Are You On Uncle Sam's Short List?

Have you wondered what the deal is with that DHS "right-wing" threat analysis and what it means to you?

There's a lot of history behind Uncle Sam's Short List!

...With the recent release of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," many unsuspecting people suddenly found themselves on Uncle Sam's short list. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, squirming under the predictable pressure from the American Legion and veterans rights groups, the most prominent people on the recent list, nevertheless said, "…Let me be very clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States. We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence." This is singularly the most eloquent contemporary description of Uncle Sam's short list. Sooner or later in this life, everybody has to be on Uncle Sam's short list! [Read more....]

Beware the cult of Obama

Gene Healy with the Cato Institute writes yet another excellent commentary on the cult status within the Republican Party enjoyed by George Bush - and which he exploited fully to disastrous economic ends.

Again, the only way the GOP will ever be reformed is if the party returns to some semblance of objectivity and impartiality when electing and dealing with our elected party leaders.

...But any conservative who thinks cultishness is exclusively a leftist phenomenon ought to take a good long look in the mirror. Because many of those who decry the "cult of Obama" are the same people who made a flight-suited action figure hero out of such common clay as George W. Bush. Peggy Noonan called Bush's post-9/11 address to Congress "a God-touched moment and a God-touched speech." Fred Barnes wrote that "the stage was set for Bush to be God's agent of wrath." National Review Online ran ads for the Bush "Top Gun" action figure, and an article about how wonderful it was to have a presidential superhero to complement your GI Joe collection. [Read more....]

Rush Limbaugh Is Not the Problem.

Diana West writes an excellent commentary tracing the rise of Obama's leftist rise to the abandonment of Conservative principles by the George Bush administration.

We cannot ever hope to see reform within the dead GOP until we return to some semblance of objectivity and acceptance of responsibility for the Republican fall from dominance in the political arena the last eight years.

Forced to the ramparts to defend Rush Limbaugh against spurious, low-down attacks from the Obama White House and assorted Obamedia, conservatives, in their understandable zeal to defend a salient voice of conservatism, are letting the real enemy slip away unnamed. Who would that be? The answer is George W. Bush, whose stealthy political legacy stands as taking what is popularly known as "conservatism" on a disastrously leftward lurch. [Read more....]

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The moderate Republicans lost [the elections]

Melanie Morgan derides the notion of a "moderate" Republican, a term first coined by the Democrats and the mainstream media. You never see the term "moderate" Democrat used, do you? A "moderate" Republican is simply one who agrees with the Democrats.

We have to demand the GOP returns to its Conservative roots, to stanch the insanity inevitable with Democrat dominance in politics and culture.

Dear fellow conservatives, Let's stop beating ourselves up over the McCain loss and start looking forward to the guys and gals on our bench who are conservatives. The real kind. The reason the Republicans lost is McCain is not conservative. So we didn't even have a horse in this race until he chose Sarah Palin, which is why the crowds grew exponentially and the money began flowing. This should be the GOP's first clue that we won't win unless we support true conservatives. [Read more....]

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Now, Seize Freedom!

I stumbled over this one recently, while researching Winston Churchill on another issue.

It is excellent, and, though today, it is not, still a vision of what the Republican party can and should be. Written by a Republican.

Welcome to "Republican Rock Bottom." Possessed of no vision, no principle, no purpose, and no appeal, we deserved our fate. Now, seize freedom! Finally, we are divorced from self-deceits. Dead is the self-indulgent imbecility of "re-branding" -- as if the Republican Party was a corporate product to be repackaged, not a transformational political movement to be led. Despite what the media will tell you, and what so-called "conservative leaders" will discuss ad nauseam during "secret" meetings, this situation is not a crisis. It is an opportunity. Today, we are as the Great Emancipator proclaimed during another time of national trial: unbound by the tired dogmas of the past; and free to think and act anew. [Read more....]

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Enemies of Capitalism

A short commentary that challenges the fiscal conservative credentials of the Bush Administration era Federal reserve leadership. Obama didn't get us in this situation - these guys did!

New Rule: neomercantilists, neoconservatives, and statists are no longer allowed to call themselves "free marketers." People who call themselves free marketers such as Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are the primary threat capitalism faces. These false prophets of capitalism are the greatest friends that proponents of socialism have. Many prominent American figures claim to be proponents of free markets but in practice advocate neomercantilist, corporate welfare policies. These policies eventually, and unsurprisingly, lead to disastrous economic and social consequences. These catastrophes are then blamed on capitalism, free markets, and deregulation, at which point, socialists are easily able to convince the distraught public that capitalism is a failed experiment and only massive government intervention in the markets can save them. Such is the way that capitalism dies, eaten away by a cancer from within. [Read more....]

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Another Bush Requiem.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 

Well, that didn't end too well.

There have been a few excellent commentaries from Conservative writers in the nascent post-Bush era; a few because of the many already lacking in any productive self-critiquing of the last eight years.  Bush went from the highest ratings in recorded Presidential history post-9/11, to some of the lowest in Gallup poll history, competing with Nixon and Truman in the low 20’s when they left office.  The Republican Party went from unprecedented control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House, at the beginning of the Millennium, to a complete rout in 2008, with losses on the state and local level.

