Calling Time of Death on Free Speech

Joe the Plumber. Someday our great-grandchildren will know his name. It will be on the page in their textbook that covers the period in history when the First Amendment died.

And in the kind of stunning irony that only real history can provide, its murderers will be the same people who have argued most vehemently for free speech historically, the liberals.

The ACLU is silent, as Joe the Plumber's tax records are pored over, as his reputation is dragged through the mud, as his life and livelihood are forever changed for the worst. All because he asked a question.

We bloggers are next, no doubt. Anyone who has tax problems should certainly lose their right to comment on the nature of our Republic. Right, Congressman Rangel?

Sweet Justice: Finally the Capitalist Pigs will Pay

I am so excited about our next President. Finally, true justice will be lavished upon all his subjects. My personal favorite is how he is talking about punishing oil companies and anybody else who does especially well. He and the other democratic socialists will institute a "windfall profits" tax that will show them a thing or two.

I can't wait until those smug bastards can no longer profit from the record-breaking price of oil. All of their stupid speculation and exploration and environmental compliance...

You just wait, ExxonMobil. Pretty soon your executives and their families will know the true meaning of pain.

Obama's gonna change it! Obama's gonna lead us!

Sorry. I get so excited sometimes that I start singing along with the Obama children. Anyway, as I was saying, you and your capitalist swine families will soon make NOTHING! 'Cuz that's what "windfall profits" taxes do, you creeps! Your companies will be dealt with harshly beyond belief! And what'll you do then, huh?

What's that? Stop exploring for oil and gas so aggressively? Well, good! Then you'll really be hurting. You and all your stinking executive friends. And then...huh? What were you saying, you disgusting capitalist? The price of what? Gasoline??? But how would punishing you cause all of us to pay more, exactly? Less oil means less supply and more demand? More demand means higher price? I don't get it. You must be lying, because that's what you right-wingers do. You lie. Well, even if we do have to pay more for gas, it'll be worth it to see you fat cats suffer...what? Pass what on, exactly? So you are telling me that you will still make a ginormous salary despite taxing your windfall profits? How do you figure that, Einstein? Lay-offs? Passing the higher costs on to the consumer? Oh.

You people disgust me. You just wait. Our glorious leader will find a way to thwart you yet.

Survival

I'm lucky. My brother and I were raised to be self-reliant. Dad made sure of that.

My maternal grandparents grew up in Oklahoma during the "Dust Bowl" years. My grandmother lived in a small town and her dad sold mules to the U.S. Army. My "Peepaw" grew up on a small farm in the middle of the state. They survived.

My dad's dad also grew up on a farm. His father had died when he was a teenager, leaving him as the male leader of a family including nine children. I remember almost every story he ever told me about those years. They lived an isolated, but very happy and fulfilling life. They planted. They harvested. They loved each other. They survived.

Somehow, through some weird quirk of circumstance, I've always been interested in the past - in how people did what they did against seemingly insurmountable odds. In fact, I've always had a peculiar romantic feeling about how life must have been in those days. My grandfather and dad taught me how to recognize which trees make good fence posts, good firewood, good houses. I learned how to salt- and sugar-cure pork. I know how to hunt. I know how to fish. I know how to trap. I know how to plant and to harvest. I know how to survive.

I watched the events following Hurricane Katrina a couple of years ago with a morbid fascination. I saw entire families helpless - waiting on rescue from a government they trusted with their very survival so completely that they literally died waiting. I saw others descend into a "Lord of the Flies" kind of madness: looting, stealing, and killing. They had lost their instincts for self-reliance. Their communities that could have helped them best evaporated in the mists. Their government agencies, whether local, state, and federal, were too large, too distracted, and too poorly-prepared to save them. They couldn't survive.

Again, I find myself watching sort of sickly mesmerized as the doom and gloom are predicted, but I know that we'll be okay. I know this because all the people I've ever known have taught me, and I've learned. I find it pitifully tragic that others lack this sense of self-reliance. Even the people in the 1920s and 1930s who were raised much closer to our agrarian and self-reliant past than were we, were shocked and surprised by the sudden onset of the Great Depression. As now, the American collapse heralded a world-wide downturn. Nevertheless, our ancestors survived. They took what they had and made the best of things. They did without the trappings of wealth and high society. They turned to the only thing you can really ever count on in this miserable world - God and family. They survived. Moreover, they thrived. Out of the ruins of that dark time rose what has been called "The Greatest Generation" - forged in the hardships of the Depression, further hardened by a World War.

