A VERY BAD IDEA: Transferring Control of the Internet to the UN

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From an intelligence standpoint, it does not make sense to turn over control of the Internet to the UN. At a time when the US Armed Forces and the intelligence community are both trying to develop our national defenses against the threats of cyber warfare, to divest the nation of control of the Internet is not in the best interest of the nation. The Pentagon, White House, and other agencies of government have been signaling the onset of cyber warfare.

Obama’s transfer of the Internet to the UN is just another illustration of how he continues to weaken the Republic, his goal seems to move the nation to a post-modern utopian world. The Obama administration has been informing the world that Putin is on the wrong side of history, that Putin is living in the 19th Century of nationalism, not in Obama’s 21st Century vision of internationalism.

Obama believes anyone espousing nationalism in the United States is backwards, uneducated, and a danger to the “change” he envision for the United States. While Obama is degrading the strength of the US military to a level that existed before WWII, and is intent on seriously damaging the economic power of the nation, as he drives the Republic into unheard of levels of debt (soon the interest on the national debt will exceed the GNP).

Obama believes that the nation-state, and sovereignty must no longer be the basis for the foundation of the international system, in Obama’s new 21st Century world, he alleges Putin doesn’t understand, he wants to eliminate the US status as the only Superpower. It is rather apparent that Putin does understand Obama’s naive vision of the 21st Century and is taking full advantage of it, and of Obama’s leadership from behind. A destabilizing transfer of control of the Internet to the UN will not be in the best interest of the American people, the US Armed Forces, or for The Free Enterprise System. If control of the Internet is transferred to the UN, the American people can expect the UN to eventually levy taxes on use its use; the American public has been fortunate that ever since the US military created the Internet, it has been free for all Americans to use free of taxes.

Eventually the UN may allow certain restrictions to be imposed against certain member states that are not looked on favorably by the majority of member nations, like Israel, the United States, or any other nation the majority member states may disagree with. Internet privacy and computer security has always been protected by the United States, but can be abused by a new and unknown power structure at the UN.

The Republican leadership in the Congress that has done very little or nothing to oppose Obama’s transfer of the Internet to the UN, must take action to prevent the occupant of the Oval Office from effecting the transfer.

It appears Obama is transferring control of the Internet to the UN because he has had difficulty dealing with the open criticism of his administration on the Internet daily; that criticism, guaranteed by the freedom of speech, under provisions of the US Constitution has been difficult for him to accept.

It has been impossible for the Obama administration to control the American people’s freedom of expression, as they criticize the Obama administration’s multiple failures and scandals on Internet daily. Since the Internet would have to remain free and open if it were to remain under the control of the US Commerce Department, that must be changed. When the Obama administration turns control of the Internet over to the UN, he has full knowledge that a coalition of nations that restrict the freedom of expression of their own populations will endeavor to suppress the freedom of expression on the Internet.

Countries like China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Myanmar, Malaysia, Mozambique, Algeria, etc. will take aggressive action to change the Internet as we know it today. The American people will forced by the Obama administration to abide by new oppressive UN Internet regulations, and Americans will be forced to abide by new UN Internet restricted regulations be penalized if they do not, or even worse. The American people must be allowed to assert their freedom of expression on the Internet and their right to oppose any attempt to suppress their freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution, regardless of what any new UN Internet regulations may require.

The transfer of the Internet to UN control is not a small issue, it is about basic freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the US Constitution, and must be opposed by any and all means possible. We encourage you to contact your Congressional representatives and demand that they take whatever action is required to prevent the transfer of Internet control to the UN.

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A Russian joke behind the Crimean joke about the American joke

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Did the Russian intelligence promote Obama from lieutenant to colonel? “I wonder, after the successful campaign of handing over the Crimea, will Barack be promoted to a colonel?” That was the question Tweeted yesterday by the newly elected Prime Minister of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, shortly after the Russian-speaking residents of the disputed peninsula voted to leave Ukraine with the prospects of joining the Motherland. The Russian-language Tweet was accompanied by a Photoshopped picture of Barack Obama wearing a Russian uniform.

The Huffington Post, which first reported on this Tweet, quickly replaced it with a different article about Aksyonov – possibly after a scathing call from the White House – but not before The Washington Times and a few conservative blogs picked it up and ran with it, reposting the picture along with the awkward English translation made by the HuffPost using Google translator or a similar electronic service.

None of them, however, provided any background, or asked a relevant question: why would a previously obscure pro-Russian politician, whom Obama administration’s incompetence helped to become a Prime Minister, sarcastically imply that Obama is working for the Kremlin? This doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Such a jab could have easily come from conservative jokesters in the U.S., as a way to vent their bitterness over Obama’s inept handling of international affairs and squandering America’s standing in the world. It could have also come from those Russians and Ukrainians who are opposed to Putin’s imperial policies. But why would a pro-Russian separatist with a shady past, who is himself very likely working on orders from Moscow, out his alleged “colleague”?

As someone who frequents the Russian-language side of the blogosphere, let me explain.

The Crimean PM’s question wasn’t a standalone joke, but rather a punch line to an earlier anonymous joke with a Photoshopped picture of Barack Obama, seen on various Russian websites and forums since he first became president.

The picture was a mock-up of a KGB personnel file with a photo of Obama wearing the uniform of a KGB lieutenant with three stars on blue epaulettes. The name on the card is listed as Boris Huseinovich Obamov, a spy and saboteur, born in Uzbekistan and of Uzbek ethnicity, a member of United Russia Party, recruited by Vladimir Putin in 1981, currently without a permanent address and working undercover as the U.S. President. The agent’s listed code name, The White One, is likely funnier in Russia than it is in America, where it comes off as overtly racist.


The “updated” picture Tweeted by the Crimean PM clearly shows two stripes and two stars across the blue epaulettes, corresponding to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the same organization – one step away from colonel. The KGB has been since renamed into FSB, and those are also the letters on his shoulder patch with the Russian flag.

In summary, Aksyonov’s joke is hardly political satire or commentary on Obama’s specific actions, but rather blatant mockery in the general direction of the American President.

The Crimean PM is not alone, as mocking Obama by addressing him as a “comrade” seems to be the latest gag among Russian politicians today, who are treating their own communist past as a joke while trying to reconstitute the USSR minus the Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Thus, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin fired out a number of Tweets yesterday, openly mocking Obama for putting him on the list of Russian officials whose foreign-held assets will now be frozen as punishment for their participation in Crimea’s secession.

“Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Have you not thought about it?” Rogozin Tweeted, implying that the U.S. President is acting like an erstwhile Soviet apparatchik. “I think some prankster prepared the draft of this Act of the US President,” he added later, in both languages. “Here it finally came to me: the real world-wide acclaim)) I thank the Washington Obkom!” he fumed sarcastically eight minutes later, using the abbreviation for the Regional Committee of the Communist Party – a once-powerful organ run by bureaucratic despots in the Soviet provinces.

Next to these messages, Rogozin’s Twitter thread also contains jingoistic cheers congratulating fellow Russian patriots with a win in the Crimean referendum, which he called “a great day of victory of the national spirit” and “the first result of our struggle for national unity.” His other Tweets contained veiled threats towards Ukraine in the form of promises to set up training shooting galleries in the Crimea and to expand Russia’s military-industrial complex to its territory.

Apparently, the cruel world refuses to live up to Barack Obama’s idea of peace through appeasement. This must come as a surprise to the president, who had received his Nobel Peace Prize as a validation of his understanding that the only real threat to world peace was greedy American imperialism. The prize was given to him by enlightened Europeans as an advance on the promise he brought to the world: that the sky would clear up and rainbows would unite different continents once America abandons its “cowboy diplomacy,” disarms its military, and pushes a cartoonish “reset” button with misspelled Russian lettering.

As it turns out, the world is full of thugs waiting to take advantage of the others’ weaknesses. Acting as if it isn’t has turned American foreign policy and the very office of the U.S. President into a joke. As of now, this joke has been made official and certified by the esteemed “international community.”

In the meantime, a desperate governor of an eastern Ukrainian region, which recently saw violent clashes with nationalist intruders from Russia, has given orders to dig an eight-foot-deep trench on the Russian border, hoping that even if it doesn’t stop an invasion, it will at least make the ride less enjoyable.

This most recent picture from the new Russian-Ukrainian border shows a hastily painted Russian emblem with dripping red paint leaving symbolic blood stains on the border fence.

Word Power: Why I like “liberty” better than “freedom” by Gary M. Galles

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As someone committed to self-ownership and voluntary association, among the most frequent words I both read and write are “liberty” and “freedom.” In most instances, they’re virtually interchangeable. In my own writing, the choice between the two has usually come down to reducing repetition. But, as far back as I can remember, I have liked the word “liberty” better than the word “freedom,” though I had never given much thought as to why.

Then I ran across a reference to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech in an article. It triggered a Superman-to-Kryptonite reaction in me. But my strong distaste for a speech full of “freedoms” led me to discover why I prefer the superior clarity of “liberty.” In my experience, demagogues have been able to successfully misrepresent freedom more easily than liberty.

Four “Freedoms”

FDR proposed “four essential human freedoms” in his famous speech. The first two—“freedom of speech and expression” and “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way”—gave me no problems. Both of those freedoms can be enjoyed universally, because the freedom of one person to speak or worship as he chooses does not detract from the same freedoms for others. The only role they create for government is the negative one of disallowing others’ intrusions on those rights. They entail general liberty for all by defending citizens’ rights against man-imposed coercion, including that exercised by the agency with the greatest coercive power—government itself.