What happened?  Let's exercise a little long lost objectivity, braving the inevitable accusation of "Bush Hater," and review those more notable highlights of the last eight years....

[Read More....]

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The Palin Phenomenon
Associate and friend, Jon Christian Ryter, explains the dominance of the two-party system, and why the GOP is the only option we have:

...If you want to change the two party system, you must work within that system to change it. In 2004, over 122 million people cast their vote. One million of them threw their voice away because screams in a closet are heard by no one. Change is a generational thing. You don't implement change at the top of the pinnacle because while he has a powerful vote, the President still only has one vote. Congress has 535 votes. But to change who casts the votes in Congress, you must start at home. All politics is local. That's where it all starts. Jon Greenspon, John Bootie and John Blyth should not have been running for President. They should have been running for city council or Mayor. Granted, there's not much glory in those jobs, but that's where the political foundation of our nation is built. Control local politics and, eventually, you will control the White House. Don't fight the system—change it. [Read more...]

The Republicans, while still holding those in office accountable in the wake of the Bush train wreck and the squandering of two decades of grassroots work, need to focus on the future. The corrupt, old GOP have to die off sooner or later. The GOP can come back again, with patience and perseverance.

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Thoughts On Christmas - 2008

With the Black Friday trampling death of 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour at the doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., this, already immersed in the greedy stench of the Wall Street melt-down and Congress cracking like a rotten egg, the 2008 "holiday" season in contemporary America, had begun.

The merchants and princes of Madison Avenue and big-box retailers, even after having high-jacked the unique institution of Christmas in America, are predictably still lowing like disgruntled cows in a dry pasture. "Black Friday" is the newer of the exploited "holiday sales/fourth quarter" sales phenomenon being pushed in mass advertising and the ratings starved media. They have turned it into something ugly - with our acquiesce - a cheap and desperate annual profit seeking opportunity, renamed "the holidays" in the new politically correct lexicon and not Christmas anymore... [Read more...]

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This was written by a local Pastor to the local paper, concerning Proposition 8 on the 2008 California ballot. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Defend marriage The Press-Enterprise's editorial on Prop. 8 was disappointing in its lack of substance, but not surprising ("No on 8," Our Views, Sept. 28). The reporting on California's marriage debate since the state Supreme Court's May decision has been so biased that I expected to see the views behind the unfair reporting formally expressed, as they were. Your views are not only out of accord with those of your readers, but they are also culturally iconoclastic. The promotion of so-called "gay marriage" and the homosexual political agenda is anti-civilization and anti-religious at its core. Civilization has never defined marriage as between two people of the same sex. Don't reject this wisdom now. There is no historic precedent in any civilization for defining marriage as between two people of the same sex. Not even homosexuality-tolerant Greco-Roman society ever conceived of undermining the normative definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman with the intention of bringing forth and raising children. Such a cultural redefinition of marriage is suicidal. Christianity, classical Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism have never blessed homoerotic sexual activity. The arrogance behind the promoters of gay marriage, and their rejection of the wisdom of the ages, is immense. Your opinion that the discussion of gay marriage is a distraction from "more pressing state issues" is consistent with the secularist rejection of traditional legislation concerning public morality. In fact, public debates about homosexuality and the definition of marriage are moral questions with immense public and collective consequences -- hardly private matters or a question of simply marrying whom you want to. Your affirmation that gay marriage is parallel to inter-racial marriage is nonsense, and an insult to people of every race. No traditional religion has ever affirmed that marriage between different races is a sin, but all have affirmed that homosexuality is. JOSIAH TRENHAM - Reverend St. Andrew - Orthodox Christian Church

This was written by a Californian to local pastors concerning proposition 8.

September 15, 2008 Dear Pastor, My name is Mike Morrell and I am a business owner in the Inland Empire. As you may know, the stability of the family and moral values in America are declining quickly. Our generation has seen prayer removed from our schools, abortion made legal and a significant increase in divorces. And now, here in California, God's definition of marriage is being redefined while homosexuality is becoming accepted as normal behavior. In J.D. Unwin's book, Sex and Culture, he chronicled the decline of 86 cultures throughout history and found no nations lasted longer than a generation after it embraced sexual hedonism and debauchery. Greek historian Polybius (200 B.C.) attributed the increase in homosexual activity to the ultimate collapse of the Roman Empire. In modern times, under the guise of sexual liberation, the Weimer Republic had become a hotbed for sexual immorality leading it into political and economic disarray. Will they one day say of America that those who had the most to lose did so little? Prayerfully, "no." If America and the family and the church are to survive, we must stand in the Lord's unwavering truth. The solution to America's problems, I believe, is you - the pastors, the gatekeepers of men's souls. In 1803, French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, came to America to discover our greatness. De Tocqueville was inspired by the vastness of our lands, our brisk commerce and trade, our natural resources and rapid assent as a world power. But he found the key to our greatness, he says, as he entered our churches and "found the pulpits were aflame with righteousness." Therefore, I invite you to join us for lunch and to discuss how we may preserve the institution of marriage and help to insure the passage of Proposition 8. With your commitment and God's help, we will succeed. I look forward to seeing you soon. Sincerely, Mike Morrell

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