Saturday - November 15, 2008

My reply (again)

I’ve just recently joined a Toastmasters club that is affiliated with my local Republican Party. This is my response to an email from the president of said Toastmasters club.

I have to disagree with you ---. It wasn’t poor communication. It was the message. There is just no way to improve the message through better communication skills.

The Republican Party abandoned conservatism as it’s message.

The message was: We are Democrat Lite!

Last time I checked, we’ve lost on Democrat Lite every single time since I was born. Republicans win when they embrace conservatism, see 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994.

2000 and 2004 were just weird. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ is just more liberalism. Voters were fooled for a couple of elections, but you can only fool them for so long. In 2006 or 2008 they opted for the real liberalism.

Why? Because Republicans didn’t give them a choice. Democrat or Democrat Lite?

Always go for the real thing!

Posted by Christopher     on 11/15/2008 at 11:35 PM   
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   Thursday - November 13, 2008

GUANTANAMO.  A STAIN ON THE USA?  ONLY AMONG THE TRULY IGNORANT. AND SCREW THEM!

BMEWSers, I am so damn sick and tired and PO’d at the attacks on us over Gitmo, I seriously wish our folks in DC just one damn time had the guts to tell the rest of the world to ef off!  Not your god damn business and it’s an internal American affair so buzz the hell off.
Or words to that effect.  Just one damn time.  Is that asking too much?  Yeah, right. I guess it is.

So being as how I’m in a pissy mood over this and reading how Obama is gonna make nice and close the place (idiot), I thought I’d post yesterday’s Daily Mail editorial.  Trouble is, I no longer find it online.  So I’m going to copy most of it here longhand.  I can’t scan it properly or I would.  Must get that fixed one day soon.

A STAIN ON THE U.S.
Daily Mail editorial

As the Mail has argued for many years, the very existence of Guantanamo Bay interrogation camp is a black stain on the reputation of the United States.

(Did any of you guys ask the idiot editor of the mail for his opinion on the subject? Did any American ask any uro-pee-on for an opinion on our internal affairs?  Didn’t think so.)

Nothing has done more to undermine the West’s moral authority then this no-go zone for justice, where prisoners are tortured and held for years without trial.

Now at last an end is in sight for this affront to the cause of freedom, which has done so much to reinforce islamist prejudices against America and her allies.

(Screw this freedom crap. Nobody told me it was all about freedom.  It’s about the very survival of my country and frankly the rest of the world can go fuck itself along with the schmuck swine editor and all who think like him.  Oh sure, islamic prejudice didn’t exist before Gitmo. We evil Americans brought it all on ourselves. Oh but WAIT BMEWS cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Here’s the interesting rest of this crap.RCOB )

Many detainees are likely to be released.  Others will be shipped to the U.S. for trial in ordinary criminal courts. A third group whose cases involve highly classified information, may be tried under special rules to protect national security.

True, the plans are far from perfect. They carry the risk that some dangerous terrorists may escape justice, while other detainees will be denied full rights offered by the U.S. legal system.

WHAT MATTERS MOST IS THAT THE CAMP IS TO BE CLOSED - AND WITH IT A SHAMEFUL CHAPTER IN AMERICA’S HISTORY.

-30-

Sorry dickhead editor.  I feel NO shame with regard to Guantanamo.  If anything, I object to the fact that all they weren’t shot long ago.
I object to the fact that you’re alive and breathing and hope that ends soon.

So then and just about the time I’m climbing down from my frustration over the Daily Mail thing, I made the mistake of looking at our very local almost amateur rag that passes for a newspaper.  It really is a joke but I like the property pages.  The wife wisely tried to hide todays edition but somehow I managed to find it and I wasn’t looking.  Wish I hadn’t now because of course all the blood comes boiling to the top again.
Yet another know it all only this time the writer is he says, half American, so he can tell everyone how awful Gitmo is. 

He says that “what happened on Nov. 4th ranks with any of the other remarkable, memorable, life changing decisions the American people have have ever taken— on our behalf as well as their own.”

What the hell is he talking about with that last bit.  We took nothin’ on anyone’s behalf but our own and there will be time to regret that.

He goes on to mention great men who changed the lives of millions. Men who were elected in the US at a crucial time and mentions
Lincoln,Kennedy and Roosevelt in 1932.  “Now Americans have elected Obama and changed the world’s perception of his country.” He says.

I’m not interested in any of the above to be honest.  What got to me was that damn Guantanamo thing. Again. He seems to pretty much be following the party line.

He goes on to say that Bush leaves us involved in two “unwinable wars.” And a reputation “scarred by Guantanamo Bay.”

He sees in Obama, “a serious man for serious times,” and feels “some sympathy for Bush” who “showed dignity and true leadership after 9/11.” Well gee.  I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy cause he had a few nice things to say there.

He also thinks that McCain looked like a beaten man long before the ballot itself and Palin a disastrous choice as a running mate.
To be fair here, I think many of us thought McCain looked bad for a long time before Nov.4th.

So there.  I got that all out, but not necessarily off my chest.  Well heck, that’s part of the blog world too I guess.
I’m not thick skinned enough most likely and resent all the bad mouthing and second guessing with regard to MY COUNTRY!  I resent foreigners sticking their noses into what I believe to be our own business. 

And maybe too I need to quit reading any newspapers or listening to news radio for a year or so.  Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

Stay Tuned

Posted by peiper     on 11/13/2008 at 01:17 PM   
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   Monday - November 10, 2008

My reply II

Flapjawman sent me another email… here is my response.

This is actually a compliment. Consider, if you will, how few Mormons there are in the world, much less in Kalifornia.

Trust me when I say that there aren’t not enough Mormons in Kalifornia to sway the vote. Must be a bunch of other Christian churches, and otherwise decent folk, who thought that there was no right to be a sodomite.

But, we have the Temples… obvious targets for the mobs. Much like Lot in Sodom.

BTW, just what ‘rights’ are violated? Do not homosexuals have the same marriage rights as anyone else? The right to marry someone of the opposite sex? The same rights as pedophiles?  The incestuous? Marriage as an institution has many restrictions. Note that the Left tries to violate them all. Woody Allen has violated all of them without even marrying the female.

No rights are violated. I can’t marry my sister. Why not? There’s no good reason for such a restriction, unless possible genetic problems with progeny are the issue. In this day and age, we can abort.

But that would not be a problem in a homosexual ‘marriage’. Progeny is not an issue for queers.

