Seeing that things are changing with Libya; I thought this to be a be very appropriate video: (Via Reason Hit and Run, and Reason TV)
Category: History
The Saturday Afternoon Mental Health Break: Special Memorial Edition – Geraldine Ferraro RIP
Regardless of what one thought of her political leaning; you cannot argue this fact — Geraldine Ferraro was one hell of a woman. Pioneer, Glass ceiling breaker… all of that…
In that Spirit and in that Spirit alone, I present this…. Rest in peace Lady…. you’ve more than earned it.
Video:
Via LA Times:
WASHINGTON—
Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic congresswoman who became the first woman on a major party presidential ticket as Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984, died on Saturday at the age of 75, according to a statement from her family.Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston of a blood cancer after a 12-year illness.
Geraldine Ferraro
Ferraro was a telegenic, articulate and fiery three-term New York congresswoman when Mondale picked her from the male-dominated U.S. House of Representatives. Ferraro’s presence on the Democratic ticket generated excitement on the campaign trail, particularly among females of all ages.
Yet on Election Day, Republican President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush defeated Mondale and Ferraro in a landslide, carrying every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota.
In delivering her concession speech that night, Ferraro urged Americans to support the re-elected president, and then saluted Mondale for helping women reach new political heights.
“For two centuries, candidates have run for president. Not one from a major party ever asked a woman to be his running mate — until Walter Mondale,” she said.
“Campaigns, even if you lose them, do serve a purpose,” Ferraro said. “My candidacy has said the days of discrimination are numbered. American women will never be second-class citizens again.”
She was a Democrat from a time, when the Democratic Party was still a respectable organization. May she rest in peace.
Prayers for the family. 🙁
Warren Christopher – RIP
A Democrat from a bygone has died:
LOS ANGELES – Warren M. Christopher, a key figure in peace efforts in Bosnia and the Mideast as secretary of state in the Clinton administration, has died, a spokeswoman for his law firm said Saturday. He was 85.Christopher died at his home in Los Angeles late Friday of
complications from bladder and kidney cancer, said Sonja Steptoe of the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, where Christopher was a senior partner.A longtime Californian, Christopher also headed a panel that pushed a number of Los Angeles Police Department reforms following the 1992 riots.A loyal Democrat and meticulous lawyer, Christopher also supervised the contested Florida recount for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, decided for George W. Bush.
via Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher Dies at Age of 85 – FoxNews.com.
Democrats of this man’s era were different people. Not nearly as vile and nasty as they are today. I refer to Democrats of this man’s era; as the pre-Saul Alinsky era Democrats. When that party still had some trace of ethics, honor and class. Nowadays; all of that is gone.
May Mr. Christopher rest in peace. Prayers for his family as always.
Where the Itamar killers trained by the US?
That is the story according to this report: (H/T to Tim Graham on Facebook)
JERUSALEM – Two members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ official security forces were arrested in conjunction with this past weekend’s bloody massacre in which five family members were brutally stabbed to death inside their home in the Jewish village of Itamar, WND has learned.The names of the apprehended suspects will be released to the Israeli media within hours but were revealed to WND by security officials working on the murder.Two cousins are now in Israeli custody and are suspected in the slayings. Ahmed Awad is an officer in Abbas’ Preventative Security Services in the northern West Bank city of Nablis. Iyad Awad is an officer in Abbas’ General Intelligence services in Ramallah.Both the Preventative and General Intelligence services of Fatah are armed, trained and funded by the U.S.The duo did not personally carry out the murders, but rather they assisting in the planning and logistics, informed security sources told WND.Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has run training bases for PA militias. The U.S. also has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid and weapons to build up the PA militias. Since 2007, the U.S. has stepped up its efforts at training the PA, including a new, advanced program for Palestinian police to train 500 to 600 cadets at a time at the American bases. The U.S. currently operates training bases for the PA police and other militias, such as Force 17 and the Preventative Security Services in the West Bank city of Jericho and the Jordanian village of Giftlik.
via WorldNetDaily: U.S.-trained forces arrested in bloody slaying of kids.
Like I wrote yesterday; this murder is the continuation of a very long war, that dates back to Biblical times. However, the very idea that our Armed Forces trained these people; changes the ballgame. I wonder what President Obama would think about such things? Of course, based upon what I have been reading; he really does not care about Israel (or anything else for that matter, including America) at all.
Update: Thanks to the people at Rotter.net for linking in! (Hebrew to English Machine translation here.) If anyone happens to have an account there and can speak Hebrew; please let them know that I cannot Independently verify the claims made by WND in that story above, thanks!
Quote of the Day
You’d think, nearly a decade after the events of Tora Bora, that Mr. Rumsfeld would understand the extent of the error and the breadth of its implications. He does not. Needless to say, Tora Bora was the fault of someone else—Gen. Franks of course, and CIA Director George Tenet. “Franks had to determine whether attempting to apprehend one man on the run” was “worth the risks.” Needless to say “there were numerous operational details.” And of course, in a typical Rumsfeldian touch, he says he later learned CIA operatives on the ground had asked for help, but “I never received such a request from either Franks or Tenet and cannot imagine denying it if I had.” I can.
Osama bin Laden was not “one man on the run.” He is the man who did 9/11. He had just killed almost 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, in a field in Pennsylvania. He’s the reason people held hands and jumped off the buildings. He’s the reason the towers groaned to the ground.
It is the great scandal of the wars of the Bush era that the U.S. government failed to get him and bring him to justice. It is the shame of this book that Don Rumsfeld lacks the brains to see it, or the guts to admit it.
CNN Asks, “Are Whites racially oppressed?”
This is a very interesting article and I have very mixed feelings on it. On one hand, I think it is very fair of CNN to ask the question; on the other, I am very highly disappointed that they went to some very, shall we say, nasty people for their answers.
Via CNN:
(CNN) — They marched on Washington to reclaim civil rights.
They complained of voter intimidation at the polls.
They called for ethnic studies programs to promote racial pride.
They are, some say, the new face of racial oppression in this nation — and their faces are white.
“We went from being a privileged group to all of a sudden becoming whites, the new victims,” says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at La Salle University in Pennsylvania who researches white racial attitudes and was baffled to find that whites see themselves as a minority.
“You have this perception out there that whites are no longer in control or the majority. Whites are the new minority group.”
Call it racial jujitsu: A growing number of white Americans are acting like a racially oppressed majority. They are adopting the language and protest tactics of an embattled minority group, scholars and commentators say.
The legitimate reasoning:
- A recent Public Religion Research Institute poll found 44% of Americans surveyed identify discrimination against whites as being just as big as bigotry aimed at blacks and other minorities. The poll found 61% of those identifying with the Tea Party held that view, as did 56% of Republicans and 57% of white evangelicals.
