A Military Non-Coup in Honduras

"Military coup in Honduras." So proclaims our President, backed up by similar statements from our Secretary of State, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Raul Castro of Cuba. But what a strange military coup: the removal of the current President was authorized in accordance with the Constitution of Honduras as interpreted by its Supreme Court and its Congress. That's 2 out of 3 branches of the elected and properly appointed government of Honduras. These two bodies then go on to install an interim Executive to manage things until free elections can be held this Fall. As coups go, the Honduras military seems a bit confused.

Here are the facts as reported by the Wall Street Journal: the Honduras Constitution can only be amended by a proper Constitutional Convention called pursuant to a national referendum approved by the Congress. Then President, Mel Zelaya, wanted an amendment to allow him to run for office again, with the evident intent to become one of those banana republic style Presidents for Life, like his pal Hugo Chavez. When Congress refused to act on the issue, Mr. Zelaya proceeded to try and hold a national referendum on this issue, under the pretense of his own authority as President. The Supreme Court of Honduras dutifully ruled that he had no such authority, and ordered the military to refuse cooperation with Mr. Zelaya. In the face of the ruling by Honduras' highest court, the lawfully appointed Attorney General of Honduras declared that any attempt to conduct a national referendum would be illegal and would be prosecuted by him to the fullest extent of the law. With the military refusing to perform the illegal referendum in accordance with the order of the Supreme Court, Mr. Zelaya fielded his own private army, broke into a military base, stole the referendum forms, and proceeded to distribute them. He was then arrested, and Congress, following established Honduran law, designated its own President as an interim Executive, pending national elections.

Here is a quote from the people of Honduras, taking a stand against the lawlessness of Mr. Zelaya:

"We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Events in Honduras are transparently a triumph of democracy and the rule of law, not a coup. That our President and Secretary of State are blind to this and can only repeat talking points oozing out of the mouths of Chavez and Castro is an indictment of the terrible ideology that clouds our own Leaders' minds.

Hawaiian Assured Destruction

See previous post on this topic here.

Let's begin with the basics. A President's job, in major part, is to protect the American people from external aggressors. That's why he is the head of the military. So if a foreign country with nuclear weapons announces its intention to test-fire at the United States a long range missile, it would seem the President would be required to take some immediate action to deter a belligerent threat to the the safety and well-being of American citizens.

The North Koreans have scheduled for July 4th weekend just such a missile test aimed at our 50th State, Hawaii. President Obama's response was to deploy missile defense assets to the region, which is certainly prudent, but seems inadequate to the situation. In nuclear confrontation matters, rope-a-dope defensiveness is not quite the strategy that will deter North Korea from its mad ambitions.

And now we learn that the President's missile defense deployment might not even be sufficient as rope-a-dope. Because of the Obama administrations budget cuts on missile defense technology, the SDI assets being deployed are not capable of stopping the type of missile being sent our way by the Norks. The Washington Times quotes a missile defense expert,

"that the sea-based SM-3 missiles now deployed to "protect" Hawaii are not equipped with adequate software and communications to intercept a missile traveling from North Korea to Hawaii, which would reach a terminal velocity of Mach 23 to 25. The SM-3s are effective only against targets traveling at up to half that speed. It would take about $50 million to upgrade the software to enable a Mach 25 intercept. The Army's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile, which also has been activated after successful tests at Barking Sands on Kauai, "doesn't come close" to being effective against this type of threat"

If this is anywhere close to true, then the President is engaging in saber-rattling of the worst kind. Rattling sabers works at all only when no one calls the bluff. But here, the Norks are already planning to test the adequacy of our missile defense technology. Should our defenses fail, as the Washington Times article indicates it might, then the President's actions will only serve to embolden North Korea in its nuclear diplomacy.

