Politically-Correct Thought
Posted here for 12-21-09

"Climate change skeptics are scientists who have gone beyond the hype and conducted their own research, and made their own findings. It's what scientists do.

"For their efforts they have been fired -- discarded -- blocked from receiving grants -- banned from publications -- and threatened. They've been compared to holocaust deniers -- called nuts, crazy, and dangerous. Al Gore himself has called for violence against them. Others have called for Nuremberg-style trials -- government show trials -- to present them as enemies of humanity -- simply because they disagree with official government reports -- reports that are proving more and more to be wrong in the first place. [. . .] "[W]e are witnessing an all-out drive to impose thought control that seeks to ban the ability -- the right -- to think or speak for one's self. Thinking is becoming a crime.

"Today, there is one acceptable idea -- government is the answer. Stray from that premise -- even a little, as did Miss California, -- and there will be no mercy for you. Your life will be destroyed.

"There are forces [and individuals] in this nation who want total power to dictate their agenda and they will stop at nothing to achieve it. For them there is no compromise or polite discussion of differences of opinion. The wants, needs, desires of your life, your family, your home, are not to be considered.

"[United Nations policies] are blatant in their intent. Top down control; no sovereign, independent nations; no individual thought; no private property; no self defense; no morality; no personal pride of achievement; no questions. Anything that goes against the plan, anything that would cause anyone to hesitate in moving toward the agenda, must be eliminated or neutralized.

"Educate, indoctrinate, intimidate. Above all, destroy reason and control the ability to think. [. . .]

"Believe it or not, there is an organization, part of the UN of course, whose purpose is to define what we are allowed to think. Its process is called 'globally-acceptable truth.'

"The organization is called the Eden Foundation and the head of it is a man named Donald Sagar. He is a representative to the United Nations' Association for World Education.

"He is dangerous to you and me because he has written the blue print on thought control and is now enlisting the self-proclaimed leaders of the world to enforce it. [. . .]

"'Because of the relentless increase in the quantity and complexity of knowledge in the world,' [says Sagar,] 'we are experiencing a clash between cultures that prevents all but the most capable of surviving with any meaningful identity in tact.'

"Did you catch that? The reason we have wars, poverty and misery is because there is too much knowledge. Based on that premise, Sagar then set out to create the blue print to define acceptable ideas and thoughts -- those that would bring harmony to the world.

"That leaves no room for new ideas or innovation. Because new ideas bring change, causing confusion, shifts in living conditions and unemployment as old industries die to make way for the new.

"So, instead, we must set up a system of thought control. Certain ideas are the only ones safe to think. Globally-acceptable truth. And there must be a top-down control to assure bad thoughts are controlled or obliterated."

-- "'Globally-Acceptable Truth,' and the Crime of Thinking," by Tom DeWeese, The DeWeese Report, September 2009, pages 1-3, published by the American Policy Center, 13873 Park Center Road, #316, Herndon, Virginia 20171. Phone: 703-925-0881. Fax: 703-925-0991. E-mail. Website.

Socialism — Always the Goal
Posted here for 12-14-09

"Whether it's the academic community, the media elite or politicians, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism — a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.

"Academics, media elites and leftist politicians both in the U.S. and Europe protested the actions and military buildup of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recall the leftist hissy fit when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and predicted that communism would wind up on the trash heap of history. [. . .]

"[T]he reason why the world's leftists give the world's most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership. Unfortunately, it matters little whether there is a Democrat [. . .] or Republican-controlled Congress and White House; the march toward greater government control continues. It just happens at a quicker pace with Democrats in charge." [And with the present Congress and White House, at a much, much, much quicker pace.]

-- "Excused Horrors," by Walter E. Williams, on the Creators.com website.

A New Inconvenient Truth
Posted here for 12-7-09

"Some 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents from the Climate Research Unit at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia (where the 'world's leading climate scientists work') have been leaked. The blogosphere is on fire -- cover-up, falsified studies, intimidation of skeptics. It's all there.

"The Cap and Trade bill to lower our standard of living and subject our consumer choices to government diktat is based on the public agreeing that what we once called 'progress' threatens the planet with destruction and we must stop it. It is a matter of accepted dogma among the collectivist lemmings of the Left that the Earth is warming because of our insatiable appetite for food, clothing and shelter -- and cars, big-screen TVs and a zillion gadgets run by electricity.

"The industries producing these things produce 'greenhouse gas emissions,' threatening mass starvation, drought and hurricanes -- a slow motion '2012' that must be stopped by decreasing 'greenhouse gas emissions.' Cows will belch less if we stop eating them, that sort of thing.

"The collectivist Left in academia, media and politics got away with imprinting this dogma on the popular mind only because generations of government-school graduates have been successfully stripped of knowledge of history, geology or climate science. There was a time when 'science' was a rigorous search for truth that required an open skeptical mind, double-blind studies, multiple repeated experiments, peer-reviewed published data and a strong belief that if you are proven wrong, someone else got it right and the world will benefit. This approach was good enough for Pasteur, Newton and Ben Franklin, but not for today's crowd.

"Earlier generations knew that the Earth's climate was constantly changing, affected by numerous influences, some known (sunspots, Earth axis wobble, El Nino), some presumed still to be discovered. Historians knew that European history was influenced by periods of warming and cooling. The Vikings didn't call it 'Greenland' because it was covered (as now) with ice. Geologists knew that, in geologic time, the Sahara Desert was a tropical rainforest, glaciers covered Chicago and numerous other wonders.

"While people could certainly affect the environment around them to their benefit by agriculture, animal husbandry and industry (this used to be thought of as an indication of intelligence), our grandfathers would have thought the idea that puny mankind could affect the climate of the whole planet absurd.

"Whatever change did occur in what was then called 'the weather' would require mankind to adapt -- a trait of our species that our ancestors celebrated. How times have changed.

"Today, Al Gore leads the pack asserting the truth of anthropogenic global warming. Complicated computer models spewed forth Gore's PowerPoint presentation, which begat Oscar and Nobel. And it came to pass that the Prophet Gore gave stirring lectures to masses of the adoring initiated, traveling from place to place in a private jet, from hotel to speech in a caravan of SUVs whose motors were kept running to warm (or cool as the season required) while Gore lectured the world on the urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions.

"Neither the computer models nor Gore could explain the fact that from 1998 to 2008 (the last full year of surface temperature readings), the Earth did not keep warming (as the models had predicted). It actually cooled. Neither the computer models nor Gore could explain the dramatic drop in the number and severity of Atlantic hurricanes when both the models and Gore had predicted ever more Katrinas every year. [. . .]

"While the blogosphere buzzed all weekend with the contents of these [newly-exposed-to-the-public] e-mails (see for example powerlineblog.com) and analyzed what many began calling the biggest scientific scandal of all time, the Old Media went into protection mode. This scandal threatens the whole scientific rationale underpinning the campaign for world government, higher taxes and a decreased standard of living for all (except the Chinese). You'd never know it in the Old Media. The New York Times reported it as a third-rate e-mail burglary 'causing a stir among global warming skeptics.' [. . .]

"The BBC assured its listeners that 'the police have been informed' of the break-in. Just another hacker story. Ho hum. Just as the scientific method has suffered a reversion to dogma in the climate-change campaign, so too the 'journalism' of the Old Media has degenerated into laughable propaganda."

-- "The Great 'Global Warming' Hoax," by Roger Hedgecock, on the WorldNetDaily website.

Choosing the End of Freedom
Posted here for 11-30-09

"At Copenhagen this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your President will sign it. Most of the Third World countries will sign it, because they think they're going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won't sign it.

"I read that treaty, and what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created.

"The word 'government' actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, 'climate debt' -- because we've been burning C02 and they haven't. We've been screwing up the climate and they haven't. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement. [. . .]

"[Those in] the environmental movement [. . .] are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a President who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He's going to sign it. He'll sign anything. He's a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he'll sign it."

-- "From Rio to Copenhagen," by William F. Jasper, quoting Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to Margaret Thatcher, The New American November 23, 2009, page 44. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Buying Political Control
Posted here for 11-23-09

"[I]n the run-up to the 2004 elections [. . .], billionaire George Soros decided to integrate the radicals -- including their political organization ACORN into the structure of Democratic Party politics. Together with a group of like-minded billionaires, Soros created a 'Shadow Party' whose purpose was to shape the outcome of the 2004 presidential race. 'America under Bush,' Soros told The Washington Post, 'is a danger to the world ...' To achieve his goal, Soros created a galaxy of 527 political organizations headed by leftwing union leaders like SEIU [Service Employees International Union] chief Andrew Stern and Clinton operatives like Harold Ickes. As its policy brain he created the Center for American Progress.

"Soros failed to achieve his goal in 2004 but he went on working to create new elements of the network, such as the Apollo Alliance. Four years later the Shadow Party was able to elect a candidate who had spent his entire political career in the bowels of this movement. [. . .]

Just eight months into his presidency [. . .], a new Barack Obama has begun to emerge. With unseemly haste Obama has nearly bankrupted the federal government, amassing more debt in eight months than all his predecessors combined. He has appeased America's enemies abroad and attacked America's intelligence services at home. He has rushed forward with programs that require sweeping changes in the American economy and is now steamrolling a massive new health-care program that will give the government unprecedented control of its citizens."

-- "The Manchurian Candidate," by David Horowitz, Whistleblower magazine, November 2009, page 38. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Disrespecting the Constitution
Posted here for 11-16-09

"Not only has President Obama done nothing deserving of the Peace Prize, by accepting it he has done something patently unconstitutional.

"It is true that other sitting Presidents have gotten away with accepting the Nobel Prize, but that doesn't make it any less wrong. Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states: 'No person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.' Suffice it to say that any breach of the Constitution, no matter how seemingly insignificant, eats away like rust at the chains binding those in power from doing mischief.

"A prize worth $1.4 million is certainly a 'present,' and a body beholden to the Norwegian Parliament surely counts as a 'foreign state.' If Obama had at least sought the consent of Congress to accept the prize, he could have been within constitutional bounds. That, of course, would not fit his vision of the presidency as being above congressional oversight."

