The connection between Christmas and liberty

It is difficult to find any of our recent presidents speaking to a legitimately national audience or a crowd of public citizens with such fearless religious conviction as President Reagan, who refused to allow the secularization of America deter him from declaring the true meaning of Christmas. On December 23, 1981, Reagan spoke on national television from the Oval Office about how "Christmas means so much because of one special child" and that many "of us believe in the divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that he was and is the promised Prince of Peace." He told specifically of a "love Jesus taught us," and with unflinching Biblical references, explained that "Americans have always tried to follow a higher light, a star, if you will." And that the success of our nation lies in "trusting in God's help." Reagan went on to declare that even though we have been divinely blessed, we have a reciprocal "obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers." Our 40th president knew and explicitly displayed through his words and actions that America is gift from God, and if we stray from His guidance the very purpose with we have been ordained will gradually erode.

Phony Nixon

I heard and partially saw a promo for this phony film "Frost-Nixon." What a joke. I lived through (the final) part of the Nixon era, and while I have no fondness for Nixon, this film sounds like a cartoon. I don't know how anyone can take this thing seriously. They make him sound like some madman ogre, in a cartoonish sense.

Do words reveal the mind?

Both the current and future Vice Presidents were interviewed this past Sunday. I found it interesting as I read the transcripts how these men express themselves. Usually people with a well-ordered disciplined mind speak in logical coherent sentences. Those who speak in jumbled, fragmented sentences reveal a disordered, undisciplined mind. Note these two examples. The first is Dick Chaney when asked about presidential power:

"The president of the United States now for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."

Now read the words of Joe Biden when asked if he might be considering serving in the Senate even up until he becomes Vice President:

" No, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. I've already -- if I haven't done it -- to be honest with you, I think I've done it, but if I haven't done it, I've signed a letter, will sign a letter saying, notwithstanding the fact I'll be sworn in the first day, I have no intention of staying up until the day that I am sworn in as vice president. Secondly, I yield responsibility to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to John Kerry. No, I have, no. "

Striking!

Israel vs Obama

I am posting this entire article by Dick Morris because the fallout from this situation could make our economic problems seem like a Sunday school picnic:

With the election of Barack Obama, the United States has moved dramatically to the left in its foreign policy at just the time that Israel, which seems likely to return Bibi Netanyahu to office in early February, is moving to the right. A collision is almost inevitable.Caroline Glick, the highly astute conservative columnist for the Jerusalem Post, writes that the "international community" believes that Obama "will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a 'peace process' with the Palestinians and the Syrians." She notes that "people who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month's U.S. elections, Obama's people are 'scope-locked' on Israel."

Meanwhile, in Israel, there is a growing consensus, reflected in public opinion surveys, that trading land for peace is a chimera. Netanyahu points out that "we do not have a viable partner with whom to negotiate peace." The Palestinian Authority does not speak for the people of either Gaza or the West Bank, and Hamas, which probably does (it won the election), does not want to be a party to any peace agreement. Recent experience suggests that Hamas will quickly install rocket launchers on any territory Israel concedes, using it not as a basis for peace, but as a platform from which to kill more Jews.Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the candidates of the left, Labor's Ehud Barak and Kadima's Tzipi Livni, are deeply committed to land for peace. Their rejection by the Israeli electorate -- the anticipated outcome of the Feb. 10 election -- will signal a bold departure in the political consensus of the Jewish state, a consensus that flies directly in the face of Obama's likely policy.

The difference between the U.S. and Israel also extends to the realm of how strongly they oppose Iranian development of nuclear weapons. While Iran moves closer and closer to a bomb that could and will be used against Israel, Obama speaks of extending the American "nuclear umbrella" to cover Israel.Reading between the lines, this means that he doesn't think he can stop Iranian nuclear ambitions and will retreat to a policy of deterrence, accepting a nuclear Iran in the bargain.If Netanyahu wins the election, he will bring with him a determination to stop Iranian nuclear weapons, no matter what, and a refusal to concede more territory in the name of the peace process. But Obama's foreign policy team will be focusing on pushing Israel in just the opposite direction.The result is likely to be the most significant divergence between Israeli and American policies since 1956, when President Eisenhower sided with the Arabs to halt the British-French-Israeli invasion of Suez.

The United States has tremendous leverage over Israel -- military, financial and political. And Obama's ability to carry the Jewish vote by a wide margin despite his likely Middle East policy makes him largely immune to the kind of political pressure that has disciplined American presidents in the past and forced them to incline toward accommodating Israeli views on the Middle East.But Israel probably has the military capacity to bomb Iran and to win the Middle East war against Syria, Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah that is likely to result. Unlike Olmert, Netanyahu will use ground troops right off the bat and will fight such a war to win and to win big. But they may have to do it without their strongest ally: the United States.

How to save the free-market system a la Bush

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse."

This is perhaps the most oxymoronic statement I have ever heard. It's like saying, "I am abandoning Christian principles to save Christianity." It's like trying to save the hen house by sending in all the foxes. Isn't this kind of thinking the definition of insanity?

