LQQKING's Newsroom

Yeah I know I quit but I just could not fail to share this with you the contrast is enlightening   --LQQKING--

Bush's Greatness

Source: The Weekly Standard

IT'S OBVIOUS not only that George W. Bush has already earned his Great President badge (which might even outrank the Silver Star) but that much of the opposition to Bush has a remarkable and very special quality; one might be tempted to call it "lunacy." But that's too easy. The "special quality" of anti-Bush opposition tells a more significant, stranger story than that.

Bush's greatness is often misunderstood. He is great not because he showed America how to react to 9/11 but because he showed us how to deal with a still bigger event--the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 left us facing two related problems, one moral and one practical. Neither President Clinton nor the first Bush found solutions--but it's not surprising that the right answers took time to discover, and an event like 9/11 to bring them into focus.

In moral terms: If you are the biggest boy on the playground and there are no adults around, the playground is your responsibility. It is your duty to prevent outrages--because your moral code demands that outrages be prevented, and (for now) you are the only one who can prevent them.

If you are one of the two biggest boys, and the other one orders you not to protect the weak lest he bash you and everyone else he can grab--then your position is more complicated. Your duty depends on the nature of the outrage that ought to be stopped, and on other circumstances.

This was America's position during the Cold War: Our moral obligation to overthrow tyrants was limited by the Soviet threat of hot war, maybe nuclear war.

But things are different today. We are the one and only biggest boy. We can run from our moral duty but we can't hide. If there is to be justice in the world, we must create it. No one else will act if the biggest boy won't. Some of us turn to the United Nations the way we wish we could turn to our parents. It's not easy to say, "The responsibility is mine and I must wield it." But that's what the United States has to say. No U.N. agency or fairy godmother will bail us out.

Of course our moral duty remains complicated. We must pursue justice, help the suffering, and overthrow tyrants. But there are limits to our power. We must pick our tyrants carefully, keeping in mind not only justice but our practical interests and the worldwide consequences of what we intend. Our duty in this area is like our obligation to show charity. We have no power to help everyone and no right to help no one. In the event, we chose to act in Afghanistan and Iraq to begin with--good choices from many viewpoints.

The end of the Cold War means that our practical duties have changed too, in a limited way. Since the close of World War I in 1918, our main enemy has been the terrorist-totalitarian axis--still true today. Different nations and organizations have occupied this axis of evil, but the role itself has been remarkably stable. Until the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was the main terrorist-totalitarian power (except when it was eclipsed by Nazi Germany and Warlord Japan). The Berlin Wall fell in 1989; in 1990, Saddam marched into Kuwait. Radical Arab terrorism and totalitarianism go way back; the Nazis and then the Soviets supported them. When the Soviets fell, Arab tyrants and terrorists were ready for the limelight. Our job was to find new ways to do what we had always done--fight and (ultimately) beat our terrorist and totalitarian enemies.

President Bush had to respond to these post-Cold War realities; 9/11 meant that our pondering period was over. He announced, with deeds and not just words, that we would meet our moral obligations, police the playground, and overthrow tyrants; we would meet our practical obligations and continue to lead the fight against this new version of the terrorist-totalitarian axis.

We have often been told that we face, today, a whole new kind of war. Only partly true. For more than half a century we have battled totalitarian regimes (the Soviets, North Vietnam, Cuba . . . ) and the terrorists they sponsored. Today we are battling totalitarian regimes (Baathist Iraq and the Taliban's Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea) and the terrorists they sponsor. What's changed? Since we became modern history's first monopower, our obligations and maneuvering room are both greater. But the basic nature of the struggle is the same.

Lincoln said, "Let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." Bush answered: "Okay; let's roll." We accept our obligation to be the world's policeman. If not us, who? If not now, when?

THE WAR IN IRAQ is dual-purpose, like most American wars. Take the Civil War. At the beginning, the North fought mainly for pragmatic reasons. No nation can tolerate treason, or allow itself to be ripped to bits or auctioned off piece-wise by malcontents. Midwesterners couldn't allow the Mississippi to fall into foreign hands; they needed their outlet to the sea. And so on. Slavery was overshadowed. But as the war continued, slavery emerged as the issue, and the war's character changed.

The Iraq war started as a fight to knock out a regime that invaded its neighbors, murdered its domestic enemies with poison gas, subsidized terrorism, and flouted the international community. Obviously such a regime was dangerous to American interests. But as the war continued and we confronted Saddam's gruesome tyranny face to face, the moral issue grew more important, as emancipation did in the Civil War. For years the Iraqi people had been screaming, in effect: "Oh, my God. Please help me! Please help me! I'm dying!" How could America have answered, "We don't want to get involved"? We are the biggest kid on the playground. If we won't help, who will?

