I can't say I know of anyone in my family who was killed in a war.  I'm pretty sure I don't even know of any family members who fought in one.  There is one man, related by marriage, who was a flight instructor and transport pilot, bringing back wounded soldiers from the Pacific Rim theatre.  He is, like so many, disinclined to sit and talk about what he did, believing others did far more and wishing only to move along with the life our fighting men earned for all of us.

So, no combat stories in my family, no medals in a box in the closet.

But I have been to Colville-Sur-Mer on a few occasions. 

I was able to visit while I was living in Brussels.  It's a long day's drive, but worth it.

Colville-sur-Mer isn't a town so much as a cemetery, on the Normandy coast of France, not far from the little village of Arromanches-les-Bains.  That's where the Allied Forces constructed the floating set of docks known as Mulberry Harbor, offloading the tanks and trucks and military gear that was to finish the job of taking western Europe back from the Nazis.  Pieces of the steel barges which formed Mulberry Harbor are still there today, some floating, some sunken in shallow water off the beaches of Arromanches.

But before the Allies could build the harbor, they had to take the beach and drive the Nazis back.  June 6th, 1944 was D-Day.   

Several thousand Allied soldiers lost their lives in the first hours of fighting.  Many drowned in the cold surf, dragged to the bottom by the weight of their combat gear, before firing a shot or taking a bullet.

Colville-sur-Mer is the cemetery where the Allied dead were laid to rest.  Day in and day out at Colville, families (mostly American) search through the directories and consult with the French administrators to find the tombstone they are looking for, the one with the name of the long lost grandfather or uncle engraved on the white marble.  Most often it is a marble cross, sometimes a Star of David.  And usually the birthplace is there along with the name, and the age.  19, 20, 21. 

So many thousands who never made it home.  So very, very young. 

There is a museum in Arromanches devoted to the equipment, the physical remains of battle gear and clothing and weapons, and of course the photographs and the stories.  It is right on the water, and has bay windows from which one can see the remnants of Mulberry Harbor.  If the sun is shining, you can usually find one or two very old men walking up and down the boardwalk wearing full dress uniforms with medals.  They may be 'fishing', as they say, but I am always happy to bite whenever I"m there.  "Je vous remercier pour votre service, monsieur!"  A fine use of my high school French, and usually they would respond to English as well, having learned the words through sixty years of respectful repetition by visitors. 

And up the street from the museum, there are a few small shops selling cool drinks and snacks. 

In one of them there is a poster on the wall I've never seen anywhere else.  Each time I think of it I weep.  Yes, I'm weeping now.

In silhouette in the background, walking into a sunset and away from the viewer, is the iconic American GI, helmet askance, rifle slung over his shoulder.  Is he going back to his platoon and home, or is he off to heaven in that sunset, after giving the last full measure of devotion?  The viewer must decide. 

But in the foreground, seen from behind, are a pair of French children, perhaps eight or nine years old, a boy and a girl holding hands and waving goodbye to the GI. 

The caption?

"Merci, monsieur!"

Thank you mister.  For everything.

When a city, a county, a state or a nation runs short of money to fulfill the obligations it sets for itself, this is not a 'downturn', or a 'crisis', or a 'revenue problem'.

THIS IS FISCAL AND FIDUCIARY IRRESPONSIBILITY.

Many people forget the second aspect and I'll describe it in a moment. 

Our legislators and bureaucrats have, of course, failed in their FISCAL responsibility to properly budget, meaning they've piled on future expenses without any certainty that the money would be there to meet those obligations.  This is now tradition, and not just Obama's fault, although the new heights of irresponsibility achieved in one short year of his control are breathtaking.  But the annual budget deficit in Bush's last year was something over $100 billion, which is over $3000 per citizen, and much more per taxpayer, just for one year of government services.  This is not the price of the services; that price was paid by the citizen's tax bill.  This is the EXCESS, the addition to the tax bill, rather like government informing you they've put $3000 on your VISA card. 

Obama's February deficit was over $200 billion.  MONTHLY deficit, not annual.  It's a new high that is a new low in terms of fiscal responsibility.  It's like the government taking your tax payments AND charging your VISA card $6000, EVERY MONTH. (and never mind the fact that half the country pays no taxes at all.  another story for another day.)

Personally, I've found I cannot run a budget deficit in my household.  I cannot make a practice out of spending more than I take in each year.  The banks charge INTEREST on those deficits when I run them!  And my credit has limits, like my income.  If I do not want to waste money spending it on INTEREST, receiving nothing in return for the expenditure, then I simply cannot run a personal deficit.

Legislators, though, appear to have no hesitation when it comes to wasting taxpayer money spending it on INTEREST.   Fiscally irresponsible behavior comes naturally to them, and red ink is the blood of Washington, state capitols and city councils.  They have the worst habits of the 'consumerism' they often deplore, happily deciding what they want and then buying it on credit, saying 'we'll deal with this debt later'.

But back to my terms.  FIDUCIARY responsibility goes further than simple fiscal responsibility; it is the ethical burden of the person who is spending other people's money.  He or she is obligated to take as little of the OPM (other people's money) as possible, and get as much OUT of it as possible.  Fiduciary responsibility is the specific duty in managing OPM.  Your stockbroker or financial advisor is bound by it.  Anyone who makes a living handling OPM is held responsible for financial decisions in a clear and usually legally enforceable way. 

If you told your broker to buy gold with your money, and discovered, reading your next monthly statement, that he had bought risky tech stocks instead and lost half your principal, you would be outraged at his FIDUCIARY irresponsibility.  And he would probably be legally responsible for the losses incurred by failing to follow your instructions.  The primary concern of the decision maker should be the financial well-being of the person whose money is being used to execute the decision.  If other concerns become more important (like padding commissions or helping out a buddy's new hedge fund), the decision maker acts with fiduciary irresponsibility and should be punished.

So, fiscal responsibility involves sensible management of available funds in general terms.  Don't spend more than you have, shop for best prices, etc. 

Fiduciary responsibility is a matter of respect for the work that other person does to earn his money, and for his right to own and keep what he earns.

But government no longer pays attention to these guidelines and is not in practical terms bound by these responsibilities.   Government long ago forgot the term 'fiduciary responsibility' and abandoned any respect it ever had for the taxpayer.   He is now a mule, to carry whatever burden, for however long, the legislators decide.  The taxpayer is the milk cow, the harnessed ox.   Some will argue that representation in legislatures means we do have a voice and the government cannot ignore us.  But reality says otherwise.  These fine gentlemen and ladies have worked out how to bypass that connection, and it now means little to them, if anything.

It's been interesting to watch the health care debacle this year, as government finally abandoned pretense and made plain its fierce determination to pass laws against the will of the huge majority of the citizens. 

They do this constantly, of course, in their spending decisions on more mundane matters.  The will of the taxpayer is ignored; only his 'contributions' are paid any attention.  Revenue down?  Out of money?  Raise taxes!  Need to pay a pesky interest bill?  PRINT MORE MONEY, thus devaluing the money we taxpayers work so hard to get, and through inflation, raising prices on the goods and services we buy with our not-unlimited dollars.