-- "Obama's Ignoble Peace Prize," by Steven J. DuBord, The New American November 2009, page 44. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Choosing Liberal Fascism
Posted here for 11-9-09

"[P]erhaps the most cunning propaganda feat in history has been undertaken for the past eight years. As Jonah Goldberg expertly expounds in his book, Liberal Fascism, American left-wing ideologues have managed to dissociate themselves from all the horrors of fascism with a 'brilliant rhetorical maneuver.' They've done it by 'claiming that their opponents are the fascists.' [. . .]

"These euphemistically called 'community' organizations have next to nothing to do with improving the communities and everything to do with politics, primarily strong-arming government money to advance their political aims. Prior to Reagan's election, these groups worked independently for the most part, each seeking to effect local change towards leftist ends.

"But with Reagan's victory, ACORN founding member Wade Rathke sent out a memo that would reverberate all the way to Barack Obama's moment. ACORN had been behaving as a sort of 'Lone Ranger of the left' for too long, wrote Rathke. Ronald Reagan had formed a coalition among the middle-class that threatened to bring greater prosperity without left-wing statists calling the shots. Rathke put out the call to the ACORN troops to stop antagonizing those who would be allies, especially unions and church organizations, once shunned by ACORN as too placid for the real fight for power. For the next 25 years, the community organization network built, proliferated and formed a solid, nationwide base of political strength, purely according to [Saul] Alinsky's original vision, and all just waiting for the right candidate to tap into it and lead it.

"When folks from all corners of America proclaimed, seemingly with one voice, Barack is the 'One we've been waiting for,' they were speaking out of the vast Alinsky-originated network.

"Neither did Barack Obama invent the political 'ideology of change,' nor design its carefully crafted propaganda. While media folks talked of the tingles up their legs and the brilliant rhetoric of Barack Obama, they were heralding the speaker only, not the creator of the movement and its slogans. That would have been Saul Alinsky, the man who took fascism and cunningly made it appear to casual observers every bit as American as apple pie.

"When Barack Obama promises 'collective redemption' through his profligate spending programs and vast overtures to a new world order built on love for our fellow man, we ought to shudder, not swoon.

"We ought to remember that healthy global relationships are built upon respect, not all-encompassing love, and that redemption for one's soul is a commodity the state is not empowered to offer."

-- "Barack Obama: The Quintessential Liberal Fascist," by Kyle-Anne Shiver, Whistleblower magazine, July 2009, pages 12, 13, 15. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Seeing the Light
Posted here for 11-2-09

"Compact fluorescent light bulbs, mandated [by Congress] to replace the century-old reliable incandescent bulb (at four times the cost) contain poisonous liquid mercury over 300 times the EPA’s standard accepted safety level. In addition, days after a bulb has been broken, vacuuming or simply crawling across the carpeted floor where the bulb was broken can cause mercury vapor levels to shoot back upwards of 100 times the accepted level of safety.

"These figures are according to a report by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) after a woman was quoted $2000 for cleanup of a broken compact fluorescent bulb in her house.

"In short, it basically takes a HAZMAT team to clean up when a bulb is broken. Worse, as the bulbs are used by more Americans, land fills will become toxic waste dumps, forcing massive government response to deal with normal disposal of the filthy things.

"Apparently that is how the 'green' industry intends to create jobs. These toxic bulbs are bad for the environment, bad for the economy and bad for your health. Who benefits? General Electric and Sylvania, corporations which lobbied Congress to ban the incandescent bulb so they could market the much more profitable “green” bulbs. They make more money and they get to tout their 'good environmental stewardship.' They even get awards for it."

-- "Environmental Facts the Greens Will Never Mention," by Tom DeWeese, in an email dated 10-24-09. Thanks, Irene.

Self-Inflicted Pain
Posted here for 10-26-09

"The Waxman-Markey [Cap and Trade] bill that passed the House [of Representatives] not only unread -- but unwritten(!) -- will give the EPA unprecedented authority to regulate anything that emits carbon dioxide, a natural atmospheric gas: smokestacks, cars, farm animals, humans, you name it. The EPA, playing God, will 'cap' carbon emissions at an arbitrary level of their choosing, allowing emissions only through permits which can be bought or sold via a government-meddled market.

"Those limited permits, by definition, will go for a pretty penny. So who will pay for them? 1) You. Costs are always shifted to the consumer. 2) Employees, when their jobs are lost overseas where companies don't have to pay their governments to emit. 3) Businesses, when unattainable permits cause them to downsize or fold. 4) Taxpayers, who must ultimately bear the cost of this hideous government expansion.

"Think about it: since carbon is always emitted through the use of energy, and since energy is needed to produce and transport every good and service on the planet, nearly every economic transaction will have a Waxman-Markey-added price tag. The total cost of 23 years of compliance with this bill from 2012-2035? Oh, about $9.4 trillion, according to the Heritage Foundation -- $393 billion annually. Heritage also calculates that our electricity bills will shoot up 90 percent by 2035, gas up 55 percent, and we'll lose a couple million jobs (and yes, that's even accounting for the 'green jobs' we'll supposedly gain). Remember, during the campaign Obama told The San Francisco Chronicle that he was well aware his plan would cause electricity costs to 'skyrocket.' Democrats know exactly what they're doing." [Destroying the United States of America.]

-- "Doomsday Machines," The Limbaugh Letter, August 2009, page 12. Address: 1270 Avenue of the Americas, 14th Floor, New York, New York 10020. Show phone: 800-282-2882. Fax: 212-445-3963. E-mail. Website.

Health Care and Freedom
Posted here for 10-19-09

"Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That's the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a 'health audit' of the contents of your refrigerator. [. . .]

"Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British health secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of 'lifestyle choices.' [. . .]

"Not so long ago in Britain it was proposed that each citizen should have a government-approved travel allowance. If you take one flight a year, you'll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But, if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you'll be subject to additional levies -- in the interest of saving the planet for Al Gore's polar bear documentaries and that carbon-offset palace he lives in in Tennessee. [. . .]

"'Freedom of movement' used to be regarded as a bedrock freedom. The movement is still free, but there's now a government processing fee of $389.95. And the interesting thing about this proposal was that it came nor from the Labour Party but the Conservative Party. [. . .]

"Ir's ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod -- but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. [. . .]

"Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea -- of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest -- or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline."

-- "Live Free or Die," by Mark Steyn, Whistleblower magazine, August 2009, pages 42-43. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Making Matters Worse
Posted here for 10-12-09

"What caused the Great Depression? It was not capitalism or 'greedy businessmen' or 'underconsumption' or 'overproduction.' Nor was it 'just one of those things.' It was government intervention in a place where government should never be -- the free market. And the agony was prolonged for a long, painful decade because government kept doing more of the same to 'fix' the tragedy that 'uncontrolled, greedy business' had created.

"Shift scene to today. The Fed has never learned its lesson. It has never stopped printing money, resulting in its devaluation. That's why for generations, young people have heard their parents talk about how cheaply they could buy a candy bar when they were children, but today they cost much more. That's why gas prices in 1965 were 25 cents a gallon, and $4.00 today. It's not a testimony to greedy candy manufacturers or oil companies. Rather it's an indication of how worthless the dollar has become.

"Economics 101 teaches that if you have more of something -- it's worth less. If you have less of it, it's worth more. The same is true of the dollar. The Fed has printed literally trillions of the things -- and flooded the market with them. As the saying goes, 'only the government can take a valuable commodity like paper, slap ink on both sides and render it worthless.' That is especially true since President Richard Nixon removed U.S. currency from the gold standard in the early 1970's. Since then, there as been nothing on which to base the value of money other than what the Fed says it's worth. [. . .]

"[I]n 1977, Jimmy Carter fell for the politically correct line that banks were 'redlining' loans for inner city neighborhoods, refusing to help the poor buy homes. Of course the banks were just trying to be fiscally responsible by not lending to people who had no money. Such a quaint idea in 1977. Carter, pandering to the Jesse Jackson types, signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which declared that banks have 'an affirmative obligation' to meet the credit needs of the communities in which they are chartered. Federal regulators would now rate banks on this basis when merger requests were filed. The CRA rating became more important to banks than the quality of loans. In fact, sound lending practices were considered to be racist.

"In 1995, under Bill Clinton, things got even worse. Tougher CRA ratings were issued. Banks now had to demonstrate that they were investing more money in poor, higher risk neighborhoods if they wanted federal approval to merge. [. . .]

"The game was on. The Wall Street brokerages and investment banks, with the encouragement of federal policy makers, have flooded America with cash. And to get that cash into society, for the common good, lending rules were loosened so that virtually anyone could get a loan, with no money down. [. . .]

"[I]t wasn't free enterprise that caused the 1929 crash, and it wasn't free enterprise that caused today's meltdown. In both cases it was government intervention corrupting the pure world of free markets. We are not protected by government intervention -- we are damaged by it. This is the second time the Fed created a collapse of the free market. To prevent a third there's only one logical action to take -- abolish the Federal Reserve."

-- "Free Enterprise Did Not Cause the Market Meltdown," by Tom DeWeese, The DeWeese Report, November 2008, pages 3-4, published by the American Policy Center, 13873 Park Center Road, #316, Herndon, Virginia 20171. Phone: 703-925-0881. Fax: 703-925-0991. E-mail. Website.

A Lesson about Torture
by George Everett "Bud" Day
Posted here for 10-5-09

George Everett "Bud" Day is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and Command Pilot who served during the Vietnam War. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S. service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having received some seventy decorations, a majority for actions in combat. Day is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

"I got shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 -- a squadron commander.

"After I returned to the U.S. in 1973, I published two books that dealt a lot with "real torture" in Hanoi. Our make-believe president is branding our country as a bunch of torturers when he has no idea what torture is.

