Ahmadinejad criticized by his own

Iran's president, Majmoud Ahmadinejad, is now being criticized by hard-line Muslims considered to be his allies. Why? Because he was seen on television watching a song-and-dance routine at the opening ceremonies of the Asian games. Why does this merit criticism? Because Islamic law forbids women to sing and dance before a male audience...and moreover, these women were not wearing veils.

When I read the article yesterday, I had to laugh. Wouldn't it be great if Ahmadinejad were ousted by his own people? I don't think this incident will come to that, but it'd still be nice.

They say they were humiliated...as well they should have been

The Washington Times today takes a look at the Imam incident where the 6 Imams were removed from their flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. As it turns out, the Imams, who are claiming that they were discriminated against based on their religion, were pretty much doing all that they could to act like terrorists! Not only were they praying in the terminal, which initially raised red flags among the gate agents, they didn't sit in their assigned seats. Two of the Imams had tried to upgrade to first class, but were told that there were no first class seats available...so they sat in the front-row of first class anyway. Two others sat in the exit aisles in the middle of the plane, and the remaining two sat in the back - the same configuration used by the 9/11 terrorists.

So, we have Muslim Imams praying in the terminal, and then refusing to sit in their assigned seats, instead copying a pattern known to have been used by the terrorists who perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in the history of America...and they say they're removal and interrogation is religious persecution? The behavior of these Imams was inflammatory, at best, and criminal, at worst. As former Air Marshall Robert MacLean was quoted in the Times article, "That's like shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater. You just can't do that anymore."

In my personal opinion, this case is an attempt by these Imams, in conjunction with CAIR and other Muslim organizations, to step up the politically correct treatment of Muslims. They are currently calling on Congress to pass a bill outlawing passenger profiling...but if security officials cannot remove Muslims from airplanes when they exhibit this kind of suspicious behavior, is there any time when officials will be allowed to remove Muslims from airplanes if new restrictions are put into place? There is no doubt that these Imams were acting suspiciously and that the airline was right to have them removed. These claims of religious discrimination are nothing but obfuscation in what, to all appearances, is an attempt to make it easier for Muslim terrorists to board planes...and we even have members of Congress buying into it.

This, more than anything else in American history, shows the danger of political correctness. If we allow these Imams and groups like CAIR (who have ties to Islamic terrorist organizations) to dictate US domestic security policy, we are only inviting further attacks.

The PC police are back

CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) has been making a big stink about a recent incident where 6 imams were removed from a US Airways flight and questioned by authorities due to "suspicious activity". Apparently, the imams had been praying very loudly in the terminal, and some witnesses said they were making anti-American remarks.

CAIR immediately started bloviating about this incident, but what did they expect? Realistically, CAIR is falling into their stereotypical role as the Muslim PC police. For years, they've been jumping all over anyone guilty of committing the slightest perceived insult to Islam, and this case is no different. Their propaganda, though, especially in this case, is entirely wrong.

First off, let's be realistic: 3,000 Americans died on 9/11 at the hands of Muslim terrorists. How are we supposed to handle it when a bunch of men are being flamboyantly Muslim on an airplane? Getting them off of the plane and questioning them is not racial profiling, it's common sense. It is not discriminatory, it is a perfectly reasonable safety measure. If the 9/11 terrorists were redneck Christians, then I would have no objection to authorities pulling some redneck Christian men off of a plane for questioning if they had been praying loudly, because for them, too, it would be "suspicious behavior."

Groups like CAIR and anyone else who puts down supposed "racial profiling" seems to want people to subjugate common sense to political correctness in the name of being "tolerant" and "multicultural." But let's face it: Islamic terrorism is still a real threat to America. If these six men had been terrorists, and the authorities had done nothing, next thing we know, America would be mourning 3,000 more dead, and airport security would be sitting before some facsimile of the 9/11 committee being grilled about why they didn't do anything to stop the attack. We cannot afford this kind of double-standard when it comes to our national security. Every Muslim has the right to say his daily prayers, Muslims should exercise discretion, and realize that if you say your prayers loudly right before getting on a passenger jet, people will be suspicious.

"Tolerance" and "multiculturalism" are two-way streets. Being suspicious of Muslims who are acting suspiciously does not make any Americans racists or bigots. It is patently clear that these imams were trying to provoke a reaction, and one has to wonder why. The only conceivable reason I can think of is to make it easier for terrorists to pull off future attacks...and CAIR is complicit in helping these imams accomplish this by trying to make our security officials doubt their actions when they react to suspicious behavior. When is America going to get its act together and ban CAIR altogether? Multiculturalism is tearing Europe apart; we don't need any more of it here.

**Robert Spencer, scholar of Islamic history, theology & law, and founder of Jihad Watch sounds off here.

It's well worth reading.

Changing Times

From the message boards at lauraingraham.com:

Scenario: Johnny & Mark get into a fist fight
1973-Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends
2006-Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled

Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class
1973-Jeffrey sent to office & given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class
2006-Jeffrey given Ritalin; becomes a zombie. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his father's car & his Dad gives him a whipping
1973-Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college & becomes a successful businessman.
2006-Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care & joins a gang. Billy's sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself & their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario: Mary turns up pregnant
1973-5 High School Boys leave town. Mary does her senior year at a special school for expectant mothers.
2006-Middle School Counselor calls Planned Parenthood, who notifies the ACLU. Mary is driven to the next state over & gets an abortion without her parent's consent or knowledge. Mary given condoms & told to be more careful next time.

Scenario: Pedro fails high school English
1973-Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2006-Pedro's cause is taken up by state democratic party, ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he can't speak English.

Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by Mary, his teacher. Mary, hugs him to comfort him
1973-Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2006-Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job, 3 years

Need I say more?

Planned Child Abuse

I just found this today, and it is disturbing, to say the least.

When Enron energy traders were caught on tape taking perverse joy in a natural disaster that caused energy prices to go up. The tapes were all over the media. The public was outraged. Eventually, Enron was brought down for its unscroupulous business practices. But is it all about the money? What about protecting children?


In 2002, a pro-life lobbying group launched an "undercover sting" aimed at abortion clinics across America. The plan: an actress called over 800 abortion clinics claiming to be a 13 year old girl who was having sex with a 22 year old man. It is important to note: this is illegal in every one of the 50 states in the US. Yet although it is illegal for a 22 year old to have sex with a 13 year old and reporting this crime is mandatory, none of the clinics reported it to the authorities, and many of them told her what information she would have to withhold when getting an abortion in order to keep them from having to report. Some also informed her on how to get around parental notification laws.

This is how evil the abortion industry has become: Planned Parenthood is using our tax dollars to protect child abusers. The fact that this story was buried by the media is telling, and the story it tells is not good.

Listen to the tapes for yourself here. (ADULTS ONLY!)

An election lost, but not won

There are several points I'd like to cover about yesterday's election, so I'll try to be as concise as I can...

• On the issue of voter fraud, the Democrats are surprisingly silent. Prior to the election we found that, despite their rhetoric about the Iraq war, the Democrats are in favor of the pre-emptive strike. Democratic pundits and politicians were setting the stage to dispute election results in the event that they lost the elections. Now that they've won, there is no talk about election fraud from the Democrats, despite the fact that Acorn, a liberal activist group is currently under investigation for committing voter fraud in several states. As radio talk-show host Michael Graham so eloquently put it, the Democratic position on voter fraud is, "either we win, or you cheated."

• My honest analysis of this election is that while the Republicans lost, the Democrats didn't win. I know how emptily partisan that sounds, but let me explain. Conservatives have been upset with the Republican party for some time due to their refusal to stand strongly for conservative issues and values. Liberals are trying to spin this election as a referendum on the Iraq war, but if you look at the Democrats who took seats from Republicans in Congress, it's easy to see that this just isn't true. The Democrats who won have more in common with Joe Liberman or Zel Miller than with Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. They are moderate Democrats who won because of their conservative values. They may not be totally conservative, but they're not flaming liberals, either. If this truly were a referendum on Iraq, Cindy Sheehan would be the new Speaker of the House.

• Much of the campaign was run on the basis of lies and half-truth, whether it be the Michael J. Fox stem-cell adds, Missouri's Amendment 2, or even the Democrats' attempts to run against George W. Bush (despite the fact that Bush wasn't running). Some of the worst political adds I heard came from an incumbent candidate for the State Assembly here in California, where she basically lied about her opponent and said that he could not be trusted. Other examples were shenanigans like this shameful add, again running against Bush, this time telling people to vote against two ballot measures that had nothing to do with President Bush.

• All in all, while the Republian party lost, this election is not a loss for the conservative movement. Conservative ballot measures showed great success across America - not so much here in California, but so much of politics here is controlled by liberal unions and liberal population centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles that it's no surprise. The Democratic candidates that won were conservative Democrats, and the margins in Congress are so slim that this is hardly the "mandate" that Nancy Pelosi was hoping for.

