EndTheChange

Methods Of Deception – The Radicals Of The Left And The Radicals Of Islam

2011-07-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

People on the left have often appeared to excuse Muslim acts of terror saying things such as “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” At the same time, the left has seemingly become more anti-Israel and anti-American. It seems as if it is a contradiction that people on the left, who supposedly have gay rights, women’s rights, and separation of church and state as their core values, would so often side with a group that goes against all these main principles.

One of the areas where radical Muslims and the left have found common ground is in their hatred of western style culture -- America and Israel, in particular. In their view, America and Israel are the true evil in the world. Both groups speak of America and Israel in such a way as to create caricatures of exploitation and colonialism.

Radical Muslims refer to America as the Big Satan and to Israel as the Little Satan. Radical leftists spell America with a K or three Ks to illustrate its supposed racism. Both groups seem to enjoy burning American flags. The leftist dominated United Nations is quick to condemn Israel and Zionism, in particular, as racism but at the same time will appoint countries such as Syria to head groups on human rights! American intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky have been rabidly anti-American and anti-Israeli.

It is even worse in the case of education because an entirely new generation is trained in the illogical and self destructive hatred of America and Israel. Noam Chomsky teaches college kids that “The Arab-Islamic world has a long history of democracy. It's regularly crushed by western force”. Clearly kids in Chomsky’s classrooms don’t hear about the women who get stoned to death for adultery. Nor do they hear about the fate of a person who dares commit the horrible offense of changing his religion from Islam to Christianity.

Directly in the Muslim world, the indoctrination of children begins at younger ages and is more violent but the methods are essentially the same. Young children are not taught facts. They are shown maps of the Middle East where Israel doesn’t even exist – not in the present, past or future. Children are given textbooks claiming that some Jews were transformed into pigs and apes. They are told to read excerpts from the known forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which claims that Jewish people are intent on world domination. In some cases, young children are trained in suicide bombing!

Both of these radical groups want to create mindless foot soldiers who are ready to do battle on their behalf. The training of the foot soldiers begins at a young age -- But what of the battle itself? What are the plans and how is this battle to be fought?

One of the leftist heroes is community organizer Saul Alinsky. In ‘Rules for Radicals’, Alinsky laid out his battle plan. In comparing Alinsky’s rhetoric with that coming out of the radical Muslim world there are startling similarities. Both leftist and Muslim radicals rely on deception. Alinsky said “Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” In the Koran it says “War is deception”.

Alinsky said "In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems." This is exactly what the left is doing today in the flotilla that is going to Gaza. Both the Muslims and the left know that Israel cannot let ships pass through uninspected to the Gaza strip because of past and current weapons smuggling. The people heading out on this flotilla are following Alinsky’s statement to the letter! In this case, acting in unison, both radical groups are forcing Israel into a public high profile action meant to make it look cruel and violent. By sending out the flotilla in this way, they put Israel in a no-win situation. This is exactly what Alinsky meant when he said “create the issues or problems”.

In the Koran, it says “The necessities justify the forbidden.” Alinsky said about means and ends:
“’Does the end justify the means?’ is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, ‘Does this particular end justify this particular means?’”
The Koran forbids certain actions but allows for exceptions in cases where there is a perceived threat to Islam or where Muslim goals can be achieved. The fact that these exceptions are open to interpretation means that there is basically nothing forbidden in the Koran which is why radical Muslims can justify suicide bombers and the targeting of innocents. Alinsky said “In war, the end justifies almost any means”.

Both radical Islam and radical leftists use fear and intimidation to keep both their friends and their enemies in line. Alinsky said “It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.” He also said "Society has good reason to fear the Radical … He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous ... Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives." The Koran says “slay the Pagans wherever ye find them”, and "Fight those who believe not in Allah”.

The result of these policies of intimidation in the Muslim world is that those peaceful loving Muslims that we keep hearing so much about are never heard from. They have been intimidated into silence. Similarly, people in the western world have been intimidated into silence or at best, feeling they have to rationalize their views. While threats of death are the methods in the radical Muslim world, in the west the threat is more subtle. Out of control political correctness has caused people to become afraid to speak about common sense issues while the radical and the insane become more normalized.

Both radical Islam and radical leftists fear the power of the individual while glorifying death and martyrdom. Alinsky said “The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.” He also said “Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.” A Taliban spokesman said “There are thousands of youth who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living.” Muslim children are taught to give their life for a greater power and rewards in heaven. Leftists are taught to give their lives for their utopian paradise.

Both radical Islam and radical leftists have contempt for the average person. They have contempt for both their enemies AND their friends. People are looked on as beings that need to be led, not as people who are capable of finding their own way. The Koran says “Believers! Do not ask questions about things which if made plain and declared to you, may vex you, causing you trouble." They are told to accept everything that is spoon-fed to them on faith and to not seek answers or to even ask questions!

Alinsky said about the average person: “Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.” Alinsky also felt that a “target” was needed to inspire the emotion needed to get people organized. Radical Muslims have that target in Israel, America and the west. Leftists in the United States rely on class warfare and tend to pick out a ‘Darth Vader’ like embodiment of evil. Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney, Haliburton and Walmart (corporations are often cast as the ‘Darth Vader of the day’) have all been targeted for attack.

Alinsky said “An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises”. In the case of Alinsky and the left, they have to tear down and discredit the free market in order to build something back in their own image. Therefore, their policies are destructive. In the case of radical Islam, in order to use the people’s dissatisfaction and discontent, they have to keep the Palestinians in a state of poverty in order to use them for propaganda value. The Arab and Muslim world could have easily absorbed Palestinian refugees but that would have taken away their most important leverage tool.

Radical Muslims and radical leftists have many differences but they also have a lot in common.

The Man To Beat in 2012

2011-06-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Many pundits have said that Barack Obama will be difficult to defeat in the 2012 presidential election. They say that on a personal level, people still like the president and that the republican field is weak. People may not agree with everything Obama has done but many are still willing to give him a pass based on situations he inherited from the previous president.

One group that may be somewhat reluctant to give Obama a pass is doctors. Obama has said that there are doctors who cut out healthy tonsils, even healthy limbs in order to earn extra money. He said this as if it was common practice and that such procedures are encouraged by the medical profession. Obama’s casting of all medical professionals with this slanderously broad brush may anger those doctors and nurses who truly care about helping and curing people.

Police officers may also not be too thrilled to support Obama in 2012. Police officers and police unions spoke out angrily when Obama said the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. He made this comment only moments after he said that he didn’t know all the facts of the case. His rush to judgment on the ‘stupidity’ of the police officer involved shows an inherent distrust of police, in general.

Another group that may be somewhat distrustful of Obama is the British. Obama made a point of packing up and sending back a bust of Winston Churchill. If he truly didn’t like the bust of Churchill, he could have simply put it in a closet. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that by sending it back, Obama actually WANTED to insult the British. He also has insulted the Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He has sided with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. He called France America’s strongest ally and has also challenged British influence in NATO.

But other than doctors, police and British people, everyone likes Obama -- Unless you are a member of the Supreme Court or are a person who believes in a constitutionally mandated balance of power between different branches of government. When Obama insulted a Supreme Court decision during a state of the union address, he insulted more than just the decision and the members of the court who made that decision -- he insulted the very idea of what the United States is as a Constitutional Republic. By calling on congress to overturn a Supreme Court decision he showed a lack of grace and civility that is certain to lose votes among people who believe in and cherish the constitution.

People in the United States generally think that America is an inherently good and moral country. When Obama went to Egypt and to countries in Europe and said that in the past, America has acted arrogantly, he insulted all the people who felt that America has done an incredible service to the world. Isn’t America insulted enough by Europe and by Muslim countries in the Middle East? Does the United States need to be insulted by its own president? How about the president bringing up all the American people that have died protecting people in other countries? How about his bringing up all the technology invented by Americans that have saved lives? How about his bringing up all the wealth American policy has created for the world and the generosity of Americans in freely giving that wealth to countries? Other countries, by the way, who continue to criticize the methods of that wealth creation which they are the beneficiaries of!

Obama has insulted the military and the CIA which, after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, has worked tirelessly and effectively to prevent another attack. President Obama said “Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained”. According to Marc Thiessen’s brilliant book “Courting Disaster”, an officer at one of the detention camps said “I’m not doing anything to create terrorists”. Another said “I take offense at that. The detainees here are better fed and live in better conditions than prisoners anywhere in the world. Some have had the opportunity to leave, and chose not to.” Other prisoners have been transferred to other detention camps and asked to be returned to Guantanamo. Officers at Guantanamo have done an incredibly difficult job. They’ve been harassed mercilessly by their captives and have shown incredible restraint and professionalism only to be insulted by their very own commander-in-chief.

During the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama skipped a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the Pentagon would not allow campaign staff or media to accompany him into the hospital. It would seem as if Obama only cares to show support for wounded veterans if he can gain political mileage out of it. This is a truly amazing display of arrogance and lack of respect to the US military and all wounded veterans.

President Obama has also insulted Christians. He refused to issue an Easter or Good Friday greeting to the nation as other presidents have done, but he is quick to recognize holidays of other religions. He has openly mocked the bible, in particular Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In addition, he has remained eerily silent as Christians are being persecuted TODAY in Iraq, Egypt and other North African countries.

Obama has insulted rural Americans creating a caricature of them as ignorant unthinking people “clinging to their guns and religion”.

Obama has insulted the surviving relatives of the 9-11 attacks and all New Yorkers by having his justice department propose bringing the trials of accused terrorists to New York. Though popular demand ended that ridiculous idea, there is still the travesty of a mosque purposely being proposed in the sacred ground of the World Trade Center.

Obama has insulted Poland on more than one occasion. He pulled out of the agreement over Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, forcing the Poles to rethink their deployment in Afghanistan. At first he wasn’t going to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. He later changed his mind on this but couldn’t get there due to the grounding of planes due to volcanic activity. In addition, rather than Obama paying his respects to the Polish fallen by visiting the recently erected Victims of Communism memorial in Washington, or at the very least, signing the condolence book at the Polish Embassy, he chose to play a round of golf.

Obama has also insulted Jewish Americans and other Americans who support the state of Israel. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel, a country that wants to live in peace, and only acts in its own defense, with groups of terrorists such as Hamas which are bent on its destruction and the killing of innocents. He has insulted the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on more than one occasion. He has made the ridiculous request that Israel retreat to the indefensible borders of 1967. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel’s building of settlements (houses!) for people to live in with people walking around with suicide belts. He has tried to push Israel to suicidal peace agreements with Syria. He has made the accusation, directly and indirectly, that Israel is the cause of instability in the Middle East. He has referred to Israel as occupied territory when, in fact, much of that land is disputed territory which Israel has more of a legitimate and historic claim to than anyone. It’s difficult to say who he has insulted more, Israel or Britain!

OK, so Obama has insulted doctors, police, the British, the Supreme Court, Constitutionalists, people who are proud -- not ashamed of America, the CIA, the military, wounded veterans, Christians, rural Americans, family members of 9-11 victims, Polish Americans and Jews. The cliché goes that ‘you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet. Obama should be judged by the job he’s done as president and not by the many groups he has offended.

Rather than end wars, he has added a new one. Rather than reduce the debt, he has raised it to a level that is so unsustainable it threatens the very future of the country. Unemployment has skyrocketed from 6 percent, when he took over, to 9 percent. The housing market is in shambles. Terrorism remains as big a threat as it’s ever been. The Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the Middle East while moderates such as Mubarak are gone and Iran is getting ready to go nuclear.

Barack Obama is a lock to win the 2012 election? On what planet?

Common Sense And So Called Gay Marriage During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender Month

2011-06-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

What is gay marriage? A marriage consists of a wife (the woman) and a husband (the man). Can one person be a wife one day and a husband the next day? Is it decided at the time of this marriage that one person will be always be the husband and the other the wife? Or are the concepts of husband and wife to be thrown away like so many other outdated and useless old concepts?

Two people of the same sex committing their lives to each other constitutes a friendship, not a marriage. People often ask why it has to be that way. If two people love each other why shouldn’t they have the right to get married? The fact is, if two people of the same sex want to have a ceremony and dedicate their lives to each other, they can call it a marriage and no one will come and knock on their doors to stop them. The United States is a tolerant country and Americans are a tolerant people who accept the fact that people are different.

But people want same sex marriage to be recognized by the law and this means that other people have to accept the idea that a man can marry a man or a woman can marry a woman which to most people, on the face of it, is ridiculous. There is a difference with identifying your own relationship as a marriage and forcing other people to abide by that classification.

Liberals on the left and libertarians on the right may ask why the government should be in the marriage business anyway? Andrew Napolitano of Fox news said government should not try to stand in the way of a marriage between two people. So in his mind, as long as a marriage is between two people, it doesn’t matter if they are of the same sex.

If that is the case, why does the definition of marriage have to stop at two people? In fact, in this day and age, when a husband and wife often both have to work, why not have a husband and two wives? Instead of sending kids to get day care by strangers or hiring a nanny, the kids can have two legitimate mothers. One mother can work and the other can take care of the children.

Changing the definition of marriage can be rationalized in many different ways. At some point, if it is to have any meaning, it has to have a definition. Every relationship between individuals does not constitute a marriage.

Some people look at same sex marriage as a civil rights issue. This is incorrect as well. There are no separate rules for straight people vs. gay people. Every man has the right to marry every woman and every woman has the right to marry every man. It is not as if one group has one set of rules and another group has a different set of rules. If a man doesn’t want to marry a woman, he doesn’t have to do so. No one in society is forced to get married.

That marriage exists between a man and a woman is a self evident truth that most people, whether they want to admit it or not, know instinctively to be true. All the rationalizations and twisting of logic and the calling of people who feel that same sex marriage is a ludicrous idea ‘Homophobes’ does not change this reality.

At the heart of the movement to legalize same sex marriage is something far more insidious than the idea that two people of the same sex should be allowed to get married. Same sex marriage is an attack on the institutions, traditions and stability of the country.

Aldous Huxley, in his forward to a “Brave New World” wrote the following:
“In a few years, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator … will do well to encourage that freedom … it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”

In the classic novel “Brave New World”, history and traditions are wiped out. Classic works of literature are eliminated. The only thing that matters is stimulation of the senses where promiscuity is encouraged and rewarded. Thus this conversation from the book:
Lenina: “Somehow… I hadn’t been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately.”
Fanny: “But one’s got to make the effort … After all, every one belongs to every one else.”

We are constantly hearing from the left about how we need to think less of ourselves and sacrifice more for others. They never talk about the successful traditions of the past. They don’t talk about religion or God. The left seems to have an inherent hatred for all religious and time tested traditions. Gay marriage is their perfect vehicle to diminish these traditions.

For a dictatorship to thrive, all the traditions that came before must be discredited. One of the most important traditions in any civilized society is the idea of the family. By blurring the most basic, common sense idea – that marriage is between a man and a woman, you are opening up the door to making everything subjective. Some things ARE black or white with no gray in between.

Barack Obama mentor and left wing agitator/community organizer Saul Alinsky understood this all too well when he said: "An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.”

At some point people have to make a stand for reality and truth. Some things are so obvious that there is no rational argument to be made. The left has made people question their own gut instincts. A country is more than a group of people living within defined boundaries. A country is defined by ideas and values. When a dictator wants control of a country he must attack it at its foundation. Make a country mean nothing, make it stand for nothing, and there is nothing left to fight to preserve – nothing to stand in the way of the would-be dictator because nothing is left worth defending.

When you walk into a corporate building in the month of June, you are likely to see a sign that says the following:
“XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender month.”
Is XYZ Company proud to celebrate this or is it afraid NOT to celebrate it? At the risk of attracting the wrath of all the compassionate people out there, if you’re going to celebrate Transgender month, how about a celebration for schizophrenia? Where is the month celebrating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? How about signs in the corporate lobby saying “XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Bipolar Manic-depressive month”?

We have become a society of people that enjoy the thrill of a 3-D movie but can’t name any Supreme Court justices. We are a society of people that know all the contestants on American Idol but can’t name the current Vice President (of course many people who DO know who the Vice President is often wish they were part of the group that didn’t). In short, this is a society made up of people who have become gullible to the stimulus around them provided by the left. They have been told to be tolerant and non-judgmental. By the way, every time people use their brains they are being judgmental so when people tell you to stop being judgmental they are basically telling you to stop thinking. We are getting closer and closer to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.

Is same sex marriage an important enough issue to debate and legislate? Is it even worth writing about while so many really dangerous things are happening? People were asked to tolerate differences, and most agreed that it was the right thing to do. But toleration is not celebration.

The United States is a country of individual rights and individual responsibilities. Though many have tried to pervert what the framers of the constitution meant, their main idea was that human rights come from our Creator, not from other people. In other words, the founding of this country had a religious and moral beginning and it is that idea that has been the backbone of the country’s success. That success will not continue if we abandon those principles.

A Modest Proposal To Heal The Earth

2011-05-21T12:35:00.001-07:00

For Returning Our Planet To Its Pristine And Natural State Of Being
(Based on the Essay “A Modest Proposal”, by Jonathan Swift in 1729)

Our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP) was founded a few years ago on the West side of Manhattan. We are dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.

The organization is staffed by people from all walks of life as well as by experts in all areas of importance. We have spoken on a variety of subjects in the past and proposed many progressive solutions to the planet’s problems and dilemmas. None of the issues that we have spoken about in the past, however, has the magnitude of the issue we intend to tackle here.

All the problems on the planet can be traced to one thing – too many people. Overpopulation is depleting the planet’s resources, heating the globe to unsustainable levels, polluting the water, encroaching on the territory of the earth’s native inhabitants, causing many of them to become extinct.

The chief purveyor of these and all other planetary problems is one species – humanity. The main problem within humanity is the philosophy and economic system that has come to be known as “capitalism”.

It is capitalism, with its maddening obsession with technology and innovation, which is primarily responsible for the overpopulation of the earth by homo sapiens. The insidious technology of capitalism has created situations where babies born with birth defects now live long, healthy lives, wasting precious resources in the process. People who at one time may have lived into their 60s are now living will into their 80s, even their 90s! Thus millions of people are using resources that years ago would have been used more efficiently by the planet.

Hence, the first step in our multi-faceted plan is to rid the earth of capitalism. We must start by teaching our children at young ages not to be capitalists. The focus of schools should not be to teach disciplines such as mathematics that might encourage kids to want to create businesses or new ideas. Education should focus on kids getting along with each other and with nature. Here we applaud Barack and Michelle Obama for being so forward thinking. Both have emphasized that students should stop striving for that corner office and that big salary and instead look to serve others, to sacrifice for the betterment of society.

Unfortunately, simply leaving this up to the whims and desires of people themselves has shown to be ineffective. Humans are selfish creatures and will need to be pushed in the proper direction. Children will need to be shown how people have all but destroyed the planet in their egotistical desires to develop products and machines. These kids need to be taught how these selfish beings have found ways to grow staggering amounts of food causing an even greater increase in the population. Everything associated with capitalism seems to cause more people while increasing the longevity of the ones already here! This evil must be stopped.

What is needed is de-industrialization which can only come about by a cataclysmic change in the ways people think about their lives. The symbols of industrialization are all around us -- big tall buildings, air conditioners, cars, cell phones, ipods, ipads, blackberries, kindles, plasma TVs, HD TVs, planes above us, trains below us, laptops in our backpacks, some have technology inside their bodies replacing the very organs they were born with, buses move people across town while ferries move them across rivers, people can take out a small device and read any newspaper in the world. All this must stop if the planet is to survive.

If people won’t give up these trivial things willingly, then they must be forced to do so. Currently there is a fictional worldwide war on terror. The effort that is going on in that war needs to be brought to bear on capitalism – the real enemy!

Rich people who disproportionally exploit the world’s resources must be the first target in the war on capitalism. Our experts here at our organization (BURP) feel that the predator drones currently being used in Afghanistan could be put to excellent use in this theater. Once predator drones and all their fire power is brought to bear on capitalists, they will think twice before exploiting resources.

Imagine a barbecue on a sunny 4th of July. Here is a holiday celebrating the creation of the worst capitalist offender and the most wasteful nation of all, the United States. A family of 5 is grilling the flesh of a poor animal on their grill while celebrating this heretical holiday. This family is in their backyard laughing, playing games while somewhere else in the world there is a family starving on a couple of grains of rice. The capitalistic family has a huge back yard all to itself while somewhere else in the world there is a small room with 18 people living in squalor. But justice is done when the predator drone comes in and eliminates this wasteful wealthy family. The war on capitalism has begun.

Yes we know it seems somewhat harsh but is there any other method that has worked? Once rich people get the message that they must give up their big homes, their swimming pools, their SUVs, their big screen TVs, their computers and internet access, their satellite radio, their running water and their sewage system, then the predator drones can stop.

Once capitalists are brought in line it will be time to take down all capitalist symbols. While it was capitalists who built these structures, they won’t be needed to take them down. Only the heavens know what methods the capitalists used to selfishly build such wasteful structures but it will be much easier to destroy them than to build them.

In a world finally free of capitalism, its technology and its buildings, the planet can start to heal. Imagine how happy the planet will be when instead of taking raw sewage and treating it with naturally occurring enzymes and chemicals to break it down and recycle it the way the capitalists did, we take it all in its raw form (both human and horse waste since there will be no cars by then) and bury tons and tons of it in the earth.

Of course, there may be an outbreak of dysentery. Typhus might also become a problem from all the raw sewage. There won’t be a lot of doctors either to cure all of this and it could turn into a full blown epidemic, the likes of which has not been seen since the bubonic plague. Water might become polluted from all the sewage as well.

But in any situation there is some give and take. While there will be no doctors, technology, drugs or hospitals to treat the dysentery and typhus outbreaks, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will go down and start the planet on its healing journey.

We here at our organization (BURP) are aware of the tragic loss of life that will occur in this future world. We feel this loss and regret it but at the same time, we know that humans are a cancer to the planet. Should we mourn the death of a cancer cell?

A scientific expert on our staff points out that there is an inverse relationship between human population and planetary health. As all the capitalist ideas are eliminated the planet will have a chance to breathe again. However, the people left will still try to eat the native inhabitants. They will still try to grow food and reclaim land in order to do so. Therefore, it may be necessary to completely eliminate the human population.

We propose a no child policy. We are caring people and do not want to be judge, jury and executioner for the people who survive the elimination of capitalism. However, they cannot be allowed to bring more people to the planet because this could start the evil cycle all over again.

Some people, those who have demonstrated a progressive, caring and forward thinking approach, will be allowed to reproduce in order to act as stewards of the planet. We here at our organization (BURP) are imminently qualified to make this decision.

We understand that many of you may have some trepidation concerning this proposal but those of you who feel that way ought to re-think your priorities. It is not right to put the perpetuation of your gene pool above the health of the planet. We have made our choice. It is either the planet or humanity and we choose the planet.

Sacrifice, Guilt And Giving Back - The Three Stooges Of Leftist Politics

2011-05-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

There are phrases and ideas that are often accepted without question. The notion that people need to ‘give back to society’ is uttered by many people who have been successful. Athletes and actors have often expressed this idea when establishing some charity or fund that helps the communities they grew up in.

While giving to charity or setting up an organization that helps people is a noble cause, there is an inherent illogic and dangerous precedent in the phrase ‘giving back to the community’. First, the idea assumes that the community has given people something to begin with. Second, it assumes that people have a right to expect something from the community.

Barack Obama seems to be a firm believer in the ‘giving back’ idea. At various times he has spoken about people who have done well in the United States:
“They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.”
In contradiction to the previous quote, he also said about the ‘rich’:
"Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I have taken from this country… Their notion is despite the fact that I have benefited from all of these investments… that somehow I have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me. And I have no real obligation to future generations to make sure they have a better future.”

So in one comment, rich people want to give more and in the other comment he presents the rich as a bunch of selfish people who want to keep all their money. Whatever Obama actually believes about the things the rich want to do with their money, he clearly believes that it is their obligation to give more of it away to government. He said:
“This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. “

The idea of ‘giving back’ is a diversion. It betrays the way of thinking of people on the left as well as on people who have been successful and who feel guilty about their success. With the left it is a matter of retribution and payback while with the successful, it is a matter of guilt, which presupposes that their success is somehow immoral.

While giving to charities is a noble idea and should be encouraged, giving BACK is an abomination. The ‘community’ did not create the success of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The ‘community’ did not make Michael Jordan a great basketball player. It is wonderful of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan to give their money to causes that they believe in. It is criminal if they are forced to give money to this fictitious entity called ‘community’.

