Friday, December 12, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
BLACK IS FOR MOURNING--NOT RACISM
Mourning In America
Mike Gallagher
Friday, November 07, 2008
Just how strange has this week been?
Real strange.
Thursday morning, I appeared on Fox & Friends, the morning talk show on Fox News Channel. I was to “debate” Lanny Davis, the longtime Clinton loyalist.
Obviously, the show wanted a reaction to this week's election from a liberal like Lanny and a conservative like me. I thought I'd have some fun and at the last minute, affixed black duct tape to my right arm.
The way the week turned out for the GOP, I figured wearing a black armband on TV would be pretty appropriate.
Poor Lanny didn't seem to get the joke. “It's pretty silly to be listening to someone give advice to the incoming Obama administration while wearing a black armband”, he sputtered.
Liberals never seem to have much of a sense of humor, even in victory.
Besides, Lanny, I wasn't giving any advice, I was just expressing an opinion. Unless you guys get your wish and the return of the Fairness Doctrine knocks people like me off the airwaves for good, I think I'm still allowed to express some views, aren't I? But things really took a turn when I got to my radio studio office after the TV appearance and found a bunch of angry emails waiting for me.
The nature of the complaints? That I was a racist because I wore a BLACK armband as a way to express my dissatisfaction with the election.
I'm not kidding.
Here's a sample:
“Gallagher, you racist pig. How dare you wear a black armband on Fox? Do you not know what that means to black people? I'm glad your bigertery (sic) is finally on display for the world to see.
Cedric
Houston, TX”
And another: “I'm a little surprised you didn't wear a white hood on TV this morning, Gallager (sic). You are a big, fat, racist m***** *****r who needs to have his butt whipped.
Tonya
Los Angeles”
And one more gem:
“Watching you wear a black armband, which everyone knows insults black people, made me immediately wish for your painful death. I'd like to think that will happen, but it probably won't. I'm a pessimist by nature.
Bill L.
Orlando”
Wow. And I thought Lanny Davis was grumpy.
These angry people even motivated me to try and Google references to black armbands somehow being offensive to Black people.
All I found was precisely what I thought, that it's a symbol of mourning, a sign of grieving or sadness. Nothing at all about race.
Then again, there are people who manage to find racial turmoil everywhere they turn.
The great Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution wrote a terrific piece after the election about how President-elect Obama managed to tap into the stigma that many White Americans feel about race. He opined that many people have been looking for something -- anything -- to relieve the burden felt by years of being blamed for racism.
What better solution than to elect a Black man president?
Naturally, race played a significant factor in this year's election. Finally, there is an answer to the rhetorical question, “Is America able to elect a Black president?”
And I expect that there is a pretty simple response to those who wonder if we can finally retire the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world and move beyond arguing about race relations incessantly.
Yes we can.
And we should.
Over and over, we were told that a vote for Barack Obama would be a way to “pay the debt” owed to millions of Black people. We would right the wrongs of the past; we would show the world how progressive we are.
I trust the debt has been paid.
Personally, I've always longed for the day when a Black person would be elected president.
Just not this Black person.
But by six percentage points, Americans elected Sen. Obama. Those of us who are the loyal opposition know that now, the battle begins.
We will do everything we can to encourage the Republican Party to rebuild itself. As Sen. Jim Demint (R, SC) told me, we need to find GOP leaders who are willing to adhere to the Reagan-era values that made many of us become Republicans in the first place.
We will challenge every crazy and wrong-headed move the Democrats come up with; we will follow the D.C. leaders closely and be sure to alert our readers, listeners and viewers to every misstep, every blunder, each and every attempt to run this country into the ground.
But for now, we will simply congratulate the other side for their victory. Sure, the mainstream media helped make it happen.
And of course the deck was stacked against Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin. But there's no sense crying in our soup. Come inauguration day, we just need to be prepared to take on the Democrat establishment.
As many parents have taught their children: never start a fight, but be sure to finish it. We shall do our best.
Just how strange has this week been?
Check this out: a listener to my radio show emailed me and claimed that the day after the election, the Illinois Lottery featured a creepy winning number and that I should check it out.
Sure enough, I confirmed the bizarre claim. On the day after the election, in the Evening Pick Three lottery drawing in Obama's home state of Illinois, the winning number was 666.
Don't believe me? See for yourself. www.IllinoisLottery.com Click on the “numbers/ jackpots” tab and look up Nov. 5, 2008.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence. I certainly don't believe those who fear that Obama is the actual anti-Christ.
Then again, what are the odds of the mark of the beast being Illinois' winning lottery number the day after the election?
I think I'll go back to wearing my armband. For a long, long time...
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Mike Gallagher
Friday, November 07, 2008
Just how strange has this week been?
Real strange.
Thursday morning, I appeared on Fox & Friends, the morning talk show on Fox News Channel. I was to “debate” Lanny Davis, the longtime Clinton loyalist.
Obviously, the show wanted a reaction to this week's election from a liberal like Lanny and a conservative like me. I thought I'd have some fun and at the last minute, affixed black duct tape to my right arm.
The way the week turned out for the GOP, I figured wearing a black armband on TV would be pretty appropriate.
Poor Lanny didn't seem to get the joke. “It's pretty silly to be listening to someone give advice to the incoming Obama administration while wearing a black armband”, he sputtered.
Liberals never seem to have much of a sense of humor, even in victory.
Besides, Lanny, I wasn't giving any advice, I was just expressing an opinion. Unless you guys get your wish and the return of the Fairness Doctrine knocks people like me off the airwaves for good, I think I'm still allowed to express some views, aren't I? But things really took a turn when I got to my radio studio office after the TV appearance and found a bunch of angry emails waiting for me.
The nature of the complaints? That I was a racist because I wore a BLACK armband as a way to express my dissatisfaction with the election.
I'm not kidding.
Here's a sample:
“Gallagher, you racist pig. How dare you wear a black armband on Fox? Do you not know what that means to black people? I'm glad your bigertery (sic) is finally on display for the world to see.
Cedric
Houston, TX”
And another: “I'm a little surprised you didn't wear a white hood on TV this morning, Gallager (sic). You are a big, fat, racist m***** *****r who needs to have his butt whipped.
Tonya
Los Angeles”
And one more gem:
“Watching you wear a black armband, which everyone knows insults black people, made me immediately wish for your painful death. I'd like to think that will happen, but it probably won't. I'm a pessimist by nature.
Bill L.
Orlando”
Wow. And I thought Lanny Davis was grumpy.
These angry people even motivated me to try and Google references to black armbands somehow being offensive to Black people.
All I found was precisely what I thought, that it's a symbol of mourning, a sign of grieving or sadness. Nothing at all about race.
Then again, there are people who manage to find racial turmoil everywhere they turn.
The great Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution wrote a terrific piece after the election about how President-elect Obama managed to tap into the stigma that many White Americans feel about race. He opined that many people have been looking for something -- anything -- to relieve the burden felt by years of being blamed for racism.
What better solution than to elect a Black man president?
Naturally, race played a significant factor in this year's election. Finally, there is an answer to the rhetorical question, “Is America able to elect a Black president?”
And I expect that there is a pretty simple response to those who wonder if we can finally retire the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world and move beyond arguing about race relations incessantly.
Yes we can.
And we should.
Over and over, we were told that a vote for Barack Obama would be a way to “pay the debt” owed to millions of Black people. We would right the wrongs of the past; we would show the world how progressive we are.
I trust the debt has been paid.
Personally, I've always longed for the day when a Black person would be elected president.
Just not this Black person.
But by six percentage points, Americans elected Sen. Obama. Those of us who are the loyal opposition know that now, the battle begins.
We will do everything we can to encourage the Republican Party to rebuild itself. As Sen. Jim Demint (R, SC) told me, we need to find GOP leaders who are willing to adhere to the Reagan-era values that made many of us become Republicans in the first place.
We will challenge every crazy and wrong-headed move the Democrats come up with; we will follow the D.C. leaders closely and be sure to alert our readers, listeners and viewers to every misstep, every blunder, each and every attempt to run this country into the ground.
But for now, we will simply congratulate the other side for their victory. Sure, the mainstream media helped make it happen.
And of course the deck was stacked against Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin. But there's no sense crying in our soup. Come inauguration day, we just need to be prepared to take on the Democrat establishment.
As many parents have taught their children: never start a fight, but be sure to finish it. We shall do our best.
Just how strange has this week been?
Check this out: a listener to my radio show emailed me and claimed that the day after the election, the Illinois Lottery featured a creepy winning number and that I should check it out.
Sure enough, I confirmed the bizarre claim. On the day after the election, in the Evening Pick Three lottery drawing in Obama's home state of Illinois, the winning number was 666.
Don't believe me? See for yourself. www.IllinoisLottery.com Click on the “numbers/ jackpots” tab and look up Nov. 5, 2008.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence. I certainly don't believe those who fear that Obama is the actual anti-Christ.
Then again, what are the odds of the mark of the beast being Illinois' winning lottery number the day after the election?
I think I'll go back to wearing my armband. For a long, long time...
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
2ND AMENDMENT RIGHTS
Views: What Do Guns Mean to Americans? The NRA vs. the Brady Campaign
Americans revere their Constitution but they can vehemently disagree on how to interpret specific passages. The 2nd Amendment is a prime example of how individual rights, self-defense, violence and American culture can produce such passion and divisiveness. The non-partisan Web site Opposing Views asked the NRA and the Brady Campaign what guns mean to Americans.
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Click here to read more debates on gun rights and gun control.
The Freedom to Protect Yourself, Your Family, and Your Community
By Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA executive director
America's 80 million gun owners could give 80 million answers to this question. To hunters, guns mean a day with family and friends, enjoying the beauty of the outdoors. To gun collectors, they provide a connection to the inventors, craftsmen, warriors and pioneers of days gone by. To competitive shooters, they provide an opportunity for self-mastery, through the discipline of training and the forge of competition.
Most important, though, is that guns provide an effective means of exercising the God-given, individual right of self-defense. To America's founders, that right was a hallmark of individual freedom in our new nation. Thomas Jefferson -- an avid gun collector and hunter -- said, "No free man shall be debarred the use of arms," and Thomas Paine said, "[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe."
While the founders were mainly concerned with "invaders and plunderers" of the political kind, the right is equally important in protecting individuals from the violent "invaders and plunderers" on our streets. In the recent case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court recognized this, declaring that the Second Amendment protects "the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation."
Indeed, the most comprehensive study of gun use to date, by award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, found that Americans use guns for self-defense against crime more than two million times per year. Certainly today, with 40 states having adopted laws that allow honest citizens to carry handguns for protection outside the home, guns mean much of what they meant to our founders: the freedom to protect yourself, your family, and your community.
We Must Make it Harder for Dangerous People to Get Dangerous Weapons
By Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
When I was 12, I earned an NRA Marksmanship badge at YMCA Camp. I enjoyed learning how to fire a gun at a target and worked at becoming better with practice. But I also took away a deep respect for how dangerous guns were.
Americans have a long history with guns. We used them to tame the frontier, and many Americans consider them important for hunting wildlife or managing pests. But Americans' views on guns often differ depending on where they live.
If you're in the bayous of Louisiana, or the plains of Montana, a gun can be your defense against predators. When the police are far away, you may feel strongly about needing a gun for self-defense. And if someone says we should restrict guns, you worry.
But in urban areas like Philadelphia or South Central Los Angeles or even my home town in Indiana, guns may be best known for injuring young people as a result of gang violence, or police officers at a traffic stop or domestic quarrel. But when you say "we need to controls the weapons available on the streets," other Americans misinterpret you as wanting to limit their rights.
This is why we've had a passionate debate about guns. Finding common ground may have been aided by the Supreme Court decision in June that Americans have a right to have a firearm in their home but that reasonable restrictions on gun access are also lawful.
Guns are always going to be available to law-abiding citizens. But we can take steps to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons.
To read about other issues on Opposing Views, click here
Americans revere their Constitution but they can vehemently disagree on how to interpret specific passages. The 2nd Amendment is a prime example of how individual rights, self-defense, violence and American culture can produce such passion and divisiveness. The non-partisan Web site Opposing Views asked the NRA and the Brady Campaign what guns mean to Americans.
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Click here to read more debates on gun rights and gun control.
The Freedom to Protect Yourself, Your Family, and Your Community
By Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA executive director
America's 80 million gun owners could give 80 million answers to this question. To hunters, guns mean a day with family and friends, enjoying the beauty of the outdoors. To gun collectors, they provide a connection to the inventors, craftsmen, warriors and pioneers of days gone by. To competitive shooters, they provide an opportunity for self-mastery, through the discipline of training and the forge of competition.
Most important, though, is that guns provide an effective means of exercising the God-given, individual right of self-defense. To America's founders, that right was a hallmark of individual freedom in our new nation. Thomas Jefferson -- an avid gun collector and hunter -- said, "No free man shall be debarred the use of arms," and Thomas Paine said, "[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe."
While the founders were mainly concerned with "invaders and plunderers" of the political kind, the right is equally important in protecting individuals from the violent "invaders and plunderers" on our streets. In the recent case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court recognized this, declaring that the Second Amendment protects "the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation."
Indeed, the most comprehensive study of gun use to date, by award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, found that Americans use guns for self-defense against crime more than two million times per year. Certainly today, with 40 states having adopted laws that allow honest citizens to carry handguns for protection outside the home, guns mean much of what they meant to our founders: the freedom to protect yourself, your family, and your community.
We Must Make it Harder for Dangerous People to Get Dangerous Weapons
By Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
When I was 12, I earned an NRA Marksmanship badge at YMCA Camp. I enjoyed learning how to fire a gun at a target and worked at becoming better with practice. But I also took away a deep respect for how dangerous guns were.
Americans have a long history with guns. We used them to tame the frontier, and many Americans consider them important for hunting wildlife or managing pests. But Americans' views on guns often differ depending on where they live.
If you're in the bayous of Louisiana, or the plains of Montana, a gun can be your defense against predators. When the police are far away, you may feel strongly about needing a gun for self-defense. And if someone says we should restrict guns, you worry.
But in urban areas like Philadelphia or South Central Los Angeles or even my home town in Indiana, guns may be best known for injuring young people as a result of gang violence, or police officers at a traffic stop or domestic quarrel. But when you say "we need to controls the weapons available on the streets," other Americans misinterpret you as wanting to limit their rights.
This is why we've had a passionate debate about guns. Finding common ground may have been aided by the Supreme Court decision in June that Americans have a right to have a firearm in their home but that reasonable restrictions on gun access are also lawful.
Guns are always going to be available to law-abiding citizens. But we can take steps to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons.
To read about other issues on Opposing Views, click here
Monday, October 13, 2008
HOW TRUE!
Intellectual Flyover Country
By Doug Patton
October 13, 2008
Columnist David Brooks is the sort of writer who passes for a conservative at The New York Times. In reality, he is an urbane, pseudo-erudite hack, as evidenced by his latest column.
Brooks contends that the reason conservatives are no longer winning elections is because we have eschewed intellectualism and promoted social class warfare, thereby "driving away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts." In the last two decades, according to Brooks, conservative politicians and "talk-radio jocks" have "divided the nation between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts."
