Loving the Troops, Hating Their Mission

Article by Captain Pete Hegseth, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division from 2005 to 2006, is chairman of Vets for Freedom.

Obama wants to have it both ways on Iraq.

By Pete Hegseth

Denver — Yesterday, I once again watched Speaker Nancy Pelosi stubbornly deny the success of the surge. Under questioning from Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press, Pelosi insisted that — despite dramatic improvements on the ground — the surge has not been successful because “the Iraqi government has not stepped up to the plate. . . . ” Her opposition, in the interview and elsewhere, is built on naming three pieces of stalled Iraqi legislation. (Hmm, can you name three pieces of stalled U.S. legislation?)

This remains the only anti-surge talking point on the Left. One problem, though: it’s no longer true — especially in light of the Iraqi government’s “surge” to autonomy, which is emblematic of their newfound political aptitude. The Maliki government has passed 15 of the 18 political benchmarks our Congress laid before it, not to mention taking on rogue Shia militias throughout the country and bringing the largest Sunni political party back into the fold. It’s not a beacon of democracy yet, but it is Iraq-ocracy.

In light of this indisputable political progress and the dramatic drop in violence in Iraq — which Brokaw referenced — Pelosi’s position is a radical one. Unfortunately, we’ve come to expect such political talking points from Ms. Pelosi — nothing short of a Planned Parenthood in every Iraqi village would denote success for her. But what of the man who has pledged to usher in a new kind of politics?

Senator Barack Obama has done his best to make it appear as if he has embraced the surge, noting in his VFW speech last week, that “gains have been made in lowering the level of violence” (note that passive construction) and that Iraq’s Security Forces have “increase[ed] capacity.” Such factual acknowledgements are welcome. Yet when actually pressed on the subject he continues to insist — as does Pelosi — that the surge has not worked. He is effectively embracing the surge without embracing it at all.

Obama has gone so far as to insist — when pressed by Katie Couric last month — that if given the opportunity to support or oppose the surge again, he would still oppose it. So, on one hand, Obama recognizes success in Iraq. But on the other hand, he still opposes the American policy that fostered that success. In Obama’s mind, this is not a contradiction.

The reason why is that Obama won’t admit that the gains we’ve seen in Iraq are at all related to the surge. He knows things have improved in Iraq — even on the political front — but credits everything but the surge strategy and U.S. troops for those improvements. Sure, he’ll say on the stump that “our troops have accomplished every mission” and “they have performed brilliantly.” But in the very next breath, he’ll deny that they were responsible for the success (remember: “gains have been made”). It seems as if nothing good can possibly have come from U.S. military policy in Iraq simply because it went ahead without Obama’s blessing.


In January of this year, Obama said that security gains were achieved because — get this — Sunni tribes in Anbar were scared that “Democrats elected [to Congress] in 2006” would hasten withdrawal. He has never retracted this unsubstantiated claim. More recently, Obama and his apologist, Madame Speaker, credit improvements in Iraq almost exclusively to the ceasefire of Muqtada al Sadr’s militia and the Sunni awakening (again, supposedly induced by the Democrats). Pelosi has even cited the “goodwill of the Iranians” as a factor; ignoring U.S. intelligence that shows Iranian arms and expertise are killing our troops.

I gladly acknowledge that other factors (well, aside from the ludicrous proposition on Iranian goodwill) have been integral to progress in Iraq. But intellectual integrity should compel Democratic leaders to admit that, at the very least, the surge has been a significant factor in the gains. Why not, if only for the sake of the troops (who, by the way, comprise “the surge”), admit that it worked?

Because detaching the surge — and the troops — from the progress in Iraq is a political necessity for Obama; admitting even the qualified success of the surge would require admitting his failure in judgment. Obama’s entire campaign was born in the notion that he exercised superior judgment on Iraq. Abandoning that proposition now would risk alienating his antiwar base.

And who gets the shaft in this equation? The soldiers and Marines who made the surge happen, that’s who. They get no credit from Obama and other leading Dems, whose mantra remains “we support the troops, but not the war.” They support the troops . . . but not so far as to upset Pelosi and Obama’s public narrative on Iraq. In order to discredit the surge strategy, its architects, and its principal political champion — John McCain — they are even willing to credit progress in Iraq to Muqtada al Sadr and Iran.

At the convention today, I suspect, we’ll see and hear only a few platitudes about success in Iraq — our “troops are wonderful, but the policy failed” they’ll say; but bend your ear and see if you hear anything positive about the surge. You won’t.

It needn’t be that way, and for the sake of our country’s future — in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader war on terror — Obama and Co. should re-examine what it means to be for our troops in the abstract but against their present mission. If not, the American people just might do it for them.

Robocop's Comment:

The Libtards are in denial. This proves that to them, no news is good news regarding a victory in this war.

Douche Of The Week 08.29.08

The Winners: Jennifer Richards and Sean Michael Block.

The Reason: This lovely couple attempted to pimp out their 5 year old daughter as payment for a used car, apartment, and childcare for their 10 month old child.

The Story:

SAN ANTONIO —
A San Antonio couple is accused of trying to trade sex with the woman's 5-year-old daughter for an apartment, a used car and child care for her 10-month old daughter.

Jennifer Richards, 25, and her married boyfriend, Sean Michael Block, 40, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Stein Nowak on Friday. Richards is charged with using interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor. Block is charged with distributing child pornography.

Nowak ordered Block held. Richards' detention hearing was delayed until Tuesday, the San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.

According to an affidavit unsealed last Tuesday, the investigation began when an informant told the FBI about a text message allegedly sent by Block reading: "Nice piece 5 yrs old belongs to my gf and she wants to sell it."

Richards and Block crafted a deal that, in addition to the apartment and used car, included child care for Richards' 10-month-old daughter, whose sexual service the couple intended to sell later, Rex Miller, the FBI's lead agent on the case, testified.

The couple had also hoped to blackmail the informant, Miller said.

Richards "was of the belief that these sexual interactions would be a positive experience for (her daughter) and that Richards would receive sexual gratification" from watching, according to the affidavit.

Authorities said both children are no longer in Richards' custody and that neither child was sold for sex.

After reviewing computers the couple used and listening to taped conversations, Miller determined Block and Richards were making further plans to abduct, rape and "carve up" a teenage runaway.

Block allegedly sent an e-mail with a link to a Russian child pornography site, according to the affidavit.

Ronald Guyer, Block's lawyer, acknowledged the severity of the charges. But Guyer told the judge that there was no evidence that the behavior progressed beyond Block's fantasy.

"There has been no action on his part," Guyer told Nowak.

Richard's attorney did not immediately return a call or e-mail left Sunday by The Associated Press seeking comment.

The couple worked at the Cheesecake Factory at North Star Mall, where he was a bartender and she was a waitress.

Court records show that Block's now-estranged wife Sarah Block filed for a protective order earlier this week on behalf of the couple's 14-month-old child. Her lawyer said she filed for divorce Friday.

Robocop's Comment:

There will be a special place in hell for this couple.

The Marxist Brother

Editorial by Burt Prelutsky.

I must confess that I am spending an awful lot of time thinking about Barack Obama. I hasten to add that it’s not, as is the case with Chris Matthews, because the senator sends shivers up my leg. Rather, it’s because I simply can’t figure out how he’s managed to convince so many people that he should be the president of the United States. It’s a lot like trying to figure out how Las Vegas magicians make lions and tigers disappear.

To be perfectly honest, I invariably feel that way about the candidates the Democrats try to foist off on us. But, as a rule, guys like Dukakis, Gore and Kerry, are just typical party hacks. But at least none of them attended a racist church, they didn’t associate with known terrorists and they usually didn’t display their contempt for national symbols and the U.S. military quite so blatantly.

Liberals have tried to convince me that Obama is brilliant. I find that odd because he has said that there are 57 states, that JFK got the Russians to remove their missiles from Cuba by sitting down and chatting with Khrushchev, and that Iran doesn’t really constitute an actual threat because they don’t spend as much money on weaponry as we do. Funny, but “brilliant” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. But what do liberals know? They were also convinced that Jimmy Carter was intelligent.

As if Obama’s lack of smarts weren’t bad enough, he compounds the problem with his arrogance. The way he’s forever tilting his head as if he were posing for a statue and employing the royal “we,” I’m never sure if he thinks he’s campaigning to be president of the United States or the queen of England.

Frankly, I’m always surprised when, every four years, the candidate with the (D) after his name is able to muster tens of millions of votes. When you realize that the party has become increasingly Marxist, I find it mind-boggling that the Democrats can consistently fare better than the Greens or the Libertarians in a national election.

If you listen to Obama, you’d get the idea that we’re a third world nation, tottering on the edge of poverty. Every word out of his mouth suggests that America is being ground down by corporations when every sane member of the middle class is well aware that the Democrats, who have never met a tax increase they didn’t love or an illegal alien they didn’t see as a potential vote, and who promote class and race warfare as party policy, pose more of a threat to this country than the Soviet Union ever did.

Obama and his fellow left-wingers keep parroting the line that all the other nations of the world hate us, but I’ve noticed that they never name names. And who can blame them? They’re not likely to mention that they’re referring to the likes of Iran, China, Yemen, Venezuela, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and North Korea, just as they’re not likely to mention that England, France, Germany and Italy, have all elected conservative leaders in the past few years, while dumping the leftist likes of Chirac and Schroder along the way.

