Archive for February, 2007
by Jeff Lukens
Thirty years after Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army, we remember the Vietnam War as a black hole from which we could not extract ourselves. It has become associated with such terms as "unwinnable," "futile" and "quagmire."
We owe a better remembrance for the blood-sacrifice our veterans made in this misunderstood war. In the Cold War, the belief was that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, then like dominoes all the countries of Southeast Asia would follow. While we may still debate the merits of our involvement there, everyone should agree our intentions there were noble.
by Carey Roberts
The greatest controversy during the upcoming political campaign will not be Republican vs. Democrat or conservative against liberal. Rather, the most riveting debate is likely to revolve around the question of whether a female president can better lead the nation than a man. It will be the ultimate Battle of the Sexes, played out in endless bedroom discussions, backyard debates, and newspaper headlines.
Three years ago Marie Wilson wrote a book called Closing the Leadership Gap in which she wrote (somewhat ungrammatically) that the United States "has been steered by male leadership who tend to lead from a self-centered, self-preservation perspective," whereas, "Women…are inclined to lead, their families and nations, from an other-centered perspective."
Hillary Rodham Clinton soon picked up on that theme and began to brag that female officials are more truthful than their male counterparts. At the 2005 Women’s Global Leadership Summit, HRC claimed that "Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of ethical behavior and lowers corruption."
by Christopher Adamo
It is neither alarmist nor prophetic to state with grim certainty that America will, in the not too distant future, suffer yet another major Islamist attack, possibly dwarfing the enormity of 9-11. Since shortly after that event, forces both within our nation and abroad have diligently sought to undermine American resolve to appropriately respond to the enemy. As a result, that enemy now perceives a growing and broadening opportunity to eventually hit us again.
Barring a nearly miraculous rebirth of American determination to avert that possibility (and any remnants of such determination are rapidly dissipating from the mainstream of society), the Islamists will, sooner or later, fall upon a feasible occasion to strike, and they will use it.
By Alan Caruba
Americans have historically been reluctant to go to war. When we do, we are generally pretty good at it. In the last century, after electing Woodrow Wilson who promised to keep us out of the European war, we joined our traditional allies, England and France, to stop the Germans. We did it again about twenty years later, but only after a sneak attack by Japan ignited our righteous anger, plunging us into the existing war in Europe and, for us, the new one in the Pacific.
Truman committed troops to Korea when the Communist North Koreans attempted to overrun the south. Yes, it’s been called a stalemate for a half century, but the South is a thriving economic power while the North can barely supply itself with electric power or feed its people.
The Vietnam War is generally seen as a failure of American military power. What prolonged the war was the refusal of President Lyndon B. Johnson to listen to advice given him by his Joint Chiefs of Staff in a private meeting they had requested in November 1965. One suspects that President Bush has not been listening to his generals either.
by Jim Kouri, CPP
Former Vice President Al Gore scours the countryside looking for support for a possible presidential run and attempts to emulate bible-thumping preachers while preaching a message of the need for "big government" to save the planet. Meanwhile, Gore hobnobs with the Hollywood elite many of whom wouldn't know a Bible from a Cecil B. DeMille script for the movie "Samson and Delilah."
Senator Hillary Clinton, who's husband used a Bible as a prop during his impeachment days, hires a consultant in order to find a way to "get over on evangelicals" without changing her positions on killing unborn children and changing the definition of marriage.
Democrat Party strategists hold brainstorming meetings in order to find the means to hoodwink Christian voters without forsaking their socialist beliefs and plans.
On Wednesday, January 17, The Church Report revealed that a group of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders have a new "faith agenda" that they will hold the 110th Congress to. This new agenda will shift the emphasis away from opposing abortion and "same-sex marriage" to issues liberal denominations and interfaith groups are associated with, according to the Church Report's Jennifer Morehouse.
The lobby Faith in Public Life and other interfaith groups are advocating increasing the minimum wage, economic and social justice in regard to immigration reform, ending the war in Iraq, and "creation care," a euphemism for child care.
Paul Sherry, national coordinator of the "Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign," said most Americans are "morally outraged" by low pay. The organization lobbied successfully for minimum wage increases in several states, according to Morehouse's report.
Church Report then quotes the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Sam Rodriguez said, "There is a strong faith ethos in the Hispanic community of the issues of immigration, poverty and economic and social justice." He advocates for secure borders and stopping illegal immigration, but he supports amnesty and a guest worker program.
"God specifically made humans responsible [for creation] as His image, and as His representatives on earth," Paul de Vries, a board member with the National Association of Evangelicals and president of New York Divinity School said. "How we treat His creation He takes personally," de Vries continued. "We’re people lovers, but we can be tree lovers at the same time. We’re people huggers and tree huggers."
