Now, I must give credit here to 50 who cast Nay votes. In all 6 Democratic Representatives and 44 Republican Representatives and Senators cast a Nay vote against paying us off with what amounts to nothing more than a band-aid on an infected wound. 461 voted in favor of covering the economic wounds of our nation while the wound is badly infected. (Clinton and Obama were two of three Senators who did not bother to vote Aye or Nay but instead cast no vote at all!)

This vote may be a gauge ... to at least look into the 50 members of Congress who said no. At least, for whatever reasons, they understood the stimulus package is a bad idea for the long-term health of the economy while offering very little short-term relief for most citizens. The cost of the stimulus package is estimated at $168 billion. This amount will be added to the deficit over the next two years! It's like using a high interest credit card to pay a minimum payment on another high interest credit card. It keeps the bill collector from calling today but does nothing to actually help pay off any debt and actually increases the overall amount owed.

There are a few ... that want real legislation passed that can actually have both an immediate and long-term positive effect on the economy. People seem to forget whenever they ask the government to do more the money is created and added to the deficit, the balance on the credit card just gets higher! But can Congress and the President actually reduce spending in a timely manner? Look how fast they arranged to pay us off and you have your answer.

Oh, and the two most prominent Senators casting no vote at all, want to also be the champions of change. Change in the way YOU live and change in the way OUR future generations live. They hear those demanding their government do more. They are quite willing to take out the people's credit card and charge the gifts of change. They are more than willing to pay us off so they can walk away and boast about how they listened and helped all the little people who needed their government to care for them!

Their train won't be going to Yuma; instead it goes to the poor house, ALL ABOARD!

2008 by Gary Wood
- Permission to copy with attribution granted.

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Similarly, if you earned $50,000 in 1999, your income in 2008 should be $63,349.34 if you want to maintain a constant-dollar standard of living. That of course assumes you didn't benefit from career progression, such as a promotion and a commensurate pay increase.

If you earned $75,000 in 1999, your break-even income target for 2008 is $95,024.01.

What about those who earned $125,000 in 1999? Good luck; you need $158,373.35 just to keep even.

Maybe a graphical presentation of the Consumer Price Index in recent years will help you to extrapolate the period from 1999 to 2008:

In your wallet assume the you have one single dollar. In historical terms, while looking at the graph, what is that dollar worth, i.e., what is it's purchasing power (not the blue line)? What is the trend?

Rather than display the incorrect tax data circulating on the Internet, the figures below illustrate the correct amount of tax paid by hypothetical taxpayers in the Internet comparison. Note that this comparison considers adjusted gross income and does not take into account the Alternative Minimum Tax. Taxpayers in these examples are assumed to have taken the standard deduction and do not have children.

Individual Income Taxes Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, 1999 Law and 2008 Law

Taxpayer
Single, income of $30,000
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $3,157.50
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $4,000.51
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $2,756.25

Assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $38,000. You are now in a different tax bracket. Welcome to the demographic group liberals call wealthy Americans. You have just experienced "bracket creep," a phenomenon in which you are making no more money (no greater purchasing power than in 1999), but your taxes have increased.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would have been 28%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 25% - 3% less.

------------------

Single, income of $50,000
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $7,262.50
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $9,201.49
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $6,606.25

However, assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $63,000. Your tax bracket may have changed.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would now have been 31%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 25% - 6% less.

-----------------

Married, income of $50,000
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $5,085.00
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $6,442.63
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $4,012.50

However, assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $63,000. Your tax bracket may have changed.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would have been 28%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 15%

-----------------

Single, income of $75,000
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $14,262.50
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $18,070.40
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $12,856.25

However, assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $95,000. Your tax bracket may have changed.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would have been 31%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 28%

-------------------

Married, income of $75,000
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $9,426.50
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $11,943.25
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $7,762.50

However, assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $95,000. Your tax bracket may have changed.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would have been 28%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 25%

------------------

Single, income of $125,000*
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $29,378.50
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $37,222.17
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $26,472.25

However, assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $158,000. Your tax bracket may have changed.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would have been 36%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 28%

----------------------

Married, income of $125,000*
Tax under Clinton, 1999 tax law - $23,426.50
If you were paying the same amount today as in 1999, in constant dollars, your tax bill would be $29,681.07
Tax under Bush, 2008 tax law - $19,462.50

However, assume you are one of the chosen few whose income has kept pace with inflation since 1999. Your income in 2008 would be over $158,000. Your tax bracket may have changed.
Your marginal tax rate under Clinton, 1999 tax law, would have been 31%.
Your marginal tax rate under Bush, 2008 tax law, is 28%

-------------------

*These figures do not take into account the Alternative Minimum Tax - which Congress refuses to eliminate.

Additionally, many Congressmen and women, including current presidential candidates, want to abolish the Bush Administration tax cuts. Look at the graph above. Study it. Is that what you want? What will huge tax increases do to your standard of living? What will it do to the United States economy? If you are so fortunate as to be one of those paying income taxes, do not harbor the naive thought that your taxes will in some way benefit you personally.

As a matter of observation, have you noticed that the only people in the entire world not enjoying the benefits provided by United States taxpayers are those citizens actually paying the taxes?

And you're going to vote for whom? Don't even think about voting to raise my taxes.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

Hat tip:
Richard D., Scottsdale, AZ
-------------------------

Response from Tom W.:

If you want to know just how effective the mainstream media is, it is amazing how many people that fall into the categories above think Bush is screwing them and Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever. Obama and Clinton say they will repeal the Bush tax cuts. A good portion of the people who fall into the categories above can't wait for that to happen. This is like the movie "The Sting" with Paul Newman - you scam somebody out of some money and they don't even know what happened.

I remember when Bill Clinton whipped up this class envy thing during one of his administrations. He said he was going to tax the rich and use the money to fund entitlement programs for the poor. The masses fell for it hook, line & sinker. They couldn't wait to stick it to the rich. They loved Clinton for being the "Champion of the Poor". Imagine their surprise when the tax increase went through and these people suddenly discovered that being "rich" applied to anybody making $35,000 a year or more! The worst part is, the tax was approved in October and the bastard made it retro-active to January 1st of that year. ( I talked to the owner of a small manufacturing firm last July who said he was STILL paying off the IRS from that tax increase!)

I had this discussion with Grant the other night. I told him that all these class envy tactics the Democrats are using now had been done before, the "Lets go after Exxon Mobil and Wal-Mart for making too much profit", the notion that somehow corporate America's profits are the reason YOU aren't rich, those are windfall profits and they didn't earn them and don't deserve them. These same things were done 30 and 40 years ago. But the problem we have now is there are millions of young people of voting age in this country who weren't born yet the first time this BS was going around, so it's all new to them. And since very few of them care to study history and learn from it, we are destined to re-live it.

These young people are being seduced by the empty rhetoric of an inexperienced, unqualified candidate who happens to have an appealing oratory style in the person of Barrack Obama. They don't care WHAT he says, they just love the WAY way he says it! This guy knows as much about the economy, global politics, and the war on terror as your 9 month old grandson, Max. Come to think of it, I apologize. That's an insult to Max; he probably knows more!

All I know is, with the Socialist leanings of the Liberal Left, if people like Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Ted Kennedy were spouting this bilge back in the 50's, Joe McCarthy would have nailed their asses for being part of the Communist Party. Today, stupid-ass Americans can't wait to vote them into office so they can take even more of our paychecks to support Washington's spending addiction. With this economy on the brink of recession, all we need is a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress who will eliminate tax cuts, bring back the old Alternative Minimum Tax, raise Capital Gains taxes, and reinstate the death tax.

Their next move will be to establish Universal Health Care, and that's it for Capitalism, "game, set, and match."

That financial burden will be so huge we will have to resort to becoming a Socialist State in order to pay for it. The budget for the Democratic version of Universal Health Care will make the Defense Budget look like chump change. And the quality of healthcare will decline like most Americans could never imagine. Bill and Hillary want to emulate the Canadian healthcare system. Well, I've talked to several Canadians who tell horror stories about waiting years for surgeries, triage systems where patients die waiting to be seen by specialists, and those who had to come to American doctors in order to be seen in time to save their lives. And the Clintons want us to adopt that?! You first, Bill!

McCain wasn't my first choice, but right now he looks like the only choice. He's the only hope we have to fend off this push toward Socialism by the Liberals. Hell, if you listen to Hillary's proposals for government programs, it sounds like it came right out of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. This broad is a Marxist!

OK, that's my rant for today. I guess I've turned into one of those "Angry White Males"!! I'd like to form a whole damned FRATERNITY of them!

Tom W.

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Meanwhile, in the United States, rainfall is increasing, tornados are becoming less frequent, glaciers have been receding for 200 years – back to their more normal average lengths, and hurricane frequency and severity has been unchanged for the past century.

Standing timber in U.S. forests has, however, increased by 40% since 1950; 2,000-year-old pine trees are growing faster; and animal and plant quantity and diversity are sharply increasing. This is truly alarming! If current trends continue, we will be overrun by squirrels, deer, and foxes and fighting for our lives against aggressively growing orange and apple trees. A dire prediction was even published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – I am not making this up – warning that poison ivy is also growing faster.

