12/21/12

Nostradamus predicted an enormous asteroid attacking earth December 21, 2012; Eistein spoke of the axis shift every 26,000 years, hitting again in 2012; Mayan and Egyptian calendars end December 21, 2012...who will be President at this time???

From Peace to Violence: The Growing Population of Muslims

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tracking the influence of Muslims in a society, from 1% to 100%


When Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone:

United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law.

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris -- car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam -- Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.

"Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel." -- Leon Uris, "The Haj"

It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France, the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots

Thanks to the Youtube user "Evil Islam" for contributing this!

Tracking the influence of Muslims in a society, from 1% to 100%

Obama: no valid birth certificate?

A senior official in the State of Hawaii's Department of Health, Director of Communications Janice Okubo, confirms that the image published and circulated by the Obama campaign as his "birth certificate" lacks the necessary embossed seal and signature. Backing away from a quote attributed to her that the image on the campaign site was "valid," she told the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times in an article published yesterday: "I don't know that it's possible for us to even say beyond a doubt what the image on the site represents."

Read the whole thing!

Two Americas

Friday, June 27, 2008
Two Americas

John Edwards was right, or at least half right, anyway.

There are two Americas fighting for dominance in this country and they aren't the America of the wealthy and the America of the downtrodden. If the wrong America wins it will be just that and then John Edwards will look like a seer.

The first of the two Americas I speak of is Classic America, the one most folks on the Right think of when they think of America. It's the one we are fighting so hard to keep from slipping into the dustbin of history.

It is the America of John Wayne, Audie Murphy, Frank Sinatra and countless other Real Men who knew honest work was a good thing for a man's soul, and that accepting or relying on charity, no matter how freely given, lessened a man. Men used to do everything they could to avoid having to accept charity.

It is the America of June Cleaver and the stay at home mom, the America of women who knew their highest calling was to raise the kids and take care of the house and her husband. Generations of women just like this raised up generations of great men and women. They were the women that raised the children that went on to beat the Brits in the Revolution, save the Republic in the Civil War and beat down Hitler and Tojo in WW2. It was women such as this who raised the men that built this country into the greatest country yet seen on this little blue globe.

It is the America of the self made man and The Buck Stops Here instead of the America of begging for the governments help for each little bump and bruise and blaming everyone and everything for all of the ills that befall you in life.

Life Is Not Fair, and to steal a great quote from a famous flick, anyone that tells you differently is trying to sell you something.

Now we have another America vying to BE America and all she stands for.

This New America, or America Lite, is represented by folks such as Sean Penn, Janeane Garafalo, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and countless other empty headed cretins that push a socialist agenda on this country using false, unearned guilt.

It is an America where the government takes care of all your needs, instead of you taking care of yourself.

It is an America where the Government controls your access to healthcare, instead of you deciding which healthcare you wish to buy, or if at all.

It is an America where the government regulates everything: the emissions from your car, what kind of paint a store can sell and how you must act as an adult by forcing you to wear helmets and seat belts.

There once was a time when this country was filled with citizens who understood that you reap what you sow, you get what you earn, good or bad, that actions had consequences and you paid the price for them either way.

Die in a motorcycle accident from not wearing a helmet?

Sorry you're dead, but dude, you asked for it.

End up crippled because of that accident? It's the responsibility of you and your family to take care of you, not the government's (i.e. everybody else)

As a result of this, people acted more responsibly, because they knew there were consequences to be paid for their actions.

Get a girl pregnant? You will suddenly find yourself with a wife. Not to mention in-laws who probably don’t think much of you and probably won’t for many years but you took responsibility for your actions and stuck it out and you raised your children into good citizens because that’s what was expected of you.

In America Lite dads leave without a second thought. This situation has gotten so bad that deadbeat dad laws will utterly destroy a man’s life if his children’s mother decides to go the easy route and take welfare and he doesn’t take responsibility by paying for his progeny.

Once upon a time in this country men did the right thing because it was the right thing to do, not because the law threatened to destroy their ability to make a living.

Now, when something bad happens to somebody the questions immediately fly about "Why wasn't something done to avoid this?" and "Where was the government?" when the questions that should be asked are "What can I do to help this poor soul?" and "What was that person thinking?" and maybe even "Did you see what happened to that dumbass? He sure got what he had coming, huh?"

The America I know and love, the America whose return MUST occur, is in a pitched battle with the America Lite, which is a country that sports the Stars and Stripes but whose Faith, Patriotism and Freedom rings hollow to this mans ears. America Lite chooses instead a socialist path that steals Liberty and crushes the greatness of the Human Spirit, making away with the Rights granted by our Creator like a thief in the night. The end result of this vileness is a population who are simply wards of the state, children to be taken care of at each turn, from cradle to grave.

The America I know and love, Classic America, the America where a man is known for his actions, where he takes pride in his work and his word, where he chooses the most menial work if that's all that is there instead of demanding to be taken care of by his fellow man by threat of government force is slowly dying off. As each succeeding generation is brought up in a school system that teaches them a test, skims the great history of this country and pounds guilt for being a citizen of the best country ever into their little mush filled skulls, we get people so empty headed as to follow the most inexperienced, liberal, anti-American person to ever run for the White House on a major party ticket as if he is the second coming of the Christ.

Is there hope?

Maybe.

If that American Spirit can be brought back to full bloom, If people once again are taught that having pride in themselves and taking responsibility for their lives is the way to success in life. If people are once again taught that success is not measured by how large a house one has, or how expensive your car or clothes are, but rather how you live your life and how you treat other people.

The theft of my liberty for your comfort, no matter how necessary that comfort may be, is still the theft of my liberty. Three generations of Americans don't seem to understand that, and they demand that our government do more for them, never realizing that with each thing the government does, someone's liberty has been stolen in their name and vice versa.

These are the Two Americas.

In November you get to choose which America you want to have. Classic America, the America that Saved the World (twice at least) and is mostly responsible for the current amenities and freedoms the world enjoys or America Lite, a pale and ugly shadow that is bound to failure and the destruction of True Freedom and the Greatness of Man.

It is that simple.

Choose wisely, my friends. If you remember the scene in Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail where the American chose the wrong Grail and instantly withered away to dust, then you get an idea of what will happen if you choose poorly.

We are that man, and we are standing in front of two cups, but only one can bring us back to the greatness we once knew, the Freedom we once would fight to defend, the Pride in simply BEING an AMERICAN. The other will certainly cause us to whither away to dust.

As I said, choose wisely.
posted by kender at 1:02 PM

Obama: 10 things to worry about

June 24, 2008, 0:00 a.m.
10 Concerns about Barack Obama
It's policy.
By William J. Bennett & Seth Leibsohn


1. Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history. For at least the past five years, Democrats and liberals have said our standing in the international community has suffered from a “cowboy” or “go-it-alone” foreign policy. While politicians with favorable views of our president have been elected in Germany, Italy, France, and elsewhere, Barack Obama is giving cause to make our allies even more nervous. This past Sunday’s Washington Post reported, “European officials are increasingly concerned that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.”