Let's remind ourselves of the grand vision of President Reagan in proposing missile defense: to make ballistic nuclear weapons obsolete. If we have viable defenses against ballistic missile attacks, then major aggressive powers like the Soviet Union of the time, and also pipsqueaks like North Korea and Iran, would not bother to expend the billions of dollars necessary to develop and stockpile ballistic nuclear missiles.

After billions already spent on missile defense and for a mere $50 million more, President Obama might have an occasion to follow through on Reagan's noble dream, and demonstrate the futility of the Nork's mad ambitions. But instead he adopts a rope-a-dope strategy in which there is no rope supporting us from behind and Hawaiians are the dopes.

Why? Because he is locked in a 1980's ideology of the Left that he learned as a young man, that Reagan's "Star Wars" was the mad plan of a Cold War ideologue. History vindicated Reagan, but ideologues like our current President are not much interested in history that doesn't conform with their prejudices.

And so we go from the successful policies of the 1980's involving the Strategic Defense Initiative and Strategic Arms Reductions, back to the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of the Cold War, as modified by Obama into Enemy God Awful Destruction (EGAD). And now, picking up speed on the nuclear slippery slope, we come to this July 4th when history might write that Hawaiian Assured Destruction became the order of the day in Washington. That's Hawaiian Assured Destruction as in HAD as in we've been had.

Washington Style Climate Control

Here is a little story that I think reveals a great deal about inside-the-beltway thinking and the recent Climate Control bill passed by Speaker Pelosi.

As the election season was heating up over the last couple of years, so too was the common wisdom on Global Warming and the legislation that would be necessary to fix it. The Left-Right split on the issue was stark: dire apocalyptic gloom on the Left, skeptical deniers on the Right. But that was only how Washington spoke in public. In the councils of our government the elite always talked of other things.

Elizabeth Dole, retired by voters in 2008, was a Senator from North Carolina, occupying the seat held by Jesse Helms for more than 30 years. She was not as conservative as Helms (who was?), but throughout her long career in government service she had established a nice book of conservative credentials.

Even so, Liddy Dole was a quintessential Washington insider. Wife of Bob Dole, head of the Red Cross, Senator from North Carolina, Liddy Dole swam and thrived in the waters of Washington opinion all her adult life. And on Climate Control her staff let slip once the Secret Wisdom of the Washington elite. This was last year, about springtime, when an obscure radio talk show reported that Liddy Dole’s office expressed the following reason for imposing a Cap and Trade system on the American economy (I paraphrase here from memory): “We need the money to invest in upgrading America's energy infrastructure.”

That's "we" as in Washington. That's "money" as in Cap and Trade revenue streams. That's "invest" as in spend. That's "energy infrastructure" as in huge government boondoggles incorporating the latest trendy Washington cocktail party opinion on where trillions of dollars need to be spent. And that's "Washington cocktail party opinion" as in a group of people who have never, ever invested their own money in energy infrastructure, much less run an actual energy company that produces real infrastructure through risk, innovation, exploration, production or distribution. And additionally, have far more on their minds than energy anyway.

In sum, the legislation is simply a trillion dollar tax on the American people so Washington will have the money to do what Washington deems important. What's important depends on the politician, but Climate Control is at best peripheral to Washington’s concerns, and at worst irrelevant, which is why Greenpeace withdrew its support at the last minute.

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For the Left, apparently the money is needed to fund the huge costs of Universal Health Care. For the Right, well, the Right is in obvious disarray these days, so it is not quite clear what the Liddy Doles would do with all those new trillions in the Federal coffers. Probably a bunch of wonkish stuff like Boone Pickens' subsidized wind farms slashing across the heartland of America and/or hydrogen/electrical/nitrogen/gluten/Red Dye No. 8 powered cars of the future.

But, Left or Right, it makes no difference. Climate Control legislation is most definitely not about climate control. It is about huge new sources of money so Washington can do the myriad things Washington wants to do, which largely revolves around paying off large voting blocks of those enamored with Washington’s largesse.