"As for me, they put thru a mock execution, because I would not respond; pistol whipped on the head. A couple of days later I was hung by my feet all day. I escaped and got recaptured a couple of weeks later. I was shot and recaptured. Being shot was OK. What happened after was not.

"They marched me to Vinh, put me in the rope trick; it almost pulled my arms out of their sockets. They beat me on the head with a little wooden rod until my eyes were swelled shut, and my unshot, unbroken hand was a pulp.

"The next day they hung me by the arms, rebroke my right wrist, wiped out the nerves in my arms that control the hands; it rolled my fingers up into a ball, and only left the slightest movement of my left forefinger. So I started answering with some incredible lies.

"They sent me to Hanoi strapped to a barrel of gas in the back of a truck.

"In Hanoi, on my knees, it was the rope trick again. Beaten by a big fool.

"I was put into leg irons on a bed in Heartbreak Hotel.

"Much kneeling -- hands up at the Zoo.

"I got a really bad beating for refusing to condemn Lyndon Johnson.

"After several more kneeling events, I could see my knee bone thru the kneeling holes.

"There was an escape from the annex to the Zoo. I was the Senior Officer and because of the escape, they started a mass torture of all U.S. commanders.

"I think it was July 7, 1969, when they started beating me with a car fan belt. In the first two days I took over 300 strokes, then stopped counting because I never thought I would live thru it.

"They continued day-and-night torture to get me to confess to a non-existent part in the escape. This went on for at least three days. On my knees; fan belting. They cut open my scrotum with one fan belt stroke. The beatings opened up both knee holes again. My fanny looked like hamburger. I could not lie on my back.

"They tortured me into admitting that I was in on the escape, and that my two roommates knew about it.

"The next day I denied the lie.

"They commenced torturing me again with 3, 6, or 9 strokes of the fan belt every day from about July 11th or 12th to 14 October 1969. I continued to refuse to lie about my roommates again.

"Now, the point of this is that our make-believe president has declared to the world that we (in the U.S.) are a bunch of torturers. Thus it will be OK to torture us next time when they catch us, because that is what the U.S. does.

"Our make-believe president is a know-nothing fool who thinks that pouring a little water on some one's face, or hanging a pair of women's pants over an Arabs head is TORTURE. He is a meathead.

"I just talked to MOH [Metal of Honor] holder Leo Thorsness who was also in my squadron in jail, as was John McCain, and we agree that McCain does not speak for the POW group when he claims that Al Gharib was torture, or that "water boarding" is torture.

"Our president and those fools around him who keep bad mouthing our great country are a disgrace to the United States. It's stupid to claim that water boarding, which has no after effect, is torture. If it got the Arab to cough up the story about how he planned the attack on the twin towers in New York City, hurrah for the guy who poured the water."

-- From an email dated 6-22-09. Thanks, Frank. I trust the story isn't a hoax. (I've made slight editorial changes to improve readability.)

Note: Shortly after the above was posted, I received an email. Thanks, Howie, for investigating and letting me know. I appreciate it!

I have researched this a few times and have found no proof that this [information] originated from Col. Day. Any email that does not cite a verifiable, credible source should be deleted, not passed on.
Cheers
Howie Mirkin
LCDR, USN (ret)

Fluoridation: Good or Bad?
Posted here for 9-28-09

"In 1950, before any of these trials [begun in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Newburgh, New York; and Brantford, Ontario] had been completed, the PHS [U.S. Public Health Service] endorsed fluoridation. By so doing, they were taking a huge gamble on four fronts, 1) that swallowing fluoride actually reduced tooth decay, 2) that it would only lead to about 10% of children developing dental fluorosis [a strange mottling and discoloration of the teeth in some children] in its mildest form, 3) that when a child developed dental fluorosis, no damage was being done to any other growing tissue in its body, and 4) that fluoride would have no ill effect on adults.

"This clearly was not a scientific decision, because the science wasn't in, since neither the trials nor any health studies had been completed. [. . .]

"[T]he key gamble made by the PHS in 1950 was that fluoride could damage the child's growing tooth cells [and thus reduce tooth decay], by some undetermined biochemical mechanism, without damaging any other growing tissues or organs in the child's body.

"Over the 60 years since fluoridation began, dental fluorosis rates in the US have skyrocketed. [. . .]

"Starting in the 1980's, studies have shown little, if any, difference in tooth decay between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities, states or countries. [. . .]

"Most serious is the growing body of evidence that fluoridation is harmful to health. [. . .]

"There are over 50 animal studies that show that fluoride damages the brain and changes behavior. [. . .] [There is] now a total of 23 studies (from China. India, Iran, and Mexico) indicating that high fluoride exposure is associated with a lowering of IQ in children. [. . .]

"There have been [. . .] moments that should have ended fluoridation. One of these was the concession by the CDC in 1999, that the promoters had got the mechanism of fluoride's beneficial action wrong for over 50 years. They now admit that fluoride works topically, not systemically. In other words, it works on the outside of the tooth, not from inside the body. It simply does not make sense to swallow fluoride [for example, in fluoridated water]. [. . .]

"Fluoridation is unethical because it violates the individual's right to informed consent to medication, one of the key ethical planks of modern medicine. Fluoridation allows decision makers, without medical qualifications, to do to the whole community what an individual doctor cannot do to an individual patient. [. . .]

"Fluoridation is a bad medical practice. It is unethical, ineffective, and poses serious health dangers, especially for vulnerable subsets of the population. [. . .]

"Unfortunately, because government officials have put so much of their credibility on the line promoting and defending fluoridation, it is difficult for them now to admit that this practice was a huge mistake. [. . .]

"For those who fear a dental crisis if fluoridation is stopped, it should be noted that at least 5 modern studies have shown that when fluoridation is stopped, tooth decay has not gone up."

-- "Fluoridation Gamble Fails the Test of Time," by Paul Connett, PhD, Republic Magazine, Issue 13, pages 7-10. Address: PO Box 9, Boynton Beach, FLorida 33425. Phone: 714-436-1234. Fax: 714-455-2091. Website.

It's Called Revolution
Posted here for 9-21-09

"The precise, technical word for what is happening in the United States today is revolution. [. . .]

"What defines a revolution [. . .] is that when it's over a country has changed not merely its leaders and its laws, but its operating system. [. . .]

"Just as computers have operating systems, so too do countries. In fact, countries have dual operating systems -- one political and the other economic. [. . .] Politically you can be a democracy or a dictatorship, and economically you can have either a free market or a command economy. [. . .]

"[N]ow we can see clearly what's been happening in the United States during the last three decades. While conservatives have been working to improve our democracy and our free-market economy, liberals have been working to replace our democracy with a dictatorship, and our free-market economy with a command economy controlled by the government. [. . .] The liberals worked covertly, feigning support for democracy and for the free market while working diligently to undermine both. [. . .]

"With the election of Barack Obama as president, the liberals have launched a massive, two-front offensive they believe will end in victory. They have judged that our public education system is so degraded that only a few Americans are left who even understand what a democracy is, and how the free market actually works. They are convinced that the majority of Americans are too frightened by the current recession to care about preserving the principles that made us the most powerful, productive and innovative country the world has ever known. In short, the liberals are reaching for victory because they believe that history now is on their side. "

-- "Revolution," by Herbert E. Meyer, Whistleblower magazine, July 2009, pages 6-7. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Feminism: On the Wrong Track
Posted here for 9-14-09

"[F]eminism, in its eagerness to claim manliness for women, destroyed femininity. We began to see gangster movies with lovely actresses playing the role of hit men. Some feminists denounced the manly passion for competition and war, but in doing so they had to be careful not to imply that women are unsuited for business or for the military. [. . .]

"Having started from the rejection of femininity, women's identity necessarily becomes a search without a guide. [. . .]

"Men and women are not the same, as the gender-neutral society of feminism claims. Nor are men and women merely different. They are both same and different. Formerly society recognized the differences between the sexes, and with laws and customs accentuated those differences. Now society does the opposite. [. . .]

"Rather than trying to elevate the standard for men's sexual behavior up to that of women, as nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century feminists proposed, the [Simone de] Beauvoir feminists proposed to lower the standard for women down to that of men. The result of abolishing the double standard has been to do away with any standard. [. . .]

"Women have three disadvantages: they get pregnant, they contract sexually-transmitted disease more easily and more seriously, and most important, they suffer more from heartache than do men. [. . .]

"The moral authority of women is a heavy counterweight to the physical superiority of men. With that authority, women have a right to say no to any proposal or proposition from a (generally stronger) man that does not suit them, and be obeyed. But men's willingness to obey depends on women's being held to a higher standard of morality, especially sexual morality, than men. If a woman cannot say, 'How dare you!' to a man, her defenses are sapped because without a moral objection she has only her whim to rely on. In response, a man will think and will say, 'Why not? We are equal and so my desire is equal to yours.' The feminists in their desire for unattainable equality threw away this advantage for women even as they made use of it. For the means they used to gain equality -- raising consciousness -- was designed to shame men, not convince than. It was an exercise of women's moral authority more effective than argument. [. . .]

"The 'battle of the sexes' will never die, for men and women have different outlooks and will never quite see eye-to-eye. The old feminism tries to overcome that basic truth by compelling us to live under the aegis of gender neutrality. It sounds like liberation but it isn't. A new feminism would accept the difference and make the best of it. A new feminism would have its problems too, but I believe it would come as a relief."

-- "A New Feminism," by Harvey C. Mansfield, Imprimis, the National Speech Digest of Hillsdale College, June 2006, pages 2, 4, 6-7. Subscription free upon request. Address: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242. Phone: 800-437-2268. Imprimis Archive. Hillsdale College Website.

Peas in a Pod: Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama
Posted here for 9-7-09

"Saul Alinsky's worldview was that the United States is an oppressive and racist society where most people (the Have-Nots) are the victims of economic injustice with a future of despair. He wanted a radical change of America's social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. His goal was not to arrive at compromise or peaceful solution; his goal was to crush the Haves and transform society.

