ObamaCare Brings “Nullification Acts” from Sovereign States in America

ObamaCare Brings “Nullification Acts” from Sovereign States in America
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

***********************************

If you are as old as I am you probably remember those old “Rest Homes.” For those of you who are not as old as me, basically, some of them gave the impression they were nothing more than warehouses where Americans stored old people waiting their turn to die. Some were really bad. They smelled of urine, feces, disinfectant, and death. Well, guess what? Under Obamacare something, which seems very like them, is on the way back onto the American scene… only this time they will be called “Medical Homes.” Oh, and don’t worry about the doctors in these Medical Homes. Under the current plans - there won’t be any. They will be run by nurses and nurse practitioners. You can learn more about the proposed Medical Homes HERE. Before you read it, prepare to be frightened... very frightened!

Back before the War for Southern Independence, Americans understood the power of the tenth amendment to the US Constitution. They understood the people of the states had the power to nullify actions of a US Congress which did not represent the people of the United States as they had been sworn to do… you know, sorta like the crowd we have in the US Congress today.

It was bound to happen. Americans are beginning to consider attacking the ObamaCare HealthCare Overhaul, sometimes referred to as: Nationalized Healthcare, Universal Healthcare, and Public Option Healthcare. (They’ll call it anything but what it is: Socialized Medicine!) through nullification acts of the states.

By the way, you may have noticed the socialists in the federal government have insisted on changing all reference to "Goverment-Run Healthcare" to "Public Option Healthcare." The idea is straight out of "Propaganda 101." Remove any and all reference to GOVERNMENT-RUN Healthcare and replace it with the words: "PUBLIC OPTION HEALTHCARE." It is supposed to help you forget that ObamaCare is, in fact, Government-Run Healthcare and make you believe that it is YOUR CHOICE. It takes the onus (Onus: meaning the burden, or burden of proof) OFF the government and places it solely on YOU! As I said, it is physcological warfare, of a sort. They are playing with your mind. They are treating you and I as the fools they believe us to be!

Yeah, you heard correctly… nullification. Now, that’s a word we haven’t heard tossed around much since the days just prior to the “Late Unpleasantness.”

See, this is what happens when the American people feel they have a government that is NOT REPRESENTING THEM! And frankly, not since the early to mid 1800’s have I read of a US government less inclined to listen to the people it purportedly represents than the current crowd we have taking up space in Washington DC.

Back to Nullification:

Nullification is an American tradition. It dates from as far back as the late 1700’s. Some of the states are looking at it for protection from the US Congress and the current presidential administration. What has them fired up? Plainly put - it is ObamaCare, or “socialized medicine.” They don’t want it in their states. And, they do not want the federal government forcing it on them.

In Florida, State Senator Carey Baker and State Representative Scott Plakon, recently , filed a proposed State Constitutional Amendment (HJR37) as a means to prevent Floridians from being affected by any Federal Health Care Legislation. If approved by the legislature, Florida residents could be voting on it as early as 2010.

The bill includes the following:

(1) A law or rule shall not compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.

(2) A person or employer may pay directly for lawful health care services and shall not be required to pay penalties or fines for paying directly for lawful health care services. A health care provider may accept direct payment for lawful health care services and shall not be required to pay penalties or fines for accepting direct payment from a person or employer for lawful health care services.

Out in Arizona they have ALREADY passed a piece of legislation titled "The Healthcare Freedom Act" and there are reports that at least ten other states are expecting to have similar legislation introduced in their coming legislatures.

What is happening here is… the American people are questioning the legality of the federal government to force this socialized medicine on the people of this country. They say the tenth amendment denies the federal government that power. They may well be correct. Here’s the text of the tenth amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

So, when a state nullifies a law passed by the federal government that state is saying that that particular law has no effect within the boundaries of that state. They nullify that law.

These nullification acts date all the way back to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. These two National Forefathers drew-up the first nullification acts both in Virginia and in Kentucky. It was thought then, and is still thought by many today, that states are sovereign entities and that the states have the constitutional power to make a decision for themselves as to whether the federal government has exceeded it’s authority under the terms of the US Constitution. If the states decided that the federal government has, in fact, overstepped, then the states had/have the power two simply refuse to obey those laws passed by the federal government that were/are outside the constitutional boundaries set by our forefathers in the US Constitution.

We warned over and over again that socialism would tear this country apart. Now that our federal government has decided that socialism is the way to take the country, even though socialism has a proven record of failure time, and time, and time again, the US has begun to disassemble itself. State legislatures have already begun to reassert themselves as sovereign states and have now begun to nullify federal laws within their states. It is going to get a lot uglier, dear reader, when the federal government decides it must use force to motivate the states to obey those laws the states say are unconstitutional. But, just as we warned in 2007 and 2008, THIS is what a nation gets when it opts for socialism and elects a socialist as President and hands over the reins of the Congress to socialists as well.

Welcome to the Socialist States of America.

J. D. Longstreet

Conservative+Socialism+Healthcare+Abortion+ObamaCare

History Really Does Repeat Itself

History Repeating Itself?

Remarks on a Victory Lost and a Book Review.

J. D. Longstreet

*******************************

As the Obama Administration begins to withdraw troops from Iraq and step up US operations in Afghanistan, one can see certain parallels with the way America mishandled the war in Vietnam. What is frightening, though, is to see the current administration seemingly set on making the same mistakes, the mistakes that cost the US so dearly in Vietnam, all over again. Obama's regime seems set to accept something short of victory in Afghanistan and that is worrisome. In Iraq, as each single day goes by, it becomes even more obvious that the US is pulling troops out of Iraq and turning over control to an Iraqi government that seems bent on re-creating the same sort of dictatorship ruled over by Saddam Hussein before the US entered and took him out. In other words, the US is setting the stage for a Gulf War Three right now.

For those of us who lived through the trying days of the Vietnam War, both here at home and in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the bumbling and fumbling in the two theatres of war in the Middle East today are all too obvious. The loss of the Vietnam War was authored in Washington, DC, by the US government. The US Armed Forces had the war won, when politicians in the nation’s capitol gave that victory away!

A new book by Richard Botkin, titled “ Ride the Thunder” details what happened in Vietnam and how a war that was won could be sacrificed on the alter of politics.