The irony is that in order to get the bare minimum votes Speaker Pelosi needed to pass the legislation, the Democrats had to horse-trade away about all of the new tax money. That’s right, let me repeat. Washington has already spent the Cap and Trade tax revenues to buy the votes it needed to pass the Cap and Trade tax legislation ("Under Waxman Markey, eighty five percent of initial carbon allowances would be simply given away. Estimates are that those initial allowances could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually."). Those nice new revenues are now promised to the GE’s of the world, the power companies, the lobbyists for power companies, and to the various politicians from coal-producing states to relieve their constituents pain as the Doctors of Washington slowly bleed the life out of their economy.

But don’t worry. A crestfallen Washington will soon revive itself over cocktails and power lunches and bold plans will be made for as yet unidentified new tax revenues.

But ssshhhh. Don’t tell anyone.

Desperate Husbands

A scandal in the South Carolina Governor's Mansion. Southern intrigue, foreign countries, mysterious "Maria," and an estranged wife, caught, all caught, in the harsh glare of public humiliation. I've got to get this to ABC quick. The White House Infomercial gig can't last much longer and this could fill the time slot nicely.

But to more mundane matters. No one cares to defend Governor Sanford these days, and with good reason. The man is an adulterer and a flake. But my concern is the media coverage: how is it no one knew the whereabouts of Governor Sanford for almost 5 whole days, but within hours of his admission of an affair yesterday, the Columbia newspapers published private emails detailing an affair? And in fact, the same newspaper had visited the mysterious Maria in Buenos Aires hours before the 2 pm press conference in Columbia where, supposedly, the Governor admitted to an affair that shocked, shocked everyone in the Palmetto State.

Great investigative reporting? Or shabby tabloid journalism festering in the gutter with sleazy politicians playing it the Chicago way? I'm inclined towards the latter.

I'm no investigative reporter, but then it doesn't appear we have any real reporters anymore, so I'll just have to do the best I can. Let's begin with a simple time-line of the saliant facts: The Governor and his wife have marital problems, and begin trying to work things out more than 5 months ago. The attempts to fix their marriage fail, and 2 weeks ago, the Governor and his wife quietly separate. Governor Sanford then ends a particularly bitter legislative fight, and leaves the partisan environs of the State Capital.

In my estimation, Opponent Politicians, let's call them Democrats for short, know all about the circumstances of the Governor's marital problems, as does the local press. This is speculation on my part, but probable, because this kind of stuff is hard to keep secret inside any State Capital's equivalent of "the Beltway." Prior to last week, the Democrats had not chosen to go public with the information. But now, a bit put out by the Governor's growing profile in national politics and also perhaps under the influence of old Chicago politics sweeping Washington and the Country, the Democrats decide to seize a nice opportunity to savage the maverick Governor. They begin a drip, drip, drip campaign with a complicit press asking "Where's the Governor? Where's the Governor?" knowing full well where the Governor is, and why. This story is then picked up by the national media and ends on the State House steps with the Governor's admissions of infidelity.

Why didn't the Democrats and the press simply come out with the real story a week earlier? Why this daily dose of faux astonishment that the Governor "was lost?" Because to come out upfront with the Governor's marital problems would have been naked political and press hackery, and the national story then would have centered on them, not the Governor. Better to build up the public's interest in the Governor's whereabouts, and then let the Governor prevaricate and dissemble before revealing the truth. And, although the Governor did not prevaricate or dissemble, the scenario played out otherwise to his opponent's satisfaction.

What the Governor did was indefensible, but essentially a private matter between he and his wife (how many Clinton supporters might I quote here?). But if my speculations herein are even close to the mark, then what the South Carolina press and the Democrats did in trying to take down a Governor was reprehensible, and an eminently public matter deserving of public scrutiny.

Here is a simple question that might be answered with a few days of competent work by an investigative reporter: What did the Democrats and the local press know about the Governor and his whereabouts last week when they intentionally invoked the firestorm of national controversy?

