Brothers at War, A New Film

GARY SINESE IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. GOD BLESS HIM AND GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!

BROTHERS AT WAR is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time. Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice, and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake’s exploits as he risks everything—including his life—to tell his brothers’ story. Often humorous, but sometimes downright lethal, BROTHERS AT WAR is a remarkable journey where Jake embeds with four combat units in Iraq. Unprecedented access to U.S. and Iraqi combat units take him behind the camouflage curtain with secret reconnaissance troops on the Syrian border, into sniper “Hide Sites” in the Sunni Triangle, through raging machine gun battles with the Iraqi Army. Ultimately, the film follows his brothers home where separations and life-threatening work ripple through their parents, siblings, wives and children. BROTHERS AT WAR provides a rare look at the bonds and service of our soldiers on the frontlines and the profound effects their service has on the loved ones they leave behind.

Please Visit the official WEBSITE for more information

The Obama Song

Happy Birthday, Mom 3/30/1926 to 6/7/2007

I miss you lots and think about you every day. I will see you again some day. Mom is on the right and my Aunt Louise, her oldest sister, on the left. The picture was taken in North Kansas City at my Aunt Louise's 80th birthday. It was a wonderful time and the last time the two were together, almost ten years ago now.

The Great Mark Levin and a Book Signing

I have followed Mark for years, as I have said on this blog. This does not surprise me. This is a book signing in Virginia. One enterprising young man decided to show how long the line was to get in to get their book signed. Manly Rash wrote about this on his blog a few days ago at a book signing he happened to go to. Mark's book is still #1 on Amazon. I have mine ordered. The book is called "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto." You can order it on Amazon here:

NewsBusters, a little comedy relief for Friday night

Zo Does Obama on Leno - Brilliant

I just love this man!

The Great Mark Levin on Neil Cavuto

I have the book on order. I have such a crush on Mark Levin. Years ago, when the Clinton fiascos were hitting us daily, he used to be on Hannity and Colmes a lot. That was my first introduction to him. I have been a huge admirer since then. I have written him several times and he has always written me back.

Stephen Baldwin talks about the Hollywood Agenda

Stephen Baldwin has been very outspoken about his conservative and Christian views. It has cost him tremendously as it has other conservatives in the Hollywood community who have spoken out. I truly admire him. Here, he talks about the Hollywood Agenda to produce movies not only unfit for family viewing, but those that negatively influence our children, who view them.

FIVE SIGNS OF A FLAILING PRESIDENCY BY FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD

I used to watch the Beltway Boys all the time, when Fred and Mort would discuss the goings on in DC. I really enjoyed both of them, but I found Fred to be the more colorful of the two. He's been around long enough, like I have. He knows what he is talking about. I found Obama's decision to appear on Jay Leno extremely odd and out of place. All he needed was a fiddle.

Five Signs of a Flailing Presidency
The White House tries its hand at damage control.
by Fred Barnes
03/30/2009, Volume 014, Issue 27


You don't have to be an old Washington hand to spot the telltale signs of a presidency and an administration in serious trouble. There's nothing new about these clues. The inability to get their stories straight--that's a hardy perennial of high-level officials caught in the vise of political embarrassment. A president who skips town to avoid the White House press corps and speak directly to the American people--we've sure seen that before. So in a sense the AIG mess has touched off nothing more than business as usual.

What goes on in Washington usually comes across as background noise to the public, but not this time. Bonuses for AIG executives are like the infamous Bridge to Nowhere--an issue that's broken through outside Washington. And we know it's become a major political problem for the president because he and his administration act as if it has. Here are five signs of this:

1. His allies are moving to protect the president. In a political emergency, this is the highest obligation of everyone in the administration. The president must be distanced as far as possible from decisions that led to the problem, even if he is made to look out-of-touch or actually incompetent.

In the AIG case, Obama is like a cuckolded spouse, portrayed by administration officials as the last person to learn about the bonuses, though he signed the economic stimulus legislation with a provision assuring they'd be paid. A front-page account in the Washington Post played along, absolving the entire administration of blame. Attributed to "government and company officials," the story said Federal Reserve officials were at fault, having failed to alert anyone in the administration, much less Obama, in a timely fashion.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said he didn't tell the White House until March 12, two days after he learned of bonuses totaling $165 million and the day before the checks went out. What could Obama do? He was "stunned," the president told Jay Leno last week. Obama said he takes full responsibility for the mess. Then he went on to blame others.

2. The president gets out of town. In the final stages of the Watergate scandal in 1974, President Nixon flew to Cairo, where he was greeted by one million Egyptians along the route of his motorcade. This prompted a question: Can a million Egyptians be wrong? The answer turned out to be yes. Nixon resigned a few weeks later.

Okay, the AIG flap isn't Watergate. But last week was a good time for Obama to skip town, mingle with worshipful fans, and dodge the (suddenly) unfriendly Washington media mob. The idea is to get through to the American people directly, without the press's filtering his every word. So in California, he spoke to a town hall meeting, the preferred venue of presidents under political stress. He was interviewed by a sympathizer on talk radio, then by Jay Leno, who invariably makes his guests look good, then went to a research center for electric cars. He put off a White House press conference until the following week, when the AIG frenzy may have eased.

3. Top spokesmen dismiss the crisis as a distraction. Anything the president doesn't want to deal with or discuss, like AIG bonuses, is automatically a distraction from the important business the American people have elected him to focus on. And Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said AIG wasn't just a minor distraction. As furious as Obama was over the bonuses, Emanuel said last week, the president's "main priority is getting the financial system stabilized, and he believes this is a big distraction."

Though David Axelrod, Obama's White House political adviser, didn't use the word "distraction," the Washington Post reported that he was making the same point. "People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG," he said. "They are thinking about their own jobs." And that's what Obama is thinking about.

4. Administration figures can't keep their stories straight. It's easy to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth. It gets harder when you're not. Geithner initially said he learned of the AIG bonuses on March 10. He tried to give himself wiggle room by saying this was when he was informed about the size and scope of the bonuses. This isn't true. It turns out he was questioned on March 3 by Democratic congressman Joe Crowley of New York in very specific terms about the bonuses. Crowley noted that AIG was "slated to pay an additional $162 million in bonuses to 393 participants in the coming weeks." Geithner responded to Crowley that he "very much share[s] your concern" about the bonuses. But don't try to square Geithner's two statements. That would be a distraction.

Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, tied himself in knots denying his role in crafting the provision in the stimulus that kept the bonuses alive. One day he indicated he'd had nothing to do with inserting that provision in the bill. He wasn't even on the Senate-House conference committee that put it in. The next day, he told a different story. Yes, he'd asked senators to include the provision, but he did so only because Treasury officials urged him to. No wonder Dodd is in reelection trouble.