I continue to be astounded at the tendency Americans have to simply trust government, to believe in its ethical goodness.  Many people I know (including doctors and other professionals) dismiss the things I tell them on the grounds that 'government wouldn't do that, they can't, they're responsible to the people, etc. etc."  Often these people are uninformed, of course; they're very busy and don't have time to search for the news the mainstream media refuses to give them.  Yet they often reject my efforts to inform them on the grounds that the information is just not believable.  In other words, it conflicts with what they want to believe about their government.

But more and more people are reluctantly coming to understand these things.  Government on all levels has failed us in fiscal and fiduciary responsibility; it has planned on an endless supply of money and committed itself to spend money it will never receive.  On a federal level, of course, they can simply print more.  Yes, it's a slap in the face of hard working people to devalue their money, and in the long term it spells W E I M A R disaster, but it's a quick fix. 

But states cannot print money.  And states, counties and cities are in DEEP trouble, having had the same habits as Washington for decades but now facing 'revenue shortfalls' for which they should have planned. 

They will soon be coming to Washington, hats in hands, asking the American taxpayer to 'bail them out'; and of course, Obama knows this and is planning to say yes.  Here in Texas, where our government has budgeted carefully and our economy is sound, we are the 'cabra estacado', the staked goat, soon to be eaten by the ravenous Debtosaurus which Washington will unleash on us.  Socialism will 'share the wealth' between functional and nonfunctional states.

The primary cause of state, city and county deficits are promises to government workers regarding pensions and benefits-- concessions to 'workers' unions' in contract negotiations which ought to be invalid, given the government's RAGING conflict of interest.  They are, you see, both 'management' and 'arbitrator' in the battle between labor and management.   It is easy to be both when the money you are spending is OPM, taxpayer dollars.  Union wants a raise?  GIVE IT TO THEM.  No sweat.  Management didn't have to earn this money by doing business, right?  Just load up the mules, milk the cows more, crack the whip on the backs of the oxen.  No problem.  Whatever the union wants, it gets.  We are, government says, their advocates, not their adversaries.  An untenable situation, this conflict of interest where management is both the advocate for labor and the arbitrator of disputes between itself and labor; it would never happen in business, because business has to come up with the money it promises to the unions.  (well, unless you're General Motors, where the solution for the problems incurred by acting like government was to BECOME government)

Government has a far easier time raising this money than business does-- at least until the taxpayers take to the streets baying for legislators' blood. 

If Texas is put on the hook for the pensions and medical plans of state and city and county workers from California, Michigan, Florida and New Jersey, expect to hear the baying very soon.

Of course, it would have been fiscally responsible for state legislators not to commit to spending for which the funding was uncertain.  It would have been fiduciary responsibility on display if all these governments had restrained themselves in the spending department, out of respect for taxpayer effort and work, and respect for property rights--  the right to own what you earn and keep it. 

Taxpayers understand government must be funded and it must do certain things.  But taxpayers have lost any real connection to government.  It turns a deaf ear to them, often literally, as legislators have been seen running away, physically running, from angry citizens over the past year or so.

The original tea party was not just a citizen gathering with signs and chants.  It was a punch in the face of Big King, destroying a large shipment of products on which Big King expected a huge lump of arbitrarily high tax revenue.  Instead, Big King got nothing AND he lost the value of the shipment.  It was real and costly destruction, by citizens outraged at government's casual dismissal of their concerns and its contempt for their right to own and keep what they earn.

In Greece, the riots these days are caused by the cutting off of 'the gravy train', social welfare and union enrichment and fake employment at taxpayer expense.  Too many are too dependent on government, and economic reality has now made itself heard.  The dependents outnumber those upon whom they depend, and the milk cows are simply dried up. 

In our country of course I expect these same riots.  We have more people on a richer gravy train than anywhere else in the world. 

But what will the American taxpayer do when his life is destroyed, his work contemptuously dismissed, his place in the world now fully changed to beast of burden for a monster government?  What will he do when he fully and finally realizes his own government is his adversary, even his enemy, and is happily planning his subjugation as a part of its new vision of America's future?

Stalin is not dead. 

But neither is the American taxpayer.  He is aroused from his work-exhausted slumber, and is learning that vague trust in government is a fool's game.

Fiscal irresponsibility is cause for dismissal from a post; fiduciary irresponsibility is worthy of a punch in the mouth. 

When you take my hard earned money and waste it, display contempt for me and my work, show me that my children and my future aren't worth even a moment of your concern, you've passed the point of a simple need to address fiscal issues.  Your contempt for me is a personal affront. 

I'm no longer thinking in business terms, that I need to make some personnel changes to improve fiscal performance. 

I am now FURIOUS.  My anger is that of the wronged person desiring justice.

Ironic, isn't it?  In the end, real 'social justice' will turn out to be the righteous "redress of grievances" sought by the victims of theft, contempt and real oppression committed against them by their own government.

I like it.

 

The title of Halperin's new book is ironic.  Any of the more arresting anecdotes would certainly have, in his vernacular, "changed the game", if he and his partner had the virtue to actually release the information when they knew it.  As reporters are supposed to do, of course.

Rush Limbaugh rightly pointed out that this book's authors withheld pertinent information, which at the time would have given voters a much needed perspective to inform their subsequent decisions, in order that they might sell a blockbuster book and rake in profits.  Yes, the lefty media rarely misses an opportunity to behave like capitalists when one comes their way, and this one will certainly enrich Mr. Halperin and company.

But this morning a different thought struck me.  Suppose Edwards had managed to hitch his star to Obama, and actually became vice president.  If Halperin had revealed his knowledge publicly and Edwards survived it, what might have happened to Halperin once Edwards (and his harpy wife) had a couple of levers of power in hand?  The blowback principle might well have done serious harm to Halperin, his partners in investigation, even the company he worked for. 

And now that we see the picture of Obama, the arrogant, superior narcissist with a bent for vindictiveness, that emerges in this book, don't even THINK about publishing a timely investigation that reveals these aspects of his character.  He'll end up having a public book burning, with the authors under the pile......

So the upside of the book revenues was combined with the potential downside of a timely published investigation, and the decision to withhold this information from the public was a no-brainer.  Self preservation, self enrichment, it was two sides of the same coin.

Think about this when you read the paper.  Journalists are creatures much like politicians and their appointees; self-protection, who you attach yourself to, insider relationships, old debts, old grudges, all have an effect on this thing they call journalism. 

And because of this, we RARELY see or hear or read what actually happens in Washington.  It isn't just manipulated to fool us or to change our thinking.  Sometimes its manipulated simply because it's the nature of surviving and thriving in that arena.

Sad, and a bit nauseating.

A few weeks ago I reviewed my posts on this blog going back years, and confirmed my own memory regarding globinal warmering.  I first posted on the topic in late 2006. 

At the time, the Solar Cycle numbered 'twenty three' had come to an end, and the next one (sometimes they overlap) had not yet begun.  In fact, it was months late according to astronomers, some of whom expressed vague concern.  More on solar cycles in a moment. 

I suggested then that the sun probably plays a larger role than climate scientists were willing to admit.  The conspiratorial guilt revealed in those recent emails from the Climate Research Center took relatively few people by surprise; their effort to steer conclusions was fairly obvious, if unprovable at the time.