So, if progeny is not the issue, why have marriage at all?

Ahhh! Grasshopper! You’ve stumbled upon the goal of the homosexuals. Destroy marriage, and you destroy the civilization.

Posted by Christopher     on 11/10/2008 at 11:59 PM   
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Does anyone remember the ‘stiff upper lip’ of the British? The fighting spirit?

I’ll answer that.  Not too many left who remember and those that are still here are rightly demoralized.

I had something else planned for my first post of this day until I ran across a comment from Lyndon and the link he provided to this. PLEASE go to the link and read the entire rant by this fellow.  He is right on target. He is correct and don’t think for a single minute we’re safe from the same mindless thing in America.  We’re already lost and doomed if you cave into the thinking that we’re “safe.” WE ARE NOT, damn it. So please take heed and pay attention.  The USA is NOT immune.

H/T LyndonB and much thanks for this.

Does anyone remember the ‘stiff upper lip’ of the British? The fighting spirit? The indomitable people who once ran a big chunk of the planet, and who could chase away armed guerillas with a walking stick and an angry voice? A people who, nevertheless, could laugh at themselves and had a great, if sometimes cruel, sense of humour? What happened to them?

Those people would never have set off a security scare because a schoolboy dressed up as the Joker and waved a plastic gun around. Those people would never have arrested a man in fancy dress because he had a plastic knife as part of his outfit (tipped by anon in the comments here). Those people would not have shrieked ‘Terrorist!’ at the sight of a plastic halloween skeleton. The first might have earned a caning, but not expulsion. The second and third should not even have raised an eyebrow. Neither should Old Holborn’s walk.

The people who replaced those real British are spineless weaklings who jump at shadows. Who call the police if they are slightly offended by a word or two. Worse, the police respond not by saying ‘It’s nothing, don’t worry about it’, but by harassing and usually arresting anyone complained about, no matter how trivial and all too often, no matter whether an offence has been committed or not.

These new people are quaking, trembling jellys. They are frightened by mere words, and terrified by a raised hand. They take offence at anything they’re told to take offence at. Those who consider themselves strong are those who have not yet experienced adversity because when they do, they run to the government for help. They cannot help themselves. They will not try.

Oh, there are a few real people left, for sure, but they are only a few. Most are now soft, weak loathsome creatures who stare at the unreality of reality TV from their well-pressed sofas and aim their rage wherever the Righteous tell them. The two minute hate. One day smokers, next day drinkers, next day hoodies, next the obese, next Eurasia… or is it Eastasia? Doesn’t matter. We are at war with the terrorists. We have always been at war with the terrorists.

These people who once called themselves the Great of Great Britain (can we still use that name for this country, or is it not considered sufficiently self-humiliating now?) are useful only for rendering into animal feed. They accept every word they are fed and have no problem at all with the doublethink required to accept it all. Coal-fired power stations will kill us all through global warming. We must build huge windmills everywhere to save the environment and we must not install new power lines underground because that would harm the environment. Snow in October? That’s caused by global warming.

http://leg-iron.livejournal.com/100224.html

While you’re at it, read some of the comments from Brits to this.

Posted by peiper     on 11/10/2008 at 03:35 AM   
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   Thursday - November 06, 2008

Barack Obama, come to save the world.  (GOOD. NOW ARE WHITES, “FREE AT LAST?")

Barack Obama, come to save the world

By Bryony Gordon
Last Updated: 8:01pm GMT 05/11/2008

Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? Barack Obama is the new president of the world and we can all sleep soundly in our beds, having sweet dreams that involve skipping through fields hand in hand with loved ones to a soundtrack of The Greatest Love of All, as butterflies flutter overhead. Goodbye terror, farewell loser, hello change. Whatever will wannabe Miss Worlds wish for now?

(the point of this article was that young Brits in numbers were encouraging Americans to vote Obama while they didn’t even know and show no interest in, their own politics here at home. Article is followed by lots of angry comments on her comments.)

http://tinyurl.com/6b2tzy

Barack Obama’s historic victory: Now we need to find out what ‘change’ means

By Simon Heffer in New York
Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 05/11/2008

This is a pivotal moment in America’s history and, therefore, that of the world. In a country that forced black people on to separate buses within recent memory, and drove them away from polling stations at elections, the advent of a black president has a resonance that should not be understated. It is easy to be distracted by an event that proves, as the new president-elect said in his victory speech on Tuesday night, that in America anything is now possible, and old bigotries and barriers have finally been broken down. But that is not the sole, or main, significance of what has happened.

America is in economic turmoil. Its place as the world’s superpower makes it a magnet for challenges by rogue and aggressive states, and more of these are certain to come - President Medvedev of Russia has already started squaring up to President-elect Obama. Neo-conservatism tried, and largely failed, to deal with those and other lesser challenges over the past eight years. From January, a very different one will be applied. Barack Obama has come this far on a tsunami of rhetoric and charisma. Now he must undertake a responsibility for which those qualities will not necessarily qualify him. He must govern.

On a balmy election night in the plaza outside the Rockefeller Centre - a skyscraper and estate built in the depths of the last great economic meltdown as an act of defiance towards it - a packed crowd watched Mr Obama’s march. Despite the solidity of New York behind the Democrats, there was still no great euphoria - that has been confined to America’s equivalent of the chattering classes, and to the new president’s home turf in Chicago. There has, though, been an act of faith by the US electorate on a gigantic scale, as it thrusts this unproven and untested man into the teeth of these challenges. The public is relieved to hear the burial service read over the grave of the 43rd, discredited presidency. We must now see how long it will be able to suspend its disbelief over the programme of “change” promised for the 44th.

We have seen this in Britain: one is constantly reminded of the advent of New Labour in 1997, the massive expectations of “change” and - inevitably - the consequent disappointment and disillusion. The Republicans claim Mr Obama made spending promises totalling $1.3 trillion during the past 21 months. It highlights the confrontation with reality that he will have to face when he enters the White House on January 20. Yet this is only part of it. To match the Democrat victory for the presidency, there has been an even more significant set of gains for the party in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

His party can now with ease get any law it wants on to the statute book. Mr Obama needs, in that context, to begin his transition to power by asking himself one important question. Did he, and his party, win so heavily because America has shifted notably to the Left - or did they do so simply because they were not Republicans?

