Ideas, opinions and observations expressed here please me.
For the most part. Example: "Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not." - Thomas Jefferson
I hope you will enjoy them, too. They're pretty much what you would expect; after all, I began life with Herbert Hoover in the White House, a time when youngsters in this country didn't have to attend classes to learn about ethics. Even the worst among us knew very well the difference between right and wrong.
~~~
Jack Wheeler is a brilliant man who was the author of President Reagan's strategy to break the back of the Soviet Union with the star wars race and expose their inner weakness. For years he wrote a weekly intelligence update that was extremely interesting and well structured and informed. He consulted with several mega corporations on global trends and the future, etc. I think he is in semi-retirement now. His is a no-nonsense approach to everything.
By Dr. Jack Wheeler
Regarding Obama
The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.
He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.
What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.
Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.
Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it, no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be e ffective against it. The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed In Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum, I believe it because it is absurd.
Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.
His candidacy is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.
~~~
“There are new studies and new polls that strongly suggest that we are breeding increasingly stupid kids here in America. Like our tasteless tomatoes, they merely look good and healthy. But of course there is more than one way to test intelligence. So, while only 43% of our 17-year-olds know that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900, as opposed to, say, 1750-1800 or after 1950, they are very good at text-messaging. They also probably know the names of Britney Spears’ kids, which is more than Ms. Spears does at any given moment, but they have no idea why December 7, 1941, was a day of infamy. They also don’t know what ‘infamy’ means. What makes the situation even more pathetic is that these kids, for the most part, have a terrifically high opinion of themselves. To be fair, nothing much has ever been asked of them, let alone demanded, and yet they are constantly being told how special they are. Hardly any of them are expected to do chores, and as teachers have been ordered by craven school boards to pass along any student who’s breathing, D’s are frowned upon and F’s are verboten. As a result, 18-year-olds, who can barely count up to 18 without taking off their shoes, automatically get their high school diplomas... However, the greatest danger of this backsliding into the abyss of ignorance, this 21st century version of the Dark Ages, where emotions and self-satisfaction constantly trump logic and intelligence, is that Democrats may never again lose a presidential election.” —Burt Prelutsky
~~
According to a news report, a certain school in Livonia, MI was once faced with a unique problem. A number of 13-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the washroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. He called all the girls to the washroom and met them there with the maintenance man. He explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, he asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet bowl, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
THE MORAL OF THIS STORY....
There are teachers, and then there are Educators
~~
Recently, I came across a quote from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, which I think hits the nail on the head.
"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
~~~
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS | Posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.
In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.
In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.
Here are my questions:
In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?
~~
And, since we're speaking of Mr. Gore, consider the following. Mr. Coleman, a meterologist for over 50 years and founder of the Weather Channel, says Gore and Co. are nothing more than scam artists
By John Coleman (jcoleman@kusi.com)
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming... it is a SCAM.
Some misquided scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental-extremism type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.
Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.
Now their ridicules manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.
I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.
However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.
I suspect you might like to say to me, "John, look the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with Ph.D's in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with Ph.D's. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created an strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control global warming is underway that will sky rocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty.
Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father was a Ph.D-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a Ph.D in Meteorology and become a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.
And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and the results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way.
Remember the United Nations had formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the late 1980's with the mission of accessing and countering manmade climate change. The UN had established this global bureaucracy on climate change. It had become the "world series" or "olympics" for Climatologists and Meteorologists and scientists in related fields. You had to strive to be accepted, invited to present and review papers and travel to international meetings of the committee. Otherwise you were a nobody in your field.
So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like-minded Ph.D colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question.
There were a few who didn't fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them and brushed their studies aside.
I have learned since the Ice Age is coming scare in the 1970's to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn't accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.
I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them Ph.D's, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid.
I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.
In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.
The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway.
I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.
~~
A few days ago, I received an email from an old friend, a fellow who spent his career in the oil business in the Middle East and Europe. I found it very interesting ..
"Can you believe this ?