Brooks also asserts that "George W. Bush restrained some of the populist excesses of his party." That argument is absurd. It is precisely because of Bush's excesses, not the GOP's, that he has a 29 percent approval rating: excesses in spending, a nearly trillion-dollar bailout bill, and lax border security. Bush deserves credit for three accomplishments in eight years: modest tax relief, a pair of solid Supreme Court appointments and especially for seven years of terror-free life for the American people. After that, the list of his accomplishments goes downhill quickly.
Yet Brooks lists "anti-immigration fervor" and "isolationism" as the "excesses" from which Bush supposedly saved his party. Question: In what world does David Brooks live that he believes such things? Answer: The solipsistic echo-chamber of New York City.
Brooks criticizes John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, as if that is the source of McCain's current problems. He seems to believe that Palin adds to the GOP's exclusion of the groups he thinks have been driven from the party. "Nobody," Brooks writes, "so relentlessly divides the world between the 'normal Joe Sixpack American' and the coastal elite."
But the most astounding part of Brooks' analysis is his statement that Republicans are guilty of alienating whole professions - lawyers, doctors, tech executives, even bankers - all of whom now donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.
As a lifelong resident of flyover country, I hardly know where to begin to refute Brooks' snobbery. So let's stop dancing around the subject. The reason these groups feel alienated from the Republican Party is that they are embarrassed by those of us who want to defend innocent human life and traditional marriage. They simply cannot believe that these issues are more important to us than a temporary drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
But their embarrassment goes much deeper than that. The gulf is primarily a spiritual one. Those of us who believe in fighting for the defense of life and - dare I say it? - for the preservation of normal, traditional, monogamous human sexual relationships do so out of a belief that someone much greater and wiser than we are, namely the Creator of the Universe, has said this is how we should live. This is not an arbitrary position we have taken in order to deny "reproductive rights" to women or "equal rights" to homosexuals. These are strongly held views given to believers by God, universal truths, if you will. No religious tradition in the world believes in killing babies or in homosexual marriage.
So let's be totally honest. George W. Bush has failed the Republican Party and, more importantly, the American people, in almost every regard. He has spent our money in a manner that would make a drunken sailor ashamed, grown the federal government at a faster rate than any president since FDR, colluded with Ted Kennedy and his ilk on education policy, and given us stimulus checks with the caveat to spend them on plasma TVs and IPhones, rather than existing debt (or the terrorists win). And he has spent eight years asleep at the wheel on illegal immigration.
The Republican Party has not rejected intellectualism. The definition of the word has been hijacked by the William Ayer' and the Ward Churchill's of the world, with their pithy rejoinders that 9/11 victims were "little Eichmanns." One need only read Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn or Christopher Buckley to know that conservative intellectualism is alive and well.
What sets conservatives, and by extension the GOP, apart is that we have always encouraged vigorous debate and the civil discourse necessary for the continuation of this American experiment. It is the foundation of our republic and the catalyst to our best ideas. But we succeed in our intellectual pursuits only because they stand firmly on the solid rock of our morality, our spirituality and our admission of and submission to the God that grants our souls the right to breathe. The sinking sand of liberal dogma will never be a suitable substitute.
---
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
--------------------
Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
By Doug Patton
October 13, 2008
Columnist David Brooks is the sort of writer who passes for a conservative at The New York Times. In reality, he is an urbane, pseudo-erudite hack, as evidenced by his latest column.
Brooks contends that the reason conservatives are no longer winning elections is because we have eschewed intellectualism and promoted social class warfare, thereby "driving away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts." In the last two decades, according to Brooks, conservative politicians and "talk-radio jocks" have "divided the nation between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts."
Brooks also asserts that "George W. Bush restrained some of the populist excesses of his party." That argument is absurd. It is precisely because of Bush's excesses, not the GOP's, that he has a 29 percent approval rating: excesses in spending, a nearly trillion-dollar bailout bill, and lax border security. Bush deserves credit for three accomplishments in eight years: modest tax relief, a pair of solid Supreme Court appointments and especially for seven years of terror-free life for the American people. After that, the list of his accomplishments goes downhill quickly.
Yet Brooks lists "anti-immigration fervor" and "isolationism" as the "excesses" from which Bush supposedly saved his party. Question: In what world does David Brooks live that he believes such things? Answer: The solipsistic echo-chamber of New York City.
Brooks criticizes John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, as if that is the source of McCain's current problems. He seems to believe that Palin adds to the GOP's exclusion of the groups he thinks have been driven from the party. "Nobody," Brooks writes, "so relentlessly divides the world between the 'normal Joe Sixpack American' and the coastal elite."
But the most astounding part of Brooks' analysis is his statement that Republicans are guilty of alienating whole professions - lawyers, doctors, tech executives, even bankers - all of whom now donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.
As a lifelong resident of flyover country, I hardly know where to begin to refute Brooks' snobbery. So let's stop dancing around the subject. The reason these groups feel alienated from the Republican Party is that they are embarrassed by those of us who want to defend innocent human life and traditional marriage. They simply cannot believe that these issues are more important to us than a temporary drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
But their embarrassment goes much deeper than that. The gulf is primarily a spiritual one. Those of us who believe in fighting for the defense of life and - dare I say it? - for the preservation of normal, traditional, monogamous human sexual relationships do so out of a belief that someone much greater and wiser than we are, namely the Creator of the Universe, has said this is how we should live. This is not an arbitrary position we have taken in order to deny "reproductive rights" to women or "equal rights" to homosexuals. These are strongly held views given to believers by God, universal truths, if you will. No religious tradition in the world believes in killing babies or in homosexual marriage.
So let's be totally honest. George W. Bush has failed the Republican Party and, more importantly, the American people, in almost every regard. He has spent our money in a manner that would make a drunken sailor ashamed, grown the federal government at a faster rate than any president since FDR, colluded with Ted Kennedy and his ilk on education policy, and given us stimulus checks with the caveat to spend them on plasma TVs and IPhones, rather than existing debt (or the terrorists win). And he has spent eight years asleep at the wheel on illegal immigration.
The Republican Party has not rejected intellectualism. The definition of the word has been hijacked by the William Ayer' and the Ward Churchill's of the world, with their pithy rejoinders that 9/11 victims were "little Eichmanns." One need only read Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn or Christopher Buckley to know that conservative intellectualism is alive and well.
What sets conservatives, and by extension the GOP, apart is that we have always encouraged vigorous debate and the civil discourse necessary for the continuation of this American experiment. It is the foundation of our republic and the catalyst to our best ideas. But we succeed in our intellectual pursuits only because they stand firmly on the solid rock of our morality, our spirituality and our admission of and submission to the God that grants our souls the right to breathe. The sinking sand of liberal dogma will never be a suitable substitute.
---
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
--------------------
Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
DOUBLE STANDARDS
Sisterhood Of The Protected Female Liberal Journalists
By Michelle Malkin
September 10, 2008
Let’s talk Mommy Wars, double standards and the media elite. Last Friday, Howard Gutman, a member of the Obama campaign’s National Finance Committee, attacked Sarah Palin’s ability to be a good parent and have a high-powered public life at the same time. In a finger-wagging appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show, Obama’s operative scolded the Republican mother of five children for not putting her professional career on hold.
“Your responsibility is to put your family first,” Gutman lectured as he singled out Palin’s Down Syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter. “The proper attack is not that a woman shouldn’t run for vice president with five kids, it’s that a parent, when they have a family in need” should get out of the public sphere and stay home.
The Gutman standard has now been proffered by countless Obama hacks and water-carrying commentators. Damningly, it’s high-powered working mothers in the journalism business who are helping to broadcast the anti-Palin slams or doing nothing to defend her.
How would Katie Couric like the Gutman standard applied to her? Her husband died at 42 when her daughters were 6 and 2 years old. With two young children devastated by the loss of a father, she opted not to quit journalism. She anchored NBC’s “Today Show” through his illness and death, continued working an intensive, time-consuming schedule as one of America’s most visible broadcast journalists while a single mother with two fatherless children at home, and then jumped to CBS News, where she maintains a rigorous on-air schedule, travel plans and an off-air social calendar. Where are the finger-waggers?
How about CNN’s Soldedad O’Brien? She’s been working overtime covering the presidential campaign season, anchoring daily coverage and nighttime conventions, and producing documentaries that require large chunks of time away from home. Disney’s Family Parenting website lauds her as “a modern mom balancing a thriving career as one of America’s top news anchors along with her four children” — two daughters now ages 7 and 6 and twin boys who are 4. Where are the Palin-bashers to lambaste O’Brien’s professional pursuits?
Also at CNN, Campbell Brown flew to Las Vegas last year to moderate a political debate while 8 and a half months pregnant. Fox News host and left-wing blogger Alan Colmes, last seen questioning Palin’s commitment to prenatal care because she worked and traveled late in her pregnancy, had no comment. When Brown initially left the “Today Show” in 2007, she said she was stepping down to devote more time to family and baby. She immediately turned around and jumped ship to CNN, where she has anchored wall-to-wall CNN Election Center coverage and will launch a new nightly show in November.
At NBC, famous balancer of work and motherhood Meredith Viera replaced Couric on the “Today Show.” She has three children at home and a husband who has battled multiple sclerosis and two bouts of colon cancer. By the Gutman standard, Viera should have left the business years ago to tend to her family in need.
As a working woman in the media for 16 years and a working mother in the media for the last eight, I know the commitment and energy it took for these women to get to the top. I’ve filed columns from hospital beds, written books while nursing, brought my toddlers to TV studios, and told bedtime stories on the cell phone while boarding planes. I’ve worked hard to strike the “balance” we all seek. I’ve made good choices and bad choices, and have no regrets about the opportunities I’ve taken or the opportunities I’ve rejected. I couldn’t have done it without a supportive husband willing to forego his own career goals — the kind of spouse the media has ignored in Todd Palin and the kind of spouse I’m sure the Sisterhood of the Protected Female Journalists all have.
I don’t challenge the commitment these fellow working mothers in the media have to their home lives. What I challenge is their silence and complicity as the Palin-bashers impose a “Family First” double standard on conservatives. The sorority is closed to the Right.
—
Michelle Malkin is author of “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.” Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
By Michelle Malkin
September 10, 2008
Let’s talk Mommy Wars, double standards and the media elite. Last Friday, Howard Gutman, a member of the Obama campaign’s National Finance Committee, attacked Sarah Palin’s ability to be a good parent and have a high-powered public life at the same time. In a finger-wagging appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show, Obama’s operative scolded the Republican mother of five children for not putting her professional career on hold.
“Your responsibility is to put your family first,” Gutman lectured as he singled out Palin’s Down Syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter. “The proper attack is not that a woman shouldn’t run for vice president with five kids, it’s that a parent, when they have a family in need” should get out of the public sphere and stay home.
The Gutman standard has now been proffered by countless Obama hacks and water-carrying commentators. Damningly, it’s high-powered working mothers in the journalism business who are helping to broadcast the anti-Palin slams or doing nothing to defend her.
How would Katie Couric like the Gutman standard applied to her? Her husband died at 42 when her daughters were 6 and 2 years old. With two young children devastated by the loss of a father, she opted not to quit journalism. She anchored NBC’s “Today Show” through his illness and death, continued working an intensive, time-consuming schedule as one of America’s most visible broadcast journalists while a single mother with two fatherless children at home, and then jumped to CBS News, where she maintains a rigorous on-air schedule, travel plans and an off-air social calendar. Where are the finger-waggers?
How about CNN’s Soldedad O’Brien? She’s been working overtime covering the presidential campaign season, anchoring daily coverage and nighttime conventions, and producing documentaries that require large chunks of time away from home. Disney’s Family Parenting website lauds her as “a modern mom balancing a thriving career as one of America’s top news anchors along with her four children” — two daughters now ages 7 and 6 and twin boys who are 4. Where are the Palin-bashers to lambaste O’Brien’s professional pursuits?
Also at CNN, Campbell Brown flew to Las Vegas last year to moderate a political debate while 8 and a half months pregnant. Fox News host and left-wing blogger Alan Colmes, last seen questioning Palin’s commitment to prenatal care because she worked and traveled late in her pregnancy, had no comment. When Brown initially left the “Today Show” in 2007, she said she was stepping down to devote more time to family and baby. She immediately turned around and jumped ship to CNN, where she has anchored wall-to-wall CNN Election Center coverage and will launch a new nightly show in November.
At NBC, famous balancer of work and motherhood Meredith Viera replaced Couric on the “Today Show.” She has three children at home and a husband who has battled multiple sclerosis and two bouts of colon cancer. By the Gutman standard, Viera should have left the business years ago to tend to her family in need.
As a working woman in the media for 16 years and a working mother in the media for the last eight, I know the commitment and energy it took for these women to get to the top. I’ve filed columns from hospital beds, written books while nursing, brought my toddlers to TV studios, and told bedtime stories on the cell phone while boarding planes. I’ve worked hard to strike the “balance” we all seek. I’ve made good choices and bad choices, and have no regrets about the opportunities I’ve taken or the opportunities I’ve rejected. I couldn’t have done it without a supportive husband willing to forego his own career goals — the kind of spouse the media has ignored in Todd Palin and the kind of spouse I’m sure the Sisterhood of the Protected Female Journalists all have.
I don’t challenge the commitment these fellow working mothers in the media have to their home lives. What I challenge is their silence and complicity as the Palin-bashers impose a “Family First” double standard on conservatives. The sorority is closed to the Right.
—
Michelle Malkin is author of “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.” Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
PALIN A GOOD CHOICE
McCain VP Pick No Friend to Polar Bears
By Sarah Lai Stirland August 29, 2008 | 1:18:52 PM Categories: Election '08
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has ignored research showing that polar bear populations are declining in the quest to plumb new sources of energy, according to scientists, and environmental groups who fought to put the bears on the endangered species list.
Sen. John McCain tapped Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential candidate Friday. Palin is only the second woman to be on a major party's ticket as VP -- the first was Geraldine Ferraro, who ran with Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, pictured here, disagrees with John McCain on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She's for it, he's against it.
"The governor's going to support senator McCain's policies," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior campaign advisor.
Photo: Associated Press/Al Grillo
The 44-year-old Palin, a beauty pageant winner and former mayor of a small town in Alaska, is an advocate of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has infuriated environmentalists for her support of the aerial shooting of wolves as a way to build up herds of moose and caribou. She's also sued the Interior Department for putting polar bears on the endangered species list.
In the lawsuit, filed this month in federal district court in the District of Columbia, Palin argues that the government's move to list polar bears as endangered is not based on sound science, and restricts oil and natural gas development. The Interior Department had put the bears on the list in response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, who argued that the bears are being threatened by global warming.
In an interview on the conservative CNN talk show hosted by Glenn Beck earlier this year, Palin said that she was worried that environmentalists are using the Endangered Species Act to block the extraction of oil and gas.
"In fact, the number of polar bears has risen dramatically over the past 30 years," she said. "Our fear (is) that extreme environmentalists will use this tool, the ESA, to eventually curtail or halt the North Slope production of very rich resources that America needs."
