In Virginia it appears a law requiring women to view an ultrasound before deciding to execute her baby will finally pass this session and be signed into law. The prospect of women being exposed to more information before the decision to abort has predictably driven the Party of Death into a frenzy.

Sen. Janet Howell (D–Planned Parenthood) was in such an uproar she couldn’t even produce a relevant legislative metaphor. The Senate defeated Janet’s amendment to the ultrasound bill that would’ve required men who wanted a Viagra prescription to undergo a rectal check and cardiac stress test.

Anyone with even a minimal knowledge of equivalency — and not blinded by abortion obsession— would have known the proper sex–specific amendment would have required men in the market to enhance their structural integrity to first buy a copy of American Baby.

That amendment would have had a much better chance of passage and left both sides of the gender divide better informed regarding the consequences of their actions.

The second example of photo–phobia involves requiring voters to show a valid photo ID. Judging by the Democrats response to this bill you would have thought someone was trying to stop an abortion!

NAACP Director Benjamin Chavis screamed that Republicans were trying to “lynch democracy” by instructing voters to show ID. That’s strange. Are hotels trying to “lynch sleep” when they require a photo ID before allowing you to check in?

Is the bank trying to “lynch currency” when you must show a photo ID before cashing a check?

Is 7/11 trying to “lynch parties” when they ask for a photo ID before selling you the MD 20/20?

Yet people check into hotels, cash checks and get hammered every day even with the photo requirement.

Voter fraud in the US is much more real than earthquakes from hydraulic fracking, manmade global warming or Keystone pipeline environmental devastation, yet Democrats will do nothing to prevent the occurrence.

A federal investigation in Chicago estimated that at least 100,000 illegal votes had been cast in the 1982 gubernatorial election and that voter fraud was routine for years. In Atlantic City Democrat campaigns regularly request absentee ballots for the homeless and then cast those ballots fraudulently. And in Louisiana I’ve personally seen the man who carries cash and a .45 to pay the vote haulers.

Before its demise, ACORN was notorious for producing fraudulent voter registrations, which are a precursor to fraudulent voting, just as buying a wheelbarrow of Contac is the precursor to meth.

Still hysterical Democrats claim voter ID laws are designed to prevent students and the elderly from voting.

Is that a fact? When is the last time you saw a student without a driver’s license? When is the last time you saw a senior citizen who had never in their entire lifetime had a driver’s license?

Even if they had never had a license in the past, DMV will issue ID for voting and other identification purposes to seniors and students. I’ll concede grandma may have lost a step over the years, but even the pokiest should be able to get an ID with a two–year lead time.

Anyone who doesn’t place a high enough priority on voting to obtain the proper ID before the election is probably someone who’s input the Republic can limp along without.

The judicious use of photos can preserve life and the integrity of the voting process. In fact, using photos during many decision–making processes can add much to the quality of life in Virginia.

I’m going to contact my legislators and ask them to introduce a bill requiring all potential tattoo customers to first examine a photo of what that tattoo will look like on their saggy old behind when they reach the age of 65, BEFORE they go under the needle.

Gym, beach and public pool customers can only benefit.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at michael-shannon@comcast.net.

Continue and watch the rest

Owing to its totemic status in the Kulturkampf, abortion is among the most heavily subsidized of medical procedures. In the first trimester, it generally costs less than $400. If the unborn child is in the second trimester, the price of ending his or her life is a bit steeper. Still, like life, death is cheap, generally under $600.·

Abortion is alone on the top shelf at the Bang for the Buck Bar. The rest of the menu is cheap, cheap, cheap. The New York City Department of Health, for example, has a website dedicated to, er, disseminating “Free NYC Condoms” (“Get Some, Get Yours — Grab a Handful and Go!”). It even has the toll-free 3-1-1 number you can call if, while away from your computer, the cupboard is bare in your time of need. And if you’re really interested in the subject, Big Apple taxpayers helpfully provide “A Brief History of Condoms in New York City.” Besides learning that “distribution of the NYC Condom topped 40 million” in 2009, you’ll revisit such milestones as Valentine’s Day 2007, when the health department “set a national precedent” with its “Lifestyles condom in a chic, branded Gotham wrapper.” Go New York, go New York, go!

Planned Parenthood reports that birth-control pills run as low as $15 per month — and at the click of a mouse, PP will help you find a health center from which to get a prescription. Like the pill, diaphragms and the “Nuva Ring” start as low as $15 per month, and PP will work to get you set up with Medicaid or other state programs that defray costs — just as it will if you prefer the cervical cap route, which will set you back about $70 (with the spermicide “kit”) but, like a diaphragm, lasts about two years. Starting at $400, Implanon, a thin implant inserted in the arm, sounds costly at first blush, but it lasts for three years. Injections of Depo-Provera, the “birth control shot,” go for about 40 smackers, and they last three months. If for some reason you’re not near one of Nanny Bloomberg’s Gotham wrapper stands but you’d still rather go over-the-counter, PP itself will supply you with a package of three sponges for about ten bucks.

More good news: You’re not like BP — if there’s an accidental spill, you’ve got very affordable options. The “Morning After” pill — which is actually a treatment course of four to eight tablets — costs about $20 at the local drugstore, although, as PP points out, “we all like to be prepared. That is why it’s a great idea to keep some emergency contraception in your medicine cabinet or bedside table” just in case. If you wait too long, there’s always the “abortion pill,” RU-486. It starts at about $300, and PP assures you that “Planned Parenthood centers that do not provide it can refer you to someone who does.”

SOURCE: National Review Online

Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

The last thing you want to do before a national election is pick a fight with a major section of your own base which is a bit skeptical about you anyway. Giving them a reason to turn on ObamaCare and the administration was the dumbest thing possible. And it happened because the people running things did not understand it would happen. They assumed that they could put on their paternalistic attitude, smile dismissively, spin up some talking points and everyone would go along.

This stupidity is our best hope. If the Republican Party establishment insists on arrogantly making a mess of things, the Obama Administration's arrogance and heavy-handedness exceeds their own and may succeed in the battle of alienation.

ISLAM'S GROUNDHOG DAY 

Groundhog Day is the long eternal tragedy of Islam, which always sees its shadow and always ends up with six weeks, six months or six hundred years of more winter. That hopeful time when the bitter cold of winter begins its slow transition into the warmth and renewal of spring never comes for Islam.

In a reversal of the cycle of season, the Arab Spring led to the Islamic Winter, but that is the endless pattern of Islamic attempts at reform and rejuvenation, which rather than finding renewal in their attempts at transformation only go on perpetuating the same cycle of violence, tyranny and oppression.

There is a peculiar tragedy to a religion which cannot escape its own destructive nature, each time it reaches for some form of redemption, its hands come up dripping with blood and it all ends in more bodies and petty tyrannies.

The full article is up at Front Page Magazine

GET YOUR WAR ON

If you tune in to CNN you can see footage of adorable Syrian children, as reported by Anderson Cooper. Because we've got to get our war on in Syria and liberate the Syrian people on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. No adorable Christian children need be shown because we might have to think about what's going to happen to them once the funloving Religion of Peace is in the driver's seat.

Copts in the village of Kobry-el-Sharbat (El-Ameriya), Alexandria, were attacked on January 27 by a mob of 3000 Muslims led by Salafi leaders, who looted and torched homes and shops belonging to Copts. 

Three "reconciliation meetings" were held at the El-Ameriya village police headquarters. They were attended by Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood representatives from neighboring villages, as well as church representative. Muslims demanded the eviction of all Coptic inhabitants from the village because "Muslim honour had been damaged."

That's what's going to happen to them. The Obama Administration is bent on this, but they don't particularly want to do the heavy lifting. Which makes it more likely that the Turks, the Saudis and some others will contribute the troops, while the United States acts as the air force for the Muslim Brotherhood one more time.

AKP's sleazy Islamist Foreign Minister is meeting with Clinton to discuss the next "steps" and it's clear that Turkey would like to be at the center of a coalition to take down Assad. The euphemism will be "Friends of Syria", because nothing says friendship like an invasion.

I WAS A MAINSTREAM MEDIA REPORTER BUT I BROKE FREE

Can anyone imagine seeing a headline like, "I was a Sunni Muslim but I broke free" in any mainstream American newspaper today? Nope.

But you can see a headline like "I was a Hasidic Jew - but I broke free‎" in the Post. Now if we are to have "I was a Jew, but I broke free" articles, then we should at the very least have equal time for, "I was a Muslim but I broke free" articles.

It's not too hard to break out of being a religious Jew. You just stop. Nobody beheads you or kidnaps you and ships you to Pakistan. Breaking out of being a Muslim is a good deal harder as plenty of Ex-Muslims can tell you.

Peculiarly though the media will not pay any attention to Ibn Warraq or to the victims of Muslim honor killings, but street trash like Deborah Feldman looking to find a book deal can always get media coverage.