Unfortunately, there is not much chance of getting an answer to that question. Our tabloids of record just don't have time for yesterdays news.

Pollution Breath

From the President's Tuesday press conference (h/t Chris Horner):

Obama: “At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation [Waxman-Markey] is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.”

Carbon emissions are contaminating and polluting the water and the air? Then air pollution was certainly exacerbated by the President, exhaling as he spoke, unless he did so breathlessly. But that is only what the Media does as they await each carbon infused word from the One.

All kidding aside, this is just another example of the President's normal double-speak mode when engaging in public debate. Another word for carbon dioxide is "air." Air permeates the waters of this earth as well as the atmosphere above the waters, and that is why the oceans and land teem with life. To call air a contaminant or pollutant is silly in the extreme.

Not that being silly has ever been a barrier to Democrat governance.

Re: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Whit: I am so happy to hear that you are cleansing well these days.

However, a warning: you might be close to becoming a Grass Eating Man, a fate I would not wish on the most irritating man, which you are not (compare, Ez. and Archie after receiving a paycheck and a lot of beers, not necessarily in that order).

All posts in this series here.

Ominous Cabals

The latest from Bob Herbert of the NY Times is here. His opening paragraph:

Even with the murders that have already occurred, Americans are not paying enough attention to the frightening connection between the right-wing hate-mongers who continue to slither among us and the gun crazies who believe a well-aimed bullet is the ticket to all their dreams.

Let me hold up a picture of a John Bircher, and ask Mr. Herbert if he can tell the difference between plain, ordinary Americans lawfully going about their daily business and a nut-case conspiracy theorist who finds cabals of hate-filled conspirators in groups of plain, ordinary Americans lawfully going about their daily business.

Whoops. This is not a picture of a John Bircher I'm holding in front of Mr. Herbert, this is a mirror. My mistake, Mr. Herbert.

I hope this doesn't put me in one of Mr. Herbert's cabals. I can't afford the dues right now.

Witness Unprotection Program:The Middle East Czar

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Re: The Sound of Silence

See all posts in this thread here.

The sound of silence gets louder in Iran.

Confirming the earlier extraordinary report posted below, it appears that sheer silence is becoming the loudest rallying cry of the Iranian protestors.

From a main stream major media source, the LA Times:

"Posters held aloft Wednesday urged demonstrators to stop their march at a certain point and call out praise for the prophet Muhammad. Then, the witnesses said, they were instructed to remain silent for 10 minutes in honor of those killed so far in the unrest, disperse and go home.

"Big rallies held Tuesday and Wednesday were largely silent, devoid of slogans altogether, except for the occasional salavats -- blessings for the prophet and his descendants -- which served to both refresh the crowd as it walked along in the late spring heat and make older, pious protesters feel welcome as they worked their prayer beads."

As I said before, the maturity, reasonableness and complete spiritual depth exhibited by the Iranian people in this most distressing of times is absolutely startling and marvelous. This is not your Father's Iranians, who in 1979 casually violated the most basic rules of civilized behavior and occupied a non-military Embassy of a foreign country.

These Iranians are grown-ups, engaged in a grown-up struggle for fundamental freedoms.

Re: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Elle: Living in the wild (i.e. the sticks) as you do, I can understand why you might make an accommodation to your predominantly vegetable neighbors by eliminating salads from your diet. But for the record, I have drifted away from high protein based meals in recent years to grains, fruits and vegetables, and find that I feel much better. It might be physiological or it might be psychological, but the difference is significant.

Don't tell your flora or fauna, among whom I count some of my best friends.

All posts in this thread here.

Sunset Caucus

What a concept! See this announcement from the new permanent sub-section of the Republican Study Committee here. It begins:

"Washington, Jun 17 - Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement heralding the establishment of the RSC Sunset Caucus ... the RSC Sunset Caucus is dedicated to right-sizing government by identifying and eliminating wasteful and duplicative programs that do not serve the best interests of taxpayers. Members of the caucus, a subset of the RSC, will champion the elimination of at least one federal program through legislative action and raising public awareness."