What follows is a review of that book by Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, a former POW in North Vietnam and a former US Senator from Alabama. As you read, you will begin to see that history, does, in fact, repeat itself. We think you will agree with us that the US is, today, setting the stage for Gulf War Three and we think, you will agree that it does not have to be this way.

Here, now, is Rear Admiral/US Senator Jeremiah Denton’s take on Richard Botkin’s book, “Ride the Thunder.”

***************************

“Thirty-six years ago this month, after the North Vietnamese suffered utter destruction of their military complex from Linebacker II air operations and the blockade of all North Vietnam ports, the Democratic Congress passed a bill prohibiting any further U.S. aid to South Vietnam. The bill's passage was the death sentence to the nation we had vowed to protect from communism.

President Nixon knew his veto of the bill would be overridden, making any veto effort futile. Even though the North was ready to sign a treaty to free South Vietnam, Congress' demands to pass the bill nullified Linebacker II and provided the communists with a free ticket to walk into South Vietnam.

This exercise of off-battlefield politics resulted not only in the loss of a near conquest by American armed forces but in a dreadful loss of American credibility. No history pundit has since given account to Vietnam's true victory -- until now. Richard Botkin, author of "Ride the Thunder," provides indispensable, historic details of the Vietnam War, dispelling the notion that all was lost.

The aftershock of Vietnam resulted in the tragic realization among veterans and citizenry alike that the gallant, sacrificial effort of American, South Vietnamese, and allied forces to preserve a free South Vietnam had been futile and flagrantly unappreciated by America. Following Vietnam, no American promise of prolonged commitment to any cause would be of concern to antagonists or trusted by allies.

The precedent is being applied tragically by the current administration in its signals to our antagonists that we will withdraw our troops from Iraq and other Middle East trouble spots before we achieve our objectives. Unless we can dismiss the applicability of the precedent, we are destined to repeat our failures, thus ensuring our ultimate demise as a nation. However, we will not dismiss it until the truth about our Vietnam experience is revealed in its totality.


Now at last, "Ride the Thunder" provides this indispensable revelation. Anyone who reads it will finally have the facts to perceive the answers to long-held questions: Was the cause in Vietnam worth our waging a war? Did the media's reporting and false antiwar influences cause us to surrender? Was military victory indeed forfeited by Congress' unilateral political act? Was the bill prohibiting any further commitment there the coup de grace in efforts to free South Vietnam?

The book delivers the truth comprehensively and authoritatively. Evidence is presented in the true stories of persons engaged over the entire time frame of the war. Incontrovertible facts and details are presented on Vietnam.

"Ride the Thunder" painstakingly sketches the history of Vietnam, revealing its remarkable ethnic characteristics: its peerless work ethic, an unequaled awareness of the importance of family, compassion for the elderly and an awareness of the importance of rearing wholesome children. It relates how Vietnam in early ages became a powerful nation in military, political, and economic terms.


However, Mr. Botkin also relates Vietnam's history of often being overtaken and ruled by more powerful nations whose soldiers and officials mistreated innocent Vietnamese with unbelievable savagery. From China, Japan, and other powerful oppressors to devastating natural disasters, Vietnam's people have been tempered by sufferings for centuries.

"Ride the Thunder" traces its historical origins in relationship with the United States. The book exemplifies how the Korean War predisposed the United States to regard Ho Chi Minh's invasion as directly related to U.S. containment of communist expansion. The Korean War ended with the United States settling on a stalemate for the first time in our history. This created a pattern of quitting and foretold the possibility we would settle for even less in a future war -- as we did in Vietnam and show signs of doing in the Middle East.

Naturally, Vietnam's history takes the sharpest focus as it deals with the American involvement in the Vietnam War. In this light, "Ride the Thunder" chronicles the individual personal experiences of the Vietnamese and U.S. military and political personages, the sum of which presents a comprehensive tapestry depicting all the complex facets, revelations and implications of the war and its aftermath.


The persons chronicled have well-known names, including Maj. Le Ba Binh, U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Gerry Turley, Capt. John Ripley and Sgt. Chuck Goggin, to name a few. The sum of their collective experiences displays the events and true significance of every ground and air campaign, battle and strategic tactical decision. The truth derived is in sharp contrast to the way the war was reported, written into history and remembered by us as a nation.

As I reviewed "Ride the Thunder," though I have come to be regarded as one of the more authentic writers on what is significant about that war, I learned much I had not known.
However, more than any author can convey in words, one thing that I and other former prisoners of war witnessed with our own eyes was the absolute total destruction of the enemy's military during Linebacker II and the full realization by the North Vietnamese that they no longer had the means to continue the war.

A few days before my release from prison, I was subjected to an interview and briefing by the top military and political leadership of North Vietnam. The leaders told me they accepted defeat and were eager to sign an agreement to keep South Vietnam free. Their earnest plea to me upon return was to prevent the POWs from exaggerating the brutality of the treatment inflicted on us, which would incite U.S. public opinion to the degree that Mr. Nixon would find it inadvisable to sign the agreement.


The interview is written up briefly in "American Admiralship" by Edgar F. Puryear Jr., published by Naval Institute Press.

I hope Mr. Botkin's "Ride the Thunder" and my review will establish an accurate perspective on the meaning and significance of Vietnam and result in a renewed, honorable depiction of the war.

Jeremiah Denton

Rear Adm. Jeremiah Denton, U.S. Navy (retired), is a former U.S. senator from Alabama.

******************************

Information on now to purchase “Ride the Thunder” by Richard Botkin can be found HERE.

J. D. Longstreet

*****************

Conservative+Vietnam+War+Victory+Defeat+MidEast

The Jerusalem Quandary ... Alan Caruba

The Jerusalem Quandary
By Alan Caruba

*************************

I have often wondered why it is such a tiny nation as Israel commands so much news coverage. Having declared its sovereignty in 1948, it is now just over sixty years old.
David Ben-Gurion went on the radio and said, “Two thousand years of wandering have come to an end.”

The name, Israel, means “he who wrestles with God.” The wandering began after the Jews had lived in Israel for over a thousand years, after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and drove them out in 70 AD.

Israel has fought and won wars intended to annihilate it. Zionism, a new Jewish state, began as the dream in the late 1800s among European and Russian Jews seeking to escape anti-Semitism. It became a place of refuge for Holocaust survivors in the late 1940s and for Jews who were forced to flee Middle Eastern nations.

