Mother Teresa on abortion

In 1994 Mother Teresa delivered a no-hold-barred pro-life speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of Clinton, her equally pro-abortion husband, then-President Bill Clinton, and Al and Tipper Gore.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.

And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

I was not there, but author and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan was. Here’s what she later wrote:

Well, silence. Cool deep silence in the cool round cavern for just about 1.3 seconds. And then applause started on the right hand side of the room, and spread, and deepened, and now the room was swept with people applauding, and they would not stop for what I believe was five or six minutes. As they clapped they began to stand, in another wave from the right of the room to the center and the left.

But not everyone applauded. The president and first lady, seated within a few feet of Mother Teresa on the dais, were not applauding. Nor were the vice president and Mrs. Gore. They looked like seated statues at Madame Tussaud’s. They glistened in the lights and moved not a muscle, looking at the speaker in a determinedly semi-pleasant way.

-- Dave Andrusko, Live Action News, 8/5/16

Canadian Muslim leftist's viewpoint

[Yes, he is on the Glenn Beck show, and yes, they actually are good friends! This is a frank and disturbing discussion about what's up with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama administration. -- kjk]

Rabbi Lapin Explains Baal

Rabbi Daniel Lapin explained what is meant by the ancient concept of Baal in its modern context on GBTV. If you have interest in the ongoing war of good and evil, this is very revealing.

RABBI LAPIN ON BAAL 1:


RABBI LAPIN ON BAAL 2:


RABBI LAPIN ON BAAL 3:


RABBI LAPIN ON BAAL 4:


RABBI LAPIN ON BAAL 5:

What has America become?

Editor,

Has America become the land of special interest and home of the double standard?

Lets see: if we lie to the Congress, it's a felony and if the Congress lies to us it's just politics; if we dislike a black person, we're racist and if a black person dislikes whites, it's their 1st Amendment right; the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims; in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process; you can kill an unborn child, but it is wrong to execute a mass murderer; we don't burn books in America, we now rewrite them; we got rid of communist and socialist threats by renaming them progressive; we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea; if you protest against President Obama's policies you're a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right.

You can have pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas; we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people; we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it is wrong to use an animal.

We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don't want to work; we all support the Constitution, but only when it supports our political ideology; we still have freedom of speech, but only if we are being politically correct; parenting has been replaced with Ritalin and video games; the land of opportunity is now the land of hand outs; the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill is that neither president did anything to help.

And how do we handle a major crisis today? The government appoints a committee to determine who's at fault, then threatens them, passes a law, raises our taxes; tells us the problem is solved so they can get back to their reelection campaign.

What has happened to the land of the free and home of the brave?

- Ken Huber, Tawas City

-- Iosco County News Herald, 6/9/10

I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing

[On August 28, 2010, a peaceful rally of grass-roots conservatives, touted as the Restoring Honor rally, was conducted by Glenn Beck. Attendance estimates range from 300,000 to 1,600,000. Glenn later said "I think this is the only guy that really gets it," speaking of the following blog post. -- KJK]

The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.

Why?

He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.

Using Boyd’s continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral.

Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

Someone who asks what the rally has to do with the 2010 election is missing the point.

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.

Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that. Defeat the enemy on that plane, and any merely tactical defeat will always be reversible.

Beck is unabashed that God can be invoked in public places by citizens, who vote and assemble and speak and freely exercise their religion. They are supposed to be too browbeaten to do this. Gathering hundreds of thousands of them to peaceably assemble shows they are not. But showing that the people who believe in God and practice their religion are fellow-citizens who share political and economic values with majorities of Americans is a critical step. The idea that these people are an American Taliban is laughable, but showing that fact to the world — and to potential political allies who are not religious — is critical.

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence, the very thing I proposed in this post.

Ronald Reagan said we would not defeat Communism, we would transcend it.

Beck is aiming to have America do the same thing to its decaying class of Overlords, transcend them.

Beck is prepping the battlefield for a generation-long battle.

He is that very American thing: A practical visionary.

See, simple.

Restore pride and confidence to your own side, and win the long game.

As Ronald Reagan also said, there are simple solutions, just no easy solutions.

God bless America.

