Ron Paul is an ass clown

Don Feder writing about Ron Paul:

To "get" Ron Paul you have to understand libertarianism -- an ism every bit as delusional as Marxism. The National Libertarian Party, which first ran a presidential candidate in 1972, hasn't had many wins -- electing 4 state legislators in as many decades, as well as a planning commissioner here and an alderman there. Ron Paul is its greatest success. 

The Texas congressman is far and away the most prominent proponent of what I like to call rightwing utopianism. Libertarianism is to authentic conservatism what Barack Obama is to 19th century liberalism. 

Inspired by Ayn Rand (Ron named his son, the future senator, Rand Paul), Libertarianism was an outgrowth of 1960s campus conservatism. Like ideologues of the left, libertarians of the day were on a never-ending quest for ideological purity and the foolish consistency Emerson derided. (They still are.) Unlike traditional conservatives, libertarians came to oppose the Vietnam War and what they called "prohibitionist" drug policies. You must be consistent, libertarians lectured us. If you support economic liberty, then you must support "personal liberty" (legalized abortion, freedom to use soul-destroying drugs) and the libertarian principle applied to foreign policy -- isolationism. 

During the Cold War, economist Murray Rothbard (one of the foremost libertarian theorists) once observed that if we lost the rest of the world and the Soviets invaded America, we could always take to the hills and launch a guerrilla war, a la "Red Dawn." Libertarians have never been hampered by reality. 

Some libertarians drifted into anarchy, others organized the National Libertarian Party. Ron Paul was the party's 1988 standard-bearer. 

I understand libertarians because I was one, from roughly 1968 (when I read "Atlas Shrugged") to 1982. I was a vice chairman of the New York Libertarian Party in the early '70s. When I lived in the Seattle-area, later in the decade, I ran a libertarian supper club, which brought in a young Texas congressman as a speaker. My road to recovery began with "The Conservative Mind" by the great Russell Kirk and Whittaker Chambers' "Witness." 

Other than abortion, there is no particular on which Ron Paul differs with either libertarianism or the Libertarian Party. Like them, he would legalize hard drugs and abolish age of consent laws, which violate the rights of 24-year-olds to have sex with 14-year-olds. 

Like the average libertarian, Ron Paul is a dogmatic isolationist. 

Rothbard believed our involvement in the Second World War was a tragedy: 

"Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex...." 

A former aide to the congressman, Eric Dondero says Paul told him the United States had no business being involved in World War II. "When pressed, he often brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand. 

The 2010 platform of the National Libertarian Party sets forth a foreign policy difficult to distinguish from the lunacy of Michael Moore and Code Pink: The former provides: 

"Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We should end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid." 

In 1973, Rothbard observed: 

"The libertarian position, generally, is to minimize State power as much as possible, down to zero, and isolationism is the full expression (of that doctrine) in foreign affairs."

Not only does Paul march in lockstep with Rothbard and the L.P., he even believes the United States should have no opinion on foreign developments. Thus, Dr. Paul was the only member of the House of Representatives to vote against a 2005 resolution condemning Ahmadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map" and a 2009 resolution "expressing support" for Iranian pro-democracy demonstrators. 

And yes, Ron Paul has intimated, on more than one occasion, that the United States is to blame for the 9/11 massacre. He claims al-Qaeda slaughtered 3,000 U.S. civilians because America is "bombing them," because we have military bases in the sacred sand pit and because we support Israel over the dear Palestinians. Wonder who he blames for the Muslin conquest of Constantinople in 1453? The CIA wasn't around then, was it? Or for the Christmas bombings of Nigerian churches? 

In a 2003 speech, Paul said we should pay attention to bin Laden, when he explained his grievances against America.: 

"The U.S. defiles Islam with its bases ... its initiation of war against Iraq (notwithstanding Saddam's pacifism), with 12 years of persistent bombing, and weapons being used against the Palestinians, as the Palestinian territory shrinks and Israel's occupation expands." 

As you'd expect, Paul is insouciant about nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran's incinerate-the-Jews/establish-a-worldwide-caliphate regime . Why wouldn't they want nukes? "Internationally, they'd be given more respect." Besides, "they are surrounded." (If only Israel would stop threatening to push the Shiites into the sea.) What's Tehran going to do with one or two nuclear weapons, Paul asks? Why Israel has dozens. Hint: The Iranians crazy enough to use them. A nuclear war would be just the thing to usher in the 12th imam. 

On the Jewish state, Paul doesn't deviate one iota from L.P. party-line. Libertarians view Israel as the engine that drives what they call U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Israel is said to sap our resources, drag us into their wars and make the Muslims -- who are otherwise peace-loving and well-disposed to our way of life -- hate us. 

In his essay, "War Guilt in the Middle East," Rothbard excoriated Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs," "confiscation of Arab lands" and its "refusal to let these refugees (Palestinians) return and return the property taken from them." He had nothing to say about the equal number of Jews driven from Arab lands by pogroms at the time of Israel's founding. 

Dondero says his ex-boss loathes Israel and "sides with the Palestinians and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs." While Dr. Paul hotly denies that he's anti-Israel (his campaign calls Dondero a "disgruntled" ex-aide) everything he's done or said about the Middle East seems to confirm the charge. 

Ayn Rand, who unintentionally provided the impetus for the movement, disdained libertarians, calling them "right-wing hippies.' She was unequivocal in her support for Israel, which she explained this way in a 1974 appearance: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are." 

Ron Paul may be delusional, but he is a consistent. Neither mass murder, terrorism, the advance of militant Islam, nor nuclear weapons in the hands of fanatical regimes will shake a libertarian's faith in his dogma: We have no foreign enemies. If certain states want to kill us, it's our fault. Nothing is worth fighting for -- unless it's abolishing the Federal Reserve System. 

I'd like to follow Ron Paul around to Republican gatherings, pointing at him and shouting "stranger, danger" Stranger this you cannot get. 

First, before I get to all the things I agree with Mr. Feder about I would point out that ending the "war on drugs" is not a position taken only by libertarian nut-jobs.  No less a conservative luminary than William F Buckley, Jr. championed ending the drug war because the damage caused by the attempt to criminalize drugs is worse than the damage done by the drugs themselves.

Now on to the modern-day libertarians.  Like Mr. Feder I was also once a card-carrying, dues paying member of the Libertarian Party.  I still agree with a great deal of what they believe regarding the need to limit the federal government to its constitutionally mandated areas of responsibility.

However what caused me to part ways with the LP was their failure to understand that sometimes"providing for the common defense" requires more than sitting within our borders and waiting for an enemy to attack and only then springing to the defense.