Because the MSM adores Obama, they continue to promote the notion of Obama as a great orator, but he is actually no more silver-tongued than your average radio announcer reading ad copy for baby wipes. The fact is that when asked a direct question, the man turns into a blithering idiot, even though you would imagine that by this late date he would have memorized the appropriate lines. Perhaps the problem is that this new style politician is so driven by polls that from moment to moment he’s not sure exactly how he feels about the 16-month deadline in Iraq, the surge, offshore drilling for oil, election financing or dividing the city of Jerusalem. Heck, he even changed his opinion about Reverend Wright overnight. On one notable occasion, during the primaries, he was heard to ask if he could just have a moment to finish his waffle. We all thought he was referring to his breakfast. But apparently that wasn’t the case because the man hasn’t stopped waffling yet.

Even after all this time on the stump, I have yet to hear what he would have done about Saddam Hussein if he’d been president. After all, his liberal colleagues had spent much of the 1990s insisting that there had to be a regime change in Iraq. And as Georges Sada, Hussein’s air vice-marshal, has stated in his 2006 book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” Hussein had all the WMD that Kerry, Kennedy and the Clintons thought he had, but had his chemical arsenal airlifted to Syria after the allied invasion began, in the hope of convincing the world that he was the innocent victim of American aggression.

Knowing Obama as we do, we can only assume that if he’d been occupying the Oval Office he would have sat down with Hussein, and through the sheer power of his personality and his white teeth -- or do I repeat myself? -- would have convinced the Butcher of Baghdad that while it’s nice to be important, it’s more important to be nice.

Judgment Under Fire

Editorial by Deroy Murdock.

As top Democrats address their national convention in Denver, they will propose “ending” Operation Iraqi Freedom, demand a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces there, and insist that “Bush lied, and people died.” What they will not do is apologize for their nearly universal failure of judgment regarding the wisdom and effectiveness of President Bush’s spring 2007 “surge” of 20,000 troops into Iraq. Widespread Democratic defeatism and lack of faith in our GIs’ ability to win gouged a gap between their forecasts of doom then and Iraq’s far sunnier outlook now. With few exceptions, Democrats got this one dead wrong.

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is [sic] going to solve the sectarian violence there,” Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Not so.

Thanks to brave U.S. GIs and valiant Iraqi soldiers, cops, and volunteers, Iraq is increasingly tranquil. According to the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs, “Overall violence is down at least 80 percent since the surge began, and ethno-sectarian violence — the kind that seemed to be sucking Iraq into all-out civil war in 2006 — is down by over 90 percent.” American fatalities have plummeted from 66 in July 2007 to five last month.

“By and large, what’s left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told the Associated Press in late July.

“As we have surged into neighborhoods — to protect the Iraqi people, earning their trust, and benefiting from their help — violence has dropped, and locals have turned against the jihadists,” wrote Army National Guard captain and Vets for Freedom chairman Pete Hegseth last week after returning to Samarra, where he served from December 2005 – July 2006.

“The economy on the street is booming,” a Baghdad-based American businessman told me. “The Iraqi people are going about their business, and business is thriving. It is so, more and more. I see it in places I could not go even six months ago.”

“The simple fact is that sending in over 20,000 additional troops isn’t the answer. In fact, it’s a tragic mistake,” 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry said on February 16, 2007. The Massachusetts senator continued: “It won’t end the violence; it won’t provide security. . . . It won’t turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is already underway; it won’t deter terrorists, who have a completely different agenda; it won’t rein in the militias.”

The simple fact is that the surge has helped turn the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s biggest militia, into a charity. “The group will focus on education, religion, and social justice,” the Wall Street Journal’s Gina Chon explained on August 5. Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decided to disarm his battered force. He is rumored to be studying Islam in Iran.

As for terrorists, the surge and Sunni disgust with the barbaric Islamo-fascism of al-Qaeda in Iraq almost have squeezed AQI to death. Last month alone, two high-value AQI-affiliated emirs and an associate surrendered to Iraqi and Coalition forces.

“The surge is not succeeding,” Sen. Joseph Biden (D., Del.) told journalists on April 26, 2007. “It’s like squeezing a water balloon. You squeeze it in one place, it bulges somewhere else.”


While Biden proposed trisecting Iraq into a Shiite south, Sunni middle, and Kurdish north, the surge has calmed things enough that Iraqis are working to keep their constitutional republic together, rather than yield to centrifugal forces.

“The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution,” Senator Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) said August 22, 2007. “It has failed.”

Congressional Democrats like Clinton often attack Iraq’s parliament as foot draggers who specifically failed to implement a petroleum reform law. This is mighty rich for Democrats who managed to pass not one appropriations bill this year, yet jetted off for a five-week vacation rather than consider GOP ideas for increasing oil and energy production.

The Iraqi parliament in 2008 adopted a budget, a pension law, and amnesty for some prisoners. It scheduled provincial elections for October and is weighing plans for an expected $50 billion budget surplus (a virtual foreign phrase in Washington, D.C.), largely from an ever more productive petroleum sector.

According to the Brookings Institution’s stunningly comprehensive Iraq Index [PDF available here], attacks on Iraqi oil pipelines fell from 19 in May 2007 to one last March. This has helped oil production swell to 2.54 million barrels per day, surpassing peak pre-war production of 2.5 million barrels daily.

On April 19, 2007, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) flatly declared that ‘‘this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything. . . .”

Wrong again.

“The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost,” the AP’s Robert Burns and Robert Reid reported last July 26. “In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago…”

While key Democrats blew it, starting with their standard bearer, the GOP nominee got it right.

“We must have more troops over there,” Senator John McCain told Fox News Channel on December 12, 2006. “And we have to have a big enough surge that we can get Baghdad under control and then Anbar province under control.”

McCain embraced the surge concept, encouraged President Bush to implement it, and energized Republicans on Capitol Hill and across America to support it. He trusted U.S. service personnel to stabilize Iraq. And they delivered — big time.

On the nation’s most urgent issue, John McCain and the GOP scored a bull’s eye, while Barack Obama and the Democrats’ arrow missed the target and crashed in the dust.

Those Poor Criminals

Courtesy of Texas Fred.



Robocop's Comment:

Warning to Libtards: This is a parody. Try to laugh a little.

Have You...?

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Article by Lorie Byrd.

The Case Against Obama - In His Own Words

It would be hard to make a better case against a Barack Obama presidency than the one Obama has made in his own words. The most memorable thing about Obama’s speeches is not generally what he says, but rather how large and enthusiastic the audiences are. If voters pay attention only to the symbolism and get caught up in the excitement of the Obamessiah and his throngs of fainting disciples, he stands a good chance of winning in November. If voters pay attention instead to the things Obama is saying, the case against an Obama presidency will be clear.

Obama’s youthful appearance is often cited as one of his biggest assets, but when he opens his mouth he doesn’t always come off as presidential or even particularly intelligent. The political figure who perhaps has received the most ridicule in the past twenty years is Dan Quayle (due largely to a misspelled word on a flashcard he read during an appearance at a school). I wonder how much more grief would have been heaped on Vice President Quayle if he had made any of the following gaffes committed by Barack Obama (from Michelle Malkin):

· Last May, he claimed that Kansas tornadoes killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

· Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

· Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama, he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.” Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965.

Some of Obama’s gaffes go beyond simple slips of the tongue and confusion over numbers though and display a lack of knowledge on important issues as was the case when he commented on the war in Afghanistan and the lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” As Malkin pointed out, the real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan is because Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish, while Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages. Worse than the lack of knowledge of the languages spoken in other nations is that he lacks an understanding of the threat posed by some of them. Or maybe he doesn’t. It is really a bit confusing. In Portland, Oregon, Obama said of Iran, “They don't pose a serious threat to us.” The following day in Billings, Montana he said: “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.” Maybe it depends what the definitions of “grave” and “serious” are. As I said, it is all bit confusing. Maybe that is why so many focus on the crowds at Obama’s events, rather than to what Obama is actually saying to them.

If voters are paying attention to what Barack Obama says they will see not only a lack of knowledge of important issues, but on some of the issues where he is informed, an attempt to hide his true position and past votes.

In the Saddleback Church forum last week, in response to Rev. Rick Warren’s question, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?” Obama responded: “Well, uh, you know, I think that whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or, uh, a scientific perspective, uh, answering that question with specificity, uh, you know, is, is, uh, above my pay grade.” As blogger Cassy Fiano points out, the idea that someone running for President would dodge such an important question in that way is “beyond ridiculous” and obviously an attempt to be as ambiguous as possible so that he does not offend those who disagree with the very radical positions he has taken on the issue of abortion during his political career. Obama’s past comments and votes on abortion legislation definitely say more about him than anything he is saying on the subject now.

Another example of actions speaking louder than words can be found when we listen to Obama’s money talk. According to Obama’s tax returns from 2000-2006, the Obamas have given far less to charity than John McCain has. In all but the two most recent years reported, the Obamas gave around 1% or less of their income to charity. Their contributions increased in 2005 and 2006 to 4.7% and 6.1% respectively, but still are far short of those of McCain who gave 28.6% in 2006 and 27.3% in 2007. But if you listen to Obama’s words you will hear that he is very concerned about the least among us.