In contrast, FDR’s third freedom—“freedom from want”—cannot be similarly universal. I think it muddles what John Hospers called “the most important distinction in the discussion of freedom,” that “between freedom-from and freedom-to.” Despite its freedom-from language, it actually represents freedom-to. It promises that government will provide some a greater freedom to acquire goods and services than they would have had through voluntary interactions with others. Unfortunately, in a world of scarcity, expanding that freedom-to must constrict others’ equal freedom to acquire goods and services with their resources. In other words, that freedom-to (disguised by the double negative construction of freedom from the absence of something one might want) violates general liberty.

Similarly, FDR’s fourth freedom—“freedom from fear . . . that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor”—strikes me as insufficiently generalized. It asserts that people must be protected against other governments’ depredations. Unfortunately, it says nothing about constraining a nation’s freedom to aggress against its own citizens, leaving intact what history has confirmed as the very legitimate fear of abuse by one’s own government. Particularly since FDR’s third freedom requires such government aggression to get the required resources for its “benevolence,” that freedom from fear omits the most significant agency most citizens in most countries need fear when it comes to their liberty.

In FDR’s speech, I saw “freedom” dramatically distorted into something very different from general liberty, and its employment to achieve that purpose set my teeth on edge. Since that same distortion has continued to this day, my preference for the less-distortable liberty has been reinforced.

On Liberty

In my reading, “liberty” has more strongly connoted the absence of an outside constraint imposed by government than “freedom.” Liberty seems clearer on what it is liberty from—man-imposed coercion—while “freedom” is agnostic about what it is from. Perhaps Ludwig von Mises stated my view most clearly when he wrote, “Government is essentially the negation of liberty . . . Liberty is always freedom from the government. It is the restriction of the government’s interference.” (Italics added.)

Further, I have found that “liberty” seems to more strongly suggest a general or universal condition than the word “freedom.” I can enjoy additional freedom from want through government’s use of what John Hospers called others’ “expropriated money and property,” but such freedoms cannot be general or universal. That is, they cannot provide liberty (or justice) for all. Such enhancements of my freedoms require taking away others’ equal freedoms. Liberty, in contrast, expands everyone’s joint freedoms, broadening the canvas for peaceful, voluntary actions.

Liberty of Travel Versus Freedom to Travel

Consider the usage of “liberty” with regard to travel or movement. As Justice William Douglas wrote inKent v. Dulles, “The right to travel is a part of ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without the due process of law . . . ‘Our nation,’ wrote Chafee, ‘has thrived on the principle that, outside areas of plainly harmful conduct, every American is left to shape his own life as he thinks best, do what he pleases, go where he pleases.” That, in turn, reflected Blackstone’s description of the liberty to move to “whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct.”

This protection against rulers’ power to restrict citizens’ movements is part of liberty as a general freedom from government coercion. However, it is only a negative claim against government interference with their choices. It gives citizens no positive claim on the beneficence of government (i.e., forced charity from others) to get them from point A to point B. If the government fails to coerce one person to give bus fare to another, it only fails to expand the recipient’s freedom to have things, but it in no way limits his freedom from government dictation. And that’s the essence of liberty.

Free Lunches Versus Liberty

It seems to me that the greater linguistic precision and self-consistency of “liberty” can also be derived from the well-worn economists’ TANSTAAFL adage (“there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”). Its lesson is that while something could be made free to a particular individual (easing one’s fear of want), the fact of scarcity means there’s still a cost and somebody must bear it. Therefore, if something is made free to one individual through government, the burden must be imposed on others. Such a freedom not only falls short of being universal, it actually requires the violation of the same freedom for others. And that usage of the word “freedom” makes it more distortable than the word “liberty.” Slaves can be equally described as being freed or liberated, without confusion, but the same is not true of lunches.

The problem I have seen is that those on whom such burdens are imposed are often simply ignored when “freedoms” that are inconsistent with liberty are discussed. They fail William Graham Sumner’s test of asking, “Who holds the obligation corresponding to his right?” which is a logical extension of Frédéric Bastiat’s “What Is Seen and What Is Unseen” to “Who Is Seen and Who Is Unseen.” Those whose liberties are restricted are simply ignored by such language, which makes them disappear from consideration.

Freedom Versus Universal Freedom from Government Coercion

Considering FDR’s Four Freedoms has led me to more clearly distinguish between “freedom” and “liberty” as universal freedom from government coercion. “Freedom” can be used to mean “liberty,” but it can also be used to mean freedom for some that denies the same freedom for others and requires government coercion. And a host of abuses can find a foothold in that confusion. That is why I like the improved clarity of “liberty” over the ambiguity of “freedom.”

Our online world compelled me to check my understanding on Google. The first result of my search of synonyms for “liberty” turned up similar distinctions. It defined liberty as “the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views,” and added independence, autonomy, sovereignty, self-government, self-rule, and self-determination as synonyms. Further, it added constraint as its antonym. That is generalized liberty, or freedom from government coercion that extends beyond protecting individuals’ self-ownership and the universal rights that logically follow.

Conclusion

I think “freedom” is a wonderful word, full of hope and possibilities. But I have frequently seen it manipulated to mean something that reduces general liberty by increasing government coercion. Further, some of the most ringing words of America’s founders are expressed in terms of liberty (e.g., John Adams’ statement that “liberty is [government’s] end, its use, its designation, drift, and scope,” Samuel Adams’ assertion that “the most glorious legacy we can bequeath to posterity is Liberty,” John Dickinson’s “liberty . . . her sacred cause ought to be espoused by every man on every occasion, to the utmost of his power,” and Patrick Henry’s belief that “Liberty is the greatest of all earthly blessings.”). That is why my preference is for “liberty,” which reduces such misrepresentation and clarifies the freedoms that provide the best hope and the greatest possibilities—universal freedom from government coercion.

ABOUT GARY M. GALLES

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University.

On this Day, March 19th in 2003, the Invasion of Iraq began

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Photo: Former US Marine Cpl. Edward Chin places the U.S. Flag over a statue of Saddam signifying the liberation of the Iraqi people in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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U.S. Army (USA) M1A1 Abrams MBT (Main Battle Tank), and personnel from A Company (CO), Task Force 1st Battalion, 35th Armor Regiment (1-35 Armor), 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 1st Armored Division (AD), pose for a photo under the “Hands of Victory” in Ceremony Square, Baghdad, Iraq during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.

Special Forces Gear sent out an email remembering the time when America used its great power to stop the rule of a tyrant – Saddam Hussein. America the powerful rallied its allies to stop a meglomaniac. Fast forward to today, eleven years later, the Middle East is in flames, Iraq has sided with Iran, Syria is a blood bath, Crimea belongs to Russia and Ukraine is preparing for war.

Si vis pacem, para bellum – “If you want peace, prepare for war”

The 2003 invasion of Iraq lasted from 19 March 2003 to 1 May 2003 and signaled the start of the conflict that later came to be known as the Iraq War, which was dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by the United States (prior to 19 March, the mission in Iraq was called Operation Enduring Freedom, a carryover from the conflict in Afghanistan ). The invasion consisted of 21 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland invaded Iraq and deposed the Ba’athist government of Saddam Hussein. The invasion phase consisted primarily of a conventionally-fought war which concluded with the capture of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad by American forces.

Four countries participated with troops during the initial invasion phase, which lasted from 19 March to 9 April 2003. These were the United States (148,000), United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000), and Poland (194). Thirty-six other countries were involved in its aftermath. In preparation for the invasion, 100,000 U.S. troops were assembled in Kuwait by 18 February.  The coalition forces also received support from Kurdish irregulars in Iraqi Kurdistan.

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Dr. Condeleeza Rice, National Security Advisor, speaks with 1st Armored Division soldiers during a Thanksgiving celebration in the Bob Hope Dining Facility at Baghdad International Airport. Dr. Rice accompanied President George W. Bush on the surprise visit to Baghdad.

The invasion was preceded by an air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 19 March 2003. The following day, coalition forces launched an incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. While the special forces launched an amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf to secure Basra and the surrounding petroleum fields, the main invasion army moved into southern Iraq, occupying the region and engaging in the Battle of Nasiriyah on 23 March. Massive air strikes across the country and against Iraqi command and control threw the defending army into chaos and prevented an effective resistance. On 26 March, the 173rd Airborne Brigade was airdropped near the northern city of Kirkuk, where they joined forces with Kurdish rebels and fought several actions against the Iraqi army to secure the northern part of the country.

The main body of coalition forces continued their drive into the heart of Iraq and met with little resistance. Most of the Iraqi military was quickly defeated and Baghdad was occupied on 9 April. Other operations occurred against pockets of the Iraqi army including the capture and occupation of Kirkuk on 10 April, and the attack and capture of Tikrit on 15 April. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the central leadership went into hiding as the coalition forces completed the occupation of the country. On 1 May, an end of major combat operations was declared, ending the invasion period and beginning the military occupation period.

As of December 2011, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the most recent armed conflict between standing national armies causing at least 1,000 battle deaths.

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Black Senior Forced to Choose: Obama or Jesus

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My Dad – Lloyd Marcus, Sr. Merchant Marine Quartermaster.