Sometimes, whenever possible in fact, the best way to defend the nation is to deal with the problem before it actually lands troops on your shores (or hijacks planes and flies them into your buildings).  For example if the US had maintained the kind of involvement with Europe at the end of WWI as it did at the end of WWII - forming a NATO-like defense alliance and integrating military operations and basing troops in Germany and other European nations it is very unlikely that there ever would have been a Third Reich or a Second World War.

I also parted company with the libertarians over the issue of Israel.  As Ayn Rand observed when savages and civilized men fight you reflexively side with the civilized men.  If you want an example of this consider the unfortunate nation of Zimbabwe.  Had the civilized nations of the world supported the admittedly flawed, but still civilized government of Rhodesia when it was under assault by Marxist savages (savages because they were Marxist) enormous suffering could have been averted.

The fact is that Israel is a civilized nation surrounded by savages.  The Muslim nations which are arrayed against Israel are a collection of totalitarian dictatorships and murderous Islamic theocracies who practice female genital mutilation, who allow fathers to murder their teenage daughters for bringing shame upon their families by "allowing" themselves to be raped and who stone to death anyone who attempts to renounce the evil seventh-century death cult in favor of any more enlightened humane (and less bat-shit crazy) religious philosophy.  In a fight like that you don't remain neutral and you don't side with the bunch holding the signs which say "behead those who say that Islam beheads its enemies".

I also part company with the libertarians on the issue of our borders.  The LP believes that people have a natural right to freedom of movement which means that it is nobody's business if the entire population of Mexico wants to move to the United States.  That the new Mexican citizens would vote with the progressive left to bring about the kind of oppressive socialist welfare state that the libertarians claim to hate seems lost on them.

In fact a great deal seems lost on them.  Libertarians think of themselves as rational secular people and they expect that all other people share that rational and secular outlook.  The fact that the mullahs of Iran might really truly believe that the Hidden Imam will return and bring Islamic paradise to the world if they nuke Israel is lost on them.

It is also lost on them that in WWII the Soviet Union the British Commonwealth, the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich were locked in a death struggle and the British did not have the power to carry the day by themselves.  Only the entrance of the United States into the war kept all of Asia from becoming a Japanese empire of blood and slavery and all of Europe and the Middle East from becoming a playground for either Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

In the real world the libertarian ideal of free trade with all and alliances with none becomes Swiss banks receiving deposits of gold pulled from the teeth of Holocaust victims while Swiss chemical companies sell the components of Zyklon B to the SS.

But this is all lost on Ron Paul and his pod people.  The reason that libertarians just don't "get it" is that not really a political movement but a utopian fantasy which attracts anti-American malcontents in exactly the same way that Marxism does.  If you are one kind of chronically unhappy basement dweller you go take a public shit in Zuccotti Park to stick it to all the Wall St. fat cats, or if you're the other kind (the kind with more than a passing acquaintance with soap) you hack online polls in order to make Ron Paul look like the popular choice of the nation.

Either way you are simply expressing an irrational dissatisfaction with the nation which gave you a higher standard of living and more opportunity than any citizen, subject or resident of any nation in the history of the entire freaking planet.

Cain survives

Robert Stacy McCain has an essay on The American Spectator website titled Campaign Crisis Tests Cain in which he speculates that the debate Wednesday night might have been a turning point for Mr. Cain.

When Wednesday's Republican presidential debate ended, CNBC switched to a post-debate panel featuring Larry Kudlow, who raved that Herman Cain had an "unbelievably good debate tonight" and said Cain's performance "blew me away."

The Atlanta businessman had help from a friendly audience at the debate, held at Michigan's Oakland University. When moderator Maria Bartiromo asked whether sexual harassment allegations against him raised "character issues," the crowd booed the question. And they loudly cheered Cain's answer: "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations." When Bartiromo's colleague John Harwood tried to get Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to address the accusations against Cain, the crowd again booed the question, and applauded when Romney refused to criticize Cain. People "can make their own assessment," Romney said, and that was the last time the topic was raised all night.

It is far too early to say that Cain has put the accusations behind him, but by the time Wednesday's debate ended, his successful performance had apparently changed the narrative of what seemed a potentially campaign-killing crisis just 48 hours earlier.

[. . .]

The boos and cheers from the audience at Wednesday's debate in Michigan seemed to indicate that Republicans are not ready to abandon Cain, and may be ready to rally behind him. Cain continues to lead the RealClearPolitics national poll average, as he has for the past three weeks. Sometimes the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and any sense that Cain's campaign is in jeopardy was overshadowed during the debate by the blunder of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who found himself unable to name the third of three federal departments he proposed to eliminate. That prompted one top fundraiser to declare to a reporter that Perry's campaign is "over."

Ten days into the campaign crisis provoked by the accusations against him, Herman Cain is not yet out of the woods, but after Wednesday, he may be able to see sunshine breaking through the trees.

One thing I disagree with is that it is "far too early to say that Cain has put the accusations behind him".  I think that Mr. Cain has successfully moved past all the accusations that have been brought forward to this date.  The primary reason why I do not believe that the current imbroglio will damage Cain's standing before the GOP primary voters - or the national electorate next November, for that matter - is laid out in the afore mentioned Ann Coulter column:

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago. 

So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod. 

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O'Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain's personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA). 

The Daley-controlled IRA works hand-in-glove with the NRA. And strangely enough, Cain's short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he's alleged to have been a sexual predator. 

After O'Grady's name surfaced in connection with the miraculous appearance of Cain's personnel files from the NRA, she issued a Clintonesque denial of any involvement in producing them -- by vigorously denying that she knew Cain when he was at the NRA. (Duh.) 

And now, after a week of conservative eye-rolling over unspecified, anonymous accusations against Cain, we've suddenly got very specific sexual assault allegations from an all-new accuser out of ... Chicago. 

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago. But you know who has? David Axelrod! And guess who lived in Axelrod's very building? Right again: Cain's latest accuser, Sharon Bialek. 

Bialek's accusations were certainly specific. But they also demonstrated why anonymous accusations are worthless. 

Within 24 hours of Bialek's press conference, friends and acquaintances of hers stepped forward to say that she's a "gold-digger," that she was constantly in financial trouble -- having filed for personal bankruptcy twice -- and, of course, that she had lived in Axelrod's apartment building at 505 North Lake Shore Drive, where, she admits, she knew the man The New York Times calls Obama's "hired muscle." 

Throw in some federal tax evasion, and she's Obama's next Cabinet pick.  

The reason all this is relevant is that both Axelrod and Daley have a history of smearing political opponents by digging up claims of sexual misconduct against them. 

John Brooks, Chicago's former fire commissioner, filed a lawsuit against Daley six months ago claiming Daley threatened to smear him with sexual harassment accusations if Brooks didn't resign. He resigned -- and the sexual harassment allegations were later found to be completely false. 