-- Lexington Green's blog on chicagoboyz.net, 8/31/10

America in pain

The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.

... But it isn't pessimism, really, it's a kind of tough knowingness, combined, in most cases, with a daily, personal commitment to keep plugging.

... When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns — even from the essential nature — of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless.

Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination.

-- Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, 8/6/10

Change? Audacity? You got that right!

During his entire first term, Carter's record doesn't touch the Obama administration's record in its first year and a half. Obama has already tacitly OK'd the Iranian nuclear program and derided Israel's nuclear program. He has allowed Iranian protestors to be slaughtered in the streets without so much as a peep for days on end. Obama has allowed the Russians to sponsor an uprising in Kyrgyzstan that resulted in the removal of a U.S. airbase. He has lent legitimacy to an Islamist Turkish government and sold American debt to a communist Chinese government that supports North Korea. He has presided over the largest oil spill in world history in the Gulf of Mexico and spent his efforts blaming everyone but himself.

He's poised to raise our taxes at the end of the year. He's pushing for comprehensive "immigration reform" that will really act as an amnesty for illegal immigrants. He has denigrated Arizona before Mexico, bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia and the Chinese president and the Japanese emperor, hugged a Venezuelan quasi-dictator, and undermined a constitutional uprising in Honduras. He has pushed carbon taxes and gas taxes and estate taxes. He has propped up unfit mortgage borrowers and penalized those who pay their mortgage on time. He has bailed out his buddies in the banking industry and nationalized the auto and health industries for the benefit of his union friends.

He has insulted the Cambridge police and defended Muslim terrorists like Maj. Nidal Hassan. He has utilized advisers who are Marxists (former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones), anti-Semites (foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, special adviser Samantha Power, National Security Adviser Adm. James Jones), racists (Attorney General Eric Holder), sycophantic pro-Islamists (Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan), kooks (Director of White House Office of Science and Technology John Holdren), perverts (Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings), and paid thugs (Rahm Emanuel).

When Obama took office, the national debt was just under $10 trillion. Now it is $12 trillion, and by 2015, it will be at least $19.6 trillion. Unemployment under Obama increased to 9.7 percent, up from 7.6 percent when Bush left office. The inflation rate has yet to explode, but most economists believe it will have to unless Obama drastically raises taxes, destroying the economy even further.

Carter can't touch this guy.

-- Ben Shapiro, townhall.com, 6/16/10

Shared sovereignty isn't sovereignty

Now, for Americans, sovereignty is not an abstract concept. ... We understand very well that under our constitution, sovereignty is vested in us, in America. It's not the government that's sovereign. It's the people who are sovereign. So when you hear people say, "Well, you know, problems today are really global in nature and therefore, you need global solutions and what we need to do is to share sovereignty or to pool sovereignty," what they are saying indirectly to Americans is, "You have too much control over your own government and you need to give some of it up to Germans and Chinese and South Africans and all the other members of the United Nations."

I think since most Americans think we don't have enough control over our own government, the last thing we want to do is give what we have up in whole or in part. And I think it's important, as you look at a range of issues that are being discussed, some in Congress, some in international organizations covering a huge diversity of subjects, from the idea of international fees and taxes for banks that would fund international regulatory activities to the Law of the Sea Treaty, which the administration is trying yet again to get through Congress that would fund an international authority from revenues, royalties of deep-sea mining, to any of a variety of other things, including issues like gun control, the death penalty, family issues, that the tendency to put more and more of these issues into international negotiations is a tendency that we should resist because it is ultimately destructive of our liberties. -- John Bolton, The First Post-American President and American Sovereignty, 5/18/10

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call, there's no hope of waking up. -- Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN)

Dot-to-dot

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Qaddafi and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama's many previous years of associations and alliances with people who hate America-- Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, etc.-- at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots? -- Thomas Sowell, 10/7/09

The right to pay for mistakes or not

In reality, what is called "the market" consists of human beings making their own choices at their own cost. What is called "social justice" is government imposition of the notions of third parties, who pay no price for being wrong. -- Thomas Sowell, 10/7/09

Laughless

The left does not understand humor. -- Don Wade

By any other name

Today's leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from Nazism. However, there's little or no distinction between Nazism and socialism. Even the word Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers Party. The origins of the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the '20s, '30s and '40s. Those horrors were simply the end result of long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for "social justice."It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans, like many of today's Americans, who would have cringed at the thought of genocide, who built the Trojan horse for Hitler to take over. -- Walter E. Williams, 10/7/09

Terms for presidential terms

Let's concede for the moment that President George W. Bush's presidency was a disaster. After all, he left us with a $1 trillion deficit, 6.7 percent unemployment rate and an expanded federal government (creation of the Department of Homeland Security was the biggie).