Community is nothing but a euphemism for government. The whole idea of our constitutional republic is limited government. All the rights are placed in the hands of individual people. The government rules by the consent of those people. It can’t give people anything because it has nothing to give. All it can do is to take from some to give to others. The prosperity of the United States was created by individuals, not government.

Bill Gates may owe his parents and he may owe friends who inspired him. Most of all, he should feel pride in himself. He has created a company that provides millions of new jobs. He has created powerful products that people can obtain at reasonable prices that make them more productive. If anything, it is the community that owes Bill Gates, not the other way around.

‘Giving back’ is a better way of saying that paying more taxes is patriotic. Joe Biden said that rich Americans would gladly pay more:
“It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
Biden could not be more wrong. Paying more taxes to is like giving $20 to a kid to buy milk, eggs and orange juice. After he comes back saying that he spent the $20 on video games you give him another $20. This time he comes back saying that he went to McDonalds. So you give him another $20 and he comes back and says he went to the movies. When do you stop giving him $20?

It is not patriotic to pay more taxes and it is not patriotic to give money to a government that has proven time and again that it doesn’t know what to do with that money when it has it. All the talk about having the rich pay their ‘fair share’ presupposes that if the government had that money it would use it in a more beneficial way.

Barack Obama said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:
“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. “

There is so much that is misleading about this statement. First of all, conservatives are not asking anyone, rich or poor to sacrifice. Obama and the left are so used to their own rhetoric that they can’t seem to think or speak without these toxic ideas seeping in to everything they say and do. If money is spent on things that are not achieving results, it is not a sacrifice to stop spending money on those things, it is common sense.

It is beneficial to everyone, rich and poor alike, to stop wasting money on union subsidies and tax breaks for unions that do not even use those tax breaks for the benefit of their own members. It is beneficial to stop spending so much money on an education system that is clearly broken. It is beneficial to look at Medicare and social security and our entire safety net system and deal with the realities of the financial mess they are in.

Another misleading idea of Obama’s statement (more of an outright lie) is the claim of a tax cut for millionaires. Republicans are proposing to keep the same rate that has been in effect for the last ten years -- that is clearly not a cut. But more important is the idea of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘giving back’. It is ironic that Obama wants to eliminate the tax cut for charitable giving. Does he really want to encourage people to ‘give back’ or does he want to have a government that has more control over the people? The idea of ‘giving back’ seems to only get its moral cache if it is forced upon individuals by an intrusive government.

Ayn Rand once asked “in a society where everybody sacrifices, who wins?” She said "The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice'...If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral.” And she also said “Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values.”

Obama said: “The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.” And he said “This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.

Exactly what America does Barack Obama believe in? Is it one where the people are helpless and need his help to survive? Americans sacrifice every day. They crowd into trains at 5:30 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep in order to give their kids a better life. They don’t need lectures from Barack Obama on sacrificing. Forcing people to spend money on ideas that are inimical to the ideas of the constitution and freedom is not a sacrifice, it is theft.

A Political Strategy For Conservatives

2011-04-22T08:02:00.000-07:00

Former NFL coach of the NY Jets Herm Edwards uttered the words “You play to win the game” at a press conference in response to a question about the Jets playing “not to lose” rather than aggressively playing to win. The Edwards quote is funny in the way he says it but playing to win is not as obvious as his quote makes it seem.

In sports, there are some teams or individuals who play aggressively, trying to force their opponents into mistakes while risking mistakes themselves. Other teams don’t take chances, playing less aggressively while waiting for a mistake from their opponents that they can pounce on. Some teams try to outsmart their opponents, some use gimmicks while others try to physically intimidate.

One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. It depends on the personnel of the team and the personnel of its opponent, as well as weather conditions and other considerations. One thing is clear in sports – you find your own strength and your opponent’s weakness and try to maximize your strengths while exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses.

In U.S. politics, one of the biggest strengths of democrats vs. republicans is that the democrats get to frame the rules of the debate. This is helped by a media that is mostly made up of democrats. There are narratives and cliché’s that are accepted as absolute truths such as: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Republicans are the party of the rich and corporations while democrats are the party of the working class. Democrats care about the elderly, minorities, children, women, gays, transgender people and the physically handicapped while republicans care about the religious right and gun fanatics. Democrats are thoughtful, thinking people while republicans are back woods people ready to support war and killing in the name of blind patriotism.

Republicans need to attack these clichés at their core before they can go into specific debates about policy. As long as republicans are portrayed in this way, they will not be successful. The worst part of these clichés is that the republicans often lend credibility to the stereotypes by trying to put themselves above other republicans.

For example, when republicans use a term such as “compassionate conservatism”, they lend legitimacy to the idea that most conservatives are not compassionate. Instead of a candidate saying that as an individual, he is a compassionate conservative, the candidate needs to say that conservatism, itself, is compassionate. The candidate needs to be able to display how and why conservatism is compassionate. Before conservatives and republicans can become the political force they need to be, they have to change the take on who they are perceived to be.

Republicans are afraid to defend anything that took place during the Bush administration and that continues to be used against them. Some political strategists, no doubt making a lot of money and being experts in their field, have decided that the past is the past and that political debates must be based on a vision of the future. But when your vision of the future is consistently compared to what you have done in the past you are put in a position where you HAVE to defend the past whether you want to or not.

An honest analysis of what took place during the Bush administration would show that Bush and the republicans were the only ones who saw the impending disaster of Freddie and Fannie, along with the housing market collapse. There are democrat politicians from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Barack Obama, himself, actually on tape saying that Freddie and Fannie were not in trouble. They are on tape saying they wanted to continue the course of sub-prime loans. These are the same sub-prime loans that were the driving force behind the economic collapse.

The republicans know the complete playbook of democrats. It’s class warfare, lying about actual facts, and portraying the republicans as mean. There is no ingenuity behind that playbook. The republicans know that an 85 mile per hour straight fastball is coming straight down the center of the plate belt high but they refuse to hit it! Since they are already being sold to the public as mean, republicans are careful not to hit the ball too hard because then they might be perceived as even more mean! Yet people would respect and like republicans more if they fought for their issues rather than ran away from them.

When Barack Obama states “But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking” -- or when Obama says that republicans have driven the car into the ditch and he is trying to get the car out -- or when he says about republicans that “they can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back”. All of these comments are based on the assumption that the Bush administration, the republican congress and the republican senate created the economic mess the U.S. is in.

When the entire strategy of the democrats is based on the idea that Bush and republicans “drove the bus into a ditch” then it is incumbent on the republicans to show that they were screaming to stop the bus while the democrats kept driving. In fact, there is a rumor that while the bus was speeding toward the cliff, it was stopped by a traffic cop but when the officer asked for a license and registration, Barack Obama chided him for being extreme. Apparently the officer let the bus go after Obama showed him an old learner’s permit from the state of Hawaii.

Obama was recently caught off camera by CBS and said “Go at it” in referring to republicans attempt to repeal his health care plan. If Obama wants a fight, the republicans should give him one. Start by isolating the lies constantly being told by the left and then attack the motivation for saying the lies, as well as the substance of the lies themselves. It can’t get done through the media and must come in a “mano a mano” challenge directly to Obama. Obama will get angry and will try to hide it by his signature smile. Nevertheless, if he is really challenged, he will come across as bitter and vengeful.

A quick word about the “Birther” issue – a friend recently applied for a job at a large financial firm. He had to provide: Proof of citizenship, A full college transcript, Allow the company to do a full credit check, Show documentation and proof of all residences for the last ten years, Copies of passport and drivers license, Get a drug test. Why does a person applying for a job at a financial institution need to show more proof than the person who has the most powerful position on earth?

The President works for the people and we have a right, actually an obligation, to make sure that he is who he says he is. In fact, we know he has a large collection of friends (too numerous to name here) who have anti-American sentiments. Is it unreasonable to ask to see what he wrote during his informative years in college, especially given who his friends are? Every other president has released his transcripts, why not Obama?

As to the birth certificate, if it has been lost then say so and tell us why. Obama has spent about 2 million dollars fighting lawsuits that want him to simply show the birth certificate. He clearly does not want to show this document. Maybe he is a citizen and maybe he isn’t but he clearly seems to be hiding something.

George Bush had about 10 minutes unaccounted for from his service in the National Guard and every media company in the world tried to find out what went on in those 10 minutes. Now we have a president who hasn’t released his medical records, college transcript and writings, and birth certificate. Where is the media curiosity? Republicans need to (pardon the expression) grow a set on this one and simply demand that Obama release these documents as all other presidents have done.

The republicans have to fight on their terms. Despite an antagonistic media, there is no need for trick plays. All republicans have to do is toss the ball down the field and they will win. There is no need to take a call on a cell phone in the middle of a news conference. Leave this kind of idiocy to the democrats. Are you listening Rudy Giuliani? Don’t insult the intelligence of the citizens of this country with silly games. State your case honestly and without fear, with humor if possible but not with gimmicks. Play to win the game.

The Big Government Virus

2011-04-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

A biological virus is defined, according to Dictionary.com as: “an ultramicroscopic … metabolically inert, infectious agent that replicates only within the cells of living hosts, mainly bacteria, plants, and animals … composed of an RNA or DNA core, a protein coat, and, in more complex types, a surrounding envelope. “A computer virus is defined as “a segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, often to damage or shut down a system or network.

There is a new type of virus known as BGV (The Big Government Virus). This is a virus that combines the maliciousness of a computer virus with the heartbreaking reality of a biological virus. BGV is similar to a computer virus in that it is caused by people and planted in hosts with purposeful intent. It is similar to a biological virus in the way it replicates itself in the body politic.

There is no cure for BGV. There is no treatment, antibiotic, or anti-virus software that will remove it once it takes hold. The virus reproduces itself on a geometric scale. The best way of dealing with this treacherous disease is to prevent it from infecting the host in the first place. Like all viruses, BGV is a parasite that needs to feed off of a living host in order to survive and spread.

The good news is that BGV is completely preventable. It requires education from a young age and continuing vigilance throughout a person’s life but as long as people are aware of the warning signs, they can prevent the infection from contaminating them and their neighbors.

Schools have started many education programs for the prevention of viruses such as AIDS. They have handed out condoms to young children and explained to these young kids how to have sex so that it is less risky. Now with this new wicked virus, young children will need to be educated to how BGV works, how it spreads and how it can be prevented.

Like many viruses, at first BGV seems harmless. Its danger is in its deceptive nature. It often fools people into thinking that it is beneficial. This is why education of BGV is so important. People first need to identify carriers of the virus. There are people who knowingly carry this virus and purposely spread it to others. Most of these people are democrat politicians. The virus works thusly:

A democrat politician such as Barack Obama will say something such as “The rich need to pay their fair share”. This is the entry point of BGV. Taxes then get raised. At this point the BGV bug takes hold. People will naturally try to prevent giving their hard earned money to the government. They may try to put it in tax shelters. So, a new government agency needs to be created in order to monitor the economic activity of citizens. A certain amount of freedom is lost as this new agency tells people how and where they can invest their money.

This new agency costs money as well. Hundreds of new IRS agents need to be hired. Therefore, the raising of taxes has an expense associated with it as a portion of the new taxes has to go into paying for the new agency.

Then the people who have to pay the extra taxes have to change their plans. Not having the money to invest the way they want, they have to cancel certain expenditures. A person planning to buy a BMW puts those plans off until the economic situation is better. Other people do the same. Soon there is extra inventory at BMW. Sales people are let go as cars are not selling.

The sales people who are let go from BMW file for unemployment. Now, instead of the government receiving taxes from all those BMW sales people, the government has to pay them unemployment checks. So the extra revenue from raising taxes now has another bill associated with it. There are less people paying taxes because less people are working and not only are there less tax payers, but the government goes from receiving money from those people to PAYING money to those people.

The trucking companies that deliver BMW cars, the mechanics that repair them, the suppliers who supply the steel, computer components, electrical equipment, and leather for the seats all let people go because demand is so low. Now the unemployment rate is really starting to rise and in an act of compassion, the unemployment insurance period is increased by six months which causes government to pay out even more money.

Now the BGV illness has completely infected the body politic. People have less money because the government is confiscating more and more. In addition, the government is telling them how and where they can invest the money they are allowed to keep. This loss of freedom and individual wealth is not offset by any gains in government revenue because whatever new money the government hoped to obtain is paid out in new expenses that didn’t exist before the tax increase.

This is only the beginning of the damage caused by the BGV virus. Not only is there a bunch of new expenses, but there isn’t any new economic growth. A person who was planning to create an extra room in his home puts those plans off because after paying the extra taxes, he doesn’t have enough money left. The construction firm that would have gotten the job and would have paid taxes on it now pays no taxes and goes out of business because no one else is adding rooms to their homes either.

The insidious virus is now in full replication mode. Politicians see the infection spreading but instead of trying to treat it, they perpetuate it with more of the same. With unemployment levels skyrocketing and debt growing, the politicians decide to create new government jobs. The people who do these jobs go off of unemployment but their very salary is still paid by other tax payers! These jobs cost money and produce little. In addition, the people who do these jobs become dependent on the very system that gave them the jobs in the first place. A vicious cycle begins as the people who work for the government become permanent perpetuators of the BGV disease!

With all the new government jobs, there is no innovation by individuals. People who may have come up with inventions and ideas that could improve the lives of others don’t have the money to invest. There is no entrepreneurialism because not only do people lack the money to invest but they also know that even if they manage to scrape up the money, come up with a great idea, work hard and have success, they still won’t get to keep the fruits of their hard work! Soon people become dependent on other countries for products because the cost of producing them here and taking risks versus the potential rewards becomes prohibitive.

At this point the BGV germs are circulating all through the body politic. The infection is severe. Debt and unemployment are high. Individual freedom is in danger. There is no growth in the economy. Opportunities are few and innovation is null. So what do the politicians do? They ask to raise taxes again! This is similar to an endless loop in the worst computer virus. A loop is a piece of computer code that repeats itself over and over until some condition is finally met to stop it. But with another rise in taxes, there is no exit to the loop as it repeats again and again while doing more damage each time it runs through. The patient, already infected with a severe case of BGV, will not survive if the loop continues to run.

Awareness of diseases is important. People have cancer walks and AIDS walks in order to prevent the spread of diseases and to raise consciousness. They remind people to see doctors and get checked for breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer. The time has come for a BGV walk to create awareness and to put a definitive end to this horrific epidemic. It is now time to educate the public to the scourge known as the BGV (Big Government) virus. This self perpetuating disease has always been around in one form or another. It can be reasonably argued that this disease has caused more death and destruction than any other. The infection rate has, hitherto, been kept in check in the United States. Now the country is in danger of a BGV epidemic. It must be stopped.

Neocons, Teabaggers and Chickenhawks - The Methods of Saul Alinsky and the Demonization of Political Opponents

2011-02-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules For Radicals” was published in 1971. Its methods have become synonymous with leftist political strategy. Even people who never read the book have been so ingrained by the techniques outlined within its pages that they use its methods without realizing it. Both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are admirers of Saul Alinsky.

A 21 year old Hillary Rodham was offered a job with the Alinsky Community Organizing group and later wrote her thesis on Alinsky. Obama’s early community organizing started when he was 24 years old in the Alinsky groups “Developing Communities Project (DCP)” and the “Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC)”.

In the first chapter of “Rules For Radicals” called “The Purpose”, Alinsky writes:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

Who is supposed to have power in the United States? According to the Constitution, the people hold power and are governed by their consent. The government must answer to the people, not the people to the government. So who, exactly, does Alinsky want to take power from and who is supposed to get this power? This idea of “holding power” is always couched in terms such as the “Have-Nots” or the “Poor” but in reality it seeks to fundamentally change the government of the United States.

In speaking about the Constitution, Barack Obama said “It says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” It would be easy to say that Obama lacks an understanding of the constitution but he probably understands it all too well. Trained in Alinsky tactics, Obama wants to change the power structure and will use the structure (the constitution and free markets) only insofar as it can be used to achieve his ends.

Alinsky said “All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” So it is not just about creating new ideas, it is about discrediting the ones already in place, as Obama does when he criticizes the constitution. When people refer to the constitution as a “Living Document” they make the constitution “pliable”. A “pliable” constitution is easier to bend to the desires of those who wish to remodel it in such a way that the original intent is unrecognizable.

Ironically, according to Alinsky, it is the very idea of being a “radical” or a dangerous “enemy” to the status quo that gives the community organizer his credibility. Alinsky said that the “establishment” must fear the organizer and label him as “DANGEROUS”:
“for in that one word the establishment reveals its fear of the organizer, its fear that he represents a threat to its omnipotence. Now the organizer has his ‘birth certificate’ and can begin.”
And you silly people thought Obama didn’t have a birth certificate!

Alinsky understood that in order to gather a following, the organizer needed to inspire confidence to a core group. While Obama fights charges that he is not a radical and tries to minimize his associations with people such as Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, he revels in it at the same time, giving a nod and a wink to those who openly or secretly adhere to the same agenda. He also has the added benefit of ridiculing those who point out these things as being out of touch or conspiracy mongers.

In the chapter “Of Means and Ends”, Alinsky utters his “Rules of Ethics”. In the eleventh rule of ethics he states “goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, “Of the Common Welfare”. It’s easy to see his influence in current mindless clichés such as ‘the rich get richer while the poor get poorer’. Mostly in this chapter, Alinsky justifies any means if it leads to the desired end. He points out that morality is flexible, depending upon the time of occurrence, who commits a particular act, and how the act is sold or marketed. It is a war mentality, as he states in his third rule of ethics, “in war the end justifies any means”. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Rahm Emanuel’s voice saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

Alinsky’s “power tactics” can be seen in almost everything the left does. For example, the fourth tactic is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules”. Conservatives always moan about double standards. The reason that there are double standards is because conservatives have standards. It is impossible to always live up to high standards but the admirable part about having high standards is to try. Failing is not a crime but in the view of the left and of Alinsky, it is an opportunity. Therefore, if Bill Clinton has affairs or is accused of sexual harassment, it is a personal matter since he never had any standards to begin with, but a conservative such as Clarence Thomas is expected to walk on water or be viewed as a hypocrite.

The fifth rule states “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky goes on to say “It is almost impossible to counter attack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition who then react to your advantage.” When the Tea Party rose to prominence in response to Obama’s radical agenda, the left came up with terms such as “tea bagger”. They thought themselves very clever in their use of that vulgar term. They have also shown fondness for the term “Neo-con”, giggling like 10 year old children when using that witty phrase. They use terms such as “Chicken Hawks” if a person who never served in the military should dare say that maybe military use is needed in a certain situation.

The thirteenth rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The left constantly looks for the latest “boogeyman/boogeywoman”. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and many others all fall into this category. In this tactic, the left doesn’t seek to find truth -- They seek to create a living caricature of evil, incompetence and cruelty and they don’t care how cruel they are in slandering people who have families and loved ones as long as it serves the purpose of mitigating an effective voice of the right.

The dirty little secret about Alinsky and his approach to “change” is that he has contempt for the average person. In the thirteenth rule above, for example, Alinsky explains that a person or “target” is needed because it is difficult to get people organized and excited about a concept or policy. It’s almost as if he views people as children, who need a cartoon character to understand his point.

In fact, Alinsky says about average people:
“Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.”
Alinsky shows his contempt for his own followers. When reading his book, you get a sense that he is out to manipulate people, not to inspire them.

Yet Alinsky does understand the need to inspire. His form of inspiration, however, does not appeal to the best in people, it appeals to their worst – their fears, their envy and their jealousies. It is inspiration by trickery. In order to inspire by trickery, a good salesperson is needed. Along comes Barack Obama and he is perfect for the job. In the chapter titled “Communication”, Alinsky states:
“the organizer will have a pretty good idea about what the community should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action. He will never seem to tell the community what to do. Instead he will use loaded questions. If possible, he will get someone in the audience to faint in order to accentuate his point.”
OK, I made the last one up but certainly Obama is Alinsky’s ideal communicator.

The founders of the United States didn’t base the constitution on trickery or manipulation. They created an idea that has survived and prospered based on the concept that people do not owe their existence to others and that they are responsible for their own happiness and well being. Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky is a recipe for agitation, not for prosperity and certainly not for morality. Anyone in a position of power who follows the teaching of Alinsky is someone who should not be in a position of power.

Choices, Transformations And Observations

2010-10-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

I’m tired of being told that my way of looking at the world is less moral than the ways of other people. I’m tired of being told to disregard what my eyes are seeing because other people may find it offensive.

I am the child of people who survived the Holocaust. My mother was first taken from her home in a small village called Nisni Slatina and taken along with other Jewish people to a decaying, disease ridden ghetto. From there she was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. As she arrived in Auschwitz, she asked a woman Gestapo where her parents were. The woman Gestapo pointed to the smoke bellowing from the chimneys and said, “You want to know where your parents are? That is your parents.” My mother was wearing earrings and the Gestapo pulled down on them, splitting her ears and creating the scars that she still bears today, at 92 years old.

My mother was taken out of Auschwitz as one of 300 girls to do slave labor in a factory called Telefunken. She was treated better at Telefunken doing slave labor than she was at Auschwitz. She was lucky to be sent there. As the tide of the war started to turn, my mother was sent to Bergen Belsen, where she was lying among the dead and dying when the camp was liberated by the British. My mother survived, as did three of her sisters. Two other sisters and her brother, along with both of her parents, were killed.

My mother told me of her experiences often. She told me about how when she entered Auschwitz, she saw the women there behaving like animals, fighting for every scrap of dirty food and swore she would never act that way. But hunger was the over-riding emotion and one day when she spotted a dirty potato skin on the floor, she grabbed at it. She said this to me many times with a lot of emotion in her voice; “Howard, that dirty potato skin tasted like an apple to me.”

As a child, I never fully understood the significance of the Holocaust. I knew it was bad. My mother would have nightmares where she would scream in such a horrified way and you couldn’t wake her up! I would run into their room and literally shake the bed. My father was always afraid that waking her up from these dreams would be too sudden and traumatic. She would finally wake up and start to relax, though with tears in her eyes. I would ask her what happened in the dream. All she would ever say was that big dogs were chasing her. She never went into more details about those nightmares and would just say that she didn’t remember the rest.

As I started to get a little older I started asking questions. What about all the other people? Didn’t anyone see that what was going on was wrong? My mother told me one story about how the neighbors in Nisni Slatina, people who had been over for dinner, people who they had been friends with, took advantage of the growing anti-semitism and started to steal things from their home. This outraged me. The evil of the Nazis was self-evident, though hardly explainable. But that average people would not only do nothing to help, but actually use the situation for petty thievery – that just stuck in my craw.

Some thoughts that you have as a child stay with you forever. Perhaps it is because these are your formative years and you are thinking things out for the first time. As you get older, thoughts come into your mind and leave and you never even knew they were there! The thought that stayed with me and shaped me forever is this; I would never be a person who would allow other people to intimidate me into going against what I knew instinctively to be true or morally correct. I didn’t always live up to this idea but it is the idea that shaped who I am.

As I grew up, it seemed obvious that a liberal ideology was morally correct. Liberals were supposed to stand up for what was right. But as I grew older I started to see things in a different way than many of my friends. I think it started with the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. President Carter was so inept and then Ronald Reagan came in and talked about peace through strength. No one wants war but there is honor in defending what is right. Cowering and hoping that things will change is what led to the Holocaust. I long ago made a pledge to myself that I would see the world as it was and not how other people said it was, and now for the first time, I was forced to act on that pledge.

Even little things started to irk me in their inconsistencies and misrepresentations. In 1984, when Walter Mondale was pressured to pick a woman as his running mate, he chose Geraldine Ferraro. Everyone said how courageous he was for picking a woman and I thought that given the NY Times and every liberal organization was pressuring him to pick a woman, courage at that point would have been to pick a man! It’s not that he was wrong for picking a woman, just that it wasn’t courageous; given the pressure he was under to do so.

It’s funny because people on the left point to the new media and say that these outlets preach to people who don’t know any better, thereby belittling people like me as being easily deceived when the exact opposite is true. My observations of the world led me to becoming conservative before there was a conservative media and when I saw the new conservative media pop up, I was happy to know that there were more people out there who saw the world the way I saw it.

Now in 2010, I’ve seen what my parents saw -- the resurgence of anti-semitism. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime but I always promised myself that if I did see it, I would do what I could to fight against it. This anti-semitism is coming from the Muslim community and from left-wing groups and it makes no sense to try and be politically correct and pretend it is something else.

