Threats to Freedom Around the World

This was one of the break-out talks at the Americans For Prosperity conference on August 27, 2010. Matthew Elliott talks about the situation in the UK.

Bob McDonnell at Americans For Prosperity Dinner

This is a short piece where Bob McDonnell points out that just going to political rallies doesn't cut it. You have to work to get candidates elected. November Is Coming!

Meanwhile ... In Iran things are heating up ... nuclear-wise ...

SEE HERE Trust but verify was something Ronald Reagan liked to say. The problem is that some folks probably can't be trusted not to play with fire, nuclear fire in this case. Nuclear proliferation to societies that subsidize state sponsored terrorism like Iran is certainly very dangerous. They are long on rocket rattling. Something to think about certainly.

The Threat! To Combat An Enemy You Must Understand Them

SEE HERE This might effect a small beginning looking at Hamas, Hezbollah & Al-Qaeda. Read some of the comments too.

Authentic Christianity? Michael Voris Has a Few Words

SEE HERE Is America turning back to religion ... ? Not so as you'd notice. We need to focus in on "objective truth." Failing that we will continue to sink into moral relativism.

Thomas Sowell on the Ground Zero Mosque

SEE HERE Thoughtful as always. The issue is sensitivity ... apparently we're the only ones who are supposed to have it.

Some Interesting Observations

How to pay off your friends and cheat the tax payers.

Fear Mongering Is What They Do!

SEE HERE Read a little of this to get a taste of the way that the environmental movement operates. When they start losing the narrative because they really don't have any data to support their over the top doomsday stories, instead of ponying up the data, they just go into carnival mode. This smacks a whole lot more of snake oil salesmen then it does of serious environmental discourse. They only know one way to play the game and that is with shrill voices and Chicken Little rhetoric while calling everyone that opposes them the dupe of some evil power group that they dream up. When I see this kind of thing instead of taking it seriously, I see it as essentially an admission that they don't have the data to support their narrative. If they did, what could be easier than producing it.

When you look at these political Kabuki affairs you have to separate out the facts from the performance. If there are no facts then it's just baloney. Unfortunately for far too many of these causes that's what it is, pure baloney. In some cases there is a shred of truth, but usually even the shred of truth is poorly attested, incompletely understood, over hyped and possibly simply in error. If there is a computer model involved but not all that much data, you're being gulled. The Club of Rome ran their computer models in the 1970s and had us all dead by the 1980s out of food, out of oil, out of natural resources. That seems to not have happened and that's an object lesson about this kind of nonsense.

How Many Were At the Beck Rally?

SEE HERE There is no official number. The unofficial numbers range from 87,000 to a million or so. This piece points out the difficulty of even getting to the rally. I intentionally avoided it although I was in DC that day and attended the Americans For Prosperity event and the Virginia breakfast on the day of the march. Something like eight huge tour buses were staged to take the folks from the Marriott out on Connecticut Ave. to the rally, presumably they were going to ping pong back and forth because there were too many people for that few buses.

I left and drove down Connecticut to 'M' street and out 'M' to Georgetown and the Key Bridge. My feet are none too good and I didn't think I could handle the walking and standing. As I drove out Route 66 towards Front Royal I noticed that cars were backed up for literally miles trying to get into DC. Now I don't know if that was people trying to get to the rally, or people who were delayed by the logistics of the rally or what. But on a Saturday morning it is pretty unusual to see traffic backed up like that to get into DC. So I think it was caused by the rally. The event was big. Just judging from the pictures I've seen and my own experience of Right To Life Marches which often varied from 200,000 to 400,000 people I'd say that there were more than 400,000 and likely less than a million. But it was one very big crowd.

If You Didn't See This Last February It's Still Worth A Read

SEE HERE I suppose the "hidden agenda" strategy is the best for those who seek to undermine the established principles of a nation. But as you become more and more liberal you begin to think that your particular agenda is so obvious, so transparently necessary, so Messianic, so simply true, that you stop concealing it as much as you did in the past. This is especially true if you have yourself confused with some semi-divine being who has a calling to "fundamentally transform America." Well I think it is rather obvious that we have such an exulted being in the POTUS position who is determined to be remembered for that transformation. It is our job to stop him. If we fail then the great experiment which was the United States, regardless of whether it retains the name, will in fact be over. November Is Coming!

Hell Bent for Hell

The Truth Trumps All the Politically Correct Bull that is Going Around. Deep Down You Know What the Truth Is. Don't Kid Yourself. No One Ends Up In Hell Accidentally!

We Must Win! Your Future Depends On It

SEE HERE It's imperative that we win big in November because this president's malfeasance in office must be investigated, exposed, punished, and it must never happen again. Failing that we can be almost certain that the "fundamental transformation of America" will continue and become unrecoverable. November Is Coming!