If the answer is the first contention, we may well be about to see the greatest era of radicalism in American politics since Roosevelt. If America really is no longer an instinctively conservative nation, Mr Obama can proceed with tax increases, the extension

of public services such as healthcare, the introduction of environmental legislation, the legitimisation of many millions of illegal immigrants, and the provision of federal funds to pay for abortions. It is not beyond possibility that Mr Obama could even find himself taken prisoner by his own party, as Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, leads it through a radical programme that takes the new president at his word about “change”.

http://tinyurl.com/6maajw

Posted by peiper     on 11/06/2008 at 03:21 AM   
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   Wednesday - November 05, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN AND A VERY WELL WRITTEN EDITORIAL COMMENT BY OUR GRUMPY OLD FART.

I’ll have to admit I wasn’t thinking along these lines the last week or more.  GOF has stated the case very well.  I don’t think it should be hidden away under comments and so am taking the liberty of posting it here.

Yeah, there are things about Mr.McCain that rile us. No denying that.  But on the other hand ... well.  Grumpy’s point of view is very much valid.

Like everyone, I knew that McCain had spent time in the Hanoi Hilton. What I had NOT known until a few months ago was that he was in a training film I was required to watch in Navy boot camp: “Trial by Fire - The Ordeal of the USS Forrestal”.
The Forrestal fire started at 10:50 local time and took until 4:00 the next morning to fully defeat. It killed 134 people and injured 161. It began when an electrical surge switching from external to internal power lit off a Zuni missile, which skated across the deck and impacted an external fuel tank of an A-4, immediately engulfing two aircraft *that were awaiting launch* in a pool of burning fuel. The pilots who suddenly found themselves in the middle of that flaming pool were LCDR Fred White and LCDR John McCain.

I’m sure there are many other events in that man’s life of which I am still unaware. Nonetheless, no one can rationally deny that John McCain is the quintessential old warhorse, harder to put down than a charging rhino and with apparently more lives than a cat. And it is likewise inarguable that, even as a young man, he more than once found himself in circumstances where he not only had to make the right decision, but had to make it RIGHT NOW, with only seconds to assess the situation. He is no stranger to high-stress decision making, nor has he been for many decades.

Do we disagree on things? Hell yes we do, most notably on immigration and campaign financing. But as my mother pointed out to me, when pressed on immigration reform, he once told the questioner, “Well okay then, what would you do? You may not like my solution, but it IS a solution, it can realistically be made to happen. Ideal solutions are often useless in a less than ideal world.” In other words, when you’re sitting in a burning aircraft is NOT the time to bitch about proper maintenance being done on the aircraft that just mistakenly fired a missile into you. You deal with what IS.

I think it would be fitting and proper if, sometime today, we were to all take a moment to acknowledge the respect this man has long since earned. And to reflect on how deeply flattering it is that people such as him consider US worth fighting, dying.... and yes, putting up with the dishonor of modern politics… to defend.

Posted by GrumpyOldFart

Posted by peiper     on 11/05/2008 at 08:32 AM   
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   Tuesday - November 04, 2008

We Won’t Get Fooled Again!

No we won’t. While I hope McCain will pull an upset, and if he does, I’ve bought plenty of ammo for Erica Jong’s prediction of blood running in the streets in the event that the ObaMessiah loses, what will change?

WE WILL BE the party of Change! We, the Conservatives of the Republican Party. First, we gain back control of the Republican Party, next, we kick Dem Ass in 2010, and again in 2012!

Who will be our standard-bearer in 2010-2012? I don’t know. Maybe Gov. Palin. Who knows? She’s on record stating that basically she doesn’t want anything to do with faux party. (Ooops. Used some elitist lingo there).

Regardless of the outcome folks, get off your @sses and VOTE!

As Rush says, drag McCain across the finish line, then deal with him. Meanwhile, rebuild the conservative movement within the Republican Party.

UPDATE: Do it for the Gipper!

Posted by Christopher     on 11/04/2008 at 07:26 AM   
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US elections: Danger lurks in Barack Obama’s comfort zone. (but, he’s been sent by god.)

And |I won’t even post the editorial cartoon illustration in todays paper.  Jeesh ... and for a conservative (?) paper. Well anyway,
Simon Heffer here at least is on the mark if nobody else is.

The remark re. O. sent by God. Yeah. And who says that? Stupid white folks and not the ones on the fringe right either. 

I need a coffee break. First of the morning.

Stay Tuned.

US elections: Danger lurks in Barack Obama’s comfort zone

By Simon Heffer in New York
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/11/2008

Two days ago, when the Sunday political talk shows of the US television networks were brimming with pundits announcing a landslide victory for Barack Obama, John McCain was jetting around America making five campaign stops. Yesterday, with the polls still showing him up to seven points behind his rival, he took in another seven. Most men would have wound down in the face of such apparently inevitable defeat. But John McCain, for whom life has never been so rewarding as when fighting against a seemingly intractable problem, is not most men.

What is regarded as the inevitability of defeat has given Mr McCain new energy. Being 72, it is certainly his last chance. He joked as much during Saturday Night Live last weekend, saying Mr Obama was young enough to have more opportunities, and now was his turn. The joke was only so funny because of its element of truth.

It is no reason to elect Mr McCain. His determination and his warrior-like quality never to admit defeat until it is obvious certainly are. There is an even more important point: he is laden with experience relevant to the job. He is not a rock star like his opponent, but no one has yet argued that this would make him a better chief executive of the world’s only superpower. This contest comes at a unique moment in modern American history and Mr McCain, despite the obliviousness of so much of America to the point, is the man for that moment.

The country is not merely at war in two theatres. It is not merely facing threats to its security. It is also trying to come to terms with the worst economic outlook since the 1930s. Add to that the constantly expressed concern about those scores of thousands of fellow Americans “in harm’s way” on foreign battlefields, and the fear of what challenge might be thrown up next, and you have a landscape of extreme uncertainty.

The choice faced by the electorate is clear. It can either vote for reality or for escapism: and John McCain has the greater appreciation of what reality might entail. I have been struck on several visits here this year just how much Americans, worn down by the failures and embarrassments of the Bush years, want something other than reality. That, though, is simply storing up troubles. The landscape of uncertainty requires someone tested in fire to lead people through it: not just for America’s sake but for the sake of that portion of the world that looks to America for leadership.