Barack Obama’s stance toward Iran is as troubling as it is dangerous. By stating and maintaining that he would negotiate with Iran, “without preconditions,” and within his first year of office, he will give credibility to, and reward for his intransigence, the head of state of the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism. Such a meeting will also undermine and send the exact wrong signal to Iranian dissidents. And, he will lower the prestige of the office of the president: In his own words he stated, “If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, I think that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time.” Not only has his stance toward Iran caused concern among our allies in Europe, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton called it, “Irresponsible and frankly naïve.”

Barack Obama’s position on negotiating with U.S. enemies betrays a profound misreading of history. In justifying his position that he would meet with Iran without precondition and in his first year of office, Barack Obama has said, “That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; that’s what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev.”

In reverse order, Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirety of his first term in office, not (ever) with Brezhnev, not (ever) with Andropov, not (ever) with Chernenko. He met only with Gorbachev, and after he was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader — and after Perestroika, not before.

If Barack Obama wants to affiliate with Richard Nixon, that’s certainly his call. But one question: Was Taiwan’s expulsion from the U.N. worth “Nixon to China”? That was the price of that meeting.

As for the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit of 1961, Kennedy himself said “He beat the hell out of me.” As two experts recently wrote in the New York Times: “Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was ‘just a disaster.’ Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed ‘very inexperienced, even immature.’ Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was ‘too intelligent and too weak.’ The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.”

So successful was the summit that the Berlin Wall was erected later that year and the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Soviets deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba, commenced the following year.

2. Barack Obama’s Iraq policy will hand al-Qaeda a victory and undercut our entire position in the Middle East, while at the same time put a huge source of oil in the hands of terrorists. Barack Obama brags on his website that “In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.” His website further states that “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” This, at the very time our greatest successes in Iraq have taken place. And yet, as Gen. David Petraeus has stated (along with other military experts from Michael O’Hanlon at the Brookings Institution to members of the U.S. military), our progress in Iraq is “fragile and reversible.”

Obama’s post-invasion analysis of Iraq is anything but credible or consistent, leading one to even greater doubt about his strategy as commander-in-chief. When President Bush announced the surge strategy in January 2007, Barack Obama opposed it, saying it “would not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly,” and that “the President’s strategy will not work.” Of course, the surge is one of the greatest achievements in Iraq since the initial months of the invasion, and is has reversed much of the loss suffered since the invasion.

Beyond these miscalculations and poor judgment on Iraq strategy, Obama has been anything but consistent on Iraq. For example, the same year (2007) he stated it would be a good idea to bring home the U.S. troops from Iraq within March of 2008, three months later he stated, we should bring them home “immediately…. Not in six months or one year — now.”

3. Barack Obama has sent mixed, confusing, and inconsistent messages on his policy toward Israel. Earlier this month, Barack Obama told an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” The next day, Obama backtracked, stating: “Obviously, it’s [Jerusalem] going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues…And Jerusalem will be part of the negotiations.” Later, Obama’s Middle East adviser tried to explain the flipping of positions on Jerusalem by stating Obama did not understand what he was saying to AIPAC: “[h]e used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East.”

Such quick switches of policy may stem from mere inexperience or they may stem from a general tone-deafness on the meaning of words and policy when it comes to the Middle East. After all, earlier this year, a leading Hamas official endorsed Barack Obama stating, “I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle. And he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance.” Rather than immediately renouncing such an endorsement, Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, embraced the endorsement, saying “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps.” Given Barack Obama’s long-standing ties to Palestinian activists in the U.S., one has good cause to wonder.

4. While his Mideast policy may have been the quickest turnaround or flip-flop on a major issue, it is not the only one. In the primary campaign, Barack Obama consistently campaigned against NAFTA, but has now changed his tune, as he has with other issues. During the primary, Obama sent out a campaign flier that said “Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA,” and called it a “bad trade deal.” He also said NAFTA was “devastating,” “a big mistake,” and in what the Washington Post labeled as a unilateral threat to withdraw from NAFTA, Obama said “I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage.”

No longer. Recently, Barack Obama backtracked on NAFTA and said, “I’m not a big believer in doing things unilaterally.” “I’m a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.” He explained his primary campaign opposition this way: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.”

This is of a piece with his further change of position on public campaign financing. As a primary candidate, he touted his support for the public financing of presidential campaigns, but then witnessing his own fundraising prowess, as a general election candidate he has gone the unique route of forswearing the system. As David Brooks put it in the New York Times:

Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system. But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck.

5. Barack Obama’s judgment about personal and professional affiliations is more than troubling. On March 18, after several clips of sermons by his longtime friend and pastor Jeremiah Wright surfaced (showing Wright condemning the United States with vitriolic comparisons and denunciations), Obama defended his friend stating: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” After Rev. Wright delivered two more talks along the same lines as the clips that led to the March 18 speech, Sen. Obama finally denounced Wright the following month, stating: “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.” “They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs,” he said.

It strained credulity to believe Obama was unaware of Wright’s previous rants — especially after a 20-year membership in Wright’s church, especially when in February of last year Obama asked Wright not to attend his campaign announcement because he “could get kind of rough in sermons,” and especially when his church’s magazine honored on its front cover such a man as Louis Farrakhan. Nonetheless, once he ceased being a political asset and turned into a political liability, Obama dumped him.

Jeremiah Wright is, of course, not the only person close to Barack Obama who holds vitriolic anti-American views. Bill Ayers was a founding member of the Weather Underground. According to his own memoir, Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. As recently as 2001, Ayers said “I don’t regret setting bombs….I feel we didn’t do enough.’’ When asked if he would engage in such terrorism again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.” When confronted with his friendship with Bill Ayers, Barack Obama dismissed the negative connections saying he is also friendly with abortion opponent U.S. Senator Tom Coburn. While Obama has never, himself, discussed his relationship with Ayers, what we do know is that Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama in his home and, according to the Los Angeles Times:

Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event at his home, according to Obama’s aides….

Obama and Ayers met a dozen times as members of the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a local grant-making foundation, according to the group’s president. They appeared together to discuss juvenile justice on a 1997 panel sponsored by the University of Chicago, records show. They appeared again in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.

6. Obama is simply out of step with how terrorists should be handled; he would turn back the clock on how we fight terrorism, using the failed strategy of the 1990s as opposed to the post-9/11 strategy that has kept us safe. The most recent example is his support for the Supreme Court decision granting habeas-corpus rights to terrorists, including — theoretically — Osama bin Laden. When the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was delivered, Obama said, “I think the Supreme Court was right.” His campaign advisers held a conference call where they claimed the Supreme Court decision was “no big deal” according to ABC News, even if applied to Osama bin Laden, because a judge would find that the U.S. has “ample grounds to hold him.”