But biologists who have studied polar bear populations counter that the facts simply do not support Palin's assertion that polar bear populations are on the rise.
"Polar bear populations have not been increasing for the past 30 years, and that's a well-known fact," said Ian Stirling, an emeritus scientist with Canada's Department of the Environment and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta in an interview. Stirling has studied polar bears for 37 years -- the longest of anyone.
In fact, the polar bear population has actually declined by 20 percent in Alaska's Southern Beaufort Sea since the mid-1980s, he says, referring to peer-reviewed research that he's conducted with other scientists for the US Geological Survey. The reason: Loss of their habitat in the form of melting ice.
The population decline in the area is one of six documented declining populations. In all, there are 19 distinct populations of polar bears, but not all of those populations have been surveyed.
The research reports with this information have been available to Palin for more than a year, Stirling says.
"There is currently no way to drill for oil in polar bear seas without imperiling the polar bears," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Polar bears that come into contact with spilled oil will become coated with oil, will attempt to groom themselves to remove it... and will almost certainly die."
Palin has stated that her opposition to the polar bear listing is based on a scientific review from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Yet documents released by a FOIA request show that the state's biologists agreed with the Interior Department about the polar bear's habitat.
Senator McCain believes that protecting polar bears is important, but that using the endangered species act may not be the best approach to solving the problem -- rather enacting climate change legislation is, says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior advisor to McCain. He added that Palin will support McCain's policies.
"McCain has said many times that policy must be based on sound science," he said. "We will see a difference from the past eight years."
"The governor is going to support senator McCain's policies," Holtz-Eakin said in an interview.
In a statement on the Palin pick, the McCain campaign called her a "tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president, and that "she has brought Republicans and Democrats together within her administration and has a record of delivering on the change and reform that we need in Washington."
The McCain campaign also praised Palin for being independent-minded and standing up to oil companies, yet at the same time "fighting for the development of new energy resources."
Conservative blogs hailed the choice Friday, gleeful at the outrage Palin's election sparked among liberals. The mood around the offices of Townhall.com is sort of like that of Christmastime," wrote blogger Matt Lewis. "Everyone is ecstatic. The pick was perfect, and the execution flawless ... You can tell this is a good pick by the way conservatives love it -- and by the way liberal blogs hate it!"
As the governor of a state that's renowned for valuing civil liberties, Palin received praise from the American Civil Liberties Union this May for letting a bill pass that prohibits the funding of the implementation of REAL-ID, a federal law that requires states to comply with certain technical standards when issuing drivers' licenses.
Governor's Information
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Born: February 11, 1964
Birth State: Idaho
Party: Republican
Spouse: Todd Palin
Family: Married Todd Palin; five children
Religion: Christian
School(s): University of Idaho
Address: State Capitol
P.O. Box 110001
Juneau, AK
99811-0001
Phone: 907/465-3500
Fax: 907/465-3532
Governor Sarah Palin made history on Dec. 4, 2006, when she took office. The 11th governor of Alaska, she is the first woman to hold the office.
Her top priorities are resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. Under her leadership, Alaska invested $5 billion in state savings, overhauled education funding, and implemented the Senior Benefits Program to provide support for low-income older Alaskans. She created Alaska's Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to oversee maintenance of oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure, and a Climate Change Subcabinet to prepare a climate change strategy for Alaska.
Palin's administration passed major legislation that began a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline and overhauled state ethics laws. Palin is chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multi-state agency that promotes conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and environment. She also serves as chair of the National Governors Association Natural Resources Committee. Prior to her election as governor, Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council and two terms as the mayor/manager of Wasilla. During her tenure, she reduced property tax levels while increasing services and made Wasilla a business friendly environment, drawing in new industry. She has served as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's most valuable non-renewable resources. She was elected by her peers to serve as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.
Sarah Heath Palin arrived in Alaska with her family in 1964, when her parents came to teach school in Skagway. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987. Palin, who graduated from Wasilla High School in 1982, has lived in Skagway, Eagle River and Wasilla. She is married to Todd Palin, a lifelong Alaskan who is a production operator on the North Slope and a four-time champion of the Iron Dog, the world's longest snow machine race. Todd and Sarah fish in Bristol Bay with their children – Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. Through Todd's Yup'ik grandmother, Alaska's Native heritage plays an important role in their family. Track enlisted in the U.S. Army on Sept. 11, 2007.
Palin is a lifetime member of the NRA and enjoys hunting, fishing, Alaska history, and all that Alaska's great outdoors has to offer.
________________________________________
By Sarah Lai Stirland August 29, 2008 | 1:18:52 PM Categories: Election '08
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has ignored research showing that polar bear populations are declining in the quest to plumb new sources of energy, according to scientists, and environmental groups who fought to put the bears on the endangered species list.
Sen. John McCain tapped Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential candidate Friday. Palin is only the second woman to be on a major party's ticket as VP -- the first was Geraldine Ferraro, who ran with Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, pictured here, disagrees with John McCain on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She's for it, he's against it.
"The governor's going to support senator McCain's policies," says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior campaign advisor.
Photo: Associated Press/Al Grillo
The 44-year-old Palin, a beauty pageant winner and former mayor of a small town in Alaska, is an advocate of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has infuriated environmentalists for her support of the aerial shooting of wolves as a way to build up herds of moose and caribou. She's also sued the Interior Department for putting polar bears on the endangered species list.
In the lawsuit, filed this month in federal district court in the District of Columbia, Palin argues that the government's move to list polar bears as endangered is not based on sound science, and restricts oil and natural gas development. The Interior Department had put the bears on the list in response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, who argued that the bears are being threatened by global warming.
In an interview on the conservative CNN talk show hosted by Glenn Beck earlier this year, Palin said that she was worried that environmentalists are using the Endangered Species Act to block the extraction of oil and gas.
"In fact, the number of polar bears has risen dramatically over the past 30 years," she said. "Our fear (is) that extreme environmentalists will use this tool, the ESA, to eventually curtail or halt the North Slope production of very rich resources that America needs."
But biologists who have studied polar bear populations counter that the facts simply do not support Palin's assertion that polar bear populations are on the rise.
"Polar bear populations have not been increasing for the past 30 years, and that's a well-known fact," said Ian Stirling, an emeritus scientist with Canada's Department of the Environment and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta in an interview. Stirling has studied polar bears for 37 years -- the longest of anyone.
In fact, the polar bear population has actually declined by 20 percent in Alaska's Southern Beaufort Sea since the mid-1980s, he says, referring to peer-reviewed research that he's conducted with other scientists for the US Geological Survey. The reason: Loss of their habitat in the form of melting ice.
The population decline in the area is one of six documented declining populations. In all, there are 19 distinct populations of polar bears, but not all of those populations have been surveyed.
The research reports with this information have been available to Palin for more than a year, Stirling says.
"There is currently no way to drill for oil in polar bear seas without imperiling the polar bears," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Polar bears that come into contact with spilled oil will become coated with oil, will attempt to groom themselves to remove it... and will almost certainly die."
Palin has stated that her opposition to the polar bear listing is based on a scientific review from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Yet documents released by a FOIA request show that the state's biologists agreed with the Interior Department about the polar bear's habitat.
Senator McCain believes that protecting polar bears is important, but that using the endangered species act may not be the best approach to solving the problem -- rather enacting climate change legislation is, says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior advisor to McCain. He added that Palin will support McCain's policies.
"McCain has said many times that policy must be based on sound science," he said. "We will see a difference from the past eight years."
"The governor is going to support senator McCain's policies," Holtz-Eakin said in an interview.
In a statement on the Palin pick, the McCain campaign called her a "tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president, and that "she has brought Republicans and Democrats together within her administration and has a record of delivering on the change and reform that we need in Washington."
The McCain campaign also praised Palin for being independent-minded and standing up to oil companies, yet at the same time "fighting for the development of new energy resources."
Conservative blogs hailed the choice Friday, gleeful at the outrage Palin's election sparked among liberals. The mood around the offices of Townhall.com is sort of like that of Christmastime," wrote blogger Matt Lewis. "Everyone is ecstatic. The pick was perfect, and the execution flawless ... You can tell this is a good pick by the way conservatives love it -- and by the way liberal blogs hate it!"
As the governor of a state that's renowned for valuing civil liberties, Palin received praise from the American Civil Liberties Union this May for letting a bill pass that prohibits the funding of the implementation of REAL-ID, a federal law that requires states to comply with certain technical standards when issuing drivers' licenses.
Governor's Information
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Born: February 11, 1964
Birth State: Idaho
Party: Republican
Spouse: Todd Palin
Family: Married Todd Palin; five children
Religion: Christian
School(s): University of Idaho
Address: State Capitol
P.O. Box 110001
Juneau, AK
99811-0001
Phone: 907/465-3500
Fax: 907/465-3532
Governor Sarah Palin made history on Dec. 4, 2006, when she took office. The 11th governor of Alaska, she is the first woman to hold the office.
Her top priorities are resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. Under her leadership, Alaska invested $5 billion in state savings, overhauled education funding, and implemented the Senior Benefits Program to provide support for low-income older Alaskans. She created Alaska's Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to oversee maintenance of oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure, and a Climate Change Subcabinet to prepare a climate change strategy for Alaska.
Palin's administration passed major legislation that began a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline and overhauled state ethics laws. Palin is chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multi-state agency that promotes conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and environment. She also serves as chair of the National Governors Association Natural Resources Committee. Prior to her election as governor, Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council and two terms as the mayor/manager of Wasilla. During her tenure, she reduced property tax levels while increasing services and made Wasilla a business friendly environment, drawing in new industry. She has served as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's most valuable non-renewable resources. She was elected by her peers to serve as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.
Sarah Heath Palin arrived in Alaska with her family in 1964, when her parents came to teach school in Skagway. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987. Palin, who graduated from Wasilla High School in 1982, has lived in Skagway, Eagle River and Wasilla. She is married to Todd Palin, a lifelong Alaskan who is a production operator on the North Slope and a four-time champion of the Iron Dog, the world's longest snow machine race. Todd and Sarah fish in Bristol Bay with their children – Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. Through Todd's Yup'ik grandmother, Alaska's Native heritage plays an important role in their family. Track enlisted in the U.S. Army on Sept. 11, 2007.
Palin is a lifetime member of the NRA and enjoys hunting, fishing, Alaska history, and all that Alaska's great outdoors has to offer.
________________________________________
Friday, August 1, 2008
MORE ON OBAMA
August 01, 2008
Why I'm Thanking God for Obama
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
Every day, for the past several months, I've made a habit in my morning prayers of thanking God for the emergence of Barack Obama. Not because my hope is in Obama, but because my hope is always, unequivocally in God.
As so many have noted, 2008 is not an ordinary American election.
Rather than two people with different policy positions vying for the President's job, we have one man who understands he's a mere mortal like the rest of us, and one man, who seems to think he is a god.
And y'all know what I'm talkin' about here.
Many of Barack's followers manifest troubling signs of regarding him as at least a demigod. Even while refraining from saying outright that they think he's a god, their belief comes through in the strange messianic iconography of their Obama-glorifying posters, videos and music. Belief in the godlike nature of Barack's powers comes through in their faith in the vast promises he or his surrogates make about the change that's going to come about, not if, but when he becomes president, not just of our Country, but the whole darned world, oceans and all. Or so he seems to think.
The seas will recede. The planet will heal. Everyone will love America again. The sick will all be cured by socialized medicine. The poor will cease to exist. The rich will give all their money to Africa. The government will become efficient. Sin won't happen. The yellow brick road will lead to the White House, not a fantasy land. And the Emperor's clothes will suddenly materialize so that the whole world will actually see something there.
The bottom line here is that Barack Obama does not seem to be running against John McCain. He seems to think he's too big for that. As he told a roomful of Congressional Democrats this week, behind closed doors, he is no longer a mere man, he's "become a symbol of the possibility of America." Considering the scope of the promises he is making and the hope he is offering not only America, but the rest of the world to boot, Barack Obama seems to be running against a far higher power than himself.
Barack Obama actually appears to be running against God. By claiming that he can do things only God can do, like heal "broken souls" and fill up "holes" in people's hearts, make all "divisions" go away and disperse with all inconvenient "distractions," Barack Obama claims power that no mortal man, and certainly no mere president has ever had, or ever will have, no matter how much money he has to spend or how brilliant or how able he may be.
Most rational human beings know this without thinking hard.
That's why this isn't an ordinary election, and why it is becoming more absurd by the hour.
But this is a terrific opportunity for all of us mortal Americans who still love this Country and happen to think that our Founders were onto something quite exceptional in the history of human civilization. This election will not pit Democrats against Republicans, but those who love America against those who just love Barack and think he is the one they've been waiting for to finally close the deal and secure their love for an America perfected by the politics of Barack Obama.
Utopian Claims that Materialize as Misery
For years now, I've occasionally fallen victim to discouragement over strides the rainbow Marxists have made in America and around the world. The Berlin Wall was barely in its shallow grave before communism's sepulchral cries of resurgence began to be heard in places far and near. The Soviet Block was barely broken before western Europeans began doing their best to emulate it and enshrine another form of it's tyranny by binding treaty.
The greatest single Marxist victory has been the systematic re-write of the movement's own bloody history, carried out by leftists in America and western Europe. After WWII, Hitler's Germany was scrubbed clean of its National Socialist underpinnings, and entire generations have been told that Fascism was the polar opposite of Communism. For the past eight years, with the new resurgence of American conservatism, leftists have bombarded the public from sympathetic press pulpits and university lecterns with their "Bush is Hitler" agitprop. And a great many fools have swallowed this lie whole hog.
As Pope Benedict foretold in 2003, in his treatise on the sleeping ambitions of worldwide communism:
"Let us not forget that Marxism, as the one great political force of our twentieth century, made its appearance with the claim to be bringing a new world of freedom and of free people. This very promise of knowing the scientifically guaranteed way to freedom, and of creating the new world, drew to it many of the boldest spirits of our age; ultimately it even appeared as the force through which the Christian teaching of redemption could be transformed into a realistic practical means for liberation - as the force that could bring the Kingdom of God as the true kingdom of men. The collapse of realist socialism in the East European states has not quite laid aside all such hopes, and here and there they still subsist, silently awaiting some new form."
-- Pope Benedict XVI; Truth and Tolerance; p. 233; emphases mine.
Just because this monstrous system puts on a new and younger face does not render it more benign.
Empty Resume, Empty Promises
Obama has arisen from nothingness, from one accomplishment-free political gig to another, propped up by leftists adulators and sycophants, to offer a perfect portrait of socialism's eternal snare. Forget God; put your hope in mankind. Human arrogance and narcissistic pride. From the fall in the Garden to the present, from generation to generation, Satan's delusion holds sway with many.
Barack Obama is walking, talking, breathing narcissism. The iconography of his campaign is nothing, if not the glorification of Obama, a solitary, quite mortal man. They must glorify Obama's image because, in reality, he has no accomplishments that bear mention.
Obama struts his nothingness with grace; even his detractors admit that.
What could more openly and more amply demonstrate the absolute emptiness of socialism's promise than the perfectly empty resume of its newest hero?
What could possibly more adequately prove the personalized utopianism of his followers than that they believe in a man who has borne no fruitful action?