I urge you not to lose heart. And I urge you to listen to the voices of our forebears. My great-great-grandmother, who I listened to as a young child, under an old oak tree in her elderly daughter's front yard, told all us kids of "coming to Texas on a covered wagon", crossing rivers, being harassed by Indians, and surviving. That same pioneer spirit that lived in her, in the Pilgrims, in the "49ers", in Lewis and Clarke, in Daniel Boone, in the Heroes of the Alamo - that same spirit lies dormant in us, too. We will grow through this, no matter how bad it gets. We will grow stronger and better. And, with God's help, we will survive.

Read, hear, learn, and survive.

What a Joke Sounds Like in Russian: Liberals Gone Wild

I have a confession. From time-to-time, I begin to wonder if I’m slightly over the top with some of my criticisms of Democrats. No, really. It’s true. I think that if one is trying to be honest and shun self-righteousness, it is necessary to maintain a kind of habitual self-examination, even self-doubt at times. I mean, surely it is a bit overstated to call them socialists all the time.

It was in just such a reflective mood that I awoke this morning. Maybe it was John McCain’s genuflection at the altar of socialism last night with his whole home mortgage buy-out thing – I don’t know. I was in the same mood when I sat down to check the news and see if this morning’s fed rate cut had been able to temporarily placate the spoiled child on Wall Street. Unexpectedly, the Conservative fire in me was stoked to new fury with an article I happened upon by Timothy Noah, senior writer at Slate magazine.

After hating myself a little for even looking at Slate (it’s like pornography for liberals), I began to read. Noah feels that the election is in the bag for The Socialist Party. In a rapture of self-congratulation and playground taunting, he begins to fantasize about how great it would be if he and the rest of his socialist pals could be open with their true feelings about our country. The article is only slightly tongue-in-cheek. I submit, for your consideration, the list. Consider it Exhibit A in my continuing quest to get people to realize just how sick, twisted, dangerous, and unpatriotic this ideology truly is.

This is a rare glimpse into the secret dungeon of liberal thought. I give you fair warning. Those of you with even the slightest conservative leanings may be deeply offended. Reader discretion is advised.

1. I think Karl Marx had some valuable insights into capitalist economies!
2. I think abortion should be safe and legal. Rare is fine, too, but the way to achieve that is contraception, baby!
3. I think Mormons are kooks!
4. The Second Amendment does too allow government to ban handguns!
5. Let's standardize the federal age of consent at 16!
6. Promiscuity between consenting adults is good exercise!
7. Health care is a service, not a business!
8. Pot is no more dangerous than vodka. Legalize it!
9. I don't support the troops. I support some troops, depending on whether or not they've committed war crimes!
10. No more wars without United Nations or at least NATO support!
11. Saving the boulder darter was worth a few thousand jobs!
12. If Eastern Europeans think NATO will go to war to defend them against Russia, they're out of their minds!
13. Ditto if Taiwan thinks the United States will go to war to defend it against China!
14. Let's teach evolution in Sunday school!
15. The military-industrial complex is a greater menace than most foreign nations!
16. If Israel isn't out of the occupied territories in six months, we'll cut off all aid.
17. Higher gas prices are good because they make everybody bike and take public transit like they should!
18. America isn't the greatest nation in the world. We think it is only because it's our country. Duh!
19. America won't be the world's most powerful nation forever. And you know what? Handing that responsibility off will be a relief!
20. America's official languages should be English and Spanish!
21. Judges should legislate from the bench if they want to. Conservatives do it, so why not liberals?
22. I do not accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior! I don't even believe in God!
23. What's so great about the Judeo-Christian tradition?
24. Big-city values are better than small-town values!
25. I'm glad the Muslims whupped the Christians during the Crusades! Served 'em right!
26. We need a shorter work week!
27. Employees who work more than 40 hours a week should always get overtime.
28. We're going to need affirmative action for a long time.
29. We're undertaxed. Look at Europe!
30. Terrorism isn't that big a threat to America!
31. I'm not a "progressive," for Pete's sake. I'm a liberal!
32. I'm not a "liberal," for Pete's sake. I'm a leftist!
33. I'm not a "leftist," for Pete's sake. I'm a democratic socialist!
34. I'm not a democratic socialist, for Pete's sake. I'm a Communist! Just kidding!
35. Let's bring back the era of big government.
36. Walter Mondale would have made an excellent president!
37. It's not enough that the top 5 percent pays 55 percent of our taxes. Why not 75 percent? Believe me, they can afford it!
38. Prostitution is a victimless crime! Don't outlaw it; regulate it, so we can arrest physically abusive pimps, limit the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and halt sexual trafficking in minors!
39. Many welfare moms kicked off the rolls by the 1986 welfare-reform bill are worse off in their crappy jobs!
40. Ronald Reagan was a crummy president!
41. Broad availability of gay marriage: good. Broad availability of gay divorce: better!
42. You want to know why George W. Bush was a lousy president? Because he's stupid!
43. Pornography is good for your marriage because it teaches you new sexual techniques!
44. The problem with public schools is private schools!

