"This BLOG is scary! Vacillating between brilliant and psychotic, if you come back often enough you will find yourself wondering if this is the writing of a tortured patriotic soul or that of a demented spirit awaiting the next white room vacancy in central Florida. But what matters is that the topics make you stop and think!"
Message to all liberals and leftists from 'Jim Thompson,' owner of FreeRepublic.com
Posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:43:56 PM by Jim Robinson
I'll tell you what. The dozen or so insults made by about a half-dozen anonymous members of the general public on an Internet forum were disgraceful. So we pulled them.
But they're really a disgrace to insults in general and to the professional race-baiters of our main stream media that hurl them on a daily basis.
Our guys don't hold a candle to the professionals that have spent the last ten years or so pummeling the Bush and Cheney families with thousands of insults every damned day in every newspaper, magazine and TV network broadcasting to the public. Even the movies. Even in the halls of congress, in school rooms, in our churches.
We are bombarded daily by a constant stream of insults hurled by liberals, socialists, Marxists and leftists of every stripe.
Family members and children are not immune from the daily barrage of insults from professionals and amateur leftists alike. The Internet is chuck full of insulting comments, photo-shopped photos, cartoons so bad that they should be ashamed to publish them in their daily papers, but publish them they do. And laugh. Freaking hypocrites!
They laugh about the insults hurled 24 hours a day against Sarah Palin and her husband and little girls. Even the tiny helpless little Downs Syndrome baby is not immune from their hateful insults.
Racism? Monkey sounds? Right. Do a google search on "Bush Chimp" and see what pops up.
George Bush is just as much a human being as Michelle Obama. And just as American. The only difference is George Bush is proud to be an American and proud to defend his country while Michelle Obama was ashamed of America for her entire adult life. Defend America? Right. The Obamas wouldn't lift a finger to defend America. They'd rather destroy it and destroy all it stands for.
Bush is a monkey. Bush is a chimp. Bush is a gorilla. Bush is a subhuman knuckle dragging mongrel. He sometimes makes funny monkey faces, even funny monkey sounds. We all have. I have. You have. Michelle Obama has. Monkey see, monkey do. Get used to it!
Poor white trash live in trailer parks. Poor white trash live in slums. Poor white trash also live in ghettos. Many people who aren't even poor white trash live in trailer parks, slums, barrios and ghettos.
"Dressed like someone from the ghetto" can't possibly be a "racist" insult unless you're assuming all black people and only black people come from ghettos. If you are making that assumption and are personally insulted by such comment, then look around. You may be a racist.
Ok, I think I have this figured out. It's absolutely ok for the left to trash any conservative, even children and babies, but it's absolutely against the rules to return fire. The left can hurl out the insults, but cry like banshees when it comes back on them.
Speaking of insults doing harm to sweet little girls, how much harm is done to a child when Obama authorizes so-called "reproductive health" professionals to reach up into a womb and literally rip a human baby limb from limb and remove its lifeless carcass bit by bit when if left alone, it would have been a bouncing little baby boy or girl just moments later.
Mr. Obama says that if one of his little girls makes a mistake, he doesn't want to punish them with a baby.
He admits that determining the beginning of human rights is above his paygrade, but he has absolutely no problem at all playing God to determine which lives are fit to bring into this life and which are ok to snuff out.
That's the supreme insult. It's a gross insult to every human being on this planet living or dead. It's an insult to life itself. It's an insult to humanity, to human decency. It's a slap in the face to God the Creator of all life. We will all pay a price for the disgraceful American Holocaust. Fifty million innocent American lives slaughtered on the altar of liberalism and the count is growing daily. Butchers!
FReep you and the smug, arrogant, hypocritical high horse you rode in on!
My name is Big Jim Thompson and I approve this message.
I grew up with a mean older brother who was ten when I came on the scene. Family lore is that Tom ran away when my mother left to deliver me. When she returned he responded with disgust, "At least you could have brought me home a brother."
Tom's main passion in life was tormenting me. He delighted in mocking me, scaring me, making me cry. He'd laugh and make this strange, guttural sound when he saw my terror. As I got older, he enjoyed more menacing methods of torture, like holding me down and pretending to suffocate me.
It was easy to have access to me since my parents were usually galavanting around town with their pack of carousing adults, all of whom were in arrested development. When my folks were around, they'd yell at him but he'd just start up again when they were gone.
After I grew up and became a psychotherapist, I learned that there was a name for Tom's behavior, sadism. Sadists get a thrill out of being cruel and watching others suffer. While most abusive parents are motivated by a misguided effort to socialize and control, sadistic siblings just want to have fun by inflicting pain.
I rarely think of Tom, who disowned my family years ago. But when I reflect on what was done to Sarah Palin, I remember him and his sadism. And I look around and see more and more Tom's, all grown up; but they haven't grown up, actually; they refuse to grow up and use self control and restraint. And, alarmingly, many of them are in positions of power.
Let's call them by their true name. When an actress calls for gang raping Palin, she's a sadist. When people torch Palin's church with children inside, they are sadists. When bloggers call her a c___t and scorn her disabled son, they are being sadists.
Each day I wake up and the world looks more and more like my childhood: Tom's and Terry's who get a thrill out of terrorizing others; aging Peter Pans who won't grow up and enforce rules; parents too busy partying or saving the world to stay home, guide their kids, and teach them that all important word "no."
Television shows that humiliate people by publicly rejecting and demeaning them; movies where audiences are kept pumped up on sex and violence; an Internet where you can post the vilest things anonymously, unfiltered.
A secular society where anything goes, where self fulfillment reigns, where morals and values are as disposable as yesterday's underwear, to be thrown in the trash when you're tired of them.
A society gone mad, a "return to the primitive," as Ayn Rand described it forty years ago when she witnessed the growing power of the Left. Adults who have the impulse control of two year olds marching around, unhinged and uncontrolled, like Lord of the Flies. Teens beating up each other and teachers and uploading the video on YouTube.
Good people like Palin and Carrie Prejean being victimized in a manner so malicious that the intent is nothing short of destroying them. And the Powers that Be which could stop the growing brutality at any time by calling off the dogs, calling for order, won't do so because it serves their needs. After all, it's what Saul Alinsky preached: control the masses by keeping them agitated and paranoid.
Maybe what's happening today goes beyond Left and Right and speaks instead to the ancient struggle between good and evil. We live in a nation that has banished evil, that denies it even exists. But this is naive and foolhardy; good and evil exist hand in hand in the fiber of all human beings. We each have in us the seeds of Gandhi and the seeds of Pol Pot. It all depends on which ones we feed and nurture.
Evil, unacknowledged and unrecognized, takes root and becomes a virus so virulent, it threatens everyone whom it touches. Because evil changes people; it wipes out what makes them uniquely human; it turns them into something completely different, unrecognizable, alien.
And goodness is not just some old fashioned concept, some relic of days gone by. It's a privilege bestowed on us from the universe and we must cradle it and protect it as we would a newborn babe. We must never take it for granted, mock it or abandon it because it's the only thing that stands in the way of us and total anarchy.
Philosopher Jacob Needleman tells a story of walking on a bustling San Francisco street with a religious scholar from Tibet. Needleman asks his friend, "If it is so rare to be born a human being, how come there are so many people in the world?" His friend ponders the question silently for several seconds. Then he looks at Needleman and responds quietly, "How many human beings do you see?"
I look around each day and ask myself the same question, "Where are the human beings?" I see fewer and fewer each day. But there's a shining example in Alaska of a woman who maintained her integrity in the midst of cruelty that would have crushed many of us; who never descended to the level of the thugs; and who exits the scene with something that the sadists will never have, not even in their dreams -- her humanity.
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and psychotherapist in Berkeley.
Shylock:I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in therest, we will resemble you in that.
So naturally, Ricci has become the target of a leftist smear campaign. The McClatchey Newspapers wire service reports:
Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling….
On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.
Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he's dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.
The Middletown-area fire department was subsequently fined for safety violations, but the Connecticut Department of Labor dismissed Ricci's retaliation complaint.
This campaign has already produced at least one result: a Ricci hit piece in Slate.
This kind of argument by character assassination is part of contemporary politics, and particularly the politics of the left—just ask Joe the Plumber. But on the eve of confirmation hearings that are supposed to plumb Judge Sotomayor's legal philosophy, what strikes me is that Ricci's history is irrelevant to the legal issues raised by Ricci v. DeStefano. The central issue of the Ricci case was whether an employer can throw out a test used as the basis for promotion, not because there was anything wrong with the test, but solely because of the low number of black employees who qualified for promotion under that test. In effect, the question was whether employers are required to adhere to straight, unadorned racial quotas in order to avoid charges of illegal discrimination. That was the position endorsed by Judge Sotomayor in an appeals court ruling—and rejected by the Supreme Court on June 29.
With these big issues at stake, who cares whether or not the safety complaints Ricci made against the Middletown South Fire District in 1997 were valid or not? And what about the other 17 plaintiffs in the reverse discrimination case, like Ben Vargas?
But the question of Ricci's past and character was opened up by President Obama's stated desire to appoint a Supreme Court justice who would base her decisions on "empathy." Under this standard—which is reflected in Sotomayor's own statements on her judicial philosophy—it suddenly becomes relevant whether or not Frank Ricci is the kind of guy for whom we should feel "empathy."
And under this standard, Lady Justice loses her blindfold.
There is a reason the figure of Justice is usually represented (most famously by Nicolas Mayer) as wearing a blindfold: it is meant to symbolize impartiality. Lady Justice is blind to whether a plaintiff or defendant is rich or poor, liked or disliked, politically connected or powerless. She decides only based on the facts she weighs in her scales. Blindfolded justice represents the ideal that the law should be administered based solely on facts and principles. A man's legal rights must be acknowledged and respected, even if you despise him.
But Judge Sotomayor has stated that she believes such objectivity is impossible. In a 2001 speech, she quoted approvingly a law professor's statement that "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives"—and, more ominously, another author's maxim that "to judge is an exercise of power." Sotomayor then concluded: "The aspiration to impartiality is just that—it's an aspiration, because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others." She later explains, "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see."
Hence the smear campaign against Frank Ricci. If there is no truth, just a "series of perspectives" which determine what facts we "choose to see," then cases like Ricci v. DeStefano will not be decided based on facts and reasoning. They will be decided based on which side has an empathy-inducing "narrative." So to support Sotomayor's ruling in the Ricci case, all you have to do is re-write Frank Ricci's narrative to make him less sympathetic.
After all, when you invite empathy into the courtroom, you also admit its flip-side: antipathy. When you admit the argument ad misericordiam, the appeal to sympathy, you also admit the argument ad hominem—the appeal to personal attacks.
This is an assault on the whole basis of the American legal system. And more: it is an assault on the 2500-year quest to institute the rule of law rather than the rule of men. Under the rule of law, the last thing you should have to worry about when you enter a courtroom is whether or not the judge likes you. All you should have to worry about is whether the facts and legal principles are on your side.
The impartiality of the law is a principle with wide application, but it has a special urgency in the era of Obama. With the president launching so many plans for his direct, personal intervention in the economy—firing CEOs, decreeing mergers, dictating the details of giant business deals—we urgently need the courts to serve as an impartial counter-balance.
Consider, for example, Chrysler's secured creditors, who were supposed to have first claim on the company's assets but were instead shoved to the back of the line, behind the UAW. How did President Obama justify this act of political looting? By vilifying the bondholders as unpatriotic Wall Street fat cats, i.e., by creating an unsympathetic "narrative" to be contrasted to the (allegedly) more sympathetic narrative of the union workers who might suffer if the UAW were treated more roughly.
What we need, in these circumstances, are judges who will make sure that the Wall Street investors still have a chance to have their day in court and argue for their legal rights—no matter who does or doesn't empathize with them.
President Obama is just returning from Africa, where he correctly pointed out that local economies are crushed by endemic corruption. It is not just the direct financial drain from bribery that destroys an economy; it is the uncertainty that undermines every business transaction. An economy is held together by the value of its contracts. It depends on all parties having confidence that the terms of a contract cannot be unilaterally rewritten and will be enforced impartially.
Yet that is precisely what President Obama is undermining at home. With the Sotomayor nomination, he is introducing the threat that justice will be administered differently for politically favored groups than for politically unfavored groups. The rule of law will be replaced by the rule of a judge's emotional empathy—or antipathy—as determined by what subjective "perspective" the judge chooses to see.
That's what is at stake in the Sotomayor nomination, and it has huge consequences for our lives and prosperity.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Why would TIME Magazine run this story? It's on the website. You know, TIME Magazine is... What do they have, 40 covers of Obama in like 20 weeks? And it says here "Obama's Stimulus Plan Failing by its Own Measure," and here's how it's written in a story by a guy named Stephen Gandel. The lede to the story is: "The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected." See, this is where everybody's missing it. This stimulus plan is doing everything its "architects" intended it to do and that's prop up the states first and prop up Democrats first, prop up unions first and second, and not ever stimulate the economy. Now, I have to think, for TIME Magazine to run this story, there has to be some sense that they better cover their rear end on this journalistically. TIME Magazine, they have been in the tank. It seems like every week or every other week Obama is on the cover of TIME Magazine or Newsweek -- and if it's not Obama, it's Michelle (My Belle) on the cover.
From CNN Money: "National Health Care May Never Happen -- The latest polling looks great for President Obama: It shows that Americans love national health care." Yeah, but what's the rub? "If history and polling trends are any guide, however, that will change. Voters right now are in what the famous pollster Daniel Yankelovich called the Wishful Thinking stage -- a moment in the life of an opinion analogous to the dreamy early days of a relationship." This piece goes on to say that Americans love the idea of health insurance for all until they realize how much it's going to cost them, and this is not speculation here. "Similar scenarios played out in 1993 when the Clintons pushed for their ill-fated health care plan and in 1988 after Congress passed an insurance plan to protect the elderly against the costs of catastrophic illness.