I have just quoted the death-cries of Kitty Genovese, who died on the streets of New York 40 years ago. And I have quoted the response of an onlooker who didn't feel like helping. Her case still resonates in America's conscience, and tells us more than we want to know about the president's enemies.

The New York Times ran the story in March 1964.

The left wanted America to watch Saddam stab Iraq to death and do nothing. That is the left's concept of moral responsibility in the post-Cold War world.

Miss Genovese screamed: "Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!"

The Iraqi people were dying. The left had no pity. The Bush-haters were opposed to American "arrogance." The New York Times shrugged.

Let's not get involved, said the Bush-haters. It's none of our business. Let the U.N. do it.

We have paid a steep price in Iraq, a thousand dead; but if you choose duty, you must choose to pay. Speaking for America, the president has said: We choose duty. What do we get in return? Nothing. Except the privilege of looking at ourselves in the mirror, and facing history and our children.

Opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq goes even further than the Kitty Genovese defense. Its real nature finally came clear when I heard about an anti-Bush harangue by a survivor of Hitler's Germany. He was a young boy when he and his family got out, just in time. "I hate Bush," this man said--or words to that effect--"because America today reminds me of Germany then. Bush is on his way to creating a fascist America." Other Bush-haters have said similar things.

Notice (it is a thing we will have to explain) that this man hates Bush not because of but despite the facts. Has the Republican Congress decreed a U.S. version of the Nuremberg race laws? Has the administration transformed every American news source into a propaganda machine? Demanded that Jews (or anyone) be fired? That Jewish (or any other kind of) shops, businesses, professionals be boycotted? Propaganda posters everywhere? Students thrown out of schools? Secret police grabbing people off the streets? Children urged to inform on parents? All opposition parties banned? Churches harassed? A "Bush Youth" that every "Aryan" boy must join? Storm-troopers holding torchlight parades, singing hate-mongering war songs? Gigantic communal fines levied against Jews (or anyone else)? State-sponsored pogroms? Massive regimentation and rearmament? A führer cult and special schools to train disciples? Brutal suppression of all regime opponents? No? Actually America under Bush resembles Nazi Germany in no way whatsoever, isn't that so? Then why did you lie and say it did?

One hears many similar accusations nowadays. The Bush administration is spending blood for oil, hopes to expand its imperialist reach, intends to dominate and oppress the Iraqi people, is the world's leading threat to peace. Hates Muslims, despises our allies, plans to suppress the Bill of Rights. There is a name for this kind of hatred--the kind that shrugs off reality, loves to mock its targets and treat them as barely human, capable of any outrage, unspeakably stupid and evil. There is a name for the kind of hatred that applies automatically to any member of a designated group--in this case to American conservatives and especially white, religious American conservatives. The name of this hatred is racism.

We can't understand hatred like the German survivor's or Michael Moore's or a million self-righteous left-wingers' unless we understand that their Bush-hatred is racist hatred.

"Race" has traditionally meant any group that seems like a group, with a recognizable group identity--Americans, British, Jews, Japanese were all called "races." The Oxford English Dictionary says that a "race" is (among other things) "a group or class of persons . . . having some common feature or features." Thus "the race of good men" (1580), "a race of idle people" (1611), "a new race of poets" (1875). The newspaper humorist Don Marquis once wrote about "the royal race of hicks." Racist hatred has clearly recognizable characteristics:

* The hater knows all about his target automatically; no research required. Recall how many leftists were shocked when Bob Woodward informed them, in his Bush book, that the president was an alert, hands-on manager. They had known this to be false a priori.

* The hater harbors a stupendous conceit. Not long ago an Ivy League philosophy professor explained the political homogeneity of so many philosophy departments. Pure merit, he said; you have to be smart to be a philosophy professor, and conservatives are dumb, so what can you expect?

* The hater is moved by a terrible, frantic eagerness to set himself apart from "them." In the spring of 2003, an American pop-singer announced to her London audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

* The hater just knows that his opponent acts not on principle but out of greed or stupidity. At an anti-Iraq war demonstration in March 2004, the actor Woody Harrelson read a poem. "I recognize your face, I recognize your name. / Your daddy killed for oil, and you did the same." We often hear this "blood for oil" accusation. After the first Gulf War we had Iraqi and Kuwaiti oilfields in our grasp. If our goal was to steal oil, why did we give them back? Are we that stupid?

* The hater has no shame--because he knows (not by reason but automatically) that he is right. Thus a decent and likable retired businessman, rich and with every reason to be grateful to America--the survivor of Nazi Germany I've mentioned--accuses the president of closet fascism.

That's racist hatred.

I DON'T SAY that all Bush-haters are racist. By no means. We have a long tradition of super-heated politics in this country. Everyone is entitled to hate the president and do his best to get rid of him.

The racist attacks I have in mind come from the reactionary left--not from the average registered Democrat, in other words, but from the liberal elite.