In the UK, many schools have dropped the Holocaust from history lessons because of fears that it might offend Muslims. Why would Muslims be offended by the teaching of the Holocaust? The fact that the UK education system has given in to this re-writing of history is shameful and eerily reminiscent of the giving in to nazism in the 1930s.

People keep saying that all Muslims are not terrorists, but was every German a nazi? Did people say “Don’t judge all Germans by the actions of a few”? The fact was that the few controlled the many and unfortunately, it’s the same today with the Muslim religion. I will believe that the Muslim religion is a religion of peace when people of the Muslim faith come out to protest the radicalism among them with the same fervor that they protest against a cartoon of Muhammad.

Recently, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for saying what everyone instinctively knows to be true – on airplanes, people will look at Muslims with suspicion and fear. While it’s true that most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims and they, not other people, are responsible for that reaction. I would like to see the people who fired Juan Williams take a lie-detector test and be asked the question of whether or not they do a double take when a person with Muslim garb walks onto a plane. I would bet that they would fail the test if they said anything other than “Yes”.

In New York, people who call themselves liberal stand up for the rights to build a mosque near the World Trade Center. Does it matter that the people building the mosque don’t condemn the acts of terrorist organizations such as Hamas? Does it matter that it is being funded by anti-semitic organizations?

In Palestinian classes, Jewish people are portrayed to children as less than human. There are cartoons portraying Jewish people as money grubbers and monkeys. Why isn’t the world angered by these portrayals? Is it because the Jewish people haven’t threatened anyone? Are Jewish people worth less than others? These cartoons are no different than that of nazis. They would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

Ayn Rand once said “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see”. It is exhausting trying to explain something that seems so self-evident yet it is an obligation, especially for me, to keep trying. I owe this to all the relatives of mine who died in the Holocaust.

The Truth And Nothing But The Truth

2010-10-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

I recently saw a movie called “The Invention of Lying” with Ricky Gervais. The movie took place in a mythical society where there was no concept of lying. I wondered what a speech by Barack Obama would look like if he had lived in this mythical society and had to tell the truth as he saw it. The speech might go something like this…

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Two years ago I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Now let me be clear, I would have never been elected if everything was running smoothly in the country. I was elected because I promised that I would change and improve these things. I offered hope.

It’s been two years and while we are still at war, while our unemployment has skyrocketed up to almost 10%, and while our debt has grown to unsustainable levels, I am amazed that I can still get away with blaming the previous administration.

America elected me because we decided to move forward as one nation and one people. But some of you have decided you do not want to be one nation. Selfish people who watch FOX news and listen to talk radio -- unpatriotic people who have formed tea parties are trying to misrepresent and ruin the change I have proposed. If we are truly to become one nation and one people, then those of you who have ideas that are different than mine need to shut up and stop standing in the way.

People need to understand that I, as President of the United States, know better than you about what is good for the country. We need to get away from our colonial, imperialistic and nationalistic way of thinking about our country and about the world. We need to understand that we are world citizens, not just citizens of one country. We cannot afford the arrogance that has marred this country in the past. We are just one country out of many and we need to have relationships with other countries based on mutual trust and mutual respect.

As to the economy, we cannot afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from last decade – what some call the "lost decade”. I don’t personally know anyone who actually called it the “lost decade” but after this speech, there will be people who will start to use the term “the lost decade” and it will seem as if that phrase has been around for a while. It’s a little trick that I and my speech writers use to fool people. We create a new term and make it seem as if others have been saying it all along.

The economic expansion of the last decade was built on a housing bubble that was unsustainable. I have said in the past that the bursting of the housing bubble was caused by Wall Street greed and unregulated financial speculation. What I haven’t said, but what is no less true, is that by forcing banks to give loans to people who had bad credit and little assets, was that we were creating a situation whereby if the housing bubble burst, a lot of innocent people would be left holding the bag. As an advisor to ACORN, I personally played a big role in seeing that this policy of bad loans continued. This, of course, was done with the best of intentions.

In fact, many of my close associates have also played a part in the forcing of banks to give bad loans with the goal that home ownership is a right, rather than a privilege. These include Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines and many others. The reasons for the financial collapse are very complicated and I rely on most of you to not take the initiative to look into what actually caused the crisis.

I know that most of you are tired if the partisanship, the shouting, and the pettiness in Washington. So in order to have a more civil and bi-partisan tone, people need to believe in me. I ask for your trust. My opponents on the other side of the aisle try to bring up facts to confuse people. We will have a much more civil and democratic society if my opponents would stop trying to throw their opinions into the political debate. This only serves to create a partisan tone in Washington. It would be much more beneficial to the country if you would simply accept that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and leave it at that.

We all hated to have to bail out the banks. It was about as popular as a root canal but it needed to be done. So I supported the last administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. I know that I bring up the previous administration quite a lot. There are two reasons for this. Number one: When I do something unpopular or reckless, it is beneficial to me if the previous administration has also done something unpopular or reckless. Number two: If the unpopular and reckless thing I have done doesn’t work out, I get to blame the previous administration but if it does work out, I get to take credit for it.

We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. From this point forward, I will see to it that only government will be allowed to take risks that threaten the whole economy.

In fact, many companies have now paid back their loans so it has been a complete success in staving off financial disaster. Therefore, tonight I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. Because I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to take that money and give it back to its rightful owners – you the people.

As to international issues, as most of you probably know, I was against the Iraq war right from the beginning. What many of you may not realize is that I was just as firmly against the surge strategy in Iraq that brought us the ultimate victory there. Nevertheless, I have ended the conflict in Iraq and see no reason to give credit to anyone other than myself (well maybe the soldiers deserve a little credit as well). The war, after all, did end on my watch.

Illegal immigration is looked at by some as a problem. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. We need to get more immigrants to come to the US, to offer their hard labor, to pay taxes, to fill jobs that Americans won’t do, and to register as democrats.

As to my healthcare plan, if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. I will listen to your ideas before I dismiss them completely. I will then point out that elections have consequences and that I am the president. If you continue to make noise challenging that my healthcare plan will do all that I say it will do, I will make sure that you are portrayed as an out of touch troglodyte who doesn’t care about average working people.

Now I will be the first to admit that my administration has had some political setbacks and some of them were deserved. My administration should have done a better job of communicating how bad things were. In short, we didn’t take enough advantage of the economic and international crises both at home and abroad.

I did not come here to do what was easy and I did not say that change would happen overnight. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high or we can do what's best for the next generation. Or we can create a crisis that we can use to our political advantage. We can spend so much money that we dig a hole so deep it is impossible to get out of and when we’re done spending us into insolvency we can blame it all on George Bush.

Thank you. God Bless You. And God Bless the United States of America.

Anti-Americanism --- The Radical Religion Of The Left

2010-09-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

In Poker, the hierarchy goes something like this:
Two Pairs beats a pair. 3 of a kind beats 2 Pairs. A Straight beats 3 of a kind. A Flush beats a Straight. A Full House beats a Flush. 4 of a Kind beats a Full House. A Straight Flush beats 4 of a Kind. Finally, a Royal Flush beats a Straight Flush.

In the liberal world view, the hierarchy goes something like this:
Free speech beats Religious rights. General Feminist rights (not including abortion) beats Free speech. Gay rights beats General Feminist rights (not including abortion). Environmentalism beats Gay rights. Union rights beats Environmentalism. Abortion rights beats Union rights. Racial Equality or preferences beats Abortion rights. Finally, Anti-Americanism beats Racial Equality or preferences.

Seems ridiculous you say? Tammy Bruce, who was the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), wrote about how she thought that the OJ Simpson case was a prime example of violence against women, and how the OJ case should have been publicized by feminists to generate an understanding of the issue of spousal abuse.

Here was OJ, a man in power, systematically beating his wife and getting away with it. Eventually, of course, his wife wound up dead. The powers that be at NOW, however, didn’t want to use this case as an example of domestic violence. The reason? -- It conflicted with the racial aspect. In fact, Patricia Ireland publicly censured Tammy Bruce by name for damaging “political alliances”.

Tammy Bruce also wrote about how rap music routinely objectifies and promotes violence against women. Again, this was not acceptable at NOW. Though the mission of NOW is to promote women’s issues, there is a bigger issue that trumps the main mission of NOW. Hence racial sensitivity, in both the OJ case and in rap music, prevents bringing up and dealing with the very circumstances that NOW is supposedly in existence to deal with! Incidentally, Tammy Bruce, after seeing this hypocrisy, became a conservative.

And who can forget the feminist reaction to Bill Clinton? Clinton was accused of not just having an affair, as with Jennifer Flowers, not just accused of inappropriate behavior and possible abuse of power, as with Monica Lewinsky, but of sexual assault and worse! These accusations came long before anyone ever heard of Ken Starr. Juanita Broaddrick, Eileen Wellstone, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Regina Hopper Blakely, Kathleen Willey, Sandra Allen James, Kathy Bradshaw, Cristy Zercher, Paula Jones, and Carolyn Moffet were some of the women that came forward with assault or harassment accusations. It would be difficult to imagine that each of these women made up these incidents. We’ll never get to the truth behind these accusations because there wasn’t enough of a demand to find out what the truth was.

Time contributor and White House correspondent Nina Burleigh said
"I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a [crude word for oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs."
So Nina Burleigh seems to accept the fact that Clinton abuses women and is even willing to participate in that abuse because it furthers a bigger cause – Abortion. Hence, in the liberal Hierarchy of Needs, feminism without abortion is separated from abortion as a separate issue and Abortion as a separate issue trumps all other feminist issues.

The “Holy Grail” of the liberal Hierarchy, to be treated with reverence and never questioned, is anti-Americanism. It is the Royal Flush of the left. It is important to define anti-Americanism because people on the left will say that they only want to improve the country; that we are an imperfect people and should always strive to get better. Who would argue with that?

But anti-Americanism, as it has come to be practiced and perfected by the left, is not about improving America, it is about re-making it in a new image. Barack Obama has said himself, on more than one occasion that he wants to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” If the United States is a good country, does it need to be transformed? – Fundamentally no less?

The anti-Americanism which is at the top of the liberal food chain is rooted in hatred of the history, the morals, the religion, and the very people who created the unique idea of the United States as a country. The most important of these rights is the idea that freedom and liberty are not passed to people from the government but that freedom and liberty are “inalienable” rights. The most unique and beautiful part of the US Constitution is that it doesn’t say what government can do; it says what government can NOT do.

Barack Obama spoke about the idea that there are restrictions on what government can do, and he called it “negative liberty”. But as Bruce Walker said in an article in American Thinker, “How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control.” Obama said that sometimes government needs to do things in order to improve the lot of ordinary people. The problem is where does that idea end? And what should government do and what should it not do? Once you accept government as the solution to problems, then you open the door to tyranny because in order for government to deal with problems for one group of people, it inevitably has to invade the rights of a different group of people.

In a recent survey, about 20% of Americans said they were unsure of Barack Obama’s religion or thought he might be Muslim. Personally, I don’t think Obama is Muslim or that he is a religious man in any traditional sense. His religion is the ideology of his pastor Jeremiah Wright, not that of any actual religious teachings such as the Bible or even the Koran. It is an ideology that says Supreme Court justices can bypass the legislative process. It is an ideology that says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can act without the input of congress. It is an ideology that forces citizens to buy a product they may not want. In short, it is an anti-religious ideology practiced with fanatical religious zeal that has no respect for the traditions of the United States and no understanding of how the country came to generate such unprecedented wealth and freedom.

Perhaps people think Obama is Muslim because he has criticized the New and Old testaments in a way that he has never criticized the Muslim religion. He criticized Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the Sermon on the Mount by saying that a civilized country can’t be based on such ideas. No religious text has as many violent passages as the Koran but Obama has had nothing but praise for the Muslim religion – why?

In countries that practice strict Muslim law (Sharia law), every doctrine that liberals supposedly hold dear is trampled upon. There is no free speech or freedom of or from religion. A woman is considered at fault if SHE is raped and can be stoned to death if caught committing adultery. Women have their genitals mutilated so that it will be difficult for them to have sex. This way they can fulfill their one real purpose – having babies. Men have the legal right to beat their wives. Women do not even have the right to file grievances in court except under very stringent circumstances. But enough of the wonderful lives women have in these countries, what about gays? At Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there are no gays in Iran. He’s probably right – they’ve all either disappeared or kept very silent. In countries that have Sharia law, the rich live in castles, the poor live in tents.

You could go on and on with this but the question is why do Barack Obama and the left feel so at ease criticizing Judeo-Christian values and feel so uncomfortable criticizing the religion of Islam? The answer is anti-Americanism. The United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The left does not like the United States as it is. In a chicken or the egg scenario, it’s difficult to determine if their dislike of Judeo-Christian values is due to hatred of America or if their hatred of America causes them to have hatred of Judeo-Christian values.

The Muslim religion has constantly criticized the west and America – to the point where many Muslims consider themselves to be at war with the west. Every doctrine held dear by the left is trampled upon by Muslim countries (even moderate ones). Yet the left continues to defend Muslims and blame America. The left seems to share the same anti-Americanism as radical Muslims and that anti-Americanism trumps everything else that they claim to stand for as supposed liberals.

Tolerance For Intolerance Is Not a Virtue

2010-08-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

A phobia is an irrational fear. When people use words such as “Islamaphobe” or “homophobe”, they are implying an irrational fear of Muslim or gay people. The “phobia” implication is misleading. If a person disagrees with policies (say gay marriage), that does not mean that the person fears gay people, yet he is likely to be hit with the “Homophobe” slander for that opinion.

Recently, with the Islamic “Cultural Center” being proposed near the World Trade Center, people have had to ask some poignant questions about why it shouldn’t be built. Is there an irrational fear of the Muslim religion and are people who want to prevent this Cultural Center/Mosque from being built truly “Islamaphobes”? Are they judging the Islamic religion in a different way than they would judge other religions and if so, is that justified?

Both George Bush and Barack Obama made the point that Islam is a religion of peace that has been co-opted and used by those who want to pervert the religion. But if the people who have co-opted the religion are the ones in charge of the religion, and if the people who have co-opted the religion are the ones who are making the rules, then the religion, itself, is not a religion of peace. If the people who practice the religion are afraid of those who have co-opted it, and have no power to change it, then why pretend that the religion is something that it clearly is not?

In a book titled “The Trouble With Islam”, the author Irshad Manji brings up a term that should be better known and understood, yet it is rarely mentioned. The term is “ijtihad”. According to Manji:
“Not jihad, but ijtihad…the Islamic tradition of independent reasoning…allowed every Muslim…to update his or her religious practice in light of contemporary circumstances.”
Unfortunately, the radical ayatollahs and imams have crushed the idea of ijtihad.

Every religion is filled with some contradiction and, to some extent, has to grapple with interpretations of religious texts as times change. People have always struggled trying to maintain their faith and meaning in a constantly changing world. For true believers of a religion, science and changing times don’t change the intent of religious texts. They can interpret their religion to the changing times while maintaining the faith, the meaning and the good of what the religion stands for.

Unfortunately when radical imams took control of Islam and took it upon themselves to determine the meaning of that faith, they created a religious dictatorship. In getting rid of “ijtihad” they put themselves in a position where they couldn’t be questioned or contradicted. In so doing they didn’t take the best of the Muslim religion, they took the worst of it and institutionalized it so that theirs was the only interpretation possible.

There are passages in the Koran and in the hadith that speak of Jews and Christians in praiseworthy ways as “People of the Book”. In other passages, Jews and Christians are described as inferior and sometimes, even subhuman. This is where a rational and sane interpretation would be needed but that is exactly what the people who are in control of the religion are NOT doing.

Even outright lying in negotiations and breaking signed treaties has been deemed acceptable if it furthers Muslim goals. This goes back to an interpretation of the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. This treaty was signed in 628 AD and declared a truce between the Meccan tribe of Quraish and the Muslim community in Medina. It was a 10 year treaty but was broken when Muhammad invaded Mecca and forced the people there to convert to Islam.

The imams who make the rules for Islam constantly refer to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya when they negotiate with those whom they consider to be their enemies such as Israel. How can any sane person or country negotiate with people who say right up front that they have the right to break a treaty any time it is convenient for them to do so? Their word is worth nothing and that is their official stated policy!

In every country where Islam has become part of official government policies, there is cruelty and intolerance, even in the so called moderate ones. Those who write books critical of Islam such as The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, get contracts put out on their lives. A simple cartoon critical of the religion causes riots and death threats. A film maker, Theo Van Gogh, who made a film that was critical of the way women are treated in Muslim countries, is murdered for daring to tell the truth. Van Gogh’s film was based on actual facts of the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who writes in her book “Infidel” about how she was genitally mutilated and about how women are told to bear the treatment of being beaten by their husbands because that is what the religion demands of them.

The Muslim religion has become a cruel, cultish nightmare for those who are forced to live in countries where the religion works its way into government policies. Terrorism is just a natural byproduct of a religion where a few “privileged” people get to rationalize any behavior, no matter how cruel or immoral, if it is deemed to advance the cause if the Islamic religion.

Countries, in general, and the U.N., in particular seem very selective in how they condemn the actions of different nations. They rightly condemned South Africa for practicing apartheid but where is their condemnation to Muslim countries that routinely discriminate against non-Muslims? Non Muslims living in Muslim countries live in Dhimmi status which means they are officially second class citizens and have inferior rights to Muslims. Why won’t the U.N. condemn the concept of “Dhimmi” status as the discriminatory policy that it is?

The sad reality is that the U.N. and many nations are afraid of the Muslim religion. Perhaps, even though they may disagree with the cruel treatment of women and non-Muslims, they have a common enemy with them in their hatred of America, Israel and, in some cases, the west in general. It’s been said that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” so many excuse the behavior of crazy Jihadists in the name of some perceived greater good and end up rationalizing and excusing the behavior of these crazy imams and Ayatollahs.

They are doing no one a favor by turning a blind eye to this radicalism. The people who live under these religious dictatorships, those who want to raise a family and make a better life for themselves and their children, are not helped by this pandering to the crazy imams. The people of Iran tried their best to let the world know they wanted freedom but the world, to its everlasting shame, did nothing. By doing nothing they sided with the bad guys.

George Bush had it right and hopefully history will correct the record on his Presidency. Help the people who want freedom, give them reliable support and the Muslim religion can get rid of the crazy imams and ayatollahs that are making these people (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) live in misery. When the people of Iran saw what happened in Iraq they were inspired. They wanted their chance at freedom. Unfortunately, things have gone back in the other direction. The people in these Islamic dictatorships know that they can’t count on reliable help from the US and from the west, in general, and therefore are forced, out of fear, to submit to the crazy imams.

So now the crazy imams want to build a 13 story “cultural center” near the site of the World Trade Center. People who have tried to bury Jewish history by building mosques on top of Jewish shrines and temples, people who have taken over the city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, and created an atmosphere where Christians are afraid to be in their holiest site, people who have destroyed ancient Buddhist statues and artifacts that could never be reproduced now have the unmitigated gall to talk about tolerance?

Muslims need to clean their own house before lecturing others on tolerance. It is not for the US to show that it is tolerant of the Muslim religion. The burden of proof is on the Muslim religion to show that it is tolerant of others. Perhaps one day when “ijtihad” returns and Muslims can be allowed to interpret their religion in a way that is not so cruel, then there can be a “cultural center” near the WTC. In the meantime, the one being proposed is nothing more than a tribute to the worst, not the best, of the Muslim faith. It is a tribute to the very imams that have taken this religion back to the seventh century and it should not even be considered to be built at the holy site of the WTC.

President Obama’s Long Lost Ancestor From The 17th Century

2010-08-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

There has been controversy surrounding the ancestry of Barack Obama. A top research team has looked into this matter and traced Obama’s family tree back to the 1600s, where Obama’s ancestor Barack Shakespeare Obama was a great leader and community organizer in Oxfordshire, England.

A parchment was discovered that documented a speech given by this ancestor of Obama’s. The parchment was in bad shape but was taken to parchment restoration experts where a process called infilling was used to fill in missing areas. The parchment was cleaned and tears were carefully mended using goldbeater’s skin, which is the outer membrane of a calf’s intestine. Even with the best efforts of top restoration experts, there are some parts of the speech that were unrecoverable. Nevertheless, with the best of intentions and with hopes that any missing sentences have been filled in true to the original intent of the document, here is the speech given by Barack Shakespeare Obama, probably at some point in the 1660s.

Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, friends, Romans and Countrymen, I come here today to praise our great nation. Almost two years ago, I took office amid religious wars such as that between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and that between the Muslims and the Hindus. There were wars breaking out all over the world. There was the Polish-Ottoman War, the Franco-Dutch War, Russo-Turkish Wars, and the Nine Years War in Ulster. The Spanish Armada was invading England. The English Armada was invading Spain. The Bubonic Plague had killed hundreds of thousands of people. Weapons of mass devastation such as high powered cannons and flintlock muskets became all too common and threatened the safety of law abiding citizens. We were in a period of unprecedented inflation as greedy speculators in London and Paris had drawn wealth away from the rest of the world, while devastating the environment in the New World by mining silver and gold.

In short, I inherited a mess. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a catastrophe. So we acted – immediately and aggressively. And two years later, the worst of the storm has passed. The storm is receding and the skies are brightening but problems remain. Many people are still out of work. Those who lost loved ones to the Bubonic plague, which my Health Department now refers to as the U1C1 Virus, can attest to the need for a national health insurance plan. Religious wars and wars of aggression are still raging all over the world.

O, a woman has lost consciousness! What dastardly deed is this? Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here for my smile was too much for this poor woman to bear!

At this point, Barack Shakespeare Obama, for some unexplained reason stopped his speech and turned to the side of the stage as if speaking to an invisible person, and said the following:

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose to remake civilization.
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself.
Perchance I should consider the desires of the people.
But that would be giving in to conscience.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.
They don’t see my greatness or they fear it.
Be not afraid of my greatness!
Lord, what fools these mortals be.
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Though we have seen better days,
It is not me who is to blame for the mess.
The way of mine enemies is wrong.
That way madness lies.
I will thrive for I am a wolf ready to strike though
He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf.
My strength is my words and while
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

The people in the audience were confused by this sudden stream of consciousness but one person in the crowd was heard shouting:
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
Obama replied “That’s alright, that’s OK…”, as the person who shouted was removed by Knights and Centurions.

BS Obama then continued his speech:
I believe we have to talk to our enemies in order to understand them better. Strong leaders talk to their adversaries, and we will do so, no matter what anyone else says. For this reason, I have scheduled a series of meetings with Ivan the Terrible. Whatever differences exist between countries and religions, we can solve by talking. Therefore, myself, Ivan the Terrible and Napoleon will sit down for a summit where the finest ale and mutton will be served.

Now I want to take a moment if I may to give a shoutout to a great man in the crowd today. Copernicus, would you please stand and take a bow. Thank you. For those of you who may not know, Copernicus is the man who realized that it is the earth that revolves around the sun and not the sun that revolves around the earth. There are people who would like to go back to the days when it was thought that the sun revolved around the earth. My administration is not here to go backwards.

We will not be a bystander in the fight against climate change. We will lead the world in new green technology. There is scientific consensus that the conglomeration of people into large cities has created the need for too many horses. Matter that is expelled from the horse’s intestines has created a change in the earth’s atmosphere resulting in the heating of the earth. In addition, the constant burning of lamps for street lighting creates smoke which stays in the air and traps sunlight.

There is a liquid called oil that may be the salvation of all our environmental problems. With this ‘oil’ we will one day be able to have carriages without the pollution that horses create. We will also be able to create bright light without all the smoke. Until that day happens it is incumbent upon all of us to use our horses less. Those of you who insist on riding horses can eliminate tons of pollution by feeding your horses properly. By not over-feeding your horse, we can save thousands of pounds of horse waste. We should also get into the habit of using smaller horses. People who are in the habit of saying “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” should change their thinking and say instead; “Give me a waste efficient horse or I’m going to walk.”

This is the leadership that we are providing – an ale and mutton summit that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We are helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against the Bubonic Plague. Our strength lies in our diversity. Sweet are the uses of diversity. In addition, we are going to provide new green jobs which will help the economy and the environment.

Right here in Oxfordshire, we have opened up a new factory that will provide 75 new jobs. This factory will manufacture graphite pencils. Graphite pencils are the future and we must look forward. Why should we buy graphite pencils from China or any other place when we can produce them here at home? We have spent millions of pounds in order to create this new, clean graphite pencil industry and these new jobs are the fruit of our hard work.