In a recent interview, Obama stated: “What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’”

Ask the legal officials during the 1990s just how cowed terrorists were by our continued indictments against them. Or, witness the bombings at the African embassies, the attack on the USS Cole, or the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, ask yourself why we have not been attacked since 9/11, and, even more specifically, why there have been no successful attacks against American civilian interests abroad since 2004.

7. Barack Obama’s economic policies would hurt the economy. As Kimberly Strassel recently put it in the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Obama is hawking a tax policy that would take the nation back to the effective marginal tax rates of the Carter days. He wants to further tax income, payroll, capital gains, dividends and death. His philosophy is pure redistribution.”

When Barack Obama speaks of taxing only the wealthy, keep in mind this could have a devastating effect on new small businesses. As Irwin Stelzer has written: “Taxes change behavior. By raising rates on upper income payers, Obama is reducing their incentive to work and take risks. The income tax increase is not all that he has in mind for them. He plans to increase their payroll taxes, the taxes they pay on dividends received and capital gains earned, and on any transfers they might have in mind to their kith and kin when they shuffle off this mortal coil. If the aggregate of these additional taxes substantially diminishes incentives to set up a small business of the sort that has created most of the new jobs in recent decades, the $1,000 tax rebate will be more than offset by the consequences of reduced growth and new business formation.”

8. Barack Obama opposes drilling on and offshore to reduce gas and oil prices. While Barack Obama has opposed off-shore drilling and a gas-tax holiday (as supported by John McCain or Hillary Clinton), his solution to our energy crisis does include additional tax burdens on oil company profits, taxes we can only imagine will be passed on to the consumer, thus causing an even more expensive trip to the gas station. As the New York Times recently detailed, ethanol subsidies are a major plank in Barack Obama’s view of energy independence and national security; the “Obama Camp is Closely Linked with Ethanol,” and “Mr. Obama…favors [ethanol] subsidies, some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax.”

9. Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton and NARAL on the issue of life. As a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, a law that would have protected babies if they survived an attempted abortion and were delivered alive. When a similar bill was proposed in the United States Senate, it passed unanimously and even the National Abortion Rights Action League issued a statement saying they did not oppose the law.

10. Barack Obama is actually to the left of every member of the U.S. Senate. According to the National Journal, “Sen. Barack Obama…was the most liberal senator in 2007.” As the magazine reported: “The ratings system — devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to National Journal — also assigns ‘composite’ scores, an average of the members’ issue-based scores. In 2007, Obama’s composite liberal score of 95.5 was the highest in the Senate. Rounding out the top five most liberal senators last year were Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), with a composite liberal score of 94.3; Joseph Biden (D., Del.), with a 94.2; Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), with a 93.7; and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), with a 92.8.”

Whom will a man this far left appoint to the Supreme Court?

— William J. Bennett is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show Bill Bennett’s Morning in America. Seth Leibsohn is the show’s producer.

National Review Online

UFOs hit Romanian plane

UPI.com

BUCHAREST, Romania, June 6 (UPI) -- The Romanian Defense Ministry has confirmed that a fighter plane was struck by four unidentified flying objects and released a video of the incident.

The ministry said the MIG 21 Lancer fighter plane was struck by the objects during an Oct. 31, 2007, check flight but was able to land safely, Hotnews.ro reported Friday.

Lt. Col. Nicolae Grigorie said a video recorded by cameras onboard the plane depicts "two solid bodies, which are not translucid."

Grigorie said authorities are working to determine what the objects could have been.

"They couldn't be birds because there are no birds in Europe able to fly so high. And they couldn't be ice bodies because it was a clear sky -- neither could they be pieces of another plane or a meteor," he said.

He said the government has ruled out rocket launches and ground artillery fires as causes of the incident.

Gay marriage: not legal in California...or anywhere!

"Gay Marriage" Is Not Legal in California or Anywhere Else in the United States!

by Gregg Jackson

Johnathan Rauch begins his article, "Why Gay Marriage is Good For America," (Opinion Page June 21, 2008) declaring: "By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week."

He is 100% incorrect. The fact of the matter is that "gay marriage" is not legal in California because the initiative marriage statute ratified by we, the sovereign people of California in 2000 (Prop 22), enshrined into statutory law that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California," has not been changed. It remains the "law of the land."

The California Supreme Court merely issued a declaratory opinion that limiting marriage to one man and one woman was "discriminatory" and "unconstitutional." The court however, issued no valid or enforceable court order, as Mr. Rauch incorrectly asserts. Under the California Constitution, only the people can revoke or amend an initiative statute. None of the other three branches can revoke or amend one in any way unless the initiative measure itself so provides. Prop 22 contains no such provision as Judge Baxter clearly affirmed in his dissent.

The marriage certificates which have been illegally altered and issued in California with Governor Schwarzenegger's authorization remain as null and void as those illegally altered and issued by former Governor Romney in Massachusetts when he, like Governor Schwarzenegger, speciously claimed that the "court legalized same sex marriage" and that he was merely "enforcing the law."

Whether or not "gay marriage" is "good" for America is worthy of further debate.

As to whether it is "legal" in California, Massachusetts, or anywhere else in America is not.


Gregg Jackson

Los Angeles, CA

Gregg Jackson is the author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue by Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z" and talk radio show host on WRKO in Boston.

UFO alert: Welsh police spot 'unusual aircraft'

UFO enthusiasts got a boost Friday when Welsh police confirmed that one of their helicopter crews had spotted an "unusual aircraft" flying over Cardiff earlier this month. An investigation into the sighting had been launched, they said.

Read the whole thing!

Ideological descendants of Marx and Rousseau now lead the Democratic Party...

THE FOUNDATION: HUMAN NATURE
“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” —James Madison

RE: THE LEFT
“Ideological descendants of Marx and Rousseau now lead the Democratic Party and they have turned it into a disloyal opposition to an increasingly accommodating GOP. They have molded the Party into a force working stridently and unashamedly against a Commander in Chief during wartime. They have made it a den of treachery devoted to American defeat in Iraq. They preside over an institution advised and influenced by moneyed, non-governmental groups and individuals with unquestionably anti-U.S. agendas who help make the Party a pseudo-intellectual sinkhole filled with perverse, tried-and-failed ideas repulsive to the majority of Americans. Those ideas are shaped into agendas which are then forced on the public by an activist leftwing judiciary and by a major media and arts consortium shot through with utter disrespect, indeed contempt, for traditional American values, religions and institutions. The Democratic Party has devolved into a club for the illegitimately aggrieved, the self-absorbed, the self-hating and the perpetually [angry]. It is a sanctuary where solipsistic malcontents and their disjointed causes find refuge and support. It has long ceased being an earnest gathering of broad minds where man’s timeless problems are examined against the backdrop of the Constitution and solutions to them proposed based on the actual realities of the human condition...[Barack] Obama is in step with that radical element and with that leadership.” —Rocco DiPippo

POLITICAL FUTURES
“The problem on the Left is, now that Karl Marx has forsaken them, they have no philosophy. Thank goodness. Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance. As for our side, conservatism is a gut reaction for most of us, and a done deal for the rest. The moral philosophy of American politics can be explained briefly and clearly, and, the Constitution being written, it has been. Where is there a philosopher in Washington?” —P.J. O’Rourke

