LOOKS LIKE A CIVIL WAR IS BEGINNING

Wow. Jimmie Bise at Right Wing News:

this very good post by Bruce at GayPatriot.

Here are my real fears about the United States heading into a civil war:

1. There is a clear distinction between those who want a more authoritarian/socialist nation versus those who want to preserve the capitalist/democratic America we live in.
2. There is a clear distinction between those who understand the principles and guidance and importance of the representative legislative process versus those who hide behind the Constitution as an excuse to create laws from the bench.
3. There is a clear distinction between those who favor strong national security vs. those who want a borderless, global government.
4. There is a clear distinction between those who hold US Constitutional principles dear (1st, 2nd, 10th Amendments in particular) and those who are ignorant or want to subvert those principles.
5. There is a clear distinction between those who want to maintain a sensible fiscal policy versus those statists in Washington who spend our tax money with reckless abandon.
6. There is a clear distinction between those who see themselves as Americans first versus those who want to segregate themselves into communities and ignore the national identity.
7. Despite his promises, surveys show that Americans have elected one of the most divisive Presidents since Richard Nixon.

These are serious issues that fundamentally challenge the formation of the Republic itself. Don't buy into the childish arguments that every criticism of the Federal Government is based in racism. That is ignorant and simple-minded talk.

I do believe there is a civil war coming in this country, but I doubt very much that it will be fought with guns nor do I believe that the overwhelming majority (and by that I mean 90 percent or better) of people angry with the President for his various schemes over the past eight months want a shooting war either.

However, there is a tension that the Democrats have brought to very near the breaking point and I don't see how it will be resolved without some sort of large revolutionary action. The Republican Party has exacerbated the problem as well, though, and whatever happens can be laid on their heads to some extent also.

Here's why I say that. In our democratic system, if people are displeased with what one party is doing, they generally have had another party running in the opposite direction to which they can turn. The hallmark of the two-party system is that each was different enough from the other to provide real alternatives. If the parties aren't all that different, or the voters don't see the parties as all that different, then the voters get stuck looking for another option. That state of being stuck builds tension until, at some point, it finds a release.

That release can show itself in a lot of different ways that don't involve what most of us think when we picture a civil war, but the lack of guns doesn't necessarily represent the lack of discontent or even anger....

The GOP hasn't presented much of an option to the big-spending, big-regulation, more government control essential planks of the Democratic platform recently at exactly the time when people are desperately looking for that very thing.

No kidding. And the part of the GOP "not presenting much of an option" is the part that so reviles Sarah Palin. To me, this underscores all the more her importance to revitalizing the party and bringing it back to bedrock, American values that the majority in the country, amazingly after years of liberal brainwashing in the schools and media, still ascribe to. He continues,

I don't think a genuine civil war is inevitable, no matter how hard the President pushes for New New Deal totalitarianism. I do think that, lacking a real release for the frustrations voters are feeling, the pressure will continue to build until it releases in 2010 and 2012. Those elections ought to be plenty interesting.

DO WE WANT FREEDOM OR NOT?

Thomas Sowell, as usual, puts it brilliantly: Utopia Versus Freedom

“Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” We have heard that many times.

What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether “change,” “universal health care” or “social justice.”

If we can be so easily stampeded by rhetoric that neither the public nor the Congress can be bothered to read, much less analyze, bills making massive changes in medical care, then do not be surprised when life and death decisions about you or your family are taken out of your hands — and out of the hands of your doctor — and transferred to bureaucrats in Washington…

Politicians are already one of the main reasons why medical insurance is so expensive. Insurance is designed to cover risks but politicians are in the business of distributing largesse. Nothing is easier for politicians than to mandate things that insurance companies must cover, without the slightest regard for how such additional coverage will raise the cost of insurance.

If insurance covered only those things that most people are most concerned about — the high cost of a major medical expense — the price would be much lower than it is today, with politicians piling on mandate after mandate.

Since insurance covers risks, there is no reason for it to cover annual checkups, because it is known in advance that annual checkups occur once a year. Automobile insurance does not cover oil changes, much less the purchase of gasoline, since these are regular recurrences, not risks.

But politicians in the business of distributing largesse — especially with somebody else’s money — cannot resist the temptation to pass laws adding things to insurance coverage. Many of those who are pushing for more government involvement in medical care are already talking about extending insurance coverage to “mental health” — which is to say, giving shrinks and hypochondriacs a blank check drawn on the federal treasury.

There are still some voices of sanity today, echoing what Edmund Burke said long ago.

