Sharp Knife

MOURNING IN AMERICA NO MORE

Dick Cheney welcomes Kotter back, and Rush Limbaugh has resigned and made Powell the "titular head" of the Republican Party. Happy now, Furrowed-Brow Media?

Of course not.

Powell endorsed the Democrat candidate at the precise moment calculated to do the most damage to the Republican nominee, even though McCain was the party's most liberal nominee since Gerald Ford.

If you think John McCain is some arch-conservative and Barack Obama has a much better grasp on keeping this country safe, then you're not somebody who should set party policy, despite the Crocodile Tear Media.

Powell served his country well, but politically speaking, he is today functioning essentially as a glorified concern troll.

Disloyalty is anathema to a soldier, and it seems like Powell was ashamed of being disloyal to Republican presidents who promoted him. Instead of admitting he got caught up in the "First Black President!"-hoopla, it was easier to blame John McCain for being some far-right ideologue. Yeah, right. If only.

Powell says he's waiting for his Republican party to "emerge", but it already has; in Arnold Schwarzenneggar's California. Even after tax increases and federal bailouts, Powell's Paradise is still 24 billion dollars in the hole just for this year. It would have been better to leave Grey Davis in place rather than let Arnold put a Republican face on that massive failure.

Anyway, the real question is not about personalities. It is this: "How do we win elections again?"

Do we go Democrat-Lite like Powell suggests, or do we stay in a sqiushy Bush-mode as others suggest, or perhaps we veer wildly into a Buchananite Paleo-Missing Link conservatism?

Or should we...no--I'm not even going to say it out loud; it's just too crazy to even contemplate such an outlandish idea:

Gallup found, when Democrats control the Oval Office, loyalty to the Republican party increases and vice versa. Republicans gained one point during Harry Truman’s presidential years, 11 points during LBJ’s tenure, 3 points during the Carter administration, and 2 points under Clinton. Politically, Kennedy (who in many ways governed from the center-right) was a wash.

Likewise, when Republicans have been in power, Democrats have gained, as they did during the tenures of Eisenhower (+3), Nixon (+7), Ford (+2), and Bushes I (+3) and II (+6).

But, wait, what about the Gipper?

Alone among post-War presidents, Ronald Reagan’s Republican party actually gained ground during his two terms in office, gaining 9 full percentage points between 1981 and 1989.

But that’s not all. As the Pew study points out:

"This [9-point Republican gain] probably understates Reagan’s overall legacy, as GOP identification had already spiked four points (and Democratic identification fallen four points) between 1980 and 1981."

If one attributes the dramatic movement toward the Republican party during the election year of 1980 to Reagan, then we’re talking about a net Republican gain of 17 points on the Gipper’s watch.

If you'll tell me why we should win, then I'll tell you how--because the "why" is the "how".

The best way to win elections is to deserve to.

Got Principle?

WHY LIBERAL JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IS THE ENEMY OF YOUR FREEDOM

What would you think if Congress decided a court case, rendered a verdict and declared a defendant guilty or innocent?

Outrageous, yes? Yet conversely, courts vote on legislation all the time and no one blinks an eye. We've grown used to abuse. That's exactly what judicial activism is--when judges abusively act as legislators or executives without bothering to stand for election.

Theoretically, activism could be conservative or liberal. But we haven't seen conservative activism in our lifetimes. All of it has come from liberals.

Say a court decided that the "provide for the common defense" Clause of the Preamble dictated that the military services must hire five million soldiers and draft them if necessary. That would be a "conservative" activism. But conservative or liberal, those are political decisions for the elected branches. By standing for election, that gives you a say in the matter.

Sen. Leahy has tried to label conservative decisions as "activism" because they overturn a law of Congress. But that's not the definition. The court must always either affirm or deny a law unless we have a rubber stamp court. Activism is when the court stretches the words of a law beyond recognition, or makes words mean the opposite of their common meanings, or judges simply substitute their preference for those of lawmakers--or you.

When a judge says there is something is in the Constitution that only he with his X-ray glasses can see, he is stealing your "Consent" to be "Governed", the one thing that sets free people apart. He is saying you already agreed with him long, long ago, when, in fact, you did no such thing.

Through our representatives, we gave our consent to the Constitution and its various amendments--but the judge now says those amendments mean the exact opposite of what we thought they meant when we agreed to them. In business, that's called "contract fraud". You thought you were marrying Cinderella, but when you lift the veil to kiss the bride, the judge has substituted the ugly step-sister Druzilla.

Consider yourself lucky; it could have been Barney Frank. Have a nice honeymoon!

Obama has said he wants judges to rule based on "empathy". That's just a nicer way to say "bias". In fact, for all the fancy degrees on the wall, it amounts to little more than tribalism. Basically, it says that a judge who was raised poor, Latino and female should rule in favor of defendants who are poor, Latino and female. That's not law, but its opposite--unless we mean the Law of the Jungle.

Of course judges use their life experience, including empathy and even diversity. In his thoughtful and compelling dissent in "Kelo", Justice Thomas mentioned the experience of black Americans with forced urban renewal, an experience Justice Souter never gained back home in his hollow log. So empathy and diversity have a limited place--but Democrats have carried them to extremes until empathy becomes bald favoritism, a "justice via biography" , based on who your grandparents were. And diversity becomes ruthlessly coerced mandatory government bean-counting.

Liberals engage in judicial activism because democracy is hard. You have to convince your fellow citizens, get legislators elected, get laws written and signed by mayors, governors or presidents, and then defend those laws in court. And amendments are even tougher!

How much easier to simply have a judge invent and decree your favorite policies out of thin air. Why, its almost like magic! The only election you have to win is the verdict, and with liberal judges, you win every election, every single time!

It's the only way liberals can get their craziest policies enacted. People would never willingly vote to free vicious repeat criminals or stop the Navy from using SONAR to defend us or force Boy Scouts to camp out with militant gay activists or a thousand other crazy ideas--but a judge will. It's easier than cheating because it is cheating.

Another attraction is because it allows politicians to get their extreme policies enacted--without being held accountable for those policies themselves! They can just blame it on those darn judges, *wink*wink*.

Liberal activism is great--if you're just tired of freedom and self-government and you simply wish to be told what to do. Or if you just want to short-circuit the rules so that you always win.

But for real Americans, its the kind of arrogant authoritarianism that already led us to rebel once in 1776. We don't need another Revolution--we need the one we already had.

VROOOM!

I just purchased a cherry-red Corvette convertible.

Or rather, it was purchased for me. You see, I figure that as a taxpayer, I now own a zillionth-part of a new Corvette since the Gummint is taking over GM. I figure that I am entitled to at least a Corvette lug nut.

Only last week, I also purchased a windshield wiper on a powder blue Dodge Viper and I’m headed down to the drag strip right now. I’m going to race my Viper against my ‘Vette for pink slips–just like Government Motors/GM is going to compete against Government Motors/Chrysler! Either way, you lose.

For those of you who think that Government Motors will be an endless money pit, well, that’s why I never bought a sports car in the first place–until now. I can now see how wrong I was.

If you combine the money-making dynamos of management, unions and politicians–how could it be anything other than a profit bonanza? After all, every program passed by Congress in the last quarter-century was going to “pay-for-itself”! That’s why Washington has oodles of extra money just laying around!

I only hope the Government isn’t too distracted from its main job of building cars to defend us from our enemies. No–not North Korea; I mean our enemies at Ford Motor Company. Daddy needs a bumble-bee yellow Shelby GT Mustang! Or the antenna, anyway.

See you at the the drag-strip–and bring your pink slips! It’s ON, motorheads!

ANYMORE

"font-weight:bold;""We Make Money the Old-Fashioned Way--We Print It in the Basement!"

Harold Witkov:

"...[T]here is one vice, one small illegal indiscretion, that, if decriminalized would solve all our problems. The United States needs to legalize the victimless crime known as counterfeiting. ...

Once in place, universal counterfeiting would prove to be the ultimate stimulus package for the economy. Employees would always have enough money and never have to go on strike. Citizens would have no trouble paying their mortgages and never face foreclosure. Everyone would gladly pay his or her taxes and there would be no need to have an IRS. ...

Once legalized, counterfeiting would still have to be regulated. Parity and fairness would dictate that families earning over $250,000 would only be allowed to print $1, $2, $5 and $10 denominations. Families with combined incomes of less than $250,000 could print $20 and $50 bills. The unemployed could print $100 bills, and ACORN workers and UAW members would be entitled to counterfeit a new denomination, something even larger than the $100 bill (with President Obama on the front).

The punch line is here. The joke is in the White House.

AND LIKE IT

Pres. "Jailbreak" Hussein Obama: "...[W]e will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders – highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety. As we make these decisions, bear in mind the following fact: nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal “supermax” prisons..."