GOVERNMENT
“Congress is spending us into a hole. We hear about the cost of earmarks and the Iraq war. But what about ‘entitlements’? That’s the government’s ironic term for programs that transfer money from people who earned it to people who didn’t. Entitlement? How can you be entitled to someone else’s money? To finance ‘entitlement’ programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy?... What we really need is a top-to-bottom freeing of the economy, including the health-care industry, and massive cuts in government both spending and taxes. This would leave us wealthy enough to take care of ourselves, with private charity assisting those who can’t manage.” —John Stossel

INSIGHT
“I would define a conservative, first as one who believes in the Constitution as it is written. That takes care of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to petition the government, the right to keep and bear arms and, in the words of William O. Douglas in one of his saner moments, ‘the right to be let alone. Second, a conservative believes in small, limited government at every level. Along with this he believes strongly in individual responsibility. That is, a person or a family should take care of itself and turn for help to government only when all other means have been exhausted. It also means that society, before government, has a duty to take care of its own. Government should be a resource of last resort. Third, a conservative believes taxes should be levied for the purpose of financing the limited responsibilities of government such as providing for the common defense, catching and incarcerating criminals, minting money and filling potholes. Taxes should not be levied for the purpose of redistributing wealth... One other thing I think a conservative believes is that the parents, not government, are and should be responsible for the upbringing and behavior of their children.” —Lyn Nofziger

www.patriotpost.us

Rising unemployment?

FOR THE RECORD:

“It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month. Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs? The answer to all of these questions is same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy—hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of Spring? That’s right—students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it. Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment—that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase. Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls—rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable.” —Jerry Bowyer

BLACK GERMAN HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

One documentary now touring the film festival circuit, telling us to "Always Remember" is "Black Survivors of the Holocaust" (1997). Outside the U.S., the film is entitled "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" (Afro-Wisdom Productions). It codifies another dimension to the "Never Forget” Holocaust story--our dimension.

Did you know that in the 1920's, there were 24,000 Blacks living in Germany? Neither did I. Here's how it happened, and how many of them were eventually caught unawares by the events of the Holocaust.

Like most West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in the late 1800's in what later became Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and Tanzania. German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German colonization. After the shellacking Germany received in World War I, it was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.

As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the Rhineland--a bitter piece of real estate that has gone back and forth between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their own colonized Africa n soldiers as the occupying force. Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.

Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards". When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children. Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it.

Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory sterilization program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo sterilization as a teenager, he was given no anesthetic. Once he received his sterilization certificate, he was "free to go", so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.

Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones.

Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler 's reign of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Luftwaffe pilots)! Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying.

Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were capture d and held as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced into dangerous labor (violating the Geneva Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable-- man the crematoriums and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted. As a final sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final Solution".

In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved, shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill--conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was "No, you can't have my life; I will fight for it."

According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine-Simms, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann--an organization of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his home town of Düsseldorf--and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.

Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi sterilization project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.

Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they were German-born). The only pension they get is from those of us who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for recognition and compensation.

After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas ovens in Germany.

We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.

For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.

Written by A. Tolbert, III

Fathers: The Real Meaning

THE FOUNDATION
“And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World.” —Benjamin Franklin


PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
You can’t outsource fatherhood!
By Mark Alexander
www.patriotpost.us

“It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.” —James Wilson (1791)

Just after the turn of the millennium, I was reviewing family social data from 1950-2000. Looking at historical trends pertaining to economics, crime and incarcerations, drug abuse, education, physical and emotional health, premarital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, child abuse and generational patterns of divorce, I was not surprised to find that there was one grid that highly correlated with all the others.

Of course, I’m referring to the corollary between fathers in the home and the welfare of their children. Turns out that children greatly benefit from the love, affirmation, discipline and protection of both their mother and father—preferably under the same roof.

Indeed, social data since 2000 continues to confirm that correlation.

Father’s Day has been observed for a century, and its inspiration, Mother’s Day, has been celebrated in one form or another since the 16th century. But perhaps these should be combined into a “Children’s Day,” because as any devoted parent can attest, there is no greater responsibility or privilege than parenting, and no greater reward than the blessing of children.

The good news is that there is a resurgence of men who are honoring their wives and children as responsible husbands and fathers. Unfortunately, many men still abdicate their responsibility as fathers.

Marriage is the foundation for the family, which in turn, serves as the foundation for society. In 295 BC, Mencius wrote, “The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head.”

Broken marriages lead to broken families, which lead to broken societies. The most successful fathering is rooted in a healthy marriage. Thus, to be good fathers, we must first be good husbands.

Marital infidelity and the consequences for children were a concern for our Founders: John Adams wrote in his diary on 2 June 1778, “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?”

One of my mentors, Dr. Jim Lee, director of Living Free ministries, writes that the Christian marriage paradigm is built on a foundation of five principles: “First, God is the creator of the marriage relationship; second, heterosexuality is God’s pattern for marriage; third, monogamy is God’s design for marriage; fourth, God’s plan for marriage is for physical and spiritual unity; and fifth, marriage was designed to be permanent.”

When this paradigm is broken, the exemplar for children is broken, and the consequences are staggering. One of the greatest affronts to the Body of Christ, then, is also the most common injury to the family of man—marital infidelity and divorce.

Divorce, which typically results in the absence of fathers from their headship role within the family, is the single most significant common denominator among all categories of social and cultural entropy.

However, more than 50 percent of children born to married parents will suffer through their parents’ divorce by age 18.

Currently, almost 60 percent of black children, 32 percent of Hispanic children and 21 percent of white children are living in single-parent homes. And the consequences?

Consider these sobering statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of the Census: Children who live apart from their fathers will account for 40 percent of incarcerated adults, 63 percent of teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions, 71 percent of high-school dropouts, 75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers, 80 percent of rapists, 85 percent of youths in prison, 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders, and 90 percent of homeless and runaway children.

About eight percent of children in married-couple homes live at or below poverty level, while almost 40 percent of children in homes without fathers live below poverty level. The latter group risks a much higher incidence of serious child abuse or neglect.

Notably, the most common and severe wounds inflicted upon children are not necessarily physical. Children internalize emotional abuse and rejection—particularly rejection by their family of origin—parental separation or divorce, or dissociation from a chemically dependent or emotionally disabled parent.

Internalization occurs when children, in defiance of adult logic, believe they are somehow responsible for the harm that came to them, whether it was circumstantial, accidental or intended. In the case of divorce, children often believe they must have caused parental dissolution, or were deserving of it.

This internalized rejection often manifests in a condition known as Arrested Emotional Development (AED)—emotional development impeded during childhood and resulting in emotional disabilities carried into adulthood.