For a relatively new nation, it has held the attention of the world from the day it was reborn in the sweat and blood of Jews seeking a place where being Jewish was normal, accepted, unexceptional.

To gain an extraordinary insight, I recommend you read Rich Cohen’s “Israel is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History” ($26.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), possibly one of the best books I have read in decades about the astonishing history of Israel from its earliest to the present times. It is filled with stories of the people who built the First Temple and, after the destruction of the Second Tempe, as Cohen says, “turned the Temple into a book”, praying for the next two millennia, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

The real Jews and real Israel are obscured by the hatred attached to them by their Muslim enemies and other antagonists, but there are many who now refer to themselves as Christian Zionists because to be a Zionist is to advocate a land for the Jews. As Cohen puts it, to be Christian is to be Jewish without actually being Jewish.

The quandary of Jerusalem is that three major religions lay claim to it. To be Jewish, to be Christian, even to be Muslim, Jerusalem is considered holy, but its long history has been a litany of bloodletting as claimants sought to legitimatize their faiths with its possession.

What the original Zionists discovered was that Israel, called Palestine at the time because of the British mandate over it, was not “a land without people for a people without a land” or that its history ended after the Jews were driven out by the Romans to become the Diaspora living among other nations.

As Cohen notes, “The Zionist ideology was beautiful, but for the pioneers to fulfill it, the Arabs could not exist.” They did, however, exist. The quandary, the conundrum of Jerusalem and of Israel is that the dynamics of demography, of birth statistics, puts the existence of the Jewish state at risk. The Arabs were there. The Arabs are there.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Arabs did not wish to yield an inch of the land in 1948 and do not wish to do so now. They do not want a “two-state solution.” They want what the Nazis called “The final solution.”

For the early pioneers of Israel, its reestablishment was a form of redemption. As one of its founding rabbis, Abraham Kook expressed it the purpose of the Jew is to bring the divine idea into the world. To bring this idea to fruition, to bring the Lord back into the lives of man, he said, the Jews must return to Zion. His son, Ziv Yeshiva Kook, called the Holocaust a “cruel divine operation needed to lift (the Jews) up to the land of Israel against their wills.”

The Holocaust, however, was more like the fulfillment of the hope of anti-Semites, the extermination of Jews from the Earth. It has something to do with the role Jews have played in relationship to the one God three major faiths lay claim. The Jews are happy to share their God with others, but insist that some rules be obeyed in the process.

Jews living in America had already found their Zion, a place where Jews could live normal lives. At the turn of the century, Jewish immigrants overwhelmingly chose America, not Israel.

Before and since Israel’s founding, many made “aliyah” (return) and some fifteen percent of them are American born. Since 1967, following a decisive war, more than two hundred Jewish settlements have been built in what are referred to as the territories. In 2005, seeking to exchange land for peace, Israelis were forced to leave Gaza. Israel did not get peace. It got rockets.

Until now, American Presidents have been friendly to Israel, but that has changed with President Barack Hussein Obama. His recent demands to stop the construction of twenty housing units in East Jerusalem are a rebuke to Israel’s very existence. Cohen notes that, “There are two hundred thousand Jews living on the West Bank—half of them in East Jerusalem, in neighborhoods (that) Israel insists it will keep in any peace deal.”

There will be no peace deal and the Jews of Jerusalem and Israel will continue to lay claim to their nation. They have built a nation, but in doing so, they have transformed themselves, often in ways even they don’t like.

The fly in the ointment is Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon and its constant threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”

The new generation of Iranians protesting in the streets has to hurry up and remove the evil mullahs and ayatollahs holding their ancient nation back from its full potential, from freedom. Israel cannot wait forever to end an atomic, existential threat. If it must, it will once again re-write the history of the Middle East.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, July 2009

*************************************************

Conservative+Israel+Muslims+Obama+US+Iran

“Never again will I doom the earth because of man…”

“Never again will I doom the earth because of man…” By: God

**************************

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

********************************

The title above was taken from the first book of the Bible, Genesis, the 8th Chapter the 21st verse.

So here we are, man, taking credit for destroying the earth, which God, Himself has told us he will not allow.

I, along with a host of other “deniers”, have been screaming from the rooftops, Man-Made Global Warming doesn’t exist! It is the absolute height of arrogance for human beings to believe they have to power to destroy something God has made and placed his personal guarantee on. But, we’re doing it.

I want to refer you to an article titled: “What God Thinks About Anthropogenic Global Warming”. Kevin Roeten wrote it. You’ll find it HERE.

In his article, Mr. Roeten makes a statement and asks the following question:

“Believing one has the power to affect an entire planet’s ecosystem is presumptuous at best and rashly arrogant at worst. God is either laughing at the sheer audacity of such an endeavor, or crying at the outcome of such egotistical actions. Are some of us telling God that man is in charge now?”

As a fellow who counts himself among the religious, I must tell you that much of the claims of the Man-Made Global Warming crowd, and the Climate Change crowd, stun me. I feel as if I should be dodging lighten bolts, hurled from on high, at the arrogant souls making such ludicrous claims. And yet they continue to do it… and worse, they have sold it to many of our mainline Christian churches. That is another reason I have washed my hands of Organized Religion.

Man-Made Climate Change not so… er… Man-Made?

Fred Singer an atmospheric and space physicist says it is the sun. Check it out HERE.

The “experts” tell us the science is “settled” on global warming. They tell us mankind pumping so much CO-2 into the atmosphere has, and is, causing it. Then they use the guilt trip they have imposed on fellow human beings to shame us into completely altering the way we live. It is the oldest con game in the book. And the peoples of the planet are falling for it.

I have heard the question asked, and even I have asked it, myself: How did Hitler manage to entice an entire nation to follow him into insanity? Actually, it is quite easy. Propaganda. As an old advertising man, I can tell you, it IS possible to sell anything if you package it correctly and if you create a desire in the consumer for it. If you lead the consumer, your target audience, to believe that all his neighbors are using and endorsing whatever it is you are selling, you have a successful sales campaign. Works every time. It worked for Hitler and it is working for the man-made global warming crowd. Except… the global warming hoaxers are much better than Hitler. He only had to con a single nation. They have taken on the world and they have had brilliant success.