Here a couple links worth checking in case you are interested in potential oil reserves - in the case of 'oil shale', this was a hot item for discussion when I was in school back in the 1950's then was a big thing in Colo. in the 1980's in Colo. when Exxon and Shell were trying to do something with it - not economic and they quit. The other one on the Bakken fm in N. Dakota is also interesting - this is a thin [20' or so] shale fm between two much harder fm's and is drilled horizontally with the drilling bit bouncing back and forth between the two hard layers
Bob
***************************************************************
Just poking around the Internet recently, I simply 'Googled' a search for 'Untapped U.S. Oil Reserves,' and the result (like the current price of a gallon of gas - BLEW ME AWAY! Go ahead, take a minute and see for yourself! Never mind, I'll share some of the highlights I found.
1. Ever heard of the Bakken Formation? GOOGLE it. I did, and again, BLEW my mind. The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oilmen/women knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana ... check THIS out:
The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependent ce on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.
'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.
'This sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,' reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada. For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered at a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves... and we now have access to up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels could cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.
2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO, people!
U.S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World!
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006 Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction.
They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:
-8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
-18-times as much oil as Iraq
-21-times as much oil as Kuwait
-22-times as much oil as Iran
-500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it's all right here in the Western United States.
HOW can this BE!? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this!? Because we've not D E M A N D E D Legislation to come out of Washington allowing its extraction, that's why!
James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels. Untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.
Don't think 'Big Oil' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, and if they can extract it (here) for less, they can afford to sell it for less - and if they DON'T, others will. It will come down - it has to.
Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so! Now, while you're thinking about it .... and hopefully P.O'd, do this:
Take 5-10 minutes and compose an e-mail; fax or good old-fashioned letter to our elected officials in Washington . and their respected leaders. We'll start with them, and here's how you can send them your e-mail/fax, DEMANDING the immediate Legislation/an Energy PLAN that calls for tapping into these (OUR OWN!) Reserves, as well as allowing for the offshore drilling for OUR oil, in OUR offshore waters and Inter-continental shelf ... not to mention Alaska. Technology ain't what it used to be people (ever had arthroscopic surgery?). They can surgically extract OUR oil, and get us on the way to at least some measure of Energy independence.
Take another few minutes and browse http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm then go to:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf There's enough oil here to last 400-500 Years.
If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices ... because by doing NOTHING, you've forfeited your right to complain. Then let's declare Open Season on some of Americas E.P.A. idiots.
Bob"
~~~
As we watched the news coverage of the massive flooding in the Midwest with over 100 blocks of the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa under water, levees breaking, what amazed me is not what we saw, but what we didn't see...
1. We didn't see looting.
2. We didn't see street violence.
3. We didn't see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the government to come and save them.
4. We didn't see people waiting on the government to do anything.
5. We didn't see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for people to rebuild.
6. We didn't see people blaming President Bush.
7. We didn't see people ignoring evacuation orders.
8. We didn't see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up the levees as the reason some have not held.
9. We didn't see the US Senators or the Governor of Iowa crying on TV.
10. We didn't see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
11. We didn't see or hear reports of the police going around confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
12. We didn't see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
13. You didn't see some leaders in this country blaming the bad behavior of the Iowa flood victims on "society" (of course there was no such lawlessness to require excuses).
To further compare Iowa vs. Louisiana:
Where were all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
Where was all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?
Why wasn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?
Where were Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
Where were all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?
Where was the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?
Where were the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?
How come, already, you know you will never hear about the Iowa flooding again?
~~
You Can't Fuel All of the People All of the Time
by Ann Coulter
Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice."
For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies.
Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles.
Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan.
The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. That's not including taxes paid directly to the government by the oil companies and passed onto consumers. As the inestimable economist John Lott has pointed out, in the past 25 years oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes what they have made in profits.
B. Hussein Obama's response to soaring gas prices is to have the oil companies collect even more money from us at the pump, proposing a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. "Corporate taxes" sound like taxes on rich people, but all they do is force corporations to collect taxes on behalf of the government.
Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished!
In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, "We can't drill our way out of this crisis."
What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, "You can't eat your way out of being hungry!" "You can't water your way out of drought!" "You can't sleep your way out of tiredness!" "You can't drink yourself out of dehydration!"
Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn't going to increase the supply of oil?
It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan. Their plan is: the permanent twilight of the human race. It's the only solution they can think of to deal with the beastly traffic on the LIE (Long Island Expressway).
How do liberals propose we acquire the energy required for the economic activity and production that results in light appearing when they flick a switch? The larger enterprise involved in producing that little miracle eludes them.