Hopefully this will become a major plank in the Republican Party in the next few election cycles, as I argued here and here.

I would suggest the Sunset Caucus could start with the Department of Energy. Does anybody remember when this bloated behemoth was created as a Cabinet level department? We were in the midst of an energy crisis brought on by an oil embargo imposed by middle eastern countries. The Department of Energy was to coordinate a national strategy to decrease America's reliance on foreign oil, and increase our long term energy supplies at home. This bureaucracy began its important work in 1977. It's progress thus far:

Grade after 10 years: F+. Grade after 20 years: F. Grade after 30 years: F-.

In sum, over 30 years, our reliance on foreign imports has grown, construction of nuclear power plants and oil refineries have shrunk to zero, and development of new oil assets in the continental United States has been all but prohibited. And a list of the more recent Press Releases indicates this multi-billion dollar bureacracy now spends about all of its time on expensive trendy Green initiatives which hold no near term benefits for America whatsoever, and on preaching to American citizens and companies about the need to reduce their carbon footprint, aka learning to live with less in a new era of scarcity and deprivation.

To call this an Energy Department is Orwellian, to say the least. This anti-Energy Department needs to be shut down, its few workable agencies like the Energy Information Administration rolled into other departments, and the Cabinet Secretary told to go find a real job.

The Sound of Silence

With the ruling Junta's, excuse me, Mullahs' suppression of the news media in Iran, about the only source of real-time information on events in that country are bloggers and citizen journalists. As such, it's difficult to assess what is going on, because as Michael Totten of Commentary says, "blogging and other forms of 'citizen journalism' are prone to sensationalism..."

That said, there is one report of a street demonstration yesterday that, if true, deserves wider attention. I quote portions of an eye witness account below, but it's important to note that the unique nature of the protest is verified by a separate blogger here (see the 4th sentence of the 1st paragraph of the email quoted therein).  H/t for all of this to Michael Totten of Commentary Contentions.

"What I saw today was the most elegant scene I had ever witnessed in my life. The huge number of people were marching hand in hand in full peace. Silence. Silence was everywhere. There was no slogan. No violence. Hands were up in victory sign with green ribbons. People carried placards which read: Silence. Old and young, man and woman of all social groups were marching cheerfully. This was a magnificent show of solidarity. Enghelab Street which is the widest avenue in Tehran was full of people ... The estimate is about 2 million people."

Even if 2 million is an overstatement, there was clearly a huge mass of people, all marching in complete silence. I cannot imagine any more powerful display of protest. It is no wonder, as the witness states, that in the face of the sheer seriousness exhibited by the protestors that the armed thugs of the Mullahs, the riot police and Basij militia, cowered behind closed doors, watching the silent protestors walk by.

I am reminded of the story of Elijah, a prophet of Israel, being chased and hunted, pleading for God to save him. On a lonely cliff face he looks for God in Nature's acts of power and might, first in a great wind that splits mountains, then in an earthquake, and then a furious fire. And yet he does not find God in any of them, but only in what is described next: the "sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:12)."

It is unclear at this point what will result from this unexpected revolution in the streets of Iran. But if God is in the sound of sheer silence, then this brave demonstration in Iran was most certainly of God, which ought to concern the Mullahs a great deal. A Polish Pope had no need of armies to help bring down a communist regime, and Iran's fascistic leaders might find their own brutal purposes and heavily armed minions insufficient to the occasion.

The witness quoted above also remarked how surprised he was that these demonstrators were so politically mature and reasonable in their protest. They were, but more important they were also deeply religious, in the best sense of that word, and we can only hope, and pray, that Allah will in fact be merciful to them in this hour of need.