The three most important substances that make life possible are water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. The primary structural and functional element in all living things is carbon. All carbon in protein, fat, carbohydrate, and the other organic molecules in living things is derived from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Without atmospheric carbon dioxide, life as we know it would not be possible. Plants inhale carbon dioxide and are thereby fertilized. When atmospheric carbon dioxide increases – as it has by about 30% during the past century, plant life and the animal life that thrives upon it are also increased.

The annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide attributable to human activities – primarily the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas – is about 1 part in 10,000 of that contained in the oceans and biosphere – a contribution of ultimately negligible consequence. Since, however, this human-released carbon must travel through the atmosphere to reach the ocean and biotic reservoirs, human use, while it continues, has caused a transient rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from about 0.03% to about 0.04% of atmospheric molecules. The primary environmental result of this rise is plant fertilization. We are moving carbon from below ground into the atmosphere, where it is available to produce more plants and animals – a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.

The Earth’s atmosphere and surface are warmed by solar radiation; the greenhouse effect – primarily caused by atmospheric water vapor; and other less-understood phenomena. Carbon dioxide and methane are also greenhouse gases, but their physical properties render their greenhouse effects very weak. Neither warms the Earth significantly, and no greenhouse warming caused by these two substances has ever been unequivocally observed. The warming and cooling of the Earth is correlated most closely with fluctuations in solar activity and is entirely uncorrelated with human hydrocarbon use.

This has not, however, troubled Al Gore, the United Nations, and their enviro-retainers, who are regaling the body politic with unverified computer projections that purport to predict the weather centuries in the future. These computer models cannot predict the weather next week, nor can they even “predict” the weather last year. In order to make the models conform at least somewhat to past temperature trends, their handlers have introduced 6 and even 7 adjustable parameters into their calculations. As Enrico Fermi famously remarked when quoting his friend, the great mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann, “with 3 parameters I can fit an elephant and with 4, I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

Why are these people doing this? Why has Al Gore positioned himself to become a historical laughing stock, and why have a few hundred United Nations climate change-funded “scientists” joined them? The reason surely is not global warming. If they truly were alarmed as they say about imminent climatic peril, they would be clamoring for the Penner-Teller solution. These scientists have shown that slight injections of sun-blocking particulates into the upper atmosphere would immediately erase all Earth warming of the past 200 years. Teller estimated the cost to achieve this cooler temperature at about $1 billion. A similar additional amount would probably be required annually to maintain the cooling.

If Al Gore were truly alarmed about hydrocarbon use, he would be clamoring for nuclear power plants. The construction of just 50 nuclear installations similar to that partially completed at Palo Verde near Phoenix would erase most of the U.S. carbon dioxide output – and would also erase most of the U.S. trade deficit at the same time. Yet, while The Wall Street Journal recently counted 381 nuclear power plants in various stages of planning or construction around the world – but none being constructed in the United States, Al Gore and his retainers actually oppose nuclear power.

So, why are they doing this? In the words of Indiana Jones – “fortune and glory, kid, fortune and glory” – paraphrase that “money and power, madam, money and power.” Al Gore, himself, has already accumulated astonishing personal wealth during his campaign against world energy technology and is now a principal in a new corporation being formed to profit from public fear of global warming. Meanwhile, United Nations bureaucrats are mesmerized by the prospect of taxing and rationing world energy supplies – a position of virtually unlimited wealth and power that would give them life-and-death control over both world technology and the human race. (emphasis added)

And, why do we prefer that Al Gore and his friends not succeed? One reason is that, in the poorer countries of the world, billions of people are using technology to lift themselves from poverty and to gain some of the technological blessings that Americans now enjoy. These people need inexpensive, relatively low technology energy that can, with current methods, only be practically derived from hydrocarbons. World hydrocarbon rationing would deprive them of this energy, destroy their dreams, and cause them to slip backwards into suffering, poverty, and death.

Simultaneously, Americans can only maintain and extend their own technology and prosperity with inexpensive energy – available now in practical quantities only from hydrocarbon and nuclear sources. Moreover, only people who are prosperous can afford the cost of true environmentalism.

Most people agree that increased quality, quantity, and length of human life and decreased human suffering are worthwhile goals. These goals are best reached by technological advance, and inexpensive energy is the currency of technological progress. The myth of human-caused global warming currently threatens these goals and that technological advance. This is the truth – inconvenient as it may be to the self-centered aspirations of Al Gore and his United Nations friends.

Complete peer-reviewed scientific references to the facts in this article can be found in the peer-reviewed article, Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by A. B. Robinson, N. E. Robinson, and W. Soon – available at www.oism.org/pproject.

This article first appeared in Human Events

© 2008 - Art Robinson - All Rights Reserved

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Saturday’s open session will feature Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presentation, “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” This is code for the increased use of wind turbine and solar energy. At present, these two provide barely one percent of the nation’s energy needs. They are incredibly inefficient and are incapable of replacing coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear energy to meet the needs of the nation.

The term “clean energy” is code for opposition to greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, but CO2 is just 0.038 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere and plays an insignificant role as a greenhouse gas. It is the Sun that is the determining factor when it comes to heating or cooling the Earth. The Earth is getting cooler, not warmer.

Former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, will address “the need to develop and support alternatives to imported petroleum.” I don’t know who Woolsey is shilling for, but I have personally heard his standard speech on this topic and I can tell you he is full of hot air. There isn’t a nation on Earth that can afford to reduce its imports of petroleum. It is a global commodity that is sold to the highest bidder. Oil doesn’t have a nationality—only a price.

The notion that America can, will or should reduce oil imports is a huge misrepresentation of the truth. Energy is the engine of our economy. Reduce or restrict its use and you will see businesses and jobs move anywhere it’s available. And yet Congress refuses to grant access to the vast oil reserves going untapped in Alaska or our continental shelf.

What’s scary about all this hogwash about energy efficiency and alternative energy sources is that these are the people who will shape the future of their individual States and of the nation.

Instead of advocating a better tax structure to encourage and stimulate industries and small businesses in their States, they are wasting time on discussing ways to thwart the building of new electricity generating plants, new refineries, and insuring that our own natural resources go unused.

These are the same governors whose States have been on a spending spree for a very long time, far outpacing their revenues. They have borrowed and borrowed to the point where our grandchildren and their children will be paying off the debt load.

America is in trouble and the governors want to discuss ethanol, wind turbines, and solar panels when they need to be discussing bridge maintenance, potholes, and jobs leaving for places where it costs far less to produce anything.

---------------------
Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2008/02/governors-ignore-infrastructure-discuss.html

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They want government power used to remake the world into their narcissistic image, to tell others how to live their lives, and to infringe on the rights of others, especially on the right to keep the fruits of their labor. In other words, they want to use coercion against others, not realizing that others will retaliate by using coercion against them.

In this very important sense, the nation is no longer a constitutional republic based on individual rights and liberty. The Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Great Society, and the neoconservative movement have transformed the U.S. to a nation where political might makes right. The individual is now at the mercy of the will of the plurality, or the collective, or marauding special-interest groups--all of whom are backed by the rule of law, which in turn is backed by armed government agents.

Barack Obama wonders why we all can’t get along. Well, it’s because politicians like him want to do things for some people by doing things to other people. And generally, the people he wants to do things to are the good people in society--the people who defer gratification, invest in their future, lead virtuous lives, sacrifice for their children, and help their neighbors without being coerced to do so by the government.

Coercion has become so accepted that the word “coercion” is not mentioned at all in Congress, in the establishment media, in K-12 schools, in universities, or in any other centers of influence. Instead, people speak euphemistically about the common good, volunteerism, social justice, equal opportunity, fairness, income equality, and other platitudes du jour. Of course, history shows that the greater the rhetoric about the collective, the greater the coercion against the individual.

President Bush says he believes in “compassionate conservatism,” but he really believes in coerced compassion. Sen. Clinton says “It takes a village,” but she really believes in coercively taking the village’s output for her political uses. Sen. Obama says that he wants to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work in government job corps, but he doesn’t say that millions of other Americans will be coerced to pick up the tab for something that is economic and social folly. McCain says that he wants to stop money in politics, but he has used coercion to limit political speech.

Politicians embrace coercion because the American people embrace coercion. Farmers embrace it to obtain subsidies that raise the price of groceries for everyone else. The elderly embrace it to get free medicine at the expense of future generations. Spendthrifts embrace it to take the savings of the frugal through the tax code. Cities embrace it to take private property for the benefit of developers. Preservationists embrace it to tell homeowners what color they can paint their homes. Anti-smoking zealots embrace it to tell owners of bars and restaurants what they can do on their private property. Arts aficionados embrace it to have their cultural interests subsidized. Sports fans embrace it to have non-fans build their sports palaces. College students embrace it to get cheaper tuition at the expense of those who don’t go to college. The stupid and greedy embrace it to be bailed out of their bad mortgages by those who are smart and financially conservative.

Examples of the use of coercion in our supposed free country could run for hundreds of pages.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain indeed have what it takes to be the president of the United States. For that matter, so does Vladimir Putin.