How Did We Get To This Point? The Chicken Littles Of the World Write Bunk and Idiots Believe It

The Green Swindle - Video - FoxNews.com
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

In case you wondered, Rachel Carson's book caused DDT to be removed from use when malaria had almost been eradicated. DDT has not been convincingly shown to be dangerous compared to many many other pesticides. However taking it off the market caused a resurgence in malaria and the death, quite literally of millions of people. Thanks Rachel! You're an idiot. Paul Ehrlich in some ways is worse. Nothing he said came to pass and you have to wonder why he has any credibility left, but the left still salutes. I think this tends to show that it's about propaganda and policy and not about science at all. DDT PERSPECTIVEs and a PPT MORE OR LESS BALANCED

Palin At the Rally: 17 minutes

How Fair Is the Voting? — A Serious Question

SEE HERE The Achilles heel of any system that depends on voting is the integrity of the vote itself. We hear all kinds of stories about how in Chicago all the cemeteries vote and then there was the famous "hanging chad" kind of thing that confused elections in the not so distant past. There are often problems with voting machines, damaged ballots, lost ballots, found ballots, absentee ballots — often the military seems to end up disenfranchised by manipulation of the absentee ballots. But here's a whole new dimension of voter fraud. Hacking the voting machines! Keep an eye out for this.

A Texan Speaks Out!

If you didn't participate then you were not counted. Only the majority on election day counts. November Is Coming!

On the Mall with Palin and Beck

Buses took people from the hotel where the AFP was having their sessions to the mall for the Restoring Honor rally. My feet are none too good so I didn't attend the rally, but I watched it on television. Many many patriots attended. It was quite inspiring. We have to take back the country from the gathering socialism. Interestingly enough several speakers at the summit spoke about the fact that Europe is drawing back from Socialism while the United State is hell-bent to repeat Europe's bad experiment.

Americans For Prosperity Defending the American Dream Summit

I went to the Defending the American Dream Summit this weekend and this is a short two something minute excerpt from President Tim Phillips opening session address. I liked the punch line to this small segment: The Fun Starts In November! November Is Coming!

The Behavioral Modification "Insurance" Encourages

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell on "Moral Hazard." How the presence of "insurance" changes people's behavior and not always for the better.

The Media Masters of the Drive By Shooting

SEE HERE I don't get much of a chance to listen to talk radio. I mostly listen to Teaching Company Courses when I'm in the automobile if only because I'm usually there only for the fifteen minutes it takes to drive to the college and the fifteen minutes it takes to drive home. That's about a lecture a day so I hear a full course about every five weeks (most Teaching Company Courses are 24 half hour lectures long). As a result I rarely listen to talk radio people. Of the ones that I have listened to I always enjoyed Rush Limbaugh's combination of commentary and humor (I know that rankles the progressive/liberals since Rush isn't spinning their narrative). Here he considers the question of what the Tea Party is up to and that's both interesting and relevant.

It's Simple Really: Concentrate On Solutions

Everyone concentrates on the problems we're having in Our Country lately: Not me -- I concentrate on solutions for the problems -- it's a win-win situation.

THE CONSTITUTION
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq ...why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS
The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this -- you cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians, it creates a hostile work environment.

GET ER DONE!

Liberals Are Clueless About Economics or They're Liars, Take Your Pick!

SEE HERE I always find it amazing to listen to boneheads saying that the rich don't pay their fair share when in fact the rich pay almost all the taxes. The lowest 43 percent of taxpayers pay no income tax at all. If you don't know the figures read the article here and do a little research. You'll be surprised to find that the top 1% are paying 40% of the income taxes and the top 5% are paying 60% of the taxes. Somehow that just doesn't look at all fair to me and I'm well down the feeding chain from the 60% crowd. So what it comes down to is the whiners at the bottom want to have someone else pay their way. I suppose that's human nature, but not the noble human nature we should aspire to, more the kind epitomized by liars, cheats and con-men. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" TANSTAAFL as my favorite science fiction author Robert Heinlein used to say. Everyone should pay their share and perhaps then we'd get a fairer and more honest government too.

September 12th St. Louis Rally Promo only a minute or so

The Wonks At the Washington Post Think Beck Rally Is a Litmus Test of the Tea Party

SEE HERE I signed up to get column spews from the Washington Post and almost every day I am tempted to unsubscribe. They are an unrelievedly liberal bunch who spin any event into a progressive, damp hand shake, twaddle-laden, smoke and mirrors bunkum script that is hard to read with a straight face it's so lacking in principled rhetoric. Pure spin is usually the order of the day. There almost always seems to be a sub-text, a hidden agenda, a cryptic message to be imported into the readers mind past "watchful dragons" as C.S. Lewis characterized in his case the Christian "supposals" that underlaid the Narnian Chronicles. We live in a world papered over with falsehoods and ridicule of the truth as if a gang of devils has undertaken to slime the world and conceal the truth.

I hope the turn out at Glenn Beck's event is staggering. If we don't shock people like the Washington ComPost into realizing that virtue and principle are not dead after all, we'll continue to get this snide kind of coverage that they're always putting up. I'm not picking particularly on this piece, just the mind-set that lives feverishly babbling like the head in "That Hideous Strength" within the Washington beltway.

Staving Off Economic Collapse

SEE HERE The government is simply out of control. The level of not only spending, but totally irresponsible and clueless, venal, stupid spending has reached unimagined levels and will surely sink the country if continued. Independent of the motivation on the part of those doing this which is presumed to be well intended, the alternative is to assume a conscious intention of collapsing the economy, but regardless of the intention, unintended or intended, the fact remains that this spending is economically crippling.

Here's A Development In the Birth Narrative

This fact has been floating around for a while. The Globe, while a national magazine, is one of those yellow journalism rags and not exactly top notch for credibility. Still, there's no reason to doubt the Hawaiian official that outed the story. So we're back to "we're from Missouri ...Show me!"