According to the following statement from an Obama speech earlier this summer, it appears pretty much everyone who isn’t Obama is a lesser being: “...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.” If Obama is able to slow the rise of the oceans then ending poverty and securing peace should be a cakewalk. I suppose he will only be able to accomplish such feats if elected President though.

This week John McCain pulled ahead of Obama in many polls and projections. Maybe voters have finally started listening to what Obama has been saying now that the thrill of his oratory is wearing thin.

Robocop's Comment:

One more thing: Congrats to Senator Joe Biden, one of the most left-winged politicians in the Union for becoming Obama's running mate. This made an already extremely leftist presidential ticket go past the margin. This race just became that between an actual moderate Conservative (borderline), versus Socialism.

Showdown at Saddleback

Debate evaluation by Larry Elder.

Oh, no, not another "town hall" meeting.

Or at least, that's how I first reacted when I learned Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church intended to host an Obama-versus-McCain town hall forum at the evangelist's California church.

But the rules, this time at least, seemed intriguing. Warren intended to ask each candidate one-on-one questions for one hour, with the rival offstage unable to hear questions and answers. The second candidate would then come out and answer the same questions in the same order.

Obama, via a coin toss, went first, and answered the often simple, straightforward questions carefully or, as many in the mainstream media later reported, in a "nuanced" way. And then came McCain. He came across as funnier, more personable, more thoughtful, more specific and, for the most part, more direct.

Some highlights. Warren asked the candidates to define "rich."

Obama: "If you are making $150,000 a year or less as a family, then you're middle class, or you may be poor. But 150 (thousand dollars) down, you're basically middle class. Obviously, it depends on region and where you're living. I don't know what housing prices are doing lately. I would argue that if you're making more than 250,000 (dollars), then you're in the top 3, 4 percent of this country. You're doing well. Now, these things are all relative, and I'm not suggesting that everybody who is making over 250,000 (dollars) is living on easy street.

"But the question that I think we have to ask ourselves is, if we believe in good schools, if we believe in good roads, if we want to make sure that kids can go to college, if we don't want to leave a mountain of debt for the next generation, then we've got to pay for these things. They don't come for free. I believe it is irresponsible intergenerationally for us to invest or for us to spend $10 billion a month on a war and not have a way of paying for it. That, I think, is unacceptable. Under the approach I'm taking, if you make $150,000 or less, you will see a tax cut. If you're making $250,000 a year or more, you're going to see a modest increase."

McCain: "I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. I don't believe in class warfare or redistribution of wealth. Let's keep taxes low. Let's give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let's give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let's not have the government take over the health care system in America.

"And, my friend, it was not taxes that mattered in America in the last several years. It was spending. Spending got completely out of control. We spent money in a way that mortgaged our kids' future. My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Now, I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue. But the point is, it was $3 million of your money.

"So it doesn't matter, really, what my definition of 'rich' is because I don't want to raise anybody's taxes. I really don't. In fact, I want to give working Americans a better shot at having a better life."

Iraq? Obama called his decision to oppose the war "difficult," given -- at the time -- the popularity of the president. McCain said: "Not long ago in Baghdad, al-Qaida took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace and, by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is. And we're going to defeat this evil. And the central battleground, according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden, is Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Iraq. And we are winning and we are succeeding, and our troops will come home with honor and with victory, and not in defeat."

The following day, on "Meet the Press," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said some "Obama people" suggested that McCain heard the questions in advance because he "seemed so well-prepared."

Indeed, McCain did seem better prepared -- to lead this country, that is.

Robocop's Comment:

I am not surprised that the liberal media kind of left out reporting on this debate. Makes you wonder what else they leave out when they report on this election.

The Dems’ Hidden Soros Slush Fund

Editorial by Michelle Malkin.

The Democratic Party platform is like a bag of pork rinds. You never know what high-fat liberal government morsel you’re gonna get.

Buried in the 94-page document is a noble-sounding proposal to create a “Social Investment Fund Network.” The program would provide federal money to “social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations [that] are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps, and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities.” The Democratic Party promises to “support these results-oriented innovators” by creating an office to “coordinate government and nonprofit efforts” and then showering “a series of grants” on the chosen groups “to replicate these programs nationwide.”

In practice, this Barack Obama brainchild would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders. This George Soros Slush Fund would be political payback in spades. Obama owes much of his Chicago political success to financial support from radical, left-wing billionaire and leading “social entrepreneur” Soros. In June 2004, Soros threw a big fundraiser at his New York home for Obama’s Illinois Senate campaign. Soros and family personally chipped in $60,000. In April 2007, Obama was back in New York for a deep-pocketed Manhattan fundraising soiree, with Soros lurking in his shadow.

No doubt with Soros’s approbation (if not advice from the hands-on “progressive” activist or his advisers), Obama fleshed out his Social Investment Fund Network plan last December. In concert with his mandatory volunteerism pitch and $6 billion anti-poverty plan, Obama called for the creation of a “Social Entrepreneurship Agency” to dispense the funds in unspecified amounts. The agency would be a government-supported nonprofit corporation “similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” which runs public television. (And we’ve all seen how fair and balanced that lib-dominated, Bill Moyers–boosting private-public enterprise turned out.)

Obama cites the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides after-school activities and mentors to children in New York, as an example of a program that should be funded. (HCZ’s former senior leader Shawn Dove is now an official at Soros’s Open Society Institute.) The problem with such initiatives, as Mitchell Moss pointed out in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal several years ago, is that these private-public partnerships formed under the guise of economic renewal often become nothing more than fronts that coordinate “an enormous safety net for social services.” Private donations give the illusion of self-help and philanthropic independence, but in reality, the “clients” are never weaned from the teat of the welfare state. They simply learn how to milk it more efficiently.

Even more troubling is how the Democratic Party/Obama plan would siphon untold millions or billions of public tax dollars into the Soros empire without taxpayer recourse. Obama promises “accountability” measures to ensure the money is spent wisely. But who would assess effectiveness of the spending? Why, experts in the social entrepreneurship community, of course. Fox, meet henhouse.


Soros has donated some $5 billion of his fortune to left-wing nonprofit groups through the Open Society Institute — an institution committed to Soros’ militant ideology of toppling the “fascist” tyranny of the United States, which he says must undergo “de-Nazification” in favor of “justice.” The mob at Obama-endorsing MoveOn, purveyors of the “General Betray Us” smear against Commanding General, MNF-I, David Petraeus, is the most notorious Soros-backed political arm. But scores of other activist nonprofits have received Soros funding under the guise of doing nonpartisan “community” or “social justice” work — and it is exactly such leftist activist groups that would be first in line for the Democratic Party/Obama’s “social investment” seed money.

Point in case: ACORN. As I’ve reported before, Obama’s old friends at the Chicago-based nonprofit now take in 40 percent of their revenues from American taxpayers. They raked in tens of millions in federal antipoverty grants while some of their operatives presided over massive voter fraud, and others were implicated in corporate shakedowns and mortgage scams across the country. Soros has donated at least $150,000 to the group, according to Investor’s Business Daily, and “heads a secretive rich-man’s club called ‘Democracy Alliance’ that has doled out $20 million to activist groups like ACORN.”

Once the spigot is turned on, there’s no turning back.

Where are fiscal conservatives on this far-left boondoggle? Well, if you’re wondering why the McCain campaign doesn’t raise hell over this proposed left-wing nonprofit/government pipeline, it’s because McCain himself is a Soros beneficiary. His “Reform Institute,” a tax-exempt, supposedly independent 501(c)(3) group focused on campaign-finance reform, was funded by the Soros-funded Open Society Institute and Tides Foundation.

Birds of a Big Government feather flock together — and look out for each other. Watch your wallet.

Douche Of The Week 08.21.08

The Winner: Chalala Gutierrez

The Reason: Making money off her dead husband, Richard Thomas Vega II. He killed himself over a contest to own a Nissan. She sued the dealer, blaming them for his suicide.

The Story:

A Texas car dealership has settled a lawsuit filed by the widow of a man who killed himself after dropping out of a contest in which participants tried to keep their hand on a vehicle the longest.

Details of the settlement between Patterson Nissan of Longview, in east Texas, and Chalala Gutierrez, the wife of contestant Richard Thomas Vega II, are confidential, officials said.

The suit, settled Thursday, focused on a 2005 contest in which the winner of the "Hands on a Hardbody" contest was awarded a Nissan truck and other prizes.

Just before a scheduled rest break 48 hours into the event, Vega dropped out, crossed a street and broke into a Kmart store, where he took a gun from a case and shot himself.

In her suit, Gutierrez alleged that the dealership was negligent in organizing and conducting the contest. She likened Vega and other contestants' stress and sleep deprivation to "brainwashing" and said the dealership failed to provide a safe environment for contestants who "temporarily lost their sanity."

Court documents show damages sought included fneral costs, lost income of about $600,000 and court costs.

Attorney Adam Allen said the dealership was happy with the result. An attorney for Gutierrez said the settlement resolved all the allegations in the lawsuit.

The contest was featured in a 1990s documentary by the same name. It has not been restaged since Vega's death.

