More "Believe it or not"

The latest nugget of wisdom from the Israel-First, pro-war crowd is that we should forget the mass starvation and the theft of homes and farms Israelis commited against Palestinians -- their rage at Israel arises out of nothing more than irrational, blind hatred:

It is pure sophistry to infer that anything except a virulent, nauseating strain of anti-Semitism is what keeps the Palestnians at war with Israel. They hate the Jews because they are Jews and any other greivance they have is pure gravy – sauce for the goose. And their single, animating, national ambition is to kill as many as they can while hoping that someone can come along and kick the Jews out of Israel for them.

It must be nice to be able to read minds, especially the minds of millions of people at the same time.

Home schooling grows

Don't you know the lefties, globalists, and all the other assorted state-worshipers hate this trend:

The ranks of America's home-schooled children have continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new research suggests broader reasons for the appeal.

The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003.

This is especially rich:

The 2003 survey gave parents six reasons to pick as their motivation. (They could choose more than one.) The 2007 survey added a seventh: an interest in a "non-traditional approach," a reference to parents dubbed "unschoolers," who regard standard curriculum methods and standardized testing as counterproductive to a quality education.

Then there's the motivation of NOT wanting your child brainwashed into a politically correct, globalist zombie.

Neocons for Panetta

Fake conservatives like liberal Clintonistas. Wow. Who could've seen that one coming?

Why the Southern Cause? Here's why ...

This is from the comments section from Sunday's "Quote of the day":

I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who believes empire and imperialism aren't problematic. It is the conclusion that secession/rebellion, for all its violence and bloodletting, is somehow a sufficient and even desirable way to deal with centralized government that is bothersome.

See, this is why I prefer thoughtful dissent to "mega-ditto" type comments. It's good to be challenged -- it forces you to re-think and re-state your reasons for blogging and for advocating a particular point of view.

So here goes. Only the dead-ender Neocons and their blood-brother communists still believe in the promises of big, consoldidated government. And the above-cited commenter apparently agrees with us what the problem is, and that is the trajectory of all over-centralized governments. They all become dictatorial -- just as the Stephens quote stated.

So what's the answer? While folks see (and laugh at!) DC as it flubs every test, unable to solve any problems, they still subconsciously look to it as the ultimate authority and as the object of loyalty. Thanks to the rigorous indoctrination of the government schools, folks think Lincoln's counter-revolution, which substituted the sovereignty of the central government for the sovereignty of the people, is somehow sacred. So they are unable to conceive of human-scaled government -- all the important decisions must be made by the Wise Ones in DC, no matter how often they screw up. We're stuck playing musical chairs, switching names and positions in DC, in the illogical belief the system is good and noble, and only needs different people to make the system work.

Meanwhile, things mysteriously get only worse.

The point is, the only solution is to downsize DC. Either it is forced to return the power it usurped from us in full defiance of the Constitution, or it should be fired. Put another way, sovereignty must be returned to the local level. And that means secession. While total withdrawal from the Union may not be necessary, the recovery of the rights of the States depends on properly understanding the real meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and that means the right of secession; that is, the reserved right to withdraw from the Union.

Which brings us to the commenter's next objection:

It becomes an 'insult' or, rather, irritating when that conclusion, which almost inevitably takes on undertones of 'cultural preservation,' leads to romanticized and misguided ideas about what southern culture is and who is a southerner.

No political unit can be born or survive without the affection and loyalty of its people. No voluntary political unit can be established without a cultural foundation uniting the people. As professor Ghia Nodia of the University of Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, has observed:

"Democracy has always emerged in distinct communities; there is no record anywhere of free, unconnected, and calculating individuals coming together spontaneously to form a democratic social contract ex nihilo. Whether we like it or not, nationalism is the historical force that has provided the political units for democratic government. 'Nation' is another name for 'we the people'."

For local sovereignty to return as a counterweight to the present centralized system, local loyalty must be nourished. And the creatures who feed off the cancerous growth of Big Government know that, which is why both leftists and Neocons smear Southern heritage.