- More colleges are offering courses in “Whiteness Studies” as white Americans cope with becoming what one commentator calls a “dispossessed majority group.”
- A Texas group recently formed the “Former Majority Association for Equality” to offer college scholarships to needy white men. Colby Bohannan, the group’s president, says white men don’t have scholarship options available to minorities. “White males are definitely not a majority” anymore, he says.
- U.S. Census Bureau projections that whites will become a minority by 2050 are fueling fears that whiteness no longer represents the norm. This fear has been compounded by the recent recession, which hit whites hard.
- You have this perception out there that whites are no longer in control or the majority. –Charles Gallagher, sociologist
- Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh argued in a radio show that Republicans are an “oppressed minority” in need of a “civil rights movement” because its members willingly sit in the “back of the bus” and “are afraid of the fire hoses and the dogs.”
- Fox talk-show host Glenn Beck led a march on Washington (attended primarily by white people) to “restore honor,” and once called President Obama a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture.” He later said he regretted making that comment.
- Conservative news outlets ran a number of stories last summer highlighting an incident from the 2008 elections, in which activists from the New Black Panther Party appeared to be intimidating voters at a polling place. Those claims were never proven.
All of that stuff is very much legitimate, and I am fine with CNN reporting the story; because, quite frankly, I am one of these people. However, here is my issue with this story:
Some white commentators are unapologetic about this racial anxiety.
Peter Brimelow, author of “Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster,” asserts that much of white America’s anxiety derives from living under a black president and changing demographics.
Diversity, he says, “is not strength.”
Brimelow’s website, VDARE.COM, has been described as a hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks extremist groups in the U.S.
Some may see him as extreme, but Brimelow argues in his columns that more white Americans are moving toward his stance on immigration and other issues.
He cites as proof the rise of the Tea Party movement and the racial makeup of Beck’s march on Washington. He says more whites recognize, even if it’s only on a subliminal level, that they have common interests to defend.
“Of course, they would deny this, quite sincerely, if you put it to them because the idea of whites defending their interests as whites is quite new,” he says. “Americans are trained to think that any explicit defense of white interests is ‘racist.’ “
Sociologist Charles Gallagher says more whites regard themselves as an embattled minority group.James Edwards, host of the “Political Cesspool” radio show, isn’t shy about naming those interests. He says white Americans have become the “dispossessed majority” and that coming demographic changes may turn the United States into a “Third-World flop-house.”
Edwards, who is considered a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, says whites must organize like other stigmatized groups.
“There is nothing wrong for Jewish organizations to promote the self-interest of Jews or black organizations to promote the interest of blacks,” he says. “There is no organization to stand up to advance the interests of the dispossessed majority.”
Those white interests have been compromised by what he sees as the “preferential treatment” blacks have received in the job market to compensate for slavery, Edwards says.
“Whatever mistakes might have been made in our pasts, they have not only been corrected, but they’ve been overcompensated for,” he says.
Now whites are victims of pervasive racism, Edwards says.
“They’re the victims of it every day. Anything a white conservative does that a liberal doesn’t like is called racism.”
Both Brimelow and Edwards reject outright the Southern Poverty Law Center’s description of their organizations as extremist.
Okay, here is my issue with this part. Firstly, I do not believe that Peter Brimelow is a racist. But I know damned well that James Edwards is a racist and very much a bigot. I have listened to that “Political Cesspool” and I can tell you firsthand; that the political cesspool is nothing more than high-brow White Nationalism and Klanman mentality. Here is a few select quotes from this guy:
Among the things Edwards has written:
* August 11, 2008: “For blacks in the Americas, slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to them. Unfortunately, it’s the worst thing that ever happened to white Americans.”
* In an August 6, 2008, post headlined “Jewish media reaches new heights,” discussing a Slate.com article by “Jew Timothy Noah,” Edwards wrote that the piece would “make sense once you understand that Jews are the ones who are always speaking in code; when they use words like ‘racists’, ‘bigots’, ‘anti-semites’, they simply mean white people.”
* In a July 9, 2008, post headlined “Great moments in Jewish journalism,” Edwards referred to a column by The Washington Post’s David S. Broder about former Sen. Jesse Helms as “another hatefilled Jewish attack piece.”
* In a July 30, 2008, post, Edwards asked: “If the WNBA [Women’s National Basketball Association] is so hell bent on diversity, why don’t they hire a couple of heterosexual players or coaches?”
* In a June 6, 2008, post headlined “Does she hate Whitey?” Edwards wrote: “Michelle Obama, that is. Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure she does. Just like her husband. Just like about 90% of blacks.”
Yeah, I know where I got the quotes from, but when you’re rounding up the truth, you do what you gotta do; there is also this: (H/T Myself!)
Oh, man…if only they had read my book! Racism, Schmacism. All of this unpleasantness could’ve been avoided. This thing is such a mess I don’t even know where to start, and it’s pathetic and hilarious at the same time. I wanted to write about it last week, but I was just swamped, and now things have gotten even crazier with the whole NAACP/Tea Party brouhaha, so I might as well go for it.
Well, let’s just start at the beginning. Last week, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning the “racism” of the Tea Party movement, and demanding that the movement purge itself of those hideous “racists” in their grass roots movement. Yes, the very same mental midgets who just a few weeks ago were condemning a Hallmark greeting card with an outer space theme because they think “black holes” means “black hos”, an organization which is explicitly organized for the exclusive benefit of one race of people, and whose name contains the words “Colored People”, actually had the gall to pass this resolution.
This was a great opportunity for the Tea Party movement to show some backbone by laughing in the face of the imbeciles at the NAACP. But did they? Of course not. Predictably, they responded in the same tired, pusillanimous manner with which they always respond to these never ending accusations. Instead of replying with a loud BWAHAHAHA! or a “Yeah? What’s your point?” or “So what?” or “Of course we’re racists -we’re white people.
That’s what “racist” means or “Can any of you race hustlers even spell “racist”?”, they predictably went into their usual bend over and grab their ankles mode. They protested that oh no, we’re not racists at all, we don’t tolerate racists at our rallies which are really huge rainbow coalitions, and it’s the NAACP and the liberals who are the real racists, etc., etc. You know, the lame “Bull Connor was a Democrat!” defense. It never works, but they just keep trotting it out like some lucky charm in the vain hope that this time it will work.
Racist means white person. Period. Until the Tea Partiers get that through their heads, nothing’s going to change, and they’re never going to be an effective political force. They really, really need to read Racism, Schmacism.
No, what you need to do asshole, is to disappear or die of a massive heart attack. James Edwards motivation is one thing and one thing only; hatred of blacks, Jews, and any other minority that is not “Aryan” white. In this man’s case, is one instance when the Southern Poverty Law Center, as much as I dislike that organization; is absolutely correct. For the record, the man’s mentality is not that of a Republican; that damned mentality was cultivated by the Democrats of the south. After all, the Democrats are the one’s who created the original Klu Klux Klan of the 1800’s to harass and intimidate those blacks who tried to vote Republican.