Barack Obama offers "collective salvation" in the form of socialist government interventions in every sphere of life, from starting-at-birth state education, to socialized, universal health care, to a tripling of the already failing AmeriCorps. This socialist answer to all that ails mankind isn't anything new. It's old, tried, and just as untrue now as in its beginning.
Beware the man who promises what man simply lacks the power to bestow.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
-- H. L. Mencken
Time and time and time again, this has proven true. Time and time again, new men arise in varying disguise, making the same promises, urging the same change.
God or Barack? This ain't rocket science.
The lesson in socialism's long, failed and scandalous history is actually very simple, I think, not rocket science at all.
Life, as God created it, is basically unfair.
Beginning at the very reality that each human being is unique, without exact duplication anywhere, anytime. Even in the case of identical twins, uniqueness begins at the moment of birth, as each twin experiences a separate reality in his or her environment. With uniqueness comes individuality and at every moment of life, unfairness.
No matter the measure one chooses, whether genetic beauty or physical strength, native intelligence or agility, inherited wealth or power, the benefits bestowed by one's parents or the lack of these. In every single aspect of human life, no matter where one is born or what happens thereafter outside one's control, life is not fair.
I perceive that within the heart of every socialist lies an insurmountable resentment over this basic fact, which is always aimed squarely at God, who made things this way. Arrogant man wants to be like God and design things his own way.
Two thousand years ago, however, Jesus of Nazareth offered the eternal solution to the paradox of unfairness and inequality:
Speaking of God's judgment, Jesus said,
From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
-- The Gospel of Luke 12:48 (New Revised Standard Version)
All who follow the same God, whether Jewish or Christian, see plainly that God's judgment has nothing whatsoever to do with one's station or gifts in this life, but only with what each individual does with what he is given.
It is certainly no accident that socialism has made its greatest advances among secular people, divorced from God by their own choice, and that today in America, it is the progressive secularists, the hardened socialists and communists, and many radical elements in our society that back Barack Obama's rise. For many of these people, hope in God died long ago.
The salvation that Obama offers comes in the form of radically changing America to a utopian state, which he contends will fix our "broken souls." That simply is not within the province of his abilities.
As Pope Benedict has so wisely and emphatically stated:
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.
-- Truth and Tolerance; p. 116
Barack Obama stands front and center now, offering the age-old false promise that mankind can save itself through "collective redemption," and simply because he employs Christian language and symbols, no genuine lovers of God will be fooled.
Hope in God?
Or hope in Obama?
I thank God every day for giving us Americans such a clear and easy choice. Perhaps He is simply using Barack Obama to separate a bit of chaff from the grain.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent citizen journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/why_im_thanking_god_for_obama.html at August 01, 2008 - 11:09:52 PM EDT
Why I'm Thanking God for Obama
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
Every day, for the past several months, I've made a habit in my morning prayers of thanking God for the emergence of Barack Obama. Not because my hope is in Obama, but because my hope is always, unequivocally in God.
As so many have noted, 2008 is not an ordinary American election.
Rather than two people with different policy positions vying for the President's job, we have one man who understands he's a mere mortal like the rest of us, and one man, who seems to think he is a god.
And y'all know what I'm talkin' about here.
Many of Barack's followers manifest troubling signs of regarding him as at least a demigod. Even while refraining from saying outright that they think he's a god, their belief comes through in the strange messianic iconography of their Obama-glorifying posters, videos and music. Belief in the godlike nature of Barack's powers comes through in their faith in the vast promises he or his surrogates make about the change that's going to come about, not if, but when he becomes president, not just of our Country, but the whole darned world, oceans and all. Or so he seems to think.
The seas will recede. The planet will heal. Everyone will love America again. The sick will all be cured by socialized medicine. The poor will cease to exist. The rich will give all their money to Africa. The government will become efficient. Sin won't happen. The yellow brick road will lead to the White House, not a fantasy land. And the Emperor's clothes will suddenly materialize so that the whole world will actually see something there.
The bottom line here is that Barack Obama does not seem to be running against John McCain. He seems to think he's too big for that. As he told a roomful of Congressional Democrats this week, behind closed doors, he is no longer a mere man, he's "become a symbol of the possibility of America." Considering the scope of the promises he is making and the hope he is offering not only America, but the rest of the world to boot, Barack Obama seems to be running against a far higher power than himself.
Barack Obama actually appears to be running against God. By claiming that he can do things only God can do, like heal "broken souls" and fill up "holes" in people's hearts, make all "divisions" go away and disperse with all inconvenient "distractions," Barack Obama claims power that no mortal man, and certainly no mere president has ever had, or ever will have, no matter how much money he has to spend or how brilliant or how able he may be.
Most rational human beings know this without thinking hard.
That's why this isn't an ordinary election, and why it is becoming more absurd by the hour.
But this is a terrific opportunity for all of us mortal Americans who still love this Country and happen to think that our Founders were onto something quite exceptional in the history of human civilization. This election will not pit Democrats against Republicans, but those who love America against those who just love Barack and think he is the one they've been waiting for to finally close the deal and secure their love for an America perfected by the politics of Barack Obama.
Utopian Claims that Materialize as Misery
For years now, I've occasionally fallen victim to discouragement over strides the rainbow Marxists have made in America and around the world. The Berlin Wall was barely in its shallow grave before communism's sepulchral cries of resurgence began to be heard in places far and near. The Soviet Block was barely broken before western Europeans began doing their best to emulate it and enshrine another form of it's tyranny by binding treaty.
The greatest single Marxist victory has been the systematic re-write of the movement's own bloody history, carried out by leftists in America and western Europe. After WWII, Hitler's Germany was scrubbed clean of its National Socialist underpinnings, and entire generations have been told that Fascism was the polar opposite of Communism. For the past eight years, with the new resurgence of American conservatism, leftists have bombarded the public from sympathetic press pulpits and university lecterns with their "Bush is Hitler" agitprop. And a great many fools have swallowed this lie whole hog.
As Pope Benedict foretold in 2003, in his treatise on the sleeping ambitions of worldwide communism:
"Let us not forget that Marxism, as the one great political force of our twentieth century, made its appearance with the claim to be bringing a new world of freedom and of free people. This very promise of knowing the scientifically guaranteed way to freedom, and of creating the new world, drew to it many of the boldest spirits of our age; ultimately it even appeared as the force through which the Christian teaching of redemption could be transformed into a realistic practical means for liberation - as the force that could bring the Kingdom of God as the true kingdom of men. The collapse of realist socialism in the East European states has not quite laid aside all such hopes, and here and there they still subsist, silently awaiting some new form."
-- Pope Benedict XVI; Truth and Tolerance; p. 233; emphases mine.
Just because this monstrous system puts on a new and younger face does not render it more benign.
Empty Resume, Empty Promises
Obama has arisen from nothingness, from one accomplishment-free political gig to another, propped up by leftists adulators and sycophants, to offer a perfect portrait of socialism's eternal snare. Forget God; put your hope in mankind. Human arrogance and narcissistic pride. From the fall in the Garden to the present, from generation to generation, Satan's delusion holds sway with many.
Barack Obama is walking, talking, breathing narcissism. The iconography of his campaign is nothing, if not the glorification of Obama, a solitary, quite mortal man. They must glorify Obama's image because, in reality, he has no accomplishments that bear mention.
Obama struts his nothingness with grace; even his detractors admit that.
What could more openly and more amply demonstrate the absolute emptiness of socialism's promise than the perfectly empty resume of its newest hero?
What could possibly more adequately prove the personalized utopianism of his followers than that they believe in a man who has borne no fruitful action?
Barack Obama offers "collective salvation" in the form of socialist government interventions in every sphere of life, from starting-at-birth state education, to socialized, universal health care, to a tripling of the already failing AmeriCorps. This socialist answer to all that ails mankind isn't anything new. It's old, tried, and just as untrue now as in its beginning.
Beware the man who promises what man simply lacks the power to bestow.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
-- H. L. Mencken
Time and time and time again, this has proven true. Time and time again, new men arise in varying disguise, making the same promises, urging the same change.
God or Barack? This ain't rocket science.
The lesson in socialism's long, failed and scandalous history is actually very simple, I think, not rocket science at all.
Life, as God created it, is basically unfair.
Beginning at the very reality that each human being is unique, without exact duplication anywhere, anytime. Even in the case of identical twins, uniqueness begins at the moment of birth, as each twin experiences a separate reality in his or her environment. With uniqueness comes individuality and at every moment of life, unfairness.
No matter the measure one chooses, whether genetic beauty or physical strength, native intelligence or agility, inherited wealth or power, the benefits bestowed by one's parents or the lack of these. In every single aspect of human life, no matter where one is born or what happens thereafter outside one's control, life is not fair.
I perceive that within the heart of every socialist lies an insurmountable resentment over this basic fact, which is always aimed squarely at God, who made things this way. Arrogant man wants to be like God and design things his own way.
Two thousand years ago, however, Jesus of Nazareth offered the eternal solution to the paradox of unfairness and inequality:
Speaking of God's judgment, Jesus said,
From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
-- The Gospel of Luke 12:48 (New Revised Standard Version)
All who follow the same God, whether Jewish or Christian, see plainly that God's judgment has nothing whatsoever to do with one's station or gifts in this life, but only with what each individual does with what he is given.
It is certainly no accident that socialism has made its greatest advances among secular people, divorced from God by their own choice, and that today in America, it is the progressive secularists, the hardened socialists and communists, and many radical elements in our society that back Barack Obama's rise. For many of these people, hope in God died long ago.
The salvation that Obama offers comes in the form of radically changing America to a utopian state, which he contends will fix our "broken souls." That simply is not within the province of his abilities.
As Pope Benedict has so wisely and emphatically stated:
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.
-- Truth and Tolerance; p. 116
Barack Obama stands front and center now, offering the age-old false promise that mankind can save itself through "collective redemption," and simply because he employs Christian language and symbols, no genuine lovers of God will be fooled.
Hope in God?
Or hope in Obama?
I thank God every day for giving us Americans such a clear and easy choice. Perhaps He is simply using Barack Obama to separate a bit of chaff from the grain.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent citizen journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver.com.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/why_im_thanking_god_for_obama.html at August 01, 2008 - 11:09:52 PM EDT
Sunday, July 20, 2008
LIBERALS AND THE OIL-GAS CRUNCH
TO: President George W. Bush
The Leadership of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives: The Hon. Mitch McConnell, The Hon. Jon L. Kyl, The Hon. John Cornyn, The Hon. John Ensign, The Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchison, The Hon. John R. Thune, The Hon. Richard Burr, The Hon. Norm Coleman, The Hon. Larry E. Craig, The Hon. James M. Inhofe, The Hon. Olympia J. Snowe, The Hon. John E. Sununu, The Hon. David Vitter, The Hon. Jim DeMint, The Hon. John A. Boehner, The Hon. Roy Blunt, The Hon. Eric I. Cantor, The Hon. Adam Putnam, The Hon. Kay Granger, The Hon. John R. Carter, The Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter, The Hon. Tom Cole, The Hon. Robert C. Byrd, The Hon. Harry Reid, The Hon. Richard J. Durbin, The Hon. Charles E. Schumer, The Hon. Patty Murray, The Hon. Charles E. Schumer, The Hon. Byron L. Dorgan, The Hon. Debbie A. Stabenow, The Hon. Jeff Bingaman, The Hon. Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Hon. Blanche L. Lincoln, The Hon. Barbara Boxer, The Hon. Thomas R. Carper, The Hon. Bill Nelson, The Hon. Russ Feingold, The Hon. Nancy Pelosi, The Hon. Steny H. Hoyer, The Hon. James Clyburn, The Hon. John Lewis, The Hon. Rahm Emanuel, The Hon. John B. Larson, The Hon. Xavier Becerra, The Hon. Rosa DeLauro, The Hon. George Miller, The Hon. Chris Van Hollen, The Hon. Joseph Crowley, The Hon. Diana L. DeGette, The Hon. Ed Pastor, The Hon. Janice D. Schakowsky, The Hon. John S. Tanner, The Hon. Maxine Waters, The Hon. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, The Hon. G.K. Butterfield
President Bush announced on Monday that he would lift a long-standing executive order banning offshore oil drilling and he essentially dared Congress to do the same!
A Little Recent History Is In Order...
Here's what our liberal legislators have done over the past several weeks.
First, liberals attempted unsuccessfully to pass the so-called Boxer Climate Bill.
But it wasn't a "Climate Bill" at all. In actuality, it was really just a huge liberal plot to increase taxes. Here's how Sen. Mitch McConnell described it:
"It is, at its heart, a stealth and giant tax on virtually every aspect of industrial and consumer life. It would result in massive job losses. And it seeks to radically alter consumer behavior, without any measurable benefit to the environment in return."
"And that's why it's so hard to comprehend the Majority's decision to move to a bill, at the start of the summer driving season, that would raise the price of gas by as much as $1.40 a gallon, home electricity bills by about 44 percent, and natural gas prices by about 20 percent."
"Overall, it's expected to result in GDP losses totaling as much as $2.9 trillion by 2050."
Yup, leave it to Barbara Boxer and other liberals in Congress to increase taxes when the price of gasoline at the pump is almost beyond the ability of most Americans to afford it!
But fortunately, because patriotic Americans like you made your voices heard, that bill died an unceremonious death!
But then -- without missing a beat -- several days later, Senate liberals tried to slip through ANOTHER TAX BILL-- masquerading as energy policy.
What were they thinking: Did they wink and chuckle at each other and say:
"Now that the Boxer Bill has failed, they won't be expecting another attempt so soon?"
Fortunately, that measure failed as well!
Meanwhile... In the House of Representatives...
On the House side, Congressman John Peterson introduced an amendment that would have extended the limits of offshore drilling.
Surely, Peterson thought, liberals had gotten the message. The crisis facing our nation was too grave, too painful for "politics as usual." This time he was certain his amendment would pass. It didn't. After the defeat of his amendment, Peterson said: "I was stunned today. I didn't expect this to happen. A lot of Democrats who supported us voted against the amendment. All six Republicans voted 'aye' and all nine Democrats voted 'nay.' I think 'Pelosi Power' was lurking. They were strong-armed from above." These days, Pelosi Power rules Capitol Hill. San Francisco values are the values of today. It's DOWN with people and UP with the snail darter, the Wyoming toad, and the Colorado squawfish.
Left-wing fanatics and environmental whackos are thumbing their noses at their fellow citizens -- a growing number of whom can barely afford to drive to work.
And, as analyst Stephen Schork recently predicted,
"If you think your gasoline bills are expensive now, wait till you get your home heating bill this winter."
As a consequence of Pelosi-Reid-inspired policies, the time has come to put middle-and lower-income Americans on the Endangered Species list.
But Here's The Icing On The Cake...
Senator Obama and a gaggle of liberal legislators started stumping for a windfall tax on oil... a strategy guaranteed to do only one thing... raise the price of gasoline.
A generation ago, the Carter Administration imposed just such a tax and the results were disastrous: a reduced incentive to drill for oil, a drop in domestic production, severe shortages, and long lines at the pump.