Liberals complain that -- as B. Hussein Obama put it -- there's "no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road."
This is as opposed to airplanes that run on woodchips, which should be up and running any moment now.
Moreover, what was going on five years ago? Why didn't anyone propose drilling back then?
Say, you know what we need? We need a class of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn't have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises.
If only we had had such a group -- let's call them "elected representatives" -- they could have proposed drilling five years ago!
But of course we do pay people to anticipate national problems and propose solutions. Some of them -- we'll call them Republicans -- did anticipate high gas prices and propose solutions.
Six long years ago President Bush had the foresight to demand that Congress allow drilling in a minuscule portion of the Alaska's barren, uninhabitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 2002, Bush, Tom DeLay and the entire Republican Party were screaming from the rooftops: Drill! Drill! Drill!
We'd be gushing oil now -- except the Democrats stopped us from drilling.
Drilling on only 0.01 percent of ANWR's 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year. To a layperson like myself, 10 billion barrels seems like a lot of oil.
The other party -- plus John McCain -- ferociously opposed drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore or drilling anyplace else. Instead of Drill! Drill! Drill!, their motto could be: Kill! Kill! Kill!
They refuse to believe our abortion studies? I refuse to believe they care about Americans having to pay high gas prices.
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS.
Copyright © 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
~~~
Mathias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, wrote a blistering attack in DIE WELT, Germany's largest daily paper, against the timid reaction of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat.
EUROPE - THY NAME IS COWARDICE
by
Mathias Dapfner
CEO, Axel Springer, AG)
A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you
can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true.
Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives, as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before theynoticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements.
Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern
Europe, where for decades,inhuman suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.
Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass-murder, we Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us.
Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European Appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.
Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush. Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.
And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany?
I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of our (German) Government, and if the polls are to be believed, the German people, actually believe that creating an Official State "Muslim Holiday" will somehow spare us from the wrath of the fanatical Islamists. One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler and declaring European "Peace in our time."
What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims,focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.
It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the greatmilitary conflicts of the last century - a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness. Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for Anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush.
His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against Democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.
In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner, instead of defending liberal
society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China.
On the contrary - we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those "arrogant Americans", as the World Champions of "tolerance", which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass.
For his policies, Bush risked the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy - because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake - literally everything.
While we criticize the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our Social Welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive! We'd rather discuss reducing our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage, or our 4 weeks of paid vacation. Or listen to TV pastors preach about the need to "reach out to terrorists; To understand and forgive".
These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house.
Appeasement? Europe, thy name is Cowardice. God Bless America.
~~~
The purpose of fighting is to win.
An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity. The man who carries a gun to a knife fight will win with the same regularity.
If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't planned ahead.
A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him "Why do you carry a .45?" The Ranger responded, "Because they don't make a .46."
The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. "Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?" "No Ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my rifle."
As John Steinbeck once said:
Beware the man who only has one gun. He probably knows how to use it.
And remember, don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.
~~~
Some things never change:
"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."
-Booker T. Washington
~~~
Obama Encourages Black Victimhood
By: Ronald Kessler
If there is anything more disturbing than watching the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s paranoid denunciations of whites and America, it’s seeing the reactions of many well-educated blacks who agree with him or find ways to justify his hate-filled comments.
“I am so proud of Reverend Wright, who speaks with unreserved passion, who accepts no quarter and gives no quarter,” said former civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot of Barack Obama’s speech addressing his longtime minister’s claims that America started the AIDS virus, trains professional killers, imports drugs, and has created a racist society to keep blacks down.
Culture of Conspiracy
While some of Wright’s language is “offensive,” the “reality out of which he speaks is that black people have suffered in America and continue to suffer because of the unfairness of the system,” said professor Cheryl Sanders of the Howard University School of Divinity. The black church “has always had prophetic preachers,” she said. “Prophetic voice goes all the way back to the days of slavery, when people were protesting being in bondage. And so protest is just kind of a part of how we do ministry.”
While saying he does not believe that the government created the AIDS virus to kill blacks, as Wright has said, professor R. L’Heureux Lewis of the City College of New York gave credence to the conspiracy theory by saying that he does “respect the right of some people to question the unfettered arrival of AIDS and HIV to the community and the ravishing effects it’s had.”