So that's the bottom line: without "cultural preservation," which includes the values of our political heritage, there can be no resistance to the abuses of Big Government.

What the Magic Man said

Roland Burris has a point:

"This is all politics and theater, but I am the junior senator according to every law book in the nation," Burris said. "This appointment is legal. What don't you all understand that what has been done here is legal? That's legal."

Burris' appointment has been under fire since Blagojevich is facing a possible indictment and impeachment for allegedly trying to sell the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama, among other issues.

Technically, he's right. Of course, we all know Burris is damaged merchandise, and always will be.

Meanwhile, in the District of Corruption, Commerce Secretary nominee Bill Richardson pre-emptively resigns before he's kicked out:

"It was my idea to withdraw," Richardson said when asked whether Obama's transition team pressured him to drop his nomination out of concern for the federal investigation into how his political donors landed lucrative transportation contracts in his state.

We're not picking on Bill Richardson here or Roland Burris. The fact is, dirty deals are a fact of life in a political system as overgrown and out of touch as the DC hegemony. Richardson just got caught doing what all the players there do.

So what's the point of mentioning it? Simple: something's gotta give. It is impossible to function in such a corrupt system while sticking to the letter of the law. The machinery of politics has outgrown the republican (small "r") values and institutions that wrote the laws we're supposed to be following. Raw power has taken the place of the rule of law, which is now nothing but a speed bump, a bothersome vestige of another time. To simply function, the system must increasingly substitute authoritarianism for the rule of law. Just watch.

New England a "gay marriage" zone?

Well, they picked the right part of the country:

Two New England states have already legalized same-sex marriage, and a Boston-based advocacy group wants to see the other four join them.

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, known as GLAD, has launched a first-of-its-kind regional campaign aimed at winning approval for same-sex marriage in the six-state New England region by 2012.

On the other hand, I assumed California would've rejected Prop 8, which confirms traditional (that is, REAL) marriage to pre-empt the homosexual lobby. So who knows? Liberal, secular New England might not be the Lavender Paradise we think it is.

Mad about Madoff

It's an ill wind that blows no good. And it seems Bernard Madoff's, umm, creative investment strategies have directly led to the demise of certain leftist foundations. One of them is the Picower Foundation, which has funded the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The giant Picower Foundation had the misfortune to choose Madoff to manage its more than $1 billion in assets.

The charity has given away more than $189 million since 1999.

A sizeable chunk of its funding has gone to abortion groups, including NARAL ($3.2 million), Center for Reproductive Rights ($2.5 million), Planned Parenthood ($2.4 million), and Center for Reproductive Law and Policy ($625,000).

Picower Foundation gave $2.9 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a public interest law firm that uses politically skewed definitions of racism to indoctrinate children while smearing conservatives who question racial preference programs.

Poor Mo, Mark, and Heidi will have to work even harder to terrify little old liberals into donating even more to the SPLC's $168 million endowment.


So all together now -- Awwwwwww!

Quote of the day

"Depend upon it, there is no difference between Consolidation and Empire; no difference between Centralism and Imperialism. The consummation of either must necessarily end in the overthrow of Liberty and the establishment of Despotism." Alexander H. Stephens

H/T to Chuck Demastus

NAACP confronts the myth of the Emancipation Proclamation

Will wonders never cease? After years of writing letters to the editor, articles, books, blog posts, and radio interviews, the Southern Movement has finally smashed one of the core myths of the DC empire, that Lincoln freed the slaves -- and look who's finally facing the historical truth:

What the 100 people who gathered for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's annual Emancipation Proclamation program Thursday got was a wake-up call and a history lesson.

President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation 146 years ago had less to do with freedom and more to do with a need to beef up Union forces during the Civil War, Lonnie Randolph said.

"The Emancipation Proclamation really didn't do anything," the state NAACP president said from Rock Hill's Agape International Ministries. "We look at this as a day of freedom. It really didn't free anyone."

"We celebrate for the wrong reason," Randolph said. "It was a military decision. Folks need to be told the true meaning of this event. This was strictly to free black men, those 250,000 who fought. It gave them the right to fight."

