Before You Vote…

An appeal to my reasonable conservative friends:

Important: if you are not reasonable and open-minded, don’t read any further. I’m not looking for “zots.” I’m looking for reasonable people who are serious about making the right choice. When I know I’ve chosen wisely, I feel at peace, without doubt in my mind, and start to get excited – like Chrissy Mathews, I get “that tingle.” How do you feel when you know you’ve made the right choice?

At this point, you’ve been following the primary race for months, and that means you are looking to make the right choice. Are you aware of how important making the right choice is in this primary process? I agree, and that’s why it is important to keep an open mind. That’s why you’ve read this far, so you might as well hear me out.

Obama has made it clear that he is pinning his reelection efforts on class warfare. So, think about whom you would want the GOP nominee to be if you were Obama, and you needed a target for class warfare? I agree – Mitt Romney. Understand that Obama uses Alinsky tactics, and Alinsky tactic 13 is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Simply put, it is much easier to attack an organization or an idea if you can ‘put a face on it’. If you can find a single individual who both represents your opponent, and who, given the right spin, can be portrayed as the face of evil, you can use this person as a proxy for your attacks on your adversary. What face would you put on the 1%? Mitt Romney.

You may think that Mitt Romney is a great guy, and a great example of success, and I agree with some of that (and certainly applaud his success), and I would add that you should have no doubt in your mind that this is exactly what Obama will do (stick a big, fat 1% on him), and you can imagine that he is licking his chops in anticipation of doing it. If Mitt Romney is the nominee, this is what the general election will look like. Click Here. No matter what he says or how well he says it, he will not be able to shake that label. How does that make you feel about Mitt? And it doesn’t help that he has a habit of making mistakes and saying the wrong thing. Click here. Even Romney booster John McCain no longer believes Romney can win. Click Here. Moving on.

Obama’s second trick is throwing “red meat” distractions to keep us from discussing the areas where he is most vulnerable, such as economic and foreign policy. The biggest distraction so far has been the contraception controversy. And Rick Santorum took the bait- big time. Rick Santorum is a great father with great moral values, but he is also a one trick pony. Social issues are important, but he just can’t stop talking about them, and that has gotten him in a ton of trouble. The issue isn’t that he talks a lot about social policy, the issue is that he just can’t change gears quickly enough to avoid the damage caused by Obama’s intentional deceptions and sleights-of-hand. Consider how many distractions Obama will throw out there if Rick is the nominee. We’ll be talking about birth control all the way through November. By the time Rick manages to shift the debate back to Obama’s weak points, it may be too late.

Rick also tends to make serious, and very public, mistakes. For example, he loses his cool very quickly. Click Here. Cringing? He also gets confused regularly – in this instance, he gives Obama credit for CREATING jobs, publicly, on CNN! Click here. Just imagine if he makes even ONE mistake like this in the months between the nomination and the general election. Understand the very real risk with Rick. How do you feel about that, given the stakes?

Please understand that all of this is just fact, and I understand that some of you will now feel a bit disturbed and unsure at this point. But, I digress.

Newt is a flawed man, but recognize that his flaws are less subject to substantive attack. For example, Freddie and Fannie? It may be a big deal in the Republican primary, but Democrats do NOT want to go there! Yes, he’s had multiple marriages, but how many times has Rush been married? Do you still listen to Rush, at least here and there? And, of course, Democrats cannot launch credible attacks on the subject of adultery – we can go there. Before I close, I urge you to do one thing, and one thing only… please watch this video – click here. You’ve read this far, so another minute or two won’t kill you. Click here. Now, how do you feel about this man going up against Barack Obama?

The above letter from J.M. Stein at Red Side of Life is so good, as is, that I chose not to break up his text with my comments.

Indeed, Stein makes a very compelling case. But if there is still any doubt in your mind, please consider a few additional facts:

• Besides the “1%er” card that Stein says will be played against Romney, the Democrats also have their old favorite: the race card. Mitt is a very committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka the Mormons, and until 1978, Mormon theology relegated blacks to a kind of second-class membership in the church. After considerable social and political pressure, the church’s “living prophet” declared a new “revelation” changing the previous position which had been held since the church’s inception. Already, many on the Left are raising a stink about this. We can be sure that if Mitt were the nominee, this ugly issue would only get uglier — much uglier. The Democrat-Media Complex will make sure of that.

• The issue of contraception is problematic for Santorum not only for the reason Stein explains — namely, that the Left is skillfully and shamelessly using it to sidetrack discussion away from Obama’s staggering malfeasances in both foreign and domestic policy — but also because the driving force behind Obama is the “Shadow Party” funded by George Soros, who has an obsession with population control. Soros and other Agenda 21 promoters believe that world population must be reduced by literally billions of people. Santorum, the father of seven children — one of whom has Trisomy-18, a genetic disorder for which many Leftists believe abortion to be the only appropriate response — has the Left’s bull’s-eye on his back.

• The Left surely will demonize Newt just as viciously as they would Romney or Santorum. That’s what the Left does — to anyone who opposes them. A key difference, however, is that Newt fights back. Like the late, great Andrew Breitbart, Newt is a “happy warrior” who both understands the Left, and loves taking them on. Plus, like Breitbart, Newt understands that Big Media is every bit as much our opponent as is the Democratic Party. He is smart, articulate and confident enough to be able to answer their attacks on the spot, without hemming or hawing. People in media continually try to nail Newt with their “gotcha” questions — but they never succeed.