I had an extraordinary telephone conservation with my 86 year old black dad, a lifelong Democrat and huge Obama fan. He called to ask me, “Is Obama anti-Christian?” Dad has been a Christian pastor for over 50 years. I said, “Dad, I have been telling you about Obama’s anti-Christian policies for the past five years.” Dad replied, “And I have not been listening.”

Dad confessed that he simply could not bring himself to go against a black man in the White House. I felt dad was expressing the sentiments of many blacks of his era. I asked Dad to explain why he could not honestly assess our black president.

Dad became passionate. He said it was because of deep, deep scars he suffered at the hands of white people. Dad said, “I don’t hate white people, but my scars run very deep; calling me a n***** and rubbing my head for luck.”

He shared about the awful things he experienced while in the Merchant Marines around 1946. Dad and Jackson were the only blacks on the ship. Dad was a Quartermaster.

He said the crew was sea-weary, exhausted and emotionally spent after almost losing their ship in a storm. The crew was extremely excited and really looking forward to their much needed shore leave when they landed in St Petersburg Florida.

Upon their arrival, word came down that every crew member had shore leave except Marcus and Jackson. St Petersburg had a curfew for “coloreds”. Blacks could not be on the streets after dark.

Dad said he broke down in tears. Jackson was enraged and began cussing. He yelled at Dad for crying. “Marcus, knock it off!”

Word spread among the sailors that there were two coloreds on the base. The sailors were outraged by Dad and Jackson’s presence on their base. On several occasions the two young black men had to be encircled by guards for protection.

Dad and Jackson took their chip which granted them a hair cut to the base barber shop. The barber said, “I ain’t never cut a darky’s hair and I ain’t gonna start now! My razor just might slip and cut a darky’s ear off.”

Jackson and Dad had to eat their meals in the mess hall alone after everyone else had eaten.

Another ship arrived at the base. When the crew of that ship heard about the two n****** on base, a mob of them stormed the building where Jackson and Dad were. The angry mob planned to lynch the two n******.

Chased by the mob, Dad and Jackson, assisted by shipmates, fled down back stairs to the office of the officer-in-charge who confronted the mob. “Now look here boys. I know you don’t want these coloreds here. I don’t want them here either. We told them people in New York not to send them down here, but they did it anyway. And by golly, we are gonna do right by them.” The mob dispersed.

Then, the officer had the nerve to instruct Dad and Jackson, “Now you boys leave them alone.”

On another occasion, Dad and his white buddy, Armstrong, had to catch a train to meet their ship in California. While waiting at the train station, an official approached Dad, “What are you doin’ boy? Don’t you know your place?” The official escorted Dad to the rundown horrible colored waiting room.

Enraged, Dad said he turned to Armstrong and said, “You white son of a b****!” Dad said he was not a curser and he knew it was not Armstrong’s fault. He was just so humiliated and frustrated.

In the 1950s when Dad broke the color barrier to become a Baltimore City fire fighter, his humiliation continued. In the firehouse, Dad could not drink from the same coffee pot as the white firemen; separate eating utensils, sleeping area and bath room.

Dad said he could go on and on about racial injustices which have left him with deep scars.

Dad is not on the internet. He said, “My computer and I are not on speaking terms.”

I told Dad I was going to send him information in the mail confirming that Barrack Obama is anti-Christian.

For the first time, I felt emboldened to challenge Dad regarding this sensitive issue. I said, “Dad, once you know the truth about Obama, which loyalty will reign supreme? Will it be your loyalty to a fellow black man or your commitment to Jesus Christ.”

Dad chuckled and replied without hesitation, “It will be to Jesus Christ.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Onderwijsgek. This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Netherlands license.

America Spirals Down the Socialist Sinkhole

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America for its first century and a quarter was home to a capitalist system and philosophy that took it from a largely agricultural economy to one that saw the rise of its vast industrial base. In 1913 that changed with the creation of the Federal Reserve, a banking cartel, and the introduction of income taxes. It was a time that gave rise to socialist ideas focused on a central government that controls all aspects of the economy and the lives of citizens.

In 1917 the Bolsheviks seized control of Russia and began implementing Karl Marx’s and Vladimir Lenin’s Communism. That lasted about seventy years until the Soviet Union collapsed for the simple reason that neither Communism nor its cousin, Socialism, works. Freedom and justice go hand-in-hand with successful economies.

Even Communist China seeks to operate with a capitalist economy, participating in international trade organizations, and a banking system that supports business and industry. It retains political control. What we have been witnessing over the last century and this one is the assertion of more and more federal control by our own government.

In Venezuela, its citizens are in the streets protesting its Communist government. In the Ukraine, elements of its citizenry overthrew a president who preferred to ally with Russia than the European Union.

As an advisor to the free market think tank, The Heartland Institute, I receive their publications and visit their website for a great treasure of timely, pertinent information about trends and events in the nation. I recently received its quarterly report that led off with a commentary by its president, Joseph Bast, with whom I have been a friend for many years.

Drawing on a quote by Ronald Reagan who warned against “the anthill of socialism” Bast took a look at the Obama years with devastating accuracy for they are in so many ways a reflection of what is so wrong about socialism.

“Attacks on basic American freedoms are occurring at such a frantic pace and in such disparate arenas that it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture,” wrote Bast, pointing to the 2013 State of the Union speech by Barack Obama. “His top priorities were overhauling immigration laws, passing new gun-control legislation, expanding early childhood education, and raising the minimum wage.”

With surgical analysis, Bast dissected Obama’s policy objectives.

“Illegal immigration is down dramatically since the Great Recession started.”

“Gun-control laws don’t reduce crime, but armed citizens do.”

“Early childhood education programs don’t produce benefits that last more than a year or so.”

“And only six percent of the population is paid the minimum wage, and the overwhelming majority move quickly to better-paying jobs.”

It is Obama’s communist ideology that prompted these and other actions. It is his immersion in Chicago politics that has corrupted the Internal Revenue Service. It is his weakness regarding American exceptionalism that has caused him to back away from global leadership. It is his bashing of “millionaires and billionaires” that reflects his belief in “income inequality” when everyone wants to join their numbers and many do. The disaster of Obamacare reflects his desire to expand government control of the nation’s health system and reduction of the health insurance industry to a handful of selected companies.

“Why not propose pro-jobs policies like removing unnecessary regulations and taxes—like the highest corporate income taxes in the world—to improve the business climate?” asks Bast. “Why not support pro-consumer health care reform, like replacing the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance with an individual tax credit that rewards people for being smart consumers of health care without rationing and without erecting a massive bureaucracy?”

Clearly Americans have taken notice of an economy that has not emerged from the 2008 financial crisis. They have seen how horrid Obamacare is, losing health care insurance plans they liked and being denied their patient relationship with physicians of their choosing, all while driving up their costs.

“Obama and the folks around him are trying to create a new economy that looks a lot like the ones liberals in the 1960s and 1970s imagined: lots of central planning, income redistribution, the illusion of world peace, and windmills.”

“Achieving this transformation requires destroying existing institutions in finance, health care, energy, and education.”  That’s what Communism/Socialism does.

The danger of what Obama is doing is becoming obvious to a growing body of Americans, though not yet enough to curb and reverse it; those who prefer the welfare programs and those whose liberal indoctrination and addiction prevents them from seeing what so many others do.

“The national government and its sycophants in the mainstream media tell us everything is going great, but the truth apparent all around us is nearly exactly the opposite.”

“We can search for and report the truth, talk to our friends and neighbors, and make sure they know what is at stake in November,” wrote Bast.

A good place to start is the Heartland website. The next thing to do is vote in the midterm elections to eliminate those in Congress who are part of the destruction and to replace them with those who want to put a stop to it.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Thoughts from the latrine: Liberal crap about jobs Americans won’t do

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I am flying to Knoxville to speak tonight and my frequent flyer miles are with US Airways, so my flight itinerary took me from West Palm Beach to Charlotte.

As always, after a flight I had to “hit the latrine” and if y’all out there are familiar with Charlotte you know they have restroom attendants. These fellas are always kind and courteous and take immense pride in their respective duty. Today, since it is SEC Men’s basketball tournament semifinals with my Tennessee Vols taking on top ranked Florida, I have on my orange hat with the big “T” on it. The restroom attendant, Centario, a professed Clemson fan, began talking to me about SEC sports, today’s games, and football. A few others joined in — there was even a Florida Gator in the mix. I tipped Centario, a squared-away clean cut black man, and bade him farewell.

As I walked to the E Concourse it hit me. We always hear the constant droning message that there are jobs Americans will not do. It is a line progressive socialists want to sell in order to expand the welfare nanny-state. when the reign of Obama began, unemployment benefits went for 26 weeks. Obama, with the nefarious complicity of henchmen Pelosi and Reid, extended it to 99 weeks, and of course they now demand more extensions.

Recently, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that Obamacare would result in the loss of 2.5 million jobs, which we discussed here. Liberal progressives joined together harping that it was their goal to liberate Americans from being “trapped by a job” and that they would have more time to stay at home and get a government subsidy check.

The truth is so obvious: liberal progressives, such as Obama Rex, do not want to inspire the American work ethic. They are doing everything possible to erode that special sense of pride, like you see in the restroom attendants here who work and earn their own. The manipulative ploys of “income inequality” and the insidious minimum wage and overtime executive orders are just more of their political tricks and gimmicks. And I know the liberal socialist media and political operatives will misconstrue my words, but that just demonstrates their lack of moral character.