Deborah Feldman claims that Jews are no better than Muslim "extremists" and while I'm no fan of the community she was a part of, she could leave. She doesn't have to look over her shoulders waiting for a cousin or brother to come up and kill her. The women who actually do have to live like that can't get book deals or the media coverage she laps up.

Jews and Christians who leave their religion bask in the adoring attention of a media which loves to portray those religions in the blackest colors. But when it comes to Islam, the only coverage allowed is the positive kind.

What's really repulsive is that the blurb for Deborah Feldman's book actually dares to compare this  Satmar version of Snooki, with about the same IQ, to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel.

Ali has actually taken risks for what she believed in. Feldman grew up in a broken family and deciding she wanted the party life broke up her marriage. She's more qualified to be on the Jersey Shore than to write a memoir about her "struggle".  If you're an Orthodox Jew and you decide not be one anymore, your only challenge is shopping for new clothes. If you're a Muslim and you decide to opt out, then you are endangering your life.

Today Ali needs bodyguards. Feldman needs PR agents. The difference between the two tells you all you need to know about the reality of Islam and the contempt in which Western elites hold traditional religion while embracing Islam.

THE CHUTZPAH OF OMAR THE BOYCOTT MAKER

The classical definition of the Yiddish word Chutzpah is a man on trial for killing his parents who asks for leniency because he is an orphan. Next to that definition is a picture of Omar Barghouti, a Qatari-born Muslim who moved to Israel and enrolled in Tel Aviv University to obtain a Masters Degree in Philosophy while conducting an academic boycott campaign against Israel.

See the full article at Front Page Magazine

LOOSE LIPS

There was still some ambiguity after Panetta's statement on the Iran window what the Obama Admin was up to, that ambiguity is all but gone after anonymous "officials" appeared to have hand fed NBC news a story that claims Israel is working with the MEK Iranian group to assassinate Iranian nuclear gurus.

This is straight up sabotage and a warning that the Obama Administration will keep on leaking information to damage any Israeli action against Iran unless Israel falls into line. Considering the operational necessities of launching an attack and the level of US surveillance, O and his cronies can do a lot to inhibit and even cost lives in an attack on Iran.

This should also settle any further rumors that bombing Iran is an election strategy for Obama. That couldn't be further away from the truth. 

The Obama Administration's sabotage is all the more obnoxious after it threw a hissy fit because Russia and China wouldn't let it go after Syria. So war with Syria on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood, yes. Allowing Israel to take out Iran's nuclear program, no. Sabotaging Israeli efforts to go it alone, also yes. 

Israel had to inform the United States of what it was doing as part of the process of cooperation, though considering the MEK's presence in Iraq, it is extremely doubtful that the United States had no involvement in this, under the previous administration or even the current one. 

While there is no independent verification of this story, it is far more plausible than the nonsense peddled by the mainstream media about Mossad agents running around Tehran. I have suggested all along that Israeli and American backed Iranian dissidents were responsible. But it doesn't take much to reach that conclusion.

After the Iranian backed Iraqi PM's MEK massacre and the US withdrawal, the MEK would need backers more urgently. Its position in Iraq is precarious and while its people have refugee status, nobody is going to protect them from Maliki's thugs. The Ashraf\Liberty situation is ugly and the MEK certainly has no sympathy from the Obama Administration. Not unless MEK was willing to hit Syria.

The ideology wouldn't really matter. The region is full of militias willing to ally with anyone on a temporary basis if it gets them money and advances their agenda. That's what keeps Afghanistan and Iraq where it is. And MEK is "unusual" enough that just about anything could be expected. But none of that means it's actually true.

Iran's claim that this is an MEK-Israel plot is convenient, but this is a region where every Muslim state or party accuses its enemies of working with Israel. During the Arab Spring, both governments and rebels accused each other of being pawns of Israel. Iran would like to delegitimize the MEK and justify further crackdowns by Maliki. This is the best way to do it.

The Pre-Tehran arm of the American left has been pushing the same line for a while, tying the MEK to some Republican officials who have at times supported it as a foil against Iran. The NBC article even looks like it was written by ThinkProgress with the same talking points.

It doesn't really matter though who's pulling the trigger. The assassinations are a sideshow that aren't going to stop the nuclear program. Israel is now on its own moving toward a direct strike method, while Obama tries to hold it back.

Defense Minister Barak, formerly a darling of the Clintonites in the Obama Administration, is on the outs after having strongly endorsed a strike. How bad is it? So bad that Administration handlers are now pushing the message that Netanyahu is the reasonable party who needs to keep Barak in hand. 

The following excerpt from the New York Times, a reliable administration organ sets the tone

President Obama tried to defuse arguments for military action in a telephone call last month with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the substance of which was confirmed by an Obama administration official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe the conversation. While the two men have had an often contentious relationship over Middle East diplomacy, American officials emerged from that exchange persuaded that Mr. Netanyahu was willing to give economic sanctions and other steps time to work.

Which is the tune that was played all along. Give us more time till Iran has a nuke.

a senior Obama administration official, expressing frustration that the Israelis are looking at the problem too narrowly, given the many kinds of pressure being placed on Tehran and the increasing evidence that far tougher sanctions are having an effect.

Ah yes too narrowly, instead of taking the "broader view", which all comes out to not enough nuance. Which is a good summary of liberal foreign policy.

Administration officials cite this more complex picture in pressing the Israelis to give the latest sanctions a chance to inflict enough pain on the Iranian leadership to force it back to the negotiating table, or to make the decision that the nuclear program is not worth the cost.

Just like North Korea. And here we go...

Administration officials also noted a distinction in the tone of Mr. Barak and Mr. Netanyahu, who does not publicly favor the phrase “zone of immunity.” This week, an American official noted, Mr. Netanyahu declared that on the topic of Iran, officials should just “shut up.”

“I think that’s good advice,” the American official said.

Yes I'm sure administration officials are big fans of Israel shutting up about Iran, but then shouldn't they be shutting up about Israeli plans for Iran?

NUDGES

The creepy social engineering innovations that you'll see tomorrow are being tested in Europe today. So here's a sample of what you can look forward to. 

Mr Halpern is director of Downing Street's behavioural "nudge unit". It advises government on ways to encourage people to change behaviour, without using compulsion. The approach is based on a school of thought that "nudging" people in a certain direction is more productive and cost-effective than trying to change behaviour by banning things or passing regulation.

So where is the UK "nudging" people now?

Mr Halpern said Britain faced a shortage of housing, partly because elderly people remained in family homes after their children left. “A big issue we have is under-occupation of houses,” he said. “We have more TVs than people in the house.” 

Officials also denied Mr Halpern was urging elderly people to down size after he told the conference that “we do have enough houses… it is just essentially they are lived in by older people”.

A report last year suggested there were 25 million empty bedrooms in the country. Ministers were urged to draw up proposals to encourage elderly couples to downsize and create more affordable family homes. The Government has recently backed council schemes that help pensioners move into smaller properties and rent out their family homes.

Sic transit.

BUT JEWISH REPORTERS CAN BE ANTI-ISRAEL TOO

CNN's Israel bureau is downsizing, reportedly to cope with a reduced budget due to falling advertising revenues.

That doesn't explain why they fired four Israeli Jewish journalists (out of a crew of 8), and retained only Arab journalists. The local chief editor of CNN is now an Arab.

This is blatantly unfair considering how hard Jewish CNN reporters have worked on smearing Israel. This discrimination fails to take into account how hard reporters like Joshua Hammer, Joe Klein and Peter Beinart have worked at proving that they hate Israel more than any Muslim does.

No one denies that Muslims really hate Israel, but I would urge CNN to remember that while hating Israel may be a qualification for working at CNN or in any mainstream media organization

THE ROUNDUP

The obsessive compulsive narcissism of Barry

What will European Sharia law look like? You're already seeing it now.

As larger and larger urban areas become Islamized (and it is happening very quickly), shari'a will not need to come in from above, through the traditional processes of legislation. Rather, it will come in from below, from people willing to enforce it and profit from it, and from the fact that the ethnic-European police will not even enter a lot of those neighborhoods.

So we are talking about de-facto City States, not de jure Nation States, going Islamic. That seems like an incontrovertible trend to me, and I would love to see any evidence pointing away from this reality. The nation state as a model will become increasingly unimportant, I project, as Western Civilization continues to decline, and the Islamic cultures overcome the sterile remains of the Englihtenment.

The entire piece is a good assessment of the trajectory of the process. Londonistan made real.

How big is that jobs deficit anyway?

According to the US Debt Clock Time Machine, in the period from 2000-2004, we gained about 10 million in population and 4 million in the workforce -- that is, for every new person in the population, we gained four tenths of a person in the workforce.

Now here's what worries me. From 2008-2012 we gained 9.5 million in population. Supposing an "average" gain in the workforce of about five tenths or 50%, we should have seen the workforce grow by 4 or 5 million. Right? But instead, the workforce SHRANK by nearly 5 million.

If it should have grown by 5 million and instead shrank by 5 million, aren't we looking at a deficit of 10 MILLION JOBS?