• America’s survival is threatened not only by terrorism and rogue states outside our borders, but by two major enemies within: communism and radical Islam. Yet, no other candidate besides Newt even mentions Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers and George Soros. Newt is the only one who seems to recognize — or at least, will publicly say — that Obama is not a misguided incompetent with well-meaning intentions, but rather a Marxist radical who believes America is more evil than good, and who is committed to destroying the freedoms that have made America great. As for radical Islam, while Rick Santorum recognizes the threat from Iran, and is very knowledgeable on national security matters, only Newt recognizes — and openly talks about — the giant strides that sharia (Islamic law) has already made right here in the U.S., thanks to CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA and the whole alphabet soup of Muslim Brotherhood-spawned groups that, despite proven connections to Hamas and other terror groups, are presented as legitimate “moderates” in our media and have infiltrated our government at high levels, including within the Department of Homeland Security.

• We can look around and see the perfect storm of economic collapse, national-security threats and inflamed social passions that is converging on us. America is — whether or not we yet realize it — in as much danger now as Britain was in the spring of 1940. Almost too late, the British people finally recognized that Winston Churchill — whom they’d previously despised as “impulsive” and “arrogant,” whom they’d castigated for his “poor judgment” and “grandiose ideas” — was actually the best man, perhaps the only man, who could lead them through the crisis. I’m not saying Newt is Churchill — but having studied Churchill, I am struck by the remarkable parallels between the two. Just as Churchill saw who Hitler really was long before most of his countrymen woke up, Newt understands the dangers to America that many people have so far been unable or unwilling to see. Newt will help open their eyes — because, like Churchill, Newt has a gift for explaining things in ways people can understand. Just as importantly, Newt has the bulldog tenacity and unabashed can-do attitude that the nation needs in its leader if we are to make it through the tough times ahead. As we saw so clearly during the South Carolina debate — when standing ovations kept erupting as Newt spoke — Newt has, as Churchill did, the power to inspire.

Read Full Post »

Henry Kissinger’s predictions are coming true at an alarming pace

Here is a chillingly prophetic piece dating from January 7, 2009. Think back, for a minute, to those days after Obama had been elected but before he’d been inaugurated… those days of “The Office of the President-Elect” and the cheap-imitation presidential seal… And then, only 25 days after this piece was written, Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize — after being in office less than two weeks. I never saw this article at the time. As I read it today, I got goosebumps — and not the good kind — as I compared what we know now with what people such as Henry Kissinger were thinking 29 months ago as they looked forward to the age of “hope and change”….

WASHINGTON, DC, January 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an interview with CNBC Monday, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that President-Elect Barack Obama’s most important, or defining task would be the creation of “a new world order.”

“The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously,” said Kissinger.

“Upheaval,” he says. Isn’t that cute? And that was before Greece went up in flames, Spain erupted in protests, Hezbollah dug in near Tijuana, Mexico descended into total chaos, North Korea sank a South Korean ship and attacked one of their islands, the Deepwater Horizon oil well blew out, China (or someone) test-fired a missile off the coast of Los Angeles, a Muslim U.S. Army doctor massacred soldiers at Ft. Hood, Iran started building missile bases in Venezuela, Iranian protesters got slaughtered in the streets, Syrian protesters got slaughtered in the streets, Libyan protesters got slaughtered in the streets, Bahraini protesters got slaughtered…. are we seeing a pattern here? Kissinger continues:

“You have India, Pakistan; you have the jihadist movement. So he [Obama] can’t really say there is one problem, that it’s the most important one. But he can give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. [Right, Henry. Especially from the queen of England. And the prime minister of Israel. And French president Sarkozy.]  I think his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created.”

“It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”

Henry is sounding nearly word-for-word like Rahm Emanuel here. And Frances Fox Piven. And Saul Alinsky. Ah, yes, Kissinger the “community organizer” — who knew?

Some commentators have suggested that the highly escalated conflicts in the Middle East and the world financial crisis have made the time ripe for a long-anticipated and foreshadowed “New World Order” to come to fruition.  Celebrated Canadian author Michael O’Brien, who has written extensively on the ‘new world order,’ spoke with LifeSiteNews.com about Kissinger’s statement.

“Only in one sense is Kissinger’s analysis correct,” said O’Brien.  “The current world situation is presently one of a multitude of crises and at the same time a moment of opportunity.  However, positing a leap towards what he calls a ‘new world order’ is fraught with difficulties.

“What does the term mean? In all likelihood it can only mean an imposed top-down global social-political revolution.  In other words, solutions would then come from a reigning authority over all nations putting aside individual conscience and principles of national self-determination.”

O’Brien added: “A true and healthy order in the human community can only arise from an internal revolution of the moral order. It cannot be imposed without imposing greater ills.  In all likelihood, Kissinger and like-minded globalists, see the present world configuration as a creative disintegration which would usher in a new form of world government.  In such a situation, management by crisis overrides authentic exercise of human freedom and responsibility.”

Because the real agenda of the one-world control freaks revolves around global population control, pro-lifers are ahead of the game in recognizing the core dynamic of the globalists.