While nobody has ever escaped, the first World Trade Center bombing was planned from inside Attica. The four terrorists arrested just this week were recruited in prisons, as were Jose Padilla, Richard Reid and many others.

Worse, there are liberal judges who are positively drooling at the chance to release these terrorists, because of Teh "Empathy".

There is one main federal supermax prison. It is in Florence, Colorado--and it's aiready full.

As Obama spoke, I couldn't help but think of Ambassador Cleo Noel, one of few American diplomats who made it to Arlington:

Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore - do you remember these names? You should. Ambassador Noel and Moore were among a group of men seized and held hostage by Yassir Arafat’s Black September terrorists during a reception at the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum. Their lives hung by a thread, a thread that Yassir Arafat ordered cut.

The terrorists demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian assassin of Robert Kennedy, as well as terrorists being held in Israeli and European prisons. President Nixon refused to negotiate. The tape was of conversations between Arafat in Beirut and his thugs in Khartoum. Execute the diplomats, ordered Arafat. The terrorists obeyed, machine gunning the unarmed, hapless Noel and Moore.

Similarly, Obama's decision paints a big, fat target on hapless Coloradoans by terrorists demanding the release of their friends from Colorado's prison.

Colorado is already reeling from the last Democrat "man-caused disaster"--when they melted down the mortgage industry by forcing banks to make bad loans--once again, done in the name of "empathy".

Even aside from the violence, any attack could send the state over the edge, dependent as much of Colorado's economy is on tourism.

I'll give Colorado's governor Bill Ritter a kind of credit; while other political cowards such as Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius demanded Gitmo's closure and then ran for the tall grass, whining about how Leavenworth is unfit for terrorists, Gov. Ritter was willing to stand up and endanger his citizens by accepting some terrorists.

And all of this madness just to win an election, to win the applause of communist university "intellectuals" in Europe and Obama's terror pals in Hyde Park.

By the way, a UN delegation visited Supermax in 1996 and declared it a kind of torture. How long until the Left declares Supermax a war crime, too? A week, tops. It will still be Bush's Fault, though. Somehow.

If there were a real national security need, Coloradans would be the first to step up. But those prisoners are fine exactly where they are. The only "need" here is the needs of politicians. The president has recklessly endangered Americans with his ideology and can't admit he was wrong. Gee--sounds a lot like Bush, huh?

Except Bush knew he should take the war to the terrorists, not bring it to America.

Obama just told naval graduates that he would never send them into harm's way unnecessarily, the insulting implication being that Bush used them for cannon fodder. But they're not delicate wall-flowers; they volunteered to serve on the front line. Obama doesn't want to use the volunteers--but he'll volunteer the civilians of Colorado.

Leave Colorado alone. You've already "helped" enough, thank you very much. It's the government's job to keep terrorists out of America, not bring them in. And it's NOT the government's job to paint a target on the backs of Coloradoans and tell them it's for their own safety.

How 'bout saving some "empathy" for the law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic citizens of Colorado and America for a change?

We're not terrorists, we're not communists, we're not even European intellectuals--we're just citizens trying to raise our families right and live free, and we shouldn't have to fight both the terrorists and our own government to do it.

RINKY-DINK BY HINKY FINKS

"It's a Barnum and Bailey world,
Just as phony as it can be,
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me."
--"It's Only A Paper Moon", Nat King Cole

David Warren casts a gimlet eye towards the History/Hysteria Channel's massively overhyped fraud, "The Link":

Actually read that paper, and the hype evaporates. The authors methodically distance themselves from every sensational claim in the fine print:

"Note that Darwinius masillae, and adapoids contemporary with early tarsioids, could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved, but we are not advocating this here, nor do we consider either Darwinius or adapoids to be anthropoids."

This is one of several remarks disowning the very assertions they have associated themselves with by participating in the extravaganza. They want to have it both ways: to pocket the stardust, while protecting their academic reputations. ...

The principal hype artist in this case -- Dr. Hurum mentioned above -- has done several similar splashes. The last one he styled "Predator X." It was mounted on the discovery in Svalbard of part of the jaw of a large and carnivorous Pliosaur that swam the oceans of the Jurassic. That, too, was nothing special: just a better-than-usual chunk of fossil evidence for an animal that was hardly new to science. But an integrated multi-media presentation of a science fiction monster, extrapolated loosely from that jaw fragment, was ready-to-air when the discovery was announced.

There's nothing new under the sun; Chesterton:

He produces his little bone, or little collection of bones, and deduces the most marvellous things from it. He found in Java a piece of a skull, seeming by its contour to be smaller than the human. Somewhere near it he found an upright thigh-bone and in the same scattered fashion some teeth that were not human. If they all form part of one creature, which is doubtful, our conception of the creature would be almost equally doubtful. But the effect on popular science was to produce a complete and even complex figure, finished down to the last details of hair and habits. He was given a name as if he were an ordinary historical character.

People talked of Pithecanthropus as of Pitt or Fox or Napoleon. Popular histories published portraits of him like the portraits of Charles the First and George the Fourth. A detailed drawing was reproduced, carefully shaded, to show that the very hairs of his head were all numbered. No uninformed person looking at its carefully lined face and wistful eyes would imagine for a moment that this was the portrait of a thigh-bone; or of a few teeth and a fragment of a cranium.

In the same way people talked about him as if he were an individual whose influence and character were familiar to us all. I have just read a story in a magazine about Java, and how modern white inhabitants of that island are prevailed on to misbehave themselves by the personal influence of poor old Pithecanthropus. That the modern inhabitants of Java misbehave themselves I can very readily believe; but I do not imagine that they need any encouragement from the discovery of a few highly doubtful bones.

Anyhow, those bones are far too few and fragmentary and dubious to fill up the whole of the vast void that does in reason and in reality lie between man and his bestial ancestors, if they were his ancestors. On the assumption of that evolutionary connection (a connection which I am not in the least concerned to deny), the really arresting and remarkable fact is the comparative absence of any such remains recording that connection at that point. The sincerity of Darwin really admitted this; and that is how we came to use such a term as the Missing Link.

But the dogmatism of Darwinians has been too strong for the agnosticism of Darwin; and men have insensibly fallen into turning this entirely negative term into a positive image. They talk of searching for the habits and habitat of the Missing Link; as if one were to talk of being on friendly terms with the gap in a narrative or the hole in an argument, of taking a walk with a non-sequitur or dining with an undistributed middle."--"The Everlasting Man", 1925

Still missing.

"I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them. Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice. Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. ...

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so that we may always be free."--Ronald Reagan

Chesterton:

"...A man was enlisting as a soldier at Portsmouth, and some form was put before him to be filled up, common, I suppose, to all such cases, in which was, among other things, an inquiry about what was his religion. With an equal and ceremonial gravity the man wrote down the word "Methuselahite." Whoever looks over such papers must, I should imagine, have seen some rum religions in his time; unless the Army is going to the dogs. But with all his specialist knowledge he could not "place" Methuselahism among what Bossuet called the variations of Protestantism. He felt a fervid curiosity about the tenets and tendencies of the sect; and he asked the soldier what it meant. The soldier replied that it was his religion "to live as long as he could." ...

Every day the daily paper reviews some new philosopher who has some new religion; and there is not in the whole two thousand words of the whole two columns one word as witty as or wise as that word "Methuselahite." The whole meaning of literature is simply to cut a long story short; that is why our modern books of philosophy are never literature. That soldier had in him the very soul of literature; he was one of the great phrase-makers of modern thought, like Victor Hugo or Disraeli. He found one word that defines the paganism of today.

Henceforward, when the modern philosophers come to me with their new religions (and there is always a kind of queue of them waiting all the way down the street) I shall anticipate their circumlocutions and be able to cut them short with a single inspired word. One of them will begin, "The New Religion, which is based upon that Primordial Energy in Nature...." "Methuselahite," I shall say sharply; "good morning." "Human Life," another will say, "Human Life, the only ultimate sanctity, freed from creed and dogma...." "Methuselahite!" I shall yell. "Out you go!" "My religion is the Religion of Joy," a third will explain (a bald old man with a cough and tinted glasses), "the Religion of Physical Pride and Rapture, and my...." "Methuselahite!" I shall cry again, and I shall slap him boisterously on the back, and he will fall down. Then a pale young poet with serpentine hair will come and say to me (as one did only the other day): "Moods and impressions are the only realities, and these are constantly and wholly changing. I could hardly therefore define my religion...." "I can," I should say, somewhat sternly. "Your religion is to live a long time; and if you stop here a moment longer you won't fulfil it."