Meanwhile, as extensively detailed in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America," the only reason Obama became a U.S. senator -- allowing him to run for president -- is that David Axelrod pulled sealed divorce records out of a hat, first, against Obama's Democratic primary opponent, and then against Obama's Republican opponent. 

One month before the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Obama was way down in the polls, about to lose to Blair Hull, a multimillionaire securities trader. 

But then The Chicago Tribune -- where Axelrod used to work -- began publishing claims that Hull's second ex-wife, Brenda Sexton, had sought an order of protection against him during their 1998 divorce proceedings.
  

From then until Election Day, Hull was embroiled in fighting the allegation that he was a "wife beater." He and his ex-wife eventually agreed to release their sealed divorce records. His first ex-wife, daughters and nanny defended him at a press conference, swearing he was never violent. During a Democratic debate, Hull was forced to explain that his wife kicked him and he had merely kicked her back. 

Hull's substantial lead just a month before the primary collapsed with the nonstop media attention to his divorce records. Obama sailed to the front of the pack and won the primary. Hull finished third with 10 percent of the vote. [Given that this happened in Chicago we also have to consider that the accusations and controversy served to shield the effects of massive voter fraud as well.  No one would think to question the numbers so the Democrat machine was free to stuff the ballot boxes as much as they wanted to - LC]

Luckily for Axelrod, Obama's opponent in the general election had also been divorced. 

The Republican nominee was Jack Ryan, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard law and business schools, who had left his lucrative partnership at Goldman Sachs to teach at an inner-city school on the South Side of Chicago. 

But in a child custody dispute some years earlier, Ryan's ex-wife, Hollywood sex kitten Jeri Lynn Ryan, had alleged that, while the couple was married, Jack had taken her to swingers clubs in Paris and New York. 

Jack Ryan adamantly denied the allegations. In the interest of protecting their son, he also requested that the records be put permanently under seal. 

Axelrod's courthouse moles obtained the "sealed" records and, in no time, they were in the hands of every political operative in Chicago. Knowing perfectly well what was in the records, Chicago Tribune attorneys flew to California and requested that the court officially "unseal" them -- over the objections of both Jack and Jeri Ryan. 

Your honor, who knows what could be in these records! 

A California judge ordered them unsealed, which allowed newspapers to publish the salacious allegations, and four days later, Ryan dropped out of the race under pressure from idiot Republicans (who should be tracked down and shot). 

With a last-minute replacement of Alan Keyes as Obama's Republican opponent, Obama was able to set an all-time record in an Illinois Senate election, winning with a 43 percent margin.

And that's how Obama became a senator four years after losing a congressional race to Bobby Rush. (In a disastrous turn of events, Rush was not divorced.) 

Axelrod destroyed the only two men who stood between Obama and the Senate with illicitly obtained, lurid allegations from their pasts. 

In 2007, long after Obama was safely ensconced in the U.S. Senate, The New York Times reported: "The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece (on Hull's sealed divorce records) later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had 'worked aggressively behind the scenes' to push the story." 

Some had suggested, the Times article continued, that Axelrod had "an even more significant role -- that he leaked the initial story." 

This time, Obama's little helpers have not only thrown a bomb into the Republican primary, but are hoping to destroy the man who deprives the Democrats of their only argument in 2012: If you oppose Obama, you must be a racist. 

I have to disagree with Miss Ann on that last point.  In the fever swamps of liberal/progressive thought supporting Cain is absolute proof positive that one is a racist!  Because Cain is black and doesn't have his snout stuck down deep in the trough of of government entitlement that other black "leaders" feed upon.  Rather Cain had fled the liberal plantation and rejects the patronage of the Democrat party.


He is unwilling to sell out the nation and his fellow African-Americans for a place at the table of the current power structure.  He is unwilling to work for policies that keep black people ignorant and dependent upon the state.


This makes him a mortal enemy (as all conservatives are) to the political left, but because he is black he occupies a place of extraordinary vilification in that by his very existence, he disproves the left's narrative of American life.


Mr. Cain (like Clarence Thomas, another blood enemy of the left) achieved success without relying on the mechanisms of the state and so can serve as an example to other blacks that they do not need to either subsist on welfare, turn to crime or rely upon affirmative action to get and keep jobs for which they are not qualified.  Rather by rejecting the handouts of the left and applying themselves they can be excellent in their own right.  They can earn a place at the top by staying in school and working hard, by practicing self-discipline and believing that success is possible for those who toil to achieve it (in other words doing all the things that get black kids derided for "acting white").


This is to the Democrat party what sunlight is to a vampire.  If even 20% of black Americans voted Republican the Democrats would never win a presidential election and would win damn few congressional contests.


Democrats know this and they are desperate to keep blacks in their place.


It is also why they are so desperate to open America's borders and get amnesty for the millions of Mexicans illegally in this country.  They need a replacement minority that can be controlled in the event that the black population (or even a large minority of it) wises up and realizes that the white liberals they have been voting for are responsible for much of their misery and the black "leaders" they have been trusting have in fact sold them out.

This is the essence of the furor to destroy Herman Cain as it was the driving force behind the attempt to destroy Clarence Thomas.  It is why every black conservative who dares to step forward and declare him or herself is attacked is attacked and smeared.

This is why the Chicago machine bestirred itself to vomit out a small parade of women who were willing to falsely claim that Mr. Cain "harassed" them.  This is why Republicans have been unwilling to play along and boot him out of the race.  We know that they are trying to play us and we ain't going along.

Either learn from history or shut the frak up already

From Mercer Tyson writing on The American Thinker:

Bad-mouthing Romney is like saying Ronald Reagan was a failure because he didn't colonize China.  Romney is a conservative who will work well with a GOP Congress.  His flipflopedness is both on purpose and irrelevant.  Time to get off his back.

Previously I wrote an article on American Thinker promoting the ticket of Romney and Rubio, and boy, did Romney and I get soundly thumped by many of the AT readers.  I consider the attacks on Romney from conservatives to be unwarranted, incorrect, and self-destructive.

[. . .]

While I love Herman Cain, I fall into the group of those who are Cain skeptics; people who say they like Cain but don't think he can win. 

IF Mr. Tyson could point back to electoral victories by Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush in his reelection campaign, Bob Dole and John McCain then he would have a point.  He would have an even better point if he could speak of how Ronald Reagan (who was painted as an insane warmonger by the MSM) went down to a humiliating defeat against Jimmy Carter in 1980.  He would cement his point if he could point to the polls which showed John McCain ahead until choosing uber-conservative Sara Palin to be his running mate after which his campaign collapsed.

But he cannot do any of those things.  RINO moderates Ford, H.W. Bush, Dole and McCain lost (the elder Bush won when he was perceived as Reagan's third term but lost when he proved that he was no conservative).  George W Bush was also perceived to be a true conservative when running for his first term and won reelection because he was commander-in-chief during a war which still enjoyed broad public support in the aftermath of 9/11.