For pro-life advocates, the proposal of a ‘new world order’ has been linked to the anti-life principles promoted at the United Nations.  Pope Benedict, while still a Cardinal, expounded on this matter in the introduction to a book published in 1997.  Then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the preface to a book by Michel Schooyans, entitled “The Gospel: Confronting World Disorder.

…Ratzinger first denounces the “new world order” describing it as more or less a culmination of Marxism. He goes on to say that a Christian is “obliged to protest” against it.

Christian protest, if it is truly Christian, will have a different character than Leftist/secular protests — both in what we advocate, and in how we advocate it. In my opinion, the starting point for every citizen who is a Christian should be signing the Manhattan Declaration of Christian Conscience. As we stand for our principles in the political sphere, we need to remember that the root problem is spiritual in nature, and that is where the real war must be fought, both within ourselves as individuals, and within the culture: “an internal revolution of the moral order,” in Michael O’Brien’s wise words.

The world-government control freaks and their initiatives, from the United Nations to the Bilderberg Group, from Agenda 21 to the Millennium Goals, represent a mind-set that, far from being limited to the Kissingers of the world conferring in dark-paneled rooms, is right out in the open and pervades our public life. That mind-set is materialism —  the unspoken assumption that man is nothing more than an evolved combination of chemicals, therefore any individual life is worth little to nothing, and the great masses of human beings should be managed by their self-appointed “superiors.” If there is no soul, if all that exists is what we see with our eyes, why not have government-forced abortions in America, as Obama’s science czar, John Holdren, has advocated? If an individual life is worth nothing, why not impose social uniformity by “eliminating” 25 million Americans in “re-education camps,” as Obama’s friend Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground terror group once discussed?

It’s quite telling that Saul Alinsky, the father of “community organizing,” dedicated his book to Lucifer, a.k.a. Satan. You may recall that when Jesus was tempted in the desert, one of the temptations Satan proffered was global rule — worldly power — the only kind of power that an Alinsky, a Kissinger, or an Obama seems to recognize. But Jesus did not choose that kind of power. He chose — and enables every one of us to choose — the power of self-giving love. And that is the only power that can change the world for the better.

Read Full Post »

Can There Be An “Islamic Reformation”?

What exactly is the nature of Islam?

Specifically:

• Is Islam itself evil — or only certain interpretations of it?
• Can Islam be reformed — or is that impossible by its very nature?
• Should we encourage “moderate” Muslims — or is that just wasted effort?

Ever since 9/11, Americans have been asking themselves these questions.

Christians often ask an additional question:

• Is it worthwhile, or even morally right, for the Church to “dialogue” with Muslims — or should all our effort be focused on converting them?

Personally, I’ve gone back and forth on these questions more times than Barack Obama’s head goes back and forth when he gives a speech. As a Christian, and particularly as a Catholic, I feel like I get mixed messages from Scripture, history, Church teaching, and reason. Christians from St. Thomas Aquinas to C.S. Lewis, and all the way back to St. Paul (see Romans 1:19-20; Acts 17:22-28), have explained that God reveals Himself even to those who have never heard the name of Jesus, and that glimmerings of truth exist within other religions. In the words of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II declaration on the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions,

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. [emphasis mine]

Of Muslims (note: Muslim persons, not Islam itself) the document states:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth….

On the other hand, St. Paul said to “test the spirits” to discern whether they’re good or evil, and Jesus said we can judge a tree by its fruit.

Roy H. Schoeman, a Jewish Catholic, in his book Salvation Is from the Jews, has this to say about Islam:

[Satan] has one goal — to deprive man of salvation, of eternal happiness — and one of the ways to achieve that is through the propagation of false religion, the primary victims of which are its own adherents…. Of all the major religions of the world, only Islam arose after God’s full revelation of Himself to man in His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ…. Only Islam’s revelation came after Christ, aware of Christianity yet contradicting it. Hence one must ask what the source of the revelation was — was it of human or of supernatural origin? If of supernatural origin, did it come from God or from fallen spirits?… One must ask just what spiritual entity lies behind the revelation of Islam. [pp. 295-300]

And yet… I believe that beauty is one of God’s attributes, and I have personally seen and heard things within Islam that are stunningly beautiful — Sufi dancing (in which I have even participated), the poetry of Rumi, the goosebump-inducing sound of certain Muslim melodies.

On the other hand, when I tried to read the Qur’an for myself, I had to stop, because it so disgusted and outraged me that I could not continue. It’s as if someone tore all the pages out of the Bible, discarded 90% of them, put the remaining 10% through a shredder, cut and pasted the shreds together randomly, then tried to cover the ugliness of the pastiche by throwing a lot of overly flowery language over it. But that’s just my subjective opinion. If we want to stick to more objective criteria, we can look at the statistics on the cold, hard facts of life in Islamic countries, such as clitorectomy, polygamy, burqas, honor killings, forced child marriages, wife-beating, domestic imprisonment, acid attacks, gang rapes, and other cruelties toward Muslim women and girls.

So… Is Islam the direct work of the devil, and was Muhammad possessed by demons? Or, is Islam merely a very faulty instrument through which God in His omnipotence and mercy can nevertheless reach people — the way a cheap toy flute, with misspaced holes and flimsy keys, might still make music in the hands of a master?