Mr Obama is a confection; he is an image, a brand, a lifestyle. He has the talents of the thespian, less obviously those of the executive. He has been branded a socialist by Sarah Palin and, because it was Sarah Palin doing the branding, the term was ridiculed by media here who are almost clinically biased against the Republicans. However, when one examines Mr Obama’s rhetoric about “spreading the wealth”, and looks at spending promises made in the past 21 months, socialism is a fair term. He plans, or at least has promised, expensive projects - such as healthcare reforms. Inflicting tax rises on a country where people are losing their jobs, having their homes foreclosed upon and having their businesses driven into bankruptcy is something whose consequences Mr Obama has yet to outline.

Neither candidate sees that the economic policies they have dealt in have been rendered anachronistic by recent events. Mr McCain was all at sea at the height of the crisis and it damaged him badly, perhaps terminally. Mr Obama knew no better: he just had the sense to keep quiet. As president, he would find he can’t keep quiet. At least Mr McCain, with his long?standing message of smaller government, less regulation and reduced spending, has a better chance of adapting to the new circumstances. An Obama presidency, given the dire straits of America’s economy, will quickly and inevitably disappoint once reality kicks in.

The clinching reason why America should vote for McCain over Obama rests, however, in the question of foreign policy and international security. It is to be hoped that America (and therefore the free world) faces no new security challenges in the years ahead and can extract itself from Iraq and assert control in Afghanistan. But these are only hopes. There are unscrupulous and fanatical elements who may take the election of President Obama as an invitation to see how far America can be pushed. One thinks of Iran, or the failure of Pakistan to rein in malevolent elements. Some argue that the advice of the State Department would be the same to President Obama as to President McCain, and that it would have to be followed. I am not so sure. Mr McCain, who understands well how foreign powers and military operations work, would have a much more informed discussion with his advisers. Mr Obama would be starting from a position of near total ignorance, and on a matter of life and death.

That question of international security is fundamental. It is the case for voting McCain. America is famed for its parochialism, even in time of war. That is why so many have found it easy to enter the Obama comfort zone. Whoever wins, being comfortable will not be part of the job of being president. A man with five-and-a-half years in the Hanoi Hilton under his belt would adapt better to that ultimate reality than would his rival.

http://tinyurl.com/5ex3cy

Posted by peiper     on 11/04/2008 at 03:37 AM   
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   Monday - November 03, 2008

Barack Obama victory will hurt US firms - and world economy. (PLEASE READ ALL OF IT PPL)

This is I know a wordy but worthy editorial and I would urge you all to PLEASE read all of it.  See the link and read some of the comments as well.

I don’t want to make this long and so will post something later that NEEDS sharing with you.

Barack Obama victory will hurt US firms - and world economy

By Janet Daley
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/11/2008

Read comments: 

(by all means folks, do read some of the comments that follow the editorial in the Telegraph. Amazing that so many ppl who really know so damn little about us, now think they can advise us on how and why we NEED to vote Obama. I guess I’m a bit thin skinned when foreigners tell me who to vote for. But there are some very good comments as well. Perhaps not always seeing our side it, but at least thought out and well expressed without always being nasty.)

Well, it’s nearly over - this presidential election campaign that has gone on for so long I can scarcely remember what life was like before it started. So long has it been running that the world has actually gone through two tumultuous transformations of political reality during its span.

First there was the emergence of Russia as a threat to international stability in a form that should not have, but nevertheless did, come as a startling revelation to a complacent free world: a phenomenon which, in cynical partisan terms, played heavily in John McCain’s favour. But that was followed, and almost totally eclipsed, by the economic implosion that brought every earlier assumption about the electorate crashing down with it.

So, in one of those bizarre jokes that history sometimes plays, the United States is apparently about to choose as president the most inexperienced, untried and virtually unknowable (because there is so little to know) candidate who has ever run for that office at a time of unquantifiable international risk and unprecedented economic instability: a candidate who, as Bill Clinton revealed in a wonderfully back-handed “tribute”, responded to the banking collapse by ringing every expert he could find (including Bill) to ask them what he should be saying.

And not only does it seem likely that Barack Obama will be elected president, but that he will arrive in office accompanied by a legion of new Democratic senators and congressmen which will give his party a lock on both the executive and legislative branches of government, thus permitting it to do precisely anything it wants.

A week ago in New York, I talked to senior Republicans who were dividing their time between conference calls to the White House to discuss the economic crisis and exasperated confrontations with the McCain campaign team over the ineffectiveness of its strategy. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the state of dissension and dissatisfaction within the higher ranks of the Republican Party - which is why the Obama claim that a McCain White House would simply be George Bush by other means is so ludicrous and disingenuous.

In truth, McCain’s status as an outlaw within his own party ("maverick" is much too mild a word) has meant that he has had only the most ambivalent relationship with what was once a very professional Republican campaigning machine. Those members of the Bush team who have been involved with the McCain-Palin ticket have been accused of being so out of sympathy with its message and tone as to be positively counter-productive.

Combine this with the fact that McCain has been running against not just a super-financed Obama machine but the most monolithically hostile media barrage in electoral history, which forced him to spend most of his time and energy on defensive fire-fighting, and you get a sense of why the Republican effort has so often seemed at cross-purposes with itself.

This media phenomenon may yet prove double-edged. There is just a possibility (maybe I am clutching at straws here, but we shall see) that the relentless onslaught from the mainstream press and television networks has made support for McCain unsayable rather than impossible and that this is producing seriously skewed opinion-polling results. This could mean, to put it in British historical terms, that this election will be 1992 (complete with premature victory celebrations) rather than 1997. Interestingly, in the 1992 election it was the issue of tax that brought about Labour’s defeat in the face of resounding leads in the polls. And it is tax policy that is Obama’s most dangerous ground. It must be surprising to British observers that his proposal to cut taxes for the 95 per cent of people who earn less than $200,000 a year (down, incidentally, from his initial figure of $250,000) has not straightforwardly won the day in the American national debate.

In Britain, such a promise (if believed) would be an electoral free pass to Downing Street. But in the US, voters are aware that the largest category of people who would be hit by Obama’s higher tax would be those who own small businesses, as Joe the Plumber famously aspired to do and as many, many of his countrymen already do. Ordinary working-class people in America do not automatically expect to be low earners, or even employees, all of their lives: they believe that through hard work and resourcefulness, they are as likely as anyone to rise in the world. And so they do not necessarily take kindly to someone who wants to penalise them as soon as they break through an income ceiling in order, as Obama fatally put it, to “spread the wealth around”.