My Health Care Proposal

The Congressional Budget Office has now weighed in on the probable costs of the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill, i.e. universal single payer government run national health care. It is $1 trillion. It could be higher, but the CBO can't say for sure at this point, because neither Kennedy or Dodd or the President or any other Democrat currently running our government cares to give out all the details of this plan to massively restructure 1/5th of the American economy.

The most commonly cited reason for this health care bill, repeated over and over, is that our current system fails to insure 45 million people. That's a lot of people, and I hesitate to even describe the terrible consequences they face when they get sick. Believe it or not, they have to do what every one did back in the dark ages of the 1920's and actually pay for any medical services they receive. Of course, they aren't paying $1,000 per month for an average family insurance plan like the rest of us, but that is small comfort when the rapacious health care industry surrounds them, demanding payment.

As deeply as I feel for these people, however, I wonder: isn't $1 trillion a tad excessive to fix this utter injustice of our current system? As an alternative, I might propose that we simply pay the annual premium of a standard individual health insurance policy for each and everyone of these poor, benighted creatures. At $500 per policy, that works out to a hefty $22.5 billion. After the first year, however, costs should go down as the 45 million uninsured are actually identified rather than just extrapolated in accordance with the inner desires of the extrapolators, and I suspect the reasons they are not insured might indicate something well short of the national nightmare envisioned by our leaders today.

In this era of solving problems with nothing less than $1 trillion of taxpayer dollars, such a solution as I propose might well be a refreshing change for Washington and a welcome relief for the taxpayers. It is true that my proposal at base is just another costly government boondoggle, but I think if we are going to throw money away, we ought to at least do it in billions rather than trillions.

Re: Iran and the Structure of Libery

As a follow up to Whit's excellent post below, I post this.

The money quote from the Basij militia: A woman who was trying to cross the avenue was shoved onto the sidewalk by a member of the Basij militia, who spat at her, "We will kill those of you who come into the street!" As she walked away, she exclaimed in disbelief, "They steal our vote and then they talk to us like that?"

No such spatting at the citizens occurred from the Army conscripts that Whit talked about.

Coincidence? I think not.

Iran and the Structure of Freedom

A little history, perhaps? The 2nd Amendment is the topic, but we will get to Iran soon.

The Supreme Court recently held that the 2nd Amendment enshrined an individual right to bare arms for the citizens of our Republic. But the most relevant part to this post is where the 2nd Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ..."

What does this mean? What is a "well regulated Militia" anyway? It is an army composed of part-time soldiers, whose responsibilities would include keeping the public peace and enforcing the laws.  For us cynics, then, a Militia was envisioned as the low paid, part-time thugs who would back up the governing power structure. Why then would the Founders describe such a motley group as "necessary to the security of a free state?"

Because they were afraid, not of public disorder, but of a greater evil, government disorder, aka governments that want to oppress freedom by the use of power rather than persuasion. If, the theory was, the only muscle available to a government to enforce its authority were part-time soldiers, then quelling rebellion caused by the over-reaching of government power would be impossible: the army of the state would not be willing to beat, shoot or otherwise do the dirty work necessary to prevent its fellow citizens (and perhaps even neighbors and families) from rising up against the state.

Today, we might be seeing a bit of that principle in Iran, albeit unconsciously. The Iranian Army is composed mostly of conscripts, i.e., involuntary soldiers, whose real empathy might lie with the people they were conscripted from. Note this quote from today's news:

"According to a Twitter post from inside Iran, the army announced it will not use force against Iranians, only foreigners. The army is made up of conscripts."

Of course, as all good totalitarian states have learned over the last century, it is important to have a cadre of true believers who are not of the people. And so it is in Iran: "The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij Militia, though, are separate armed forces loyal to the regime."

This fight in Iran may go a myriad of different ways. But on this point, I think it is instructive to note how prescient, thoughtful and deep are the sentiments of liberty in our Constitution, which we cast aside at our peril.

Especially if we cast them aside without even appreciating their relevance, as seems likely under the tutelage of our Ignorati Class of leaders today, who have neither experience nor education in the history of America, or of the essential rarity of freedom and liberty in this world that informed and energized the Founders.