Should Western Christians band together with virtuous atheists, such as the late Oriana Fallaci, to fight the anti-human cult of Islam? Or, should we join forces with Muslims of goodwill in order to combat what may be the even greater evil of secularism, what Pope Benedict XVI termed the “dictatorship of relativism”?

Can Islam be reformed and made compatible with the modern world of progress, liberty and individual rights? Or, is it inherently unreformable?

To stage a debate on that last question, you’d be hard-pressed to find two more qualified and articulate principals than the two men you’ll see in the video below.

For the affirmative, we have Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who is, hands down, my favorite Muslim in public life. He’s earnest, likable, accomplished, patriotic, has integrity and goodwill, and is engagingly smart and articulate. A medical doctor and formerly an officer in the U.S. Navy, Jasser is founder and head of a group called the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), whose goal is genuine Islamic reformation. He has started programs to inculcate young Muslim Americans with the principles of our Founding Fathers, a love of liberty, and commitment to the Constitutional rule of law, and separation of mosque and state.

If you can’t watch the whole debate, try to at least watch from the 5:10 mark to the 10:20 mark, which is the first segment in which Dr. Jasser comments. If you’ve never seen Jasser interviewed or read his articles, you owe it to yourself to hear his views, for he is an entirely different breed from the duplicitous, seditious CAIR types who dominate the discussion of Islam in our media. I don’t agree with everything Jasser says, but I appreciate having his perspective; he makes me think. I believe he is completely sincere — which makes him a very brave man.

On the other side is Dr. Robert Spencer, head of Jihad Watch, co-founder of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), and one of my longtime personal heroes — right up there with Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, all of whom face constant death threats because of their leadership in the fight to defend liberty and human rights against the creeping imposition of shariah all over the globe.

Moderating the discussion is Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness and The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. McCarthy headed the legal team that prosecuted and convicted Sheikh Abdel Rahman, “the blind sheikh,” who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. McCarthy knows more about Islam than 99% of Americans — but on the questions raised in my first paragraph, he freely admits he’s ambivalent. Introducing the debate topic, he says, “I’ve been having this argument with myself for about eighteen years!”

I’ll be honest. Although I, like McCarthy, am ambivalent, I mostly tend to think that, while countless individual Muslims are good people, Islam itself is an evil ideology, Muhammad was demonically possessed, and the Twelfth Imam in Iran is probably the Antichrist. There. I’ve said it.

But, if there is anyone who could make me doubt all that, it would be Zuhdi Jasser.

The debate took place on April 3 at a retreat sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Walid Shoebat, former Muslim, has given a lot of thought to this issue, particularly to Dr. Jasser’s arguments, which Shoebat rebuts in his piece “The Problem With Reforming Islam.”

Cross-posted at Creative Tension

Read Full Post »

It’s 1938 — all over again

Nothing should shock me anymore about the depth of humanity’s oldest hatred — nevertheless I am in shock. The next Holocaust is being prepared — as the world looks on. And does nothing.

On Wednesday, in Cairo, Fatah — the terrorist group founded by Yasser Arafat that now styles itself as “moderate” and runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — signed a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip. The signing was accompanied — as these things always are — by enough pomp and ceremony to disguise, for most onlookers, the monstrous evil taking place. It was attended by representatives not only of the Arab League, but of the E.U. and the U.N. That means us. Scandalously, the U.S. is not only a member of the U.N., but its chief financial contributor. So when “representatives of the U.N.” show up to cheer the consolidation of Palestinian power against Israel, they are doing that in our name.

From Big Peace:

The reconciliation agreement is an important step on the way to getting the United Nations General Assembly to unilaterally create a Palestinian state in September by international mandate. A reconciliation is an important prerequisite.

Abbas said that they had forever turned “the black page of divisions.” Meshall spelled out Hamas’s goal:

“Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return [of Palestinian refugees].”

In fact, several years ago, the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, Russian Federation, United States, European Union) set three conditions for Hamas: recognize the state of Israel; renounce violence; and honor past Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Hamas has said that it will not agree to any of these conditions.

Well, of course it won’t. That would go against their whole reason for being. Hamas has been committed, from its origins, to the utter elimination of the Jews of Israel. Their very charter, Hamas’s founding document, is a declaration of war — against Israel, and against all of non-Muslim humanity. Here is the second paragraph of the Hamas charter in its entirety:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

And do not suppose that Hamas intends to fold up shop once they’ve obliterated Israel. The charter is a manifesto of global Islamic conquest. Here’s a sample, from Article 7, which appears under the heading “The Universality of the Islamic Resistance Movement”:

As a result of the fact that those Muslims who adhere to the ways of the Islamic Resistance Movement spread all over the world, rally support for it and its stands, strive towards enhancing its struggle, the Movement is a universal one.

And what would life be like in Hamas’ utopia? Poor, nasty, brutish and short. That’s the only kind of life unmitigated hatred can yield.

I will never forget the heartbreaking scenes in 2005 as Israeli soldiers evicted their own fellow Jews from their homes in Gaza, so that Israel could give the whole Gaza Strip to the Palestinians — in hopes of peace. And I’ll never forget how sick I felt as that gift was trashed by its recipients.

