Tonight's Music

Flogging Molly - (No More) Paddy's Lament.

Blogs4Borders weekly blogburst

Our weekly vlog/poscast in illegal immigration and border security. In this weeks edition...

Jobs Americans Won't Do? Or jobs Americans can't get hired for?

100% Preventable! Americans continue to pay the bloody price for open borders! When will the madness end?

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Reflections on the state of the Republic

From Mike Vanderboegh writing on the blog Western Rifle Shooters Association:

Premonition of Civil War: "We. . . are about to have our fues lit".

"I listened to Sen. McCain address the NRA Friday night with my 1st grandson asleep in my arms. As I listened to the diluted mumbo jumbo from him, I thought about what my grandson will probably face. I did not like it one bit. I think we, the folks in America that just want to be left alone to live a peaceful life without the gov't intervention in every facet of our life, are about to have our fuse lit. I just know it's coming." - Email to Mike Vanderboegh from his friend John in Florida, 19 May 2008.

Mr. Vanderboegh's comment on his friend's email:

My friend John's prediction, his premonition, "we . . . are about to have our fuse lit," came to him because he understands where we find ourselves in the first decade of the 21st Century. His is an intellectual premonition, as was mine before Thursday afternoon. It takes no seer, no crystal ball, no weird purple light from the Twilight Zone to anticipate the coming confrontation between those who revere the Founders' constitutional republic and the God-given liberty it codifies and the gathering dark forces of "enlightened" collectivism. And like most wars, this one will need to be fought precisely because most of us think it is impossible.

The Belief that there will be another American Civil War is not a new one. Everyone is familiar with Thomas Jefferson's observation that the Tree of Liberty would periodically need to be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. What most people don't know was that he saw that "watering" taking place around every 20 years or so.

However I have always been deeply skeptical about the prospect of any kind of widespread insurrection against the federal government. The fact is that for the overwhelming majority of people in the USA life is very good. And it never seemed likely to me that the average person would be too keen on giving up his fat 401K, 56" flat screen with blu-ray disc player and the realistic prospect of that summer home at the beach/mountains/lake to take up his rifle and start potting the jackbooted Schutzstaffel of the American leviathan. I think that most people agree with me in that opinion. This is why the story of the frog in the pan of water being slowly heated to boiling is such a popular metaphor for the American people's slow loss of liberty at the hands of an ever expanding federal government.

However I am reminded of the fact that the people who made the American Revolution happen were not wretched masses of the desperately poor who had nothing to lose. Rather they were the landed gentry. Educated and affluent they were the elite of colonial society. The same can be said of the Southerners who led the South into succession from the Union. In both cases the people leading the breakaway from what was thought of as an oppressive government were the men with the most, not the least, to lose by their actions.

I'm sure that the vast legions of people who comprise the federal government (from elected officials to senior bureaucrats down to the alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies) do not feel themselves in any particular danger of an armed domestic uprising. In this respect the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution has failed in its intended purpose. The 2nd Amendment was not written so that country boys could go out and put venison on the table with their trusty long arm. Nor was it written so that the robbers and rapists might be terrorized into reforming their evil ways by the thought that their next victim might put a bullet between their eyes. No, while those things are happy side effects of the 2nd Amendment its real purpose was to ensure that the government would ever and always feel profoundly intimidated by the citizenry.

However the BATF agents who raided a peaceful religious community in Waco, TX in 1993 had absolutely no fear that the other residents of Waco would take up arms and turn out to help defend their neighbors (however they were seriously taken aback when the Davidians had the gall to actually shoot back - note that they haven't tried another raid of that type since). Just like the US Marshals and FBI agents who surrounded Randy Weaver's house and murdered his wife and son knew that there would be no convoys of outraged armed Americans descending on Ruby Ridge to turn the incident into a latter day Lexington and Concord.

We all remember the video of police in post-Katrina New Orleans tackling an elderly woman to take her revolver away from her. Do you think that any of those cops hesitated for one second out of fear that the old woman's neighbors would come to her defense?

As I said, the true purpose of the 2nd Amendment has been forgotten both by the citizens it was intended to protect and by the government it was intended to terrify. But this forgetting is a dangerous thing to both the citizen and to the government and its minions. Fredrick Douglass, the runaway slave who became a respected writer and leading advocate of the abolition of slavery in the antebellum North, once advised slave owners to "cuff your slaves and treat them cruelly, for a slave with a bad master will aspire to have a good master while a slave with a good master will aspire to be his own master".

Douglass knew that removing the lash from a slave's back allowed him to look up and see the possibilities of freedom. In the United States the lash of poverty has been removed from the great majority of the population. At the same time the Internet has broken the virtual monopoly which the elite media (the handmaiden of big government) has held on the dissemination of information (anyone who doubts the importance of having a way to get out the other side of the argument should study the history of the Reformation and realize that Gutenberg had as much to do with its success as Luther).