5. The president indulges in hyperbole. Presidents sometimes lose their rhetorical grip during a political controversy. Obama has. He went into high gear defending Geithner. With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, no Treasury secretary has "had to deal with the multiplicity of issues that Secretary Geithner has," he said. "He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand." Not only that, Obama likened the financial firms Geithner is dealing with to terrorists. "They've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger."

For entire article, please go HERE

Bathtub Boy Criticizes Brit Hume for comments Hume made at MRC Gala

I especially loved the last part. Speaking of doing "the news." When was the last actual time, no make that the first actual time, no make that ANY TIME Bathtub Boy actually reported the news. Keith Olbermange is a tool and an especially loathsome one in a kind of girly wimpy cowardly sort of way. Hey, just look at his tie!

I'm just sayin'.

Mark Levin at the Media Research Center (MRC) Gala and Dishonors Awards

The great Mark Levin, tellin' it like it is!

Pam of Atlas Shrugs calls it the BIGGEST FRAUD IN HUMAN HISTORY

I agree with her. Was the "outrage" over the AIG bonuses a smoke screen to divert our attention from the "stimulus packages I and II?" I think so. Each and every day we learn about more earmarks. My friend and I were taking his father to dialysis this morning. The father is over 80 and quite frail. He probably goes to the doctor at least three times a week. And dialysis three times a week. I was thinking about the proposed change to Medicare whereby the government will decide whether healthcare is warranted based on age and life expectancy. In other words, there might come a time when expense three times a week hemodialysis is just too expensive for someone over 80 years of age. The father in question voted for Obama and said, at the time, he thought Obama was going to be "alright." It's all I can do sometimes not to mention that but I am not sure he even knows what is going on out it the world. He voted for Obama because he has "always voted Democrat." He really didn't know anything about him and he didn't want to know. That's how it is. That's how Obama got elected. For some, it was enough that he was probably the most liberal politician ever to come out of the windy city, fresh with his friendly thugs, like Rahm Emanuel, he of the "never let a crisis go to waste" sentiment. Then there were at least four members of his cabinet and/or proposed cabinet who just didn't think paying their taxes was important. In fact, one of them is in charge of the money right now. But all of this pales compared to what is coming. Stem cell already reversed. Mexico City policy reversed. Socialized medicine looking more and more possible each day. I am gong to bed. I have a headache.

DAY BY DAY

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

See more Day by Day by Chris Muir HERE

Nationalizing Life and Death (by John Griffing)

I was searching over at American Thinker for information on another subject when I found this. I think a lot of us realize that the wool was pulled over just about everyone's eyes with the stimulus package. I do remember reading at the time about the manipulation of health care for the elderly. I really had no idea how much more there was to it. This is monstrous. Imagine a world in which the government gets to set the guidelines on who lives and who dies. As it turns out, we don't need to imagine it. It is already happening.


Nationalizing Life and Death
By John Griffing

"Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!" So is it always with petty politicians seeking to enhance their power. Swallow it whole, swallow it now is the word. But just what are we swallowing so fast that we don't even have time to think? Are we really to believe that all we must do is touch the hem of President Obama's garment, and the pains of capitalist dislocation will wash away?


Hidden deep in the stimulus bill is a Trojan horse like no other. I am not speaking of pork. A scheme more dastardly would have been hard to concoct. With the passage of this bill, the US government is now empowered to "ration" healthcare. That means, to treat or not to treat is now a government question.

Within the bill is a line that would sentence millions of people to death:


In addition, $400,000,000 shall be available...to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies, including through efforts that: (1) conduct, support, or synthesize research that compares the clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of items, services, and procedures that are used to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases, disorders, and other health conditions


For those that don't speak draconian, "comparative effectiveness" means that the cost of an individual's treatment will be divided by the number of years they are likely to benefit. If your treatment is too "costly" you will be thrown out with the bathwater. No country for old men. The bill also created the "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research" to make comparative effectiveness decisions. Only 20 years after winning the Cold War we are adopting central planning as our preferred model. Only, instead of determining the number of toothbrushes, this committee will determine the value of someone's life. How ironic.

The stimulus bill mandates electronic healthcare records for every American by 2014 and would "encourage the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data...." No room for miracles. Computer models will now decide your "outcome." Twilight Zone anybody?


If you are picturing Germany circa 1930, you're right on. With the passing of this bill, government, not doctors, will decide who receives care and who doesn't, in essence, who lives and who dies. The cruelest regimes in history have begun with this premise. Government was responsible for non-war related deaths exceeding 100M in the 20th Century, 80M by Communist governments[i], and now we're going to trust them with our medical care? "Do no harm", the Hippocratic Oath, has been replaced by "cost-benefit analysis."


It will start with the elderly, because after all, they are social burdens and a drain on federal funds. They need to wake up and smell the coffin. "If they're going to die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!" Comrade Tom Daschle, the author of the ominous healthcare provisions, supports this line of thought, saying that healthcare reform "will not be pain free." He goes on to praise Europeans for being willing to accept "hopeless diagnoses" and forgo "experimental treatments".


Next would be the infirmed. Too many resources are wasted on people with incurable diseases. We should allocate money to those who actually have the potential to live and live well.


Then the children with a poor quality of life. One can recall the abortion lobby's virulent argument for killing black babies.


Then newborns. It simply won't end. The medical profession will become the harbinger of death, not health. This is not a slippery slope argument. Holland has already slipped the slope. Holland's healthcare system is so cash-strapped that it views humans as liabilities. A patient must formally request "no euthanasia" before simple outpatient surgery. In fact, involuntary euthanasia accounts for over 1,000 deaths in Holland annually. In addition, 8,000 people in Holland die every year because they are given intentional overdoses of pain medication, not to control pain, but to end life. In 60 percent of these cases, the patient did not give his or her consent to the action.[ii]


If doctors making quality of life decisions doesn't scare you, maybe this will: Holland has a committee to decide who's expendable. It actually slates children, adults-anybody-for euthanasia. Robespierre and the Public Safety Committee are back, ushering in a reign of terror for our times.


Holland has quickly broadened the scope of euthanasia, extending the "right to die" all the way down to 12-year olds, no parental consent required. If they can get an abortion, why can't they kill themselves?


Holland even legalized euthanasia for newborns. In some countries this is still considered infanticide. Recently an abortionist was jailed in the United States for throwing a survivor baby in a dumpster. A few inches is all that determines humanity in this country, but at least there's a standard.

Please read rest of the article HERE

SEBELIUS AND ABORTION

Sebelius' Pro-Choice Incoherence
Michael Gerson
Wednesday, March 11, 2009

WASHINGTON -- There is a common thread running through President Obama's pro-choice agenda: the coercion of those who disagree with it.