Robocop's Comment:

Patterson Nissan did not force Richard Thomas Vega's hand off that truck. They did not force him to cross the street, break into K-Mart, pull a gun out of a case, find and load the ammunition, and then end his miserable life. Patterson Nissan did none of these things. Chalala Gutierrez did not start this lawsuit out of love, or out of a sense of loss for the love of her life. She saw $$$$. Sure, she'll give some bullshit lie that "He would have wanted it this way..." all she wants. This does not change the fact that she is now officially a Douche.

Echoes of Berlin

Editorial by Michael Barone.

Last week, the two erstwhile Communist superpowers were in the spotlight. Starting on Aug. 8, China staged the Olympics — an event on the schedule for years. Also on Aug. 8, Russia invaded the independent republic of Georgia — which apparently caught our government flatfooted. George W. Bush remained in Beijing watching the Olympians, while Vladimir Putin, making no secret of who is in charge, went to the Russian borderland with Georgia to supervise.

There are echoes of history in all this. Echoes that remind us in one way or the other of Berlin. China’s Olympic extravaganza — and its suppression of dissent — inevitably remind us of Adolf Hitler’s Berlin Olympics in 1936. Russia’s torrent of lies — its claims that democratic Georgia has been engaged in ethnic cleansing, its claims that it is acting in the interest of Russian citizens, its claims that it has accepted a ceasefire when its tanks continue to enter Georgian cities — remind us of Hitler’s claims that Czechoslovakia was oppressing the Sudeten Germans and his claims that Poland was committing atrocities before he invaded.

Belatedly, on Aug. 13, George W. Bush reminded us once again of Berlin, when he announced that the United States would airlift supplies and send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia. The United States has no capacity to join Georgia in arms and does not want a direct military confrontation with Russia. But in effect we are putting feet on the ground in Tbilisi and its airport, which should make it plain to Putin that an assault on them is an attack on the United States.

There’s a parallel here to the situation in Berlin in June 1948, when the Soviets cut off land access to West Berlin. Harry Truman’s top civilian and military advisers told him there was no way to supply the city by air and that we could not win a land war with the Soviets. But Truman said, “We’re staying in Berlin,” and the American military made the airlift work. The Soviets could have wiped out the Allied garrison, but they dared not do so. For the full story of the airlift, read Andrei Cherny’s riveting “The Candy Bombers.”

John McCain has taken a strong stand from the start. His statement, “We are all Georgians,” echoes John F. Kennedy’s Ich bin ein Berliner. Barack Obama, after a weak opening statement, has also condemned the Russian actions. But his own speech before the Prussian Victory Column in Berlin showed an incomplete appreciation of history.

He hailed the Berlin airlift as an example of American generosity, which it was. But he didn’t note that it was an example of American military strength: The “candy bombers” were members of the U.S. Air Force. And when he celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said it was supported by “the world as one.” But a lot of people — communists — built the Berlin Wall, supported the Berlin Wall and shot men who attempted to climb over the Berlin Wall to freedom.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia did not invade Georgia solely because it is a country on its borders moving toward freedom, democracy and the rule of law, though that was one reason. He did not invade solely to intimidate other former Soviet republics that have moved in the same direction — Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia — though that was another reason. He invaded also because Georgia is the chokepoint on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that is the sole means except through Russia of transporting oil from the Caucasus and potentially natural gas from Central Asia to Europe and the wider world.

Maintaining a visible and active American presence in Tbilisi makes it riskier for the Russians to destroy the pipeline and makes it easier for Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili to resist Russian pressure to resign. There are other ways we can put pressure on Putin: Charles Krauthammer has suggested dissolving the NATO-Russia Council, barring Russia from the World Trade Organization, dissolving the G-8 and boycotting the 2014 Winter Olympics. The way forward is not clear, as it was not in Berlin in 1948.

Some say we never should have encouraged Georgia by offering NATO membership, which was sidetracked by Germany; others say if NATO membership had been extended, Russia would not have invaded. Perhaps and perhaps. In June 1948, some said we should have withdrawn from Berlin, while others said we should have negotiated land access to Berlin in 1945. We are where we are, as we were where we were then. The question is whether we have the nerve and the ingenuity and the persistence to stay. Truman’s America did. Does ours?

Why Victory in Iraq Matters

Editorial by Pete Hegseth.

Because what happens in Samarra, doesn’t stay in Samarra

Samarra, Iraq — The second most refreshing thing about this latest visit back to Iraq — aside from spending time with soldiers — is the respite from the never-ending drumbeat of election coverage. In my week with combat troops, I didn’t hear the names “Obama” or “McCain” once: the “who won the week?” nonsense that dominates cable news stateside doesn’t matter over here. Fighting America’s radical enemies wipes away the pettiness that impoverishes our domestic political debate — “who wins the war?” consumes those over here, not Paris Hilton or George Clooney.

What I’ve seen in Samarra, and what is happening throughout Iraq, is enough to make Americans of either party proud. After years of getting it wrong — or at best, only partly correct — in Iraq, today we are winning the war and setting the conditions for an enduring peace in that country, even in perpetual al Qaeda cesspools like Samarra. Faced with a determined enemy, hell-bent on bringing America to her knees in Mesopotamia, American military will, adaptability, and might are carrying the day.

Yet too many Americans, consumed with their daily lives or restricted by partisan blinders, see the progress and say: “Who cares? What does it matter? We should have never been there in the first place.” While I disagree with this position, I understand its origins. Americans feel betrayed by what many consider the suspect rationale for the war, have been frustrated by its early conduct, and remain wary of a war without end. These feelings don’t bother me, as they could change when victory — and therefore a drawdown — is achieved in Iraq.

What bothers me, however, is the self-aggrandizing notion that opposing the Iraq war then automatically devalues the important of the endeavor today. Today’s hardcore Iraq war detractors — politicians, pundits, and polemicists alike — all use the same lines of argument to smear the importance of the Iraq war at every turn. The surge was purely a tactical success to them, whereas Iraq overall has been a strategic blunder.

First, they claim, Iraq is not a central front in the global war on terror because al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq in 2003; second, Iraq is a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan; third, the presence of troops in Iraq — and anywhere in the Middle East — perpetuates their hatred for us, thereby creating more jihadists. While there are plenty of overarching reasons to dispute these claims, my latest trip to Samarra suggests these assertions are not just counter-factual, but dangerously divisive.

I challenge anyone to walk the streets of Fallujah, Baqubah, Samarra, or elsewhere in Iraq and tell the locals that their city — their neighborhood — has not been an al Qaeda battlefront. Every Samarran I spoke with — every single one — brought up “al Qaeda,” pronouncing the name with a guttural disdain distinct in Iraqi accents. Most have a family member who has been killed by al Qaeda’s indiscriminate tactics, and still more have no desire to live in their seventh-century fantasy world.

“But this isn’t al Qaeda central we’re talking about,” detractors might say. “These are local thugs acting under their banner.” Wrong. Al Qaeda central has been funneling foreign fighters — primarily Syrians and Saudis — to Samarra, and throughout Iraq, for years. In fact, a few months ago, a raid south of Samarra uncovered the primary administrative hub for al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The bunker complex — piled with medical records, travel documents, and pay stubs — was where foreigners were sent before receiving their suicide assignments. Al Qaeda literature and videos littered the underground headquarters.

While the vast majority of the leadership and financing for AQI comes from outside Iraq, most of their foot soldiers in Samarra are indeed locals. Nonetheless, unlike Americans who wring our hands over ‘foreign versus local’ fighters, Samarrans I spoke with draw no such distinction — same ideology, same brand, same violent tactics. Al Qaeda made Iraq its central front in 2004, and Iraqis faced the consequences. Today, al Qaeda central wishes it had chosen more wisely.

As for the “distraction” argument, war detractors actually have it backwards — Iraq has actually proven to be a distraction for al Qaeda. Their choice to fight in Iraq was, in retrospect, a strategic blunder. (Although it wouldn’t have been, had we withdrawn as some proposed). Al Qaeda had little indigenous support there prior to 2003, and Iraq’s educated and largely secular population was not predisposed to radical Islam. As a result, al Qaeda’s defeat in places like Samarra has denied them terrain for decades to come; and has once again relegated them to the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda will indeed think twice next time they attempt to expand their power base.

America must re-commit to winning the war in Afghanistan as well — plain and simple. We need to kill Osama bin Laden and every last one of his henchmen. However — unlike Iraq — Afghanistan is not advantageous terrain for American warfighters, as al Qaeda benefits from widespread tribal support, safe haven in Pakistan, and bountiful organic funding sources. While I’m confident that General Petraeus will recalibrate U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, it will be a tough fight — requiring additional troops, time, and resources.

Lastly, war detractors continue to propagate the myth that the terrorists and insurgents are “anti-American antibodies” trying to keep their body politic healthy. The American presence in Iraq, they argue, is the cause of the sickness there. If we just leave, everything will get better. My experiences on the ground in Samarra — and the facts of the new counterinsurgency strategy — directly refute this. As we have surged into neighborhoods — to protect the Iraqi people, earning their trust, and benefiting from their help — violence has dropped, and locals have turned against the jihadists.