Now we have a president who has virtually doubled the national deficit, unemployment has increased to 9.8 percent and he's looking to add 53 new bureaucracies with his health-care plan (which has an $829 billion price tag).

What word should we choose to describe President Barack Obama's presidency after only nine months?

-- Frank C. Overfelt, letter to Deseret News, 10/10/09

Congressman Mike Rogers on Health Care reform

This has gone way beyond fixing an obvious problem. It is about unprecedented intrusion into our lives and governmental coercion. The damage and pain inflicted by this and other initiatives of this government will continue with our children and their children. Keep praying for common sense to prevail among our elected representatives!

When asked to sacrifice

It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. -- Ayn Rand

Pour more fool on the fire!

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats' idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink. -- Ann Coulter

Hockey Mayor - Hockey Mom -- same diff

88 years old and mayor for 11 consecutive elections! This gal inspires! Is anyone writing her biography?

Daniel Hannan MEP - Bold, plain talk

[This is a politician I can respect. Find more like this. -- KJK]

Communism Deadens

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. -- Milton Friedman

[Currently living most of the time in the former East German city of Dresden, I see solid confirmation every day of the fact that communism destroyed rather than enhanced the greatness of this place. -- kjk]

And much of it is pork

Politics are not the high class, marvelous thing that lots of you picture. Our whole government workings are crammed with 'baloney. -- Will Rogers

The Frugal Machiavellian

Never waste a good crisis ... Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security. -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Obama of Sherwood Forest

If I say to 10 co-workers, 'We all need to chip in together to get this done,' and then say, 'So, Todd, open your wallet and give five bucks to everyone else in the room,' it would sound ridiculous. But when Obama says the same thing to 300 million Americans it's called 'leadership.' -- Jonah Goldberg

Don't Forget the Big Stick

But foreign policy is not about winning popularity contests. And woe to thepresident who imagines he needn't inspire fear among the wicked even as he embraces the adulation of the good. -- Bret Stephens, wsj.com, 2/10/09

Inebriation of Power

Barely two months into his Presidency, Obama is wreaking havoc, crippling the nation, oblivious to consequences and monumentally arrogant, believing the timbre of his voice and the manipulation of the media will win public confidence until the socialist utopia he believes in comes to fruition. Who knows how bad it will be in a year, let alone four? -- Lance Fairchok

Obama, Rush, and bipartisanship

Evidently Obama the Whiner can’t work his socialistic voodoo if Rush Limbaugh keeps free thinking and running his mouth off. D***it, Rush, you’re ruining Obama’s ability to cast his spell! . . .

Socialists like Obama . . . cannot work in an environment in which leaders and citizens do not do-si-do when he says so. Geez, the press corps can’t even toss him a question during a meet and greet without Barack getting testy. Therefore, Limbaugh, and all dissenters like him, must bow and kiss the ring or suffer vilification and marginalization for not being “bipartisan and tolerant.”

I would rather bikini wax a sensitive and livid grizzly sow than be a “tolerant bipartisan” toward the bloated government, pro-death, anti-free market, crap on traditional values, socialism squared, nanny state policies Obama has floated in the last few days. -- Doug Giles, Townhall.com, 2/3/09

Toward a well-known economic model

Note that President Obama doesn't even pay lip service to making his interventionist plans ["stimulus" bill] short-lived. . . . This is an effort to restructure our economy radically toward the type of command and control model that has accompanied tyrannical regimes throughout history. -- David Limbaugh, Townhall.com, 2/3/09

Random well-put thoughts

What we have on display is both the gargantuan ignorance of the celebrity illiterati as well as their boundless vanity. -- William B. Smith, responding to "Hollywood Celebrates Che Guevara"

Try it on Congress for two years before turning it on the public. -- Bill Druckemiller (on Obama's health care proposal)
[I LIKE it!]