• For years now, the Democrats have been running a "tabula raza" campaign - a blank slate. Time after time after time the Democrats have been challenged to define a platform, whether it be a strategy to win the war in Iraq (the best we've gotten is "strategic redeployment"), a strategy to get health care to those who don't have it (to which they reply "it needs to be done), a strategy to secure the border (race card, anyone?), or a strategy to fix social security ("There's no problem! I don't care what I said under Clinton, it's fine!"). Meanwhile, they continually hammered the Republicans with lies, accusations, and scandals. All in all, a good strategy to win one election, but it won't help the Democrats to sustain power

All in all, this is not the end of the world for Republicans, and it is especially not the end for conservatives. The Democrats have won the majority in the House; they will likely win the majority in the Senate by a very slim margin. My prediction is that in the next two years the Democrats will show their true nature to the American people, and it will be roundly rejected in 2008. This is also a monumental opportunity for Republicans to stand up for conservative values and show the people of America that conservative values are infinitely superior to liberalism. If the Republican party uses this event wisely, they will in 2008 win the mandate that the Democrats were hoping for in this election.

I Voted...

And I've gotta tell you, it was a bit disappointing. The voting station activation card worked as designed, all of the boxes were lined up properly, and the paper print-out of the ballot matched my choices exactly. It was kind of a disappointing experience, given all of the allegations of voter fraud and intimidation, or confusing voting machines. It was all very easy...perhaps too easy..................

But by far, the biggest and best thing about this day is:


NO MORE POLITICAL ADDS!!!!!!!























At least, not until the '08 elections, anyway.

If the Democrats win on Tuesday...

I hate voting against someone. I'd much rather have someone to vote for...which is why I'm glad I live here in Kern County, where Kevin McCarthy, an exceptional conservative Republican, is running for the House of Representatives.

It bothers me greatly that conservative pundits have been reduced to "vote Republican or Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House." This is not the way to win elections, and this is why so many conservatives are right to be worried about the outcome of the elections. If the Republican party had a solid conservative platform to stand on, they would have much, much less to worry about, because their views and positions would be much more in line with the majority of the American people. Instead, we're offered empty politics and a sort of wishy-washy, watered down conservatism that only moves into the solid right in the months before an election.

If the Republican party wins the elections on Tuesday, or at the least, holds on to the majority by the skin of their fingernails, it will only be because conservatives understand that the GOP represents the lesser of two evils. And if the GOP has any illusions of holding on to their majority, much less the Presidency, in 2008, they had darn well better start pushing - strongly pushing through the conservative agenda, because "vote for us or you'll get stuck with them" may work for them this time around, but it isn't enough to sustain victory in the long-haul.

If the Republican party wants to stay in power, they need to:

1. Immediately push through a strong immigration policy, which includes real border enforcement, not some kind of "virtual fence" or "amnesty plus" program that conservative America will see through as being election year-appeasement or pandering to potential illegal immigrant voters. And until our border is secure through more conventional means, it should be militarized in order to ensure that drug smugglers or terrorists will not be able to enter our nation. And if Mexico has a problem with that, tell them that we will de-militarize our Southern border when they de-militarize their own.
2. Pass a Secure Elections Act to guarantee that our elections process can be trusted. This policy should include voter ID cards, regulations on registration, and strict penalties for any district that does not keep its voter roles up-to-date, as well as electronic voting machines that the American people can put their trust in (as opposed to voting machines programmed by a company with ties to the Venezuelan government). Our absentee voting system also needs to be secured. In the interests of preserving our democracy, we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that the results of our elections can be trusted.
   
3. Stop playing politically correct games with the War on Terror. Islamic fascism is the greatest enemy that America has ever seen, and it should be treated as such. We need to show those nations and peoples who wish our destruction that we are an enemy to be feared. Our military needs to take swift, decisive action to secure Iraq and keep foreign fighters from being allowed to enter that nation. America's pro-Israel stance needs to be backed up with more than just words - it is essential that these militant Muslims know that their anti-semetism and threats to exterminate an entire nation will not be tolerated.
4. Get in the public eye. From Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid to Howard Dean to John Kerry, the Democrats have made innumerable fallacious accusations and insults not only to the President and Republican leaders, but to our military...and the response to these lies and distortions has been silence. Every Republican indiscretion is greeted with cries for numerous resignations, while Democrats are routinely given a pass for similar or worse misdeeds. Were it not for talk radio and, to a lesser extend, Fox News conservatism would have no voice in America. It is absolutely essential that Republican politicians get out and strongly proclaim their message - and stop taking crap from the liberals who have been allowed to define the issues for far too long now.
5. Stand up for a conservative judiciary. For far too long now, liberals have been allowed to use the judiciary to push through an agenda that looses when put before the voters. Liberals believe that a "conservative judiciary" means appointing judges that will legislate conservatism instead of liberalism, but what it really means is keeping judges accountable to their job description, and not allowing them to usurp power from the legislature or the people. This also means not being afraid to censure or impeach judges who step outside their Constitutionally-defined boundaries - even if they be Justices of the Supreme Court.

As I see it, the primary problem facing conservatives is that they have allowed the nation to move so far to the left that strong, decisive action must be taken to bring the nation back...action which is common-sense, but action that many on the far-left will consider and try to convey as extreme. It is essential that conservatives not allow the restoration of our nation to be cast as extreme, and a strong PR campaign will be needed to accompany these measures. If these steps are taken, though, we can secure a brighter future for America sooner, rather than later.

The Real Story: Iraq

via GlennBeck.com:

Republicans: The Party of Border Security

An interesting case has been taking place in El Paso, Texas. Two border patrol agents were chasing down a drug smuggler who had slipped across the Mexican border with 743 pounds of marijuana. At some point during the chase, the agents believed that the drug smuggler had a gun, and they shot at him. The agents were tried for "causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and a civil rights violation." This week, they were convicted, with one agent receiving a 12-year prison sentence, and the other receiving a sentence of 11 years and 1 day. The drug smuggler was given immunity in exchange for his testimony against the border agents.

This is a travesty of justice. The "crime" that the border agents were guilty of was that of violating rules and procedures that essentially hamstring our border patrol agents from effectively stopping the smuggling of illegal drugs across our border (much less stopping illegal immigrants).

Today, 12 congressmen (all Republicans) submitted a letter to the White House demanding that the case be re-opened and re-investigated, and that the President pardon the two border patrol agents. This is the only course of action that makes sense; to do otherwise is to enbolden the drug smugglers and make the problem worse. White House spokesman Tony Snow has thus far refused to comment on whether President Bush will pardon the border agents, and implied that this will not happen...but we can still hope.

The challenges that we face along our border are very, very real. When the debate over border security flares up, it seems that Democrats always railroad the debate into racial terms. To do so is a great injustice to the American people. Not only are millions of illegal immigrants who refuse to acculturate into American society a threat to us, but there exists a largely unaddressed terrorism problem...not to mention the drug problem, which grows worse and worse by the day as the drug cartels become ever more militant.

Throughout the past couple of weeks, the media has been broadcasting a barrage of messages about why conservatives should stay home on November 7 and not vote - everything from alleged immorality among the ranks of Republican politicians to (more) falacious allegations of racism leveled against Republicans to self-claimed "conservatives" telling religious Republicans that they should stay home because they should keep their faith separate from their politics ("separation of church and state is in the Constitution, isn't it?).

It is true that as the majority party, the Republicans have done an abysmal job at pushing through a conservative agenda...but to say that Republicans should stay home and not vote is tantamount to saying, "if you don't feel like dropping a hammer on your foot, you should slit your throat." The Republican party is not perfect. In fact, I would go as far as to say that as time goes on, the Republican party moves further and further away from true conservative values, and will soon have to either be reformed or replaced. But handing the government over to the flaming liberals will do more harm than good. Will it tell Republican politicians that their constituents want them to stand for conservative values? Maybe. But handing Congress over to liberals will definitely halt the advancement of a conservative agenda in the short term, and will very likely harm that advancement in the long term - after all, it is very difficult to re-gain the majority once it has been lost, and getting the government to spend less money is a virtual impossibility.

Personally, when I hear the media coming up with another reason I should stay home and not vote, it only makes me want to get out and cast my ballot even more. The current status of the Republican party in relation to the true conservative movement forces me not to vote for Republicans, but rather to vote against Democrats. This is not a position I enjoy, and it is not a position that can sustain the Republican party, with so many conservatives upset with them, but for now, at least, it is more than enough reason to get up and vote on November 7...if only to keep America's progress from grinding to a screeching halt. We cannot afford to hand the War on Terror, the economy, and the security of our border over to the party that sides with terrorists, wants to raise our taxes, and would rather eliminate our borders entirely.

When the Euroweenies Attack...