The Arab Spring comes to Sydney.

Showdown in Georgia

It's not easy being a Black Conservative.

It's getting harder to deny anymore...even as my adult, grownup brain wants to disdain the idea—actual evil seems to be afoot in the world, and its guise is becoming ever more clear.

Decoding the code

Islamonausea: It's the new human condition.

Veteran discrimination

The lost art of raking up profits

I decided long ago to end the shameful practice of begging on my property.  First, I never allowed my own kids to raise funds this way.  Second, every time a tot or teenager arrived on my doorstep, he was given a choice.

My pitch was simple; I'd say, "Look, I don't need or want what you are selling.  But I understand that your teacher wants you to raise money for your class project/field trip/whatever, and I'd like to help.  There's a rake in my garage, and I'll pay you ten dollars in cash if you work in my yard for one hour.  You can give the money to your school, or you can keep it for yourself.

Only one ever took me up on my offer

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

As time went by, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh took power since August 2005.  Ever since then, he has been vociferous in his venom against America, the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

But it was on December 14, 2005, that he went above and beyond his previous rhetorical attacks against America and Israel, when he suggested that the Holocaust was a myth, causing many European leaders, who were among Iran’s most lucrative business partners, to be outraged.

Since then, the world could hear Ahmadinejad or some of his colleagues, such as Larijani, in violent rhetoric against the big satan, America, and the little satan, Israel.  I had once heard Larijani, Iranian chief nuclear negotiator,  address a crowd in Dubai, exciting the people when he vociferously attacked “Israel” and the “Jews”.

The Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193) says: “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

Recently, an article written by an analyst and strategist from Khameini’s camp, Alireza Forghani, has been posted on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Gard’s Fars Agency -showing the official endorsement of the regime.  

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called Israel a danger to Islam and is reported to have said that they should not miss the opportunity to remove “this corrupting material because there is “legal justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel and that Iran should take the helm for that endeavor.

Israel has been threatened time and again by the Iranian regime.  The world has been successively and endlessly negotiating and sanctioning Iran. And, according to scientific reports, Iran seems to be very advanced in their quest to have a nuclear bomb.

The above declarations are not from a few year ago, but from a few days ago. The West is used to listen to dictators’ threats without wanting to believe in them.  But, the time has come to listen to Ahmadinejad.

As such, one can no longer heed to the argument that “if anyone would attack Iran, the whole population would turn against their aggressor...”  It’s a fair position, but, we have been waiting for the Iranian population or the Iranian student movemetns to develop an organized resistance, but our waiting time has been in vain.   

We have been told from the beginning that the Iranian people are the most Westernized in the region and a new regime in Iran would transform them and the world, ending terrorism; Iraq and Afghanistan could become much more stable, as would other countries in the region and beyond.  Sure, but on the condition that we support the Iranian people in their aspirations for freedom, without appeasing or negotiating with their leaders.

We have often been told that anything else short of helping the Iranian resistance, would backfire as it would create Nationalism in Iran and destroy the resistance.  Indeed, Iranians are patriotic as the world could see when Saddam decided  to attack a weak Iran, who had no spare parts and whose leaders had been executed, yet the Iranians fought fiercely for 8 years . This was despite the fact that the US, USSR, Britain, France and all the Arab money were backing Saddam.

However, the problem is that the Iranian people and student movement, for whatever reason, have not gotten their act together, while the nuclear is moving forward.  Many have had faith and have counted on them to start a counter-revolution, but for when, what are they waiting for...?   

It is clear that roughly eighty million people can decide to overturn an evil regime; as we have seen throughout history, revolutions have happened.   

Saying that "The Iranian people are the most Westernized in the region and a new regime in Iran will transform the world" sounds great, but the big question is for WHEN?    

Being too westernized, too pro-democracy is proving to be counterproductive in the end... When push comes to shove, there is a lot of talking from the Iranian 'resistance'... but the nuclear is making progress in Iran -and the world cannot wait forever.   

So the time has come to realize that one can no longer wait for the Iranian population to remove their evil regime.    

Virulent speeches must be heard and kept in mind, because words reflect a state of mind.  And actions, that speak louder than words, can make possible to turn that state of mind into a reality.      Israel is being attacked by the whole world; at this point, world opinion can be relegated behind the only One force that counts, that has always and will always stand by the Land of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide: God.

Opinion©ElianaBenador ·········Art©StephenEHughes

Visit Eliana's blog atwww.elianaschoice.blogspot.com 

Follow her on twitter www.twitter.com/ElianaBenador

Goodwill Ambassador Eliana Benador is a national and international global strategist and the former CEO and founder of Benador Associates.

While the hippie elements of the left have dabbled with buying farmhouses and growing occasional crops that are not cannabis, they are not serious about return to a nation of family farms or even collective farming. They have adopted the pollution paranoia and the twaddle about the dehumanization of machinery without actually having a fallback plan.

If all that wasn't bad enough, the left has not championed agriculture, but a purity of nature cult that demands that we leave the environment "unspoiled". That means seizing land that farmers might put to use and declaring it protected land. It means cutting off water supplies to agriculture and attacking any attempt at bringing industrial efficiency to agriculture. Instead the left celebrates a boutique agriculture which relies on hipsters buying overpriced organic and locally grown produce.

It does not take much to crunch the numbers and see that locally grown is a formula for starving some 60 percent of the country, denying children basic nutrients and driving the price of foodstuffs so far through the roof that Africans will start sending us aid.

This brand of militant individualism might be somehow defensible if it was being practiced by actual rebels, instead of by collectivists dressing up their latest meme and fad in the rebel's red shirt. While the left objects to the collectivism of the factory and the corporation, they are replacing it with a sonorous collectivism of the soul that pervades every aspect of society and demands total conformity. Instead of Charlie Chaplin caught in the gears of the great machine, we all find ourselves trapped by the demand that we all care about the same things, laugh and sneer at the same things, and buy the same things.

The left's moral consumerism elevates scarcity over plenty. It is hostile to mechanical organization that is not ideologically derived. Communism married the order of industry with ideological collectivization and the Nazis attempted to do the same thing. But the modern left only wants the ideology with no actual plan for how it will all work. Its approach to the market is elitist. It would rather have a few expensive products, than a great many cheap products. It would rather have a few million government jobs, than a few hundred million real jobs.

Had the left managed to get all this regulatory power before global transportation became cheap and simple, and other countries managed to hit their own industrial marks, then it is likely that our experience would have been similar to that of Venezuela under Chavez, with an economic implosion, spiraling prices and a civil struggle that would have left us a banana republic or shattered the left for a generation.

Instead the production shifted overseas, and subsidies and tax breaks protected the tail end of what had once been the industrial and agricultural engine of the world. The slow death of American industry put millions out of work, but that only made them into ripe territories for the candidates of social justice to plow. The more the ranks of the poor increased, the more the left could denounce the injustices of a society where there was such a gap between the rich and the poor, while disregarding the fact that they were the rich and their policies had set that gap in stone.

Not satisfied with having outsourced much of America's industry and jobs to totalitarian countries, the left set out to politicize food at every stage of the process, from water supplies to calorie counts. We now live in the peculiar area where the authorities are obsessed with what we are, staring into our plate as if we were the ones gorging, while they starved. Our diet is now officially a national security issue which means it is only a matter of time until Ronald McDonald is the new Osama bin Laden. And all the while there is less to eat and it costs more.

Looking over this spectacle it behooves us to ask what kind of society the left would want? What sort of life do they foresee in a civilization where everything is expensive and hard to come by? This scarcity was an accidental byproduct of a broken system in Soviet countries, but in the West it is not incompetence, it is policy. And what specifically happens to the middle class in such a system?

The Western lifestyle has been made viable after the death of its industry by its high value currency and lack of equivalent competition. That grace window is now expiring. The dollar and the Euro are endangered, and it is only China's razor sharp salesmanship that keeps its own currency artificially low. The day when that changes is the day that Wal-Mart becomes a luxury goods store.

Even the Western corporation which has helped maintain the illusion of economic power is likely to fall not to the left, but to the logic of the marketplace, as its foreign suppliers cut out the middle man and buy it up or bypass it selling directly to Western consumers. For anyone who has brought a Lenovo computer or an HTC phone, has already picked up a product created by a Chinese manufacturer of famous American brand name products which either brought up the business on the  American end or just bypassed it.

When the Western corporations go, then suddenly the United States will just be another third world market for goods made by the actual economic superpowers in the East. 

The left's adoption of a series of increasingly outdated and unworkable ideas that make Communism seem downright forward looking brought us this far. The left has combined central planning with an opposition to industry, which amounts to the captain dividing up the last food supplies on the raft. It is hostile to agricultural revolutions that can affordably feed an expanding population. It opposes any exploitation of the natural environment that would provide food, jobs and shelter for the people.