Obama has begun providing federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. He has moved to weaken conscience protections for health care professionals. And he has chosen the most radical possible option on the use of embryonic stem cells -- a free license for researchers, with boundaries set only by the National Institutes of Health.

Taxpayers will now likely fund not only the use of "spare" embryos from in vitro fertilization, but also human lives produced and ended for the sole purpose of scientific exploitation. Biotechnicians have been freed from the vulgar moralism of the masses, so they can operate according to the vulgar utilitarianism of their own social clique -- the belief that some human lives can be planted, plucked and processed for the benefit of others.

It is the incurable itch of pro-choice activists to compel everyone's complicity in their agenda. Somehow getting "politics out of science" translates into taxpayer funding for embryo experimentation. "Choice" becomes a demand on doctors and nurses to violate their deepest beliefs or face discrimination.

It is probably not a coincidence that Obama has chosen a Roman Catholic -- Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius -- to implement many of these policies as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Obama has every right to a pro-choice Cabinet. But this appointment seems designed to provide religious cover. It also smacks of religious humiliation -- like asking a rabbi to serve the pork roast or an atheist to bless the meal.

Sebelius, though strongly pro-choice, was capable of occasional compromise. But she consistently fought against the serious enforcement of Kansas' late-term abortion restrictions. Kansas became a magnet for late-term abortions.

Still, Sebelius insists that "my Catholic faith teaches me that all life is sacred." This puts her in the same category as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden -- Catholics who assert the sanctity of life while defending legal abortion. It has also earned Sebelius a firm rebuke from her archbishop.

The explanations of pro-choice Catholics are varied. Some say they will not impose their private religious views on others. But moral beliefs about human dignity are not religious dogmas such as transubstantiation or the Trinity. They are assertions about the nature of political justice. Removing the transcendent basis for human rights would also remove the central argument of the Declaration of Independence and the primary motivation for American social reform from abolition to the civil rights movement.

Others claim they are merely employing an alternative method to secure the rights of the unborn -- through social welfare programs rather than legal restrictions. In Sebelius' case, the overall abortion rate in Kansas did decline slightly more than the national reduction, though it is difficult to trace this drop to her policies. And the question arises: Couldn't a Catholic politician support women in crisis and effective protections for viable children?

See rest of article here

Welcome to Londonistan

British troops returning from war encounter Muslim extremists. I don't think they represent all Muslims, either, but England has a problem and it's a huge one. Maybe even unfixable.

GRADE OBAMA

Click on the link to grade Obama in his first less than 100 days. Don't be shy!

CLICK HERE

Jill Stanek Talks to Bill O'Reilly about the Infant Born Alive Issue

This is a video from 2007 but even more important today with Obama as president and considering the changes he has already made including the Mexico City policy and stem cell research. Something tells me he is not done yet. The proabortion lobby has their dancing shoes on.

We Win!

I saw this on Jill Stanek's site today and decided to repost it here. What a great song. Hang in there, we win. Life wins as well.

Written by Tony Funderburk of Denver Bible Church and converted to video by Rachel Troyer, also from DBC, it encourages pro-lifers to stay at it, we win.

BARAK OBAMA ON ABORTION

I have posted over time many articles and videos regarding Obama's untenable and monstrous stand on abortion, partial birth abortion, and the born alive debate (he feels it would be a "burden" to a mother's "original decision" to assess and treat them.). I thought this was an excellent video by a remarkable and lovely young woman. I can only hope that more young people are getting involved in the abortion debate and in favor of life.

Humor for a Tuesday (Because we really really need it!)

EMBRYONIC CELL RESEARCH AND SCIENCE

President Barack Obama issued an executive order yesterday that lifted President Bush’s order prohibiting federal funding from going to “embryonic stem cell research” in which living human embryos are destroyed for their stem cells.

Federal funding means your tax dollars and mine are going to fund something I find untenable.

While making the announcement, Obama said that he would seek to “ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction.” But neither in his remarks nor in the executive order itself did he say anything about stopping human cloning for purposes other than human reproduction—such as cloning human embryos in order to extract their stem cells for research.

Following are some facts about stem cells:

* Stem cells are the body's master cells, the source of all cells and tissue, including brain, blood, heart, bones and muscles.

* Embryonic stem cells come from days-old embryos and can produce any type of cell in the body.

* Scientists generally harvest embryonic stem cells from embryos left over after in vitro fertilization attempts at fertility clinics. They can also be produced using cloning technology.

* Scientists hope to harness the transformational qualities of stem cells to treat a variety of diseases, including injuries, cancer and cystic fibrosis.

* The issue is controversial because some people believe the destruction of any embryo is wrong.

* U.S. legislation called the Dickey Amendment forbids the use of federal funds for the creation or destruction of human embryos for research.

* In 1998, soon after human embryonic stem cells were discovered, the National Institutes of Health determined that the Dickey Amendment did not apply to researchers working with stem cells, so long as they did not get the cells themselves from human embryos.

* In August 2001, then-President George W. Bush declared otherwise and limited the use of federal funds to stem cell lines, or batches, that existed as of that moment. He vetoed several congressional attempts to override this decision.

* The issue does not fall clearly along party lines and strongly conservative Republicans who oppose abortion, such as Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, have backed broader federal funding of embryonic stem cell research for years.

* Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand actively encourage embryonic stem cell research. Austria, Lithuania and Poland have laws banning research into human embryonic stem cell research.

* Researchers have discovered how to make embryonic-like cells from ordinary cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research say research can focus on this field but most scientists agree that all approaches must be pursued at this point.

MOST SCIENTISTS AGREE THAT ALL APPROACHES MUST BE PURSUED AT THIS POINT.

OBAMA SAID THAT HE WOULD SEEK TO ENSURE THAT OUR GOVERNMENT NEVER OPENS THE DOOR TO THE USE OF CLONING FOR HUMAN REPRODUCTION.

What's wrong with this picture?

The Cost of Selling Your Soul

Kathleen Sebelius has sold her soul to obtain political power. I can't see that there is really any other way to come to any other conclusion. She's a practicing Catholic who not only believes in abortion, but supports late-term and partial birth abortion. Watch the video to see how very much she cares about those getting abortions, as well. The question might be, other than herself, what DOES she care about? At what price glory, only I'm not speaking about eternal glory. If you live your life as if there is no God, you had better be right.