So, despite plagues, economic catastrophes, wars, religious intolerance, and global warming, we are continuing to move forward with the change I promised. I didn’t say it would be easy as these are all the problems that I inherited from my predecessor. I still have confidence in the citizens of the country. You are all masters of your fates. And I will make sure that your fates turn out in a way deemed positive.

The Main Stream Media And the Void It Leaves Behind

2010-07-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of discussion recently about media bias. Liberals point to the fact that the media has become consolidated among a relatively few big corporations and therefore, has a bias to the right. Conservatives point to the fact that most people in the media, based on surveys, are registered democrats and vote consistently for the democrat candidate, thereby displaying a bias to the left.

In fact, neither of these claims proves media bias. It is ludicrous to say that because the media is consolidated among a few corporations that it is, therefore, biased to the right. Historically, corporations have donated as much to democrat candidates as to republican ones. There are as many democrats who run big corporations as there are republicans.

For example, according to OpenSecrets.org, these corporations all contribute significantly more to democrats than republicans; Comcast, General Electric, Boeing, Verizon, Capital Group Companies, Exelon Corp. In fact, most corporations hedge their bets and contribute just about the same amount to democrats as they do to republicans. For the ones that actually take a stand and make a point of going to one party over the other, most actually contribute more to democrats than to republicans! The idea that corporations are interchangeable with republicans is a myth.

Similarly, to say that because most people in the media vote for democrats does not prove bias either. It is possible to vote predominantly for democrats (or republicans) and still be an objective reporter (possible but in practice, not likely). The only way to prove media bias is to look at what the media actually does – What does it cover? How much time does it devote to certain stories? How does it frame those stories?

It is clear that the Main Stream Media (MSM), which consists of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times and the overwhelming majority of print and broadcast media, including most of the entertainment industry in Hollywood as well as news magazines such as Time and Newsweek, devotes time to some stories and neglects others. The decision to neglect certain stories has created a void for those stories. An alternative media has sprung up out of necessity to fill that void. The alternative media consists mostly of Fox Cable News and talk radio. The internet has been successfully used by both the MSM and the alternative media.

Looking at actual stories, it is clear that the Jeremiah Wright controversy was not going to be looked into with any investigative zeal by the MSM. What the MSM failed to realize is that a large number of people cared about this story. People were enraged at the hatred this reverend demonstrated towards the United States and they questioned why a presidential candidate would sit in a church for over 20 years and listen to rants against the very country that the candidate wanted to be the president of!

Recent quotes pulled out of “Journolist” which is a listserve (think of it as a long email chain) show that journalists were actively seeking to bury the Reverend Wright story. These were not just people writing on a blog. They were journalists with the power to effect the editorial decisions of major newspapers, networks and magazines.

For example, Michael Tomasky, who writes for the Guardian, said to other members of “Journolist”: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy (ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos had the nerve to bring up the Wright issue) in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the (mainstream media) kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

Who is Michael Tomasky to decide how to “serve the people”? A reporter’s job is to ask questions and to get at the truth. When a story is “uncomfortable” to your belief system, is it appropriate to bury the story and smear those who want to get to the bottom of it? Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent tried to create a climate of fear so that no one would dare talk about the Wright story. He said on “Journolist”, “Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” In fact, this very scandal is now a story in and of itself but don’t hold your breath waiting for the MSM to cover it. If Fox news, however, threatened to arbitrarily smear people for talking about certain stories, the MSM would be on it and there would probably be a congressional investigation!

For many people, a “smoking gun” email chain wasn’t necessary to prove media bias in the MSM. People have observed this through the years such as in 1994 when Peter Jennings described the republican takeover of the house as a “temper tantrum”. Dan Rather was willing to put doctored documents on the air in an effort to put George Bush in a bad light. The funny thing about “Rathergate” was that it wasn’t much of a story, even if were true! It just goes to show what lengths reporters will go to in order to put someone they don’t like (conservatives) in a bad light. When Newt Gingrich received a bonus for a book he was writing while he was an active member of congress, the MSM criticized him endlessly for it but when Senator Clinton got an even bigger bonus the only thing heard was crickets. The examples are endless.

More recently the MSM has ignored horrific details in Obama’s healthcare bill and “stimulus” plan. They’ve misrepresented the situation of the Shirley Sherrod firing and slandered Andrew Breitbart for daring to post a video of the speech. Just for the record, days before Breitbart posted that video; the NAACP said that the Tea Party had racists in their group. This statement was given with no proof whatsoever but the MSM reported it dutifully.

Whatever context the Sherrod video was in, it showed that NAACP members were laughing when Sherrod spoke about “sending a white person to one of his own”. That is an outrageous statement and the reaction by members of the audience to the speech was telling. Yet no one in the MSM brought up that angle of the story. Now the MSM is talking about Sherrod as if she is a hero and Breitbart as if he is Satan. But Breitbart did a service to the truth showing that those who condemn others of racism should clean their own house first.

The alternative media has risen because of simple supply and demand. People on the left don’t seem to understand supply and demand when it comes to basic economics so it’s not surprising that they don’t quite catch the connection when it comes to the media. Bill Press, who wrote a book about bringing back some form of the “Fairness doctrine” to talk radio, said on an interview recently that his book was only concerned about talk radio and not about biases on television or newsprint. Yet one cannot talk about the success of conservative talk radio in a vacuum.

Conservative talk radio has succeeded because there is a ravenous hunger for information. People are tired of seeing the MSM misrepresent who they are and what they believe in. They are tired of the condescension shown by the MSM to anything religious or patriotic. They are tired of having their views and beliefs belittled. Not only at news networks but in the movies, conservative characters are presented as evil. It may be one unnecessary line or part of the main theme of the movie but it is there more often than not. It may be at a concert where all you want is to hear the music but have to listen to the singer denigrating the things you hold dear to your heart.

People can say whatever they want. Free speech is a good thing but choice of where to get information is also a good thing. People have turned away from the MSM and flocked to other sources because their priorities of what is important are not the same as those held by people in the MSM. People in the MSM don’t seem to care. Those who don’t share their vision of the world and what is important are just mere troglodytes. The MSM will never change to satisfy the needs of their audience for information because that kind of information is “beneath” them. In the minds of people in the MSM, they have a “higher” calling which only they get to define and only they get to judge.

Slavery And Racism – Is The United States To Blame?

2010-07-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of antagonism toward the United States in certain segments of the African American community. People such as Louis Farrakhan have made hatred of the United States “fashionable” and “cool”. President Obama has been a part of this community, much of it originating in Chicago, where Jessie Jackson, Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Williams Ayers and Reverend Michael Pfleger have spouted this anti-Americanism in the name of both real and perceived past wrongs.

Barack Obama’s pastor of over 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, has said the following things about America:
“Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!…We (in the U.S.) believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America!”

Recently, the US Justice Department dropped a case against members of the New Black Panther party for “lack of evidence”. Members of the New Black Panthers were accused of intimidating voters at a polling place in Philadelphia. There was clear video evidence of the incident. J. Christian Adams, who was involved in the prosecution of the case, quit the justice department alleging that people in the justice department were told to ignore cases where the defendants were black and the victims were white.

Last summer, Barack Obama criticized the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts saying that the police acted “stupidly” in arresting black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. He made this accusation in a prime time speech after he just admitted in the previous sentence that he didn’t know all the facts of the case.

Does Obama’s view of the US differ from that of Jeremiah Wright or the New Black Panther party? Obama’s policies are often prefaced with the phrase “an even playing field”. In reality, however, it amounts to “Getting even”.

Of course there has been slavery and discrimination in the United States. Slavery is a stain on humanity but it didn’t start with the US. Physical Evidence of slavery dates to around 11,000 years ago in southern Africa. Western slavery goes back 10,000 years to Mesopotamia. Egyptian hieroglyphics show that they practiced slavery. Where is the hatred of Egypt for originating such a vile practice? Where is the demand of Egypt for reparations?

In ancient times, conquering armies in Europe and Asia found it more profitable to enslave captives than to massacre them. Black slavery between antagonistic tribes existed in Africa long before the advent of the Portuguese in the 1400s. Portuguese slave trading began in 1442, particularly on the west coast of Africa in an area that became known as the ‘Slave Coast’. Soon the Spanish entered the slave trade in 1517, followed by the English (1553), the French (1624), and then by Holland, Denmark and the American colonies.

Once the United States was formed as an independent nation, it inherited the mess of slavery. Obama should be familiar and sympathetic to the idea of inheriting messes since he reminds us each day that he inherited a mess and that it takes time to solve such things (whether he inherited or caused the mess is another question for a different day). Slavery was a mess that was created over 10,000 years ago so solving it while trying to create and unify a new nation was no easy task.

The United States was a nation built on compromise and yes, there were many people in the new country that owned slaves. Yet the people who wrote the constitution did recognize the inconsistency of creating a nation based on equal rights and opportunities while allowing an evil such as slavery to exist. Unfortunately, in order to unify the Unites States as one nation, they had to compromise on the issue. Yet written into the constitution in Article 1, Section 9 is a mandate that slavery would be outlawed by the year 1808.

So slavery existed for over 10,000 years and this new nation, while trying to fend off foreign threats, unify disparate views and create a constitution to live by, did as one of its first priorities, write into the new constitution that slavery would be outlawed within 32 years of its founding. In fact it was the United States and England, the two nations most accused of practicing slavery, that were the most involved in ending it!

They were not completely successful but their intentions were clear. John Jay wrote in 1786:
"It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused."
Patrick Henry wrote:
"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

It of course is true that the founding fathers owned slaves and this has caused many in the African American community to have contempt for these “dead white men”. The founding fathers were not perfect people but they inherited slavery, they didn’t cause it. They knew it was wrong, and were the first in over 10,000 years history to take real steps to end it. For this they deserve praise, not criticism.

There are those who will say that the wealth of America was built on the backs of slavery. If this is the case, why didn’t all the other countries who practiced slavery achieve wealth and success? Why didn’t Egypt, which had thousands of years of a head start on slavery, not become the world’s foremost economic power? Portugal was the first country to be involved in the African slave trade to the new world so why didn’t that country produce the wealth and innovation that later came out of the United States? Spain and Portugal brought slavery to South America so why didn’t any countries on that continent generate success comparable to the United States?

The wealth and success of the United States is due to a system that recognizes the rights of the individual. It is due to a unique idea that says the government governs only by the CONSENT of the people. Thomas Jefferson once said:
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

The reason why so many major inventions and patents have come out of the United States is because people know they can invest their own time and money in an idea and if successful, reap the rewards from it. People have been able to feel confident that the success or failure of their idea is up to them and not on some arbitrary person in government who may decide on a whim to change the rules. There is a reason why people risk their lives to come to the United States. It is amazing that people would call this a racist country while at the same time fighting in every way possible to come here and enjoy the opportunities it provides.

Like every country on earth, the United States has done shameful things. While the United States didn’t create slavery, segregation existed in this country well into the 1960s. That is a stain on this country that can’t be ignored. And yet, while imperfect, it is a country with a conscience. It eventually ended slavery and while far too late, eventually ended segregation as well.

The “Get even” battle being fought against America by the likes of the New Black Panther party, Louis Farrakhan and Reverend Wright is not a battle against the forces of racism. That battle has already been fought and won. Ironically, the battle being fought by this “Get Even” crowd is a battle against all that is GOOD about America. They are actually fighting against the very forces that were able to eliminate the evils of slavery.

Barack Obama seems to be a part of this “Get Even” crowd. He demonstrates this by his actions, his words, and by who is friends are. His vision of “change” would be to remove the principles that ended slavery and replace them with the ideas that tolerated and caused slavery. Skin color, social rank, and class all play prominent roles in Obama’s agenda. These are the evils that were behind slavery and what the constitution put in place to eliminate. It took almost 200 years to finally get it all working properly and now Obama and his “Get Even” crowd would have us go backwards again.

The Radicalism Of Moderates And Independents

2010-07-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

There seems to be an unwritten rule, in the minds of many, that being a Political Independent makes a person more “reasonable” than people on the extremes of the political spectrum. Many on the right look to “soften” their views in order to gain acceptance from the MSM (Main Stream Media). They may say things such as “I’m a fiscal conservative but a social liberal”, or the all too popular “I’m neither a republican nor a democrat”.

People on the left don’t need to soften their views because the MSM never views a far left view as “extreme”. The only time politicians on the left look to soften their views and move to the right is during election time which shows that either consciously or subconsciously, they know that it is THEIR views that are not in the main stream. Yet people who are independent of both parties seem to have a special arrogance as if they are more reasonable than people on the left OR the right.

One of the worst offenders of the “I’m an Independent and therefore better than the rest of you” mentality is FOX pundit Bill O’Reilly. If O’Reilly criticizes Michael Moore, he may also feel obligated to criticize someone associated with the right such as Ann Coulter. When O’Reilly criticizes far left websites such as moveon or the DailyKos, he seems to feel obligated to say that he also criticizes far right websites. He is constantly bloviating about being an “Independent”.

Bill O’Reilly, to his credit, has been at the forefront of a number of controversies. One of his uncompromising issues is child abuse and the need for laws to protect children. O’Reilly would never feel the need to justify his uncompromising stance in protecting children by saying something such as “We need to look at the underlying reasons that cause a person to commit child abuse.” There is only one issue and that is the protection of children. O’Reilly gets this here but on issues such as healthcare, the environment, the economy, national defense, taxes and many others he bends over backwards to show his “independence”.

The issue here is not that everyone on the right must agree on every issue. The left is far more intolerant of people within their ranks. They basically threw Joe Lieberman out of the democrat party because he disagreed with them on one issue – national defense. The right does, and should, tolerate differing views on all issues. However, what is happening today is that people on the right, by constantly justifying and rationalizing their views, cede the moral superiority to the left.

If someone on the right points out that Reverends Jeremiah Wright or Al Sharpton are racists, he may feel obligated to point out that he would feel the same way if they were white racists. Former KKK member David Duke has not been in the news for years but his name keeps popping up, as in “I would feel the same way about Jeremiah Wright as I do about David Duke.” Do the filthy words of Jeremiah Wright not stand on their own? Does it make it acceptable to criticize a minority as long as you throw a white racist former KKK member into the sentence?

When Bill O’Reilly points to extremes, he falls into the same trap that the MSM does. For example, in the Michael Moore-Ann Coulter comparison, saying that one is on the far left and one is on the far right gives them both equal status. Michael Moore has been caught lying many times. David T. Hardy in his book “Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man” documents these deceptions. There are NO deceptions of a like status in any of Ann Coulter’s writings. People can debate what she says but there aren’t misrepresentations in her writings. There is a far greater difference between these two people than “far left” and “far right”.

Sometimes the truth is crazier than fiction. If this is the case do you turn the truth into fiction in order to sanitize it and make it more believable? If I said that Barack Obama is fundamentally trying to change this country from a constitutional republic where the government is put into place and run only by the consent and the permission of the people, into one where the government doesn’t care whether or not the people consent to how they are being governed and, in fact, is closer to a dictatorship in that the people have practically no say at all in what the government could do to them, you might say that I am being a radical. Certainly, politicians such as Barney Frank or Anthony’s Weiner would label me as “extreme”.

Perhaps the solution is to say “Barack Obama is gaining dictatorial power but David Duke is a racist and I’d feel the same way if he were gaining dictatorial power.” There is no need to rationalize the truth! Republicans seem to live in constant fear of what democrats and the MSM may say about them. Ronald Reagan was loved by the right because he never rationalized his beliefs. He stated his case eloquently and wasn’t intimidated by how the democrats or MSM characterized what he said. John McCain, Bill O’Reilly and many others labeled as “moderate republicans” or “independents” are looked at with suspicion from the right because they sometimes seem to look at the right with the same condescending attitude that the democrats and the MSM does.

There is a radicalism to Independents that rivals any on the right or the left. There is a need to take any situation and find an alternative to it to show that there MUST be another side to the argument. Ayn Rand spoke about this issue. She said:
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Today, the strategy being used by democrats is to label all criticism of Obama as “extreme”. During the election, John McCain did not bring up a number of vital campaign issues because he didn’t want to be divisive. McCain failed in his duty as a candidate in the same way that a lawyer might fail in his responsibility if he left out critical evidence that could have exonerated his client. The citizens of the US are not children and they have the right to know the truth no matter how strange the truth is!

It is not radical to ask the President of the US and the leader of the free world (if there is such a thing anymore) to put forth the same paperwork as a person applying for a job at a local bank. Yet republicans run from this by saying it is not a winning strategy. Maybe it’s not, but it’s not a crazy idea to want to know the truth! And this truth involves much more than Obama’s birth certificate. It involves organizations he was part of, his sealed college records, his associates over the years and much more.

Republicans and conservatives will never be successful until they learn how to defend their vision, rather than excuse it. Bi-partisanship is not a virtue when you give up your principles in order to be perceived as a “moderate”. Again, according to Ayn Rand:
Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue…When people call themselves moderates, ask yourself: “Moderate—about what?” Since the basic question today is freedom versus statism, or individual rights versus government controls, to be a moderate is to advocate a moderate amount of statism, a moderate amount of injustice, a moderate amount of infringement of individual rights. Surely, nobody would call that a virtue.

People on the right need to stop worrying about how they are perceived. To lie even when the truth and the facts are on your side makes people doubt what the truth and facts are. Informed people will respect a person who honestly fights for his convictions. Let the left and the democrats lie – they need to!

The Obama Testament

2010-05-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

In the beginning there was only Hillary.

And the Democrats were without form.

And there was corruption, and lying, and deceit, and intimidation.

And then the spirit of Obama came and moved upon the waters.

And Obama said Let there be hope and change.

And Obama saw the hope and change, and said that it was good.

And Obama said Let there be a stimulus plan.

But unto Obama and his plan, the people had not respect.

And Obama saw the wickedness among the people of the United States.

And Obama said unto the people of the United States 'Let my stimulus plan pass'.

And Obama gave money to banks, insurance companies and car companies and said that it was good.

But the hearts of the people were hardened.

And the people wanted to know why the unemployment rate was over 10%.

So Obama needed to speak to the Lord.

And he went to the special place where he could seek the counsel of the Lord.

And from the other side of the mirror, God spake unto Obama, saying, Go speak to your wife Michelle and tell her to speak to the children of the United States.

And Michelle went forth and spake unto the people of the United States, saying unto them,

Whatsoever containeth polyunsaturated fats, ye shall not eat.

All fast food, whether it cometh from dwellings with golden arches or from Kings, shall be an abomination unto you.

And every earthen vessel that containeth carbonated water with sugar shall be unclean to you. And you shall break it and not drink from it.

And Obama listened to his wife with pride and said that it was good.

But the hearts of the people were still hardened.

And the anger of Obama was kindled against the United States,

And Obama went into the land of Egypt and said that the United States was arrogant.

And Obama shamed members of the Supreme Court and said that their decisions were wrong.

And Obama said Cambridge cops acted stupidly.

And Obama said that doctors cut off healthy limbs for profit.

And Obama said bankers were greedy.

And Obama said Oil companies were greedy.

And Obama said Insurance companies were greedy.

And Obama criticized the state of Arizona.

And Obama criticized Fox news.

And Obama criticized Republicans.

And Obama criticized BP.

And Obama criticized Israel for building houses.

And Obama criticized people for going to Las Vegas.

And Obama criticized George Bush.

And Obama criticized John McCain.

And then Obama went to the United Nations and said how much he respected the Islamic Republic of Iran and that he wanted a new beginning based on mutual trust and mutual respect.

And the children of the United States saw what was happening and they were angered.

So angered were the children of the United States that they formed a new group and called it the Tea Party.

And Obama spake to the people of the Tea Party saying,

Do ye not know that I have rescued you from the republicans?

But the people were angered and they spake saying, We had a $500 billion deficit under Bush and now we have a $2 trillion deficit.

And Obama stopped them, saying You dare question Me? I am Obama. I will provide for your needs and all I ask is that you are faithful to me and pay 70% of your income to me in taxes.

Wherefore the people did chide with Obama, and said Give us back our money, that we may invest it and create jobs and have freedom.

And then it came to pass that Obama started nominating people to the Supreme Court. And Obama said to his two Supreme Court nominees, Thou shalt have compassion and empathy, and set precedents when I tell you to and change laws when I deem them to be unjust.

And the people said there is this thing called the constitution...

But Obama interrupted them and said Enough!

And then Obama spake again to the people, saying, Ye are upset with me. But my power will be revealed when I give you the most precious gift of all the earthly gifts. I grant to all the children of the United States free healthcare.

And the people of the United States stood up and said, What?!

And Obama spake to the people again and said, Take heed to yourselves that ye not go up into the halls of congress to watch the healthcare bill debated.

And it came to pass in the second year of his reign, in the fifteenth month, in the twenty second day of that month, that the healthcare bill passed.

And Obama walked out of the Whitehouse with the two thousand seven hundred page health care bill held under his arms.

And Obama had grown a long white beard while debating the heath care plan and the people did not recognize him at first.

And Obama went forth among the people and raised the healthcare bill above his head and spake, saying, I am Obama, who hast brought you forth from the presidency of George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who hast brought you out of the bondage of the right wingers and conservatives.

And the people murmured against Obama, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of a republican controlled government to then burden us with high taxes, healthcare that takes away our freedoms, regulations that punish small business. You take away our pride in ourselves and our country. You leave us vulnerable to those who wouldst do us harm. You burden us with debt that we can't pay back. The things that thou doest are not good.

And Obama was provoked to anger. And he raised the healthcare plan above his head and proclaimed to the children of the United States in a thundering voice,

Those who will not live by the healthcare shall die by the healthcare!

And Obama threw all two thousand and seven hundred pages of the healthcare plan at the people.

And the healthcare plan struck the ground and paper exploded everywhere. And paper dust filled the air and it was difficult to breath. And people couldn't walk, or even see, for all the paper that was all over the land. And paper was on the roads and paper filled the fields. And all the animals and all the people were covered with paper. And the people gathered the paper together upon heaps: and the land stank.

But despite the paper plague upon the land, the hearts of the people were still hardened, for they knew that they were dealing with a false prophet. And the people spake saying,

Well, at least that's the end of the health care plan.

But Obama had made copies.

In the end, there was corruption, and lying, and deceit, and intimidation.

And there was debt as far as the eye could see. And the children of the United States were so burdened with taxes that there was no money left to invest, and there was no more innovation and no more entrepreneurs. And the constitution was changed and people weren't free to speak their minds anymore. And people couldn't sell their homes without approval from the government. And people couldn't sell their cars without approval from the government. And the United States was only one state in a world government. And the United Nations ran the world. And the people had no redress for their grievances.

All this happened and it was not good. It was not good at all.

Want to change the ending? Then End the Change!

A Proposal For Updating The US Constitution

2010-04-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

For Making The Constitution More Compatible With The Modern Age

This proposal has been created and authorized by our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP). This is a community organization which has its home office on the upper west side of Manhattan, and is dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.

We here at our organization (BURP) have always considered the constitution a living and breathing document that should be updated periodically to reflect the changing needs of our community. However, it has gotten more difficult over the years to take a document that was written in the 18th century and keep it contemporary. Therefore, rather than amend the constitution, and continue to put tape and paper clips on an old and out-dated document, it is time for a complete re-writing of the constitution. We will start here with the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights.

The first amendment to the constitution reads thusly:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Many people in our organization were shocked to learn that the phrase “Wall of separation between church and state” was not actually in the document. We need to remedy this. The phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” seems fine on the surface but we want to be careful in limiting the power of what congress can do. We want congress to be able to freely pass laws for the benefit of the many people who may not know what is in their best interests.

It is also important to define what religion is. Is a religion anything that prays to a God? Is it anything that utilizes a church? And how can a church be defined? All this needs to be written into the new document so that there is no ambiguity.

Just to digress for a moment, we are not concerned about the intent of the so-called “Founders”. Our goal in this re-writing is to come up with a fair and just document by which the country can be moved into the modern age and to stop being governed by outdated and unfair concepts.

The phrase “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is a problem. Congress must have the power to prohibit religious practices because it conflicts with the new “Wall of Separation” clause.