By Craig J. Cantoni
Feb. 18, 2008
_________________
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An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

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In December 1962, Kennedy offered ablunt summary of the Castro/Che record. "The Cuban people were promised by the revolution political liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the campesinos, and an end to economic exploitation," he said. "They have received a police state, the elimination of the dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech and a free press, and the complete subjugation of individual human welfare." Eleven months later, in aspeech intended for delivery on the day he was assassinated, Kennedy regretted that Castro's "Communist foothold" in Latin America had "not yet been eliminated."

Were he alive today, it's hard to imagine JFK feeling anything but contempt for those who extol a dictatorship that has been crushing freedom and human beings for nearly 50 years. And it would surely pain him that so many of the cheerleaders are members of his own party.

The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol Pot. A celebrity who was spotted with a swastika-festooned cap or an actress who revealed that she had gotten a tattoo depicting Timothy McVeigh would inspire only repugnance. No presidential campaign would need more than 30 seconds to sever its ties to anyone, paid staffer or volunteer, whose office was adorned with a Ku Klux Klan banner. Yet Che's likeness, which ought to be as loathed as any of those, is instead a trendy bestseller and a cult favorite.

A few years ago the New York Public Library gift shop sold Che wristwatches. These it described as "featuring the classic romantic image of Che Guevara, around which the word 'revolution' revolves." But Che's idea of revolution was anything but romantic. What he cherished was hatred and murder: "Hatred as an element of struggle," he wrote in 1967, "unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine." It was a sentiment he expressed repeatedly - and lived up to.

With Che at his side, Castro toppled Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. "As soon as they had seized power," notes "The Black Book of Communism," a magisterial survey of communist crime in the 20th century, "they began to conduct mass executions inside the two main prisons, La Cabana and Santa Clara." As chief prosecutor of the new regime, Che oversaw the bloodbath, ordering hundreds of executions in the first months of 1959. Those he killed, "The Black Book" records, included "former comrades-in-arms who refused to abandon their democratic beliefs."

Like totalitarians of every stripe, Che didn't scruple at the death of innocents. "Quit the dallying!" he ordered Jose Vilasuso, a conscientious government lawyer who was seeking evidence against several prisoners. "Your job is a very simple one. Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute from revolutionary conviction."

Time magazine once called Che the "brain” of the Cuban Revolution, and saluted his "icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence, and . . . perceptive sense of humor." A better description comes from journalist Humberto Fontova, who observes in "Exposing The Real Che Guevara" that Che was for Castro what Heinrich Himmer was for Hitler and Lavrenty Beria for Stalin - "the snarling enforcer." Fittingly, a massive drawing of Che adorns the headquarters of Cuba's secret police in Havana.

That this sadistic thug's face also adorns the office of a US presidential candidate's supporters is appalling and disgraceful. That the candidate couldn't bring himself to say so is even worse.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/02/17/what_would_jfk_do/

Hat tip:
Len S., Prescott, Arizona

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It is undeniable that Mexico faces major challenges. Endemic corruption and the power of violent drug cartels still dominate everyday life across Mexico. Beyond the headlines, Mexico has deep institutional maladies. Mexico’s absurdly antiquated Napoleonic-inquisition styled legal system and the squandering of robust energy-industry opportunity by a poorly managed, state-run Pemex monopoly are just two examples of the kind of self-inflicted wounds that hobble your troubled nation.

I understand that you are attempting to resolve some of these problems and applaud your leadership in trying to do so. But what would contribute more to the long term stability of your economy and your country would be to focus more energy on addressing your domestic challenges and less on lobbying the U.S. to provide amnesty for Mexicans who have illegally entered this country with the blessing of your government. In doing so, you might be able to keep Mexico’s “best and brightest young men” in Mexico – where they can contribute more to Mexico’s economy than remittance payments. Unfortunately, your recent comments indicate that Mexico will continue its policy of encouraging illegal immigration and treating the United States as little more than a dumping ground for your social and economic problems.

In your speech yesterday to the California State legislature, you lectured the American people on how to improve our immigration policies. Why did you not propose that we model our policies on Mexico’s own policies toward illegal entry across your own southern border? Mexico expends enormous resources to prevent Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans from entering the country illegally, but you castigate the United States for wanting secure borders. Mr. President, in my neighborhood that is called hypocrisy.

You proposed in your Sacramento speech that “migration” be made “legal, safe and organized.” Mr. President, we already have such a program and it is called legal immigration. Over one million legal immigrants come through our ports of entry each year, not across our border fences. The American people set limits on the number of legal immigrants through our immigration laws, and it is not the job of the Mexican government to revise or expand those limits.

President Calderon, you are insulting the American people when you tell us that fifteen to twenty million illegal aliens in our country bring only benefits and no costs. I challenge you to give one concrete example of how the enforcement of our existing immigration laws violates anyone’s human rights. The people of Oklahoma are not anti-Mexican for passing laws to require verification of employment eligibility. The people of Indiana are not anti-immigrant for passing laws to require photo identification for voting. The people of California are not anti-Mexican for denying driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. The people of Arizona are not anti-immigrant for passing laws that deny welfare benefits to people who are in that state unlawfully.

It is no secret that the purpose of your visit is to influence the American election, and in fact your trip has been billed as a high-stakes effort to shape the immigration debate underway in the U.S. presidential race. What is perhaps more disappointing, however, is your attempt to insinuate that anti-amnesty sentiment here in the U.S. is the same as anti-Mexican sentiment. I am referring to your statement, “I need to change in the perception that the Americans are the enemy, and it is important to change the perception that the Mexicans are the enemy.”

It is both disingenuous and dangerous for you to inject this kind of xenophobia into this debate. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans support the enforcement of our immigration laws and take issue with the notion that we should reward illegal behavior, hardly qualifies as ethnic animosity or international enmity. What you must understand is that a treasured aspect of our national foundation is a respect for the rule of law. Perhaps if corruption were not so widespread and commonplace in Mexico, it would be easier for you to understand this.

President Calderon, in many ways your trip thus far has been a long series of mixed messages. You accuse the United States of recent protectionist trends, yet you heavily restrict foreign entry into Mexico’s energy sector through a massive, state-run Pemex monopoly. You assure American politicians that an open flow of cheap Mexican labor is not only benign but vitally necessary, but you take great care in securing your own southern border with Guatemala. You come to the United States purportedly to promote better political and economic ties with the U.S., but then issue a thinly veiled threat that Mexicans will regard the U.S. as an enemy if we refuse to provide millions of illegal aliens with unconditional amnesty.

President Calderon, I respectfully suggest that the next time you visit our country, rather than trying to influence U.S. policymakers or our election process, you take time to listen to Americans rather than lecture them. If you want to make changes in government policies, apply your energies to Mexico’s laundry list of problems rather than meddling in domestic American politics.

-------------------------
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After WW1, the winners discovered that war was messy and they didn't want to do it anymore. The businesses discovered that wartime profits didn't justify the cost and the politicians discovered that wartime successes didn't justify the ultimate price paid for using them and decided that the appearance of force was just as good as the use of force. The losers of WW1 though, Germany and Russia, which had taken a severe beating only to fall victim to a German infused revolution, were under no such illusion. While the winners of WW1 were busy digesting their post-war gains and proclaiming an era of universal peace, the losers wanted revenge.

When the winners faced off against the losers once more, the winners tried diplomacy and were nearly eaten alive for it. The aftermath of England and France's diplomacy with Hitler and America's diplomacy with Stalin left Europe in rubble and flames and the remaining half of it occupied. Yet the only lesson that seemed to have been learned from diplomacy's defeat in the face of Communism and Nazism was to repeat every one of the follies of appeasement twice over.

In the 21st century European civilization once again looks at a menace in its midst and the response is equally unfocused. Some call for negotiation and compromise, others call for battle and most sit on the sidelines and await the inevitable. While America fights the War on Terror abroad, Europe continues losing the Demographic War at home. Israel has become America and Europe's Czechoslovakia, the dainty treat on the menu of concessions meant to appease the Islamic beast.

But of course the strong do not make concessions, only the weak do. Yet militarily America, Europe and Israel have vastly superior militaries in comparison to the nations and factions that threaten them. The weakness in them is not a weakness of force but a weakness of will. But where has that will gone?

Let's go back to the two men in the room. One has a knife and one has a machine gun. One is determined to kill the other. Which one will walk out of that room alive? The answer is, the one who is determined to kill the other. A weapon is no good unless it is used. Using a weapon as a bluff only works once at most and it stops working if your opponent is willing to take the risk or knows you won't use it.

The nature of the world is two men in a room, one has a gun and one has a knife. The man with the gun insists on trying to reason with the man with the knife, to enlighten him and democratize him. The man with the knife meanwhile grins and creeps closer and takes a few swipes at him. In return the man with the gun threatens him, waves the gun around and occasionally takes a shot at him to warn him away, without really trying to hit him. Is it any real mystery who will emerge alive from this conflict?