"In 1988, polls had shown that Americans overwhelmingly favored such a plan in the abstract, and large bipartisan majorities passed it in both houses. Only the top 40 percent of seniors would have paid a tax surcharge to fund the plan, but those were the people who tended to carry supplemental insurance already. Once they realized what was happening, they howled in a way that legislators couldn't ignore." Remember, this is when Dan "Rosty" Rostenkowski got beaten up by constituents in Chicago, outside his car. "Congress repealed it. None of its provisions ever took effect. Today, with more ambitious reforms on the table, a scenario not unlike 1988's could be taking shape. Dig deep into the latest polling, and you'll find that while most Americans think the state of health care is a serious problem, 77 percent say they are satisfied with the quality of care they receive."
Now, why is Obama, then, pushing it? Well, Obama is pushing health care -- and he wants this done by August. He's got to get this done by August! He wants to get this done by the recess because the economy is tanking. I'm going to tell you why he wants it fast. The economy is tanking. Obama knows better than anyone else that it's tanking, and he also knows that by the end of the year he cannot pass health care because the state of the economy is going to be so bad that everybody will know it. So the tactic here is speed and deception, the same tactic being used with Sotomayor and her confirmation hearings. The public is not going to be in any mood for a massive new spending program of any kind when the depth of the current spending and its disastrous consequences are known, and they will be known -- and they are going to get worse. The circumstances are going to get worse.
Mort Zuckerman today has a piece in the Wall Street Journal: "The Economy Is Even Worse Than You Think." Mort Zuckerman is the chairman and editor of US News & World Report. He owns the New York Daily News. "The average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948," is the subheadline of his piece. Now we got Timmy Geithner out there saying... Is it Geithner? Who was it? Somebody said we're going to have a jobless recovery. Was it Geithner? Was it Larry Summers? Somebody said it. I got it here somewhere. How do you have a jobless recovery? Oh, I get it! Wall Street comes back. Goldman Sachs is doing fine. They have a $3.4 billion profit. Goldman Sachs is doing fine. Wait 'til Americans find out about that.
They thought Goldman Sachs and Wall Street going to be punished by Obama.
I mentioned a piece yesterday by Robert Samuelson in Newsweek magazine on the rich not being recession proof this time, and I read that again. The most important part of the article in the Samuelson piece yesterday, is a discussion on a Wall Street Journal article and the reaction thereto. Now, here's from the Samuelson piece. Quote: "In April, The Wall Street Journal ran an article sympathetically portraying families with incomes around $250,000, the level that President Obama has targeted for tax increases." Sympathetic to those people. "By most measures, these families rank in the top 2 percent to 4 percent of the income spectrum. But many -- possibly most -- see themselves as 'upper middle class' and not 'rich,' the paper reported.
"'I'm not after sympathy,' said the wife of a surgeon who makes about $260,000. 'What I want is a reality check on what rich means. I can pay my mortgage and can buy some clothes. I'm not going without, but I'm not living a life of luxury.' The mayor of San Jose scoffed at $250,000. That's what a two-engineer couple might make, he said. It put them in 'the upper working class' and wasn't enough to 'buy a home in Silicon Valley.'" So how can you say you're rich if you can't buy a home in Silicon Valley? "The article triggered an outpouring of e-mails -- many applauding that someone had finally described their harried plight; others sarcastically wondering what planet the whiners lived on." How could you make $250,000 a year and be complaining about it? "But so much angst among the affluent -- however defined -- attests to something else," Samuelson, this is his point: "the present recession, unlike any other since World War II, has deeply shaken the nation's economic elite."
And that was the theme of his story, but I didn't mention to you his quoting of the Wall Street Journal piece in April that closes the loop. Now, this illustrates very well why it is so dangerous to allow the government to pick and choose tax winners and tax losers. If you make $10,000 you're okay taxing the rich guy making 25,000. If you make 25K tax the rich guy making 50 because he doesn't need it all -- and on and on and on and on and on. If you make 75, tax the guy making a hundred. You make 250, you're getting soaked and everybody wants you to get soaked! That's another problem here: 43% of taxpayers now do not pay income tax. They pay FICA, payroll and all that, but they don't pay income tax. Now, how can you have a representative republic when almost half of the people do not pay taxes?
And when those people don't pay taxes, they understand who's supporting them. So they favor tax increases on everybody else. The natural human tendency (meaning your average Democrat) is to think that anyone and everyone who makes more than you is just a selfish bastard if he complains about taxes. Obama, politicians like Obama know this. They deliberately twist and use that class envy reaction under the big lie of fairness, to gain even more control of the economy and then use that control for their ends and best interests, not the nation's. So this is why flat tax, Fair Tax, works. This arbitrary setting of rates based on what Obama thinks is rich, leads to even further diversions and divisions in the country among the population. Plus it doesn't raise any money! You know, the fascinating thing?
If you were listening yesterday and you heard me say you didn't want to listen and you didn't want to believe me that Obama is purposely destroying the middle class -- purposely destroying it, purposely raiding it, taking capital away from the private sector and transferring it to governments and unions and so forth. If you don't want to believe that, if you just can't bring yourself to believe that anybody we would elect president would want to destroy, because you can't believe that somebody like Obama grew up hating America or being told it was unjust and immoral now has a chance to fix it -- you just don't believe it. Ask yourself this. We're running huge, as Jim Sasser in Tennessee say, "defycits." We got deficits coming out of every bodily orifice. We got deficits coming out of the mouth of every river in this country. We got deficits everywhere!
We got a $2.5 trillion budget deficit this year, a $12 trillion forecast, and there's more spending to come. Now, wouldn't you think that given that reality, one of the first things on the minds of people in Washington would be revenue generation? And isn't that what you think taxes are for? "Yes, that's right Mr. Limbaugh! We are taxed." This is the voice of the New Castrati." That's right, Mr. Limbaugh! We are taxed so that we citizens can do or civic duty and pay for all of the goods and services that our government generously provides for us." Okay, you believe that. You believe it's the purpose of taxes, raise money for the government to provide our roads and bridges and our schools and toasters and whatever the hell else. Have you seen the decline in revenue being generated by virtue of taxes given the recession?
There are more and more people out of work. More and more businesses are closing. One of the reasons the deficits are so high is that there is far less tax revenue being produced. It's just a simple matter of math. So here we have the smartest people in the world, the Obamas and the Larry Summerses and these guys, and their policies are creating less revenue. "Less revenue to run the country to provide the goods and services that we the citizens need and crave," and yet they're not bothered by it. They continue with policies that will result in less revenue still being generate via taxes, and what are they going to then do? Raise taxes on the remaining people who pay them. By the way, if you make under 250 grand and they do this health care, you're going to get soaked like everybody else. If you're one of the 43% not paying income tax, get ready.
You're going to get soaked with a value at tax a VAT tax, some kind of sales tax. It's going to happen. We're all going to pay higher taxes, under the theory that that will raise more revenue. It's going to reduce revenue because it's going to slow down the economy even further, and it's going to cause more people to lose their jobs. We're going to have fewer taxpayers, and when you have fewer taxpayers, you have less tax revenue. Yet none of this bothers them. They are prepared to fully implement every stage of this, to create less revenue, more unemployment. It can't be that they're just naive and mistaken, even after a year of this. Now, there's talk of a second stimulus now! After the abject failure of the first, and the first stimulus, we've only spent 6% of it -- and it's all gone to the states to help with their own budget deficits and to the unions.
We haven't even spent it. They know it's not going to stimulate anything, economically. Now they're talking about a second one. There is no other conclusion than there is an ongoing effort to remake the structure of this country from a free market capitalist system to a command-and-control, government-run system for the express purpose of making sure that everybody is equal -- or as equal as they can make it -- that nobody has any more than everybody else. And if they do, they'll tax that. That's who these people are. They have grown up, they have been taught, they've been raised that America is unjust and immoral. Obama goes over there and says we gotta get rid of all missiles, while he's dropping bombs and firing missiles in Afghanistan.
This CIA program... The New York Times knew about this program, by the way, in 2002, we found out. They knew about this program. They talked about on Sunday. They knew about it back in 2002. It was a program designed to kill -- at close range, not with missiles or bombs but at close range -- Al-Qaeda leaders in 2001, which makes total sense. Right after 9/11, you wanna go get those guys. Everybody said, "Go get 'em! They're at Tora Bora? Go get 'em!" The Democrats all said, "Well, you didn't get Osama, so you failed," and Leon Panetta has canceled the program. He cancelled the program, while Obama is implementing it in Afghanistan we're dropping missiles. We're going in trying to get these guys in close range. Oh! Another story in the Stack of Stuff. You know what? He may not be able to close Gitmo in January.
He just might not be able to do it -- and it's Bush's fault. (interruption) What? Bush didn't tell him how fully intertwined Club Gitmo was with the War on Terror and how there was nowhere else to put these prisons 'cause nobody else wanted them and so forth. It's just like Biden said. What did he say? "We underestimated or misread how bad the economy was because Bush didn't tell us. We didn't have the right figures." It's the same thing with Gitmo. (interruption) That's like my whole point. They did know how bad it was. We all knew how bad it was. Everybody knew how bad it was. They knew how bad the economy was. This was all smoke and mirrors because they still want people to believe that Obama's oriented towards fixing it. What they don't know is he is fixing it his way. It's working exactly as he wants it to. His whole point is to go out there and convince people that it's coming. The recovery and the rebound and your job, it's coming. "It may be even worse if we hadn't done the first stimulus."
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A very strategic announcement by President Obama this morning. During the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama at the White House, after a meeting with the Dutch prime minister had some words, and nobody broke away from the hearings to cover this. Well, not on the two channels I was watching. I didn't see them break away from Sotomayor. They played video later after it happened during a break in the hearings for Sotomayor. But here's President Obama. Now, if you're going to make this announcement, what better time to do it than when the world is focused on a Supreme Court confirmation hearing?
OBAMA: My expectation is, is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months, and the challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we are stabilizing the financial system, we understand that the most important thing in the economy is are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages.
RUSH: Now, how is that hope and change working out for you? This, folks, is outrageous. He tells us unemployment is going to tick up. He could announce a couple things today that would not turn the job situation around immediately, but would change attitudes immediately. Eliminate corporate taxes or reduce them to 25% to whatever, capital gains, personal tax cuts, any number of things, and I tell you, Wall Street would go nuts and so would the private sector. But he says we gotta stabilize the financial system first. He says it here. "The challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we're stabilizing the financial system --" like coming up with more money to give people to pay their mortgage when they're out of work, that's going to stabilize the financial system "-- we understand that the most important thing is are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages."
Now, we have to be very careful here, 'cause he doesn't mean a word of that. If he wanted circumstances or people to be able to find work at good wages, he wouldn't be doing the policies he's doing. Oops. Thought I was finished. I still have seven seconds to go. So I'll say it again. If he really wants to create jobs, he wouldn't be saying and doing what he's doing. No mistakes.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Politico today: "Obama's Rosy Scenario Turns Thorny." This is by Jeanne Cummings. "President Barack Obama's economic forecasts for long-term growth are too optimistic, many economists warn, a miscalculation that would mean budget deficits will be much higher than the administration is now acknowledging. ... Alternately, if Obama clings to current optimistic forecasts for long-term growth, he risks accusations that he is basing his fiscal plans on fictitious assumptions -- precisely the sort of charge he once leveled against the Bush administration." And on page two of this story is a former Clinton administration economic advisor, actually, Robert Shapiro: "It's also dangerous and risky because if the forecast doesn’t come true, you’ve undermined the basis for the rest of your policies."
That's exactly why they're doing health care by August. That's exactly why they're trying to do everything before it bombs out, and it's going to bomb, they know it's going to bomb, they want it to bomb, they want to get this done before it bombs. If you have ever trusted me on anything, trust me on this. This is intentional, the speed at which they are proceeding to get all this done is to get it done before it gets so bad everybody has to acknowledge how bad it is and how wrong the plans to fix this have been. Obama's first forecast after the stimulus bombed is what the Politico says. Economists say his long-term predictions are no better. Forget growth, they're saying forget growth. He's so wrong on deficits we're not going to have any growth, by design. If you have never trusted me before, trust me now, all of this is by design.
It has been pointed out to me, by the way, and this is a good point, that the Democrats, Biden and these guys, are saying the same thing about the economy they said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All of these Democrats, remember how eager they were to go in there and take out Saddam, Hillary and all that bunch. They believed, 1998, we have the audio of all of them saying Saddam's got these nuclear weapons, mass destruction weapons, we gotta go in there and get 'em out, bad, bad, bad, when Bush said so, they did, same thing. But then, when no weapons of mass destruction of significance were found, what happened? Well, Joe Wilson surfaced and that started this whole parade of Bush lied, Bush lied to us. And that's essentially what Biden is saying, the same script, when Biden says, we misread, we guessed wrong, we didn't know how bad it was, they're saying they've been lied to again. These poor old Democrats lied to again. No, Obama didn't lie to them; Bush did. Bush lied to them about Gitmo. Bush lied to them about weapons of mass destruction. Bush lied to them about how bad the economy was.
So now the phrase is, Obama lied and the economy died. Obama lied and the economy died. Never mind that anybody can see the economic numbers just as we can see them -- and these people can see more economic numbers than we do, they are members of Congress, after all. But we didn't know, Bush lied, we didn't know how bad it was. Same tactic. All right, now, Snerdley is asking me how long is it going to -- look, that's the question, how long does any of Obama play? We don't know. How long does it play with his voters? Now, the CBS poll interestingly that has Obama falling to 57%, let me find this. If you dig into this, 57% that's his approval number, and that's down from 62, the CBS/New York Times. Fifty-seven percent say that the country's on the wrong track. He has lost six points in his approval numbers almost entirely from Democrats and independents, and the poll says it's the economy that's hurting him. So maybe the questions in the process of being answered, but as you heard, Harry Smith and Schieffer doing their best to cover it up, maybe even blame the poll a little bit.