This utterly inhuman ideology is the sort of thing that decadent intellectuals like Rousseau or Tolstoy might have engaged in, but has frightening consequences on a national and international scale.It is both elitist and clueless, embracing the diploma as the only tool that matters in a postmodern age where the old verities of supply and demand no longer apply. Stripped of its rational tones, this is the elevation of the advanced degree to a measure of national enlightenment which will solve all our problems.

There is nothing rational about this mystical progressivism, a techno-luddite elite that believes unpaid cooperative efforts by degree holders can provide for a society better than the industrial and agricultural mechanisms that made the society whose cliff's edge they are approaching possible.

The fixation on problem solving by a technocratic elite comes down to nine people discussing how a machine should ideally work and a tenth man trying to actually make it work. The class of entitled problem solvers who have degrees in everything but living in the real world are incapable of understanding that they are the problem. That no amount of social tinkering can make people run the way they want to and that the day when the social tinkerers got the authority to remake the real into their ideal is the day when everything began to go downhill.

We do not need more sociologists, ethicists, workplace psychologists, politicians, human resources staff, chief experts on how to make people interact appropriately with each other. What we need to do is put all the experts back in the closet and let the engineers, farmers, workers and businessmen try to make the society work again. 

Communism celebrated the worker but put the Party man at the top of the pile. These days we are running out of workers, but we have a frightening surplus of Party men to try and figure out what is wrong. What is wrong is that the left is insane. Its ideology leads to a completely unworkable system built on hypocrisy, lies and heavy doses of denial. 

Even the Communists understood that there needed to be a means of production to seize. Even the South American left understands that. The Western left disregards the means of production in their ideology. The only thing they are interested in producing is a perfect world that is outside such mundane needs. Means of production are outdated. In the future we will all go to college and resolve social injustices without the need to resort to production lines. We will all have less, but be spiritually enlightened. We will eat one meal a day, make our own toilet paper and have three diplomas on the wall.

For all that the Freegans who dumpster dive to find food are mocked, they are the real future of the left's economic policies. One day, if the left goes on as it is, we will all be Freegans.

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Muslim Ambush

By all accounts, Muslim immigration in America has dramatically increased throughout the last decades, suffice to look around and see the many Muslim women head-to-toe dressed in black burqas, while their men are dressed in a more dissimulated manner.  What’s less so, are the multiple mosques or masjid that are now to be found in every state, but that's a problem that has developed throughout the various administrations.  

Good Americans are for freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as per our sacrosanct Constitution that nowadays serves as jump rope for the president and his acolytes.

However, there is no where written in the Constitution that freedom of religion is supposed to be given to a community whose terrorists caused the massacre of our civilian population in times of peace, in the name of their god, Allah, and especially when their countries of origin have not even had the decency to disavow terrorism and had not sent their troops to hunt and kill their own terrorists.  

Therefore, this is not Islamophobia, but our legitimate right to be concerned, especially when we know the chaos that reigns in the Muslim world at any and all times.  

A recent Pew Research study claims that over the next two decades, the Muslim population in our country will more than double, from a Muslim population representing currently 0.8 percent to 1.7 percent predicted by 2030.  The same report shows a Muslim population increasing worldwide by almost a billion people in the next 20 years which means that if it actually happens, Muslims will soon enough represent more than a quarter of the world population.  

With the tacit and official approval of our authorities, whether it is Hussein Obama or Mr. Bloomberg and others, Muslims have never actually been made accountable for the acts of terror that have come our way, instead they were given a pass as our own Administration has conspicuously removed the term Muslim terrorism from official documwnts in relation with the massacres of 9/11 and, among others, has also facilitated their immigration, and continues to do so, as we will see below.  

To crown the whole, the Pew Research Center finds “no indication of increased alienation or anger among Muslim Americans in response to concerns about home-grown Islamic terrorists controversies about the building of mosques and other pressure on this high-profile minority group in recent years, nor does the new polling provide any evidence of rising support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans. On the contrary...”  Right.  It's as if though it has been our people who have done something to them and not the other way around. Please, note the mention of “home-grown Islamic terrorists...”

Politically speaking, seems that Muslim Americans, who lean strongly Democratic, are much more satisfied than they were four years ago and, unsurprisingly, 76% approve of Barack Obama’s job performance; while, at the same time, in 2007, about as many (69%) had disapproved of the way George Bush handled his job as president.

Most may not be aware that in the aftermath of 9/11 the number of Saudi students who immigrated to the United States jumped more than fourfold and that trend has continued.  

By the end of the 2011 fiscal year, the American missions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, announced that they have issued 121,296 visas for Saudis, up 32 percent over the previous year.  Interestingly, "some 48,000 Saudi students are on scholarship, currently studying in various universities and colleges in the United States,” according to Mofid Deak, press attaché at the mission in Riyadh.

C.A.I.R. Ambush

While their numbers in our country are not precise, 3-5 million Muslim population seems to be quite a conservative estimate.  

Last December, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced their 2012 “Muslims Vote” campaign, making available their Presidential Voter Guide, their “guide” to the intricate American electoral system.  CAIR has an active social networking system and one should not expect them to be shy in their “guide” to elections, especially if in some circles Arabic is their mother tongue.

It is worrisome to find an increasingly larger Muslim population in key swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Michigan, which the majority of American conservatives seem to dismiss, though it is a mistake to do so, because after all, this is also the reason why CAIR wants to encourage Muslim participation in elections.  

Obviously, a massive Muslim democratic vote could be critical in the scheme of things and as such, it could also be one of the reasons that this Administration has been removing obstacles to Muslim and, particularly, Saudi immigration to our country.  

It’s as if though the fact that Muslim terrorists have committed 18,393 deadly terror attacks world wide since 9/11, is unimportant.   Wherever Muslims are established, there is terror and chaos, just look at the news.   Indeed, terrorism and trouble follow Muslims wherever they go.   Why would anyone even think that it could be different in America, once they will be well established here?

The Obama and Co. Ambush

Obama may not have only facilitated Muslim immigration, among others, to help his re-election, but also other kind of manipulations to help his re-election are being committed on a daily basis, so it is not surprising that he has announced, on behalf of his reelection campaign, their strategy to court African-American voters, a voting bloc that he heavily secured during his 2008 run. Obama received 95% of the black vote. Thus, he has created the African-Americans for Obama, which in all likelihood, will end up inciting more divide in our country.

The list of impeachable offenses and of violations against the Constitution are countless and constitutional experts know that, in other circumstances, those excesses could have lead to the replacement of any other president and his administration.

The Conservative ambush

 In that line, we would be remiss if we would oversee that all the above and more could only have been made possible thanks to the spineless, lethally lethargic American conservative movement.  

GOP and Tea Party are hosting a Conservative Political Action Conference and, sadly, there is little they can achieve. As a key indicator, we have the first item on their agenda: How to Raise Money…the Easy Way – Sponsored by the Leadership Institute, and it’s "Open to all CPAC attendees."  Another session is:  "Do We Still Hold These Truths?”: The Future of the Conservative Movement.

For all it’s known, the future of the American Conservative Movement is bleak, it has been non-existent and almost under anesthesia during Obama’s deplorable first tenure.  And, it has been in deep contrast with the very busy, very intent, and very organized, Left and their Occupy Movements, as well as the Unions.  It’s like comparing day and night.

The Ambush of America by Americans

 One thing is that corrupt politicians consider themselves above the law and more particularly, this president who, in his pre-tyranny moments, places himself with ease above the American constitution.   

But, it is something else when John Doe, Joe the Plumber and all the American Annie Oakleys actively work in front of their computers and let the world feel their outrage tweeting or facebooking, when they see and feel the country collapsing -but fail to get ready for the worse, hoping for the best.  

In our country, there was something about which we were always proud of, and that was American exceptionalism, which used to be the rule and now is, sadly, the exception.  

Exceptionalism was to give the best of our best.  Where has it gone?  

Americans are feeling the change, and they know it is a change taking us far from our values and traditions, to a place with no God, with no love of country, with no essence of the family nucleus.  

In case of Obama’s defeat, it is most likely that the liberal left will not accept with grace losing the elections, so it is important to remember how the NCAAP picketed some voting venues, plus those leftist radicals who love violence.

Whatever happens to America, it will be on the conscience of each and all Americans who have not stood up to defend her.

America depends on the American people and while our Constitution is violated and our country disintegrates, it’s the time to remember this one precious treasure in our lives:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Opinion©ElianaBenador          Art©StephenEHughes

Visit Eliana's blog atwww.elianaschoice.blogspot.com

Follow her on twitter www.twitter.com/ElianaBenador

 Goodwill Ambassador Eliana Benador is a national and international global strategist and the former CEO and founder of Benador Associates.

The call to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities has been growing for over a decade. The time is rapidly approaching when such an attack in increasingly likely however complicated and tactically difficult it may seem to execute. Any attack to remove or reduce Iran’s nuclear capability is perceived to simply delay their overall drive to attain nuclear weapon status, not to remove their ability to threaten the region and the world. Any military attack on their nuclear and weapon assets that will leave their leadership in statu would be detrimental to future regional development.