But there is another facet of Obama taxation with even more serious consequences for the US. In order to pay for his tax cut for 95 per cent of the population (half of whom do not pay income tax and whose “cut” would be in the form of a cash rebate), President Obama and his Democratic Congress would raise the US rate of corporation tax - already the second highest in the world - from 15 to 20 per cent. They also plan to punish through taxation companies that employ people overseas rather than “creating American jobs”. These measures would have the almost immediate effect of driving companies and capital out of the US.

In the same “help the little guy” spirit, Obama proposes to raise capital gains tax, thus penalising those whose investment is desperately needed for market recovery. As my economist friends always tell me when I advocate tax cuts for the low-paid: it may seem a morally and politically attractive policy but it doesn’t do a damn thing for economic growth. The tiny amounts that the lower-paid receive in such wide-ranging cuts make little difference as a stimulus and if they are balanced by penalties on business and on the investing classes, they are worse than useless.

So what will happen? For what it is worth, I think it will be a close presidential race with the favourite, Obama, winning by a squeak (which is what happened in 1960 when the then favourite, John Kennedy, was the voice of the “future"). Whoever gets the White House, America will eventually return to being what it must be: the economic engine of the world and the greatest testimony to the power of human initiative in history. On both of those counts, it will once again be resented. But it will take a while longer to reach that point under Barack Obama.

http://tinyurl.com/5cz8uk

Posted by peiper     on 11/03/2008 at 04:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • Editorials • Politics • Republicans •  
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   Sunday - November 02, 2008

After a Barack Obama election victory party, a hangover will follow.

And in other comments NOT posted here, a very much conservative Simon Heffer says that “America can’t get rid of Bush fast enough.”
Is President Bush really as despised even by our side as I’m led to believe here?  I know some may think I could keep up more with home (USA) stuff then I do, but my defense can only be you’ve no idea what I have on my plate here.  It really isn’t easy as it may seem.  Though I do read what I can.  Point is however, what I read doesn’t paint quite that picture.  But then , I haven’t been reading the left.  Maybe I should.

Finally, America will elect a new president this week. Many voters believe that if Barack Obama wins, a new day will dawn in American politics.

US presidential election 2008

For his supporters, Mr Obama has become an almost Messianic figure. Many believe an Obama presidency will mean that America withdraws from the wars to which George W. Bush has committed troops.

Many also think he will increase the federal government’s role in the economy, so as to achieve goals such as providing universal health care.

If Mr Obama is elected, there will inevitably be disappointment and frustration, as millions of those who voted for him discover that he is mortal, and cannot achieve the miracles they hoped for.

In the straightened economic circumstances which America will find itself, the new universal health care plan he promises may not be affordable.

Moreover, the new President will find himself confronting so far intractable foreign policy challenges, such as the belligerence of a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, the difficulties of trying to achieve peace in the Congo, and of securing victory in Afghanistan.

If he does anything at all about those problems, Mr Obama will disappoint those who voted for him in the expectation that he would end America’s use of armed force around the world.

As The Sunday Telegraph reports today, Mr Obama is already preparing to ask Britain to commit an additional 3,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Unlike George W. Bush, Mr Obama enjoys significant popularity in Europe. But after the years of bloody war in Iraq and Afghanistan, even he may struggle to achieve the commitment from European nations he says is essential – especially given the very high level of borrowing that so many countries have already committed themselves to in bailing out their banks.

Still, Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to help revitalise America’s influence on the world as a force for good. If he is elected, we hope he will use that opportunity wisely.

http://tinyurl.com/6mvctp

Don’t be fooled by Hillary on the stump

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been stumping the country this week to do their bit for Mr Obama, the 42nd President himself sharing a platform with the anointed, and associating himself very closely with him and his supposedly impending glory.

Now it looks as though Mr Obama has won, it is a typically shrewd Clinton move to ensure that their dynasty is tarred with the brush of the imminent victory. Do not underestimate the cynicism of these people.

Since Mr Obama might be president until 2016, when Mrs Clinton will be nearly the same age as John McCain, this may look selfless. But we know what Mrs Clinton really thinks: that some madman could well shoot President Obama. Good ol’ Joe Biden would be a comical president.

Hillary would be there in 2012 to restore order, with the added blessing that neither she nor her loathesome husband had done anything to impair the Obama victory.

Think about it: they certainly are.

Another woman with her eye on the prize

It’s not just Hillary who still has one rather tasteless eye on 2012. A group of prominent Republicans is scheduled to meet in Virginia next Wednesday - if John McCain loses, of course - to discuss ways of keeping Sarah Palin in the game until the next election.

Media bias has helped pass over the fact that Mrs Palin is hugely popular in much of middle America: here in the media village of Obamamaniacal New York the quickest way to get a laugh is to mention any sort of regard for her political skills.

http://tinyurl.com/6lg24c

Posted by peiper     on 11/02/2008 at 07:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Politics •  
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   Wednesday - October 29, 2008

Barack Obama is the Busby Berkeley of modern America.  (All show and mirrors)

I felt BMEWS would want to see this and no comments from me. Well, maybe not.

Barack Obama is the Busby Berkeley of modern America

By Simon Heffer in New York
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 28/10/2008

One can find two kinds of voters in this great city in the week before the presidential election; those Democrats who can see no possibility of defeat for Barack Obama next Tuesday, and those who wake with a jolt at 4am imagining he has lost, and feeling in their bowels the fear that something might happen in the next few days to stop the saviour of the United States from fulfilling his mission. I have yet to find a Republican, despite this being the city that returned Rudy Giuliani twice as mayor. But then it is hard to find anyone in the city that gave Hillary Clinton a big victory in February in the New York state primary who will now not admit to being a dyed-in-the-wool Obamamaniac. The fat lady has yet to sing, but, as far as New Yorkers are concerned, the show is over already.

They may well be right. The McCain camp says that its private polls show the race is far closer than those published by media organisations: but then it would, wouldn’t it? There is much anecdotal evidence that, at the grass roots in states where John McCain is not now campaigning (and even in one or two where he is), the fight has more or less stopped. After a good convention eight weeks ago in St Paul, the Republicans have lost the initiative at every turn. They had a bad financial crisis. Neither Mr McCain nor his running-mate, Sarah Palin, was able to land a killer blow in the televised debates. Things have reached the pass where Mrs Palin is having to protest that the haute couture on which $150,000 was spent to enhance her glamour belongs not to her, but to the Republican National Committee: and that she will now revert to shopping in the factory outlets of Alaska. After one has paused to consider just who on the RNC will be wearing Mrs Palin’s clothes next, one realises just how much this pathetic squabble signals that the game is almost certainly up.