A Man With A Mission: Exposing the Real Agenda

Well I'm convinced that there is nothing to global warming alarmism except a desire to push through draconian power grabbing agendas, but Michael Voris in this promo for a coming CIA special makes the whole thing sound a good deal more sinister than that, so of course he's sucked me in and I'll be watching for it and probably popping for the video. He's been doing some very high quality work I think, so I'm keeping him in my focus. As a friend of mine once said "It's all a game of who do you trust." That's what life is about, trust. Every time I discover I've been misled by someone they lose trust points. Every time I find someone "spot on" as the Brits say, they gain trust points. Right now Michael Voris has a lot of trust points.

Sliming the Young and Driving the Culture Into the Garbage Dump

My wife and I thought it would be fun to go to a movie and we'd seen the trailers for "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" and they looked innocent enough. The movie was rated PG-13 which seemed innocuous enough. So we went.

Basically this movie didn't show anything ... it just slimed everything. It reminded me of nothing so much as "Pulp Fiction" in terms of the total lack of any redeeming merit. The subtext of this movie is that any kind of sexual activity among the young is OK (in this case twenty somethings, but the first girlfriend is said to be 17 in the movie and made out to be sort of up-tight because she is Chinese and a Catholic. So we manage to get two sterotypes for the price of one.)

The movie is suggestive in the extreme. Promotes multiple sexual liaisons. Throws around the Lesbian word and the Gay word and has implied homosexual sex and implied heterosexual sex in the context of an on-going motif of extreme if not very explicit violence somehow made OK by having a sort of video game motif overlaid so that it seems to be an illusion or imagined experience rather than real. The female lead is supposed to have had serious relationships with a whole bunch of guys who are all out to get Scott Pilgrim. BTW motivation isn't very clear. Apparently if you ever date this gal whose hair is in varying psychedelic colors you lose your mind and want to kill her current boy friend. The band sells its soul to some guy near the end.

If you have not walked out then you find at the end that Scott Pilgrim is claiming to being unfaithful for going out with one without telling the other which is about the extent of any recognition that anything in the whole world might be wrong. Drugs are talked about as if they are quite acceptable, only they have not been used. The movie seems to be aimed at teenagers.

If teenagers buy into this world view then we are doomed as a culture. This is a thoroughly scummy movie, not even that well made and should be rated "R" but then no-one would go to see it, which would be a good thing.

Muslim Backlash? Not so you'd notice ...

SEE HERE The concern for a Muslim backlash seems misguided and misplaced. The intolerance in this equation is almost entirely on the Muslim side. When was the last time an American cut the head off a Muslim? Where are the dozen Americans that hijacked an airliner to fly it into a high rise building in Saudi Arabia? For that matter where is the outrage from the Muslim community towards there own terrorists for spoiling relations with the United States? That's right ... nada ... So maybe the liberals who are always wailing about this should get over it.

Why Is the Government In the Job Killing Business?

SEE HERE The government can't do anything very well, but it is especially bad at making anything remotely productive. The reason for that is that there's no internal quality check in the government on anything. The only government agency that does a remotely good job is the military and that's because they come up dead if they don't do a good job. Note that the uniformed military often has to give the civilians in the government agencies "what for" because they don't have to take fire if their oversight produces a bad product. It's all a game to the bureaucrats. They move paper from one desk to another and make the production of paper ever more complicated so that it employs ever more people. When I first worked for the government we could get a small contract out the door in about three or four weeks with about five signatures. By the time I stopped working for the government it was about seven months and thirty-five signatures for a contract denominated in the same amount, although the money had inflated so it was worth about half what it had been. I started out as a research scientist and was rapidly becoming a contract administrator, so I bailed out. Nothing like moving paper to make your blood stagnate.

Nothing Ever Satisfies the Liberal Media If It Goes Against Their Narrative

SEE HERE Ann Coulter on the double standard. Liberals can just say whatever they want and that's OK. But even when Republicans say what the Liberals want them to say the Liberals say they are lying. The secret is that only Liberals are allowed to brand anyone. Everything they say must be true because they are the anointed ones, appointed by mother earth to save us all. Tell that to the fifty plus million babies they have murdered or the millions of malaria victims due to the demonization of DDT. These are folks that don't understand how the world works but want the rest of us to kowtow to their every whim. Is Obama a Christian? or a Muslim? or a Buddhist? or just a Narcissist?

Let's Do the Full Analysis

SEE HERE It isn't often that I disagree with Walter Williams, but I think he's failed here to give the full case. Seniors had money taken from their paychecks to pay for social security and an equal amount was extracted from their employers which otherwise could have gone to them in salaries. Moreover the money that was extracted and merely went into the general fund (or the "trust fund" of IOUs the government issued) could have been invested in real assets and real securities and earned income. So William's analysis seems at best limited and incomplete for both the male and female recipients of Social Security. I've more than once run the numbers for my own case and concluded that had my employer and my investments in Social Security been invested in a broad index fund that I'd be able to take out something like four times what Social Security is paying me. So in may case at least, I'd say I've already been cheated. Will I get more than I put in? Of course, because they don't count what my employer put in. That's just dishonest. Yes it's a Ponzi scheme, but that's not my fault. It could have and should have been an investment scheme. Even as a Ponzi scheme it would likely have been more solvent if the government had not been complicit in the murder of over fifty million babies who could have grown up to be productive members of society.