“The study of human institutions is always a search for the most tolerable imperfections,”

according to Prof. Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago. If you cannot tolerate imperfections, be prepared to kiss your freedom goodbye.

(via Pookie's Toons)

READY FOR AMERICA

(more from Hope n' Change)

( via Hillbilly White Trash)

AND NO BETTER THAN THE KOOL-AID IS

ENGLISH AUTHOR SOON TO BE FATWAH'D

Wow. Guts. And from Europe, no less. Best selling author Sebastian Faulks had to read the Koran to research for a new novel. He had this to say, followed by some commentary from The Bookworm Room:

‘With the Koran there are no stories. And it has no ethical dimension like the New Testament, no new plan for life. It says ‘the Jews and the Christians were along the right tracks, but actually, they were wrong and I’m right, and if you don’t believe me, tough — you’ll burn for ever’. That’s basically the message of the book.’

I’m much struck by his point about the lack of a story in the Koran. It’s absolutely true that part of the Bible’s continuing relevance lies in the story-line it presents, whether the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament, or the Rashoman-like presentation of Christ’s life and teachings in the New Testament. The Koran is just Mohammed’s “me me me” — which isn’t helped by the fact that he doesn’t come across as a very nice “me” but, rather a violent, vindictive, self-centered “me.”

Thats IT! No WONDER The Obamunist is so crazy about Islam, self-centered narcissist that he is. It's a perfect fit!

Really, agree or disagree, and I think there is room for both, it is still amazing that someone will give other than the Official State Opinion and risk death for exercising his free speech. But then, I'm sure all those hoards of "moderate Muslims" in England will come to his defence. Won't they?

Isn't it the "religion of peace"?

(via Blue Collar Republican)

THE OFFICIAL OBAMA RECESS FLAG

Obama: "There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee weed up!"

GEE, WHY IS AFGHANISTAN NOT GOING AS WELL NOW?

Might have something to do with the Obamunist Government telling troops to read miranda rights on the freaking battle field.

And releasing inflammatory info from CIA interrogations where they (gasp!) made the terrorists uncomfortable.

Being more at war with the CIA than the terrorists.

Or maybe its because the Obamumist Government is really on the other side.

I mean, when they do things like this:

The Obama administration on Monday released a detainee from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to his home in Afghanistan, the latest departure from the controversial prison which is set to close in five months.

Mr. Jawad was seen by an Afghan policeman throwing the grenade at the US soldiers, killing one and wounding another and their interpreter.

Mr. Jawad’s partner was grabbed while in the process of throwing another grenade.

And, Mr. Jawad had two more grenades on his person at the time of his arrest.

As we have also previously noted, the assertion that Mr. Jawad is 12 years old is based on an Afghan ‘rights group’ who claims it was told that by Mr. Jawad’s mother. (As the BBC article notes, the science says he is at least 17.)

Lastly, as we have also already noted, Mr. Jawad confessed to his crimes at least twice – once to the Afghan police and then to the US authorities.

There has been no suggestion that the Americans tortured him. (Sweetness and Light)

So go kill more of our people, you brave, brave freedom fighter!

REPLAY: KLAVAN ON "THE GAYS"

The most real and sensible thing I think I've ever heard about the whole thing- just had to post it one more time....

EPISODE TWO: ZO MEETS NANCY!

You'll find out what REAL torture is!!!

(Part one here.)

An OBVIOUS bigot!

NATIONAL PARKS ARE RACIST!

Is it because of a Moose/Palin connection?

Is it because of violent tea-party-going grey squirrel attacks on Americans of African descent?

Or maybe those "purple mountain's majesty" are purple-ist and excluding other colors?

It's hard to tell, but according to ABC "news," our parks are just like southern plantations in the 1800's.

My God. Something HAS to be done! Its ridiculous to see any self-directed decisions on the part of Americans of African descent in this. They can't be anything but passive, helpless victims. To think otherwise would be as racist as.....the National Park System! I can't believe you even thought that! Go back with your white hood wearing chipmunks and WHITE tail deer, you hate-monger!

YOU WILL FORGET 9/11 BY PRESIDENTIAL DECREE

Srsly.

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry....

With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition isis launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.(American Spectator)

It's to be called the National Day of Service.

It's too "negative" to honor the dead and remember to stay vigilant. I mean, how exactly does that help the Marxist revolution? Geez!

Melissa Clouthier puts it well:

Islamofascists bent on destroying freedom, who hate Jews and Christians, and out of soul blotting envy murdered nearly 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11 should be remembered for being soulless killers. Those lost to their evil should be remembered as individuals who lost their lives because they lived their lives as free men to the end.

