Many DC–area residents have a taxi story. Few have happy endings. Mine occurred on a very rainy day at Union Station. I’d been shuffling along in an endless taxi line when my turn finally arrived. The cab pulls up and fortunately I happened to glance inside before I entered.

The cab’s vinyl–covered backseat was already occupied by a puddle of rainwater. A situation like this is a win–win for the cab driver: He gets a fare and my pants soak up the wet spot. It’s harder so see an advantage for the passenger.

Since DC taxis operate under a regime of rules and regulations my role as a cog in this vast machine was to get in the cab, let my BVDs absorb the water and beseech the authorities to rectify this injustice to my private parts at a later date.

But I’m a conservative, so I asked the driver to wipe the seat.

He replied, “Get in the cab.”

I asked if paper towels had been invented in his country and he replied, “Get in the cab.”
Peer pressure began to rear its ugly head. Line dwellers pressing up behind me wondered why I didn’t get in the dang cab. What’s more, the petty line bureaucrat was holding the door open and motioning me inside.

Further negotiation with the driver appeared pointless. Instead, I decided to try a market–based solution. Taking this cab and getting to my destination sooner was not worth riding like a frog in a puddle, so I asked the rider behind me if he wanted the cab. Evidently worries about mold growing in places that are hard to reach were less for him than myself, so he took the taxi. I took the next one, which featured a dry seat.

Citizens are competent to conduct transportation market transactions like this without government intervention, yet in DC liberals are not only increasing taxi regulation, they are aping policies that have been proven to be monopolistic and anti–consumer in other cities.

Mayor Vincent Gray (D–What, Me Worry?) and Council member Mary Cheh (D–Serious, Intellectual Glasses) want to establish a taxi monopoly by instituting a medallion system. This would limit the 10,672 licensed cabdrivers and 116 cab companies to only 4,000 medallions, stifling future competition and guaranteeing higher prices.

The medallion system in New York and Boston has proven a windfall for medallion owners and a disaster for competition. The last medallion sale in NYC went for $1 million each. In Boston the average price is $400,000. Both prices are in indication of artificial market scarcity created by government.

As part of the medallion package, DC would impose vehicle age and mileage limits, while offering the ability to pay with a credit card — something that has been possible in Las Vegas for years — but there is no mention of installing paper towel racks.

Cabs would also be limited to a single color, white in the esteemed Ms. Cheh’s opinion, while potentially adding a surcharge to each fare so the customer can pay for the politician’s “improvements.”

This is why liberal government is so expensive. There is simply no area of life or color scheme that the progressive mind does not think it can improve with a few laws and subsequent regulation.

The question is: why is government involved at all? Medallion systems and cab commissions protect existing businesses and generate campaign contributions at the expense of the public. This latest taxi legislation only proves the DC council is incapable of embarrassment, since the last time it was discussed a staffer for Council member Jim Graham (D–Bribe, What Bribe?) went to jail for soliciting bribes from cab companies that would benefit from the bill.

The federal government deregulated the airline industry over 30 years ago and ticket prices are lower now than in the 70’s. (Of course this also made it possible for people who wear pajamas in public to fly, but you take the good with the bad.) Bus companies are competing on the DC to NYC route and fares have never been lower and the buses vie with each other to offer more passenger amenities, without design help from Ms. Cheh.

Government doesn’t need to set fares, limit cab numbers or pick the color. All that’s required is a background check and exam for drivers, vehicle safety inspection rules, a requirement that fares (determined by the company) be clearly visible on the door of the cab and a reasonable number of inspectors. The market can handle the rest.
Is something like this possible? Can we ever prevent government from meddling in areas it isn’t needed?

It just so happens I have an idea. Make it illegal for candidates to accept campaign contributions from any industry that’s operations are substantially regulated by the office they seek.

I think we would soon see a tidal wave of deregulation.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at
michael-shannon@comcast.net.

Michael R. Shannon
MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations
703-583-6277
571-969-1995 Google Voice
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelrshannon
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-washington-dc/michael-shannon

 

WesternFront America

For about the past two decades, those to the left side of the sociopolitical spectrum have made such a fuss over their hostility towards traditional American holidays and celebrations that the arising disputations have themselves become an anticipated aspect of the close of each year. It was claimed such festivities promote values so vile that these sentiments must be expunged from the civic calendar and the very names seldom mentioned for fear of irrevocably harming those not participating for whatever the reason.

Though not always cognizant of the epic spiritual and philosophical struggle taking place all around them, Americans can be a remarkably stubborn and independent lot. As such, a number sympathetic to the process of communalization have realized that they might be more successful in accomplishing their goals through a subdued gradualism rather than through sudden revolutionary upheaval.

The first of the remembrances of the waning year subverted by manipulative social engineers is Thanksgiving. This holiday is despised for a number of common liberal reasons.

For starters, it is argued that Thanksgiving is racist because of the hostilities that eventually erupted between Americans of European origins and the American Indians. However, such criticism fails to recognize that, at the time of the first Thanksgiving Feast, these distinct groups were at accord with one another over the blessings shared amidst hardships and struggle.

Frankly, if you have a problem over the concept of Thanksgiving, you have a serious attitude problem. No one is saying that at points that the Indians weren’t screwed over. Yet it must be remembered that some of them gave as good as they got in terms of inflicting violence upon innocent Whites not responsible for crafting or implementing policy.

So if you can’t take a few moments to express gratitude for what you do have in this country as a result of the values set in motion there at the beginning even if they weren’t adhered to in full at every step along the way, you are yourself harboring a degree of animosity bordering on racism.

The next and probably deeper reason as to why Thanksgiving is really despised despite all the lofty platitudes regarding honoring indigenous cultures and the like is that the day expresses gratitude towards God. In this era of postmodern enlightenment, such homage is to be directed more towards terrestrial sources, the COMMUNITY being foremost among them.