What's next? Will the NAACP now realize that La Raza's Open Borders agenda profoundly harms blacks? Will they denounce Al-Sharpton-style race baiting? And maybe even turn away from the entire leftist agenda?

Who knows? Now that this myth has been busted, the sky's the limit ...

Coming Soon: The Disunited States?

We've noted Dr. Igor Panarin's views previously, and agree with some, and disagree with others. But now, other pundits are taking notice of Panarin's conclusions that the United States is dissolving before our eyes, as Doug Bandow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance reports:

The Wall Street Journal summarized his views: "Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the US will break into six pieces – with Alaska reverting to Russian control."

How silly! When have mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation EVER led to the collapse of a government?


Well, ok, if you want to be nit-picky, they've caused ALL the oversized, multicult empires in world history to fall. But maybe the DC empire is immune to historical forces. Yeah.

Bandow sees many benefits from Panarin's predictions:

Thus, today disunion might prove to be a blessing. If the Midwest wants socialism, with government control of manufacturing, then it should be separate from the South, which holds to a stronger if not exactly pure ethos of self-reliance. If California wants to be in the forefront of cultural relativism and experimentation, then it also should be separate from the South, which retains much of its heritage as home of the Bible Belt. The western mountain states prefer more of a rough libertarianism in economic and cultural affairs. New England and the mid-Atlantic states have their own cultural peculiarities and economic assumptions. If we can't just leave each other alone, then maybe we should live separately.

And there are many other benefits to the return to human-scaled political systems. With its stranglehold on power and money, DC is forcing an artificial uniformity on over 300 million souls. Think of all the local expertise that's shackled by DC's one-size-fits-all mentality on the most vital issues, from education, to health care reform, to protecting jobs.

More important, the bomb-it and rebuild-it scam that fuels DC's command-and-control system, though lucrative for power brokers and politically connected industries, is a grossly wasteful and inherently bloody and immoral racket. The military-industrial complex is clearly the single biggest source of chaos the world has ever seen, and it can only survive by feeding off a vast population forced to live under one artificially overgrown political system. Think what that trillion dollars that's already dropped down the Middle East sinkhole in Bush's wars could have done for the people of this country.

Big government is inherently aggressive and autocratic. If we are to reclaim our political liberties, we must scale back DC's unnatural and unaccountable power. Local self-determination is the only answer.

What Will ‘Brother Barack’ Do for Africa?

Obama loves his people:

Obama is not unaware of these hopes and expectations. Indeed, they have been high since he visited the continent as a senator in 2006 and proclaimed, “You are all my brothers and sisters.” In Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Chad, he told cheering crowds that he would lobby for help back in the U.S. to solve their problems.

And even though he was quick to remind his kinsmen in western Kenya that he was the senator for Illinois in the United States—not Kogelo, or indeed Africa—the foreign policy page at barackobama.com states that Obama worked with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “to secure $20 million for the African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur.”

And his people love him -- not just the average Kenyan in the streets, but even in the Kenyan parliament:

The Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs (Mr. Musyoka): Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it could very well be that due to the great amount of excitement in the country this morning, some of these hon. Members may not be here on time. If you could just bear with them, they are all celebrating, in their own way, the big and very historic win by Senator Obama.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Precisely! Because of that, the Chair will have to wait and proceed to the next Question!

Next Question by Mr. Shakeel!

Dr. Khalwale: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. You have heard none other than the Leader of Government Business acknowledge that because of Obama's win in the United States of America (USA), the House is crippled. Could we allow him to move a Motion for Adjournment so that we could also continue the celebrations of having a Kenyan ruling the USA? I humbly request!

(Applause)

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order! Indeed, our President has already done that and you must appreciate. Tomorrow is a public holiday. So, Kenyans will have a long day to celebrate, including today.

It's like Barney the Purple Dinosaur, only on a trans-continental, and not-so-post-racial level.

Help stop the lynching!