Witness Unprotection Program: ABTA Goes to Washington

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The Pravda Hurts

When english lanquage Pravda, the Russian government run newspaper whose name translates as "Truth," makes more sense than 90% of the editorial pages in the U.S., then we are in trouble. Just about every line in this April 27, 2009 article burns with a mocking truth. A few excerpts.

The opening salvo: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."

Then there is this exacting critique of the vast, degenerating American public educational system of the last few decades (mirroring my comments about the Ignorati Class about half way down in this article a month ago): "First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonald's burger or a BurgerKing (sic) burger than for their constitutional rights."

Eh? What's that? A Russian (!) extols knowledge of our constitutional rights as a mark of good education, while our education establishment throws millions of public dollars at "self-esteem" studies.

And then there is this passage on Religion and Churches in America, which goes a little over the top in seeing only a desire for political power in the last election cycle, but nevertheless highlights the strange scene of Christian preachers currying favor with the most irreligious Presidential ticket in my lifetime: "Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their ... top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another ... Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America."

There is more. The article pointedly names the Wall Street insiders who have engineered the biggest bail-out of the largest financial firms in the world as "Oligarchs," certainly a debatable point but not THAT debatable. It derides our pretensions at freedom and the rule of law when we allow a President to fire CEO's of private companies without even the color of a law enacted by elected representatives of Congress, and to otherwise declare to American citizens, "Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions."

To me, an interesting throw away line is when the article cites Marxism, and by implication European Socialism, as a "Western sponsored horror show" that Russia suffered under for "70 years." I have often wondered why we haven't heard more of such sentiments. Historically, Russia always seemed to have some perverse desire to be more Western, but China and the rest of Asia? Why would they ever be attracted to a romantic Western mythology of the 19th Century?

I don't know. But perhaps for the same reason that now, in the 21st Century, almost 4 generations removed, we Americans are seduced by those same quaint, parochial, old and tired ideologies of the last 100 years that have brought such misery and suffering to so many millions.

But there is more in this short Pravda article, much more, and you can find it here.

And as you read it, ask yourself this: can America ever hope for the same clarity from our own media as we see here in the formerly Marxist, currently oligarchical, Russian state run media? It doesn't seem likely.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Witness Unprotection Program: The Tyranny Debate

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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: Offsetting Carbon Offsets

My glass of sherry finished, I turn to my dinner - a salad, alas. I dislike salads. Besides the fact that lettuce and celery serve no discernible nutritional purpose, it's all just so desultory, so lacking in - how do the French put it? pizzazz, I think is the term. But, a woman of my manner and means just cannot be wolfing down rare slabs of steak. It's just too impulsive.

I fork an olive and stop. The Discovery Channel is on and is going to tell me all about the Carbon Crisis. I have been worrying about just this issue for some time but really have very little idea what carbon actually is, much less what kind of a crisis looms before us. Even so, I am happy to say that I have been doing my part, meticulously checking fabric labels in clothes, studying the contents of cereal boxes and canned goods, checking under rugs and doorstops, to insure that carbon is not hunched down somewhere near me, waiting to bring the apocalypse with the rest of its fellows.

In one admittedly paranoid moment, I even took a nail file to my Faberge Opera Russe pattern silver. As all young ladies should know (but don't), 92.5% of Sterling Silver is .99999% pure silver, while the remaining 7.5% is some other metal. I understand that mathematics tells us that .99999% silver multiplied by 92.5% content is really only 92.49999075% silver, but that's mathematics and this is 925 Sterling Silver, and never the twain shall meet. Especially since mathematics is a concept and silver is a thing and concepts and things have always been a bit antagonistic, to put it mildly.