Reactionaries recoil from new ideas and try to suppress and defeat them. They want things to stay the same. Hence their racist hatred of uppity white conservatives, who have developed the cheek to threaten the left's cultural power. Such institutions as Fox News and the conservative Washington think tanks are hugely disturbing to reactionary liberals. The president faces the same thinking as he tries to set policy for post-Cold War America. Reactionary liberals want everything to stay just the same. All trends must continue just as they have been. (Judges must continue to subvert democracy; Congress must continue to create new entitlements.) We must treat the new totalitarians just the same as we once were forced to treat the Soviets--gingerly. Our goal must be not to liberate their victims, not to defeat and disarm their military machines, but to arrange détente with their dictators--just as we once did. (Détente with Saddam was French and Russian policy until we screwed things up.) Our antiquated pre-cell phone, pre-microchip laws and regulations must stay just the same (kill the Patriot Act!), and we must sit still and wait politely for the next terrorist outrage, just as we always have.

Bush has a simple message for the reactionary left: The times change and we change with them. He is a progressive conservative--and a progressive president in the best sense. And he has established his greatness in record time.

David Gelernter, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, teaches computer science at Yale.

Since Fox does not want re-posts there is little for me to do here . I was under the impression that I contributed because of the number of my posts that were featured.

In any event good luck to you all and good bye

500K illegal immigrants defying deportation orders

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle

By DENISE LAVOIE, Associated Press Writer

Zeituni Onyango came to the United States seeking asylum from her native Kenya but was turned down and ordered to leave the country in 2004.

Four years later, she is still here. And her nephew is about to become president of the United States.

Onyango's family connection to Barack Obama has thrown a spotlight on a phenomenon many Americans might find startling: An estimated half-million immigrants are living in the United States in defiance of deportation orders.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up efforts to catch fugitive aliens, as they are known, and now has about 100 "fugitive operations teams" around the country. In the past year, the teams have made 34,000 arrests, more than double the number two years ago. But there are still 560,000 such immigrants in the U.S.

Fugitive aliens include people who, like Obama's aunt, sought asylum in the United States but were rejected and ordered to leave the country. Others were caught entering or living in this country illegally, and failed to show at their deportation hearings.

Often, illegal immigrants who have been issued deportation notices are given a certain amount of time to get out of the country on their own. They are not forcibly put aboard a plane; these deportations essentially operate on the honor system.

Generally, if these immigrants stay out of trouble — if they don't get pulled over by police or swept up in a workplace raid, for example — they are in little danger of being thrown out of the country.

That galls many immigration reform advocates, who say the practice breeds disrespect for the law and emboldens immigrants to sneak in and stay.

"We are strong believers of enforcement of our immigration laws, and this is a priority area for getting the message across to this country, that if they've been convicted of committing crimes or if they have been ordered deported, that they will be apprehended if they try to hide and continue to stay in the country," said Jack Martin of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Government officials say that they do the best they can with the money and manpower available to them, and that they focus on the most serious cases, including those involving illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in this country.

"ICE has taken tremendous steps at closing these cases and apprehending fugitives," spokesman Richard Rocha said. "However, we prioritize our efforts on egregious violators and criminal aliens."

Overall, there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. In the last year, the government arrested and deported a record number of illegal immigrants, nearly 350,000, according to ICE.

Critics of the agency complain of the government's former "catch and release" policy along the border, in which non-Mexicans caught sneaking across were released into this country with a date to appear for an immigration hearing. Officials ended the practice in 2006. Now, these immigrants are held until their hearings.

After paying smugglers $40,000 to get his family to the United States, Juan, his wife and 3-year-old son were caught the moment they crossed into Arizona from Mexico. A judge ordered them deported, released them on bond and gave them three months to leave.

Nine years later, they are still living in the United States. But they avoid going out in public and refuse to drive for fear of getting pulled over by police.

"It's really painful to wonder if, tomorrow, somebody will knock on your door and everything will be over," Juan said.

But he said that is better than going back to their native Bolivia, where their financial prospects are bleak.

"For me, the best chance is to provide education to my children, and that's something that I can do for them here," said Juan, a 38-year-old construction worker in Maryland who supports two older daughters in Bolivia. He asked that only his first name be used to protect his family.

Advocates say many immigrants defy deportation orders because they have lived in the United States for years, married, had children and put down roots in their communities.

"Is it worth going around with that feeling that you might be discovered? Or packing up your entire family now and settling all your obligations in the United States, buying airplane tickets for your family, moving back to a country where you haven't lived for many years, where you are worried about you are going to find a job? There's another whole set of uncertainties," said Maureen O'Sullivan, a Boston immigration lawyer.

It is not clear when Onyango, the 56-year-old half-sister of Obama's late father, first came to the United States. But she moved into a state-subsidized public housing project in Boston in 2003.