Obama was a teenager at the time, but you'd think he'd remember.
These actions raise a chilling question: "Are liberals actually TRYING to drive up gas prices?" For years the Greenies have been down on their knees, begging for higher gasoline prices. In the Energy Bulletin, Hamish McRae published an article with a title that says it all:
"Oil at $100 a barrel will do more to save the planet than all the wind farms in the world."
With the price of oil hovering around $140 per barrel, is the earth safe yet?
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter wrote:
"Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles."
"Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 'The Population Explosion' that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan."
"Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished! "
"In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, 'We can't drill our way out of this crisis.'
"What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, 'You can't eat your way out of being hungry!' 'You can't water your way out of drought!' 'You can't sleep your way out of tiredness!' 'You can't drink yourself out of dehydration!'
"Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn't going to increase the supply of oil?
"It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan."
In other words, the higher the price at the pump. the fewer the drivers on the road.
Of course, those who can no longer afford gasoline will inevitably be the poor.
But, as Al Gore would say, "Let them ride buses."
Yours in Freedom,
Jeff Mazzella
President
www.cfif.orgCenter for Individual Freedom
113 S. Columbus Street, Suite 310
Alexandria VA 22314
703-535-5836
Fax:703-535-5838
CFIF is a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit constitutional advocacy organization with
the mission to protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights
in the legal, legislative and educational arenas. Contributions to CFIF are
not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
Contributions may be deductible as a business expense.
HOW THE LEFT WAS WON
How The Left Was Won
An In-Depth Analysis of the Tools and Methodologies Used by Liberals to Undermine Society and Disrupt the Social Order
Combining a series of unique insights with an entirely new set of analytical techniques, How the Left Was Won systematically dismantles each and every element of modern-day liberalism ranging from the justifications behind all of its flawed social and political policies to the most basic assumptions regarding the ideology itself.
In order to achieve this goal, the author first introduces a new framework which segments and isolates all liberal behaviors and beliefs into the most objective and discrete elements possible. He then goes on to provide numerous examples of how liberals relentlessly employ this simple set of tools and methodologies over and over again and then discusses the resulting effects they have on our society. Some of these strategies include:
● Promote and Exploit Divisiveness: Learn why liberals should thank God every day for differences between people and how without them, liberalism would be dead in the water.
● Bad Competition: Learn why practically all liberal policies create success only through the impairment of others and exactly where this dynamic must necessarily lead.
● Relevancy and Proportion: See why the vast majority of what liberals say has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and learn a simple way to prove it every time.
● Implicit Assumptions: Explore the assumptions liberals use to shape public policy and see why the arguments supporting them are ultimately nothing more than a house of cards.
● Groupdividual: Find out how liberalism has distorted the differences between groups and individuals and why this continued distortion is the basis for all flawed social policies within the United States.
● The Perpetual Motion Machine: Learn how the vast majority of liberal programs are based on the scientific impossibility of getting something for nothing.
● A Swarm of Ants: Find out the real reason liberalism continues to permeate more and more elements of our society and why there just may be no way of stopping it.
“Mgrdechian does an excellent job of dissecting the strategies liberals use...”
— Jonathan Garthwaite,
Editor-In-Chief, Townhall.com
"...a must-read for conservatives and independents alike."
— The Iowa Voice
"I highly recommend this book."
— Kelvin Moxley, The Conservative Spectator
"...exactly what Conservatives have been trying to say for years..."
— The Guardian Watchblog
"Extremely valuable."
— Danny Carlton, Jacklewis.net
"For anyone who wants to gain insight to the mind of liberal politics…"
— Bookviews.com
Saturday, July 19, 2008
THIS IS BOTH SAD AND OUTRAGEOUS
Blue Summer
Hollywood is peddling sex like crazy this season even though the sexualization of our culture is exacting a fearsome toll, especially on young girls.
By Brian Fitzpatrick
Culture and Media Institute
July 19, 2008
Hollywood seems to have sex on the mind this summer. From pop music to reality shows to dramas, the sexually charged material currently being offered up by the entertainment media is making Woodstock look like a Boy Scout jamboree.
That Hollywood peddles sex is not exactly news. What is news, though, is the increasing evidence that our society’s libertinism comes at a steep price. In addition to soaring cases of sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, the sex culture is inflicting a wealth of emotional injury on teenaged girls.
A new study by the Mental Health Foundation in England reports that young girls are being victimized by premature sexualization, commercialization and alcohol abuse, resulting in high levels of stress and unhappiness. According to the study, “Sexual advances from boys, pressure to wear clothes that make them look too old and magazines and Web sites directly targeting younger girls to lose weight or consider plastic surgery were identified as taking a particular toll.”
The statistics are shocking: 40 percent of the 10- to 14-year-old girls surveyed said they know someone who has “self-harmed,” and nearly that many know somebody who has experienced panic attacks. A third have a friend suffering from an eating disorder.
The head of the Mental Health Foundation told Life Site News, “Girls and young women are being forced to grow up at an unnatural pace in a society that we, as adults, have created and it’s damaging their emotional well-being.”
Hollywood’s studio execs, producers and writers should sit up and take notice. may attract adult audiences, but children are watching too, and it’s too much for many of them to handle. In addition to robbing kids of their innocence, the constant sexual images and allusions are creating a cultural environment that makes demands on children that they are not ready to meet and should not have to think about. Children’s innocence is a valuable commodity that society ought to guard jealously. Hollywood moguls have children too, and their children are not immune from Tinseltown’s destructive cultural influences.
Hollywood is peddling sex like crazy this season even though the sexualization of our culture is exacting a fearsome toll, especially on young girls.
By Brian Fitzpatrick
Culture and Media Institute
July 19, 2008
Hollywood seems to have sex on the mind this summer. From pop music to reality shows to dramas, the sexually charged material currently being offered up by the entertainment media is making Woodstock look like a Boy Scout jamboree.
That Hollywood peddles sex is not exactly news. What is news, though, is the increasing evidence that our society’s libertinism comes at a steep price. In addition to soaring cases of sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, the sex culture is inflicting a wealth of emotional injury on teenaged girls.
A new study by the Mental Health Foundation in England reports that young girls are being victimized by premature sexualization, commercialization and alcohol abuse, resulting in high levels of stress and unhappiness. According to the study, “Sexual advances from boys, pressure to wear clothes that make them look too old and magazines and Web sites directly targeting younger girls to lose weight or consider plastic surgery were identified as taking a particular toll.”
The statistics are shocking: 40 percent of the 10- to 14-year-old girls surveyed said they know someone who has “self-harmed,” and nearly that many know somebody who has experienced panic attacks. A third have a friend suffering from an eating disorder.
The head of the Mental Health Foundation told Life Site News, “Girls and young women are being forced to grow up at an unnatural pace in a society that we, as adults, have created and it’s damaging their emotional well-being.”
Hollywood’s studio execs, producers and writers should sit up and take notice. may attract adult audiences, but children are watching too, and it’s too much for many of them to handle. In addition to robbing kids of their innocence, the constant sexual images and allusions are creating a cultural environment that makes demands on children that they are not ready to meet and should not have to think about. Children’s innocence is a valuable commodity that society ought to guard jealously. Hollywood moguls have children too, and their children are not immune from Tinseltown’s destructive cultural influences.
HOW DO YOU-WE-STOP THIS MADNESS
Barry Goldwater once talked about the various levels of government and identify THE MOST DANGEROUS level
The first level is the visible level, our elected officials. They were sent to Washington by WE THE PEOPLE. The next are those appointed to positions by the President with the advise and consent of Congress (an increasingly near impossible task). The lowest. and most dangerous is composed of paid, tenured, civil servants who hold their jobs until they die or retire. These are the people charged with writing the rules and regulations and those who have to enforce those rules, regulations and laws. Do you see a danger here? WE THE PEOPLE are expected to believe that these civil servants are loyal, honest, trusted people. Right? WRONG!!!
they are flesh and blood human beings just us, and we all know about US. "US" are not perfect and neither are all those civil servants. They can screw up in more different ways than Jimmy Carter has peanuts.
During the FDR and Harry Truman liberals and communists invaded various levels of government (like the State Department) and started writing policies and laws that undermine the Constitution and the Rights of WE THE PEOPLE. FDR was a bully. A smooth, slick bully who ramrodded these policies, etc, down Congressional Throats and WE THE PEOPLE are still paying the price for the acts of FDR, Truman, Johnson and Clinton.
WE THE PEOPLE bear the responsibility for allowing this to continue on and the only way to stop it is to vote these clowns out of office (and not vote anymore into office).
192.168.1.100
600 U.S. Taliban?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, July 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
War On Terror: After 9/11, Pakistan promised to close its radical madrassas as part of anti-terror reforms. Now we learn they're not only still open, but also recruiting and brainwashing American boys.
Read More: Global War On Terror
All told, 600 American children are being indoctrinated into jihad in 22 madrassas across Pakistan. A U.S. filmmaker stumbled on them while tracing the path of the London suicide bombers. He discovered they attended the same radical Islamic schools. A congressional delegation has confirmed his findings.
One particularly radical school in Karachi freely displays a banner at its main gate urging Muslims to join the Taliban. At least 80 Americans are enrolled at Jamia Binoria, an international school. Many of its graduates joined the Taliban and became commanders.
Another jihadist seminary in Pakistan connected to Jamia Binoria brainwashed John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban now serving time for attacking U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
The mullahs who run these terrorist hatcheries come to America to recruit boys, many of them from Lindh's home state of California. Jamia Binoria's headmaster, Mufti Mohammad Naeem, travels to the U.S. each year during Ramadan to meet with Muslim parents — like a college football coach recruiting prospects.
They hope Naeem will teach their kids to memorize the Quran, a high honor in Islam, so the whole family can get into Paradise. They also want them protected against "corrupting" Western influences.
The pupils, some as young as 8, spend years locked inside these cults reciting the Muslim holy book for hours on end. They learn "Islam, only Islam," the mufti says.
An English translation of his school's mission statement reveals its goal is to send Western students back to their home countries to spread extremism. "The outgoing scholars of the Jamia are fighting a crusade against infidels and pagans," Naeem states.
Astonishingly, the U.S. has the most enrollees at the nine madrassas run by Jamia Binoria of any country outside Pakistan.
The outrage raises a number of questions, including:
Why has Naeem's U.S. visa been renewed each year? For that matter, why isn't he on the no-fly list? Why aren't we demanding Islamabad stop renewing the visas of American students to his madrassas? What share, if any, of the billions in U.S. aid to Islamabad is used to support these madrassas? Who is monitoring these radicalized graduates as they return to America to preach or partake in jihad?
Pakistan's prime minister is visiting Washington on Monday. President Bush should raise these issues near the top of their meeting.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
MORE FROM BILLY GRAHAM
Billy Graham
For You
Monday July 14, 2008
* What Should We Look for in a New Pastor?
* Free Comics for the Whole Family
What Should We Look for in a New Pastor?
By Billy Graham, Tribune Media Services
Q: Our church is looking for a new pastor, and I've been put on the search committee (something I've never had to do before). Our first task is to come up with a description of the kind of person we should look for. What advice would you give to a committee like ours? -- M.J.
A: You've been given a very important responsibility -- and the best advice I can give you is to seek God's will as you seek to fill this position. Pray for God's guidance in your committee, and encourage your whole church to be praying as well.
After all, someone might meet every standard on your list -- but if they aren't the person God wants in that position, their ministry will not make its maximum impact. Remember: God is even more concerned about your church and its ministry than you are, and He has already chosen the person best equipped to lead your church in the future.
What kind of person should you seek? You know your church's needs, of course, and your description will take those into account. But first of all seek a person of godly character -- someone who reflects Christ in their daily life. Paul urged his young pastor friend Timothy to "pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness" (1 Timothy 6:11).
Second, seek someone who will make the Bible the foundation of their teaching and preaching. Paul's example is a challenge to every pastor: "You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you. ... For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God" (Acts 20:20, 27).
========
Send your queries to "My Answer," c/o Billy Graham, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1 Billy Graham Parkway, Charlotte, N.C., 28201; call 1-(877) 2-GRAHAM, or visit the Web site for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association: www.billygraham.org.
For You
Monday July 14, 2008
* What Should We Look for in a New Pastor?
* Free Comics for the Whole Family
What Should We Look for in a New Pastor?
By Billy Graham, Tribune Media Services
Q: Our church is looking for a new pastor, and I've been put on the search committee (something I've never had to do before). Our first task is to come up with a description of the kind of person we should look for. What advice would you give to a committee like ours? -- M.J.
A: You've been given a very important responsibility -- and the best advice I can give you is to seek God's will as you seek to fill this position. Pray for God's guidance in your committee, and encourage your whole church to be praying as well.
After all, someone might meet every standard on your list -- but if they aren't the person God wants in that position, their ministry will not make its maximum impact. Remember: God is even more concerned about your church and its ministry than you are, and He has already chosen the person best equipped to lead your church in the future.
What kind of person should you seek? You know your church's needs, of course, and your description will take those into account. But first of all seek a person of godly character -- someone who reflects Christ in their daily life. Paul urged his young pastor friend Timothy to "pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness" (1 Timothy 6:11).
Second, seek someone who will make the Bible the foundation of their teaching and preaching. Paul's example is a challenge to every pastor: "You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you. ... For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God" (Acts 20:20, 27).
========
Send your queries to "My Answer," c/o Billy Graham, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1 Billy Graham Parkway, Charlotte, N.C., 28201; call 1-(877) 2-GRAHAM, or visit the Web site for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association: www.billygraham.org.
ANOTHER HERO HAS DIED
July 13, 2008, 12:27AM
Dr. Michael DeBakey: 1908-2008
Houstonian called the 'greatest surgeon of the 20th century' dies at 99
By TODD ACKERMAN and ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dr. Sherwin Nuland, medicine's best-known historian, was visiting with Dr. Michael DeBakey three years ago when the then-96-year-old surgeon left the room to attend to some business.
Taking advantage of the moment to tour the room's extensive collection of memorabilia — the honors, photographs and mementos from an illustrative career that spanned eight decades — Nuland stopped to reflect on two antiquarian charts of the history of medicine.
"As I studied the charts, it occurred to me that no face on them was any more important in the history of medicine than DeBakey himself,'' said Nuland, a retired surgeon at the Yale University School of Medicine and author of Doctors: The Biography of Medicine. "I can't think of anyone who's made more of a contribution to the field of medicine.''
Michael Ellis DeBakey — internationally acclaimed as the father of modern cardiovascular surgery and considered by many to be the greatest surgeon ever — died Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. He was 99.
Methodist officials said DeBakey died of natural causes. He was taken to the hospital after his wife, Katrin, called 911, and he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving, said Dr. Marc Boom, executive vice president of Methodist.
DeBakey is to lie in repose within the rotunda of Houston City Hall from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, officials at Baylor College of Medicine said. Funeral services are planned for Wednesday.
Chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine and a surgeon at Methodist since 1949, DeBakey trained thousands of surgeons. During his career, he estimated he performed more than 60,000 operations. His patients included the famous — Russian President Boris Yeltsin and movie actress Marlene Dietrich among them — and the uncelebrated.