The Manchurian Candidate

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”


Thanks to Kimmie for the picture. It was animated but I can't get that to come through here, darn it. Please read rest of article here

Movie Recommendation - La Vie en Rose

I am not a movie critic and I am also not a fan of foreign movies with subtitles. Especially French movies. My oldest daughter sung its praises and I felt compelled to watch. She has very good taste in these things and she knows I am not fond of the French or subtitles. I'm glad I watched. I do very much like Edith Piaf. I was an older teenager when she died so I only have a passing familiarity with her music. I read she had been on Ed Sullivan many times and I was an ardent fan of that show, but I don't remember her. I know I would have remembered her. She was only 47 when she died, ravaged by the effects of drugs and alcohol and a terribly sad life. But she was defiant to the end and the movie is a masterpiece. Here's a You Tube Clip of her singing a song written for her, Non, je ne regrette rien (1961) (No I regret Nothing). Two years later, she would be dead. I have provided the English translation of the song. I certainly fits her life.



No, nothing at all, I regret nothing at all
Not the good, nor the bad. It is all the same.
No, nothing at all, I have no regrets about anything.
It is paid, wiped away, forgotten.
I am not concerned with the past, with my memories.
I set fire to my pains and pleasures,
I don?t need them anymore.
I have wiped away my loves, and my troubles.
Swept them all away.
I am starting again from zero.

No, nothing at all, I have no regrets
Because from today, my life, my happiness, everything,
Starts with you!

Contradictions of Socialism (I Saw The Future & Ran Away!}

Courtesy of Red Square from The People's Cube

There was a time in recent American history when certain Soviet jokes didn't work in translation - not so much because of the language differences, but because of the lack of common sociopolitical context. But that is changing. As President Obama is preparing us for a great leap towards collectivism, I find myself recollecting forgotten political jokes I shared with comrades while living in the old country under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev. (I was too young to remember the Khrushchev times, but I remember the Khrushchev jokes.) I also noticed that the further America "advances" back to the Soviet model, the more translatable the old Soviet jokes become.

Not all Soviet advancements have metastasized here yet, but we have four more glorious years to make it happen.

One of my favorite political jokes is this:

The six dialectical contradictions of socialism in the USSR:

1. There is full employment - yet no one is working.
2. No one is working - yet the factory quotas are fulfilled.
3. The factory quotas are fulfilled - yet the stores have nothing to sell.
4. The stores have nothing to sell - yet people got all the stuff at home.
5. People got all the stuff at home - yet everyone is complaining.
6. Everyone is complaining - yet the voting is always unanimous.

It reads like a poem - only instead of the rhythm of syllables and rhyming sounds, it's the rhythm of logic and rhyming meanings. If I could replicate it, I might start a whole new genre of "contradictory six-liners." It would be extremely difficult to keep it real and funny at the same time, but I'll try anyway.

Dialectical contradictions are one of the pillars in Marxist philosophy, which states that contradictions eventually lead to a unity of opposites as the result of a struggle. This gave a convenient "scientific" excuse for the existence of contradictions in a socialist society, where opposites were nice and agreeable - unlike the wild and crazy opposites of capitalism that could never be reconciled. Hence the joke.

Then I moved to America, where wild and crazy opposites of capitalism were supposedly at their worst. Until recently, however, the only contradictions that struck me as irreconcilable were these:

Economic justice:

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

Hollywood cliches:

1. Without capitalism there'd be no Hollywood - yet filmmakers hate capitalism.
2. Filmmakers hate capitalism - yet they sue for unauthorized copying of their movies.
3. They sue for unauthorized copying - yet on screen they teach us to share.
4. On screen they teach us to share - yet they keep their millions to themselves.
5. They keep their millions to themselves - yet they revel in stories of American misery and depravity.
6. They revel in stories of American misery and depravity - yet they blame the resulting anti-American sentiment on conservatism.
7. They blame the anti-American sentiment on conservatism - yet conservatism ensures the continuation of a system that makes Hollywood possible.

I never thought I would see socialist contradictions in America, let alone write about them. But somehow all attempts to organize life according to "progressive" principles always result in such contradictions. And in the areas where "progressives" have assumed positions of leadership - education, news media, or the entertainment industry - contradictions become "historically inevitable."

If one were accidentally to open his eyes and compare the "progressive" narrative with facts on the ground, one might start asking questions. Why, for instance, if the war on terror breeds more terrorists, haven't there been attacks on the U.S. soil since 2001? Why, if George W. Bush had removed our freedom of speech, was nobody ever arrested for saying anything? And if Obama has returned us our freedoms, why was a man harassed by police in Oklahoma for having an anti-Obama sign in his car? Why would anyone who supports free speech want to silence talk radio? And why is silencing the opposition called the "Fairness Doctrine"?

After the number of "caring," bleeding-heart politicians in Washington reached a critical mass, it was only a matter of time before the government started ordering banks to help the poor by giving them risky home loans through community organizers. Which resulted in a bigger demand, which resulted in rising prices, which resulted in slimmer chances of repaying the loans, which resulted in more pressure on the banks, which resulted in repackaging of bad loans, which resulted in a collapse of the banks, which resulted in a recession, which resulted in many borrowers losing their jobs, which resulted in no further mortgage payments, which resulted in a financial disaster, which resulted in a worldwide crisis, with billions of poor people overseas - who had never seen a community organizer, nor applied for a bad loan - becoming even poorer than they had been before the "progressives" in the U.S. government decided to help the poor.

As if that were not enough, the same bleeding hearts are now trying to fix this by nationalizing the banks so that they can keep issuing risky loans through community organizers. In other words, to prevent the toast from landing buttered side down, they're planning to butter the toast on both sides and hope that it will hover in mid-air. Which also seems like a sensible alternative energy initiative.

If that doesn't fix the problem, there's always the last resort of a liberal: blame capitalism. It's always a win-win. Today government regulators may be blaming capitalism for the crisis caused by their dilettantish tampering with the economy, but who do you think they will credit after market forces resuscitate the economy?

Years ago, living in America made me feel as though I had traveled in a time machine from the past. But after the recent "revolutionary" changes have turned reality on its head - which is what "revolution" literally means - I'm getting an uneasy feeling I had come from your future.

As your comrade from the future, I also feel a social obligation to help my less advanced comrades in the American community, and prepare them for the transition to the glorious world of underground literature, half-whispered jokes, and the useful habit of looking over your shoulder. Don't become a nation of cowards - but watch who might be listening.

Let's start with these few.

People's power:

1. Liberals believe they're advancing people's power - yet they don't believe people can do anything right without their guidance.
2 People can't do anything right - yet the government bureaucracy can do everything.
3. The government bureaucracy can do everything - yet liberals don't like it when the government takes control of their lives.
4. Liberals don't like it when the government takes control of their lives - yet they vote for programs that increase people's dependency on the government.
5. They vote for programs that increase people's dependency on the government - yet they believe they're advancing people's power.