James Edwards, is one of those people.
So, my point here is this; I do not mind CNN “Going There” as they say nowadays. But I would have much preferred if they would have used someone of a more legitimate status. Possibly someone like Pat Buchanan or someone like him. Instead of a third-rate, modern day Klansman like Edwards. Because really, the article sort of looks like it is trying to paint white people in a negative light.
Unless, maybe that was the intent in the first place.
Other Bloggers Covering this, mostly liberal, mileage may very, as well truthfulness: Zandar Versus The Stupid, American Prospect, Runnin’ Scared, The Awl, Shakesville and Wonkette
The Thursday Night Mental Health Break: Night Ranger
Admittedly, this not my first band of choice. This is what I call “Chick Rock” from the 1980’s. But the theme fits perfectly.
Enjoy:
I have to confess, that I very highly doubt that this sort of Pro-American imagery would have flown in this day and age of Anti-Americanism in the entertainment industry today.
Frank Buckles, The Last Doughboy from World War I has died
First Videos: (h/t HotAir)
An Awesome Trailer from an up and coming movie on Mr. Buckles life:
And, the story, from The Washington Post:
Frank Woodruff Buckles - February 1, 1901 – February 27, 2011
Frank W. Buckles died Sunday, sadly yet not unexpectedly at age 110, having achieved a singular feat of longevity that left him proud and a bit bemused.
In 1917 and 1918, close to 5 million Americans served in World War I, and Mr. Buckles, a cordial fellow of gentle humor, was the last known survivor. “I knew there’d be only one someday,” he said a few years back. “I didn’t think it would be me.”
Mr. Buckles, a widower, died on his West Virginia farm, said his daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, who had been caring for him there.
Flanagan, 55, said her father had recently recovered from a chest infection and seemed in reasonably good health for a man his age. At 12:15 a.m. Sunday, he summoned his live-in nurse to his bedroom. As the nurse looked on, Flanagan said, Mr. Buckles drew a breath, and his eyes fell shut.
“We have lost a living link to an important era in our nation’s history,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said of Mr. Buckles, whose distant generation was the first to witness the awful toll of modern, mechanized warfare. “But we have also lost a man of quiet dignity who dedicated his final years to ensuring the sacrifices of his fellow doughboys are appropriately commemorated.”
As time thinned the ranks of those long-ago U.S. veterans, the nation hardly noticed them vanishing, until the roster dwindled to one ex-soldier, embraced in his final years by an appreciative public.
“Frank was a history book in and of himself, the kind you can’t get at the library,” said his friend Muriel Sue Kerr. Having lived from the dawn of the 20th century, he seemed to never tire of sharing his and the country’s old memories – of the First World War, of roaring prosperity and epic depression, and of a second, far more cataclysmic global conflict, which he barely survived.
Mr. Buckles, who was born by lantern light in a Missouri farmhouse, quit school at 16 and bluffed his way into the Army. As the nation flexed its full military might overseas for the first time, he joined 4.7 million Americans in uniform and was among 2 million U.S. troops shipped to France to vanquish the German kaiser.
Ninety years later, with available records showing that former corporal Buckles, serial No. 15577, had outlived all of his compatriots from World War I, the Department of Veterans Affairs declared him the last doughboy standing. He was soon answering fan mail and welcoming a multitude of inquisitive visitors to his rural home.
“I feel like an endangered species,” he joked, well into his 11th decade. As a rear-echelon ambulance driver behind the trenches of the Western Front in 1918, he had been safe from the worst of the fighting. But “I saw the results,” he would say.
Many great things have been writing about this man. But my one word or thought is this; History lost. Frank Buckles was the last of that great history of America. He now is in his new body; and is most likely around the throne of grace. Mr. Buckles, may you rest in the eternal peace of the almighty God. Because, you have more than earned it.
May his memory live on through the lives of his children and through the lives of every American citizen that cherishes his or her freedom.
A small prayer tonight for the Buckles family.
Related:
Frank Buckles, last American veteran of World War I, dies at 110
Frank Buckles, Last World War I Doughboy, Is Dead at 110
Others Covering: The Moderate Voice, msnbc.com, No Sheeples Here, AOL News, New York Magazine, Patterico’s Pontifications, Swampland, TigerHawk, Pundit Press, Moe Lane, Outside the Beltway, Lean Left, The Daily Caller, RedState, Maggie’s Notebook, UrbanGrounds, The Mahablo, The Daily Dish, Runnin’ Scared
The Late Night Music Express Presents: The Jeff Beck Group
This first one is really cool. The piano solo at the beginning is a bit long… But once it gets gone; hang on to your hat! Classic Rock at its most raw, powerful and loud. How live music should be:
This next one, sounds like the original, and sort of doesn’t. The original singer on this was Rod Stewart; I think this version holds up rather well; some great drumming on this one too. The drummer does a quick, fast, triplet on this one… I wish I could do them like that! 😀 (yes, I am a drummer, but I don’t do triplets like that!)
Video: The Reality Report: Taking the Neo-Conservatives to the mat!
In this space, before I post this video; I usually post a disclaimer, because usually, I do not agree with some of the content and ideas presented in this Video report. However, this week, I am going to forgo the disclaimer. Because a good ninety percent of what is presented here, I absolutely agree with and besides, nothing gives me more joy, than to watch freedom-loving Americans making Neo-Conservative fascists look like the damn fools that they are. Yes, it warms the cackles of my stone cold heart to see those who wish to sell our freedoms out to the altar of “Security” made to look like buffoons.
Very well done gents, very, very, well done. 😀
Having said all that —- here is the synopsis and Video….
Synopsis: In this special CPAC expanded edition of the Reality Report, we go face to face with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich and present the highlights (and lowlights)! ; Gary Franchi runs into former Saturday Night Live star, Victoria Jackson, and interviews CPAC Chair David Keene about the Defender of the Constitution Award. Gary also meets with Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s Communications Director, to give you the inside scoop on the Ron Paul 2012 Presidential campaign. Jeff Frazee from Young Americans for Liberty joins the show to tell us how he got turned on to Ron Paul’s message. We meet with Congresswoman Nan Hayworth from New York’s 19th district to ask her about her vote for the Patriot Act. We also ask Ron Paul supporters what it is about his message that inspires them. We also take you to the Jordan Page after party for the release of his new album titled “Liberty”. Angie returns to deliver the headlines with a special report on the Young Americans for Freedom and Truth Squad.TV’s confrontation. We’ll read your email, review last week’s poll results and brand a new enemy of the state.
The Video:
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Source for WMD’s in Iraq admits to making it all up.