 But I already knew my world history.  I knew of the medieval warm period in the tenth century, in which global temps were higher than today.  It's the reason Greenland is named Greenland, an island of ice now but temperate when Vikings settled there over a thousand years ago.  This medieval warm period is one of the inconvenient truths the CRU crew were busily trying to eliminate from the 'temperature proxy record' so that today's temperatures would appear to be unprecedented. 

Here's what happened.  A CRU scientist named Keith Briffa had succeeded in making the medieval warm period disappear by cherry-picking the trees to be used in the tree ring sample chart.  His problem?  The same chart, carried through today, showed a decline in temperatures where thermometer data showed a rise.  That was no good; not only did it not show what they wanted it to show, the 'modern unprecedented increase in temperatures', but it gave away the fact that the chart was created to make the medieval warm period disappear from history.  It was this 'decline' in proxy tree-ring temperatures for the modern period which the scientists referenced in the famous 'hide the decline' emails. 

How did the CRU scientists 'hide the decline'?  On the chart, they stopped the tree-ring record temperature data at the year 1960 and pasted on the actual thermometer data after 1960-- and DID NOT TELL ANYONE THAT THE SOURCE OF THE TEMPERATURE DATA CHANGED AT THE YEAR 1960 on their chart.  Onlookers made the not unreasonable presumption that the chart was consistent, that its sources and interpretations did NOT change at a key historical moment, and that if this had been true the 'scientists' would have INFORMED us of it, for the sake of good science and peer review and yada yada.

But the good doctors switched from 'proxy' tree ring data to actual thermometer readings and did not tell anyone or print it on the chart.  They did this because when they pasted the two data streams together, they were successful at creating the famous 'hockey stick' chart of rapid unprecedented modern temperature rise... a phony chart, which was long ago accepted as a true representation of the historical weather record and has been at the heart of everything from Kyoto to Copenhagen to Cap and Trade legislation and worse.  These massive changes in government and taxation and economic circumstances are all based on a phony chart, a trick.   It was a deception deliberately created by the so called climate scientists working on the IPCC climate reports from the United Nations.

They 'hid the decline'.  That was what they called "Mike's nature trick" in the emails.  The trick was the cut and paste job on the chart. Charming.

 And I knew of the 17th century "little ice age" too, a phenomenon that killed a generation of people whose crops failed and whose livelihood, agriculture, was halted by thirty years of permafrost in formerly temperate zones.  Streets all over southern England are named after grapes, vineyards, wine varieties.  Nobody ever seems to notice that southern England is traditionally too cool for grapes to flourish.  But when those ancient towns were still growing, the grapes were growing too.  Hence the street names, incomprehensible today, like "the Vineyards" and "Vine St." in London.  The little ice age of the 17th century put a hard end to that industry, but the street names survived. 

And I knew, too, of the chilly beginning of the 19th century in which an observed lack of sunspots correlated with a decades-long period of considerable cooling. That period played a part in military history; Napoleon's army in Russia was crippled by below-normal winter temperatures, and in the end failed to hold the Kremlin and had to withdraw.  Horror stories of the experiences of that army are the stuff of military legend, but history has not made the connection.  A Maunder Minimum of solar radiation, named for the astronomer who first observed it, cost Bonaparte the opportunity to create the worldwide "Roman Empire" of his dreams.  He built a Roman arch in Paris called the Arc de Triomphe, after the famous Roman triumphal parades of victorious generals into that ancient city.  And the 'little Emperor' was often painted in Roman garb, including toga and laurel wreath.  But he lost too many soldiers in the deep snows of the Russian solar minimum, and his military and personal strength never recovered.

The cycles of solar radiation's ups and downs are measured, on average, at about eleven years.  Twenty three times since astronomers have kept track, the sun has gone through this decadal increase and decrease of radiation.  Sunspots and flares are visible manifestations of those increases, and their disappearance the opposite. 

We all recognize those exciting astronomy photos of the sun blasting out its flares, gamma rays and X rays and visible light all looping and bursting from the surface of the sphere, a massive dance of sheer power so visibly large as to render the earth smaller than a pinhead in any visual comparison.  The flares are often longer and larger than the sun itself.

And those flares are quite absent from the sun today, and have been since 2006.  No sunspots except perhaps one or two over a period of months, each lasting a day or two and then disappearing.  And no giant flares of energy at all.

And of course, the year is now 2010.

That's right, the amount of time since the last cycle ended has now covered almost half the length of the next cycle, which should now be in full bloom and nearing its peak.  The sun, though, remains obstinate; quiet and 'cool'.

If Old Sol were doing his normal thing, the Enviro-Marxists would be winning their great battle for control, would even now be raking in all our taxpayer dollars after the world had given in to their complaints of impending doom and bowed to a giant worldwide government.  The globinal warmening 'phenomenon' would be roasting us-- just as it did in the early 1930's, a time when Washington DC hit 100 degrees or more on each of thirty consecutive days in the summer of 1931.  (And yes, it was a peak of the solar cycle).

A normal solar cycle would mean the greenies would already be dictating from their lofty perches your thermostat setting, the kind of car you drive (if any), the size of television you're permitted to buy, and a gazillion other formerly personal decisions made in freedom. 

And soon taxes would be raised to unheard-of levels and government would confiscate the rewards of hard working people like never before, with no relief to be found and nowhere to flee.  The resulting global catastrophic loss of incentive- encouragement for the productive to BE productive- would then blanket the world in poverty and lack, making everyone 'equal' by bringing down the best of us while doing nothing for those who were already poor.  Leftism, after all, never really does anything for those people.  Leftists do not want to end poverty; desperate dependence on government is how the left maintains power.   

But it is the fatal flaw of Marxism that wealth must be produced before it is redistributed, and there is simply no substitute for incentive.  When the productive are viewed by government as cows to be milked, the productive become far less productive and the flow of milk rapidly dries up.  Combine this decrease in available resources with the clumsiness and inefficiency of central planning and distribution, and suddenly poverty is the norm in a post-modern Marxist globally governed world.  

And as in Orwell's "Animal Farm", we would all be equal, but some would be more equal than others.  The chauffered limo, the beach resort at Martha's Vineyard, the private jet, all these things would still be available to the elite.  Conventional airlines would be driven out of business in the first decade of such a paradise, but the chariots of the smaller gods would continue to ply the skies.

Now, though, just in time to save us from massive taxation related to globinal warmening legislation and world treaties, the good Lord has delivered unto us a Maunder Minimum- if in fact this turns out to be one.  It is well on its way.  And God, as wits have noted, has a fabulous sense of humor.  No better way to 'withhold the destruction of Sodom for the sake of ten good men' than to cast a real cold wet blanket over the burning ardor of the 21st century communist movement.  The 'wise men' are made fools once more. 

Of course I do not welcome the suffering of this world, and at this moment it is suffering from the cold.  Moscow, 1 degree Fahrenheit this week, Beijing 2 (and government there is now rationing electricity), Paris and London and Brussels and Amsterdam and Berlin all locked in a weeks-long deep freeze.  I recently spoke with a 71 yr old Dutchman who said he did not remember ever seeing such cold and so much snow in the Netherlands.  The UK is now running out of road sand for keeping drivers safe during what are said to be snowstorms unequaled in a century, and of course all across the USA we're dealing with crop-killing freeze conditions and record snowfalls.  Tomorrow night, it is said, my home town of Dallas will see temperatures as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest in twenty five years or more.  The latest forecast has three nights in a row below 20 degrees here, and freeze warnings all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

And if it's true, this is just the beginning.  A genuine Maunder Minimum, a decades-long absence of sunspots and flares, would directly impact food production, killing crops and preventing maturity of subsequent plantings by shortening growing seasons worldwide. 