Rick Ufford Chase, who leads the organization Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, said his group intends to remind Congress that it has a "clear moral imperative to end the war" and bring US military forces home, according to Morehouse. But Chase's organization has no plan on how to protect millions of Americans from terrorist attacks.
Faith in Public Life said Congress should heed the power of religious voters who "rejected a go-it-alone strategy in Iraq and politicians that put power ahead of policies that promote the common good."
The Church Report is a national business news magazine that is distributed to over 40,000 senior pastors and Christian leaders from across the United States. Published by Christy Media, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and founded by Jason T. Christy, CEO of Christy Media, The Church Report is the leading magazine Christians turn to for news and information on a range of topics from theology, politics, business, books, music, education and much more!
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and
trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He's a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com. He's also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he's syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline
News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri's own website is located at http://jimkouri.us
by Thomas E. Brewton
American labor unions are pushing candidates for the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nomination toward expansion of the welfare-state and massive inflation of the sort that the Great Society spawned.
After both World War I and World War II, the British Labour Party led England into its destructive liaison with socialism that destroyed British industry and reduced England to the "sick man of Europe."
Harold Meyerson's January 31, 2007, column in the Washington Post describes the behind-the-scenes power exerted by labor unions, especially the government employees unions. Their immediate goal is imposition of universal, socialized medicine, of the sort championed in 1993 by Hillary Clinton.
by Jim Kouri, CPP
Well, it's official: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has announced she will run for president in 2008. The hyperventilating denizens of our nation's newsrooms are reporting this story as if there was any doubt Hillary wanted to rule over the American people.
Hillary's campaign workers posted a videotaped message on her web site which said, "I'm in and I'm in to win." As opposed to "I'm in and I'm in to lose?"
This was a great story for the news media to cover. Reporters probably had the story already written and stored in their PCs' just waiting for the right moment to gush over the announcement that the first former First Lady announced a run for the White House.
by Sher Zieve
Arizona Congressional Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), a former Green Party member, has proposed a law that would stop US citizens from protecting their property and lives from illegal aliens who cross the US-Mexico border. Although directed at the citizen organization The Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, Sinema’s proposed HB2286 states that "domestic terrorism" shall include: "An individual or group of individuals commits domestic terrorism if the individual or group of individuals are not affiliated with a local, state or federal law enforcement entity and associate with another individual or group of individuals as an organization, group, corporation or company for the purpose of patrolling to detect alleged illegal activity or to individually patrol for the purpose of detecting alleged illegal activity and if the individual or group of individuals is armed with a firearm or other weapon."
by Erik Rush
When Joseph Smith kidnapped 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in front of a Florida mall (and a closed circuit video security monitor) in February of 2004, raped her, killed her and discarded her body like a used condom, I responded with a column entitled "Give Him Death", in which I outlined my ambivalence regarding the death penalty, among other things.
"Officially" I am against the death penalty, because, as I said in the column: "I am personally against the death penalty for one reason: I don’t trust the state not to execute innocent people. I believe that if one innocent individual is executed, that’s one too many."
While I believe that most police and prosecutors take their duties in appropriately solemn fashion, we all know that there are those without conscience, those more devoted to career advancement than law and justice, and who reason that certain individuals "have it coming" whether or not they happen to be guilty of the crime at hand. Thus, I am in favor of life without parole for certain crimes, although I do worry about how legislatures, the judiciary and prison overcrowding can throw a wrench in that one.
My aforementioned ambivalence, and that for which I would make exception, are those crimes (like the Brucia killing) in which there was unequivocal guilt. Sadly, although there many cases of evident unequivocal guilt, there are very few methods by which the state can prove unequivocal guilt, particularly after a suspect "lawyers-up."
Which bring us to Michael Devlin, Missouri’s 41-year-old corpulent pizzeria pedophile accused of kidnapping Shawn Hornbeck 4 ½ years ago, and then 13-year-old Ben Ownby on January 8 in Beaufort, Missouri. A tip led authorities to Devlin's suburban St. Louis apartment, where on January 12 they found Hornbeck and Ownby. Devlin, now lawyered-up, has pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping Ben Ownby, which I am sure is a major surprise to the reader. He is also charged with kidnapping Shawn in 2002 but has not yet entered a plea.
If one reads newspapers or watches television news at all, it is obvious that there are all manner of irregularities concerning these cases, from Devlin’s ability to maintain a double life to questions of why Shawn Hornbeck made no attempts to escape despite having contacts in the community, contacts with police, to his parents willingness to parade him in front of Oprah Winfrey’s audience less than a week after his rescue.