Remember what drove the propertied class which led both the Continental Congress in the Revolution and the Confederate government in the Civil War was the fact that their life experiences made them intolerant of being pushed around and unwilling to accept the impositions of a distant government which they did not respect. For those of you having difficulty seeing Thomas Jefferson commanding his slaves at Monticello and Joe Sixpack being fawned on by the salesmen at Best Buy in the same light let me ask you this, what really pisses you off about being pulled over by a cop, the fact that a ticket might make your car insurance go up or the fact that you are going to have to bow and scrape before an arrogant prick who, absent his badge, would be fixing cars or sweeping a Wal Mart parking lot?

Fix this thought in your mind. The American Civil War was not an uprising of slaves seeking freedom. It was an uprising of Slave owners seeking to preserve their prerogatives.

Now think about the fact that those who wish to concentrate unlimited power in the federal government have effectively lost the ability to control the flow of information within the United States. Just as the printing press made it impossible for the Pope to prevent all of Christendom from reading Luther's 95 thesis and the committees of correspondence allowed the patriots to frame the debate in colonial America the Internet allows the instant and uncensored distribution of information about every usurpation of liberty and every affront to the dignity of a free people.

Internet services like YouTube allow people to not only read about but to see examples of the outrages which are inflicted by the servants of the state. The video of the old woman in New Orleans being piled on by a group of cops who were just following orders generates far more raw fury than just reading an account of the incident. The 'net also allows these datum to be archived and easily searched so that the intellectually honest seeker after truth soon finds himself buried under an avalanche of other similar affronts and usurpations.

It is not inevitable, but it is entirely possible, that a breaking point could someday be reached. The fact that the government, the police who enforce the government's will and the elites in the academy and the media who exist in symbiosis with the government no longer believe that there is any such thing as a "breaking point" where the people are concerned means that they will be in no way cautious about approaching that point.

The fact that most of the general public is not aware of the fact that there is a societal breaking point in regard to their government means that they will not become alarmed and act to rein in the government while it can still be reined in.

It doesn't have to start big. In fact it almost certainly will start small. Mr. Vanderboegh relates an exchange he had with someone named Peter on a gun blog:

Peter: "The day may come when we need to take up arms against a tyrannical government, but the fact that you can 'tell them in advance, in public, what MY “rules of engagement” were.' is proof that this is not the time. So please stop giving the anti-gun nuts more ammo, and trying to bait the government to come after you. This is only hurting our cause."

Vanderboegh: "Well, if that's the case, our 'causes' are not the same. My cause is that of the constitutional republic of the Founders and a United States of America that my children and grandchildren can live in as free citizens, not frightened serfs. Here's the thing: with the ATF on the prod, and cantankerous people like me refusing to be pushed, sooner or later somebody's going to trade shots. WE, my friends and me, are going to give the cheesers on this board and in the larger country a choice: are you going to make the same excuses you made before in 1993 when you watched government murder on television and did nothing? And if they kill someone like me, someone who's not a religious cultist (unless you count the Baptists as cultists), someone who doesn't mess with explosives or automatic weapons, someone who's a father and a grandfather, a guy who's on disability for congestive heart failure and can't attack anybody, a guy whose only real sin in their eyes is to despise them publicly -- if they kill me and you do nothing AGAIN, hiding behind excuses AGAIN, well I don't know how you look yourself in the mirror."

And I concluded:

"And understand this, in a country that allows the David Olofsons to be victimized without correction, sooner or later people like me are going to force people like you to look in that mirror. And I suppose that's what really scares y'all. But whether you like it or not, whether you join us or not, we will force you to make the choice because we DO NOT consent to be victimized by some thug simply because he possesses a federal badge that is unconstitutional in the first place. We are free men and women, and will live or die as free men and women. You are free to choose, but you should understand that the choice is not far away. The imperial feds have apparently decided that by their egregious misconduct in the Olofson case."

That's how it can start. Someone snaps and says "I'm not taking this any more" and fights back. Then someone like me, a man with no family depending on him, says "you know if I sit here and watch this happen and don't do jack about it I have no right to call myself a man". Then the mirror gets held up and more and more people are dragged kicking and screaming by their own consciences and forced to look into it. Then the nation has a moment like the jury in the movie Walking Tall where Buford Pusser takes his shirt off and shows them his scars and tells them "if they can do this to me then they can do the same damn thing to you".

Will everyone in the nation rise up then? No, and they will not have to. Remember that at the time the Declaration of Independence was signed the actual number of the colonists who favored independence even at the cost of war was around 20%. During the war the percentage favoring independence more than doubled, but never reached even 50%. And of those favoring independence only a small minority actually took up arms and fought for it.