Warmer weather would only open up more land for agriculture.  Colder weather makes agriculture HARDER.

Thirty years of unreasonable cold would do just as it did three hundred and fifty years ago; starve a generation of people, particularly the poor, who have no recourse when the day-to-day food supply withers. 

Then again, there's always the possibility that this is the beginning of something worse; what historians agree is a now OVERDUE ice age, the real thing,

Mile-deep ice over places like Cleveland and Nashville, as it has been in past millennia, would of course bring the end of life as we know it.  Ice ages have begun very quickly in history, with total change from warm period to full ice age occurring in as little as a couple of decades according to tested core samples.  Remember the woolly mammoths, found upright in the ice with undigested food still in their stomachs? 

This world can change quickly indeed.

And mile-deep ice is the normal condition of this planet.  Warm periods of ten thousand years or so, like the one we have enjoyed, are rare in the known history of earth, happening only every few million years.  And this one has now lasted eleven thousand years, making the next ice age historically overdue.

It would be nice, at this point, if these 'climastrologists' would put down their Communist Manifestos and their leftist ambitions and get serious.  We need to know what's really happening, and if there is anything we can do to protect ourselves. 

Read up on your Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler.  Worldwide, leftism has been proven to starve citizens even when other countries are enjoying relative plenty; let's not distract ourselves with ideological fervor while we need our best minds at work to KEEP US ALIVE.

This is amazing.  Obama, addressing children at Christmas, manages to distort the Christmas story (so clear in the minds of these children!) so that it reflects redistribution, Marxism, utopian ideals...  he even gets in the (not really) code words like 'even though the wise men have all this wealth and power"!  So being magicians/courtiers/advisers in service of some Persian king 2,000 years ago is morally equivalent (in his warped marxist mind) to being an evil capitalist corporate banker/oilman!  (update- fun part is around 13 m. mark, sorry for those who had to sit thru the first 12! :-) 

This man has no shame, no sense of humility, only the dogged determination to advance both himself as leader and his ideology as the only true good in the world.  Just like Islam "respects" Moses, Abraham and Jesus as God's preliminary prophets as a way of mollifying Christians and Jews and smoothing their way into Islam (the carrot to accompany Islam's many sticks, of course), so does The One salute Christianity's history as providing us with examples of...  forward thinking behavior from early Socialists. 

Rhetorical question--  if one day God vaporizes Obama with a bolt of heavenly lightning, would Chavez say he smelled sulfur?

I heard Glenn Beck say recently that it's probably a good thing Obama was elected, as it's galvanized America to recover and restore itself in a way that McCain probably would not have done.  McCain, he argues (effectively and truthfully), is a hidden progressive, a fan of Teddy Roosevelt (who was far more leftwing than most realize).  McCain was late to sign on to 'global warming' theory, at a time when a growing number of scientists and pundits were backing away from it due to evidence which contradicts it.  McCain always leans toward government solutions and 'compromise' with his pals on the left, and would probably have signed almost all the legislation Pelosi's crowd would have come up with. 

In other words, a McCain presidency would have sent us down this same road, more slowly, but would NOT have awakened the sleeping giant of American conservatism.  He's a war hero, he's a Republican, etc etc.  An all American story, unlike Barack Hussein Obama, and a story that would have calmed quite a few on the right and permitted much of this dangerous agenda to slide past us.

Beck's postulation has merit, and as it's a theory developed 'after the fact' and was not something Beck agitated for DURING the election, it is not technically harmful to the nation to discuss it.  McCain already lost.  The grassroots conservative revolution is up and running thanks to Obama's knee jerk leftism, and more power to us. 

I mentioned, on Twitter, that Beck seems to be right about this.  The knee jerk leftism has awakened us, and we NEEDED to be awakened.  Ergo the terrible damage Obama is inflicting on this nation is, in a wierd way, 'good' for it, like the pain of a visit to the dentist is good for your health.

For this, I am now labeled 'not a conservative'.  And I do not understand it. 

I want the conservative revolution, and I have appeared at every possible event spawned by it, going all the way back to a chilly day in February in downtown Dallas for the first Tea Party.  I paid good money for a weekend in DC, airfare, hotel and expensive food, to be a part of the 9/12 event and document it in a video here. 

There is almost nobody on EARTH more politically conservative than I am.   I don't get down in the weeds of policy and compromise; I work from basic PRINCIPLE.  Liberty in all things, from religion to economic activity to choices large and small.  He governs best who governs least.  The constitution is a lifter of humanity and should be revered and obeyed.  Government is LIMITED by it, not empowered.  Term limits.  Overturn Roe v. Wade, which is bad law as well as immoral.  Eliminate the Fed, the IRS as it is now constituted, and the Department of Education.  Give me a 10% flat tax or similar low burden on the economy, let states and communities handle education free from leftist big government interference and propagandizing, and for health insurance cost reduction simply remove artificial barriers to better risk pooling and competition-- STATE LINES.  To lower cost of health care, give me TORT REFORM.

And I am a Christian man, having given my life to Christ in 1987, and I'm imperfectly trying to live as He would have me do. 

And Beck seems to me to be right in this simple, after the fact conversational offering.  But for agreeing with him, I'm now 'not conservative'...  ??

Some think Beck is simply saying "Obama's election was a good thing" and are not seeing the larger context of it.  So to clarify--

He is talking after the fact of the election, meaning it's talk, not action.  Beck undoubtedly did not VOTE for Obama, and he CERTAINLY did not encourage anyone else to do so.  What he's saying now is NOT causative of anything, only an observation.  It is simply uncalled for to react to his assertion as if he was blithely saying "I'm glad Obama won" without explaining why.

And the why, again, is this--  BECAUSE OBAMA'S ELECTION IS CAUSING A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION AND MCCAIN'S ELECTION WOULD NOT HAVE DONE SO. 

And this country, opines Beck and myself, would have gone down this same general path, albeit with a slower timeline and some small substantive differences, if McCain had won.  McCain is a progressive, NOT a conservative.  He would sign all manner of crazy leftist bills, and the more we 'got in his face' about them, the more rigid and determined he would be.  He's not a smart man, and believes compromise, like 'honor', is a PRINCIPLE.  McCain holds almost no conservative positions, and is easily led by those he considers smart.  Oh, and he isn't a big fan of evangelical Christians, a common failing of the modern republican party.

So, before you criticize Beck as having somehow ENDORSED Obama or said he's GLAD Obama was elected, remember the POINT.

Obama has caused a CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION to begin, one without which this nation WOULD NOT SURVIVE as it its now.  And McCain as president would probably NOT have caused it.  Ipso facto, it is 'better' that Obama was elected.  Better for conservatism, better for the future of America, not because of anything Obama is DOING (he is destructive beyond words) but for the RESPONSE to what he's doing.