More important than the ability to fight is the willingness to fight. A national government that is not willing to fight even to protect its own citizens has committed treason and ceased to have any continuing legal justification for its existence. There are only three things a national government is truly needed for and the first of them is national defense. Yet national governments across the world, from America to Europe to Israel, have substituted national accommodation for national defense. Amnesty, integration, moderation and tolerance have become the new watchwords.

"We are too good to fight," proclaims the new Western ethos. "We will fight only for human rights, to bring freedom to other nations." Yet how can one bring freedom to other nations, when the fundamental freedoms a national government exists to protect, the freedom to live in peace from violence and terror are not respected. Peace through accommodation only produces a one sided war. A war that is slowly being lost.

Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence but between violence and nonexistence. That is a choice faced by Europe and Israel right now, not tomorrow or the day after. 9/11 emerged out of Hamburg as much as it did out of Afghanistan. That is why 9/11 should have been more of a wake up call to Europe than to America because it had become infected by the second stage of the global Jihad. Europe had become no longer merely just a target but a launching pad, a partially occupied territory Jihadis were using to get to the front line.

9/11 should have produced a recognition of the intertwined problem of demographics and Islamic terrorism, as the Cold War should have produced a recognition of the intertwined problem of the Soviet threat and Communist infiltration. Yet the same liberal Western elites who did their best to silence the recognition of Communist infiltration are now doing their best to silence the recognition of growing Muslim populations in Western nations and the terrorist threat. Those same Western liberal elites who blamed American and European intransigence toward Uncle Joe for the Cold War now blame America, Britain and Spain and Israel for enraging Uncle Osama.

As superior morality has become conflated with superior comfort, both physical and psychological, the political, academic and business elites who are creatures of a Post-WW1 ethos that tells them that war is the least profitable way to achieve their goals, continue to dance between bluff and accommodation. The very same brilliant minds that spawned the technological civilization we live in today frantically seek for some alternative to having to defend it on the battlefield. In their hands civilization has gone from steel to glass, fragile and trembling on the edge of an abyss as an unwillingness to fight even when needed has become the new morality and surrender, the supreme sacrifice that civilization makes for its enemies.

by ‘Pet Sheep’
January 11, 2008
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/02/two-men-in-room-superior-force-and.html

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The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation.

The most gruesome FALN attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.

FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims "reactionary corporate executives" and threatening: "You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can't escape." By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.

On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.

Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. "For me," the president concluded, "the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose."

His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of "guilt by association," were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were "in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity."

The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.

"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."

Observed Judge George Layton, who sentenced four FALN defendants for their conspiracy to use military-grade explosives to break an FALN leader from Ft. Leavenworth Penitentiary and detonate bombs at other public buildings, "[T]his case . . . represents one of the finest examples of preventive law enforcement that has ever come to this court's attention in the 20-odd years it has been a judge and in the 20 years before that as a practicing lawyer in criminal cases."

The FBI cracked the cases with the discovery of an FALN safe house and bomb factory. Video surveillance showed two of those on the clemency list firing weapons and building bombs intended for an imminent attack at a U.S. military installation. FBI agents obtained a warrant and entered the premises, surreptitiously disarming the bombs whose components bore the unmistakable FALN signature. They found 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false IDs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

A total of six safe houses were ultimately uncovered. Seven hundred hours of surveillance video were recorded, resulting in a mountain of evidence connecting the 16 prisoners to multiple FALN operations past and present.

Federal law enforcement agencies considered these individuals so dangerous, extraordinary security precautions were taken at their numerous trials. Courthouse elevators were restricted and no one, including the court officers, was permitted to carry a firearm in the courtroom.

Given all this, why would Bill Clinton, who had ignored the 3,226 clemency petitions that had piled up on his desk over the years, suddenly reach into the stack and pluck out these 16 meritless cases? (The New York Times ran a column with the headline, "Bill's Little Gift.")

Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.

Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners' delay in refusing to renounce violence "speaks volumes," she said.

The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn't actually asked for clemency.

To push the deal through, signed statements renouncing violence and expressing remorse were required by the Justice Department. The FALN prisoners, surely relishing the embarrassment and discomfiture they were causing the president and his wife, had previously declined to accept these conditions. Committed and unrepentant militants who did not accept the authority of the United States, they refused to apologize for activities they were proud of in order to obtain a clemency they never requested.

So desperate was the White House to get the deal finalized and out of the news, an unprecedented 16-way conference call was set up for the "petitioners" who were locked up in 11 different federal facilities so that they could strategize a response to the president's offer. Two eventually refused to renounce their cause, preferring to serve out their lengthy sentences rather than follow the White House script.

Mr. Clinton's fecklessness in the handling of these cases was demonstrated by the fact that none of the prisoners were required, as a standard condition of release, to cooperate in ongoing investigations of countless unsolved FALN bombing cases and other crimes. Mrs. Clinton's so-called disagreement with her husband on the matter made no mention of that fact. The risk of demanding such a requirement, of course, was that the prisoners might have proudly implicated themselves, causing the entire enterprise to implode, with maximum damage to the president and potentially sinking Hillary Clinton's Senate chances.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rican politicians in New York who'd been crowing to their constituents about the impending release of these "freedom fighters" were enraged and insulted at Hillary Clinton's withdrawal of support. "It was a horrible blunder," said State Sen. Olga A. Mendez. "She needs to learn the rules."

The first lady called her failure to consult the Puerto Rican political establishment before assessing the entire issue a mistake "that will never happen again" -- even as the cops who had been maimed and disfigured by FALN operations continued to be ignored. Tom and Joe Connor, two brothers who were little boys when their 33-year-old father, Frank, was killed in the Fraunces Tavern attack, were dumbstruck to learn that White House staffers referred to the FALN militants as "political prisoners" and were planning a meeting with their children to humanize their plight.

Members of Congress viewed the clemencies as a dangerous abuse of presidential power that could not go unchallenged. Resolutions condemning the president's action were passed with a vote of 95-2 in the Senate, 311-41 in the House. It was the most they could do; the president's pardon power, conferred by the Constitution, is absolute. The House launched an investigation, subpoenaing records from the White House and Justice in an effort to determine whether proper procedure had been followed. President Clinton promptly invoked executive privilege, putting Justice Department lawyers in the impossible position of admitting that they had sent the White House a recommendation on the issue, but barred from disclosing what it was.

Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony.

The investigation revealed that the White House was driving the effort to release the prisoners, rather than the other way around. White House aides created talking points and strategies for a public campaign on the prisoners' behalf included asking prominent individuals for letters supporting clemency.

Jeffrey Farrow, a key adviser on the White House Interagency Working Group for Puerto Rico recommended meetings with the president and the three leading members of Congressional Hispanic Caucus who were pushing the effort, stating in a March 6, 1999 email, "This is Gutierrez's [sic] top priority as well as of high constituent importance to Serrano and Velazquez." The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste sent an email to White House Counsel Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency issue, supporting Mr. Farrow's view, saying, "Chuck -- Jeff's right about this -- very hot issue." Another adviser in the Working Group, Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, noted that releasing the prisoners would be "fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters)."

And there you have it. Votes.

While the pardon scandals that marked Bill and Hillary Clinton's final days in office are remembered as transactions involving cronies, criminals and campaign contributors, the FALN clemencies of 1999 should be remembered in the context of the increasing threat of domestic and transnational terrorism that was ramping up during the Clinton years of alleged peace and prosperity. To wit, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivan’s bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot.

It was within that context that the FBI gave its position on the FALN clemencies -- which the White House succeeded in keeping out of news coverage but ultimately failed to suppress -- stating that "the release of these individuals will psychologically and operationally enhance the ongoing violent and criminal activities of terrorist groups, not only in Puerto Rico, but throughout the world." The White House spun the clemencies as a sign of the president's universal commitment to "peace and reconciliation" just one year after Osama bin Laden told his followers that the United States is a "paper tiger" that can be attacked with impunity.

It would be a mistake to dismiss as "old news" the story of how and why these terrorists were released in light of the fact that it took place during the precise period when Bill Clinton now claims he was avidly engaged, even "obsessed," with efforts to protect the public from clandestine terrorist attacks. If Bill and Hillary Clinton were willing to pander to the demands of local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights activists defending bomb-makers convicted of seditious conspiracy, how might they stand up to pressure from other interest groups working in less obvious ways against U.S. interests in a post-9/11 world?

Radical Islamists are a sophisticated and determined enemy who understand that violence alone will not achieve their goals. Islamist front groups, representing themselves as rights organizations, are attempting to get a foothold here as they have already in parts of Western Europe by deftly exploiting ethnic and racial politics, agitating under the banner of civil liberties even as they are clamoring for the imposition of special Shariah law privileges in the public domain. They believe that the road to America's ultimate defeat is through the back door of policy and law and they are aggressively using money, influence and retail politics to achieve their goal.

On the campaign trail, the Clintons like to say that Bill is merely supportive and enthusiastic, "just like all the other candidates' spouses." Nothing could be further from the truth. Returning Bill and Hillary Clinton to the White House would present the country with the unprecedented situation of a former and current president simultaneously occupying the White House, the practical implications of which have yet to be fully explored.