This is a very interesting story, the problem is; I cannot embed the stupid video, because the U.K. Guardian does not allow embedding of their videos. doggone putzes. 🙄
Anyhow, go watch the video, by clicking here.
The story via the Guardian:
In a small flat in the German town of Erlangen in February 2003, an out-of-work Iraqi sat down with his wife to watch one of the world’s most powerful men deliver the speech of his career on live TV.
As US secretary of state, Colin Powell gathered his notes in front of the United Nations security council, the man watching — Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the west’s intelligence services as “Curveball” — had more than an inkling of what was to come. He was, after all, Powell’s main source, a man his German handlers had feted as a new “Deep throat” — an agent so pivotal that he could bring down a government.
As Curveball watched Powell make the US case to invade Iraq, he was hiding an admission that he has not made until now: that nearly every word he had told his interrogators from Germany’s secret service, the BND, was a lie.
Everything he had said about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons programme was a flight of fantasy – one that, he now claims was aimed at ousting the Iraqi dictator. Janabi, a chemical engineering graduate who had worked in the Iraqi industry, says he looked on in shock as Powell’s presentation revealed that the Bush administration’s hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed the lot. Something else left him even more amazed; until that point he had not met a US official, let alone been interviewed by one.
“I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime,” he told the Guardian in a series of interviews carried out in his native Arabic and German. “I and my sons are proud of that, and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”
His interviews with the Guardian, which took place over two days, appeared to be partly a purge of conscience, partly an attempt to justify what he did. It also seems to be a bid to resurrect his own reputation, which might help him start again in Iraq — a country that eight years later is still reeling from more than 100,000 civilian deaths and the aftermath of a savage sectarian war.
I very highly recommend that you go read the rest of that; because it is very much involved. I must confess, I have very much mixed feelings about watching that; on one hand, It sort of angers me, that this idiot was trusted to the point of sending our and other nations troops over there and for what? Because of a guy who hated Saddam enough to lie? On the other hand; which is the overriding feeling is this — Saddam was, as we all know; a very bad man and treated his own people horribly. So, in hind sight, perhaps it was all worth it.
Ace is not buying the dude’s reasoning; it is a really long posting, I’ll quote a snippet, but I highly recommend you read his too. Thus saith Ace:
So to me this is guy being pressed for further information or proof and (having none) saying “Fine, if that’s what he says.” That doesn’t seem to sound anything like a confession, and I’m not surprised that no one took it as such at the time.
Furthermore, I don’t trust Curveball now, either. We already know, by self-confession, he’s a longtime liar who tells interested parties what they wish to hear. His current version of reality is that the spun these lies for the patriotic purpose of deposing a tyrant; he doesn’t mention that valued intelligence assets get money and nice little protected apartments, too.
Again, as with the Guardian story, Go read the rest. As it is a very interesting read. The gomer award should go to a bunch of people and a couple of Governments, including ours. The real cute part is this; you know how the left says Bush and Co. are all war criminals; if that is the case, ol’ Curvy here, is an accessory and should be tried as well. Truth is, Bush and Co. acted on what they had, which was this guy and other pieces of fragmented evidence. Because of it, they acted. In all honesty, Bush and Co. are simply guilty of violating an old Russian proverb — Trust, but verify. For that, they paid for it dearly, in the loss of the trust of the American people.
No amount of navel grazing will ever change anything, bring back the lost Vets and such. We just should ensure that this never, ever, happens again. Because this War will be a black mark on America’s record for a very long time. God help us, if this ever happens again.
Blogger Roundup, Mostly liberals, mileage may very here: The Huffington Post, Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, TPMMuckraker, msnbc.com, Oliver Willis, Outside the Beltway, New York Magazine, Balloon Juice, Comments from Left Field, ABCNEWS, Sky Dancing, Wonkette, Mock, Paper, Scissors, The Raw Story, AOL News, LewRockwell.com Blog and Newshoggers.com (Via Memeorandum)
Update: John Sexton, writing over at HotAir.com, has an excellent take on this story:
Now we know that the justification for the war really was based in part on a lie. The left can find some vindication in this fact. That said, the details presented do not support the idea that some dark cabal within the Bush administration organized our entrance into Iraq. On the contrary, we now know who the liar was and he wasn’t part of the administration. We also know why he lied, and it wasn’t to get rich off Iraqi oil, to finish what Bush 41 started or any of the other explanations the left has offered over the years. Curveball wanted to see Saddam toppled for the good of the Iraqi people.
Of course that doesn’t mean American soldiers and taxpayers should have had to go along for the ride. Conspiracies aside, there’s plenty to be upset about here. Numerous intelligence agencies failed, starting with the German BND which interviewed Curveball over a period of six months. British and American intelligence agencies failed to detect the fraud as well. The result is that we were led to war, in part, by a lie. Even if you believe the US is better off without Saddam in Iraq, you can’t be pleased about taking such a big swing on a curveball.
To that, I simply offer a hearty — Amen.
Hope and Change?: FBI doesn’t need court’s OK to get phone records, Obama’s Justice Department claims
Well, isn’t this just a lovely story to pick up on a Sunday Morning?
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the United States without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.
That assertion was revealed by the department – perhaps inadvertently – in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.
Critics say the legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that were supposed to have been stopped in 2006.
The controversy is a legacy of the Bush administration’s war on terror. Critics say the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.
For years after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI sought and obtained thousands of telephone records for international calls in an attempt to thwart potential terrorists. The bureau devised an informal system of requesting the records from three telecommunications firms to create what one agent called a “phone database on steroids” that included names, addresses, length of service and billing information.
Which proves to this old school, Paleoconservative, Fundamentalist Christian one thing and one thing alone. That the only difference between a Neo-Liberal; like President Obama and a Neoconservative like President Bush is this —- One loves big Government and the other loves big Government as long as they are the one’s controlling it.
I remember how doing the Bush era, people like Keith Olbermann,were wailing to the top of their lungs about how darned horrible of the Bush Administration to allow such stuff to happen; and now that the Obama Administration is in power, what do you hear?
(click to play)
That is right, absolutely nothing about it at all. That is because the socialist liberals do not give a damn about personal liberty, all they care about is winning elections. All of the attacks against the Bush administration about everything; Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, Iraq —- everything —was just partisan politics. It never was about the people; because socialists do not give a darn about the people! All they care about is power – governmental power — everything else to them is just second nature.
Which pretty much sums up why I stopped voted for the Democratic Party. I am pretty much on to their game anymore. They try to come off as the party of the people; but anymore, they are all about the party of the state.
Video: Don Rumsfield on 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and More
Some good video here:
The Story via ABC NEWS:
More than four years after leaving public life, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continues to believe the war in Iraq was worth the effort, and has no apologies for his decision-making in leading the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In an exclusive interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Rumsfeld concedes that “it’s possible” that decisions on how many troops to send into Iraq marked the biggest mistake of the war.