It's a response this country had to have.  It's like throwing up--  you know that if you don't do it, you will be VERY sick for an extended time.  McCain is the 'not throwing up' sickness.  Longer, slower, but in the end just as bad.  Obama is the quick projectile vomiting.  Shorter, more intense, and in the end cleansing and restorative.

The leftists have been at this since the heyday of world Marxism/communism, the 1930s.  Britain's leftists became spies, Philby, Blunt, Burgess, heroes of the Soviet Union for their work against their own country.  Every western nation had Soviet Union fans, helpers, useful idiots like Walter Duranty of the New York Times.  FDR was one of them.  Because of the war and the powerful pro American instincts and values which carried us through it to victory, people thought the leftists had vanished.  But they never did.  They just beavered away in anonymity, inside government and out, slowly working up through the 1960s, becoming ever more radical and subversive, all the while working up to THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY, the 'takeover' of the United States of America.

I believe with all my heart that they will not succeed, that this nation is more than they thought we were, that this nascent revolution will continue and grow and take back the levers of power in this country.  God did not bless us and raise us so high for so long, only to wander off while a small minority of people set about destroying all He helped us make and build.

Call it faith if you want.  I believe America is far from over and I'm hip deep in the fight, insofar as an ordinary guy can be.

I AM A CONSERVATIVE.  :-) 

And that settles it. 

This is the perfect anecdote.  I'm sure it represents many millions of Americans who confront this issue at some point in their lives.

Kathy Ireland was a supermodel. 

Sports Illustrated covers, bikinis, then movie roles, the whole deal.  She was her generation's Christie Brinkley or Cheryl Tiegs.  She had it all, including the requisite liberal Hollywood viewpoints.

But something happened to her when she 'grew up'.  This guy people call Jesus Christ managed to get her attention, and she was 'born again'.  There is a reason He chose that metaphor to describe the process of becoming Christian; the change is so total, so absolute, that no aspect of life is left untouched by it.

In Kathy's case, one of the notable changes was in her view of abortion.  She came to realize there was no proof that 'a bundle of cells is not a human being', as the pro side claims.  She put her mind to work, did her research, and most importantly, asked every pro choice person she could find to prove or demonstrate rationally that a fetus has an early stage at which it is not a human being.

And she was shocked to find that even the scientists, in whom she had placed her faith as a young person to have the 'settled answers' to this kind of issue, had no clue what makes a human human.  Those few people who took her challenge seriously ended up offering the Bill Maher answer, "a clump of cells that doesn't look like a person can't be human, right?"

Kathy asked herself the scientific question; does a clump of cells already 'represent' a complete human being in any way?  The answer is yes, of course.  DNA, the genetic code, the 'genome', is already there, from the moment the fertilized cell begins to split into two cells.  A person's hair color, eye color, height, pattern baldness, weight gain tendencies, individual mental capacity, physical responses to allergens, inclination to become addicted to some substances, blood type and athletic ability and strength and longevity and a whole lot of a person's personality; it's all in the code.  There is a sound and solid argument just on available evidence that a fetus, even a very small one, is 'human'; it has all it needs to complete the entire process of a human life, right down to its likely natural cause of death.

I recall a story I heard in Twinsburg, Ohio, the town that hosts the annual Twins Festival.  Twin brothers, aged 67, were outdoors one sunny Sunday.  One played golf, the other cut the lawn at his home.  The two awoke on stretchers, side by side, having suffered heart attacks in the exact same hour, possibly the same minute, of that afternoon.  At age 67, then, they knew their bodies were far more pre-programmed than anyone realized.  The Genome is nowhere near being completely unlocked in this way.  Nobody knows what's in there beyond the most basic of instructions.  But we know from this story and many others that genes can carry instructions for far more aspects of life than anyone had previously thought.

Kathy concluded (as I did) that science can't prove a fetus is, at some early stage, not human.  On its own, science cannot even identify what makes us human.  We are animals with extras; "spirit, soul, imagination, self-awareness, abstract thought" and so forth.  These things are not quantifiable in any scientific terms.  This means science cannot give the day, the hour, the moment when a fetus gets that magic pixie dust of humanity, goes from the 'clump of cells' to the 'baby person'.  Without that knowledge, then, we must take the reverse timeline approach-- if a baby newly born is human, then the same baby one day before is also human, and one month, and six months, and eight months before.  There is in fact only one point in time when the 'existence' of the human being can clearly be delineated. 

The day before conception there is no person.  The day after, there is.  It is from nonexistence to existence.  No other 'stage' in the process of fetal maturation is identifiable as the stage at which 'humanity', whatever that is, arrives.

That's why nobody on the pro choice side ever goes within a country mile of this argument.  They know it's a losing proposition.  If they try to prove a fetus is not human, they'll fail, and anyone listening will realize THEY ARE WRONG, and abortion is murder.

So they put everything in the terms of women's rights.  But nobody has the right to murder a human being.  Any woman doing this will be sent to prison, just like any man. 

But now you know, beyond doubt, that a fetus IS a human being.  All logic and rationality demand this be acknowledged, and one need not know exactly what MAKES a human human, whereas the other side must point to a moment at which humanity arrives in the already living fetus in order to justify abortion 'before' that moment. 

Simple logic shows the fetus must be human, as nobody can prove, or will even attempt to prove, that it is not.  Proof is required here.  We're talking about killing.  We can't be lazy or disinterested in answers; we MUST know!  And their side will not tell us.  We are supposed to flinch and withdraw at the words "women's rights". 

Almost all abortions are for for the sake of convenience.  I realize the word can seem flippant, but putting aside its emotional overreach it simply means that a person is unwilling to go through all the enormous life changes a baby brings.  The money, the school, the relationship with parents, the respect of family, the unfortunate permanent tie with the baby's father (often a man who is best forgotten)-- serious as all these are, they still add up to 'convenience'.  If you would recoil from killing a human being standing in front of you, then rationality compels that same revulsion to apply to a human being not yet born.  Placing aspects of your own life ahead of another human being's RIGHT to be alive is, plainly, wrong.

Unless you can prove a fetus isn't human. 

The inconsistency in the expressed views of that pro side gives their game away.  Some say 'it doesn't look human', implying that when it does, then abortion is wrong.  Yet others on that same side, including our esteemed President for life Barack Ogabe, believe you can kill it with impunity right up until natural childbirth is COMPLETE.  Obama fought for and voted for the kind of measures which permit the insertion of scissors into the skull of a child whose body is still inside the birth canal.  The scissors break open the hole and in goes the vacuum to suck out the brains of this little person.  Such is partial birth abortion, and I don't hear Bill Maher saying the 9 month old fetus 'doesn't look human'. 

Because it DOES look human.  IT IS human.  The Maher argument carries an implication that its adherent is open to the idea that at some point a fetus does become human. If Maher's 'clump of cells' isn't a baby, then he must be willing to acknowledge that a fetus which DOES look like a baby IS a baby.  But interestingly, I cannot recall any pro choicer who uses the 'clump of cells' argument having any comment on partial birth abortion.  Even NARAL has a problem with partial birth abortion!  But not Our Dear Leader, The One, The Saviour, El Presidente por la vida, Barry Ogabe.  He's all for killing babies that are lying on cold steel counters, alive, healthy, survivors of botched abortions, by simply leaving them on that cold steel counter until dehydration, starvation and exposure do their civic duty.