Michelle Malkin via HotAir:

The European Union is launching a bid to make big government even bigger by requiring internet blog sites that ustilize video to conform to broadcasting standards, ostensibly to protect children from 'hate speech.' Considering the continuing trend on the left to classify basic conservative ideology as hateful and advocacy for conservative ideals as 'hate speech', this kind of censorship is definitely something to be avoided. Even recent trends in political correctness show us that this kind of thing is dangerous: earlier this month, a teenage girl who refused to work on an in-class school project in a group with several Asian students was suspended for racism. The problem? These were foreign exchange students from China who were speaking to each other in Mandarin, a language she didn't understand! Only one of the foreign exchange students spoke English, so the girl wanted to work with other students with whom she shared a common language, so she could understand what was going on. For that, she was suspended.

As Americans, and indeed, as humans, we need to be extremely wary of arbitrarily classifying ideas we don't agree with as racist or hate speech. Yesterday on her radio show, Laura Ingraham played clips from a debate between Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the head of the ACLU. In this debate, Scalia warned against the prominent liberal view of the Constitution as a "living, evolving document", because in doing so, we run the risk that it will "evolve" in a way that makes our own views or ideologies illegal. Modern American liberals seek to use the judiciary to accomplish what they cannot accomplish through the elections process, whether it be maintaining a 'right' to abortion, instituting homosexual marriage, or even removing the words 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance. They worry about the structure of the Supreme Court, especially after President Bush's two new appointments, but what if the SC were truly a conservative court that bought in to this same method of operating? How would liberals like it if a conservative SC took it upon itself to legislate conservative ideals from the bench?

We face the same dangers from political correctness and definitions of 'hate speech.' Such ideas are double-edged blades, and a good analogy is to picture such a blade swinging as a pendulum, because this is how history shows that the political process tends to go: swinging back and forth, liberal, then conservative, then back to liberalism, then back to conservatism. What liberals are today using to cut off conservative arguments and ideas may very well come back to cut them, and liberals who would wish to restrict speech based on political correctness should remain aware of that.

Some EU leaders want to exempt Google and YouTube as a "concession," but considering the flak Michelle Malkin and others have taken when trying to post anti-jihad videos on YouTube (which hosts a multitude of pro-jihad videos), and the attitude Google has taken toward oppressive regimes such as communist China, this is hardly a "concession."

As Malkin says, "the price of internet freedom is eternal vigilance." This arena, the internet, is one of the last places where speech is truly free, and it is paramountly important that it stay that way, for the sake of both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Check it out...

Recently, I've become enamoured with the site HotAir.com - it's a great resource for news that the mainstream media just isn't covering, as well as some worthwhile humorous tidbits.

When I saw this on HotAir today, I was disturbed, to say the least.

Lynne Stewart, an American citizen, was tried and convicted for giving material support to Arab terrorists. She was sentenced to 28 months in prison.

More details about the case in this video.

This woman gave material support to America's enemies in time of war...........sounds suspisciously like TREASON to me. Last I heard, the penalty for treason was a little more serious than 28 months jail time. The judge in this case should be thrown bodily from the bench.

Political Opportunism at its worst...

This Mark Foley business is out of control. Democrats are calling for Dennis Hastert's resignation more and more loudly every day; Hastert has been all over the media denying that any cover-up took place, and now it has come out that the Congressional page that Foley was IM-ing was 18 years old at the time - in other words, of legal age.

Personally, I don't think this excuses what Foley did, and it's a good thing that he's no longer serving in the House. But quite frankly, when it comes to Hastert's resignation, the Democrats should just shut up and count their blessings - they're virtually guaranteed to win Foley's House seat next month, and if they keep on over-inflating this scandal, chances are it will come back to bite them because, despite what they think about us, the American people are not stupid. It's all too easy to see the double standard that the Dems have been hiding behind, most especially with Gerry Studds, who, as I pointed out in my last post, was actually having sex with a 17-year-old male Congressional page, and then defiantly turned his back on the House when they voted to censure him for his behavior...and was applauded for it by the Democrats.

So many Congressional Democrats have been in the press lately demanding as many Republican resignations as they can get out of this scandal, because Foley was supposedly a child-predator. But how much do the Democrats really care about children? Sure, they talk about protecting children a lot, but do they have it where it counts? I don't think so.

I've already mentioned the Gerry Studds incident. Add to that the fact that it's Democrats who have been pushing for the lowering of age-of-consent laws, and Democrats who try to protect groups like NAMBLA, and Democrats who believe that pornography should be protected speech and available to anyone who wishes to see it, and Democrats who believe that child molesters should receive counseling so they can "get better" and be put back out on the streets, even though child molesters have the highest recitivism rate of any crime out there...the numbers just don't add up here. The truth of the matter is that all of their righteous indignation is nothing more than political posturing, trying to get as much leverage as they can out of this strategically-timed scandal. History has shown us quite clearly that the Democratic Party is the party of moral relativism, and any time you see Democrats standing up for moral values, you should start sniffing around for a rat...because the only time Democrats really care about moral values is when they can somehow score political points.

What Mark Foley did was wrong. If Hastert was involved in a covering it up (which is not clear at this point, no matter what the Democrats say), he should either resign or be removed. But these facts do not excuse the Demcrats' behavior. There is an investigation underway to find out who knew what, and when they knew it. Until that investigation is complete, the Democrats need to shut their faces and let the nation take care of its business. When the investigation has run its course, then the people of America should be able to stand united in the call for the guilty to be punished...but to do so before the facts are known is inexcusable.

The Mark Foley Controversey...why Democrats cannot be trusted.

This Mark Foley madness is now permeating the news media, and, like nearly ever other issue involving Washington politics, it's becoming an absolute mess.

For those not following the story, it was revealed that Republican Representative Mark Foley had been engaging in inappropriately sexual instant messages with underage male Congressional pages. There were also some less-inocuous emails, as well.

There are several reasons that this scandal has become such a mess. First is that many Democrats are taking great pleasure in Foley's fall, as they always seem to do whenever they can point at a Republican and shout "hypocrite!". Rush even played a quote this morning from a Democrat saying that people who don't take pleasure in seeing a hypocrite taken down have something wrong with them. Personally, I take no pleasure in this at all, because the acts occurred. Am I glad that Foley is out of power? Yes. But to take pleasure in this kind of a scandal - when children have been exploited? That is taking it too far.

Another reason that this is such a mess is that each side is accusing the other of knowing about the messages for some time, but doing nothing about it - the Republicans to cover it up, and the Democrats to wait until the most politically advantageous moment. Now, Republicans apparently reprimanded Foley when they heard about the emails and told him to stop, but they did not take the matter any further because they did not know about the instant messages, which were much more graphic. Still, Democrats are pushing for Dennis Hastert's resignation for not doing more. This does not, however, mean that the Democrats are clean: a George Soros-funded blog was the first to publish the story, and there are questions as to how long they had the incriminating instant messages before publishing them. The timing of the release makes it extremely suspect...and thankfully, there will be a throrough investigation into who knew what, and when.

The truth, however, is that as much as Mark Foley, a supporter of President Clinton's impeachment, comes across as a hypocrite through this scandal, the truth of the matter is that the Democrats have no less egg on their own faces. Gerry Studds (D-Mass.) was exposed as having had a sexual relationship with an underage Congressional page in 1983 - he continued to serve in the House until his retirement in 1997. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was reprimanded in 1990 when it was revealed that a male prostitute that Frank had hired was running a prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment - Frank still serves in the House. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) ran for a seat in the House in 1993. In 1994, he was indicted for having sex with an underage campaign volunteer. On August 22, 1995, he was convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. He resigned his seat on October 1, 1995, after his conviction. In 1997 (while still in prison for the other charges), he was convicted of bank fraud and lying to SEC investigators. He received a presidential pardon from Bill Clinton - whose philandering was publicly defended as a "personal matter" by Democrats.

The disgusting thing about this debate is that the Democrats are reveling in the fact that a Republican Congressman was caught betraying his moral principles...yet these selfsame Democrats try their very hardest to avoid having moral principles (or, at least, naming them publicly), so that they won't get caught betraying those principles.

That Republicans and conservatives come out for moral values does not mean that we ourselves are perfect. It does, however, mean that we believe that our leaders shoud be held to a higher standard. Mark Foley is no longer serving in the House because his behavior was inappropriate and reprehensible. Tom Delay stepped down from his leadership position because he had been indicted - despite the fact that the indictment was obviously groundless and politically motivated. Newt Gengrich stepped down and resigned amid allegations that he was having an affair with a House aide.

Republicans have standards, and when those standards are violated, the violators are punished. Democrats seem to think that they can get away with avoiding consequences by imposing no standards of behavior except those arbitrarily imposed in order to embarrass Republicans, but eventually, enough of the American people will get wise to this charade that few Democrats will be electible.

Foley is now in rehab for alcoholism. Personally, I think this is a dodge - he should jailed for exploiting minors, and apparently offering alcohol to minors. I don't know what the charges would be, exactly, but he should definitely be charged. Alcoholism does not and should not explain away this kind of reprehensible behavior, and it should not be accepted as an excuse by Foley.