Wondering If Obama Is A Christian?

Here's RealCatholic's take on the question. Worth a look!

When The Government Is Your Doctor You're In For Poor Health Care Period

SEE HERE I really don't know why this isn't obvious to more people. Are we bringing up a generation of people who blindly trust authority? If we are then we're in very big trouble. Authority unquestioned, quickly turns to arbitrary power and tyranny. That's the slippery slope we are on if we don't put on the brakes.

It's All In the Framing

HERE and HERE and HERE The gays are having a gay-old time celebrating the divisiveness in the Conservative camp over the whole Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, WND brouhaha. Notice the framing however, because it's dishonest and slanted. The problem with gays is that the activity is sinful. That's it is morally wrong. Now someone who sins is not automatically hated. Nor is the recognition of sinfulness an act of hatred. More often it is an act of admonition and love. We ought not to sin because the wages of sin are death, and not that plain old ordinary death of the body, but the death of the immortal soul.

"Oh you're just a religious nut" might be the retort from people in a society saturated with immorality. I confess. I'm a sinner too just like all the rest of you. But failure to recognize sinfulness for what it is, is not an act of love. So all the celebratory ranting from the gay crowd is really a chant of people celebrating their own sinfulness. It is profoundly sad because to have lost one's sense of sinfulness is to have become a fundamentally immoral person. When enough people become that way, the society collapses.

So Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter are wrong. WND called it right. If in fact Beck and Coulter are just playing to a young propagandized demographic in hopes of cashing in, then they're just being immoral in a different way. My mother used to say "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." It isn't clear that there is a good intention involved in telling those trapped in the gay obsession that they are all right and that we recognize their right to be that way. We don't do that with other sinners. We don't tell thieves that it's OK. We don't tell racists that it's OK. We are ignoring a lot of serial polygamy and adultery and that's not OK either.

"You're just being judgmental." Well yes, I'm exercising my judgment. Based on the objective character of moral law these are wrong actions, sinful and ultimately destructive of the human person. Failure to recognize that is also sinful for to destroy your moral sensibilities is a sin as well. It's called hardening of your conscience. It happens when you intentionally stop attending to the evil character of a thing and instead excuse it. Done often enough and you no longer recognize right from wrong. When you have reached that state you are more like a demon than a good angel and sadly you've also lost the ability to ask for forgiveness. Typically at that point only some great catastrophe in your life will make you once more attend to the right. That catastrophe will come and C.S. Lewis, speaking of pain, called it "God's Megaphone." If you're not listening it may be your last chance.

Avatar Director Backs Away from Climate Debate

SEE HERE I guess this shows that there's nothing there but a loud mouth with an empty suit. Although why a director thinks he knows enough about climate science to debate actual scientists is beyond me. Since they would have made mincemeat of him it's probably wise that he backed out. But to back out in such a staged and relatively cowardly way is amazing.

You've Probably All Seen This ... It's Still Funny!

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who's hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man.. Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his role as our president.

The old rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Obama is a 'Post Turtle''..

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him, what a 'post turtle' was.

The old rancher said, 'When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'.

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. 'You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put him up there to begin with'.

Making the Rounds: Obama is a Racist

This piece has been making the rounds on the internet. I decided to put it up because I think it illustrates the point that Barack Obama is a blatant racist.

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From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'

From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about her that made me wary, a little too sure of herself, maybe and white..

From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself: the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'

And FINALLY, and most scary!

From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

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This is probably not the hope and change you were hoping for when you voted for Barack Obama, if you voted for him. The question is why wasn't this kind of thing even talked about in the media. A man with essentially no credentials by way of experience that would qualify for president just walks into the White House to the applause of the media because he's a black liberal. They crucified Alan Keyes who has far more experience. It's racism in both directions more than likely. People making the feel-good vote to prove they are not racists and the black community making the racial solidarity vote and the liberal news media seeing the historical moment and blindly supporting it. How's that hope and change working for you?

Religion of Peace: More Like Religion of Satan

See the following two videos which were posted on LES FEMMES.

The Religion of Peace: Where Parents Kill Children for Choosing Christ


The Answer to Islam! A Coptic Priest Who's Willing to Lay Down His Life for Jesus


There is nothing to praise is this "religion." It treats human beings like so much trash to be forced to follow a violent, primitive, and totally intolerant religion whose explicit objective is to enslave human beings to an ancient form of violent law, Sharia. What is remarkable is that it has as many followers as it does. I suppose this shows the power of custom and family.

Learn more about it. Get informed. Don't just drink the Koolaid spread around by those who want to calm your concerns. Read the history of world violence in the past 100 years and ask how much of it was stimulated by Islam?

Fossil Fuel Burning In Perspective &mdash Not Significant In the Scheme of Things

SEE HERE This is a fun introduction to the significance of CO2 production from fossil fuels. Quite interesting and informative.

Ann Coulter Screws Up Big Time

SEE HERE and HERE. I guess we'll have to start rethinking the notion that Ann Coulter is on our good guy list. This is just too strange. Let me start by saying that headlining a GOP gay event (does that even make sense) is an implicit endorsement whatever you say. It shows bad judgment at least.

Why do I say that? Gay behavior is, how do I say this delicately, "Sinful" ... "Disordered" and just plain wrong. That doesn't mean that one doesn't have sympathy and forgiveness for people who are caught up in a sinful obsession.