Bush and the media:

1. The media said Bush was dumb - yet he won over two intelligent Democrats.
2. He won over two intelligent Democrats - yet the media said his ratings were hopeless.
3. The media said his ratings were hopeless - yet the 2004 electoral map was red.
4. The 2004 electoral map was red - yet the media said his policies failed.
5. The media said his policies failed - yet the economy grew and the war was won.
6. The economy grew and the war was won - yet the media said we needed "change."

Public education:

1. Liberals have been in charge of education for 50 years - yet education is out of control.
2. Education is out of control - yet liberal teaching methods prevail.
3. Liberal teaching methods prevail - yet public schools are failing.
4. Public schools are failing - yet their funding keeps growing.
5. Their funding keeps growing - yet public schools are always underfunded.
6. Public schools are always underfunded - yet private schools yield better results for less.
7. Private schools yield better results for less - yet public education is the only way out of the crisis.

Foreign radicals*:

1. Foreign radicals hate America - yet they're all wearing American blue jeans.
2. They're all wearing American blue jeans - yet they disdain American culture.
3. They disdain American culture - yet they play American music, movies, and video games.
4. They play American music, movies, and video games - yet they call Americans uncivilized.
5. They call Americans uncivilized - yet they expect Americans to defend their civilization.
6. They expect Americans to defend their civilization - yet they think American capitalism is outdated.
7. They think American capitalism is outdated - yet most of their countries require American handouts.
(* Some US politicians have similar opinions about their redneck constituents - yet they won't shut up about how proud they are to have their mandate.)

Liberals and taxes:

1. Liberals want to help the poor - yet they won't give money to charities.
2. They won't give money to charities - yet they'd like the government to become a gigantic charity.
3. They'd like the government to become a gigantic charity - yet the money has to be taken from people by force.
4. The money has to be taken from people by force - yet they call it welfare.
5. They call it welfare - yet higher taxes make everyone poorer.
6. Higher taxes make everyone poorer - yet liberals find ways not to pay taxes.
7. Liberals find ways not to pay taxes - yet they get to be chosen to run the government.

Liberals and the CIA:

1. The CIA is a reactionary institution - yet its agents always leak information that helps liberals politically.
2. CIA agents always leak information that helps liberals politically - yet liberals say the CIA is clueless.
3. Liberals say the CIA is clueless - yet in their movies the CIA is running the world.
4. In their movies the CIA is running the world - yet they tell us that better intelligence could have prevented the war.
5. Better intelligence could have prevented the war - yet "enhanced interrogations" of captured terrorists must not be allowed.

Love and marriage:

1. Sex differences are the result of social conditioning - yet homosexuality is biological.
2. Homosexuality is biological - yet everybody is encouraged to experiment with it.
3. Everybody is encouraged to experiment with it - yet venereal diseases are treated at the taxpayers' expense.
4. Venereal diseases are treated at the taxpayers' expense - yet taxpayers have no right to impose standards since there are no moral absolutes.
5. There are no moral absolutes - yet gay marriage is an absolute must.
6. Gay marriage is an absolute must - yet family is an antiquated tool of bourgeois oppression.

Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from Ukraine, currently lives in New York. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square. Please click on the link above to visit the site. It's absolutely brilliant and spot on politically, ethically and morally.

Obama to Reverse U.S. Government Ban on Funding Stem Cell Research Today

President Barack Obama will reverse the U.S. government’s ban on funding stem-cell research today and pledge to “use sound, scientific practice and evidence, instead of dogma” to guide federal policy, an adviser said.

Harold Varmus, co-chair of a science advisory group to the President, said Obama will ask the White House Office of Science and Technology to create guidelines to incorporate ‘scientific integrity’ into decision-making by U.S. agencies. The action on stem cells, which can grow into any kind of tissue, may help speed research into cures for major illness.

Academic laboratories, led by Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and companies already using stem-cell technology, led by Geron Corp., of Menlo Park, California, could gain tens of millions of dollars in funding because of the decision. A “significant amount” of $10 billion given the National Institutes of Health in Obama’s stimulus plan will go to this area of research, Varmus said.
“We view what happened with stem-cell research in the last administration as one manifestation of the failure to think carefully about how government use of scientific advice occurs,” said Varmus, a Nobel prize winner who is president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in a conference call with reporters yesterday. “Public policy must be guided by sound, scientific advice.”

Ed Morrissey from Hot Air writes:

The advocates of this policy cheer the supposed triumph of science over politics, but in truth, it’s the reverse. Over a year ago, researchers found a way to unlock adult stem cells to have the same flexibility as hEsc lines, ie, the ability to transform into any kind of tissue. Bush’s policy in effect pushed the government-funded research in that direction, which prompted the breakthrough. With that process available, we have no need to grind up our offspring to cure diseases, especially since grinding up our offspring has yet to result in even one therapeutic result, despite billions of dollars of research into hEsc. A scientific approach would dictate that we follow success instead of failure.

In fact, the market has done just that. While some states (California being one) have provided public funds for hEsc research, most of the private money goes towards adult stem-cell research. Why? It’s a proven technology. That’s one of the reasons hEsc researchers are so desperate to overturn Bush’s ban on federal funding —they can’t compete for any other funding any longer.

This decision places politics ahead of science. People demand government funding for hEsc not because it works, but because it’s popular. Pro-abortion activists want it as an endorsement of abortion as some sort of mechanism for scientific advance, and they’ve managed to sucker the rest into thinking that we’ll all die unless we start destroying embryos to keep us alive. No one has offered a single scientific reason to have the federal government fund hEsc research.

Back Then We Thought It Was Cool

This article is from American Thinker.

Back then we thought it was cool
By Randy Fardal

Recent recantations by avid Obama supporters, including financial celebrity Jim Cramer, are reminiscent of the late actor, Yul Brynner. Brynner was an avid smoker who, on learning that he was dying of lung cancer, recorded the following message to be played after his death: Don't Smoke

Listening to Cramer essentially link Obama to America's economic cancer, you might notice some parallels between supporting Obama and smoking cigarettes.

To young people, supporting Obama and smoking cigarettes both look cool and both make them feel good. And despite dire warnings from responsible adults, lots of their friends also do both and, so far, nothing bad has happened to them.

Older and wiser smokers gradually realize that cigarettes cost them a huge portion of their earnings, increase their health care costs, and make them feel helpless because cigarette makers control their lives. Older and wiser Democrats must be saying the same about Obama -- just four months after they voted for him.


According to MSN Money, "A 40-year-old who quits smoking and puts the savings into a 401(k) earning 9% a year would have nearly $250,000 by age 70." --Probably about the same amount lost by the average 401(k) owner since Obama was elected.

Cigarette companies now acknowledge that their products are potentially addictive and harmful, but they once implied that smoking was healthy. They might not have run "Hope" ads, but they did run ads in the 1940s with this headline:

More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

Likewise, Obama's economy doctors claim that transferring wealth from working Americans to his supporters is not addictive to the recipients and will improve our economic health. And if those 1940s smoking doctors were still alive, they also could be part of Obama's bogus scientific consensus excuse for imposing crippling taxes to combat his manmade global warming hoax.