Before

After

The Jewish settlers in Gaza had built some of the most state-of-the-art agricultural facilities in the world, exporting flowers, fruit and vegetables to Europe and elsewhere, and employing thousands of Palestinians, Israelis, and others. Wealthy Jewish philanthropists in the U.S. (as well as a couple of prominent non-Jewish ones such as Bill Gates) bought the Gush Katif hothouses for $14 million and donated them to the Palestinian Authority. The hothouses had taken years to build, but as PA police looked on, Palestinian mobs ransacked them within hours of the Israeli exit. They stripped them of their glass, wiring, computer and electronic equipment and irrigation pipes and timers, destroying a vital source of employment for Gaza Palestinians in the process.

Jewish minds had conceived and designed the greenhouses, Jewish hands had built them, Jewish families had earned their livings in them. Therefore they must be destroyed. Don’t want anything that’s been contaminated by the filthy Jews!

It would seem that the most well-honed skill in Gaza now is the art of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. The mentality of the suicide bomber.

There is only one way out of this pit. The late, great Israeli prime minister Golda Meir saw what it was. She said:

“Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”

Read Full Post »

Obama slaps Israel in the face — on Passover!

Barack Obama seems to think that attending a Passover seder once a year will fool Jews into thinking he likes them.

Forget that he gave massive financial support — not to mention weekly attendance — to a church whose pastor, Jeremiah Wright, delivers anti-Semitic jabs on a regular basis. Forget that his first phone call from the Oval Office after his inauguration was to Mahmoud Abbas, and that his first formal TV interview as President was with al-Arabiya. Forget that one of his top advisers is Samantha Power, an inveterate Israel-hater who recently said that the U.S. should be prepared to send in our military to subjugate the Jewish state and facilitate its takeover by the Arabs. Forget that whereas Obama bowed to the Saudi king, he treated Prime Minister Netanyahu like something the cat dragged in.

We’re supposed to forget Obama’s unrelenting disparagement and undermining of the Jewish state because… he attends a Passover seder. That, he supposes, will make everything okay. To quote the man himself, “Do you think we’re stupid?”

From Israel National News:

Passover recalls the bondage and suffering of Jews in Egypt and the miracle of the Exodus, but U.S. President Barack Obama says its message is reflected in Muslim uprisings.

In his annual message, prior to his third straight participation in the Passover Seder, President Obama stated, “The story of Passover…instructs each generation to remember its past, while appreciating the beauty of freedom and the responsibility it entails. This year that ancient instruction is reflected in the daily headlines as we see modern stories of social transformation and liberation unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Did you notice the conspicuous omission? No, Barry, the haggadah doesn’t “instruct each generation to remember its past.” It instructs each generation of Jews to remember its past. And it’s not just about “the beauty of freedom,” but rather, it’s about deliverance of the Jews by God so that He could make His covenant with them at Mt. Sinai, establishing them as the Chosen People.

Unfortunately for the Jews, for thousands of years, the idea that God would choose one particular people to be His instrument of blessing to the world has really bothered a lot of non-Jews — and it’s bothered them enough to attempt genocide time and time again.

All over the Middle East and North Africa right now, radical jihadists are on the move. The Muslim Brotherhood — which is calling for war against Israel — has largely shut down the secular freedom movement in Egypt. Al-Qaeda is gaining territory in Libya. Thanks to all the unrest, anti-terrorist efforts and cooperation with U.S. intelligence have been disrupted and/or shut down all over the Middle East and North Africa.

It’s bad enough for Barack Obama to be celebrating these developments. But to celebrate them on Passover — the central, defining event of Jewish history — is beyond despicable.

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

Read Full Post »

Budget battle reveals Obama's top priorities: Kill babies and kill businesses

Good golly, Miss Molly, some days I wake up and I still can’t believe my fellow Americans elected this creep to the White House:

President Obama said Tuesday he would not sign a budget agreement to keep the government running that cuts funding for Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“There can be some negotiation about composition,” Obama told reporters…. “What we can’t be doing is using last year’s budget process to have arguments about abortion, to have arguments about the Environmental Protection Agency, to try to use this budget negotiation as a vehicle for every ideological or political difference between the two parties.”

Well, Barry, I heartily agree that the government shouldn’t be shut down over disagreements about Planned Parenthood and the EPA.  So get the hell out of the way and quit obstructing the budget cuts that the majority of the American people want!

Riders included in the House budget bill would, among other things, defund Planned Parenthood and remove the EPA’s authority to regulate “greenhouse gases” blamed for climate change.

Let’s be clear, Barry. The plain fact is you’d rather shut down the government than allow We the People and our Congress to defund an organization that was founded by a eugenics fanatic, targets black babies for destruction, breaks the law, and aids and abets child molesters. And you’d rather shut down the U.S. government than lose your ability to use the EPA to destroy what’s left of the U.S. economy all for the sake of some mythical theory whose top proponents were caught red-handed committing gross scientific fraud.

“What we can’t do is have a my-way-or-the-highway approach to this problem,” Obama said.

Well, look who’s talking! That’s rich. Just rich.

“If you’re a small business right now and you’re counting on a small business loan, it may make a difference in whether or not you can keep that business going. And you find out you can’t process it for three or four weeks, or five weeks or six weeks, because of some bickering in Washington? What does that say about our priorities? It doesn’t make sense.”