Bubba Unhinged...or was he?

Chris Wallace interviewed Bill Clinton, a taped interview that aired on Fox News Sunday this weekend. The interview started out well enough, until Wallace asked a seemingly innocuous question about President Clinton's counter-terrorism strategy (specifically, why he didn't do more to capture or kill Osama bin Laden) - a question that, according to Wallace, was posited by many viewers who emailed in to Fox News, and in truth, it was a question that many conservatives and neo-cons have been asking, especially since so many liberals have laid so much of the blame for 9/11 squarely on the shoulders of President Bush. Clinton responded with beligerance and anger, calling Wallace's question a "conservative hit job" and saying that he was just doing Fox News' bidding in an attempt to prevent conservative viewers from leaving because of Rupert Murdoch's support for his stance on global warming. He also claimed that he had done all that he could to get bin Laden, but that his hands were tied by the CIA and FBI (two agencies which, by the way, answer to the authority of the President).

Clinton alleged that the demotion and subsequent firing of Richard Clarke was a major failure of the Bush administration's strategy to combat terrorism, and recommended the reading of Richard Clarke's book...but unfortunately for Clinton, Clarke's book has largely been discredited - in some cases by Clarke's own statements (by the way, a great book to read about Clinton's presidency is Dereliction of Duty by Col. Buzz Patterson). Clinton also alleged in the interview that he had left a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy when he left the White House, including plans to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban...something that Condi Rice publicly disputed. The interview wherein Rice disputed Clinton's claims was very telling: Rice disputed Clinton's claim that his administration left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy, and placed the blame for 9/11 on the shoulders of the terrorists, rather than on any American administration, saying, "When are we going to stop blaming ourselves for the rise of terrorism?"

The real question about Clinton's interview is, just what did Bill Clinton accomplish? To the hard left, Clinton handed Wallace his own head on a silver platter. To the hard right, Clinton came unhinged. Personally, I believe that Clinton did try to stop bin Laden. He should have done more, but it's inaccurate to say that he didn't do anything. In this interview, though, he came across as defensive and paranoid - Wallace and Clinton were getting along fine as the interview started, and Clinton seemed to get offended just a little too quickly when Wallace asked the question about bin Laden. Through the course of his response, Clinton basically accused Wallace and Fox News of being part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," along with ABC, who a week or two ago showed their "Path to 9/11" mini-series, the release of which was strongly opposed by Clinton, Madeline Albright, and others, who alleged that it was full of lies. According to Col. Buzz Patterson, who carried the "nuclear football" for Clinton, however, the ABC mini-series was fairly accurate (at least, the parts that he had personally witnessed), and was actually kinder to Clinton than the full truth would have been.

There is a lot of speculation out there over just what happened with Clinton - just what set him off. As a conservative, and decidedly not a fan of Bill Clinton, I want to believe that his paranoia was real. Whether it was or not, I cannot say for sure. But the exchange came across to me as being manufactured - Clinton took too much offense too quickly to be sincere, which leads me to think that he's playing popularity games with the liberal base, possibly to win points for Hilary's run in '08, as well as trying to heal his image after the ABC mini-series...unless he really does believe in a "vast right-wing conspiracy," in which case he was being sincere, and he really is a liberal wack-job. With people as politically ambitions and slippery as the Clintons, it's hard to tell just what they're doing until it's already been done - but regardless, Clinton's anger and spin reflected poorly on him with nearly everyone except the left-wing kook base.

Hilary Clinton has come out stating that her husband's vitriol shows that Democrats are going to stand up to these kinds of attacks (though, ironically, they expect Republicans to stand there and take harsher attacks than that), and that the 9/11 Commission Report documents how President Clinton stopped terrorist attacks. Question for Mrs. Clinton: which attacks were these? Perhaps the USS Cole? The Beirut barracks? Or maybe it was the Khobar Towers? There is only one documented case of a foiled terrorist attack during the Clinton administration that I can think of: the attempted bombing of the World Trade Center. And then, the only action that was taken was the prosecution of the bomber.

When it gets right down to it, the Clinton presidency was a failure when it comes to fighting terrorism. Instead of reacting to the many terrorist attacks by killing the terrorists behind the attacks, the Clinton administration tried to criminally prosecute the perpetrators of those attacks. Then, they have the audacity to blame the Bush administration for failing to prevent 9/11, when Clinton had been in office for eight years, compared to Bush's eight months - eight months that were largely spent repairing the damage done to the White House when Clinton left, and trying to get cabinet appointments past Congressional Democrats' obstructionism. Bill Clinton was in office twelve times as long as George W. Bush, and was more focused on the economy and philandering (and then perjuring himself about his philandering) than he was on battling terrorism. Now, he is trying to re-write history - probably because he knows that the attacks on his presidency are accurate, and that isn't how he wants to be remembered.

Enemies foreign and domestic...

I don't have a lot of time to post today, but there are two topics that I want to cover in what time I do have.

First, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez's speech to the UN General Assembly. Only a small part of the Communist dictator's words made it through the press' filters...of course, the most absurd part, wherein Chavez calls President Bush "the devil." But the liberal media largely ignored the rest of Chavez's address. Why? Perhaps because it sounds so similar to what US Democrats have been saying about President Bush and America. Liberal blogs have been cheering Chavez's words, while big media has largely been silent as to the substance of the speech. But Chavez's attacks did not stop with the GA.

After that speech, Chavez gave another speech, this one at a college in New York City, where his anti-Bush tirade continued. He accused the President of committing genocide in Iraq and said the President should be tried for war crimes. Sound familiar? Chave's ramblings sound suspiciously similar to the lies that Howard Dean, John Murtha, Dick Durban, and many other Democratic Congressmen (and Michael Moore and MoveOn.org) have been spreading about President Bush for years.

After his speech, Chavez was given a standing ovation.

In World War II, America and England allied themselves with France and Russia to fight was was known as the "Axis Powers" - namely, Germany, Italy and Japan. Now a new Axis is forming, and it is very much more dangerous than its predecessor, because the heads of this hydra know well how to play the game of American politics. This new Axis consists of Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba...and there is some evidence to show that they are being supported by Russia and China, and have the support of the United Nations. Venezuela and Iran are now very closely tied together. They have numerous treaties, including one that stipulates that any action taken by the US to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability will be considered an attack on Iran, and, hence, an attack on their ally, Venezuela. Moreover, Hugo Chavez has been forming very close ties between his nation and Cuba - not only does Chavez provide lots of oil to Cuba, but the majority of Chavez's cabinet comes from Cuba (a new law in Venezuela making it illegal to publicly or privately criticize the President allowed Chavez to get rid of most of his original cabinet).

The great danger here is that both Chavez and Ahmadenijad know how to play American political games. While Chavez will likely receive some criticism from US Democrats, they cannot help but agree with his words - the same words they have been saying for some time now. The only reason he will be criticized is that US politicians have to play to moderates in order to get elected. Ahmadenijad looks great in the American press, primarily because the American press tends to only report on the interviews that he does with American reporters - they conveniently leave out interviews with foreign media, where he makes much more outrageous statements than he ever would here (denials of the Holocaust, his belief that Israel should be wiped out or moved out of the Middle East, his belief that Iran has a divine right to nuclear weapons, his belief that it is his religious duty to bring about the apocalypse to herald the arrival of the 12th Imam).

For more about the insanity and danger that we face, I strongly recommend listening to Glenn Beck and/or watching his television show on CNN Headline News. He is the only person in the media that I know of that sees the big picture when it comes to the gathering threats to America.


The other topic I want to address is the Democrats' opposition to an ID requirement for voting. Recently, a Georgia judge struck down a state law requiring voters to show valid ID before voting. Now, the House of Representatives has passed (over the protestations of Democrats) a bill requiring voters to show ID before being allowed to vote in federal elections.

Democrats claim that requiring ID is tantamount to instituting a poll tax. But let's face it: Democrats are also the ones who whine and complain the loudest about voter fraud after they lose elections. If we truly want to prevent voter fraud, an identification requirement is the thing that makes sense. But, then, Democrats also want to position themselves to get the votes of illegal aliens (it's important to note: for all their talk about disenfranchisement of minorities, it is impossible to disenfranchise a group that is not enfranchised in the first place, such as non-citizens). For starters, ID is not that expensive. For another thing, if Democrats truly wanted to prevent voter fraud, they would be all for this. The truth is that not only would requiring ID hamper the Democrats' stuffing of ballot boxes, it would significantly hamper their efforts to get illegal aliens out and voting. All told, it is another step in the right direction that the Democratic Party is trying to block.

Today I am depressed...

Why am I depressed? Because the United Nations depresses me. In the past two days, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez both spoke before the United Nations General Assembly, both taking the opportunity to slam President Bush.