It is just that the minority favoring independence was more willing to act than the majority opposing it. In the Civil War it was the same. The number of Southerners who favored breaking away from the Union was less than half and the number of Northerners who favored going to war to keep the South in the Union was less than half. It is just that an active minority will always trump a passive majority.

The cost in blood and treasure could be enormous and the effect on the rest of the world could be catastrophic. If America, the "essential nation", were ripped apart by internal fighting who would take its place in a world where the "bad guys" outnumber the "good guys" by orders of magnitude?

As Mr.Vanderboegh said, ". . . like most wars, this one will need to be fought precisely because most of us think it is impossible." There is a breaking point and it must be not just respected but feared.

First pictures of the Martian far north

A Nasa spacecraft has sent back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.

The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth.

The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.

It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days.

A signal confirming the lander had reached the surface was received at 2353 GMT on 25 May (1953 EDT; 0053 BST on 26 May).

Engineers and scientists at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California clapped and cheered when the landing signal came through.

"Phoenix has landed - welcome to the northern plain of Mars," a flight controller announced.

The Martian arctic looks pretty much like every other part of Mars that I've seen. But still it is what is below the surface that counts.

Stop and think for a minute about what a great achievement it is to launch something like this from Earth and have it land safely on another planet at the exact time and place that were planed.

I still doubt that the machine will find the firm evidence of life that it was sent to look for, however. That will take human boots on the Martin ground.

How about we take all the money we are wasting by subsidizing ethanol and other global warming fantasies and put it into space exploration. That way we will not only push back the frontiers of human knowledge we will get all kinds of technological spin-offs which just might do something like cure cancer or even give us that cheap and abundant source of pollution free energy the greens want.*

*Actually that's wrong. The greens don't want a cheap and clean source of abundant energy. They want the human population reduced from six billion to a few million who will live at the neolithic level.

NASA probe lands on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. — ­ NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft appears to have made a safe landing on Mars.

Just before 8 p.m. Eastern time, mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here received a radio signal from the Phoenix on the ground in the icy plains north of Mars' Arctic circle.

Because the signal was relayed via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the controllers would have to wait another couple of hours, until Odyssey's next pass over the landing site, for additional word of the Phoenix's condition, including whether it had successfully unfolded its solar panels and possibly the first photographs.

If all is operating properly, the next few days will be spent checking out the instruments aboard the lander. Then, it will begin the first upclose investigation of Mars' north polar regions. That area became a prime area of interest for planetary scientists after NASA's orbiting Odyssey spacecraft discovered in 2002 vast quantities of water ice lying a few inches beneath the surface in Mars' polar regions.

All of Mars' surface is currently far too cold for life to exist, but in the past, Mars' axis may have periodically tipped over so that its north pole pointed at the sun during summer. That conceivably could have warmed the ice into liquid water.

With liquid water comes the possibility of life.

On Phoenix, a robotic arm with a scoop at the end will dig into the permafrost terrain into the ice. Instruments on the spacecraft included a small oven that will heat the scooped-up dirt and ice to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Analyzing the vapors will provide information of the minerals, and that will, in turn, provide clues about whether the ice ever melted and whether this region was habitable for life.

"We see Phoenix as a stepping stone to future investigations of Mars," said Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, the principal investigator of the mission.

I wish the little robot well on its mission and I congratulate the scientists and engineers who designed and built it and launched it on its way.

I somehow doubt that they will find any firm proof that there was ever life on Mars (not even Sam Tyler's leather jacket) but the effort is still worthwhile.

Prissy and sissy (for once we're not talking about a failed author wannabe from Fla.)

You can't accuse Peggy Noonan of joining the mainstream media feeding frenzy now that the general rejection of Hillary Rodham Clinton is complete since she, as a Republican, has been taking shots at Mrs. Clinton all along:

You know where I'm going, for you know where she went. Hillary Clinton complained again this week that sexism has been a major dynamic in her unsuccessful bid for political dominance. She is quoted by the Washington Post's Lois Romano decrying the "sexist" treatment she received during the campaign, and the "incredible vitriol that has been engendered" by those who are "nothing but misogynists." The New York Times reported she told sympathetic bloggers in a conference call that she is saddened by the "mean-spiritedness and terrible insults" that have been thrown "at you, for supporting me, and at women in general."

Where to begin? One wants to be sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton at this point, if for no other reason than to show one's range. But her last weeks have been, and her next weeks will likely be, one long exercise in summoning further denunciations. It is something new in politics, the How Else Can I Offend You Tour. And I suppose it is aimed not at voters -- you don't persuade anyone by complaining in this way, you only reinforce what your supporters already think -- but at history, at the way history will tell the story of the reasons for her loss.

So, to address the charge that sexism did her in:

It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.

It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.

It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for the girls."