Now, there's one thing about this poll I have to tell you that could mitigate it all. Republican support for Obama has actually risen by a point. It is Democrats and independents that account for his drop. So the Colin Powell Republican crowd loves the guy. They probably called McCain, I'm sure he said he approves. And I'm sure they called Colin Powell, I'm sure he said he approves of the way Obama's doing things. But he's down six points from Democrats and independents.
Okay. Back to the phones we go to Cheshire, Connecticut. John, thank you for holding, and welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, second-time dittos from Cheshire.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, you know, diving into this how-long-does-it-play issue and something you brought up early in the show, with this $12 billion that he wants to spend now of money that we don't have on community colleges, and, you know, part of my thought process is, number one we're not giving a basic education to our kids at the high school level, so what's happening is these community colleges are taking the place, really, of what kids used to get in high school.
RUSH: You know, you are exactly right. I don't want to offend anybody here, but of course I'm me and that's generally not possible for me to avoid, is offending people, but I happen to, over the last five or six years, have run into some people that were taking courses at a community college, and I had them in junior high --
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: -- and high school. I said, "Whoa," but I've always wondered about this, why we need job retraining centers. What the hell is school for in the first place?
CALLER: Right. I mean, there used to be a vo-tech program that was out there that kids could take that wanted to do that sort of thing, but along the lines of, you know, you ask how long does it play, I see this as kind of another $12 billion of money that's coming to keep people in the system for another two years. You know, we talked about the nursery school indoctrination, where they want to start the kids earlier. This is a way of keeping people in school for an extra two years and the brainwashing process can continue because if they're not out there actively seeking a job and maybe, you know, falling on their butt --
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: -- in terms of life --
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: -- and they're sitting in a classroom for two years getting God knows what out of it in terms of the indoctrination --
RUSH: And if they're losing their jobs and their health care is not portable, and they're scared to death about losing their health care, they'll support health care, it's like Marie Antoinette. Now, she didn't actually say this, Marie Antoinette has been crucified theoretically, philosophically by history. You know the whole thing, "Marie Antoinette, they don't have any bread." "Fine, let 'em eat cake." When I first heard that I was a kid and I said, "What's wrong with eating cake? I'd much rather eat cake than bread. Give me a good old-fashioned white cake, yellow cake any time over bunny bread or some of this store bought processed." "No, no, no. Cake back in those days was the scrapings from the oven." I said, "Oh, okay." But let's go along with history and Marie Antoinette, "They don't have bread, let 'em eat cake," Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, "They don't have jobs, let 'em hear about universal health care." That's the plan. You're right on the money out there, John. I appreciate it.
Hey Ronbo, don't you think you have went over the edge with your fictional prediction of a Second American Revolution? I know Obama is a raving socialist of some type, but even if he does turn this country into a social democracy we'll still have our basic civil rights. After all, Canada is socialist and I don't see mass oppression or a GULAG in operation.
Dear Sir:
What makes you think Obama and Company have a social democracy on the Canadian model in mind for the United States? As is well known, Obama had a communist mother & father. He was a red diaper baby with communism metaphorically mixed in with his infant formula. The young Obama was educated in a series of third world socialist schools and topped off his education at elite American Leftist institutions of higher learning. Obama's best friend, mentor and ghost writer of his two books was none other than Communist SDS chief Bill Ayers, the mad bomber of 1960s radicalism.
The machinery of tyranny is in place and running on idle; all that needs to be done by the Traitor In Chief is to put the device in gear and the liberty of all Americans will be crushed. My only question is whether or not the American military and various police agencies will allow what is already taking shape as a latter day Bolshevik revolution to go forward unopposed.
Obama's thugs came first for the Republicans, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Republican;
And then they came for the conservative media, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a member of the conservative media;
And then they came for the conservative teachers, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a conservative teacher;
And then they came for the gun owners, And I didn't speak up because I didn't own a gun;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then they came for the Catholics, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic.
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
The Freedom Fighter's Journal belongs to the American Republic... and the world!
As the graph and stats above indicate the majority of my readers are from countries other than the USA, although Americans still form the largest single group.
The surprise for me were the second largest group who are the British with about 20% of the total readers.
What does this mean? I wish I knew. Perhaps it relates to the fact that people who share a more or less common language and culture stand together on the same ideals of liberty and capitalism that raised humankind from the poverty of agriculture to the wealth of industrialism.
Scene: Winter Park, Florida in the early evening just after a thunderstorm has cleared the air and cleaned Park Avenue, the main street. This is a beautiful, upscale town in Central Florida that could be taken on a village in Ohio were it not for the palm trees.
The camera moves up the street to focus on a middle age man with grey hair sitting at an outside table in front of Starbucks drinking coffee. The man is dressed in tourist style wearing a loud shirt, short pants and tennis shoes. He has a black backpack sitting in the chair opposite him and is giving a map of the local attractions his full attention, but on occasion looking up and down the street as if looking for someone.
A young 20 something woman with dark hair and eyes walks into the Starbucks to buy a cup of coffee. She returns outside and meets the man's glance. The woman is well dressed in professional fashion and has long hair neatly tied into a pony tail. She wears no jewlery aside from a large silver “Star of David” that hangs from her neck.
The woman walks to the man's table and pulls a white rose out of her small expensive looking purse and places it on the table in front of the man while looking quickly at the people drinking coffee around them to see if anyone takes note. No one does.
Ronbo: “The white rose is a symbol of liberty.”
Woman: “The white rose also represents the timeless values of Western Civilization.”
Ronbo: (Standing)“Sign and passwords. You must be Fanny Kaplan.”
Fanny: “At your service.You're Ronbo.” (They shake hands)
Ronbo: “Please have a seat.” (He moves the backpack off the chair)
Fanny. “Ronbo you've become something of a legend; I half expected not to meet anyone here this evening.”
Ronbo: “Very likely I'm a disappointment to you. I'm very plain and common. People seldom remember my face.”
Fanny: “I never judge a book by its cover.”
Ronbo: “I'm impressed by the large number of female revolutionists I'm meeting on this trip to Florida.”
Fanny: “We should let the guys have all the fun?” (She smiles briefly and her thin face is much improved) “As you are aware Mr. Bernestein couldn't make it tonight due to a family emergency.”
Ronbo: “Not a problem. The money and instructions are in the backpack. Tell Bernie to destroy the instructions after reading.” (He passes the backpack to Fanny) Fanny: “Funny how life turns out – Three years ago I was a wall flower of a conservative Jewish girl from Miami and today I'm a radical in the Jewish Defense League involved with in a conspiracy that could land me in a federal prison for the rest of my life.”
Ronbo: “I'm a bit of a history buff – Didn't a Fanny Kaplan try to assassinate Lenin during the Russian Revolution?”
Fanny: “The Fanny Kaplan you're talking about was indeed one of my ancestors. She was a Social Revolutionary who tried to kill Lenin because he betrayed the revolution – Also Lenin turned out to be a raving anti-Semite. Tell me Mr. Ronbo, are you and your right wing pals anti-Semites? How many Jews get shot after your revolution?
Ronbo: (Taking a sip of coffee) “My people aren't in the habit of killing our allies.”
Fanny: (Looking at him with doubt) “Mr. Bernestein thinks you and your wild bunch are good people. I respect his opinion, after all he's been a member of the JDL longer than I've been alive.”
Ronbo: “Bernie and I go back a long way – He was my cellmate in the federal GULAG back in the 1990s. I believe Bernie got a three year sentence for owning automatic weapons.”
Fanny: I believe his words were to the effect that you are a Righteous Man. This is high praise for a man who has few Christian friends.”
Ronbo: “Thanks for the kind words.”
Fanny: “What about the weapons?
Ronbo: “Bernie will have to brief you on the details, but let your heart not be troubled – On Revolution Day your JDL chapter will be well armed and equipped.”
Fanny: “How do you know I won't take the money and run?”
Ronbo: “Because Bernie is your favorite uncle who raised you and your sister and you love him. Also you're a devout Jew and stalwart supporter of Israel. Bernie talked about you quite a bit in prison. He called you Fancine..”
Fanny: "I hate that name! It's so French! I much prefer Fanny."
Ronbo: "Well this ends our business this quiet evening. I have a train to catch just up the street at the AMTRAK station. (Ronbo rises and throws away his coffee cup and exits the out door cafe. Fanny follows his lead)
Fanny: "Do you mind if I walk with you to the train station? I have some questions?"
(They walk down Park Avenue. The economic bad times are displayed even here with about half the shops empty and locked. The rest display sale signs to invite the few customers still available.)
Ronbo: "I'll be glad to answer your questions, but you may not like my answers."
Fanny: "Do you have a favorite philosopher? I'm working on my Ph.d. in philosophy at Rollins College. My favorite philosopher is Ayn Rand."
Ronbo: "Dear was Ayn Rand, but dearer still is the truth."
Fanny: "Why do you say that?"
Ronbo: "In ATLAS SHRUGS, Rand's greatest book, she does a very good job of playing the prophet and predicting exactly what is happening today, which is an economic and political meltdown to leading to socialism, yet she misses the fact that America was born in revolutionary war and cut its teeth in the most destructive civil war in modern history. In Rand's novel the opposition simply drops out; in reality we revolutionists will dropping in like a ton bricks on many a traitors' head."
Fanny: "True. America is in at least VERBAL revolt even as we speak - Just go into any public place and hear O'Hara being cursed to the high heavens! If the Secret Service arrested everyone who has threatened to kill O'Hara, they would need to jail about 150 million people."
(They walk thru a small city park to the station and waiting train.)
Ronbo: "I'll say goodbye and good luck to you Fanny Kaplan. I am curious about something - how do you square being a Jew with being an Objectivist - a follower of Randian philosophy - Ayn Rand was an atheist."
Fanny: "Simple. I'm born into the tribe of Israel and like Ayn Rand I'll always be a Jew. Like you too, Ronbo."
Ronbo: "I see you have been talking to Bernie - Yes, my grandmother on my mother's side was a Jew, but I was raised in the Baptist Church."
Fanny: (As Ronbo steps on the train) "A Jew always knows another Jew. Also the evil ones know who the Jews are as well."
(The train pulls out of the station and Ronbo seated by a window in the train waves at Fanny who smiles and waves back. The conductor motions for Ronbo's ticket and he pulls the ticket out of his pocket along with the Fanny's Star of David.)
I'm having a bit of fun on my blog "overthrowing the government."
What I have in mind is an old fashioned military coup in conjunction with a rising of the militias designed to floor the opposition with a metaphorical "one-two" punch and K.O. him in the first round.
The main protagonists are Ronbo, Jack Idema, Mr. Big (Mark Alexander) and General Conway.
The character of Ronbo is a latter day Sam Adams - Father of the Revolution.
Jack Idema represents the American sense of adventure and fearless unconventional thinking.
Mark Alexander, a billionaire, bankrolls the revolution.
General Conway, the head of the U.S. military, would correspond to George Washington.
Please take a look at what I've written. The links a the bottom of the page will lead you to individual chapters and references.
P.S. I understand the current Director of the U.S. Secret Service does not like my attempts at fiction writing (Is something along these lines really in the works?).....so the SS gets cast as evil.
OUR STORY OPENS...
I arrived there early in the morning after an epic road trip across much of the USA hunted by the dread Secret Service (SS). "There" being Galt's Gulch Colorado. The Rocky Mountains surround the Gulch and only a few know the narrow dangerous gravel road into the mountain fortress. After miles of white knuckle driving threading carefully around hair pin turns the driver comes to the golden dollar sign marking the entrance. The road improves from gravel to a well built four lane road...
I discovered Galt's Gulch by way of a conference with Mr. Big of the vast right wing conspiracy. I should note that Mr. Big really is a large man over six foot tall and three hundred pounds. We met years ago by way of Emails and phone conversations but this was the first time in person. Mr. Big is a man of about 55 years who was once a criminal lawyer and state judge in Colorado. The face reminds one of Sir Winston Churchill in his prime and the love of a good cigar and fine brandy reinforces that opinion.
The location picked by Mr. Big was the restaurant of a ski lodge near Aspen, Colorado. It was instructed to introduce myself to the manager of this establishment and ask to be directed into his presence. This was done and within minutes I was shown to his table in a private room with large picture windows with the Rocky Mountains framed above and the ski slopes below. I don't think I've been in more beautiful or expensive room in my life. I was dressed in my traveling clothes - blue jeans, sweat shirt and boots. Everyone else at this establishment was dressed to the nines, especially the staff who treated me with the respect given to a rich Saudi Prince with a limitless bank account. In marked contrast my bank reserve was down to the last hundred bucks.
I followed the manager, a man that reminded me of a young David Niven complete with an English accent, over to Mr. Big's table (I should note Mr. Big was typing something into a laptop computer and didn't see us enter) and he made the introductions, "Mr. Big, this is your friend, Ronbo. Ronbo, this is Mr. Big, a former state judge, lawyer and real estate baron. Ronbo this is your menu and you can select anything at no charge. I'll be back later to take your order. How about a drink now? This is our wine list. Choose anything. No charge." I said, "This being Colorado, I'll take a Coors beer." The manager said, "An excellent choice, sir! I'll send the waiter with a bottle immediately."
Mr. Big put away the laptop and looked at me across the table and said in an educated Mid Western voice , "Ronbo you look so damn common. You could be most men in this country of your age. I like that." I replied, "Why so?" Mr. Big answered, "Because the people who count in this country want a seasoned citizen as a leader. They would suspect a young man of having personal ambition. A man of years would come across as a leader with only the best interests of the country at heart. You'll do."
"I'll do as what? I'm down to my last hundred bucks and have no job, no home and I'm on the arrest immediately roster. Do you have a job and a false identity in mind. Like you say, I can pretty well fit into any job." Mr. Big looked at me with pale green cat eyes and said, "The job I have in mind for you is the organizer of a revolution to overthrow the federal government. I think you have built the best resume of anyone for the job over the last fifteen years with your difficulties with the Secret Service, prison, parole and surviving on less than nothing has served to train you as the best right wing revolutionist in the country. You have a fire in your belly. I know this from reading your writings and talking to you over the phone. You are like Sam Adams in the First American Revolution, the spark that will light the fire. I have vast wealth from my days as a real estate developer and a circle of friends here in Colorado with millions more but all our wealth and power cannot do the job that needs to be done. We need you. You need us. This meeting can be the start of a Second American Revolution. What say you?"