Usually when given the opportunity in a public forum such as the popular press to provide words of encouragement and understanding, those holding positions as professional clergy worthy of their hirer tend to draw focus to what God has done for us, how we have fallen short of the glory of God, and how He still loves us anyway with restoration available for those placing themselves under His mercy. Interestingly, pastors of Emergent Church inclinations would rather go along with the flow rather than prevent the nation’s downward slide into tyranny and desolation.

Writing in the November 2011 edition of the Hyattsville Life & Times, pastor of the town’s First Baptist Church Todd Thomason asserts that the thing he is grateful for this Thanksgiving season is not so much his God, his freedom, or even his family but rather COMMUNITY. In other words, this pastor does not value people as individuals but rather as part of the overall group.

In his analysis, Thomason in particular reflected upon a power outage following Hurricane Irene. Commenting on what took place, the pastor observes, “But I was hardly the only person offering assistance. It was a wonderful display of community at its best.”

If this represents the kind of spiritual insight available at this particular congregation, no wonder the discerning get the impression it is becoming increasingly ensnared in the clutches of communalism.

Thomason continues, “Then the lights came back on and we all went back…to our narrower, more familiar life patterns that…keep us apart.”

What this misguided cleric fails to realize is that, by its definition, community does not include everyone and by its nature is necessarily exclusive. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

In a paragraph following this lamentation, Pastor Thomason lists a number of things that he views as obstacles to social harmony. These include categories such as economic status, political affiliation, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Why aren’t these valid categories around which to in part derive one’s social identity?

G.K. Chesterton is credited with saying that one should not take a fence down until you know why it was put up. Sometimes the best way to maintain amicable relations is to limit one’s interactions with those whose values are diametrically opposed to one’s own.

Rev. Thomason, on the other hand, advocates such a compulsory and contrived degree of togetherness that one ought to willingly surrender those convictions of the heart one holds most dear. For usually in those kinds of situations where the parties involved hold to conflicting perspectives, it is the party holding to the higher standard that is forced to adopt the more lax principle.

For example, in terms of religion, if this is not to be one of the categories by which we determine those from the within from those from the without, it is usually the ones that believe that faith alone in Jesus Christ without reliance upon good works is the only means of eternal salvation and not those that believe all paths are equally valid so long as our good works outweigh our evil deeds that are forced to compromise in the name of ecumenical unity. Likewise in regards to sexual orientation, when we supposedly come together setting aside our differences, in the postmodern context that does not mean the promiscuous elevate their behavior by henceforward living lives of repentant abstinence, covenantal monogamy, or at least keep their mouths shut regarding what kinky proclivities they might be into. Rather, it ends up that those espousing a traditional morality are the ones not only shamed into silence but forced to smile and applaud in affirmation under threat of punitive denunciation.

Until recently, the disputes regarding Thanksgiving have for the most part been of a more subdued or subtle nature. Some of the really great battles of the culture war have instead broken out over Christmas.

The key to winning any conflict is controlling how that conflict is expressed in terms of language and conceptualization. Those that despise Christmas and the Christ that the celebration was originally intended to honor have gone to considerable lengths to minimize the mention of the day’s very name.

Occasionally this is accomplished under threat of some kind of punishment on the part of the state. More often, this is achieved by attempting to shame these words out of common usage by crafting elaborate reasons as to why the values given lip service by petty despots such diversity, inclusion, and hyperpluralism are to be extolled at the expense of those preferred by the average person.

For example, the Hyattsville Reporter insert of the November 2011 edition of the Hyattsville Life & Times lists a number of events to be held by the municipality throughout the month of December such as the “Annual Holiday Tree Lighting”, breakfast with Santa, and a memorial toy drive. At no point in the announcement is the reader informed as to why these events are being held this time of year rather than in the middle of the summer as Christmas is never mentioned.

In the past, it was claimed in connection with this very issue that the phraseology “holiday” has to be utilized since not everyone celebrates Christmas. If so, then why is the word invoked in the column immediately to the left?

The heading reads none other than “We’re Dreaming Of A Green Christmas”. However, what follows does not so much detail what certain individuals plan to do themselves but rather what they hope to guilt trip everybody else into.

For example, in regards to gifts, it is literally insinuated “You shouldn’t have.” Instead of traditional gifts, the responsible consumer rather gives donations to charities or purchases locally made items. In other words, things nobody really wants.

As in the case of the blurb about domestic artificial and locally grown trees, the reason behind locally produced gift items has nothing to do with bolstering the U.S. economy. Rather, it is about reducing the distance for ecological reasons the miles goods and supplies are transported. But unless an artist or craftsman forges, smelts, or mixes their own supplies, does it really matter if the assorted petrochemicals are assembled down the street or across the country since they will still have to travel the exact same distance?

In “The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe”, the tyranny imposed by the White Witch upon Narnia is categorized as it being always winter but never Christmas. It seems now the next stage of villainy has developed where the White Witches of our own time and realm instead wish to use the trappings of this celebration as a tactic in the attempt to implement their assorted agendas.

by Frederick Meekins

 

WesternFront America

Forty years ago he stepped across an imaginary line to make his home in Maryland. He married, worked hard, raised a family, sent his children to public school, paid taxes, saw one wife die of cancer and even played fantasy football. Placing him right smack dab in the mainstream of American life. No different from thousands, even millions of other hard–working Americans who were fortunate enough to be born in Maryland.

Then, without warning, armed sheriff’s deputies are pounding on his door at 3:30 AM, just like the KGB. They barge into his room, ignore his protests, snap handcuffs around his wrists and drag him off to jail. Leaving behind a stunned, broken family that has been brutally separated from their father and is now looking for a way to survive in today’s cruel America.