"Alinsky developed concepts to achieve power through mass organization. Organizing was his word for revolution. His 1946 book, Reveille for Radicals, had already made clear that he wanted to move the United States from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. So he called for massive change. [. . .]

"'Change' is Alinsky's favorite word, used on page after page. 'I will argue,' he writes, 'that man's hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change.' Alinsky uses what he calls 'general concepts of change' to move us toward 'a science of revolution.' What he calls 'change' means massive change in our socio-economic structure. What he calls 'organizing' means pursuing confrontational political tactics.

"Alinsky teaches the Have-Nots to 'hate the establishment of the Haves' because they have 'power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve.' He claims that 'justice, morality, law, and order, are mere words used by the Haves to justify and secure their status quo.' He proclaims that his aim is to teach the Have~Nots 'how to organize for power: how to get it and to use it.' [. . .]

"Will the Alinsky strategies that nominated and elected Barack Obama President of the United States be put on the back burner for four years, lying dormant until they are needed to reelect him in 2012? Not likely. Those strategies are available right now to push through the radical legislation and gigantic spending programs that he promised his followers."

-- "How a Community Organizer Became president," by Phyllis Schlafly, The Phyllis Schlafly Report, February 2009, pages 1, 2, 4. Address: PO Box 618, Alton, Illinois 62002. E-mail. Website.

Sustainable Development: The End of the American Way
Posted here for 8-31-09

"[W]e cannot win this battle to restore our Republic if we don't understand that what we face is not a bunch of random issues -- but a complete agenda of control -- Sustainable Development. Cap N Trade, global warming, population control, gun control, open borders and illegal immigration, higher taxes, higher gas prices, refusal to drill American oil, education restructuring, international IDs, natural health supplement control, food control, farming 'reform,' control of private property, NAIS and UN Global Governance are all part of the Sustainable Development/Agenda 21 blueprint. [. . .]

"Sustainable Development calls for changing the very infrastructure of the nation, away from private ownership and control of property to nothing short of central planning of the entire economy -- often referred to as top-down control. Truly, Sustainable Development is designed to change our way of life. [. . .]

"So what is Sustainable Development? The Sustainablists insist that society be transformed into feudal-like governance by making nature the central organizing principle for our economy and society.

"To achieve this, Sustainablist policy focuses on three components; global land use, global education, and global population control. [. . .]

"According to the Sustainablist doctrine, it is a social injustice for some to have prosperity if others do not. It is a social injustice to keep our borders closed. It is a social injustice for some to be bosses and others to be merely workers.

"Social justice is a major premise of Sustainable Development. Another word for social justice, by the way, is Socialism. Karl Marx was the first to coin the phrase 'social justice.' [. . .]

"According to the UN's Biodiversity Assessment Report, items for our everyday lives that are NOT sustainable include: Ski runs, grazing of livestock, plowing of soil, building fences, industry, single family homes, paved and tarred roads, logging activities, dams and reservoirs, power line construction, and economic systems that fail to set proper value on the environment (capitalism, free markets). [. . .]

"Are you starting to see the pattern behind Cap N Trade, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and all of those commercials you're forced to watch about the righteousness of 'Going Green?' [. . .]

"Sustainable Development's economic policy is based on one overriding premise: that the wealth of the world was made at the expense of the poor. It dictates that, if the conditions of the poor are to be improved, wealth must first be taken from the rich. Consequently, Sustainable Development's economic policy is based not on private enterprise but on public/private partnerships. [. . .]

"Under Sustainable Development there can be no concern over individual rights -- as we must all sacrifice for the sake of the environment. [. . .]

"Under Sustainable Development there can be no limited government, as advocated by our Founding Fathers, because, we are told, the real or perceived environmental crisis is too great. [. . .]

"Sustainable Development is [. . .] a new kind of tyranny that, if not stopped, will surely lead us to a new Dark Ages of pain and misery yet unknown to mankind."

-- "Sustainable Development: The Root of All Our Problems," by Tom DeWeese, The DeWeese Report, August 2009, pages 1-4, published by the American Policy Center, 13873 Park Center Road, #316, Herndon, Virginia 20171. Phone: 703-925-0881. Fax: 703-925-0991. E-mail. Website.

It's Unconstitutional!
Posted here for 8-24-09

"No review of federal education policy would be complete without mentioning that all federal education programs are unconstitutional. Education is a word found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, and is not enumerated among the powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution. In the modern era, Congress approves most unconstitutional spending programs using the excuse of the 'general welfare' clause of the Constitution. But the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, told the House of Representatives on February 7, 1792 that if the federal government could fund whatever it wanted under the 'general welfare' clause, then there would have been little point in enumerating other powers. In that speech, Madison sarcastically remarked that the federal government did not have the constitutional power to hire teachers or supervise education across the country:

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union, they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.

"Madison's sarcasm is now federal policy, and has been for some time. Had Congress heeded Madison's advice (and their oaths of office) for the past 40 years, they could have saved about $1 trillion that ended up wasted on programs that have failed to raise educational standards."

-- "The Constitution and Education," by Thomas R. Eddlem, The New American May 25, 2009, page 13. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Silver Lining
Posted here for 8-10-09

"There is only one good thing about the Obama administration's attempts to nationalize most health care and to begin to control Americans' energy consumption through cap-and-trade: clarity about the left. These attempts are enabling more and more Americans to understand the thinking and therefore the danger of the 1eft. [. . .]

"[S]ome principles of the left are becoming clearer to more Americans:

"Principle One: The left, as distinct from traditional liberals, is not, and has never been, interested in creating wealth. [. . .] The left is interested in redistributing wealth, not creating it. The left spends the wealth that private enterprise and entrepreneurial risk-taking individuals create. [. . .]

"Principle Two: The reason the left asks why there is poverty instead of why there is wealth is that the left's preoccupying ideal is equality -- not economic growth. And those who are preoccupied with equality are more troubled by wealth than by poverty. [. . .]

"Principle Three: The left everywhere seeks to make as big and powerful a state as possible. It does so because only the state can redistribute society's wealth. [. . .] The idea of small government, the American ideal since its inception, is the antithesis of the left's ideal. [. . .]

"Principle Four: The left imposes its values on others whenever possible and to the extent possible. That is why virtually every totalitarian regime in the 20th century was left-wing. [. . .]

"The president of the United States and much of the Democratic Party embody these left-wing principles. Right now, America's only hope of staying American rather than becoming European lies in making these principles as clear as possible to as many Americans as possible."

-- "Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left," by Dennis Prager, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, July 27, 2009, page 36. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

NAIS
Posted here for 8-3-09

"[I]n 2002, the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) proposed that the USDA develop a 'national animal identification system' (NAIS). [. ..] The current NAIS Plan [mid-2007] provides:

Premises registration: Every person who owns even one horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, goat, deer, elk, bison, or virtually any livestock animal, will be forced to register their home, including owner's name, address, and telephone number, and keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates, in a government database under a 7-digit 'premises ID number.' Additionally, pet owners who own one parakeet, canary, cockatiel, etc., as owners of 'exotic fowl,' have been targeted for mandatory inclusion in this system. [. . .] If you move the bird off your 'premises' for any reason, or if it dies, or it produces more birds, you must report such activity to the federal government within 24 hours. [. . .]

Animal Identification: Every animal will have to be assigned a 15-digit ID number by the government. The form of ID will most likely be a tag or microchip containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID), designed to be read from a distance. [. . .] The plan may also include collecting the DNA of every animal and/or a retinal scan of every animal. [. . .]

Animal Tracking: The owner will be required to report: the birthdate of an animal, the application of every animal's ID tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property, every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing. Also, every time an animal goes onto or off of another person's premises, a report would be required, showing that the tagged animal had a been on each of these other premises. Such events must be reported within 24 hours. [. . .]

"Legally, livestock animals are a form of personal property. The NAIS plan refers to a 'national herd' (Plan, p.8) which clearly indicates the government's vision: private ownership rights will be destroyed, and no one will be allowed to birth, hatch, own, or transfer any head of livestock without government permission."

-- "NAIS: Big Brother's Destruction of Small Farms and Civil Liberties," by Judith McGeary, The DeWeese Report, June 2007, pages 1-3, 7, published by the American Policy Center, 13873 Park Center Road, #316, Herndon, Virginia 20171. Phone: 703-925-0881. Fax: 703-925-0991. E-mail. Website. Check the Liberty Ark website for more information.

Making Matters Worse
Posted here for 7-27-09

"[G]etting out of a recession/depression can be accomplished if government gets out of the way. In other words, what President Obama and his team should do is nothing except abolish some government agencies. [. . .] [O]ur nation dug itself out of a very severe downturn immediately after World War I. [. . .] Instead of dealing with the crisis [conditions worse than the first year of the Great Depression] with public works projects, Federal Reserve-created inflation, deficit spending for stimulus schemes, etc., the government and the Federal Reserve essentially did nothing during that period, and the nation recovered in less than two years.

"The way our nation dealt with the 1920-1921 depression isn't discussed by today's economists, at least the vast majority who are captives to Keynesian socialist economics. [. . .] There are two reasons why they ignore what happened close to 100 years ago: a) the problem was so short-lived, and b) it was solved, not by government, but by government standing aside and allowing the people to dig the nation out of the hole. The lesson is clear, even if most economists fail to mention it. [. . .]

"President Hoover initiated the completely opposite response at the outset of the Great Depression [. . .] Hoover raised taxes, provided government loans to failing businesses, supplied states with federal funds, presided over inflationary monetary policy, and forced prices upward. The problem that started with the 1929 crash worsened. In 1932, while he was running for election, FDR labeled Hoover as the 'greatest peacetime spender in the nation's history.' Having won the presidency, he promptly outdid the defeated Hoover by doubling or tripling every wrong-headed tactic. The Great Depression grew even greater and lasted all through the 1930s. Roosevelt had violated the first law of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. He dug hard all through the 1930s. [. . .]

"The Obama administration's treatment of our nation's economic ills -- duplicating and exacerbating actions taken by its predecessor -- will make matters worse. Everything initiated by the Hoover-Roosevelt tandem is being repeated or planned."