The waiter appeared with my Coors and Mr. Big went silent. He took the cigar out of his mouth and took a gulp of his brandy. The cigar was returned and he took a deep pull on it and exhaled a cloud of smoke. I took down about half the glass of Coors, my throat suddenly dry. Mr. Big stared deep into my eyes, into my very soul. I said, "I agree. But only on the condition that I am, indeed, the CEO. I don't want find out later that I have to report to some sort of committee or be overruled on any matter. If you agree and provide me with a large budget I can start a revolution, and God help us all."
Mr. Big was silent for a moment and then he began to clap his hands and said, "Bravo! Bravo!" with a big smile. "I like your style. No hesitation. No speech. No demand for a salary and perks. Just a simple acceptance and one key condition. Yes, you will be the man. No one will second guess you; there will be no committee looking over your shoulder. The buck ends on your desk. I only ask that you provide an account for the funds expended. These are considerable funds but not limitless.
What they say about me.....
Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema is an American citizen convicted in September 2004 for running a private prison in Afghanistan and torturing Afghan citizens. At the time of his arrest and conviction, Idema had been portraying himself as a U.S. government-sponsored special forces operative on a mission to apprehend terrorists. However, the U.S. government has repeatedly denied such claims. Idema was granted a pardon by Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai in April 2007, departing Afghanistan in early June, having served three years of a ten-year sentence.
Yeah, Yeah, YEAH! Enough already you critics, wimps, Commie Journalists, and Special Forces Wanna-Bes! JACK IS BACK in the United States of America and living large on millions of hard earned gold gained by honest labor in the People's Republic of Karzai Afghanistan! Also, a well deserved FUCK YOU! to the fascist stormtroopers of the FBI who are out to arrest this SUPERPATRIOT! Eat your hearts out, fascist motherfuckers! This SP has gone to ground somewhere in the good ole U.S. of A. and changed his appearance so much even his own mommy wouldn't recognize old Jackie!
What am I doing back stateside? Well old Jackie has teamed up with Ronbo and other super patriots to overthrow the fucking federal government. You heard me right, buckos! You see Ronbo and me go back...way back...back to 1994 when we met at FCI Butner, North Carolina. I was doing federal time on a fraud frame up by the fucking FBI and had just been checked into this here Butner prison by the U.S. Marshals. It was a dark and stormy night in October and the wind was blowing buckets of rain just like a hurricane in Florida.
The Marshals were nice enough to march me in the pouring rain without a raincoat to the Maryland Unit. A fat and bored black correctional officer checked me in at the office by the door. Needless to say I was all pissed off, what with getting dragged thru the federal criminal justice system and looking at three years in the can for something I didn't do. Then Ronbo appeared. I was told by the guard that Ronbo was an Orderly in the unit who had prepared a room for me...A FUCKING PRIVATE ROOM! Hee-Hee! This was just like old Ronbo: in the few months he had been at Butner he had gamed the system. Yessir! So he took me to my quarters which was like I said before, a room and not a cell. Hell's bells! It even had a private bathroom! Granted it was small, but it did have everything a convict would need: desk, typewriter, dictionary, and a stack of PENHOUSE and PLAYBOY magazines.
I asked Ronbo why the special treatment? He looked at me with pale blue killer eyes and said, "I heard you were a veteran like me who was screwed by the Feds for something you didn't do."
Then I remembered! Ronbo had been convicted for the attempted assassination of President Clinton back in January, 1994. I recall reading newspapers and thinking that the Feds really didn't have much of a case against him. I was surprised when he was convicted on one charge that got him a five year cruise on Club Fed. This is the way the Feds fill their prisons: They charge you with everything under the sun hoping the jury will find you guilty of at least one count.
I told Ronbo I needed to change out of the wet orange jumpsuit the Feds were nice enough to keep me in for about a week and hit the shower. I bet I scrubbed for an hour in the hot water. When I step out, Ronbo had laid fresh clothes out on the bunk...CIVILIAN CLOTHES....not a prison uniform. I was to be told later that at Butner prisoners were allowed to wear street clothes. This had something to do with a new policy by the Clinton Administration to improve life in the federal pen, which was okay by me.
By now I'm feeling better than I had since being thrown in jail without bail months before by the fucking FBI. I decide to do a little recon of the facility, since clearly I'm not locked in a cell. I wander down a corridor to a television room. Ronbo was speaking to a Jewish looking prisoner who I discovered later really was Jewish. His name is John Pollard. In case this name doesn't ring a bell, Pollard was sentenced to life by the Reagan Administration for spying. The country he spied for was Israel and seldom does the USA send those who spy for friendly countries go to prison, but they made an exception for Pollard, so he was buried alive. I understand he's still doing time at Butner. Poor guy!
When I entered the room they both stopped talking and Pollard offered a hand which I shook.
Ronbo said, "John, this is the guy I told you about...you know, he had the goods on the man pack nukes from the former Soviet Union which have gone missing. Many folks think he was screwed by the FBI because he didn't spill his guts."
Pollard sighed, "I see."
Then he turned to me, "I suppose you'll be joining Ronbo and me on the Orderly detail? It's an easy job. We work maybe two hours a day, and the rest of the time we just hang out and dodge work details. It's an easy life here as far as work and recreation go. The negative is that you're going to be seeing federal agents on a regular basis, as is well known, Butner in an interrogation center."
"What if I tell the Suits to fuck off?"
Pollard looked at me with world weary eyes and said, "Then they put you on a bus to a less agreeable prison. Someplace like where I came from; a place like Marion."
I asked, "So Marion is bad news?"
Pollard walked towards the door and replied, "You don't want to find out! Play the game here at Butner. Prison is like hell, but this is the first circle of hell. I mean how many other other prisons in this country allow you to wear street clothes and gives you a private room with bath? I'll talk with you tomorrow. I have prayers early in the morning, so I'm going to turn in now."
"Damn!" I said to Ronbo, "That dude has given up! This is sad, very sad!"
"Maybe you would too if you faced life. This is as good as it gets for Pollard. I doubt the Feds are ever going to let him go free."
"What about you, Ronbo? Have you cried UNCLE SAM?"
"I have not yet begun to fight."
"What will we do?"
"The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers," said Ronbo with a grin, "Are you with me?"
"As long as the first lawyer we kill is my lawyer," I said.
Ronbo checked the corridor to see if the guard was lurking about. When he discovered no one was around he said,
"Strike."
"Strike? Strike what?"
"The federal prison industry here at Butner. Did you know they only pay 50 cents an hour? And they work the prisoners over 12 hours a day including Saturday. Outrageous say I! So we do a bit of labor disruption. I'm working on printing up leaflets and passing them out all over the prison, but I need a few hale and hearty men to join me. Would you be one?"
"Jack Idema is with you! What type of industry do they have here.?"
"Where do you think this military uniform I'm wearing was made? Hmmm? Right here at Butner. they make uniforms for all the Armed Forces here. It saves the Feds billions, but it keeps thousands of Americans out of work. I mean who can compete with 50 cents an hour slave labor?
"The bastards! I'm with you, Ronbo! Let's STRIKE!"
"I knew you were a fellow freedom fighter the moment I laid eyes on you, Jack! I have a special radar that allows to size up people rather well. But I what I like best about you is that you didn't hesitate a minute before agreeing to my proposal." "Strike while the iron is hot is my motto."
"Jack, I wouldn't be a friend unless I tell you the down side."
"Okay, shoot." I walked over to the window and looked at the kick ass October storm and wished that I were outside -- even wet, cold, hungry and miserable is better than being locked away in a prison. Even a first class Holiday Inn prison like Butner.
"The powers that be will discover sooner or later who are the leaders of the Strike. At that point they will place us in "Segregation" which is politically correct prison jargon for the more accurately described, HOLE. Then they will forget about us for a month or six weeks. They will also forget meals and showers for days on end. Finally, late one night the guards will come charging in and wrap us in chains. We will be thrown like sacks of flour into a bus that will take us on a long journey to a real federal prison. What do you say now?"
"How did you plan to print up the leaflets?"
Ronbo laughed; a big friendly laugh that echoed down the deserted hallway,
"Did I tell you I took an unofficial locksmith course here at Butner? The counselor's office just down the hallway has a Xerox machine and about two thousand blank sheets of paper. This is enough for every prisoner here at Butner to have his own personal copy."
The two of us walked about a dozen steps down the hallway....
Well to make a long story short, Ronbo and me were able to engineer a three day strike at Butner, and, as Ronbo predicted, snitched out before the week was gone. We both ended up in segregation, then transported to other federal prisons. Ronbo was sent to a little piece of paradise named FCI Petersburg, Virginia where he was nearly killed by fellow inmates. I drew the prison at Lewisburg and ended up in good company with some Mafia guys the guards feared.
After federal prison I went to other places and had many adventures. But as they say, "There's no place like home!" So I'm back in CONUS, The U.S. of A., The World, and teamed up with Ronbo working on the Second American Revolution.
The message from Ronbo read, “Meet Mr. Big of the vast right wing conspiracy at the penthouse on top of the Contemporary Hotel at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Please dress in casual attire and brings lots of sun tan lotion for a week of sun, fun and plotting revolution. The tab for this all expense paid affair will be picked up by Mr. Big.”
I should introduce Mr. Big to the readers….well…I’ll share what little I know about the reclusive billionaire who, according to Ronbo, owns directly or indirectly about half the real estate in the far West of the USA. Mr. Big is self made man, an orphan who started his business career at 17 years old with little more than the clothes on his back and much read copy of Ayn Rand’s THE FOUNTAINHEAD and by means of old fashioned American hard work and careful investments became a millionaire before he turned 21 and a billionaire before he became 40 years old.
Mr. Big used his great wealth for many years to support conservative political candidates, right wing radio talk show greats like Rush Limbaugh and Libertarian think tanks. In the South and West, Mr. Big was very successful in political terms: The Republican majority in Congress that lasted for over ten years between 1994 and 2006 was bank rolled Mr. Big who channeled the funds by means of third parties while he remained deep in the background.
Interestingly, Mr. Big did not support George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 because he considered Bush an opportunist with no core conservative values who could have just as easily ran for office as a Democrat. In this, as in many things political and business, Mr. Big was dead on target, as GWB’s big spending policies and endless compromises with the Democrats resulted in the growth of the federal government to a gigantic size never before seen in the history of the human race.
The federal government had become a leviathan by 2008. The ministers of this creature were an army of 5,000,000 bureaucrats working for regulatory agencies who spread their tentacles into all aspects of civil life in the formerly Great Republic. As if this swarm on federal agents were not enough to drive the average citizen mad with regulations and fines – An enforcement division exists of agencies like the FBI, BATF and Secret Service backed by the majesty of the federal court system to bulldoze into submission any private citizens thinking…well…patriotic thoughts like how much this “American Empire” was beginning to look like the British Empire of George III.
The Rubicon for Mr. Big was crossed with the election of Obama as president along with a majority Democrat Congress. He understood that the machinery of tyranny had already been created over a period of 70 plus years; all that was needed to end freedom in America was the election of a collectivist president like Barack Obama; a foreign ruler to his country like the great dictators of history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin; a ruthless man who would lead the greatest champion of liberty, and the world’s last best hope, the United States of America to ruin.
Thus Mr. Big settled on the radical idea of revolution – a Second American Revolution that would destroy the old regime root and branch – a violent uprising that would see massive destruction, famine and death in its wake, but would free America from tyranny. Some would argue that the cure was worse than the disease; Mr. Big would respond that if the patriots did not act and act soon, the evil empire of federalism would crush the lovers of liberty under the iron yoke of collectivism; that in short with the election of Obama revolution by the left had already been released against the American People, so what they did in defense of freedom was proper constitutionally and necessary even if it included a first strike against oppression.
Mr. Big was good at many things and a genius at business. Alas! He was not a revolutionist. Hence, he asked trusted members of his staff to come up with a list of ten right wing revolutionists. When his staff produced a list of ten names, Mr. Big told them to cut it down to five. When the staff after much research gave him a list of five Americans with proper rightist revolutionary credentials, Mr. Big send it back to them with a request the five names be reduced to one name. The name they came up with was Ronbo. This met with the approval of Mr. Big who arranged a meeting with Ronbo, a man of the shadow, ex-con and failed presidential assassin on the run from the Feds.
The two revolutionists met high in the Rocky Mountains at a ski lodge owned by Mr. Big in early 2009. On the one side was a nearly penniless vagabond hunted by the long arm of the federal Gestapo and a multi-billionaire no one suspected of any misdeed. The details of this meeting will no doubt go down in the annals of American history like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but the long and the short of it was that the Man and the Money had finally come together: Separate the duo was impotent against evil federalism; together they were the authors of destruction and creation.
The Second American Revolution was born!
Where do I come in? Simple. I was recruited by Ronbo. We are friends from way back and I have related already the details of that encounter. As part of the agreement made by Ronbo with Mr. Big all major players in the game of revolution must be interviewed by Mr. Big. This is not done for the purpose of supervision, Mr. Big has total faith in Ronbo’s selection of fellow revolutionaries, but rather to improve his education; after all, the nuts and bolts of revolution are not taught in any class and no owner’s manual exists with a series of steps mapped out that will bring life to the machine. No each revolution is different and unique – Once they occur the mold is thrown away.
I’m thinking these thoughts while my plane is nearing Orlando. We break through the clouds and began a long slow circle over central Florida; a region of lakes and river bounded by a vivid bright green. In this region of Florida the water seems to be as well represented as the land and I remember this part of the state is only a few feet above conquest by the Atlantic Ocean. The leftist environmentalists claim this watery Florida grave will happen before the end of the 21st century; however, like all claims made by the leftists this one is false as well.