Visiting from Britain, one senses just how like the spring of 1997 it is. Obama supporters often bridle at comparisons with Tony Blair, though why they should mind being lumped with a man who won three elections handsomely, inflicted serious change (for better or worse) on the country he governed, and put his opponents off the map for at least a dozen years is beyond me. Perhaps they are sensitive to the triumph of Mr Obama’s image over his content, to the accusations that his media management, with its brutal threats to journalists who cut up rough, belies the image of integrity that they seek to disseminate, and to the unspoken difficulty that, when and if Mr Obama gets into the White House, the magnificence of his rhetoric and the vast extent of his oratorical skills will do little to help him tackle an economy in the tank and a precarious international situation.

However, the Obama camp need not worry about any of this, because it appears most of the electorate don’t. The voters’ decision appears to have been simple: that George W. Bush, when he becomes history in January, should for the time being take the Republican party with him. Mr McCain has been at pains to distance himself from Mr Bush since before he won the nomination, and has had the facts mostly on his side in doing so.

However, that has failed to penetrate the souls of many voters. Polls in states that returned Mr Bush in 2004 now show Mr Obama far in front. Mr McCain is even at risk of losing Virginia, which is a little like the Tory party being wiped out in Surrey. The evidence that American voters have had enough is becoming more abundant. Mr Obama can capitalise on a lethal cocktail of economic hardship and, among the more outward-looking of his fellow citizens, a deep and pervasive embarrassment at how America is now seen around the world.

(okay wait a minute. how many Americans do know and if they do, give a flip what foreigners who aren’t paying our bills think?)

There is, though, no euphoria about what most of America feels to be his imminent election. It is, rather, a sense of relief at their being about to be shot of a discredited administration and a dismal president. Again, it should remind us of 1997, when Mr Blair surged to power not so much on a national wave of faith in him, but because so many Conservatives stayed at home and declined to shore up his inadequate opponent, the incumbent.

Here, the incumbent party is run ragged, too. It is fashionable to blame Mrs Palin for this, but the truth is that she is by far the more impressive of the two candidates on her ticket. She speaks directly to her audience, has conviction and charisma and is not trying to be something she isn’t. Ever since the convention John McCain has pretended not to be John McCain, and it just hasn’t worked.

In the circumstances of such a poor campaign by the Republicans, Mr Obama has not been pressed to outline how he would govern. All that has mattered is that he is not what has come before, or like what has come before. In these past days there have been attempts by his opponents, and especially by conservatives, to paint him as a socialist because of his talk of “spreading the wealth”. His opponents are correct: he is, by the lights of all his rhetoric, an orthodox Leftist with an ill-formed notion of redistribution of income.

But it no longer matters. The mood here is to get the people who have run America for the past eight years out, and get in someone completely different. The time to discuss what, in their turn, they would do would come once they are there. This is far from ideal, for that is what election campaigns are supposed to be for. But in the unusual predicament of an America that feels weakened, embarrassed and angry, it has become nearly inevitable.

The last time the American economy was on the ropes to the extent it is now a whole industry of escapism grew up, and produced such gems as Gold Diggers of 1933. You might remember that the plot of that charming film was a millionaire putting on a musical that saved countless Broadway hoofers from the soup-kitchen during the Great Depression.

Barack Obama is the Busby Berkeley of modern America. He is ordained as the great choreographer who will spirit America out of its misery, using not his own millions but the billions of the taxpayer to put the country back on course. Having listened all year to his message of “change”, and being entirely unclear what it means, perhaps at last we have the answer. It is The Great Cause Of Cheering Us All Up.

The reverence with which Mr Obama is regarded by most of the American media, and by much of the American elite, is such that, when I see him on television, I look — so far in vain — for the stigmata on his hands. This feeling is entirely appropriate, for what America seems to be preparing to embark upon is the most massive act of faith. Not since 1960, and the election of Jack Kennedy, has so much disbelief been suspended by so many in such a massive cause. If it does indeed translate into an Obama victory on Tuesday, further prayer may well be in order. Not long after Gold Diggers of 1933, I seem to remember, came The Grapes of Wrath.

http://tinyurl.com/6ywjzh

Posted by Drew458     on 10/29/2008 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Politics • Republicans •  
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   Tuesday - October 21, 2008

Barack Obama: Why I believe he should be the next President.  (From the Mayor of London)

I just could not be more disappointed in this guy who I have long held in esteem and thought was a leading Conservative light here in the UK.

I really don’t think it’s right for someone in his position offering opinions on our political doings.  Least not publicly.  I don’t think he can sway American voters of course, minds are pretty much made up buy now.  But he isn’t being logical at all, and if there was one thing I used to think I liked about this guy, it was logical thinking.

I find it very hard to digest the fact that he is saying we should (among other reasons) vote Obama because he is “black.” Which of course is IS NOT.
But no matter. He’s brown right?  Mulatto.  Still don’t matter.

Thing is this .... what if a conserv. paper or editor wrote an article right here in the UK and said people should vote for Dave Cameron because is is NOT a Scot.
Or in a local election an editor wrote that ppl should vote for ‘X’ because ... why, he’s white.  Can you just imagine the storm that might cause?  Especially as there are some many of so many hues over here.

I am not going through all the other issues I may have with hiz honor.  That one is quite enough.
He suggests we tamper more with the Supreme Court which voting Obama would certainly be.  I guess Mr. Johnson for all his grand education and travel and family (sister a successful writer), knows less about my country then I thought he did.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Please read the comments in the paper at the bottom of his editorial.

Barack Obama: Why I believe he should be the next President

By Boris Johnson
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/10/2008

Have your say Read comments

There are all sorts of reasons for hoping that Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States. He seems highly intelligent. He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.

Unlike his opponent, he visibly incarnates change and hope, at a time when America desperately needs both.

It is no disrespect to John McCain - a brave and principled man - to observe that he has chosen a difficult time to stand on the Republican ticket.

Barack Obama: Why he should be US President
An Obama win could signify the end of race-based politics

The legacy of George Bush may take years, if not decades, to determine.

But at present he seems to have pulled off an astonishing double whammy.

However well-intentioned it was, the catastrophic and unpopular intervention in Iraq has served in some parts of the world to discredit the very idea of western democracy.

The recent collapse of the banking system, and the humiliating resort to semi-socialist solutions, has done a great deal to discredit - in some people’s eyes - the idea of free-market capitalism.

Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea.

To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune.

To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.

(BORRRRISSSS!  I don’t a F*&!*^&$"£$%&*## what people here think in MY election.  STAY THE eF OUT!)

It would be tough for any candidate to receive the Republican baton from Dubya, and McCain can be proud of doing as well as he is.

His chief problem is that he does not seem to offer any hope of repair to those American ideals.

Or, to put it another way, it is not clear how America under McCain would recover her standing in the eyes of the world.

His chief selling-point is his grasp of foreign affairs, and his staunch belligerence in the pursuit of American interests.

(the pursuit of American interests. Oh well crap. We can not have that in a president. Can We.)

He is certainly owed the respect due to a man who fought for his country, was captured and tortured.

But is this bellicosity really what the world is crying out for today? 

(Screw the freeken world. I’m not conerened with the world or what they feel or want. I’m concerned with MY COUNTRY!  Period!)

When asked what his policy was towards Iran, Mr McCain sang - to the tune of the Beach Boys - “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”.

No doubt he was joking, but if I were an Iranian politician, those words would make me want a nuclear deterrent all the more.

McCain seems to stand for perpetual sabre-rattling against the terrors of abroad, and Obama wins because he seems to stand for hope, not fear.

(OF COURSE, THERE’S NOTHIN’ TO FEAR OUT THERE. IS THERE?)

Not that the Democratic candidate is a pushover.

He has shown terrific steel, beating off the Clintons, and defeating McCain in all three televised debates.

If elections were decided on the ruthless efficiency of campaigns, then Obama would already have it in the bag.

The defining image of the battle so far is of the two candidates leaving the stage after the last TV debate - Obama moving confidently off, after another grave and measured performance, and McCain gagging like a gargoyle, tongue out, as he realised he was about to walk over the edge.

I am not suggesting that McCain is a buffoon, or that Obama is quite as Messianic as some of his supporters seem to believe.

He gave a speech of unrivalled torpor in Germany, for instance. He needs to stick up more vigorously for free trade, and we must hope that any ill-considered new taxes will be thwarted by Congress.

But then again, he is patently not the Marxist subversive loony Lefty that some of his detractors allege.

I revere Melanie Phillips, and I have carefully studied her blog entries about Obama and the vote-stealers, or Obama and his association with a quondam terrorist called Ayers.

In the end I gave up, goggle-eyed and exhausted, having trolled the wilds of the Neocon internet without finding anything remotely approaching a smoking gun.

Obama’s terrorist chum is now a professor, and his last act of terrorism took place when the candidate was eight, and it is not really clear that he and Obama are chums at all.

The entire set of allegations seem to be an attempt to smear him by association, and are about as damaging as pointing out that some of Tony Blair’s colleagues used to be Stalinists, or that Tory party conferences used to feature people who advocated the hanging of Nelson Mandela.

Obama deserves to win because he seems talented, compassionate, and because he offers the hope of rejuvenating the greatest country on earth in the eyes of the rest of us. All those are sufficient reasons for desiring his victory.

And then there is the final, additional reason, the glaring reason, and that is race. Huge numbers of voters, whether they admit it to themselves or not, will hesitate to choose Barack Obama for President because he is black. And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black, and because he stands for the change and the progress they want to see in their society.

After centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred - you name it, they’ve had it - America is teetering on the brink of a triumph. If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

(So tell us Boris .... who’s your pick to win the office of PM here among the many coloreds you have here?  Has there ever been a Negro PM? Indian? Pakistan? Caribbean? )

If Obama wins, then black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling.

(NO SIR! What they will learn if brains in gear, is how much money it takes to run for office in the USA.  And that is a shame!)

If Obama wins, then it will be simply fatuous to claim that there are no black role models in politics or government, because there is no higher role model than the President of the United States.

If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it.

If Obama wins, he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired, and he will have re-established America’s claim to be the last, best hope of Earth.

http://tinyurl.com/6pvzpc

Posted by Drew458     on 10/21/2008 at 03:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Politics •  
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   Tuesday - October 14, 2008

WITH APOLOGIES TO BMEWS. CLASS.  A MEA CULPA?  CARLA BRUNI AIDS TERRORIST.

Recently Drew and I agreed on the term class as applied to certain women.  Neither of us thought Paris Hilton exhibited much by her overall public behavior, though I tended to think perhaps she might be improving somewhat after being incarcerated.  Something she was never brought up to believe one of her monied class would experience. 

I then posted an eye candy photo of a woman who up till that time I thought exhibited class beyond all measure.  The First Lady of France, Carla Bruni. 
Fully clothed she had far more appeal and striking looks then many women half her age (40 something). 

I forgot she had been a million dollar model and so knew how to best present herself.  I now confess that blinded by her physical appearance, I was quite willing to conveniently forget just how far left her politics were are.  I came to believe she was one who did exhibit class as I understood the word.
Well, maybe I don’t understand what “class” really is.  I always just assumed I’d know it when I saw it and she seemed to embody the very meaning itself.

If real class in a person goes beyond the physical (and it does), then my idea of Bruni class has shown her to have hooves of clay.  Actually, that might not be fair to her as she never made a secret of her leftist politics and has spoken openly on the subject.  And that fact alone (being left) doesn’t mean she’s classless.
However, it’s what she’s managed to bring about in criminal matters, the total disregard of victims as she worked on the ever horny Sarko, president of France, to deny Italy the extradition of a member of The Red Brigade, that has me riled this morning.

She has NO CLASS whatever.  Simply a very good actress with the appearance of class.  I’m more disappointed in myself (typical male huh?) then in her.
She never denied her stripes and I never gazed beyond her light to see what what was behind.  So, here’s the story that has me all bothered today.

Carla Bruni uses influence to halt extradition of Red Brigades terrorist
Carla Bruni and her sister have persuaded Nicolas Sarkozy not to extradite a woman who faces life imprisonment for murder to her native Italy, sparking anger amongst her victims’ families.

By Henry Samuel in Paris
Last Updated: 6:01PM BST 13 Oct 2008

In a sign of her influence over her husband’s decision-making, the Italian-born First Lady - along with her sister - convinced the French president to drop a court order to deport exiled Red Brigades terrorist Marina Petrella to Rome.

Her personal intervention and the presidential u-turn sparked anger in Italy, which has been seeking Mrs Petrella’s extradition from France since she fled after being freed on bail in 1986.