Ahmadinejad bashed the US primarily over Iraq and the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, and basically called the US Security Council a body that cowtows to large, powerful nations (namely the US) while descriminating against smaller, less powerful nations (Iranian nukes, anyone?). His solution: "the nonaligned movement, the organization of the Islamic conference, and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege." While this sounds well and good given the context of Ahmadinejad's speech, this is what he is really saying: give seats to America's enemies to balance out the Security Council. The "nonaligned movement" is a collection of dictators who met just last week in, of all places, Cuba - basically a new "axis of evil" uniting to oppose the United States. A representative of "the Islamic conference" undoubtedly means giving hard-line Islamofascists a seat at the table. I would agree with having an African representative on the Security Council were it not for the fact that so many African nations today are run by warlords (in many cases Islamofascist warlords), and it would benefit no one but them to give them a Security Council seat.

The end of Ahmadenijad's speech was where he truly revealed his agenda: he called for the world to be united under monotheism (in other words, Islam), and prayed for the return of the 12th Imam (the Muslim messiah).

Hugo Chavez was muuch more animated, and will get (has already gotten) more press. He started his speech off by recommending to the world, and to US citizens in particular, the latest book by Noam Chomsky, noted American leftist communist US-hating academic...just the kind of person one would expect Chavez to be reading. Then, in the statement that has gotten him the most press, Chavez referred to President Bush as "the devil." He went on to criticize the United States and Israel for civilian deaths in Lebanon and "American imperialism."

The reason these speeches depress me so is that here we have two world leaders - one an Islamofascist dictator, and the other a Communist dictator, coming to America to speak on the floor of the United Nations, bashing the United States, and a large segment of the US population agrees with them!

We will likely see the results of these speeches in the next couple of days. If logic, common sense, and the spirit that has made America into the great nation that it is today prevail, the people of America, whether black, white, latin, asian, conservative, liberal, Democrat or Republican will unite to say that enough is enough - we are fighting not only for our freedom, but for the freedom of people across the world, and not only is there no reason that we should stand for such insults, there is no reason that these tinpot dictators should be given the same amount of credibility that a free democracy such as the United States receives on the world stage (and it seems as though, in these cases, the tinpot dictators were granted even more credibility than President Bush).

There is one extremely revealing quote from Ahmadenijad's speech that should send chills into the hearts of every American: "There is no indication that the occupiers have the necessary political will to eliminate the sources of instability." What is Ahmadenijad referring to here? The Democratic Party and the anti-war movement. During the Vietnam War, a counter-cultural movement became a cultural movement. And now we are paying the price. Liberals complain that America is not respected on the world stage - we have no credibility, and other nations don't like us. Well, how about this: a united America would bring that respect back. America would be a credible member of the world community because we wouldn't have factions within our own nation doing everything they could to impede the progress of our own national security simply due to their own political aspirations. A united America could truly move the world forward to confront the threat of Islamofascism and global Communism. We defeated the Soviet Union, but the Cold War is not over yet...and now, with Communist dictatorships uniting with Islamofascist dictatorships, World War III is standing on our doorstep, just waiting to come in. When it finally does, will we be ready? Only if we stand united as Americans, resolved to face the threat.

Pope makes obscure reference to Muslim violence in speech; Muslims protest with violence

Violence has erupted in the Muslim world in recent days over comments made by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech last week. What has basically happened is that the Pope gave an absolutely briliant speech, one line of which has been taken grossly out of context and blown completely out of proportion. The initial reports that I heard about the speech said that the Pope had criticized Islam for being violent, and that Muslims were protesting the Pope's comments with violence...basically, a repeat of the Danish cartoon "scandal." Upon reading the actual text of what Pope Benedict said, however, I found that this was decidedly not the case.

The remark that has offended so many Muslims is this: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Taken at face value, it is an inflamatory comment. Taken in the context of his speech, however, the violence that has occurred in the wake of this comment is absurd, at best.

The overall argument that the Pope was making in his speech was that academia and religion can, in fact, meet together to discuss logically the veracity of claims made by either side - outright rejection, such as we have seen by both sides for many years, and violence, as especially evidenced by the past and current uprisings, are unnecessary. Though he did not use these words, Pope Benedict was essentially arguing for the "marketplace of ideas." Rather than condemning Muslims for their violence, he was urging academics, Christians, and Muslims to come together to work out their differences logically. The quote blamed for the uprising of Muslims was taken from a 14th Century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, who wrote down the text of a debate between himself and a Persian scholar over the natures of Christianity and Islam.

Instead of listening to what Pope Benedict was actually saying, the Muslims reacted with violence to this one quote (in many accounts falsly attributed to Pope Benedict himself, both in Middle-Eastern and Western media), burning several churches, and even murdering a nun. Many are saying that, by reacting violently, these Muslims are proving the Pope right. This would be true if the Pope had been condemning Muslim violence, but he was not. The one they are truly proving right is Emperor Manuel II Paleologus...and by the fact that his remarks hold true for many Muslims 600 years after they were written, Muslims condemn their own religion.

Why making deals with terrorists is never a good idea...

Besides the obvious fact that they are terrorists bent on using the deaths of innocents to accomplish their goals, making deals with terrorist organizations legitimizes not only the organizations, but their behavior, and encourages even more of that behavior. Case in point: Palestinian terror organizations are now plotting even more kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. While Hezbollah's kidnapping back in late July turned into a military defeat on their part as the Israeli military proceeded to bomb them back into the stone age, the overall campaign was a victory for the terror organization, as they won the PR battle and gained much-needed diplomatic legitimacy through the UN-brokered cease-fire.

And now, what is happening but the emboldening of Palestinian terror organizations. Why? Because they now know that they can not only find a sympathetic ear in the international press, but also in the diplomatic community. All they have to do is to continue make it look like Israel is the bad guy whenever they retaliate against an attack or a kidnapping, and the terrorists can declare victory, no matter how great their losses militarily.

There is a reason for the policy of refusing to deal with terrorists, and this is it.

Way to go United Nations...another great success. Looks like "Peace in our time" is working just as well now as it did for Neville Chamberlain.

The Apocalypse is coming...

And no, I'm not talking about Iran this time. In fact, this post has nothing to do with the Middle East. The date of the impending apocalypse is November 8. Figured it out yet? Well, just in case, I'll tell you: November 7 is election day, and on November 8, no matter who wins, all hell is bound to break loose.

Here is my prediction:

If the Republicans retain the majority in Congress, the Democrats will use the same tactic they've been using for the past 6 years, since the 2000 election: allegations of voter fraud. Now, there is ample evidence that voters are dissatisfied with the Republicans. Democratic politicians wrongly assume that that means those dissatisfied voters are headed their way. However, the majority of dissatisfied Republicans are out of sorts because the Republican Party has been moving steadily to the left for some time now, cow-towing to special interests, and generally playing the same political games that conservatives have come to expect from the Democrats, but try to avoid ourselves. However, the fact that Republicans are dissatisfied with their party does not mean that they will hand the Congress over to the Democrats. I personally believe (and hope and pray) that the Republicans will hold on to their majority, because, although they are the lesser of two evils, many Republican politicians are beginning to see the light: that they can no longer expect to hold on to their seats while capitulating to leftist ideals and special interests.

Republican dissatisfaction aside, however, Cynthia McKinney's recent primary election loss is a perfect example of what is to come, though her reaction is perhaps (and hopefully) a bit more insane what we can expect from Democrats, should they lose. McKinney gave speeches after her primary loss calling for African Americans to rise up violently, calling electronic voting machines "racist," playing pretty much ever old and tired card in the Democratic playbook (race, class, etc.). In 2000, paper ballots were discriminatory because they were confusing. In response, more and more voting districts have been moving to the easier-to-use electronic voting machines. We have been using them here in my home county for some time now, and while there have been some political spats over which company's machines to use, resulting in a few kinks in the system, the results overall have been promising. Having used the machines myself, I have found them to be quick and easy, very much preferable to the old punch-card system, and leaving little or no ambiguity as to who I was voting for. Get ready, though, because at this time in history, there is little reason to doubt that nearly every Democrat who loses in November will be alleging voter fraud, blaming it on electronic voting machines wherever they are used, and demanding recounts.


If the Democrats win the in November, the chaos may be postponed for a few days, or even weeks, but it will come, and will perhaps come even more violently than the allegations of voter fraud we'll see if they lose. Over the past few months, prominent Democratic Congressmen have been predicting almost constant impeachment hearings, should they win the majority. Given a majority, the Democrats would control the chairs of many Congressional committees. Investigations will be started by the dozens. If you think there's too little progress in Washington now, just wait until the party of obstructionism has everyone even slightly involved with the Bush administration under investigation for one thing or another. Just before the last midterm election, a memo was unearthed revealing the stragegy Congressional Democrats were planning to use against President Bush, should they secure a majority in Congress. The memo revealed that the Democrats' plan was to start investigations into anything and everything. The important part, according to the memo, was not the truth of the allegations being investigated, but rather the seriousness of the charges. These were not to be investigations per se, but rather opportunities for the Democrats to point out each and every disagrement they had with the Bush administration. If the Democrats win control of Congress, the best anyone can expect is two solid years of investigations and attempts at impeachment. The Democrats are still obsessed with defeating President Bush...none of them seems to care about the fact that, this being his second term, he cannot run again. But, then, so many Democrats seem to suffer from the delusion that President Bush has turned America into a fascist theocracy, maybe they think he will toss out the Constitution and install himself as the king of America. With all of the outrageous allegations the Democrats have made against the Administration so far, this really wouldn't be all that surprising.