Given the choice of having a nuclear weapon or remaining in power, Tehran would decisively choose to remain in power, and that would be awful for the Iranian people and bad for the world. Whichever way you look at it, the removal of their nuclear threat would not turn the Ayatollahs into Mother Theresa overnight. The insult of being forced to remove their big ace to regional dominance would lead them to adopt other covert ways of imposing themselves in the region. They would also seek to strike out at their enemies be it Israel, America, the West, Sunnis, or others perceived as standing in their way, such as Turkey. So a non-nuclear Iran would continue to be a threat to world peace and security.

Taking all of the above into consideration, regime change looks the best option. Some equate Iran’s contribution to world terror to be greater than that of Al Qaeda and from Saudi Arabia. If it was legitimate to knock off Bin Laden isn’t it equally legitimate to “cut off the head of the snake”, as the King of Saudi Arabia cutely put it? What he meant was regime change in Tehran.

The benefits of forcing an Iranian regime change, even by force, are huge. The most immediate beneficiary would be the people of Iran. Back in 2009 and 2010 they rose up in their thousands to overthrow their leaders. They failed. The West, full of lip service but zero operational support, failed them badly, and left them victims to the brutal repression of the Tehran theocratic tyrants.

A second beneficiary would be Israel. Israel has been living under the looming mushroom cloud for a decade or more. Only the removal of either the nuclear threat or the Iranian regime would remove that threat for the people of Israel.

A regime change would benefit most of the Arab and Muslim nations in the Middle East. They have been looking with increasing nervousness at the march to nuclear supremacy by a Shiite Iran.

The free world has only recently learned to understand that a nuclear Iran is not solely an Israeli concern. With reports that Iran is developing a rocket fuel capable of carrying a warhead the distance of ten thousand kilometers has been a wake-up call to Europe and beyond.

Iraq would be allowed to get their house in order without Iranian meddling.

So who would be the losers from a regime change in Iran? Clearly Syria, whose regime is on its way out anyway. Syria was the key to Iran’s negative influence in the Arab world.

Hizbollah would be a major loser of both Assad and the Iranian regime fall. They would be reduced to a barking dog whose teeth have been pulled. As a result Nasrallah’s terrorists would be isolated and contained, even if their huge weapon stockpiles could be used to defend themselves from internal and external threats. The fall of the regime in Tehran could lead to the fall of the regime in Beirut.

Hamas has thrived through three channels. The moral support of radical pro-Palestinian activists give them comfort and encouragement to continue their extremist declarations and deeds against the Jewish state. The misuse of European funds, the work of UNWRA, and Israel opening its border to the flow of good and aid into the Gaza Strip, has allowed Hamas to develop a social economy in Gaza which strengthens their popularity there and removes the last vestiges of Fatah-Palestinian Authority influence in the Gaza Strip. But the main sponsor to the strengthening of Hamas has been Iran. The fall of the regime would put an end to this conduit of financial and weapon oxygen. This is not to say that Hamas would shrivel up and die. They now have a fresh supply source to take up the slack with the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian government. They are, literally, brothers in arms.

The Western media pumps out non-stop exhortations to encourage the removal of the Assad regime, just as they did to remove the Mubarak-regime and the Gaddafi-regime, and many others before them. They echo the same message emanating around the Arab and Muslim world.

If regime change has become mainstream then surely it must apply against the mad mullahs of Tehran?  To do so by Western forces must not be seen as a war between the West and Islam. It is not. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, must lead the call to their Muslim constituents that a nuclear Iran threatens them all, and a change of regime in Iran is a vital necessity for regional peace and stability. Such a call would head off the false accusation that it is a Western and Zionist plot against the Islamic world. Indeed, Saudi and Gulf forces must join the Coalition forces to head off such an accusation as was done in Iraq. Iran will not turn into another Iraq. The people of Iran will ensure this will not happen. We are not talking about the instability of sectarian and ethnic divisions when considering a future peaceful and non-threatening Iran.

An attack should target the political and military heads of the regime, not the nuclear facilities. It should target all the main bases and weapon storage facilities of the Iranian Republican Guard. It should degrade any retaliatory capability to prevent the Iranians from striking back at Western and regional targets.  Calls should be made to the people of Iran to rise up and take control of their country. They should be helped by all mean possible. A militia of the peoples opposition should be armed and trained. If this was legitimate in Libya, and is being spoken about with regard to Syria, so it should be done in Iran.

Everything must be done to ensure that an Iranian peoples’ revolt succeeds and that they bring their oppressors to justice.

The world can be confident that, of all the Middle East countries that have experienced an uprising in the last few years, Iran will be the one that will introduce proper democratic institutions and true democratic freedoms to their people. The new Iran can be the beacon of example to other regional nations.

With such a people, the world can be assured that they will be the ones that will dismantle and remove the military nuclear facilities and turn them into peaceful civil use, and the world will applaud and assist them in their efforts on the road back to democracy and prosperity.

Barry Shaw | A View from Israel

The coach has been reading Alinsky's Rules for Radical Players which teaches that the only way to win the Super Bowl is by completely changing the rules of the game on an ad hoc basis and that the only way to accomplish this is by taking over the NFL from within. No touchdowns have actually been scored, but the fawning coverage assures us that we are living in a post-touchdown world where the pigskin doesn't matter, it's all about the value of the brand.

Cheering for a comeback for that isn't for halftime, it's for halfwits. There are baseball and football teams who can never win, but still command passionate followings because they keep losing. The more they lose, the more passionate their fans are about them someday winning. But there's nothing of the lovable underdog spirit about the people who ran this country into the ground. Instead of projecting the humility of those who tried and failed, they project the arrogance of winners even as they show off a track record that even losers should be ashamed of.

Their folly isn't that they tried and failed, it's that they never cared about the game, only about the money and the cameras. They never accept defeat, because they never accepted the rules. They don't believe in limitations. Theirs is the assertion of the motivational speaker that there are no limits but those you impose on yourself. Or as Aleister Crowley put it, "Do what thou wilt, that is the whole of the law."

Obama and his merry band of pranksters have been doing what they will. They have made countless rules for us to follow, but there are no rules that apply to them. And facts, like rules, are things that apply to other people. Their postmodern Sheenseque world is one where the assertion of winning matters more than achievement, where being entertaining counts for more than being right. Where it doesn't matter what the economy actually is, it only matters what it looks like.

The gap between Halftime in America and the reality of Motor City is positively narrow compared to the chasm that stretches between the actual economic situation of the United States and the one set out by Obama in his own halftime in America speeches. We are not recovering, things are not getting better, they are on the verge of getting worse. Rather than making adult decisions, the administration has been as greedy, vicious and corrupt as the former indicted mayor of Detroit.

But Eastwood's rasping narration was right about one thing. Detroit is showing us how it can be done. Not through gumption, hard work, determination and a little spit-- but through government handouts that can't keep the city together, but can help pay for commercials to encourage us to do it all over again.

Instead of fully compensating America for the nearly 2 billion in losses that we took on the Chrysler bailout, the company has spent the money on Super Bowl commercials touting its comeback. This is like the crook who gets out of jail and instead of compensating his victims, spends the money to take out an ad that boasts of how well he's doing now. The average cost of a Super Bowl spot is 3.5 million for 30 seconds and with a 2 minute running time, that comes out to 14 million dollars. And that's not counting Clint Eastwood's fee.

Sure that's less than 1 percent of the money we're out for the cost of salvaging Chrysler and turning it over to Fiat, but it might have been nice if instead of spending all that money on an LA ad about how hard the people of Detroit are fighting for a recovery, it had gone to the people who lost their jobs to cover the higher taxes that fund bailouts like these.

At the New York Times, Paul Krugman, the ideological champion of massive deficit spending, cheered the ad as the beginning of a new Democratic optimism, their very own Morning in America. The problem with that analogy is that it actually was morning in America in 1984 or at the very least a balmy afternoon. Reagan could sell optimism, because there was something to be optimistic about.

When Obama and his backers try to peddle optimism, the only thing they have to be optimistic about is themselves. It's not America that they are optimistic about, only their own prospects for victory. They were pessimists in 2008, now they're eager to be optimists because the oil tank is half empty when the other guy is driving, but it's half full when you're at the wheel.

Halftime in America has that same empty optimism, a working class ethos as can only be imagined by a poet from Portland, who wrote the text, and the director of Your Highness. It isn't patriotic, it invokes the working class romanticism that you can still see in Social Realism art or North Korean posters on behalf of a billion dollar corporation. It champions some vague struggle for progress, without defining what that might be. It tries to connect the plight of Detroit to America, but if that's so then we're already doomed.

Like period Communist propaganda, it treats work as a struggle and success as collective heroism, rather than a process. This nationalistic mythmaking disguised the basic reasons for the failures that made all that struggle necessary. Every aspect of Soviet or Communist Chinese industry was such a desperate struggle because the entire system was hopelessly broken. And so there was always a battle on to maintain a steel industry or bring in the harvest. And there always had to be villains who were in the way.