"He was a great contributor to medicine and surgery," said Dr. Denton Cooley, president and surgeon-in-chief at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and a former rival of DeBakey.
"But he left a real legacy in the Texas Medical Center and at Baylor College of Medicine, where he's brought so much attention," Cooley said. "Together, we were able to establish Houston as a world leader in cardiovascular medicine."
Dr. George Noon, a cardiovascular surgeon and longtime partner of DeBakey's, said he "single-handedly raised the standard of medical care, teaching and research around the world. He was the greatest surgeon of the 20th century, and physicians everywhere are indebted to him for his contributions to medicine."
DeBakey almost died in 2006, when he suffered an aortic aneurysm, a condition for which he pioneered the treatment. He is considered the oldest patient to have both undergone and survived surgery for it.
He recovered enough to go to Washington earlier this year to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's two highest civilian honors.
He remained vigorous and was a player in medicine well into his 90s, performing surgeries, traveling and publishing articles in scientific journals. His large hands were steady, his hearing sharp. His personal health regimen included taking the stairs at work and a single cup of coffee in the morning.
DeBakey's death was mourned by the leaders of Methodist and Baylor.
Methodist President Ron Girotto said: "He has improved the human condition and touched the lives of generations to come. We will greatly miss him."
Baylor President Dr. Peter Traber added: "He set a standard for pre-eminence in all areas of his life that those who knew him and worked with him are compelled to emulate. And he served as a very visible reminder of the importance of leadership and giving back to one's community."
Built a reputation
DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, La., in 1908, a month before Ford began making Model Ts and a quarter-century before the discovery of bacteria-fighting drugs. While still in medical school, he developed the roller pump for the heart-lung machine. DeBakey invented many of the procedures and devices — more than 50 surgical instruments — used to repair hearts and arteries.
He is widely credited with laying the foundation for the Texas Medical Center in Houston by recruiting doctors and researchers and giving the city an international reputation for leading-edge health care. He was a maverick, running afoul of the Harris County Medical Society for insisting that surgeons be certified by the American Board of Surgery. At the time, it was common for general physicians to operate.
"DeBakey built a department of surgery at Baylor and at The Methodist Hospital, which was to become one of the most celebrated in the world, a galaxy of young stars," the late author Thomas Thompson wrote in 1970 in Hearts: Of Surgeons and Transplants, Miracles and Disasters Along the Cardiac Frontier. "In a city where 25 years ago there was practiced medicine of the most mediocre sort, there sprung up in a swampy area 6 miles south of downtown ... one of the handful of distinguished medical centers in the world."
DeBakey invented and refined ways to repair weakened or clot-obstructed blood vessels using replacements made from preserved human blood vessels and, later, with artificial ones. He is credited with the first successful surgical treatment of potentially deadly aneurysms of various parts of the aorta. In 1939, he co-authored one of the earliest papers linking smoking and lung cancer.
During World War II, while he served in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, DeBakey's work led to the development of mobile surgical hospitals, called MASH units. He helped President John F. Kennedy lobby for Medicare; he recommended creation of the National Library of Medicine, subsequently authorized by Congress. In 1963, DeBakey won the Lasker Award for Clinical Research, considered the U.S. equivalent of a Nobel.
"At times he could act like the meanest man in the world. He didn't let you breathe," said Dr. John L. Ochsner of New Orleans, who trained under DeBakey and whose father, Dr. Alton Ochsner, was DeBakey's mentor at Tulane University School of Medicine.
"The thing that made him so mad all the time was he was trying to conquer the world, and every minute was so important to him. He didn't have time for frivolity at all," he said.
Two sides
Patients and their families saw him otherwise.
To them, DeBakey was a healer with quiet authority who seemed to work miracles. Enfolding a patient's hands in his, the patient's face would relax, some recalled.
He was pained by the breakup in 2004 of the 50-year marriage between Baylor and Methodist, which dissolved over disagreements about the future of the institutions. DeBakey said the breakup made no sense and hurt both parties. Friends described him as "heartbroken" about the split. In an interview earlier this year, DeBakey said the description was not inaccurate.
In 2003, his MicroMed DeBakey LVAD was implanted in a 10-year-old girl, the youngest patient in the world to receive the device, which boosts the heart's main pumping chamber. In 2004, a child-sized version became available for children as young as 5. DeBakey had developed the device in collaboration with heart surgeon Noon and NASA.
In his prime — and it was an unusually lengthy prime — DeBakey, with his sharp-nosed profile and dark-brown eyes, had the power to intimidate and awe his acolytes. In surgery, DeBakey was famous for his withering remarks, delivered in a velvety Louisiana drawl, directed at the anxious and ambitious residents operating alongside him.
John Ochsner recalled how, if an operation was going slowly, DeBakey might ask, ''Am I the only one here doing anything?"
Or a clumsy resident might prompt DeBakey to say, ''Do you have two left hands?"
DeBakey's trainees cringed at his criticism, but among themselves they recounted the barbs in a sometimes dead-on imitation of the revered surgeon. Ochsner, now chairman emeritus of the Department of Surgery at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, said DeBakey's stern manner came from a desire to prepare his students for the demanding career ahead.
Family life
DeBakey was the eldest of five children born to Lebanese immigrants Raheehja and Shaker Morris DeBakey.
Shaker Morris DeBakey was a businessman and pharmacist in Lake Charles who invested in real estate and rice farming. Michael DeBakey grew up with his brother and three sisters in a large house with maids, butlers and gardeners.
The DeBakeys ate healthy foods — fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, seafood, rice and beans. They didn't smoke or drink. At dinnertime, the family chatted about things that happened at the drug store or the doings of politicians who sought out Shaker's advice.
"You could not get a word in edgewise until one of our parents announced who had the floor," DeBakey recounted to a reporter in 1997. "It was very stimulating."
On Sundays after services at their Episcopal church, the DeBakeys would take clothing to a nearby orphanage. One time, the giveaway bundle included DeBakey's favorite cap. When the youngster protested, his mother sat him down and said: "You have a lot of caps. These children have none." "It made a great impression on me," he said.
DeBakey's mother also taught him one of his future career's essential skills — sewing. He would help her repair items headed for the orphanage. He also learned to tat, using a little bobbin to make lace. Years later, in the 1950s, DeBakey would introduce artificial arteries made from Dacron; he sewed the prototype on his wife's sewing machine, using fabric purchased at Houston's downtown Foley's.
He went to medical school at Tulane after graduating as valedictorian from his high school class. During his senior year in medical school, he developed the roller pump, a device that two decades later became a crucial component of the heart-lung machine used on patients during open-heart surgery.
'A work of art'
As a surgery resident at New Orleans' Charity Hospital, DeBakey caught his first glimpse of a living human heart — pink and pulsating in the chest of a knifing victim.
''I saw it beating, and it was beautiful, a work of art," DeBakey said in 1987. ''I still have an almost religious sense when I work on the heart. It is something God makes and we have yet to duplicate."
Later, at Charity Hospital, DeBakey experienced a potentially catastrophic near-miss — he accidentally punctured a patient's aorta — which gave him an appreciation for the steadying influence of his mentor, Alton Ochsner.
He and Ochsner were operating in an amphitheater with a full audience of visiting surgeons. DeBakey was on one side of the patient, Ochsner on the other. DeBakey was attempting to lift up the aorta, which had been weakened by infection "when I suddenly realized, with a gripping terror, that I had entered the aorta."
DeBakey whispered this to Ochsner, who calmly instructed DeBakey to leave his finger over the hole. Ochsner stitched it up, and no one realized a near-fatal accident had occurred.
During the late 1930s, DeBakey married his first wife, Diana, a nurse he met in New Orleans. They had four sons: Michael, Ernest, Barry and Denis. When DeBakey came to Houston in 1948 to head Baylor's surgery department, he moved his family into a home near Rice University, only five minutes from the Texas Medical Center, so he wouldn't waste time commuting. He never moved from that home.
Diana DeBakey died of a heart attack in 1972. They had been in Mexico for a medical meeting, staying with a close relative of the president of Mexico. They ate well and stayed up late, and when the DeBakeys returned home, Diana was complaining of an upset stomach.
At that time, gastrointestinal problems were not widely recognized as a heart attack symptom in women. When her discomfort worsened, DeBakey had her admitted to the hospital to find out what was wrong. While DeBakey was in surgery on someone else, he got a call that there was an emergency. When he reached his wife's bedside, she had died.
Three years after her death, DeBakey married German film actress Katrin Fehlhaber, whom he met through Frank Sinatra. They had a daughter, Olga.
Health-conscious
The workaholic DeBakey rarely slept more than five hours a night, awaking at 5 most mornings to write research papers or read medical journals. He rarely drank, never smoked, ate sparingly — mostly salads, late in life — and didn't watch television. He spent much of his adult years in light-blue scrubs and wore a pair of gleaming-white cowboy boots for the operating room.
In 1948, when DeBakey came to Houston, he had turned the Baylor job down twice. The fledgling school had moved to Houston from Dallas just five years earlier, and Baylor students were scattered all over the city doing their clinical rotations, a situation that didn't appeal to DeBakey. He finally was persuaded to come when Hermann Hospital promised the school a 20-bed surgical service, according to Ruth SoRelle's history of Baylor,
The Quest for Excellence.
The Hermann deal fell through, and DeBakey nearly left. But the Truman administration asked DeBakey to transfer Houston's Navy hospital into a Veterans Administration hospital, an idea championed by DeBakey that evolved into the national VA system. There, DeBakey's students started the city's first surgical residency program.
One of the most talked-about events of DeBakey's life was his legendary feud — more Arctic freeze than hot-tempered spat — with Cooley, his one-time close collaborator.
DeBakey hired Cooley in 1951 after the Houston native finished his training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
In 1965, DeBakey participated in a federally funded program to design an artificial heart.
Within a few years, he had a device that some physicians felt was ready for human trials, but DeBakey believed it needed more work.
Then, to international acclaim in 1969, Cooley performed the first implantation of an artificial heart into the chest of 47-year-old Haskell Karp, a dying heart surgery patient. Karp lived with the heart in his chest 65 hours before dying shortly after a heart transplant.
A bitter feud
Cooley's fame was quickly tarnished after DeBakey said the heart was identical to one under development in the Baylor labs and that Cooley had used it without permission.
Cooley said he and Dr. Domingo Liotta, who also designed artificial hearts in DeBakey's lab, had built the heart privately and that he had no choice but to use the heart because the patient's life was in jeopardy.
After the incident, the American College of Surgeons voted to censure Cooley, and, amid a dispute with the trustees of Baylor, Cooley resigned from the institution.
The two men stopped collaborating and rarely spoke. DeBakey changed his focus and decided funds would be better spent developing pumps to assist failing hearts. Such devices became the mainstream treatment for patients with failing hearts.
The episode ''stole DeBakey's shot at a Nobel Prize," Methodist heart surgeon Mike Reardon said in 2004. ''What Mike needed was one crowning event to make him a candidate. And that was going to be the artificial heart."
The two buried the hatchet last year. Cooley inducted DeBakey into his surgical society, and DeBakey accepted, telling his former colleague he was touched by the gesture.
Earlier this year, DeBakey returned the favor, granting Cooley membership in his surgical society.
In April, when DeBakey was given the Congressional Gold Medal, Cooley made the trip to Washington, too.
"I feel a sadness over his passing," Cooley said. "It represents the end of an era. We were at one time colleagues, and then we were competitors, and then finally we restored our friendship."
A fight against death
For a man who outlived most of his peers, DeBakey seemed unphilosophical about death, appearing to view it as a personal enemy.
Losing a patient put him in a black mood and set his mind spinning with thoughts of what he might have done differently.
''You fight (death) all the time, and you never really can accept it," he once said. ''You know in reality that everybody is going to die, but you try to fight it, to push it away, hold it away with your hands."
DeBakey was preceded in death by his sons Houston lawyer Ernest O. DeBakey, who died in 2004, and Barry E. DeBakey, who died in 2007; and a brother, Dr. Ernest G. DeBakey, who died in 2006.
In addition to his wife, Katrin, and their daughter, Olga, DeBakey is survived by sons Michael DeBakey of Lima, Peru, and Denis DeBakey of Houston; and sisters Lois and Selma DeBakey, both medical editors and linguists at Baylor.
todd.ackerman@chron.com
eric.berger@chron.com
Dr. Michael DeBakey: 1908-2008
Houstonian called the 'greatest surgeon of the 20th century' dies at 99
By TODD ACKERMAN and ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dr. Sherwin Nuland, medicine's best-known historian, was visiting with Dr. Michael DeBakey three years ago when the then-96-year-old surgeon left the room to attend to some business.
Taking advantage of the moment to tour the room's extensive collection of memorabilia — the honors, photographs and mementos from an illustrative career that spanned eight decades — Nuland stopped to reflect on two antiquarian charts of the history of medicine.
"As I studied the charts, it occurred to me that no face on them was any more important in the history of medicine than DeBakey himself,'' said Nuland, a retired surgeon at the Yale University School of Medicine and author of Doctors: The Biography of Medicine. "I can't think of anyone who's made more of a contribution to the field of medicine.''
Michael Ellis DeBakey — internationally acclaimed as the father of modern cardiovascular surgery and considered by many to be the greatest surgeon ever — died Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. He was 99.
Methodist officials said DeBakey died of natural causes. He was taken to the hospital after his wife, Katrin, called 911, and he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving, said Dr. Marc Boom, executive vice president of Methodist.
DeBakey is to lie in repose within the rotunda of Houston City Hall from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, officials at Baylor College of Medicine said. Funeral services are planned for Wednesday.
Chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine and a surgeon at Methodist since 1949, DeBakey trained thousands of surgeons. During his career, he estimated he performed more than 60,000 operations. His patients included the famous — Russian President Boris Yeltsin and movie actress Marlene Dietrich among them — and the uncelebrated.
"He was a great contributor to medicine and surgery," said Dr. Denton Cooley, president and surgeon-in-chief at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and a former rival of DeBakey.
"But he left a real legacy in the Texas Medical Center and at Baylor College of Medicine, where he's brought so much attention," Cooley said. "Together, we were able to establish Houston as a world leader in cardiovascular medicine."
Dr. George Noon, a cardiovascular surgeon and longtime partner of DeBakey's, said he "single-handedly raised the standard of medical care, teaching and research around the world. He was the greatest surgeon of the 20th century, and physicians everywhere are indebted to him for his contributions to medicine."
DeBakey almost died in 2006, when he suffered an aortic aneurysm, a condition for which he pioneered the treatment. He is considered the oldest patient to have both undergone and survived surgery for it.
He recovered enough to go to Washington earlier this year to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's two highest civilian honors.
He remained vigorous and was a player in medicine well into his 90s, performing surgeries, traveling and publishing articles in scientific journals. His large hands were steady, his hearing sharp. His personal health regimen included taking the stairs at work and a single cup of coffee in the morning.
DeBakey's death was mourned by the leaders of Methodist and Baylor.
Methodist President Ron Girotto said: "He has improved the human condition and touched the lives of generations to come. We will greatly miss him."