After it was reported days before the election that she was in the country illegally, Onyango left Boston and went to Cleveland, where she hired an immigration attorney to fight her deportation order. She is staying with relatives in Cleveland, said her new attorney, Margaret Wong.

The Obama camp has said the candidate did not know about his aunt's status. "If she is violating laws, those laws have to be obeyed," Obama said just before Election Day.

Advocates say the only way to reduce the number of illegal immigrants is to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

"I ask the new president, I implore the new president to provide legislation that would allow us to become legal, to have papers," Juan said. "I don't mind paying fees, but I want to come out of the shadows."

The president and the president-elect shake hands.

SOURCE: Fox NEWS

BY: Neil Cavuto

Make nice.

The nasty election over. The peaceful transfer of power now being acted out.

For all of capitalism's problems, for all this talk of the death of Western society, of big government coming in and, well, less big government going out, I want you to try and figure this out.

For all that ails us, I cannot think of any system of government anywhere better than us.

We take it for granted in this country that parties come in and out of power in this country.

Without shots fired, or coups launched. Without violent protests in the street, just quiet respect for the will of the people on the street.

If you've spent any time in third world countries, you'll know this is first rate amazing.

That parties, in this case, diametrically opposed can systematically move on.

Our country handles this stuff so routinely, it is worth noting it is unique in how it is conducted so smoothly and peacefully.

Bitterness on some sides, now respectfully, if somewhat grudgingly, joining hands to say we're on the same side.

All Americans, all patriots, all hoping that this system of government might change hands but it doesn't change the constitution, or us.

People change. Our prerogatives change.

Sometimes we usher in an era of top-to-bottom sweeping changes for bigger government, as we did with FDR in 1932.

Sometimes just the opposite, as we did with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Sometimes our will isn't as clear. One guy wins the popular vote but not the electoral vote.

Four times it has happened. And each time, not a single revolution when it did.

Trust me, we have our problems, and our worries, our foibles, and our blunders.

Plenty of fears.

But time and again, living proof.

We are bigger than the sum of all those fears, and then some.

Do We Get the Government We Deserve

SOURCE: The American Thinker

by William Tate

Yesterday, Americans by the millions went to the polls and elected a new President.

Today in America, a police officer will risk her life to save someone she's never met. A teacher will stay late to help an at-risk student. A driver will pull off the road to help a stranded motorist.

In America today, a firefighter will charge toward a burning building -- while those inside flee. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will kiss their spouses and kids goodbye, then ship out for foreign lands in order to protect them  

A craftsman will return home to tell his wife that he has lost his job. An entrepreneur will open the doors of her new business for the first time. A doctor will gird herself to tell a patient that he has cancer, and she will formulate a regimen for his treatment.

Today, a tired woman will head to a second job to give her kids a better chance at college. A volunteer will use his lunch hour to deliver food to the elderly. The grand-daughter of a pioneer and the son of an immigrant will wed their lives together.

A bartender will cut off a customer before he has drunk one too many. A child will experience the joy of realizing that letters, so carefully memorized, connect together to form these things called words. A young woman will give birth to a child, and she and her husband will never look at their lives -- or life, itself -- the same way.

Across America, these acts -- these triumphs and tragedies, the heroism and joys, the fear and disappointments of daily life -- will be repeated today by workaday heroes and unsung heroines. Like they were yesterday. And the day before. Just as in Maine the sun this morning will rise once again over the Atlantic and set in Hawaii over the Pacific.

Partisans of one party will celebrate today, while the other side, no doubt, plots a comeback. But for most folks life will go on as before. Because -- despite the bombast and the attack ads and the talking heads and the polls -- most things, the truly important things, rarely have much to do with an election.

The strength of this country is -- and always has been -- its people, the roots that produced such leaders as Washington and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, T.R. and Truman. It is we, the people, who "ordain and establish" our Constitution and government. Not vice-versa. And it is we who make this country work, for better and worse.

It has been said that we get the government we deserve, often as a way to rationalize the leadership we got. But, rather than expecting the public to settle for diminished expectations, perhaps it is time our leaders remembered their obligation to be worthy of the people they serve.

Starting with the man we have just chosen to work in a smallish, not-quite-round office in an ornate building far, far away from most of us.

William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author.

This is not going to be a long post .

Well, Nows His Chance

I simply want to say that this guy had best be a white persons and a red persons and a yellow persons President as well as a black man's . If he isn't he will hold TWO RECORDS The FIRST Black President............................. and the Last.  Mr Obama has his chance to not only have won an Historic Election but to be an Historic President. I recommend he not cater to the leftest nor stifle the right. I must say though his choice for Chief of Staff is discouraging

This Country needs a President to hold us together not tear us apart. If they come out swinging with their leftest agenda I fear for the results for all of us. No one is going to listen to me, but I warn them there are 50% of this country that is Conservative and we will not be abused.