No doubt you’re wondering where you can join a protest or demonstration demanding an apology for this outrage, organized by indignado members of CASA de Maryland, the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and the Pew Hispanic Center.

Unfortunately, this particular arrest doesn’t lend itself to intervention by professional Mexicans and border–jumping advocates. Which explains why this story is not another ‘little brown brother’ weeper. The problem here is Mr. Glenn Wilson is too white, too old, doesn’t hablar Spanish and is already an American citizen. Worst of all for Glenn, he’s not a member of a potential Democrat voting block.

Wilson’s offense — other than skin color and national origin — is he walked out of the courthouse in 1971 and didn’t return to face a minor burglary charge. In the ensuing four decades Wilson remained in Maryland and became a law–abiding resident. His only arrest was the one last week that put him in jail on a 40–year–old warrant.

Now if Wilson’s nombre had been Senor Guillermo and the line he crossed had been the invisible border between the US and Mexico, chances are all would have been forgiven. In Maryland it’s almost impossible to be arrested for a mere immigration violation. They’d sooner haul you away for parking tickets.

Border violators confess publicly, hold news conferences and testify before legislative committees, but — like the obscure actor who never got a part — they can’t get arrested in that town.

And if the Obama administration has its way, this de facto amnesty will soon spread nationwide.

It’s ironic that one of the few things this confederacy of incompetents has been able to do is deport illegal aliens. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Obama’s Secure Communities program has shipped nearly 400,000 illegals south each year, which is 4 percent annually of the 10 million estimated long–term trespassers. Even this sizeable figure does not account for the chain self–deportations of relatives and the intimidated that follow the deportee home of their own free will.

Certainly a program like Secure Communities offends those who are willing to violate their oath of office to put their tribe before the rule of law, like Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D–La Raza). Which is why Obama intends to pull the plug.

The Obamanations are instead planning to “prioritize” deportations. But in reality the only priority is Obama’s re–election campaign. When Barack’s approval rating is in the 40’s, he needs every Hispanic vote that pandering will attract.

Since the administration has not been able to persuade Congress to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” (euphemism to English translation = amnesty), Obama intends to achieve amnesty by ordering the border bureaucracy to do it anyway.

Instead of deporting everyone caught who is here illegally, the administration will drop deportation proceedings if the illegal has been here a long time (each day adding another 24 hours to the original border violation) or is elderly, pregnant, in school, responsible for other family member’s care and has a number of relatives or friends who are potential Democrat voters in 2012.

Which means “catch and release” is no longer limited to fish.

What’s more, the illegals snared by Secure Communities will be allowed to apply for work permits, essentially rewarding them for a long series of bad decisions and thwarting the will of Congress and the majority of Americans.

This is like releasing burglars who steal less than $1,000.00 and helping them start a used electronics business on eBay.

Why obey the law when breaking it gains you a work permit? Unless you’re a citizen burglar with a warrant from another century, like the unfortunate Glenn Wilson, who probably rues the day he wasn’t born a Mexican.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at michael-shannon@comcast.net.

Michael R. Shannon
MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations
703-583-6277
571-969-1995 Google Voice
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelrshannon
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-washington-dc/michael-shannon

 

WesternFront America

By Paul Driessen

Confused visitors will be forgiven for thinking Oregon State University is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congressman Pete DeFazio and the “progressive-socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. Or for likening what’s going on there to political retribution as practiced in Third World thugocracies.

The idea that three outstanding students – PhD candidates at OSU – could face dismissal, and worse, shortly before receiving their degrees, is simply shocking. That this could be happening because their father had the temerity to challenge an entrenched 12-term Democratic congressman (and OSU earmark purveyor) could make people think the university is in Zimbabwe, not America.

Dr. Art Robinson is president of the nonprofit Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, on the family farm in southwestern Oregon, 180 miles from Corvallis. OISM focuses on biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and aging – and improving emergency preparedness and basic education.

After his wife died in 1988, Robinson raised and home-schooled his six children – all of whom became remarkable scholars, collaborating on research and a popular DVD series on math and science for home-schooled students and their parents. Five of the children have BS degrees in chemistry; one a degree in mathematics. Two earned doctorates in veterinary medicine; one a PhD in chemistry.

The three youngest are all at OSU, working on PhDs in nuclear engineering. They entered the field at a young age, helping their father write and publish the “pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise” newsletter, Access to Energy, which explains and advocates nuclear energy.

Dr. Robinson is well known for the Oregon Petition Project, which says “there is no convincing scientific evidence” that humans are causing “catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere” or disruption of its climate. It urges Congress to reject the Kyoto global warming agreement – and has been signed by more than 32,000 Americans with university degrees in physical sciences (including yours truly and over 9,000 PhDs).

The petition, and Robinson’s support for DDT in combating the malaria pandemic, drew anger and outrage from the political Left, climate chaos industry and “mainstream media,” giving him his first brush with the politics of personal destruction. But it did not prepare him for the lengths and depths his opponents would go to “discourage” his political activities.

With our nation drowning in debt, energy prices skyrocketing, and unaccountable pseudo-scientific agencies like EPA and Interior hobbling economic growth with endless delays and red tape, Dr. Robinson decided to run for Congress. As a scientist and thoughtful, Christian family man, with proven math and budgetary skills – he felt he could bring much needed expertise and perspectives to the House of Representatives.

He challenged DeFazio, who initially figured he would have a cakewalk against this political neophyte. But Robinson raised $1.3 million from over 5,000 individual donors (against DeFazio’s $1.5 million from special interests, MoveOn.org and other contributors), gave numerous speeches and ran a highly effective campaign. With polls showing his lead narrowing, an increasingly desperate DeFazio struck back.