A group representing victims of the Red Brigades said it would travel to Paris this weekend and protest against the decision in front of the Elysée palace.

Mrs Petrella was found guilty in absentia by an Italian court in 1992 of murder, kidnapping, attempted kidnapping and armed robbery.

A French court approved her extradition in December and an order to send her back to Italy had been signed by the prime minister. But after “pugnacious” lobbying by Mr Sarkozy’s wife on behalf of her older sister, actress Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, the president changed his mind - citing humanitarian grounds.

“Mrs Petrella was in danger of dying. This hunger and thirst strike had to stop, which it did. There is a humanitarian clause, I used that clause,” Mr Sarkozy said during a financial press conference.

“I told him (Mr Sarkozy) about her, especially just after I saw her in jail.

I gave him some information that was perhaps a little bit important in his decision,” said Miss Bruni-Tedeschi.

“He focused his attention on a case that he hadn’t completely focused on before,” she said. Her sister Carla said she was “happy” about the decision.

The pair personally delivered the message to Mrs Petrella on Sunday at her secure prison hospital bed, where she is refusing to eat and is in “very poor” health.

“I have a message for you from my husband,” the First Lady reportedly told her. “You will not be going back to Italy.”

The Communist Red Brigade was accused of dozens of murders in the 1970s and 80s, including that of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.

Mr Moro’s widow, Olga, expressed outrage: “All judicial accords and conventions have been violated” by a decision “no doubt taken because the Sarkozy household was scared of unpopularity,” she said.

Mrs Petrella had been living at liberty in France until she was arrested in August 2007 at Italy’s request soon after Mr Sarkozy’s election. He had promised to end France’s policy of granting repentant ex-Red Brigades members asylum– first initiated by Socialist president François Mitterrand in 1985.

Mr Sarkozy denied that his decision would anger his Italian counterparts. “I remained in contact with them. I don’t think there was a lack of understanding. There is never a lack of understanding when one takes a humanitarian decision,” he said.

But Isabella Bertolini, a member of Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party disagreed: “To apply a humanitarian clause to a terrorist convicted of homicide, theft and kidnapping sounds like a bad joke,” she told newspaper La Republicca.

The First Lady’s sister told Italian daily Corriere della Sera that Mrs Petrella’s story had particular significance for the wealthy Bruni family, which had fled to France after receiving death threats from the Red Brigades.

“I arrived in France as a little girl exactly because my family was afraid of what was happening in Italy, also because of terrorism,” Miss Bruni Tedeschi said.

“We all had a sentiment of fear, even I who was so little, and I know what it means to be welcomed by a foreign country, feel protected by it, and I can imagine what it means to suddenly lose that welcoming, lose that protection.”

This is a rare foray into politics for Mr Sarkozy’s third wife, who unlike her husband has always espoused left-wing causes.

However, it is not the first time the President has involved a spouse in politics: last year he sent his second wife Cécilia on a successful mission to free Bulgarian nurses from jail in Libya. The pair divorced last October and a month later he met Carla Bruni, a top model and successful folk pop singer.

http://tinyurl.com/3kra9x

Posted by Drew458     on 10/14/2008 at 04:02 AM   
Filed Under: • Celebrities • Commies • Crime • Editorials • Euro-Peons • Terrorists •  
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   Sunday - October 12, 2008

STAND UP, SHAKE IT OFF, AND GET OUT THERE AND FIGHT.

MY DEEPEST THANKS TO FRIEND DREW WHOSE KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS TECH. HAVE ALLOWED ME TO POST THIS TOON OF OUR SARAH, WHICH I ORIGIANLLY GOT FROM THE TELEGRAPH A WEEK AGO BUT HAD NO IDEA HOW TO GET RID OF THE PRINTED ARTICLE THAT SURROUNDED IT, AND GET IT TO DO THIS.

I’M AFRAID TO ASK HOW HE DID THIS.  ANYWAY ... THANKS.

NOW THEN ... TO SOMETHING TURTLER POSTED UNDER COMMENTS.  IT DESERVES A REGULAR POST RIGHT HERE. AND I SHOULD THANK T. ALSO BECAUSE I HAVE NOT BEEN FEELING TOO UP ABOUT THINGS LATELY.  BUT T. IS RIGHT.  WE CAN NOT JUST LAY DOWN AND LET EM RUN US OVER NO MATTER HOW BAD THINGS LOOK.  SO THANKS TURTLER, FOR THIS.

I cannot guarentee that Obama will not win.

I cannot guarentee that our political system will recover from its present corruption.

I cannot guarentee that we will remain a nation worthy of its past.

I cannot guarentee that any effort we make will not be in vain.

HOWEVER, THAT DOES NOT MEAN WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIE DOWN IN A FOXHOLE AND DIE WITHOUT AN EFFORT!

In the pledge, we swear ourselves to this nation, its flag, its Democratic Reptublic, and its Constitition. We are obliged to serve and support it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And in this we cannot waver.

But you say that there is no use, we are certain to loose, even if we do defeat Obama.

However, and this is purely my opinion, that does not matter. We are obliged to stand and do our damndest, even if there is no hope for success.

Why?

Because, imagine what the world would look like if there were no people to stand up and fight the good fight even though they were certain they would be destroyed?

What would have happened at Theromopylae?

And, once more, history has been changed by futile stands against impossible odds by people with no real expectation of winning.

It is entirely possible that the Western Allies in North Africa would have been overrun had it not been for the brave resistance of a group of hodge podge Free French and Palestinian Jews who fought the full wrath of the Afrika Korps at Bir Hakeim and Bir el-Hamet after the Allied disaster at Gazala.

If it were not for the ultimately futile Armenian resistance agianst the Turks in WWI, it is entirely possible that the Turks could have turned the full force of their troops (who outnumbered the Allied forces in the area) around and pushed the Western Allies out of Mesopotamia and Palestine, which would have given them control of the Suez Canal, thus greatly weakening the Allied Cause.

Were it not for Charles de Gaulle going to Britain in defiance of the tactily legit Vichy government, it is possible that the French Colonies would have fallen to Germany.

The bottom line is that we must be willing to accept defeat but fight anyway. For without the willingness to make sacrifices and even suffer defeat for lost causes, Democracy would have been snuffed out long ago.

SO STAND UP, SHAKE IT OFF, AND GET OUT THERE AND FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!
Posted by Turtler United States 10/11/2008 at 03:32 PM

Posted by Drew458     on 10/12/2008 at 10:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Editorials • Politics •  
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