-- "Obama's Counterproductive Plan," by John F. McManus, The New American May 11, 2009, page 44. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

U.S. Gives Up Its Economy to World Control
Posted here for 7-20-09

"The G-20 meeting in London on April 2 nullified the work of July 4, 1776. A joint communique announced a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. Henceforth, our Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board, and other regulators will march to the beat pounded by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body of central bankers from each of the G-20 states. [. . .]

"Now we may no longer look to presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate, to make policy for our economy. These decisions will be made internationally. And Europe will dominate them. The FSB will be made up of central bankers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States; plus representatives of the World Bank, the European Union, the IMF, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"The United States, with a GDP three times that of the next largest G-20 member (Japan), will have one vote. So will Italy.

"The Europeans have been trying to get their hands on our financial system for decades. It is essential to them that they rein in American free enterprise so that their socialist heaven will not be polluted by vices such as profit. Now, with President Obama's approval, they have done it."

-- "Europeans Gain Control of U.S. Financial System," by Dick Morris, with Eileen McGann, NewsMax magazine, June 2009, page 34. Address: Sequoia Digital Corporation, 224 Datura Street, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401. Website.

Cap and Trade: The End of Capitalism
Posted here for 7-13-09

"The Obama administration plans to 'implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.'

"Cap and trade [. . .] There is another word that means the same thing, although for most Americans it has [. . .] lost its sense of authoritarian control: r-a-t-o-n-i-n-g. In this case we are not rationing to provide supplies for troops, as in WWII, but rationing industry's ability to produce goods and services that would improve the condition of humanity. All this in order to avert a hypothetical global-warming crisis for future generations.

"The always-unmentioned details about how cap and trade would be administrated are horrible to contemplate. [. . .]

"Obama is personally on record advocating a carbon-emission 'auction.' [. . .] Probably 'carbon credits,' i.e., allowances to put C02 into the atmosphere, would be the product auctioned. The Treasury Department or some government agency would be the auctioneer, and a variety of buyers, mainly industry, would be allowed to buy these 'Mother-May-I' instruments. [. . .]

"The amount of carbon credits, which even if it were held at a constant amount would be terrible and stifle a growing economy, must constantly decrease to fulfill the Obama administration's game plan: decrease C02 emissions in accordance with a Kyoto-type plan to be adopted in Copenhagen in December. As the credits decrease, rationing comes into play -- only so many goods and services will be able to be created under the government-imposed constraints, and many industries will undoubtedly close operations. As a corollary, this reduction makes the carbon credits more valuable, puts American industry under total control of the government, and makes trading credits incredibly profitable, especially when brokers can pick up inventory from Eastern European nations or African satrapies, and sell it to American entrepreneurs. [. . .]

"If it's enacted, the Obama energy plan, if it can be called that, will likely be used as a case study in college classes generations from now as a lesson explaining how government interference in the markets leads to the economic downfall of a civilization."

-- "Green Fairy Tales," by Ed Hiserodt, The New American June 22, 2009, page 17. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

New Route to Marxism
Posted here for 6-22-09

"[T]he most important debate in the history of the United States is about to begin -- it's the battle over a completely new economic system based on climate change called Cap and Trade.

"It should be called Tax and Trade as it will force up the price of every item created or run by energy from gasoline to toothpaste to natural gas to hotel rooms.

"Cap and Trade will throw out the old system of a free market based on goods and services and operate on the idea that C02 is a pollutant.

"Instead of money, wealth will be determined on how many government-issued emission permits you own to allow you to operate your business.

"In short, it's all about wealth redistribution. Your wealth into a green rat hole.

"During the Cold War, communists tried to get us to surrender our liberties and way of life for the wisdom of Karl Marx. Americans didn't buy it.

"But now, they have taken the same clap trap and wrapped it all in a nice green blanket, scaring us with horror stories about the human destruction of the environment -- and so we are now throwing our liberties on the bon fire like a good-old-fashioned book burning -- all in the name of protecting the planet.

"It sounds so friendly. So meaningful. So urgent. But, the devastation to our liberty and way of life is the same as if Lenin ordered it."

-- "A New Economy Based on Carbon," by Tom DeWeese, The DeWeese Report, April 2009, page 3, published by the American Policy Center, 13873 Park Center Road, #316, Herndon, Virginia 20171. Phone: 703-925-0881. Fax: 703-925-0991. E-mail. Website.

American Exceptionalism
Posted here for 6-15-09

"'At a stop on his grand global apology tour this spring, President Obama was asked by a reporter in France if he believed in American exceptional. This is the notion that our history as the world's oldest democracy, our immigrant founding, and our devotion to liberty endow the United States with a unique, providential role in world affairs,' James Kirchick writes in the Los Angeles Times.

"'Rather than endorse the proposition -- as every president in recent memory has done one way or another -- Obama offered a strange response: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

"'This is impossible. If all countries are exceptional, then none are, and to claim otherwise robs the word, and the idea of American exceptionalism, of any meaning. Besides, American exceptionalism is demonstrable -- [People around the world] look toward the U.S. and nowhere else to defend freedom. [. . .]

"'Since swearing the oath of office, our president has traveled the world criticizing his predecessor, confessing America's supposed sins, and otherwise flagellating the nation he leads on the altar of international public opinion.'"

-- "Odd Response," Inside Politics, compiled by Greg Pierce, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, May 4, 2009, page 14. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

Freedom Versus Servitude
Posted here for 6-8-09

"Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free because they [did] not own all of their own labor.

"An income tax is inconsistent with the historical definition of freedom. Today in America, government has a claim on every person's labor, just as feudal lords, the government of that time, had claims on the labor of serfs and 19th century plantation owners had on slaves.

"Understanding that an income tax was serfdom, our Founding Fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution in a way that prevented an income tax. This was altered in 1913 with a constitutional amendment that some claim was not properly carried out.

"This first step in the enserfment of the American people was taken in envy. The rich were the targets of the income tax. Once in place, the income tax was extended by law and by inflation until ordinary people were being taxed at rates several times as high as the original top rate for the rich.

"After almost 100 years of income tax, generations have been born into serfdom and accept the government's claim on their labor as normal, even just. Some say they don't mind paying taxes to help the poor. They should look to see what share goes to the poor and what share to war, armaments and the bailout of the treasury secretary's rich friends. [. . .]

"Americans work 42 percent of the year for the government, a higher tax rate than was endured by medieval serfs and one approaching that of a 19th century slave."

-- "How Freedom Was Lost," by Paul Craig Roberts, Middle America News, May 2009, page 19. Address: We the People Institute, Incorporated, PO Box 17088, Raleigh, North Carolina 27619. Phone: 919-839-1001. Fax: 919-839-2181. E-mail. Website.

The Death of the American Dream
Posted here for 6-1-09

"With little fanfare, the Government Accountability Office released a document that points to the day when the American dream dies and is buried beneath a middle class welfare state.

"You can see death coming for the American dream as surely as you can see cirrhosis coming for a drunk.

"We are bringing it upon ourselves -- although not all Americans deserve what is going to happen. For one, our children don't deserve it. Neither do Americans who have tried to live independent, self-reliant lives.

"What the document said is that what the GAO dryly calls the 'federal fiscal gap' may now equal as much as $62.9 trillion. [. . .]

"[A]ccording to the Census Bureau, there were 112,377,977 households in the United States in 2007. If every one of these households were charged an equal amount to cover a $62.9 trillion federal shortfall, they would each need to pay $559,778. [. . .]

"The Census Bureau says there are 13.8 million American households living below the poverty line. Exempt these poor people, and the 98,527,917 non-poor households would need to pay $638,397 apiece to cover a $62.9 trillion federal shortfall [. . . .]

"If these politicians [those who remain in power by sustaining the welfare state] win -- if they succeed in creating a society where those who work and sacrifice and save their entire lives can see the fruits of their labors confiscated to pay government benefits to someone else -- that will be the day the American Dream dies."

-- "The Day the American Dream Dies," by Terence P. Jeffrey, Human Events, May 11, 2009, page 8. Address: 1 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001. Phone: 202-216-0600. Website.

Power Grab
Posted here for 5-25-09

"The right of parents to authority and autonomy in the rearing of their children has always enjoyed consensus in the United States. This principle -- that 'parents have a fundamental constitutional right to rear their children, including the right to determine who shall educate and socialize them' -- was unanimously reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 in Troxel v. Granville.

"Over the past 30 years, there has been a steady erosion of this fundamental right by liberals who believe that various so-called experts are better able to make decisions about children than mere parents. These experts can be teachers, school counselors, pediatricians, psychiatrists, social workers, custody evaluators, or judges. This denial of the fundamental role of parents is illustrated by the slogan 'it takes a village to raise a child.'

"Public schools have been taking over many responsibilities traditionally in the domain of parents such as providing meals, health care, and pre-kindergarten services. Public schools notoriously assert their right to override parental decisions about the assignment of books that parents find immoral or profane, the use of privacy-invading questionnaires, the teaching of sex and evolution, the provision of contraceptives and abortion referrals, the use of school counselors, and demands that children be injected with vaccines or put on psychotropic drugs.

"This widespread campaign to give the 'village' (speaking through the public schools or the family courts) -- instead of parents -- the authority to make major decisions about the care, upbringing and education of children is taking place despite the fact that no scientific basis exists for 'village' methodologies, for the tests used, or for the recommendations and decisions made. There is no agreement among professionals on how to conduct a proper examination, what standards to use if any, or what should go into any assessment. The reports are not scientific findings but expressions of personal preference. Often the practices are wrapped in the expression 'the best interest of the child,' but the use of people other than parents to determine the best interest of a child cannot be justified by science, law, morality, or common sense."

-- "The 'Village' Is Taking Over," by Phyllis Schlafly, The Phyllis Schlafly Report, December 2005, page 3. Address: PO Box 618, Alton, Illinois 62002. E-mail. Website.