Bristling with a sense of entitlement, the congressman ran print, television and radio ads, painting Robinson as a nutcase who would promote racism, put radioactive wastes in drinking water, end Social Security and Medicare, close schools, repeal taxation of oil companies and destroy Oregon jobs. With help from Rachel Madow and MSNBC, DeFazio claimed Robinson lived off Social Security in a survivalist compound and was funding his campaign with cash from money launderers and drug dealers.

Despite the libelous attacks, Robinson garnered a very respectable 44% of the vote – and promptly announced that he would run for DeFazio’s seat again in 2012. If the soft-spoken father of six thought DeFazio’s campaign had been in the sewers, what happened next beggared belief. Now the targets became Robinson’s three youngest children.

During the election campaign, OSU President Edward Ray and other faculty and administrators improperly used the campus to campaign for DeFazio and against Robinson. Then, almost immediately after the 2010 election, they launched a series of despicable and unprincipled actions designed to ensure that Joshua, Bethany, and Matthew never receive their degrees – regardless of their outstanding academics, examinations and research, or the thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars they had invested.

Even though they have been working on their PhDs for almost five years at OSU, and have about a year to go, Joshua has been forbidden access to the equipment he built for his PhD work, while Bethany has been told she will be dismissed from school. Matthew, who turned down a nearly “full ride” from MIT to go to OSU, has been there for two years – but now is waiting for the ax to fall on his work, and on his thesis professor, Dr. Jack Higginbotham, who came to the students’ defense.

Nuclear engineering professor Higginbotham has been at OSU 24 years; he is president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of a large NASA program on the campus. His inside knowledge of what the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics deans and certain faculty were doing to railroad the Robinson children made him Public Enemy Number One to the department Torquemadas who are trying to destroy his career and get him fired for his impertinence.

Right now, Higginbotham’s salary and career hang by a thread, preserved only by attorneys he has hired to protect himself from OSU attacks. The Robinsons’ studies have been severely disrupted. Meanwhile, however, public outcry in favor of Higginbotham and the students has grown in intensity, especially in Oregon, and a group of prominent alumni donors has offered to pay for the student’s remaining PhD work and legal costs to settle the dispute. (Higginbotham is a nuclear power guy; the culprits are in “nuclear medicine” and generally anti-nuclear power.)

Rather than being chastened, though, President Ray and his staff have refused even to speak with the alumni group. University administrators have become incensed that their actions are now public knowledge, and that alumni and other donors are vocally supporting Higginbotham and the children. Ray and his entourage have circled the academic wagons, stonewalled public inquiries and refused to talk to the Robinsons

They appear to think they own the university, and “academic freedom” means they are entitled to deny academic degrees to children of parents whose politics differ from their own. As more alumni join this effort, however, and the university’s reputation becomes increasingly radioactive, OSU appears to be wavering. Perhaps a dose of sanity may yet take center stage.

Oregon State is a prime example of what happens when educational institutions fall under progressive-socialist control, and dependency on taxpayer handouts from political overseers in Washington. DeFazio and his fellow congressional Democrats gave OSU a reported $27 million in earmark funding during the last legislative cycle alone. That’s $9 million per Robinson student denied a PhD.

No wonder President Ray and the Nuclear Engineering deans have given new meaning to “payback,” while DeFazio smirks in silence in the congressional office that he seems convinced should be his for life.

In depressing testimony to how far America has strayed from its Constitution and founding principles, we have reached the point where congressmen can lavish key supporters with tax dollars – and in return get votes, campaign contributions, rallies and volunteers on our campuses … and be assured of vicious retribution against the families of anyone rash enough to run against them.

If you want to read all the gory details in this sordid case, visits www.OregonStateOutrage.com. If you want to tell OSU what you think of its actions, send a message to President Ray at pres.office@oregonstate.edu and todd.simmons@oregonstate.edu in the OSU press office.

If you thought the last Robinson-DeFazio bout was a humdinger, stick around. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

By J. D. Longstreet

In the late 1940s; Russian spies infiltrated the deepest levels of the US government, including the Rosenbergs who had stolen the plans to the nuclear bomb. America was threatened by a ruthless enemy in Soviet Communism that would not stop until the world was enslaved. When Senator Joseph McCarthy learned of the Russian infiltration of Washington, DC, he was determined to take the evidence public to the American people.

In his famous speech on February 9th, 1950, McCarthy brought public a list of 57 known communists working for the state department. These revelations took the American public by storm. Out of all the Senators and public figures in Washington, only McCarthy had the courage to stand up against communist infiltration. It was a deed that McCarthy’s leftist critics would never forgive him for.

For the next four years, Senator Joseph McCarthy stood undeterred against the strong socialist influence in Washington, exposing literally hundreds of anti-American operatives working incognito for the US Government.” (SOURCE)

ONLY 57 Communists? Good Grief!

If Joe McCarthy was alive today, and engaged in the same investigation, there’s a pretty good chance he’d have to use a set of hand trucks, or a dolly, to roll the current list of suspected communists, plus the socialists and Marxists working for, employed by, or otherwise involved with the US government.

We must remember, dear reader, that was 1950. It was early in the socialist movement in the American mainstream media, which would, as time passed, become so strong it would sanitize the socialist/marxist/communist movement to infiltrate the US government. Today that movement controls, approximately, half of the three branches of the current US government.

If the American citizen of today were as smart — and as well educated — as the Americans of the 1950’s we would be storming the US seat of government demanding a purge of our government and a return to a constitution centered government, the legacy of this nation’s founders, which has now been discarded in favor of a socialist agenda with the ultimate goal of creating a socialist/marxist/communist government in which the state controls American’s lives from the cradle to the grave –and – presumes to replace God with the state as the object of citizen’s worship.