Responding to my Newsmax stories about Obama and Wright going back to Jan. 7, many blacks said whites could not understand what it means to be black.
“It is not a secret that black people were slaves and that we are still victims and suffering from slavery, a black woman from Inglewood, Calif., wrote. “The pastor is just expressing a reality that we black people are going through.”
In his speech on race, Obama implicitly condoned this backward-looking perspective.
“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years,” Obama said. "While the anger is not always productive," Obama continued, "[it is] real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Yet while Wright, 66, no doubt had brushes with discrimination growing up in Philadelphia, it was nothing compared with what Condoleezza Rice faced — or, for that matter, what six million Jews who were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler faced.
In contrast to Wright, who attended an integrated school, Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala. Denise McNair, one of Rice’s friends and classmates, was one of the four girls who was killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Rice's Unbridled Courage
Rice had to sit at the back of buses. When more whites got on, the driver would move a “Colored” sign farther back in the bus, making less room for blacks. Rice could not eat at the same restaurants as whites unless the restaurant had a separate room with a separate entrance for blacks.
She was not allowed to use the same drinking fountains or public restrooms as whites. But Condi Rice, a descendant of slaves and white slave owners, had something else going for her: Her middle-class black neighborhood had developed a culture separate from the rest of the city, one that shut out the racism all around and taught children they had to be “twice as good” to pull even with whites.
Instead of teaching Rice to carry a chip on her shoulder, as she has told me, Rice’s parents amplified those positive values, giving her a strong sense of self-worth.
Rice’s father, the Rev. John W. Rice Jr., instilled in his daughter the faith that she brought with her into the White House and the State Department.
While Rice is comfortable with her own heritage and often speaks before black groups, she does not dwell on the racism she experienced growing up. Above all, Rice is proud of America and the opportunities that everyone now has. Witness the fact that she is secretary of state.
What a contrast to the poisonous atmosphere at the church that Obama has chosen to attend for more than two decades and the demagoguery of the man he calls his friend, sounding board, and mentor.
Encouraging Failure
As my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams told me after publication of his book “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America,” many black leaders orchestrate support for themselves by promoting victimhood, creating a black “culture of failure.”
That self-defeating attitude tells blacks, “You can’t help yourself; you can’t help your family; and therefore, all you can do is wait for the government to do something for you,” Williams says. “I think it is a message of weakness and ineffectual thinking that is absolutely crippling the poor and especially minorities in the United States.”
Sounding a similar theme in his book “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America,” black author John McWhorter calls the culture of victimhood “therapeutic alienation,” a form of self-medication that is “disconnected from current reality” and continues to hold blacks back.
To be sure, most largely black churches preach an uplifting message.
“As a pastor of a bi-racial church, I cannot accept that Wright’s way is the right way to do ‘black church,’ the Rev. Wally Shifflett, a minister from Charlotte, N.C., wrote to me. “Sen. Obama has been wrongly accused of being a Muslim — and why should that matter? We can hardly disqualify a candidate, offhandedly, because of his or her religion. But the senator’s continued participation in a church stoked with such anti-American rhetoric should no more be acceptable than if he openly supported one of the Islamic-extremist’s madrasses that teach their young to hate Americans. Is there any difference?”
The answer, of course, is no.
Both Islamic extremism and the black cult of victimhood generate support by conjuring up largely imaginary grievances and exploiting them.
The Rev. Otis Moss III, who recently took over from Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ, continued that theme on Sunday. Referring to the media’s belated exposure of Wright’s hate sermons. Moss said the church had been the victim of a “lynching.”
In contrast to the message of Obama’s church and its award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement, as one of its core values, Shifflett’s church adheres to inclusiveness: “Convinced that all people ever to be born have one common ancestor; and that God’s love for all people caused him to send the one Savior into the world to seek and save all people; we believe that he has reconciled all people to himself, and to one another.”
If Barack Obama were the unifier he claims to be, that is the kind of church he would attend and support with $22,500 in donations over a two-year period.
Instead of saying he understands where Wright and his “God damn America” are coming from and refusing to sever ties with him, if he really wanted to help blacks and further racial progress, he would denounce Wright’s message of hatred and the culture of victimhood that continues to undermine black society.
If Obama were a leader who genuinely had the interests of all the country’s citizens at heart, he would be citing Condoleezza Rice as an example of what blacks can achieve in America.