Central Banks
Posted here for 5-18-09

"Central banks are villains in most countries; ours is just not as bad as others. In 1946, Hungary's central bank gave it the world's highest inflation rate. Prices doubled every 16 hours creating an annual inflation rate of 13 quadrillion percent. Last October, Zimbabwe's central bank produced history's second highest rate of inflation. Prices doubled every 25 hours, giving it an annual inflation rate of 80 billion percent. By comparison, Germany's inflation rate, which brought about the social disruption responsible for Hitler's rise to power, was a mere 30,000 percent that saw prices double every four days. [. . .]

"Knowing the dangers posed by central banks, we might ask whether our country needs the Federal Reserve System. [. . .]

"[F]rom 1836, when President Andrew Jackson closed the Second Bank of the United States, to 1913 when [the] Federal Reserve Act was written, [. . .] we prospered and became one of the world's major economic powers.

"The justifications for [the] Federal Reserve Act of 1913 [were] to prevent bank failure and maintain price stability. Simple before-and-after analysis demonstrates that the Federal Reserve Bank has been a failure. In the century before the Federal Reserve Act, wholesale prices fell by 6 percent; in the century after, they rose by 1,300 percent. Maximum bank failures in one year before 1913 were 496 and afterward, 4,400. During the 1930s, inept money supply management by the Federal Reserve Bank was partially responsible for both the depth and duration of the Great Depression.

"It is not wise for us to permit a few people on the Federal Reserve Board to have life and death power over our economy."

-- "Was the Federal Reserve Bank a Mistake?" by Walter E. Williams, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, December 22, 2008, page 36. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

The Government Describes Domestic Terrorists
Posted here for 5-11-09

"Are you on some government list as a possible 'domestic terrorist' suspect because you have exercised your First Amendment right to express opposition to a government program or a proposed piece of legislation?

"Have you, like millions of your fellow Americans, expressed outrage over the trillions of dollars being poured into the unending series of government bailouts?

"Are you concerned about the escalating violence in Mexico and upset over the refusal of our government to secure our border and stop the continuing deluge of illegal aliens entering our country?

"Do you support the Second Amendment and oppose the prohibition, restriction, and confiscation of privately owned firearms and ammunition?

"Do you criticize and/or oppose the United Nations?

"Does your automobile sport any politically incorrect bumper stickers?

"If you answer yes to any of these questions, you already may have been singled out as an 'antigovernment' terrorist suspect. A report issued on February 20 [2009] by the Missouri Information and Analysis Center (MIAC), a branch of the state's Highway Patrol, tells law-enforcement personnel that these indicators are characteristic of 'right-wing extremists' and 'militia members' whose 'mindset' poses a 'threat to law enforcement.'"

-- "Do You Fit the Terrorist Profile?" by William F. Jasper, The New American April 13, 2009, page 44. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Has Obama Perjured Himself with His Claim He's a U.S. Citizen?
Posted here for 5-4-09

"According to much legal research, at the time of Obama's birth he could be a 'natural born citizen' in one of three ways: by being born in the United States, by being born to two U.S. citizen-parents (not possible because of his father), or, if only one parent was a U.S. citizen at the time of the birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least 10 years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.

"The problem is, Obama's mother was only 18 when she gave birth, so his only apparent route to 'natural born' citizenship status would have been to be born in Hawaii.

"[. . .] Even if Obama was born in the state, would he have inherited citizenship from his Kenyan father, a British subject, or from his American mother, a juvenile?

"If he was born overseas, as some critics contend, is there any way he would have acquired U.S. citizenship at birth? Statements from members of his extended family in Kenya, including some from his paternal grandmother, seem to indicate his birth location was in Kenya, not Hawaii.

"At the time Obama moved to Indonesia as a child, only citizens of that country were allowed to attend school there. He was registered there as Barry Soetoro, his citizenship listed as Indonesian and his religion listed as Islam. There was reportedly no dual citizenship with Indonesia at the time. [. . .]

"Also, some critics contend it is likely Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 on a passport other than a U.S. document, raising the question of the status of his citizenship at that point. Could one obtain another nation's passport while being an American citizen? [. . .]

"Among other claims being raised in the various lawsuits [that have been filed]: That Congress didn't property determine whether Obama is qualified, that state officials failed to properly qualify Obama as a candidate (California previously had removed ineligible candidates from the ballot), that his college records should be released to reveal whether he attended school as a U.S. citizen, and that members of the military -- especially those on active duty and in harm's way -- have a legitimate and compelling need to know his qualifications to be commander-in-chief."

-- "Why Questions Persist Regarding Obama's Qualifications," by Bob Unruh, Whistleblower magazine, April 2009, pages 11-12. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Lessons to Learn from Zimbabwe
Posted here for 4-27-09

"The tragedy now unfolding in Zimbabwe provides the latest example that a government cannot create prosperity simply by cranking up the printing presses and creating previously unimaginable sums of money. All that course of action ever does in the long term is destroy the value of the currency. But this tragedy is not limited to inflation of the currency, as horrific as the inflation has been. It also shows the devastating effects of share-the-wealth politics, which become control-the-wealth politics wherever [they are] put into practice. [. . .]

"Zimbabwe has shattered all previous records for inflated currency, effectively bringing the nation's economy to a halt. The nation's annual inflation rate rose from 1,000 percent in 2006, to 12,000 percent in 2007, to an immeasurable figure in 2008. Last August, the government devalued the currency by chopping off 10 zeros from bills. Had they not done so, the conversion rate would have risen to 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars to one U.S. dollar! [. . .]

"The seizure of farms without compensation was prohibited by Zimbabwe's original constitution, so [President Robert] Mugabe initiated a referendum to amend the constitution to remove that prohibition. [. . .] A majority of Zimbabwean voters defeated [the referendum], but parliament disregarded their wishes and passed legislation authorizing uncompensated seizure of farms, which Mugabe signed into law on April 18, 2000. [. . .]

"As in all socialist governments, governmental micro-management of the economy produced a steady decline in the nation's productivity, gross domestic product. and standard of living. [. . .]

"With its economy killed by socialist mismanagement, the 'solution' implemented by Zimbabwe's government was more socialist mismanagement, this time of the nation's money supply. [. . .]

"That the issuing of new money is the economic cause of price inflation is not widely understood in Africa (and probably not in the United States, either, judging by congressional support for President Obama's 'stimulus' package). [. . .]

"Among the most important lessons that can be learned from Zimbabwe's economic and social crisis is that too much government will destroy both prosperity and freedom." [Americans ought to take note.]

-- "From Riches to Rags," by Warren Mass, The New American March 30, 2009, pages 13-17. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Following the Communist Plan
Posted here for 4-20-09

"A recent directive from the New York State Department of Health is one of the latest examples of the deterioration of America's culture. Sent to the offices of the 900-plus cities and towns in the Empire State, it contained a newly created 'Certificate of Live Birth' along with a single-page explanation of why it had been sent. The official document noted that a New York State court had ruled that same-sex 'marriages performed in 'other jurisdictions' (such as in neighboring Massachusetts) 'must be recognized.' Therefore, stated the directive, 'any married woman that gives birth in your district will have her spouse -- male or female -- listed in the birth certificate as the second parent.'

"Samples of the new form accompanying the directive contained space for the entry of the name of "Mother" and a second space for entry of another "Mother." No space for any father is provided. That's on another form available from the state to use in registering the newly born child of a heterosexual couple.

"New York State now dignifies homosexuality to the point of considering two females as the parents of a newborn. [. . .]

"The transformation of America's culture has much to do with the strategy laid out by a communist theoretician named Antonio Gramsci. [He] proposed attacking the West's cultural foundations, thereby weakening the structure of those nations he wanted to conquer. If communists could undermine faith in God and love of family and country, he believed, the Christian West would become rootless and would be an easy prey for conquest. [. . .]

"Gramsci recommended that communists should ridicule morality, decency, and virtue. He said that real heroes should be replaced by adulation of the equivalent of to day's decadent rock stars and Hollywood favorites. [. . .]

"Consider the harmful effect on America's cultural base of such forces as feminism, the homosexual lobby, extreme environmentalism, liberal historians who trash our nation's founders, and jurists and legislators who operate on the false doctrine that the U.S. Constitution was written only for a bygone age and modern government has all the answers for today's needs. [. . .] While it is true that many Americans shrink in horror at the erosion of culture that so marked our nation, few seem to understand why it is happening."

-- "Undermining Our Culture," by John F. McManus, The New American March 2, 2009, page 44. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

Clash of Values
Posted here for 4-13-09

"If enough people break the law and trespass our borders, in time society will not penalize them, but will reward them with jobs, education for their children, and drivers' licenses. [. . .]

"Integrity and virtue, instead of acting as boundaries, become speed bumps, and are rolled over in pursuit of some higher good. Once morals are on a sliding scale, the end completely justifies the means. And if some, like the liberals, see themselves on the moral high ground, their consciences will permit them to do whatever they need to if they decide it is for everyone's ultimate best.

"A liberal president, for example, might carry on an adulterous relationship in the White House, and have no qualms about lying under oath to cover it up. And when exposed, he will feel no shame nor be tempted to resign, because he believes that the good he offers the country outweighs his 'mistakes.' His supporters may acknowledge that adultery and lying are not good, but will mercifully overlook the indiscretions, because they, too, believe the country needs his liberal leadership.

"Their elevation of expedience over integrity is why they easily forgive the failures of liberal leaders, but have no tolerance for conservatives who fail. Besides, conservatives are the ones who claim to represent faith and values, while the liberals claim to represent free-spirited living. That means a conservative who falls is a hypocrite, but a liberal who falls was just careless. In their minds, the man who fails to live up to his own morals is worse than a man who makes no claim to have morals at all. The fact is, both should cause us concern.