If you doubt this, notice how the American mainstream media has assumed the position of Praetorian Guard to the Obama Administration — itself riddled with socialists and Marxists. In fact, many conservative commentators are convinced that Obama, himself, is a socialist. Some even go so far as to accuse him of actually being a communist.

Not today. Today, with political correctness squeezing the life out of truth, even McCarthy’s name is a dirty word. But that is what political correctness does. It stifles truth. It slams the brakes on any discussion of whether or not Senator McCarthy was right – or not. It makes certain a public discussion of whether the US government is held captive by communists, socialists, and Marxists is, in fact, true – or not darn near impossible.

Political correctness is an oft-used tool to MISLEAD the public, as well. Was Joe McCarthy all the terrible and evil things we are told … or have we been mislead? Political correctness is the tool wielded by the left to make darn sure the other side is never, ever, heard.

In modern America, we embrace socialism, Marxism, and communism. McCarthy saw it as the threat to America that it was in the 1950’s and as it is today. It is a cancer eating away at America’s soul. It is terminal. It WILL kill America.

And there is NOBODY standing tall and pointing out to Americans the evil disease rotting our nation from within.

Unfortunately, Americans bought into the propaganda from the left concerning the “evil” McCarthy. Believing it themselves, they became zealous in disseminating it to the masses.

But the truth has a way of surviving just about everything. Now we know from information gathered from studies of old Soviet files in Moscow and the famous Vanona Intercepts — FBI recordings of Soviet embassy communications between 1944-48 – the actual record of that period in American history is proving that McCarthy was essentially right.

Would it even be possible to create an Un-American Activities Committee today in either the US House of Representatives or the US Senate? The answer is an emphatic – NO!

Another question: Would the American people support such an effort? Here is the most telling answer of all – NO!

America does not want the truth because we are no longer capable of handling the truth.

And so we perish — at our own hand.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

By Paul Driessen

Energy Tribune, 31 March 2011

Whether you know it or not the industrialized world is at war, a climate war. The industrialized world didn’t ask for it, it has been forced upon us. The fossil fuel burning world is being attacked by factions that want to extract the wealth of the prosperous nations to pay for a remaking of the world and “save it” from the industrialized nations crime of releasing carbon dioxide into the air.

However, as one of the Australian climate commissioners recently revealed, these governments, environmental groups and the United Nations have no answers as to what specific climate benefit would result from their victory. This is what makes the climate war so dangerous. Without a specific, targeted temperature drop figure somewhere in the future as a goal the entire transformation from fossil fuels to “renewables” lacks any true objective. The attempt to re-make energy production on a global scale will likely be prohibitively expensive and yield a temperature reduction that can only be guessed at! History has proven over and over again that stumbling into war without a specified, targeted objective, results in billions or trillions of wasted dollars and the pointless loss of human life.

Every once in a great while when our moon’s orbit takes it closer to Earth something quite remarkable can happen, a government official tells the truth. Apparently the increased gravitational force of the closer moon wrenches the truth from the unwitting official’s mouth. Before you know it he or she has blurted out something that in a moment, changes the entire landscape. With the last full moon being closer to earth since 1993 just such a thing happened in Australia.

In March, around the time of the moon’s closer proximity a reporter named Andrew Bolt, writing for Melbourne’s Herald Sun, happened to be interviewing Australia’s leading Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery. Bolt was looking to get a figure as to how much the earth’s temperature would drop if Australia reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 5% by 2020. At first Flannery was unwilling to give an answer, probably because he didn’t have one. Bolt pressed him for an actual number, something he could get his arms around. Flannery responded with “look it will be a very, very small increment.” Bolt continued to ask Flannery for an actual number.

Apparently at this point the moon’s stronger gravity effect kicked in. Upon further questioning Flannery blurted out “If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.” The first time I read this I had to go back and read it again, I was that stunned. Bolt was not satisfied with this answer. He was simply looking for an actual number, not a vague statement of generalities. He pressed Flannery to give a number like the cost of buying a car. He said you need to know the price of the car before you spend real money to buy it right? Flannery agreed.

Bolt then used a different approach. He gave Flannery a set of temperature numbers that he could pick from. This would help Flannery give the amount of temperature drop benefit Australia would achieve by reducing carbon dioxide emissions 5% by 2020. The closer moon’s proximity and increased gravity was now pulling harder on the earth than it had in 18 years. Flannery responded with this remarkable admission. “Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years”. After reading this I was glad I was sitting down.

This eye popping remark comes not from some everyday politician but from a climate commissioner of Australia. He is saying that if we shut down every coal, gas or oil burning electric utility, eliminate every car, bus, train and ground all planes, shut all factories that make things and stop using fossil fuels entirely everywhere in the world it would have no effect on earth’s temperature for hundreds of years, perhaps a thousand years. Amazingly, even after that tectonic plate shifting admission Flannery still had no actual number as to how much the temperature would drop if Australia shut everything off today. He could only offer “it’s going to be slight.”

What is “slight” Is it a tenth of a degree? A hundredth of a degree? A thousandths of a degree? Flannery had no answer. That’s because he doesn’t know what the number is. It’s like saying the car is going to cost you money to buy. Well ok but how much? Well, we really don’t have a number for you but trust us it does have a price. Well then, I’m not going to buy it if I don’t know the price. What’s scary and dangerous about the climate war is that governments will force you to buy that car no matter what it costs.