American troops are tolerated, even welcomed when they effectively provide security; but their presence is cursed when it does not accompany progress. Violence persists not because American troops are present, but when we are present and feckless. For years, al Qaeda exploited our inability to protect the Iraqi people, spreading rumors that our incompetence was actually part of a larger conspiracy to keep them suffering. The security structures American forces have helped build — of, with, and for the people — has changed this. One trip to Samarra would demonstrate this to any objective observer.

The world will continue to watch Iraq. Whether Americans like it or not, what ultimately happens on the streets of Samarra — militarily, politically, and economically — will reverberate through the Middle East and the world. Will our allies see a strong America that wins its wars and stands by its friends? Or will our enemies — namely Iran — be emboldened by perceived American weakness?

Osama bin Laden and his followers jumped at the chance to “bleed out” the Americans in Iraq, believing we didn’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight on two fronts. Thanks to the political courage of a few — and the military courage of many — American have proven bin Laden wrong. Their victory in Iraq would have emboldened al Qaeda to expand their ambitions; instead, their military and ideological defeat has sent the “faithful” back to Afghanistan with their tail between their legs. May we finish them there.

— Captain Pete Hegseth of the Army National Guard served in Samarra, Iraq with the 101st Airborne from December 2005 to July 2006 and has returned there as an embedded correspondent for NRO as part of Vets for Freedom's “Back to Iraq” effort.

Robocop's Comment:

This is obvious. It is too bad the Libtards often ignore the obvious.

Big Oil Democrats

Editorial by Andrew Cline.

Here is how you know Republicans are on the winning side of the oil drilling issue. It's not that two-thirds of the American people support offshore drilling. It's that the Democratic response has been to simply point at Republicans and shout, "Big Oil!"

Earlier this month, Sen. Barbara Boxer gave this genius explanation for high gas prices: "You want to know about my conclusion about $4 a gallon gas? Just divide eight years by two oilmen in the White House and you have your $4 a gallon."

Ah, that must be it. Of course, no one challenged Boxer on this nonsense. No one noted that oil prices did not skyrocket until the tail end of Bush's presidency, right at the time worldwide demand shot up. No one noted that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission concluded this summer that worldwide supply and demand had caused the rise in oil and gas prices.

Unchallenged, Boxer went on: "At the end of the day, you have two oil men in the White House and they represent Big Oil. The Republicans are doing the bidding of Big Oil."


ON MONDAY, Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- the third most powerful human being in America -- said oil companies "rule" Washington. She said they were in charge, that they controlled the White House's and Republicans' position on drilling. This is the woman who could have given the word at any time in the past eight months to vote on a comprehensive energy package that includes offshore drilling and all of the Democratic proposals, and she actually blamed the oil companies for our not having a vote. As she was speaking to Larry King, this of course went entirely unchallenged.

When Sen. John McCain came out for offshore drilling, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said McCain's decision "represents another big giveaway to oil companies already making billions in profits."

He continued, "President Bush and John McCain are not serious about addressing gas prices. If they were, they would stop offering the same old ideas meant to pad the pockets of Big Oil and work with Democrats to reduce our dependence on oil, invest in the renewable energy sources, crack down on excessive speculation and stand up to countries colluding to shake down American consumers."

Barack Obama, Mr. End-Politics-As-Usual, has gone with the worst demagoguery, saying in his new ad this month, "After one president in the pocket of Big Oil, we can't afford another." The narrator says, "Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets. Now big oil is filling John McCain's campaign with $2 million in contributions."

Obama and his campaign staff have hit John McCain with an endless string of accusations that he is beholden to "Big Oil," which is exactly the kind of character assassination Obama has claimed for this entire campaign that he despises. Apparently, he finds it contemptible it only when it's directed at him.


THERE'S A PERFECTLY good reason Democrats keep using the term "Big Oil" instead of talking about the merits of offshore drilling. It's because offshore drilling is immensely popular, but "Big Oil" isn't. People are upset that they are paying so much and the oil companies are making record profits. By turning the debate away from the basic economics of the issue -- increasing supply to meet the increased demand, which Americans understand -- to the profits oil companies are making, the Democrats believe they can win an issue they currently are losing.

But Republicans have a golden opportunity here to turn the tables back on the Democrats. All they have to do is give a basic economics lesson every chance they get. The American people aren't stupid; they will get it. The lesson is this:

If the Democrats really wanted to cut the profits of Big Oil, they would vote to...increase the supply of oil! Oil company profits are so high because the price of oil is so high. The price is so high because demand is so much higher than supply. Allowing oil companies to drill for more oil will increase supply, which will lower prices, which will lower oil company profits!

Who is really in the pocket of Big Oil here -- the party whose policies would reduce oil company profits, or the party whose policies are keeping huge oil reserves confined underground, thus keeping oil companies rolling in record amounts of cash?

Robocop's Comment:

hypocrite [hip-oh-krit]
Noun-
a person who pretends to be what he or she is not.

Stars And Bars

Tennessee Teen Fights For Right to Wear Confederate Flag

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. —
Tommy DeFoe wore his Southern pride on his Confederate flag belt buckle Wednesday as he argued in federal court that a school dress code banning such items violated his free speech rights.

"I am fighting for my heritage and my rights as a Southerner and an American," said the lanky DeFoe, 18, during a break in his trial.

DeFoe says his great-great uncle served in the Confederate army and "died for the South" in the Civil War.

But heritage was not the issue for Anderson County school officials who suspended DeFoe more than 40 times before he received his certificate of completion from the county vocational school last fall.

DeFoe's trial, which began Monday and is being heard by an all-white jury, is the latest in a string of cases across the South since the 1990s challenging dress codes that banned Confederate flag apparel: a prom gown in Kentucky, purses in Texas, T-shirts in Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia.

It is unusual for such cases to go to a jury trial, however. Most were settled with a payment to the plaintiffs, said DeFoe attorney Kirk Lyons, who has been involved in many of the cases as chief trial lawyer for the North Carolina-based Southern Legal Resource Center. Others were thrown out by the judge.

DeFoe's lawyers claim the issue is whether the school system can ban the Confederate flag, a symbol of racism to some, if it causes no substantial disruption, Lyons said.

But officials in Anderson County, in East Tennessee not far from Knoxville, said they feared racial tension and violence if DeFoe continued to wear his Confederate flag shirts and belt buckle to class.

All sides agree his clothing failed to draw much notice at Anderson High School, where one of 1,160 students is black, or at the vocational school, where all 200 students are white.

But officials worried about the impact at Clinton High School six miles away, where about 100 of 1,200 students are black. Clinton High was the first public school desegregated by court order in the Old South in 1956 and was rocked by three massive explosions that temporarily closed the school in 1958.

"If he had worn at Clinton High what he wore at Anderson High it would have been a riot, somebody would have clobbered him," said county school board chairman John Burrell, one of several officials DeFoe is suing.

Yet Burrell said DeFoe clearly was "challenging the system. He knew the dress code. His father knew the dress code. He signed the dress code. He was challenging it."

Until 2001, the dress code for all Anderson County schools specifically banned the Confederate flag. Then the policy was rewritten to more general language "because we were afraid we would leave something out," Burrell said. Still, he said it was understood Confederate flag apparel wasn't allowed.

DeFoe's lawsuit questions why other symbols aren't banned, including the Mexican flag, the Canadian flag, political campaign buttons and images of Martin Luther King Jr.

He said other students wore Confederate flag clothing without consequence.

"I felt like I was the one who stood up for" what he believed in, he said.

Robocop's Comment:

I am not Southern in origin. I am not white. My family did not fight either for the Federal Government, or the Confederacy. But being historically aware, I do know the true meaning of the Confederate Flag. It stands for the right of the states against an overbearing central government. I hope Mr. DeFoe wins this case.

America's Suicide

Article written by J.D. Longstreet.

We have a country so torn about whether it wants to be free, or a socialist slave nation, a country which is so ignorant of it's own rights and privileges (as well as it's responsibilities), under the US Constitution, and so utterly ignorant of the actual laws of the US that it behooves us from time to time to stop, take a deep breath and try to decide who we are, what we are, and where we are headed.

We are a nation at war. Our enemies have sworn to wipe us out. That, in itself, is not new. It seems some nation, or group of nations, or fanatics, has been trying that since, well, 1776. So far, we are still here.

Having said that, I think we are as close to collapsing, as a free nation, as we have ever been' at any time in our history.

Our educational system has failed this country. It has failed the would be beneficiaries of it's knowledge. We now have a couple of generations, in existence currently, who haven't a clue who they are. Why? Because our educational system no longer teaches history. I don't mean the politically correct garbage, disguised as history, our kids are being taught today. The Left is busily at work attempting to sell our young students a bill of goods to create support for a political system that will eventually, in the dreams of the Left, replace the capitalist system upon which the nation was founded and upon which it has flourished. No, I mean REAL history, the raw, gritty, stuff that does not shrink from teaching us of our failures and our triumphs. The story that helps us to understand who we are and how we got here, the story that creates pride in oneself and pride in one's nation.

Further, it teaches our students that the United States is a Representative Republic, not a Democracy, as they have been taught to believe. A history that teaches our students that there is, indeed, an AMERICAN CULTURE. A singular culture, created by our ancestors, and to which each generation contributes, good or bad, as the generations come onto, and pass from, the American scene.