Damn right it doesn’t make sense…  that our president is willing to hold every small business, every family, in America hostage — for the sake of his beloved baby-killers at Planned Parenthood and his beloved economy-killers at the EPA.

Read Full Post »

Why does Obama hate small businesses?

Big Government ran this wonderful piece by Wayne Allyn Root. You may have heard of Root’s bestselling book The Conscience of a Libertarian. What I didn’t know is that Root was a classmate of Barack Obama at Columbia University. It’s a shame that Barry O was too busy seeking out all the campus radicals to get to know his common-sense classmate. He could have learned a thing or two.

I’ve started more than a dozen small businesses. For one, over $20 million was invested by me and investors who believed in me. I’ve paid payrolls, health insurance, payroll taxes, workers comp, and unemployment insurance for hundreds of employees.

Because of that, my employees were able to pay their mortgages, buy groceries, send their kids to college, and provide for their families. For this same small business, I spent about $50 million dollars on things like advertising, marketing, promotion, lawyers and accountants. That money enriched and employed thousands of others. And, that’s just one small business. Think of the impact that thirty million small business owners have on the U.S. economy. No wonder we create 70% or more of America’s new jobs. Small businessmen and women are a far more powerful economic force than Exxon, Microsoft, GE, or Wal-Mart.

So why do Obama and his socialist cabal hate us? Why do small businessmen and women feel demonized and punished? Why is it Obama’s goal to drive us out of business?

Mug or rob me once? Maybe it’s ignorance or a mistake. Twice? It’s a pattern. But, coming up with ways to rob and destroy me and my businesses on a daily basis? It’s time to get the message. Without a doubt, Obama and the progressive left are the enemy of small business.

Let’s look at the facts.

For 30 years I have been able to deduct mortgage interest from my taxable income. Obama wants to end that. How many so-called “wealthy” taxpayers (i.e. small business owners) would no longer be able to pay their mortgage? How many homes would go into foreclosure? What would happen to the housing market? Overnight every home in America would lose 40% of its already decimated value. How many small businesses earn a living off of real estate? How many millions of jobs would be lost? Does this sound like a President looking to create jobs?

For 30 years FICA taxes have been based on earnings currently capped at just over $100,000 per year. Obama wants to remove the cap, thereby hitting small businessmen with the largest tax increase in history. Overnight a small business owner making $500,000 per year would see his or her FICA plus Medicare taxes go from about $15,000 per year to $75,000. That’s $75,000 before federal or state income taxes. That’s a $60,000 per year tax increase for a small business owner. That would drive hundreds of thousands of small business owners out of business. It would force layoffs. It would lower consumer spending and kill more jobs.

For 30 years I ran my business without the extra taxes to pay for Obamacare. Now we face new taxes on income, stock sales, home sales, even on tanning beds! Worse is the provision mandating we report annually to the IRS every vendor from whom we purchase more than $600 of goods and services during the year. The cost of complying with this Big Brother Gestapo mandate is unfathomable and threatens to drown millions of small businesses in paperwork.

For 30 years, most small businesses could raise capital without government permission. Obama and his socialist friends in Congress want to change that. Last year Democratic Senator Dodd tried to pass financial reform that included a provision increasing the amount of money one would have to earn to be considered an “accredited investor.” That would reduce the angel investor pool by an estimated 70% and require most PRIVATE businesses get permission from the SEC to raise money. Do you know what an SEC lawyer costs? Raising capital for any new startup would suddenly cost an extra $250,000 in legal fees…and take months, or years, to wait in line for SEC approval. This would kill new business start-ups. Who could come up with this idea? Only a Marxist looking to destroy the American economy, or perhaps a cabal of extortionist lawyers looking for government to mandate obscene new legal fees. Either way, it was a “Friend of Obama.”

For 30 years I ran my businesses without the White House being in partnership with the American Bar Association. Now Obama has found a way to encourage every lawsuit junkie and disgruntled employee to make up a story and sue their boss. Every caller to the White House alleging their boss has broken the law now gets assigned a lawyer willing to work for contingency (no fees up front). Say goodbye to American business…and goodbye to jobs.

Keep in mind that all those new taxes and regulations mentioned above are aimed at people who risk their own money to start businesses. Collectively we risk trillions. Our courage and capitalism fuels the economy and creates over 70% of new jobs. Our taxes pay for government and all those government employees with their obscene pensions. Running a business often requires working sixteen-hour days and is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. If our reward for all this risk, sacrifice and work ethic is to be punished and demonized, why would we keep doing it?

This is no mistake or coincidence. This is a purposeful plan to destroy capitalism. And the best way to destroy capitalism is to destroy small business. Obama is trying to redistribute our wealth and create a jobs crisis. He can’t stand that we small business owners don’t need or want government to save us. So he’s out to ruin our businesses, and bring us to our knees begging for government to help. And as a bonus, he gets to wipe out the biggest contributors to conservative causes — small business. In other words, killing small business wipes out Obama’s political opposition.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, we have met the enemy of small business…and he resides in the White House.

Read Full Post »

The "Draft West" movement is GROWING

On Facebook, Allen West for President pages/groups are springing up like mushrooms.