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher; as a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide. -- Abraham Lincoln, 1837

If you believe the left is tolerant, open-minded and democratic, you're in for a rude awakening. -- David Limbaugh

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. -- William F. Buckley Jr.

Ignoring the cowboy, we ride into the sunset

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. -- Ronald Reagan

Harvest time approaches

From the fifth grade through the fourth year of college, our young people are being indoctrinated with a Marxist philosophy, and I am fearful of the harvest. -- Ezra Taft Benson, 1967

Gorbachev tore down but a wall only

Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika is fully based on the principle of more socialism. -- Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and theWorld?1988 Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) Secretary General Communist Party

None dare call it conspiracy

Today the path to total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly, we have a Constitutional government. We have something within our government ... representing another form of government which believes our Constitution is outmoded and is sure that it is the winning side... All the strange developments in foreign policy agreements may be traced to this group who are going to make us over to suit their pleasure. -- Speech on the Senate floor, February 23, 1954 William E. Jenner (1908-1985) U.S. Senator, Indiana (R)

Painless descent into Socialism

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing it happened. -- Campaign speech, 1948 Norman M. Thomas (1884-1968) U.S. Socialist Party Leader

A too-familiar 5-step program to slavery

From Weishaupt through Babeuf, Marx, and Lenin, the revolutionists pushed the five abolitions, namely of monarchy and all other ordered government, of national patriotism, of property and inheritance, of all religion, and of marriage and the family. -- World Revolution, the Plot Against Civilization, 1921 Nesta H. Webster (1876-1960) Historian and Author

Methodical subjugation

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. -- The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1, p.130

Simply Marxism 101

For the last seven years we have had the highest corporate profit ever in American history. ... But it hasn't been shared, and that's theproblem, because we have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in the simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it. They have an antipathy toward the means of redistributing wealth. And they may be able to sustain that for a while, but it doesn't work in the long run. --Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)

Obama vs Economics 101

[B]y 'redistributing wealth,' as Obama wants the government to do, he's actually reducing overall wealth in the economy by taking away capital from those who can invest it efficiently in direct job creation. And the real irony is that if Obama ... succeeds in raising taxes on the top 5 percent, he's likely to collect less tax, not more, if history is a guide. -- Linda Chavez

Bush tried but was defied

[T]he Bush administration warned in the budget it issued in April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged. Their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities andeconomic activity" well beyond housing.

Mr. Bush wanted to limit systemic risk by raising the GSEs' [i.e."government-sponsored enterprises" like Fannie and Freddie] capital requirements, compelling preapproval of new activities, and limiting the size of their portfolios. ... Mr. Bush wanted the GSEs to be treated just like their private-sector competitors.

But the GSEs fought back [ with a massive $170,000,000 lobbying campaign!]. They didn't want to see the Bush reforms enacted, because that would level the playing field for their competitors. Congress finally did pass the Bush reforms, but in 2008, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed. ...

The housing meltdown is largely a story of greed and irresponsibility made possible by government privilege. If Democrats had granted the Bush administration the regulatory powers it sought, the housing crisis wouldn't be nearly as severe and the economy as a whole would be better off. -- Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 1/7/09

Ezra Taft Benson and Conspiracy Facts

After serving eight years in the Eisenhauer administration, Ezra Taft Benson knew first-hand what was going on and heard from Kruschev himself what the man's intentions really were. Read the full text of this speech, given at Brigham Young University in 1966) here: http://www.latterdayconservative.com/ezra-taft-benson/our-immediate-responsibility.html

On duck hunting and assault weapons

[ The woman testifying in this brief video clip gives you a mighty succinct education on what the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is really about. Her last statement is gutsy but she has it dead right. -- Kirt ]

Do you stick to the script or do you ad lib?