So thank you, Tim Noah et al. Thank you for reminding me exactly why it is that your America-hating, atheistic, Godless, sadistic, and yes, by your own admission, Communist ideology must be destroyed.

Mayday, Mayday...Pull the Cord, Maverick! Pull the Cord!!!

John McCain, in a colossal blunder tonight, just revealed his plan to win the election. Socialism, Republican-style.
Oh, my goodness. Now we're going to "bail out" the irresponsible "grass roots" that contributed to this credit mess. Let's not allow the market to adjust naturally by allowing unemployed and asset-less borrowers to reap the whirlwind of their irresponsibility. Instead, let's allow the responsible borrowers to subsidize others' short-sightedness in a misguided and transparent pander which will undoubtedly eventually further destabilize the lending market.

As a tax-paying, hard-working, debt-leveraged Veteran and worried home-owner and householder, allow me to be one of the first to tell John McCain "no thanks".

You were ready to sacrifice an election to win a shooting war. Now it is time to sacrifice an election to win an ideological one.

If we conservatives give in to the notion that the government is responsible for saving citizens from their own poor decisions, then the Republican Party has truly lost its moral authority on all matters financial. I'm sorry, Senator McCain, but this is where we truly part ways.

I respect you. I honor your service to our country and unmistakable courage as a POW. I admire your willingness to stand your ground, even against your own party, when you feel they are wrong. So please understand and respect my position that what you suggested tonight is more than simply a ham-handed attempt to change your downward slide in the polls. To me, this identifies you irrevocably as part of the very problem that has led me to oppose Barry Obama. If you continue on this poorly-considered vote-grabbing pandering course, I will feel forced to waste my vote on the Libertarians.

Please reconsider, or I fear all will truly be lost.

Redistribute. It's the (new) American Way.

I found Obama's performance tonight to be flawless. He spoke just like George Soros taught him. I'll give it to him. He is about the most eloquent spokesman for communism I've ever heard. What a pity the Cold War ended already. He'd have been a shoe-in for information minister under Andropov or Khrushchev.

When did it become a crime to make it? When did it become the government's responsibility to make sure your children were taken care of? I guess I missed the memo. Here I am, trying to ensure a better life for my son, and all the time, I could have been depending on Barney Frank to take better care of him than I ever could have dreamed.

Incidentally, I found it interesting that "health care is a right...in a country as wealthy as ours...". I guess that, once again, I was operating on the outdated notion that "rights" were those things that were assumed as part of a universal belief about people's place in the universe. Apparently, health care is a right in America, but not in the Congo. Not in the Sudan. Not in any less "fortunate" country. It's good to know.

I move that we also amend our Declaration of Independence to specify that only Americans are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights to Life, Libery, and Property. After all, we are the only ones who can afford such luxuries...right, Senator Obama? I guess the rest of the world can just suffer until your far-sighted generosity touches them. After all, YOU (and your party) are the true guarantors of all real "rights". Until the colossal thieves Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Barack ("the One") Obama, and the Obama Youth are on board, all such claims to these heretofore "rights" are simply rhetoric.

Please, Senator Obama. Please let us poor sheep know which rights we can afford under your New Plan for America. Far be it from me to be so presumptuous as to claim rights to which I am untitled due to my poor position in life. We await Thy Glorious pronouncement.

Barack Obama - Criticize at your own Peril

In an A.P. article this morning, it was suggested that criticisms by Governor Sarah Palin of Senator Barack Obama's past (and present) radical acquaintances and friends are, in a word, racist. This is exactly the kind of conversation-squelching race-card playing that his campaign has perfected, not over the past couple of years, but apparently over his entire adult life. He is a career race-baiter and brow-beating thug.

Okay. Let’s just take the whole color thing off the table for a moment. Not that I am forgetting about it, of course, because it is extremely important, and I will get to it later.

Senator Barack Obama is a radical terrorist sympathizer. It’s true. There is no reason to believe, unless you are simply predisposed to take him at his word that he would not continue to be a terrorist sympathizer once in the White House. I know. You are in shock at my candor on this subject. And some of you, perhaps many of you, are thinking the same thing right now – the “r” word (racist). I’d like to tackle this issue in two parts. I’ll start by backing up my assertion that Senator Obama has habitually cozied up to terrorists and radicals.