You may already know that this blog is linked to the “Allen West for President in 2012” page.

And our friend C.M. Sackett has the wonderful “ALLEN WEST for President” page.

But there are many others — and the one that has me the most excited right now is the “DRAFT ALLEN WEST FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012” page.  These people get it:  Allen West will only be a presidential candidate in 2012 if we draft him for the nomination, as the GOP did with Eisenhower in 1952.

This stirring video was recently posted on this blog’s Facebook page by a member who is also a member of the new Draft Allen West in 2012 page, which is growing very rapidly. When I joined that page a mere 48 hours ago, there were some 1,700 members. As of this posting, there are 2,265!

Read Full Post »

God save Peter King!

If you do one thing today to help save our country, please make it a phone call to your Congressperson to tell him/her to support Congressman Peter King’s hearings on homegrown Islamic terrorism in the U.S. and the radicalization of the U.S. Muslim community by jihadists and sharia promoters. (Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121.) Or go to your congressman’s website, http://xxx.house.gov, where xxx is your representative’s last name, and email them a message.

Here’s a visual example of why these hearings are so necessary — a screenshot of the CAIR site taken in January 2011 (the image has since been taken down, under protest):

With people like CAIR encouraging Muslims to stonewall law enforcement, it’s no wonder that

[c]ops and federal agents agree with Rep. Pete King that they don’t get a lot of tipsters from the Muslim community – but they say that’s true of many other communities.

Counterterrorism and intelligence sources from the NYPD and FBI say law enforcement faces the same problem with the Mafia, drug cartels and the MS-13 gang. [Doesn’t it make you feel better about Muslim groups to hear them compared to…MS-13?!!]

“Criminals are criminals. It gets dicier because Muslim extremists wrap their work in religion, but the smokescreens, the silence and intimidation are similar,” an FBI source said.

“What’s different is the risk — the extent of the damage, the number of innocent people who can be hurt.”

King has outraged many Muslim-Americans by convening hearings into homegrown radical Islamists and claiming the community has stonewalled terror investigations.

If King is outraging people, he’s probably doing something right. But the pressures he must be facing are enormous. And for some reason — either ignorance, appeasement, or some combination of the two — King has assembled a line of witnesses that is rather disappointing. From Investors Business Daily:

The New York Republican [Peter King] blames the Council on American-Islamic Relations for creating a backlash against his hearings. Yet his Thursday curtain-raiser is bookended by witnesses who are staunch allies of CAIR, a group so shady the FBI director has blackballed it from outreach.

As House Homeland Security Committee chairman, King is giving a Muslim politician — Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. — first turn at the witness-table mike. Ellison, who’s spoken at several CAIR fundraisers, has already tried to discredit the hearings as “a witch hunt.”

Worse, King gives the last word to someone who threatens to undermine his most explosive charge — that the Muslim community is not cooperating with law enforcement. That final witness, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, claims Muslims have been “pivotal” in fighting terror.

“I don’t know what King is hearing,” said Baca, who’s also appeared at CAIR fundraisers. If he “has evidence of noncooperation, he should bring it forward.”

That will be tough: King has impaneled none of the “cops or FBI agents on the ground” who he insists have been telling him “every day” that Muslims are withholding information. Without them, Baca threatens to steal the headlines.

Baca made headlines last year on the Hill when he angrily defended CAIR against FBI charges it’s a terrorist front group. When a lawmaker pointed out that the Justice Department had designated CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing case in U.S. history, Baca shot back: “CAIR is not a terrorist-supporting organization.”

CAIR’s L.A. chapter is listed on the sheriff’s website as a partner. Among other things, CAIR gives mandatory two-hour Islamic “sensitivity training” to new cadets at the sheriff’s academy. This is the same CAIR that recently posted a flyer on its own website urging Muslims to slam the door on FBI agents asking for information.

We’re told that the White House lobbied for testimony from Baca, who has decried what he calls “this constant uninformed chatter about religion being a factor in terrorism.” But why give him Day One billing?

….King’s staff [does highlight] other witnesses, including the uncle of a radicalized young Muslim who’ll testify his Minneapolis mosque instructed members not to cooperate with FBI investigators. While powerful, the public needs to also hear from law enforcement officials working such cases. (Interestingly, Ellison defended that same pro-jihad mosque.)

They have told the press that outreach to Muslim leaders more often than not proves a one-way street. About the only information investigators ever get involves complaints of “hate crimes,” not tips about jihadists.

“Many FBI officers have grown impatient with what they see as Muslim resistance,” the Washington Post reported in a front-page story published in 2007. “The Muslims are ‘in denial’ over the threat in their midst, one senior officer said, adding: ‘All they say is “There is no problem. Stop picking on us.”‘” Of course, homegrown Muslim terrorism is a major problem, with dozens more cases emerging since that article ran.

Islamist groups and leaders are shuddering over the prospect of King outing them on national TV. That’s why they’ve tried to shut down the hearings.

But their Democrat co-conspirators are running just as scared. The true nature and scope of the threat from radical Islam that they’ve worked so tirelessly to filter out from public view could finally break out into the open and make them look very bad.

King can’t cave to their demands. If he’s going to do this, he has to go all the way. That means producing witnesses who are authorities, not just citizens or activists, and can back up his charges with first-hand evidence.