September 11, 2001 was not a good day just as December 7, 1941 was not a good day.

It is a day that should pass as a warning and remembrance of evil unchecked. People should be mindful and continue to live. Out of respect for the dead, the day should not be trivialized, but that's exactly what President Obama seeks to do.

(in case you think this was all the Dems doing, its worth remembering that a big part of the Republican party is screwing things up too. Michelle Malkin reminds us: Only 14 Republicans in the Senate voted against the bill. )

Drill, baby, drill...no...wait...that was something else....

TORTURE! TORTURE!

First the NYTimes, quickly becoming the propaganda arm of the Islamofascist movement, revealed that interrogators scared mass murdering terrorists with a drill and the sound of a gunshot. Yes. I feel just horrible about that too. Those poor, poor men! And now, From Gateway Pundit:

The radical Obama Justice Department has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases!
Now we can get to the bottom of these awful threats and caterpillar torture against Al-Qaeda detainees!

Well he had to do something about his sinking poll numbers! He needed a distraction- national security be damned. So what if it increases the violence against our troops? They're all a bunch of baby-killing, racist idiots anyway, according to all his friends. I bet not ONE of them even knows what arugula is....ha ha ha! Stupid cavemen! "Goddamn America!"

What is puzzling though, is how such kind, compassionate friends of humanity could somehow forget to say anything about this:

In May 2007, The Smoking Gun published a series of torture drawings that were captured at an Al-Qaeda torture house in Iraq. Nine days after the images were released, neither ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times nor The Washington Post ran a story with photos of the shocking evidence of al-Qaeda’s barbarism. (Gateway)

Funny, that.

WONDER WHY THIS MARINE WAS SO PISSED OFF?

First, earlier comments by the Congressman:



Then an interview with the Marine that gave him hell:

MANDATORY GOVERNMENT PSA's

You are hereby directed to listen and learn, by order of The One True Risen Obamessiah:

THE EUROPE WE ARE SUPPOSED TO EMULATE

According to Chairman Zero and his Marxist Minions.

Read and learn from the UK:

Dozens of quangos and taxpayer-funded organisations have ordered a purge of common words and phrases so as not to cause offence.

Among the everyday sayings that have been quietly dropped in a bid to stamp out racism and sexism are “whiter than white”, “gentleman’s agreement”, “black mark” and “right-hand man”.

That's crazy. Wait...that is mental-healthism. Damn.

MARK STEYN QUOTES

Right Wing News has posted a great list to prosecuted thought criminal, Mark Steyn's quotes.

Given the most recent blow to our national security coming from the left, in releasing the names and photos of interrogators, giving details of how they weren't nice by making mass murderers uncomfortable and calling this torture, thereby inflaming the ever-flammable Islamofascist world, I liked these especially:

Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" -- in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity." But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a five-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.

Certainly, not all Muslims want to fly planes into the Pentagon. But those that do do it in the name of their faith. And anyone minded to engage in an "anti-Islamic activity" will find quite a lot of support from leading Islamic scholars

But, by insisting on re-labeling terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Islam as "anti-Islamic activity," Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you.

If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe -- especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book What's The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.

Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" -- i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc -- and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you'll forgive the expression) that America's loser gun-nuts don't share the same sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.

A while back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long.

BTW, Happy Ramadan!

A PRIMER ON THE " DEATH PANELS"

Dr. Sanity has it laid out- A,B,C - so that it's perfectly clear. Check it. And about the phrase that Chairman Zero finds so "offensive" (snort!):

...there are many options for what you might call a panel that is set up to determine the "fair distribution" and "socially just" allocation of costly life-prolonging medical treatments, but "DEATH PANEL" captures the essence of what these arbitrary committess would do; and, in addition, it is a perfectly clear, concise, and to-the-point term.

What would you call them? Only the reality-challenged political left, with their loving, compassionate and bizarre notions of "social justice" would consider them... NICE.

UNDERSTANDING THE INCREASING HATRED ON THE LEFT

They won, and het they're hatred has been cranked up to enormous levels- all while they pat themselves on the back for being so kind and loving. Seems a little....crazy doesn't it?

Dr. Sanity (a professional, btw, who should know):

At The Corner, Peter Wehner writes about liberals "Channeling Hate" :

The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle has a post titled, “Who’s Crazy Now?”, in which she writes, “Liberal rage at right-wing loonies is starting to sound, well, a little loonie.” She cites comments by the Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne and the New York Times’s Frank Rich and asks, “Why are so many journalists losing basic touch with reality?”