Now that financial surgeon generals like Cramer have begun to establish a link between Obama's policies and America's economic cancer, why not follow the lead of the anti-smoking activists that demanded warning labels on cigarette packages? Something like this could be posted prominently on Obama's forehead:

And since anti-smoking activists demand astronomical taxes to "cover the costs of smoking to society", why not institute similar tax rates on Obama voters to cover the societal costs of his leftist programs? In states that have high concentrations of Obama voters, such as New York, most of the price of a pack of cigarettes goes to taxes. Likewise, a 90 percent income tax on New York Obama voters seems fair.

Furthermore, perhaps a multi-trillion-dollar class action lawsuit could be filed against Obama. After all, he knowingly pushed highly addictive wealth transfers and deliberately withheld evidence from numerous global trials that extreme government spending causes major economic health risks. The uncaring egomaniac also denies that "second hand deficits" harm the economic health of our children.

Finally, he must have violated some FTC rule against predatory pricing by advertising his product with the promise of "tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans". Then, once he had driven his only remaining competitor out of the market, he jacked up the price by trillions. If not predatory pricing, it must be false advertising.

Last month, Russian prime minister and former Soviet KGB leader Vladimir Putin also warned against following Obama's leftist policies. That's akin to the Soviet Union giving us a warning from its grave, just as Russian-born Yul Brynner did from his.

You can read the entire article and check out the links here

In case you are not aware of Putin's warning, this is what he had to say.

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the statet's role absolute, Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

Putin also cautioned the US against using military Keynesianism to lift its economy out of recession, saying, in the longer run, militarization won't solve the problem but will rather quell it temporarily. What it will do is squeeze huge financial and other resources from the economy instead of finding better and wiser uses for them. Putin's comments come in sharp contrast to Russia's own military buildup and expansion.

Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would conserve and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.

Hell has indeed frozen over when the Ruskies get it but Obama doesn't.

“The time for enlightenment has come. We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future

Obama and the Never Ending Spending Parade

It seems even politically liberal venues of the media are starting to become alarmed at the massive spending, wealth destruction and generational theft of the Obama Administration.

Obama the Spender Goes to Washington
No One Spends Other People's Money as Carefully as He Spends His Own
Opinion by JOHN STOSSEL
March 5, 2009 —


How lucky we are to have Barack Obama as president. He's already come up with a revolutionary idea that escaped his predecessors: He's going to scour the budget for ... "waste and inefficiency" "... go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs."

It's astonishing that no one has thought of this before. Who knew programs could actually be eliminated just because they don't work and waste taxpayers' money?

And he's making progress.

"[W]e have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."

How will he do it? Here's an example: "Agriculture Secretary [Tom] Vilsack is saving nearly $20 million with reforms to modernize programs and streamline bureaucracy."

Amazing! "Modernize and streamline." It is indeed a new day.

Though he says he wants better not bigger government, Obama plans to spend a lot more money -- on medical reform, education, energy, etc. He also promises to halve the deficit by the end of his term. (Presumptuously he says, "first term.")

This is dangerous nonsense. Obama's budget numbers are laden with politically driven assumptions about a rosy future in which robust economic growth pays for record-breaking government.

Unfortunately, Obama is simultaneously working hard to delay recovery by imposing new taxes on the rich, toadying up to unions and trial lawyers, being ambiguous about trade and threatening all sorts of "activist" government that makes the future even more unpredictable. The new taxes are not just the direct assault on wealthy taxpayers, but indirect punishments, like his cap-and-trade plan for carbon emissions. His gifts to unions go beyond the outrageous "card-check" rule to the requirement that stimulus spending go to union workers who must be paid artificially high Davis-Bacon wages. All this will frighten off private capital and suffocate economic recovery.

Obama's budget also creates a $634 billion "reserve fund" for medical reform -- but only $318 billion is to come from higher taxes. Where will the rest come from? Where else? Savings squeezed out of Medicare, Medicaid and other medical programs.

Give me a break.

It is hard to take seriously his claim that he will cut old spending to make way for new spending and a lower deficit. As The Wall Street Journal points out, "[T]he 2009 budget deficit is estimated to be an eye-popping 12.7 percent of GDP, which once again dwarfs anything we've seen in the postwar era. The White House blueprint predicts that this will fall back down to 3.5 percent as soon as 2012, but this is based on assumptions about Washington that aren't going to happen."

One of the most absurd assumptions is that the new stimulus spending will be temporary.

Higher stimulus spending in the current budget becomes the new baseline for future budgets. Any cuts below that line will be condemned as heartless.

Every president promises to save money by eliminating waste and fraud. But the savings never materialize.

In Washington, one person's waste is another person's pork. Every dime spent by the federal government has well-connected advocates who swear the money is vital to the national interest. They line up to testify. Even if they didn't grease the palms of lobbyists and congressmen, their cries would be hard to resist. "This program will keep this poor woman, your constituent, alive! Would you be so cold as to deny her that?"

Read the rest of the article here

Olbermann is a Cry Baby

I mean really, can this so-called man be any more pathetic. A sportscaster who thinks he is William F. Buckley, poor Keithy is just pathetic. You almost kind of feel sorry for him.

The Great Destabalization by Mark Steyn

There hasn't been much in the news about Obama's snub to the British Prime Minister. But people noticed...important people and they won't forget. This says something not only about the neophyte president but about his underlings, those who should have guided him in picking appropriate gifts for the Prime Minister. Frankly, I am surprised they didn't give him a packet of Burger King and Pizza Hut coupons. Maybe Michelle could have handed them to him in her sleeveness dress with her bulging biceps. How pathetic.

The Great Destabilization
Can America, the engine of the global economy, pull the rest of the world out of the quicksand?

By Mark Steyn


British prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy’s anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President.

The president’s guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.

And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.

In return, America’s head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of “classic American movies.”

Evidently, the White House gift shop was all out of “MY GOVERNMENT DELEGATION WENT TO WASHINGTON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT” T-shirts. Still, the “classic American movies” set is a pretty good substitute, and it can set you back as much as $38.99 at Wal-Mart: Lot of classics in there, I’m sure — Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Sound of Music — though this sort of collection always slips in a couple of Dude, Where’s My Car? 3 and Police Academy 12 just to make up the numbers. I’ll be interested to know if Mr. Brown has anything to play the films on back home, since U.S.-format DVDs don’t work in United Kingdom DVD players.