Yoo-hoo! Calling all who struggle for racial justice, multiculturalism, and showing off your moral superiority. This is your call to action:

Taking to the podium at the end of a bizarre, shambolic press conference in which Governor Rod Blagojevich sought to appoint Roland Burris to the US Senate, Congressman Bobby Rush dared white Democratic senators to block a black man from joining their ranks.

He urged people "to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer" and, after saying repeatedly that Burris would be the only African-American in the Senate, said that he believed no senator would want "to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the US Senate".

Rush is a former Black Panther who trounced Barack Obama in the 2000 Democratic primary when the then state senator challenged him for his House of Representatives seat.

It couldn't be more clear -- if you oppose Blago's choice for the US Senate, then you're a racist who wants to lynch helpless black people.

You know, the utter madness of political correctness is paralyzing this country faster than even I thought possible.

Uncivil War: Detroit Blames the South

Another look at how "pro-American" is defined as sacrificing for Northern interests. Looks like nothing's changed since 1861.

Rooting for the overdog

According to the Israel-First, pro-war, any-war crowd, if you so much as question the Israeli Army's use of American WMDs against the civilians in Gaza, you're a goose-stepping Nazi who wants to exterminate all Jews. And the only moral, rational choice for the Israelis is to kill all Palestinians. Think I'm exaggerating? See for yourself.

Let's not forget that all this is taking place in occupied Gaza, which is Egyptian territory illegally seized by Israel in the Six-Day War. UN demands that Israel return the captured territory are effectively blocked by the DC empire. So much for the myth of DC's support for the "integrity" of UN resolutions.

This mindless support for a DC crony and blind malevolence against any who resist American hegemony can only be described as sado-patriotism. How else to describe rants like this:

There are the usual photos of fat Muslim ladies with their mouths wide open in faux horror as they pose for the news cameras, and dusty wreckage of some Palestinian shithole recently renovated by Israeli ordnance. There are never any pictures of dead Israelis, or Palestinian rockets, or mutilated bodies of kidnapped and murdered Israelis. Even Fox News contributes to this gross imbalance in news coverage.

That's because even Fox can't sanitize this lopsided slaughter. But the rant gets better. See if you've ever encountered an expression of such malignant delight in the suffering and death of innocents as this:

As for you, Palestinians, who rejoiced when your fellow barbarians murdered 3,000 Americans in 2001, I rejoice in the righteous destruction and long overdue payback for your evil, your barbarian savagery, your murderous and false religion. You have earned every bomb and every bullet, and since we don't practice Islamic finance, there will be a great deal of interest due with every payment. Enjoy.

And check out this comment from the site linked above justifying the slaughter of innocent civilians as an extension of DC's first war of liberation:

But as the Gazeans (term?) haven't stood up to Hamas, neither did the Southern non-slave owners stand up for the rights of blacks. They did not "deserve" the ravages of the Federal Army, but neither were they completely innocent, either.

That's what empire-worship comes down to -- the glorification of power, and the sniggering delight of unleashing that power against the sub-humans who resist it. This was made clear in a thread Free Republic published in the early days of W the Great's conquest of Iraq:

crazyhorse691 ~ ""My children are terrified every time they see an American now.""

Redbob ~ Now, if only we could duplicate this result throughout the arab world...
Or as Bluelancer so eloquently put it:

200 years from now, I want their children's children's children to cower and cringe in fear whenever they hear the sounds of jet engines overhead because their legends tell of fire from the sky.

I want them to hide in dark caves and holes in the earth, shivering with terror whenever they hear the roar of diesel engines because the tales of their ancestors talk about metal monsters crawling over the earth, spitting death and destruction.
I want their mothers to be able to admonish them with "If you don't behave, the Pale Destroyers will come for you", and that will be enough to reduce them to quivering obesience.

I want the annihilation to be so complete that their mythology will tell them of the day of judgment when the stern gods from across the sea .. the powerful 'Mericans .. destroyed their forefathers' wickedness.

Feel the pride.

War College paper considers domestic military deployment

This is the inevitable result of open borders, militarism, and egalitarian economic policies:

Deepening economic strife in the US could lead to civil unrest and violence that would require military intervention, warns a new report from the US Army War College. ...