Speaking of the important “Wall of Separation” clause and just as a side anecdote to this, I had a conversation the other day with my son Rainbow. He told me that at school the teacher was talking about the “big bang” theory and how all life was formed by the random combination of trillions of molecules and atoms. Another student actually had the nerve to offer the ill-advised opinion that maybe it wasn’t random, that maybe there was an intelligent design to all this. Can you imagine the arrogance of people to think that they were created by some invisible mythical being rather than the random combination of molecules? Now if someone wants to have a misguided opinion, that is his or her right but to try to force that religious view on a classroom of kids is exactly the kind of situation that this new revised constitution will stop. My son Rainbow should not have to listen to the rantings of a religious fanatic in a classroom setting.

As for “Freedom of Assembly” and “petitioning government for grievances” – these have become huge problems. We are very concerned that the freedom of congress to act in the best interests of the people has been severely limited by this ill-defined clause. Clearly the “founders” did not anticipate such things as talk radio, the internet, cable TV and so forth. The improvements to the printing press, alone, make much of the language concerning “freedom of speech” obsolete.

We have seen recently with the tea party movement that government clearly needs to have a role in how and when people can assemble and petition the government for a “redress of grievances”. We have seen how people can distort what congress and the president are trying to do. Congress and the president must and shall have the freedom to do what is in the best interests of the people and must be able to restrict the people from putting out information that contradicts the good intentions of the government.

So, without further adieu, here is the new revised first amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

There is a distinct separation between church and state. Church is defined as any dwelling, be it of brick, metal, or other structural materials, or any boundary whatsoever, where there is reverence or prayer being given to any being or entity which cannot be substantiated through scientific means. Church is distinct from the word religion which is defined as any belief system that involves prayer or devotion to any being that cannot be scientifically verified. Prayer is defined as words or gestures, thoughts or feelings directed towards a being or entity that cannot be verified through the scientific method. Worship of the sun, the earth, water, or any other physically verifiable, scientific entity is not considered a “church” or “religion” under this definition and therefore is not subject to restrictions.

Whereas the church and the state are considered to be two distinct entities, all activities associated with the church, including but not limited to prayer, religious clothing and jewelry, religious ornaments such as trees or candle holders with religious intent, are not to be permitted in buildings that are owned, operated or rented by the government or used by the government for any purpose, be it official or otherwise.

Whereas the practicing of religion, regardless of the location of the said practice, involves the training of people in such practices, and whereas these practices, thoughts and opinions are likely to be brought into government offices or schools, either consciously or subconsciously, it is incumbent upon the congress to restrict these practices . Congress, therefore, shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. In rare circumstances, private religious events may be permissible but congress shall have the authority to levy a tax on the religious event and to monitor the proceedings in such an matter as is deemed appropriate.

Whereas people (people being defined as living beings of the homo sapien species who are not a member of the United States congress, senate, judiciary or executive branch of government) have gathered in public places and contradicted the words, intentions, policies, and strategies of congress and whereas said people have made it difficult for the government to act in their interests, and whereas said people have violated the right of congress and the executive branch of government to levy new taxes, and whereas these same said people have raised money to disseminate information in a manner not approved of by congress, we do declare on this 17th day of April in the year of our Mother Earth of Two thousand ten the following:

That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in congress and the senate ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place outside of the congress and the senate.

That the gathering of people to protest the good policies of congress without the consent of congress is pernicious and illegal.

That criticism of the President, whether through print, broadcast, internet, or radio, is tantamount to incitement to violence and is illegal, unless that President is deemed, by a special commission (see more on this commission in the addendum to the First Amendment to the Constitution), to be worthy of said criticism.

Well, that’s it for the new First Amendment! You can download the addendum to the first amendment in PDF format (all 36 pages), as well as the rider to the new first amendment (27 pages), at www.burp/newconstitution/thisisnotarealwebsite.com.

We here at our organization (BURP) are dedicated to creating a more perfect union. To this end, we have recognized that the people have encroached upon the freedom of congress. The government needs to get on with the job of ruining the country without interference. We will continue to work tirelessly to this end. Look for continued updates to the constitution as next time we will offer you our new second amendment!

Deceptive Arguments And Specious Reasoning - Political Debate Gone Wrong

2010-04-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of ways to win an argument and a lot of ways to deceive others into thinking you’ve won an argument. There is one set of rules to follow when you have facts on your side and a different set of rules when the facts are not with you. The first rule is to never use any of these rules in arguing with your wife. If you do, it should be under controlled circumstances and only when there is professional supervision.

There are situations of absolute fact. For example, OJ Simpson either killed two people or he didn’t. People may disagree as to what evidence shows but there is a Yes/No answer to the question of whether OJ did it or not. No matter what anyone believes, the event did happen in a particular way and was caused by specific actions.

Other situations are more theoretical. Global warming is a theory based on models and evidence. Whether it exists, is caused by human activity, the extent of damage (if any), what might or might not happen in the future, all has to be based on honest scientific inquiry. In the first situation with OJ, you are dealing with a known fact (two people were murdered) while in the second, you are dealing with a future event (some say an event that has started already), but in any case, one that is not as specific as a Yes/No answer can provide.

The last situation is one of morality and spirituality. Issues such as abortion or the death penalty fall into this third category. There is much passion in these debates. A belief in God is a matter of faith. The ongoing evolution vs. creationism debate also falls under this last category.

While there may be some issues that cross the line between these three categories, in most situations they will fall in one of these three groups and not more. When propaganda is used, it is usually done by blurring the distinction between these categories.

A good example of this is to look at how Al Gore argues the inevitability of global warming. First, backing up a step, if you are going to debate an issue, one of the best ways to do it is “Search and Destroy”. You find your opponent’s arguments, you list them one by one, and then you point out why they are specious or why their reasoning is faulty. When people have truth on their side, they are eager to display why the arguments of their opponents are wrong.

Getting back to Al Gore, when he is faced with a question challenging his belief in global warming, he never answers it. He simply labels people who don’t agree with him as “deniers” or “flat earthers”. Some people may not disagree, per se. They just may not be sure, not being as scientifically trained as Al Gore, they just want more of a debate before committing so much money, resources, and lifestyle changes to a theory that they don’t know enough about.

If Mr. Gore had the facts on his side, he would bring out all these challenges to then tear them down (“Search and Destroy”). Some arguments against global warming (there are many more):
- The ice in Antarctica has been growing since 1979.
- Temperature measurements during the 90s (the supposed warmest decade) did not use weather stations in some of the coldest climates which artificially increased the average.
- There is evidence of warming on other planets indicating that sun spot activity may be a cause of temporary warming.
- Ice core samples show the middle ages to be warmer than the present.
- The earth has been cooling in the last 15 years.
- Many of the same people who are now warning about global warming were warning about the coming ice age as recently as 1975!
- There is evidence, also from ice core samples, that the cause and effect of global warming is backwards. In other words, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere didn’t cause global warming in the past but, in fact, periods of warming caused increased levels of CO2.
These are just some of many arguments against the theory of global warming. Not being a scientist, I would welcome hearing the other side to these points but all I hear is crickets. That no one does a “Search and Destroy” on these points leads me to believe they are true. Al Gore smears people who don’t believe global warming to be “settled science” and with that, hopes to stifle debate on the issue.

Stifling debate, by the way, is not the same thing as winning the debate. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has become a party that can’t debate on facts and therefore, they debate by character assassination. Whether it is global warming or the Tea Party movement, the left is constantly trying to impugn the integrity and motives of whoever has a different point of view. Personally, I would never want to stifle the opinions or speech of people on the left. Every time they speak, they tell you who they are and what they want to do. The fact that they don’t extend the same courtesy to people on the right is a great indicator of who is telling the truth and who is lying.

Uh-Oh, I think someone just fainted while reading this article. If anyone knows the address of the person that just fainted would you please get him or her some water? Maybe have him or her lie down and prop some pillows up so he or she can breathe. Please give him or her plenty of room….

The final straw in this Global Warming/Climate Change/Greenhouse Effect thing is when Mr. Gore labels people who want more evidence into global warming as equal to Holocaust deniers. Global warming is a theory. The Holocaust is a historical fact backed up by evidence including hundreds of thousands of witnesses, physical evidence, film archive and even admissions by some who committed the horrific acts. To compare this to a subjective theory such as global warming is an insult to the memories of the people who died in the Holocaust, as well as to the survivors and their children.

Barack Obama’s way of dealing with a challenge (not that he faces many from the main stream media) is different than Al Gore’s. Obama’s preferred method is to ramble meaningless phrases as if by the magic of his oratory skills, people will forget what the question was. Asked what his favorite Whitesox player was on opening day of the baseball season, he couldn’t just say he didn’t know or remember any. He talked about being an Oakland A’s fan while living in Hawaii, blathered a few other meaningless things about liking the Cubs as well but never answered the simple question! You’d expect that from a kid in third grade, not the President.

What is amazing about this is that Obama made a specific point of showing the world that he was a Whitesox fan. He pulled out a Whitesox cap to display in front of 40,000+ Washington Nationals fans and millions watching on TV. You’d think he’d be prepared to answer, just as a matter of common sense, some questions about the team since he made such an unnecessary spectacle of bringing it up. It makes you wonder, if he is that unprepared for a question that is the logical result of an action he has taken, then how is he to be trusted negotiating with Russia or China? Who knows, maybe he put on the Whitesox cap to give fans an excuse to boo. That way, he could say they were booing the cap, not him or his actions, but he couldn’t be that narcissistic, could he?

If he can’t answer a simple question about his favorite player, how is he to answer questions about health care or taxes? The answer to that is a 17 minute incoherent response to a question about whether or not the US is already too highly taxed to shoulder the additional burdens to pay for health care. If Obama had truth on his side, he wouldn’t need to spend 17 minutes on a disjointed dissertation while still not answering the question! Obama mixes in all tactics. He confuses fact with theory, and throws in a hefty dose of moralizing and somewhere in between all the meaningless words you are almost tempted to say “Stop already! I give up -- just stop talking!

The old joke says “How can you tell if a politician is lying?” Answer: “If his mouth is moving”. Some, however, lie more than others. Propaganda involves turning facts into subjective concepts while turning subjective concepts into facts. It involves taking bad policy and packaging it as an absolute moral good so that no one dare oppose it.

Generational Insanity – The Stupidity And Greatness Of Each Generation

2010-03-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Every generation has its own style. Each era has a unique vocabulary, its own taboos and its own definition of what is considered cool or hip. Each era has its style of fashion, music and entertainment. Some fads and vocabulary are temporary and some make it past the generational stage and become permanent fixtures of society. Some go away but still leave their influence in other ways. The expressions; “That’s groovy man” and “Far Out!” have long been replaced by “At the end of the day” and “That’s how I roll!” Thankfully the expression “Don’t go there” seems to have seen its last days. Some styles or expressions are driven by technology such as “LOL” or “ROTFL”. At times, we use new expressions without thinking. They all of a sudden find themselves inside our vocabulary repertoire and we don’t know how they got in there or how we can get rid of them.

In a recent controversy, Tom Hanks spoke about United States racism during World War II. Most of the time, when actors get involved in political issues, they show how uninformed they are of the real world outside of a Hollywood film set. However, in this case Tom Hanks has a point. The U.S. was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and then took appropriate action in everything it did to defend itself. But in marketing war to its citizenry, there were words used and characterizations made of the Japanese people that were over the line. We could have “sold” the war in the Pacific based on the horrible reality of the sneak attack without demonizing everyone of a particular race and culture. The same thing is true of the wars in Vietnam and Korea where other offensive terms and characterizations were used.

Today, we’ve gone in the exact opposite direction. The United States and, in fact most of the world, is at war with a fundamentalist form of Islam yet we are afraid to mention the true nature of the enemy. This does not mean that we have to use terms for Muslims that are comparable to words used in the past for the Japanese, Vietnamese or Koreans. At the same time, however, we can’t pretend that reality is something other than what it is. The threat of terrorism is real and won’t go away by pretending it doesn’t exist or by calling it by a different name.

It’s amazing how some things in society are considered taboo while others are acceptable. It’s even more amazing how what is taboo and acceptable changes over time. An old episode of the television show I Love Lucy had to show a husband and wife in different beds; it couldn’t even use the word “pregnant” on the air. Yet just about everyone, men and women alike were always smoking cigarettes! Today, you’ll see women kissing women on prime time TV, sexual innuendo all over the place but they won’t dare show someone smoking a cigarette! These are two distinctly different societies -- one society smokes like chimneys calling people of different races bad names while no one anywhere in the world has ever had sex. The other society has so many rules regarding how to speak about different cultures that they are afraid to say anything but they are all having sex with each other.

Language is a reflection of the society. Watch an old movie from the 30’s and you are likely to hear the coolest character in the film say something such as “That’s swell!” As the language gets updated and revised, so do the customs. Usually started by the younger generation in revolt of some perceived wrong, they feel the need to be different. They may grow their hair long and wear psychedelic colored clothes or they may wear 20 gold chains and polyester suits. They may wear baggy jeans (see dungarees) that reveal the boxer shorts within or they may have tattoos and piercings all over their body. Perhaps it’s a midriff shirt worn at just the right length to reveal the tattoo on the back. And when, exactly, did butt cracks become a statement of style? I guess it depends on whose butt crack it is, to answer my own question.

Every generation thinks it knows better than the previous one. Eventually, the customs of every generation fade away and give in to newer ones. Each generation laughs at previous generations thinking that they, the current generation, are the coolest, the smartest, and the most aware. They are always laughed at by the generation coming up behind them. The cycle never ends. The generation that has been replaced is permanently memorialized in the books, in the movies and in the music that it has produced.

When history is looked at objectively, some generations face more problems than others. Some react differently, causing either good or harm. As time passes, it is important to understand that each generation has a responsibility, at the end of the day (Argghhh!), to understand that it is not as unique as it thinks it is. For this reason, it is important that no generation of people leave such a legacy that future generations lose the ability to laugh at the previous one. No single generation should have so much importance as to limit what the following generation can or can’t accomplish. Each generation should have an equal chance to be just as stupid and annoying as the previous one.

While there are things to be laughed at in each generation, there are also things that each generation adds to our society. It is important to take the good out of every generation. It is in this way that we gain accumulated knowledge and wisdom. By taking the best out of every generation and understanding that the current generation will always be limited by issues of a particular time, we can continue to grow as a country or as a society. We need to learn from history, rather than abandon it or label it as “old fashioned”. In a sense, this idea of understanding that the present is always clouded by the moirés, fashions, styles, and biases of any particular time and that the past is something to be respected is the definition of conservatism.

The founding fathers, whom recent generations would label as dead white males, understood that everything had to be balanced. They brilliantly balanced the power of states to the federal government, the power of the legislative branch vs. the power of the executive and the judicial branches. What is lesser known is how they knew to balance the whims of one generation against the proven successes and failures of previous generations. This is why the constitution makes it difficult to change or amend a law or a bill. The framers of the constitution recognized that the perceived needs of any present time may not always be in the best interests of future generations.

In Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on January 28, 2010, he said the following:
"if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, a supermajority, then the responsibility to govern is now yours, as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions."
In saying this, President Obama showed that he either doesn’t understand the constitution or that he doesn’t respect the constitution. He has his logic completely backwards. The framers wanted to make the process difficult so that if a law was changed or created, it would have to be something that transcended the ambitions of any individuals. It is precisely that reason why the framers made it so that 60 votes are required. Barack Obama was trying to criticize the Republicans but he was actually criticizing the constitution, itself. In effect, it is his own ambitions that he is putting ahead of the constitution. It was precisely for this type of person that the framers made it so that 60 votes would be necessary!

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “All times are good times if we but knew how to use them.” We obviously haven’t always used our times in the best ways. There have been times of fear and insanity where people have rationalized absolute evils such as slavery and mass extermination. Other times have shown incredible innovation, ingenuity and kindness. Because at any given time, the way people perceive reality can change, it is important to keep the present in perspective to the known successes and failures of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the current United States administration. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid all think they are bigger than anything that came before them and that is a recipe for disaster.

A Letter To The President

2010-03-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

Hi Barack,
You don’t mind if I call you Barack, do you? In the recent healthcare summit, you referred to all the Senators by their first names so I thought it would be appropriate here, considering that a little over a year ago, you were just a simple Senator yourself.

Barack, you keep reminding everyone that you won the election. The fact that you won the election should be demonstrated by your deeds and actions. We know you’re the President. We get that already. Whether a President, a corporate exec, or the manager of a baseball team, a good leader doesn’t need to remind people of what his position is. If your leadership was profound and strong, you wouldn’t need to constantly, and quite frankly a bit obnoxiously, bring up that you are the president. I can’t imagine Vince Lombardi reminding the Green Bay Packers that he was their coach. That group of football players knew who their coach was and they respected him for who he was as a person, not for the position he held.

Saying that you are the president doesn’t give you the respect that goes with the position. That has to be earned. The election was only the interview. Now you’ve got to start working and I have a number of concerns. Let’s start with your answer to Senator McCain in the healthcare summit. Again, you pointed out for the umpteenth time that the election was over. Senator McCain pointed out that you misrepresented yourself on your ‘job application’. You said you’d put the health care debates on C-Span. You said this eight times and not as mere passing references. You went into great detail about how you were going to do this and haven’t explained why you didn’t. When a job applicant says he can or will do a task and then either doesn’t do it or is incapable of doing it, I find it a reason for dismissal, unless I can get a reasonable explanation. A reasonable explanation is not for the job applicant to tell me; “You hired me, I’m the new Analyst. I got the job”. “Wrong” I would tell him, “you HAD the job.”

Barack, I’ve heard you and your representatives say that your election was a mandate on the policies that you are proposing. If you were so proud and confident that your policies were what the people wanted, then why weren’t you up front with the people BEFORE you got elected? For example, if you said that you would propose additional spending that would put the projected deficit at 20 times that which you inherited from Bush; do you think you would have gotten elected? If you said that you planned on bringing terrorists to trial in civilian courts, do you think you would have gotten elected? If you brought out the 2,700 page monstrosity of health care “reform” before the election do you think you would have gotten elected? Incidentally, just as an aside, you could do some good work for the environment if you’d stop printing all these health care plans! If you won’t consider the will of the people, please consider the trees! If you told the people before the election that you would take over banks and car companies do you think you would have gotten elected? If you told people that you would traipse around the world apologizing for the things that most of us think make our country great, do you think you would have gotten elected?

My point in bringing these things up Barack, is that if you’re going to point out that your election gives you carte blanche to do whatever you want, then I think it’s important to point out back to you that your election was NOT a mandate to do the things you are trying to do. People did not vote for you to do these things. You didn’t campaign on doing these things so how can you now say that you have a mandate to do these things?

You drive me crazy Barack. The thing that bothers me most is that I don’t feel that you have a lot of respect for the American people. Yes you won the election with 52% of the votes but many of those were votes you wouldn’t have gotten if people actually knew what they were getting. What makes this worse, though, is that you have the chutzpa to talk about the 52% of these votes as some kind of mandate but are willing to outright dismiss polls which show that 60% to 70% of the American people are against your healthcare proposal. Those people are, apparently, too stupid to understand your brilliant plan. So when 52% of the people vote for you, based on misleading information, that is a mandate but when 60% or 70% of the people vote against your plan, that is a matter of them not understanding your plan?

Look Barack, you and I both know what’s going on here. The last thing you want is for people to “understand” your plan for healthcare. That’s why you tried to push it through in August before anyone even had a chance to read the 2,000+ page monstrosity. You said that it had to be passed right away or there would be dire consequences. Well, it’s seven months later and there aren’t any dire consequences. In fact, the health care in the United States, with all its faults, is still the best in the world. There are far more important things to concern ourselves with. This is your priority, it is not the priority of the country but that doesn’t seem to concern you.

In fact, Barack, when you say that you haven’t “explained” or “communicated” your plan well enough, what you are really saying is that you haven’t been able to misrepresent your plan well enough. The excessive costs of the plan, the health care rationing, putting choices in the hands of government rather than in the hands of individuals and doctors, the back room shady deals; all of this is an embarrassment to your administration but you want to try to paint the people who see your plan for the catastrophe that it is as being too dumb to understand it. I know that this is a tactic of one of your heroes, Saul Alinsky. Your idea is to make the radical seem main stream and to criticize and attack those who are against it as the radicals.

It’s not working Barack. Your purported eloquence has been overshadowed by your actual arrogance. Your speeches are, quite frankly, boring. The only people still excited by your rhetoric are Chris Matthews and the six people that watch his show. What really ticks me off is when you, Reid, and Pelosi talk about getting this done for the American people when it is the American people who keep telling you that they don’t WANT this!

I guess you’re going to try to push this through no matter what. I know you’re not stupid Barack. You’ve become boring and predictable, but you’re not stupid. You have an agenda which is obvious by the crowd you’ve always hung out with. You’ve put your agenda above what the people want and above the good of the country. You try to present yourself as someone who will listen to the other side but at your health care summit, you cut people off the moment that they brought up points that conflicted any of your own.

Barack, you can’t cut off the voice of the American people the way you tried to cut off the voice of people against your health care plan at that summit. You are not the King of the United States, although you may think you are. You are the top representative of the American people and you must answer to the American people, not the other way around. The people have seen you for what you are Barack, and they don’t like what they are seeing. I’m insulted to have a president who thinks so little of the American people that he is willing to so completely disregard their will.

So in closing Barack, I know you are not going to change. You are driven by your agenda as you always have been, but as you said yourself; “That’s what elections are for”. I just hope that by the time we throw you, Reid, and Pelosi out of office, that you haven’t created a hole that is too deep to climb out of.

George Bush Gives A Speech Barack Obama Style

2010-02-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Every President has a unique style of speaking and dealing with issues. Barack Obama recently gave his first State of the Union address. In listening to him speak about all the problems the country faces in 2010, it brought to mind the early days of the presidency of George Bush and his early speeches when he had to deal with the worst attack against the United States homeland in its history and the prospect of an uncertain future where the seemingly invulnerable United States was now facing the very real possibility of additional attacks. What if George Bush’s style was more like the style of Barack Obama? What if the two Presidents could be merged and you could create a new President by the name of George W.H. Obama. It is early 2002. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States…

President George Obama: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens: America this evening is a nation called to great responsibilities. And we are rising to meet them. In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. My fellow citizens, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union -- and it is strong. We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground; we have seen it in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We have seen the unfurling of flags, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers. We are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

One year ago, I took office amid an underfunded military and a depleted and dispirited CIA. High level security agencies lacked the ability to share information. We were attacked in 1993 in New York’s World Trade Center and the previous administration handled it as if it were a bank robbery, rather than an act of war. We were attacked at Khobar Towers and the previous administration again looked at it as an isolated incident. 17 sailors were killed and 39 were injured when two members of Al-Qaeda blew up their small craft next to the USS Cole in Yemen -- President Clinton’s response? He said “Their tragic loss reminds us that even when America is not at war, the men and women of our military still risk their lives for peace. “ Not at war President Clinton? You may not have been at war with them but they were certainly at war with us. How many acts of terrorism would it take for the previous administration to wake up to the danger? Even when our soldiers suffered the humiliating indignity of being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, President Clinton continued to treat terrorist attacks as if they were no worse than a robbery at a local deli.

We had at least four known documented opportunities to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the previous administration turned it down. As for Iraq, I know that many of you in this chamber are apprehensive about the possibility of going to war there. I have to remind our distinguished members of congress that if the previous administration did not show weakness and allow weapons inspectors to be thrown out of Iraq, we would not have lost years of intelligence gathering and we might not be in the position now where war is necessary.

In short, we inherited a disastrous mess from the previous administration. A year later, however, we have taken action and have corrected some of the horrific mistakes of the last eight years. We have removed the wall of separation between various intelligence gathering agencies that proved so ineffective in dealing with terrorism. We have taken terrorists off the battle field and not treated them as common criminals but as the enemy combatants that they are. We have housed them in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where the military can interrogate them and get the needed information to prevent future attacks. Our goal not being one to simply punish those caught committing acts of terrorism, but to prevent future attacks. We will use common sense intelligence gathering, not all of which that can be revealed for obvious reasons.

There is a fine line between trampling the rights of individual citizens and common sense surveillance. Let’s remember where the blame for this lies. We are reacting to the real threat posed by terrorists who are obsessed with destroying our country. The ineffective and irresponsible way that Washington has dealt with this problem over the last eight years has made certain procedures necessary in order to protect the country. Because of the reckless and irresponsible behavior of Washington, we are forced to allocate money to a brand new office – The Office of Homeland Security. We need to upgrade procedures and computer systems of our Intelligence gathering organizations and we will need to increase funding for the military to make up for the funding shortages of the last eight years. This is a tremendous expenditure that I would rather not have to make but thanks to the previous administration, I have no choice.