[T]here are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution -- try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial. -- Clarence Thomas, How to Read the Constitution, 10/20/08

More Important than Cell Phones

As I have traveled across the country, I have been astounded just how many of our fellow citizens feel strongly about their constitutional rights but have no idea what they are, or for that matter, what the Constitution says. I am not suggesting that they become Constitutional scholars -- whatever that means. I am suggesting, however, that if one feels strongly about his or her rights, it does make sense to know generally what the Constitution says about them. It is at least as easy to understand as a cell phone contract -- and vastly more important. -- Clarence Thomas, How To Read the Constitution, 10/20/08

Who 'You' Is

[Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber] 'I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.' In that sentence about you spreading the wealth around, there's [a] typing error: that 'you' should read 'I, Barack.' 'You' will have no say in it." -- Mark Steyn

Equality versus Everything Else

The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The right subscribes to the American formula, 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.' The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality. -- Dennis Prager

Gays, Obama, and the Courts

The aim of the gay rights lobby is to destroy all remnants of biblical values and societal norms. Gay rights advocates will take their agenda to federal courts as soon as sufficient numbers of liberal judges are there to give them what they want. Watch them vote in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama. He is their future. This election is, among other things, about the future of the majority and whether we want this country to be shaped by the courts, or by 'we the people'. -- Cal Thomas

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah Palin is the one real outsider among the four candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency on the Republican and Democratic tickets. Her whole career has been spent outside the Washington Beltway. More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to the intelligentsia of the media. She didn't go to the big-name colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling that they are special folks. She doesn't talk the way they talk or think the way they think. ... Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, they are people whose values are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country's fundamental institutions are beyond question because they have not spent decades working with people who hate America." -- Thomas Sowell

Get the Story Straight

This housing crisis ... was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans. ... One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

... [I]t was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

... This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion. -- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 10/5/08

NOT a free market failure!

The enormous risk that Sen. McCain warned of in 2005 has now become a financial crisis of staggering proportions. That crisis can trace its roots to Bill Clinton's signature on legislation making it easier for minority constituents with bad credit to obtain mortgages. In 1995, he had his Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, rewrite the lending rules for the Community Reinvestment Act, opening the flood gates of mortgage lending to unqualified borrowers. This legislation, in effect, applied affirmative action to the lending industry, which is to say that the current crisis is NOT a "free market failure" but the result of socially engineered financial policy by the central government. -- Mark Alexander, PatriotPost.us, 9/26/08

Patriot McCain

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me... and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God. I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. Fight for our children's future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all. Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other, for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up and fight. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. -- John McCain, concluding his 2008 nomination acceptance speech

And the darkness comprehended it not

[Sarah Palin is]... the object of the cultural disdain of a left that loves the working class in theory, but is mystified or offended by its lifestyle and conservative values in reality. -- Rich Lowry

Faults and Potentials

Poverty is the default human condition... The interesting question isn't 'Why is there poverty?' It's 'Why is there wealth?' Or: 'Why is there prosperity here but not there?' At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own... -- Jonah Goldberg

Facts vs Politics

Obama is being hailed as the newest and freshest face on the American political scene. But he is advocating some of the oldest fallacies, just as if it was the 1960s again, or as if he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since then... But politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe. -- Thomas Sowell

What Krushchev Knew

We can't expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. -- Nikita Khrushchev on Roosevelt's "New Deal" paradigm

Election Day Fowl

A taxpayer voting for Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

Miracle Ma(r)x

As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone. -- Charles Krauthammer

An Illegitimate Function of Government

The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector." —Ronald Reagan

The Do Nothing Solution

[I]ncreasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that it was government intervention which prolonged the Great Depression beyond that of other depressions where the government did nothing. The stock market crash of 1987 was at least as big as the stock market crash in 1929. But, instead of being followed by a Great Depression, the 1987 crash was followed by 20 years of economic growth, with low inflation and low unemployment. The Reagan administration did nothing in 1987, despite outrage in the media at the government’s failure to live up to its responsibility, as seen in liberal quarters. But nothing was apparently what needed to be done, so that markets could adjust. The last thing politicians can do in an election year is nothing. So we can look for all sorts of ‘solutions’ by politicians of both parties. Like most political solutions, these are likely to make matters worse. —Thomas Sowell

Obama, the Politician

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country’s problems, just because they say so—or say so loudly or inspiringly. Politicians’ top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected. —Thomas Sowell