(Aside-- I have run across one or two people with a malfunctioning or insufficient sense of humor, and if you're the third, here's why I call him Ogabe.  Zimbabwe's president for life Robert Mugabe is famous for seizing private property, and for the million percent inflation that results from printing money like newspapers and going into massive national debt.  I suspect Mugabe is a role model for Obama, so I've synthesized their names to communicate my sense of the similarities between the two men.  Hence, Ogabe.)

I await with interest the argument from that side which points out clearly at what stage a fetus becomes human.  Science, perhaps, can do it.  Science disappointed Kathy Ireland in that respect, but maybe she didn't ask the right people.  I mean, they're out there, ready with the answer, just waiting for the right person to call on them...  right?  Surely people who are so loud and insistent in defending this 'right to choose' can explain rationally, for the peace of mind of any sensible person wishing to pursue their path, how a 'fetus' isn't human......  ???

After all, we don't want to be guilty of 'choosing' to kill somebody.  If there is doubt, then it should be explained by the smart people, so we red state rednecks can be free of guilt when we bow to their superior wisdom. 

And surely those who fight so hard for the woman's right to abort would know when a fetus becomes human, right? 
.....
Kathy asked them, and came away with nothing.  Same thing happened to me, probably about the same time.  When I was young I voted for Mondale, I supported abortion rights and other liberal causes, not because I was convinced or even interested but because I was trying to impress a girl who had those views.  I had no idea what it all meant, but I knew what I had to say to impress the girl.  And yes, it worked.  I found out later that she, as many full throttle abortion rights supporters, had one herself not long before.

I knew her later in life, and I happened to be around one day when she saw a group of children at recess in the schoolyard. She actually broached the subject with me, tear in her eye, saying "my child would have been this age now".  Not the words of a woman who had a medical procedure to remove an annoying clump of cells.  She knew what she had done, and felt guilty all these years later.  But at the time, she was fully committed to the cause, believing she was on the side of right, of 'women's rights' to be specific. I wonder how many of the tens of millions of women in this category are experience that sadness, that guilt, that fear of God's retribution, over having killed their own children.  I wonder how many are lying awake at night, and are contributing to America's all time record for sleeping pill consumption.

If a hunter in a forest had his crosshairs on a visible patch of brown fur, he'd shoot, right?  Even if he thought it might be a brown jacket on a person picking truffles under a tree, the hunter ought to shoot... right?  Because a little doubt shouldn't stop him from killing.  He needs food for his family, and there is a patch of brown fur in his sights.  He has a right to provide food to family!  Who cares if it might be a person, SHOOT! SHOOT!!!

In the real world, any hunter hesitates and holds his fire when he thinks his target MIGHT be a person. 

But not the pro choice crowd.  Even though they cannot offer a shred of evidence to prove a fetus is NOT a person, they skip right past the 'benefit of the doubt' and go straight to the killing.

Sensible people, of course, give the benefit of the doubt.  Nobody wants to be guilty of killing a human being, even if they 'didn't know' it was human.  Just the thought that it might be, just that little shred of doubt, ought to be enough to stop the act of killing, at least for long enough that the doubt can be erased.

But nobody who sets out to have that doubt erased will achieve their goal, will convince sensible people that a fetus is not a human being.  Nobody is making the argument at all, let alone a cogent and compelling argument, to demonstrate that an unborn fetus is not human.

What are the arguments FOR abortion? Why, they're all about the WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE. 

She has a right, we're told, to decide what happens with her body.  So do we all, actually.  But the question is, does the fetus constitute 'her body' or is it a separate human being?  If the latter, then the fact that it's temporarily residing inside her body does NOT give her the right to kill it, anymore than I would have the right to kill someone who is in my car or in my living room.  A pregnant woman is in the position of hostess here, someone who has a high level of responsibility to care for and nurture this little guest.  That responsibility continues to apply after birth and up through age 18, legally speaking. 

And in a real sense they've already exercised their right to choose when they chose to participate in the activity of reproduction.  Perhaps they used protection; perhaps they took great care to prevent pregnancy.  But they chose to do what they did, and knew at the time it carried the risk.  Only the rape victim can claim otherwise.

You might think I'm going to make an allowance for a rape victim.  No.  If a fetus is a human being, it's a human being.  It has no responsibility for its own existence, and cannot choose its father.  Killing the fetus is as much a murder as in an abortion of convenience.  It is NOT about the motive, it's about the result of the act itself.  An abortion kills a human being.  Once the human being has been killed, no reason for having made that onerous choice is going to pass muster.  I can be overwhelmed with sympathy for victims of rape, but why would the rape of one victim prompt anyone to make a second victim, one who won't even survive these events?  If it weren't for the difficulty of being certain what actually happened in most rape cases, I'd support the death penalty for rapists.  That is the extent of my revulsion for and hatred of rapists.  No human being should have to submit unwillingly to that total domination and control from another, under any circumstances.  But there are women who have abused the privelege of womanhood and made false accusations of rape in order to harm the life of a man toward whom they are ill disposed.  Because there are rarely witnesses, the truth of any such event is very hard to fully learn.  For this reason only, I"ll withhold my blessing from executions of rapists. 

But as for the fetus, if it's a baby and it didn't do anything wrong, you shouldn't kill it.  Period.  And needless to say, infants in the womb can't really do anything wrong, let alone anything wrong enough to provoke the taking of their lives as a measure of justice.  They are innocent in every sense.

There is no middle ground.  A person is a person is a person.  "Thou shalt not murder" is the eighth commandment.  To murder is to kill a person.  And yes, this means a rape victim must give birth to the rapist's child or be complicit in murder.  Life is unfair, and we have no guarantees that people will always respect our rights or treat us well, or that our lives will go as we wish them to go.

I have no stake in this.  I have never caused a pregnancy, I have no children, and I will never have them.  I'm well aware that my contribution to this debate, such as it is, means nothing to some.  I can't understand it, they'll say, because I can't experience it.  My view will be rejected with a howl of anger from one quarter at least.   Telling the truth has never been easy, least of all to the people who are suffering and who desire deeply to partake of the comfort of the lie.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad/frightening-- 

It's a section of the document sent out to the Maryland National Guard, warning them of the dangers of the Constitution-wielding
'terrorists' at the Tea Parties.  Check it out.  Those grannies in the American Flag vests, those dads who took the afternoon off from work to bring their 4 yr. olds, perched up on dad's shoulders, all those people saying the Pledge of Allegiance and praying during the invocations, the men and women quoting from the Constitution of the United States, they are the frightening scary dangerous ones...  if you're an IDIOT.

The only person who needs to think of ME as a THREAT is the person planning to do me or my family any harm, to rob us, to break into our home, to hurt us...  because to that guy I AM a threat.  But a threat to the National Guard!?!?!?

I wonder if I'd be arrested by the MDNG if I put on a turban and fake beard, charged into a tea party shouting 'allahu akbar!" and chopped some granny's head off..... ?  They'd probably escort me from the area, offer a bathroom to wash up, and drive me to the nearest mosque so I could thank Allah for the opportunity to kill the infidel. 