So how have they done it? With emotion! Plain and simple. Human emotion. Hoaxsters play on human emotions, especially guilt. They do it because it works! Human emotion will run roughshod over human rationality every time. Think about it. The world is being destroyed and you are the cause of it! Guilt.

Let’s face it. Most of us do not understand the so-called science behind the claims of Man-made Global Warming. Most of us are not scientists. The fact that we don’t understand it brings a degree of shame. (Remember emotion) We drive our nice cars and trucks and live in our nice homes and wear our nice clothes and along comes someone who has a scientific formula, which we do not understand, to tell us that all these things we are enjoying are causing death and destruction to our fellowman… to our home… the earth. We are ashamed and we feel guilty about what, we are told, are our excesses. The guilt we feel drives us to bow to the demands of those pointing their fingers at us and crying “shame, shame”. Next thing you know, in order to feel good about ourselves, we are following the demands of the hoaxsters and have even joined the finger pointing group calling “shame, shame” at the holdouts who HAVE bothered to take a second look, a RATIONAL look, at the claims made by the hoaxsters and found them far short on facts.

This entire Man-made Global Warming Hoax can be unveiled and destroyed if the public would only stop and think rationally for a few minutes.

It is up to each of us to look closely at the claims the hoaxsters are making and with a little fundamental research we can debunk it.

If you remember any of your grammar school and high school science you already know that the earth goes through heating and cooling periods. It is the way of nature. It is as natural as sunrise and sunset. And, most important, it happens to be true.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you do not understand something about the Man Made Global Warming message. Then check the answers for accuracy. You have the greatest library in history at your fingertips… the Internet.

As a religious man, I believe that God created this planet as a home for us. Man’s most heinous sin has always been his aspiration to be God, or to be LIKE God. This Man-Made Global Warming scheme is simply more evidence that man has not yet learned that he is NOT BIG ENOUGH TO BE God. Not yet. Not ever.

J. D. Longstreet
*****************

Conservative+Global+Warming+Hoax

Guns and America

Guns and America.
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

****************************************************
It is impossible to separate the two... guns and America, I mean. Guns obtained and secured the country we now know as “America” for the people we now know as “Americans.”

As the settlers/pilgrims stepped ashore in the New World they carried their trusty weapons, guns. When the frontiersmen dipped their toes into the waters of the western sea, the Pacific, no doubt they clutched in their hands a later variant of the same weapon the Pilgrims had in their grips when their toes touched the sand of the Carolina, Virginia, and New England beaches. It had been a long journey but guns had fed, clothed, and protected these new people, called Americans, as they laid claim to a new land destined to become the leader of the free world, if not the entire world.

When these restless people, the Americans, decided their “King” was demanding more from them than they were willing to give, the gun won them their Independence. Some eighty years later, these same restless peoples decided to fight a war amongst themselves over, depending upon how you decipher history, “States Rights” or “Slavery”. (In my case, I have done the research and know that States Rights was the cause of the American Civil War simply because the facts, when laid bare, support that interpretation. Yes, slavery BECAME an issue in the war but only after the war had raged for nearly two years and when Lincoln needed political support, badly, from the abolitionists, for the war he was losing! All this is for another day, in a different venue, so I will cut it short by urging you to actually read the “Emancipation Proclamation” if you are REALLY interested in learning just how many slaves were freed by that piece of political propaganda. The answer was, of course, NONE.). In any event, the gun, carried by both sides in the conflict devastated the countries and some say forged a single entity known as the UNITED States of America. Only recently, frankly, have I begun to question that.

In all the wars since, the gun has taken the war to America’s enemies and protected the Americans wielding it and managed to secure the freedom and liberties our forefathers put their lives and their fortunes on the line for back in the 1700’s. Together, we have come a very long way the gun and America.

But, just as there were two camps in the days preceding the American Civil War, there are two camps today as regards the gun and the American citizen. One camp made up of folks who think Americans have no need of the gun, and those in the second camp who feel Americans and the gun are inseparable… and should be.

“Society benefits from ordinary people who accept the responsibilities of firearm ownership. Society does not benefit from gun control.” I have no idea who said that first, but it would make an excellent motto for the Americans who believe Americans and guns are inseparable.

The argument over guns flares up, it seems, with each new Presidential Administration’s entrance into the White House. Much the same thing happens after each congressional election and when a new Justice is vetted for the US Supreme Court. As we are just a few weeks into all three happening, both camps have applied their war paint and are looking for opportunities to make thie positions known and likewise feel out the new people in the White House, on The Hill and on The Court.

When our forefathers wrote the constitution their collective wisdom was based upon all the collective wisdom from creation up to their day. To our knowledge, there were no “seers” or clairvoyants among them. In other words, no one could see the future or what it held for this brand new country and, indeed, the world. Had there been, I expect the final version of the constitution would read much differently from the end version we have today.

Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled that the constitution actually meant what it said about US citizens having the right to keep and bear arms. The 2nd Amendment says: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

It is important to notice that the decision in favor of the Forefathers won by a single vote of the Court. The vote was 5 – 4 in favor of interpreting the 2nd amendment so Americans did not have to turn in their guns or have the US Government confiscate them.

The obvious problem with this vote is that it will instigate more litigation until finally, at some point, those who wish to take away that right will succeed. In fact, many feel the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court may, in fact, be the final straw and the next time the second amendment is tried before this court Americans will lose their right to keep and bear arms.

Thinking about it for a while now, I have concluded that we may have at least two more chances before we lose our guns. Until the liberals in America manage one more seat on the court, we may, and I say “MAY” with trepidation, get one more case decided in favor of my side, (the side in favor of allowing Americans their right to keep and bear arms) before we lose the next case and, along with it, our right to keep and bear arms. (By the way, define “ARMS.” Does it cover knives? If so, how long? How many edges? Hilt or hiltless? , etc, etc.)

As one who favors the right to keep and bear arms I am concerned over the Sotomayor appointment to The Court. Why? Well, first of all, I accept that she will be seated on the court. It is a done deal. But there are indicators from her past that concern me. These indicators cause me to believe that when the chips are down she will vote to ignore the obvious meaning of the second amendment and support taking away the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. Lets looks at some of those indicators:

She has spoken out against the Heller decision in which the Supreme Court recognized the individual right to Keep and Bear Arms.