I'm speaking of a history that teaches our youngsters how laws are made, how laws are used, and how laws are tested. It teaches them respect for the law. It teaches them that in America, very little is asked of it's citizens, except that they obey the laws which were created by the representatives their parents sent to the government of the United States for the sole purpose of making those laws.

The history I'm speaking of teaches that America is a country of law(s). Our society is based upon a code of law, which, itself, was based upon, among other things, the Ten Commandments of the Bible, English Common Law, and other codes.

Proper history teaches there are rights, privileges, and responsibilities, all tied up into one bundle and each citizen is handed that bundle at birth. It further teaches that for every infraction of a law, there is a punishment. It is the way civilization governs itself. If you break the law, you will be punished.

But, our American youth have no knowledge of these basic fundamentals of citizenship in America. . They haven't a clue who, and what, they are. They no longer have the pride for their country and the passion, or love, for her that is necessary for a country to survive and thrive. It just isn't there.

All great nations commit suicide. America is no different. We are in the process, even as I write. Wehave been since, at least, the decade of the 1960's.

I'm afraid America has reached and passed her 'high water mark'. The descent into mediocrity began in the 1960's and decline has increased at a frightening pace ever since.

I believe the American educational system has done this. It has gone from the premier educational system, in the world, to the rough equivalent of an educational system of a third world country. I have concluded that ' if a country wishes to destroy its educational system, the quickest and most efficient away to do that is to allow the teachers to unionize. The most powerful unions in America today, bar none, are the teacher's unions.

Then, there are the politicians who make use of these ignorant products of the American Educational System and, boy, have they ever! We have a nation filled, to over flowing, with 'Useful Idiots'! And there is no light at the end of that very long tunnel.

I suppose the gaudiest example of American ignorance resides in the American Left. (The old expression 'birds of a feather', etc.) Although, we have our share on the Right, as well, it seems most pronounced on the Left, I think, because of their propensity toward public displays of their ignorance. The glittering jewels of ignorance seem to, sort of, wash up on the shores of the Left and are immediately lauded, and praised, and placed in positions of prominence for the entire world to see. Examples: the anti-war movement, the global warming/climate change crowd, the pro-choice crowd, the politically correct crowd, the ban the bomb crowd, the supporters of the UN crowd, the tolerance crowd, the multicultural crowd, the diversity crowd, and many groups which support strange and weird behavior. All these groups fall beneath the Left's huge umbrella. Every so often one of them will pop up on the Right, only to be shut down and expelled. On the Right, we don't suffer fools lightly. If we find we are cursed with such a group, or individual, we relegate them to the backbenches, immediately, out of public view. We do not advertise and promote our fools.

It disturbs me, beyond measure, to note how quickly our nation has gone from an individualistic, God- fearing, 'Can DO' nation, to a nation of dependent hedonists, who find the word 'can't' to be the course of least resistance and cling to it in hopes of being saved from themselves by a government every bit as helpless as themselves.

I must tell you, I believe there is something to what the preachers, and prophets, of old tried to tell us' that was' that God would withdraw his favor from a nation, which chose to forsake Him. God must weep, regularly, when he views the mess we have made of this great, and glorious land, to which, I am convinced, He led our Forefathers.

We find ourselves, as a country, today split into two camps. One camp wants to save the country, from itself, and restore it to its rightful position as that 'shining city on a hill'. The other is bent on the total destruction of what is left of that dream and what is left of the efforts of the founders of this unique experiment. As a member of the former group, I must tell you I feel we are losing to the latter group. Any proof you might need is splashed across your morning newspaper and the screens of your TV sets.

Can we save America? Frankly, I don't think we can. Just look at the mediocre candidates for President both sides have offered up to the American voter. Plus, when I survey the generations, upon whose shoulders the task of saving America will lie, I REALLY fear for the survival of America.

You see, when you rob a people of their identity, you have taken everything from them. You can lead them wherever you wish'right off the cliff, if you wish. They will unquestioningly follow. They don't know any better.

I see two generations, behind mine, neither of which has any clue who they are. Their destruction is assured. In their destruction lies the destruction of the once great land known as America.

J. D. Longstreet

America’s Self-Weakening Security Syndrome

Editorial by Fox's James Jay Carafano.

America’s Self-Weakening Security Syndrome

We’re told that history repeats itself. Actually, it’s people who do that. They repeat their mistakes all the time. That’s the real human constant in history. And Washington may be about to give us another history lesson: repeating the gravest misjudgments of the Vietnam War.

When Congress voted to abandon our allies in South Vietnam in 1975, lawmakers patted themselves on the back, arguing that they had made the nation better by walking away from a bad war. Nothing was further from the truth.

The world became more dangerous after America quit Vietnam. Emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal, the Soviets became more aggressive. They embarked on an unprecedented build-up of military force.

The Kremlin directed a worldwide campaign of insurgencies from Latin America to Africa. It even dabbled in support for transnational terrorism. A decade later, the United States had lost the respect of its allies and found itself mired in "brush fire" wars around the world. Many questioned whether the American Age had come to an inglorious end.

Worst of all, Washington virtually abandoned the men and women in uniform. An exhausted military faced an uncertain future. It had skipped a generation of modernization to help pay for the war.

Equipment was worn out after years of jungle combat, while the armed services had to make the difficult transformation from a draft military to an all-volunteer force; meanwhile, politicians took a peace dividend and cut military spending.

By the end of the 1970s, the Pentagon had what Gen. Edward "Shy" Meyer famously called a "hollow" force. On paper there were plenty of troops, he told a congressional committee, but few were prepared for combat. The Pentagon lacked sufficient funds to maintain a trained and ready force, pay for current operations, and modernize the military.

Congress was shocked. But it shouldn’t have been.

Three factors contributed to military unpreparedeness. The first was a general disillusionment with the utility of military power. Indeed, many took the lesson of Vietnam to be that the use of armed force created more problems than it solved. A weak military would mean America would be less likely to get into future troubles. Antipathy became a substitute for strategy.

Second, there was a general malaise over the economy. Since Washington didn’t want to spend money on the military anyway, framing every fiscal debate as a case of "guns vs. butter" became an easy argument. A dollar spent on the Pentagon was a dollar wasted — a dollar that instead could have built schools and fixed bridges.

Third, Washington became complacent about threats. Although the Soviet Union had fielded the greatest military machine in human history, the United States had survived three decades of the Cold War and suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam — and the nation was still standing.

It was better, Washington argued, just to live with the evil around us than try to fight back. Threat assessment became making sure our appreciation of the enemy matched the meager defense budgets passed by Congress. Hope became a method, as policymakers simply ignored the dangers too expensive to address.

Rather than spend money on defending ourselves, the thinking went, all we needed were smarter, more honest and compassionate leaders who would tame the world with their sincerity.

These were convenient, convincing and comforting arguments to cut military spending. They were also just wrong. The U.S. economy worsened, and the world became deadlier.

Now we’re hearing the same arguments all over again. The answer to all our ills is "end this war." Of course, ending wars won’t solve irresponsible tax-and-spend fiscal policies, rebuild the military or restore global confidence in American leadership.

And that’s assuming we could just "end" wars — and you can’t. You can lose, quit or win wars … but you cannot end them simply by walking away. Wars have two sides and the enemy, as the saying goes, "gets a vote." This is the real lesson of Vietnam.

As we saw in the 1980s, there is another way to face adversity. Americans rediscovered that they lived in a resilient and powerful nation that had the means to rebuild the military, stand tall in the struggle against an eternal enemy, and re-energize the economy.

Rather than repeat the infamous "crisis of confidence" of the 1970s, America should stand tall. Win the Long War. Adopt responsible pro-growth policies that will allow the country to prosper and Washington to provide for the common defense.

Let’s show that we’ve finally learned the right lesson.

James Jay Carafano, a Senior Research Fellow for National Security at The Heritage Foundation

One Blow Against Political Correctness

Free speech on campus

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit just made hundreds of colleges wonder how long their restrictive speech codes can survive. On Aug. 4, the Philadelphia-based appellate court affirmed a lower court's ruling against a broadly worded Temple University speech code prohibiting words or deeds whose "purpose or effect [is to create] an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment." Such loose, eye-of-the-beholder standards are increasingly recognized as affronts to the First Amendment, which is right and just.

Interestingly, it did not even take much of a challenge by the plaintiff to get to this point. Christian DeJohn, a graduate student in military history and American history who served in the Pennsylvania National Guard, sued because he "felt inhibited in expressing his opinions in class concerning women in combat and women in the military." He was "concerned that discussing his social, political, and/or religious views regarding these issues might be sanctionable by the University." Fittingly, Mr. DeJohn appears not to have taken great lengths, nor did the courts require him to take lengths, to prove the case. The result is that backers of Temple's nebulous speech code who left all to the realm of perception are now getting a taste of their own medicine. The courts readily recognized the underlying constitutional issues.

Colleges and universities generally know the game is up. Indeed, Temple saw the ruling coming and tried to pre-empt it by throwing out the offending sections of the speech code early in the proceedings. Before a lower court, Temple tried to argue that the voluntary removal of these sections solved the problem and should close the case. Both courts disagreed. Nothing would stop Temple or another school from simply reinstating these sections at some future date, the appellate court reasoned. Perhaps the Temple dons should enroll in their own constitutional law offerings.