At last the plane begins its final approach to Orlando International Airport and as we descend I can’t help but think of Wagner’s “The Ride of Valkyrie” with myself as a sort of war god reporting his master at Valhalla. The hatch of the sky machine is popped open and along with several hundred other former inmates of the big 747 I walk to the tram that takes me to escalator that takes me down to the baggage area. I find my one suitcase and walk out to find transportation. The June Florida is hot and topical and I break out in a sweat while walking to the taxi stand only a few feet outside the air conditioned terminal building. The taxi driver is from Jamaica but has lived in Florida for many years and knows the central Florida area as well as he once knew Kingston, Jamaica, his hometown.
After about a 20 minute trip down I 4 we turn off on the Disney Exit. The taxi driver, Ben Stafford, according to the license displayed on the dashboard, changes his channel to talk of Disney, “Did you know Disney World has the same land area as San Francisco?” I find facts like these to be very informative, since this is my first trip here. I notice that parallel to the roadway is the monorail line and a train is running at about the same speed as our taxi. We reach the main gate and we are quickly waved through in special lane for buses and taxis. The Contemporary Hotel looms up a few minutes later – It is built in an “A” frame style with a monorail line going through what is called, "The Grand Canyon Concourse" about four stories up.
We pull up to the ground transportation entrance where I say goodbye to Ben; he of the British accent and smiling black face graced with beautiful white teeth into whose hand I give a generous tip and cab fare with a promise to book him back to the airport when my vacation is finished here. I march into the Contemporary to the front desk. I present my documents and I.D. to the very pretty blond receptionist who says, “I’ll contact Mr. Big immediately and a security host will be here shortly to escort you up to the penthouse. Would you like a drink while you wait?” I order a Tom Collins that appears in the company of a beauty queen waitress who asks with a sweet Georgia peach accent, “Could I get you all anything else?”
I resist the obvious reply. Also, she is young enough to be my daughter.
I no sooner down the T.C. when a 20ish handsome young man in a blue blazer introduces himself as my security guard escort to the penthouse and Mr. Big. We walk a short distance down the lobby to the elevators where the security guard uses a special key to open an elevator. While we are entering, a mother with small child in hand attempts to enter. The security guard stops her and states, “Sorry lady. This elevator is for the penthouse only.” The woman turns away but a little girl of about six years asks, “Does Mickey Mouse live there?” The security guard beams at her as if she was the most important little girl in the world and says, “No sweet heart. Mickey Mouse lives over in the Magic Kingdom. You and your mommy can visit him at his house. This is your special ticket to see him,” and hands her a ticket. The door closes and I tell him I’m impressed with his professionalism and kindness. “This is what I’m trained to do here at Disney World. We hosts are always on stage and in character.”
In seconds the elevator flies up about 40 stories to the penthouse. The doors open to reveal a smiling man decked out in butler attire who asks me to follow him into an ultra modern and lavishly expensive room with picture windows looking out over the Magic Kingdom. The man departs, although I don’t notice because the view of one of the world’s most famous amusement parks is awesome and leaves me short of breath. “I’ve noticed the scene before us has the same effect on most other people who have never seen the Magic Kingdom; they are speechless for a moment,” relates a voice at my back. I turn around and a very large man offers his hand, “I’m Mr. Big. You must be Jack Idema. Ronbo has told me much about you. Would you care to have a seat? We’ll talk revolution.”
From the movie script:
Mr. Big and Jack Idema move to the library in the penthouse and settle into two large leather chairs. A servant brings in cart with coffee and cake. The two men are dressed casually in loud Hawaiian style shirts and comfortable slacks. Mr. Big is indeed a very large grey haired man who towers over Jack Idema and has a face that reminds one of Winston Churchill. In contrast Jack Idema is an intense smallish man with dark hair who looks every inch the physically fit Special Forces soldier.
Big: What are your plans for revolution? How would you do it?
Jack: The book on modern revolution was written here in America over 200 years old and remains a classic written about, studied and taught in scores of schools and colleges in all quarters of the globe.
Big: The American Revolution was largely the work of the patriots in all the colonies calling themselves, “Committees of Correspondence.
Jack: Yes. Now think of the way they were organized.
Big: If I recall correctly they weren’t organized. Those interested in revolution simply began writing to one another expressing their dislike for British oppression. This happened at first within the various colonies and they later expanded the correspondence to all the colonies. These committees had no central authority and acted independently. This made them impossible to crush by the British authorities.
Jack: I see you know your American history. This method of organization is known today as “Leaderless Resistance?” Now can you tell the modern terrorist group that follows such a concept with an important modification for leadership?
Big: I hate to say it: AL QAEDA.
Jack: Correct. Bin Laden and other high Islamofascist leaders set the agenda. The details are left up to the various cells. In the case of 9/11 the leadership identified the targets and provided the general instructions, money and technical advice.
Big: I see the value of the leaderless resistance cells: no chains of command; if you expose and destroy one cell you cannot follow the trail up or down; there is no trail to follow. The security organizations may destroy one cell, but miss five other cells directing themselves against the target.
Jack: Exactly. You start by recruiting a few zealots here and there. These very committed individuals recruit other like minded folks and before the authorities are even aware that a revolution is in progress thousands of rebels are coming together underground united by a common ideology and hatred of the regime. Even if the government is lucky and crushes 50% of them, the other 50% is alive, active and recruiting more and more members.
Big: The weak point would be the leadership element.
Jack: And how successful has this country been in killing Osama bin Laden? The most hunted man in the world with a $25 million bounty on his head. A man who is tracked by the best trained, equipped and led special operators in the world? A fugitive individual reduced to hiding in the wilds of central Asia and communicating by tape recording to his supporters. Yet this demon from the Gates of Hell still commands a global shadow army of terrorists busy plotting jihad against the number one nation in the world who has thrown billions of dollars and best military machine in human existence against him and his lackeys. The United States may have crushed 90% of the AL QAEDA terror cells beneath the iron boots of the legions, but the 10% still alive could author the next 9/11 – a nuclear holocaust.
Big: I was thinking of an example closer to home: Myself, you and Ronbo. The federal government with its vast armies of the night cannot stop a revolution in progress. I daresay we could publish the daily summaries of the growth of the Second Revolution and the Feds would not be able to stop it.
Jack: I do believe Ronbo is doing just that on his blog, THE FREEDOM FIGHTER JOURNAL. Of course, the names have been changed to protect the guilty and venues where the conspiracy meets, greets and plans are fictionalized. Ronbo considers this a recruiting tool. Can you imagine how more quickly the First American Revolution would have happened had the colonists had an Internet? The ten years that passed before the unrest resulted in the Battle of Lexington and Concord could have happened in ten months or less.
Big: I will say this about you and Ronbo: You both have guts and brains! The Big Fed Wolf chases a couple of revolutionary foxes for years, then suddenly these foxes stop running and the wolf, thinking it is coming in for the kill, finds itself in a revolutionary trap and is killed. Brilliant! Absolutely genius! Bravo! Bravo! Jack: Thank you very much for the kind words and applause. I would note for the record that it was your money in support that made the difference.
Big: I believe in an old concept called, “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Jack: We are three who made the revolution….
Big: Great minds think alike. And we are not only ones: Other patriots are forming Minutemen militia units and “Tea Parties” are coming back in style again. Jack: Revolution is as American as apple pie. Ben Franklin thought that a revolution every 20 years would be a good thing. Thomas Jefferson said the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and traitors.
Big: So we are in effect jumping on a wagon already in motion?
Jack: This is fair to say. There are ominous parallels in the actions of our federal government over the last 70 plus years and the oppression of the British Empire. Yesterday the lackeys of George III would control all aspects of our lives; today our own countrymen would do the same. It is unimportant whether tyranny is foreign or domestic – In either case the role of the patriot is to remove it.
Big: Have you considered the police and military? Do you think they will sit on their hands while the the militias storm the centers of power?
Jack: We have. Ronbo is working on a plan that will enlist the U.S. military on the side of the revolution. If this happens the major cities and the nation’s capital can be secured within hours after the first shots are fired.
Big: I was recently reading a book on the revolutionary left in the late 60s and early 70s. As you are well aware, the radical left was serious about seizing control of the government, but the problem was the fact that the police and military firmly supported the government. Thus the left was not successful, although they could flood Washington D.C. and other major cities with hundreds of thousands of their supporters.
Jack: Another unsuccessful group of revolutionists were the German officers who attempted to overthrow Hitler on July 20, 1944. They were able to wound Hitler, seize control of major European cities including the Nazi capital of Berlin and arrest scores of high ranking Nazis – Yet at the end of the day they were unsuccessful because a wide spread rebellion did not happen and Hitler was still alive.
Big: I see your point – A mass rebellion can be crushed. Likewise a military putsch can be stopped. But if you put the two things together the chances are the target government is overthrown.
Jack: Yes it is rather like professional boxing – The one/two punch that Mohammad Ali was famous for using. Punch number one with the right hand to the opponent’s chin at the same time with punch number two you nail him in the belly. The man goes down and it’s victory in Round One.
Big: This complex operation would all be coordinated by the Internet?
Jack: It would be. Let us say the code word for R Day would be, “John has a new car.” One could simply start a blog and tell all the conspirators to spring to arms on that day and take a certain targets down.
Big: And what if militia unit “A” marches to the nearest federal building finding it occupied by militia unit “B?”
Jack: I would expect things like that to happen; however, I think the people involved would work things out in the field.
Big: I would suggest we take time out for lunch. There is much food for thought. We will continue in the afternoon – I’m interested in the post revolution period.
Jack woke that Sunday morning at the Mount Vee Motel in Alexandra, Virginia. He had arrived Friday night after a drive from Richmond up I-95. Jack had planned to stay at a motel in Arlington, but had been so bone tired that he got off I-95 at the Alexandra exit and stopped at the first motel with a vacancy sign which was the Mount Vee. The motel had clearly seen better days but the room that Jack rented was clean and comfortable. He posted a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and literally passed out on the large double bed fully clothed and on top of the bedding.
It was Sunday morning now and his appointment with The General at the Pentagon was scheduled for high noon. Jack had been informed by Ronbo that an Army staff car would be present at the motel at 1100 hours (11:00 a.m. Jack always thought in terms of a military 24 hour clock). Jack took room service for a large Virginia breakfast that would normally fed a family of four and washed it down with 100% pure Columbian coffee (so said the menu) and then hit the bathroom for a long and very refreshing hot shower.
When the clock hit 1100 hours on the dot Jack heard a knock at the door. He opened the door to see a bird colonel dressed in a field uniform sporting a .45 automatic Colt on his belt.
“Jack Idema,” the officer announced in a Texas accent after taking a look down the deserted hallway as if expecting federal agents to jump out of the adjoining rooms.
“I have been called many names by many people,” said Jack fighting back the urge to salute the colonel, “old habits die hard,” he thought.
The colonel gave him a hearty hand shake and beamed a smile from a nearly perfect row of white teeth. The officer stood about six feet tall in his highly polished and unauthorized black jump boots. The officer looked like he had been created by central casting for a Hollywood blockbuster war movie.
“I am to be your escort to The General. Please follow me,” said the colonel who did a right turn and a walked towards the exit to the parking lot never doubting that Jack would follow closely behind.
They walked only a few feet from the door when a Hummer pulled up and a military policeman jumped out of the passenger door to hold open the rear door for Jack and the colonel.
The Hummer pulled to a stop on US1 which ran past the motel and a long column of four wheel drive weapon carriers rolled down the highway. The driver turned on his emergency equipment to stop the nearly bumper to bumper heavy trucks and turned on to the roadway. Jack noticed the vehicle in front of them was filled with heavily armed troops who looked out the back at the Hummer with disinterest.
“This is quite a parade you put together for an old Army sergeant.”
The colonel responded in pure Texan, “This here is one small part of a major civil defense drill. I do believe it’s called Plan “R.” The boys in the trucks are part of the 82nd Airborne that done come high balling it up from Ft. Bragg. They are the reinforcements for the paratroopers already in the District. I could tell you more, but I’ll let The General fully brief you. My name is Ben Smith and I’m from the birthplace of Texas – San Antonio.”
“Please to meet you, Colonel Smith.”
While the men were talking the Hummer’s radio cracked with terse military traffic that made no sense to the layman, “Sierra Tango will arrive at Lima Six in ten,” and other strange militaryese, but from the sheer volume of radio traffic even the most uninformed onlooker would know that something very big was happening in the District of Columbia on an otherwise dead Sunday morning.
At last pulling free of the military trucks the Hummer turned towards the Pentagon with emergency equipment flashing and siren blowing. The vehicle roared passed a heavily guarded Pentagon checkpoint complete with an M1 main battle tank those 120 mm cannon pointed high into the air as though the planners feared an accidental discharge into a populated area. At last the Hummer pulled to a halt in front of a door guarded by paratroopers of the 82nd in bright red berets armed with M4 assault rifles.
The MP in the front seat jumped out of his door and opened the back seat door.
“Show time,” said the colonel to Jack who stood up. The paratroopers came to attention and saluted with their rifles as if he and Colonel Smith were inspecting officers. Jack could not help giving them a hand salute on the way to the door.
“Did you know this was the part of the Pentagon hit on 9/11? Over 200 people killed and scores injured. Every September 11th the public thinks of the 3,000 killed at the World Trade Center in New York City while they forget the 200 plus military and civilians murdered here in Washington, D.C.,” said Smith his voice grim.
………..
Meanwhile in the Pentagon War Room the staff drew a breath of relief – Plan R had come off without a major problem – over 100,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and the Marine Corps had "taken" all major objectives. This was a tribute to the fact that these were America’s most experienced and resourceful assault troops, the veterans of many a hard fought battle in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. One loud mouth and very overweight REMF Army major said unnecessarily to a room full of highly decorated combat officers (very likely in a vain attempt to suck up to his betters)
“Why these boys could storm the Gates of Hell on 15 minutes notice and shoot old Satan himself.”