[ This is precisely the conclusion I came to as I finished Obama's book yesterday. He is a superb rhetorician and consummate politician. If that is want you want, he is a great choice to have on your side, but he is clearly far, far away on the other end of the ideological spectrum from my position. His strengths, if elected, will only compound the weakness of his credentials to America's great detriment. Scary. -- Kirt ]

The Roads Both Taken

When he comes to a fork in the road, Barack Obama continues to take it." —Wesley Pruden

Presidents and the Constitution

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1810

[ George W. Bush, like Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln before him, were not without justification in their unconstitutional exercise of presidential powers in order to honor their higher oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States". Acting decisively to keep the country safe from another 9/11 attack for the remainder of his two terms in office will place him in high esteem, despite his methods and failings, in the eyes of future historians. -- Kirt]

The sacred cow of global warming

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming . . . miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

-- Freeman Dyson, The New York Review of Books, Vol 55, No. 10, 6/3/08

Uncommon Sense

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yet we continue to elect the same people year after year, thinking things will change or get better. Do yourself and your kids a favor. Read the Declaration of Independence and compare the grievances our forefathers had against the king of Great Britain to the grievances you have now. How do they match up? What does it say our duty is?

The only way I can see to change the way things are is to boot out every politician that has been in office more than two terms and elect people with some common sense.

-- Troy Wright, DeseretNews.com, 5/23/08

[ With very few exceptions, career politicians make me shudder. Rarely do we see a true statesman worth keeping. Competent leaders and problem solvers from the private sector ought to be carried, kicking and screaming, into office and let off for good behavior at the end of their term. -- Kirt ]

Part of the problem

This may be cruel, but do you want to really confuse a Republican politician and leave them speechless? Ask them to identify ONE program or governmental effort that is outdated, detrimental to society or useless and that can be eliminated. I've done this and believe me.....they don't know what to say. But it speaks volumes. -- Liberty Tom, Rochester, NY, 5/22/08

Relearning the folly of appeasement

A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn. -- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Declaring the wrong enemy - Act I

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful. . . .

Kennedy promised . . . that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor -- a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

-- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Declaring the wrong enemy - Act II

[In] the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate -- Vice President Gore -- championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent -- and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. . . . When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy -- not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush -- activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

-- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Conservatism Defined

Conservatism is alive and well in America; don't let anyone tell you differently. And by conservatism, I don't mean the warmed-over "raise your hand if you believe . . ." kind of conservatism we see blooming every election cycle. No, I'm speaking of the conservatism grounded in principles based upon enduring truths: an understanding of the importance of human nature in the affairs of individuals and nations. Respect for the lessons of history, the importance of faith and tradition. The understanding that while man is prone to err, he is capable of great things when not subjugated by a too-powerful government. -- Fred Thompson, wsj.com, 5/20/08

Democracies don't let people die

Tectonic plates in motion don't distinguish between democracies and autocracies, but the record shows that getting hit by an earthquake or cyclone in an authoritarian government is a high-risk proposition for the survivors. [Consider these examples...

• Communist China's Tangshan earthquake of 1976: 255,000 dead.
• Managua under Somoza 1972: at least 5,000 dead.
• Mexico City's 1985 earthquake under the PRI government: 9,500 dead.
• Soviet Armenia 1988: 25,000 dead.
• Iran, 2003: 31,000 dead.]

Common to all is that their governments never held real elections. In such places, after nature kills people, delay and incompetence kill the rest. Set aside idealism and the flowery rhetoric that must accompany a statement like the 2002 Bush Doctrine. The bottom line is accountability. In democracies, even poor or imperfect ones, public pressure, even outrage, pushes elected officials to act. In nondemocracies, the politicians don't give a damn because they don't have to.

There are no angels in politics. Absent accountability, though, a nation's people are at permanent risk. Democracy's greatest value may well be the average politician's cynical compulsion to survive the next election.