WND in publishing private emails went over the top a little too. But the motivation seems comparatively strong. Since Ann Coulter is a real pro at the vitriolic comment she's been pretty much cutting her own throat for while releasing the emails is somewhat questionable, dumping her from the conference was the right thing to do.

This whole thing is saddening as is apparently the Glenn Beck capitulation on the same issue. But then Glenn has fewer neurons than Ann so I'm much more disappointed in Ann. I'm one of those people who support people when I think they are right and don't support them when I think they are wrong. Both Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck have demonstrated a lot of moral relativism in dealing with the gay issue here recently. Conclusion: Ratchet up the scrutiny! They don't get a pass any more.

Too bad!

Why People Think Obama Is A Muslim

SEE HERE How about the fact that that idea makes sense of so many things that the president himself has done? Frankly, given the evidence he certainly looks more like a Muslim than a Christian. So what's a person to think?

Thomas Sowell on The Collapse of Our Culture

Thomas Sowell is a former Marxist and a brilliant human being. He has seen the face of our cultural collapse and come to tell us. We should attend to his wisdom.

Obama ... Just What Is He?

SEE HERE I needed some story to hang this amusing image of Rush Limbaugh on so I figured I might as well make it the story where I found the image in the first place. The issue is LIES. Well also the issue is this idea that a lot of Americans think Obama is a Muslim. Now I don't really care if Obama is a Muslim. He's on record as saying he is, but he said he misspoke. He was registered as a Muslim in a school when he was a kid. He's said the the Muslim call to prayer is the sweetest sound in the world. He's bowed to Muslim princes. And he doesn't go to any Christian church because he'd be a disruption. So all in all he looks a lot like a Muslim. He sure doesn't look like a Christian. His background is largely opaque so it's hard to determine what he is. He just looks like trouble.

PUNCH LINE:(from El Rushmo) "It is not something healthy for the American people to not know what religion their president is, to have doubts to the extent that they do about this man and his life and where he's been and who he is, it's not healthy, it's not good. We can make fun of it, and we will, and we'll have our fun with it, but at the end of the day, this is not good. And we have people who have promulgated this. We have the partisan political operative media who have facilitated this intricately woven web of deceit and confusion, all for the purposes of getting their party elected to power so as to advance their agenda, at the expense, in fact, of the country."

We don't now who this man is. We don't now what he is. He appears to be a chameleon. One prominent psychologist called him a classic Narcissist. He's brought radicals and self-professed Communists into the government. He is running the least transparent administration in history after promising the most transparent. This is all very disturbing to those of us that bother to think about such things. For those who just go floating along barely aware of being alive I guess it doesn't matter much until the Gestapo comes knocking. There are a hundred little warning signals in the air and they are all swept under the rug one by one so that you wonder sometimes if you're on the same planet as you used to be. Superman comics had its Bizzaro World and Star Trek had its sort of negative Star Trek universe that you go into when the transporter malfunctioned. Sometimes watching the internet these days makes you feel that way. I'll be a lot happier if things would just return to normal. But I think that may be a while in coming and the ride from here to there may get distinctly bumpy.

Obama and the CIA

What is this all about? Tune in and see. These guys seem to be conspiracy nutjobs, but whether there is any fire where the smoke is, is a judgment call based on the information that is actually present. Never rule out the possibility that even a nutjob may be right. (Continue the program at the end with a 12:57 continuation)

I'm inclined to think these guys are way too conspiracy oriented. The problem is that some of this is plausible. I recall the CIA involvement in the overthrow and assassination of Diem in South Vietnam. That event may very well have contributed to the assassination of Kennedy. It's never wrong to be watchful.

REPORTS PART I/II ANOTHER LINK

Some People Have Class Whether You Like Them Or Not

Former President Bush and his wife Laura greet returning soldiers on August 11th. Welcome Home A Hero! Our men and women in uniform deserve no less. Semper Fi!

Whatever He Is, He's NOT a Christian!

SEE HERE Who cares if Obama is a Muslim? He certainly was brought up as one at least for part of his youth. He's not a Christian by any definition of a Christian that I would recognize. I think he's a true believer in his own personal propaganda which would make him an Obamaist I think. He is the ONE, the ONLY, Savior fighting to transform evil America into something else ... whatever seems appropriate at the moment in the mind of the ONE. Meanwhile he's off on his sixth vacation. Remember when the media complained about George Bush taking any vacations. Apparently the ONE works so hard that he needs a lot more time off. The sheer hypocrisy of the media is really getting hard to stomach.
THE COVER STORY Just private devotions. Me and God! Wow! I'm so impressed!! When is he going to walk on water? This of course is the same person whose support for abortion extends to killing babies who somehow survive the procedure and are alive. Christian? No way! Muslim? No way either. Good Muslims are against abortion too. Opportunist? Ahhhhh....

"A Republic If You Can Keep It" — So What's It Going to Be?

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell points the question implicit in Benjamin Franklin's response after the Constitutional Convention. It has taken a long time to undermine the republic. It has been the work of many minds, all claiming the highest of motivations. It has come to this. We will soon make the choice once more between freedom or slavery. Right now slavery is winning.