“In a war, many things cost lives,” Rumsfeld told Sawyer.
Pressed on the fact that President Bush has written that cutting troop levels in Iraq was “the most important failure in the execution of the war,” Rumsfeld called that “interesting.”
I do not much care for the man. He is, in my humble opinion, an ignoramus. But he does have his opinions and he is a human being.
Get the Book:
I also highly recommend George W. Bush’s book as well:
The Morning Mental Health Break: Thin Lizzy
This one is dedicated to the memory of Gary Moore, who we lost yesterday:
The renowned rock guitarist Gary Moore has died in a hotel room while on holiday in Spain.
Moore, 58, originally from Belfast, was a former member of the legendary Irish group Thin Lizzy.
Thin Lizzy manager Adam Parsons told the BBC he was found early on Sunday.
Moore was originally drafted into Thin Lizzy by its late frontman Phil Lynott. He later gained acclaim for his solo work and was a former member of the Irish group Skid Row.
The Northern Ireland guitarist was only 16 when he moved from Belfast to Dublin in 1969, to join Skid Row, which featured Lynott as lead vocalist.
He was later brought into Thin Lizzy by Lynott to replace the departing Eric Bell, another guitarist from Northern Ireland.
Lynott died in 1986 but a new line-up of Thin Lizzy continues to tour.
Bell told the BBC on Sunday he was still “in shock” at Moore’s death in the Costa del Sol.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said.
“He was so robust, he wasn’t a rock casualty, he was a healthy guy.
This news is very sad personally, being about the same age and growing up with his music from his days with Skid Row and Thin Lizzy. However, it was his guitar virtuosity that appealed to me the most, as it did to many others.
Thus another person and a piece of my youth has departed this mortal plane. As one commenter on another site stated, “God needed a lead guitarist for a new band.” If that is so, he couldn’t have chosen any better.
Godspeed Gary Moore. Your talent and passion will be missed greatly.
Greg over a Greg’s Opinion sums it up rather nicely:
One of the many guitar players I learned from, ripped off, and wished I could play half as good as. Much of the appreciation for melodic solos can be heard in a lot of his early-mid-80s solo work.
I believe that about sums it up. I also play guitar; and when I saw the headline, I let out a gasp and a “Oh no!”
Gary Moore joins the line of great guitar players that we have lost — Hendrix, Terry Kath, and many others.
I am also a guitar player and this one was a shock 😮 and so very sad. 😥
Quote of the Day
What happened was Ronald Wilson Blithering Reagan. Obviously Reagan did not suddenly descend out of the clouds in 1980. He had been the cherished candidate of the conservative movement, its chosen route to power, ever since Goldwater’s defeat. Goldwater was too blunt and candid, too much an unhandleable Real Person. What was needed was a lovable, manipulable icon. Moreover, Goldwater’s principles were too hard-edged: he was way too much a domestic libertarian, and he was too much an eager warmonger. Both his libertarianism and his passion for nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union scared the bejesus out of the American masses, as well as the more astute leadership of the conservative movement.
A reconstituted conservative movement would have to drop any libertarian ideology or concrete policies, except to provide a woolly and comfortable mood for suitably gaseous anti-government rhetoric and an improved foreign policy that would make sure that many more billions would go into the military-industrial complex, to step up global pressure against Communism, but avoiding an actual nuclear war. This last point was important: As much as they enjoy the role of the bully, neither the Establishment nor the American people want to risk nuclear war, which might, after all, blow them up as well. Once again, Ronnie Reagan looked like the Answer.
Two important new ingredients entered into, and helped reshape, the conservative movement during the mid 1970’s. One was the emergence of a small but vocal and politically powerful group of neo-conservatives (neocons), who were able, in a remarkably short time, to seize control of the think tanks, the opinion-molding institutions, and finally the politics, of the conservative movement. As ex-liberals, the neocons were greeted as important new converts from the enemy. More importantly, as ex-Trotskyites, the neocons were veteran politicos and organizers, schooled in Marxian cadre organizing and in manipulating the levers of power. They were shrewdly eager to place their own people in crucial opinion molding and money-raising positions, and in ousting those not willing to submit to the neocon program. Understanding the importance of financial support, the neocons knew how to sucker Old Right businessmen into giving them the monetary levers at their numerous foundations and think tanks. In contrast to free-market economists, for example, the neocons were eager to manipulate patriotic symbols and ethical doctrines, doing the microequivalent of Reagan and Bush’s wrapping themselves in the American Flag. Wrapping themselves, also, in such patriotic symbols as The Framers and the Constitution, as well as Family Values, the neocons were easily able to outflank free-market types and keep them narrowly confined to technical economic issues. In short the neocons were easily able to seize the moral and patriotic “high ground.”
The only group willing and able to challenge the neocons on their own moralizing on philosophic turf was, of course, the tiny handful of libertarians; and outright moral libertarianism, with its opposition to statism, theocracy, and foreign war, could never hope to get to first base with conservative businessmen, who, even at the best of times during the Old Right era, had never been happy about individual personal liberty, (e.g. allowing prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, or drugs) or with the libertarians’ individualism and conspicuous lack of piety toward the Pentagon, or toward the precious symbol of the Nation-State, the US flag.
The neocons were (and remain today) New Dealers, as they frankly describe themselves, remarkably without raising any conservative eyebrows. They are what used to be called, in more precise ideological days, “extreme right-wing Social Democrats.” In other words, they are still Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy-Humphrey Democrats. Their objective, as they moved (partially) into the Republican Party and the conservative movement, was to reshape it to become, with minor changes, a Roosevelt-Truman-etc. movement; that is, a liberal movement shorn of the dread “L” word and of post-McGovern liberalism. To verify this point all we have to do is note how many times Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, et al., properly reviled by conservatives while they were alive, are now lauded, even canonized, by the current neocon-run movement, from Ronnie Reagan on down. And no one calls them on this Orwellian revision of conservative movement history.
As statists-to-the-core the neocons had no problem taking the lead in crusades to restrict individual liberties, whether it be in the name of rooting out “subversives,” or of inculcating broadly religious (“Judeo-Christian”) or moral values. They were happy to form a cozy alliance with the Moral Majority, the mass of fundamentalists who entered the arena of conservative politics in the mid-1970s. The fundamentalists were goaded out of their quietist millenarian dreams (e.g., the imminent approach of Armageddon) and into conservative political action by the accumulation of moral permissivism in American life. The legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade was undoubtedly the trigger, but this decision came on top of a cumulative effect of the sexual revolution, the militant homosexual movement “out of the closet” and into the streets, the spread of pornography, and the visible decay of the public school system. The entry of the Moral Majority transformed American politics, not the least by furnishing the elite cadre of neocons with a mass base to guide and manipulate.