Ronald Reagan, a genuine conservative, was tarred as an evil warmonger, lacking in compassion and probably senile was elected in a landslide and won reelection in an even bigger landslide.

John McCain was behind in the polls and was considered to be a joke by most on both the left and right until he picked Sarah Palin.  At that point he started running nearly even with Obama and at one point even pulled ahead.  Only the collapse of the housing bubble and beginning of the Great Recession catapulted Obama into a decisive lead.

In other words every time since 1980 we try it Mr. Tyson's way we go down in flames and every time we back a true conservative (or someone who is thought to be a true conservative) we win.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.

A necessary corollary to that would be that sanity is defined as expecting things to work the same way in the future as they have worked in the past.

So let us be as sane as possible and nominate the most believably and consistently  conservative candidate we can find in the expectation that he (or she) will win.

Like the Klan with iPhones and the Internet

This is long, but very worthwhile.  I would also note that one of the most common targets of the inquisition were ethnically Jewish men who had converted to Christianity (or whose families had converted before they were even born) who had achieved success in business.  They were accused of secretly practicing Judaism by jealous business rivals and the Church/State authorities were eager to play along and torture "confessions" out of the accused because that would lead to the confiscation of all their assets (and the cancellation of outstanding loans).  It was a dandy racket.  The local lord or bishop would fatten his treasury and the less successful businessmen would rid themselves of a competitor.  

 We can see the same kind of thing happening here.  If Cain is removed from the race it will benefit Romney, the less successful competitor for the GOP nomination, and the rest of the Republican establishment as well as the Democrat/progressive complex of elected politicians, unions (especially public sector unions), the mainstream media and academics.  

 

Lincoln's "Living Dog"

By Jeffrey Lord on 11.1.11 @ 6:09AM

Herman Cain's a threat to both the left and the GOP Establishment. 

"A living dog is better than a dead lion." -- Abraham Lincoln on the choice between himself and Stephen A. Douglas

Well, well, well.

Or as Private Gomer Pyle used to exclaim: "Surrrrrrr-prize, surrrrrr-prize, surrrrrr-prize!"

You know why all this flapdoodle over Herman Cain and charges of sexual harassment, charges that Mr. Cain has flatly denied? (Here in this Fox News exclusive Herman Cain is what Abraham Lincoln called a "living dog.")

A living dog? Yes, and we'll come back to this in a moment because it bears directly on what's happening here. As Herman Cain the "living dog" comes under the inevitable attack from the left, if conservatives understand where they are, where they appear to be heading, where they've been, it becomes easier (although perhaps not easy) to understand what to do next -- and how and with whom to do it.

There are two parts to this disgraceful attack. Both must be examined to understand exactly what is going on with this story.

Part One? History. And this history has two parts within. 

So let's begin -- and let's be blunt.

Let's recall in some detail how this racial game -- and it is a racial game -- is played.

Liberals and the Democratic Party have a two centuries long vivid and extremely graphic history of racism. (Detailed previously here ). From the almost thirty -- thirty! -- party platforms that either supported slavery or segregation or chose to be silent on the subject, to an alliance with the Ku Klux Klan, electing Klan members to all manner of political offices federal, state and local, not to mention supporting everything from lynching to the racial quotas of today, racism has been the life blood of the left.

Part and parcel of all this has been the fine art of portraying black men as sexual predators. And dealing with these black men so accused in a terrifyingly horrific fashion: they would be lynched.

One could fill cyberspace with these stories, but perhaps one of the more famous is the story of Emmett Till. PBS once did a documentary on the Emmett Till case and as the crescendo rises from the liberal media lynch mob about Mr. Cain it is worth a look at what PBS notes on its website about this particular issue.

Said PBS, no outpost of conservatism:

Some whites espoused the idea that black men were sexual predators and wanted integration in order to be with white women…. Lynchings were frequently committed with the most flagrant public display. Like executions by guillotine in medieval times, lynchings were often advertised in newspapers and drew large crowds of white families. They were a kind of vigilantism where Southern white men saw themselves as protectors of their way of life and their white women. By the early twentieth century, the writer Mark Twain had a name for it: the United States of Lyncherdom…. Lynchings were covered in local newspapers with headlines spelling out the horrific details. Photos of victims, with exultant white observers posed next to them, were taken for distribution in newspapers or on postcards. Body parts, including genitalia, were sometimes distributed to spectators or put on public display. Most infractions were for petty crimes, like theft, but the biggest one of all was looking at or associating with white women. Many victims were black businessmen or black men who refused to back down from a fight. Headlines such as the following were not uncommon:
"Five White Men Take Negro Into Woods; Kill Him: Had Been Charged with Associating with White Women" went over The Associated Press wires about a lynching in Shreveport, Louisiana." 

Did you catch those two particular sentences above? These two:

Most infractions were for petty crimes, like theft, but the biggest one of all was looking at or associating with white women. Many victims were black businessmen or black men who refused to back down from a fight.

To restate. Black businessmen who refused to back down from a fight were lynched because they had been "looking at or associating with white women."

And who is Herman Cain? That's right. A prominent black businessman. A black man who is refusing to back down from a fight. A black man who, quite obviously from his business career in a largely white country, necessarily is "looking at or associating with white women."

Now, bearing this history in mind, let's recall the second part of this history -- the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky episode.

Several years after the term "high-tech" lynching exploded on the scene at the confirmation hearings of now-Justice Clarence Thomas -- Thomas, recall, is a conservative black man married to a white woman -- the American left had a mysterious change of heart. After furiously insisting that "women tell the truth" in matters of sexual harassment, and that the real story was that men didn't "get it" -- Bill Clinton came along and liberals did… shocking, I know… a 180.

As the damn broke on Clinton's sexual behavior -- including allegations of rape (from Juanita Broaddrick, a one-time supporter), groping in the Oval Office (Kathleen Willey, another supporter and White House volunteer), dropping his pants as governor and asking state employee Paula Jones to "kiss it" -- liberals suddenly had a whole different world view.

Did I mention that Bill Clinton is a white man and a liberal?

Sorry. Bill Clinton is a white man and a liberal.

So what exactly were the responses back then in the day? When the man in question was not a black conservative but a white liberal?

Clinton's critics, fumed liberals, were uptight, religious fanatics. A massive liberal campaign was launched -- directly from the Clinton White House -- to discredit every single woman or conservative who took issue with Clinton's womanizing. Clinton's critics, scorned James Carville, were determined "to wash all the sodomites and fornicators out of town."

Also from Carville the memorable gem "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find." A reference, of course, to Paula Jones, who was quickly deemed to be an unsophisticated redneck rube.

Of a sudden, not all women told the truth.