Americans will work, they want to provide for themselves and their families. As my Mom, Snooks West instructed me, self-esteem comes from doing “esteemable” things. Sitting and waiting for a government pittance, a measly subsistence is not the basis of esteem. It is not a part of the exceptional American genetic code. Tax and regulatory policies that create and expand opportunity, in the private sector, especially for small businesses, are what is needed. Obama and his acolytes offer economic servitude, and that has always been the end result of socialism: shared misery.

Rise up America and do not allow yourselves to be tricked and shackled by the charlatans of liberal progressivism. Stand, stand this day, Men of the West, for yourselves, for your families, for liberty, for America.

And God bless the restroom attendants of Charlotte-Douglas international Airport.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. The featured photo is by Heather Hutchinson from Edmonton, Canada. The photo has been edited. The original may be view here. This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Islamists’ “Christian-Jewish Phobia”

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“A Radical Muslim’ is a ‘Practicing Muslim’, a ‘Moderate Muslim’ is a ‘non Practicing Muslim’ or otherwise known as an Apostate of Islam. The penalty for Apostasy under Sharia law is Death”

Whenever any person or organization refutes the actions, statements, and/or objectives of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) organizations and their supporters, the executives of these organizations immediately go into their modus operandi. Essentially this means the MB (Islamic based terrorist groups) immediately begin to blackmail, threaten, intimidate, physically attack, discredit (false and deceptive, but truth is of little concern to groups who kill, rape, and rob from even innocent Muslims themselves), and these groups use the infamous ‘lawsuit’ to ‘force’ their enemies into silence.

NIHAD AWAD

Nehad Hammad (AKA: Nihad Awad)

These terrorist organizations are beginning to realize the power, stamina, persistence, and love/allegiance of the American people to our country and our children. With the recently released best seller ‘Muslim Mafia’, it has made at least one terrorist supporting group Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) realize that Dave Gaubatz does not go away easily. As readers are reviewing this article I will give you a typical scenario within CAIR National.

CAIR’s executive director Nehad Hammad (AKA: Nihad Awad), their spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper, and government relations director (contractor Simple Resolve) are under immense stress. They know they have committed felonies and the FBI are looking at their actions, they know they support the same violent ideologies as Hamas and Al Qaeda, they know foreign governments support them (illegally), they know they have intimidate and blackmailed large and small corporations such as Burger King, NIKE, Bank of America and dozens more. They have used the same tactics against individuals to include Glenn Beck when he was at CNN, Fox’s O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and many more news journalists. They know that Saudi Arabia is behind the Islamophobe campaign and dumps millions of dollars into U.S. corporations to silence them.

Readers need to ponder and seriously question why even Fox journalists seldom (specifically after 11 Sept. 2001) question, condemn, or conduct investigations in regards to the Saudi government. Does Mr. O’Reilly and Beck (both of whom I have respected) aggressively pursue allegations Saudi Arabia is behind and/or endorse the terrorism committed against innocent people around the world? Does any Fox journalist question why Saudi Arabia donates millions to CAIR, spends millions building mosques throughout America, and at the same time allows 50 year old men to marry 7 year old girls? Does Fox or any other American network question the Saudi leadership about spending millions to distribute hate material against Christians and Jewish people in America? Not only is the material ‘hate’ related, but also the material condones killing Americans to include our children.

Since it can be easily proven no major network condemns the violent actions of Saudi Arabia, one must ask why. There can only be four possibilities:

1.  Saudi Arabia is a rich and powerful country and puts billions into the American economy; therefore news organizations do not want to offend the ‘elite’.

2.  Mr. Beck (former Fox journalist), O’Reilly, Hannity and others have personally been intimidated by terrorist groups like CAIR, and they personally are fearful for not only their financial careers, but the safety of their families and themselves. Readers should note that no amount of personal security will protect you if Al Qaeda targets you or related group of killers. O’Reilly, Hannity, and Beck are smart enough to know this. If CAIR or one of their affiliates in the Muslim Brotherhood labels you an Islamophobe and oppressor of Islam, they have in reality put you on a ‘hit list’. They rely on the Major Hasan’s from Ft. Hood, and thousands more like him to carry out physical attacks when the time is correct.

3.  Saudi Arabia has many powerful and influential political leaders they have essentially’ bought over the years, and major news organizations are fearful of ‘offending’ former Presidents and they’re Saudi ‘thugs’.

4.  Investigative journalists from major news organizations are not experts and for the most part only report what their ‘assistants’ hand to them. Their assistants know even less about the Middle East, Islam, or Islamic terrorist organizations. Although they believe themselves to be the most informed and reliable people to bring the news to the American people, this is by far more of a fantasy than reality.

Readers are now asking what is the correct answer from above. The truthful answer is a combination of all four. Saudi pumps millions into our economy, CAIR (MB) has threatened numerous journalists like Hannity, Saudi officials have personal friendships and business dealings with powerful Americans, to include U.S. Presidents. Lastly, news journalists are not experts on Islamic based terrorism.

Below is an example of how the peace loving Muslims within this terrorist group (CAIR) attack anyone who dares to ask ‘tough questions’.
From CAIR National:

1.  “Attacks on CAIR are the work of a very finite and interrelated band of Career Islamophobes, whose own credibility is in doubt, who profit economically and politically by bashing Muslims and smearing their leaders and organizations.

2.  This band includes Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Joe Kaufman and David Horowitz together with affiliates like Stephen Schwartz and Andrew Whitehead. These individuals who are all staunchly pro-Zionist and anti-Muslim and create the bulk of the anti-CAIR literature, which is consumed and circulated by others.

3.  All of them spew their bigoted conspiracy theories primarily through the internal which is an un-relegated medium with no professional standards as far as content or fact-checking.

4.  They promulgate their content through thousands of than their own Islamophobic sentiment.5. Some of their lies and conspiracy theories seep through right wing AM and Cable TV radio talk shows that lean towards accepting their conspiracy theories about Muslim Americans and their organizations (Savage, Medved, Prager. O’Reilly, Carlson. Beck, FrontPage Magazine, the online hate site, etc…)”

Again I ask readers to observe how many times CAIR uses the term Islamophobe and hate. CAIR executives remind me of small children. Often children use the strategy of name calling to resolve disputes, but most children grow and become more adult like and professional as they mature. CAIR executives are highly educated, yet still use childlike defense mechanisms instead of facing realities head on. Seldom will you hear any Islamic terrorist use sound and rational reasoning to confront Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, David Horowitz,or myself. In addition CAIR executives are not refuting the documents within our book. The thousands of documents my team obtained from CAIR were salvaged before CAIR had an opportunity to shred them. CAIR officials knew the documents contained criminal information against them. They know the documents show the true CAIR, which is a terrorist organization operating in America. Instead they are using the typical ‘name calling’.

I will close by asking the novice counter-terrorism reader and the more versed reader why anyone takes the name calling by a terrorist organization seriously. I ask all to think of the absurdity of Islamic terrorists calling any American an Islamophobe when the Saudi government does not allow (and this is highly encouraged by CAIR, ISNA, and many others) Christians or Jewish to live and practice their respective religions inside Saudi Arabia. Would this logic not equate to every Saudi citizen and anyone who supports Saudi to be Christian-Jewish Phobes, and hate mongers? By CAIR’s own definition this would be true.

American citizens need to contact Fox and the other networks. Ask them why they have not examined and reported on the documents presented inside ‘Muslim Mafia’. Ask them to choose from the four alternative answers mentioned above, or feel free to add their own reasons. I encourage readers to write me with the results.

RELATED STORIES: 

Texas: Muslim arrested fleeing to Jordan after hit-and-run, lawyer seeks sharia

Virginia: Muslim Couple Arrested on Immigration Charges for Harboring Domestic Slave

Dearborn, MI: Lebanon-born Muslim arrested at airport on way to join Hizballah

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a 13th century Belgian Manuscript illustrating the dialogue between the jew “Moyses” and the Christian “Petrus”. Illustration of “Dialogi contra Iudaeos” written by en:Petrus Alphonsi. This is a photograph of an exhibit at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv en:Beit Hatefutsot. (Photo taken by en:User:Sodabottle)

Enemy of the State, Friend of Liberty by Lawrence W. Reed

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Question: If you could go back in time and spend one hour in conversation with 10 people—each one separately and privately—whom would you choose?

173px-Thorvaldsen_Cicero

Cicero

My list isn’t exactly the same from one day to the next, but at least a couple of the same names are always on it, without fail. One of them is Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was the greatest citizen of the greatest ancient civilization, Rome. He was its most eloquent orator and its most distinguished man of letters. He was elected to its highest office as well as most of the lesser ones that were of any importance. More than anyone else, he introduced to Rome the best ideas of the Greeks. More of his written and spoken work survives to this day—including hundreds of speeches and letters—than that of any other historical figure before 1000 A.D. Most importantly, he gave his life for peace and liberty as the greatest defender of the Roman Republic before it plunged into the darkness of a welfare-warfare state.

Cato Institute scholar Jim Powell opened his remarkable book The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000-Year History, Told Through the Lives of Freedom’s Greatest Champions (Free Press, 2000) with a chapter on this Roman hero—a chapter he closed with this fitting tribute: “Cicero urged people to reason together. He championed decency and peace, and he gave the modern world some of the most fundamental ideas of liberty. At a time when speaking freely was dangerous, he courageously denounced tyranny. He helped keep the torch of liberty burning bright for more than two thousand years.”