So, if the Democrats lose, expect temper tantrums across the board. If they win, expect temper tantrums across the board. Either way, the response to this November's election will very likely be both predictable and extreme. Get ready, because the fun is about to begin.

Showdown with Iran

Well, Iran has now violated the UN imposed deadline by refusing to halt their enrichment of uranium.

The question now, is, will sanctions come? And will they be enough to stop Iran from developing nukes?

I wouldn't bet on it to save my life.

The Danger Remains

America is such a complacent nation. This is a double-edged sword: in some ways, it is nice to live fat and happy in the freest nation on the planet. On the other hand, so many in America have forgotten what it means to be an American. America is divided: we are divided between those who are proud of America and want to defend her from the coming storm, those who are ashamed of America and believe that she deserves whatever she gets, those trying to take over or destroy America, and those trying to use America for their own purposes.

Unfortunately, those who are proud of America and want to defend and preserve one of the last bastions of freedom and justice left in the world are being overwhelmed by the self-interested and ashamed, who have more power in the nation's government. Meanwhile, Muslim extremist hate groups are cropping up across the nation even while illegal Mexican immigrants attempt to fulfill the "reconquista" movement to take back the land the United States won in its war on Mexico back in 1848.

The problems that America faces are not undefeatable. America could easily overcome these problems, given that enough of the American people have the will. The greater problem, in the context of the survival of America, is that the ashamed and the power-hungry have no real interest in solving problems; they would rather either put down America, or seek power for themselves even if their quest for power harms America. They put down nationalism as a step on the road to fascism, not realizing that nationalism is what has drawn Americans together for generations. It is nationalism that has made America the greatest symbol of freedom on the planet. It was nationalism that drew Americans together to free the world from the threat of Nazism. Without nationalism and the belief that America is an exceptional nation (also known as "American exceptionalism"), America would not have survived for as long as it has. Without nationalism, there would be no America, and without American nationalism, Europe would have been taken over by the Nazis.

The simple truth is that without nationalism, America will cease to exist. Some (such as Pat Buchanon), say it will take 50 years. Personally, I believe that it will take anywhere from 20-100 years, but regardless, the consensus among those who are truly looking at the big picture of how America is being targetted by enemies from without and within is that the end is approaching.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, America first sent troops to Europe to defeat the Nazis. True, America fought the war on both the European and Pacific fronts simultaneousely, but Nazi Germany was seen as the greater threat. When Al-Qaida brought down the World Trade Center towers on 9/11, America first sent troops to Afghanistan, where Al-Qaida's main leadership was based. This was the greater threat. But the threat from Islamofascism was not defeated through the Afghanistan front only. Detractors love to point out that "Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11." While the truth of this statement is tenuous, at best, it needn't be debated: that statement is tantamount to saying that "Hitler had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor."

Politics in America has become a game. Who has power? How can I get power? How can I get my party into power? How can I get my agenda passed? How can I make this work out best for me?

America is fast forgetting one of the wisest admonishments ever given it: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

America will fall if we do not unite. We have stopped teaching our children about the American dream, about American ideals, about American exceptionalism, substituting instead a kind of watered-down hate-America anti-establishmentarian curriculum in a kind of ritualistic mass-suicide, basically telling our enemies, "Do whatever you like. We wouldn't want to offend you." On the surface, their philosophy sounds rather noble, but in the end, all it amounts to is a sure way to be overrun.

I have been accused of being a liberal because I'm pro-war. While on the surface this doesn't make sense, the argument was that, as a conservative, I should be for small government...but by being pro-war, I support having a large military, as well as large intelligence agencies. Well, as I see it, when the choice is between going against some of the principles of the idealistic type of government I'd like to see in America vs. supporting policies that would hasten America's end, I'm willing to compromise on some of my conservative principles.

Basically, what it gets down to is balance. I believe that for most, if not all domestic policy decisions, the conservative answer is the right one. However, when it comes to national defense, conservatism is an invitation to destruction, especially when facing enemies such as Islamic fascism, an ideology dominant in an area of the globe that we are economically depenant on, and growing in many other areas of the world. Cutting our military and intelligence capabilities in times such as this would be counter-productive: across-the-board conservatism will not serve the nation if we are all dead. In the same way, liberalism will not cut it, either. If we spend too much on our military and intelligence capabilities, we will lose the freedom that makes America great, thus making America yet another dictatorship not worth fighting for.

The problem with arguments that America is becoming a fascist state is that they are quite simply not true. Even with measures such as the Patriot Act, Ameirca is still the freest nation on the planet. The evidence against America being, or even moving toward being a fascist state is overwhelming.

If America were anything close to a fascist state,

• CNN and at least 60% of American newspapers would be shut down.
• The Republican party wouldn't just be in control of the U.S. Congress and the White House...it would be the only party still allowed to exist. All other parties would be illegal.
• Bill and Hilary Clinton, Dick Duran, Michael Moore, Teddy Kennedy, John Murtha, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Howard Dean, among others, would either be dead, or currently reside in a labor camp on the northern Alaska tundra.
• Anti-war rallies would regularly be broken up by police, and protestors would executed or shipped to labor camps.
• Interstate and international travel would be severely restricted, not just screened for safety reasons.
• Both the northern and southern borders would be closed to all traffic, and anyone trying to cross either border illegally would be shot.

America stands today as the freest, most prosperous nation on the planet. That didn't just happen - it came about because the people of America moved foward as a body of Americans, not a bunch of disparate multi-cultural groups. The chic saying among sociologists is that America is not a "melting-pot," it is a "salad bowl," because we are made up of many different groups of people...and this kind of multi-culturalist separationism is why America and Europe are falling apart today. America's first national motto was "e pluribus unum"..."out of many, one." Acculturation is the key. It is common culture that lends to the greatness of a nation, because it is common culture that allows the people of a nation to be united. Without a common culture, we cannot survive: "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand."

Republican or Democrat, left or right, white, hispanic, asian, black, latino, or native American, we must stand together, united against our enemies. That is our duty as Americans. That duty must come before party politics, political ideology, or cultural pride, because if we do not stand united against our enemies, then there will be no more America to defend.

Why this man should give us all nightmares...

From an extremely relevant and revealing column in the Daily Mail:

Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear bombs to deter attack from the 'Great Satan', America, let alone the two 'Little Satans', Israel and Britain? Sounds reasonable. But that pre-supposes that the Iranian regime is reasonable.

The mullah-mafia lied through their teeth for 18 years, denying they had a nuclear programme, despite their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And all the evidence shows that they are lying now when they say they only want nuclear power for 'peaceful energy purposes', despite sitting on some of the largest oil reserves in the world.

But, alas, there's nothing which we would recognise as 'reasonable' about President Ahmadinejad, the small, bearded blacksmith's son from the slums of Tehran - who denies the existence of the Holocaust, promises to 'wipe Israel off the map' and who, moreover, urges Iranians to 'prepare to take over the world'.

The UN gave him until August 31 to reply to its package of proposals designed to stop his nuclear programme. Significantly he chose yesterday to, in effect, reject the UN ultimatum because yesterday was a sacred day in the Islamic calendar.

It is the day on which the Prophet Mohammed made his miraculous night flight from Jerusalem to heaven and back on Buraq, the winged horse.

As one Iranian exile told me yesterday: 'The trouble with you secular people is that you don't realise how firmly Ahmadinejad believes - literally - in things like the winged horse. By choosing this date for his decision, he is telling his followers that he is going to obey his religious duty.

'And he believes that his religious duty is to create chaos and bloodshed in the "infidel" world, in order to hasten the return of the Mahdi - the Hidden Imam. So don't expect him to behave, in your eyes, "reasonably".'

This is why the US, the UN, and any other body on the planet should be taking a hard line on the Iranian nuke issue. Ahmadinejad has no interest in negotiating about their nuclear program. In fact, just about a week ago, there was a story out that Iran was willing to negotiate...but as I read on, the real story was that Iran was saying, "We'll negotiate, but we're not giving up our nuclear program." Ostensibly, their nuclear program is for nothing more than energy purposes...which makes perfect sense, considering that Iran sits on top of one of the world's largest oil reserves. Iran, of all nations, has no need for nuclear energy. They aren't like us here in America, where we cannot expand our oil production because of the environmental lobby. Iran is run by the Imams, and what they say goes (by the way, for those in America who complain that there is too much entanglement between government and religion here, try living in the Middle East, where religion dictates the laws of the government). The only feasible explanation is that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and this is now widely accepted as fact.