Baylor President Dr. Peter Traber added: "He set a standard for pre-eminence in all areas of his life that those who knew him and worked with him are compelled to emulate. And he served as a very visible reminder of the importance of leadership and giving back to one's community."
Built a reputation
DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, La., in 1908, a month before Ford began making Model Ts and a quarter-century before the discovery of bacteria-fighting drugs. While still in medical school, he developed the roller pump for the heart-lung machine. DeBakey invented many of the procedures and devices — more than 50 surgical instruments — used to repair hearts and arteries.
He is widely credited with laying the foundation for the Texas Medical Center in Houston by recruiting doctors and researchers and giving the city an international reputation for leading-edge health care. He was a maverick, running afoul of the Harris County Medical Society for insisting that surgeons be certified by the American Board of Surgery. At the time, it was common for general physicians to operate.
"DeBakey built a department of surgery at Baylor and at The Methodist Hospital, which was to become one of the most celebrated in the world, a galaxy of young stars," the late author Thomas Thompson wrote in 1970 in Hearts: Of Surgeons and Transplants, Miracles and Disasters Along the Cardiac Frontier. "In a city where 25 years ago there was practiced medicine of the most mediocre sort, there sprung up in a swampy area 6 miles south of downtown ... one of the handful of distinguished medical centers in the world."
DeBakey invented and refined ways to repair weakened or clot-obstructed blood vessels using replacements made from preserved human blood vessels and, later, with artificial ones. He is credited with the first successful surgical treatment of potentially deadly aneurysms of various parts of the aorta. In 1939, he co-authored one of the earliest papers linking smoking and lung cancer.
During World War II, while he served in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, DeBakey's work led to the development of mobile surgical hospitals, called MASH units. He helped President John F. Kennedy lobby for Medicare; he recommended creation of the National Library of Medicine, subsequently authorized by Congress. In 1963, DeBakey won the Lasker Award for Clinical Research, considered the U.S. equivalent of a Nobel.
"At times he could act like the meanest man in the world. He didn't let you breathe," said Dr. John L. Ochsner of New Orleans, who trained under DeBakey and whose father, Dr. Alton Ochsner, was DeBakey's mentor at Tulane University School of Medicine.
"The thing that made him so mad all the time was he was trying to conquer the world, and every minute was so important to him. He didn't have time for frivolity at all," he said.
Two sides
Patients and their families saw him otherwise.
To them, DeBakey was a healer with quiet authority who seemed to work miracles. Enfolding a patient's hands in his, the patient's face would relax, some recalled.
He was pained by the breakup in 2004 of the 50-year marriage between Baylor and Methodist, which dissolved over disagreements about the future of the institutions. DeBakey said the breakup made no sense and hurt both parties. Friends described him as "heartbroken" about the split. In an interview earlier this year, DeBakey said the description was not inaccurate.
In 2003, his MicroMed DeBakey LVAD was implanted in a 10-year-old girl, the youngest patient in the world to receive the device, which boosts the heart's main pumping chamber. In 2004, a child-sized version became available for children as young as 5. DeBakey had developed the device in collaboration with heart surgeon Noon and NASA.
In his prime — and it was an unusually lengthy prime — DeBakey, with his sharp-nosed profile and dark-brown eyes, had the power to intimidate and awe his acolytes. In surgery, DeBakey was famous for his withering remarks, delivered in a velvety Louisiana drawl, directed at the anxious and ambitious residents operating alongside him.
John Ochsner recalled how, if an operation was going slowly, DeBakey might ask, ''Am I the only one here doing anything?"
Or a clumsy resident might prompt DeBakey to say, ''Do you have two left hands?"
DeBakey's trainees cringed at his criticism, but among themselves they recounted the barbs in a sometimes dead-on imitation of the revered surgeon. Ochsner, now chairman emeritus of the Department of Surgery at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, said DeBakey's stern manner came from a desire to prepare his students for the demanding career ahead.
Family life
DeBakey was the eldest of five children born to Lebanese immigrants Raheehja and Shaker Morris DeBakey.
Shaker Morris DeBakey was a businessman and pharmacist in Lake Charles who invested in real estate and rice farming. Michael DeBakey grew up with his brother and three sisters in a large house with maids, butlers and gardeners.
The DeBakeys ate healthy foods — fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, seafood, rice and beans. They didn't smoke or drink. At dinnertime, the family chatted about things that happened at the drug store or the doings of politicians who sought out Shaker's advice.
"You could not get a word in edgewise until one of our parents announced who had the floor," DeBakey recounted to a reporter in 1997. "It was very stimulating."
On Sundays after services at their Episcopal church, the DeBakeys would take clothing to a nearby orphanage. One time, the giveaway bundle included DeBakey's favorite cap. When the youngster protested, his mother sat him down and said: "You have a lot of caps. These children have none." "It made a great impression on me," he said.
DeBakey's mother also taught him one of his future career's essential skills — sewing. He would help her repair items headed for the orphanage. He also learned to tat, using a little bobbin to make lace. Years later, in the 1950s, DeBakey would introduce artificial arteries made from Dacron; he sewed the prototype on his wife's sewing machine, using fabric purchased at Houston's downtown Foley's.
He went to medical school at Tulane after graduating as valedictorian from his high school class. During his senior year in medical school, he developed the roller pump, a device that two decades later became a crucial component of the heart-lung machine used on patients during open-heart surgery.
'A work of art'
As a surgery resident at New Orleans' Charity Hospital, DeBakey caught his first glimpse of a living human heart — pink and pulsating in the chest of a knifing victim.
''I saw it beating, and it was beautiful, a work of art," DeBakey said in 1987. ''I still have an almost religious sense when I work on the heart. It is something God makes and we have yet to duplicate."
Later, at Charity Hospital, DeBakey experienced a potentially catastrophic near-miss — he accidentally punctured a patient's aorta — which gave him an appreciation for the steadying influence of his mentor, Alton Ochsner.
He and Ochsner were operating in an amphitheater with a full audience of visiting surgeons. DeBakey was on one side of the patient, Ochsner on the other. DeBakey was attempting to lift up the aorta, which had been weakened by infection "when I suddenly realized, with a gripping terror, that I had entered the aorta."
DeBakey whispered this to Ochsner, who calmly instructed DeBakey to leave his finger over the hole. Ochsner stitched it up, and no one realized a near-fatal accident had occurred.
During the late 1930s, DeBakey married his first wife, Diana, a nurse he met in New Orleans. They had four sons: Michael, Ernest, Barry and Denis. When DeBakey came to Houston in 1948 to head Baylor's surgery department, he moved his family into a home near Rice University, only five minutes from the Texas Medical Center, so he wouldn't waste time commuting. He never moved from that home.
Diana DeBakey died of a heart attack in 1972. They had been in Mexico for a medical meeting, staying with a close relative of the president of Mexico. They ate well and stayed up late, and when the DeBakeys returned home, Diana was complaining of an upset stomach.
At that time, gastrointestinal problems were not widely recognized as a heart attack symptom in women. When her discomfort worsened, DeBakey had her admitted to the hospital to find out what was wrong. While DeBakey was in surgery on someone else, he got a call that there was an emergency. When he reached his wife's bedside, she had died.
Three years after her death, DeBakey married German film actress Katrin Fehlhaber, whom he met through Frank Sinatra. They had a daughter, Olga.
Health-conscious
The workaholic DeBakey rarely slept more than five hours a night, awaking at 5 most mornings to write research papers or read medical journals. He rarely drank, never smoked, ate sparingly — mostly salads, late in life — and didn't watch television. He spent much of his adult years in light-blue scrubs and wore a pair of gleaming-white cowboy boots for the operating room.
In 1948, when DeBakey came to Houston, he had turned the Baylor job down twice. The fledgling school had moved to Houston from Dallas just five years earlier, and Baylor students were scattered all over the city doing their clinical rotations, a situation that didn't appeal to DeBakey. He finally was persuaded to come when Hermann Hospital promised the school a 20-bed surgical service, according to Ruth SoRelle's history of Baylor,
The Quest for Excellence.
The Hermann deal fell through, and DeBakey nearly left. But the Truman administration asked DeBakey to transfer Houston's Navy hospital into a Veterans Administration hospital, an idea championed by DeBakey that evolved into the national VA system. There, DeBakey's students started the city's first surgical residency program.
One of the most talked-about events of DeBakey's life was his legendary feud — more Arctic freeze than hot-tempered spat — with Cooley, his one-time close collaborator.
DeBakey hired Cooley in 1951 after the Houston native finished his training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
In 1965, DeBakey participated in a federally funded program to design an artificial heart.
Within a few years, he had a device that some physicians felt was ready for human trials, but DeBakey believed it needed more work.
Then, to international acclaim in 1969, Cooley performed the first implantation of an artificial heart into the chest of 47-year-old Haskell Karp, a dying heart surgery patient. Karp lived with the heart in his chest 65 hours before dying shortly after a heart transplant.
A bitter feud
Cooley's fame was quickly tarnished after DeBakey said the heart was identical to one under development in the Baylor labs and that Cooley had used it without permission.
Cooley said he and Dr. Domingo Liotta, who also designed artificial hearts in DeBakey's lab, had built the heart privately and that he had no choice but to use the heart because the patient's life was in jeopardy.
After the incident, the American College of Surgeons voted to censure Cooley, and, amid a dispute with the trustees of Baylor, Cooley resigned from the institution.
The two men stopped collaborating and rarely spoke. DeBakey changed his focus and decided funds would be better spent developing pumps to assist failing hearts. Such devices became the mainstream treatment for patients with failing hearts.
The episode ''stole DeBakey's shot at a Nobel Prize," Methodist heart surgeon Mike Reardon said in 2004. ''What Mike needed was one crowning event to make him a candidate. And that was going to be the artificial heart."
The two buried the hatchet last year. Cooley inducted DeBakey into his surgical society, and DeBakey accepted, telling his former colleague he was touched by the gesture.
Earlier this year, DeBakey returned the favor, granting Cooley membership in his surgical society.
In April, when DeBakey was given the Congressional Gold Medal, Cooley made the trip to Washington, too.
"I feel a sadness over his passing," Cooley said. "It represents the end of an era. We were at one time colleagues, and then we were competitors, and then finally we restored our friendship."
A fight against death
For a man who outlived most of his peers, DeBakey seemed unphilosophical about death, appearing to view it as a personal enemy.
Losing a patient put him in a black mood and set his mind spinning with thoughts of what he might have done differently.
''You fight (death) all the time, and you never really can accept it," he once said. ''You know in reality that everybody is going to die, but you try to fight it, to push it away, hold it away with your hands."
DeBakey was preceded in death by his sons Houston lawyer Ernest O. DeBakey, who died in 2004, and Barry E. DeBakey, who died in 2007; and a brother, Dr. Ernest G. DeBakey, who died in 2006.
In addition to his wife, Katrin, and their daughter, Olga, DeBakey is survived by sons Michael DeBakey of Lima, Peru, and Denis DeBakey of Houston; and sisters Lois and Selma DeBakey, both medical editors and linguists at Baylor.
todd.ackerman@chron.com
eric.berger@chron.com
Saturday, July 12, 2008
At long last, has the Associated Press lost all sense of decency?
Classless AP Takes Cheap Shots at Just-Passed Snow
Photo of Tom Blumer.
By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
July 12, 2008 - 09:03 ET
The AP's story (saved here for future reference in case the wire service is embarrassed into revising it; you might consider saving it too as Exhibit A on how far over the cliff the dinosaur media has driven itself) by Douglass K. Daniel, with Jennifer Loven contributing (I might have known), gets in at least three cheap, fundamentally untrue, and totally uncalled-for shots at Tony Snow, who died earlier this morning.
I won't sully NB's front page with any of them. They follow the jump:
With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.
..... During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.
Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.
Godspeed Tony. I'm sure God will take an objective view of your life, and you'll waltz right in to be with Him for eternity.
Otherwise, words fail. How dare they
Photo of Tom Blumer.
By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
July 12, 2008 - 09:03 ET
The AP's story (saved here for future reference in case the wire service is embarrassed into revising it; you might consider saving it too as Exhibit A on how far over the cliff the dinosaur media has driven itself) by Douglass K. Daniel, with Jennifer Loven contributing (I might have known), gets in at least three cheap, fundamentally untrue, and totally uncalled-for shots at Tony Snow, who died earlier this morning.
I won't sully NB's front page with any of them. They follow the jump:
With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.
..... During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.
Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.
Godspeed Tony. I'm sure God will take an objective view of your life, and you'll waltz right in to be with Him for eternity.
Otherwise, words fail. How dare they
BILLY GRAHAM
Billy Graham
For You
Saturday July 12, 2008
* Is the Devil Trying to Turn Me Away From God?
* Tips for What to Do After an Accident
Is the Devil Trying to Turn Me Away From God?
By Billy Graham, Tribune Media Services
Q: A year ago I accepted Jesus into my life, and for a time I really felt He was with me. But now I find myself wondering sometimes if God even exists. This scares me, because I don't want to miss going to heaven. Why has this happened? Is the devil trying to turn me away from God? -- Q.S.
A: The devil will always try to turn us away from God; after all, this is the main thing he wants to accomplish in our lives. And one way he does this is by probing for our weak spots and trying to take advantage of them.
But don't blame everything on the devil; he doesn't deserve all the credit! The real problem, I suspect, is that after you gave your life to Jesus you thought this was the end, and it was all you needed to do. You knew your sins were forgiven, and you knew as well the reality of the Bible's promise that "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life" (1 John 5:11-12).
But afterward you never did anything to strengthen yourself spiritually -- and over time you became spiritually weak. Just as a newborn baby needs food and warmth in order to survive and grow, so you needed spiritual food and warmth -- the "food" of the Bible and prayer, and the "warmth" of fellowship with other believers. If these were missing, your spiritual life inevitably suffered.
God has not abandoned you; He loves you and yearns for you to grow stronger in your faith. Confess your weakness to Him, and then take time each day to be alone with God in His Word and in prayer. In addition, ask Him to lead you to a church where Christ is central, and where you can grow in your faith.
========
Thursday, July 10, 2008
1ST CORINTHIANS 6:9
Bible Publishers Sued for Anti-Gay References
Thursday, July 10, 2008 10:51 AM
By: Rick Pedraza
A Michigan man is seeking $70 million from two Christian publishers for emotional distress and mental instability he received during the past 20 years from versions of the Bible that refer to homosexuality as a sin.
Bradley LaShawn Fowler, a gay man, claims his constitutional rights were infringed upon by Zondervan Publishing Co. and Thomas Nelson Publishing, both of which, he claims, deliberately caused homosexuals to suffer by misinterpretation of the Bible.
Fowler, 39, is seeking $60 million from Zondervan and another $10 million from Thomas Nelson.
According to a USA Today report, Fowler's two separate suits against the publishers claim the intent of the Bible revisions that refer to homosexuals as sinners reflect an individual opinion or a group's conclusion.
Fowler says the deliberate changes made to first Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine *caused him "or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder."
Fowler, who is representing himself in both lawsuits, claims the publishers are misinterpreting the Bible by specifically using the word homosexuals, which made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.
'These are opinions based on the publishers and they are being embedded in the religious structure as a way of life," he tells a local NBC TV station affiliate in Grand Rapids.