Who wouldn’t want to have an hour with this man?

Cicero was born in 106 B.C. in the small town of Arpinum, about 60 miles southeast of Rome. He began practicing law in his early 20s. His most celebrated case, which he won, required him to defend a man accused of murdering his father. He secured an acquittal by convincing the jury that the real murderers were closely aligned to the highest public officials in Rome. It was the first but not the last time that he put himself in grave danger for what he believed to be right.

In 70 B.C, 10 years after his victory in that celebrated murder trial, Cicero assumed a role uncommon for him—that of prosecutor. It was a corruption case involving Gaius Verres, the politically powerful former governor of Sicily. Aggrieved Sicilians accused Verres of abuse of power, extortion, and embezzlement. The evidence Cicero gathered appeared overwhelming, but Verres was confident he could escape conviction. His brilliant defense lawyer, Hortensius, was regarded as Cicero’s equal. Both Verres and Hortensius believed they could delay the trial a few months until a close ally became the new judge of the extortion court. But Cicero outmaneuvered them at every turn. Verres, all but admitting his guilt, fled into exile. Cicero’s speeches against him, In Verrem, are still read in some law schools today.

Roman voters rewarded Cicero with victory in one office after another as he worked his way up the ladder of government. Along the way, the patrician nobility of Rome never quite embraced him because he hailed from a slightly more humble class, the so-called equestrian order. He reached the pinnacle of office in 63 B.C. when, at age 43, Romans elected him co-consul.

The consulship was the republic’s highest office, though authority under the Roman Constitution was shared between two coequal consuls. One could veto the decisions of the other and both were limited to a single one-year term. Cicero’s co-consul, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, was so overshadowed by his colleague’s eloquence and magnetism that he’s but a footnote today. In contrast, Cicero emerged as the savior of the republic amid a spectacular plot to snuff it out.

The ringleader of the vast conspiracy was a senator named Lucius Sergius Cataline. This disgruntled, power-hungry Roman assembled an extensive network of fellow travelers, including some fellow senators. The plan was to ignite a general insurrection across Italy, march on Rome with the aid of mercenaries, assassinate Cicero and his co-consul, seize power, and crush all opposition. Cicero learned of the plot and quietly conducted his own investigations. Then in a series of four powerful orations before the Senate, with Cataline himself present for the first, he cut loose. The great orator mesmerized the Senate with these opening lines and the blistering indictment that followed:

How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us? To what end will your unbridled audacity hurl itself?

Before Cicero was finished, Cataline fled the Senate. He rallied his dwindling army but was ultimately killed in battle. Other top conspirators were exposed and executed. Cicero, on whom the Senate had conferred emergency power, walked away from that power and restored the republic. He was given the honorary title of Pater Patriae (Father of the Country).

But Rome at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy was not the Rome of two or three centuries before, when honor, virtue, and character were the watchwords of Roman life. By Cicero’s time, the place was rife with corruption and power lust. The outward appearances of a republic were undermined daily by civil strife and a growing welfare-warfare state. Many who gave lip service in public to republican values were privately conniving to secure power or wealth through political connections. Others were corrupted or bribed into silence by government handouts. The republic was on life support and Cicero’s voice was soon to be drowned out by a rising tide of political intrigue, violence, and popular apathy.

In 60 B.C., Julius Caesar (then a senator and military general with boundless ambition) tried to get Cicero to join a powerful partnership that became known as the First Triumvirate, but Cicero’s republican sentiments prompted him to reject the offer. Two years later and barely five years after crushing Cataline’s conspiracy, Cicero found himself on the wrong side of senatorial intrigue. Political opponents connived to thwart his influence, resulting in a brief exile to northern Greece.

He returned to a hero’s welcome but retired to his writing. Over the next decade or so, he gifted the world with impressive literary and philosophical work, one of my favorites being De Officiis (“On Duties”). In it he wrote, “The chief purpose in the establishment of states and constitutional orders was that individual property rights might be secured . . . It is the peculiar function of state and city to guarantee to every man the free and undisturbed control of his own property.”

Politics, however, wouldn’t leave Cicero alone. Rivalry between Caesar and another leading political figure and general, Pompey, exploded into civil war. Cicero reluctantly sided with the latter, whom he regarded as the lesser of two evils and less dangerous to the republic. But Caesar triumphed over Pompey, who was killed in Egypt, and then cowed the Senate into naming him dictator for life. A month later, Caesar was assassinated in the Senate by pro-republican forces. When Mark Antony attempted to succeed Caesar as dictator, Cicero spearheaded the republican cause once again, delivering a series of 14 powerful speeches known in history as the Phillippics.

Cicero’s oratory never soared higher. With the remnants of the republic hanging by a thread, he threw the scroll at Antony. The would-be dictator, Cicero declared, was nothing but a bloodthirsty tyrant-in-waiting. “I fought for the republic when I was young,” he asserted. “I shall not abandon her in my old age. I scorned the daggers of Catiline; I shall not tremble before yours. Rather, I would willingly expose my body to them, if by my death the liberty of the nation could be recovered and the agony of the Roman people could at last bring to birth that with which it has been so long in labor.”

Antony and his fellow conspirators named Cicero an enemy of the state and sent the assassin Herennius to take him out. On December 7, 43 B.C., the killer found his target. The great statesman bared his neck and faced his assailant with these last words: “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.”

With one sword stroke to the neck, the life of the last major obstacle to dictatorship was extinguished. At that moment, the 500-year-old republic expired, too, to be replaced by an imperial autocracy. Roman liberty was gone. On the orders of Antony, Cicero’s hands were severed and nailed along with his head to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum. Antony’s wife personally pulled out Cicero’s tongue, and in a rage against his oratory, stabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin.

Powell reports in The Triumph of Liberty that a century after the ghastly deed, the Roman writer Quintilian declared that Cicero was “the name not of a man but of eloquence itself.” Thirteen centuries later, when the printing press was invented, the first book it produced was the Gutenberg Bible, but the second was Cicero’s De Officiis. Three more centuries after that, Thomas Jefferson called Cicero “the first master of the world.” And John Adams proclaimed, “All the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher” than Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Some might say Cicero’s labors to save the Roman Republic were, at least in hindsight, a waste of time. He gave his life for an ideal that he was able to extend tenuously for maybe a couple of decades.

But if I had an hour with Cicero, I would thank him. I would want him to know of the inspiration he remains to lovers of liberty everywhere, more than two millennia after he lived. I would share with him one of my favorite remarks about heroism, from the screenwriter and film producer Joss Whedon: “The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.”

And that is exactly who Cicero was.

RELATED VIDEO: The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels | Lawrence Reed. Lawrence Reed speaks about the parallels between the fall of Rome and the modern United States. This talk was delivered at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/FPFlH6eGqsg[/youtube]

 

ABOUT LAWRENCE W. REED

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s. Prior to becoming FEE’s president, he served for 20 years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. He also taught economics full-time from 1977 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan and chaired its department of economics from 1982 to 1984.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a fresco titled Cicero Denounces Catiline located on the Palazzo Madama, Rome.

The Essence of Sarah Palin’s Message for 2014

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I watched a great old movie in the time period of the 1700s starring Anthony Quinn. A small village was brutally abused by an evil bandit and his army of thugs. Quinn organized and inspired the fearful villagers to fight back. When villagers were killed, many blamed, criticized and rejected Quinn. Displaying true leadership, Quinn remained willing to fight. He informed his critics that cowardice begets more tyranny. Freedom ain’t free.

Folks, true leaders pay a heavy price which is why they, as do eagles, fly alone. Sarah Palin has led by example, displaying tremendous courage, backbone and grit by standing up for conservative principles, traditional values, freedom and liberty; even when some conservatives and establishment Republicans joined the chorus of liberals, Democrats and MSM calling her a fool.

Someone said if you promote a lie long enough, for some, it becomes reality. Such is the case regarding Palin’s smarts. Meanwhile, Obama’s list of faux pas including his recent inability to correctly spell “respect” are ignored or laughed-off.

Threatened by her enormous presence and the extreme impact of her inspiring 2008 VP nomination acceptance speech, Democrats and the MSM immediately launched a campaign to destroy Palin. In their joint effort to discredit her, every word out of Palin’s mouth has been viewed through an unjust false lens which assumes that she is an idiot. I challenge anyone on the planet to survive such extreme critical scrutiny.

Sarah Palin is not perfect. She is a human being like the rest of us. But, Sarah Palin is an unmistakably gifted charismatic born leader who inspires millions to fight back against the horrible evil attempting to overtake our great nation. Palin’s passion is fueled by her love for God, family and country and her knowledge that freedom ain’t free. Thank God Palin is conservative.

For those on our side who wish to nit-pic everything Palin says and does, I ask, what the heck are you thinking? Stop it! Obama and his vile minions (Lois Lerner and others) are launching daily unprecedented outrageous assaults on our freedoms. Why waste time, energy and resources beating up on one of our few generals leading the charge to restore America?

As a proud conservative, I hold our leaders to a higher standard than the Democrats. I expect conservative leaders to make character driven decisions rooted in the best interest of the American people. However, I think it is unfair and foolish to demand that our leaders be perfect in every way. We should not join our enemies in berating them every time a conservative has a less than home run hitting media appearance. Our laser focus should be on exposing and stopping Obama’s non-stop crimes against our Constitution. Attacking our own is counter productive.