And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is, ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.

It is probably truer that being a woman helped Mrs. Clinton. She was the front-runner anyway and had all the money, power, Beltway backers. But the fact that she was a woman helped give her supporters the special oomph to be gotten from making history. They were by definition involved in something historic. And they were on the right side, connected to the one making the breakthrough, shattering the glass. They were going to be part of breaking it into a million little pieces that could rain down softly during the balloon drop at the historic convention, each of them catching the glow of the lights. Some network reporter was going to say, "They look like pieces of the glass ceiling that has finally been shattered."

I know: Barf. But also: Fine. Politics should be fun.

I agree that politics should be fun, too bad it isn't this time around, but the wretched quality of the choices before us mean that whoever wins the nation is going to lose and lose badly.

Still, one must take enjoyment wherever one finds it and the cratering in of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the small crowds and generally negative reception that Bill Clinton is getting and the sheer speed with which their own party abandoned the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics the nanosecond a viable alternative showed his jug-eared head is enough to bring forth a chuckle on even the darkest day.

Remember

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

From USMemorialday.org

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

NOW he gets it

The left-wing media has been in the tank for B. Hussein Obama for months now but they have so far refrained from giving Hillary Clinton the exact same kind of treatment that she would get if she was a conservative Republican - until now.

In a Daily News column entitled Hillary Clinton's colossal blunder simply the last straw an overwrought leftist named Michael Goodwin has this to say:

SICK. Disgusting. And yet revealing. Hillary Clinton is staying in the race in the event some nut kills Barack Obama.

It could happen, but what definitely has happened is that Clinton has killed her own chances of being vice president. She doesn't deserve to be elected dog catcher anywhere now.

Her shocking comment to a South Dakota newspaper might qualify as the dumbest thing ever said in American politics.

Her lame explanation that she brought up the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy because his brother Ted's illness was on her mind doesn't cut it. Not even close.

We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul. One consumed by raw ambition to where the possible assassination of an opponent is something to ponder in a strategic way. Otherwise, why is murder on her mind?

It's like Tanya Harding's kneecapping has come to politics. Only the senator from New York has more lethal fantasies than that nutty skater.

We could have seen it coming, if only we had realized Clinton's thinking could be so cold. She has grown increasingly wild in her imagery lately, invoking everything from slavery to the political killings in Zimbabwe in making her argument for the Florida and Michigan delegations. She claimed to be the victim of sexism, despite winning the votes of white men.

But none of it was moving the nomination needle, with Obama, despite recent dents, still on course to be the victor.

So she kept digging deeper, looking for the magic button. Instead, she pushed the eject button, lifting herself right out of consideration.

Giving voice to such a vile thought is all the more horrible because fears Obama would be killed have been an undercurrent to his astonishing rise. Republican Mike Huckabee made a stupid joke about it recently. Many black Americans have talked of it, reflecting their assumption that racists would never tolerate a black President and that Obama would be taken from them.

Clinton has now fed that fear. She needs a very long vacation. And we need one from her.

Say good night, Hillary. And go away.

"We could have seen it coming, if only we had realized Clinton's thinking could be so cold." This has to qualify as one of the stupidest statements of this entire campaign season. Where has Mr. Goodwin been since 1992?

Has Mr. Goodwin forgotten the Travel Office scandal where Mrs. Clinton fired some low level White House employees in order to give their jobs to some of her friends and then attempted to have those low level employees framed for felonies and sent to federal prison?

Has Mr. Goodwin forgotten what Chelsea Clinton (who would have only been 12 or 13 at the time) said to a pair of Secret Service agents who attempted to scold her for referring to the Secret Service bodyguards as "personal trained pigs"? Her response was "That's what my parents call you all the time".

Has Mr. Goodwin forgotten Vince Foster?

Has Mr. Goodwin forgotten what Mrs. Clinton said to an Arkansas state trooper who was part of the governor's security detail after he wished her a "good morning"? Her response was “F*ck off! It’s enough that I have to see you sh*t-kickers every day. I’m not going to talk to you, too. Just do your g*dd*mn job and keep your mouth shut.”

Has Mr. Goodwin forgotten that White House staff (maids, janitors, waiters and so on) were forbidden to look Mrs. Clinton in the eye?

These incidents are only a representative sample of the public record of the "real" Mrs. Hillary Clinton. All of this information has been floating around for years, some of it for more than a decade. So, I repeat, where has Michael Goodwin been all these years.

Of course the answer is that while Hillary Clinton was Bill Clinton's first lady and then Democrat Senator from New York and then presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Mr. Goodwin, as a faithful member of the left-wing lapdog mainstream media, was far too busy carrying Mrs. Clinton's water to criticize her or do anything like a real piece of investigative journalism into her true character and fitness to hold a position of public trust.