The room went silent and the assembled personnel came to attention as The General walked down the center aisle followed by aides. This officer was a smallish type of middle age man with grey hair and blue eyes that darted about the semi dark War Room with its numerous small numerous video screens to the large central screen in which a map of the District of Columbia and the surrounding areas of Maryland and Northern Virginia with targets in the hundreds outlined in white. A target was considered “taken” if a red “x” appeared over the white square. One glance at the “game board” was enough to inform The General that this exercise was an over 95% success with only a few white target squares in existence.
“I want you all to applaud yourselves and the troops of all branches of the Armed Forces who took part in this exercise for a job well done!” said The General whose amplified baritone voice shot off the walls of The War Room which erupted into wild cheers and applause as 48 hours on pent up tension was released.
Then a chant started in the back of the room that grew louder and louder, “Conway, Conway, ALL THE WAY WITH CONWAY!!!”
The General looked at his War Room staff and tears begin to flow freely down his cheeks. He thought, “Damn these were great people and stalwart patriots – the best warriors the United States of America had to offer. Indeed, they would storm the Gates of Hell as the fat major said if he gave the order. He felt like Julius Caesar on the banks of the fateful Rubicon knowing that his life was ended by order of the Senate unless his Legions crossed behind him.”
When the War Room saw The General’s tears, they too began to cry and shout, “Bravo! Bravo!” As if he were a latter day Richard Wagner who had written and produced a Grand Opera in which they all had an important role to play. The General smiled in tears and waved back to the staff walking quickly towards the exit as military policemen pushed over enthusiastic personnel away from him and cleared a path to the nearest exit. …… Jack Idema and Colonel Smith waited in The General’s well appointed office with several aides for a short time before the door opened and Conway appeared with an attractive female Air Force captain carrying a clipboard. A military police light colonel and several enlisted men closed the door behind The General literally pushing several officers out of the room and secured the door. The General turned to the female officer and said, “Tell General Ridgeway that I’m well pleased with the Eastern Airlift Command’s performance today – The USAF made the impossible happen today.”
The pretty dark haired captain made a quick note, “I’ll pass on your remarks to General Ridgeway. And on a personal note let me say it’s an honor to have been allowed to be the liaison between the Air Force and the author of our twin victories in Iraq and Afghanistan.“
The General, a courtly Southerner from South Carolina, bent and kissed her hand, “It was an honor for me to be allowed by the Almighty to lead warriors such as you.”
The captain turned a beet red and departed the room as quickly as her high heels would carry her wiping away tears that refused her repeated commands to stop.
The General turned to the dozen or so officers like present in his office. "I request everyone to leave except for Colonel Smith and the gentleman in civilian clothes."
The room was quickly emptied and The General motioned Smith and Idema into a small Spartan conference room furnished with a small round table and three chairs. The General locked the door and pulled down a switch.
“There! We are cut off from the outside world, so the experts tell me.”
Colonel Smith smiled, “Well maybe yes…and maybe no. We are if the people who built this room were really Army personnel and not agents of the Secret Service. If they were then somebody not far away is gittin some awful interestin pictures and videos in living color and full stereo. Hey Jack, smile! You may be on candid camera.”
“Mr. Idema please do not let Ben worry you. He would never compromise my safety and it was he who supervised the construction of this conference room. I have complete trust in Ben Smith.”
From the movie script, "The White Rose": General Stonewall J. Conway, Colonel Ben Smith and Jack Idema are having a meeting in a small paneled conference room in the Pentagon. They are seated around a round table in comfortable black office chairs. The two officers are dressed in combat uniforms and the colonel wears a pistol belt containing a .45 Colt automatic pistol. Jack Idema is wearing blue jeans, plaid shirt and corduroy jacket. The general speaks....
Conway: “May I introduce myself? I'm U.S. Army General Stonewall Jackson Conway of Charleston, South Carolina. My official title is Commander of Joint Service Operations. My station is several rungs down from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but as is well known around the Pentagon, I'm the de facto supreme commander of the American military...”
Idema: “I've aware of that fact for years now – you got me out of that crap hole of a prison in Afghanistan back in 2007. I'm very grateful for your help. I think about another six months I'd been twice as crazy as I am already even though I lived pretty large there and had an Internet connection plus a satellite phone.
Conway: “I want you know, Mr. Idema, that in 2004 when you were arrested doing the Lord's work trying to run down Osama bin Laden, my hands were tied by the State Department. It was those commie bastards in State that got the Afghans to arrest you.”
Idema: “I know all that....Again thanks! And let me tell you that standing in the same room with an American hero on the level of George Patton is something I'll never forget.”
Conway: “I'm often called, “the Unknown Soldier” because outside the Pentagon few people have heard of me.”
Idema: “The ones who count do know you – A soldier of the old school who kicks butt and takes names. You are also known for victories purchased at low cost for your troops and at maximum expense to the enemy.”
Smith: (He pushes across the table a folder) “Jack, These papers outline Plan "R." The plan really is about the upcoming revolution; however, for now we'll stick with the moniker of Romeo.”
Idema: (Glancing quickly thru the pages), “So the routine civil defense drill this morning was more than routine? A dress rehresal for a coup? I thank you both for the show, but it was going to much trouble just for little old me.”
Conway: (laughs) Hardly. It was just pure chance you hit town the day we do a dry run for Revolution Day....which is scheduled for August.
Idema: (looking up from the papers) “So soon? I got the impression from Ronbo that we were going to need at least a year to get everything in order...”
Conway: “There was thinking along those lines. Certainly if we had a year we could fine tune the putsch down to the microsecond, but the sad reality is that don't have more than a few months at most to go over the top. There have been development recently here in D.C. that you and Ronbo know nothing about. Our hand is being forced by the opposition.”
Idema: (holding up a DVD he found in the folder) “Would the change in date have anything to do with this?”
Conway: “Yes, it would, Mr. Idema. This 60 minute DVD was produced by the National Security Agency (NSA) at Ft. Meade, Maryland from hundreds of hours of video taken in the Oval Office. It would appear our Grand & Glorious President O'Hara will activate his Red Guards in about 90 days. These units will help the police make mass arrests of 20,000 plus innocent Americans, including about 90% of the senior officer corps of the U.S. Military. The leadership of the Republican Party will be likewise swept away in one fell swoop. Also, on the arrest lists are leading conservative media persons like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity....I could go on – watch the DVD and read the transcript! This will be a contemporary version of the 1934 "Night of the Long Knives" when Hitler destroyed the senior leadership of the SA and murdered and jailed opponents of his regime.
Idema: (looking quickly thru some papers) “You forgot to mention O' Hara's execution orders: certain high ranking individuals like yourself are to be executed without trial in various federal prisons by firing squads. WHAT A MONSTER!”
Conway: “Now do you see the need to move things quickly forward?”
Idema: “Kill them! Kill them all!”
Conway: “That was my first thought when the Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Steiner, showed me the transcript the very afternoon I had to attend a White House function where that bastard O'Hara was in attendance and I could have saw to his end; however, cooler heads, or should I say a cooler head, Colonel Smith, prevailed to change my mind.”
Idema: “How did he manage to get cameras into the Oval Office?”
Conway: “He didn't need to – The cameras were under the management of his staff and well guarded by the U.S. Secret Service, the SS, but the world of SIGINT, Signal Intelligence, is a universe ruled by the National Security Agency, NSA, whick knows any electronic device radiates a radio frequency. This particular bandwidth was intercepted by the electronic warfare people at Ft. Meade in the W2 Branch, who operate some of the most advanced intercept equipment only about 20 miles away from the White House as the crow flies.”
Idema: “I thought NSA couldn't spy inside the USA.”
Conway. “I thought presidents were forbidden to plot the arrest and murder of thousands of innocent people and recreate the GULAG.”
Idema: “We were both misinformed....”
Conway: “About the militias – will they be ready by August 15th?”
Idema: “It can be done.....if we go petal to the metal.”
Conway: “What about money? Tell me what you need to make it happen. I have wealthy friends on Wall Street who don't much fancy a vacation to a concentration camp.”
Idema: “We are pretty well funded by Mr. Big of Colorado....I'll let you know if we need more. What we really need are weapons and ammunition.”
Conway: “I can help you out there. What types of weapons?”
Idema: “How about AK47s?”
Smith: “If I may interrupt for a moment – The U.S. Army has over three million AK47s in storage at Ft. Bliss, Texas. These weapons were captured in Iraq at the conclusion of the invasion in 2003 from Saddam's Republican Guard. I understand they are in excellent condition and ready for service. Ditto ammunition for them. We have acres of AK47 ammo.”
Conway: “Why AK47s? We have vast stocks of M-16s and M4s?"
Idema: “I don't doubt you do, but we are talking about untrained militia here. I can teach a 12 year old kid to become deadly with an AK47 in about half an hour. If train him on the M-16 you're talking upwards of six weeks or more. Also, the AK47s are rugged, dependable and basically impossible to destroy by poorly trained troops.”
Conway: “How many militiamen can you and Ronbo come up with?”
Idema: (thinks for a moment) “one million....two million.”
Conway: “That many?”
Idema: “It depends on the breaks. If the regular military, National Guard and reserves are with us on Revolution Day we have more than enough troops to seize control of all major cities in all fifty states."
Smith: "I've let the whiz kids in Plans & Training run this exercise in their simulators and they agree even without the militias we can overthrow the government and make mass arrests. The problem then becomes holding power. We can expect serious opposition here in this country and from our enemies overseas who will no doubt use the opportunity to hit us hard."
Conway: "Jack, what is Ronbo's thinking on the post revolutionary period?"
Idema: "Well for openers we'll need a president right away."
Conway: "Any idea who that would be? My thinking was along the lines of Mr. Big..."
Idema: "Ronbo and me agree it should be you?"
Conway: "I'm a general. First, last and always!"
Idema: "So were Washington, Jackson, Grant, and Eisenhower. All you need a is quick on the job training and you're good to go."
Conway: "They'll say I'm a latter day Julius Caesar who overthrew the republic."
Idema: "Yes and those critics would be right; like Caesar you will overthrow this republic for the same reason old Julius overthrew the Roman Republic -- It has become corrupt, degenerate and a tyranny."
Smith: "I see things the same way as Idema and Ronbo -- Indeed, the American Republic is dead....belly up....finished...KAPUTT! All we will be doing is throwing a stinking corpse into a grave. We must create a New Republic and you are the only man who can bring it off."
Conway: "And how do you know I won't end up as a mad Caligula Caesar ruling an American Empire? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Idema: "Because you have not until now seriously considered idea of being president. I would think a tyrant in waiting would be giving orders to his less powerful allies instead of asking for their advice."
Conway: "I'm not George Washington The Second. My imperfect life and service to this nation can in no way compare to Washington. I remember as school boy learning that Washington was first in war; first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Now there was a hero to the ages! Washington wasn't perfect, but he was as near to being perfect as mortal man can be..."
Idema: "General, I'm a little man. Ronbo is a little man. Smith here is well...a little big man. But you are a Great Man. I read your biography last night. Last week I read your book on counter insurgency. Last month I read your book on the reformation and rebirth of America you wrote under an alias. YOU ARE THE MAN!"
Conway: "Can you staff this idea, Colonel Smith? I want you to get your whiz kids on the case. I want the names of potential presidents."
Idema: "Take your time. We have over a month."
Conway: "I selected August 15th for Revolution Day because the president will be visiting his relations in Jamaica, Congress will be in recess, half the District of Columbia will be on vacation and it will be a Sunday."
Idema: "I'll pass the word to Ronbo. He's out West somewhere."
Conway: "I suppose this concludes the meeting."
Idema: "Yes. I can't think of anything more just now. The whole thing is just so gigantic it seems unbelievable; a work of fiction! I'm sure there are a million details to settle, but The Die Is Cast.
From the movie script, “The White Rose.” Location: Orlando, Florida on the 4th of July. The scene opens as a middle aged man wearing a backpack walks down a divided four lane street. The street is well landscaped with palm and pine trees lining the roadway. There are views of several motels and business building while the man walks into the camera eye for a few minutes. The weather is beautiful under a cloud free sky as this is morning long before the thunder storms move in for the almost daily afternoon shower.
Then the scene changes to one of hyper activities: Orlando police and Orange County deputies block off the man’s path up and down the street. A black SUV with tinted windows rolls up to walking the man who stops in his tracks, as if expecting such a development. The doors open and two men in plain clothes jump out and quickly arrest the walking man and handcuff him.
The walking man is dressed in shorts and wears a loud shirt as is the custom with Florida tourists. The two plain clothes policemen are dressed differently: One wears casual sports clothes and has short dark hair; the other officer is well dressed in a conservative dark business suit and has longish hair that is the current style for men.
The Walking Man: “Since I’m obviously in custody a couple of things: Aren’t you required to read me my Miranda Rights and tell me why I’m being detained?”
The Sports Clothes Cop: (who is busy going thru the backpack) Who said you’re under arrest? Whatever gave you that idea? This is just a friendly encounter with an old friend: I’m Agent Smith of the Secret Service and the well dressed gentleman who is busy looking at the phone list in your cell phone is Agent Jones. (Jones waves and smiles. He is now busy in examination of the wallet)
The Walking Man: “Are you sure you have the right guy?”
Smith: “You mean you aren’t you? You aren’t the famous ’Ronbo’”
Ronbo: “Glad to meet you. Now would you take off the cuffs? I think my hands are beginning to swell up?”
Smith: “Shortly.”
(A dark Lincoln town car with tinted windows drives up. Agent Smith opens the rear door and has a brief conversation with the person inside. The camera backs off and we can see the street blocked off at either end by SWAT teams who watch the party intently. Smith finishes the conversation and walks back to Ronbo.)
Smith: “The Deputy Director of the Secret Service will see you now, please follow me.”
Ronbo: “As if I had an option….”
Smith: (Looking at Jones who follows with the back pack) “Find anything?”
Jones: “Only $10,000 in the back pack. Hundred dollar bills.”
Smith: “Say, Ronbo, where does a man who hasn’t held a job since 2001 come by $10,000?”
Ronbo: “I got lucky at black jack in Vegas?”