Despite the left’s best efforts to silence her, Palin has been relentless, sounding the alarm of all the bad things that would accompany an Obama presidency. Palin was right. America’s chickens have come home to roost for electing Obama.

Here are Palin’s predictions which have come true.

Obama pacifying world aggressors would have negative consequences.

Russia (which had just invaded the sovereign nation of Georgia, a U.S. ally) would feel emboldened to send troops in Ukraine as well.

Under Obamacare there would be government “death panels” that would determine whether or not a patient should be eligible to receive life-saving treatments, or whether it would be cheaper to just let that patient die. Could you ever imagine such a thing in America?

A few liberals have admitted that Palin was right when she said Obama does not have a whole lot of substance.

Sarah Palin was right on all these issues.

But the most important thing that Palin has been right about, winning her my utmost respect, is her unapologetic advocacy of true Conservatism; confidently touting Conservatism as the miracle cure for all of America’s woes. 

The 2014 midterm election must be a vote for Conservatism. Conservatives in office is the only way we defeat our outlaw president and his army of thugs. We must take the House and the Senate.

Palin’s CPAC speech confirms that she continues to lead the charge. Her battle cry is loud, strong and clear. If the GOP wishes to repeat the victory it enjoyed in 2010, it had better embrace the Tea Party (Conservatism).

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo of Sarah Palin is by Therealbs2002. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Stalinism: The ideology behind the IRS scandal, invasion of Ukraine and missing Malaysian Flight 370

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The world community is stunned and confused in March 2014 by the avalanche of negative events across the globe: Russia invaded Ukraine, the mysterious disappearance of a Boeing 777-200, and a growing IRS scandal in America. You will be surprised by my conclusion—all of the above have the same root cause. Moreover, this cause has created other crises around the globe, particularly in the Middle East. The Ideology– Stalinism. Stalinism, where the crux of the matter is Deception and Fraud… I am warning you again; it is not the Alinsky’s building of a social state; the reality of transforming America is more dangerous and ubiquitous.

Understanding the term “Statism” as we witness government intervention into our personal, social and economic affairs, Some of the American people are fighting to prevent the building of a powerful centralized government. We, the former citizens of Socialist countries, know this term from our personal experiences—we called it “Stalinism“, named after a dictator who designed and implemented a powerful centralized government in our former Soviet countries. This is the reason I dedicated four articles to the creation of Soviet Socialism, declared and spread by Stalin and his disciples across the globe. Do you remember how the fraudulent ideological impulses were traveling from Marx to Stalin? President Reagan has definitely helped the Soviet Union to collapse, yet the major cause of the collapse was deeper—fraud does not produce, Soviet Socialism simply did not work.

Chelovek_s_ruzhyom-Tenin_Shtraukh_Gelovani

Vladimir Lenin, standing.

You can ask me: Why I am naming Joseph Stalin, the man, as solely responsibility for Soviet Socialism, when Lenin was the leader of the Socialist Revolution? For a better understanding, let me answer this question once and for all. At the 11th Communist Party Congress in 1922, Lenin presented his perspective on “contemporary social development” in Russia, summed up in just three sentences:

  1. There is no proletariat in Russia.
  2. The form of future social organization in Russia is still being debated.
  3. Social and economic conditions in Russia do not allow the application of Marxist theory in the country.

Lenin saw a profound and systematic contradiction in the very character and essence of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Being a savvy and knowledgeable man, Lenin knew an extricable connection between ideology and economy. Russia had experienced a catastrophic situation in its economy at the time and Lenin announced NEP–a New Economic Policy, allowing some return of private property rights. The condition in Russia had dramatically changed for the better, but… Lenin died in 1924, his NEP died with him—Stalin cancelled NEP and began building his personal  form of Soviet Socialism beginning with the confiscation and nationalization of private property.

Winston Churchill was right saying: “Russia’s greatest misfortune was Lenin’s birth. Russia’s second greatest misfortune was his death.” As you can see Churchill was right!

Soviet Socialism has two primary vehicles or instruments promoting the Stalinist ideology: The Stalinist security apparatus and an Ideological Department. As fraud did not work, Stalin needed an application of force to implement his Soviet Socialism plus the media to cover up the Deception and Fraud. . Those two are like two arms of the Soviet Socialism’s body or model have defended and promoted the ideology. You can read the history of the KGB in the Chapter 4: And Evil is Alive and Well of my book: What is Happening to America? The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction, Xlibris, 2012.

Another powerful arm promoting Soviet Socialism was the media. Let me give you a part of my article The Communist Ideological Department:

The Art of Brainwashing, written a couple of years ago: “The Ideological Department was one of the Kremlin’s mightiest weapons, a tentacle that once extended its grip around the world and continues to cast its shadow over global politics even today. It was originally called The Department for Agitation and Propaganda. The Department understood extremely well Russian culture and the key elements of the Russian psyche and therefore knew what it had to do to refashion them in the desired manner. The Department focused on three things, above all else: patriotism, images, and emotions. Its ideological cadres did their nefarious job well…

“…The Department instituted a ubiquitous censorship, not difficult to do given that the entire range of print media and all publishing houses belonged to the government and every level of government had a Department for Agitation and Propaganda to carry out censorship. All cinematography, movie theaters and eventually television also belonged to and were fully controlled by the government, and the Department had a presence in all aspects of such communications. If you remember, Soviet law played its role, as well, through Article 58 of the Criminal Code—Counterrevolutionary Agitation and Propaganda. Perhaps now you are beginning to get an idea of how extensive thought control was behind the Iron Curtain, and even today this effort to control the flow of ideas continues…”

Only now we can return to March 2014 in America. Does not the American media remind you a Department of Agitation and Propaganda, serving the Democrats? The same department is still functioning in Russia under the supervision of the KGB government and the effort to control the flow of ideas continues… Do you note the recent elevation of political division in our country? Look at our Congress and listen to Rep. Trey Gowdy. Also remember Khrushchev’s words “to weaken America,” presented in my article on World War III, published on March 4, 2014.

Russian invasion of Ukraine

Russian invasion of Ukraine is an act of war with a global implication; it is similar to the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler in 1938 and Stalin’s occupation of three Baltic States in 1940. The American media explained the situation by “weakness” of Obama in foreign policy that emboldened Putin. This is not correct. Obama is not a “weak” leader–he is following his agenda in cahoots with Putin, united by the same ideology. For him, Putin is our partner. Obama is taking a lesson from professor of Russian/Soviet history, Stephen Cohen, teaching in Princeton and New York universities. He was defending Putin while interviewed by Fareed Zacharia, CNN, March 2 and March 9, 2014. Professor Cohen reminded me a fake journalist of the 1930s defending Stalin’s Show Trials, his name was Walter Duranty. I was writing about Stalin’s apologist in Baltic Winds. Do you know that Duranty by deceiving the West untied Stalin’s hands to kill millions? And the crux of the matter is again Deception and Fraud.

You can see today, how the ideology is destroying people’s livelihood and lives in America and the world. You also know now that the major devices and tools of the ideology are the Lies and Fraud, which are bringing the benefits to the party in power. Perhaps, you understand now, why I started this series of articles analyzing Marxism, Socialism and Communism: the discrepancies, fraud, and lies that were deriving from the 19th century. Stalinism had quadrupled them in the 20s century with a lot of dynamics in the process, turning the leaders into charlatans, murderous, and thugs. The best example of that is a former president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, his past and behavior. The same kinds of leaders are operating to orchestrate a so-called referendum in Crimea with all the Stalinist methods of intimidation and application of force.

My prediction: Ukraine has a constellation of very knowledgeable, bright leaders to bring the country to Western civilization. In terms of the Russian army, it will move further to occupy the industrial Eastern Ukraine—WWIII is going on. Watch Ukrainian cities: Kherson, Nikolaev, Donezk, and others…

Mystery of Malaysian Flight 370

This is a pre-planned act of a foreign intelligence similar to 9/11 twelve years ago. The plane was hijacked and deliberately diverted to use for the benefits of the criminals involved. If the plane is not on the ground of the ocean, it landed for the further use as a weapon of mass destruction similar to 9/11. Meanwhile, the plane, with a lot of sophisticated technology, will be studied by the team of a foreign country involved in the crime… It could land in one of the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia or in the Western China: My guess is the former, maybe Kazakhstan. I have been writing about the plane crashes since 1999, The Russian Factor: From Cold War to Global Terrorism, Xlibris, 2006, p. 105. I had continued this subject on p. 169, What is Happening to America? Xlibris, 2012. For the last twenty years, I am writing to unmask Stalinism, but our intelligence apparatus is blocking information about all my books.

A Growing IRS Scandal

Any former citizens from the Socialist country would smile or even laugh, watching House Committee investigating Lois Lerner, who oversaw Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of tea party groups. It was a spectacle we used to see in our former countries, when people are sabotaging the truth by all means possible. As a matter of fact, the IRS helped Obama to win in 2012, by paralyzing activities of the tea party. Just recall the enormous power of the IRS over the American people. The picture is clear to me in March 2014—Obama is building an American KGB – the IRS.