She has expressed disdain for private gun ownership dating back to her senior thesis at Princeton University, where she wrote that America has a "deadly obsession" with guns and that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to firearms ownership.

In United States v. Sanchez-Villar, she stated: "the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right."

And In addition to her record opposing the Second Amendment, she has also strongly advocated judicial activism. (In some ways, this worries me more about Ms. Sotomayor than her obvious problem with the 2nd Amendment!)

If this Sotomayor record does not give you pause, then, frankly, I don’t know what will.

So America edges ever closer to losing the citizen’s right to keep and bear arms, quite possibly even the right to carry a knife. There can be no doubt that a knife, in the time of our forefathers, was, indeed, a weapon. It would, no doubt, fall into the category of “arms.” There can also be no doubt as to why the forefathers felt it important to place this amendment in the constitution as a part of the original 10 amendments that made up the Bill of Rights. They had just fought a war against a tyrant to gain their freedom - and they did it with a citizen’s army composed of men who owned their own weapons!

George Washington, the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and the first President of the United States said the following: "A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."

Thomas Jefferson said the following: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

And finally, words from the most well known of the tyrants of the last century, Adolf Hitler: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.”

It is good, I think to note that the Forefathers felt so highly of the right to keep and bear arms that it is the SECOND Amendment. The first being, of course, freedom of speech, religion, etc.

We must tread softly, yet boldly, as we attempt to protect our rights these days. America has two generations of citizens trained in socialism as products of the Public (Government) School System. Like “Pavlov’s Dog” they await only the ringing of the bell to respond in defense of the “greater good.” But, like the other dog, chasing it’s tail, they haven’t the reasoning ability to ask of themselves what they intend to do with the tail if, and when, they DO catch it?

J. D. Longstreet

****************************************************************

Conservative+Guns+America+Constitution

Forests of Concrete and Steel

Forests of Concrete and Steel
By Paul Driessen
****************************
“Many words could describe wind energy and green jobs. “Sustainable” is not one of them.”
Paul Driessen
*******************************************
Boone Pickens, Nacel Energy, Vestas Iberia and others have been issuing statements and running ads, extolling the virtues of wind as an affordable, sustainable energy resource. Renewable energy reality is slowly taking hold, however.

Spain did increase its installed wind power capacity to 10% of its total electricity, although actual energy output is 10-30% of this, or 1-3% of total electricity, because the wind is intermittent and unreliable. However, Spain spent $3.7 billion on the program in 2007 alone, King Juan Carlos University economics professor Gabriel Calzada determined.

It created 50,000 jobs, mostly installing wind turbines, at $73,000 in annual subsidies per job – and 10,000 of these jobs have already been terminated. The subsidies have been slashed, due to Spain’s growing economic problems, putting the remaining 40,000 jobs at risk.

Meanwhile, the cost of subsidized wind energy and carbon dioxide emission permits sent electricity prices soaring for other businesses – causing 2.2 jobs to be lost for every “green” job created, says Calzada. Spain’s unemployment rate is now 17% and rising. That’s hardly the “success” story so often cited by Congress and the Obama Administration.

Across the Channel, Britain’s biggest wind-energy projects are in trouble. Just as the UK government announced its goal of creating 400,000 eco-jobs by 2015, major green energy employer Vestas UK is ending production. All 7,000 turbines that Downing Street just committed to installing over the next decade will be manufactured – not in Britain, but in Germany, Denmark and China.

For businesses, existing global warming policies have added 21% to industrial electricity bills since 2001, and this will rise to 55% by 2020, the UK government admits. Its latest renewable energy strategy will add another 15% – meaning the total impact on British industry will likely be a prohibitive 70% cost increase over two decades. This is the result of the government’s plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions 34% below 1990 levels by 2020, and increase the share of renewables, especially wind, from 6% to 31% of Britain’s electricity.

These cost hikes could make British manufacturers uncompetitive, and send thousands more jobs overseas, the Energy Intensive Users Group reports. English steel mills could become “unable to compete globally, even at current domestic energy prices,” says British journalist Dominic Lawson; “but deliberately to make them uncompetitive is industrial vandalism – and even madness … a futile gesture ... and immoral.”

On this side of the pond, President Obama and anti-hydrocarbon members of Congress are promoting “green” energy and jobs, via new mandates, standards, tax breaks and subsidies. However, the United States would need 180,000 1.5-megawatt wind turbines by 2020, just to generate the 600 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity that compliance with the narrowly passed Waxman-Markey global warming bill would necessitate, retired energy and nuclear engineering professor James Rust calculates.
This would require millions of acres of scenic, habitat and agricultural lands, and 126 million tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals for the turbines, at 700 tons per turbine; prodigious quantities of concrete, steel, copper and land for new transmission lines; and still more land, fuel and raw materials for backup gas-fired generators. America’s new national forests will apparently be made of concrete and steel.

Those miners and drillers would likely be reclassified as “green” workers, based on the intended purpose of their output. However, the raw materials will probably not be produced in the States, because so many lands, prospects and deposits are off limits – and NIMBY litigation will further hamper resource extraction.

Air quality laws and skyrocketing energy costs (due to carbon taxes and expensive renewable energy mandates) will make wind turbine (and solar panel) manufacturing in the USA equally improbable. Thus, manufacturing could well be in China or India, and most “green” jobs could be for installers, as Spain and Britain discovered.
Posturing has already collided with reality in Texas, the nation’s wind energy capital. Austin’s GreenChoice program cannot find buyers for electricity generated entirely from wind and solar power. Its latest sales scheme has been a massive flop: after seven months, 99% of its recent electricity offering remains unsold.

Austin officials admit that “times have changed,” and the recession and falling energy prices may make it impossible for the city to meet its lofty goals. The company’s renewable electricity now costs almost three times more than standard electricity, and even eco-conscious consumers care more about the color of their money than the hue of their purported ideology.

Even worse for global warming alarmists and renewable energy advocates and rent seekers, global warming patterns have reversed during the past decade. Satellite data reveal that the planet is cooling, despite steadily rising carbon dioxide levels, and summertime low temperature records are being broken all over the United States.
“You'd better hope global warming is caused by manmade CO2 if you're investing in [renewable] sectors,” says Daniel Rice, the past decade’s best-performing US equity fund manager (BlackRock Energy and Resources Fund). But evidence for manmade catastrophic global warming is dissipating faster than carbon dioxide from an open soda bottle on a hot summer day.