In economic matter, the neocons showed no more love of liberty, though this is obscured by the fact that the neocons wish to trim the welfare state of its post-Sixties excrescences, particularly since these were largely designed to aid black people. What the neocons want is a smaller, more “efficient” welfare state, within which bounds they would graciously allow the market to operate. The market is acceptable as a narrow instrumental device; their view of private property and the free market is essentially identical to Gorbachev’s in the Soviet Union.
Why did the Right permit itself to be bamboozled by the neocons? Largely because the conservatives had been inexorably drifting Stateward in the same manner. In response to the crushing defeat of Goldwater, the Right had become ever less libertarian and less principled, and ever more attuned to the “responsibilities” and moderations of Power. It is a far cry from three decades ago when Bill Buckley used to say that he too is an “anarchist” but that we have to put off all thoughts of liberty until the “international Communist conspiracy” is crushed. Those old Chodorovian libertarian days are long gone, and so is National Review as any haven for libertarian ideas. War mongering, militarism, theocracy, and limited “free” markets – this is really what Buckleyism amounted to by the late 1970s.
The burgeoning neocons were able to confuse and addle the Democratic Party by breaking with the Carter Administration, at the same time militantly and successfully pressuring it from within. The neocons formed two noisy front groups, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and the Committee on the Present Danger. By means of these two interlocking groups and their unusual access to influential media, the neocons were able to pressure the Carter Administration into breaking the détente with Russia over the Afghanistan imbroglio and influencing Carter to get rid of the dove Cyrus Vance as Secretary of State and to put foreign policy power into the hands of the Polish émigré hawk and Rockefeller Trilateralist, Zbigniew Brzezinski. In the meantime, the neocons pushed the hysterically hawkish CIA “B” Team report, wailing about alleged Soviet nuclear superiority, which in turn paved the way for the vast gift of spending handed to the military-industrial complex by the incoming Regan Administration. The Afghanistan and “B” Team hysterias, added to the humiliation by the Ayatollah, managed not only to kill off the bedeviled Carter Administration, but also to put the boots to non-intervention and to prepare the nation for a scrapping of the “post-Vietnam syndrome” and a return to the warmongering of the pre-Vietnam Era.
The Reagan candidacy of 1980 was brilliantly designed to weld a coalition providing the public’s instinctive anti-government mood with sweeping, but wholly nonspecific, libertarian rhetoric, as a convenient cover for the diametrically opposite policies designed to satisfy the savvy and politically effective members of that coalition: the neocons, the Buckleyite cons, the Moral Majority, the Rockefellers, the military-industrial complex, and the various Establishment special interests always clustering at the political trough.
[….]
Has the Reagan Administration done nothing good in its eight ghastly years on earth, you might ask? Yes, it has done one good thing; it has repealed the despotic 55-mile-per-hour highway speed limit. And that is it.
As the Gipper, at bloody long last, goes riding off into the sunset, he leaves us with a hideous legacy. He has succeeded in destroying the libertarian public mood of the late 1970’s, and replaced it with fatuous and menacing patriotic symbols of the Nation-State, especially The Flag, which he first whooped up in his vacuous reelection campaign in 1984, aided by the unfortunate coincidence of the Olympics being held at Los Angeles. (Who will soon forget the raucous baying of the chauvinist mobs: “USA! USA!” every time some American came in third in some petty event?) He has succeeded in corrupting libertarian and free-market intellectuals and institutions, although in Ronnie’s defense it must be noted that the fault lies with the corrupted and not with the corrupter.
It is generally agreed by political analysts that the ideological mood of the public, after eight years of Reaganism, is in support of economic liberalism (that is, an expanded welfare state), and social conservatism (that is, the suppression of civil liberties and the theocratic outlawing of immoral behavior). And, on foreign policy, of course, they stand for militaristic chauvinism. After eight years of Ronnie, the mood of the American masses is to expand the goodies of the welfare-warfare state (though not to increase taxes to pay for these goodies), to swagger abroad and be very tough with nations that can’t fight back, and to crack down on the liberties of groups they don’t like or whose values or culture they disagree with.
It is a decidedly unlovely and unlibertarian wasteland, this picture of America 1989, and who do we have to thank for it? Several groups: the neocons who organized it; the vested interests and the Power Elite who run it; the libertarians and free marketeers who sold out for it; and above all, the universally beloved Ronald Wilson Reagan, Who Made It Possible.
As he rides off into retirement, glowing with the love of the American public, leaving his odious legacy behind, one wonders what this hallowed dimwit might possibly do in retirement that could be at all worthy of the rest of his political career. What very last triumph are we supposed to “win for the Gipper”?
He has tipped his hand: I have just read that as soon as he retires, the Gipper will go on a banquet tour on behalf of the repeal of the 22nd (“Anti-Third Term”) Amendment – the one decent thing the Republicans have accomplished. In the last four decades. The 22nd Amendment was a well-deserved retrospective slap at FDR. It is typical of the depths to which the GOP has fallen in the last few years that Republicans have been actually muttering about joining the effort to repeal this amendment. If they are successful, then Ronald Reagan might be elected again, and reelected well into the 21st century.
In our age of High Tech, I’m sure that his mere physical death could easily have been overcome by his handlers and media mavens. Ronald Reagan will be suitably mummified, trotted out in front of a giant American flag, and some puppet master would have gotten him to give his winsome headshake and some ventriloquist would have imitated the golden tones: “We-e-ell…” (Why not? After all, the living reality of the last four years has not been a helluva lot different.)
Perhaps, after all, Ronald Reagan and almost all the rest of us will finally get our fondest wish: the election forever and ever of the mummified con King Ronnie.
The Truth about President Ronald Reagan
As you know, this is the 100’th birthday of our Nation’s 40’th President.
But I believe it is important to know, what he really did, while he was in office. The Progressive Blog, Think Progress, lists the things that Reagan did while he was in office. These are the ones that I, as a Paleo-Con care about — :
1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.
2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.
4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.
6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.
7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.
8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.
9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”
10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendency.
Now these here, are things that Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter, and were, of course, by the progressives, blamed on Reagan:
3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980?s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.
Which of course, is a liberal talking point. This was actually caused by the raising of taxes under Carter and because of the slump in the economy, caused by inflation; which again, was caused by Democrat’s spending.
Another talking point:
5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.
Well, that might have to do with the fact that President Reagan thought Abortion was murder; however, he knew that it was not the role of the Federal Government to stop abortion — but rather the State’s role. This is because he was a Federalist. Not only that — but — do the liberals know the concept of a campaign promise or saying stuff to get elected? Funny, Obama did the very same things, when he was running. But that’s okay — because he is a liberal! 🙄
Also, The American Conservative’s blog @TAC lists some remembrances:
Pat Buchanan – “We Shall Not See His Like Again”
When America began to tear herself apart over morality, race, and Vietnam in the 1960s, the old certitudes he articulated and the old virtues he personified held a magnetic attraction for a people bewildered by what was happening to their country. When he spoke, he took us to a higher ground, above petty and partisan squabbles and divisions, where we could dream and be one people again.