When your enterprises are desperately struggling to survive, then you can either try to romanticize the struggle or ask what is really wrong with them. The same goes for a government that can't fix the economy, but can issue forty press releases a day attaching the blame to someone else. Halftime for Chrysler is also Halftime for Detroit and Halftime for Obama. None of them actually want people to ask what is really wrong, instead they want us to emotionally and financially invest in their struggle. And if we do that, then we lose the game.

SOURCE: Sultan Knish

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

As part of Obama’s propaganda campaign, photos were shown on TV, depicting weapons that purportedly were intercepted at the Arizona boarder with Mexico. This, we are told, is proof that we need more gun control in the United States to stop the violence in Mexico. These photos pictured rifles, grenades, grenade launchers, machine guns, rocket launchers, a dozen trucks, and military grade communications equipment. This has led to efforts at the United Nations to eliminate the private ownership and transfers of firearms. As it turns out however, the photographs weren’t taken anywhere near the Arizona boarder, instead they were taken in 2010 by Mexican police in the town of Higueras, about 400 miles from Monterrey; and contrary to popular belief, you can’t purchase grenade launchers from gun shows.

The Truth about the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment has become one of the most controversial parts of the Constitution, although this should not be the case. Written in 1789 by the First Congress, and ratified in 1791 as part of the original Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment states: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The meaning of the right “to keep and bear arms,” and the segment of the citizenry to which that right applies, has been heatedly debated for over 40 years. While gun rights supporters assert that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right like the freedom of speech or religion, gun opponents assert that the right pertains only to collective bodies (e.g., the military, police, National Guard, etc.) and not to individuals. According to socialists:

1. “[T]here is no individual right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights.” (USA Today)
2. “[L]aw-abiding Americans have no uncondi­tional right to firearms access. (New York Post)
3. “The debate over gun control offers a reveal­ing case study of the misuse of the Constitu­tion ... [T]he idea that the Bill of Rights guarantees each individual a right to own a gun ... [is] a constitutional illusion.” (The San Francisco Barrister)
4. [T]he sale, manufacture, and possession of handguns ought to be banned ... [W]e do not believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep them. (The Wash­ington Post)
5. There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a mili­tary person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. (Michael Gartner, former president of NBC News)
6. [T]he Second Amendment ... protects only the right to “bear arms” for the purpose of service in the “militia,” and ... not ... firearm ownership unrelated to militia service. (Statement filed by fifty-two law professors and historians in a Second Amendment lawsuit).

The question about gun control – which argument is right?

This question has actually been around for millennia; and the one consistent fact is that free men can legally carry arms while serfs cannot. When the Athenians invaded the island of Melos around 416 BC, their ambassadors wanted to persuade the Melians to abandon their allies and join Athens. The Athenian argument was that “might makes right,” and “by the necessity of their nature, men always rule, when they have the power … justice prevails only among men equal in power.” Barack Obama forcefully embraced this philosophy shortly after his election when he told the Republicans, “I won,” meaning: “to the victor go the spoils.”

The Roman Emperor Cicero admitted this when he said, “Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in the wild beasts by nature itself. They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all means in their power.”

Even Jesus understood the right and necessity to protect one’s life, liberty, and property when He asked his disciples,

“When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” He replied. (Luke 22:35-38)

Our founding fathers understood their Christian responsibility, and that all rights came from God, not the State. About this John Adams said, “Rights [are] antecedent to all earthly govern­ments; Rights ... cannot be repealed or re­strained by human laws; Rights [are] derived from the great Legislator of the universe.” In agreement, Richard Henry Lee, a contributor to the Bill of Rights exclaimed, “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms… especially the young, and know how to use them.”

This position on firearms was confirmed by Alexander Hamilton who said, “The Supreme Being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beau­tifying that existence. He ... invested him [man] with an inviolable right to personal lib­erty and personal safety.”

Since the right to self-defense was an inalienable personal right, the Second Amendment simply as­sured each citizen that he would have the tools nec­essary to defend his life, family, or property from aggression, whether from an individual or a govern­ment. That the Second Amendment simply secured in writing a right, which God had already conferred on His creation, was confirmed in the legal com­mentaries that stand behind American law.

This was reflected in the Militia Act of 1792, which defined the “militia of the United States” not as the Continental Army or any other organized military body, but rather as including almost every adult male in the United States. Under that act, each adult was required to possess a firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment. What no one in the press, government, or academia will tell you, is that this law is actually in force today as 10 Code U.S. Code Section 311, which still states, “The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 [and] under 45 years of age.”

This view of the Second Amendment has been upheld by every Supreme Court ruling on the subject, which as a body has never ruled it not to be an individual right. In his 1833 Commentaries on the United States Consti­tution, Justice Story declared:

“The next amendment is: 'A well-regulated mi­litia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons who have duly reflected upon the sub­ject ... The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the pal­ladium of the liberties of a republic since it of­fers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will gener­ally, even if these are successful in the first in­stance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them...”

Supreme Court Strikes Down Chicago Gun Ban

In June of 2010, The Supreme Court struck down the Chicago handgun ban. In McDonald v. City of Chicago, the high court affirmed that citizens have the right to own and bear arms, just as the constitution and the law says. Unfortunately evil never sleeps, and on August 2011, the gun control advocates Jim and Sarah Brady visited the White House, where Barack Obama reportedly told them that he was working on new gun control schemes “under the radar,” so this is far from over!

“Guns have two enemies — rust and politicians.”   – Unknown

Jeff Baird is the publisher of Right Side News, serving Right News to Americans for over 4 years.  Find Jeff on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The rhetoric employed by Obama's top officials is striking for what it reveals about how the Obama administration perceives the purpose of rhetoric in foreign policy.

Most US leaders have used rhetoric to explain their policies. But if you take the Obama administration's statements at face value you are left scratching your head in wonder. Specifically on Syria, if you take these statements literally, you are left wondering if Obama and his advisers are simply clueless. Because if they are serious, their indignation bespeaks a remarkable ignorance about how decisions are made at the Security Council.

Is it possible that Obama believed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would betray Bashar Assad, his most important strategic ally in the Middle East? Is it possible that he believed that the same Chinese regime that systematically tramples the human rights of its people would agree to intervene in another country's domestic affairs?

Outside the intellectual universe of the Obama administration - where stalwart US allies such as Hosni Mubarak are discarded like garbage and foes such as Hugo Chavez are wooed like Hollywood celebrities - national governments tend to base their foreign policies on their national interests.

In light of this basic reality, Security Council actions generally reflect the national interests of its member states. This is how it has always been. This is how it will always be. And it is hard to believe that the Obama administration was unaware of this basic fact.

In fact, it is impossible to believe that the administration was unaware that its plan to pass a Security Council resolution opposing Assad's massacre of his people - and so jeopardize Russian and Chinese interests - had no chance of success. The fact that they had to know the resolution would never pass leads to the conclusion that Obama and his advisers weren't trying to pass the resolution on Syria at all.

Rather they were trying to pass the buck on Syria.

We have two pieces of evidence to support the view that the Obama administration has no intention of doing anything even vaguely effective to end Assad's reign of terror that has so far taken the lives of between five and ten thousand of his countrymen.

First, for the past 10 months, as Assad's killing machine kicked into gear, Obama and his advisers have been happy to sit on their hands. They supported Turkey's feckless diplomatic engagement with Assad. They sat back as Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayep Erdogan employed the IHH, his regime-allied terror group, to oversee the organization of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.

Second, the administration supported the Arab League's farcical inspectors' mission to Syria. That mission was led by Sudanese Gen. Muhammad al- Dabi. Dabi reportedly was one of the architects of the genocide in Darfur. Clearly, a mission under his leadership had no chance of accomplishing anything useful. And indeed, it didn't.

AND SO, after nearly a year, the issue of Assad's butchery of his citizens finally found its way to the Security Council last month. Many in the US expected Obama to use the opportunity to finally do something to stop the killing, just as he and his NATO allies did something to prevent the killing in Libya last year.

Ten months ago Obama, Rice, Clinton and National Security Council member Samantha Power decided that the US and its allies had to militarily intervene in Libya to ensure that Muammar Gaddafi didn't have the opportunity to kill his people as Assad is now doing. That is, to prevent the type of human rights calamity that the Syrian people are now experiencing, Obama used the UN as a staging ground to overthrow Gaddafi through force.

Sadly for the people of Syria, who are being shot dead even as they try to bury their families who were shot dead the day before, unlike the situation in Libya, Obama has never had the slightest intention of using his influence to take action against Assad. And faced with the rapidly rising public expectation that he would take action at the Security Council to stop the killing, Obama opted for diplomatic Kabuki.