It is no small irony that divorced parents were, in all likelihood, themselves the child-victims of generational patterns of familial dissociation and dissolution. Daughters bear a particularly difficult burden in the absence of fathers. A broken father-daughter trust bond can disable the formation of a trust bond with a husband in later life.

Indeed, the sins of our fathers are visited upon generations that follow.

There is also a sobering financial component to all this: Beyond the private-sector costs associated with absentee fathers is a taxpayer assessment of well over $100 billion annually for social-welfare services to families without fathers.

On this Father’s Day, then, may we not only count the blessings of fatherhood, but also commit to honoring those attendant obligations every day. May we also examine the job we are doing as husbands first, and then as fathers.

Additional information about fatherhood can be obtained from Focus on the Family, the National Center for Fathering, the National Fatherhood Initiative and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

If you are interested in community-based marriage and parenting initiatives, the gold standard is the template designed by First Things First under the expert guidance of my friend, Julie Baumgardner.

(Editor’s Note: To all those fathers who have been forcibly separated from their children, this call for fathers to honor their obligations, starting with marriage, does not discount the fact that there are many women who live in constant infidelity to their husbands, and women who subordinate the needs of their marriage and family life to their own desires—careers, social relationships and activities, substance abuse, media immersion, etc. Predictably, the vast majority of those women are, themselves, the victims of marital dissolution, or dissociation from a chemically dependent or emotionally disabled father.)

Quote of the week
“Maturity does not come with age, but with the accepting of responsibility for one’s actions. The lack of effective, functioning fathers is the root cause of America’s social, economic and spiritual crises.” —Dr. Edwin Cole

Democrats always JUST SAY NO!

Weather Channel Exposes Al Gore''s Costly Canard

The scientific illiterate, Al Gore, is the direct cause of the high gas prices. In 1996 he convinced President Clinton to veto a bill that would have allowed drilling in the ANWR--we would have have oil and gas from ANWR THREE years ago, were it not for Al Gore--you would be paying $2.00 a gallon less, and our economy would not be tanking. Thank you Al Gore for hating Americans and being, to paraphrase Al Franken, "a big fat liar". Gore and his Luddite friends have cost us jobs, a quality of living, forced tens of billions to be spent on a canard. All the while he is making millions off of folks that pay $25 to "rent" a tree, that already exists and call it "carbon credits". P.T. Barnum could not have done it better. Folks Gore has stopped us from converting oil shale in the Rockies, building nuclear plants and new gas refineries. His lies have caused every family to pay more for heating and driving to work. Terrorists could not have done a better job in destroying our economy that Gore and his Luddites. When you fill up this weekend, remember to give thanks to Al Gore and the Democrat party for the high cost. Pass this along to your friends. They need to know the truth. To see the complete article click on the URL below.

Read it here!

How Jimmy Carter fucked us out of oil

Thanks to an agreement negotiated by Jimmy Carter that splits the 90 miles of water between the U.S. and Cuba for economic purposes, it will not be exploited by us. Since pools of oil do not respect international boundaries, Cuban rigs will be sucking dry oil that rightfully should be ours.

The Bay Of Rigs
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT

The Left's Fairy Tale

In simple terms, nearly everything the Left believes about the United States for the past eight years is a lie. Taken one-at-a-time, such misinformation is not necessarily corrosive. Taken as a whole, they erode a citizen’s ability to support his nation’s cause during a time of war, giving the enemy invaluable aid and comfort. Indeed, this is one of the lessons of the new book David Horowitz and I have written entitled, Party of Defeat

Read the whole thing:

The Left's Fairy Tale

Obama's real roots

WATCH HERE

Pay special attention to this:

Jeremiah Wright is a guest on the Sean Hannity show here (00:07:23) and then it gets to this:

"Liberation Theology exploded onto the Central American political landscape as a Marxist strategy for undermining the teachings of legitimate Catholocism in hopes of expanding government control." (00:07:30)

And this:

"If God is not for us, and against White People, then he is a murderer and we had better kill him!" (00:08:44)

And how about this:

Reverend Jeremiah Wright hates Jews (00:10:35)

But we started with this:

Obama doesn't repudiate the man he claims was his spiritual mentor for 20 years (Jeremiah Wright) (00:05:59)

Still want this man to be your President?

WATCH HERE

Obama's Cabinet

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Everything You Love You Owe to Capitalism

Daily Article | Posted on 5/19/2008 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
This talk was delivered at the Mises Circle in Seattle on May 17, 2008.


I'm sure that you have had this experience before, or something similar to it. You are sitting at lunch in a nice restaurant or perhaps a hotel. Waiters are coming and going. The food is fantastic. The conversation about all things is going well. You talk about the weather, music, movies, health, trivialities in the news, kids, and so on. But then the topic turns to economics, and things change.


You are not the aggressive type so you don't proclaim the merits of the free market immediately. You wait and let the others talk. Their biases against business appear right away in the repetition of the media's latest calumny against the market, such as that gas station owners are causing inflation by jacking up prices to pad their pockets at our expense, or that Wal-Mart is, of course, the worst possible thing that can ever happen to a community.


You begin to offer a corrective, pointing out the other side. Then the truth emerges in the form of a naïve if definitive announcement from one person: "Well, I suppose I'm really a socialist at heart." Others nod in agreement.


On one hand there is nothing to say, really. You are surrounded by the blessings of capitalism. The buffet table, which you and your lunch partners only had to walk into a building to find, has a greater variety of food at a cheaper price than that which was available to any living person — king, lord, duke, plutocrat, or pope — in almost all of the history of the world. Not even fifty years ago would this have been imaginable.


All of history has been defined by the struggle for food. And yet that struggle has been abolished, not just for the rich but for everyone living in developed economies. The ancients, peering into this scene, might have assumed it to be Elysium. Medieval man conjured up such scenes only in visions of Utopia. Even in the late 19th century, the most gilded palace of the richest industrialist required a vast staff and immense trouble to come anywhere near approximating it.


We owe this scene to capitalism. To put it differently, we owe this scene to centuries of capital accumulation at the hands of free people who have put capital to work on behalf of economic innovations, at once competing with others for profit and cooperating with millions upon millions of people in an ever-expanding global network of the division of labor. The savings, investments, risks, and work of hundreds of years and uncountable numbers of free people have gone into making this scene possible, thanks to the ever-remarkable capacity for a society developing under conditions of liberty to achieve the highest aspirations of the society's members.


And yet, sitting on the other side of the table are well-educated people who imagine that the way to end the world's woes is through socialism. Now, people's definitions of socialism differ, and these persons would probably be quick to say that they do not mean the Soviet Union or anything like that. That was socialism in name only, I would be told. And yet, if socialism does mean anything at all today, it imagines that there can be some social improvement resulting from the political movement to take capital out of private hands and put it into the hands of the state.


Other tendencies of socialism include the desire to see labor organized along class lines and given some sort of coercive power over how their employers' property is used. It might be as simple as the desire to put a cap on the salaries of CEOs, or it could be as extreme as the desire to abolish all private property, money, and even marriage.