It’s a good question. After all, liberals have the man they viewed as a secular savior, a “sort of God,” in the White House. Democrats control 60 seats in the Senate and a 257–178 advantage in the House. This was supposed to be their time. Yet if you go to the Left’s most important internet outlets and its cable news station of choice, MSNBC, you find anger, rage, and fury. This has become, I think, very nearly a permanent state for many of them. Keith Olbermann, the ESPN-sportscaster-turned-rabid-commentator, embodies this as well as anyone. His show is all about channeling hate. For years it was hate directed against Bush; today it is hate directed at others. It appears to have consumed him and turned him, and the guests who appear on his program, into comic figures. Olbermann’s show is interesting, then, not as a political program but as a sociological and psychological phenomenon. Perpetual anger and dissatisfaction is interesting to watch — for a while. Then it gets boring. And then it gets clinical.

In a post shortly before the November election, I wrote a piece titled, "Win or Lose, the Left Will Remain Dysfunctional" in which I argued exactly the same point, except that I already understood that this perpetual state of rage on the part of the left was a clinical syndrome:

Taken as a whole, they are evidence of an ongoing and determined refusal to face reality--because it is a reality that threatens the belief systm of a whole section of the American population. Without the delusions and conspiracies concocted by the always creative political left, their whole house of Marxist cards will come crumblin down.

Some have said that Unwillingness To Face Reality And Its Consequences is the most serious mental illness of our time; and that is most certainly true.

EXHIBIT A:

In an appearance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 21, Garofalo ripped into tea party protesters, or what some of the wizards of smart on the left have deemed “tea baggers” calling them “functionally retarded adults” and “racists.”

“Do you remember tea baggers?” Garofalo said. “It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don’t know why we can’t call them racists, or functionally retarded adults.”

(Big Hollywood)

That's not even to mention Pelosi, Reid, etc. calling us Nazis, hate-mongers, un-american, racists....

"A BUBBLE LAND OF NO CONSEQUENCES"

Melissa Clouthier:

The Tea Party movement was not born of President Barack Obama, much as the left would like to think so. Discontent raged around the TARP bailouts after years of excessive spending and Americans were helpless to stop it....

And now, the President and Congress want to push through Health Care Reform, that won’t help people’s health, cares little for the American taxpayer, and is anything but reform. And while California and Michigan face 15% unemployment rates and higher in some cities/industries, these same people want to raise taxes on Americans and kill the energy industry with Cap and Trade. It’s sheer insanity. It’s like the politicians live in some dream state where the reality of paying the bills doesn’t exist. It’s like they believe the American people will lay down and consent to a vast redistribution of hard-earned wealth when they’ve already lost so much to the hands of a wrong-headed governance.

But that’s exactly where politicians live. It’s a bubble land of no consequences. The only thing that engenders fear is the prospect of losing personal power. But even that concerns them little as they rig the system so that incumbents can enjoy permanent places of power. They spend the taxpayer’s money like tax revenue falls from magical, ever-producing gold trees. Americans thought this new administration would be rational. It’s not just more of the same. It’s worse.

And while the Democrats hatch plans to bury America in a tax and regulatory burden never before seen, where are the Republicans? They’re where they’ve been for years: Tremulous, attempting to curry favor with the press and with Democrats. Still, President Obama tries to blame these classic enablers for obstruction. It would be laughable if the charge wasn’t so insane. The Republicans have zero power. None. Their mismanagement when they had the reins has sent them into the political wilderness and yet they refuse to even fight rhetorically now when they have nothing to lose. The war of ideas is being fought by an out-of-power Republican Governor from the furthest reaches of America. Sarah Palin is the only one willing to call B.S. on the nonsense in plain language.

The Republicans worry about being called obstructionists instead of worrying that they have no core principles that they can, without hypocrisy, champion or defend. Believe something already! And then, vote a value without undercutting it by amoral behavior. Yeah, that might happen. The only chance of it happening is an engaged populace holding their feet to the fire.

The people, at long last, rise. The political class needs guidance, to put it mildly. Basically, things have been good enough and people have been busy enough that they stopped holding those entrusted with the keys to the law and treasury accountable. That time is over. All politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, would like the grassroots people to just go away. It seems evident that these folks are just getting warmed up.

Call them the mob, terrorists, haters, un-American, disloyal, treasonous, immoral, racist, deranged. They’re not going away. They are Americans. They deserve better than what they’re getting from the ruling class.

Tonight, a friend tweeted this timely quote: “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from it’s government.” – Thomas Paine

The government needs to relearn its place.