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice. We have had the sophist who defends cruelty, and calls it masculinity. We have had the sophist who defends profligacy, and calls it the liberty of the emotions. We have had the sophist who defends idleness, and calls it art. It will almost certainly happen--it can almost certainly be prophesied--that in this saturnalia of sophistry there will at some time or other arise a sophist who desires to idealise cowardice. And when we are once in this unhealthy world of mere wild words, what a vast deal there would be to say for cowardice!

"Is not life a lovely thing and worth saving?" the soldier would say as he ran away. "Should I not prolong the exquisite miracle of consciousness?" the householder would say as he hid under the table. "As long as there are roses and lilies on the earth shall I not remain here?" would come the voice of the citizen from under the bed. It would be quite as easy to defend the coward as a kind of poet and mystic as it has been, in many recent books, to defend the emotionalist as a kind of poet and mystic, or the tyrant as a kind of poet and mystic. When that last grand sophistry and morbidity is preached in a book or on a platform, you may depend upon it there will be a great stir in its favour, that is, a great stir among the little people who live among books and platforms. There will be a new great Religion, the Religion of Methuselahism: with pomps and priests and altars. Its devout crusaders will vow themselves in thousands with a great vow to live long. But there is one comfort: they won't.

For, indeed, the weakness of this worship of mere natural life (which is a common enough creed to-day) is that it ignores the paradox of courage and fails in its own aim. As a matter of fact, no men would be killed quicker than the Methuselahites. The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. And in the very case I have quoted we may see an example of how little the theory of Methuselahism really inspires our best life. For there is one riddle in that case which cannot easily be cleared up. If it was the man's religion to live as long as he could, why on earth was he enlisting as a soldier?".................

A: On earth, as it is in Heaven.

FOR DAD

My father was a young sailor during the Korean War. He served aboard the USS Coral Sea, a shiny new aircraft carrier named for the famous WWII sea battle fought just a few short years before. The Coral Sea left Newport News for her shakedown cruise to Guantanamo Bay and the Panama Canal, going on to serve us all over the world, including Viet Nam.

It was a world that seems so very, very long ago now--so long ago that even Democrat presidents were still worth a damn...

"On August 26, 1950, I was summoned to the office of Captain Edward Pearce, USN, in the Dai Ichi Insurance Building in downtown Tokyo, overlooking Emperor Hirohito's imperial palace. For the past year, I had been serving under Captain Pearce on General Douglas MacArthur's staff.

"Gene," Eddie Pearce said in his gruff deadpan way, "I believe we've cooked up a little rumble you're going to like."

The twinkle in Pearce's gray eyes intrigued me. So did the eager expectation on the face of the other man in Pearce's office, Major General Holmes E. Dager. He had been one of General George S. Patton's tank commanders during World War II. Between them, these two guys had seen a lot of bullets and shells fly in that global struggle. Now a new war had exploded in Korea. I sensed they were about to invite me to sample some excitement in this fracas.

I said nothing, while Eddie Pearce shifted in his chair and leaned toward me. "We're going to make an amphibious landing at Inchon on 15 September, and General MacArthur says it's essential we obtain more timely and accurate information on everything in and around the place-at once."

"How would you like to try to get us that information?" General Dager asked.

On June 24, 1950, Communist North Korea had invaded South Korea with fourteen well-trained divisions. They quickly captured the capital, Seoul, and smashed the lightly armed Republic of Korea army with a lavish use of artillery and tanks. President Harry S. Truman had ordered General MacArthur to send American soldiers to resist this act of naked aggression.

The green GIs, mostly draftees in combat for the first time, had been driven back to a precarious perimeter around the port of Pusan, on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. They were clinging to this enclave, under ferocious North Korean attack. Many people in General Headquarters thought it was only a matter of time before we faced an American Dunkerque. In Washington, D.C., shudders ran through the White House at the possibility that if the North Koreans succeeded in spreading Communism at the point of a gun, the Russians might try something similar in Europe. There was also a very visible threat to Japan, where President Truman had done his utmost to exclude Communist influence. The tip of Korea was only about ninety miles from Kyushu, Japan's southernmost island.

I was devoted to Captain Pearce. The white-haired Annapolis man had accepted me without the slightest hint of the condescension often displayed by some naval academy graduates toward "mustangs"-officers appointed from the enlisted ranks during World War II. That was how I had won my commission. A yeoman, I had risen from seaman to chief petty officer-the highest rank an enlisted man can achieve. But I disliked captaining what I sometimes called an "LMD"-a Large Mahogany Desk-and applied for a commission to get myself into the war zone.

I was not completely surprised by Eddie Pearce's proposition. Since the war in Korea began, I had been working in the Geographic Branch of General MacArthur's staff, gathering information about tides, terrain, and landing facilities at various ports along both coasts of South Korea. I had participated in amphibious operations during World War II, notably on Okinawa, the last big battle of the Pacific war, and knew what was needed to make a successful landing on an enemy-held shore. I and other members of my research team had scoured every possible source, from old Japanese studies to aerial photography taken during World War II-and had come up with very little that was reliable about either Korean coast. Major General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence chief, had expressed grave dissatisfaction with our reports.

My experience as an amphibian also enabled me to grasp why a landing at Inchon required absolutely reliable information. The port was on Korea's west coast, 180 miles north of the Pusan perimeter. If anything went wrong at Inchon, the American attackers would be in serious danger of being flung back into the sea with horrendous casualties. The fighting men around Pusan were too far away to give them any support. From my preliminary research, I already knew that the approach to Inchon was complicated by tides that rose and fell twenty-nine feet in a twenty-four-hour period-leaving miles of mudflats, some extending six thousand yards from the shoreline at low water.

"I know we've gone to the limit in researching this matter," I said. "So I take it that a little personal look-see trip is in order. Is that correct, Captain?"

"That's right, Gene," Pearce said. "It's going to require a reconnaissance of the Inchon area by someone qualified to observe and transmit back to Tokyo the information we currently lack. I believe you're the man for the job."

"I'd certainly like to take a crack at it," I said-simultaneously trying to visualize what this rumble might involve. I had an uneasy feeling it was not going to be a pleasure trip. At thirty-nine, I was getting a little old for the commando game. But I preferred excitement to desk work. I had had a pretty good taste of action on Okinawa and nearby islands, dealing with Japanese troops who were inclined to stage a final banzai charge rather than surrender. After the war, I had enjoyed some highly clandestine operations along the China coast, trying to help the Nationalist Chinese in their losing struggle with the Communists.

"I told General Willoughby you'd be ready to tackle the job," Captain Pearce said, visibly pleased. "You will report to General Dager until the completion of this mission, as of now."

"Aye aye, sir!" I said.

In the elevator, General Dager told me to get him a list of what I would need for the expedition by the following morning. With it should be a target date for my departure to the vicinity of Inchon.

Back in my office, I sat down at my desk and lit my pipe. Below me spread the peaceful, exquisitely beautiful grounds of the Japanese imperial palace. It was hard to believe that men were fighting and dying around Pusan while I gazed down at this oasis of serenity."

--Excerpt from "The Secrets of Inchon: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Covert Mission of the Korean War" by Commander Eugene Franklin Clark, USN.

Lt. Gene Clark, an intelligence officer, was sent into the islands near Inchon to prepare the way for MacArthur's brilliant invasion that saved South Korea.

Clark operated right under the enemy's nose, fighting hand-to-hand at times, relaying intelligence that saved thousands of his brother servicemen. He organized the local South Koreans, who fought bravely; and his own small fleet of junks conducted mine-sweeping and naval firefights like a pirate from another century.

He wrote his own unassuming and professional first-person account...and modestly filed it away for fifty years, only to see the light of day after his death. It reads like a John Wayne movie, with espionage, infiltration, sabotage and combat.

For his heroism, Cmdr. Clark was awarded the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit, among other honors.

But like my father, he was just one of the many American servicemen who answered the call of duty, serving our country with honor, as Americans still do to this very day. They made it back safely, where many of their friends and colleagues did not.

This Memorial Day, we remember them; the long, unbroken line of patriots who paid the full price to secure for us our freedoms.

Don't forget to remember them. After all, they remembered you.

DOING BIN LADEN’S JOB FOR HIM

In the Bad Old Bush Junta Days, it was the president’s job to try to keep terrorists out of America and bin Laden’s job to try and get them in.

But President Obama has now taken on bin Laden’s job; he wants to bring hundreds of terrorists into America.

Obama says Gitmo is a “recruiting tool”. So is waterboarding. And listening to their phone calls. And denying them Geneva Convention status.

But why focus only on those ‘recruiting tools’? Aren’t Gay Rights a recruiting tool, too? What about teaching girls to read, whether in Afghanistan or America? The Wahhabbi scholar Qtub famously objected to slow-dancing to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. I’m not sure if he hated the Sinatra version or just the Mel Torme version, so we’d better ban both just to be sure. Goodbye to all that jazz. Slow-dancing has got to go.