Whatever the specifics of the case in question, socialism always means overriding the free decisions of individuals and replacing that capacity for decision making with an overarching plan by the state. Taken far enough, this mode of thought won't just spell an end to opulent lunches. It will mean the end of what we all know as civilization itself. It would plunge us back to a primitive state of existence, living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or charity. Nor is any form of socialism capable of providing for the needs of the world's six billion people, so the population would shrink dramatically and quickly and in a manner that would make every human horror ever known seem mild by comparison. Nor is it possible to divorce socialism from totalitarianism, because if you are serious about ending private ownership of the means of production, you have to be serious about ending freedom and creativity too. You will have to make the whole of society, or what is left of it, into a prison.


In short, the wish for socialism is a wish for unparalleled human evil. If we really understood this, no one would express casual support for it in polite company. It would be like saying, you know, there is really something to be said for malaria and typhoid and dropping atom bombs on millions of innocents.


Do the people sitting across the table really wish for this? Certainly not. So what has gone wrong here? Why can these people not see what is obvious? Why can't people sitting amidst market-created plenty, enjoying all the fruits of capitalism every minute of life, see the merit of the market but rather wish for something that is a proven disaster?


What we have here is a failure of understanding. That is to say, a failure to connect causes with effects. This is a wholly abstract idea. Knowledge of cause and effect does not come to us by merely looking around a room, living in a certain kind of society, or observing statistics. You can study roomfuls of data, read a thousand treatises on history, or plot international GDP figures on a graph for a living, and yet the truth about cause and effect can still be evasive. You still might miss the point that it is capitalism that gives rise to prosperity and freedom. You might still be tempted by the notion of socialism as savior.


Let me take you back to the years 1989 and 1990. These were the years that most of us remember as the time when socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe and Russia. Events of that time flew in the face of all predictions on the Right that these were permanent regimes that would never change unless they were bombed back to the Stone Age. On the Left, it was widely believed, even in those times, that these societies were actually doing quite well and would eventually pass the United States and Western Europe in prosperity, and, by some measures, that they were already better off than us.


And yet it collapsed. Even the Berlin Wall, that symbol of oppression and slavery, was torn down by the people themselves. It was not only glorious to see socialism collapse. It was thrilling, from a libertarian point of view, to see how states themselves can dissolve. They may have all the guns and all the power, and the people have none of those, and yet, when the people themselves decide that they will no longer be governed, the state has few options left. It eventually collapses amid a society-wide refusal to believe its lies any longer.


When these closed societies suddenly became open, what did we see? We saw lands that time forgot. The technology was backwards and broken. The food was scarce and disgusting. The medical care was abysmal. The people were unhealthy. Property was polluted.


It was also striking to see what had happened to the culture under socialism. Many generations had been raised under a system built on power and lies, and so the cultural infrastructure that we take for granted was not secure. Such notions as trust, promise, truth, honesty, and planning for the future — all pillars of commercial culture — had become distorted and confused by the ubiquity and persistence of the statist curse.


Why am I going through these details about this period, which most of you surely do remember? Simply to say this: most people did not see what you saw. You saw the failure of socialism. This is what I saw. This is what Rothbard saw. This is what anyone who had been exposed to the teachings of economics — to the elementary rules concerning cause and effect in society — saw.


But this is not what the ideological Left saw. The headlines in the socialist publications themselves proclaimed the death of undemocratic Stalinism and looked forward to the creation of a new democratic socialism in these countries.


As for regular people neither attached to the socialist idea nor educated in economics, it might have appeared as nothing more than a glorious vanquishing of America's foreign-policy enemies.


We built more bombs than they did, so they finally gave in — the way a kid says "uncle" on a playground. Maybe some saw it as a victory of the US Constitution over weird and foreign systems of despotism. Or perhaps it was a victory for the cause of something like free speech over censorship, or the triumph of ballots over bullets.


Now, if the proper lessons of the collapse had been conveyed, we would have seen the error of all forms of government planning. We would have seen that a voluntary society will outperform a coerced one anytime. We might see how ultimately artificial and fragile are all systems of statism compared to the robust permanence of a society built on free exchange and capitalist ownership. And there is another point: the militarism of the Cold War had only ended up prolonging the period of socialism by providing these evil governments the chance to stimulate unfortunate nationalist impulses that distracted their domestic populations from the real problem.


It was not the Cold War that killed socialism; rather, once the Cold War had exhausted itself, these governments collapsed of their own weight from internal rather than external pressure.


In short, if the world had drawn the correct lessons from these events, there would be no more need for economic education and no more need even for the bulk of what the Mises Institute does. In one great moment of history, the contest between capitalism and central planning would have been decided for all time.


I must say that it was more of a shock to my colleagues and me than it should have been, that the essential economic message was lost on most people. Indeed, it made very little difference in the political spectrum at all. The contest between capitalism and central planning continued as it always had, and even intensified here at home. The socialists among us, if they experienced any setback at all, bounded right back, strong as ever, if not more so.


If you doubt it, consider that it only took a few months for these groups to start kvetching about the horrible onslaught that was being wrought by the unleashing of capitalism in Eastern Europe, Russia, and China. We began hearing complaints about the rise of a hideous consumerism in these countries, about the exploitation of workers at the hands of capitalists, about the rise of the garish super rich. Piles and piles of news stories appeared about the sad plight of unemployed state workers, who, though loyal to the principles of socialism their entire lives, were now being turned out onto the streets to fend for themselves.


Not even an event as spectacular as the spontaneous meltdown of a superpower and all its client states was enough to impart the message of economic freedom. And the truth is that it was not necessary. The whole of our world is covered with lessons about the merit of economic liberty over central planning. Our everyday lives are dominated by the glorious products of the market, which we all gladly take for granted. We can open up our web browsers and tour an electronic civilization that the market created, and note that government never did anything useful at all by comparison.


We are also inundated daily by the failures of the state. We complain constantly that the educational system is broken, that the medical sector is oddly distorted, that the post office is unaccountable, that the police abuse their power, that the politicians have lied to us, that tax dollars are stolen, that whatever bureaucracy we have to deal with is inhumanly unresponsive. We note all this. But far fewer are somehow able to connect the dots and see the myriad ways in which daily life confirms that the market radicals like Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, and Rothbard were correct in their judgments.


What's more, this is not a new phenomenon that we can observe in our lifetimes only. We can look at any country in any period and note that every bit of wealth ever created in the history of mankind has been generated through some kind of market activity, and never by governments.


Free people create; states destroy. It was true in the ancient world. It was true in the first millennium after Christ. It was true in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And with the birth of complex structures of production and the increasing division of labor in those years, we see how the accumulation of capital led to what might be called a productive miracle. The world's population soared. We saw the creation of the middle class. We saw the poor improve their plight and change their own class identification.