The crucial fact remains: wind and solar are simply not economical without major government subsidies or monstrous carbon taxes. Moreover, cap-and-tax legislation currently being promoted in the House and Senate is “not enough to do anything” about supposed global warming disasters notes Rice.

“All it does is provide Obama a pass to Copenhagen,” where the UN will host a climate change conference in December, Rice says. And those subsidies and taxes would drive energy prices still higher, killing jobs and skyrocketing the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

Congress and the Administration are dragging their feet on nuclear power, closing off access to more resource-rich lands, and imposing layers of new regulations on oil, gas and coal energy – denying Americans these vast stores of energy and hundreds of billions in revenue that developing them would generate. Meanwhile, slick wind turbine ad campaigns promote expensive, heavily subsidized, unreliable technologies that only climate activists and company lobbyists would describe as sustainable, affordable, eco-friendly or socially responsible.

The ads and lobbyists seek more mandates, tax breaks and subsidies. Wind promoters want to quiet opponents long enough to get energy and climate legislation enacted – before Americans realize how it would drive the price of energy still higher, kill jobs, curtail living standards and liberties, and raise the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

___________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power • Black Death.
*********************

cap-and-trade, coal+ Congress+ energy+ environmentalists" rel="tag"> Conservative+cap-and-trade, coal+ Congress+ energy+ environmentalists

How Empires Die ... Alan Caruba

How Empires Die
By Alan Caruba

**********************

I recently read an interesting book by Christopher Kelly, “The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and The Fall of Rome.” Our popular image of Attila is that of a barbaric pagan, but Priscus of Panium set off to meet Attila in 449 AD and, as Kelly relates, “Attila turned out to be surprisingly civilized and a dangerously shrewd player of international politics.”

It’s always a good idea to review one’s assumptions about the world in which one lives, such as the current politically correct view that Islam is “a religion of peace” and that the barbarity of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Arab groups is an anomaly, the result of their incorrect interpretation of the Koran. Their interpretation, however, is quite accurate and the Koran is a call to arms and battle plan for the conquest of the world.

From America’s earliest years, it has had to deal with marauding Arabs and in modern times we have put our troops in harm’s way in the Middle East in Beirut in the 1980s and to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in August 1990.

Following 9/11 we returned in 2001 to drive Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan. They took refuge in the frontier provinces of Pakistan and have since returned to the killing fields of our choosing…if killing one’s sworn enemies can be called a choice.

On March 20, 2003, the Second Gulf War was launched against Iraq and we are now beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq’s cities. A large contingent of U.S. military will remain in Iraq. At the same time, there has been a buildup of troops in Afghanistan. Historically, no empire has ever successfully conquered or subdued the Afghani tribes and, in modern times, the most recent effort brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is generally agreed that the real threat to Mideast stability is Iran and that the shakiest nation in the region is Pakistan.

History teaches us that the emperors of the Roman Empire had to make choices about where they too would place their troops throughout the vast expanse under their control; it surrounded the Mediterranean, which they called Mare Nostrum, our sea.

At the end of his book, Kelly asks, “What makes great empires endure or collapse? How do governments defend their actions? What causes the breakup of a leviathan superstate? When is it right to go to war, or purchase peace, or pay off an enemy? These are issues of enduring importance.”

When an empire gets too large for it’s military and financial resources to maintain, it becomes highly vulnerable. An empire, too, depends on its alliances. When they go bad, the empire—any empire—is in trouble.

The Roman Empire fell for many reasons, but chief among them was the relentless arithmetic of demography, the movement of populations of people.

The Romans regarded the Goths and Vandals as “barbarians,” but the Goth tribes were people who were just as challenged by the Huns as the Romans and they were on the move to find more land for their growing population. In doing so, they crossed the Danube to trespass on Roman lands in France, in Spain, and down into Northern Africa.

By contrast, “the Huns seemingly offered no moral or religious justification, however thin or unconvincing. They sought neither to find a new homeland on Roman territory nor to glorify themselves as heroic freedom fighters warring down a harsh imperial regime.”

“The Huns appear more brutal precisely because they had no known motive for their raids beyond the acquisition of booty and captives.” This last observation is particularly important because the rise of Islam can be traced directly to the same purpose. It was, however, masked by Mohammed’s promise of paradise for anyone who fell in battle and servitude for those conquered.

Here’s where the similarities between America and the ancient Romans get really interesting. At the same time the nation engages Islamic terrorism, our national sovereignty—the integrity of our borders—is being challenged as not just thousands, but millions have invaded to take up residence among us. This repeats the pattern that brought down the Roman Empire.

Having forsaken universal conscription, the U.S. depends on an all-voluntary military to project our power. The Romans, toward the end, often allied with the Goths to fight the Huns and, on occasion, allied with the Huns as well. With the exception of the British, Canadians and Australians, our military allies are mostly for show.

Not only is our financial stability at risk, but since the 1960s, the level of decadence in our society has risen, reflected in popular culture and media. Our primary and secondary educational system has become an abject failure.

Recently, while in Russia, President Obama said, “The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.”

This ignores the entire history of civilization. It is criminally naïve. The future, just as in the past, will belong to whoever has the greatest military with the financial power and the willingness to use it.

Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

And as John Adams warned, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. He is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, July 2009

****************************

Conservative+US+ROME+SUPERPOWER+COLLAPSE

Americans getting the “Bum’s Rush” On ObamaCare

Americans getting the “Bum’s Rush” On ObamaCare

A Commentary from J. D. Longstreet

*****************************************

So Many Questions. So FEW Answers!

The Urban Dictionary defines “Bum’s Rush” as: “To be jostled or hustled to move you, or get rid of you, or get you to do something that someone wants you to do - that you don't necessarily want to do.”

Now that we have everyone up to date on that portion of the lexicon most nearly associated with what the Congress is doing to Americans these days, let us now speak of ObamaCare the socialized medicine legislation the democrat/socialists are ramming through Congress and down the throats of the American people.

First I want to urge you to write, e-mail, fax, phone, or even send a telegram to your congressperson and senators demanding that they fight ObamaCare and vote no on any portion of the legislation that may come before them. Believe me, the dems are going to throw this legislation at the congresspersons and senators as fast as they can, in the dead of night if they can. In other words - they intend to do whatever it takes to get this ObamaCare legislation passed through the Congress, if it is humanly possible, by the end of July.