Obamacare Damage Control

SEE HERE This came floating around purports to be a presentation to prep Demon-crats for the coming election on the health care issue. The strategy is to lay low and try to make out that it's going to be all right and not to talk about cost or the fact that it's passed or anything else that might rile up the voters. Sensitive issue ... lay low! Stress how it's supposed to help the little people using personal stories (fabricated since it hasn't kicked in so suppositional). Yup! That's the way they do business — Spin Control is the name of the game. November Is Coming!

The Food Fascists

SEE HERE I'm not sure who anointed the Food Fascists to protect us from ourselves. They have become ubiquitous perhaps because they've largely won the war against tobacco not they have to take on some other ministry to we poor benighted heathens who have the audacity to enjoy *gasp* bacon or french fries or that root of all evil, a McDonald's Happy Meal. We need to take these folks' government subsidies away so they have to work for a living like the rest of us. What a bunch of busy bodies! But I suppose in a country that has decided that people are unable to take care of themselves without the intervention of the all-seeing, all-caring (are you laughing yet) state, it is no surprise that bureaucrats need to move on in their campaign to destroy your last visage of free will. You will be assimilated into the vast nanny state, whether you like it or not. Act up for freedom &mdash do some fast food today!

A Memorial to the Religion of Peace?

Some things that you can do legally are obscene.

YES IT IS AT GROUND ZERO

Abstinence Education Is the Way to Go

SEE HERE I guess agenda driven science isn't limited to climate change. The drill seems to be to fund studies and if the result doesn't come out the way you want, do damage control to hide the results. That kind of behavior is simply disgraceful. Science is about being honest with your data, not cranking out propaganda on demand.

Ashamed of the American Flag?

SEE HERE I don't really know what to think about this. I did a little googling around when a friend sent it to me and I thought can this be true? Is this some other venue than the White House? There has been a pattern of this president removing symbols from the background. When he spoke at Georgetown he had crucifixes covered up. There's the famous picture of him sort of having his hands crossed across his crotch while everyone else had their hand across their hearts as the star spangled banner was played. So what is it with this guy? He sure doesn't act like an American. It's outrageous. But just to cut him some slack (and I don't do that much), maybe there is some other explanation. Anyone have a clue?

AH THE COVER STORY Obviously there is some truth in this, but notice that all the explanatory pictures are not in a White House briefing setting. It doesn't really address the fundamental issue.

Our Government Is the Enemy

SEE HERE Does that sound like an exaggeration? I would have said so a few years ago. Instead of ascribing malice to the government I'd have assigned their stupidity to ignorance. But it seems to me that there are limits to what can be dismissed as ignorance and this administration has long exceeded the most generous assessments of ignorance. I'm always ready to ascribe some to liberals. They do the damnedest things after all. Thomas Sowell here touches on some that are both truly monumental and truly mystifying. Judge for yourself. My position is that we have placed in positions of power and authority people who truly hate the United States and intend to bring it down. So far they are making good progress.

If You Knew How Much You Were Really Paying In Taxes You'd Be Pissed

SEE HERE It would be interesting to calculate the real costs of not only taxes but all the regulations and other things that the government, local, state, and federal does that costs you money. Most of the time you just don't notice the taxes. They're buried in your receipts and your payroll deductions and in the prices of the goods you buy where manufacturers and service providers pass on their costs of complying with regulations to you the buyer, but in a way that is invisible. What if we could make all the taxes and costs of government more easily visible? That would change the whole playing field.

Judge Napolitano Points Out the Constitutional Points

The problem is that the Federal Government is not doing their job. If they enforced the borders there would be no problem.

The Reality of the Immigration Discourse

Failure at the top! The Federal Government is at war with the citizens.

We've Discovered Their Nest (the Lunatics) It's at the New York Times!

SEE HERE It's a good think Ann Coulter is so smart or we wouldn't notice how the New York Times makes such consistent good sense. Hahahahahaha.... the laughter echos through the concrete canyons of New York where the hive lives. Each morning they get their drop of wisdom from the View and the NYTs. The rest of us are at least protected somewhat by the distance from the sewer, ur source of wisdom. But thankfully we have Ann to keep us abreast of what the newsmakers and opinion shapers have in store for us.

The Lunatics Are Running the Asylum

SEE HERE Summary: They and their ideas are bounced back and forth and embraced as gospel truth with no bearing on reality. They preach to the masses, turn their noses up at alternatives, and believe that the world is all right as long as they are in charge.

That's Red State's critique of our leaders! They are the anointed ones but polls show:

• 57% think the Democrat agenda is “extreme”


• 60% favor repeal of Obamacare


• 56% disapprove of Obama’s job performance


• 61% favor immigration laws like Arizona just passed


• 68% oppose the Ground Zero mosque


• 65% are angry at federal government policies


• 65% say America is on the wrong track

Extreme? or Sensible? I vote sensible. November Is Coming!

The End Game

The reality is that the Democrats are out of control spenders destroying the country with totally unsustainable debt. Accountability begins in November. This administration has to be stopped while there is still hope for liberty.

It All Depends Whose Ox Is Gored

Obama is a pro at in-your-face pseudo-wisdom. Maybe that's what a university education in the ivy-league gets you these days. This is funny because it makes the point that whether legal or not, some things are appropriate and others are not. The mosque at the top of a relatively tall building near ground zero is not-appropriate. I don't care what your narrative is, it's a reminder to all that Islam is not a religion of peace, it is a religion of submission and terror. I'll change my mind when Muslims stop strapping bombs on their children and sending them to kill innocent people in the name of some demonic impulse that makes that seem appropriate to them. Until then, Islam is not only not a religion of peace, it is hard to conceive of it as a religion. No God I want to know would sanction any of it. DOUBLE STANDARDS Note also that the fund raising for this mosque extends to other nations. SEE HERE What's their interest in a ground zero mosque in the United States?