It could be worse. The president might have given him the DVD of He’s Just Not That Into You. Gordon Brown landed back in London a sadder but wiser man. The Fleet Street correspondents reported sneeringly that he (and they) had been denied the usual twin-podia alternating-flags press conference. The Obama administration had supposedly penciled one in for the Rose Garden, but then there was that catastrophic snowfall (a light dusting). This must be the first world leaders’ press conference to be devastated by climate change. No doubt President Obama could have relocated it to a prestigious indoor venue, like the windowless room round the back of the White House furnace in Sub-Basement Level 5. But why bother? Some freak flood would have swept through and washed the prime minister and his DVD set into the Potomac and out to the Atlantic. And by the time the Coast Guard fished him out, the sodden classic movies wouldn’t work in any American DVD player any better than in the Brit one.

snip here....

I would make a modest prediction that in 2012, after four years of the man who was supposed to heal America’s relations with a world sick of all that swaggering cowboy unilateralism, those relations will be much worse. From Canada to India, the implications of the Obama ascendancy are becoming painfully clear. The other week Der Spiegel ran a piece called “Why Obamania Isn’t the Answer,” which might more usefully have been published before the Obamessiah held his big Berlin rally. Written by some bigshot with the German Council on Foreign Relations and illustrated by the old four-color hopey-changey posters all scratched up and worn out, the essay conceded that Europe had embraced Obama as a “European American.” Very true. The president is the most European American ever to sit in the Oval Office. And, because of that, he doesn’t need any actual European Europeans getting in the way — just as, at his big victory-night rally in Chicago, the first megastar president didn’t need any megastar megastars from Hollywood clogging up the joint: Movie stars who wanted to fly in were told by his minders that he didn’t want any other celebrities deflecting attention from him. Same with world leaders. If it’s any consolation to Gordon Brown, he’s just not that into any of you.

snip here....

And that was before Obama made clear that for him the economy takes a very distant back seat to the massive expansion of government for which it provides cover. That’s why he’s indifferent to the plummeting Dow. The president has made a strategic calculation that, to advance his plans for socialized health care, “green energy,” and a big-government state, it’s to his advantage for things to get worse. And, if things go from bad to worse in America, overseas they’ll go from worse to total societal collapse. We’ve already seen changes of government in Iceland and Latvia, rioting in Greece and Bulgaria. The great destabilization is starting on the fringes of Europe and working its way to the Continent’s center.

We’re seeing not just the first contraction in the global economy since 1945, but also the first crisis of globalization. This was the system America and the other leading economies encouraged everybody else to grab a piece of. But whatever piece you grabbed — exports in Taiwan, services in Ireland, construction in Spain, oligarchic industrial-scale kleptomania in Russia — it’s all crumbling. Ireland and Italy are nation-state versions of Bank of America and General Motors. In Eastern Europe, the countries way out on the end of the globalization chain can’t take a lot of heat without widespread unrest. And the fellows who’ll be picking up the tab are the Western European banks who loaned them all the money. Gordon Brown was hoping for a little more than: “I feel your pain. And have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz? It’s about this sweet little nobody who gets to pay a brief visit to the glittering Emerald City before being swept back to the reassuring familiarity of the poor thing’s broken-down windswept economically devastated monochrome dustbowl. You’ll love it!”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”? Oh, perish the thought. The prime minister flew 8,000 miles for dinner and a movie. But the president says he’ll call. Next week. Next month. Whatever.

For entire article, please go here
Also, I highly recommend Mark Steyn's Book America Alone, which you can buy here

And A Small Child Shall Lead Them

The New York Slimes actually ran an article about Jonathan, which really surprised me. I am not fan of that news rag, nor is any conservative. I posted his CPAC speech on my blog at the time. He is really something else, this little powerhouse. Here's part of the article:

The Little Mr. Conservative
By JAN HOFFMAN
Duluth, Ga.

SITTING in the back seat of his mother’s van as she drives through Atlanta suburbs, Jonathan Krohn is about to sign off with a conservative radio talk show host in Florida. In the 40 minutes he’s been on the air, with the help of his mother’s cellphone, this hyper-articulate Georgia eighth grader has attacked the stimulus bill, identified leaders he thinks will salvage the Republican Party’s image, and assessed the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The show’s host chuckles and asks whether President Obama has called Jonathan “a little fascist.”

“The president hasn’t come after me yet,” Jonathan says chummily, “but we’ve had other people come after me!”

“Jonathan!” his mother hisses from the driver’s seat.

The interview concluded, Jonathan wistfully handed his mother her cellphone. His parents still won’t let him have one, even though he turned 14 last Sunday, right after he became an instant news media darling and the conservative movement’s underage graybeard at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

The annual convention brings in the movement’s grand old lions, like Rush Limbaugh, as well as cubs to rally 8,500 of the faithful, who were shaken by the election of Barack Obama. Jonathan, a slight, home-schooled only child whose teeth are in braces, is so passionate about his beliefs that he spent his summer writing “Define Conservatism,” an 86-page book outlining what he says are its core values. In January, he contacted CPAC organizers, asking to speak there.

With some skepticism, they gave him a spot on a Friday panel of grassroots activists. But Jonathan, an experienced child actor, rocked the house with a three-minute speech, which was remarkable not so much for what he said, but his electrifying delivery. The speech was part pep talk, part book promotion. By Saturday morning, an archdeacon of the movement was saying, “I’m Bill Bennett: I used to work for Ronald Reagan and now I’m a colleague of Jonathan Krohn’s!”

As video of the speech coursed through the Internet, radio talk show hosts and television reporters at the conference sought him eagerly.

In less than a week, Jonathan appeared on “Fox and Friends” and CNN, and broadcast network anchors requested interviews. He has lost count of the number of radio shows he has spoken on. Though his family has received hate mail, accusing them of brainwashing their son, a Jonathan Krohn fan club has sprung up on Facebook. High honors: Jon Stewart has already poked fun at him.

And the invitations have only snowballed since the family returned to their modest house in a subdivision here.

Why just that morning, his mother, Marla Krohn, marveled, a staff member for a potential candidate for Georgia governor asked for a meeting with Jonathan. In her gentle drawl, Mrs. Krohn said cautiously, “I’m not sure I’m a supporter of his.”

“Neither am I,” Jonathan piped in.

“But I’m a voter,” Mrs. Krohn reminded him firmly.

Jonathan retorted, “Now that I’m a political pundit, I have the ability to influence people. I have to think about it!”

But first, his mother reminded him, he had some homework to finish.

He’s an unusual kid with an unusual background. Jonathan’s parents, Doug, a computer systems integrator, and Marla, a sales representative and former actress who teaches drama and speech to middle-school students, have been home-schooling their bright, curious son since the sixth grade. On Fridays, Jonathan joins 10 middle-school students at the Classical School in Woodstock, where classes are taught from a Christian perspective, for five hours of study, including Latin. They have two 10-minute recesses for tag, said Jonathan’s teacher, Stephen P. Gilchrist. Lunch is eaten at their desks while they work.