Iran is not only actively seeking nuclear weapons. They have been actively seeking the destruction of Israel. Iranian fighters were found among the Hezbollah dead in the recent conflict in Lebanon, and the rockets Hezbollah was launching into Israel were provided to them by Iran. The simple truth is that diplomacy will not stop Iran. If diplomacy were the answer, the problem would already be solved. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is no insurance against a zealous president who believes it is his religious duty to "create chaos and bloodshed." It is unreasonable to expect Ahmadinejad to act in a reasonable manner. He hasn't so far...why should we think he will in the future? The only time I have ever seen Ahmadinejad acting reasonably was when he was interviewed by Mike Wallace...whom he played like a violin.

Trusting Iran to turn from its quest for nuclear weapons is tantamount to expecting Al-Qaida to stop plotting terrorist attacks. It just isn't going to happen...and the longer the world seeks "diplomatic" solutions, the more drastic the measures we will have to take to stop the mounting threat posed by this hard-line Islamofascist state.

Iran unveils cartoon contest...

This week marks the unveiling of Iran's Holocaust cartoon exhibit. The exhibit features 204 Holocaust-denying and/or America- or Jew-bashing cartoons.

From Reuters:

"This is a test of the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries," said Masoud Shojai-Tabatabai, head of the Cartoon House which helped organise the exhibition, as he stood next to the Statue of Liberty drawing.

Basically, the Islamo-fascists are trying to provoke the West into a violent response, so they can say that we are no better than they are, after so many Muslims rioted in the streets after the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They ignore, of course, the fact that the cartoons that sparked the riots were, in fact, blurred copies of photographs given false captions, and another cartoon that was never published by any Western newspaper, rumored to have been released by Islamic Imams in order to gin up hatred of the West.

Of course, the expectation that people across the Western, civilized world will riot over these cartoons is ludicrous. After all, we have to put up with the so-called "modern art" movement, under which artists throw elephant dung on a portrait of the Virgin Mary (after covering much of the portrait with pictures of female genetailia) or submerge a crucifix in a vat of urine, call it art, and are then subsidized with our own tax dollars.


When anti-Islam riots start tearing up the West over these cartoons, I'll let you know...but don't get your hopes up. We've seen it all already.

Iran: America's Next Greatest Enemy

The longer conflict goes on in the Middle East, the more it becomes clear that Iran is the ringleader of Islamofascism there. Iran has long been a state sponsor of terrorism, supporting such groups as Hezbollah, HAMAS, and Al-Qaida, both with monetary and material support. It is now a known fact that the missiles Hezbollah has been firing into Israel originated in Iran and Syria. Recent news indicates that Iranians are fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon. There have even been rumors that Hezbollah's initial actions were taken only after they were given permission by Iranian Ayatollahs.

In reality, the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is nothing more than a proxy war between the United States and Iran; the problem is that the diplomats and politicians cannot speak about it in those plain terms.

In the coming weeks, it may well be that the world will see plain and clear just what kind of threat Iran poses. A UN resolution orders Iran to give up their nuclear program by August 31; Iran has already hinted at some announcement or revelation on August 22 (I only hope Iran doesn't announce it has nukes on my birthday...or do something even worse).

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has proven himself to be an anti-Semitic, unstable religious zealot with a flair for the somewhat insane. Taken holistically, he is not the kind of leader who is to be trusted with any sort of weapons, much less the nuclear sort. He has stated publicly that he believes that the Holocause never happened; it was just a bunch of Zionist propaganda made up to raise sympathy for the Jews. He has also stated that he believes that nuclear weapons are a God- (or Allah)-given right to the nation of Iran. It is also suspected that he believes that it is his role to bring about the return of the twelfth Imam...kind of like the Second Coming of Christ, only instead of world events hinting of the Imam's return, Ahmadinejad believes that it is the duty of Muslims to instigate Armageddon, which will bring about the Imam's return and hail the rise of the global domination of Islamofascism.

Everything about Ahmadinejad shows that he has been effectively indoctrinated in Iran's propaganda-driven schools, and has bought the party line with a vengance. The world would do well not to trust him, or any other government leader in Iran.

President Bush has indicated in past speeches that his overall goal in the War on Terror is to change the face of the Middle East. The problem is that the Middle East is resisting the change - and small wonder, considering that Islamofascism has kept much of the region in a state strongly resembling the Second Century. As the West pushes harder for change in the region, the more obvious it becomes that change is sorely needed there. Islamofascism has become a threat to the entire globe - Muslim terrorists have attacked America, England, France, Spain, Jordan, India, and others, with no signs of stopping. Muslims in Indonesia, Australia, and elsewhere have tried to justify rapes and beheadings of teenage girls with the defense of "they weren't wearing burka's." This kind of Islam (know as Wahhabism) is a danger to the world, as well as the very peole living under its thumb, especially the women, who are oppressed, and the children, who are put into fundamental religious schools and brainwashed into hating Jews and the West.

Now more than ever the Middle East needs to be freed from the clutches of extremist Islam, which has itself become a threat to the entire world. The problem is that political correctness has hampered our politicians and diplomats, keeping them from calling this conflict what it is: the War on Islamofascism. In the overall War on Terror, there are other threats than extremist Islam, but none more dangerous. It is high time that the world came to the realization that we can no longer afford to play politically correct games with terrorists, or play at diplomacy with terrorist states. We have to be united. We have to be strong. Or we will be overrun.




By the way, I found some interesting facts about Israel that you won't see in the mainstream media; they pretty much debunk the "they stole their land" argument by the Israel-haters.

1. Israel became a state in 1312 BC, two millenia before Islam.
2. Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves "Palestinians" in 1967, two decades after (modern) Israeli statehood.
3. After conquering the land in 1272 BC, Jews ruled it for a thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there for 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 AD lasted just 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even under Jordanian rule, (East) Jerusalem was not made the capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible, but not once is it mentioned in the Qar'an.
7. King David founded Jerusalem; Mohammed never set foot in it.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Muslims face Mecca. If they are between the wto cities, Muslims pray facing Mecca, with their backs to Jerusalem.
9. In 1948, Arab leaders urged their people to leave, promising to cleanse the land of Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without ever setting eyes on an Israeli soldier.
10. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Muslim countries had to flee as the result of violence and pogroms.
11. Some 630,000 Arabs left Israel in 1948, while close to a million Jews were forced to leave the Muslim countries.
12. In spite of the vast territories at their disposal, Arab refugees were deliberately prevented from assimilating into their host countries. Of 100 million refugees following WWII, they are the only group to have never integrated with their coreligionists. Most of the Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab lands were settled in Israel, a country no larger then New Jersey.
13. There are 22 Muslim countries, not counting Palestine. There is only one Jewish state. Arabs started all five wars against Israel, and lost every one of them.
14. FATAH and HAMAS constitutions still call for the destruction of Israel. Israel ceded most of the West Bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, and even provided it with arms.
15. During the Jordanian occupation, Jewish holy sites were vandalized and were off limits to Jews. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian holy sites are accessible to all faiths.
16. Out of 175 United Nations Security Council resolutions up to 1990, 97 were against Israel; out of 690 General Assembly resolutions, 429 were against Israel.
17. The UN was silent when the Jordanians destroyed 58 Synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem. It remained silent while Jordan systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetary on the Mount of Olives, and it remained silent when Jordan enforced apartheid laws preventing Jews from accessing the Temple Mount and Western Wall.

***UPDATE: Finally, nearly five years after 9/11, President Bush has named our true enemy, stating this morning in a speech, "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

***UPDATE 2: Headline: "US Muslims bristle at Bush term 'Islamic fascists'"
What they try to gloss over in this report is that the criticism is coming from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who, in union with the media, tries to censor any mainstream condemnation of Islamic terrorists. The director of CAIR was quoted as saying, "We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims." The problem: this is a religious war, whether we like it or not. The US isn't being attacked by Christian, or Jewish, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Shinto terrorists. We are under attack by Islamic fascist terrorists. Iran, an Islamic fascist state, is our enemy. Saudi Arabia, an Islamic fascist state (though not quite as fascist as Iran) was the home of most of the 9/11 hijackers. Strangely, even though we are at war with Islamic Islamic fascists, CAIR thinks it is "ill-advised" and "counter-productive" to frame the war in those terms.

What the report fails to mention is that CAIR officials have been investigated, and some even arrested, for actively supporting Islamo-fascist terrorist groups. Why we should let CAIR define anything having to do with the war is beyond me.

When it comes to anti-Semitism: Which is more important?

There was an extremely interesting column on Townhall.com that contrasts two cases of anti-Semitism in the United States and how those cases were portrayed in the media.

The first case is that of Mel Gibson, who, after being arrested for drunk driving, went on a drunken anti-Jew tirade. It absolutely dominated the press for the better part of a week, and Gibson was bashed and/or denounced almost constantly for his remarks.