And that is the whole issue. What price are we supposed to pay to revolutionize the way the industrial world makes energy and what temperature benefit will result? This climate commissioner of Australia has no answer as to what the temperature drop would be. I strongly suspect he has no idea what the cost will be to achieve the temperature drop either. It took 200 years to achieve the amount of energy production we have in the world today. You can bet it will take trillions of dollars to re-engineer it into something else. Even if such a thing were possible there is no guarantee it would have any significant effect on earth’s average temperature. According to the Australian climate commissioner the end result, whatever that might be, would take up to one thousand years to take effect.

There is hope. Mr. Flannery has basically admitted there is no need for the climate war to continue. By revealing that the temperature drop would not be realized for perhaps a thousand years there simply is no pressing need to transform the way we make energy today, tomorrow or twenty years from now. The collateral damage resulting from such a forced and rapid transformation would likely far, far exceed any guessed at benefit of unknown magnitude hundreds of years in the future. To risk the prosperity and safety of billions of people on such tenuous assumptions is reckless and irresponsible to the extreme. The climate war should be declared over.

Energy Tribune, 31 March 2011

© Paul Driessen

 

WesternFront America

by J. D. Longstreet

“We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.” … Hilaire Belloc

How many times have you heard someone say that when liberals are out of power their antics are funny … but when they are in power they are dangerous? My guess is you have heard it many times. Most of us are quite familiar with it, in fact.

Today America is living the nightmare … disguised by the Left as the American dream.

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
— Edward Gibbon

Mr. Gibbon could easily have been describing modern day America rather than ancient Athens. America’s coffers are empty largely to provide Americans a comfortable life. And, just lie the Athenians, we are losing everything, our security, our comfort, and most important, our FREEDOM.

We have a government ruled by those barbarians America used to laugh at. And they are solidifying and tightening their grasp on the throat of America’s freedom squeezing it out of existence. Viewing the constitution as nothing more than a speed bump, they are determined to drag America from the pinnacle to the cesspool — and they are enjoying great success in their strivings!

In a recent commentary I noted how the peoples of a number of states have become so alarmed at the Obama government that they are harkening back to their rights as sovereign states and employing state nullification laws to countermand federal mandates intended to yoke them with federal laws to which they disagree and find overbearing, and massive financial costs they cannot bear.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of America, said the following: “ Whenever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” He was there at the birth of this nation, so he ought to know!

Thomas Paine, one of America’s great pamphleteers, author of “Common Sense,” and certainly one of the great rabble-rousers of all time — and in many ways responsible for the American colonists’ revolution against Great Britain commented thusly: Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worse state, an intolerable one.” No truer words were ever spoken.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the renowned French historian, in writing about what we call today “Big Government” said the following: “It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

After reading de Tocqueville’s words above your brain happens to form the words “OBAMACARE” on the TV screen of your mind… then you, sir/madam, GET IT!

Today we have first-hand knowledge of the destruction out-of-control big government can levy on a nation – even the most powerful nation on the globe. Americans are weighted down, yoked to government as oxen were once yoked to the plow. Heads down, shoulders hunched forward were are pulling the weight with the near debilitating knowledge that our efforts only make the yoke stronger and will, eventually, end in our demise.

“And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.” Thus wrote Frederic Bastiat a French economist, statesman, and author in the 1800’s.

Freedom is slowly being crushed in America. As an American, now in my seventh decade of living in America, I can tell you, with no hesitation at all, that I am not nearly as free as I was only a decade or two ago. Freedom, once lost, is nigh impossible to regain. That’s why free peoples should fight every attempt to take from them even the smallest and seemingly least important freedom.

The man who has done more to diminish America and set her on a course to becoming another third-world dung heap is now asking Americans to give him four more years in which to complete the job.

I remain convinced nothing short of divine intervention can halt the wholesale destruction of a free America led by Barack Hussein Obama.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

President Barack Obama exhibits very little to none of the biblical teachings of the Judeo-Christian faith. To this day, he has not become a member of any of the Christian churches in Washington, D.C.

I’m not going to stop reminding the American people about the fact that Obama sat in the Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years because he liked what he heard coming out of the mouth of an anti-American, anti-Semitic, bigoted pastor named Jeremiah Wright.

Progressive Black Liberation Theology is a Marxist teaching. It explains the goals of this president as he continually works to destroy our country. For nearly a century, communists have sought to bring down the greatest nation in the world, and the current resident of the White House is no exception.

Treasonous insiders

Ronald Reagan emphasized that America is a shining city on a hill whose beacon guides freedom-loving people everywhere. He spoke of the tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace — a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. Where is that nation today?

America is being stolen from us by an administration that is riddled with communists and Czars who make laws and policies that do not pass through our Senate and the House.

Carol Browner — a member of Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society — was but one of the radical czars who dominated the administration from the outset, and who served as part of a shadow cabinet to implement Obama’s ultraliberal agenda.

We can clearly see that disturbing agenda by taking a look at the work conducted within Browner’s office. She and her cohorts manipulated the scientific data regarding the British Petroleum oil spill, in their quest to stop off-shore drilling. The result was a job-killing moratorium on safe drilling in the Gulf. With the Middle East aflame and in chaos, we’re paying a price, as we continue to be beholden to unpredictable oil-rich countries. Whatever happened to the mantra “Drill, baby, drill?”

Browner resigned in January as Obama’s Director of Energy and Climate Change Policy, and the House of Representatives voted the following month to abolish her position altogether. These developments may help slow down this administration’s obsession with implementing “cap and trade” — with its energy tax — but we can’t count on it. Obama has shown himself oblivious to the will of the American people. Do we honestly believe Obama will be deterred from trying to shove his policies down our throats — policies like redistribution of wealth and Obamacare — by the loss of one of his leading czars?

Every single czar should be forced to resign. But until we remove the man in the White House, that is not likely to happen. We have a traitorous “fifth column” embedded in every facet of our government. Who has the president’s ears? View here — “Obama’s Communist and Socialist Czars — Van Jones & Carol Browner — Advising Obama.”