~~~
THE 545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA'S WOES
BY CHARLEY REESE
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all
the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The Houseof Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's
responsibility to determine how he votes.
These 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate
in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who stood up and criticized G.W. Bush ALONE for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of
the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist
disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess.
~~~
(Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics". He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.
In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.)
Digging a Hole to China
Paul Craig Roberts
Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China's considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds "contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency."
Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, "the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar."
If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.
The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is "the world's sole superpower," whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality. This hubris is so extreme that only 6 weeks ago McKinsey Global Institute published a study that concluded that even a doubling of the US current account deficit to $1.6 trillion would pose no problem.
Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China's power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush's wars.
If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, Bush's wars would end. The savings rate of US consumers is essentially zero, and several million are afflicted with mortgages that they cannot afford. With Bush's budget in deficit and with no room in the US consumer's budget for a tax increase, Bush's wars can only be financed by foreigners.
No country on earth, except for Israel, supports the Bush regimes' desire to attack Iran. It is China's decision whether it calls in the US ambassador, and delivers the message that there will be no attack on Iran or further war unless the US is prepared to buy back $900 billion in US Treasury bonds and other dollar assets.
The US, of course, has no foreign reserves with which to make the purchase. The impact of such a large sale on US interest rates would wreck the US economy and effectively end Bush's war-making capability. Moreover, other governments would likely follow the Chinese lead, as the main support for the US dollar has been China's willingness to accumulate them. If the largest holder dumped the dollar, other countries would dump dollars, too.
The value and purchasing power of the US dollar would fall. When hard-pressed Americans went to Wal-Mart to make their purchases, the new prices would make them think they had wandered into Nieman Marcus. Americans would not be able to maintain their current living standard.
Simultaneously, Americans would be hit either with tax increases in order to close a budget deficit that foreigners will no longer finance or with large cuts in income security programs. The only other source of budgetary finance would be for the government to print money to pay its bills. In this event, Americans would experience inflation in addition to higher prices from dollar devaluation.
This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China. It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into Chinese imports, and it was the "free trade, free market economists" who egged it on.
How did a people as stupid as Americans get so full of hubris?
~~~
"The American Indians found out what happens
when you don't control immigration."
~~
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1907
~~
The Rape of Europe By Paul Belien
The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper, "De Volkskrant," (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin , Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: "We are watching the world of yesterday."
Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. "I am too old," he said. However, he urged young people to get out and "move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable."
Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder's advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics.
The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today, Mohammed is already the most popular name for newborn boys in Brussels , Amsterdam, Rotterdam , and other major European cities.
Broder is convinced that Europeans are simply not willing to oppose islamization. "The dominant ethos," he told De Volkskrant, "is perfectly voiced by the stupid woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death."
In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper, "De Standaard," (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared "humanist") author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder's interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him, coping with the islamization of Europe is like "a process of mourning." He is overwhelmed by a "feeling of sadness." "I am not a warrior," he says, "but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."
As Tom Bethell wrote in "American Spectator," "Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working." But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to "enjoy" freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist.
"If faith collapses, civilization goes with it," says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means "submission" and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.
Some of the people I meet in the U. S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism.
People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.
This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European "islamophobes" who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (Islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission - just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead.
Europeans apparently never read John Stuart Mill: "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Here's some indication that at least some of our friends across the pond understand what's really happening. Click here, sound up! http://www.dotsub.com/films/moredemands/index.php?autostart=true&language_setting=en_1618
~~~
“Why is it that many, if not all, of us think twice before we say what we really think or believe? Have we been silenced by the popular hecklers? Are we afraid? Is there a cultural inquisitor who stalks us all? Then, why is it that so many of us who know better about so much that we see around us cower and speak in hushed, mousy voices?” —Justice Clarence Thomas
~~~
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." —Robert Heinlein
"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit (and means) of resistance. Let them take arms!" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787
That, friend, is what the Second Amendment is all about .. people have the right to protect themselves. In America, the Second Amendment guarantees we'll always have the means to do so.