But I digress. In my worry over carbon, it suddenly occurred to me that in all my Sterling Silver, there is some 7.5% of something that no one seems to want to talk about. In the catalogues 925 Sterling Silver is up there like Las Vegas neon, whereas any information on 75 copper, for instance, is as nondescript as a lapel on a suit. References to other 75's, boron, zinc, platinum and silicon, are buried in the footnotes as well, although, if my catalogues are any evidence, Argentium metalloid germanium seems to be establishing some sort of reputation out there.

All I can say is I hope not. As my Mother used to say before she married my Father, standards are important, and I can't quite envision a world in which fine dinner flatware includes a majority of something called metalloid germanium.

But I digress. In sum, it occurred to me that I had no information whatsoever about the 75 in my Faberge 925 Sterling Silver dinner settings. Faberge is very professional, but they did get their start in eggs. Could a carton of carbon have fallen mistakenly into the smelting vat? So, I attacked a salad fork with a nail file, which didn't tell me much, except either nail files are not as sturdy as they ought to be or my 75 is in fact metalloid germanium, which bothers me because ...

But I will not digress. Paranoia disposed of, I realized that if I don't know what I am looking for, then there is little likelihood I will find it. Plato said that in some context or other, although I suspect he stole it from Socrates.

Now suddenly I am discovered by the Discovery Channel. What is carbon? will be answered in one concise hour by a slew of delightfully erudite people. I drop my olive in front of Frederick's (pronounced Froderick's) nose, and begin concentrating.

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And get worried. Discovery is beginning so far back Old Sol is not even a gleam in the eye of the galactic disk. I mean, it's as if someone asked me where I came from and I intoned, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth ... " Come on, people, let's at least skip on up to the Jurassic Era.

But time contracts swiftly after the first commercial, as I think Einstein predicted it would, and I begin to get the picture. Dinosaurs, immense pressure, and then oil and coal. So, that stuff is carbon. But then ... It's a gas? Like natural gas? Apparently not. Professor Tweed Jacket says it's a gas in the atmosphere that is destroying the world, it is .....

Carbon dioxide!?!

I exhale suddenly and catch myself, coughing. To solve the Carbon Crisis we need to drastically reduce carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But the trees, my garden, the grasses in the meadow, the flora and fauna around and in the pond, they breathe carbon dioxide like oxygen. They live on the stuff.

Dark things begin to drop into place.

I keep a neat yard and a colorful garden. But this Spring, it's as if I cannot prune enough. After a heavy workout in the yard, the next afternoon, the very next afternoon, the bushes and trees flush that much more over the fence; the vines have halved again the distance to my house; and the vegetation has advanced its glacial movement over the walkways.

It's as if they know. It's as if they found out we plan to take their air away. It's as if they have decided not to stand by any longer, mute and patient. They have decided to act.

They have decided to offset us, all of us, before we offset their carbon.

I click off the TV in some vain hope they might not think I am the enemy. But it's too late. I glance down at Frederick, my black dog, mostly Labrador, and he seems strangely relaxed. So, I say, "I don't know why you're so comfortable. My people are only considering the possibility of taking away their air. We haven't done anything yet. You on the other hand go out every day, nonchalantly nose around their roots and then lift a leg or two on them. You think they'll let you off easy? Hah!"

He gives me a tired look that says, "Nice try," and then yawns and closes his eyes. He's right. They don't want him. Why not? And then the olive in front of his nose, my dinner that I dropped, fixes me with an unblinking gaze.

I realize: it's not the carbon. It's the salad. It's not what they breath, it's what we eat. Especially, I think, things like those baby tomatoes and little artichoke hearts. “The children,” laments the wind through the trees. “The children!”

I sigh with relief, shakily sipping a second sherry. If that's all they want, well then, no more salads. I could use a bit more beef in my diet anyway.

And the bovines in the meadow? Won’t they be upset that I am offsetting salads with steaks? Well, the fence thing really baffles them. By the time they figure some way around that, Frederick and I will be long gone from this carbon infested earth.

Witness Unprotection Program: Pelosi on the Record

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Witness Unprotection Program: GM & UAW

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