Kathleen Willey was trashed. Juanita Broaddrick filed a lawsuit -- and was promptly audited by the Clinton-controlled IRS. Paula Jones was humiliated, mocked and smeared from one end of the country to the other for everything from her accent to her economic and educational status. Liberals were ruthless. Absolutely totally ruthless. And among other things, ironically established a consensus that sexual harassment is no big deal.

Let's move on from history to politics.

To begin, what was Lincoln talking about? Why does Herman Cain fit precisely Lincoln's "living dog" description? What do we need to understand here?

Lincoln borrowed his point from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 9:4: "For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.") in his fabled House Divided speech, using it to contrast himself with Stephen A. Douglas. Said candidate Lincoln: "A living dog is better than a dead lion." 

By which Lincoln meant that a man who cares nothing for the task at hand is what he termed a "caged and toothless" lion when it comes to doing the job that needs to be done. Lincoln was referring to Douglas's unwillingness to end slavery. In today's world Cain is effectively using the same sentiment to illustrate his differences with rival Mitt Romney and others -- President Obama included -- on everything from how to approach changing the tax code (Cain's 9/9/9 plan) to putting the brakes on the growth of government and, most tellingly, refusing to buy into the dime store New Deal mentality that has become a hallmark of Establishment moderate Republicans.

As the polls show, Mr. Cain is gaining fans because of his performance in the GOP debates. He is being perceived as a potential "living dog" in the White House -- all teeth and energy in tearing relentlessly into the problem. How, the question arises, can a President Romney possibly oppose the growth of government when he went out of his way as governor to increase it? Demonstrating he not only didn't oppose the idea of big government but that he now seems bent on convincing the public they shouldn't care that he doesn't care.

And how can the GOP Establishment in Washington be committed to the task when so many feed off of that very same government? Are not Romney and the larger GOP Establishment the very embodiment of Lincoln's "caged and toothless lion"? Is not Herman Cain -- his color quite aside -- a more serious political threat to both the GOP Establishment and the Liberal Establishment as opposed to just another political competitor?

We are in the midst of a tremendous popularity surge for Mr. Cain. Poll after poll is emerging both nationally and now in Iowa showing him at the front of the GOP pack. Like clockwork, and precision clockwork at that, now comes forth the allegation, an "exclusive" in the liberal media outlet Politico, of "inappropriate behavior" that was "sexually suggestive." Years ago.

Let's again be blunt. Mr. Cain is black. Were his female accusers white? Politico doesn't say. Certainly the Politico lists two white male reporters in the byline of the Cain story. One, Kenneth Vogel, is an ex-staffer for the far left George Soros funded Center for Public Integrity, as noted here.

And the tie between the left and lynching, as PBS notes, "black businessmen" who were "looking or associating with white women" and "who refused to back down from a fight" is historically airtight.

But whatever the color of Mr. Cain's accusers both the pattern of this attack as well as the reason for it is crystal clear.

You might call it The Meaning of the President 2012.

The presidential election of 2012 will mark the 48th year since the defeat at the 1964 Republican Convention of the then-dominant Republican moderates by conservatives. The avowed complaint then from infuriated moderates was that conservatism could not win elections, much less govern the country.

In practice, the loss of elections has since occurred when moderates (Ford, Bush 41, Dole, McCain) headed the ticket. Close election victories rather than landslides have resulted when the nominee campaigned as a moderate (the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush). And under the command of both Bushes, from the raising of taxes (in violation of 41's "read my lips" pledge) to Bush 43's embrace of such as a Medicare prescription drug program and education's No Child Left Behind -- the size and cost of government has increased.

It seems altogether obvious that the size and cost of government -- now with the country dangling precipitously over the canyon of a $15 trillion debt -- will not decrease with a Republican president until a flash point, a crisis, is reached within the Republican Party itself. Reached, resolved and passed.

To borrow from Abraham Lincoln: A party divided against itself cannot stand. A conservative party that is led by a moderate will eventually split asunder.

The GOP won't dissolve or disappear. But just as Lincoln predicted of America in the middle of the slavery controversy, the GOP will become all one thing or all the other. Either conservatives will continue the party's evolution back into the party of American conservatism it was at its founding, or moderates will make moderation -- the idea of the dime store New Deal -- palatable everywhere into the farthest reaches of the GOP.

Lest there be anyone who thinks the chances of the latter are unthinkable, it would be important to think of party history exactly in terms of these last 48 years since 1964. If one thinks of the federal government as, say, a governmental version of the popular movie franchise Transformers (described by Wikipedia as the story of: "alien robots who can disguise themselves by transforming into everyday machinery") a clearer picture of what has been happening to the GOP for those 48 years can be seen.

Some of the more visible "everyday machinery" that has been transforming the robotic federal government into even larger size with a costlier price tag has been welded on courtesy of the moderation impulse of various Republican presidents.

Contemplate that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now run amok in the Obama era was a creation of Richard Nixon. Or that Bush 43 dismissed the Reagan idea of getting rid of the growing bureaucracy that is the Department of Education as not "realistic' of leadership and instead decided in favor of launching an expansion of the federal government's role in education by launching No Child Left Behind -- with no less than the late "Liberal Lion" Senator Ted Kennedy as his partner. Not to mention the Bush signing of McCain-Feingold and Sarbanes-Oxley.

And so on… and on.

The first GOP platform after 1964 -- 1968 -- found the Republican Party that nominated Richard Nixon that year including a plank titled "The Individual and Government" which stated:

In recent years an increasingly impersonal national government has tended to submerge the individual. An entrenched, burgeoning bureaucracy has increasingly usurped powers, unauthorized by Congress. Decentralization of power, as well as strict Congressional oversight of administrative and regulatory agency compliance with the letter and spirit of the law, are urgently needed to preserve personal liberty, improve efficiency, and provide a swifter response to human problems.

But by July of 1970, a bare two years and four months later, the Nixon Administration created the EPA -- by executive order. There was not a single enabling piece of legislation from Congress involved. The Nixon executive order opened the door to a massive national intrusion of what the platform specifically said the GOP opposed -- "an increasingly impersonal national government (that) has tended to submerge the individual." Beginning operations in December of 1970, EPA is now a federal behemoth employing almost 18,000 full-time employees, daily injecting into everyday American life proposed rules and regulations on everything from global warming to commercial boilers to private property.

In one recent case cited by the Heritage Foundation, the problems with moderate Republican presidencies is vividly illustrated.

Alaska small businessman Krister Evertson, who had never had a run-in with the law in his life, was run off the road and jailed by a SWAT team armed with automatic weapons. Why? Because he had not used a properly approved EPA label he had never heard of for a small shipment of sodium. Evertson wound up doing two years in prison.

When did this happen?

That's right. In 2004 -- when the EPA was under the administration of one George W. Bush.