One Nation Under Marx

When we become rightfully upset about the way the president and his buddies in the media refer to the Tea Party, I’d like to know why the Democrat Party is connected at the hip with the groups that were seen October 2, 2010, in Washington, D.C., at the socialist One Nation Rally.

The American people have never been given an explanation. View the “One Nation Rally” photos. These Communist and Marxist organizations were told to show up by whom? Does the president have no connection with any of these groups? Let me sell you the Brooklyn Bridge if you’re naive enough to believe he has none.
Conservative and independent voters are fed up. We’ve heard not one word of condemnation by the Democrat Party or the media of such blatantly unAmerican hate-mongering as we witnessed at the One Nation Rally. Even our own Republican candidates running for president seem content to say little or nothing about the true character of the deceitful man who happens to be Commander-In-Chief of our troops.

If Republicans want to win come 2012, they must be open and candid. Many people still don’t understand that besides being an agitating community organizer from Chicago, the Usurper has known ties to shady operatives and criminals. Republicans need to explain that the transformation Obama is busily working toward is to transform our country to socialism — resulting in the enslavement of ourselves and our posterity by Obama’s fellow elitists and thugs.

Let us never forget that “When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (Prov. 29:2).

“Grinding America down”

Like most conservatives, I’ve known bits and pieces of the root of America’s problems. I think it’s time, however, to put things all together and view them in perspective. Are we so blind we can’t see what’s happening to our country?

Take time out of your busy day and watch a 16-minute preview of the film “Agenda: Grinding America Down,” by courageous Idaho legislator Curtis Bowers. This well-done documentary — available in its entirely for $17 at Amazon — points to the truth about what’s happening to America, with interviews of well-known writers and prominent political figures, including Phyllis Schlafly, Edwin Meese, M. Stanton Evans, James Simpson, Brannon Howse, Trevor Loudon, and many others.

The film’s bottom line is that until most Americans are willing to accept reality, there will never be the kind of massive changes needed to save the land we say we love. We’re headed right into a brick wall — unless God intervenes.

We can no longer give in to those who are trying to tear down every good and decent moral value at the heart of what makes America great. And with that, I’ll point out the obvious: the Obama administration is corrupt and evil.

View: “Agenda: Grinding America Down” (preview)

You can purchase the entire documentary here: Amazon.com — “Agenda: Grinding America Down”

Marie’s Chosen Song: The National Anthem” USA — Tim Davis

RenewAmerica speaks with a clarion call and has a strong patriotic heart and soul.

See RenewAmerica’s patriotic Activist Tools

© Marie Jon

 

WesternFront America

In Wisconsin it could not be any clearer. When the “defecation hit the rotary oscillator,” all the democrats in that state’s legislature boarded buses — and headed for parts unknown.

I rest my case!

What we clearly see here is a demonstration of the kind of courage the democrats bring to an issue. When the pitchforks and torches come out, they “get the hell out of Dodge!” (Actually – Wisconsin)

This is the kind of courage that lands our country in trouble time and time again when the Democratic Party is in power.

As of this moment, America is in serious trouble — nationally and internationally. Our national leader is of the party, which, in Wisconsin, boarded buses and took off.

It would be funny were it not for the fact that this is serious business.

I am STILL not over the fright Obama threw into me — and a huge number of Americans by his vacillating, “democrat two-step,” during the early stages of the ongoing Middle East fiasco. He clearly did not know what he was doing. He clearly did not know WHAT TO DO. He clearly did not have a plan of action for the US in the event the Mubarak government in Egypt fell, and he clearly has no idea what to do, even now.

Americans should note one important thing as they observe the furor and rage of the Unions in Wisconsin. Those are OBAMA’S PEOPLE! The Unions threw massive amounts of money and manpower into the election of Obama. It is important to know WHO those people in the streets really are.

I have news for the unions. They are not as powerful as they think they are. What is happening in Wisconsin now will have — no — has already had an effect on the American people as they have seen the unions with their façade down.

The more the unions riot, the less support they will have among the American people. And the better America will be as a result.

Another thing of note: The more money the unions spend on the sort of activity we are seeing in Wisconsin, the less they will have to insure their puppet is reelected in 2012. Now – THAT is a GOOD thing!

Come on, America! We all know Obama is a hand puppet for the unions in America.

There may have been a time in America’s past when labor unions were of some help to the working class in America, although you will have a difficult time trying to convince me. Even if that time did exist – it is long since past and today the labor unions are a burden on the workingman and workingwoman, and on the nation as a whole.

Incidents such as the ugly, ugly, demonstrations in Wisconsin simply show America why so many Americans object to labor unions — and states like mine have “right to work laws.”

It also demonstrates, as clearly as one could possibly hope, the ties between the Democratic Party and the labor unions in America. Take a good look, America. Those rioting unions are the “big club” of the Democratic Party and they will use it to keep YOU in line if we do not purge them from our government.

In November of 2012 we will have another chance to finish the job we began last November. That is to cleanse the US Senate and the Oval Office and put some adults in charge of the government of the United States. It will also give us the opportunity to put the labor unions in their place, which, most definitely, is not in the Oval Office, nor any place in the US government.

Observe how the democrats left town while their muscle covered their backsides as they retreated. There is a huge lesson to be learned from all this ugliness in the streets of Wisconsin. What we are seeing is the left at work.

No matter how the problems with the Wisconsin state budget are finally settled, union members are going to lose. Jobs WILL be lost. When the money is gone it is, well, GONE.

There will be other states in the near future, which will face the same sort of problem as Wisconsin. If the union rioting spreads to other states, look for the taxpayers to take another look, a favorable look this time, at the possibility of states filing bankruptcy. Seems to me that is where this is ultimately headed, anyway.