It is only now that Mr. Goodwin and the other left-wing lickspittles have a new receptacle for their fawning sycophancy that they can be bothered to view Mrs. Clinton as she actually is.

Not that I don't enjoy seeing Hillary Clinton exposed, laid bare, revealed [download 143 gigabytes of Japanese porn to purge the mental picture] shown for what she really is in her deepest soul [there that doesn't dredge up any image]. But I have very little respect for those like Goodwin who would still be sipping the Hillary kool-aid if she were ahead in pledged delegates.

Saturday morning cartoon

Another slap in the face to Islam! A Muslim bomb maker is thwarted by a PIG! He is then arrested by policemen who are DOGS! Any Muslim who sees the images of the unclean pig or dog will be rejected by Allah and denied entry into Paradise!

No virgins for you!

Tonight's Music

The Shillaly Brothers perform Too Drunk to Fight.

McCain is back to supporting amnesty

Michelle Malkin reminds us that she wrote this on January 23, 2008:

After spearheading a disastrous, security-undermining illegal alien amnesty bill last year with Teddy Kennedy, “straight-talking” GOP Sen. John McCain claims he has seen the light. In TV appearances, he vows to put immigration enforcement first. On the campaign trail, he offers a perfunctory promise to strengthen border security and emphasizes the need to restore Americans’ trust in their government’s ability to defend the homeland.

“I got the message,” he told voters in South Carolina. “We will secure the borders first.”

But how can McCain cure citizens’ distrust when his own credibility on the issue remains fatally damaged? He doesn’t believe his own election-year spin. And he knows we know it. This is cynicism on steroids with a speedball chaser.

Not all of us have forgotten how the short-fused Arizona senator cursed good-faith opponents in his own party (“F**k you!” and “Chickensh*t” were the choice words he had for Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn during a spat over enforcement provisions). Not all of us have forgotten that he voted against barring felons from receiving amnesty benefits under his plan. Not all of us have forgotten the underhanded, debate-sabotaging manner in which McCain/Kennedy/Graham/Harry Reid conspired to ram their package down voters’ throats.

His admission of the shamnesty failure is grudging and bitter. While he now tells conservative voters what they want to hear about the need to build the southern border fence, he takes a contemptuous tone toward physical barriers when talking to businessmen. “By the way, I think the fence is least effective,” he told executives in Milwaukee, according to a recent Vanity Fair profile. “But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it.” Straight talk? Try hate talk.

For all his supposed, newfound enlightenment about what most Americans want—protection against invasion, commitment to the rule of law, meaningful employer sanctions, an end to sanctuary cities, enforcement-by-attrition plus deportation reform, and an end to special illegal alien benefits that invite more law-breaking–The Maverick remains a Geraldo Rivera Republican. Like the ethnocentric cable TV host who can’t string a sentence about immigration together without drowning in emotional demagoguery, McCain naturally resorts to open-borders platitudes when pressed for enforcement specifics.

She then goes on to note that McCain has reneged on his pledge to oppose amnesty and support a stand-alone border security bill:

And, now, straight from the campaign trail with Arnold “Move Left” Schwarzenegger, McCain has shed every last pretense that he “got the message” from grass-roots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the “comprehensive immigration reform” euphemism is a notable milestone.

Here is the question that all of you McCain kool-aid drinkers have to ask yourself. If McCain can't even pretend to be a conservative until this November then what is he going to be like after next January, assuming that he wins the election?

Is there anyone out there who still thinks that McCain is going to be some kind of "bulwark" against the Left?

PS - How long do you suppose that it will take McCain to call Malkin an "Asian whore"?

Freudian slips are showing all over

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, whose IQ wouldn't melt an ice cube, phucks up and lets the cat out of the bag regarding the Marxist left's plans for the future.

Link: sevenload.com

When Pelosi, Reid and the other leftist grand masters hear about this we can expect to find Waters' partially decomposed in a Capital City dumpster.

Rebranding the GOP

The People's Cube understands the modern Republican Party:

Having successfully shed the burden of conservative values, the Republican National Committee has retooled and is now launching a new ad campaign to let the American people know that Democrats aren't the only party of empty slogans and slick marketing techniques. We offer you a sneak preview of the new RNC stickers, print ads, and promotional items you will be seeing a lot in the coming months. ~

Why repair the damaged national brand with conservatism when you can cheaply spray-paint it with liberalism and gain power by out-Democrating the Democrats?

Support Our Candidate!
Buy The McCain-Fingers-Crossed T-Shirt

This shirt can mean two things:

1. What McCain does behind his back when he says he's a lifelong conservative and promises to secure the borders.
2. What you do behind your back when you vote for McCain and hope he'll appoint strict constructionist judges.

Welcome To The New and Improved Republican Party!

G-d, I weep for the future of this nation.