I put key phrases in red, just to let you know how much your government FEARS you. 
___________________________________________________

5. (U) FORCE PROTECTION RECOMMENDATIONS:

a. (U) Full-time personnel (i.e. armories) and recruiters need to be aware their surroundings. Contact local law enforcement when feel threaten by protesters or protesters trespass into MDNG property.

b. (U//FOUO) Commanders at all levels should establish relationship with local police in order to understand the local threats. Keep family members informed. Talk to other service personnel to share information. Practice OPSEC. Don’t provide personal information to anyone you don’t know. Avoid high risk areas.

c. (U//FOUO) Commanders are encouraged to update alert rosters and review emergency evacuation plans/rally points. Ensure all facilities have emergency phone lists posted (i.e. FBI, FIRE, POLICE, HOSPITALS, EMS, ETC…). Be aware of and avoid local protests. Report all potential protest activities to your next higher headquarters.

We have elected President Thug.

Politico dot com has a story today about what really went on in a recent meeting between Obama and some bank executives.

They tried to explain to him why executive pay has been so high.  International talent market, competition for best people, etc.  Valid arguments, although less so now that the banking biz has been hurt so badly and so many 'talented' people were caught by surprise.

In the meeting?  Obama waved off all the explanations and explained to them their predicament:

"right now, my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks".

It's a quote.  The President, whose team has been busily GINNING UP the 'mob frenzy", along with ACORN and Frank and lots of other players, has now threatened banking executives with the possibility of some sort of violence from his rent-a-mob.

In other words, "nice bank you got there... be a shame if anything were to happen to it.... "

God help us, we've elected president Tony Soprano.

Government Motors... if anybody beats a GM deal, we'll seize their company!

Here is the truth about what happened with the Irish visitor and the teleprompter in the White House recently, and it is NOT, as is now well circulated, a true mistake by Obama.

It was a clever joke by Obama, admittedly at the expense of the Irishman but in good humor and much enjoyed.

the Irishman actually began reading Obama's speech, but realized quickly what had happened, and joked "why don't these things work for ME?" as a ribbing of Obama's known dependency on the device.

Obama then began by saying "I'd like to thank President Obama--" and laughed, along with a roaring and appreciative crowd.  Give and take, with pleasure.

The problem here is the media, of course.  Beginning with the AP and made worse by some newspapers, the report skimmed the facts and made it appear as if Obama had made a mistake.  They overlooked or ignored or edited out the fact that it was a joke and that it went very well.  It was subsequently seized upon by bloggers and webfolk worldwide, and eventually went onto talk radio in the States. 

I do not blame any of them, as they were just reading the story.  The story was wrong.  The fault lies primarily with the AP.

And of course, such a mistake would not have been made if Obama had not already been known to be dependent on that teleprompter.  An understandable error, but AP owes worldwide readers a better grasp of the facts.

reminds me of "bodies stacked like cordwood' inside the Superdome, or Dan Rather's "proof" that Bush evaded duty thirty years ago.  Those stories were much more serious but the problem is the same.  Media carelessness tilting toward disregard of obligation.

I only wish that the REST of the news I hear about Obama were as false as this story. 

Here is the United States Constitutional Amendment XIII addressing the issue of non-mandatory government service--

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

At present there is a plan which is currently passing through congress in the form of a bill, as an expansion of Americorps.

It calls for consideration of “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people.”

Mandatory service.  To government.  A thing that is specifically forbidden in Amendment XIII to the Constitution.

Think about it.

A friend tricked me over the weekend...  invited me to the lake for a weekend of fishing, then when we had eaten dinner and begun watching TV he whipped out "Religulous" and loaded the player.  The other guys there wanted to see it, so I was stuck.  :-)

Don't get me wrong, I can defend myself.  In fact, my friend kept ending our discussion of it (to escape, mind you) by saying I should have my own talk show.  :-) 

Been there, done that.  Maybe some day I'll feel like trying radio again, but thirty years of broadcasting and station ownership were enough for this go-round. 

During the movie, which was largely about how smart Bill Maher is, and of course about how much SMARTER he is than anybody else in the movie, I did notice one thing---

He made a statement to one of his victims/subjects along the lines of 'a little bundle of cells isn't a human being'. 

I challenge Mr. Maher to define what IS a human being.  He won't.  He will simply insist that something "without a brain, without arms or legs, without eyes and ears" etc is NOT a human being.

Now I know, as a 'religulous' man, that humanity is a characteristic given to each new person by God, invented by the creative mind of God before our own physical existence begins, and thus that we must consider any fertilized and dividing egg to be human because that is the defining moment at which physical 'existence' comes.  Before fertilization, no person, just an egg and a sperm.  After they meet, we see something NEW that sets off on its OWN path, eventually to be born, to grow up, to become an adult, to grow old and to die, and along the way perhaps to offer its own egg or sperm for that process to begin again.

But for Mr. Maher's sake, let's do the scientific thing.  Let's ask precisely what it is about each person that gives them that 'thing' we call humanity, personhood, human-being-ness or whatever clever word the clever Bill might offer.

And that answer, strictly speaking, is DNA. 

Each human being has a double helix of 'coding' that is responsible for every moment of change, every physical characteristic, every stage in the growth process of each person.  We are software whose instructions are followed by the hardware of our bodies.  Bill Maher and other supersmart guys should be able to get a handle on that. 

Any scientist would agree that DNA is the one thing that makes each person unique, but also defines each as a person rather than a chimp or frog or bacteria.

Without questions of spirituality or religion (just as the megasmart Bill Maher would have it), we are considering only the physical, and we are asking 'at what point is it human?'

And I suggest to him that he's wrong, that the little bundle of cells IS in fact human.

You see, that little bundle of cells has unique DNA that is not its mother and not its father, but is him, uniquely him.  It is the code that instructs his development.  Inside his unique double helix is everything about what he will be at every stage of his life.  Redhead or blond?  Blue eyes or brown?  Male or female?  Six foot five or five foot six?  Efficient metabolism or prone to weight gain?  Millions of instructions that govern every physical trait, every change, even to (as some doctors believe) the general time of his death, through cellular telomeric degradation.  It's all in there. 

It's in the code.

and Mr. Maher?  THE CODE IS THERE FROM THE MOMENT THE EGG IS FERTILIZED. 

When it splits from one cell into two, the code is already at work, instructing each cell as to its next step.

So, Mr. Maher, you are dead wrong even from the 'nonreligulous' scientific viewpoint:

A bundle of cells IS a human being.  PRECISELY that. 

And if you disagree, then it's incumbent on you to say at what point the bundle of cells DOES become human, and what change causes that.  Because you're always careful to dismiss the assertions of others, to say what it's NOT, and yet you never defend your knowledge of this subject by saying what a human being IS. 

Bill Maher.  Coward.  Control freak.  Bully.  But....  not a true intellectual.  He is an ideologue, a narcissist, and an immature person. 

But a true intellectual always keeps asking, always seeks truth.  Maher uses people who sometimes ARE true idiots and sometimes are simply caught by surprise, and makes them look stupid to make himself look smart.  It is embarrassingly transparent to any real intellectual.  But Maher, predictably, is far from embarrassed; he's comfortable, genial, basking in his own good opinion of himself.

Okay, so the Porkulus bill was written in Nancy Pelosi's office, by Barney Frank, San Fran Nan and other Dems.  No Republicans allowed. 