As a veteran of this Country's Naval Service and having risked life and limb to defend her I say we give the man a fair chance......................... That is after all the thing we defend

--LQQKING--

Opportunities of an Obama Presidency

Source: American Thinker

By   Dave Smithee

The cyclical nature of human wisdom is well documented in both secular histories, and the biblical record.

Blessing, Discontent, Rebellion, Suffering, Penitence, Restoration. Wash, rinse, repeat.  As ancient Israel whined to have monarchs rule over them to be like their pagan neighbors, so too are American leftists smitten with the illusory sophistication of the crumbling European economic and social models.  They salivate for the esteem of tyrants, socialists, and every manner of grandiose failure; the more extravagant, the better so long as the mission statement is sufficiently lofty. 

It's said that liberals are like any other people; only more so. In this case, it's their turn to perpetuate the ancient cycle of rejecting what works, turning their backs with disdain on America's incomparable blessings and crying "Give us what they have!"

Well, we've gotten it.

In a receding economy and aided by a political monopoly, President Obama is going to prove unable to resist his fetish for increased taxation and eco-regulatory strangulation. In a dangerous time, his vanity will lead him to grant legitimacy to nations that wish America ill. When an Obama presidency with majorities in the House and Senate ends in economic calamity, emboldened international foes, or both -- as history wearily tells us it must -- then the healing can begin. 

This is a true changing of the guard in more ways than one, as it also signals the end of the Moderate. Trashing his own party only served McCain for so long. The Maverick was devoured by his Media base the moment he became inconvenient, and timorous pseudo-conservatives have jumped ship to ensure they remained on the right side of the DC sophistication line. Classical conservatives would be well served to let them flounder.

Yet I admit my own relief, despite the costs we will bear in the short term, that Obama was the victor.

For the Democrats, it was an act of sublime short-term calculation to trot out Obama.  A man whose easy, telegenic charm was able to narcotize into irrelevance all the facts that would have rendered him unelectable in anyone else's skin. The sewage of slum lords, communist sympathizers and domestic terrorists swirl about his ankles. And yet a flash of smile and a few words in his soothing baritone captured the American imagination and soothed a majority of the electorate.  But now the work is going to start. Results are going to matter, and if there's one fact about Barry that the media was unable to obscure, it's that he is a candidate truly uncluttered by moderation.
He is the proto-Democrat; liberalism's gleaming new flagship. And that's going to be a long-term problem for Democrats in ways they can scarcely now imagine.

Obama's ideological roster ticks off all the requisite good-liberal boxes.  Where he differs critically from say, a Hillary Clinton, is that he has done away with all pretense of social justice or fiscal sanity as rationales for positions that Americans have found historically repellant. He is the candidate that everyone now knows values wealth redistribution not because he can fumble his way through contorted reasoning that it "helps the poor." As he revealed when he endorsed raising capital gains taxes despite no benefit to the treasury; he is a redistributionist in the crudest Machiavellian sense. Admitting that redistributing wealth, even to no fruitful end, is just 'fair', and wishing to secure his power by ensuring he's the one handing out alms.
Unlike other Democrats, we know he openly supports abortion and infanticide as a matter of lifestyle convenience, not unlike the decisions one makes while flipping through an Ikea catalogue. Gone is the talk of medical necessity, or the older tradition of draping abortion in obfuscating language pulled from the left's ‘1001 Things to Call a Civil Right' playbook.  In defending his infanticide vote by insisting that women shouldn't be "punished with a child" he's thrown up his hands with a smirk and declared "That's enough of that 'women's rights' kabuki theater. We all know what this is really about." 