Those of us who believe the Second Amendment means what it says are beginning to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. The Supreme Court has ruled the Second Amendment means exactly what it says. After decades of mind-boggling foolishness, the anti-gun crowd is showing signs of unraveling. (At least, for the moment. The gun banners will always be with us, especially now, with the Democrats back in the saddle in Washington.) Why unraveling? Whither Gun Control
If you're still interested in the general subject, and have some time to spend, please visit Guns in America . Other excellent sources include the Texas State Rifle Association, at http://www.tsra.com and the National Rifle Association (the much-maligned NRA) at http://www.nraila.org/issues/
"All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified."
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895); English biologist.
What Huxley doesn't note is, a lot of people, including too many in the news media, have no interest whatsoever in the truth .. they're the ones you have to watch out for.
~~~
"The media are so full of themselves—among other things that they are full of—that they act as if the government exists to provide them with something to publicize. The time is long overdue to put these people in their place." —Thomas Sowell
Some of you know that, once upon a time, I was a television reporter and anchor. Pretty good anchor, adequate reporter on occasion. Mostly, I spent my most productive time keeping the bean counters at bay while some fantastic young people on staff honed their skills, did marvelous work and moved on to bigger and better things. Dennis Murphy, at NBC News, comes to mind. Gene Allen, Houston Hall, Dave Burrington, Bruce Halford, Linda Ellerbee and Jessica Savitch .. and so many more. Real pros. I must tell you I am appalled at the puffed up, self-important, self-aggrandizing phonies who regularly find employment as network television reporters today. The incredibly incompetent press ..
~~~
"The 'offense to Islam' ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire. These people have a serious anger management problem. So it's not exactly a scoop that Muslims are engaging in violence. A front-page story would be 'Offended Muslims Remain Calm'." —Ann Coulter
~~~
"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." — John Adams
~~
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." - Benjamin Franklin
~~
"They're terrible people, liberals. They believe -- this can really summarize it all -- these are people who believe you can deliver a baby entirely except for the head, puncture the skull, suck the brains out and pronounce that a constitutional right has just been exercised. That really says it all. You don't want such people to like you!" --Ann Coulter
~~
"Whatever became of the Republican Party? ... Too many Republicans in the House and Senate are afflicted with one or both of two problems. Either they don't believe in much of anything or they are afraid to fight for what they do believe in." --the late Lyn Nofziger, whose moral compass the GOP sorely misses ...
~~
"A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation." - Thomas Sowell
~~~
"This court seems incapable of admitting that some matters are none of its business." - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
~~~
I Hate "hate crime" Legislation ..
"Leaders from both parties -- Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ted Kennedy -- have vowed to push through a new, wide-reaching federal 'hate crimes' bill. a 'hate crimes' law which would make crimes motivated by enmity toward blacks, gays or other protected groups into a special federal offense....The proposed law declares that criminals motivated by a government-designated set of intolerable ideas -- racism, sexism, religious sectarianism, anti-homosexuality -- deserve special prosecution and additional punishment. But to subject someone to trial and punishment on the basis of his ideas -- regardless of how despicable those ideas might be -- constitutes a politicization of criminal law.... A 'hate crimes' law would expand the law's concern from criminal action to 'criminal thought.' It would institute the premise that the purpose of our legal system is not to defend the rights of the victim, but to punish socially unacceptable ideas. This is a premise that should be abhorrent to a free society....It is an attempt to import into America's legal system a class of crimes formerly reserved only to dictatorships: political crimes. Instead, we should insist on the one principle that forms the foundation for the protection of all rights, i.e., that the purpose of law is to punish criminals for initiating force against others, not for holding bad ideas." - Robert Tracinski
As I've already noted, I abhor so-called "hate crime" legislation. If possible, I care even less for "diversity." Both are being used anew to silence the freedom to speak one's mind in England, Sweden and Canada .. and, most importantly, right here at home. Consider this
Christmas gets one day. Kwanzaa gets seven. Martin Luther King - who was NOT a president of the United States - gets his own, individual holiday...but Washington, Lincoln and every other president shares a single day. The Irish get St. Patrick's Day, Mexicans get Cinco de Mayo and Germans get Oktoberfest. But African-Americans get an entire Black History Month. There isn't even a White History day, let alone a month.
I guess it's "racist" to point this out.
You've gotta be exhausted if you've actually made your way through the foregoing ... thanks for visiting.
Some sanity here .. (although, like all of us, they go overboard on occasion ..)
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More to come ..