If we’re going to let our enemies dictate our terms of surrender, then let’s give up ALL our recruting tools, not just the national security tools that have been proven to save lives.

We can bring back Prohibition! And since our War on Poppies is a recruiting tool, we should legalize heroin even as we’re banning alcohol again. It’s odd; somehow, Democrats only want to ban the “recruiting tools” that actually protect us.

Dick Cheney was right: “Recruiting tool” is just another way for Democrats to say “It’s All America’s Fault(tm).”

But tell me this: why will Supermax not be a “recruiting tool” just like Gitmo was? Supermax is much tougher than Gitmo. And the Geneva Conventions forbid putting POWs in regular prisons–”Recruiting Tool!”

Of course, this could make Colorado and other places targets for terrorists. But, hey, President O’Tool’s purity of soul comes before all else.

I hope Democrats choke on this insane posturing. It really couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of demagogues.

FIRST, WE BLAME AMERICA FIRST

In response to Dick Cheney’s speech at AEI, the Klown Kar Krowd rushed President Teleprompter to the microphones.

I don’t recall President Reagan spending all his time responding to that intellectual powerhouse Walter Mondale at this point in his first term. It just shows that Cheney is hurting them with the truth.

Cheney gave a mature, rational speech while Obama had to give yet another campaign speech. In fact, Obama is doomed to remain forever in campaign mode.

You know how your mom always told you that when you tell the truth, you never have to worry about keeping your story straight? Well, this is Obama trying to keep his stories straight.

Why? Because his national security policies were based on the Big Lie, and once you go down that road, the Big Lie must be repeated over and over, even as Obama adopts the grown-up Bush/Cheny policies in many areas. Obama could put on a flight suit, land on a carrier, say “Mission Accomplished!” and “Dead or Alive!”, re-hire Don Rumsfeld –and he would still have to lie about national security.

For example, that’s why President 50% only released half of the Bush Interrogation Memos.

The only reason we’re still consumed with the endless “torture” debate is because Democrats lied about it to gain power and need to keep lying about it to maintain power. Nancy Pelosi can barely even form a sentence. That’s because she thinks the parts of speech are “subject”, “verb”, “adverb” and “big, whopping lie”.

When dealing with Gitmo, instead of getting a plan first like a grown-up would do, Obama swung for the cheap seats, seeking the applause of French intellectuals, communist university professors and other America-haters. The fact is, Gitmo is not some “mess” left to him by lesser mortals, but a well-run, humane and effective operation. If you set out to design one, it would look exactly like Gitmo.

But Obama is trapped by his campaign lies and his party with him. They just figured out that he’s going to bring terrorists to America. Some will even go free in America if Obama has his way. Others will be incarcerated in their congressional districts, potentially making those districts targets.

“Forget ‘casualties’–this is important! I could lose my seat! OMG!!!”

The Cowardly Congress suddenly realized there could be a price to pay for their preening and posturing so they did the only thing left to them: even more preening and posturing!

They’ve voted to ban Gitmo terrorists from the USA, even though that is the logical consequence of their demand to close Gitmo.

Barack Obama believes you are made safer by bringing terrorists to America and treating them like ordinary criminals.

Barack Obama believes you are made safer when terrorists are freed overseas to rejoin the fight against American troops.

Barack Obama believes you are made safer by releasing terrorists to live next-door to you and putting them on welfare.

Shoulda’ listened to Mom.

UPDATE: Dick Cheney–an excerpt:

"The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the President is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy. When just a single clue that goes unlearned, one lead that goes unpursued, can bring on catastrophe–it’s no time for splitting differences. There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance."

BUILDING A BRIDGE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

"The [20th] century also brought forth social engineering, the practice of shoving large numbers of human beings around as though they were earth or concrete. Social engineering was a key feature in the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, where it combined with moral relativism - the belief that right and wrong can be changed for the convenience of human societies - and the denial of God's rights."--Paul Johnson

READ IT HERE!

I was just going over the president's address and frankly, it's magnificent.

What?--No, not that president. I mean a real president; Ronald Reagan's commencement address at his alma mater, Eureka College.

The year is 1957--but you'll be surprised by how relevant it remains. Some excerpts:

Your America to be Free

For some 25 years I have nursed a feeling of guilt about the degree given me here upon the occasion of my own graduation. It was, I feel, more honorary than earned and for all these years I have carefully refrained from referring to myself as a "student" here.

With your permission I would rather speak of something very close to my heart. You members of the graduating class of 1957 are today coming into your inheritance. You are taking your adult places in a society unique in the history of man's tribal relations.

I have never been able to believe that America is just a reward for those of extra courage and resourcefulness. This is a land of destiny and our forefathers found their way here by some Divine system of selective service gathered here to fulfill a mission to advance man a further step in his climb from the swamps. ...

And now today we find ourselves involved in another struggle, this time called a cold war. This cold war between great sovereign nations isn't really a new struggle at all. It is the oldest struggle of human kind, as old as man himself. This is a simple struggle between those of us who believe that man has the dignity and sacred right and the ability to choose and shape his own destiny and those who do not so believe. This irreconcilable conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.

In a phase of this struggle not widely known, some of us came toe to toe with this enemy this evil force in our own community in Hollywood, and make no mistake about it, this is an evil force. Don't be deceived because you are not hearing the sound of gunfire, because even so you are fighting for your lives. And you're fighting against the best organized and the most capable enemy of freedom and of right and decency that has ever been abroad in the world. Some years ago, back in the thirties, a man who was apparently just a technician came to Hollywood to take a job in our industry, an industry whose commerce is in tinsel and colored lights and make-believe. He went to work in the studios, and there were few to know he came to our town on direct orders from the Kremlin. When he quietly left our town a few years later the cells had been formed and planted in virtually all of our organizations, our guilds and unions. The framework for the Communist front organizations had been established.

It was some time later, under the guise of a jurisdictional strike involving a dispute between two unions, that we saw war come to Hollywood. Suddenly there were 5,000 tin-hatted, club-carrying pickets outside the studio gates.

We saw some of our people caught by these hired henchmen; we saw them open car doors and put their arms across them and break them until they hung straight down the side of the car, and then these tin-hatted men would send our people on into the studio. We saw our so-called glamour girls, who certainly had to be conscious of what a scar on the face or a broken nose could mean careerwise going through those picket lines day after day without complaint. Nor did they falter when they found the bus which they used for transportation to and from work in flames from a bomb that had been thrown into it just before their arrival. Two blocks from the studio everyone would get down on hands and knees on the floor to avoid the bricks and stones coming through the windows. And the 5,000 pickets out there in their tin hats weren't even motion picture workers. They were maritime workers from the waterfront--members of Mr. Harry Bridges' union.

We won our fight in Hollywood, cleared them out after seven long months in which even homes were broken, months in which many of us carried arms that were granted us by the police, and in which policemen lived in our homes, guarding our children at night. And what of the quiet film technician who had left our town before the fighting started? Well, in 1951 he turned up on the Monterey Peninsula where he was involved in a union price-fixing conspiracy. Two years ago he appeared on the New York waterfront where he was Harry Bridges' right hand man in an attempt to establish a liaison between the New York and West Coast waterfront workers. And a few months ago he was mentioned in the speech of a U.S. Congresswoman who was thanking him for his help in framing labor legislation. He is a registered lobbyist in Washington for Harry Bridges.

Now that the first flush of victory is over we in Hollywood find ourselves blessed with a newly developed social awareness. We have allowed ourselves to become a sort of a village idiot on the fringe of the industrial scene, fair game for any demagogue or bigot who wants to stand up in the pulpit or platform and attack us. We are also fair game for those people, well-meaning though they may be, who believe that the answer to the world's ills is more government and more restraint and more regimentation. Suddenly we find that we are a group of second class citizens subject to discriminatory taxation, government interference and harassment.

This harassment reaches its peak, of course, in censorship. Here in this great land of the free, exchange of ideas in our section of the communications industry is subjected to political censorship in more than 200 cities and 11 states and it's spreading every day. But are we the only victims of these restraints and restrictions on our personal freedom? Is censorship really a restriction on us who already have a voluntary censorship code of good taste, or is this an invasion of your freedom? Isn't this the case of a few of your neighbors taking it upon themselves the right to tell you what you are capable of seeing and hearing on a motion picture screen?

So we worry a little about the class of '57, we who are older and have known another day. We worry that perhaps someday you might not resist as strongly as we would if someone decides to tell you what you can read in a newspaper, or hear on the radio, or hear from a speaker's platform, or what you can say or what you can think.