Yes Hillary, you said that out loud

Mrs. Bill Clinton puts her foot in it.

From The New York Post:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

Clinton made her comments at a meeting with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader's editorial board while campaigning in South Dakota, where she complained that, "People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa."

Obama, the first African-American to advance so far in the race for the White House, has faced threats, sources have said.

Robert Kennedy, the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, was gunned down in 1968 after winning the California primary. He had been a hero on the left for his civil rights agenda and calls to end the war in Vietnam.

Barack Obama, who leads Clinton by nearly 200 delegates and has already secured a majority of pledged delegates, has been the subject of threats. Early in the campaign, the Secret Service gave him a security detail at the request of Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois).

Clinton criticized an "urgency" to end the campaign prematurely, saying, "Historically, that makes no sense."

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told The Post, "She was talking about the length of the race and using the '68 election as an example of how long the races in the past have gone -- she used her husband's race in the same vein."

Jughead reacts:

Senator Clinton's statement before the ARGUS LEADER editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign, said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton...


The Hillbilly White Trash take on the whole affair:

Yawn. Mrs. Clinton committed what is called a Freudian slip. She accidentally spoke what her subconscious mind desires, for some gun-nut Klansman type to gun down Jughead so that she can not only get the nomination, but also have an excuse to champion new gun control legislation. Especially if the Klansman uses an [cue scary music] assault rifle.

I want the TRUTH!

I demand an investigation into the symbiotic relationship which BIG OIL has with left-wing politicians and environmental activists!

Even a child can understand the effect that the law of supply and demand has upon price. If demand rises without an accompanying rise in supply price will rise. If demand falls without an accompanying reduction in supply the price will fall.

What has happened in the oil market is that the developed world has continued to grow, increasing their demand for oil, while the economies of China and India have exploded. Those two nations are busy building a massive industrial infrastructure with the accompanying need for electrification.

This has resulted in a sharp increase in the demand for petroleum. However the world supply of petroleum has not increased to match that increased demand. Therefore consumers are bidding up the price of the now scarce commodity.

Marginal reductions in demand are possible through conservation however marginal reductions in demand only yield marginal reductions in price and are overwhelmed by the ever increasing demand from Asia.

The obvious answer to the problem of high oil prices, and the high gasoline and diesel and heating oil prices that go with higher per-barrel prices for crude oil, is a dramatic increase in supply. Since most OPEC nations' only export is petroleum it is not in their interest to do anything to reduce the price of oil, at least not by much.

The best way for the American consumer to get relief at the pump would be for America to increase its own oil production. This can be easily accomplished by removing the legal restrictions on drilling in Alaska and on the continental shelf in the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. Removing the legal obstacles to the mining of oil shale and coal would give the confidence they need to invest the billions which would be required to bring coal liquefaction technology to the US and begin exploring the most efficient way of extracting the oil from shale.

I have heard that coal liquefaction and oil shale extraction both require a per-barrel price of $75.00 to be profitable. The price of crude is currently over $130.00 per barrel. The time to begin drilling and mining would seem to be now since within 10 to 15 years the US could more than double the world's supplies of oil. However the domestic oil companies are currently reaping massive profits from the increased world price of crude and if we began exploiting our domestic resources that would reduce the world price of crude to $75.00 per barrel and lock it in until advances in technology brought the price down even more.

Right now BIG OIL is making money hand over fist and the only downside for them is bad will from consumers, which they cannot do anything about, and the prospect of a "windfall profits tax" being imposed on them by politicians. However any kind of tax is simply a cost of doing business which they will happily pass on to the consumer.

So it is not in BIG OIL's interest to increase supply and who is providing them with a ready-made excuse not to develop our domestic reserves? No one but the left-wing Democrats in the United States congress (and some turncoat Republicans like John McCain)!

THAT'S RIGHT! The lunatic fringe environmentalists and their bought and paid for Democrat lapdogs in congress are IN BED WITH BIG OIL in a conspiracy to fleece the American consumer in order to line the pockets of the DNC, The Sierra Club and DICK CHENEY'S BUDDIES IN THE OIL BUSINESS!!!!!!!!

I demand that politicans like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer be put UNDER OATH and forced to explain why they are doing the bidding of BIG OIL and helping BIG OIL steal from their constituents in order to increase the already obscene profits of DICK CHENEY'S BUDDIES IN THE OIL BUSINESS!!!!!!!

When did the Democrat party and the environmental lobby go on BIG OIL's payroll? How much are DICK CHENEY'S BUDDIES IN THE OIL BUSINESS paying Al Gore to spread his global warming alarmism?

The American people have a right to know!