Knowing full well that Putin - who is still selling Assad weapons - would veto any resolution, rather than accept that the Security Council is a dead end, Obama had Rice negotiate fecklessly with her Russian counterparts. The resolution that ended up being called to a vote on Saturday was so weak that US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement on Friday calling for the administration to veto it.

As Ros-Lehtinen put it, the draft resolution "contains no sanctions, no restrictions on weapons transfers, and no calls for Assad to go, but supports the failed Arab League observer mission," and so isn't "worth the paper it's printed on."

She continued, "The Obama administration should not support this weak, counterproductive resolution, and should also reconsider the legitimacy that it provides to the Arab League - an organization that continues to boycott Israel - when it comes to the regime in Damascus."

But instead of vetoing it, the administration backed it to the tilt and then expressed disgust and moral outrage when Russia and China vetoed it.

The lesson of this spectacle is that it we must recognize that the Obama administration's rhetoric hides more than it reveals about the president's actual policies.

THE FIRST place that we should apply this lesson is to the hemorrhage of administration rhetoric about Iran.

For the past several weeks we have been treated to massive doses of verbiage from Obama and his senior advisers about Iran. The most notable of these recent statements was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's conversation with The Washington Post's David Ignatius last week.

Panetta used Ignatius to communicate two basic messages. First, he wanted to make clear that the administration adamantly opposes an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations. And second, he wanted to make clear that if Iran strikes Israeli population centers, the US will come to Israel's defense.

The purpose of the first message is clear enough. Panetta wished to increase pressure on Israel not to take preemptive action against Iran's nuclear weapons program.

The purpose of the second message is also clear. Panetta spoke of the US's obligation to Israel's defense in order to remove the justification for an Israeli attack. After all, if the US is obliged to defend it, then Israel mustn't risk harming US interests by defending itself.

When taken together, Panetta's message sounds balanced and responsible. But when examined carefully, it is clear that it is not.

It is far from responsible for the US government to tell its chief ally that it should be willing to absorb an attack on its population centers from Iran. No government can be expected to sit back and wait to be attacked with nuclear weapons because if it is, the Americans will retaliate against its attacker.

Panetta's message was not just irresponsible. It was obnoxious.

And this leaves the first message. Since Obama was elected the US has devoted most of its energies not to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but to pressuring Israel not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And Panetta's remarks to Ignatius were consistent with this mission.

Some have argued that the US's stepped-up naval presence in the Persian Gulf is evidence that the US is itself gearing up to attack Iran. But as retired US naval analyst J.E. Dyer explained in an essay last month at the Optimistic Conservative blog, the US posture in the Persian Gulf is defensive, not offensive.

The US has not deployed anywhere near the firepower it would need to conduct a successful military campaign against Iran's nuclear installations. The only thing the US deployment may serve to accomplish is to deter Israel from launching a preemptive air strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

It is true that to a certain extent, Israel has brought this escalating American rhetorical storm on itself with its own flood of rhetoric about Iran. Over the past week nearly every senior Israeli military and political official has had something to say about Iran's nuclear program.

But this stream of words does not reflect a change in Israel's strategic timetable. Rather it is a function of the rather mundane calendar of Israel's annual conference circuit. It just so happened that the annual Herzliya Conference took place last week. It is standard fare for Israel's security and political leadership to bloviate about Iran's nuclear program at Herzliya. They do it every year. They did it this year.

And in truth, no one said anything at the conference that we didn't already know. We learned nothing new about Iran's program or Israel's intentions. Had there been no conference last week, there would likely have been no flood of Israeli statements.

We only know three things for certain about Iran. It is getting very late in the game for anyone to take any military actions to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran will not stop its nuclear weapons program voluntarily. And Obama will not order US forces to take action to stop Iran's nuclear project.

What remains uncertain still is how Israel plans to respond to these three certainties. The fact that Israel has waited this long to strike presents the disturbing prospect that our leaders may have been confused by the Obama administration's rhetoric. Perhaps they have been persuaded that the US is on our side on this issue and that we don't have to rely only on ourselves to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

But as the foregoing analysis of the administration's very angry words on Syria and very sober words on Iran demonstrates, Obama and his deputies use rhetoric not to clarify their intentions, but to obfuscate them. Just as they will do nothing to prevent Assad from continuing his campaign of murder and terror, so they will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Caroline Glick is an American-Israeli journalist for Makor Rishon and is the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.^[2] She is also the Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy.^[3]

If one is to ever develop a coherent and attainable goal oriented Syrian policy, one first has to understand the various groupings and allegiances at play.

The “Syrian people” is a composite of religious and ethnic groups who historically oppose each other. The dominant group, approximately two thirds of the population are Sunni Muslims; 12 percent are Alawites; 9 percent are Kurds; 10 percent are various Christian sects (Arab Christians, Assyrians and Armenians); and the remainder are a hodgepodge of religio-ethnic groups including Druze, Turkmens and Circassians.

Let’s focus on the Sunni, the Alawites and the Kurds. The Sunni majority includes the Muslim Brotherhood. It is subjugated by the ruling Alawites led by the al-Assad family. The Sunni majority, which lost power to the Alawite dominated secular nationalist Syrian Ba’ath Party in a 1963 coup, began to cause increasingly violent unrest led by the Muslim Brotherhood. This later developed into open revolt.

In 1980, after an assassination attempt against President Hafez al-Assad failed, he came down on them like a ton of bricks, literally. In 1982, the city of Hama, a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, was destroyed by regular Syrian army forces, including tanks and artillery, commanded by Rifat al-Assad, Hafez’s younger brother. An estimated 20,000 residents of Hama were killed. The revolt was quelled and the Alawite al-Assad family continued to rule.

However, the real dispute goes way back. The Sunni majority view the Alawite minority as heretics. The Alawites, or Alawi as they called themselves because of their adherence to Ali (the Muslim prophet Mohammad’s cousin and son-in-law), were originally called by the Sunnis the “Nusayri” after the Shi’ite Ibn Nusayr in the 9^th century, indicating their break with Islam. After 1920 and French rule in Syria (which included Lebanon), the persecuted Alawites ingratiated themselves with the new rulers.

The French encouraged Alawites to join the French commanded Syrian army and dominate the officer corps as a counterweight to the hostile Sunni majority. This subsequently set the stage for the Alawite dominance of the Baath Party and the 1963 takeover of the Syrian government.

The Kurds, while only 9 percent of the total Syrian population, comprise the majority of the Jazira province, and are affiliated with major Kurdish populations in neighboring Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Historically, the Kurds once ruled their own land known as Kurdistan which included eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and northern Syria. The Kurds in all of these countries are persecuted by the current ruling regimes in their respective countries.

In 1957 the KDPS (Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria) was founded. The Syrian central government never recognized the Kurds as a separate entity, thus the KDPS remained an underground organization. In 1960 a number of its leaders were imprisoned. In 1961, after the dissolution of the UAR – United Arab Republic with Egypt, the Syrian government decided to “recognize the Kurds” as a separate entity and in the summer of 1962 conducted a special population census of the predominantly Kurdish province of Jazira. All of the identified Kurds were stripped of their Syrian citizenship and declared “aliens.” At the same time a media campaign was launched against the Kurds with such  slogans as “Save Arabism in Jazira” and “Fight the Kurdish Threat.” These policies coincided with the beginning of Mustafa Barazani’s Kurdish uprising in Iraq and the discovery of oilfields in the Jazira province. In the summer of 1963, Syrian forces joined with the Iraqi military in attacking the Barazani led revolt to reestablish an independent Kurdistan.

In the mid-1980’s through the early 1990’s, following the unsuccessful revolt against the al-Assad regime by the Sunnis, the Kurds too clashed violently with the regime which only resulted in mass arrests and killings of Kurdish Syrian civilians. And while the al-Assad government's ongoing persecution of the Kurds is part of its general suppression of any form of political dissent, it continues the previous policy of repression because a separate Kurdish identity is still viewed as a threat.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement in last year’s so-called “Arab Spring” in Tunis, Egypt and Yemen, induced the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to take their opposition to the al-Assad Alawite regime up another notch and the protests/riots began followed immediately by the al-Assad style ruthless oppression.

As the daily violence expands, and the death toll rises, one hears the cacophony of statements such as Secretary Clinton who said on March 27, 2011: “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” But by November 18, 2011, Mrs. Clinton finally awoke to the fact that Bashar al-Assad’s so-called reformist attitudes were baseless. Speaking to ABC News, she reversed herself and said: “We heard what Assad said about what he wanted to do for reform. But when it came to it, in the Arab Spring and as people actually demanded some freedom and their rights, he responded, as we have seen, very violently.” Considering Syrian history in the past 30 years alone, one wonders why she is surprised.

Syria is the scene of an ongoing civil war of sorts between the Sunni majority led by the Muslim Brotherhood and the minority Alawite controlled regime led by the al-Assad clan with various minor religio-ethnic players scattered over the field. If the al-Assad regime falls, it is not merely the al-Assad family that is in trouble, the entire Alawite population can expect similar or worse persecution by the Muslim Brotherhood led Sunnis as they attempt to turn the clock back to a modern version of the Ottoman period. Bashar al-Assad is fighting for both Alawite dominance and survival.