Thus the "dime store New Deal" of moderate Republicans -- in this case from Nixon to Bush -- at work in practice. (Here is Mr. Evertson's congressional testimony from 2009.)

This is now a considerably polished approach by GOP moderates. So run-of-the-mill routine that in his memoirs President George W. Bush apparently never thought his signing of the Sarbanes-Oxley "Corporate Responsibility" legislation was worth mentioning. The compliance costs for American business from this gem of Republican regulatory moderation were predicted to be $1.2 billion. In fact, they now hover in the stratosphere of $35 billion. And this from a president who ran on a platform with a plank promising -- no kidding -- "Common Sense in Regulation."

These few examples (and many more not mentioned here) show precisely where conservatives and the Republican Party are now -- and where they will continue to head unless serious change is at hand.

In effect the philosophical strategy or lack thereof that has guided the Nixon, Ford, and two Bush presidencies over the last 48 years since that return to basics that was the 1964 Convention has exactly built almost to specification a Republican Party which has a conservative political foundation supporting moderate if not liberal governments. Governments which in turn wind up creating regulatory nightmares like the EPA or Sarbanes-Oxley and the rest.

Which means conservatives watching the 2012 jockeying for the Republican presidential nomination face a considerable task to prevent the continuation of this trend. Plainly, Romney promises in so many words that a Romney presidency would re-channel the thinking of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and the father and son Bushes. He honestly pretends to nothing else.

Leaving conservatives across the country knowing what must be done. Yet struggling to understand how -- and importantly with whom -- to do it.

What they are actually doing is examining the field for Lincoln's "live dogs." Those who care strongly enough about the changes they are promising and plan to look back in their farewell address to the nation as they leave office with the satisfaction they sank serious teeth into the task -- with results to show for it.

Or, as Reagan himself put it in his farewell address to the nation in January of 1989: "My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference."

Added into this mix, working hand in glove with the dime-store New Dealers, is the drive by this or that Republican consultant and lobbyist to convince conservatives they can't win independent votes and simply shouldn't care that the next Republican president would turn out like four of the last five.

That means something must be done to stop the popularity of Herman Cain.

Which in turn leaves a wide field of "suspects" for those who would seek to torpedo the Cain campaign. No one yet knows the source here, but in this day and age of the Internet it is difficult to believe they will escape unrevealed.

Was the source a GOP consultant/lobbyist with ties to a Cain rival?

Or was it a left-winger acting on the centuries' old and well proven animus of the left for the uppity black man -- a hatred that once summoned the noose of the lynchers? And now, if you are a conservative black man like Herman Cain or Clarence Thomas before him as opposed to a white liberal man like Bill Clinton -- makes you the target for exactly that same animus. Except this time it's a high tech lynching, fed to a couple of lefty white male reporters at Politico.

Either way, one thing is clear.

Abraham Lincoln would recognize Herman Cain instantly.

Why?

Because Herman Cain is exactly Abraham Lincoln's "living dog" incarnate. Which makes him one very big, double-barreled threat. To both the GOP Establishment, because of his outsider views. And the left wing, because he's a black man with conservative views.

What is this sexual harassment story really all about?

Somebody wants that damnable living dog Herman Cain rounded up.

And Politico is supplying the political rope.

About the Author

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/01/lincolns-living-dog

A little more than a year to go. Can we survive?

Some thoughts on The Walking Dead

This post was mostly eaten by blogger when I first put it up and this has been my first chance to fix it.

I caught the first (and now the second) episode of AMC's The Walking Dead and had a few thoughts.

1. This is left over from last season.  What's the deal about guns being so scarce that someone had to go back into the heart of zombie occupied Atlanta to retrieve a bag of firearms?  This is Georgia in the heart of the American Southeast.  If you want a gun just go into any house and chances overwhelmingly favor finding a few laying around. If you don't want to enter a private residence then go into any gun store, pawn shop, sporting goods store or any big box "mart-mart" and you'll find at least rifles and shotguns.  Also you can go into any sheriff's office, city police office or state highway patrol office or National Guard armory.  In the NG armory you just might find full auto weapons and explosives as well.

2. This season they are searching for the missing girl and hear church bells.  They find a church which is clearly identified as "Southern Baptist".  They find that the bells are recorded chimes (we will not ask where the electric power came from) and set about to exploring the building.  Upon entering they find a giant crucifix hanging behind the pulpit - just like one might find in a Roman Catholic church, but would not see in a Southern Baptist church.

3. What's with the ratty old camper?  They are in the Atlanta metropolitan area!  There are dozens of dealerships with brand new RV's, some nearly the size of Greyhound buses that they could help themselves to.  There are also plenty of dealerships full of new SUV's that they could expropriate.

4. And while we're on vehicles why have the redneck ride a chopped Harley with hangers when a good dirt bike would be far more practical?  After all he could go off road when necessary and maneuver through much tighter areas.  But why have a motorcycle riding point anyway since a biker would be much easier for the zombies to unseat and dine upon than someone enclosed in a car?  It would be better to tow the bike behind the camper and use it when needed.

5. They need to have a wrecker with winch and push-board to ride point so that it can clear obstructions.  An armed man can ride shotgun.

6. Disarming everyone is a spectacularly bad idea.  The theory is that only the two deputies are trained to use firearms however the alternative is to give everyone an edged weapon.  Ask yourself this, which is easier to use without training, a handgun or a sword?

It seems very obvious to me that the writers and directors of this show have never been south of Washington DC.

It's time to thin the herd

There have been enough debates by now for the public to have formed an impression of the candidates who are contesting for the GOP nomination and so it is time for those with no chance of being the party's standard bearer to step aside so that remaining debates can focus upon those the public had decided to take seriously.

Michelle Bachmann would make a very good president, but the impression she has made is not adequate to give her the victory and she should withdraw.  That she does not indicates that she is no longer running for president but for vice president or, and more likely, Speaker of the House.  There is nothing wrong with these ambitions, but continuing to advance them in this forum is destructive to the GOP and its chances of picking a thoroughly vetted candidate that can defeat Obama next year.

Much the same can be said of Rick Santorum.  He would make a wonderful president, but it won't be him.  At least not this time around.  I think he knows this.  In fact I think he has always known this.  His goal in entering the race was either to secure the VP slot or another cabinet position.  Or to increase his stature back home in Pennsylvania for another Senate run.

Newt Gingrich just might be narcissist enough to have thought he could have gotten the nomination and then won the White House.  But probably even he was not that delusional.  This is almost certainly a vanity run for Newt whose real purpose is to allow him to raise his speaking fees and get a new book deal or two.  Of course a cabinet post or even the vice presidency could also be in his sights.  Whatever his true agenda remaining in the race only harms the party and by extension the nation.  Newt is smart enough to understand this so if he chooses to remain in the race it will be because he has made the conscience choice to put his interests ahead of the country's. 