The FALN clemencies provide a disturbing example of how the abuse or misuse of presidential prerogative, under the guise of policy, can be put in service of the personal and private activities of the president's spouse -- and beyond the reach of meaningful congressional oversight.

Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Wall Street Journal Online:
February 12, 2008; Page A17

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First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break their tradition of uniformed service. Ivy League universities once produced heroes. Now they resist Reserve Officer Training Corps representation on their campuses.

Yet, our leading universities still produce a disproportionate number of U.S. political leaders. The men and women destined to lead us in wartime dismiss military service as a waste of their time and talents.

Delighted to pose for campaign photos with our troops, elected officials in private disdain the military. Only one serious presidential aspirant in either party is a veteran, while another presidential hopeful pays as much for a single haircut as I took home in a month as an Army private.

Second, we've stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools. Since the 1960s, one history course after another has been cut, while the content of those remaining focuses on social issues and our alleged misdeeds. Dumbed-down textbooks minimize the wars that kept us free.

As a result, ignorance of the terrible price our troops had to pay for freedom in the past creates absurd expectations about our present conflicts. When the media offer flawed or biased analyses, the public lacks the knowledge to make informed judgments.

This combination of national leadership with no military expertise and a population that hasn't been taught the cost of freedom leaves us with a government that does whatever seems expedient and a citizenry that believes whatever's comfortable. Thus, myths about war thrive.

Myth No. 1: War doesn't change anything.

This campus slogan contradicts all of human history. Over thousands of years, war has been the last resort - and all too frequently the first resort - of tribes, religions, dynasties, empires, states and demagogues driven by grievance, greed or a heartless quest for glory. No one believes that war is a good thing, but it is sometimes necessary. We need not agree in our politics or on the manner in which a given war is prosecuted, but we can't pretend that if only we laid down our arms all others would do the same.

Wars, in fact, often change everything. Who would argue that the American Revolution, our Civil War or World War II changed nothing? Would the world be better today if we had been pacifists in the face of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan?

Certainly, not all of the changes warfare has wrought through the centuries have been positive. Even a just war may generate undesirable results, such as Soviet tyranny over half of Europe after 1945. But of one thing we may be certain: a U.S. defeat in any war is a defeat not only for freedom, but for civilization. Our enemies believe that war can change the world. And they won't be deterred by bumper stickers.

Myth No. 2: Victory is impossible today.

Victory is always possible, if our nation is willing to do what it takes to win. But victory is, indeed, impossible if U.S. troops are placed under impossible restrictions, if their leaders refuse to act boldly, if every target must be approved by lawyers, and if the American people are disheartened by a constant barrage of negativity from the media. We don't need generals who pop up behind microphones to apologize for every mistake our soldiers make. We need generals who win.

And you can't win if you won't fight. We're at the start of a violent struggle that will ebb and flow for decades, yet our current generation of leaders, in and out of uniform, worries about hurting the enemy's feelings.

One of the tragedies of our involvement in Iraq is that while we did a great thing by removing Saddam Hussein, we tried to do it on the cheap.

It's an iron law of warfare that those unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front will pay it with compound interest in the end. We not only didn't want to pay that bill, but our leaders imagined that we could make friends with our enemies even before they were fully defeated. Killing a few hundred violent actors like Moqtada al-Sadr in 2003 would have prevented thousands of subsequent American deaths and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths. We started something our national leadership lacked the guts to finish.

Despite our missteps, victory looked a great deal less likely in the early months of 1942 than it does against our enemies today. Should we have surrendered after the fall of the Philippines? Today's opinionmakers and elected officials have lost their grip on what it takes to win. In the timeless words of Nathan Bedford Forrest, "War means fighting, and fighting means killing."

And in the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."

Myth No. 3: Insurgencies can never be defeated.

Historically, fewer than one in 20 major insurgencies succeeded.

Virtually no minor ones survived. In the mid-20th century, insurgencies scored more wins than previously had been the case, but that was because the European colonial pow ers against which they rebelled had already decided to rid themselves of their imperial possessions. Even so, more insurgencies were defeated than not, from the Philippines to Kenya to Greece. In the entire 18th century, our war of independence was the only insurgency that defeated a major foreign power and drove it out for good.

The insurgencies we face today are, in fact, more lethal than the insurrections of the past century. We now face an international terrorist insurgency as well as local rebellions, all motivated by religious passion or ethnicity or a fatal compound of both. The good news is that in over 3,000 years of recorded history, insurgencies motivated by faith and blood overwhelmingly failed. The bad news is that they had to be put down with remorseless bloodshed.

Myth No. 4: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems.

In most cases, the reverse is true. Negotiations solve nothing until a military decision has been reached and one side recognizes a peace agreement as its only hope of survival. It would be a welcome development if negotiations fixed the problems we face in Iraq, but we're the only side interested in a negotiated solution. Every other faction - the terrorists, Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, Iran and Syria - is convinced it can win.

The only negotiations that produce lasting results are those conducted from positions of indisputable strength.

Myth No. 5: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies.

When dealing with bullies, either in the schoolyard or in a global war, the opposite is true: if you don't fight back, you encourage your enemy to behave more viciously.

Passive resistance only works when directed against rule-of-law states, such as the core English-speaking nations. It doesn't work where silent protest is answered with a bayonet in the belly or a one-way trip to a political prison. We've allowed far too many myths about the "innate goodness of humanity" to creep up on us. Certainly, many humans would rather be good than bad. But if we're unwilling to fight the fraction of humanity that's evil, armed and determined to subjugate the rest, we'll face even grimmer conflicts.

Myth No. 6: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.

It's an anomaly of today's Western world that privileged individuals feel more sympathy for dictators, mass murderers and terrorists - consider the irrational protests against Guantanamo - than they do for their victims. We were told, over and over, that killing Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hanging Saddam Hussein or targeting the Taliban's Mullah Omar would only unite their followers. Well, we haven't yet gotten Osama or Omar, but Zarqawi's dead and forgotten by his own movement, whose members never invoke that butcher's memory. And no one is fighting to avenge Saddam.

The harsh truth is that when faced with true fanatics, killing them is the only way to end their influence. Imprisoned, they galvanize protests, kidnappings, bombings and attacks that seek to free them. Want to make a terrorist a martyr? Just lock him up. Attempts to try such monsters in a court of law turn into mockeries that only provide public platforms for their hate speech, which the global media is delighted to broadcast.

Dead, they're dead. And killing them is the ultimate proof that they lack divine protection. Dead terrorists don't kill.

Myth No. 7: If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them.

Did the bombing campaign against Germany turn us into Nazis? Did dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, as well as millions of Japanese lives, turn us into the beasts who conducted the Bataan Death March?

The greatest immorality is for the United States to lose a war. While we seek to be as humane as the path to victory permits, we cannot shrink from doing what it takes to win. At present, the media and influential elements of our society are obsessed with the small immoralities that are inevitable in wartime. Soldiers are human, and no matter how rigorous their training, a miniscule fraction of our troops will do vicious things and must be punished as a consequence. Not everyone in uniform will turn out to be a saint, and not every chain of command will do its job with equal effectiveness. But obsessing on tragic incidents - of which there have been remarkably few in Iraq or Afghanistan - obscures the greater moral issue: the need to defeat enemies who revel in butchering the innocent, who celebrate atrocities, and who claim their god wants blood.

Myth No. 8: The United States is more hated today than ever before.

Those who served in Europe during the Cold War remember enormous, often-violent protests against U.S. policy that dwarfed today's let's-have-fun-on-a-Sunday-afternoon rallies. Older readers recall the huge ban-the-bomb, pro-communist demonstrations of the 1950s and the vast seas of demonstrators filling the streets of Paris, Rome and Berlin to protest our commitment to Vietnam. Imagine if we'd had 24/7 news coverage of those rallies. I well remember serving in Germany in the wake of our withdrawal from Saigon, when U.S. soldiers were despised by the locals - who nonetheless were willing to take our money - and terrorists tried to assassinate U.S. generals.

The fashionable anti-Americanism of the chattering classes hasn't stopped the world from seeking one big green card. As I've traveled around the globe since 9/11, I've found that below the government-spokesman/professional-radical level, the United States remains the great dream for university graduates from Berlin to Bangalore to Bogota.

On the domestic front, we hear ludicrous claims that our country has never been so divided. Well, that leaves out our Civil War. Our historical amnesia also erases the violent protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the mass confrontations, rioting and deaths. Is today's America really more fractured than it was in 1968?

Myth No. 9: Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist problems.

This claim rearranges the order of events, as if the attacks of 9/11 happened after Baghdad fell. Our terrorist problems have been created by the catastrophic failure of Middle Eastern civilization to compete on any front and were exacerbated by the determination of successive U.S. administrations, Democrat and Republican, to pretend that Islamist terrorism was a brief aberration. Refusing to respond to attacks, from the bombings in Beirut to Khobar Towers, from the first attack on the Twin Towers to the near-sinking of the USS Cole, we allowed our enemies to believe that we were weak and cowardly. Their unchallenged successes served as a powerful recruiting tool.