Now today as you prepare to leave your Alma Mater, you go into a world in which, due to our carelessness and apathy, a great many of our freedoms have been lost. It isn't that an outside enemy has taken them. It's just that there is something inherent in government which makes it, when it isn't controlled, continue to grow. So today for every seven of us sitting here in this lovely outdoor theater, there is one public servant, and 31 cents of every dollar earned in America goes in taxes. To support the multitudinous and gigantic functions of government, taxation is levied which tends to dry up the very sources of contributions and donations to colleges like Eureka.

[W]e enjoy a form of government in which mistakes can be rectified. The dictator can never admit he was wrong, but we are blessed with a form of government where we can call a halt, and say, "Back up. Let's take another look." Remember that every government service, every offer of government financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom. I am not castigating government and business for those many areas of normal cooperation, for those services that we know we must have and that we do willingly support.

But in the days to come whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forego in return for such service.

There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity.

This democracy of ours which sometimes we've treated so lightly, is more than ever a comfortable cloak, so let us not tear it asunder, for no man knows once it is destroyed where or when he will find its protective warmth again.

TO OURSELVES

...and our Posterity"--The Constitution Of the United States

And it came to pass that babies who survived abortions at Christ Hospital in Illinois were denied medical care, swept up into the dustpan and thrown out with the trash. As an Illinois legislator, Barack Obama voted to continue the infanticide. Not even the fanatics at NARAL supported that.

As president, his first act was to force American taxpayers to fund not just their neighbor's abortion, but those of foreigners, building new abortion camps all around the world. This says that he sees abortion not only as a Constitutional right of Americans, but as a universal human right so important that Americans must be made to fund it against their will. Not even the Chinese abort other people's children--but Americans do.

Then he okayed the use of embryos for spare parts.

Barack Obama is the most Pro-Death Politician in American history, if only because Jack Kevorkian can't run.

Notre Dame giving Obama honors for his accomplishments in law is like giving Josef Mengele a degree in pest control for his groundbreaking work with Zyklon B.

When a protestor interrupted President Prettywords by yelling "Stop killing children!", the crowd shouted down the brash temple-overturner with chants of "We are N. D.!", "Yes, we can!" and "Give us Barabbas!"

Obama has famously decreed that the Culture Wars are over, and he won. This gutless, heartless capitulation by Notre Dame only tells him he's right. In fact, by honoring his understanding of law, Notre Dame has not merely surrendered, but changed sides. It's just a matter of time 'til Notre Dame has its own abortion clinic on campus--a campus named, ironically, for a mother.

Good thing Mary didn't understand her "rights".

Update: Barack Obama is so morally confused, he deserves to be president of a Catholic university, just like Trinity College president Patricia Maguire.

In her commencement address, she claimed that faux Catholic mobs of snarling, hateful religious vigilantes had no right to challenge Obama because he's black. ............

From the Desk of Axel Roserod
Office of Faith-Based Compliance, Chicago-style
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear President Maguire,

Thank you for labeling your fellow Catholics "religious vigilantes". They're almost terrorists, aren't they?

In fact, you'll be glad to know that Homeland has already categorized these students and 55 bishops as "security risks" and "potential terrorists".

Thank you again for volunteering to inform on these troublemakers. Frankly, we don't see patriotism like yours much anymore--at least, not since the Berlin Wall fell. We regard you as a modern day Martin Neimoller--in reverse;

"First, they came for the Catholic student protestors. No one volunteered to spy on them, so as an educator, I volunteered. Then they came for the bishops. No one volunteered to spy on them, either. So as a Catholic big-wig, I volunteered. Then...."

ps: I know we can count on you. That's a nice little school you got there--be a shame if something happened to your tax exemption.

Faith-ishly yours,

Axel

IF YOU CANT CARRY YOUR HOME STATE, YOU SHOULDN'T BE PRESIDENT

Why dense vegetables are called ">"Gourds":

And, you know, I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical,

Gore, just one year and three months later: "We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil so that America can not be held hostage to global chaos and tinhorn tyrants like Saddam Hussein. But what's their solution? Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

and then of the policy.

"Policy" only? Really? Gore: "The Administration works closely with a network of “rapid response” digital Brown Shirts..."

You know, you talk about somebody {Cheney] that shouldn’t be talking about making the country less safe,

Seven years without another attack, versus an attack every year under Clinton/Gore: The USS Cole, The African Embassies, Khobar Towers, the First WTC bombing, etc. Not to mention Clinton golfing while bin Laden escaped. "Clinton Mulligan-ed, Osama Killed Again!"

invading a country that did not attack us and posed no serious threat to us at all.

Gore: "Saddam's ability to produce and deliver weapons of mass destruction poses a grave threat ... to the security of the world."

You know, he can speak for himself. And I have a feeling that members of his own party wish that he would not do that. But I’ll let that be an argument between him and them.

Uhh...you just said "he shouldn't be talking", Al. Make up your mind, genius.

It's Democrats who keep telling Cheney to shut-up, not Republicans. They say he's great for Democrats, yet they want him silenced. Odd, isn't it?

Al's the only person in history to concede the the presidential election...and then withdraw that concession...and then concede again--a Two-Time Loser in one election. Even Adlai Stevenson needed two elections to lose twice, but not Al.

Al doesn't really care about elective office these days, though. Gore is poised to fleece billions from struggling rate-payers if the Cap and Tax Energy Rationing Tax passes.

But that massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the already wealthy Gore is fitting; under his Risky Carbon Offset Scheme, the wealthy can live as they please, while you will be expected to shiver in the dark.

Did I say "expected"? Sorry--I meant "forced". But in a gentle, non-threatening, life-affirming yet compusory way.

Al's not fit to trim Dick Cheney's carbon toenails.

"No one should have a vested interest in poverty or dependency, that these tragedies must never be looked at as a source of votes for politicians or paychecks for bureaucrats. They are blights on our society that we must work to eliminate, not institutionalize."--Ronald Reagan

"In 1929 I gave in and admitted that God is God."


"I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole word is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest one, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic - there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others."--C.S. Lewis

IN WHICH SAN FRAN NAN JUMPS OUT OF THE PAN

and into the Liar's Fire.

“Nancy Pelosi’s lies are so transparent, birds are slamming into them.”--Andy Levy

That's funny--but not as funny as Pelosi's naive faith in municipal bus driver Ralph Hussein O'Cramden.

She thinks that just because she's got a Honeymooner's Crush on him, he will run interference for her and protect her from the CIA.

Nancy, did you or did you not see that trail of bodies underneath his bus? I remind you that you're under oath.

There are several lessons here for conservatives.

Lesson #1: Jackie Gleason: Still a National Treasure.

Lesson #2: Democrats opposed Bush fiercely and regained power. We should do likewise.

Lesson #3: But because they did it so dishonestly, they are now paying the price.

*When she realized that it was a way to regain power, Pelosi ruthlessly lied about her approval of waterboarding.

*Obama, in a Friday night document dump, just retracted his campaign demagoguery about military tribunals. Now, they are no longer kangaroo courts, but a vital part of our justice system.

*Democrat legislators bleated on and on about closing Gitmo--and now find that the alternative is either freeing sociopathic mass-murderers, or worse, having them incarcerated in that congressman's district! The HORROR!

You've never seen NIMBY like you're about to see it!

In other words, we need to oppose Obama fiercely, but unlike the Democrats, honestly.

And we also need maturity. Otherwise, I might say something like "Al Franken is still a big, fat doody-head." Honestly.

(Hat-tip: Hot Air)

UPDATE: The San Francisco Treat--Nancy's very latest version:

"...'Waterboarding'? No wonder...I thought you said 'water-sporting'!"

"As Ranking Member of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee in the 1990s, I helped secure the first funding for the Torture Victims Relief Act to assist those suffering from the physical and psychological effects of torture.

That's why I propose we give Khalid a million dollars and...a fabulous NEW CAR!!!

"Those conducting the briefing promised to inform the appropriate Members of Congress if that technique were to be used in the future.

'Cos if you can't trust the word of a torturer, who can you you trust, really?

Sure, I could have spoken up and prevented the worst War Crimes in History, but my hemorrhoids were flaring up that week. It's all in Bob Graham's journal--you can check!

"Following that briefing, a letter raising concerns was sent to CIA General Counsel by the new Democratic Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, the appropriate person to register a protest."

I screwed that Israeli-lover Harman out of her chairmanship and here I am hiding behind her fig-leaf; life sure is funny.

"But no letter could change the policy. It was clear we had to change the leadership of the Congress and the White House. That was my job.

I was too busy to object because I was on a super-secret mission that no other politician had: to win elections!

Q: WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON?

A: The Playskool Preznit.