"When morality is arbitrary, society's standards get lower and lower. The scenario I just described occurred in 1998, just ten years after Gary Hart had been forced out of the 1988 presidential race for a comparatively minor scandal. Back then, the American people expected the president of the United States to have character. After all, it was reasoned, if a man lacks the character to keep his wedding vows to his wife, spoken before God and other witnesses, why should he be trusted to keep his oath of office? If a man would betray his own wife for personal pleasure, why would we expect him to be faithful to the American people? But because the liberal influence is so predominant in our society, in only one decade America's morals went from 'character wins our trust' to 'character doesn't count.'"

-- "Freedom to Be Enslaved," by Reb Bradley, Whistleblower magazine, January 2009, pages 36, 38. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Fossil Fuel? Maybe Not.
Posted here for 4-13-09

"The study published in Science Magazine earlier this year [2008] presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil [. . .]

"The abiotic theory [. . .] directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure. [. . .]

"In stark contrast, the abiotic theory argues that hydrocarbons are naturally produced on a continual basis throughout the solar system, including within the mantle of the earth. [. . .]

"In 2003 and again in 2005, [lead scientist Giora] Proskurowski [of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle] and his team descended in a scientific submarine to collect liquid bubbling up from Lost City sea vents. [The Lost City is a hypothermal field some 2100 feet below sea level that sits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the center of the Atlantic Ocean.]

Proskurowski found hydrocarbons containing carbon-13 isotopes that appeared to be formed from the mantle of the Earth, rather than from biological material settled on the ocean floor.

"Carbon 13 is the carbon isotope scientists associate with abiotic origin, compared to carbon 12 that scientists typically associate with biological origin. [. . .]

"'Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water and moderate amounts of heat,' Proskurowski wrote."

-- "Discovery Backs Theory Oil Not 'Fossil Fuel'," by Jerome R. Corsi, Whistleblower magazine, August 2008, pages 34, 42. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

The Environmental Movement Exposed
Posted here for 4-6-09

"The liberal environmental movement is a religion with a smothering political agenda. A leftist agenda that is bad for the economy and, ironically, bad for the environment. [. . .]

"[Environmental] groups are led by people who subscribe to a modern Marxist view of the world where, in the pursuit of power and control, concerns for 'the environment' have replaced concerns for 'the worker.'

"The solutions environmentalists promote for environmental problems, many of these problems grossly and intentionally exaggerated by environmental groups to create the required alarm in the public, are the same as those on offer from Marx and V.I. Lenin: Government control of the economy and of people's personal behavior. It's no accident that April 22, Earth Day, is Lenin's birthday. That date was deliberately chosen because the enviro-Marxists who began Earth Day were convinced that capitalism destroys the environment. It doesn't. In fact all capitalist societies are cleaner than socialist societies. [. . .]

"The environmental movement is grounded in the idea that freedom is detrimental to the environment. [. . .] The dogmatic ideologies and restrictive policies pushed on us by the environmental Left have harmed nature more than helped it, but environmentalists have never borne the blame . . . . Laws and policies that were introduced in the name of saving the environment are hurting it, and we can expect more of the same if liberal environmentalists continue to have free run."

-- "Environmental Hazards Caused by Self-Appointed Eco-Leaders," a review, written by Larry Thornberry, of the book The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About -- Because They Helped Cause Them, by Iain Murray, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, June 23, 2008, page 26. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

Stealth Jihad
Posted here for 3-30-09

"It's like something out of a science-fiction film, a vision of a future American dystopia ruled by religious fanatics:

Large cities and urban enclaves are deemed 'sensitive' zones where secular law isn't recognized, and local police cannot enter.
Women are chattel, allowed to divorce only if permitted by their husbands, and receiving only small portions of their inheritance.
Adulterers and gays are put to death or imprisoned for lengthy sentences.
Alcohol is forbidden even to nonbelievers, and business contracts can be entered only on the terns of the faithful.

That's the nightmare scenario of some leading thinkers who believe that America and the West are succumbing slowly to a 'stealth jihad' by radical Islamists infiltrating communities, courts, and schools in Europe and the United States.

The experts point not only to a series of decisions and decrees across Europe permitting Islamic law, or Shariah, to govern marriage and other family law, but the increasing implementation of Islamic practices in banking and finance. [. . .]

"[S]ays Robert Spencer, author of the new book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, "The aim is to insinuate Islamic law into the United States so that Islamic law takes precedent over American law where the two conflict."

-- "America Faces 'Stealth Jihad'," by Tim Collie, NewsMax (the magazine), January 2009, page 8. Address: Sequoia Digital Corporation, 224 Datura Street, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401. Website.

Throwing Gas on the Fire
Posted here for 3-23-09

"The economic crisis imperiling America and the rest of the world is not one that was caused by deregulation or under-regulation.

"It was not one caused by laissez faire capitalism.

"It is not one caused by banks and financial institutions simply running out of money.

"And it is not one that will be fixed by infusing those institutions with more money at taxpayer expense.

"The problem is debt.

"And the problem was caused by government.

"Government agencies and officials actively pressured banks to write more loans to people who were poor credit risks. The idea was to make home ownership a national right, rather than a benefit of hard work, savings and achievement. Two government-sponsored enterprises -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- were at the forefront of this political scheme.

"Not only did these two corporations engage in improper and fraudulent accounting practices, but they also became major political contributors -- giving millions of dollars to political candidates, especially Sen. Barack Obama, who shared their agenda and were considered likely to back increasingly risky practices. [. . .]

"The $700 billion bailout is nothing more than a temporary bandage placed on an acutely hemorrhaging patient. It didn't address the root of the problem -- government's active encouragement of unsustainable public and private debt. [. . .]

"Americans intuitively understand [the bailout] is a giant rip-off -- perhaps the biggest scheme to loot taxpayers in the history of the world. [. . .]

"Election Day comes and goes, and the vast majority of the incumbents, including those who betrayed [the citizens] and the Constitution with the bailout, go back to Washington.

"That's why we'll not have a sound economy again in America in our lifetimes. That's why we'll not have a return to dollars based on gold. That's why we'll not have constitutionally limited government. That's why we'll continue down the road of socialism, globalism and ultimate collapse."

-- "The Problem Is Debt," by Joseph Farah, Whistleblower magazine, November 2008, page 7. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

If It's Ratified, We're LOST
Posted here for 3-16-09

"The United States Senate may vote very soon on one of the most far-reaching and dangerous treaties our government has ever considered for ratification: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (also known as the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST). The treaty, which has simmered on the back burners of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, would give the United Nations control and jurisdiction over the world's oceans, nearly three-quarters of the surface of our planet. [. . .]

"Its scope is vast: it covers all ocean space, with all its uses, including navigation and overflight; all uses of all its resources, living and nonliving, on the high seas, on the ocean floor and beneath, on the continental shelf and in the territorial seas; the protection of the marine environment; and basic law and order. . . . The Convention is widely recognized by the international community as the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and the seas must be carried out. [. . .]

"[T]he claims go even far beyond this to include global regulations that will override domestic laws covering not only coastal waters and shorelines, but also human activities in rivers and inland waterways, and land-based activities that may be claimed -- no matter how far-fetched -- to be harming the marine environment.

"Moreover, LOST may confer upon the UN, for the first time, the ability to tax Americans directly, without congressional approval. [. . .]

"Senate ratification of LOST is a 'top priority' for the new Obama administration. [. . .]

"Sen. Clinton [said]: 'The President-Elect and I both supported ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention as senators. . . . If confirmed, its ratification will be one of my top treaty priorities at Stale, and the new administration will work with the Senate to secure approval."

-- "LOST -- Law of the Sea Treaty," by William F. Jasper, The New American March 2, 2009, pages 10-11. Address: PO Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912. Phone: 920-749-3784. Fax: 920-749-3785. Website.

The Change Obama Promised
Posted here for 3-9-09

"Simply put, we came into this administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We soon will become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Sweden: a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities, and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

"Obama will accomplish his agenda of 'reform' under the rubric of 'recovery,' Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won't do much to shorten the downturn, although they will make it less painful, but they will do a great deal to change our nation. [. . .]

"[Obama] will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole will grow to a clear majority of Americans. [. . .]

"He will legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and blacks will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. [. . .]

"[B]y 2010[,] the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power. But it will be too late to reverse the socialism, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of healthcare by the government, the surge of unionization, and the crippling of talk radio."

-- "The Obama Presidency: Here Comes Socialism," by Dick Morris with Eilleen McGann, NewsMax (the magazine), March 2009, page 38. Address: Sequoia Digital Corporation, 224 Datura Street, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401. Website.

The Un-United States of America
Posted here for 3-2-09

"I don't see a way to unite a people as divided as Americans are today. We are trying to pretend we're one nation when we are really two.

"One of those two nations clings to the promises and covenants of the past, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, as the guiding principles. The other believes in and lives with no immutable standards. [. . .]

"My vision of the world is one in perfect harmony with the Bible, the Declaration and the Constitution. But these standards have been run over, obscured, distorted, demolished, nullified, undone, vandalized. Since, historically, it was the Bible, the Declaration and the Constitution that held us together, what binds us today? Shouldn't those of us who upheld the commitment to those standards have the right, in fact, the duty, to separate ourselves from those who have gutted them?

"America was founded as a sovereign, independent nation. The vandals want to yield sovereignty to global authorities and make America interdependent.

"America was founded with a federal government that was to be constitutionally limited in scope. The vandals have already succeeded in obliterating the enumerated powers.

"America was founded as a nation of self-governing free people and sovereign states with significant authority reserved to them. The vandals have placed America under the shackles of a central government to which the states and people are subordinate.

"America was founded as a nation of people 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' The vandals deny the Creator, invent man-made rights and deny life and liberty are sacred values. [. . .]

"I don't want to live under the consequences of the actions of the vandals. I don't want my children to do that. There ought to be a choice. Maybe we can live side by side in peace as two nations, but we can't live freely as one people any longer."

-- "How Much Are You Willing to Bend?" by Joseph Farah, Whistleblower magazine, January 2009, page 5. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

ACORN and the Mortgage Crisis
Posted here for 2-23-09

"[T]he mortgage crisis [. . .] has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and [it] forced banks to make loans to low-income, high-risk customers. Ph.D. economist and former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm has called it 'a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks.' [. . .]