We warned you this was coming. Well, it is here. ObamaCare and Cap and Trade - both are coming up at Americans fast and furious - along with the full Senate’s consideration of the President’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. ALL of this is coming at the American electorate like the Bum’s Rush we spoke of above. Rest assured… more is on the way.

For now, though, lets focus on this “Healthcare Overhaul,” as the President likes to call what you and I refer to as… ObamaCare.

Have you considered just how complicated a bill like the ObamaCare proposal would, of necessity, have to be? I mean, just think about it. Think of all the things a bill similar to ObamaCare would have to be. The intricacies of such an all-encompassing bill are staggering. It boggles the mind. Yet, the democrats want the Congress to vote on it, without ever having read it. Now, you and I both know that reading something, anything, and considering that same thing are two entirely different things. Why, reading one of your old healthcare insurance policies is so complicated you need an attorney by your side to interpret much, if not most, of it and the layman, unskilled in the law, is lost within a few paragraphs. And THAT, dear reader, is only a single Insurance policy for a single person, or, at most, a single family. There is just SO much to be considered!

I happen to be one of the millions of Americans cursed with a chronic disease, which rendered me “uninsurable.” Believe me, when I tell you, I know the value of having insurance. I also happen to be a former insurance salesman back in my misspent youth. So, my concern over the intricacies of ObamaCare is very real. For instance: I wonder if Obama Care cover diseases like Crohn’s Disease? Oh sure heart disease, diabetes, and such will be covered, but how about the little known, less “sexy” diseases such as the one I mentioned a sentence or two before this one. Will they be covered? And, who will make the decision(s) about what is covered and what is not?

If your Chronic Disease is not covered by ObamaCare… What Then? That is just ONE of the questions nobody has answered, at least to my knowledge, YET, about the President’s new Healthcare Overhaul proposal… and there are so many more! What size bureaucracy are we talking about here - huge, maybe? How about humongous!?

What about medical research and medical innovations? Up to now, the government has participated in medical research and development with taxpayer money as grants, etc, to development labs all over the country. But, one must ask, what happens when the government is insuring everyone and their primary concern has turned to holding the costs of that treatment down? All that R&D money will have dried up as it is sucked from the treasury by the costs of treatment.

Of course, the really BIG fight is just now beginning to elbow its way to the forefront. That’s the fight over whether, or not, ObamaCare will cover the costs of abortion. This fight is bound to get down and dirty, and do so quickly, once the bell rings and the bout begins. Of course, they could always decide NOT TO DECIDE, at least for now, and revisit the issue at a more favorable time in the future, for one side or the other.

By now, you should be getting a glimpse of just how incredibly intricate devising a socialized medicine scheme is for America - a country which has not, until now, actually considered socialism as a form of government for ourselves. It is here that we must bring ourselves to understand that we will be replacing our “republican”(The US is a Representative Republic.) form of government with a “socialist” form of government.

In the meantime, Americans are being herded toward acceptance of this HUGE piece of a Socialistic boondoggle at near record-breaking speed. But, thank goodness for small favors. The Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Thursday (07-23-09) that there will be no vote on “ObamaCare”, in the US Senate, until AFTER the August recess.

The more Americans learn of ObamaCare the more they become convinced thy do not want it! That explains the “Bum’s Rush” we mentioned at the beginning of this commentary. The democrat/socialists (in charge of the US government these days) KNOW if they have a chance of winning this fight, they MUST get ObamaCare passed through the Congress and signed by the President BEFORE American citizens wake-up to what they (The Congress and the President) are about and what is in the bill and what is NOT in the bill – and - just what it means for our form of government.

I cannot stress this enough: It is extremely important that Americans become involved in this fight! If you who wish to maintain the democratic Representative Republic the US has enjoyed since it’s founding, and you want to guard against a socialist take-over of our government – then you MUST become involved.

The country asked very little of its citizens. Mostly, it asks that you obey the laws and defend it. We have arrived at one of those occasions when you, as an American citizen, are accorded the privilege, yes, I DID say privilege, of standing up to be counted among the hosts of those Americans who value their country which was placed in their care by a group of men and women, the likes of which the world has never seen the match.

We have reached a point in this struggle, which suggests the need for supernatural interference. I am suggesting, here, that prayer be employed as a weapon in this conflict. As I said above, it is impossible to stress enough how much power this bill will place in the hands of our government. This is power that could be used against all Americans, even those Americans yet unborn, on the whim of a Congress or a President at sometime in the future. Already you are beginning to realize the financial strain it will place on the country and on its citizens.

ObamaCare must go down to defeat. In my humble opinion, that defeat can be made a reality ONLY by Americans working together to, once again, defend this great land from a threat that is decidedly domestic.

In the words of that American hero, Todd Beamer: “Let’s roll!”

J. D. Longstreet
*************************

Conservative+Socialism+Healthcare+Abortion+ObamaCare

Buying More Votes With ObamaCare

Buying More Votes With ObamaCare!

A commentary by J. D. Longstreet

************************************
This “Healthcare Overhaul” the Obama Administration and the democrat/socialists are trying to ram down the throats of Americans has more politics in it than the entire US Congress put together!

We have somewhere between 12 million and 20 million illegal aliens inside the borders of the US right now, today. Under ObamaCare they would receive free healthcare just as the Americans who live here legally, work in the US, and pay their taxes. That’s right! 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants will receive taxpayer-subsidized health insurance coverage. And consider this: The Healthcare plan now in the Senate Finance Committee actually exempts illegal aliens from the mandate to buy insurance. You may recall that a part of the bill would make it mandatory that LEGAL citizens of the US have Health Insurance or be fined. But, hey, if you are in this country illegally, having broken in and violated the law, you can receive the same healthcare as the legal folks who are paying for it with the hard-earned money they gave to the federal government in taxes. Oh, of course, even though you are illegal you will be expected to support the Democratic Party. Oh, that last part (about supporting the Democratic Party) isn’t written down anywhere, but it is understood , even so.