No. The unions aren’t doing themselves any good, at all, by the actions they are taking in Wisconsin. If anything, in the long run, they are doing damage to themselves that will require decades just for minimal recovery.

So – take a long, hard, look at the “demonstrating” unions in Wisconsin and ask yourself if that is what you want in your state. Because, more than likely, it is coming to your state, and like Wisconsin, it won’t be pretty.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

~ Justice Robert Jackson

Paraphrasing the telling words of Justice Jackson who made that comment in a 1949 dissenting opinion, Terminiello v. Chicago, I would say of today’s times, particularly in light of the current insurrection in Egypt – The Constitution is not a suicide pact, but the Progressive-Muslim Axis is.

The world stands at the brink – the Progressive/Muslim Axis vs. Natural Law/Christianity. Indeed, developments in Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan may indeed be that fateful domino that causes civilizations to collide into global catastrophe. Muslims want to invite apocalypse to set the stage for the so-called Twelfth Imam. Since the 1880s, progressives have provoked societal chaos through a litany of diabolical ideas and welfare policies designed to plunge America and the West into utopian socialism as a pretext to destroy Christianity, Natural Law and the Constitution while forcing society into a globalist Marxist state.

Heads the Progressive-Muslim Axis wins – tails Western civilization, Christianity and Israel lose.

Predictably, the litany of what Lenin called useful idiots comes to center stage to spout their evil propaganda. When asked by “NewsHour” host Jim Lehrer if Egypt’s embattled president is a dictator, Vice President Joe Biden answered, “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

The next useful idiot is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). He told the world for a dozen years (1997-2009) that Iran has no intent of obtaining nuclear capability, and if they did it would be only for their domestic energy needs. He turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear hegemony, so now that nation possess 100 nuclear warheads. Virtually all this developed during his tenure at IAEA.

ElBaradei’s reward for making the world an infinitely more dangerous place? Like Arafat, Carter and Obama, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

ElBaradei now brags to the world that his recent axis with the Muslim Brotherhood is benign. This Nazi-like organization founded in 1928 is the grandfather of the modern Muslim terrorist movement, yet ElBaradei claims that this political alliance will only bring peace to Egypt and Israel. In the meantime, Israel is furious with the Obama administration for turning against President Mubarak whom they considered a good ally and the provider of Israel’s natural gas, which is now shut off to the saboteurs.

Obama’s remarks regarding the chaos in Egypt have been unprepared, tepid and cowardly, which will only further destabilize the Middle East.

This brings me to the crux of my argument: Is Islam compatible with a republic? No! Yet other than tiny Israel, where in the Middle East or in any Muslim country exists a government structure approximating a democratic republic that guarantees natural rights contained in the Bill of Rights? Such a country can never exist under Islam because Islam is incompatible with Natural Law and a pluralistic, diverse civilization.

The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is a battle cry for perpetual war against Christianity, Israel and Western civilization – Allah is our objective, the prophet is our leader, the Quran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

The Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979 began America’s financial aid of Egypt, which amounts to scores of billions of dollars to date. Most of that money goes to Egypt’s military. Egypt, along with several other Muslim nations fought (and lost), four major wars against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Why for the past three decades have we given money to build Egypt’s military and keep a dictator in power? Because they signed that treasonous false peace treaty in 1979 with that nitwit Jimmy Carter while Egypt secretly ships hundreds of tons of weaponry though their shared tunnels into Gaza, which Hamas uses to kill Israelis.

Is America’s Middle East policy legitimate foreign policy or duplicitous extortion, bribery purchased with blood money?

“Better to trust the devil you know than the devil you don’t know” has been America’s cowardly rejoinder for decades of supporting murderous tyrants. I reply: America shouldn’t be trusting or trading with any devils. America’s foreign policy in the Middle East since Jimmy Carter has been one of expediency over justice, pragmatism over principle and cowardice over courage, while these murderous Muslim dictators like Mubarak, Arafat, King Hussein and Abdullah, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Saudi sheiks have played America like a pimp uses a prostitute.

America must break the servile bondage of the Progressive-Muslim Axis over American foreign policy. The trillions spent in foreign aid and war over there we’ve essentially flushed down the toilet. What has 35 years of Middle Eastern “diplomacy” gotten us but 9/11, two Iraq wars, Afghanistan and the devolution of American exceptionalism?

I am not promoting neo-isolationist policies America had prior to the World Wars, but how about breaking the slave chains of China, Iran and the Saudis and returning to a robust Reagan foreign policy where we manufacture what we need here in this country without needless regulation and union thuggery? How about America mining for our own rich natural resources in coal, oil, natural gas, shale and other profitable minerals needed for computers, manufacturing and weaponry? America is literally the Saudi Arabia of coal, oil shale and natural gas, but for too long we’ve allowed gutless politicians to be controlled by the environmental fanatics, union thugs and the regulatory Gestapo.

Stop the Progressive-Muslim Axis. America needs a pragmatic and narrowly defined foreign policy that makes alliances with Christian or Christian-friendly nations and avoids what President George Washington warned against, entangling alliances with those nations whose ideology and culture seek our destruction.

Any nation that we have to bribe with foreign aid (i.e., voluntary extortion) isn’t a faithful or true ally and will only push America into bankruptcy and into treasonous geopolitical entanglements.

Ellis Washington is former editor of the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute. He hosts a radio program Thursdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on 1620 AM in Atlanta. It can be heard online at the Radio Sandy Springs website. Washington is a regular co-host of the popular radio show, Joshua’s Trial heard Saturdays on WDTKam.com. Visit his website, the Ellis Washington Report. Washington is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history and critical race theory. His latest book is “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust.”

 

WesternFront America