Did our mistakes on the ground in Iraq radicalize some new recruits for terror? Yes. But imagine how many more recruits there might have been and the damage they might have inflicted on our homeland had we not responded militarily in Afghanistan and then carried the fight to Iraq. Now Iraq is al-Qaeda's Vietnam, not ours.

Myth No. 10: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own.

The point may come at which we have to accept that Iraqis are so determined to destroy their own future that there's nothing more we can do. But we're not there yet, and leaving immediately would guarantee not just one massacre but a series of slaughters and the delivery of a massive victory to the forces of terrorism. We must be open-minded about practical measures, from changes in strategy to troop reductions, if that's what the developing situation warrants. But it's grossly irresponsible to claim that our presence is the primary cause of the violence in Iraq - an allegation that ignores history.

Myth No. 11: It's all Israel's fault. Or the popular Washington corollary: "The Saudis are our friends."

Israel is the Muslim world's excuse for failure, not a reason for it.

Even if we didn't support Israel, Islamist extremists would blame us for countless other imagined wrongs, since they fear our freedoms and our culture even more than they do our military. All men and women of conscience must recognize the core difference between Israel and its neighbors:

Israel genuinely wants to live in peace, while its genocidal neighbors want Israel erased from the map.

As for the mad belief that the Saudis are our friends, it endures only because the Saudis have spent so much money on both sides of the aisle in Washington. Saudi money continues to subsidize anti-Western extremism, to divide fragile societies, and encourage hatred between Muslims and all others. Saudi extremism has done far more damage to the Middle East than Israel ever did. The Saudis are our enemies.

Myth No. 12: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault.

Muslim extremists would like everyone to believe this, but it just isn't true. The collapse of once great Middle Eastern civilizations has been under way for more than five centuries, and the region became a backwater before the United States became a country. For the first century and a half of our national existence, our relations with the people of the Middle East were largely beneficent and protective, notwithstanding our conflict with the Barbary Pirates in North Africa. But Islamic civilization was on a downward trajectory that could not be arrested. Its social and economic structures, its values, its neglect of education, its lack of scientific curiosity, the indolence of its ruling classes and its inability to produce a single modern state that served its people all guaranteed that, as the West' s progress accelerated, the Middle East would fall ever farther behind. The Middle East has itself to blame for its problems.

None of us knows what our strategic future holds, but we have no excuse for not knowing our own past. We need to challenge inaccurate assertions about our policies, about our past and about war itself. And we need to work within our community and state education systems to return balanced, comprehensive history programs to our schools. The unprecedented wealth and power of the United States allows us to afford many things denied to human beings throughout history. But we, the people, cannot afford ignorance.

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer, strategist and author of 22 books, including the recent "Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century"

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The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and asserting the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are successfully denying Americans electrical power.

There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.

The brownouts in California are testimony to what happens when there are an insufficient number of plants to generate electricity, whether it comes from coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power.

Right now the population of America is just over 300 million. The rate of population growth is 30 to 40 million people a year – a number equal to the population of California today. All will want and need electricity. Where will it come from if the Greens are successful in thwarting the building of power generation plants?

“Coal-fired power plants are the wrong investment for our climate, our health, and our economy,” said Becky Tarbotton, director of Rainforest Action Network’s Global Finance Campaign. (1) Such plants do not affect the climate. (2) Americans now have the longest life expectancy ever, so our health is not an issue. (3) Our economy is entirely based on the availability and provision of electrical and other forms of energy.

The Greens opposed nuclear energy so successfully we haven’t seen a new plant built in 30 years. If you want to increase the amount of electricity and, at the same time, reduce the cost of electricity, build a few and watch what happens.

Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine points out that, “The construction of just one nuclear power station like Palo Verde (CA) in each of the 50 states, with a full complement of 10 reactors, would supply all of the energy that the United States currently imports – with, in addition and at current prices, $300 billion per year worth of excess energy to export.”

If we can’t get nuclear facilities built and we can’t get any new coal-fired plants, what does RAN propose? The same thing as the other Greens do. So-called “renewable energy.” And “efficiency.”

Neither solar, nor wind energy is EVER going to be able to produce the amount of energy Americans use and need. The laws of physics eliminate these “solutions” to our energy needs

Energy is measured in British Thermal Units, BTUs. One BTU is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2006 the United States used 99.5 quadrillion BTUs of energy for electrical energy and for our transportation needs.

What energy sources were used to generate the power? Fully 40% came from oil, 23% came from coal, 22% came from natural gas, 8% came from nuclear plants, 2.9% came from biomass, including ethanol, 2.8% came from conventional hydroelectric dams, and less than 1% came from all other alternatives combined, geothermal, wind and solar power.

Along with the efforts to stop any means to provide the power America needs for its present and future energy, the U.S. government heavily taxes energy industries and has placed so many restrictions on new nuclear and hydrocarbon power production that there has been very little development for two generations. On top of this, it has mandated that a large portion of the nation’s corn crop, an essential element of our food supply, be liquefied and burned for fuel!

The most recent “energy bill” passed by Congress and signed by the President actually bans Thomas Edison’s most famous invention, the incandescent light bulb!

If this keeps up, we are going to run out of energy in America for electricity and for transportation. The vast oil tar deposits in Canada are a target of the Natural Resources Defense Council that has challenged the granting of permits required to expand refineries and pipelines on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border.

A recently proposed billion-dollar project by ExxonMobil to construct a storage facility and pipeline for liquefied natural gas off shore of New Jersey immediately drew criticism by environmental groups seeking to thwart access to this energy source. Meanwhile the State’s largest daily reported on February 9th that New Jersey ratepayers “will see double-digit increases in their electric bills.”

Whether it’s coal, gas or oil, the Greens are doing everything they can to return the United States to the same conditions that existed from before the Revolution to fifty years after the Civil War. The use and expansion of electrical energy did not really begin until the last century.

An energy catastrophe is looming for the nation and Americans cannot even look to Congress to avert it.

Alan Caruba

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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Response by David R.:

You know, I've been thinking;

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

If you ever want to be deeply chilled, see the movie "Hotel Rwanda." It is a graphic, true, example of what civlization looks like in the first few weeks as its breaking down. I've been thinking about how to "get by" as these colossal idiots pitch civilization out the window. I see it coming from all sources. From the crazy greenies, to the Obamaniacs, to the Petroleumobsessives. As the Roman empire started to fray at the edges, average people started stealing the rocks from the aqueducts to make their huts. They destroyed massive, irreplacable, civilization spreading, infrastructure to serve their own immediate interests. Now, I see tweakers and street people stealing plumbing, electrial fixtures, even phone lines, for scrap. Destroying civilizations highly engineered devices to convert them to their base elements. This is what its like all over Africa. This is why they can't have a phone line or telegraph. This was what made it so difficult to put in railroads there. This is why they have no electricity grid. Now it's happening here. What I wonder about is if it is getting time to "go feudal" again. It worked in Africa with cell phones. It is much harder to protect large society projects than smaller (albeit less efficient) personal ones. Cell phones work in Africa because the telecom companies only have to protect their few towers. The average person only has to protect the phone in their pocket, not their house 24/7. Likewise, it may be time to try and inefficiently generate some of our own power with solar and wind. It may be time to make sure that fireplace works. It may be better to own a clockwork winding radio than a nice big stereo. I'm not prepared to try to live "off the grid", but that may be the future social model here in America and around the world. It's a sort of "technological feudalism," where the largest institutions have to be devolved down to individuals, because there is insufficient social cohesion to permit the maintenance of large projects. Certainly this would be the solution in a place like Iraq, where individual production resources would deny insugents large targets of opportunity. I'm afraid we might go the same way here. If we get the massive power shortages we foresee due to lack of new power plants, or if we can't get enough consensus to deal with our water and fuel resources, we may need more "personalized" systems. It will be more expensive and less efficient, but it might be all we can depend on. I bet anybody with wind-up radios, a few solar cells, a fireplace, guns, a CB radio, and a water distillation kit, was a lot more comfortable in New Orleans than the unprepared.

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Response by Jared D.:

London to Triple Daily Traffic Charge on Polluting Cars, SUVs
By Brian Lysaght
Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- London Mayor Ken Livingstone will triple the city's daily congestion charge to 25 pounds ($49) for the most-polluting cars and sport utility vehicles, in a bid to improve air quality. Owners of vehicles that emit more than 225 grams (0.5 pounds) of carbon dioxide a kilometer -- the so-called `G band' rating used for calculating U.K. vehicle tax -- will pay the increased fee to enter central London's congestion zone. The charge will be waived for owners of the least-polluting vehicles, Livingstone said at a news conference today.

The mayor introduced the charge in 2003 to reduce traffic, improve air quality and raise cash for public transportation. Milan, Stockholm and Singapore have similar systems, and New York is considering one.

In London, congestion is increasing even though the charge has reduced the number of drivers entering the zone. The city's transportation department reported ``a sharp increase in congestion'' inside the zone in a report last year. It said the trend reflects traffic-management changes to allocate more road space for buses and bicycles, as well as roadwork by utility Thames Water, which began a program last year to upgrade Victorian-era pipes.