"[Vouchers are] an ongoing threat to public education in the District of Columbia...use your voice to help eliminate this threat."--NEA president Dennis Van Roekel in a letter to Obama, March 6, 2009

"These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib."-- Amrit Singh, ACLU shyster, back when he still thought he was getting his precious pictures, before Obama threw him under the bus, too.

On orders from their owners at the education unions, Democrats in Congress just defunded the DC voucher program. Even better, they did so in a slippery, underhanded way, in hopes that no figerprints would be found at the scene of the crime. Congress hoped parents who had relied upon the program would one day simply find themselves standing in the street hand-in-hand with their children, locked out of the schoolhouse, without ever knowing who or why.

Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan of course colluded with Congressional Democrats by burying the report of the program's success and pre-emptively announcing its closure. After all, we simply cannot have children getting twice the education for a quarter of the price--makes the unions look bad, old chap.

But then, something changed:

Then:

Secretary Arne Duncan’s Department of Education sent letters to D.C. parents informing them that their children were no longer eligible for scholarships. These families, who recently applied to enter the program, had recently been told that their students had received a scholarship.

Now:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan had told reporters that it didn't make sense "to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning,"

So what made Obama walk-back?

Minority school-kids began organizing protests in the streets of DC. Obama realized this was making him look like Lester Maddox in a Klan hat, barring other people's kids from the Sidwell schoolhouse while ushering his own children inside. Rule #1: Nobody makes Obama look bad--not even Obama.

So the decision was made to allow the children already in the program to graduate, while accepting no new students. Sadly, these hostage children would be allowed to escape their ransomers at the NEA.

Meanwhile, a half a world away, Egypt prepares for Obama's return home as our troops fight terrorists in the deserts and mountains. In his office, Obama has decided to walk-back another previous decision: to release pictures of our military guards being guards. Why?

For the same reason that a few runaway schoolkids are being allowed to escape the Education Plantation: it was making Obama look bad (see: Rule #1).

On the cusp of first trip to the Motherland since he brought "Change" to Kenya by campaigning for his Communist cousin Raila Odinga, Obama decided that releasing these photos two weeks before his African trip could cause widespread rioting in Egypt and ruin his Victory Lap.

Despite Obama's best efforts, Odinga lost the Kenyan elections, but conducted ethnic cleansing riots and church burnings until he was awarded power. Perhaps Obama has had his fill of helping to cause riots in Africa.

Some hope that Obama has seen the error of his ways now that he has responsibility. Fine--then let him apologize to our troops for using them as a whipping boy to gain political advantage. Hell, he's apologized to everyone else in the world.

Regardless, whether it's students or soldiers, Obama does what he does for himself. In education, he promised to "fund what works"--for himself, that is.

He has every right to exclude those military photos from ever being made public, just as battle plans are not available--yet he has not done it. He has only temporarily reversed his decision to release them, and only because it would hurt him politically, both at home and abroad. Obama does what is good for Obama.

Rule #1 Rules! "He's going to Obama World, baby!" It's Six Flags Over Obama!

Like some carnival midway Narcissus in the House of Mirrors, Obama can always be counted upon...to Put Obama First.

LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL

Commanding the military, appointing Federal judges, conducting diplomacy, deciding the advertising budget of a car company--sometimes it seems like this president doesn't understand his job or free market capitalism.

It's supposed to work like this: a group of investors gets together and invests in a product that they can sell to the American people. They own that investment, and it shouldn't be confiscated by, say, some power-mad meglomaniacal politician bent on running everything. No, that investment is the wholly-owned property of the investors, bought and paid for, and those investors are entitled to make a profit on the product they have invested in.

But there's some Good News: It looks like the president has finally grasped these basics of market economics!

The Bad News: The investors in this case are unions--and the product they have invested in is Barack Obama.

They are selling him to the American people. They own him, lock, stock and barrel, bought and paid for. They are reaping a huge profit on their investment. They even got him to gut investigations of crooked union bosses.

That's value. That's service. That's...Obama(tm)!

Hey, President Gekko, whadda' you know; greed IS good, after all!

HE SAID "WHITHER", NOT "WITHER"

"When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating? ... A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers."--Ronald Reagan

We're told that Colin Powell, Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chafing are the future, the visionary leaders of the Republican Party---nevermind that they're Democrats. That's not just a steaming pantload, it's a Joe BidenBrand Steaming Pantload(tm)!

Some other voices:

Nicolle Wallace:

Our first mistake was accepting this media-generated debate as legitimate. It’s a false choice that offers nothing but continued division for Republicans.

Dick Morris:

{O}ur nation will be unrecognizable well before the 2010 elections. Business will march to a beat drummed in Washington. The top producers will be hounded by confiscatory taxation. A majority will pay nothing or receive government welfare. ...All America will be watching the Obama fallout, and Republicans must be seen as a clear alternative — a strong voice for reversal of the harm the president will have inflicted — if they are to benefit from this catastrophe.

If the GOP is seen as a moderate force, a party just looking to split the difference, voters will cynically conclude that there is no distinction between the parties.

Fred Barnes:

...[B]e the party of no. And not just a party that bucks Obama and Democrats on easy issues like releasing Gitmo terrorists in this country, but one committed to aggressive, attention-grabbing opposition to the entire Obama agenda. Many Republicans recoil from being combative adversaries of a popular president. They shouldn't.

Bill Kristol:

The Republican Party's navel is a pretty unattractive thing. So maybe Republicans should stop obsessively gazing at it. Instead, the GOP might focus on taking on the Obama administration, whose policies are surprisingly vulnerable to political and substantive attack. Battling Barack Obama is an enterprise that offers better grounds for Republican hope than indulging in spasms of introspection or bouts of petty recrimination.

Mark Steyn:

...[W]hen the going gets tough, you don’t, as General Powell advises, “move toward the center.” You move the center toward you, as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did.

Gerry Nicholls:

"... two million Britons were unemployed, recession gripped the country. Meanwhile, opinion polls showed support for her Conservative government had fallen to record lows and her personal popularity was dropping sharply. Consequently, she was under tremendous pressure from the public, from the media, and even from within her own caucus to do a “U-turn” and drop her economic measures.

But Thatcher had other ideas.

On October 10, 1980 she declared to a Conservative convention: “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catch-phrase — the U-turn — I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to; the Lady’s not for turning."

From that speech, The Lady herself:

It is sometimes said that because of our past we, as a people, expect too much and set our sights too high. That is not the way I see it. Rather it seems to me that throughout my life in politics our ambitions have steadily shrunk. Our response to disappointment has not been to lengthen our stride but to shorten the distance to be covered. ...

We have undertaken a heavy load of legislation, a load we do not intend to repeat because we do not share the Socialist fantasy that achievement is measured by the number of laws you pass. But there was a formidable barricade of obstacles that we had to sweep aside. ...

We have made the first crucial changes in trade union law to remove the worst abuses of the closed shop, to restrict picketing to the place of work of the parties in dispute, and to encourage secret ballots. ...

It was Anthony Eden who chose for us the goal of "a property-owning democracy". But for all the time that I have been in public affairs that has been beyond the reach of so many, who were denied the right to the most basic ownership of all—the homes in which they live. They wanted to buy. Many could afford to buy. But they happened to live under the jurisdiction of a Socialist council, which would not sell and did not believe in the independence that comes with ownership. ...

The Left continues to refer with relish to the death of capitalism. Well, if this is the death of capitalism, I must say that it is quite a way to go. But all this will avail us little unless we achieve our prime economic objective—the defeat of inflation. Inflation destroys nations and societies as surely as invading armies do. ...

This Government are pursuing the only policy which gives any hope of bringing our people back to real and lasting employment. ...

Higher public spending, far from curing unemployment, can be the very vehicle that loses jobs and causes bankruptcies in trade and commerce. ...

If spending money like water was the answer to our country's problems, we would have no problems now. If ever a nation has spent, spent, spent and spent again, ours has. Today that dream is over. All of that money has got us nowhere but it still has to come from somewhere.

Those who urge us to relax the squeeze, to spend yet more money indiscriminately in the belief that it will help the unemployed and the small businessman are not being kind or compassionate or caring. They are not the friends of the unemployed or the small business. They are asking us to do again the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.

Lady Thatcher closed that speech with a plan just as apt for her party coming into power as for ours, now out of power:

We close our Conference in the aftermath of that sinister Utopia unveiled at Blackpool. Let Labour's Orwellian nightmare of the Left be the spur for us to dedicate with a new urgency our every ounce of energy and moral strength to rebuild the fortunes of this free nation.

If we were to fail, that freedom could be imperilled. So let us resist the blandishments of the faint hearts; let us ignore the howls and threats of the extremists; let us stand together and do our duty, and we shall not fail.