Ground Zero

Thomas Sowell In His Own Speak

SEE HERE I used to watch Thomas Sowell every now and then when he appeared on Firing Line with William F. Buckley. Here he shows how much of our current troubles are caused by lack of personal responsibility. Click on the Chapter 3 video. I loved the last line ... It's pretty much exactly how I would assess the situation.

Structural Unemployment ... Remember that Term

SEE HERE Read this and remember what it says. It's important information to take into the polls in November. This administration is locked in a dysfunctional past of failed policies and if it continues to employ these old failed ideas we will be toast before long.

Laura Schlessinger On Her Decision

The typical techniques of the left wing ranters are to be offended about anything and then howl. We should stop listening to the idiots. The number of idiots is infinite and in our society today, strangely enough, they are listened to. That probably is explained by the fact that we're no longer teaching anyone how to think.

Warming Sure! Humanly Generated? Unlikely!

SEE HERE I like it when I see serious questioning of the global warming alarmist view by serious scientists. Here's something worth reading if you are interested in this on-going squabble. I was going to write debate, but since neither side seems willing to actually just talk about the data, indeed most of the data is submerged in rhetoric, squabble seemed like the more accurate word.

Look at Parts I thorough III:
Part 1 Conclusion: There is no direct evidence showing that CO₂ caused the 20^th century warming, or as a matter of fact, any warming.

Part 2 Conclusion: if the global temperature is carefully analyzed (for example, by folding the global temperature of the past 120 years over the 11-year solar cycle), it is possible to see variations of about 0.1°C in the land temperature, and slightly less in the ocean surface temperature.

Moreover, when studying directly the total ocean heat content, it is possible to see that the amount of heat going into the oceans is at least 5 times larger than can be expected from just the changes in the total solar irradiance (e.g., see this blog entry and references therein). Thus, one can conclude that there must be at least one mechanism amplifying the link between solar activity and climate.

Part 3 Conclusion: We can expect, with reasonable confidence, that solar activity will diminish over the 21^st century, and cause a temperature decrease of several tenths of a degree.

His final words represent a true scientist: And now for the really last point. Don’t believe a word I write. If you are a genuine scientist, or wish to think like one, you should base your beliefs on facts you see and scrutinize for yourself. On the same token, do not blindly believe the climate alarmists. In particular, be ready to ask deep questions. Does the evidence you are shown prove the points that are being made? Is the evidence reliable? Sometimes you'll be amazed from the answers you find.

N-Words and Stupidity ... Linked! If they are calling Names they are Democrats!

SEE HERE This whole Laura Schlessinger thing is, as usual, being blown all out of proportion. Leave it to folks to be hypersensitive about essentially nothing. I listened to the whole piece and her point was that black athletes and entertainers make frequent use of the N-word saying N-word, N-word, N-word and why can they say it but other people can't? Gee, that's a superb case of racism? Are there any people out there with neurons? Give me a break. Get a life.

To be fair I nearly never listen to any talk radio of any kind because I use the time in the car to listen to Teaching Company Courses on things like philosophy, history, and science. But the few times I've listened to Laura Schlessinger she seemed to make a lot of sense on the whole. I checked this piece out because I was curious what was so offensive. The answer: Nothing! This is a trumped up charge. At least Imus said offensive stuff when they got on his case. There are a lot of people out there who make a profession of being offended. Oddly enough they are all Demon-crats.

Why is one group privileged to use offensive language and another group isn't? Is that freedom of speech? The N-word I always think of when I hear N-word, is Nazi. That is a word popularly used by the Demon-crats whenever they don't like a conservative policy. The other favorite Demon-crat word is the R-word, Racists. The right has only the general purpose L-word, "liberal" although that's finally gotten some traction so they're going back to being progressives again.

What Should We Expect ... ?? More Than This We Should Hope!

SEE HERE Walter Williams is another of those people who have their heads screwed on straight and tends to cut to the chase and simply state the truth, certainly the truth as best he knows it. What can we expect from Republicans? I think it depends on what kind of Republicans we get. Williams points out that the kind we've gotten in the past have not been too effective, largely because they've been gutless wonders and invested in the Washington Corruptocracy. Joseph Sobran tends to call the Republicans "the stupid party" but generally they're more accurately characterized as the gutless party. They've so seldom been in the majority that when they are they routinely fail to lead and fall back instead on a sort of Democrat-lite strategy. Why rock the boat? Well the boat needs to be rebuilt and sinking slowly or sinking fast are both still sinking. So let's dig hard and find some Republicans that actually have spines and principles. Then maybe we'll have something.

The Corruption of the Nation's Soul

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell points out how dishonest our lawmaking process has become. Bills have to be rushed through congress lest someone actually find the time to read them and protest. Little provisions entirely unrelated to the central concept of a bill are slipped in to get special taxes put in place and fund pet projects. We live in a time when government has simply grown too big, too unresponsive to the citizenry, and frankly too arrogant. If it is not trimmed back soon we will all have the luxury of extended regret, for once tyranny is established it is extremely hard to undo it.