The moment when the Orwellian practice of restricting speech at what are supposed to be this country's free centers of learning may not be far off. A few years ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) estimated that as many as two-thirds of American colleges and universities have speech codes. There is disagreement over how many of these codes rise to the level of Temple's or would otherwise be sufficiently restrictive to be unconstitutional.

At minimum, the unknown number of schools that do enforce excessive speech restrictions have another unmistakable point of comparison. They will have little plausible defense if they insist on speech codes as nebulous and facially unconstitutional as Temple's.

Robocop's Comment:

I have heard vile Libtard rhetoric all four years of college. Unfortunately, any conservative expression was scrutinized by the politically correct thought police. Even though this decision only covers one Federal district, it is one district where political correctness is now, for the time being, in check.

Douche Of The Week 08.14.08

The Winner: Josephine Sunshine Overaker

The Reason: Saving the earth by blowing stuff up.

Under the cover of darkness on an October evening in 1996, Josephine Sunshine Overaker began her life as an eco-terrorist, officials said.

The long-haired, vegan activist, sporting a slight moustache, worked at times as a midwife, sheep tender and firefighter, but this night she ignited her own dangerous blaze, officials said.

Along with several other environmental extremists, Overaker slipped into the Willamette National Forest and struck the U.S. Forest Service's station in Detroit, Ore., officials said.

Clad in black, they allegedly left graffiti and burned several Forest Service vehicles before disappearing into the night. Overaker and her cohorts broke the law for a branch of the Earth Liberation Front that called itself "the Family," investigators said.

"Once they did an action, they never went back to that place," FBI Special Agent Timothy Suttles said. "And the people involved in that action would never talk about it, ever."

Two days after the attack in Detroit, investigators said Overaker and fellow extremists struck 140 miles away in Oakridge, planting within another ranger station an incendiary device crudely fashioned from milk jugs and sponges with fuses made of incense sticks. It was designed to ignite the accelerant long after they'd gone, and it worked; they succeeded in burning the Oakridge Ranger Station to the ground.

"They would pick their targets sometimes a year in advance and do significant surveillance, getting the timing down of the guards — if there are any — if there are people there," Suttles said. "Their main thing was that they always claimed they didn’t hurt anybody, so they were very vigilant to make sure they watched a place so that nobody was in there."

It was just by luck, Suttles said, that the forest ranger who often slept overnight at the station was not home at the time of the second attack.

Over the next few years, Overaker took part in seven more actions through 2001, Suttles said — including a massive 1998 blaze at the Vail ski area in Eagle County, Colo., that caused about $12 million in damage, as well as the toppling of a high-voltage tower in Oregon's only Y2K-related disruption.

"They would steal their clothes or get them out of Goodwill, secondhand-type stores — all black," Suttles said. "[They'd] go in at night with police scanners and radios and then afterwards, they’d get rid of their clothes, even sometimes going as far as getting new tires for whatever vehicles they used."

With each arson attack, investigators said, the technology became more and more sophisticated. Five-gallon pails replaced milk jugs and digital timers took the place of incense sticks as members of the Family honed their terrorism skills with weekend seminars on computer encryption and lock-picking, Suttles said.

"They have these small autonomous groups that don’t know each other, and they just go out and commit acts and usually the groups are four or five max," Suttles said. "They don’t use their real names; they use made-up nicknames — codenames — and that’s the way they always refer to each other, and they do that supposedly so when they get arrested, even if they try to cooperate, they can’t."

That silence made it difficult to track down the members, but after a nine-year investigation, federal detectives were able to begin rounding up members of the group. Overaker, however, has managed to elude authorities.

Raised on the West Coast and fluent in Spanish, Overaker is believed to be living abroad.

"Spain has a huge commune-type area and so, at least we’ve been told from the National Police there, it would be a good place for her to be if she was [wanted] anywhere in the world," Suttles said.

Officials said the non-meat-eating activist still may be a vegan and may have gone back to her work as a firefighter, midwife, sheep tender — or even masseuse, officials said.

"She’s a very good shoplifter, which all these people were," Suttles said. "That’s how they got all their material to build these devices, by shoplifting."

Overaker is 5-foot-3, 130 pounds with brown hair and eyes. She has several distinctive tattoos, including a large bird across her back. Her aliases included Lisa Rachelle Quintana, Maria Rachelle Quintana, "Osha," "Jo," "China," "Josie" and "Mo."

She faces numerous federal and local arson-related charges in connection with the destruction of government and private property and her alleged participation in eco-terrorism. If convicted, she could face life in prison.

Anyone with information on her whereabouts should contact the FBI at 202-324-3000.

Robocop's Comment: Oh yea, fire bombs are GREAT for the environment.

Public Improvement Announcement 08.14.08

'Texas 7' inmate executed

HUNTSVILLE – Michael Rodriguez apologized and thanked his spiritual advisor before he was administered a lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. Thursday.

Rodriguez, 45, had ordered all appeals dropped and volunteered for Thursday's lethal injection.

"My punishment is nothing compared to the pain and sorrow I've brought you," he said. "I'm not strong enough to ask for forgiveness because I don't know if I am worthy."

"I ask the Lord to please forgive me. I've done horrible things that brought sorrow and pain to these wonderful people," he said, looking directly at the widow of the slain police officer and Rodriguez's former sister-in-law.

Rodriguez also spoke to Irene Wilcox, his spiritual advisor.

"Irene, I want to thank you for helping me walk in Christ's footsteps," he said. "These first few steps our mine alone."

Rodriguez prayed as the drugs took effect.

"I am ready to go, Lord," he said. "Thank you."

He was the eighth convicted killer executed this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state and the fourth this month. Another is set for next week. He was the first of the six surviving "Texas 7" band to be put to death.

Rodriguez ordered a large menu for his final meal before being executed.

Rodriguez, 45, asked for fried chicken breast (preferably spicy), a grilled pork steak with onions, a bacon cheeseburger, a garden salad and french fries with ketchup.

It arrived at about 4:00 p.m., two hours before he was set to die for the murder of an Irving Police officer.

Rodriguez is the first of the notorious "Texas 7" to be put to death.

"I need to pay back," Rodriguez said in an interview with the Associated Press last week. "I can't pay back monetarily. This is the way."

He was serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife in San Antonio when he conspired with six others to break out of the John Connally Unit in the fall of 2000.

Rodriguez and six others went on a crime spree, eventually killing Officer Aubrey Hawkins on Christmas Eve during the robbery of an Oshman’s Sporting Goods store in Irving.

Hawkins, who was the first officer to arrive on the scene to investigate a report of suspicious activity, was shot 11 times and run over with his own patrol car.

Weeks later, Rodriguez and his cohorts were finally captured in the mountains near Colorado Springs as they attempted to create a plan to rob a casino.

One committed suicide as police closed in. The remaining six were all sentenced to death. Rodriguez asked to be executed first.

"This early execution, to me, was almost a breath of fresh air," Lori Hawkins, Aubrey's widow, told News 8. "I feel like, in my heart, this is someone who's actually admitting to their crime."

Waiving his appeals, Rodriguez was strapped to the gurney inside the Walls Unit just before 6:00 p.m.

Outside, more than 20 Irving Police officers made the three hour trip to Huntsville Thursday afternoon to stand in support of Hawkins’ widow, Lori.

“It’s good the first one’s coming,” said Toby Shook, the Dallas prosecutor who tried each of the six. “It’s going to be a real long process.

Hawkins rode to the Walls Unit in Huntsville with several Irving Police officers. At least two of them witnessed the execution with her.

More than 20 other officers will stand in uniform outside in a show of support, at Lori’s request. They rode separately in three vehicles Thursday.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Rodriguez had no family or friends witness his death.

Rodriguez was the eighth inmate Texas executed this year.

Robocop's Comment:

They should have executed the SOB on Christmas Eve. The same night he murdered that police officer. We need to send hell a telegram stating "We are sending you someone."

Give To The United Illegal Alien...

Illegal Immigrant Bond Fund Kicks Off Fund Raising Campaign

SILVER SPRING, Md. —
Illegal immigrants arrested in workplace raids can now access a fund to help them post bond.

The National Immigrant Bond Fund launched its national debut and fundraising campaign on Monday. Founder Bob Hildreth said Monday the goal is to raise $500,000.

Through the fund, illegal immigrants arrested in raids who do not have any outstanding criminal violations can apply for financial assistance. Churches, legal organizations or community groups help facilitate their requests. The fund provides half the bail money and immigrants must pony up the rest.

The fund has already been tapped into following a few raids, including one in Annapolis on June 30.

The fund was formalized three months ago. Hildreth says it's helped bail out about 100 people so far, and all of those cases are pending.

Robocop's Comment:

...because a mind is a terrible thing.

The Audacity of Haughty

An editorial by Rich Lowry.

The Audacity of Haughty

‘It’s almost as if they take pride in being ignorant,” Barack Obama mused the other day, blasting Republicans for ridiculing his exhortation to the nation to make sure its tires are properly inflated.