-- Daniel Henninger, online.wsj.com, 5/15/08

Border Economics

There have been suggestions that the border be sealed. But Mexico is the United States' third-largest customer, and the United States is Mexico's largest customer. This was the case well before NAFTA, and has nothing to do with treaties and everything to do with economics and geography. Cutting that trade would have catastrophic effects on both sides of the border, and would guarantee the failure of the Mexican state. It isn't going to happen. So long as vast quantities of goods flow across the border, the border cannot be sealed. -- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly, 5/13/08

Selling Eden

A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains. . . . So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 5/14/08

The Course Not Taken

History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days... The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it's dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said: 'Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. -- Jack Kelly

Old Professions

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan

Things I'd Say If I Was That Smart

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual [Republican] nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68. -- Hugh Hewitt

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. -- Norman Thomas

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security. -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes... -- Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don't matter. -- Brent Bozell

Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That's because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values. -- Burt Prelutsky

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies. -- William F. Buckley Jr.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection -- it is plunder. -- Benjamin Disraeli

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. -- Calvin Coolidge

The current tax code is a daily mugging. -- Ronald Reagan

I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago. -- Will Rogers

We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. -- Davy Crockett

Blunt-speaking and heroism does not a president make

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker. . . .

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let's talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

Being a war hero is not a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. And becoming President of the United States is not a matter of rewarding an individual for past services.

The Presidency is a heavy responsibility for the future of the nation, including generations yet unborn. Character and integrity are major qualifications.

-- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 2/1/08

Plotting to cripple the American economy

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse-gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren. -- Bill Clinton

[In other words, Bill, global warming REALLY IS an anti-American, anti-capitalist ploy, right? -- Kirt]

The Republican candidate liberals want out of the race

Are you familiar with our 'no exchange/no return' policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color. The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide. -- Ann Coulter

Romney for real

Romney's very public migration rightward over the last few years is a different kind of act, one intended not to hide his real views but to liberate them. In 1994, Romney struck me as an extraordinarily bright, talented, and decent man -- and a political neophyte who fell for the canard that the only way a conservative could win in Massachusetts was by passing for a liberal. [Now,] Romney is where he should have been all along. -- Jeff Jacoby

Straight Talk is not the same as Straight Walk

I seek the nomination of our Party because I am as confident today as I was when I first entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution that the principles of the Republican Party – our confidence in the good sense and resourcefulness of free people – are always in America’s best interests. In war and peace, in good times and challenging ones, we have always known that the first responsibility of government is to keep this country safe from its enemies, and the American people free of a heavy-handed government that spends too much of their money, and tries to do for them what they are better able to do for themselves. We want government to do its job, not your job; to do it better and to do it with less of your money; to defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively, because the cost of our defense is so dear to us; to respect our values because they are the true source of our strength; to enforce the rule of law that is the first defense of freedom; to keep the promises it makes to us and not make promises it will not keep. We believe government should do only those things we cannot do individually, and then get out of the way so that the most industrious, ingenious, and enterprising people in the world can do what they have always done: build an even greater country than the one they inherited.

-- John McCain, 1/18/08

[So, given all the "straight talk", how much do past misdeeds -- Keating savings and loan scandal, McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, McCain-Feingold 1st Amendment sell-out, and judicial nomination side deals -- count towards walking the walk? -- Kirt]

A Good Government

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations. -- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

[I think it is only in "its operations" that our government has earned our dismay. -- Kirt ]

The Jihadist War in Review

After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States realized it lacked the military wherewithal to simultaneously deal with the four powers that made al Qaeda possible: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Pakistan. The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance. The second was to invade the state that bordered the other three-- Iraq -- in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda. The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda -- the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate, not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name -- broke.

As 2008 dawns, it has become apparent that though this strategy engendered many unforeseen costs, it has proven successful at grinding al Qaeda into nonfunctionality. Put simply, the jihadist war is all but over; the United States not only is winning but also has an alliance with the entire constellation of Sunni powers that made al Qaeda possible in the first place. The United States will attempt to use this alliance to pressure the remnants of al Qaeda and its allies, as well as those in the region who are not in the alliance.

This leaves Iran, the region's only non-Sunni power, in the uncomfortable position of needing to seek an arrangement with the United States.

-- George Friedman, stratfor.com, 1/8/08

Government needs a short leash

Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans. -- Taylor Caldwell