The author warns potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, "unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters." The situation could deteriorate to the point where military intervention was required, he argues.

Uncle Sam is just itching to rescue you. Feel safer?

London and Obama administration to regulate websites

Looks like Oceania -- that is, the DC Empire and Airstrip One -- plan to coordinate their efforts to control thought and expand their shared globalist goals:

Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff - the UK and the U.S. working together - the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying. ...

Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said.

Chew on that last sentence for a bit. That's censorship any way you look at it. And that's where we're headed. The Internet is today's samizdat, the only means by which dissenters can voice their opinions. The unmistakable collapse of both Big Media and Big Government before our eyes may be gratifying, but it's also what's behind their increasingly desperate measures to hold on to their former power, such as denying habeas corpus and conducting warrantless searches. Until our victory over the forces of crony capitalism and authoritarianism is complete, we have to be careful. There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast.

Blagojevich Will Be Out of Office by Lincoln's 200th Birthday

Ok, this is getting a little creepy:

Illinois Lt. Gov Pat Quinn says on CBS' 'Face the Nation' that Gov. Rod Blagojevich will be impeached and forced to leave office by Abraham Lincoln's bicentennial birthday celebration on Feb. 12.

Obama launches his presidential campaign from Springfield. The press is dazzled by this diamond in the not-so-rough, puts on its collective loupe, and detects many more parallels between the two. Lincoln's birthday will coincide with Obama's coronation inauguration. And Obama plans to take his oath of office using Lincoln's Bible. Whoa.

Makes you wonder what other parallels we'll see between these two presidents, hmmm?

Thousands demand separate region for Iraq's Basra

The centrifugal forces in Iraq appear to be gathering momentum:

Some three thousand people took to the streets in mainly Shi'ite Basra, demanding a referendum on whether the city and surrounding province might become a semi-autonomous state.

"Yes, yes for the Basra region," demonstrators shouted.

Ahmed Ali, a 27-year-old civil servant, said Basra wanted to "cut the cord with the central government, which has brought us only trouble, poverty and unemployment".

Hmmm -- sounds like what DC has brought us. But then, that's about all oversized, authoritarian regimes are capable of.

Anti-illegal immigration activists condemned for spreading "ethnic hatred"

Angered by the ongoing invasion of their nation, and the threat to their traditional culture, "nativist" trouble-makers resort to "separatism" -- what the nativists call "self-determination." For their opposition to government-sponsored colonization by an alien and aggressive culture, the police have detained many of these nativist agitators.

Texas? Alabama? North Carolina? No, this government crackdown took place in Tibet, where Han Chinese are colonizing traditional Tibetan homelands:

The police have detained 59 people in Tibet on charges that they sought to foment unrest by spreading ethnic hatred and by downloading and selling banned songs from the Internet, Chinese state media reported Thursday. ...

Although news reports did not say whether the detainees were formally arrested and charged, they are accused of threatening national security by advocating for an independent Tibet and by expressing disdain for the ethnic Han migrants who now dominate commerce in Lhasa and other Tibetan cities.

Interesting how reading the Communist Chinese version of events in Tibet sounds just like the Open Borders crowd here in the US. The echoes of SPLC ideology are clear and chilling.

Christmas in Dixie

This is the time of year we celebrate family and faith. While remembering and reconnecting with tradition and kin, it's only natural to think back to the Christmases of childhood.

Growing up, my life revolved around my grandparent's tobacco farm. Their four children all lived on the edges of their 60-acre farm, and much of our social and recreational time was spent on that land. Christmas Eve meant celebrating at my grandparents' house with my three uncles and their families. My mother and her three brothers would sing carols, and we'd exchange presents, feast, and talk until midnight. With 12 cousins packed in the house, you can just imagine the hullabaloo. It was a joyous time.

That house now belongs to a stranger, and my grandparents and two of my uncles are gone. My mother's family no longer gets together for Christmas. But what life takes away, it adds other things. Our daughter is coming up from Charleston tonight, and tomorrow we'll visit my wife's family on the small vineyard where my brother-in-law lives in the Yadkin Valley. Then we'll go to my parents' house, where we'll wake up early Christmas morning to greet what promises to be a cold but bright day. And we'll do Christmas in Dixie one more time.