John Huntsman never had a chance but is probably too stupid to have realized it.  Remember when the White House leaked that Huntsman was the one Republican that Obama feared running against.  No?  Don't be embarrassed it was only in the news for about two days.  Democrats always do this.  They leak the name of some clueless liberal RINO that they know that they could beat in their sleep as the "one Republican that could defeat us" and hope that the GOP takes the bait.  Like we did in 2008.  The result is always the same.  When we bite we go down in flames. 

Ron Paul is the best guy in the race on domestic fiscal issues however his views on national security and the closely related field of foreign policy utterly disqualify him from serious consideration.  If you want to know what Paul's response to a threat from a foreign power would be just look at how The US and the Great Powers of Europe dealt with Hitler.  That is Paulism in a nutshell.  Except that when Germany invaded Poland Europe did, at last" go to war.  If Paul had been running things I doubt that even the Blitz would have stirred him to combat.  After all war is the health of the state.  Paul knows that he isn't going to be president.  This campaign is just a way for him to raise his stature for future book sales and speaking engagements.

Rick Perry might make a good president.  He has a good record as governor of Texas but his views on illegal immigration are deeply troubling.  If 10 plus million Mexicans suddenly gain the right to vote in US elections they will give the Democrats an unbeatable electoral majority for at least the next 50 years.  From that point forward every president and congressional majority will be like Obama/Pelosi on steroids.  If you want America to become Venezuela vote in a president and congressmen who favor amnesty.  Having said that it is still a fact that Perry is the popular governor of a large and very prosperous state so he must, for at least a little while longer, be taken seriously as a candidate in the primary process.  If he continues to implode over the next couple of months he should leave but for now he has a legitimate place in the race.

Herman Cain never expected to get this far but now he is the front runner.  While he has not thought out clear positions on all the issues that a president will have to deal with (especially foreign policy) he has good instincts and as a very successful CEO knows how to seek and follow good advice from legitimate experts.  As the frontrunner he absolutely has a place in the race.  In fact right now he is the candidate I'm backing.

Mitt Romney.  What can you say about Mitt?  He has been running for the presidency since 2007.  I supported him back in 2008 after the Thompson candidacy imploded as the only man who could keep John McCain's name off the top of the ticket but that was just a choice between the lesser of evils.  Romney should not be president but his place as the number 1 or 2 candidate in polls earns him a place one the stage.

As things now stand the debates are so crowded with also-rans in the race only for ego or to further other ambitions that it becomes impossible to examine the three serious candidates properly.  It is very important that they be encouraged to withdraw. 

The mainstream media will not put pressure on any RINO candidate to leave the race while they will restlessly hammer an conservative candidate.  It will be up to rank and file Republican voters to push the dead wood off the stage.  That means that those with a soft spot in their hearts for Bachmann or Santorum need to face reality and let their candidate know that it is time to leave and throw their support behind Perry or Cain (preferable Cain).

Ron Paul supporters are as hopeless as he is.  Libertarianism is a utopian cult which at its heart is as anti-American as the nihilist death-cult of progressive liberalism.  Ron Paul's pod-people supporters don't give a rats ass about the good of the nation as long as they get to run wild through the primary process spray painting their graffiti all over the walls and gaming the results of every electronic poll to make it look like Paul has the support of more than a handful of basement dwelling malcontents.

To sum up the campaign season started early this year so the time has already come to thin the ranks of the candidates.  Otherwise we will wind up with Mitt Romney running against Barack Obama.  Liberal-lite running against Liberal-extreme.

Not a good outcome for the nation no matter who wins.

Trying so hard to take them seriously

H/T: American Thinker

It better

More good news

From USNews:

Here's how much political trouble President Obama is in: A new poll by the authoritative Evolving Strategies firm finds that Herman Cain, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney would all beat Obama it the election were held today.

Worse for Obama: the poll, which showed some 1,000 Americans videos of both Obama and the candidates speaking on the economy, backed up recent analysis that the president has lost his mojo when it comes to tackling the deepening recession and blaming Republicans for standing in his way.

Evolving Strategies put the video spin on their poll because most of the Republican presidential candidates still aren't known outside of Washington, the early primary and caucus states and to political junkies. Their idea was to show respondents a video clip and have them read a short 120-word biography.

As a result, the respondents felt they had more information and familiarity with the candidates and felt better making a judgment on a head-to-head contest question. Ironically, Obama still beat a "generic" Republican, but not the three front runners. Unfortunately for Obama, since the GOP primary race is now known, there is no more generic candidate to wish for.

[Read: Cain Jumps 20 Points Ahead of Romney in Poll.]

It is too soon to tell who the nominee will be but things are looking good for Cain and as things stand now that it good for the country.

So clever that only Satan could have thought it up

Ross Kaminsky in The American Spectator's website:

Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, made news last week when referring to Mormonism as a cult while introducing Texas Governor Rick Perry to the Values Voters Summit.

In the past couple of days, Jeffress is doing anything but backing away from his comments, saying on Sunday that "Part of a pastor's job is to warn his people and others about false religions. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Mormonism are all false religions. And I stand by those statements."

My views on these various religions aside, this sort of rhetoric is distinctly unhelpful in reaching the goal that a majority of Americans now share: ending the Obama administration after one term.

The "mainstream" media are already foaming at the mouth over Jeffress's remarks, using them to reinforce their journalism school-learned bias against Republicans as small-minded bible thumpers, or perhaps, to coin a phrase, as people bitterly clinging to religion.

If Mr. Kaminsky gets his way Satan will have won a victory of incalculable magnitude.  He will have literally guaranteed that no Christian can be elected president of the United States.

If the mainstream media's (and Ross Kaminsky's) attempt to force GOP candidates to prove their worthiness for office by affirming that a non-Christian cult is a legitimate Christian denomination it will have the same effect as making candidates deny the deity of Christ, his bodily resurrection and his future return.  All indispensable bedrock doctrines of true saving Christian faith.

Mormons do not believe that God is eternal.   They believe that he was born a mortal human in the distant past on a distant planet (a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away) and that he earned his godhood by perfect obedience to the Mormon religion.  They believe that upon his death he was judged worthy and elevated to godhood and that he then called out the name of all his wives who then were elevated to the status of goddesshood.  That he then formed his own heaven and earth (our earth) out of already existing materials and began populating his heaven by having sex with his goddess wives, who became pregnant and gave birth to babies who had only spirit bodies.  The first of his spirit children was Jesus and the second was Lucifer.  They call this life in spirit form before getting a body "the preexistence".  