Ah, behold the open-mindedness and cross-partisan understanding. Remember two years ago when Obama was only a media darling and not yet The Anointed One? Back then, his appeal was the extraordinary sensitivity he had for the views of others. He wrote a best-selling campaign book called “The Audacity of Hope” that was carefully unaudacious in its on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand weighing of the issues of the day, giving the impression that nothing pained him so much as not being able to agree with the other side, though he thoroughly understood and respected its arguments.

That iteration of Obama was tossed under the bus long ago (no word on whether the tires were adequately inflated). It’s been replaced by an Obama who — between pauses gazing regally into the middle-distance during his orations — betrays a dismissive contempt for all differences of opinion.

“Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face,” he said, responding to a John McCain attack ad. Nobody does? Are all those people who vote Republican simply delusional? Or are they pretending to believe things that they really don’t to conceal unseemly motivations — power-hunger, bitterness, racism?

The most elemental act of political civility is to concede the good motives of your opposition. Obama lately can’t even muster that. Of course, sharp elbows will inevitably be thrown in a hotly contested election, but it’s no accident that Obama’s comments reading his opposition out of polite company — or almost entirely out of existence — came in response to mockery.

Obama is now such a puffed-up figure that he’s vulnerable to the pinprick of ridicule. The most devastating hits against him in the Democratic primaries were made by Saturday Night Live, which made fun of him as an earnest empty suit propped up by a fawning media. Having failed to get much traction against Obama heretofore, the McCain campaign scored recently with a pointed but lighthearted ad comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and the distribution of tire gauges to mock his tire-pressure comments.

“They’re making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent,” Obama said of the tire gauges, suggesting that the making-fun particularly bothered him. Of the Spears/Hilton ad, Obama complained: “They got me in an ad with Paris Hilton. You know, [I] never met the woman.”

As if the McCain campaign were literally suggesting that he and Paris coordinate on their Sidekicks about what clubs they’re going to frequent after a long day of campaigning. Hilton, in contrast, got the joke and went up with a Web ad lampooning McCain that was defter and more effective than Obama’s earnest plaint.

It has to be hard for Obama to maintain a sense of proportion. First, it has become Democratic dogma that in reply to any Republican attack, a Democratic candidate has to hit back twice as hard. This makes it impossible to calibrate a response — the only option becomes the nuclear option. Second, given the idolatry of the press and his most fervent supporters, Obama would need prodigious reserves of humility to keep from taking himself too seriously.


On the question of tire pressure, he was wrong when he said that properly inflating tires would save enough gas to make up for whatever oil we might get from more offshore drilling. Only an estimated 27 percent of cars have underinflated tires, and having properly inflated tires saves at most only 3 percent on gas consumption, so the number gets quite small. Obama’s estimate of an overall savings of 3 percent to 4 percent on gas consumption is wildly optimistic. But it’s his critics who are ignorant (and proud of it!).

Robocop's Comment:

Haughty-adj.- Scornfully and condescendingly proud.

It is too bad our opinions are so below Sir Obama. But he is not elitist. Bullshit, yes he is.

Democrats: The Missing Years

Article by Jeffrey Lord.

Missing: 52 years of history.

Ignored: The other 113 years that take the Democrats from their birth in 1800 to 1965.

As Democrats prepare to nominate Senator Barack Obama to be the first black president, the Democratic National Committee and its chairman Howard Dean have whitewashed the party's horrific and lengthy record of racism. The omission is in the section of the DNC website that describes the party's history. The missing history raises the obvious question of whether the Democrats, unable or simply unwilling to put their party on record as taking direct responsibility for one of the worst racial crimes of the ages, will be able to run a campaign free of the racial animosities it has regularly brought both to American presidential campaigns and American political and social life in general.

What else to make of the official party history as presented by the DNC on its website? It is a history so sanitized of historical reality it makes Stalin look like historian David McCullough.

The DNC website section labeled "Party History," linked here, is in fact scrubbed clean of the not-so-little dirty secret that fueled Democrats' political successes for over a century and a half and made American life a hell on earth for black Americans. Literally, the DNC official history, which begins with the creation of the party in 1800, gets to the creation of the DNC itself in 1848 and then...poof!...the next sentence says: "As the 19th Century came to a close, the American electorate changed more and more rapidly." It quickly heads into a riff on poor immigrants coming to America.

In a stroke, 52 years of Democrat history vanishes. Disappeared faster than the truth in the Clinton administration. Why would this be? Allow me to sketch in a few facts from those missing 52 years. For that matter, lets add in the facts from the party history before and after those 52 years, since they aren't mentioned by the Democrats' National Committee either.

So what's missing?

* There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were 6 from 1840-1860.

* There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves. There were 7 from 1800-1861

* There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868-1948.

* There is no reference to "Jim Crow" as in "Jim Crow laws," nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC's missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Civil Rights heroine Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the front of a "whites only" bus, the "whites only" designation the direct result of Democrats.

* There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner became "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party."

* There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth banned slavery. The Fourteenth effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision (made by Democrat pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The Fifteenth gave black Americans the right to vote.

* There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of Democratic President Andrew Johnson. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.

* There is no reference to the Democrats' opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.

* There is no reference to the Democrats' 1904 platform, which devotes a section to "Sectional and Racial Agitation," claiming the GOP's protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to "revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country," which in turn "means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed."

* There is no reference to four Democrat platforms, 1908-1920, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching, and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address "Rights of the Negro" (1908), oppose lynchings (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks "wards of the state."

* There is no reference to the DNC-sponsored Democrat Convention of 1924, known to history as the "Klanbake." The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the Convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering Convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African Americans and Catholics.

* There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government of the United States, specifically at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.

* There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws and created Social Security with Wilson's New Freedom and FDR's New Deal. There is no reference these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. Congressmen and U.S. Senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democrat presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

* There is no reference that three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House came from Democrats, or that 80 percent of the nay vote on the bill in the Senate came from the Democrats. Certainly there is no reference to the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, Sr., father of future Vice President Al Gore.

* Last, but certainly not least, there is no reference to the fact that Birmingham, Alabama Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors, was in fact -- yes indeed -- both a member of the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.

Reading the DNC's official "Party History" of the Democrats and the race issue and civil rights is not unlike reading In Through the Looking Glass: "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'"

Here's this line from the DNC: "With the election of Harry Truman, Democrats began the fight to bring down the final barriers of race..." Truman, of course, was elected in 1948, and to his great credit he did in fact, along with then-Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, begin to push the Democrats towards a pro-civil rights stance. This culminated in the passage of the 1960s' Civil Rights laws -- legislation that re-did what was done by Republicans a hundred years earlier but had been undone by the Democrats' support for segregation. But the notion that "Democrats began to bring down the final barriers of race" begs the obvious questions. What were these barriers doing there in the first place? And who exactly was responsible for creating them?

Reading the DNC version of race history in America in which they have erased their own leading role is not unlike checking in on an official German government website and seeing a description of Germany that ends around 1900, then picks up with a sentence that reads "As the mid-20th century came to a close, the German people changed more and more rapidly" followed by another sentence that begins, "With the election of Konrad Adenauer in 1949, Germans began the fight for world peace and to bring down the final barriers of anti-Semitism..." You know, why bother with those inconsequential things like World War I, World War II, Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust? We Germans had nothing really to do with any of it anyway.


AS IF TO CONFIRM the "who, me?" racial psychology behind the DNC website, Nancy Pelosi's Democrats passed a House Resolution on July 29th sponsored by Tennessee Democrat Congressman Steve Cohen. The resolution, passed by voice vote, concludes this way:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) acknowledges that slavery is incompatible with the basic founding principles recognized in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal;

(2) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow;

(3) apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and

(4) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future.



What word is missing here?

You got it. The word "Democrat." Never mentioned anywhere. As with the DNC website, all these terrible things -- somehow, apparently, it seems, so they keep hearing -- happened. Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Cohen and their fellow House Democrats just can't understand how. But, you know, whatever. They are sorry. Really.

Are they? Let's take them up on this.

After all those Democrat platforms and conventions that championed slavery and segregation, what do you think the chances are they will use the occasion of Obama's nomination to have the Democrat platform formally apologize for the active, frequently violent and decidedly official support of the Democratic Party for slavery, segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan and all the rest?

Better yet, do you think they'll pass a resolution promising to use the funds raised from all those Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraisers to pay reparations for slavery? (Did I mention that while the DNC discusses party co-founders Jefferson and Jackson it neglects to mention that between them the two owned an estimated 360 slaves?)

Will the NAACP and other groups seeking reparations from non-government entities for their role in supporting slavery (companies like Aetna, Wachovia and Chase along with educational institutions like Brown University, etc.) finally zero in on the prime historical mover behind some of the worst chapters in American history? Will they sue the Democrats?

The Democrats are poised to nominate a black man for president of the United States. But will they apologize for slavery? Will they start paying reparations not from tax dollars but their own dollars for what they have done?

Do they have the guts to publicly admit what serious history records of their deeds? Are they capable of running a campaign without playing the race card as they have played it for the better part of two centuries? Can they even escape the race psychology that has indelibly branded them as America's Party of Race?

Or, when it comes to their own responsibility for race relations in America, will they order up more of what, under the circumstances, is a very appropriate word for the DNC website?

Whitewash.

Robocop's Comment:

I once brought some of this stuff up in a college debate, and the Libtards, including the professor,looked at me like I had five heads. I won the debate FYI.