The Porkulus bill was signed by Ogabe. 

In the bill is a specific piece of language authorizing/permitting AIG to pay executive bonuses of $168 million. 

The House of Representatives established that, although billions in tax dollars bailed out AIG, these particular bonuses were not on the table in Congress in terms of preventing their payment or seizing them.  Congress decided, in the Porkulus bill, that these particular bonuses were going to be paid with no contestation from them.

A few weeks later, suddenly, Ogabe and the Dem leadership pretend to be SURPRISED that these bonuses were paid.  SHOCKED.  ANGRY.  How DARE these greedy executives take this taxpayer money and grab their greedy bonuses!

IT'S ALL A LIE. 

CONGRESS SET THIS UP, AGREED TO ALLOW THE BONUSES TO BE PAID, AGREED TO STAND BY AND DO NOTHING WHILE THESE FUNDS WERE DISTRIBUTED TO THESE EXECUTIVES.

I do not believe this is incompetence. 

This was done in order to target these executives and drum up public anger at 'greedy Wall St. executives taking taxpayer money for bonuses'. 

This is, in short, a large battle in the war on the wealthy.  It's class warfare.  It's happening because of two things-- less important, it's to take attention off the failures of the Ogabe administration, and more important, it's to establish in the public mind that government has the right to dictate to companies how much they will pay their employees.

It's class warfare.  It's an offer to the lower class to feel like they've won some kind of victory by denying some rich guy his bonus, or lowering his pay.  It's a way of firming up the vote of the lower class, the poor, the great masses, for the Democrat party.  It's demagoguery, setting up President Ogabe as the great arbitrator of who gets how much, all in the name of economic JUSTICE.

In short, we are watching Josef Stalin's clone grow up before our very eyes.

If this continues, and it will, the end result will be the large scale destruction of many corporations, and a massive decrease in government revenue, and a concordant massive INCREASE in enrollment for social programs.  Welfare, unemployment, WIC, everything.  It will destroy the auto makers, no matter how much we bail them out.  People without jobs do NOT buy new cars.  Corporations whose decisions are dictated to them by Stalin/Ogabe will NOT stay in business for long.  Not to mention Ogabe will be DECIDING who will survive and who will not.  And if you're among the people who believe this will result in government checks coming to your mailbox, try to imagine how that will happen when government HAS no more money, because they killed the golden goose of American enterprise.

It will destroy resorts, golf clubs, entertainment companies, Las Vegas, and a hundred other economic scenarios I'm too angry to think of right now.

These AIG employees, by the way, were responsible for saving over $1 trillion for AIG just in the past year.  They almost HALVED the amount of money AIG was losing, by their superb efforts in sales and their ingenuity.  THEY PRODUCED, and they were the ones AIG wanted to keep.  These were RETENTION bonuses. 

The AIG people who LOST all the money were the ones in the risky credit default swap market, and those people are GONE.

The people responsible for AIG's failure are GONE.

The ones who made it over trillion dollars less painful to the taxpayers?  They are now THE ENEMY.  The EVIL RICH.  TARGETS. 

And Barney Frank threatened them indirectly on the house floor, saying he was going to subpoena their names and that HE would decide whether they would be 'safe' if publicized.

Piano wire around their necks.  One of the ways some creative 'angry members of the public' suggested for the EXECUTION of these executives and their wives and their children.  BallPork Frank was unmoved.

Stalin is coming.  Mobs who are made angry by government/media organized propaganda are coming soon to YOUR front lawn.

Where did America go, and when did it depart?  I suspect it began on November 4th.  Goodbye, my beloved country.

From a story in the World section of last Sunday's Dallas Morning News comes this note about Saudi culture--

Apparently, Saudi is overrun with young men who have no access to young women, or entertainment, or beer, or anything else remotely considered Western.  They are bored, and their restless energy leads them into all sorts of bizarre behaviors.

Okay so they 'drift', they race cars and skid them sideways down deserted country roads.  Not so bizarre, eh?  Teens all over the world do these dangerous but exhilarating things.

Well then, read this selection from the story:

"Drifting, which tends to attract poorer (it's all relative in Saudi - ed), more marginal men, has also been an unlikely nexus between homosexuality, crime and jihadism since it emerged thirty years ago.  Homo-erotic desire is a constant theme in Saudi songs and poems about driftingh, and accomplished drifters are said to have their pick of the prettiest boys among the spectators.  Drugs sometimes play a role, and a number of drifters have also become Islamic militants (terrorists - ed)."

It is hard for me to even imagine this 'nexus'.  Such a twisted blend of pursuits, such an alien sort of cultural milieu. 

And yet, it makes sense.  Saudi culture is famously segregated by sex.  Teenage boys simply have little to no access to teenage girls.  There is no western 'entertainment', no movies or songs or videos... no booze or beer... and the author notes that drifters are mostly young Bedouins (Arab desert dwellers, the country folk) who have recently moved to the city and whose lives are marked by suffering and self-destructive behavior.  I have read many side notes in writings on other topics which indicate that homosexual longings and behavior are, if not rampant, at least far more numerous in repressed Islamic society than in the west.  Their culture sends mixed messages, obviously.

Do not forget as you absorb this faintly nauseating enlightenment, Yassir Arafat was gay.  It's true.

I bought a book years ago by Mihai Pacepa, the former chief of intelligence for Ceaucescu of Romania who defected to the USA in the late '70's.  It was called Red Horizons, and it dealt with the things Pacepa had done and seen while running the department.  There was a lot about KGB destabilization of the west and America, including arms sales to Egypt and other provocations, but the biggest story of those years was the KGB's constant funding and supplying of Arafat and the PLO.  Arafat used Romania as the intermediary state for his travel and meetings, as he did not want to be seen in Russia itself.  The KGB monitored his hotel rooms and much of his personal life, and the men who listened to the bugs developed a disgust for Arafat.  "He's playing the tiger tonight", one drily reported as he listened to Arafat having sex with his bodyguard, presumably growling and so forth.      

The words which have stuck with me since I read the book several years ago were "never have I seen this much blood and filth in one man".

Yassir Arafat died in a French hospital famous for its advanced AIDS treatment, and of course there is no requirement in France for the cause of death to be revealed if doctors choose to keep it secret, or family members.  Arafat chose well if he wanted this to remain hidden.  It might have been a choice made years ago, as the world saw how addled and out of control Arafat was in his final days, the dementia that signals an AIDS case that is near to claiming the life of its victim. 

To this day his cause of death has NEVER been reported by ANYONE.

So the Saudi story, while disgusting and quirky to this westerner, is not at odds with other information that filters out from that part of the world.  Racing cars, acting gay, committing crimes and recruiting for jihad, in a one stop shop at the edge of town.  Ick.

In Islam we have seen the reports; Iran hangs young gay men in public places.  Egypt executes and imprisons them.  Brick walls are pushed down on them, and worse.  And yet, homosexual behavior appears to plague the more fundamental of the Islamic regimes.  I am told by an Iranian in America that Iran has a special solution to this problem.  The state pays for surgery to alter sex in a gay man.  It is one choice, and the other offered by the state is, shall we say, far worse.  So there are a LOT of genital alteration surgeries done in Iran, and the result is, in Islam's view, a WOMAN, not a gay man. 

End of problem.