After a goodly number of spirit children were created the Mormon god called a counsel and asked his offspring to bring plans to the table on how he was to govern the world he was preparing to populate.  Lucifer proposed a plan to force all humans to believe and obey their heavenly father and Jesus proposed allowing men to possess free will.

The Mormon god chose Jesus' plan and in anger Lucifer defied his father and drew one third of the spirit children with him into his rebellion.  They became Satan and the demons and they attempted to overthrow Elohim (the Mormon god's proper name).  Some spirit children fought bravely in support of their father and some were cowardly and did not take part in the fighting.

The Mormon god then created Adam and Eve and ordered them to be fruitful and multiply in order to create physical bodies for his spirit children to incarnate into.  The reason Mormons are instructed to have large families is to create more bodies for the spirits in the preexistence. Those spirit children who fought bravely in the battle for heaven in the preexistence were rewarded by being born with skin that was "white and delightsome" while those who had displeased god would have a "skin of blackness".

"And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, and they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

       From the Book of Mormon - 2 Nephi 5:21

It should be pointed out here that all this has happened before and all this will happen again (just like in Battlestar Galactica).  This happened on Elohim's home planet and on the planet of the god who created Elohim's planet.  It is happening on countless planets across the universe at this very minute.

On each of these planets a Jesus will be born and go to the cross in order to begin the work that a future Joseph Smith will finish when he is called by the god of that world to become the prophet of the Mormon religion.  And on each of those planets some number of men will be perfectly faithful to the demands of Mormonism and will earn their own godhood.  They will the create their own planets and the whole process will start over and so on into eternity (each cycle is called a "heavenly round").

I could go into more details but you get the point.  There is simply no way that this is compatible with biblical Christianity and forcing presidential candidates to say that it is will do nothing more than exclude believing Christians from the presidency.

Of course this is a free country and anyone may believe anything he pleases.  I am also aware that we are electing a national political leader not a national Sunday school teacher.  And I am aware of Heinlein's dictum that "one man's religion is another man's belly laugh". 

I have no objection to a Mormon as president - as long as he is a genuine constitutional conservative who understands that socialized medicine is not just bad for the entire nation when imposed by the federal government but bad for any individual state when imposed by that state's government.  Who understands that the Second Amendment means exactly what is says and who has a clear and consistent record opposing abortion.

None of which can be said about Mitt Romney - BTY.

However I refuse to allow the claim that Mormonism is a legitimate form of Christianity to stand.  It is not.  To make claiming that Mormonism is true Christianity a test of whether someone should be allowed to become president is no different that making a Jew (like Joe Lieberman) affirm that Jesus was the true messiah or making an atheist affirm his belief in an "all-powerful creator god".

Individual Americans have the right to use religion as a basis for their decision on who to vote for if they wish to do so.  We are free to vote only for Southern Baptists or Roman Catholics or Wiccians or atheists or any other faith or non-faith as we see fit.  However we owe it to ourselves to know exactly what we are doing when we do it.

Essential bedrock doctrines of the Mormon faith have no more common ground with biblical Christianity than Hitler does with Netanyahu.  Making a Christian who knows what Christians believe say that Mormons are not a cult is making him deny his faith.

If GOP candidates like Perry or Bachmann buckle under this pressure and affirm that Mormons are Christians then they have denied Christ (1 John 2:19)

Yawn

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he is backing Mitt Romney for president as "the man we need to lead America" and said attacks on his Mormon religion are "beneath the office of the president of the United States."

So, one RINO endorses another RINO.

Is anyone surprised?

The incredible imploding presidency of B. Hussein Obama

From The New York Post:

Aimless Obama walks alone
 

Last Updated: 3:45 AM, October 9, 2011

Posted: 2:49 AM, October 9, 2011

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.

Obama conceded in one television interview recently that Americans are not “better off than they were four years ago” and said in another that the nation had “gotten a little soft.” Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and sparked comparisons to Jimmy Carter, never a good sign.

Blaming the country is political heresy, of course, yet Obama is running out of scapegoats. His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation -- and that was just last week.

The blame game isn’t much of a defense for Solyndra and “Fast and Furious,” the emerging twin scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best. 

Obama himself is spending his public time pushing a $450 billion “jobs” bill -- really another stimulus in disguise -- that even Senate Democrats won’t support. He grimly flogged it repeatedly at his Thursday press conference, even though snowballs in hell have a better chance of survival.

If he cracked a single smile at the hour-plus event, I missed it. He seems happy only on the campaign trail, where the adoration of the crowd lifts his spirits.

When it comes to getting America back on track to economic growth, he is running on vapors. Yet he shows no inclination to adopt any ideas other than his own Big Government grab. His itch for higher taxes verges on a fetish.

Harvey Golub, former chairman of American Express, called the “jobs” bill an incoherent mess. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he said that among other flaws, the bill includes an unheard of retroactive tax hike on the holders of municipal bonds.

“Many of us have suspected that economic illiterates were setting the economic policy of this administration,” Golub wrote, adding that the bill “reveals a depth of cluelessness that boggles the mind.”

The public increasingly shares the sentiment. A new Quinnipiac polls finds that 55 percent now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with only 41 percent approving. A mere 29 percent say the economy will improve if the president gets four more years.

The election, unfortunately, is nearly 13 months away.

The way Obama’s behaving, by then we’ll all be talking to portraits of past presidents, asking why this one turned out to be such a flop.

Can't say that anything here surprises me.  This is the first time in Obama's life that he has been held accountable for his actions.  There is no one here to step in and rewrite a "C" term paper into an "A" for him (or just change the grade).  No ghost writer to take his notes and turn it into the autobiography that he couldn't finish.  No unspoken agreement among his fellow law students to refrain from commenting on the fact that his only signed article was something that would have embarrassed a high school senior taking college prep courses.

Little Barry is all on his own and even the MSM can't (and is increasingly unwilling to try to) disguise the fact that his is simply in way over his head.  He was unqualified for the job.  Had no experience to help prepare him for the job and had never come face to face with any of the hard cold realities of the real world outside of a very brief stint in a private sector law firm in which he said that he felt that he was "behind enemy lines".

Obama has never before had to consider that the faculty lounge Marxism that he absorbed from his moonbat mother, from his Marxist professors, from the "structural feminists" and "radical foreign students" that he deliberately and exclusively cultivated as friends during his college career might just be utterly wrong.  Never before has little Barry had to face the fact that the ideas for a utopian society based on the radical redistribution of wealth that he has never even once thought to question might fail disastrously when put into practice.

And now he can't process the fact that nothing that he has done has worked.  Marxism really is The God That Failed.

If the reality of the horror that Marxism brings hadn't been out there for any thinking person to see before Obama was even born I might feel a bit sorry for him.  But as it is I can have no sympathy.  He made his bed and now he must lie in it.

The tragedy is that for the next 15 months the rest of us must lay there with him.