From his very earliest days as a Columbia University student with political aspirations, Barack Obama has been groomed, trained, and protected by some of the most notorious America-haters known. Almost as soon as he arrived in New York, possibly before, he was under the tutelage and supervision of the radical and controversial leader of the so-called Nation of Islam and well-documented white-hater and race-baiter Louis Farakhan. He was likely accepted into Harvard Law School as a result of the introductions made for him by Farakhan, most notably to an advisor to a Saudi Arabian prince. It has been speculated and not denied that Obama’s law school education was paid-for by this Saudi sheik.

Once in Chicago, Obama was immediately snapped up into the world of ACORN as a community organizer, where he became acquainted with William Ayers, former 1960s radical and member of the Weather Underground. Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist, and has made recent statements that indicate that violent acts against the government might still be necessary in order to perpetuate his radical agenda.

Ayers and Obama co-chaired a foundation which funneled funds into ACORN projects, including one designed by Obama himself while the lead trainer at ACORN – the use of intimidation and bullying tactics to force local banks to make ridiculous loans (so-called NINJA [“no income, no job, no assets”]) to local black citizens. ACORN then funneled money back towards Obama when he first ran for elected office in Chicago. It should be noted that at the center of the recent mortgage credit crisis lies ACORN and their work to force loans to happen that could never be paid back as a form of social engineering. These bad loans were eventually packaged up and sold to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and when they began to be defaulted upon, started the fall of dominoes that led to the recent $700B bailout. This sort of takes the punch out of Obama's recent assertion that this mortgage problem suddenly appeared out of thin air the instant G.W. Bush was elected. It also makes one wonder how on earth he could go about fixing a problem, the origins of which he either forgot or refuses to acknowledge.

For twenty years, Barack Obama attended a church led by a violently radical race-baiting, white-hating pastor, Jeremiah Wright. He was married to Michelle in that church by Reverend Wright. Reverend Wright baptized his children. There really are only three possibilities: (1) Obama truly was oblivious for twenty years about what went on in that church (ignorance or naiveté of an unprecedented scale); (2) Obama knew what that church was all about but couldn’t afford, for political reasons, to leave (cowardice and self-centeredness); or (3) he knew very well what the church was about and stayed there because he tacitly agreed with what Wright preached. Is he naive, cowardly, or dastardly? I'm just asking. I still haven't been satisfied with his failure to answer simple questions about this.

Antoin (“Tony”) Rezko, a Syrian businessman and recently-indicted real estate developer in Chicago, has had a close personal relationship with Obama for years. In fact, Obama and Rezko secured their new home properties on adjacent lots in the same very well-to-do Chicago suburb on the same day – three weeks after Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi loaned $3.5million for the purchase. There is more than enough to be curious about the relationship between Obama and Rezko.

Obama’s campaign has been in frequent contact with Hamas, a known terrorist group, during this campaign, so much so that when it was discovered, they felt it necessary to fire Robert Malley, a chief Obama advisor, to avoid the obvious political fallout. This never really materialized, of course, because the mainstream media outlets are too busy drooling and trying to get their next opportunity for "Cooking with Barack and Michelle".

So what does all this mean? Does it mean that Obama is Al Qaeda’s “man on the inside”? Of course not. Although it does seem to indicate a certain level of comfort with people that most of us, especially us whites who seem to be the target of the rage of lots of Obama’s friends and acquaintances, might find less-than-fun dinner companions.

I never like the “shoe-on-the-other-foot” technique of argument. But here it seems rather appropriate. Let’s imagine a candidate – a white candidate. This candidate goes to a white supremacist church for 20 years, then claims he didn’t know that it was preaching white supremacy, after it is conclusively demonstrated that he was there when the “hate message” was being preached. Far from being shocked and horrified at that message, he stays there. He gets married by the white supremacist preacher. He lets that same preacher baptize his children. Would that bother you?

Now let’s say he could be definitively linked to running in the same circle as Tim McVeigh, or perhaps the Unabomber? Moreover, he lived on the same street as the Unabomber, as well as the same street as a well-known Aryan Brotherhood leader who had called for the destruction of all black people? Would that bother you? Would it make you a racist to point out all those oddities?

I, for one, don’t think that would make you a racist. I think that would make you a thoughtful voter. So when you call those of us racists that want to make sure we aren’t electing a radical, a friend of known terrorists, just know how incredibly defensive and silly you sound. There is truly a limit to being “The Devil’s Advocate”.