The vehicles that will qualify for the 25-pound charge include: Ford Mondeo cars with V6 gasoline engines; BMW 335i convertibles and 540i and 730i sedans; and Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover sport utilities, according to the U.K. Department for Transport Web site.

Livingstone has criticized drivers of ``Chelsea tractors,'' as sport utilities are called locally, saying the vehicles are
wasteful and impractical in London. He has said he wants to provide incentives for them to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. The least polluting vehicles, which emit less than 120 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometer and won't pay the charge, include the Toyota Prius gasoline-electric powered car and Vauxhall Corsa and Peugeot 107 models.

Since the charge was introduced, Livingstone increased the price to 8 pounds a day from 5 pounds and expanded the area covered to take in west London. He has introduced other traffic-management plans as well. On Feb. 4, the city imposed a 200 pound-a-day charge on the most polluting commercial trucks. The city also plans to introduce a fleet of 6,000 street-rental bicycles starting in 2010, a project similar to that under way in Paris, and to improve bike routes in the city, Livingstone said yesterday.

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Maybe this next bit of information will clue you in.

The Prince George's County school system is allocated $11,325 per student, per year. This sum comes from a variety of sources, and roughly breaks down this way: About 7 percent ($780) comes from the federal government; 46 percent comes from the state of Maryland ($5,246); and 47 percent comes from local monies such as city budgets ($5,298).

In order for the schools to receive that money, a child must be enrolled in the school. Simple enough, right? Well, according to the state regulations on vaccinations, a kid CAN'T be enrolled if he doesn't have his vaccinations up to date. In fact, he could be expelled.

According to the news report, there were as many as 2,300 hundred kids being barred from school due to their non-compliance with the vaccination policy. If those kids were tossed from school due to state regulations. That would mean the PG County school district would suddenly be out an astounding $26 million in revenue from the state and the city! No wonder they wanted to threaten the parents with jail!

Don't let them suck you in with all that "it's for the safety of the children" nonsense. As always, it's about the almighty dollar. This is just the kind of issue that gets me going, because it's not only about good health, it's also about the protection of your personal freedoms. And the sad truth is, when it comes to vaccinations, the choice is very rarely yours. Your body and the bodies of your children are the property of the government when it comes to vaccines. It's not only un-constitutional; it's downright scary.

But when it comes to creating supplements with everything you need and nothing you don't, it's not just a matter of weeding through the junk. Sometimes it means finding Thankfully, there's no such thing as bad publicity. The more these kinds of things happen, the more the anti-vaccine groups are able to get some much-needed media attention for the cause. There are two great groups out there who are fighting the good fight against vaccines: PROVE (Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education) and the American Association for Health Freedom (AAHF). These organizations are doing what they can to ensure the philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccinations are enforced throughout the country.

You read that right. Refusing vaccines just isn't a matter of saying, "no thanks." While every state in the union protects those medically exempt from vaccinations (those with proven allergies to certain vaccines), and every state except Michigan and West Virginia offer religious exemptions, there are ONLY 18 STATES that offer a philosophical exemption. The fact that most states make a legal distinction between a "religious exemption" and a "philosophical exemption" (which, if you ask me, is the same exact thing), is bureaucratic hair-splitting of the most egregious kind.

If a study came out tomorrow that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that vaccines weren't dangerous (don't hold your breath, by the way), I would STILL be shouting about exemptions at the top of my lungs. Why? Because it is a FUNDAMENTAL PERSONAL RIGHT to CHOOSE what is and what is not injected into your body and the bodies of your children. This right needs to be upheld in ALL 50 states in the U.S., and FULLY PROTECTED by the federal government. The right to choose to be fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, or completely unvaccinated should be up to you. And no amount of money or influence should be able to bend such a basic constitutional freedom. Period.

Taking aim at mandatory shots,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Response by Suzanne:
Outrageous!

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I remember well the Carter years, with its mind numbing cowardice in the face of dangers from the USSR and Iran, and how it caused us to doubt our greatness. And I remember a man named Ronald Reagan, and how he inspired an entire nation to rendevous with its destiny once again, and in an inconceivable turn of events, won the Cold War and knocked down the Berlin War without firing a single shot. His courage and belief in America inspired policies that freed all of Eastern Europe and kept budding Islamofascism at bay, all the while he was opposed and reviled by the Democrats, the America-haters and the Communists worldwide.

I remember the horror of the Clinton years, when a rapist and abuser of women was the Commander in Chief, aided and abetted by a power hungry woman who hated the military. I remember fighting for his impeachment, only to be betrayed by a Republican Senate that had no courage, or that was compromised by stolen FBI files and failed to discharge its lawful duty to remove a lawbreaking President who brought shame to the Oval Office. I remember recoiling in horror and shame when a six year old boy whose mother drowned in an attempt to bring him to freedom from Cuba was removed from a private home under the force of arms and returned to Fidel Castro.

I remember crying tears of gladness when our current President said the words of his Oath of Office on January 20, 2001, ending my personal nightmare, an eight year long nightmare, of having Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House.

The events of these last seven years are nothing what I expected that cold, clear January morning. The events of September 11, 2001, the invasion of Iraq, the War on Terror, all of them returned me to the patriotic days of my youth. I saw a nation united in purpose for the first time in my adult life, as the nation had been torn since the Vietnam War.

But I saw a Republican President I believed in, and a Republican Party that was my home politically, shift in a slow, determined, unstoppable drift away from its principles, adopting the policies and views of the Democrats, to the point where we now face having as our Presidential candidate, John McCain, an enemy of conservatism, of Republican principles, and of American sovereignty.

As I pondered these things today, February 2, 2008, I have come to a very troubling observation.

We conservatives always had a home in the Republican Party. President Reagan even came here when the Democrat Party became too radical for him in the 1950s. We were the foundation of 12 years of the Reagan Bush era and we fought for the current President to give him eight years, even in the face of a national election being stolen from him.

But when our country was threatened by the prospect of a mass amnesty last May and June, allowing 20 million or more illegal immigrants to become defacto citizens by fiat, we erupted in a display of power that had Washington DC recoiling in terror. We derailed their plan to ensure the Balkanization of America by giving it 20 million more citizens who would not assimilate into the culture, and to ensure a cheap workforce, and to permanently undercut American worker's wages. Together with Global Warming and carbon credits, America could be brought to heel and managed.

We stopped McCain-Kennedy and its cousin, alright. But there was a price to pay for our insolence.

We, the America loving conservatives of the Republican Party, are no longer needed by this party. We are too narrow minded and old school. Flag waving and the supremacy of the American Way are passe. We are not inclusive. We are standing in the way of the elites in Washington DC from making their wet dreams a reality--making America an also-ran, not a super-power. America as a third world country, not as better than anyone else. An America that is afraid to face its Islamic enemies,that worries about what the world thinks about it, strangled in political correctness, surrendering its freedoms on a daily basis in the vain hope for security.

We keepers of the flame of American liberty are now the enemy. When Hillary labelled us the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, we took that has a label of pride. But now the Republican establishment has decreed that we are a conspiracy to be defeated within our own party, as we face the prospect of John McCain being rammed down our throats. John McCain, the Manchurian Candidate, the man who has betrayed every tenet of Republicanism in his quest for power,who has railed against conservatives at every turn, who is bound and determined to grant amnesty to 10% of Mexico's population now within our borders, he is the one being annointed by the elites as our candidate.

His job is not only to become the candidate of choice, but to be the means of the destruction of the power of the conservative base of the Republican Party.

Between McCain, Obama and Hillary, there isn't a dime's worth of difference in their political views. The Republican and Democrat established elites have melded into one entity, and they will win no matter who gets nominated or who wins the general election, especially if McCain is the nominee. All three believe in unlimited amnesty, an open border, cap and trade globaloney, giving rights to Gitmo detainees, and the restriction of free speech and gun rights.

The MSM is their collective cheerleader, actively working to marginalize us as a viable force for the America we visualize.

Many of us will vote Republican in November, only because we cannot, in good conscience, vote for Obama or Clinton. The Republican establishment knows this, and knows because we are principled, we can not do otherwise. Rather than enlist us to help, they are engaged in a policy of containment and neutering, because we stand in the way of their vision of America.

McCain as a candidate will be a disaster. The Republican establishment knows this. But they don't care, because the goal is not to win this election. It is to remove us from the political table, and for them to join with their Democrat brothers in the march toward an America subsevient to global interests. Sovereignty is treated as a quaint, outmoded concept, even by many Republican governors who are pushing the globaloney nonsense that will cripple this nation.

The perfect storm of American politics is converging in a bid to elect one of three horrible candidates, McCain,Obama, or Clinton, to be our next President. The odds are that the Republicans will not only lose with McCain, but they will lose even more of the House and Senate, enough to relegate Republicans to a minority status for decades to come.

Where are the national Republican leaders speaking out against where our party is heading? As one looks over the events of the last 15 years, since the ascension and improbable election of a no good, draft dodging, lying huckster like Bill Clinton to President, we have witnessed a snowballing reversal of American values and fortunes. With Clinton II on the horizon, we face a complete collapse of American values and soveriegnty and freedom with the "CHANGE" that is being promised for the electorate.