The empirical truth has never been hard to come by. What matters are the theoretical eyes that see. This is what dictates the lesson we draw from events. Marx and Bastiat were writing at the same time. The former said capitalism was creating a calamity and that abolition of ownership was the solution. Bastiat saw that statism was creating a calamity and that the abolition of state plunder was the solution. What was the difference between them? They saw the same facts, but they saw them in very different ways. They had a different perception of cause and effect.


I suggest to you that there is an important lesson here as regards the methodology of the social sciences, as well as an agenda and strategy for the future. Concerning method, we need to recognize that Mises was precisely right concerning the relationship between facts and economic truth. If we have a solid theory in mind, the facts on the ground provide excellent illustrative material. They inform us about the application of theory in the world in which we live. They provided excellent anecdotes and revealing stories of how economic theory is confirmed in practice. But absent that theory of economics, facts alone are nothing but facts. They do not convey any information about cause and effect, and they do not point a way forward.


Think of it this way. Let's say you have a bag of marbles that is turned upside down on the ground. Ask two people their impressions. The first one understands what numbers mean, what shapes mean, and what colors mean. This person can give a detailed account of what he sees: how many marbles, what kinds, how big they are, and this person can explain what he sees in different ways potentially for hours. But now consider the second person, who, we can suppose, has absolutely no understanding of numbers, not even that they exist as abstract ideas. This person has no comprehension of either shape or color. He sees the same scene as the other person but cannot provide anything like an explanation of any patterns. He has very little to say. All he sees is a series of random objects.


Both these people see the same facts. But they understand them in very different ways, owing to the abstract notions of meaning that they carry in their minds. This is why positivism as pure science, a method of assembling a potentially infinite series of data points, is a fruitless undertaking. Data points on their own convey no theory, suggest no conclusions, and offer no truths. To arrive at truth requires the most important step that we as human beings can ever take: thinking. Through this thinking, and with good teaching and reading, we can put together a coherent theoretical apparatus that helps us understand.


Now, we have a hard time conjuring up in our minds the likes of a man who has no comprehension of numbers, colors, or shapes. And yet I suggest to you that this is precisely what we are facing when we encounter a person who has never thought about economic theory and never studied the implications of the science at all. The facts of the world look quite random to this person. He sees two societies next to each other, one free and prosperous and the other unfree and poor. He looks at this and concludes nothing important about economic systems because he has never thought hard about the relationship between economic systems and prosperity and freedom.


He merely accepts the existence of wealth in one place and poverty in the other as a given, the same way the socialists at a lunch table assumed that the luxurious surroundings and food just happened to be there. Perhaps they will reach for an explanation of some sort, but absent economic education, it is not likely to be the correct one.


Equally as dangerous as having no theory is having a bad theory that is assembled not by means of logic but by an incorrect view of cause and effect. This is the case with notions such as the Phillips Curve, which posits a tradeoff relationship between inflation and unemployment. The idea is that you can drive unemployment down very low if you are willing to tolerate high inflation; or it can work the other way around: you can stabilize prices provided you are willing to put up with high unemployment.


Now, of course this makes no sense on the microeconomic level. When inflation is soaring, businesses don't suddenly say, hey, let's hire a bunch of new people! Nor do they say, you know, the prices we pay for inventory have not gone up or have fallen. Let's fire some workers!


This much is true about macroeconomics: It is commonly treated like a subject completely devoid of any connection to microeconomics or even human decision making. It is as if we enter into a video game featuring fearsome creatures called Aggregates that battle it out to the death.


So you have one creature called Unemployment, one called Inflation, one called Capital, one called Labor, and so on until you can construct a fun game that is sheer fantasy.


Another example of this came to me just the other day. A recent study claimed that labor unions increase the productivity of firms. How did the researchers discern this? They found that unionized companies tend to be larger with more overall output than nonunionized companies.


Well, let's think about this. Is it likely that if you close a labor pool to all competition, give that restrictive labor pool the right to use violence to enforce its cartel, permit that cartel to extract higher-than-market wages from the company and set its own terms concerning work rules and vacations and benefits — is it likely that this will be good for the company in the long run? You have to take leave of your senses to believe this.


In fact, what we have here is a simple mix-up of cause and effect. Bigger companies tend to be more likely to attract a kind of unpreventable unionization than smaller ones. The unions target them, with federal aid. It is no more or less complicated than that. It is for the same reason that developed economies have larger welfare states. The parasites prefer bigger hosts; that's all. We would be making a big mistake to assume that the welfare state causes the developed economy.


That would be as much a fallacy as to believe that wearing $2,000 suits causes people to become rich.


I'm convinced that Mises was right: the most important step economists or economic institutions can take is in the direction of public education in economic logic.


There is another important factor here. The state thrives on an economically ignorant public. This is the only way it can get away with blaming inflation or recession on consumers, or claiming that the government's fiscal problems are due to our paying too little in taxes. It is economic ignorance that permits the regulatory agencies to claim that they are protecting us as versus denying us choice. It is only by keeping us all in the dark that it can continue to start war after war — violating rights abroad and smashing liberties at home — in the name of spreading freedom.


There is only one force that can put an end to the successes of the state, and that is an economically and morally informed public. Otherwise, the state can continue to spread its malicious and destructive policies.


Do you remember the first time that you began to grasp economic fundamentals? It is a very exciting time. It is as if people with poor eyesight have put on glasses for the first time. It can consume us for weeks, months, and years. We read a book like Economics in One Lesson and pore over the pages of Human Action, and for the first time we realize that so much of what other people take for granted is not true, and that there are exciting truths about the world that desperately need to be spread.


To consider just one example, look at the concept of inflation. For most people, it is seen the way primitive societies might see the onset of a disease. It is something that sweeps through to cause every kind of wreckage. The damage is obvious enough, but the source is not. Everyone blames everyone else, and no solution seems to work. But once you understand economics, you begin to see that the value of the money is more directly related to its quantity, and that only one institution possesses the power to create money out of thin air without limit: the government-connected central bank.


Economics causes us to broaden our minds to look at the commerce of society from many different points of view. Instead of just looking at events and phenomena from the perspective of a single consumer or producer, we begin to see the interests of all consumers and all producers. Instead of thinking only about the short-run effects of certain policies, we think about the long run, and the spin-off effects of certain government policies. This is the essence of Hazlitt's first lesson in his famed book.


By the way, let me interrupt here to make an exciting announcement. This book was written more than 60 years ago, and it remains the most powerful first book on economics anyone can read. Even if it is the last book on economics you read, it will stick with you for a lifetime.


It is a hugely important tool, and though I'm glad that it has stayed in print, I've not been happy with the edition that has long been distributed. We had long hoped for a hardback version of this amazing classic to make available at a very low price. Now we have it.


For a person who has read in economics, and absorbed its essential lessons, the world around us becomes vivid and clear, and certain moral imperatives strike us. We know now that commerce deserves defense. We see entrepreneurs as great heroes. We sympathize with the plight of producers. We see unions not as defenders of rights but as privileged cartels that exclude people who need work. We see regulations not as consumer protection but rather as cost-raising rackets lobbied for by some producers to hurt other producers. We see antitrust not as a safeguard against corporate excess but as a bludgeon used by big players against smarter competitors.