The Council has spoken

The Watchers Council met in conclave at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (to more conveniently attend Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations) and chose this week's winning entries:

The winning Council post was Republicans Ponder The Abyss by Wolf Howling. Here is a sample:

About a week ago, on the eve of the third special election in a safe Republican district, House Republicans huddled to ponder their fate. We do not know what was said in the meeting but Rep. Tom Davis, coming out of the meeting, blamed Republican troubles on Bush and things such as his opposition to SCHIP – the Democratic plan to spend billions to create nationalized health care for children. And in that one event, all was summed up.

Congressional Republicans are both deaf to their constituents and delusional about the causes of their problems. If there is a single Republican who thinks emulating the left and embracing SCHIP or some other huge new socialist program is the way forward for the Republican party, they are insane. What in God’s name is wrong with these people? Bush certainly has to take a major share of responsibility for all of the above problems, but let there be no doubt that our Congressional Republicans and the RNC all shoulder an equal share of the blame.

Go and read the rest. When Republicans face a bloodbath this November they will not be able to say that they have not been warned.

The winning non-Council entry was Blog For Human Rights -- May 15th, 2008 by The Whited Sepulchre. Here is a sample:

It's May 15th. If you look to your right, you'll see this is Blog For Human Rights day. I decided to go old fashioned, and talk about a series of Norman Rockwell paintings based on Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" State of The Union Address. These were originally published in The Saturday Evening Post (1943), and were eventually used to sell War Bonds.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Norman Rockwell is totally out of favor and widely ridiculed as bourgeois kitsch. Rockwell was cursed with both talent and training, both of which are out of favor. If only he'd been inspired to create a Virgin Mary with elephant dung, or photograph a crucifix in urine. Now THAT is art.

[. . .]

Here's the second Rockwell painting, called Freedom From Want. You can safely assume that it's Thanksgiving.

In the meantime our government, in an effort to guarantee that campaign donors are properly cared for, has mandated that MORE than 100 % of our yearly production of certain foodstuffs be converted to ethanol. The current Farm Bill, which will probably make it through the House of Representatives today, provides more of the same.

This has caused food prices all over the world to skyrocket. Food riots have broken out in Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt.

Here's the third Rockwell painting in the series, and it's called Freedom of Speech. My parents had a picture book of Norman Rockwell paintings, which included this series, and I've always been intrigued by the man standing to speak. Do you see what's unusual about him, relative to everyone else?

He's the youngest person in the painting.

He's also wearing the grungiest clothes in the painting.

And yet everyone has to listen to him.

In the meantime, our allies in Saudi Arabia are putting barbers on trial for "insulting Islam".

In Canada, believe it or not, Canada.... The Alberta Human Rights Commission, truly one of the most poorly named bureaucracies in North America, is hauling people into court for insulting Islam. I'm noticing a trend.

And don't get me started on the sanctions against Free Speech in China.

Again, go and read the rest.

The rest of the results can be seen here.

What if Ted Kennedy lived under socialized medicine

Our good friend the Dowager Viscountess sent us a link to a great post on All American Blogger where Duane Lester explores what Ted Kennedy would have to expect from a nationalized health care system if he were an ordinary working class citizen:

Imagine for a minute that Ted Kennedy lived in an America where the government ran health care, and he was what pundits and talking heads like to call a “working class” American.

He’s sitting in his kitchen, reading the paper and eating his morning breakfast when he starts convulsing uncontrollably. His wife makes the call for an ambulance, only to be told that the ambulance would be there as soon as their government mandated break was complete. Unlike this British man, who died from a heart attack five minutes from an ambulance station while two ambulance crews took an EU-mandated break, the ambulance arrives before he expires and gets him into the back of the vehicle.

Ted rides to the nearest hospital and his ambulance parks outside the building, but he is not unloaded. Instead he sits. And sits. And sits. For nearly five hours, Kennedy waits in the ambulance, “in a holding pattern”, waiting to be allowed in the hospital. He can’t be allowed in because the hospital can’t treat him immediately, and they have a government mandate that says patients have to be treated within four hours of admission. So rather than being treated right away, Kennedy is stacked outside the hospital in an ambulance. During that time, other 911 emergencies are left unattended by his ambulance because it is being used to meet government regulations.

Finally, he is allowed into the hospital and seen by a doctor. Like 55 other people this month, his cancer is misdiagnosed. The doctor finds Kennedy’s seizure to be caused by high blood pressure. Instead of treatment for cancer, he is given medication for his blood pressure.

In the following months, he has more seizures, resulting in more visits to the hospital. Kennedy’s health suffers from these visits, as he finds himself exposed to germs and viruses from the hands of the doctors treating him. While he is one of the 300,000 people to get sick from the hospital, he is fortunate. None of the doctors, even the ones who go almost 20 patients before washing their hands, give him MRSA. Eventually, he takes to demanding doctors wash their hands before they touch him.