The other case occurred in Seattle. A Muslim man entered the offices a local Jewish organization and opened fire with two automatic handguns, killing one and wounding five others. The story produced a small blip in the national news scene, but not much more than that.

As Jeff Jacoby said in the Townhall piece, "after six days, a Nexis search turned up only 236 stories mentioning Haq -- about one-fourth the number devoted to Gibson’s drunken outburst. Why the disparity?"

When The Passion of the Christ was released, Gibson was accused of being an anti-Semite for two reasons: Gibson's father is known to be a total anti-Semitic wacko, and the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem was responsible for Christ's crucifixion. Prior to Passion's release, the Christian-hating press went wild with stories speculating on whether it was truly a Christian film, or merely a product of Gibson's anti-Semitism. Of course, the press failed to realize that if Passion is anti-Semitic, then the Bible itself is anti-Semitic, which simply is not the case (especially if you take into consideration that Jesus, the 12 disciples, Paul, Silas, Mary, Joseph, and Mary Magdalene were all Jews and that the vast majority of Christians see Christianity as an extension of Judaism rather than a completely new religion).

But all of that aside, it is a dark day indeed in America when a celebrity's drunken rantings garner more attention from the press than a terrorist attack perpetrated within the United States. What's more, members of the media have gone to great lengths to avoid calling this a terrorist attack...but even if this doesn't qualify as terrorism, it is premeditated murder, not merely a "hate crime."

And what's more, this isn't the only time this has happened.

Political Correctness: The Terrorists' Best Friend

Now more than ever we see the true fruits of political correctness, not only for America, but for Israel in its current conflict. Due to 9/11, political correctness did not play too much of a part in Afghanistan, which is why American troops were so successful there in overthrowing the Taliban and installing a new government. In Iraq, it has been a different story. The Iraqi government was overthrown in short order, primarily due to the unwillingness of Iraqi troops to die for their beloved leader, Saddam Hussein. The Hussein regime was overthrown in what turned out to be the swiftest victorious invation in the history of the world. Bringing stabilization to Iraq is where political correctness has effectively ruined the US cause. At the outset, various military units had "embedded" reporters that travelled around with them, shadowing them and reporting on the action. This was both good and bad: it allowed Americans back home to see what was going on in the war, but when the tough decisions had to be made on the ground, having a reporter there made our soldiers think twice.

When the insurgents started firing out of and storing weapons in mosques, there was a huge debate over whether the US should start bombing those mosques. By firing out of and storing weapons in mosques, the Iraqi insurgents not only violated the Geneva Conventions, but they turned their own religious sites into military targets...yet, due to political correctness, we could not bomb these now-legitimate targets.

It has also become very un-PC to deny that the United States engages in torture. After the Abu-Garaib scandal surfaced, US status as the worst violator of human rights ever became something akin to Gospel truth. Whether Abu Garaib or GTMO, the only PC conclusion is that the US is evil...never mind the fact that terrorist training manuals uncovered in England instructed terrorists to make up allegations of torture...or the fact that Senator Dick Durbin, one of the most outspoken of those condemning GTMO could suddenly find no words of condemnation after he visited GTMO himself and saw what was going on there with his own eyes.

What's more, the political Left in America did everything it could to re-write the Bush Administration's arguments for the war, bringing them all down to a single issue: weapons of mass destruction. When the US military didn't find WMD ("the smoking gun," as the Left called it then), the war suddenly became unjustified, and "Bush lied." Then there was the "16 words" scandal, when President Bush said in his State of the Union Address that British Intelligence had stated that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium ore from the nation of Niger. The evidence that this was incorrect hinged on the informal testimony of Joe Wilson. Now, all other aspects of "Plamegate" aside, in his assessment of the situation, Wilson said that Saddam Hussein had been trying to open commercial ties with Niger. Niger is is a third-world nation. Most of its economy consists of subsistence agriculture. Niger's primary export is uranium, of which it has one of the richest supplies in the world (its second export is livestock...but it's a very distant second). If Saddam Hussein was looking to open up commercial ties with Niger, then he really was trying to acquire uranium ore.

Unfortunately for the Bush Administration, not only is it not politically correct to try and point out that the Administration had several reasons for the invasion of Iraq (WMD, human rights violations including torture, rape, and mass murder, and 12 years of continuous violations of United Nations resolutions), but "Plamegate" made it very un-PC to point out that the British intel that the President referred to in his speech was right.

Here in the United States, we're even too politically correct to secure our own nation! After 9/11, we had a brief moment of unification, and then the politically correct machine ramped right back up again, hindering efforts to bring security against further terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act? Too strict. Forget the fact that citizens of America have temporarily given up certain rights during wartime throughout history in the interests of defeating the enemy, and we are better off for it. Forget the fact that the Clinton Administration's blundering had to be fixed. Secure our ports? Why? Why should Congress do anything substantive to secure our ports when they can just yell and holler and criticize the Bush Administration for not doing anything about it? Secure our borders? Never! We have a responsibility to the poor peoples of the world, and that includes allowing them to cross our border illegally. We should stand up for these "undocumented workers." What? There are drug smugglers and terrorists coming across our border, too? Ya don't say! (It's interesting how the issue of border security, just like President Bush's arguments for the Iraq war, are re-written by liberals to have one, single reason backing them up, when, in fact, conservatives have posited several equally legitimate reasons for a secure border). Unfortunately for America, liberals, particularly liberal leaders, would rather politicize our national security, criticizing any measures taken to make our nation secure, criticizing the Bush administration over measures not taken, defending media outlets such as the New York Times when they reveal covert measures taken, and obfuscating issues surrounding other measures so that they seem unrelated to the issue of national security.


Now there is another crisis in the Middle East, and the Political Correctness movement is doing all that it can to ensure victory for Hezbollah terrorists. Israel is expected to follow the Geneva Conventions to the letter and beyond...because they "stole" the Palestinians' land, which was a very un-PC thing to do. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fighters hide among the civilian population, all the while not allowing those same civilians to leave (because then the terrorists would lose their human shields). They hide in hospitals and mosques and use ambulances as troop transports. They hide behind UN outposts. And all the while, they have been shooting unguided rockets into Israeli towns and villages.

The reason Israel is being condemned so much for its actions in this campaign is because they are fighting war in the classic style: the un-PC style which, while more effective, was usually fought without a 24-hour cable news cycle showing images of dead people constantly. Civilians have been killed in Israel's attacks, and all fingers are pointed at Israel for those deaths, in spite of the fact that the reason civilian areas become military targets is because Hezbollah uses those areas to launch its rockets. Meanwhile, the PC crowd bandies around intelligent-sounding phrases like "disproportionate response" and "collective punishment", seemingly forgetting that the goal of war is to crush the enemy (and maybe Hezbollah shouldn't have provoked Israel if they didn't have the military might to withstand an all-out Israeli attack), and that it is Hezbollah that is turning civilian and UN areas into military targets, not Israel. But it is very un-PC to point that out, and if conservatives start winning arguments, the PC crowd always has the "stolen land" argument to fall back on.

At the root of this current conflict is the fact that Hezbollah is putting civilians into harm's way, and then parading their bodies around in front of the cameras in order to turn world opinion against Israel. And it seems to be working. The deaths of these civilians, the blame for which should be laid squarely on the shoulders of Hezbollah, who are using them for propaganda purposes, are tragic, but are not the fault of Israel. Israel, from the start, has done its best to hit only strategic and military targets. That civilians are in the way is the fault of Hezbollah, who is actively preventing them from leaving. Furthermore, many of the press reports on the number of civilians killed get their numbers from Hezbollah. How many of those civilians were actually Hezbollah fighters is unclear, but what is clear is that if Israel is at fault for anything, it is not doing enough. The most effective means to combatting Hezbollah would be an all-out, hard-and-fast invasion of Lebanon, bringing quick death to any and all Hezbollah militants they find, and searching out and destroying any and all weapons caches found within Lebanon. Unfortunately, though, that would be very, very un-PC.

The conclusion is this: if we fail or are failing in the War on Terror (aka the War on Islamic Fascism), it is because the Politically Correct Left and the Politically Correct culture is forcing us to fight a Politically Correct war...and a Politically Correct war is a war that cannot be won. In order to win this war, we must kill the enemy until they are either entirely dead, or forced to surrender. Israel, by facing up to Hezbollah, is fighting another front in the War on Terror, and they are showing us just how much political correctness enables our enemies. If we want to win the War on Islamic Fascism, we must learn, as a people, that Islamio-fascists are our enemies, and if we don't kill them, they will kill us. It doesn't matter why they hate us. We don't have to understand them beyond their aspirations to convert or kill each and every man, woman, and child on the planet. That may not be politically correct, but it happens to be the state of affairs on planet Earth, and if the politically correct don't come to terms with that, we will all pay the price. As Ann Coulter wrote on September 13, 2001, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."