We taxpayers of the US are already paying through the nose for medical care for illegal aliens - even though the folks who want the US borders thrown wide open try to sell us the garbage that illegal aliens do not cost US taxpayers anything in medical costs. That is unmitigated Bovine Scatology! Recently, USA Today reported that here in my own state, North Carolina, the cost to the people of the state for emergency Medicaid for illegal aliens increased by 28%! And that is just in ONE STATE!

What do you think is going to happen when the folks, who are south of the border, learn that ObamaCare passed into law and they learn of the FREE MEDICAL CARE in the US provided by the gringos? Why, there’ll be a stampede north! The Border Patrol will have to get out of the way - or be trampled! If you want to get a taste of how bad it will be, pay a visit to the Emergency Department, or ER, of the hospital nearest you on some Friday or Saturday night and just stroll through the waiting area and see for yourself who is there.

WAKE UP AMERICA! YOU ARE GETTING SCREWED BY THE DEMOCRATS… AGAIN!

It is maddening to watch my fellow Americans bend over, assume the position, and take, with a smile, what the democrats are offering.

A number of years ago Ronald Reagan said the following:

“As if we’re not already overextended enough financially, the issue of National Health Care is now on the table once more vote. Here’s some perspective you might find interesting.

Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.

Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.Let’s take a look at social security itself. Again, very few of us disagree with the original premise that there should be some form of savings that would keep destitution from following unemployment by reason of death, disability or old age. And to this end, social security was adopted, but it was never intended to supplant private savings, private insurance, pension programs of unions and industries.

Now in our country under our free enterprise system we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.

But let’s also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won’t decide when they’re in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine.

Former Representative Halleck of Indiana has said, “When the American people want something from Congress, regardless of its political complexion, if they make their wants known, Congress does what the people want.”

So write, and if your representative writes back to you and tells you that he or she too is for free enterprise, that we have these great services and so forth, that must be performed by government, don’t let them get away with it. Show that you have not been convinced. Write a letter right back and tell them that you believe in government economy and fiscal responsibility; that you know governments don’t tax to get the money the need; governments will always find a need for the money they get and that you demand the continuation of our free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen even we believe that he is on our side to begin with. Write to strengthen his hand. Give him the ability to stand before his colleagues in Congress and say “I have heard from my constituents and this is what they want.”

Write those letters now; call your friends and them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until, one day, as Normal Thomas said we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

It was excellent advice then and it is certainly excellent advice today.

J. D. Longstreet

********************

Conservative+Socialism+Healthcare+ObamaCare

Obama Shows His Muslim Hand ... Alan Caruba

Obama Shows His Muslim Hand

By Alan Caruba

**********************

When candidate Obama was courting the “Jewish vote” he donned a yarmulke, went to the Wailing Wall in Israel, and said all the right things. He needn’t have bothered because the American Jewish community, estimated to be approximately 5.5 million, was largely in his pocket. They have voted overwhelmingly Democrat since the days of FDR.

This is, if you think about it, fairly astonishing because his middle name is Hussein, his birth father was a Muslim, and so was his Indonesian step-father who reportedly would take him on occasion to the mosque. It is even more astonishing because he was a member for twenty years in a church whose pastor was close friends with the notorious anti-Semite, the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan.

Any American Jew paying any attention should surely have harbored some doubts and, six months into his presidency, a lot of American Jews are asking themselves what they were thinking when they voted for Obama.

In an article in The Jerusalem Post, Anne Bayefsky wrote, “President Barack Obama last Monday met for the first time with leaders of selected Jewish organizations and leaks from the meeting now make one thing very clear. The only free country in the Middle East no longer has a friend in the leader of the free world. Obama is the most hostile sitting American President in the history of the state of Israel.”

Surprise, surprise. Among the leaders of major Jewish organizations not invited to the July 13 meeting was one from the Zionist Organization of America. As Bayefsky noted, “The oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, with a Washington office second in size only to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was not a voice Obama wanted to hear. This leaves the President willing to engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but not ZOA President Mort Klein.”

In a July 21 editorial, The Washington Times criticized the U.S. State Department noting that, in the previous week, it had “delivered a demarche (a protest) to Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, to hold construction on twenty residential units on the site of the Shepherd Hotel, which stands on the edge of an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem.”

Does it strike anyone as odd that the State Department whose policies are set by the Oval Office is upset over a bit of housing in Jerusalem? It was, of course, the kind of Kabuki theatre in which diplomats engage to make a larger point. If the point was that the U.S. has the right to tell the sovereign nation of Israel where it can and cannot build housing it is an entirely absurd notion.

There is some further irony in that Ambassador Oren is the author of a remarkable book, “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: American in the Middle East 1776 to the Present.” Had anyone in the State Department read it, they would have learned that “A full fifteen years after declaring its independence, the United States still faced a devastating threat from the Barbary pirates”, Arabs who preyed on our merchant sea trade and who ultimately were responsible for the creation of the U.S. Navy and Marines to defeat them.

In the early years of America, there was an active movement to send missionaries to the Middle East to convert them to Christianity. Now we just send troops to rid the region of psychopathic depots like Saddam Hussein and fanatical Islamo-fascists like Osama bin Laden. So complaining about twenty new apartment units in East Jerusalem is just another way Obama is showing his Muslim bona fides.

He has been on a “get tough” agenda since taking office in late January. The message has not been lost on the so-called Palestinians. The PLO chief, Mahmoud Abbas, has gone back to demanding idiotic concessions from Israel despite the fact that he and his ragged little bunch of Arafat wannabes are literally propped up by Israel as an alternative to Hamas.

Middle East expert, Daniel Pipes, recently noted that Zionists had founded the Shimon Hatzadick neighborhood in 1891 by purchasing land from Arabs. It changed hands as the Arab/Jewish conflicts occurred over the years. The pro-Nazi Amin al Husseini, Jerusalem’s mufti, put up a building in the 1930s that later served as the Shepherd Hotel. In 1985 an American businessman, Irving Moskowitz, bought the land and rented the building to the Israeli border police until 2002.

What does any of this have to do with the United States? Nothing. It is sheer hubris to say that Israel hasn’t the right to build housing for its growing population in Jerusalem or anywhere else. As for the West Bank, it was captured in 1967 after Arab nations, including Jordan, again attacked Israel.

When we give back Texas, California, and much of the U.S. Southwest to Mexico, the State Department can issue such idiotic demands.This isn’t just about U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about the very Muslim Barack Hussein Obama.

Alan Caruba

***********************

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/