Doug Bandow — “American Realist”
Reagan passionately believed in the importance of ideas and husbanded rather than squandered America’s credibility. When Ronald Reagan left office the U.S. truly did stand tall, a far cry from its status today as an isolated, distrusted giant. President Reagan likely would have been horrified: the U.S. initiating war on a lie and then finding itself caught in an unnecessary guerrilla war that has made the West less secure and America more hated by more people than at any point in its history.
Daniel McCarthy — “Getting Reagan Right”
The Reagan I Knew could just as fairly have been called The Reagan I Didn’t Know, for after a 40-year friendship, Buckley suddenly realized he had misjudged the man. At National Review’s 30th-anniversay gala in 1985, he toasted the then-president as the consummate cold warrior: “What I said in as many words, dressed up for the party, was that Reagan would, if he had to, pull the nuclear trigger,” writes Buckley. “Twenty years after saying that, in the most exalted circumstance, in the presence of the man I was talking about, I changed my mind.”Richard Gamble — “How Right Was Reagan?”
Reagan’s speeches abounded with themes that were anything but conservative. He aligned the Republican crusader more closely with America’s expansive liberal temperament. In particular, his brand of evangelical Christianity, combined with fragments of Puritanism, enlightenment optimism, and romantic liberalism, set Reagan apart in key ways from historic conservatism.
Also, here is Jack Hunter’s video on Reagan:
Jack Hunter, as always — is spot on.
So, with Reagan, it was a mixed bag. As the comments section over at @TAC says:
A great actor in his greatest role. On balance,during his tenure, taxes increased,inflation increased,government employment increased,the debt increased,the power of government increased yet he made you feel good about it. He “talked the talk” but didn’t “walk the walk.” As to the last few years of his 2nd Administration,I think he was in a different world. Yet, all in all,you couldn’t help like the guy and the way he made you feel proud to be an American.
However, for the record; I think it is important to note, what really caused the collapse of the Soviet Empire — It sure was not Ronald Reagan. I mean, the man gave a speech in free Germany and automatically, Reagan brought down the Soviet Union. Which, of course, is foolishness. Reagan no more brought down that Soviet Empire, than George W. Bush defeated Al-Qaeda.
While I did admire Ron Reagan for his speaking ability and his ability to lead; as a Paleo-Conservative or as I like call it — a real Conservative — I will say, Reagan was by no means perfect.
—
Post updated to reflect differences between legit complaints with Reagan and liberal talking points.
Update: As Always Ed Morrissey offers a “Rose Colored Glasses” version of the history of Reagan. ....and as usual the commenters over there are stupidly comparing that feckless train wreak of a media whore to President Reagan; which is sick, if you ask me. 🙄
Video: The Reality Report: Bypassing the Obama Kill Switch
Please Note: The posting of this video does not constitute an endorsement of views presented in this video. It is simply posted for information purposes only.
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In this issue of the reality report: The Egyptian Revolution triggered a government shutdown of the web. Could it happen here? Is the internet kill switch back on the congressional table? If the Feds shut down the web in the United States how could “We the People” get around the internet blackout? Gary Franchi reveals what tools you need to bypass a Government sponsored internet blockade. In this edition, Ron Paul explains the how the Federal Reserve works outside of congress’ constitutional framework. We also look at Senator Chuck Schumer failing miserably while explaining the three branches of government. Beautiful words are uttered from the lips of the Florida attorney general about Obamacare. President and founder of Freedom Law School, Peymon Montehedeh, gives us the details on this years’ Freedom Conference, and we announce a new action taking place in March. We’ll take a dip into the mailbag, deliver the results of last week’s poll, a viewer brands a new Enemy of the State… and Nina returns to deliver the Headlines from the new Reality Report News Room.
Challenger: It has been 25 years
It is truly unbelievable. It has been 25 years ago, when these images were splashed across our TV screens:
A President comforts a grieving Nation:
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ —- Ronald Reagan
This is a great one here, I ask that you go and read the entire thing….:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — For many, no single word evokes as much pain.
Challenger.
A quarter-century later, images of the exploding space shuttle still signify all that can go wrong with technology and the sharpest minds. The accident on Jan. 28, 1986 — a scant 73 seconds into flight, nine miles above the Atlantic for all to see — remains NASA’s most visible failure.
It was the world’s first high-tech catastrophe to unfold on live TV. Adding to the anguish was the young audience: School children everywhere tuned in that morning to watch the launch of the first schoolteacher and ordinary citizen bound for space, Christa McAuliffe.
She never made it.
McAuliffe and six others on board perished as the cameras rolled, victims of stiff O-ring seals and feeble bureaucratic decisions.
(—-)
“I wonder if it’s because the image is so ingrained in our brains, that it seems like yesterday,” Rodgers said.
Almost as many years have passed since the accident, as the span of her 26-year marriage to Dick Scobee.
“Isn’t it interesting about the number 25?” she asked softly. “Challenger was the 25th mission. This is 25 years.”
A full generation has come and gone.
Something to watch, a documentary on this awful event….:
The Late Night Mental Health Break: Rez Band
Nite folks! See you in the morning…. 😀
Video: The Reality Report #78: The Homeland becomes the Fatherland
Please note: The posting on this video does NOT constitute support for all of the views therein. It is posted for your education and information.
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Synopsis: In the 78th edition of the Reality Report, Gary Franchi draws the direct parallels America shares with Hitler’s Germany and provides the solution to avoiding their terrible fate. We take a look at Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk where he discusses what a new found interest in the Constitution could mean for America. CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, Peter Schiff tells us why the Chinese modeled their currency after the U.S. dollar. We also hear from the former U.S. military analyst who is responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. He explains the recent war on whistle-blowers. Chris Mathews latest hypocrisy is revealed and Angie breaks down the news. As always we take a dip into the mailbag, reveal the results from last weeks viewer poll and brand a new Enemy of the State.
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Quote of the Day
But 8 million homes are today in foreclosure or their owners are delinquent in their mortgage payments. Some 5.5 million are occupied by families whose mortgages are at least 20 percent higher than the value of the property, making them prime candidates for foreclosure.
This weekend, Bank of America reported fourth-quarter losses of $1.6 billion and a 2010 yearly loss of $3.6 billion. Its credit card unit took a $10 billion write-down, and its home loan business is still reeling from the fallout of the exploded housing bubble.
Now, facing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, House Republicans are balking at agreeing to raise the debit limit of $14.3 trillion, though the national debt just crossed the $14 trillion mark.