Fowler admits that every Bible printed is a translation that can be interpreted in many ways, but he says specifically using the word 'homosexual' is not a translation but a change.
Fowler says Zondervan Bibles published in the '80s used the word homosexuals among a list of those who are ‘wicked' or unrighteous and won't inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Zondervan, for its part, issued a statement to the Grand Rapids press stating it does not translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations it publishes
‘We rely on the scholarly judgment of the highly respected and credible translation committees behind each translation and never alter the text of the translations we are licensed to publish,’ the statement reads.
‘We only publish credible translations produced by credible Biblical scholars.’
U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr., who will hear Fowler’s case against Thomas Nelson, says the court ‘has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of [Fowler’s] claims."
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
• 1ST Corinthians 6:9: do you not know that the wicked shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not misled: neither the immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the corrupt nor men who sleep with men.
• HOLY BIBLE FROM THE ANCIENT EASTERN TEXT
• GEORGE M. LAMSA’S TRANSLATION FROM THE
• ARAMAIC OF THE PESHITTA.
1ST Corinthians 6:9-10 Surely you know that the people who do wrong will not inherit the God’s kingdom. Do not be fooled. Those who sin sexually, worship idols, take part in adultery, those who are male prostitutes, or men who have sexual relations with other men, those who steal, are greedy, get drunk, lie about others or rob—these people will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
THE HOLY BIBLE
CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
NEW CENTURY VERSION PUBLISHED BY
NELSON BIBLES. COPYRIGHT 2005. PRINTED IN
BELGIUM.
1ST Corinthians 6:9-11 .Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
The Greek terms translated male prostitutes and sodomites do not refer to “homosexuals,” as inappropriate older translations; “masturbators” and male prostitutes might be a better translation. While continuing the emphasis on economic offenders, the list expands the sexual offenders (see 5.10-11n.), anticipating 6.12-20.
THE NEW OXFORD ANNOTATED BIBLE,
New Revised standard Version (THIRD EDITION)
AN ECUMENICAL STUDY BIBLE.
The word/term homosexual was not even coined until the mid-late 19th century by an early day liberal/socialist. The Z Bible does actually use the word homosexual and in my mind that shows poor scholarship on their part (my personal opinion, not necessarily anybody else’s.)
So, does the guy have a valid complaint? Maybe. Is this a frivolous lawsuit? Definitely. If he had a problem why did he wait 20 years? He is serving as his own attorney? Who was it that said, ‘a man serving as his own attorney has a fool for a client’?
Thursday, July 10, 2008 10:51 AM
By: Rick Pedraza
A Michigan man is seeking $70 million from two Christian publishers for emotional distress and mental instability he received during the past 20 years from versions of the Bible that refer to homosexuality as a sin.
Bradley LaShawn Fowler, a gay man, claims his constitutional rights were infringed upon by Zondervan Publishing Co. and Thomas Nelson Publishing, both of which, he claims, deliberately caused homosexuals to suffer by misinterpretation of the Bible.
Fowler, 39, is seeking $60 million from Zondervan and another $10 million from Thomas Nelson.
According to a USA Today report, Fowler's two separate suits against the publishers claim the intent of the Bible revisions that refer to homosexuals as sinners reflect an individual opinion or a group's conclusion.
Fowler says the deliberate changes made to first Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine *caused him "or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder."
Fowler, who is representing himself in both lawsuits, claims the publishers are misinterpreting the Bible by specifically using the word homosexuals, which made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.
'These are opinions based on the publishers and they are being embedded in the religious structure as a way of life," he tells a local NBC TV station affiliate in Grand Rapids.
Fowler admits that every Bible printed is a translation that can be interpreted in many ways, but he says specifically using the word 'homosexual' is not a translation but a change.
Fowler says Zondervan Bibles published in the '80s used the word homosexuals among a list of those who are ‘wicked' or unrighteous and won't inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Zondervan, for its part, issued a statement to the Grand Rapids press stating it does not translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations it publishes
‘We rely on the scholarly judgment of the highly respected and credible translation committees behind each translation and never alter the text of the translations we are licensed to publish,’ the statement reads.
‘We only publish credible translations produced by credible Biblical scholars.’
U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr., who will hear Fowler’s case against Thomas Nelson, says the court ‘has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of [Fowler’s] claims."
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
• 1ST Corinthians 6:9: do you not know that the wicked shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not misled: neither the immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the corrupt nor men who sleep with men.
• HOLY BIBLE FROM THE ANCIENT EASTERN TEXT
• GEORGE M. LAMSA’S TRANSLATION FROM THE
• ARAMAIC OF THE PESHITTA.
1ST Corinthians 6:9-10 Surely you know that the people who do wrong will not inherit the God’s kingdom. Do not be fooled. Those who sin sexually, worship idols, take part in adultery, those who are male prostitutes, or men who have sexual relations with other men, those who steal, are greedy, get drunk, lie about others or rob—these people will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
THE HOLY BIBLE
CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
NEW CENTURY VERSION PUBLISHED BY
NELSON BIBLES. COPYRIGHT 2005. PRINTED IN
BELGIUM.
1ST Corinthians 6:9-11 .Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
The Greek terms translated male prostitutes and sodomites do not refer to “homosexuals,” as inappropriate older translations; “masturbators” and male prostitutes might be a better translation. While continuing the emphasis on economic offenders, the list expands the sexual offenders (see 5.10-11n.), anticipating 6.12-20.
THE NEW OXFORD ANNOTATED BIBLE,
New Revised standard Version (THIRD EDITION)
AN ECUMENICAL STUDY BIBLE.
The word/term homosexual was not even coined until the mid-late 19th century by an early day liberal/socialist. The Z Bible does actually use the word homosexual and in my mind that shows poor scholarship on their part (my personal opinion, not necessarily anybody else’s.)
So, does the guy have a valid complaint? Maybe. Is this a frivolous lawsuit? Definitely. If he had a problem why did he wait 20 years? He is serving as his own attorney? Who was it that said, ‘a man serving as his own attorney has a fool for a client’?
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
What if they called an election and no one showed up
date Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 10:16 PM
subject What if they scheduled an election....
and no one showed up. I never could vote for a Democrat for president and this year I might just have to vote for Micky Mouse or None of the Above instead of John McCain. I have nothing against LEGAL IMMIGRATION, nothing at all. However, I do have a serious problem with my tax dollars spent on 'La Raza' programs, policies and idiocies. The late, great, singer and Congressman Sonny Bono was once asked how he felt about illegal immigration. His response, "It's illegal". As in, it is against the law.
For 'La Raza,' Trouble Begins With Its Name
By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, July 09, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Only in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."
Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.
Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race":
15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
14. "The Race" demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.
13. "The Race" opposes cooperative immigration enforcement by local, state and federal authorities.
12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border.
11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database.
10. "The Race" opposed the state of Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal cooperation.
9. "The Race" joined other open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Prop. 227, California's bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions.
7. "The Race" has opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
6. Former "Race" president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the U.S. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."
5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA. The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized MEChA as "a radical racist group . . . one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."
4. "The Race" is leading a smear campaign against immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves — in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported current "Race" president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."
3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "Ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo-liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
2. "The Race" has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy — and the elite's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "(The) organization's very nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' — and that's precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."
The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza.
Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, In
--
"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." --George Washington
--
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask
another man to live for mine."
— John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government. — Thomas Paine
subject What if they scheduled an election....
and no one showed up. I never could vote for a Democrat for president and this year I might just have to vote for Micky Mouse or None of the Above instead of John McCain. I have nothing against LEGAL IMMIGRATION, nothing at all. However, I do have a serious problem with my tax dollars spent on 'La Raza' programs, policies and idiocies. The late, great, singer and Congressman Sonny Bono was once asked how he felt about illegal immigration. His response, "It's illegal". As in, it is against the law.
For 'La Raza,' Trouble Begins With Its Name
By MICHELLE MALKIN | Posted Wednesday, July 09, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Only in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."
Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.
Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race":
15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
14. "The Race" demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.
13. "The Race" opposes cooperative immigration enforcement by local, state and federal authorities.
12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border.
11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database.
10. "The Race" opposed the state of Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal cooperation.
9. "The Race" joined other open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Prop. 227, California's bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions.
7. "The Race" has opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
6. Former "Race" president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the U.S. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."
5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA. The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized MEChA as "a radical racist group . . . one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."
4. "The Race" is leading a smear campaign against immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves — in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported current "Race" president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."
3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "Ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo-liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
2. "The Race" has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy — and the elite's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "(The) organization's very nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' — and that's precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."
The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza.
Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, In
--
"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." --George Washington
--
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask
another man to live for mine."
— John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government. — Thomas Paine
Monday, July 7, 2008
NYT STRIKES AGAIN
McCain Speeches Are "YouTube Fodder" -- But Obama Never Makes Gaffes?
Another story on McCain's verbal gaffes -- but the Times has yet to mention Obama's claim to have visited 57 states, or any of his other odd statements.
Posted by: Clay Waters
7/7/2008 2:32:26 PM
John McCain's struggles in formal speaking environments prompted a front-page Sunday story by Mark Leibovich, "McCain Battles a Nemesis, the Teleprompter." Leibovich opened with the candidate's latest futile struggle against what is apparently his greatest enemy:
Senator John McCain was performing relatively smoothly as he unveiled his energy plan.
He managed to limit the mechanical hand chops and weirdly timed smiles that can often punctuate his speeches. He delivered his lines with an ease that suggested a momentary peace with his longtime nemesis, the teleprompter. (He relied on a belt-and-suspenders approach, with text scrolling down screens to his left and right, and on a big TV set in front of him.)
But when Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came to the intended sound bite of his speech -- the part about reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil -- he hit a slick.
“I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lex-eegton Project,” Mr. McCain said, drawing a quick breath and correcting himself. “The Lex-ing-ton Proj-ect,” he said slowly. “The Lexington Project,” he repeated. “Remember that name.”
In a town meeting in Cincinnati the next day, Mr. McCain would again slip up on the name of the Massachusetts town, where, he noted, “Americans asserted their independence once before.” He called it “the Lexiggdon Project” and twice tried to fix his error before flipping the name (“Project Lexington”) in subsequent references.
Mr. McCain’s battle of Lexington is part of a struggle he is engaged in every day. A politician who has thrived in the give-and-take settings of campaign buses, late-night TV couches and town meetings, he now is trying to meet the more formal speaking demands of a general election campaign.
To prove his point that McCain is not a natural at the podium, Leibovich forwarded insults of McCain from the liberal comedy show "The Colbert Report." Then he replayed some of McCain's greatest gaffes.
[Campaign adviser Mark] Salter bemoans the current environment, in which, he said, “the press creates the expectation that you better not stumble on a word, or tell a joke that Mr. Rogers wouldn’t tell, or you’re going to be in trouble.”
There are any number of Web videos of Mr. McCain to prove the point. They include the moment he playfully called a young man a “jerk” at a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire last year after he asked Mr. McCain if his age made him a candidate for Alzheimer’s disease in the White House (Mr. McCain typically uses jerk as a term of affection), or when he suggested to Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” that he brought him a special gift from Iraq -- an improvised explosive device.
Small misstatements become instant YouTube fodder -- as when Mr. McCain vowed to “veto every single beer” that included lawmakers’ pet spending projects (he meant “bill”) or when he said the government should have been able to deliver “bottled hot water” to dehydrated babies in New Orleans. (It is fortunate for Mr. McCain that there was no YouTube in the 1980s when he jokingly referred to the retirement community Leisure World as “Seizure World.”)
The Times has shown consistent interest in John McCain, Republican gaffe machine -- but has yet to mention in its news coverage Barack Obama saying he had visited "57 states" during the campaign (a clip also on YouTube, since that seems to matter to the Times). Nor has the paper mentioned Obama seeing "fallen heroes" in a Memorial Day crowd or thinking that Hitchcock actually filmed the climactic chase scene in "North by Northwest" at Mt. Rushmore, as opposed to a studio set.
Another story on McCain's verbal gaffes -- but the Times has yet to mention Obama's claim to have visited 57 states, or any of his other odd statements.
Posted by: Clay Waters
7/7/2008 2:32:26 PM
John McCain's struggles in formal speaking environments prompted a front-page Sunday story by Mark Leibovich, "McCain Battles a Nemesis, the Teleprompter." Leibovich opened with the candidate's latest futile struggle against what is apparently his greatest enemy:
Senator John McCain was performing relatively smoothly as he unveiled his energy plan.
He managed to limit the mechanical hand chops and weirdly timed smiles that can often punctuate his speeches. He delivered his lines with an ease that suggested a momentary peace with his longtime nemesis, the teleprompter. (He relied on a belt-and-suspenders approach, with text scrolling down screens to his left and right, and on a big TV set in front of him.)
But when Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came to the intended sound bite of his speech -- the part about reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil -- he hit a slick.
“I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lex-eegton Project,” Mr. McCain said, drawing a quick breath and correcting himself. “The Lex-ing-ton Proj-ect,” he said slowly. “The Lexington Project,” he repeated. “Remember that name.”
In a town meeting in Cincinnati the next day, Mr. McCain would again slip up on the name of the Massachusetts town, where, he noted, “Americans asserted their independence once before.” He called it “the Lexiggdon Project” and twice tried to fix his error before flipping the name (“Project Lexington”) in subsequent references.
Mr. McCain’s battle of Lexington is part of a struggle he is engaged in every day. A politician who has thrived in the give-and-take settings of campaign buses, late-night TV couches and town meetings, he now is trying to meet the more formal speaking demands of a general election campaign.
To prove his point that McCain is not a natural at the podium, Leibovich forwarded insults of McCain from the liberal comedy show "The Colbert Report." Then he replayed some of McCain's greatest gaffes.
[Campaign adviser Mark] Salter bemoans the current environment, in which, he said, “the press creates the expectation that you better not stumble on a word, or tell a joke that Mr. Rogers wouldn’t tell, or you’re going to be in trouble.”
There are any number of Web videos of Mr. McCain to prove the point. They include the moment he playfully called a young man a “jerk” at a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire last year after he asked Mr. McCain if his age made him a candidate for Alzheimer’s disease in the White House (Mr. McCain typically uses jerk as a term of affection), or when he suggested to Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” that he brought him a special gift from Iraq -- an improvised explosive device.
Small misstatements become instant YouTube fodder -- as when Mr. McCain vowed to “veto every single beer” that included lawmakers’ pet spending projects (he meant “bill”) or when he said the government should have been able to deliver “bottled hot water” to dehydrated babies in New Orleans. (It is fortunate for Mr. McCain that there was no YouTube in the 1980s when he jokingly referred to the retirement community Leisure World as “Seizure World.”)
The Times has shown consistent interest in John McCain, Republican gaffe machine -- but has yet to mention in its news coverage Barack Obama saying he had visited "57 states" during the campaign (a clip also on YouTube, since that seems to matter to the Times). Nor has the paper mentioned Obama seeing "fallen heroes" in a Memorial Day crowd or thinking that Hitchcock actually filmed the climactic chase scene in "North by Northwest" at Mt. Rushmore, as opposed to a studio set.
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