Although I do have some of the same voyeuristic, morbid curiosity as the rest of us, I’m not going to get into all that. My greater interest lies in our attitude as a society toward such events and our manifest lack of outrage. I say "manifest" because despite strong verbiage being thrown around, that’s about all that’s being thrown around – rather than, say, Michael Devlin being thrown from a window with a good strong chain around his fat neck.
Oh, yes, we have a system of (deteriorating) jurisprudence, and there’s the presumption of innocence and all that. Again though, as in the case of Carlie Brucia, we have unequivocal guilt. Devlin abducted the boys. No doubt. In all probability, Hornbeck was his sex slave, and Devlin planned the same fate for Ownby. An angry mob won’t have the opportunity to drag him from the jail and summarily execute him, but I’m here to tell you that wistfully regretting that fact doesn’t make you a bad person.
In a way, it was a week of happy endings in the realm of child abductions. In addition to the Missouri rescues, there was the case of Marissa Marie Graham, who, after being abducted in Oklahoma, leaped from the back of her kidnapper’s car and found aid in New Mexico after he stopped at a convenience store for gas. Leave it to a 10-year-old girl to save the day by her own wits, God bless her…
On a completely different (but, trust me, relevant) tack: Back in the ‘Sixties, my father, who was an absolute computer systems pulsing brain, worked for this little company called International Business Machines (IBM). The company, which was known for stringency and, of course, mega-success, had a motto: "think". My dad even brought home a plaque he got from work emblazoned with it. This motto became so popular, in fact, that marketers got a hold of it; plaques and posters began to appear in novelty shops bearing the spoofed legend: "think".
Whatever else IBM subsequently became, at the time, they reflected the epitome of American innovation and excellence. What did they need to do better than anyone else in order to succeed in their increasingly-competitive industry? "think".
Which is what Americans need to start doing, not only respecting existing domestic political and geopolitical issues – but right at home. While I realize that Nancy Pelosi and her posse are in all likelihood working on a bill right now to criminalize this controversial activity, I would admonish the reader to increase their regular participation in this particular activity. Not to be condescending, but it’s clear that Hollywood, advertisers, pervert activists, and socialist radicals (who now control Congress) are dedicated to the early sexualization of children – and have been, I maintain, since I was a child.
Between this and the subversion of the American family they’ve foisted upon us during the same period, it’s no wonder we have dead-eyed freaks like Smith, Devlin, and the increasing number of similarly infamous characters who’ve practically became household names.
Our PC lawmakers are never going to go for immolation of pedophiles, implementing castration via oxyacetylene torch, or hurling them from windows with good strong chains around their necks. So it’s up to us to do what we can – for the moment, figuratively speaking.
My kids are a tad perturbed at me right now because I installed a really cool parental control software package on their computer. In addition to filtering, monitoring and reporting, it even reports places my kids are thinking of visiting online.
"Dad – why can’t I get on this page?"
"Because I blocked it."
"How come?"
"Because it’s bristling with spirit poison."
"Oh…"
They get over it. They’re not savvy enough yet to know that this is happening by design – but when my seven-year-old can get from Postopia.com to a clip of buck-naked Alyssa Milano having her breasts lasciviously fondled in three clicks or less, it takes a fool not to at least suspect there’s something decidedly sinister going on.
As an aside: I’ve got a big beef (no pun intended) with Alyssa Milano. This Hollywood-raised brat is a boob (pun intended) of the highest (or is it lowest?) order, and was the operative who, during the 2004 general election campaign visited our fair city with the mission of enlightening us folks as to how evil the Republicans are and which deviant-supporting socialist-progressives for whom we should cast our votes.
Give it a try! After all, it could mean one of your kids avoiding sex slavery or a gruesome death someday. Go on – I know you want to… "think!"
Erik Rush is a New York-born columnist and author who writes a weekly column of political fare. He is also Acting Associate Editor and Publisher for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. An archive containing links to his writing is at www.ErikRush.com.. His new book, "It's the Devil, Stupid!" is available through most major outlets. His new book, Annexing Mexico, is scheduled for release shortly.
By Alan Caruba
There is an effort in Congress—mostly thanks to the Democrat leadership—to strangle the energy baby in the cradle.
Why they and some addled Republicans would want to do this defies an answer beyond the hatred environmentalists have for all forms of energy other than windmills, solar panels, and crops which should be eaten instead of poured into one’s gas tank.
Let’s start by understanding there are now three hundred million Americans. More people increase the need for more electricity. America currently must generate 15.43 trillion kilowatts of electricity and is in immediate need of more.