Before we blame King for not “going all the way,” consider this from the New York Daily News story first cited in this post:

But even some anti-terrorism cops are worried that King’s push could backfire — by making moderate Muslims feel they are being scapegoated [thereby making them] more vulnerable to anti-American propaganda.

“When people hear ‘witch hunt,’ that can’t be good for us,” said an NYPD source.

King said he is aware he is treading on perilous ground and that an insensitive comment by a Homeland Security Committee member could be twisted into “official American policy” in jihadist propaganda.

Congressman King is doing his best to tread a razor-thin line not of his making. On one side, people such as the readers of this blog, who want him to do more — much more — to expose the terrifying extent to which shariah-promoters have infiltrated not only U.S. mosques, but our prison system, police forces, homeland security apparatus, military, universities, media, and local and national governments. On the other side, people — including in the federal government — from whom even mentioning the word “Islamic” in the same sentence as “terrorist” provokes raving hysteria. And indeed, King has been getting death threats from that side.

As anti-shariah patriots, though, we need to keep up the heat on Congressman King, while doing everything we can to support him in pressing forward into dangerous territory.

Along with calling your own Congressman, please keep Rep. Peter King and the other members and staff of his Homeland Security Committee in your prayers.

Read Full Post »

Keeping us off balance: The Left's strategy of sound and fury

As the ruckus in Madison, WI, goes on and on and ON, I think it would be useful to step back and take a look at the big picture.  You may have heard of the Cloward-Piven strategy, which is to so overwhelm “the system” that it collapses — at which point the fundamental restructuring of society that socialists desire can theoretically take place. (In reality, what always happens is chaos followed by tyranny.)

Allen West has often said that conservatives need to be familiar with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. We have to know the enemy’s strategy if we want to counter and defeat it.

Toward that end, I would like to offer some wisdom from David Kupelian, from his book How Evil Works. As the level of noise and rancor keeps escalating in Wisconsin — and as the agitators keep trying to disguise their real motives from the public — I’ve thought often of what Kupelian says in a section titled “Using Lies to Create a Crisis”:

One of the most creative uses of lying — and a key tactic for bending a population to your will — is the creation of a crisis.

…[M]aybe you’ve heard of the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” — inspired by left-wing radical organizer Saul Alinsky, whose methods Barack Obama adopted — which openly advocates the creation of crises to destroy capitalist society. This is how socialist progress is achieved “peacefully”: through conflict or crisis, which always is resolved in the direction of greater socialism.

The problem is, this “crisis creation” talk just sounds so crazy, so foreign to us, that it’s hard to believe our fellow human beings, no matter how confused or deluded, could actually engage in such a practice. But it’s not only true, it’s actually a common part of everyday life.

Consider this nonpolitical example and note how it illustrates the power of a crisis to mold people to the deceiver’s will: In one child abduction case, a little girl was approached after school by a man she didn’t know. He claimed her house was burning down, that her parents were busy putting out the fire, and that he was a friend of the parents, who had asked him to pick up their daughter and take her to them. The crisis — and the emotional upset the girl experienced over the thought of her house being on fire and her parents in danger — drowned out her normal caution about getting into a car with a stranger. You guessed it: the stranger was a predator who had concocted the lie for the sole purpose of upsetting and thereby tricking the girl into going with him so he could brutalize and murder her.

This tragic story makes an important point: a crisis throws us off our guard, upsets us, and inclines us to make decisions and accept “solutions” we normally reject.

[all boldface mine]

Think back to September 2008.

In the space of less than 2 hours, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the U.S. to the tune of $550 billion. Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania said that if authorities had not closed the banks, $5.5 trillion would have been withdrawn from U.S. banks, which would have caused the collapse of the U.S. within 24 hours.

We will leave it to others to speculate as to what person, persons or foreign governments might have decided that such a development, less than 2 months before the presidential election, would be in their interests. In any case, the financial crisis caused normally cool heads to panic and pass TARP — some of which funds, by the way, may still end up being used as a slush fund for Democrat-supporting interest groups.

“A crisis throws us off our guard… and presses us to choose options we would normally reject.”

Sounds like a capsule summary of the Obama Administration.

Health care reform… Quick! Now! It’s a crisis! People are dying! Do something! Fix it! Pass the bill, any bill! Don’t read it, don’t debate it, just pass it! Right now!

Financial regulatory reform… Hurry! It’s a crisis! Wall Street is raping the country! Fix it quick! Now! Not a moment to lose!  We’ll deal with Fannie and Freddie later! We’ll deal with the small-town banks later! Who cares about them! We’ve got to pass something — anything — right now!

Carbon dioxide emissions… Help! The temperature’s rising, the icecaps are melting, the planet is dying! (What? The main climate scientists lied? Well, then, make the lies BIGGER!!) Pass cap-and-trade! Quick! What, Congress won’t pass it?! Then have the EPA do it! Now! Quick! While our guy’s still in office!

You see the pattern. And it’s nothing new. Tyrants have used it for ages.

Kupelian writes that during World War II, the U.S. government’s Office of Strategic Services assessed Hitler’s methods this way:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Sounds an awful lot like Alinsky, doesn’t it? Do you suppose Hitler thought of himself as a “community organizer”?

Read Full Post »