AND DEATH TAXES

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."--Will Rogers

BUT I WILL

Obama laughed when what’s-her-name said that Rush wanted the “country to fail”.

Problem is, Rush never said that. He said that he wanted Obama and Obama’s policies to fail…SO THE COUNTRY WOULD SUCCEED. When you have to alter the quote to make the death wish/insult punchline work, that’s called “lying”.

She simply believes that Obama IS “the country”. That’s Fuhrer-Worship, lady.

Rush was also called a “traitor”, a phrase we used to reserve for those who leak secrets to the enemy and work to cause America to lose her wars. Today, those are known as “the New York Times” and “Democrats”, respectively.

And we know that Rush isn’t the 20th hijacker–otherwise, Eric Holder’s law firm would be rushing to represent him pro bono and Democrats would be making excuses for him.

There was also the lost irony of joking about Rush’s pill addiction to a guy who has entire Lost Years crashing on different couches in New York City, spinning in a cocaine twister. If addiction is so damned funny, let’s yuk it up about Obama’s drug addiction, too.

Obama was said to be “self-deprecating”, but it seemed to me that most of his jokes were about how great everybody thinks he is, a conclusion with which he seemed to agree.

When he told the Brown Nose Press “You all voted for me,” that was a simple statement of fact taken as a joke. When he apologized to Fox, I sensed a grudging respect for Fox and some contempt for the press toadies in his hip-pocket. Not even a bully likes a boot-licker.

The president didn’t have time to attend the National Day of Prayer ceremonies, but he did make time to tell the nation’s first recorded presidential “mother-f***er” joke.

We’re all so proud.

SUPERSIZE THAT GOVERNMENT FOR YA'?

He don't cut the mustard and he won't cut the budget--except for defense.

Then:

In the summer of 1997, as he was finishing his first term in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama and a young legislative aide made an exploratory tour of downstate districts. When they stopped at a T.G.I. Friday’s, Obama ordered a cheeseburger, and when the waitress brought his food, he asked for Dijon mustard to go with it. “He doesn’t want Dijon,” the aide insisted, waving the waitress away, and shoving a bottle of French’s Obama’s way. The waitress was confused: “We got Dijon if you want it,” she said.

Dijon was "too French", you see, so his aide tries to give him..."French's"?


Now:

Two regular guys out for a guy kind of meal. A script written in the White House and read by MSNBC.

But MSNBC edited out the audio when Obama ordered his Hell Burger just at the moment when Obama asked for Dijon mustard.

Now I have nothing against Dijon mustard, but the image didn't fit with the image being spun by the White House and MSNBC. Dijon mustard on a Hell Burger had a very John Kerry-ish quality about it.

"...and don't come out until the cabana is clean!"

What's funny is that ten years ago, his staff tried to protect him. Today, the Burger-Flipper Press does the job for free.

Fries with that fearless Truth to Power-Burger?

"May your father and mother be glad; may she who gave you birth rejoice!"--Proverbs 23:24

BLACKSTONE:

"FAR be it from me to derogate from the study of the civil law, considered (apart from any binding authority) as collection of written reason. No man is more thoroughly persuaded of the general excellence of it's rules, and the usual equity of it's decisions; nor is better convinced of it's useas well as ornament to the scholar, the divine, the statesman, and even the common lawyer. But we must not carry our veneration so far as to sacrifice our Alfred and Edward to the manes of Theodosius and Justinian: we must not prefer the edict of the praetor, or the rescript of the Roman emperor, to our own immemorial customs, or the sanctions of an English parliament; unless we can also prefer the despotic monarchy of Rome and Byzantium, for whose meridians the former were calculated, to the free constitution of Britain, which the latter are adapted to perpetuate.

WITHOUT detracting therefore from the real merit which abounds in the imperial law, I hope I may have leave to assert, that if an Englishman must be ignorant of either the one or the other, he had better be a stranger to the Roman than the English institutions. For I think it an undeniable position, that a competent knowlege of the laws of that society, in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar; an highly useful, I had almost said essential, part of liberal and polite education. And in this I am warranted by the example of ancient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us, the very boys were obliged to learn the twelve tables by heart, as a carmen necessarium or indispensable lesson, to imprint on their tender minds an early knowledge of the laws and constitutions of their country."

Christian Britain was culturally confident and free.

OF LIBERTY

Yesterday's TODAY:

MATT LAUER: Ken Salazar is the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Secretary, what a pleasure to be in this location with you. It’s nice to see you.

KEN SALAZAR: It’s good to be here.

LAUER: This location, for the most part, has been closed to the public ever since the attacks of 9-11, and you have a special announcement to make today. Why don’t you make it?

SALAZAR: I do Matt. This Statue of Liberty really is about hope and optimism for America. It’s also about jobs that come with tourism all over this country. And it’s about President Obama’s agenda.

And so today we’re announcing that on the 4th of July, we will open up the crown of the Statue of Liberty, here in New York and New Jersey, to the entire people in America in a way that we’ll be able to manage the crowds to come into this space.

LAUER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And anytime your administration wants to use our NBC microphones to make a self-serving message, we're your doormat to the American people.

SALAZAR: Uh...thank you, Matt.

LAUER: Kiss me.

SALAZAR: ...what?

LAUER: Kiss me. Now.

SALAZAR: ...Security!

Okay, okay--it was too good to check.


Finkleblog:

I would have thought that presidents are meant to mold their agenda to reflect the meaning and inspiration of our founding documents and symbols of freedom. But no, it’s apparently the other way around. Those symbols are really about Pres. Obama.

Behold His works!

This just in--from "60 Seconds Over Tokyo Rose" by Cap'n "Ace" Biden, Man o' War:

“There she was, just like Leon Panetta said; the giant statue of Saddam, right in the middle of the harbor.

For some reason, this statue of Hussein had him holding up a torch in one hand and a book in the other. He was also wearing a dress–but, hey, I don’t judge.

I reached down for the the joystick, but decided I'd better fly the plane instead. I eased off the throttle of the stolen Air Force One jumbo jet. Oh, how they laughed at me when I told them I refused to take public transit because of the swine flu. But who’s laughing now?

Besides, mass transit is something we Democrats force on the little people--like all those little people I could see beneath me on the streets, scurrying in sheer terror as I began my first strafing run.

Suddenly, all the alarm bells went off, like a Kennedy trying to disable the car’s Breathalyzer ignition interlock. There was a bogey on my tail!

The F-16 buzzed my cockpit. I couldn’t make out his face, but I’d recognize that maniacal laugh anywhere. It was Colin Powell, obviously sent by a powerful person in Washington to stop me from speaking directly to the American people.

But which powerful person in Washington could possibly want to get rid of me?

Yes! That’s it! It must be …Dick Cheney!”

As with Cap'n "Ace" Biden, it all makes sense now.

Scare Force One was sent to terrorize New Yorkers in conjunction with Interior's Statue of Liberty opening.

FoxNews has forced the White House to release one publicity photo, even though, by definition, publicity photos are for the public.

In the midst of recession, the White House charged taxpayers $328,000.00 for one self-serving photograph.

Note to White House: Wal-Mart photo department--one print is only a dime!

And keep Joe off the joystick, would ya'?

"As the GOP stumbles around Washington trying to be the party of Herbert Hoover, it's sad to see so many Republicans drifting so far and so fast from the Reagan model that helped pave the way for the great, non-inflationary economic and jobs expansion of the past 25 years."--Jack Kemp

Steven Hayward is over the "Get over Reagan"-crowd:

I've had my own criticisms of superficial Reagan nostalgia... but there is something perversely self-destructive about the idea that we should shove aside or ignore the example of the single most popular GOP president of the last century.

...[W]e've been here before, and Reagan showed the way out. After the post-Watergate 1974 election disaster, some polls showed the number of voters who identified as Republicans below 20 percent (compared to 31 percent today), and there were calls to abandon the Republican Party and found a new Conservative Party.

...[H]e worked extremely hard, studying the issues in depth and preparing and practicing his speeches at great length. I'm frankly appalled at the low level of rhetorical skill displayed by most GOP politicians today. It is not just a matter of talent; talent helps, but Reagan showed that hard work is the key ingredient. Too many of our would-be party leaders today are simply lazy, and think they can coast through speeches and media appearances with little forethought.

It's been two decades since Ronald Reagan left the White House. His stature was such that it secured the presidency for George Bush, both father and son.

Like Reagan, Gov. Palin has integrity that can't be bought, only sold--but she hasn't yet done her homework like Reagan did. But then, who has?

Fighting American communists as a union leader, touring factories speaking for GE, two successful terms as governor, years spent studying the philosphical basis of conservatism and researching and writing his own topical radio shows; they called him "lazy" as president, but he was simply a man in full.