Because of all the money we now have to spend on security, coupled with the recession that we inherited, we will need to spend much of the budget surplus. Let me make this perfectly clear. The budget surplus was built on a house of cards. There was a new medium -- the internet -- that busted out during the previous administration. The Dot Com companies created a lot of investment in an unpredictable, untested environment. Their failure was inevitable. Their business practices were shabby and wasteful. Coupled with the tragic cuts to the military and to our intelligence services, the budget surplus of the previous administration was bound to end. You can only put paper clips and rubber bands on the military and the economy for so long before you need to go in and spend the money you need to really fix things, which my administration is prepared to do.

With all the problems that I inherited from the previous administration, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and say to my lovely wife Laura Michelle, “Oy Gevalt! What have I gotten myself into!” But for the good of the nation I will trudge on. For the nation needs me now more than ever. I am the President. I won the election. I am Commander-In-Chief, the leader of the free world. I am George Obama.

I n fact, the economic problems that we inherited are on the verge of being solved. I am going to cut taxes which will cause investment opportunities. I predict that due to these tax cuts the unemployment rate will drop by the mid 2000s to a miniscule 4.5% so that despite the increased spending on the security of our country, made necessary by the previous administration, we will still manage to revive the economy and keep our country safe at the same time.

Let us not forget what happened on September 11, 2001. It is my fear that as the decades go by and this horrific event fades into the past, we may be lured into the same false sense of security that got us in trouble in the first place. We weren’t attacked for anything we did, we were attached because of the values we espouse, and these are good values. They are not values to be ashamed of. They are values worth defending and we must be vigilant in defending them.

It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, life will return almost to normal. We'll go back to our lives and routines, and that is good. Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We'll remember the moment the news came -- where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a story of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them. Fellow citizens, we'll meet violence with patient justice -- assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.

Thank you.

Note: The second, last and next to last paragraphs are taken directly from speeches given by George W. Bush.

A Proposal For Foreign Policy And Relations between People and Nations

2010-01-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

For Building Tolerance, Acceptance, Peace, Harmony, Mutual Respect, Mutual Understanding, And Love among Different Nations And People

This proposal has been created and authorized by our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP). This is a community organization which has its home office on the upper west side of Manhattan, and is dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.

Recently in New York, a manual was created to advise heroin users how to properly use needles. We here at our organization (BURP) applaud this progressive idea. Too many of our rules and laws are based on conflict. Instead of trying to force people to abide by laws, we need to make it so that it is in the best interest of individuals to do what is also in society’s best interest. If we can’t get people to comply with society’s needs, then in order to reduce costs and minimize the damage, we need to find a way to allow their destructive behavior while minimizing the damage and cost to the rest of us.

It is in this vein that we take on the issue of foreign policy and the issue of terrorism, in particular. First off, we are grateful to President Obama for not using the word terrorism, which heretofore will be referred to as the T-word. However, when people in the media refer to people who commit acts of “T-word”, they often use the term “militants”. This too, is unacceptable as it sheds a cloud over an entire person’s outlook and personality. When referring to people who commit such acts, we propose the term “Misunderstood soldiers without uniforms”.

We need to look at the motivations of why people would engage in T-Word. Some people commit these acts thinking that there is a higher power that will reward them in the afterlife. Also, we need to look at our own behavior and how it is perceived by others. Many people who commit these acts believe that if they give their life to their cause, they will be rewarded with 72 virgins.

We are creating something called “The 72 Virgins In Life Project”. People will not have to give their lives for 72 virgins. Professional sex workers will be recruited. Some may call this bribery and we can’t deny that there is a certain amount of bribery in this plan. However, we feel that if bribery is good enough for our congress and senate as their standard operating procedure, surely it is also good enough to use on a plan designed to save lives and to combat acts of violence.

The “72 Virgins In Life Project” will provide clean, meaningful lives to women of the evening. These women will be provided with medical care, clean living quarters, and an education. If they have drug habits, clean needles will, of course, be provided and their heroin will be sold to them at cost. The women will be expected to tend to all of the needs of the misunderstood soldiers without unforms. In no way will they be expected or asked to try to gain information from the misunderstood soldiers without uniforms as this would defeat the purpose of the project. The misunderstood soldiers without uniforms must know and believe that this service is being provided to them out of respect and friendship, not out of fear or to gain intelligence.

If there are women who are actual virgins that wish to participate, their services will be at a premium as they will fetch the most interest. These actual virgins will be given the moniker of “Grade-A Virgins”. Once their services are used, their moniker will change to “Pre-Owned” and those women of the evening who are providing the service will be known as “Grade-B”. All of the women providing the service however, will be referred to simply as “The Virgins”. The group of 72 will be a wonderful eclectic mix of all three grades that will make any misunderstood soldier without uniform change his ways.

Now we realize that there will be criticism of this solution as it certainly is an unorthodoxed way of solving a problem. We must look at the benefits before jumping to conclusions. In the street, women of the Evening are taken advantage of, are subject to disease, violence and drugs. In the environment that they live in, the life expectancy is short and the life lived is sad. They will be cleaned up, provided with care and in turn, they will provide a service to the country of incalculable value.

There are those who will say that by rewarding people who commit acts of T-Word we would create the motivation for more people to become misunderstood soldiers without uniforms. We here at our organization (BURP) could not disagree more. What creates misunderstood soldiers without uniforms is putting them in a place such as Guantanamo Bay or using methods such as water boarding to gain information. Profiling at airports, listening in on their conversations, or watching bank accounts from certain countries or nationalities is what creates the motivation for people to become a misunderstood soldier without a uniform. By providing in life, what they hope to gain in death, we take away their motivation, not add to it. Also, they are surely to notice how nice we are being and after all is said and done, are likely to say something such as “You know, these people are all right with us!”

We would, of course, like it if the misunderstood soldier without uniform community were a bit more diverse. We toyed with the idea of recruiting 72 male virgins for our gay and female soldier without uniform friends but there just isn’t the demand for that at this point. We will, however, keep that one on the backburner and hope that at some point in the future, we can implement that part of the plan as well.

Now for the issue of profiling -- we feel it is provocative and quite frankly, defeatist, to single out people at airports or other checkpoints because of nationality or country of origin. This kind of treatment creates anger and again, causes more, not less, people to become misunderstood soldiers without uniforms. We’ve heard the arguments “Why single out granny? What are the chances that she is carrying a weapon?” That is a simple minded argument and completely misses the point. By focusing on one nationality as being closely linked to the misunderstood soldier without uniform community, we have created anger in that community. What we should be doing is profiling everyone EXCEPT people from those countries that are linked to T-Word. By doing this, we would be saying that we are a fair country and that we trust people from the countries linked to T-Word. This trust would surely be repaid in kind by a spirit of love and friendship. The misunderstood soldier without a uniform who gets on a plane and is about to commit an act of T-Word would break down in tears and be unable to complete the mission due to the kind treatment that he has been afforded.

We applaud our friends in Saudi Arabia for giving drawing lessons to people linked to T-Word. We need to take that idea and run with it. Our proposal is to create a major university in the US for misunderstood soldiers without uniforms. For short, we will call it MUSWU University. These misunderstood soldiers without uniforms will be given liberal arts classes where they will read and study a diverse selection of literature such as Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, Hemmingway, Steinbeck and much more. There will be courses and detailed discussions of topics such as “The Koran and Lesbianism – Are they mutually exclusive?” We feel that this university will be a great cultural exchange and will result in many people choosing a different career path than the one that leads them to becoming misunderstood soldiers without uniforms.

There are many other progressive ways that we can combat T-Word and we will comment on them in subsequent proposals. We have to compliment our President Barack Obama for beginning this necessary path toward understanding, rather than conflict. His proposed closing of Guantanamo Bay, his banning of harsh interrogation methods and his bringing misunderstood soldiers without uniforms to face trial in civilian courts in the US are all good ideas but they are only the beginning of the things we need to do to permanently end the threat of T-word.

The Battle Of The Ages -- Words And Language Versus Thoughts And Ideas

2009-12-29T19:07:00.000-08:00

Thoughts and ideas are expressed with words and language so how can these concepts, which are dependent upon each other, be in conflict? There is too much meaning placed on the words and not enough exploration of the ideas that the words represent, especially if the words sound good. If they are soothing words that make people feel good about themselves then people are unlikely to explore the real meaning. Call it intellectual laziness; this conflict is the dictator’s best friend.

Joseph Goebbels is known for having said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The rest of that quote is lesser known. He continued “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

While one should be careful in comparing anything to the evils of Goebbels and Nazi Germany, the propaganda methods that Goebbels spoke of have been used throughout history. Whether as a citizen, a consumer, a student, an employee, or a spouse (especially as a spouse!) people should be aware of misleading words and be careful not to confuse the words with the thoughts behind them. Ayn Rand once said “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” The key part of that Rand quote is “Check your premises”. What is the premise of the person saying the words and how does it conflict with what the listener or reader believes? Too often, the consumer of information assumes that he SHOULD accept the information at face value and is afraid to question it for fear of seeming an outcast, or worse, he may fear being scorned for being too stupid to understand the greater good of the propaganda that is being spoon fed to him. This fear is the propagandist’s best friend.

A good example is the current health care debate in the US. People have argued about this on many levels. The debate has taken many turns but the basic premise doesn’t go challenged. President Obama is always talking about reducing costs. Whose costs is he concerned about? Is each individual responsible for the medical costs of others? It doesn’t matter what the specifics are of a plan whose foundations are based on a false premise. Once it becomes the responsibility of one person to pay for the care of another, then everyone else has an incentive to get involved in the way we each live our lives. Community involvement is one thing but personally, if I work hard for my money, no one has the right to tell me how to spend it -- or worse – take it away from me to force me to buy a product that I don’t want. I need many things beside medical care (some people after reading my articles say it really is medical care I need the most). We all need food, shelter, a way to make a living, some entertainment once in a while, a 54 inch plasma TV and many other basic needs. Should we share the costs on those also?

You don’t reduce costs by cutting into the freedom of individuals. That is sacrosanct and off-limits. If Obama was interested in government waste and reducing debt and costs, which we all have as a burden, then he would start putting a serious investment in enforcing the border, where people coming here illegally are putting an incredible financial strain on the medical system. He would put a serious investment and effort into tort reform, so that doctors wouldn’t have to send patients for needless tests just to protect themselves. He would allow free competition across state lines for health insurance which would reduce prices. Another worthwhile idea would be to look into whether or not states should mandate insurance companies to cover non-essential procedures which provide incentive for people to get elective procedures which they may not need or want if it weren’t provided on someone else’s dime. When Obama speaks the words “save money” or “reduce costs” (and by the way if you google those phrases you’ll find that he says them almost as much as “I”), the translation is more government power and less freedom for the individual. He is like a car salesman that goes on and on with lies and faulty logic but the nightmare is that as a consumer, you don’t have the freedom to walk away from it! You are forced to buy the “car” with money that they take right out of your pocket.

Thomas Sowell once said that if the democrats came up with a plan that would mandate all citizens to jump off of a 100 story building, a week later the republicans would come up with a plan to mandate all citizens to jump off of a 50 story building. This health care debate is about whether to jump off of a 50 story or a 100 story building and before getting into the specifics of the plan, we should ask “Is it a good idea to be jumping off of buildings?”

This idea of misusing words is used in public policy debates but it also permeates our day-to-day conversation like a growing cancer. Stuart Chase, a left wing writer in the 1930s, correctly pointed out in his book “The Tyranny of Words” that words which end in “ism” tend to be misused more than most. These are words that represent concepts which can’t be defined simply, yet the mere mention of these words invokes images of pure evil in some and pure joy in others. Words such as fascism, industrialism, communism, capitalism have meanings based on emotion but not too many people actually know what any of these words really mean. One word cannot possibly define a complex political/economic system. Ask the average person to tell you the meaning of fascism and what you’ll get is something such as “evil, tyranny, bad government, totalitarian….” But not too many people can go further.

Fascism is often portrayed as the opposite of communism when in fact, they are two sides of the same coin. Fascism is positioned on the right and communism on the left and if no one questions this, it goes without further argument. In reality, however, both fascism and communism subjugate the rights of individuals, the family, self protection, religious freedom, the right to own property, and many other rights taken for granted, to the state. The state decides what you can own, where you can worship, even how many children you can have. These are not opposites -- they are basically the same! Yet if you listen to your average newscast or read your average paper, you’ll hear fascism linked with capitalism, not with its brother communism.

Capitalism is one word that is completely misleading. The term implies a society based on capital when in fact, the idea was to have a society based on freedom. It is the freedom to operate without government interference that makes “Capitalism” the true opposite of both communism and fascism. Yet the word itself has to be called into question because it implies that capital is at the root of a free society rather than the result of a free society. The term capitalism is itself, a derogatory term coined by none other than Karl Marx. He mistakenly viewed free markets as being based on capital and coined “capitalism”. People continue to defend capitalism by using the term capitalism which by its very use undermines what a free market is.

While there are some words that are misleading, others are sophisticated euphemisms. On September 11, 2001, the worst attack in American history took place on American soil. When we refer to that horrific day, we say “9-11”. There is a “pre 9-11 mentality” and a “post 9-11 mentality”. Other countries, after having been attacked, have said, “This is our 9-11”. After December 7, 1941, people didn’t call the Pearl Harbor attack “12-7”. They called it a sneak attack and said some not too complimentary things about the people that did the attack. Admiral Halsey said “Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!” While we don’t need to resort to insulting any group of people, we don’t need to pretend that reality is something it isn’t. Barack Obama refuses to even use the word “terrorism”. On September 11, 2001, people went to work and found themselves trapped in a burning building knowing they were about to die. It was just a day of work for them. They were thinking about lunch, their weekend plans, their work schedule – all of a sudden they were faced with the end of their lives. Using the phrase 9-11 doesn’t do them justice and it doesn’t speak to the evil that occurred on that day. It doesn’t sound like a Madison Ave jingle and it shouldn’t – it was the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, not a date and not a number.

Sometimes words just seem to pop up out of thin air. Some political consultant who just got out of Harvard decides that there is a new word to be used and all the networks, pundits and politicians go with the word in lock step. One such word was “gravitas”. In 2000, when Bush was running against Gore, the democrats came out and said he lacked “gravitas”. All of a sudden all the people on television were talking about “gravitas”. In the last campaign the word “transparency” was the word of the day. Politicians should stop being so political and learn how to talk to people, not by using a word such as “transparency” but by explaining how as citizens, we have a right to know what our government is doing. Words as concepts lose their meaning and we hear them without really being affected by them. As for the word “gravitas”, after a grand explosion on the political scene in 2000, it seems to have gone back into hiding. No point in bringing out the word “gravitas” when there is a democratic president who lacks “gravitas”. George Orwell understood why politicians will bring words such as “gravitas” up from the basement, dust them off and use them. He said “If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy…Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful…to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Take the advice of Ayn Rand and “Check your premises” when reading, hearing or watching information. If it doesn’t sound right, don’t be afraid to question it. Look past the words and ask, where is this coming from? Why is it being presented in this way? Why now? Who has to gain from this? What is the real agenda behind this? As Orwell pointed out, political speech is designed to deceive. Read between the lines and look for what is being implied, rather than said.

Universal Healthcare And Death Panels – Sarah Palin Was Right

2009-12-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin was roundly criticized, laughed at, and excoriated by supporters of Obama when she said that the universal health care plan would lead to death panels. The characterization of the term ‘death panels’ was quickly associated with people wearing tin foil hats. It is ironic that a group of people who believe the twin towers were brought down by inside conspiracies and that a plane never crashed into the Pentagon, could call other people ‘tin foil hat wearers’.

When liberals are afraid of a person or of a particular point, they attack it with a vengeance. It’s much like the story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Hans Christian Andersen. The Emperor is told that his clothes will be invisible only to the incompetent and the stupid. He doesn’t want to seem incompetent so, of course he says that he sees the clothes, as does everyone else until a child says “He hasn’t got any clothes on!”

The moment the term ‘Death Panels’ is labeled as a lunatic term; everyone is supposed to be afraid to explore the logic behind the term. It is a strategy often used by liberals. We see the proof that there are, in fact, ‘Death Panels’ but we are supposed to be afraid to say it for fear of being labeled incompetent or stupid – but if you see the emperor wearing a pair of stripped boxer shorts, it’s stupid to pretend that he’s wearing a three piece suit.

When this health care debate started, the first instinct was to look at other countries which have tried universal health care. What we saw was frightening – long waits for MRIs, horrific survival rates for cancer, waits for hip surgeries and on and on. It is so bad in England that there is a waiting list just to get on the waiting list! There are 40,000 people in the UK who have been waiting over a year for surgeries. There are shortages of critical supplies, drugs and medical equipment. According to the Burton Report, it is so bad in some countries that there is a black market in health care. In Japan life saving devices such as defibrillators are rarely available.

Socialized medicine has ruined the medical profession in any country where it has been tried. It’s basic economics. Increase the demand for a product and decrease the incentive to supply that demand and you create a shortage. Not only is there a shortage in medical care, there is little to zero medical innovation and advancement. There is no money to invest in research and no incentive to even try. There is a reason why most new medical innovations come out of the United States – it is called the free market.

People who support the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health care plan say that their plan is different. They say their plan will give people a choice; that people will be able to keep their current plan and won’t be forced into anything they don’t want. Their own words, however, prove that this is not the case.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who is now an economics adviser for Barack Obama, said the following at a speech in 2007 at UC Berkeley. The premise of Reich’s comments is that this is what a presidential candidate would say if he were honest about healthcare:

"what I'm going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it (healthcare) to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people...you're going to have to pay more."
"And by the way, we're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."
"Also I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid…to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents."

Tom Daschle was Barack Obama's first choice to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In Dashchle’s 2008 book, ‘Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis’, he laid out some of his ideas on healthcare:
"Doctors will have to 'learn to operate less like solo practitioners' and be willing to accept mandatory government controls and guidelines."
Daschle advocates the creation a brand new bureaucracy called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. This new government organization will monitor all medical treatments to make sure that your doctor is prescribing the exact drugs and medical treatments that the federal government believes are 'appropriate' and 'cost effective'. This would slow the development and use of new medications and treatments because they are driving up medical costs. According to Betsy McCaughey, Daschle praises Europeans for being more willing to accept 'hopeless diagnoses' and 'forgo experimental treatments,' and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a special advisor to the President on health care. He believes people between the age of 15 and 40 should be given preferential treatment. Some quotes from Emanuel:
"Suppose a 25-year-old and a 65-year-old have a life threatening disease. Since the 25-year-old has many more potential years of life ahead of him, he should receive preferential treatment."
"The complete lives system discriminates against older people…. Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years."
"Health services should not be guaranteed to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

Barack Obama said:
"So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here…I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists…It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions through normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."

What is this independent group of Obama’s to be called? A death panel by any other name is still a death panel.

People may argue that the quotes listed above are taken out of context. An example of something truly taken out of context, ironically also involving Sarah Palin, is when Drew Griffin from CNN said to Palin, “some conservatives have been pretty hard on you… "The National Review" had a story saying that, you know, I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above? In actuality, the National Review article by Byron York said "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward or, well, all of the above." The words “Watching press coverage” completely change the meaning. There is nothing, in any of the quotes listed above, that can change the context of the meaning or the intent of what is said in the way that those three words “Watching press coverage” do.

The Health care proposals that are being shoved down the throats of the American people do, in fact, have death panels. It would be obvious if all we had to go on were the many examples of how socialized healthcare works in different countries around the world. In fact, we have so much more proof than that as stated in the very words of the very people who are shoving this immoral debacle down our throats. Who the hell do these people think they are? If I work and save my own money I won’t have the right to use my OWN money on the care of my elderly parents? It won’t be available? This is their moral plan? This plan is pure evil and it is a moral obligation to stop it.

A Brooklyn Conservative in Blue State New York

2009-11-17T18:23:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine was surprised when I told her that I was a conservative. I asked her why she was surprised. She said “Well, you seemed intelligent; I just assumed you were liberal.” Sometimes I hide the dirty secret of my conservatism. Living in New York, it can be easier that way. I’m passionate about my beliefs, however, and sometimes I just can’t contain myself.

If I say nothing while my core beliefs are being trashed right before my eyes, I feel as if I am going to explode. If I say something, I’ll get into an argument and I’ll feel bad for starting an argument, for being the outcast in this world of left leaning lunacy. Usually, when I can’t take the liberal onslaught and am forced to respond, it’s in a situation where there are two, three or four people arguing against me. This causes me to have to raise my voice to be heard. The spit starts flying out as I go on the attack and act like the Cro-Magnon man that the left believes us conservatives to be.

It’s really so much easier to be a liberal. You could say “Of course I’m for universal health care. What kind of person would want sick people to be without care?” This is so easy! You don’t have to look at facts or details. If I get sick or lose my job, I could say, “I deserve to be taken care of because I wanted to take care of other people who could have been in the same situation.” I would never have to worry about being blamed for anything because I wouldn’t strive for anything. If I cheated on my wife, I could say that I never said that having an affair was wrong. If I got addicted to drugs, I could say “It’s not my fault; we’re all victims of an unfair system.”

We conservatives are victims of our own standards. When it was revealed that Bill Bennett, who had written books about virtue and family values, had a gambling problem, the left was all over the story, using the H-word “hypocrisy” over and over again; the same with Rush Limbaugh when it was revealed he had a drug problem.

Conservatives never said that they, or anyone else, needed to walk on water. If it is hypocritical to strive for something and fail, what is it when one strives for nothing and succeeds? The philosophy of the left is evident in both personal matters and in larger, governmental and economic concerns. Striving for success, failing and learning from failure is the basis of a Free Market economic system. In a true free market system, a person takes a chance, gets the rewards for success and the blame for failure. Socialist systems, on the other hand, strive for nothing more than the maintenance of the society, not for creating anything better. And when a conservative gets caught doing something wrong, well, contrary to the stereotypes of the left, we conservatives like to have fun! Sometimes, like all human beings, we make mistakes. The left wants us to behave as if we were the robots that they believe us to be.

Whether it is striving for personal success, success in business, success in family life, or anything else, the conservative mind does not see failure as hypocritical, it sees failure as an essential part of the process of making the most of who you are as a person in all facets of life. The left, in judging conservatives, tends to judge them based on their standards, not with the standards that conservatives use in judging themselves.

Conservatives take responsibility for their mistakes and learn from them. A conservative who talks about family values is not hypocritical when he makes a mistake. He is a person who is striving for something greater. The mistake or the hypocrisy is not in failing to achieve your own standards, the real hypocrisy is to not have any standards, or anything worth striving for in the first place.

When I try to debate points such as this with liberals, I get blank stares. They are like children who just repeat something over and over again. My nephew, when he was about six years old, once came to me and said “Hey Howie, you know what?” To which I said “What?” “Chicken Butt!” he said, and then laughed hysterically, which made me laugh as well. Two seconds later he said, “Hey Howie, you know what?” To which I said “Tell me”. And he said “NO NO NO! You know what?” “What?” I said. And he said “Chicken Butt!” -- And then laughed hysterically once again. Somewhere around the 45th time he said the joke I had to figure a way out of it. This, by the way, is what it’s like arguing with a liberal.

Liberals will bring up points that have nothing to do with the debate and then act as if they have just declared a major “gotcha” moment. The “Chicken Hawk” argument is a good example. If someone needs to hire an accountant, it is not necessary that the person have worked, himself, as an accountant. If a person calls the police for help, it is not necessary that the person would have had to, at one time, work for the police department. Liberals, incapable of winning a debate on issues, try to cut it off with personal attacks.

As to the “Chicken Hawk” argument, if a person who never served in the military tried to tell the military what strategy to use, how to use troops, technology and equipment, then there would be a legitimate case to be made. However, whether or not the country, in defense of its borders and safety of its people, has a need to use the military is something that any person (whether having served in the military or not) has a right, even an obligation, to speak up about. The alternative would be to have a military dictatorship. Does the left ever think of the logical consequences of their arguments?

As to logical arguments, I was talking to a liberal once about the benefits of drilling for oil in Alaska. She argued that we change the environment by our drilling for oil. I countered by saying that the Alaska pipeline has actually turned out to be beneficial to the environment, as well as to humanity. The caribou population has grown and has thrived around the pipeline because the heat generated by the pipeline attracts animals. The caribou gather around the pipeline, which in turn, helps not only the caribou but other animals that prey on the increased population of caribou. Rather than see the benefit of this win-win situation, my friend said “You see! That’s what I mean; we’ve messed with the natural order of things!” I said “But they’ve INCREASED!!” “It doesn’t matter!” she said. How do you argue against this?