Smith: “Okay. Now show me the receipt from the Casino?”
Ronbo: “Didn’t you find it? I thought I put it with the money.”
Smith: “Try again.”
Ronbo: “My uncle died and left me $10,000”
Smith: “Not your Uncle Sam?”
Ronbo: “No, my Uncle Fred.”
Smith: “Show me the Will. Ronbo, I’m disappointed. You’re suppose to be the master of conspiracy and yet come up with BS stories just like a common street thug busted with a bag of drug money. I guess you know the government seizes this money?”
Ronbo: “I’m sorry Agent Smith. If that really is your name. The Secret Service seems to be filled with Smith and Jones. Please feel free to keep the cash -- I know in these troubled economic times the government needs every red cent it lays its hands on.”
Voice from inside the limo: “Smith take off the cuffs you put on Ronbo and give him back all his property. Ronbo please join me.”
Ronbo: (sliding into the back seat with Smith taking the front passenger seat) “Well I’ll be darn: It’s Senior Special Agent John McKenna, my arresting officer from 1994! I see your career with the SS has been rewarding -- A deputy director, no less! I’m impressed.”
McKenna: (who bears a likeness to Martin Sheen) “I see you have grown as well, although not in a socially approved way. I do wish you’d stop calling us the “SS” -- I mean one gets the mental picture of secret policemen breaking down doors and arresting people for being Jews and such.”
Ronbo: “As is well known, the American SS is an equal opportunity organization who equally oppresses all Americans regardless of race, creed, or religion.”
McKenna: (Changing the subject)”Where would you like to go for lunch.?” Ronbo: “When in Orlando I always go to my favorite hamburger joint -- the NASCAR bar and grill. It’s just up this street after the light”
McKenna: (To the driver) “ You heard that? (the man nods) To Smith: “Take off Ronbo’s cuffs. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with him. Also, call off the back ups.”
Ronbo: (Trying to get circulation back in his hands) “Why do you guys always put the cuffs on so damn tight?”
Smith: “It’s what we do. It’s our thing. After all, we are the good guys and you’re an ex-con bad guy. You should be glad we let you go to be as free as a bird.”
(The limo pulls up to the VIP entrance to City Walk where the NASCAR is located. The three men walk into the park. All three are dressed in shorts and wear loud shirts, which is the standard attire for males on vacation in Orlando. In a short time they are seated at the NASCAR bar and grill. A pretty blond waitress hands them a menu.)
Waitress: “What will ya’all have?” spoken in a southern accent. Her name tag reads, 'Sue.'”
Ronbo: “I’ll take the world famous NASCAR cheeseburger with fries and a big dill pickle washed down with a very large Coors draft. ”
McKenna: “Smith and I will take the same. We are in such a vacation mood today.”
Smith: “A beer? We are on duty, chief.”
Ronbo: (To Sue who looks puzzled) “You see, Sue, these are agents of the Secret Service and they are suppose to interrogate me today and so are on duty. They are not allowed to drink on duty, not even a beer. But it would appear that Agent McKenna has reached such a high level of authority in the SS that such small matters of discipline are no longer important. Please show your gun to Sue, Agent Smith.”
Sue: (smiling) “Oh, I get it! You all are actors in some new movie here at Universal Studios. What’s it called?”
Ronbo: “Revolution.” (Smith kicks Ronbo under the table)
McKenna: “I’ll take my burger rare. What about you, Smith?”
Smith: “As rare as I can get it. I love the sight of blood (Shooting eye daggers at Ronbo)
Sue: “And you , sir? How would you like your burger cooked” (Looking at Ronbo with pen and pad in hand)
Ronbo: “Well done.” (Smith eyes him coldly)
(Sue hurries off with the order)
Smith: “Chief, could I have five minutes alone with this jerk. I promise not to leave any marks or break any bones.”
McKenna: “I respect your zeal for law enforcement, Agent Smith, but we are here just to talk to Mr. Ronbo like gentlemen. Isn’t that right, Ronbo?”
Ronbo: (rubbing his knee) “Damn Smith that smarted! I’d hate to get kicked by you if you were wearing steel toed boots.” (to McKenna) “Yeah, sure. It’s your dime, start talking, Mac.”
Sue: (Appearing with the beer) “Enjoy. The burgers will be here shortly.”
McKenna: (Taking a small sip of beer and wiping his mouth) “Ronbo you simply must stop dropping out of sight for months on end and moving about the country doing God knows what. Did you know in the last several months we have had Ronbo sightings in places like Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California.”
Ronbo: “I like to travel about and see the big old U.S. of A.”
McKenna: “And you are done just that…But what puzzles me is that you don’t seem to stay in one place longer than 24 hours.”
Ronbo: (Taking a big sip of Coors) “I get bored easily and move on.”
McKenna: “Why did you go to Las Vegas?”
Ronbo: “I heard the beach was great here.”
Smith: “The beach? Las Vegas, Nevada is in the middle of a desert!”
Ronbo: (Finishes off the Coors and orders another by sign language to Sue at bar) “Damn! I was misinformed.”
McKenna: (To Smith) “Ronbo is having fun with us.” (To Ronbo) I see CASABLANCA is one of your favorite movies too? What role do I have?”
Ronbo: (As Sue brings him another cold one) “I think the Claude Rains role, a corrupt petty official of a collectivist government who wants to be on the winning side with the loot.”
McKenna: (Noticing that Ronbo is making excellent progress on his second Coors) “I see you have the Humphey Bogart part down pat -- you’re a drunk.”
Ronbo: “Yes, but I’ll be sober in the morning and you’ll still be a flat foot secret policeman.”
McKenna: “Ronbo, we know you have been out West for months. We know you have been throwing around money -- millions of dollars -- like a drunken sailor on a weekend pass. We know that you seem to have access to an apparently limitless supply of AK47 and ammunition. We know that you seem to have made contact with about half the dangerous militia types on our watch list….”
Ronbo: (He waves the empty glass at Sue, both Smith and McKenna are still working on their first beer) “There’s a problem? Let us just say for the sake of an argument that I’m traveling around the country giving away guns and money to people you disapprove of. So what? As long as the money are honest bucks and the AK47s aren’t automatics you have no case. I may just be altruistic and just helping out my survivalist friends.”
Smith: "As you well know being a man of no small weapons experience it only takes an expert a few minutes to convert a semi-automatic AK47 to full automatic. Interestingly, someone had done that already to the weapons we captured."
Ronbo: "If you say so, Agent Smith." (Ronbo appears to give his third large beer of the afternoon all his attention and the agents watch with awe as it too follows the quick fate of the first two.)..."Of course, it could be that the AK47s you intercepted were never semi-automatic to begin with."
McKenna: "We had thought of that as well...But where would someone get access to full automatic AK47s?"
(Sue carries in a tray filled with cheese burgers and fries. She serves them to the three men along with another Coors draft for Ronbo.)
Ronbo: (Takes a long sip) "Ah! There is nothing better cool beer on a hot Florida July afternoon! (Smith and McKenna eye him coldly) Guys I'm not feeling the love here!"
Smith: "Answer the question, mister?"
Ronbo: "Why do you keep asking me questions that you know the answers to?"
McKenna: "Please humor us."
Ronbo: (He finishes off the beer and waves the empty glass at Sue who pulls the handle to the Coors draft machine) "The answer is.....so obvious -- Only the military could supply the weapons in question in mass quantity....which means..."
McKenna: "Yes?"
Ronbo: "Very bad news for your side: The Armed Forces have joined the rebel cause."
McKenna: (Placing three pictures on the table from a folder he's carrying) "You know these men?"
Ronbo: (Eating the cheeseburger and fries like a starving man and washing it down with large gulps of beer. He pauses briefly and looks at the pictures) "More importantly do know who they are."
McKenna: "This is General Conway. The second is Jack Idema. The third is Mark Alexander who is more commonly known as 'Mister Big'"
Ronbo: (Who has just downed a good quarter of his burger in one large bite and chased it down with a large gulp of beer) "My co-conspirators in revolution. Do you think you sell the case to a U.S. Attorney."
McKenna: "I wouldn't think of it! (He looks at Smith with a smile) I'm sure the Department of Justice has its hands full of work processing the important things the president is interested in: Tax cheats, drug dealers and white supermacists.
Ronbo: "So you want to make a deal, Louie? This is getting so CASABLANCA. I can see a beautiful relationship starting. Why the turn about? Let me guess -- the higher ups didn't believe a revolution was brewing and refused to allow you to crush us."
McKenna: "If you can't beat'em join em."
Ronbo: "I believe you."
McKenna: "Just like that - you believe me. No proof needed. A trusting soul?"
Ronbo: "Let's just say we have our people in the Secret Service. They tell us things."
McKenna: "Terms?"
Ronbo: "We allow you and your bodyguard Smith to live anywhere in world outside the USA after the success of the revolution. I'm sure as a man of the world you can have a wealthy retirement. You have a Swiss bank account, I believe?"
McKenna: (Angerly wipping his lips with the napkin) "Agreed."
Ronbo: "There are conditions."
McKenna: "They are?"
Ronbo: "You must turn President O'Hara over to us alive. The White House is not to be defended by the SS. No Secret Service or White House files, recordings or videos are to be destroyed."
McKenna: (Wiping the sweat from his face) "I'll do my best, but I can promise nothing."
Ronbo: "I think you can and will deliver -- you're a ruthless bastard."
From the movie script: “The White Rose.”
Scene: Winter Park, Florida in the early evening just after a thunderstorm has cleared the air and cleaned Park Avenue, the main street. This is a beautiful, upscale town in Central Florida that could be taken on a village in Ohio were it not for the palm trees.
The camera moves up the street to focus on a middle age man with grey hair sitting at an outside table in front of Starbucks drinking coffee. The man is dressed in tourist style wearing a loud shirt, short pants and tennis shoes. He has a black backpack sitting in the chair opposite him and is giving a map of the local attractions his full attention, but on occasion looking up and down the street as if looking for someone.
A young 20 something woman with dark hair and eyes walks into the Starbucks to buy a cup of coffee. She returns outside and meets the man's glance. The woman is well dressed in professional fashion and has long hair neatly tied into a pony tail. She wears no jewlery aside from a large silver “Star of David” that hangs from her neck.
The woman walks to the man's table and pulls a white rose out of her small expensive looking purse and places it on the table in front of the man while looking quickly at the people drinking coffee around them to see if anyone takes note. No one does.
Ronbo: “The white rose is a symbol of liberty.”
Woman: “The white rose also represents the timeless values of Western Civilization.”
Ronbo: (Standing)“Sign and passwords. You must be Fanny Kaplan.”
Fanny: “At your service.You're Ronbo.” (They shake hands)
Ronbo: “Please have a seat.” (He moves the backpack off the chair)
Fanny. “Ronbo you've become something of a legend; I half expected not to meet anyone here this evening.”
Ronbo: “Very likely I'm a disappointment to you. I'm very plain and common. People seldom remember my face.”
Fanny: “I never judge a book by its cover.”
Ronbo: “I'm impressed by the large number of female revolutionists I'm meeting on this trip to Florida.”
Fanny: “We should let the guys have all the fun?” (She smiles briefly and her thin face is much improved) “As you are aware Mr. Bernestein couldn't make it tonight due to a family emergency.”
Ronbo: “Not a problem. The money and instructions are in the backpack. Tell Bernie to destroy the instructions after reading.” (He passes the backpack to Fanny) Fanny: “Funny how life turns out – Three years ago I was a wall flower of a conservative Jewish girl from Miami and today I'm a radical in the Jewish Defense League involved with in a conspiracy that could land me in a federal prison for the rest of my life.”
Ronbo: “I'm a bit of a history buff – Didn't a Fanny Kaplan try to assassinate Lenin during the Russian Revolution?”
Fanny: “The Fanny Kaplan you're talking about was indeed one of my ancestors. She was a Social Revolutionary who tried to kill Lenin because he betrayed the revolution – Also Lenin turned out to be a raving anti-Semite. Tell me Mr. Ronbo, are you and your right wing pals anti-Semites? How many Jews get shot after your revolution?
Ronbo: (Taking a sip of coffee) “My people aren't in the habit of killing our allies.”
Fanny: (Looking at him with doubt) “Mr. Bernestein thinks you and your wild bunch are good people. I respect his opinion, after all he's been a member of the JDL longer than I've been alive.”
Ronbo: “Bernie and I go back a long way – He was my cellmate in the federal GULAG back in the 1990s. I believe Bernie got a three year sentence for owning automatic weapons.”
Fanny: I believe his words were to the effect that you are a Righteous Man. This is high praise for a man who has few Christian friends.”
Ronbo: “Thanks for the kind words.”
Fanny: “What about the weapons?
Ronbo: “Bernie will have to brief you on the details, but let your heart not be troubled – On Revolution Day your JDL chapter will be well armed and equipped.”
Fanny: “How do you know I won't take the money and run?”
Ronbo: “Because Bernie is your favorite uncle who raised you and your sister and you love him. Also you're a devout Jew and stalwart supporter of Israel. Bernie talked about you quite a bit in prison. He called you Fancine..”
Fanny: "I hate that name! It's so French! I much prefer Fanny."
Ronbo: "Well this ends our business this quiet evening. I have a train to catch just up the street at the AMTRAK station. (Ronbo rises and throws away his coffee cup and exits the out door cafe. Fanny follows his lead)
Fanny: "Do you mind if I walk with you to the train station? I have some questions?"
(They walk down Park Avenue. The economic bad times are displayed even here with about half the shops empty and locked. The rest display sale signs to invite the few customers still available.)
Ronbo: "I'll be glad to answer your questions, but you may not like my answers."
Fanny: "Do you have a favorite philosopher? I'm working on my Ph.d. in philosophy at Rollins College. My favorite philosopher is Ayn Rand."
Ronbo: "Dear was Ayn Rand, but dearer still is the truth."
Fanny: "Why do you say that?"