A time for choosing

Let me commend to you, the reader who may stumble upon this blog, an item listed in the left hand column of this page. Our blog administrator, Dave, has provided a link under the phrase "Rhetorical Gold," to the speech delivered by Ronald Reagan in 1964 in support of the candidacy of Barry Goldwater. I just had the pleasure and privilege of re-watching this brilliant speech. It's astonishing in its freshness, its directness, its implicit respect for the intelligence of the average American citizen.
Click on the link right now and either watch, listen to, or read the comments by Ronald Reagan. His wise words of 1964 ring as true today as they did 44 years ago. Truer, even. And they say that the era of Reagan has passed. Hardly.
This tract ought to be to conservatives what the Nicene Creed is to Catholics: that is, you accept it in all its particulars or you are not a member of the True Faith.

Rise of the Beast

In a December 8 article titled And now for a world government, Gideon Rachman writes: "A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged. The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them."

Strobe Talbot is the consummate globalist. He was a Rhodes Scholar, served under Clinton as Deputy Secretary of State, and is a member of the CFR. In the July 20, 1992 issue of Time magazine he said: "In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all."

We are witnessing first-hand the rise of the Beast of Revelation 13. Call it shared sovereignty, global governance, or one-world government, it's all the same: "And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation."

Are They Praying?

Is it me, or do those autos executives in the news photos look like they're praying? Praying before the mighty gods of Congress! Have mercy, oh Congressional gods!

"We have to accept the religion of the secularist?"

asked the great Mark Levin, incredulously, last night, referring to "conservatives" who contend we need to "accept" the "fraud" of global warming. He also said, quite accurately, that "Marxism is mass suicide." And that's just what we're preparing to do in this country, economically, militarily, and every which-way. Mark's response to all this? The only correct one: defiance.

Bush=Nixon? No and no

Can I sort of change the thrust of this blog for a moment. While we’ve been focused – quite appropriately – for the past few months on Barack Obama and what his election means for the country, there’s something that just drives me nuts. It’s this irrational Bush hatred that consumes so many people.
What has set me off is a story linked from Drudge (where else?) saying that Ron Howard, the movie director and one-time child star, sees great parallels between George W. Bush and Richard Nixon. Both, you see, imperiled our freedoms in horrific, dangerous, and power-hungry ways. Thanks goodness, in both cases, heroes emerged to save us: Jimmy Carter and now Barack Obama.
This is self-indulgent nonsense of the first order.
First, Bush is no Nixon, and secondly, neither was Nixon.
Nixon certainly was a complex and troubled man, but his excesses in office, unforgiveable though they might have been, were certainly nothing out of the ordinary for the chief executive of this great but flawed system of ours.
Presidential excesses seem to go with the territory. The excesses of the Kennedy clan and Lyndon Johnson were epic, and of course, Roosevelt invented new powers for himself almost as a pastime.
Nixon, in other words was nothing exceptional. His problem was that the hard left targeted him for destruction in the early 1950s for exposing one of their own for what he was – a Soviet agent. Alger Hiss was an Ivy League man and Nixon was a rube from out west somewhere; how dare he insert himself into the business of his betters? They set their sights on Nixon and eventually caught him in the crosshairs. On Nixon being caught mixed up in the Watergate mess, one imagines the democratic leadership collectively saying it was “shocked, shocked” at such behavior. Indeed.
So, as I say, Nixon was no Nixon; he was a wartime president elected to lead a society that somehow had to deal with the likes of William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, etc. If that wasn’t a time that called for extraordinary law enforcement measures, I don’t know what was.
And Bush, likewise, finds himself leading a society through the complex challenges of a global war on terror – a war that has been constantly undermined on the domestic front by the likes of – yes – William Ayers et al.
But for all of that, Ron Howard is free to make his movies, speak his mind and trash his president. And congratulate himself on his “courage.”
These people are, I tell you, nothing if not self-satisfied. Ignorant, yes, but self-satified.
What brought all this up? Well, Howard has directed a new movie about the post-resignation, post-humiliation interviews with Nixon orchestrated and conducted by British comedian David Frost.
Comedian? Oh, I know he considers himself an important journalist/interviewer/history maker, but his real claim to fame was as host of the comedy/reality show “That Was the Week that Was,” which anticipated a lot of the so-called news programming circa 2008. Oh, and how could one forget Frost’s memorable hosting duties on the periodic (and idiotic) Guinness Book of World Records TV shows?
In other words, Frost, the hero of Howard’s new film, was primarily a clown. His self-serving account of the Frost/Nixon interviews, which I tried to read, serve as the basis for Howard’s film. Nixon, of course, isn’t around to answer Frost, Howard, or anyone else.

New role for the military

"The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said" (WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 30, 2008).

Rather than reassuring me, this move really makes me nervous. This is a radical change in the purpose and focus of our military. And once they're in place, they could be used for literally anything (like confiscating guns a la New Orleans...or worse).