In short, economics helps us see the world as it is. And its contribution lies not in the direction of the assembly of ever more facts, but in helping those facts fit a coherent theory of the world. And here we see the essence of our job at the Mises Institute. It is to educate and instill a systematic method for understanding the world as it is. Our battleground is not the courts, nor the election polls, nor the presidency, nor the legislature, and certainly not the wicked arena of lobbying and political payoffs. Our battleground concerns a domain of existence that is more powerful in the long run. It concerns the ideas that individuals hold about how the world works.


As we get older and see ever more young generations coming up behind us, we are often struck by the great truth that knowledge in this world is not cumulative over time. What one generation has learned and absorbed is not somehow passed on to the next one through genetics or osmosis. Each generation must be taught anew. Economic theory, I'm sorry to report, is not written on our hearts. It was a long time in the process of being discovered. But now that we know, it must be passed on — and in this way, it is like the ability to read, or to understand great literature. It is the obligation of our generation to teach the next generation.


"If the world had drawn the correct lessons from these events, there would be no more need for economic education and no more need even for the bulk of what the Mises Institute does."


And we are not merely talking here of knowledge for knowledge's sake. What is at stake is our prosperity. It is our standard of living. It is the well-being of our children and all of society. It is freedom and the flourishing of civilization that stand in the balance. Whether we grow and thrive and create and flourish, or wither and die and lose all that we have inherited, ultimately depends on these abstract ideas we hold concerning cause and effect in society. These ideas do not usually come to us by pure observation. They must be taught and explained.


But who or what will teach and explain them? This is the crucial role of the Mises Institute. And not only to teach but to expand the base of knowledge, to make new discoveries, to broaden the reach of the literature, and to add ever more abundantly to the corpus of freedom. We need to expand its proponents in all walks of life, not only in academia but in all sectors of society. This is an ambitious agenda, one that Mises himself charged his descendents with.


Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of Speaking of Liberty. See his Mises.org archive. Send him mail. Comment on the blog.

This talk was delivered at the Mises Circle in Seattle on May 17, 2008.

Hot babe for VP!

Now HERE's a woman that could easily rise to the level of the President of the United States...she's got the ethics (risked her entire political career to get rid of unethical politicians IN HER OWN PARTY), and every other aspect about her screams out: THIS IS WHAT WE NEED IN OUR POLITICIANS!!!

From one of my favorite bloggers: Click Here!

Tired of Red vs. Blue Politics?

Sign the petition to urge the Democrat and Republican Parties to formally consider the Platform of the American People!

Read and sign here!

McClellan On Plame

By Robert D. Novak
June 2, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In Scott McClellan's purported tell-all memoir of his trials as President George W. Bush's press secretary, he virtually ignores Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's role leaking to me Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee. That fits the partisan Democratic version of the Plame affair, in keeping with the overall tenor of "What Happened."

Although the media response dwelled on McClellan's criticism of Bush's road to war, the CIA leak case is the heart of this book. On July 14, 2003, one day before McClellan took the press secretary's job for which many colleagues felt he was unqualified, my column was published asserting that Plame at the CIA suggested her Democratic partisan husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, for a sensitive intelligence mission. That story made McClellan's three years at the briefing room podium a misery, leading to his dismissal and now his bitter retort.

In claiming he was misled about the Plame affair, McClellan mentions Armitage only twice. Armitage being the leaker undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan, that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Wilson as a war critic. McClellan's handling of the leak by itself leads former colleagues to suggest he could not have written this book by himself.

On page 173, McClellan first mentions my Plame leak, but he does not identify Armitage as the leaker until page 306 of the 323-page book -- then only in passing. Armitage, anti-war and anti-Cheney, cannot fit the conspiracy theory that McClellan now buys into. When Armitage after two years publicly admitted he was my source, the life went out of Wilson's campaign. In "What Happened," McClellan dwells on Rove's alleged deceptions as if the real leaker were still unknown.

McClellan at the White House podium never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits Armitage's slipping Mrs. Wilson's identity to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to me. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.

McClellan writes that Rove told him this about his conversation with me after I called him to check Armitage's leak: "He (Novak) said he'd heard that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. I told him I couldn't confirm it because I didn't know." Rove told me last week he never said that to McClellan. Under oath, Rove had testified he told me, "I heard that, too." Under oath, I testified that Rove said, "Oh, you know that, too."

McClellan writes, "I don't know" whether the leaker -- he does not specify Armitage -- committed a felony. He ignores that Fitzgerald's long, expensive investigation found no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, if only because Plame was not covered. Nevertheless, McClellan calls the leak "wrong and harmful to national security" -- ignoring questions of whether Plame really was engaged in undercover operations and whether her cover long ago had been blown.

A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."

McClellan's fellow Bush aides do not remember him ever saying anything like that. At senior staff meetings discussing policy, they recall, he was silent. His robotic performances from the White House podium seemed only to disgorge what he had been told, and "What Happened" has the similar feel of someone else's hand.

The book so mimics the Democratic line that Ari Fleischer, McClellan's predecessor as press secretary, asked him last week whether he had a ghostwriter. "No," Fleischer told me that McClellan replied, "but my editor tweaked it." (McClellan did not return my call.)

The bland book proposal McClellan's agent unsuccessfully hawked to publishers early in 2007 is not the volume now in bookstores. How and why McClellan changed is a story so far untold.


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COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

Group Think: How the Democrats Create State-dependent Voters

“The big difference between Republicans and liberal Democrats is the way each party views people. Republicans see us as individuals and respect our God-given human dignity. To liberal Democrats, we’re not individuals; we’re members of a herd with all the dignity of a cow or pig dependent on its owner for daily rations of hay or slop. Democrats see us as being white or as blacks or as straights or as gays, or as lesbians or as heterosexuals, or as rich or poor, or as Christians or as Jews or as Muslims, or as young or as old, as working or as retired, or as housewives or as career women. They submerge us into pools that define us as members of groups instead of as what we are as God sees us—as any father sees his children—each being different from one another, and each child being a separate and distinct individual with his or her own specific talents and abilities, and all deserving of his love... This Marxist view of human nature embraces group-think, despises individuality, and seeks to eliminate all vestiges of the dignity to which every human being created in the image and likeness of God is entitled. Only the hopes and aspirations of the groups matter, and they matter solely because they create dependency on the state—which seeks to supplant God as the source of all that is good and necessary for survival.” —Michael Reagan

Did George W. Bush do this?

Putin's opponents are made to vanish from TV

...or this?

Chávez decree tightens hold on intelligence

Sean Penn and others in this country had better wake up and grow up and start realizing the real differences between fascism and freedom or else they might just lose what they have. Then they would realize how they fucked up but it would be too late. If they were all on an island by their stupid selves, I wouldn't mind, but unfortunately I will end up in the same mess as them. The difference is that I can actually tell the difference between freedom and fascism...and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure it out.