Obama is not just a Democrat, or a liberal. Obama is liberalism. He is liberalism stripped of all of its false fronts of civic mindedness. Shorn of all its bogus declarations of interest in the public good, or lip service to free markets or property rights. He is liberalism as it exists only in the psyche of the petty tyrant, rarely glimpsed emerging in public. Shrieking, demanding as a newborn, nakedly ravenous for power.  Worshipping expedience, debasing of life, and viewing everyone else's wealth as his own, with which he may conduct his vast social experiments on the subdued human landscape. 
But as an ideological flagship surrounded by hysterically unrealistic expectations, if he fails, Obama is going to drag the Democrat ship down to truly crushing depths. And when he does, the redemption of the Democrats will not be swift in coming. With Obama, they have bet the ideological farm, and several surrounding properties too. They have damned the torpedoes and abandoned the strategy of advancing themselves in managed increments. By pushing Obama into the spotlight, they're tipping their entire ideological hand a good twenty years ahead of schedule.
It's difficult to tell how much utterly unchecked leftism America will be willing to endure, or for how long. But one thing for certain is that Obama, in tandem with Pelosi/Reid is the greatest gift the Republicans and conservatives everywhere could have been given.  Over the next four years, there will be no political 'moderation' in Obama to muddy the waters, confuse his identity, or cast doubts about who's to blame for what. 
It's an odd (and maddening) trait of elected conservatives that they come alive almost exclusively in the face of opposition. They define themselves most persuasively when juxtaposed against runaway state largesse, oppressive economic conditions, or the sheer buckling incompetence of Carter-esque liberalism.  Conversely, as they were and would have been with McCain, they're on their weakest footing when squandering intellectual resources and goodwill in the defense of ideologically compromised leadership.  And now they've been blessed with an undiluted, unambiguously radical leftist with which they have four years to contrast themselves and make their case.
Disappointed as some will be, Obama's win is not surprising in the present climate. Sadly, Cavuto had it right on McCain's lack of economic conviction.  With one hand committed to vague free-marketisms and the other dealing out murky condemnations of 'Wall Street greed', he was unable to deliver a coherent counter-punch that addressed the Democrat-driven interventions that birthed the subprime crisis.
In a painful campaign video from Wisconsin, a famously enraged voter declares "I'm mad!" about the "socialists taking over the country". The audience was in a fervor over the gentleman's comments and salivating for partisan red meat.  McCain promptly deflated the crowd by stammering that he would again 'reach across the aisle' and work with everyone to fix the problem. The silent groan of agony that settled on the leadership-starved crowd was palpable. Obama by comparison, was consistent and on message with his serial deceptions and class warfare; but at least he was consistent and on message.

Most painful of all was watching Palin, shackled to McCain's policies like Princess Leia to Jabba the Hutt. Squirming her way through explanations her heart clearly wasn't in, needing to toe the line of McCain's nebulous free-market-populism. It was doubly frustrating to conservatives who knew that Palin understood the root of the problem, and could have eviscerated the Democrats on it handily had she been taken off her chain. Despite the media's crowing about the wickedly energizing Palin being a 'drag on the ticket', the race would have been over long ago without her; she truly represents the future of the party. Like Obama, she is sharp, determined, decisively partisan, with a governing philosophy definable in clear, easily marketed and communicated strokes.
An Obama presidency will certainly mean short-term pain. America is about to learn some very hard lessons, but she will learn them, and conservatives have been handed an unprecedented opportunity to define themselves, regroup, sharpen their ideological knives and come out swinging.  And as a character from Lewis's Narnia observed after breaking a demagogue's oratory hypnosis by forcing himself to step on hot coals, "Pain is very good at dispelling certain kinds of magic."

Dave Smithee is the pseudonym of a screenwriter and film artist.

Manager of Agriprocessors Plant Arrested for Role in Postville Raid

SOURCE: Numbers USA.com

The former manager of a Postville Agriprocessors plant Sholom Rubashkin was arrested by federal immigration agents on Thursday morning. Rubashkin is the son of the company's owner and faces charges of conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants for financial gain, aiding and abetting document fraud and aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft. 

Federal agents raided the plant on May 12, arresting 389 people in what was, at the time, the largest immigration raid in U.S. history. Agents reportedly seized dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards during the plant's raid.

Reports suggest that Rubashkin was aware that it was likely that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be raiding his plant and he agreed to a $4500 cash loan to those employees without identity documents.  Both parties understood that this money was to be used to acquire false documentation and Rubashkin actively participated in the finding these documents.

Rubashkin is the highest-ranking executive to face arrest since stepped-up immigration raids on meat packing plants began in 2006.

Earlier this week, human resource employee Laura Althouse plead guilty to conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants for financial gain and aggravated identity theft. Two other supervisors faced charges and have entered guilty pleas.

In September, the owners and managers of the plant were charged with 9,311 misdemeanors alleging they legally hired minors and let children under 16 handle dangerous equipment.

Iowa authorities have fined Agriprocessors $10 million for wage violations and Sholom Rubashkin faces a maximum of 22 years in federal prison.

The Chicago Tribune and the New York Times have more on this development.

Ego and Mouth

SOURCE: Real Clear Politics

By Thomas Sowell 

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.

The signs of Barack Obama's self-centered immaturity are painfully obvious, though ignored by true believers who have poured their hopes into him, and by the media who just want the symbolism and the ideology that Obama represents.

The triumphal tour of world capitals and photo-op meetings with world leaders by someone who, after all, was still merely a candidate, is just one sign of this self-centered immaturity.

"This is our time!" he proclaimed. And "I will change the world." But ultimately this election is not about him, but about the fate of this nation, at a time of both domestic and international peril, with a major financial crisis still unresolved and a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon.

For someone who has actually accomplished nothing to blithely talk about taking away what has been earned by those who have accomplished something, and give it to whomever he chooses in the name of "spreading the wealth," is the kind of casual arrogance that has led to many economic catastrophes in many countries.