Sometimes, we conservatives can use the liberal biases to our advantage. I have a conservative friend in New York (one of two – not one of two conservative friends, one of the two other conservatives that live in New York) who is a baker. She entered a cupcake baking contest on July 4th. She thought of putting tiny American flags on the cupcakes. Being that this is New York, however, she thought better of it and put peace signs on the cupcakes. She won the contest. We’ll never know if she won because of the peace signs vs. the American flags. The cupcakes are amazing and may have won anyway. The point is that instinctively, she knew that to this crowd, the American flag would have been an impediment to winning and that is truly a shame.

What does one do, when the liberal assumes he is speaking to a comrade in arms? Another friend was listening to a client go on and on about the evils of the Bush administration, the evils of Cheney, Halliburton, Abu Ghraib and on and on and on. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore and said “I voted for Bush!” The reply was “You couldn’t have voted for Bush, you’re a photographer!” Liberals, who pride themselves on their progressiveness, their openness, their acceptance of others not like them, are not only the most intolerant people I’ve ever met, but the most hypocritical of all!

The left prides itself on diversity but the diversity they talk to is superficial diversity. Real diversity is diversity of thought and opinion and they do not tolerate it. These are people who love to shock and stun others with their openness and creativity but they, in turn, are truly shocked and come out with some of the most inane statements when they hear anything in disagreement with their liberal dogma.

Heads I Win – Tales You Lose (Liberals Win but leave behind a Mess)

2009-10-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has made it a point to continually talk about the “mess” he inherited from the Bush administration. In August, he said "But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."

Indeed, Barack Obama inherited an economy in freefall. There are wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while terrorist groups remain a constant threat. North Korea and Iran are testing long range missiles in conjunction with the development of nuclear weapons. It’s worth noting that the precarious state of the country is what got him elected in the first place. If everything was going along swimmingly, the country wouldn’t have changed direction.

Liberals need a catastrophe to get elected. They use the misfortune of others, a bad economy, a war, racial tension, hurricanes, the Rachel Maddow show – anything and everything to convince others that they and only they, can come in on their white horses with shining armor to come to the rescue and save the day. Their very existence as a political force is predicated not on solving real problems but on having problems to justify the need for their policies.

It’s a vicious circle. Without having to have to worry about consequences, liberals can promote the most radical policies the way that a gambler can go down double or nothing, without ever having to worry about losing. They are never held to account for their policies. No matter what the facts say, it’s always someone else’s fault. Hence they have a ‘Heads I Win – Tales you lose’ policy. If the radical policy produces results, they are heroes; if not, then there is justification for more of their policies.

Think this sounds crazy? In 1977, the Carter administration passed the Community Reinvestment Act. The goal was noble, as most liberal goals seem, but devoid of logic, as most liberal plans are. The idea was to create a situation where low income people would be able to buy homes. Banks had to prove that a certain percentage of loans went to these low income people and it forced them to make loans to people who didn’t qualify. In the 1990’s, in order to guarantee those loans, Freddie Mac and Fannie May promised to buy 2 trillion dollars worth of those mortgages. This took financial pressure off banks and they were able to make more of these risky loans and show what good ‘corporate citizens’ they were. The downfall was inevitable.

Once all this was set in place, there was speculation and trading on these loans to try to profit from it but none of that would have happened if the irresponsible policies weren’t put into effect in 1977 and then increased in the 1990’s. Before the inevitable collapse, President Bush tried to point out that there would be problems if the current policies continued. It was liberals such as Barney Frank who assured everyone that Fannie and Freddy were solvent. Bush didn’t push the point as hard as he should have, but at least he recognized the problem while liberal democrats said there was no problem.

So Barack Obama is elected into office based on an economic downturn that was created by exactly the kind of policies that he wants to implement to solve the problem. Incidentally, Social Security is another problem that George Bush tried to deal with. They criticized him for bringing up Social Security the same way they criticized him for trying to deal with the mortgage crisis. When Social Security blows up, liberals will no doubt use the same policies that blew it up to try to fix it. At the same time, they will blame republican and conservative greed for causing it to fail even though conservatives were the only ones who tried to head off the problems before they became critical.

President Obama talks about those who ‘created the mess’. How many messes has the left created and how many of those messes have they had to answer for? When you don’t have to answer to your failures, when you are, in fact, rewarded for your failures, it doesn’t provide any incentive to stop failing. Liberals either don’t understand or don’t care that there are consequences to their actions that go beyond the immediate situation at hand.

One mess created by liberals is the banning of the chemical DDT. Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” created hysteria around chemical pesticides. The manufacturers of DDT, farmers, scientists, and others tried to assure people that DDT was not harmful and had tremendous benefits. The anti DDT campaign took on a life of its own and when a liberal cause takes on that kind of momentum, there is no stopping it (See Global Warming). So DDT was banned. Since 1972, over 100 million people have died from malaria. This is a disease that was on the verge of being eradicated in the early 1960s. Millions of people died needlessly. This is a catastrophic event of monumental proportions that few people address and fewer take responsibility for. It’s not an exaggeration – 100 MILLION people have lost their lives yet no one is asked to answer for this! Is it because their heart was in the right place? Their intentions were good? People continue to suffer, mostly in Africa, to this very day and some are talking about re-introducing DDT – a bit late for all those who died because of well-intentioned people. For more information on Rachel Carson and the DDT ban, a good article is “Rachel Carson’s Ecological Genocide” by Lisa Makson in FrontPageMagazine.com.

Another fine mess that liberals have never had to answer for was when they pressured congress to withdraw all funding from the war in Vietnam. When the US withdrew, it did so under a treaty that it would go back in if the situation got out of hand. There was so much pressure by the left to get out of Vietnam, that they constantly blamed the US and absolved the North Vietnamese or the Khmer Rouge of any wrong doing. When it became obvious that mass extermination was taking place in Cambodia, the left continued to blame the US and make excuses for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. They placed all the blame on Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as if, even if that were true, it would absolve them of the responsibility of living up to a treaty and saving the millions of people who were being slaughtered.

The propaganda that took place then was similar to the propaganda now and there was no FOX news, talk radio, or the internet to present the other side. Movies such as “The Killing Fields” made it seem as if everything the Cambodians did was the result of the actions of the US. Just as now with Islamic terrorism, it could never be that there were purely evil people who had to be fought and stopped. Nevertheless, regardless of the cause of the Cambodian genocide, we had an obligation to stop it, not to excuse the actions of mass murderers. Two million people died in Cambodia. Not only did the left not want to stop this genocide, they actually praised the people committing the genocide! For a more complete telling of the true story of the Khmer Rouge, see the chapter called “The Bloodbath” in Mona Charen’s book “Useful Idiots”.

Whether it’s as severe as mass extermination or a banking crisis, schools that can’t educate, a war on poverty that creates more poverty, inner city programs that create crumbling cities, rent control ideas that create a lack of housing, ideas to stop crime by understanding criminal behavior, rather than punishing it – thereby causing more crime, welfare ideas that cause dependency instead of personal growth, the messes created by liberal ideas are endless. They are never held accountable for these failures. It’s either because they didn’t do enough of whatever their miserable idea was, or they didn’t have enough money to do it correctly. It never dawns on them that maybe the ideas, themselves, are flawed.

So, we are now being forced to buy this bill of goods that has failed so miserably in the past. Apparently, we have no choice but to accept it. We’re supposed to just “get out of the way and stop talking”, but we have to leave our money behind of course -- they’ll need that. Obama is like a vacuum cleaner salesman who is going to pour some dirt all over the floor to prove how great the vacuum cleaner will work. It won’t work and we shouldn’t have to pay $10,000,000,000,000 for a broken vacuum cleaner that will leave a mess on the floor.

War – What Is It Good For? – Absolutely Everything

2009-10-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

Of course war is horrible. People say that war is to be avoided at all costs and it should always be a last resort. All other options must be completely exhausted before a country should consider sending troops (people) to fight and kill. War as an absolute last resort seems to make perfect sense.

Unfortunately, the idea of ‘war as a last resort’ assumes that there are two reasonable groups or countries who can resolve differences. It assumes that all differences can be ironed out with compromise. Sometimes, however, evil exists in the world and to compromise with evil is to lend it legitimacy.

Let’s look at this on a personal level. You witness a woman being mugged and beaten. What is the proper course of action? Maybe a good idea is to walk over to the mugger and say, “This mugging and beating thing is wrong. I don’t know how much money you hope to gain with this mugging but I’ll give you a twenty. Then we can all walk away satisfied.”

Or, if you are Barack Obama and you witness a mugging, you may say something such as “Hold on there young man, I know there have been differences between people who mug and those that don’t. We need to work together. Partnership and cooperation among all people is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity. I understand your frustration. In the past, people who haven’t broken laws or mugged someone have acted arrogantly and sometimes unilaterally, without consideration for those that have the need to mug others. And sometimes it is our very arrogance that has caused people to become muggers in the first place.”

In reality, when a mugging takes place, the witness to the scene has a responsibility. Perhaps you do nothing -- someone else is getting mugged and that’s not your business. Many cities have ‘good Samaritan laws’ which speak to the morality of doing nothing while a crime is being committed. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time, the same way that the person getting mugged is in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, you saw the crime and you now have a responsibility that you can’t escape from.

When countries commit crimes, the choices are no different than when a crime is being committed by an individual. While the choices are the same, the consequences of doing nothing are far more severe. The ultimate example is Nazi Germany and WWII. Suppose in 1939, the world community, knowing what Hitler was up to, had acted preemptively. Let us say that the moment the world saw Hitler’s designs on Poland, it attacked Germany. Let us also assume that the act of attacking Hitler’s Germany resulted in a war in which one million people died. Yet Hitler’s designs on world domination were stopped. It prevented the Holocaust from happening and it prevented a war where over 65 million people died.

No one would have known about WWII or the Holocaust because the preventative action would have stopped it. In such a situation, there would have been intense criticism on those who initiated a war where over one million people died. At the time, Hitler was looked at as a crazy Charlie Chaplain look-a-like. A million people dead? -- For what???

In an episode of the original Star Trek series, Dr McCoy (Bones for you Trekkies!) went through a portal that took him back in time. Back in the late 1930s, he saved the life of a woman played by Joan Collins. She was about to be hit by a car and McCoy pushed her out of the way. The character played by Collins was a peace activist who ended up influencing US policy and delaying the US entry into WWII. As a result, Germany won the war and all history changed. In the end, the Star Trek crew had to set history right by going back in time and stopping McCoy from saving the life of the peace activist played by Collins. In a moving scene at the end, Captain Kirk holds back McCoy as he is about to save the life of the Collins character. McCoy says, “Do you know what you have done? I could have saved her!!” To which Mr. Spock says “He knows, doctor, he knows.” Spock then adds, “She had the right idea, but at the wrong time.”

I bring this Star Trek episode up in all its excruciating detail because it demonstrates that the choice to initiate or retaliate in war has got to be looked at differently. No one ever gets to see the consequences of the “other choice”. When there is world conflict, the UN and individual countries always ask “How can we avoid a war”. This is the wrong question. Asking this question avoids reality and places world life and death situations into the realm of “wishful thinking”. The real question that needs to be asked isn’t how to avoid a war. It is “Based on what we know and can project, what are the consequences of going to war vs. the consequences of doing nothing?

People look at WWII as “the good war” because they know what happened. The reason that people know what happened is because we waited too dam long in the first place!! The so called and much maligned “Bush doctrine” was correct! This doctrine was based upon two truths of which reasonable and intellectually honest people cannot disagree. There are two imperatives in the doctrine. The first is that there IS evil in the world and that some countries fall under evil for a variety of reasons. When a country becomes a threat to its neighbors and its own citizens, the second imperative takes place and the world has to act to stop the threat – before innocent people suffer, not after!

The so called “Bush doctrine” was not too different from the original UN charter. The UN was set up to stop aggressive immoral behavior in order to PREVENT the kind of atrocities that took place in World War II. To stop aggression, it’s usually a good idea to make a distinction between the aggressors and the victims of aggression. Unfortunately, the UN has become incapable of making this distinction, often putting both aggressor and victim on equal moral playing fields, sometimes even taking the side of the aggressor against the victim. The UN, by this inability to distinguish right from wrong, has not only been ineffective but has often made catastrophes worse.

Even those who have coined the oxymoronic term “passive resistance” have had to come to terms that it only works if the group you are resisting against has a conscience. Mahatma Ghandi was once asked what Jewish people should do at the time of the Holocaust. His answer, documented in an essay by George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi”, as well as by Louis Fischer's “Gandhi and Stalin”, is that the Jewish people should have committed mass suicide in order to bring attention to their plight and to the evils of Nazi Germany. Gandhi is considered almost saintly because of his absolute renunciation of violence. But would his methods have stopped violence or caused more violence? His methods worked against the British because the British had a conscience. Again, here is the recognition of good and evil that the UN and pacifists in general, like to make believe doesn’t exist. Yet Gandhi, as displayed by his answer, clearly WAS aware of this distinction and held on to his philosophy of non violence knowing that it would not work and would lead to the extermination of a race of people.

Many people say that patriotism and religion can be blind. Pacifism can be as blind a faith as any. Shrouded in the certainty that peace is the way, no matter what the consequences, and so certain of the moral correctness of their actions or inactions, they have put pressure on countries to tolerate and often excuse evil. Whether witnessing a mugging or watching as a rogue nation gains the knowledge to build nuclear weapons, doing nothing is never the right thing to do. People never want to be in a situation where they have to deal with such horrible choices but these choices are thrust upon us whether we want them or not. In dealing with them, we will make mistakes. We are obviously not infallible. The choices we make should be based on reality and the knowledge that sometimes the choice is between something bad, something else that is really bad, and something else that is catastrophic. When you have those three choices, making the bad choice is the right choice.

Terrorism – The Left, The Right, And the Middle East

2009-09-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

It has often been said that “All forms of extremism are equally bad”; often by people who are extremists. Extremism, in itself, is not wrong. To fight for a just cause and to be uncompromising in that fight is the noblest thing a person can do. People on the left, mislabeled as liberals, are uncompromising in their fight for certain values yet they never refer to themselves, and are never referred to by anyone else, as extremists.

When people on the right start to make noise and air their dissatisfaction, words such as militia, Nazi, skinhead, redneck, racist and many others get routinely thrown around. When people on the left air their dissatisfaction, words such as activism and protest get used. Liberals are community organizers while people on the right are rude agitators. This double standard has never been more evident than in the treatment of people who are voicing their displeasure on the proposed healthcare debacle.

The double standard was evident in early April when the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning that there might be an increase in domestic terror by "lone wolf" right-wing extremists, possibly with military experience. There was no specific intelligence for this threat. Janet Napolitano issued a report from Homeland Security that, according to Ralph Peters, “repeatedly warns of our military vets being terrorists. She uses ‘terrorist’. It warns about people who oppose illegal immigration as being terrorist threats, as people who may differ on right-to-life issues as terrorist threats.”

Right wing radio has repeatedly been referred to as hate mongering and extremist. As a result, the Obama administration is actively trying to limit talk radio, disregarding the hate being peddled by people on MSNBC, the misinformation from CBS, NBC, ABC, the NY Times… you get the idea. Would it ever occur to anyone to wonder why conservatives flock to talk radio? Would it ever occur to the people on the left that the reason people seek out talk radio is because the conservative view is constantly being disparaged and maligned by the main stream media? People on the left, not the right, created right wing talk radio. They did this by their media malpractice. People in the MSM weren’t doing their job and in true American and free market fashion, when there is an unfulfilled need, someone will come along and fill that need. FOX news and talk radio came along and filled a black hole in the media market.

It’s much easier to refer to right wingers as Nazis and terrorists than to actually listen or try to understand what conservatives are saying. Is this projection? Does the left look at the right and judge the right based on their (the left’s) values? When conservative authors and scholars give speeches at universities, liberal groups have done all they can to shut them down. They have thrown pies at authors; they have confiscated conservative newspapers and have successfully shut down conservative speeches. Is that an example of their “tolerance”? When Janet Napolitano warns of right wing terrorism, is she thinking, or expecting that the right wing will act the way the left has acted for the last 45 years?

To really view the double standard, imagine Al Gore making a speech on global warming. Someone comes along after the speech and says “Mr. Gore should be careful in his rhetoric. There might be another Unabomber out there who may take what he says too literally.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for that scenario to happen.

It would seem ridiculous to imply that this one crazed environmentalist (The Unabomber, not Gore) should be compared with everyone who is an environmentalist. Yet that invidious comparison is constantly used by people on the left. How often does the name Timothy McVeigh come up when liberals are talking about Conservatives? To the left, all people on the right are potential terrorists. For people who supposedly pride themselves on their understanding of other people, cultures and faiths, they are remarkably ignorant and intolerant of anyone with a different worldview than theirs.

While labeling people on the right as potential terrorists (or as Nancy Pelosi said about people attending town hall meetings, “People with swastikas on their arms”), liberals are eager to look at the causes of Islamic terrorism. Liberals want to know the reasons that would cause a group to do such horrific things. Moral equivalence rears its ugly head and liberals reach for the quote at the beginning of this article; “All forms of extremism are equally bad.”

First of all, when I take my belt and shoes off to go through the terminal in the airport, I’m not doing it because of Christian fundamentalists or Zionists. There is one group that has caused this to happen. We can’t live in a world where we have to pretend that the Emperor is wearing clothes when we can plainly see he’s wearing nothing but a pair of striped boxer shorts. Saying that “all forms of extremism are bad” is one of the most idiotic comments that have come into the modern lexicon (well that and “at the end of the day…”).

Some forms of extremism are noble and some aren’t. Common sense can always be used to tell which is which. The ones who tell 12 year old children to wear suicide belts can be described as the crazy extremists. The ones who fight against that ideology can be described as the noble extremists. It’s really not that difficult. Yet when liberals try to excuse Islamic terrorism, they’ll often play the Timothy McVeigh card again. “Well, there are people who bomb abortion clinics and what about Timothy McVeigh?”

The fact that Timothy McVeigh has to be mentioned so often, really indicates that there is not the epidemic of homegrown right wing terrorism that the left tries to display every time there is a controversial issue. Abortion bombings aren’t cheered by conservatives and they are extremely rare. Though when one happens, the MSM will play it up with news coverage that can only be rivaled when a child accidentally shoots someone.

Middle Eastern, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is clearly the biggest threat the country and the world has faced and will face in the future. The left draws a moral equivalency between the tens of thousands killed all over the world from Islamic terrorism, and the few people who have died from home grown terrorism. Of course, one person’s death is one too many but no one on the right said, “We need to understand Timothy McVeigh.” Home grown terrorism, as an issue, has been misrepresented. The image one gets when faced with the term “homegrown terrorism” is one of right wing militia groups, Nazis and skin heads.

Two of the biggest and most organized terrorist organizations in the United States are the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The FBI considers them two of the most dangerous home grown terrorist organizations. The Earth Liberation Front, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), have taken responsibility for more than 600 crimes since 1996, totaling more than $100 million in damages. The Earth Liberation Front sprung from -- and in many ways is still an arm of -- Earth First! As described on their own website: Earth First! (EF!) is a "warrior society" that takes a "by any means necessary" approach to "defending mother earth." The group declines to participate in the democratic process, preferring instead to damage, disable, and destroy the property of its ever-growing list of enemies. EF! targets include, but are by no means limited to, loggers, ranchers, and farmers.

Where is the right wing home grown terrorist group that rivals that? There aren’t any but no one would know it by listening to the MSM. Of course it doesn’t stop there. There are the FALN terrorists (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional), responsible for more than 120 bomb attacks United States targets between 1974 and 1983. Not only did this group commit these horrific attacks, but the current Attorney General and Secretary of State were instrumental in the pardons of some of their members! Can you imagine a Republican pardoning of abortion bombers?

There has been the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and many more. The current president is an associate (some would say good friend) of two of the founding members of the Weather Underground, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Some of the biggest worldwide terrorist groups that are not home grown, but still pose a threat to the US and its interests, such as FARC, are left Marxist groups. There just aren’t the extreme right wing groups that the left mythologizes about.

Liberals talk about “all forms of extremism” being bad, while associating, endorsing, pardoning and excusing some of the most extreme groups ever created. Memo to the left; Please stop calling other people hypocrites.

A Modest Proposal For Healthcare

2009-08-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

For Providing Better Healthcare, Cleaning Up The Environment, And Saving Money
(Based on the Essay “A Modest Proposal”, by Jonathan Swift in 1729)

A new organization has been created on the West side of Manhattan. This is an organization dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations. The organization is called the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP).

This is a community organization which is staffed by people from all walks of life, as well as by experts in all areas of importance. We will be speaking to a variety of subjects throughout the coming months and years. The first issue that we wish to address is that of healthcare.

Our goal is to have universal healthcare for all people. People should not be without basic care, no matter what their circumstances. The biggest obstacle to this is money. Our President, Barack Obama, seemed to recognize this in his press conference in July when he spoke about healthcare. In that press conference, the word “money” was stated 21 times. Only four nouns were said more. Those were “health” – 72 times, “care” – 69 times (although the word “care” wasn’t always used as a noun), “insurance” – 34 times, and “people” – 31 times.

We are a bit disappointed about the obsession with money as we always felt that it was the republicans who were more obsessed over issues concerning money while our side was more concerned with issues dealing with quality of life, morality, and fairness. However, we recognize money as the necessary evil it is, at least for now, until we can put in place a more fair system and eliminate the need for this exchange of capitalistic greed.

So how do we provide healthcare for all people and how to we pay for it? We, at our organization (BURP) have devised a plan that will not only provide healthcare for all, but at the same time will not cost a cent! In fact, we expect our plan to make money! As a side benefit, we also expect our plan to go a long way toward cleaning up the environment and stopping the green house gasses that are heating our planet to such dangerous levels.

80% of healthcare costs are spent on the elderly. President Obama spoke to this issue when he said that he wasn’t sure if it was in everyone’s best interests that his grandmother got a hip replacement – we agree. Couldn’t the medical resources that went toward her hip replacement have been better served going to a child or a person with more years to live and contribute to society?

Much of the currently proposed healthcare reform comes from Tom Daschle’s book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis”. Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.” We agree with that statement as well, but we have some qualms about this and think that we can improve on its basic premise.

It is immoral to ask an elderly person to suffer. We don’t want the elderly to live with painful and debilitating conditions. At the same time, we don’t have the money to treat them because they will bankrupt the system and cost too much money. We can’t continue to spend 80% of healthcare costs on people who have nothing left to contribute but stories of bygone eras. We are a progressive nation and we must move forward.

As mentioned earlier in this proposal, we at our organization (BURP) have experts from all walks of life. One such expert is a chef in France by the name of Jean Aymard. Mr. Aymard assures us that an old person, if seasoned properly, can be cooked in a variety of ways to provide a most delicious and healthy meal. Old people provide a very tender meat because the muscular structure of their meat has diminished; creating a texture that is exquisite.

Old people can be served in a variety of ways. According to Mr. Aymard, the hips can make a T-bone steak that would be the envy of the finest steak house. Because there is so little muscle left on old people, a good portion of the meat can be made into an amazing filet mignon, far more so than in a cow, which contains a larger percentage of gristle and muscle.

There will be many ways of using this fine quality meat. Dipping an old person’s fingers in barbecue sauce will be a treat on a Friday night after a hard week of work. Boneless toe nuggets, either fried or baked, will be a tasty appetizer or hors d'oeuvres. Mr. Aymard also assures us that the breasts of an older woman can create a pâté that could be served at the finest cocktail parties. This pâté, served with green salad and potatoes, will be a delicacy to be envied and longed for. Other parts won’t go to waste either. There will be granny cold cuts sold in every supermarket. These cold cuts, we are assured by our resident expert, are lighter in fat content than turkey or chicken cold cuts.

Now we understand that this plan, however well intentioned it may be, could be criticized on certain moral grounds. So let us then look at the benefits of this plan. As Barack Obama said, we have to look very carefully at “end of life” decisions. We clearly can’t afford to give elderly people endless care and also provide universal care to everyone else. We don’t want our elderly people to suffer but we can’t afford to give them care. So by turning them into food, we are allowing them to do one last great thing in their life. Instead of becoming a burden to society, they become a benefit to society.