Finally, after more than a year, his cancer is properly diagnosed. However, Kennedy and his family are shocked when they are told that he is too old to be treated for the disease. The doctor tells him, “The health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone. And really, with your age we can’t justify free treatment if it were unlikely to do you good for long.” Later, another doctor tells him that the treatment is very expensive and because of his age, he won’t be treated.

Kennedy takes his case to the media, and the outrage that follows compels the health service to treat his cancer. But before the treatment begins, another obstacle blocks his path to a cancer free twilight. He’s too fat. The head of the local hospital tells him, “We have limited resources and it’s sensible to use money where we know treatment is going to work.”

When the Secretary of Government Health Services is asked about the policy, it isn’t rejected, but embraced.

“Hospitals are absolutely entitled to set their own treatment guidelines.”

Kennedy again appeals to the public via the media and another outrage ensues. The government is shamed into treating him despite his weight. His doctors recommend their treatment, but he knows that by adding the drug Avastin, his chances of survival are increased. He mentions this to his doctor. He is told that there is a three year waiting list for the drug. Plus, it is just too expensive.

“If millions of dollars are spent on cancer treatment then there will be less to spend on, say, heart disease and arthritis. For example, it costs $40,000 for a two-year supply of Avastin. That could buy six hip replacements.”

Kennedy says he has the money to buy the drug himself, and will if the doctor will approve it. He is told that, despite the fact that three other patients in the area are paying for the drug privately and still receiving treatment, for him to do that would result in him forfeiting free treatment in the future.

A government spokesman explains, “The government says the rules on this are clear. You can’t mix and match between private care and public care.

Patients cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated by the public and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs. That way lies the end of the founding principles of the system.

You either go all public and it is free, or you go all private and you pay for everything.

If those who can afford it start ‘topping up’ their care it will create a two tier system. What about those who can’t afford Avastin?”

Eventually, Kennedy is allowed to pay for the drug himself, but by then the cancer is advanced and the drug does little to help.

Duane goes on to point out that all of the obstacles Kennedy faced in his story are based on real events which occurred under government run health care systems. Then he notes that in real life Kennedy, having all his wealth and power, would simply fly to a nation which still enjoyed a free market in medicine and receive the best care possible.

The left-wing politicians and the Lear jet liberals in Hollywood and the elite media who are calling the loudest for socialized medicine know that they will never be required to wait in line for their health care. They know that they will never be told that they are being denied a life saving drug because it is too expensive or that they will not receive treatment because they are too old or their health is too poor to make them a good risk.

No, the people who will die while on waiting lists or be turned down for treatment because they are too old or too fat or because they smoke or have some other factor which makes them a poor candidate for receiving rationed health care are all going to be faceless drones who live in flyover country.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

You always know you've struck gold when liberals react with hysteria and rage to something you've said. So I knew President Bush's speech at the Knesset last week was a barn burner before even I read it. Liberals haven't been this worked up since Rev. Jerry Falwell criticized a cartoon sponge.

Calling the fight against terrorism "the defining challenge of our time" -- which already confused liberals who think the defining struggle of our time is against Wal-Mart -- Bush said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The way liberals squealed, you'd think someone had mentioned Obama's ears. Summoning all their womanly anger, today's Neville Chamberlains denounced Bush, saying this was an unjustified attack on Obambi and, furthermore, that it's absurd to compare B. Hussein Obama's willingness to "talk" to Ahmadinejad to Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler.

Unlike liberals, I will honestly report their point before I attack it.

The New York Times editorialized: "Sen. Obama has called for talking with Iran and Syria," but has not "suggested surrendering to these countries' demands, which is, after all, what appeasement is."

"Hardball's" Chris Matthews gloated all week about nailing a conservative talk radio host with this brilliant riposte: "You don't understand there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberlain did wrong ... is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia."

Liberals think all real tyrants ended with Hitler and act as if they would have known all along not to appease him. Next time is always different for people who refuse to learn from history. As Air America's Mark Green said: "Look, Hitler was Hitler." (Which, I admit, threw me for a loop: I thought Air America's position is that Bush is Hitler.)

This is nonsense. Ahmadinejad looks a lot like Hitler did when Chamberlain agreed to meet with him at Munich, except that Hitler didn't buy his suits from ratty thrift shops. Much of England reacted just as today's Democrats would because, like today's Democrats, they feared nothing more than another war. (Lloyd George lied, kids died!)

Lots of Britons cheered when Chamberlain returned from Munich and announced "peace in our time." Without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, what on earth makes Chris Matthews think he would not be among them?

As Bush said at the Knesset, "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words." That was Chamberlain. And that is today's Democratic Party.

What Matthews and the Times are saying is this: We can have a Munich, but we promise to be tougher than Chamberlain was. Therein lies the flaw in their logic. Yes, in the abstract, it is technically possible to "talk" without