The equally casual ease with which Barack Obama has talked about appointing judges on the basis of their empathies with various segments of the population makes a mockery of the very concept of law.

After this man has wrecked the economy and destroyed constitutional law with his judicial appointments, what can he do for an encore? He can cripple the military and gamble America's future on his ability to sit down with enemy nations and talk them out of causing trouble.

Senator Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, has for years shown the same easy-way-out mindset. Senator Biden has for decades opposed strengthening our military forces. In 1991, Biden urged relying on sanctions to get Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait, instead of military force, despite the demonstrated futility of sanctions as a means of undoing an invasion.

People who think Governor Sarah Palin didn't handle some "gotcha" questions well in a couple of interviews show no interest in how she compares to the Democrats' Vice Presidential candidate, Senator Biden.

Joe Biden is much more of the kind of politician the mainstream media like. Not only is he a liberal's liberal, he answers questions far more glibly than Governor Palin-- grossly inaccurately in many cases, but glibly.

Moreover, this is a long-standing pattern with Biden. When he was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination back in 1987, someone in the audience asked him what law school he attended and how well he did.

Flashing his special phony smile, Biden said, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do." He added, "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship" and "ended up in the top half" of the class.

But Biden did not have a full academic scholarship. Newsweek reported: "He went on a half scholarship based on need. He didn't finish in the 'top half' of his class. He was 76th out of 85."

Add to Obama and Biden House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and you have all the ingredients for a historic meltdown.

NO BONUSE$ FOR YOU

Source: The New York Post

 By NELL MINOW

Secretary Henry Paulson came up with a $700 billion emergency plan to pour government money into the Wall Street firms to save them from collapsing - not to fund a bonus pool for the billionaire boys' clubs of the investment banking firms. It is the economy that is supposed to be bailed out - like the millions of homeowners currently or soon to face foreclosure - not the bankers.

If Paulson does not stop the bailout companies, like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, from writing big bonus checks to their executives, those payments will make the future viability of the world's best banking system as unstable as a portfolio of sub-prime mortgage derivatives. Stopping the big bonus bonanza would be the right thing to do - and Paulson must do it for five big reasons.

1. It is hypocritical. The Wall Street guys always rhapsodize about the perfection of the free market - until it stops showering them with money. Then people who are already in the top fraction of a percent of the wealthiest people in the world want to be "made whole" with billion-dollar welfare checks.

2. It is unfair. The only justification for multi-million-dollar pay packages is that they reward performance. That means that in a bad year what had gone up must come down.

3. It is infuriating. I've observed many financial scandals, from the savings and loan failures through Enron, WorldCom, and post-Sarbanes-Oxley messes like backdated options. All were recognized as tragic but not pervasive - compartmentalized as the corruption of a limited group of individuals.

But across the country, people see this mess as central to the operation of Wall Street and we are outraged at having to take money that would better be spent on education, the environment, paying down the debt - or lowering taxes - and spend it on making up for the greed and stupidity of a bunch of rich people trying to get richer.

4. It makes it easier for our competitors in global markets. The rest of the world has never really tried to compete with our investment banks, intimidated by their power, expertise, and reach. The current mess has opened up new opportunities for non-US financial institutions.

5. It is asking for trouble from Washington. I'd hate to be a politician who voted for the bailout and has to explain how this money got diverted from customers to bankers. If Wall Street cannot accept some responsibility for creating this problem, Congress and the regulatory agencies will be more than willing to step in to make them.

Nell Minow is the editor and co-founder of The Corporate Library, a corporate governance firm.

Not too much else left to be said

It's 3 a.m. and the Prime Minister of Israel is Calling

Source: The American Thinker

by William A Jacobson

Joe Biden's warning that America's enemies will test the mettle of Barack Obama is a reminder that this election should be about which presidential candidate is best equipped to handle an international crisis.  For supporters of Israel this question takes on even greater importance in light of Jesse Jackson's warning that in an Obama administration "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.

To understand Israel's vulnerability, and the vital role the President of the United States plays in securing Israel's existence, one need only look at the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  On October 6, 1973, I was 14 years old.  I remember waking that morning and turning on my clock radio to hear of a crisis that had developed in the Middle East overnight.  On that Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the armies of Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise attack on Israel, and Israel's survival was in doubt. 

But Israeli victory owed its success to more than bravery.  On October 12, 1973, President Nixon ordered a massive military re-supply airlift to Israel.  President Nixon made this decision over the objections of the foreign policy establishment, which wanted a more "balanced" approach.  Israel owed its survival to a Republican President who was not afraid to make a hard, and in some quarters unpopular, decision in a time of crisis.