Old people, at the age of 70, can be taken to “Environmental Contribution Centers”. These centers will be located in beautiful beach front areas so that the old people can enjoy a last hurrah of life. They will be given only the finest foods, which will not only give them a great sendoff, but will fatten them up for the dinner table. They can enjoy a few rounds of golf (not too many, though, because we don’t want them to develop hardened muscular structure), ping pong, shuffle board and whatever else they wish to do. When their time comes, there will be a wonderful ceremony. Relatives will be invited to share in the gift of an elderly person sacrificing his or her life for the betterment of our country and our planet.

Putting this proposal into practice will not only free up 80% of healthcare costs for other, more productive members of society, but it will create a new enterprise that will make money. The Old People Meat market will be a multibillion dollar industry that will provide money for schools, infrastructure improvement and new jobs. It will be an economic boom!

The cruel and dirty business of slaughter houses will come to an end. There will be no need to raise turkeys, chickens, cattle, pigs and other livestock when we have an endless supply of healthy, wholesome meat. The environment will be better off. It takes a huge amount of space and resources to raise cattle. The grain to feed the cattle and the land that they take up can be used for our benefit, or it can go back to nature. In either case we will be better off for it as the raising of cattle takes up far too many resources. Cow flatulence, which is a huge contributor to global warming, will also be a thing of the past.

Animal activist groups, a number of which we have right here in our organization, such as PETA, will be happy that chickens and turkeys are no longer raised for food, suffering through their short lives to have a cruel destiny as food for some person’s selfish needs.

Of course there will have to be some exceptions to what we will affectionately refer to as “The Rule of 70”. For example, we have many resident experts right here in our organization (BURP) whose knowledge is invaluable to shaping the course of events and in creating the progressive society that we all yearn for. Because of the need for their skills and expertise, these people, despite their age, will be provided the full health care that will be provided to the society as a whole.

And so, dear comrades, you see how this proposal benefits society in so many ways. Sometimes it takes a good community activist organization to shine the light and show how to get things done. Our organization (BURP) is about making America a kinder, fairer and just country. Providing universal health care for all is just the beginning.

Life Under Obamacare

2009-08-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

Johnny AveragePerson is 63 years old. He is in relatively good health. His wife passed away six years ago. He has a daughter living in Florida and a son who lives in New Jersey. Johnny lives in Brooklyn, New York and works at a bank, commuting into Manhattan each day.

Today is a pleasant spring day in May; Johnny has just gotten off the morning train and walks into the corner deli to get a doughnut and a cup of coffee. Let’s listen in!

Johnny: Let me get a chocolate doughnut and a regular cup of coffee with half and half.

Female Clerk: Can I see your medical ID card?

Johnny: Here you go (Digs in his wallet and hands her the card)

Female Clerk: Sir, I just scanned your card and it says that your cholesterol is high.

Johnny: I know, I just saw the doctor yesterday. He said it was a bit high but that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about.

Female Clerk: It’s above the limit to sell you a doughnut.

Johnny: That’s ridiculous! I always get a doughnut in the morning.

Female Clerk: I’m sorry (Hands Johnny back his medical ID card).

Johnny: Look, the doctor said my cholesterol wasn’t even high enough to warrant giving me Crestor. He said he would prescribe Crestor but he could only prescribe it if my cholesterol was higher!

Female Clerk: Would you like a bran muffin?

Johnny: No! I want a chocolate doughnut!

Female Clerk: I’m sorry. Look, there are other people in line. I can’t sell you a doughnut.

Johnny: So my cholesterol is too low to get Crestor and too high to buy a doughnut.

Female Clerk: (Getting annoyed) Sir, I don’t make the rules. Now if you’ll excuse me…

Johnny is so irritated when he walks out of the store that he trips on the door jam and falls awkwardly. He hurts his ankle and can’t get up. The clerk, with an annoyed look on her face, calls an ambulance which arrives an hour and a half later. They scoop Johnny up and take him to the hospital. At the hospital, they take x-rays. The doctor walks into the room holding a chart and smiles at Johnny.

Doctor: He puesto toda la información en su carta medica. Lleve la carta a una farmácia y ellos la prepararán la receta.

Johnny: I’m sorry I don’t speak Spanish

Doctor: Enfermera!!

Nurse: The doctor is putting all the information on your medical ID card. Take the card to the pharmacist and have this prescription for painkillers filled. He is listing this as a severe sprain so you should be good to go back to work in two weeks. It’s all down in your card so you shouldn’t have any problem with work compensation for lost time.

Johnny hobbles out of the hospital on crutches with a soft cast on his foot. He heads to the nearest pharmacy.

Johnny: Hi, I want to have a prescription filled.

Pharmacist: Well, let’s just see what we’ve got here. May I have your medical ID card please?

Johnny hands over his card...

Pharmacist: Let’s just put it in the scanner....

Johnny: Is there a problem?

Pharmacist: The scanner doesn’t seem to want to read your card. Did you put your card next to a magnet or some electronic device?

Johnny: No

Pharmacist: Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to fill out this form to get a new medical ID card. You have to send the card and the form to this address, along with a $75 fee and you should have your new ID card in about 2 weeks.

Johnny: What about my pain killers. I’m in pain here!

Pharmacist: I can give you Advil, that’s it. I’m really sorry.

Johnny leaves the pharmacy and hobbles home. About two weeks go by. Johnny has not received his new card yet. He has not gotten paid anything from work or workman’s comp, or anything to cover his medical expenses. Worst of all, the pain in his ankle has gotten worse, not better. He can’t wait anymore and calls a number to get some help…

Johnny dials the phone: 1-8-8-8-U-S-A-H-E-A-L-T-H-C-A-R-E

Phone: Welcome to the United States Health Care System. Para información en español, marque ocho

Phone: If you would like to participate in a brief survey, please press 7 now.

Phone: If you are calling about finding a doctor, press 1. If you are calling about a claim, press 2. If you are calling about a lost or damaged card, press 3, If you are calling about our new super saver insurance plan, please press 4…

Johnny: Oh what the hell!…. Presses 2

Phone: Please enter you medical ID number, followed by the pound sign.

Johnny: Shoot, where did I put that claim form… Here it is. Presses: 02A9207C1-9965429B….waits….nothing happens…oh…presses #

Phone: Thank you. Please wait while we retrieve your records….OK, I’ve got your records here. What would you like to do? Press 1 if you would like to find a doctor, Press 2 if you are calling about a claim…

Johnny: I just did this!!

Phone: I’m sorry, I did not understand you. Press 1 if you would like to find a doctor, Press 2 if you are calling about a claim…

Finally after about 45 minutes, Johnny gets someone on the phone

Medical Rep: Good afternoon, this is Emir, how can I help you today?

Johnny: OK, I fell about two weeks ago. I hurt my ankle and they said it was a sprain but it’s been two weeks and it still really hurts. I haven’t been able to get any pain killers and I can’t get an appointment with the doctor because my card was damaged and I haven’t gotten any money back either and I’ve got bills to pay.

Emir: I think I can help you with that sir. May I have your medical ID number?

Johnny: 02A9207C19965429B

Emir: OK, I see your record. You sprained your ankle.

Johnny: I think it’s worse than a sprain. This is killing me!

Emir: Well, the x-rays were negative. I see that you’re 63 years old. Would you like to set up a counseling session?

Johnny: Counseling???? What the f#@% do I need counseling for?

Emir: We would have to schedule an MRI to see if there is any damage but that is very expensive and anyone over 60 is recommended to take counseling before we put them on the MRI waiting list.

Johnny: I’m really in pain here.

Emir: OK sir I can do that for you. I have to tell you though, that for people your age, I can’t guarantee an MRI for anytime within this month or next. There might be an opening in July. However if you take the counseling session, you might be able to get in there earlier.

Johnny: I’ll take the counseling session, if that’s the only thing I can do.

Emir: Very well. I can do that for you sir. Can you make it on Tuesday the 14th?

A meeting for counseling is set up. Johnny’s ankle has gotten very bad. He comes into the meeting sweating, not feeling well at all. He meets with a counselor by the name of Mica.

Mica: Mr. Averageperson, I’m very pleased to meet you! Please have a seat!

Johnny: Thank you. Listen I’m really not feeling well. I don’t need counseling. I need to see a doctor.

Mica: Mr. Averageperson, I think I can arrange to get you pills that will make you feel better.

Johnny: That would be great.

Mica: I’m going to be very frank with you Mr. Averageperson. Looking at you I can see that you are not well. The government just has so much money to spend on care and there are people who have a better chance of living longer, healthier lives than you do.

Johnny: I just hurt my ankle. This can be healed.

Mica: But at what cost Mr. Averageperson, at what cost?

Johnny: I’m not an old man!

Johnny disappeared soon after that. A couple of people in the Health Administration Department were reviewing some files and came upon that of Johnny Averageperson.

Person 1: We really didn’t handle this case well. This person should have gotten earlier treatment.

Person 2: Perhaps, but we must have saved, what, $50,000 all told? Maybe $100,000? Isn’t it our job to save money? I think we’ve handled this case extremely well!

In a small town in Arizona, a person by the name of Jonathan goes into his mailbox and pulls out an envelope from the government. It contains a check made out to Jonathan Averageperson for $106,000. Itemized for an MRI, x-rays, lost wages, medication and other incidental expenses.

Ben Franklin And The Real Meaning Of Freedom

2009-07-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

During the Bush administration, liberals often brought out one of Ben Franklin’s more notable quotes “Those who are willing to give up a little freedom for a little security, wind up with neither freedom, nor security”.

Whether they were referring to “illegal phone taps” or the monitoring of money transfers, or the detainment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, they said that the President had overstepped his authority and sacrificed our freedom for our security. It’s difficult to say if the left purposely misused the comment of Ben Franklin -- probably not -- they are not that smart. They truly believed that President Bush sacrificed freedom for security. In doing so, the left and the Bush haters showed a remarkable lack of understanding about what freedom means.

Not understanding freedom, liberals are helpless in comprehending the constitution. There was another quote of Ben Franklin’s that is lesser known than the first. When Franklin got out of the constitutional convention, he was asked “what kind of government have you created a Republic or a Monarchy?” His response was “A Republic, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT”.

The words “IF YOU CAN KEEP IT” mean that there is vigilance and work involved in maintaining the republic and the individual freedoms that the constitution looked at as something that was a natural right, not as something that had to be “given” to anyone. So, what exactly is freedom? Try looking it up on Dictionary.com and you’ll get 17 different definitions. Freedom is a concept, not a word.

Every time I’m stopped at a traffic light, my right of movement is obstructed. Is this a restriction on my freedom? Take away traffic lights and we’d have chaos on the roads. Road anarchy would rule the day. Driving on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, it’s obvious that road anarchy already rules the day. Without traffic lights, freedom of movement would be more restricted, not less, because the lack of organization means that no one would get anywhere. Is freedom being sacrificed for security by installing traffic lights? Of course not --laws in a society are for everyone’s benefit. There are situations where one person’s freedom conflicts with another person’s freedom and we need common sense laws so that everyone’s freedoms are protected.

A society with common sense laws is the difference between a Republic and anarchy. If you get on a plane, you have to take your shoes and belt off. This isn’t a government gone crazed with power; it is a common sense response to a real threat. President Bush took actions that were necessary based on a situation that he did not create. Whose freedoms were lost by phone taps anyway?

So if it is OK to make common sense laws that result in the benefit of everyone, when does the government go too far? The answer is the real definition of freedom. Freedom is the ability to make your own choices for your own benefit. You give up freedom when you cede the right of your own well being and put the decisions that affect your life in the hands of another person or entity.

If you are a member of a union and the union goes on strike, you may listen to the arguments pro and con and decide that you want to go on strike with the union. What if, after listening to the arguments pro and con, you decide not to go on strike. You have no right to disagree because a vote was taken and the union voted against you. They are going on strike whether you agree or not.

When the constitution was formed there was a distinction made that many people are unaware of. The United States has often been referred to as a democracy. In fact, it is a constitutional republic. The framers of the constitution wanted to avoid the mob mentality that often arises by pitting groups against each other. This pitting of groups against each other has always been the specialty of the left and dictatorships in general. When Ben Franklin was asked what kind of government they created, a democracy was not even mentioned.

So in the union example, you may be a person who is willing to work at a salary that someone else is willing to pay you, in conditions that you both agree are beneficial, and yet neither of you have the freedom to go forward with it because a majority of union members wanted to go on strike. Both you and your employer have ceded your freedoms to another group. This is the “mob” mentality that the framers wanted to avoid. Anyone who has seen the way unions sometimes behave can’t say the mob analogy is very far off. Unions may have done some great things but if a person wants to work at a salary that someone else is willing to pay, no one should have the right to stand in the way.

Gun control is another area where people are being asked to trust someone else with their freedom. Sometimes, political decisions are made as to who will be protected and who won’t be. People should never be asked to give up their right of personal protection to politicians who too often make decisions based on the political consequences, avoiding risky decisions that may cause controversy, often causing even more controversy by their inaction and cowardice.

Here are three examples of government making decisions for “expedience”. All three of these examples involve race in one way or another but race is not the issue. The issue is about giving up the right and responsibility of personal protection.

The first case is documented in Richard Poe’s book “The Seven Myths of Gun Control”. During the civil war, Black Americans served in the Union army. People coming home often kept the weapons they used in battle. However, in the case of black Americans, there was an organized effort to take away those guns. The Ku Klux Klan and other militia men ransacked their homes. The government did little to stop this. The end result is that because of a government decision, black Americans, after serving in the army, were left defenseless. There are incidents of those who refused to give up their guns and those are the ones who were able to defend themselves -- certainly, at no help from anyone other than themselves.

The second and third examples are more recent. During both the Rodney King riots in LA and the riots in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, local and state politicians decided to withhold protection for citizens who were under attack. People were rioting in the streets while police were, allegedly in Crown Heights, told to do nothing.

Liberal’s talk of gun control, as most things liberals talk about, is based on a false assumption. They are trying to create a “secure” environment by taking away the very tools that create a secure environment. In personal defense, no individual should be at the mercy of a decision made by a politician. People must have the right, if they deem it necessary, to have the last line of defense in the protection of themselves and their families.

Now there is Obamacare. We may be about to make the most stupid move in the history of this Republic. Hypocrites on the left don’t bring up Security-Freedom tradeoffs when it comes to unions or gun control. They don’t bring up tradeoffs in Social…uh, Social what? Oh yes, Social “Security”. That thing that says you have to pay some of your money so the government can put it away for your old age. When there is no money left in social “Security” you can take solace in an old age where you won’t be able to hire the doctor you want because the government may not consider your life “important” enough. Those defending Obamacare say “You already don’t have complete freedom to choose a doctor”. This is true enough but you don’t solve a problem of this magnitude by creating a much bigger problem. This would be like having a $500 dollar debt and trying to solve it by spending $10,000 more, or a few trillion but who’s counting.

During the Bush years, the United States did not sacrifice freedom for security. The one job of the government is to provide for the common defense which the Bush administration did admirably. No individual liberties were lost under the Presidency of GW Bush. Where is the left, so concerned about individual rights during those years, as Obama tries to take every personal choice out of the hands of the people and put it into the hands of beaurocrats who don’t care about the people they serve (Yes, they serve US!). Amazingly, they do this in the name of “morality”. All dictators do.

What kind of government? A Republic – If you can keep it… let’s hope we can.

Obamaball

2009-07-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

It is the beginning of Barack Obama's second term as president. Obama is getting ready to deliver a much anticipated speech on the state of major league baseball. He is going to propose a stimulus package that is designed to get major league baseball back on its feet. And here he is, the preident of the United States, Barack Obama....

Good morning, everybody. Please be seated. Thank you all for being here. Throughout the history of baseball, there have many crises - The black sox scandal in 1919, the strike year of 1994.

Today we face a crisis in the sport of baseball unlike any we have ever seen. We don’t know which players are on steroids. The price of tickets has become unaffordable to the average person. Some teams cannot compete and have to get by with small payrolls while other, more greedy teams, steal the resources necessary to be competitive while the fans of these poorer teams live in despair with no hope in the current season and no future to look forward to. The horrific state of baseball education has resulted in players not running out ground balls or pop ups and has now put us behind Japan and Korea in baseball knowledge and skills.

Quite frankly, the state of baseball is a mess. Owners of major league teams have put their own selfish needs of winning above the good of the sport. Major League baseball has had a win at all costs attitude. It has encouraged trickery and deception and instead of representing all that is good about America, it has represented all of America’s mistakes. As my wife Michelle has told me, “It has become a mean game.” That ends today. Starting today, owners, players and fans must ask themselves not what is good for their team but what is good for the well being of the sport.

For this reason I have worked with my economic team and leaders of both parties on a plan to meet the most urgent challenges in major league baseball. The plan that I will outline today represents not just new policy for baseball, but a whole new approach for the game and for meeting its most urgent challenges. I understand that some might be skeptical of this plan. I get it. I do not want to run Major League baseball. I have enough to do running the banks, car manufacturers and oil companies. While Washington will do everything possible to prevent the catastrophic failure of Major League baseball, it will come with a clear understanding that government support for any team is an extraordinary action that must come with significant restrictions on the sport and on the individual teams that receive support.

Changes to the sport must begin in Washington. Only government can break the vicious cycles that have crippled the game. Baseball must set an example in creating a clean energy economy. For this reason, night games will be a thing of the past. Baseball teams will be allowed one night game per week. By this one action we will save as much energy as we would acquire by drilling in ANWAR. In addition, major league stadiums must immediately stop the wasteful practice of watering the field and the infield dirt. We can live with a weed or two in the outfield and a bit of dust kicking around in the infield.

Baseball must be at the forefront of environmental responsibility. Electronic scoreboards and video screens running throughout the stadium are also wasteful. I am recommending today that baseball return to the days of a person sitting inside a scoreboard manually changing the numbers. Not only will this help the environment, but it will create thousands of jobs. New stadiums built must be retrofitted with windmills and solar panels so that to the extent that energy is used, it will all be self generated. Existing stadiums have one year to comply with adding solar panels and windmills to their structure.

And then there is the issue of travelling in baseball. It is incredibly wasteful and bad for the environment that teams charter their own planes to fly all over the country. Again, baseball must, as the great American institution that it is, set an example. Teams will no longer have the luxury to charter planes to go to all over the country. Teams will need to travel on commercial flights already scheduled. If a team is unable to get all its members on one flight then the team can travel in two or three different flights. It can be possible that a team may get to its scheduled game and all of its players have not arrived yet. For this reason I am proposing that major league rosters expand to 35 players. This way, more jobs will be created and it will be unlikely that the team will arrive at its scheduled game without enough players.

The idea of creating more jobs is an important part of this baseball stimulus package. Baseball has become a game of selfishness, where only a few of the millions who try out for it, get to play on the highest level. One of the causes of this is the pitch known as the curveball. There are players who have been stars in high school and stars in college. Yet when they try out for the major leagues, they are excluded because they are unable to hit this deceptive pitch. Baseball should not be about deception and exclusion. The rules of the game, itself, must change to be more inclusive and fair to the people who desire to play. There will be no more curveballs in baseball, period.

Now there are some pitchers who throw over 95 MPH. Others throw at 86 to 88 MPH. Thus comes the need for trickery on the part of the pitcher who, through no fault of his own, is not able to throw the ball as hard. Currently, the pitcher’s mound is 60 ft, 6 inches from home plate. Starting today, there will be three rubbers on the pitcher’s mound. For those pitchers who throw 93 MPH and harder, they will need to use the rubber that is 70 feet from home plate. Pitchers who throw the ball at 90 to 93 MPH get to use the current rubber of 60 feet, 6 inches. Those who are less fortunate, get to use the rubber that is 59 feet from home plate.

Not only will this policy create more jobs in baseball, eliminate the need for deceptive pitches such as the curveball, it will also eliminate the need for one of the scourges of major league baseball -- steroids. There will be no need for any player to take steroids when the rules of the game don’t reward the unjust advantages that some have over others. If we eliminate these inequities, there will be no need for players to seek dishonest advantages with artificial means.

For this reason we also have to look at other parts of the game as well. Some players can hit a baseball 500 feet while others may top out at hitting a ball 350 feet. Players who are unable to hit a ball over 400 feet will be allowed to use metal bats. Players who attempt to steal a base or try to stretch a single into a double will be suspended. Stealing bases puts undo pressure on both pitchers and catchers and awards the accidental advantages that some players have for being faster than their cohorts.

With these rule changes that I am proposing, thousands of new jobs will open up to people who previously had no hope of ever playing in the major leagues. Therefore it will be incumbent upon baseball to seek out new cities for new teams in order that all the players who were previously shut out from the game find a place to play. I am today putting forth an executive order that baseball expand from 30 to 46 teams in order to provide the necessary opportunities needed for all the players who will now have the right to play.

I must now take a moment to speak about the competitive aspects of baseball. I believe that the rules of baseball were motivated by a sincere desire to create a competitive and honest game. But I also believe that all too often the writers of baseball rules made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often they trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of creating a game based on our principles, too often they set those principles aside as luxuries and too many of us -- Democrats and Republicans, politicians, journalists, and citizens -- fell silent. In other words, we went off course. And this is not my assessment alone. It was an assessment that was shared by my Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who is a Yankees fan.

We have pitchers throwing inside at hitters with no regard for what might happen if that pitch hits the batter and the harm that the pitch might cause. We have runners trying to break up double plays going into second base without taking into account the well being of the shortstop or the second baseman on the other side of the play. We have fans hating each other. Red Sox fans hating Yankees fans. Mets fans hating Phillies fans. Hatred and the desire to do harm will have no place in the game of baseball. Tonight I seek a new beginning between the owners, players and fans around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that the interests of different fans are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Now let me be blunt. There are no neat or easy answers here. I wish there were. But I can tell you that the wrong answer is to pretend like this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo. As President, I refuse to allow this problem to fester. I refuse to pass it on to somebody else. It is my responsibility to solve the problem. The people elected me president. We won the election. John McCain lost the election. Yet as Senator McCain once said, torture “serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us.”

So what does that have to do with major league baseball? In baseball stadiums around the country, fans boo players who make mistakes, players commit acts that can hurt one another, they try to steal bases and humiliate the other team. They do things such as bunt, which causes a third baseman to second guess himself. He wonders “Should I play in?” “Should I play back?” And if, in fact, the hitter bunts, the third baseman is forced to rush in to catch the ball, often without even enough time to catch the ball in his glove, he has to catch it with his bare hand and then try to throw it to first off balance and awkwardly, risking injury to himself and humiliation to his family. Today I am ordering the closing of any baseball stadium that allows these practices to continue.

I must take a moment now to talk about umpires in baseball. Currently umpires call balls and strikes, whether a ball is fair or foul, whether a runner is safe or out. A shortstop may make an amazing play, throw to first on his knees, and yet after all that effort the runner may still be called safe. I am appalled by this inflexible and unfair approach to the game. I am going to increase the number of umpires in each game from 4 to 9. When there is a play that merits further consideration to the infexible rules, umpires will deliberate and vote whether or not to overrule the rule. So in the above play, if the umpires vote 5-4 to overrule the call at first base, the runner will be safe. All umpires will be appointed by me. I won the election and therefore, respectully reserve the right, with all due respect to those who lost the election, to these appointments.

For the reasons I just mentioned and many others, I am extremely proud today to appoint Al Gore as my new baseball czar. Mr. Gore will oversee the spending of money by major league teams. All expenditures by major league teams will need to be approved by my new czar. No team will be allowed to spend more than any other team and all signings of players and coaches, as well as hot dog vendors and ushers, will need approval from the baseball czar. The days of deception and cruelty in baseball are over. The days of the strong teams praying on the weak teams are over. People elected me for change, not to maintain the status quo. In baseball, the strong too often have dominated the weak, and too often those with speed, power, or the ability to throw harder or trick their associates have found all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of the disadvantages of others.

I am proposing a win-win situation for baseball. I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we cannot return baseball to its former glory unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. I am going to make the game a beacon of environmental responsibility. I will eliminate the need for anyone to ever try steroids because the rules of the game do not encourage it. I will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. I will create a game where fans in all cities have hope that their team can win a championship, where good will and mutual respect define the game, not hatred and the desire to do harm. How can anyone be against this plan?

We will not be united and safe if major league baseball continues as a wedge that divides America -- it can and must be a cause that unites us as one people and as one nation. We've done so before in times that were more perilous than ours. We will do so once again. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.