"ACORN showed its colors [. . .] in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. [Barack] Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac-borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively. [. . .]

"On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with '100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns.' [. . .]

"Since these loans were to be underwritten by government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: 'It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit.' [. . .]

"Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Sen. Lindsay Graham reported on Sept. 25, 2008, in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox's 'On the Record' that Democrats wanted 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!"

-- "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis," by James Simpson, Whistleblower magazine, January 2009, pages 31-32. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Orchestrated Crisis
Posted here for 2-16-09

"Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had 60 years of virtually unbroken power in Congress -- with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable? [. . .]

"Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit. [. . .]

"For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent -- the failure is deliberate. [. . .] This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy. [. . .]

"David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

"Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

'Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,' Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to 'live up' to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist 'rule book' with a socialist one.

"Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision."

-- "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis," by James Simpson, Whistleblower magazine, January 2009, pages 27, 28, 34. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

The Radicalization of Education Is Nearly Complete
Posted here for 2-9-09

"The public schools took a major left turn in the 1960s when Humanist John Dewey and the teachers he trained at Columbia Teachers College began their putdown of objective truth and authoritative notions of good and evil. In the 1970s, Sidney Simon's best-seller Values Clarification taught students to cast off their parents' values and make their own choices, often aided by Kinsey-trained sexperts determined to change our sexual mores.

"By the 1980s, many radical antiwar activists of the 1960s had become tenured college professors, so teachers colleges and public schools opened their doors to 'social justice' teaching. Among these '60s radicals was Weather Underground William Ayers, who escaped prosecution [and later] emerged as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. [. . .]

"Mr. Ayers became a leading advocate of 'social justice' teaching, i.e., getting students to believe they are victims of an unjust, oppressive and racist America. Community organizers can then use these young people to vote and otherwise to carry out Mr. Ayers' 'revolution.'

"Mr. Ayers' has been on a decades-long mission to transform education into anti-American indoctrination and to get young people to demand government control of the economy, politics and culture. We see the result in the 2008 postelection surveys: Seven in 10 voters between ages 18 and 29 now favor expanding the role of government and agree that the government should do more to solve the nation's problems. It's obvious which party and which candidate will get their vote.

"Mr. Ayers worked closely with Barack Obama in the 1990s when Mr. Obama headed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which gave $160 million in grants to so-called school-reform projects. Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama guided some of this Annenberg money to community organizers such as ACORN.

"The National Association of Scholars reports that use of the term 'social justice' is today understood to mean 'the advocacy of more egalitarian access to income through state-sponsored redistribution.' That is academic verbiage for Barack Obama's assertion that he wants to 'spread the wealth around.'"

-- "The Radicalization of Education," by Phyllis Schlafly, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, January 5, 2009, page 35. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

Choosing Popularity over Peace and Prosperity
Posted here for 1-26-09

"Historians will look at 2008 and say it was the year that America ceased to be a great superpower. A war-weary public threw in the towel against Islamic fascism, and embraced President-elect Barack Obama's policy of appeasement. Groveling in fear of a recession, Americans also overthrew their free-market ideals. This was the year of false hope by an Obama prophet who will only accelerate our demise. [. . .]

"The American electorate has buried its collective head in the sand, hoping that Mr. Obama can somehow -- through his slick rhetoric, artificial 'cool' demeanor, and worldwide celebrity status -- convince our enemies to lay down their weapons. He will not succeed. Our celebrity-in-chief does not frighten or inspire the murderous, anti-American thugs in Tehran, Pyongyang or Caracas. They see him for what he is: a weak, naive and oscillating leader, who does not understand the growing threat against the West. In fact, he is even part of the problem. [. . .]

"The biggest threat, however, comes from revolutionary Iran: 2008 was when Tehran reached the point of no return in its quest for the bomb. Iran's mullahs are now within reach of possessing the capability for a nuclear weapons program.

"In the face of this gathering storm, Mr. Obama pledges diplomatic carrots and negotiations. He fails to recognize we are at war not only with terrorist-sponsoring states, but a totalitarian fascist ideology that seeks to impose a global Muslim caliphate. [. . .]

"Americans think they have brought themselves peace and prosperity with Mr. Obama. Yet neither peace nor prosperity has previously been secured by cowering to the enemies of freedom.

"The year 2008 was the year of surrender."

-- "The Year American Greatness Collapsed," by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, January 21, 2009, page 31. Address: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002. E-mail. Website.

January 19: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Posted here for 1-19-09

"The federal government has made space available on The Mall in Washington [DC] for a national monument for [Martin Luther] King, not far from Lincoln's. Only four men in American history have national monuments: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt; and now King will make five.

"King is the only American who enjoys the nation's highest honor of having a national holiday on his birthday. There are other days of remembrance such as Presidents' Day, but no one else but Jesus Christ is recognized with a similar holiday." [. . .]

"As a young man, King started plagiarizing the work of others and he continued this practice throughout his career. [. . .]

"An extensive project started at Stanford University in 1984 to publish all of King's papers tracked down the original sources for these early papers and concluded that his academic writings are 'tragically flawed by numerous instances of plagiarism.' [. . .] [O]ne paper show[ed] 'verbatim theft' in 20 of a total of 24 paragraphs. [. . .]

"King plagiarized one-third of his 343-page dissertation, the book-length project required to earn a PhD [. . . .] King's Nobel Prize Lecture was plagiarized extensively from works by Florida minister J. Wallace Hamilton; the sections on Gandhi and nonviolence in his 'Pilgrimage' speech were taken virtually verbatim from Harris Wofford's speech on the same topic; the frequently replayed climax to the 'I Have a Dream' speech -- the 'from every mountainside, let freedom ring' portion -- came from a 1952 address to the Republican National Convention by a black preacher named Archibald Carey; and the 1968 sermon in which King prophesied his martyrdom was based on works by J. Wallace Hamilton and Methodist minister Harold Bosley. [. . .]

"King lived a double life. During the day, he would speak to large crowds, quoting Scripture and invoking God's will, and at night he frequently had sex with women from the audience. [. . .] According to King biographer Taylor Branch, during a long party on the night of January 6 and 7, 1964, an FBI bugging device recorded King's 'distinctive voice ring out above others with pulsating abandon, saying, 'I'm f***ing for God!'" [. . .]

"King justified his adultery this way: 'I'm away from home twenty-five to twenty-seven days a month. F***ing's a form of anxiety reduction."

-- "The Unknown Martin Luther King, Jr.," by Benjamin J. Ryan, American Renaissance, January 2009, pages 1, 3. Address: PO Box 527, Oakton, Virginia 22124. E-mail. Website.

Media Gone Amuck
Posted here for 1-12-09

"[W]e somehow expect the press in a free country like America to be fair, right-thinking and courageously truthful.

"And yet, no institution in America today is more guilty, complicit and responsible for making evil look good and good look evil than the news media. [. . .]

"We never heard a word about [Hillary Clinton's] radical socialist views. We never heard about her scandals and notoriously shady enterprises -- many would say criminal enterprises -- with Bill Clinton, including Whitewater, Travelgate, Pardongate, the Tyson Foods $100,000 bribe camouflaged as futures trades, about her repeated episodes of obstructing justice, hiding and shredding subpoenaed documents, lying to investigators and ordering subordinates to lie as well. We never heard about her incredibly foul mouth or her legendary abuse of secret service agents.

"Everyone in the Washington Press Corps knows about all of these scandals and more. And yet, they never saw fit to communicate to the public what this person-who-would-be-president is really like. So, we would watch, and be swept up with the speeches and debates and high drama of a presidential election, always shielded by the media from the truth -- that Hillary's record is one of a pathological liar and ruthless opportunist just like her husband.

"The media superficially report on Obama's 'controversial' associations, but never hammer home the truth that he has spent his entire adult life associating with and being mentored by communists (Frank Marshall Davis), terrorists (William Ayers), crooks (Tony Rezko) and America-hating racists (Rev. Jeremiah Wright). All we hear about is 'hope' and 'change.' [. . .]

"Let's sum up: The greatest nation on earth is saddled with a secular, elitist, globalist, atheistic media full of activists pretending to be objective journalists."

-- "Is the Press Evil?" by David Kupelian, Whistleblower magazine, October 2008, pages 26, 31. Address: PO Box 2450, Fair Oaks, California 95628. Phone: 916-852-6300. Fax: 916-852-6302. Website.

Creating a Strong Leftist Society
Posted here for 1-5-09

"For most liberal news reporters, [. . .] the purpose of news reporting is not to report news as objectively as possible. The purpose of the media in general and of reporting specifically is to promote social justice and the social transformation of society.

"For most liberal judges, the primary purpose of being a judge is to promote social justice and transform society. That is why liberal judges are so much more likely to be judicial activists than conservative judges. Most liberal judges do not see their roles as merely adjudicating a dispute according to the law. They see their role primarily as using the law and their power to rule on the law to promote social justice.

"For most university professors outside of the natural sciences and math, the same holds true. The task of a teacher is to teach, i.e., to convey the most important information as honestly as possible. But, again, this conflicts with the social justice goal of the left. History teachers who merely teach history are of little use to the left. History -- and English and political science, and sociology and other liberal arts -- teachers must use their classroom to produce young people who will wish to engage in society-transforming work for social justice.

"For most liberals in the arts (there are very few conservatives in the arts), there is no denial of their having an agenda. They state quite candidly that the purpose of the arts is to challenge the (conservative) status quo, to raise political and social consciousness by advancing a 'progresive' political and social agenda. The artist whose agenda is merely to produce beautiful art is looked upon as a reactionary buffoon, and is not likely to be taken seriously -- no matter how talented -- in the worlds of music, dance, painting, and sculpture."

-- "Why Reporters, Judges and Professors Are So Biased," by Dennis Prager, Human Events, December 8, 2008, page 11. Address: 1 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001. Phone: 202-216-0600. Website.