Get Informed About the Religion of "Peace"

SEE HERE Sharia is Islamic law. It is sufficient reason in and of itself to challenge the idea that God had anything to do with Islam. Get informed because as the size of Muslim populations grow they begin to demand Sharia. Many of the provisions are simply in direct conflict with American law as well as in conflict with concepts of simple decency.

An Analogy to Remember — Arafat and the Holocaust Museum

SEE HERE Sometimes an analogy is the way to make a point in a particularly telling way. I think this one does it. Building a mosque, especially a triumphal one at the top of a tall building, two blocks from ground zero is like inviting Arafat to the Holocaust museum. It sounded reasonable but it created a perfect storm. Liberals are always talking about "sensitivity" and it is amazing therefore how little "sensitivity" they actually display when issues other than their particular pet ones come into play. It's just a bad idea.

The Political Elites ... Out of Touch? Can It Be?

SEE HERE Red State does an admirable job of nailing the hides of the liberal elites to the wall in this piece. Living in an insular group think world helps make you think you are smart. After all you must be smart if all the people that matter think the same way you do ... right? Well most of the people in jail think like criminals ... is that a fair comparison? Most of the people in asylums think like madmen ... hmmm.... The real world is full of people with various opinions, ideas, even principles and philosophies, but in the insular worlds of the hive nothing is challenged, everyone thinks the same. It is political correctness on steroids. Sometimes you just need to pour cold water on people like this. November Is Coming!

Malkin Is Incredible ... I'm In Love!

Well Ann Coulter is still my favorite but if I'm allowed two, Michelle Malkin is right up there ... Oh I forgot Laura Ingraham ... hmmm... I obviously need a harem. Michelle kicks butt! It is an old piece but it shows how thin the preparation on the View actually is.

Don't You Just Feel Great that the Government Is Going to be Your Doctor!

SEE HERE If Obamacare becomes the norm there will be no new procedures. There will be no new drugs and medical science will stagnate and decline. Your treatment will be slow, expensive, and less effective. If you supported this you just don't understand how the system works. You have one chance to turn this around. November Is Coming!

Criminal Activity, Propaganda, Abuse of Federal Funds ...

SEE HERE Nah! Obama! Really! You're kidding right? You're not really surprised are you? Is he from Chicago? Where the majority of the graveyard votes Democrat ... Of course that nasty Corsi that reports this story is the guy who wrote that nasty Swiftboat book. Actually that's why I trust him.

How to Get Stimulated! I Mean Really Angry!

But funny too! If you wondered how it was that government could be thought of as responsible you might want to look at some of this enlightened spending. Blew my mind! You can't make this stuff up ... it is too crazy!

This Is What Transparency Means

Welcome to Oz!

Ignore the Constitution: We're Smarter Than the People

SEE HERE That's the mantra of the ruling class, the dweebs that are spending all the people's money on their own pet projects and vacations in Spain and whatnot. After all, that's what winning elections is about right, who gets to spend the money any damn way they want. How dare anyone object. Well maybe the people should wake up and take a look around. Things are not looking so good and some changes need to be made.

Hmm... Sounds Like Climate Science Isn't the Only Manipulated Science

I ran into this today. It's at least a year old so it's not particularly current. Interesting however, that some scientists are speaking out about manipulation. The question is how much publicly funded science, medical and otherwise, is tainted by agenda driven pressures like this. I've heard stories like this for years out of Congressional studies for example. There was a study funded by Congress that found that acid rain was not a problem and it was quashed by the Congress so that it was not published, for example. Worse, even after the results of the 10 million dollar study which showed how limited the problem was, the Congress continued to press for policies to alleviate the non-existent problem. Sound familiar?

Singing the National Anthem

SEE HERE Well isn't it interesting that the Park Police think singing the National Anthem isn't allowed at the Lincoln Memorial. I think it's time to look into this kind of policy. It's simply crazy.

Some Thoughts on Social Security

SEE HERE Social Security would not even be necessary if Americans were frugal and invested for the future. But Americans are not frugal. In fact given recent history they are not only profligate but totally irresponsible and their government models the process. If you're a young person and you think Social Security is going to be there for you then you have an actuarial problem and a significant case of over optimism. What to do? Get frugal! If Social Security turns out to be there that's great. If you're frugal and save wisely for the future then any Social Security you get will be gravy. But you better start now. In fact given the likelihood of some significant draw back in the stock market I'd be looking hard at what stocks will be recovery candidates.

My grandfather was an organist in vaudeville. Then he played the organ in the early movie theaters for a while until the talkies came in. He became a church organist for the bishop of Cleveland and ran the choir there. While he was in vaudeville he made a little money and put it in the stock market. Then 1929 came along and the market tanked. He had put his stocks in a lockbox instead of selling them. When my father who became his dad's executor, opened the lock box he discovered that most of the stocks had recovered and appreciated to a value of over $200,000. Not a fortune, but not chump change either. The bottom line is that investing early is more important than how much you invest. Make up a savings plan to put money aside regularly. Make it hurt a little. You'll get used to it. Put the money in solid investments. If I were you I'd look into ETFs. (Exchange Traded Funds) and become an expert on them.

Good luck. Don't expect the Social Security tooth fairy to pay off! It might but then it might be freezing in hell one of these days.