That "change" is starting right now for us. By Tuesday midnight, we will know if the fate the elites have decreed for us will become reality, if McCain is our candidate.

In the past few days, the lenses through which I view politics have changed in prescription. I see now that we are the enemy to our own party's leaders, whose leaders have decreed that our nominee will be the anti-conservative, anti-Republican candidate. The other candidates still open to us, Huckster, Romney and Paul each have their own problems with our values.

There are only a few short days to stop the McCain Screwball express. As we fought the impossible fight against McCain and amnesty last year, we have but a few days to influence our fellow conservatives and Republicans not to allow the predetermined outcome to occur.

I offer this screed in an attempt to understand what is going on today, to explain the inexplicable in what is occurring to our party and our chances for success in November against the second ascension of the corrupt Clinton Machine. I wish not to tell my fellow conservative who they should vote for, but I ask them not to vote for McCain.

Others, including the Republican establishment, have decreed for us who are candidate should be. American loving Republicans should reserve the right to make that choice.

by Exit 82
posted blog commentary at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1963918/posts#comment

Hat tip: Connie Foust

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Some of the most memorable and shocking misfortunes are shootings in schools. There is a problem already. These are referred to as “shootings” as in, the threats shot their victims as if they were fish in a barrel. Shootings should be avoided by taking necessary action. If citizens on campus could have access to firearms these “shootings” would be referred to as “shootouts” as in, the threats tried to shoot their victims but several of the “fish” fought back with an equal deadly force and stopped the threat. Many seem to refuse to learn from past experience in the case of a school shooting. School shootings occur because the attackers know that no one will have a chance at fighting back. Schools are “Gun Free Zones.” Of course, this only applies to law abiding citizens.

Instead of allowing qualified persons in schools to carry firearms to assure safety, students and teachers lock themselves in little rooms and squeeze together. The logic behind this must be to assist the attackers in taking more lives. By grouping themselves together, the attackers can easily mow down three or four defenseless students with one shot. Those that invented the lockdown procedure believe in a false sense of security.

Zero-tolerance policies for guns by schools are an affront to U.S. Constitution and everything this country stands for. This must come to an end.

Incidents such as Columbine and the Virginia Tech shootings may have been prevented if law abiding citizens with FBI background checks and training were allowed to possess firearms on school grounds. Violent crimes are less likely to be committed when the attacker knows that their victims will defend themselves with deadly force.

Dave Kopel, research director for the Independence Institute, brings up an interesting point based on common sense thinking tactics: “Sure, blame the gun. Keep on ducking real responsibility for children's safety and moral education. Teach people to be afraid, but not how to protect themselves. Keep on hating inanimate objects and the law-abiding people who own them.” Another common mistaken belief is caused by the false sense of security that everyone will follow the rules. The truth is simple. Why would a criminal with intentions of breaking the law obey gun control laws? Laws banning firearms are only followed by law abiding citizens.

Prior to the enactment of the 1995 “Gun-Free School Zone” legislation signed by President Bill Clinton, teachers could bring firearms onto school grounds. Between 1977 and 1995 there was only one school shooting in states that had right-tocarry laws. Then the carnage began first in October 1997, in Pearl, Mississippi. No firearms on campus set the stage for mass killings. When there is nobody prepared to defend lives with deadly force an evil person sees an opportunity for a free ride.

During a school lockdown, some students feel safe.

School administrators believe that the perception of security is more important that providing real security for students.

Massad Ayoob, a law enforcement officer, renowned expert on firearms and self defense techniques estimates that one out of twenty teachers and administrators would be willing to carry firearms on campus.

Patrick Johnston describes several incidents that occurred within six weeks of each other in the United States public school system:

• A drifter walks off the street into a Colorado public school and kidnaps a half a dozen girls before sexually molesting then shooting one of them.
• Three Wisconsin teenagers are taken into custody for plotting a bomb attack on their school.
• A teacher is gunned down in Vermont as a man searches angrily from classroom to classroom for his ex-girlfriend.
• Another student in a rural school shoots his principal. (Johnston) What do all of the incidents have in common? These crimes were committed within the boundaries of safe “gun-free zones.” All of these hostiles shared one puzzle piece of knowledge that allowed them to choose their target and go through with their plans. No one was going to stop them.

Gun-Free Zones are extraordinarily dangerous places. All “gun-free zones” amount to are “selfdefense prohibition zones” for law abiding citizens, and therefore become “free-fire zones” for psychopaths, “terrorists,” and other homicidal criminals (Vieira). Schools are the most well known “gun-free zones.” If a picture of a laser gun is sketched by a student, there will most likely be serious consequences to pay for. The idea on firearms in schools must be reversed before any more occurrences transpire, causing more deaths of beloved students and children. The U.S. constitution, the constitutions of forty four states, common law, and the laws of all 50 states are acquainted with the right to use arms in selfdefense in one way or another. Right-to-carry laws respect the right to self-defense by allowing individual citizens to carry firearms for protection.

Why should the United States school systems remain vulnerable by not adapting to the only practical trend that succeeds in protection? It is time to restore liberty and safety at all our schools.

By Brett Hoeppner
January 9, 2008

Brett Hoeppner is an AP Honors Sophomore at Cactus Shadows High School, SCTP National Champion in Skeet Shooting, Arizona Junior Olympic Silver Medalist in International Skeet and a Life Member of the NRA.

http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2008/080109-02/GuestEditorial.html

Red State Patriot response: Linda Bentley reported in the January 30, 2008 Sonoran News that Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, after reading Brett Hoeppner’s convincing guest editorial about the fallacy of gun-free-school zones, introduced a bill that would allow concealed weapons on school grounds by persons in possession of a valid permit.

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I can hear you saying, “surely you aren’t saying that South Carolina has gone liberal -- are you?” Are you kidding me? Drive through the Carolinas and count the number of license plates from NJ, NY and Pennsylvania. There is not much Dixie in the Carolinas; it’s more like Trenton and Long Island with fireworks. “But”, you protest, “New Hampshire, is Live Free or Die, it’s been a backbone of conservatism since the 1950’s.” No longer my friends -- NH has become an exurb of Boston, with Boston’s sensibilities and, ugh, their voting tastes. NH hasn’t been reliably conservative since Reagan’s first term. These voters would rather be loved by the Boston Globe, than respected by the Union Leader.

But the evidence continues, you say, “Iowa, that’s America, with small town values and homespun sensibilities.” Wrong again -- Iowa is just a state brimming with farmers on the federal dole, college students and ex hippie professors looking to con, libs in training at Grinnell.

And Florida? As my bubbies would say in Bay Ridge -- puhleeeez. It’s the 6th borough and has been since the mid 1960’s. Liberals have been sliding down the I-95 corridor since Kennedy was elected.

Sadly these 4 states have done more than set the tone for the other 46 -- they’ve dictated terms. Frankly I could extend the analogy to include Nevada, which is down to about 13% native -- but why beat a dead horse.

What we have is the sick and twisted dreams of Pinch Sulzberger, Don Imus, Maureen Dowd, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews come true: the GOP has been forced to choose a nominee designed to cause the base to retch, and thereby not vote. Guaranteeing 4 years of Clinton score settling or Obama socializing entire corporate sectors.

Its time to simultaneously bring back democracy to the GOP and defang the left and her Rockefeller accomplices in the new Axis of Evil. It’s time for the nuclear option -- its time for the GOP to front-load the whole freaking process into one date. Make every state vote on exactly the same day. Make every candidate compete in EVERY state at the exact same time and hold every single GOP primary and caucus on Super Tuesday. When NH and IOWA complain, take a page from the Democrats and refuse to seat their delegates, or better yet, declare renegade states as straw polls.

This would balance our nomination process out. There will be no more “Big Mo”, no more singular precincts in obscure Iowa towns setting the tone for the rest of the country. If liberals from Englewood Cliffs NJ want to vote liberal, it’s going to get cancelled out by conservatives in Chattanooga -- who might actually get to vote for Fred. Its time to let Nebraska count as much as New Hampshire. Let Texas matter as much as South Carolina, let Florida be canceled out by California -- as it should be. The only two groups who have benefit from the current process are the media flacks selling the drama and John McCain establishment hacks. Does anyone think Fred Thompson got a fair hearing? Or Duncan Hunter? John McCain does not speak for me…or frankly for any one else, I know.

Folks, we have let the liberals and RINOS set the agenda. Open Borders, Higher Taxes, and surrender to Kyoto-worshipping technocrats. This is the Republican Party? But hey, the McCainiacs counter, “John McCain is a war hero -- right?” Let me be the first to say it’s not about what you did in the 60’s sir -- it’s about what you will do to America in 2009 and beyond.

This is our party, not John McCain’s or Mel Martinez's, or Lindsay Graham’s. The Republican Party is THE conservative party dammit. Let’s admit it and take it back. RINOS and Liberals have taken the GOP plane hostage, and its time for us passengers to revolt…and do what has to be done -- Let’s Roll.

Brett Winterble
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24726

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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