In summary: All three examples have the same cause–the circumstances of these events have converged in March 2014. To understand my thought-process, here is a conversation of two KGB’s Generals, narrated by one of them. He is Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa; the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect to the U.S, the second General is the KGB’s Chairman Yuri Andropov a devoted Stalin’s disciple:

“In 1972 the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America that could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.” – Russian Footprints by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, August 24, 2008.

General Pacepa wrote in the same article: “According to Andropov… the Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized.”

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com.

The Future of Catholic Schools – The Curse of Common Core

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Hope all is well on this “Second Saturday of Lent“, as it seems almost surreal that I am still writing about Common Core – the most controversial issue to hit the United States of America since that infamous day of January 22nd, 1973 – when the Catholic Church decided to “take the 5th”, allowing the liberals of this country to pass the Roe v. Wade decision – giving abortionists in this country “open season on babies in the womb”.

Historians and Pro-Life experts will tell you today that “Had the Catholic Church stood up as One Body in Christ as One Strong Voice, back at the end of 1972 – abortion in this country would have never been legalized”. I have heard that a million times…I honestly think that’s where our beloved Pope Francis’ latest famous quote “Whom am I to Judge”? was actually birthed…and, it wasn’t just a blob of tissue.

In tying in Pope Francis’ famous “5” words from my previous article, “Who Am I to Judge“, this same nonchalant attitude seems to have a played a large role in our country 41 years ago. It’s almost as if the liberals and Pro-abortionist of this country challenged our Catholic Church back then and asked them:

“Is the Holy Catholic Church going to fight against the legalization of abortion like it should because of the 6th Commandment, or is the Church just going to roll over and allow this intrinsic evil to rule our land of the Free? Is the Holy Catholic Church just simply going to say: WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

Fifty-six million murdered babies and 41 years later, the United States is still paying a dear price for that infamous decision that the Catholic Church could have said NO to. Today, the Catholic Church is faced with a very familiar scenario, and this one involves, not the unborn – but our beloved children who somehow survived abortion. Our school children – specifically, our Catholic School children. Is history going to repeat itself? Are the liberals, the Pro-Abortion fanatics, the crooked politicians and the self-serving school administrators – along with our ever-controlling government – going to wreak havoc on our nation once again? First, the fiasco of Obamacare…now this.

The “Curse of Common Core”, ladies and gentlemen, is what I am referring to in this article as this socialist disease could be even more detrimental to our country than the legalization of abortion.

I have studied it, read all about it, immersed myself into it, written hundreds of emails about it, written to every single Catholic Bishop in our country about it, met with several of them, met with several superintendents, met with many legislators about it, organized and attended meetings, conference and rallies on it. You name it – I have done it. From the second that I heard that our beloved Catholic schools were planning on implementing this government-controlled set of “unproven” education standards that have literally been sneaked in around the back door to our schools – I became very actively involved. That’s only because I know exactly what happened in Nazi Germany back in the late 1930’s, and I know exactly what happened in our own country back on January 22nd, 1973.

Will history repeat itself?

If President Obama and Jeb Bush have their way, it will. If Bill Gates has his way, it will. If Planned Parenthood has their way, it will. If the United Nations has their way, it will. If Agenda 21 has its way, it will. If Jeb Bush and all of these self-serving politicians who are in it for their own greedy purposes, it will. And, if the Holy Catholic Church does NOT come to her senses and says NO to Common Core – history will repeat itself – and the United States will no longer be the same country that my late, beloved father brought us from Communist Cuba to live in back in 1961. Castro destroyed my beautiful place of birth. Obama is doing the same to this incredible country that I love with all my being…and, like Nero, he is playing us like a fiddle.

“Who am I to Judge?” Is that the way the Holy Catholic Church is going to answer when it comes to implementing this ever-controversial Common Core, which has the entire country up in arms? Why on earth would the Catholic schools even think of following the Public schools when the public schools kicked GOD out of their schools years ago? Is the Catholic Church going to back down from Her Catholic Church teachings & position and cower to Obama and his liberal cronies in order to get their prize? Is it too late to reverse the curse or has the damage already been done? Are they really talking about changing the name of Common Core to another name to hide that controversy – but, still looking to get that funding that originated from “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”?

The Bottom Line:

Is it all about the “Almighty Dollar” or is it all about the “Almighty Father”? Does not the Holy Bible tell us that “we cannot serve two masters?”

“Who am I to Judge?” It’s time the Catholic Church steps up and says” It is the Catholic Church who is here to judge – and it is not the jury – but, the Almighty Catholic Church – that has decided that we are NOT going to do business with the likes of Common Core – with its face & foundation of the “population control”, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; along with “abortion giant”, Planned Parenthood; Agenda 21; the United Nations; and every single crooked politician who has had their greedy hands in putting this controversial curriculum together. Common Core and all it stands for has no place in our Catholic schools and our beloved children deserve better”.

Being a devout Catholic myself, I can only pray that the Holy Catholic Church comes up with this judgement and finally puts this Common Core controversy to its final resting place somewhere in a beautiful Catholic Cemetery…Queen of Peace, Pray for us.

 

mashup2013THE COMMON CORE must BE THE CATHOLIC FAITH!!

cardinal newman society logo

 

 

 

March 14, 2014

Dear Willy G.,

I need your help to continue our important work on the Common Core!

Concerns about the Common Core come from about as diverse a group of people as you will find anywhere. They include conservatives, liberals, top educators, teachers unions, and, most importantly, parents.

But The Cardinal Newman Society has one particular concern: Promoting and defending faithful Catholic education.

We have been working with experts to address Catholic concerns about the Common Core, partnering with the outstanding experts at the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools, and raising awareness about the flaws in the Common Core standards.

Our position is simple: In Catholic schools, the “common core” should be the Catholic Faith!

Since launching our “Catholic Is Our Core” initiative, we have:

  • co-hosted briefings on concerns about the Common Core for Catholic school superintendents, principals, education experts, and bishops;
  • conducted a poll of Catholic school principals, finding they weren’t broadly consulted and that they have substantial concerns about the Common Core;
  • published a series of “issue bulletins” by national experts on how the Common Core might threaten faithful education;
  • created a comprehensive online library of information on our website;
  • and advocated for strong Catholic identity and academic quality in media interviews about Catholic schools and the Common Core.

Still, many Catholic families and educators aren’t aware of what’s coming rapidly in many Catholic schools. There is so much more to be done!

Will you help us today with a special donation to address concerns about the Common Core and to continue our important work to promote and defend faithful Catholic education?

Whether it’s Common Core, bad theology or just ambivalence about our Catholic Faith, The Cardinal Newman Society will be here to help ensure faithful Catholic education in the years ahead. Our students deserve nothing less!

Thank you for your prayers and most generous support! May God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Patrick J. Reilly
President

EDITORS NOTE: The featured picture is of Roanoke Catholic School in Roanoke, Virginia taken by Patriarca12. This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Ted Cruz: Other than Cigarette Smoking, the Pic is Accurate

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First Breitbart and then Time reported earlier today that mysterious photoshopped posters of Ted Cruz, showing the Texas Republican senator shirtless, with edgy tattoos, smoking a cigarette, were plastered around various locations in Los Angeles, like the Beverly Hilton Hotel, late Thursday night.

Time Magazine writes: Of course, Cruz is tattooed in poster form only. Some mischief-maker posted his photoshopped (we think!) image around town ahead of a speaking engagement for the congressmen at Beverly Hills’ Claremont Institute. The event was scheduled for Saturday night.

Likely a prank, the stunt prompted a tongue-and-cheek response from the Senator:

Ted_Cruz_Tweet.jpg

They think it’s prank? How much do we know about Ted Cruz, really? Could it be that this picture is actually a selfie texted from his phone to a mysterious Tea Party knockout, and his official bio is nothing more than a fictionalized alternative reality?

According to our sources, Ted Cruz is actually a twin brother of Chuck Norris, and his powers extend beyond the realm of what can be grasped by mere mortals.

We know for a fact that…

– When Al Gore invented the Internet, his inbox already contained three unread emails from Ted Cruz.

– Ted Cruz has a quadruple citizenship in the U.S., Canada, Middle-earth and Westeros.

– If you superimpose Ted Cruz’s fingerprints, the resulting image will be the Seal of the President of the United States.

– When Ted Cruz got bit by a rattle snake, the snake had to sign up for Obamacare but couldn’t get through the login screen and died after a week of pain and agony in front of the computer.

– Ted Cruz has already won the presidential election in 2016 with a roundhouse kick in the polls; the pollsters just haven’t developed the technology to look that far into the future.

More facts and documentary footage to follow.

Hillary & Bill, Bonnie & Clyde

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In its January 24, 2004 edition, the New York Times reported that a Los Angeles private detective, Anthony J. Pellicano, had been sentenced to thirty months in prison for illegal possession of hand grenades, blasting caps, plastic explosives, and two handguns.

Those items were found by F.B.I. agents in a raid on Pellicano’s Los Angeles office in November 2002.  The agents were acting under a search warrant issued in a federal investigation of threats against a Los Angeles Times reporter, Anita Busch, who was working on a series of articles detailing the relationship between a Hollywood celebrity and a reputed mob figure.

According to news reports, Ms. Busch found her car vandalized, a bullet hole in her windshield, a dead fish with a long-stemmed red rose in its mouth on the front seat, and a note saying, simply, “STOP!”  Unfortunately for Pellicano, the F.B.I. produced an audiotape in which an F.B.I. informant was overheard confessing that Pellicano had hired him to silence Ms. Busch.