Fort Dix five guilty of conspiracy to kill soldiers

This news release backs up our earlier post illustrating how diversity promotes "different ways of thinking and doing":

Five Muslim immigrants from South Jersey were convicted today of plotting to kill American soldiers, a crime that prosecutors said demonstrated how Al Qaeda was using the Internet to recruit, train and incite supporters for attacks in the United States and around the world.

See? Traditional American demographic groups wouldn't have thought of this. It took Moslem immigrants to conceive the idea of trying to blow up American soldiers.

Take that, Diversity Deniers!

Obama's office clears Rahm Emanuel

"Nothing to see here, folks!" Lt. Frank Drebbin, Naked Gun

The Office of the Savior-Elect has done a thorough investigation, and finds its Chief of Staff is as pure as the driven snow in the Blago affair:

The president-elect's office says it will release on Monday the promised report giving a full accounting of those contacts, and Obama aides say the official under the most scrutiny -- Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel -- will be exonerated after weeks of innuendo that they have long said was unfair.

That settles that!

'Question 46,' Revisited

Civilian disarmament is integral to any military occupation, as William Grigg reminds us. And as DC desperately tries to hold on to power, it's expanding its use of the military at home. This is a trend we've reported on before, and don't like where it's headed.

Go forth and spread Magic Diversity Dust

I caught a radio ad promoting Diversity the other day on the Dennis Miller show. Here's a partial transcript:

Obviously White young girl: "Gee, you work with lots of people who don't look like you at all!"

White mother: "What do you mean?"

Girl: "Well, there are Asian people, African-American people, Latino people--"

Mother: "We all work together as a team."

Girl: "Aren't they different from you?"

Mother: "In a way, yes. But those differences are good. They mean different ways of seeing things, different ways of thinking things, different ways of doing things."

Girl: "But if those differences are so good where you work, why does everyone where we're living look just like us?"

Wise Announcer: "Diversity shouldn't be left behind at work each day. Prepare your children for the coming global life that lies ahead. Your family doesn't live in a 9-to-5 world. Why should Diversity?"

The ad is sponsored by the National Fair Housing Alliance, which proudly proclaims that it is "dedicated to the creation and sustenance of diverse communities throughout the nation." We can be assured their vision for us is good, because its members include such enlightened entities as Wachovia, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae, which, now that I think about it, are some of the chief proponents of the diversity-at-any-cost policies that gave us the ongoing Diversity Recession.

But I quibble. Let's take the ad's message at face value. The first thing it's telling us is that thinking, seeing, and behaving are determined by race -- an idea that I thought was considered eeeevil. Guess I'm behind the times.

And if that assumption is true, then the radio ad raises a question: Since Magic happens when people of different races work together, why aren't all the Nobel prizes swept up every year by people in racially diverse areas, such as Brazil and south Los Angeles? And here's an interesting implication: If a homogeneous community is fatally hobbled by its dull uniformity, shouldn't measures be taken to prevent people from intermarrying and creating a homogenous community of mestizos? Clearly, the government should criminalize marriage among different races -- how else can we continue to enjoy the mysterious creativity that emerges when the different ways of thinking, seeing, and doing things bump into one another, making those stimulating sparks when people of different races interact?

Of course, I'm not advocating those things, I'm just thinking about the logical implications of the National Fair Housing Alliance radio ad. And you're not supposed to think when you hear ads promoting Diversity.

Chicago Police Seize Portrait That Blacks Deem Offensive

Hear that? It's the sound of the First Amendment being nullified in the name of Civil Rights. A Chicago alderman (translation: gauleiter) took offense at a picture of Mayor Harold Washington depicted in "frilly lingerie." So, accompanied by the police, he removes it from public view. Later, he declared that if the courts had it replaced, he'd defy the law. So what happens? Was this blatant violation of free speech punished? No -- instead, the school buckled, and knelt in submission as it begged forgiveness for failing to respect a black icon:

But late today, after a four-hour meeting with black aldermen and Mayor Eugene Sawyer, officials of the school and the Art Institute said they not only would issue a public apology for exhibiting the painting of the former Mayor, but also promised to do more to increase the number of students and employees who are members of minority groups, as well as the number of blacks on the board of the institute.