“Other children his age are not quite sure how to take him,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “Jonathan is so intense, so verbal and a strong personality. But as they get to know him, they respect him for what he is. And he is tons of fun.”

Jonathan’s father oversees his math; he studies Arabic with a tutor.

“Before I got into politics,” Jonathan said as he sat with his parents in the study of their home, “I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language.” The family are active members of Peachtree Corners Baptist Church in Norcross, Ga.

That was several careers ago. But he is sticking with Arabic, because, “it’s important to talk with our allies in their language.”

Although the Krohns are conservative, they say Jonathan’s passion for politics is largely his. “Politics bore me,” his mother said flatly. “I’ve learned a lot from Jonathan about the candidates I’ve voted for.” Doug Krohn said he listened to talk radio, but with his Iowa-born soft-sell manner, he’s hardly the pontificating firebrand his son is.

Jonathan said he became a political enthusiast at 8, after hearing about a Democratic filibuster on judicial nominations. “I thought, ‘Who goes to work saying, ‘I’m going to filibuster today?’ ” he said.

Mr. Krohn, looking bleary-eyed by recent events, muttered, “And now he can filibuster with the best of them.”

Jonathan would wake up at 6 a.m. to listen to Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” show and became riveted by politics and American history. Soon, Mr. Bennett, whom Jonathan now describes as, “my mentor and very good friend,” was taking Jonathan’s calls.

“Jonathan was an extraordinary boy, very special,” Mr. Bennett said, in a phone interview. “He wowed my audience, he wowed me. He’s very engaging and learned. He’s got staying power.”

Last spring, as the presidential campaign was in full roar, Jonathan decided the term conservatism was so misused that he needed to write a book explaining it. He received a computer from his maternal grandfather for his 13th birthday. “In the Jewish culture in which my mom was raised, 13 is a big deal,” he said. “But since I’m a Jewish Christian, I don’t do a bar mitzvah.” (Decades ago, his mother became a Baptist.)

Although the family said they hired an editor to go over grammar, Jonathan, they said, wrote the book himself. “My mom would get tough,” Jonathan said. “She’d say, ‘If you don’t stop writing now and go outside and get some exercise, I won’t let you finish this book!’ ”

See the rest of the article here

Lou Dobbs on the Shamnesty Bill

DISCLAIMER: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BRAIN ANEURYSMS, HEART ATTACKS, STROKES, OR OTHER LETHAL ILLNESSES WHILE WATCHING THIS VIDEO. I'M JUST SAYIN'.

Obama and the Teleprompter

Your Mortage is Not My Problem and Whoopi Goes on Rant About Taxes

Get over it, Whoopie. You voted for him and sung his praises. SHOCKER! You are going to get hit with higher taxes, after all you did for him! Call the WAHHHHHBULANCE!

A New Low in Diplomacy

I don't know about most of my friends and family. Well, actually I do. Other than one or two, none of them seem at all bothered by anything that is going on right now. We all have our own personal crises to deal with, after all. It's too darn bad because something very wicked this way comes, to coin a phrase from Ray Bradbury. And it's moving faster all the time. I don't feel I am at all simplifying by saying it will be the end of life as some of us know it. I was reading an article today on a website chastising Obama for insulting the British Prime Minister and his family when they were here with cheap gifts and no fanfare. I wasn't surprised that it happened, but I was surprised at the responses. Among the well thought out gifts the British Prime Minister gave the Obamas were dresses from Top Shop, a British line of clothing opening in the U.S. They are not cheap clothing. I went on line and saw that their average frocks run starting at about $50.00 plus and go up into the hundreds of dollars. This is how people respond to criticism of the Obamas in "any way."

If you don’t like it, you can always return to the U.K. and blog from there…

Sandra, Top shop is like Target (I love top shop cotton panties) and how many books did they get that cost “hundred” of pounds?

Uh, no, it is not like Target but nice try dimbulb.

Sorry Sandra, I am laughing at this. I can only think this is a humor post because we are allowed to comment on it.

When people give you a gift, you don’t have to ‘match” what they give you, do you? Gifts are gifts. Maybe Michelle felt like the book and a helicopter was appropriate for the too boys that probably have every everything they want.

Obama is president now, and just like any other president, he can like who he want, and do what he want in “his” white house.

Can you send a link to the other british blogs. Maybe I need to read them to understand the sincerity of this, because it just seem funny to me. I am like picturing it in my head.

Good day, Everybody! It’s going to be 70 degrees in Greensboro, and I’m barbecuing!!!

March 5th, 2009 at 2:18

You can't make this up folks. You just can't.

This post was hilarious. Thanks to all the posters who revealed how inexpensive the dresses probably were.

Who cares how much the items cost? The gifts were given as a gesture. Surely, you and your Brit friends can find something else to be up in arms about.

The gift that keeps on giving...stupidity.

And my favorite:

President Obama and his wife, don’t have to kiss the Brit’s behind. I wouldn’t want nothing from your country. I have been there and it was no big deal. Look at you, you can’t keep your nose out of the Obama’s business, that says it all. You Brit’s are just to dull!

One thing for sure, you will never see any black PM’s in your{England} country, and who wants to meet the slumball who dump his wife to marry a bimbo?

The UK Telegraph reports this:

Barack Obama 'too tired' to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown
Barack Obama's offhand approach to Gordon Brown's Washington visit last week came about because the president was facing exhaustion over America's economic crisis and is unable to focus on foreign affairs, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 10:03PM GMT 07 Mar 2009

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown walk down the Colonnade of the White House in Washington, Photo: AP
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".
A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. "I think it's right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn't quite understand the British concerns and didn't get what that was all about."

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything."

British diplomats insist the visit was a success, with officials getting the chance to develop closer links with Mr Obama's aides. They point out that the president has agreed to meet the prime minister for further one-to-one talks in London later this month, ahead of the G20 summit on April 2.

But they concede that the mood music of the event was at times strained. Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama's Oval Office desk. Mr Obama's gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.

Mr Obama rang Mr Brown as he flew home, in what many suspected was an attempt to make amends.

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.

In addition to passing the largest stimulus package and the largest budget in US history, Mr Obama is battling a plummeting stock market, the possible bankruptcy of General Motors, and rising unemployment. He has also begun historic efforts to achieve universal healthcare, overhaul education and begin a green energy revolution all in his first 50 days in office.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama's most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama's character.

"The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this," the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. "He's underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk." A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.

He said that on several occasions the president has had to hurry back from eating dinner with his family in the residence and then tucking his daughters in to bed, to conduct urgent government business. Matters are not helped by the pledge to give up smoking.

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