There is only one person in the world who can destroy Israel.  That person is not the leader of Syria or Iran, or the head of some terrorist group.  The only person who can destroy Israel is the President of the United States, whose decisions in times of crisis affect Israel's survival.  If Richard Nixon has not taken the bold decision to resupply Israel, Israel would not be here today. 

"9/11" was America's Yom Kippur War, the day on which Americans understood that the appearance of peace may be an illusion.  Who, on 9/10, could have imagined that 24 hours later the World Trade Center Towers would crumble, and the Pentagon would burn?  The attack on September 11, 2001 showed that what happened to Israel in 1973 could happen here. 

The United States did not have to be vulnerable to attack in 2001, any more than Israel needed to be vulnerable in 1973.  In each instance, politicians failed to recognize that the appearance of safety is not enough, and that the enemies of the United States and Israel plot attacks even during peacetime. 

The success of the 1967 "6-day War" had lulled Israelis into complacency, leading Israel not to launch a preemptive attack in 1973 despite numerous warning signs.  Similarly, during the 1990s the United States was lulled into complacency by the end of the Cold War.  Many Americans, particularly on the political left, thought human nature had changed and that if we were "nice" to those who hate us they would be "nice" to us.  The first attack on the World Trade Center, the bombings of our embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole, met with tepid response from the Clinton administration.  While government leaders ignored these warning signs, the enemies of the United States plotted even greater attacks.

The mainstream media's obsession with electing Obama has pushed history aside.  But the Yom Kippur War and the 9/11 attacks hold important implications for the current election.  History shows that being nice to our enemies does not mean they will be nice to us.  Yet the Obama's foreign policy is built on this false premise.

Voting also is a matter of trust.  Voters are choosing the person they most trust to protect the United States and its allies.  It is not surprising that public support for Israel among the American public has increased since 9/11.  Most Americans now recognize that Israel is the proverbial canary in the coal mine, that Israel and the United States share the same fate and the same enemies.  But this support for Israel is not universal.  The last bastion of anti-Israel fervor in this country is occupied by a toxic mix of radical leftists and Islamists, and anti-Israel academics, who hold sway over a portion of Obama's base.  William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi and Louis Farrakhan are just some of the personalities upon which Obama cut his political teeth.

Questions regarding Obama's ability to handle an international crisis are not new.  Hillary Clinton's famous "3 a.m." video touched an emotional nerve which voters should not forget as they cast their votes.  "It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep.  But there's a phone in the White House and its ringing.  Something's happening in the world...."  These words brought home the dilemma facing our country and our allies.  While Americans can see our children sleeping safely, our children may not be safe.  We cannot see the enemies of our children who are awake and plotting against us. 

It appears that many people have forgotten what it felt like on October 6, 1973, and September 11, 2001.  Forgetting history, and focusing solely on the present economic turmoil, is risky to our nation's security.  Democracies must remain vigilant.  Letting a nation's guard down even for a holiday can have disastrous consequences.

The American people do not know what the crisis will be when that phone rings in the White House in the middle of the night.  We do know, however, that the person who answers the phone will have to make a decision, and fast.  No time to see which way the political wind is blowing.  No chance to avoid taking a position, or voting "present."  What stands between Americans and our enemies is the willingness of our leaders to make the hard decisions necessary to protect us and our allies, sometimes in the middle of the night.

While voters have no control over which crisis arises, we do have control over who answers the phone.  For supporters of Israel who remember October 6, 1973, the choice of which person will answer the White House phone is critical because Israel's very survival may be at stake.   

Supporters of Israel are correct to be concerned with the prospect of an Obama presidency.  Which Obama will pick up the phone in the middle of the night?  Will it be the Obama who says all the right things about Israel's safety, or will it be the pre-campaign Obama who was comfortable being arount the anti-Israeli elements in our society when it served his political interests?  Will it be the Obama who pledges never to put Israel's security in jeopardy, or will it be the Obama who surrounds himself with foreign policy advisors who argue for more "balance" in the Middle East policy of the United States?  In choosing Obama, will supporters of Israel be doing the equivalent of picking Door No. 2 on the game show Let's Make a Deal, where we don't know if we made the right choice until it's too late?

A President who hesitates in making a decision, or who worries about "balance" and popularity among the far left, endangers Israel's survival.  When the phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House, and the Prime Minister of Israel is calling, who do you want answering the phone?

William A. Jacobson is Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, NY, and author of the Legal Insurrection Blog.  The views expressed here are his own, and not on behalf of the university.

Why the Mortgage Crisis Happened

 Source: American Thinker

by M.Jay Wells

Obama's economic narrative of the mortgage crisis ignores the facts. He has put free-market capitalism at the root of the current mortgage industry debacle, denying the real history of government interference in that market.

On September 15, with banking giant Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy protection, Obama was given the opening to begin weaving his anti-capitalist storyline. And that he did. Artfully blurring the mortgage industry crisis with generalized tax policy, Obama declared,