I have to wonder: What would Martin Luther King Jr. think today?
Because today is his day. I remember the man.
His Best Speech, I felt:
Part 1:
Part 2:
It is without argument; except from some mentally and morally depraved few among the white race — that Martin Luther King Jr. was in fact, the standard bearer of Christian way of fighting racial injustice in America. Martin Luther King Jr. was, in fact, a registered Republican and felt that the progressive black’s slogan of “fight the power” was, in fact. morally wrong. So much so, that Malcolm X said this about Martin Luther King Jr.:
To which Martin Luther King Jr. said back:
You see, some people within the Republican Party and within White Conservative circles do not understand the differences here. Well, I happen to be one of the white people who totally understand the difference. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Conservative Christian, who was, in fact, trying to fight racial oppression by Christian means. Malcolm X was not.
But, now that is all history, MLK was killed, as was Malcolm X was as well. But, I have to wonder, what would Martin Luther King Jr. think of the following, which was compiled by Michelle Malkin:
Harry Reid openly sneered at Hispanic Republicans;
Harry Reid, Jesse Jackson & Company likened Obamacare critics to white supremacists and slave owners;
Journolist members conspired to paint Jeremiah Wright’s critics as racists;
MSNBC attacked conservatives who bought Sarah Palin’s book as paranoid white Tea Partiers;
Former House Democratic whip James Clyburn played the race card over earmarks;
The FCC played the race card to expand its regulatory powers over the Internet;
Liberal minority mobsters played ethnicity police against GOP Florida Sen. Marco Rubio;
DREAM Act radicals bitterly accused opponents of xenophobia and race traitorism;
Progressives led the race-card attacks on the Tea Party from day one;
An NPR commentator cheered the fact that Tucson massacre suspect Jared Loughner was a “gringo;”
And the NAACP has morphed into the National Association for the Advancement of Coddled People.
I often have to wonder, just what would Martin Luther King Jr. think of the progressives who have claimed his mantle?
It is to truly wonder.
The feckless left Exhibit TDFR: Total Disconnect from Reality
This my friends, is a shining example to why I hung it up with the Democratic Party and with Progressive Politics in General.
RFK Jr. Muses over at HuffPo:
Uncle Jack’s speech in Dallas was to have been an explosive broadside against the right wing. He found Dallas’ streets packed five deep with Kennedy Democrats, but among them were the familiar ornaments of presidential hatred; high-flying confederate flags and hundreds of posters adorning the walls and streets of Dallas showing Jack’s picture inscribed with “Wanted for Treason.” One man held a posterboard saying, “you a traitor [sic].” Other placards accused him of being a communist. When public school P.A. systems announced Jack’s assassination, Dallas school children as young as the fourth grade applauded. A Birmingham radio caller declared that “any white man who did what he did for niggers should be shot.” As my siblings and I visited the White House to console my cousins John and Caroline, a picket paraded out front with a sign, “God punished JFK.”
Jack had received myriad warnings against visiting the right-wing Texas city. Indeed, there had been a sense of foreboding even within our family as he and Aunt Jackie prepared for the trip. Jack made an unscheduled trip to Cape Cod to say goodbye to my ailing grandfather. The night before the trip, Mummy found Jack distant and brooding at a dinner for the Supreme Court Justices. He was very fond of Mummy, but for the first time ever, he looked right through her…
Gabrielle Giffords lies in a hospital room fighting for her life, and a precious nine-year-old girl is dead along with five others. Let’s pray for them and for our country and hope this tragedy prompts another round of examination of conscience.
Which could be entirely true. However, RFK Jr. seems to have missed something rather important — really important.
AllahPundit over at HotAir.com, of whom I do enjoy reading greatly. fills in the ever so conveniently missing blanks in this lesson in history:
Nowhere in the post is Oswald mentioned, or his communist sympathies, or the fact that he had tried to kill an ultra-conservative general seven months before he shot JFK. Which, sadly, is not uncommon when an especially unscrupulous left-wing hack writes about Kennedy’s assassination. The “reasoning” here, I guess, is that because conservatives in Dallas hated Kennedy, the otherwise peaceful Oswald — an ideologue so devoted that he actually defected to the Soviet Union in the last 1950s — saw his mind turn from civil political opposition to Kennedy to murderous rage. The “climate” of anger affected him … even though his own political grievances were nothing like the Birchers’. That’s as coherent as I can make this argument, and in any case, I don’t think Junior’s concerned about coherence. He’s practicing voodoo here: Right-wing city –> ??? –> JFK assassinated. Fill in the blank yourself.
The fact that AllahPundit is missing here; is the fact that the Democrats and progressives are skillful masters at historical revisionism and whitewashing of the past to further a political point. I mean, is not very uncommon to hear Democrats essentially blaming things like Slavery, Segregation, and general racism on the Republican Party and on White Conservatives in general —- when on the contrary, it was the Democratic Party who fought for the continued slavery of the black race in this Country. It also was the Democratic Party establishment in the South, who fought against the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama and other such Southern States. It was the Democrats of the south, who broke away from the Democratic Party to form the “States Right Party” and ran Strom Thurmond as its Presidential Candidate.
In fact, the only reason that the Democratic Party has ever given the Black, Jewish or Latino races anything other than the time of day, is because they know that they need those races to get votes in order to win elections. They are able secure those votes from the Black, Latino, and Jewish races is by offering them lip service and the occasional handout. If the Democratic Party stopped with lip service and the hand outs, they would never, ever be able to win elections.
So, what does the Democratic Party do? They seek to revise history and blame the other sides for the stuff that Democrats were responsible for in the first place. They do this, because they know that the majority of the people from those said races are mostly uninformed boobs, who are, for the most part, too lazy to pick up a history book and see who were the people responsible for the sins committed in our Nation’s past.
Is this to say that there is not racism within Conservative circles? Not at all. There is, plenty, I have seen it on websites and on Blogs and yes; even on facebook. In fact, I have unliked several pages and even several people — who were Conservative and yes, were quite racist. I mean, I dislike some of Obama’s polices as much as the next guy. But when I see President Obama and the First Lady’s faces being superimposed with the faces of the players from the movie Planet of the apes; I most politely object. Of course, I was called a “race baiter” and a fake Conservative by those people for making a stink about it. Which is all too common for those people.
The point that I am trying to make here is this —- neither of these political parties are without blame when it comes to racism. However, it is not improper to point out the fact that it was the Democratic Party — not the Republican Party —- that was the supporter, enabler and financer of institutionalized racism in the United States of America for many, many years. Anyone who says anything other than this and further more, anyone who says that the person who killed JFK and RFK were anything other than a Soviet admiring leftist and an Anti-Israel Palestinian supporter — is dealing in abject historical revisionism.