"He knows so little, yet accomplishes so much!" said one aide. But the truth was, he knew more than you.

I'm not sure Jeb Bush is as guilty as Mr. Hayward says, but others certainly are. Which Reagan principles would they have us toss overboard? A strong national defense? Limited government? Strong families? Faith and patriotism? Low taxes and real prosperity?

No, they want us to throw the entire concept of principle overboard in an effort to chase voters. And chasing is following--the very opposite of leadership.

Even people who didn't think like Reagan voted for him. Why? Because they responded to his principled leadership. Obama faked it long enough to get elected, but even he needed the Tiger Beat Media to pull it off.

He even ripped-off Reagan's "City on a Hill" the other day. Oddly enough, just as demons recognize the Master's voice, Obama recognizes Reagan's greatness...while some Republicans want to run away from it!

There will never be another Reagan. But twenty years later, the mantle is still there for the taking.

Who will step up and make "a statement, not an apology"?

That's Reagan's Way, and it is both timely and timeless.

CASE BY CASE

You know who:

"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom.

It takes brass balls to talk about empathy for teen-age moms at a Planned Parenthood Camp, where teen-agers are violently made into non-moms and their non-children thrown are into medical waste dumpsters--when the organs aren't harvested first, that is.

The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to selecting my judges. At at time when the real war is being fought abroad, some would have us fight Culture Wars here at home. I am absolutely convinced that culture wars are just so '90s. Their days are growing dark."

Finally--a war Obama wants to win! "Mission Accomplished!", eh, flyboy? We'll see about that.

Provided that it hasn't been seized under 'Kelo' during his absence, the Hermaphroditic Hermit Souter will soon be returning home to his hollow log in the forested hills of Hampshire.

Obama's concept of adjudication is now front and center. For all the big words and pretensions of intellectual gravitas, it rests on two premises:

1.) Rank tribalism: a black judge should rule for a black defendant, a female judge should rule for a female defendant, etc.

2.) A glorified Law of the Jungle in which the strongest impose their will on the weak. By perverting our system, judges are in a position to simply declare their own personal opinions law. So they do. Because they can.

Cavemen are said to have operated exactly in this way--yet it is conservatives who are regularly called "Neanderthals".

Like his recent stint as a Bankruptcy Judge, Hizzoner Obama is announcing in advance which defendants he "stands with" and which defendants should lose their case.

He wants a completely fair and impartial judge...as long as that judge will always rule for the abortionist, the poor, black, gay, disabled and elderly. Unless those elderly were retirees who invested in Chrysler, in which case they are greedy proletarian malefactors who must be crushed for the Glorious Revolution of the Workers!

Doc Sowell swings the gavel:

Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with "empathy" for groups A, B and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y or Z? Nothing could be further from the rule of law. ...

Appoint enough Supreme Court justices with "empathy" for particular groups and you would have, for all practical purposes, repealed the 14th Amendment, which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" for all Americans. ...

Barack Obama solves this contradiction, as he solves so many other problems, with rhetoric. If you believe in the rule of law, he will say the words "rule of law." And if you are willing to buy it, he will keep on selling it.

Those people who just accept soothing words from politicians they like are gambling with the future of a nation. If you were German, would you be in favor of a law "to relieve the distress of the German people and nation"? That was the law that gave Hitler dictatorial power. ...

The biggest danger in appointing the wrong people to the Supreme Court is not just in how they might vote on some particular issues— whether private property, abortion or whatever. The biggest danger is that they will undermine or destroy the very concept of the rule of law— what has been called "a government of laws and not of men."

Like most people, Justice Holmes had empathy for some and antipathy for others, but his votes on the Supreme Court often went against those for whom he had empathy and for those for whom he had antipathy. As Holmes himself put it: "I loathed most of the things in favor of which I decided." ...

Justice Holmes saw his job to be "to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not. Men should know the rules by which the game is played. Doubt as to the value of some of those rules is no sufficient reason why they should not be followed by the courts." Legislators existed to change the law.

One of Holmes' judicial opinions ended: "I am not at liberty to consider the justice of the Act." ...

Justice Holmes understood the difference between the rule of law and the rule of lawyers and judges.

Orrin Hatch has it wrong; it's not simply a matter of knowing the difference between a tort and a tart. Sen. Hatch is bound by his oath to defend the Constitution against all of its enemies.

If that includes Obama's judicial nominees, well, you took the oath without reservations or purpose of evasion, senators.

Remember?

Pastor Hagee tells his story:

"Cornerstone Church is an orchard bearing much fruit. It did not begin late last night. It began on Mothers Day 1975. It has been built through the blood, sweat, tears and perseverance of godly men and women who refused to compromise with the world, the flesh and the devil. A pastor who was visiting this church from out of state said to me, “You really have it nice here. How’d you get started?” His implication was that a major denomination funded me and our church just exploded. Well, that’s not how we got started. It started with me living in the garage of a church member for one year. Not garage apartment, just the garage. They moved the car out and I moved in. I shared that garage with a companion, a 125-pound Great Dane. My vast wardrobe was hanging on a 1” piece of pipe in the back corner of the garage.

But things got better. We got the church going and I moved into the missionary quarters: an 10 X 12 room with its own electric heater. Big time. Big bucks, too. I made $7000 every year for three years in a row, and knew I was lucky to get it.

Then I got married. My wife was Hispanic and we found out that racism is alive and well in the church. We had a new minister of education who kept the chart for church growth. After noticing that the growth line had gone straight down, he asked, “What can I do to explain this line?” I said, “Write on that line FLEW EPIDEMIC.” Many members flew the coop, but we’re still here, praise God.

I’ve been shot at point blank—in church, in from of the congregation—by a demonized lunatic under the control of witchcraft. I’ve had investigative reporters dig through my past like maggots on a corpse. I’ve been cussed and discussed, analyzed and scandalized. The devil’s mad and I’m glad. The battle rages, and that’s just how I like it. Our church has put hell on notice. We’re not here to get along or to go along. We’re here to fight the good fight of faith. We’re here to lift the bloodstained banner of Jesus Christ up until the nations of the world confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We’re on the attack. We have put on the whole armor of God, and in the power of Jesus’ name we are attacking the gates of hell. We’ve served notice on the devil, “Come out wherever you are, because we’re going to run the sword of righteousness through your hide until you look like Swiss cheese on the hoof—the victory is ours through Jesus Christ the Lord.”

Perhaps you have been struggling to make your dreams come true. You’re tired, exhausted, on the very brink of depression. Quitting looks good right now. I’m saying to you in Jesus’ name, don’t do it. Press on. Endure. Try again. Christ is our example. Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, endured the cross. Calvary is not the name of a picnic ground outside the eastern wall of Jerusalem. It’s where the Son of God fought the most vicious battle in the history of the world. He did not quit. He did not surrender. He endured the cross and gave me the victory over death, hell and the grave. And because he endured, you can endure. Nothing is impossible to those who know the Lord Jesus and are called according to the purposes of God."

Update: more...

"My first night at Southwestern I spent in the Women's Dormitory. Let me hasten to say that I was four years old. It was the first week of June 1944. My parents were ordained A/G Ministers and were attending the June Council.

In the middle of the night, there was a hard and loud pounding on our door and the voice shouted: "Our boys have landed at Normandy Beach. The invasion of Europe has begun. Report immediately to the gymnasium for prayer that God will protect our boys today as they fight for America's freedom."

My mom and dad jumped out of bed, dressed me in record time and in the middle of the night dragged me across the football field of Southwestern toward the gymnasium. Within minutes the floor of the gymnasium was covered with spirit filled prayer warriors pounding the gates of heaven for the safety of their sons and the survival of the United States.

It is a scene etched in my memory that will never leave. That prayer meeting lasted until noon the next day when word came that our boys had at last penetrated at Omaha Beach.

As I think of the passion and desperation of that night of prayer in 1944...I wonder if Americans realize our country is in as great a danger today as they were then."...

"How did it happen? How did our national government grow from a servant with sharply limited powers into a master with virtually unlimited power? In part, we were swindled. ...But let us be honest with ourselves. Broken promises are not the major causes of our trouble. Kept promises are. ...We have taken the bait, preferring to put off to another day the recapture of freedom and the restoration of our constitutional system."--Sen. Barry Goldwater

Jack was a Christian gentleman, a sportsman and a competitor. He was a patriot and a servant. And because he was a servant, he was a leader. He was a friend to Israel and an opponent of dictators, not vice versa. He wanted all to prosper and helped many to do so. He believed in private property, not the statist socialism in vogue today. At his best, he tried to attract all people to conservatism, not by pandering, but by principle. He always seemed so young because his ideas kept him young.

Jack was a friend. And now he lives with his Savior. Rest in peace, old friend.