Secretary Clinton and Co. must realize that life is not a Hollywood movie and Syria isn’t a western country. Syria is a serious mess and there is no happy ending in sight soon

The author is a veteran journalist specializing in geo-political and geo-strategic affairs in the Middle East. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Insight Magazine, Nativ, The Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon. His articles have been reprinted by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the US Congressional Record.

The UN has been finagling for decades to construct a global government (a one-world government) and rule over all the peoples of the earth.  National sovereignty be damned.

For the people of the United States it would mean the abrogation of the US Constitution.  Our loyalty would be to the UN -- not to the US Constitution. UN law would prevail in America, not US law.

The UN has delusions of grandeur.  I mean REAL delusions. Unfortunately, except for the late US Senator Jesse Helms, of North Carolina, nobody has been willing to stand up and call them on it.

Any attempt to rule the world is destined to end in utter and abject failure. The people of this planet are far too diverse -- and just plain ornery -- to agree to live under one government.  Any attempt to force a one-world government on earth will lead to wars all over the planet.  The earth would be in a constant state of world war.  Any FOOL can see that.

And yet they continue to mold a receptive mindset in the less educated, less sophisticated, and the less fortunate peoples of the earth in order to create a creature so banal, ignorant, weak, and vulnerable as to be completely reliant on them for their very existence.  It is akin to the modus operandi of the Democratic Party in the United States.

And now the UN wants us to pay for it, too with a World Tax

Once again they are seeking a “World Tax” to fund their global socialism.  It is pure socialism/communism.  Of course,  they want to tax the wealthier countries more than the less wealthy countries. It other words – it is redistribution of the wealth or, as we have come to know it … socialism.·

“ A 2010 UN blueprint for putting the organization back at the forefront of global governance alarmingly revealed the agenda to re-brand global warming as “overpopulation” as a means of dismantling the middle classes while using “global redistribution of wealth” and increased immigration to reinvigorate the pursuit of a one world government.”  (SOURCE)·

The UN has even put forth “a plan under which the west would be mandated to respect “the rights of Mother Earth” by paying a “climate debt” which would act as a slush fund for bankrolling an all-powerful world government.” (SOURCE)·

Oh, the utopians will love this idea … until they grow up. By then, of course, it will be too late -- because the world will already be enslaved.·

If the US is the subject of an act of God, and conservatives manage to grasp control of the Congress and the Presidency, then Americans should insist that one of the first acts of the new government should be to pull the United States of America out of the United Nations.·

As an American, I am embarrassed that my country is a member in such a corrupt organization.  For good measure, Americans ought to insist that the United Nations move its headquarters to a country more accepting of the UN’s corrupt socialist agenda.·

The UN is a festering carbuncle on the posterior of the world. Its stench reaches unto heaven.·

By the way:  that “world tax” the UN wants to levy would be  … “a minimal financial transaction tax (of .005 percent). This will create $40 billion in revenue.”(SOURCE)   

In a recent report by Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, “Mr. De Schutter blames the free market system for threatening the livelihoods of “peasants, fishers, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples.” He emphasizes “the importance of land redistribution for the realization of the right to food.” (SOURCE)·

De Schutter goes on to say: “Rather than focusing on strengthening the rights of landowners, States should encourage communal ownership systems, strengthen customary land tenure systems and reinforce tenancy laws to improve the protection of land-users…” (SOURCE)·

What he is advocating, dear reader, is doing away with private ownership of land and replacing it with collective farms, or socialist communes.  YOU will not be able to own land.  The STATE will own all the land.·

The United Nations is a socialist organization and the United States of America has no business even associating with it let alone being a dues paying member.

J. D. Longstreet

The evening' speekers in high spirits. From left to right: Hans Rustad (Norway), the Swedes Gunnar Sandelin and Ingrid Carlqvist and the Danes Lars Hedegaard and Mikael Jalving.
Photo: Steen Raaschou

That same evening yet another murder and yet another bombing of a police station were added to the seemingly endless cycle of gangland violence in the Southern Swedish city. The number of unsolved murders in Malmoe since last summer now stands at eight and the city has acquired a reputation as the Murder Capital of Northern Europe.

But despite escalating violence and biting cold, 120 people turned up for the meeting, which was held under the watchful eye of about 20 uniformed and armed police in addition to a number of fierce-looking plainclothes agents that were there to protect the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has been the target of several assassination attempts.

The Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist – the principal organiser of the event – had ample reason to be satisfied as she bid welcome to the audience and speakers:

This is a historic meeting. [...] We are here to break some taboos and let's begin with the biggest one of all – Sweden's immigration policies.

Total blackout

 As one of the evening's speakers, the Swedish journalist Gunnar Sandelin, could testify, it is a risky business to write the truth about this national taboo.

In 2008 he wrote a critical piece for the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter under the headline "Journalists impose blackout on immigration". Since then he has been unable to find a steady job.

The article documented that the vast majority of so-called refugees have no legitimate reason to ask for asylum.

What is really taking place is a hugely expensive, camouflaged immigration. "In addition," said Sandelin in his Malmoe speech, "we have no knowledge at all about who is entering the country. The great majority come without any identification papers and present the immigration authorities with cooked-up stories.

Many anonymous members of the immigration service are well aware of what is going on. Yet nothing is done.

This ought to be an obvious issue for Swedish journalists but nobody wants to touch it. They simply impose a blackout when it comes to the entire problem of unregulated mass immigration. Instead they spend their time stigmatizing people who dare speak up. This is not a healthy social climate.

Sandelin quoted a poll indicating that 90 pct. of the population agree that the Swedish media are not telling the truth about immigration and its consequences.

"Make them weep"
As a former journalist with the state-owned TV channel SVT Sandelin was able to reveal how the channel views its role when it comes to immigration.

At some point he asked his boss why the reporters kept labelling immigrants as refugees when it was evident that they were not.

My boss informed me that immigrants are weak and that it is therefore the obligation of TV-journalists to be on their side. Immigrants had to be presented as so pitiful that viewers would weep.

According to Gunnar Sandelin, this is a highly ideological issue.

It used to be the workers who were weak by definition – today it is the immigrants. We are being ruled by a sort mental Stalinism that determines what roles various social groups must play. As a consequence, people are being misled and kept in the dark as to what is really going on.

Inequality before the law
The other speakers were two Danes and one Norwegian.
President of the Danish Free Press Society Lars Hedegaard attributed most current threats against free speech to the fact the entire vision of an idyllic multicultural society has unravelled.

As we can see in city after city and country after country, multiculturalism and cultural relativity have created problems so vast that politicians no longer know how to solve them. Angela Merkel has admitted that the multicultural utopia is off the table and so have David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy. But if they cannot solve the problems, they can at least try to prevent people from speaking about them.

The result, said Lars Hedegaard, is the introduction of so-called "hate speech" and "racism" clauses in the penal codes and an ensuing string of convictions all over Europe. The problem is compounded by the fact that laws against insult are being applied selectively leading to inequality before the law.

Some people are being punished for saying what the specially favoured – those defined as 'week' or righteous – can utter with impunity. In fact, the most favoured can say pretty much whatever they want.

Hedegaard made a point of stressing that successful integration of immigrants cannot take place in a climate where people are afraid to speak their mind.

Who would integrate into a society that responds to any attack by limiting the rights of its own citizens? Without free speech we cannot solve the problems of society. We cannot even identify them.

Cracks in "The Realm of Silence"
The other Danish speaker, journalist and author Mikael Jalving, is quite an expert on Swedish debating culture. He spent most of a year travelling around the country in an attempt to get the Swedes to talk.

It proved difficult. He did, however, manage to collect enough material to write a book entitled "Absolute Sweden" in which he characterises the country as "The Realm of Silence":

There is a lot of discussion taking place in Sweden, [...] But people rarely debate matters of import. That's why I'm positively surprised that today we have a Free Press Society here in Malmoe. I wouldn't have believed that two years ago.

Sweden wants to be best
Hans Rustad, the editor of the popular Norwegian website Document.no, had also made the trip to Malmoe. He delivered a brief characterisation of Swedish immigration policies as it looks from a Norwegian perspective:

Viewed from the outside, Sweden seems to have a great need to be the best. You want to be number one in goodness and tolerance, which is why you compete with other countries in the discipline of having the most liberal immigration policy.

But in the process you have given up your own identity and that is dangerous. That is why I wish the Swedish Free Press Society success and good luck.

With the help of witting and unwitting accomplices in and out of government, Islamism doesn’t merely fuel terrorism but spawns America-hating Islamic enclaves in our midst and gradually foists Islam’s repressive law, sharia, on American life.  The revolutionary doctrine has made common cause with an ascendant Left that also seeks radical transformation of our constitutional order.  The prognosis for liberty could not be more dire.

Get the Book!