After serving a 30 month sentence, Pellicano was back in the news again.  In a February 7, 2006 story, the Los Angeles Times reported that, “… one time private investigator Anthony Pellicano and six others were accused Monday of conspiring to wiretap, blackmail, and intimidate dozens of celebrities and business executives…”  Pellicano was found guilty of illegal wiretapping, harassment, identity theft, and racketeering, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Not only was Pellicano an important member of the O.J. Simpson defense team in 1994-95, the Times has identified such high-profile celebrities as Roseanne Barr, Kevin Costner, Michael Jackson, Sylvester Stallone, and Elizabeth Taylor as former Pellicano clients.

Of course, the Times couldn’t be expected to list all of Pellicano’s clients.  However, those who were paying attention during the Clinton scandals of the 1990s will remember Anthony J. Pellicano.   His name first came to light during the summer of 1992 when Bill Clinton was a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In a long series of “bimbo eruptions,” disclosures that threatened to derail his presidential

ambitions, it became known that Clinton had enjoyed a twelve-year extramarital affair with a Little Rock woman named Gennifer Flowers.  When Clinton called Flowers a liar and his “bimbo eruption” squad attempted to destroy her reputation and her career, Flowers produced audio tapes in which Clinton was overheard telling her to simply lie about their relationship and that, if they both stuck to their stories, no one would ever be able to prove otherwise.

Shortly thereafter, Clinton’s principal handlers, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, under the supervision of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, began making public statements alleging that an “expert in audio recording analysis” had concluded that a twelve minute portion of the tapes had been “selectively edited” in two places.  That “expert” was identified as Anthony J. Pellicano.  Flowers then submitted her tapes to an organization called Truth Verification Labs, which found them to be totally authentic.

But Pellicano’s services to the Clintons were apparently just beginning.  As investigative reporters uncovered one former lover after another, the White House “bimbo eruption” squad had their hands full.  In fact, the details of the Anita Busch intimidation in Los Angeles bear an eerie resemblance to a story involving a former beauty queen, Sally Perdue, Miss Arkansas of 1958, one of Clinton’s many sexual dalliances.

Perdue said in a 1994 interview with a London newspaper that she’d been threatened with having both her legs broken if she spoke to reporters or government investigators about her relationship with Bill Clinton.  Subsequent to the threats, her car windshield was broken and a spent shotgun shell was left on her front seat.  Cops and screenwriters might refer to that as a “standard M.O.”  Perdue was so terrified that she relocated, quite suddenly, to the Peoples Republic of China.

Then, early in his presidency, a major supporter and fundraiser from Virginia, Kathleen Willey, went to the Oval Office to ask Clinton for a full-time paid position in his administration.  During that meeting, Clinton assaulted Ms. Willey, sexually, causing her to run from the oval office in a state of panic… her hair disheveled, her makeup smeared, and her clothing in disarray.

Later, as she prepared to testify before special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, Willey was subjected to acts of intimidation.  Two days before her testimony, while taking an early morning walk near her Richmond, Virginia home, she was approached by a strange man.  The stranger threatened her and her children by name, and references were made to her vandalized car and a missing 13-year-old house pet.  The message was clear: she was being told to remain silent.  A day after the deposition, she found an animal skull on her porch.

Then, in 1998, just four days after the Monica Lewinsky story broke in the national press, one of Lewinsky’s former boyfriends, Andy Bleiler, reported that Lewinsky had told him that she was going to Washington to be a White House intern and to get her “presidential kneepads.”  When it was widely reported that Pellicano had been engaged to dig up dirt on Lewinsky, allegedly by Hillary Clinton herself, he was asked by a New York Post reporter, Andrea Peyser, to either confirm or deny that he was the source of the Andy Bleiler information.  He responded, “You’re a smart girl.  No comment.”

So why does the Times not find it interesting to report Hillary Clinton’s past relationship with Pellicano?  The answer is, those in the mainstream media are interested in seeing Bill Clinton absolved of all his sins and Hillary Clinton inaugurated as America’s first female president… no matter what criminal acts they may have committed.

But now that Hillary has completed her four-year stint as a do-nothing Secretary of State, during which time she was given a fancy office in Foggy Bottom, a big airplane, an unlimited expense account, and told to just travel… get out of town… she now has her eyes set once again on the White House.  But let us not forget who the Clintons are.  They are the real life version of Arkansas’ Beverly Hillbillies, but with a much more expensive wardrobe and none of the class.

When George W. Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, he graciously loaned Air Force

Two to the Clintons to transport them to their new home in Chappaqua, New York.  But when the plane returned to Washington it was necessary to completely restock the aircraft.  Every comfort item on the plane… china, flatware, glassware, napkins, blankets, sheets, pillow cases, ashtrays, book matches, pens, pencils, and playing cards… literally anything and everything that was not a permanent part of the aircraft, had been stolen by the Clintons and their friends.

And when the Bushes entered the White House that same afternoon to prepare for an evening of black tie festivities, what they found left them speechless… and deeply saddened.  They found desks, chairs, and bookcases overturned, telephone lines purposely crossed so as to misdirect calls, computers and word processors with the “W” missing from the keyboards, obscene messages posted to email inboxes, and obscene graffiti spray painted on the walls.  The Clinton staff had totally ransacked Air Force Two and trashed the White House.

These are the people who now rely on Obama’s low information voters to give them another four year lease on the White House.  But now that they are poised to make a third frontal assault on the White House, let us not forget that it was Hillary Clinton who presided over the murder of four Americans at Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.

On Friday, September 14, three days after the attack, as the flag-draped coffins of the four slain Americans arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, all of the usual suspects… Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice… were among the dignitaries who were there with long faces, shedding a few feigned tears of sorrow and expressing their condolences to the bereaved family members.

Although everyone in the Obama administration knew within minutes of the attack that it was not the result of an anti-Islamic Internet video, Hillary Clinton took to the podium, and said, in the presence of the grieving families of the Benghazi victims, “We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.  It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.”  When she uttered those words she knew that it was all a lie, designed only to provide political cover for Barack Obama’s reelection less than two months away.

Later, as she and Obama expressed condolences to the families of the slain Americans, Clinton embraced the father of former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods.  She assured him, convincingly, that she would personally see to it that the person who made the video was arrested and prosecuted.

This is the Hillary Clinton we’ve all come to know.  She is far more ruthless than her long-time friend, Diane Blair, described her in her recently released private papers, and the only way she should ever again be allowed to set foot inside the White House is with an engraved invitation from a Republican president in hand… and perhaps one of Anthony Pellicano’s long-stemmed red roses clenched between her teeth.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image was taken on January 26-27, 2007 at Gallaudet University in Washington DC, SEIU local union leaders individually questioned eight Democratic presidential hopefuls—Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM), and former Gov. Tom Vilsack (D-IA) —about where they stand on the issues that matter most to SEIU members: affordable health care, good jobs, and retirement security. This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Ukraine: Will Any Principle Do?

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This week’s news in Britain has been dominated not by the clash of nations or the continuing stand-off on the borders of Ukraine.  Rather, it has been dominated instead by the death of two leading figures of the British left.  The death at the start of the week of Union leader Bob Crow and at the end of the week of the former Labour party minister Tony Benn, has provided an opportunity to dwell not only on their individual legacies, but on the state of the left and politics as a whole.

Despite both men being hugely controversial figures – banes of the tabloid media in particular – both have received fulsome praise even from their political opponents.  Within minutes of the news of Bob Crow’s death, his opponent in the recent London tube strikes, Mayor Boris Johnson, was keen to pay tribute.  In part this was just the exercise of good manners.  But it is also emblematic of something else.  The obituaries of both men have been noticeable by their focus on principle.

True Bob Crow’s principles included a decade and a half long stretch (from the 1980s-1990s) in the Communist Party of Britain.  And in Tony Benn’s case they included a large quantity of doctrines so far to the left that they undoubtedly assisted the government of Margaret Thatcher to achieve its successive election victories.  The radicalism of the policies of both men is not in doubt.  Anymore than was the general public’s distaste for such politics whenever offered to them at the ballot box.

But the reactions to the deaths of both men, from even their most doughty political foes, has kept coming back to the fact that they had principles in the first place.  As though the holding of any principles is now to be considered remarkable and necessarily admirable.

There may be something in this.  It is true that in all the Western democracies a sense has grown that we have entered a period of managerialism in our political systems.  This is not necessarily such a bad thing as is sometimes made out.  Better to have a politics of the middle ground dominated by moderate managers than a politics of the extremes dominated by hungrily competing ideologues.  But debate over the last week is also a reminder that a dose of principle, consistency and even unpopularity is not wholly to be feared.

Neither Crow nor Benn ever managed to pose a threat to the mainstream of politics and perhaps it is for that reason that their ideas – however misguided – can be looked at fondly even while not admiringly.  But the clear hunger for principle of any kind – even of such an unpopular stripe – should be worthy of note for our politicians.  A very different political figure, Enoch Powell, famously wrote in his study of Joseph Chamberlain that, ‘All political careers end in failure.’  That may be true.  What is certain is that all political careers have failure somewhere in their trajectory.  Whether someone was right or wrong on the great questions of the day is what matters most.  But as the judgements of our age become clearer it appears that to have felt strongly on anything at all is now enough to be ranked with honour.