Earlier in the day officials of the art school, an adjunct of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, promised that they would not put the painting on exhibiton again. They said the police warned them that its exhibition could "incite a riot."

Chew on that last sentence -- the police warned the victims of government oppression that if they displayed the banned picture, THE VICTIMS would be responsible for whatever violence committed by thugs.

Welcome to multicult America.

Afghanistan: Soviet failures echo for US

The blood and money pit in Afghanistan just keeps absorbing all we can dump in:

Recent headlines from Afghanistan have read like a history lesson from the Soviet 1980s.

That war "devolved into a fight for control of … the road network," concludes a 1995 US Army study. Militants are now stepping up attacks against American supply routes, destroying some 200 trucks in Pakistan this month.

Anti-Soviet militants controlled "the rural areas," says a former Soviet official. Today's militants have a "permanent presence" in 72 percent of the country, according to a Dec. 8 study.

There are differences between then and now. Yet 20 years later, many problems are similar: The US and NATO control neither the countryside nor the militants' hideouts in Pakistan, and as civilian casualties increase, Afghan anger is mounting.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." Karl Marx

The economic Civil War

More confirmation, unfriendly though it may be, that the age-old and ongoing conflict between North and South is economic:

If the major U.S. automobile companies go under, it will be partly because timely federal aid for them was blocked by members of Congress like Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, whose states have created their own counter-Detroit in the form of Japanese, Korean, and German transplant factories. The South will have risen by bringing down the North. Jefferson Davis will have had his revenge.

Lind's solution to the South actually looking after its own interests instead of the North's? Simple: "It's time for a Third Reconstruction to put an end to it."

At least he's more blunt about it than most politicians.

Obama's inaugural choice sparks outrage

Here's the feint:

Prominent liberal groups and gay rights proponents criticized President-elect Barack Obama Wednesday for choosing evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the presidential inauguration next month.

... the founder of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, has also adhered to socially conservative stances -- including his opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights that puts him at odds with many in the Democratic Party, especially the party's most liberal wing.

Look out! Here comes the reverse:

Some top retired military leaders and some Democrats in Congress are backing William White, chief operating officer of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, to be the next secretary of the Navy - a move that would put the first openly gay person at the top of one of the services.

Here's the analysis:

"...[T]hey must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.... [The conqueror should] not wish that the people... should have occasion to regret the loss of any of their old customs...." Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Prince and the Discourses” (New York: Random House, 1950), pages 18, 182-183

And here's the color commentary:

Obama is not only a left-winger, but a smart left-winger. I strongly advise folks to read Saul Alinsky, the leftist agitator who transformed Gramscian infiltration from a theory into a political weapon of deadly effectiveness. Obama imbibed Alinsky's strategy and tactics when he worked under Mike Kruglik at the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago.

Alinsky's thrust was that effective radical agitation required creating the illusion of working and governing from the center, and keeping communication open with the opposition. He once wrote that outright defeat of your opposition is not necessary to achieve your objectives. Sometimes it's better just to convince them you're a nice guy who respects and admires leaders of the opposition despite their views. Get them to buy that, and they'll be butter in your hands.

What NOT to do when you hear a burglar

Don't reach for your phone. Reach for your gun.

Illegal Immigration costs Texas $3.5 billion a year

“The Health and Human Services Commission estimated this month that Texas spent $81.2 million in fiscal year 2007 on free health care for illegal aliens, mostly through the children’s Medicaid program. Additionally, the HHSC report said, Texas county hospital districts spent an estimated $596.8 million in 2006 on mandated, uncompensated health care for illegal immigrants.” ~ Dallas Blog

Other states seem to be suffering similar expenditures. From an economic perspective, much legal and illegal Third World immigration is tax-payer subsidized cheap labor for big business.

via Conservative Times