Ronbo: "In ATLAS SHRUGS, Rand's greatest book, she does a very good job of playing the prophet and predicting exactly what is happening today, which is an economic and political meltdown to leading to socialism, yet she misses the fact that America was born in revolutionary war and cut its teeth in the most destructive civil war in modern history. In Rand's novel the opposition simply drops out; in reality we revolutionists will dropping in like a ton bricks on many a traitors' head."
Fanny: "True. America is in at least VERBAL revolt even as we speak - Just go into any public place and hear O'Hara being cursed to the high heavens! If the Secret Service arrested everyone who has threatened to kill O'Hara, they would need to jail about 150 million people."
(They walk thru a small city park to the station and waiting train.)
Ronbo: "I'll say goodbye and good luck to you Fanny Kaplan. I am curious about something - how do you square being a Jew with being an Objectivist - a follower of Randian philosophy - Ayn Rand was an atheist."
Fanny: "Simple. I'm born into the tribe of Israel and like Ayn Rand I'll always be a Jew. Like you too, Ronbo."
Ronbo: "I see you have been talking to Bernie - Yes, my grandmother on my mother's side was a Jew, but I was raised in the Baptist Church."
Fanny: (As Ronbo steps on the train) "A Jew always knows another Jew. Also the evil ones know who the Jews are as well."
(The train pulls out of the station and Ronbo seated by a window in the train waves at Fanny who smiles and waves back. The conductor motions for Ronbo's ticket and he pulls the ticket out of his pocket along with the Fanny's Star of David.)
From the movie script, “The White Rose.” Location: Orlando, Florida on the 4th of July. The scene opens as a middle aged man wearing a backpack walks down a divided four lane street. The street is well landscaped with palm and pine trees lining the roadway. There are views of several motels and business building while the man walks into the camera eye for a few minutes. The weather is beautiful under a cloud free sky as this is morning long before the thunder storms move in for the almost daily afternoon shower.
Then the scene changes to one of hyper activities: Orlando police and Orange County deputies block off the man’s path up and down the street. A black SUV with tinted windows rolls up to walking the man who stops in his tracks, as if expecting such a development. The doors open and two men in plain clothes jump out and quickly arrest the walking man and handcuff him.
The walking man is dressed in shorts and wears a loud shirt as is the custom with Florida tourists. The two plain clothes policemen are dressed differently: One wears casual sports clothes and has short dark hair; the other officer is well dressed in a conservative dark business suit and has longish hair that is the current style for men.
The Walking Man: “Since I’m obviously in custody a couple of things: Aren’t you required to read me my Miranda Rights and tell me why I’m being detained?”
The Sports Clothes Cop: (who is busy going thru the backpack) Who said you’re under arrest? Whatever gave you that idea? This is just a friendly encounter with an old friend: I’m Agent Smith of the Secret Service and the well dressed gentleman who is busy looking at the phone list in your cell phone is Agent Jones. (Jones waves and smiles. He is now busy in examination of the wallet)
The Walking Man: “Are you sure you have the right guy?”
Smith: “You mean you aren’t you? You aren’t the famous ’Ronbo’”
Ronbo: “Glad to meet you. Now would you take off the cuffs? I think my hands are beginning to swell up?”
Smith: “Shortly.”
(A dark Lincoln town car with tinted windows drives up. Agent Smith opens the rear door and has a brief conversation with the person inside. The camera backs off and we can see the street blocked off at either end by SWAT teams who watch the party intently. Smith finishes the conversation and walks back to Ronbo.)
Smith: “The Deputy Director of the Secret Service will see you now, please follow me.”
Ronbo: “As if I had an option….”
Smith: (Looking at Jones who follows with the back pack) “Find anything?”
Jones: “Only $10,000 in the back pack. Hundred dollar bills.”
Smith: “Say, Ronbo, where does a man who hasn’t held a job since 2001 come by $10,000?”
Ronbo: “I got lucky at black jack in Vegas?”
Smith: “Okay. Now show me the receipt from the Casino?”
Ronbo: “Didn’t you find it? I thought I put it with the money.”
Smith: “Try again.”
Ronbo: “My uncle died and left me $10,000”
Smith: “Not your Uncle Sam?”
Ronbo: “No, my Uncle Fred.”
Smith: “Show me the Will. Ronbo, I’m disappointed. You’re suppose to be the master of conspiracy and yet come up with BS stories just like a common street thug busted with a bag of drug money. I guess you know the government seizes this money?”
Ronbo: “I’m sorry Agent Smith. If that really is your name. The Secret Service seems to be filled with Smith and Jones. Please feel free to keep the cash -- I know in these troubled economic times the government needs every red cent it lays its hands on.”
Voice from inside the limo: “Smith take off the cuffs you put on Ronbo and give him back all his property. Ronbo please join me.”
Ronbo: (sliding into the back seat with Smith taking the front passenger seat) “Well I’ll be darn: It’s Senior Special Agent John McKenna, my arresting officer from 1994! I see your career with the SS has been rewarding -- A deputy director, no less! I’m impressed.”
McKenna: (who bears a likeness to Martin Sheen) “I see you have grown as well, although not in a socially approved way. I do wish you’d stop calling us the “SS” -- I mean one gets the mental picture of secret policemen breaking down doors and arresting people for being Jews and such.”
Ronbo: “As is well known, the American SS is an equal opportunity organization who equally oppresses all Americans regardless of race, creed, or religion.”
McKenna: (Changing the subject)”Where would you like to go for lunch.?” Ronbo: “When in Orlando I always go to my favorite hamburger joint -- the NASCAR bar and grill. It’s just up this street after the light”
McKenna: (To the driver) “ You heard that? (the man nods) To Smith: “Take off Ronbo’s cuffs. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with him. Also, call off the back ups.”
Ronbo: (Trying to get circulation back in his hands) “Why do you guys always put the cuffs on so damn tight?”
Smith: “It’s what we do. It’s our thing. After all, we are the good guys and you’re an ex-con bad guy. You should be glad we let you go to be as free as a bird.”
(The limo pulls up to the VIP entrance to City Walk where the NASCAR is located. The three men walk into the park. All three are dressed in shorts and wear loud shirts, which is the standard attire for males on vacation in Orlando. In a short time they are seated at the NASCAR bar and grill. A pretty blond waitress hands them a menu.)
Waitress: “What will ya’all have?” spoken in a southern accent. Her name tag reads, 'Sue.'”
Ronbo: “I’ll take the world famous NASCAR cheeseburger with fries and a big dill pickle washed down with a very large Coors draft. ”
McKenna: “Smith and I will take the same. We are in such a vacation mood today.”
Smith: “A beer? We are on duty, chief.”
Ronbo: (To Sue who looks puzzled) “You see, Sue, these are agents of the Secret Service and they are suppose to interrogate me today and so are on duty. They are not allowed to drink on duty, not even a beer. But it would appear that Agent McKenna has reached such a high level of authority in the SS that such small matters of discipline are no longer important. Please show your gun to Sue, Agent Smith.”
Sue: (smiling) “Oh, I get it! You all are actors in some new movie here at Universal Studios. What’s it called?”
Ronbo: “Revolution.” (Smith kicks Ronbo under the table)
McKenna: “I’ll take my burger rare. What about you, Smith?”
Smith: “As rare as I can get it. I love the sight of blood (Shooting eye daggers at Ronbo)
Sue: “And you , sir? How would you like your burger cooked” (Looking at Ronbo with pen and pad in hand)
Ronbo: “Well done.” (Smith eyes him coldly)
(Sue hurries off with the order)
Smith: “Chief, could I have five minutes alone with this jerk. I promise not to leave any marks or break any bones.”
McKenna: “I respect your zeal for law enforcement, Agent Smith, but we are here just to talk to Mr. Ronbo like gentlemen. Isn’t that right, Ronbo?”
Ronbo: (rubbing his knee) “Damn Smith that smarted! I’d hate to get kicked by you if you were wearing steel toed boots.” (to McKenna) “Yeah, sure. It’s your dime, start talking, Mac.”
Sue: (Appearing with the beer) “Enjoy. The burgers will be here shortly.”
McKenna: (Taking a small sip of beer and wiping his mouth) “Ronbo you simply must stop dropping out of sight for months on end and moving about the country doing God knows what. Did you know in the last several months we have had Ronbo sightings in places like Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California.”
Ronbo: “I like to travel about and see the big old U.S. of A.”
McKenna: “And you are done just that…But what puzzles me is that you don’t seem to stay in one place longer than 24 hours.”
Ronbo: (Taking a big sip of Coors) “I get bored easily and move on.”
McKenna: “Why did you go to Las Vegas?”
Ronbo: “I heard the beach was great here.”
Smith: “The beach? Las Vegas, Nevada is in the middle of a desert!”
Ronbo: (Finishes off the Coors and orders another by sign language to Sue at bar) “Damn! I was misinformed.”
McKenna: (To Smith) “Ronbo is having fun with us.” (To Ronbo) I see CASABLANCA is one of your favorite movies too? What role do I have?”
Ronbo: (As Sue brings him another cold one) “I think the Claude Rains role, a corrupt petty official of a collectivist government who wants to be on the winning side with the loot.”
McKenna: (Noticing that Ronbo is making excellent progress on his second Coors) “I see you have the Humphey Bogart part down pat -- you’re a drunk.”
Ronbo: “Yes, but I’ll be sober in the morning and you’ll still be a flat foot secret policeman.”
McKenna: “Ronbo, we know you have been out West for months. We know you have been throwing around money -- millions of dollars -- like a drunken sailor on a weekend pass. We know that you seem to have access to an apparently limitless supply of AK47 and ammunition. We know that you seem to have made contact with about half the dangerous militia types on our watch list….”
Ronbo: (He waves the empty glass at Sue, both Smith and McKenna are still working on their first beer) “There’s a problem? Let us just say for the sake of an argument that I’m traveling around the country giving away guns and money to people you disapprove of. So what? As long as the money are honest bucks and the AK47s aren’t automatics you have no case. I may just be altruistic and just helping out my survivalist friends.”
Smith: "As you well know being a man of no small weapons experience it only takes an expert a few minutes to convert a semi-automatic AK47 to full automatic. Interestingly, someone had done that already to the weapons we captured."
Ronbo: "If you say so, Agent Smith." (Ronbo appears to give his third large beer of the afternoon all his attention and the agents watch with awe as it too follows the quick fate of the first two.)..."Of course, it could be that the AK47s you intercepted were never semi-automatic to begin with."
McKenna: "We had thought of that as well...But where would someone get access to full automatic AK47s?"
(Sue carries in a tray filled with cheese burgers and fries. She serves them to the three men along with another Coors draft for Ronbo.)
Ronbo: (Takes a long sip) "Ah! There is nothing better cool beer on a hot Florida July afternoon! (Smith and McKenna eye him coldly) Guys I'm not feeling the love here!"
Smith: "Answer the question, mister?"
Ronbo: "Why do you keep asking me questions that you know the answers to?"
McKenna: "Please humor us."
Ronbo: (He finishes off the beer and waves the empty glass at Sue who pulls the handle to the Coors draft machine) "The answer is.....so obvious -- Only the military could supply the weapons in question in mass quantity....which means..."
McKenna: "Yes?"
Ronbo: "Very bad news for your side: The Armed Forces have joined the rebel cause."
McKenna: (Placing three pictures on the table from a folder he's carrying) "You know these men?"
Ronbo: (Eating the cheeseburger and fries like a starving man and washing it down with large gulps of beer. He pauses briefly and looks at the pictures) "More importantly do know who they are."
McKenna: "This is General Conway. The second is Jack Idema. The third is Mark Alexander who is more commonly known as 'Mister Big'"
Ronbo: (Who has just downed a good quarter of his burger in one large bite and chased it down with a large gulp of beer) "My co-conspirators in revolution. Do you think you sell the case to a U.S. Attorney."
McKenna: "I wouldn't think of it! (He looks at Smith with a smile) I'm sure the Department of Justice has its hands full of work processing the important things the president is interested in: Tax cheats, drug dealers and white supermacists.
Ronbo: "So you want to make a deal, Louie? This is getting so CASABLANCA. I can see a beautiful relationship starting. Why the turn about? Let me guess -- the higher ups didn't believe a revolution was brewing and refused to allow you to crush us."
McKenna: "If you can't beat'em join em."
Ronbo: "I believe you."
McKenna: "Just like that - you believe me. No proof needed. A trusting soul?"
Ronbo: "Let's just say we have our people in the Secret Service. They tell us things."
McKenna: "Terms?"
Ronbo: "We allow you and your bodyguard Smith to live anywhere in world outside the USA after the success of the revolution. I'm sure as a man of the world you can have a wealthy retirement. You have a Swiss bank account, I believe?"
McKenna: (Angerly wipping his lips with the napkin) "Agreed."
Ronbo: "There are conditions."
McKenna: "They are?"
Ronbo: "You must turn President O'Hara over to us alive. The White House is not to be defended by the SS. No Secret Service or White House files, recordings or videos are to be destroyed."
McKenna: (Wiping the sweat from his face) "I'll do my best, but I can promise nothing."
Ronbo: "I think you can and will deliver -- you're a ruthless bastard."
"You know what the fellow said: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." -Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man
One Small Iraqi Death
Gone With The Wind
"No" To EU
Club Gitmo
Did You know?
90%-95% OF ALL THE CONFLICTS ON THIS PLANET TODAY INVOLVE MUSLIMS FIGHTING NON-MUSLIMS OR EACH OTHER.
Hang John Murtha?
Muslims Eat Their Own Children
"Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people. At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family." -- Michael Yon
IDEA POWER
"Ideas power men. Men power cultures. Cultures power civilizations. Civilizations power history. Ideas are the fuel of man's mind.
It is not a question of whether man chooses to be guided by [philosophy]: he is not equipped to live without it." (Ayn Rand)
"History is philosophy teaching by example "(Lord Bolingbroke)
"The trouble with nations is that there is an unequal distribution of capitalism. "(Rush Limbaugh)
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. "(Thomas Jefferson)
Teddy Roosevelt
T.R. On Islam
The following passages were written in 1916 in Teddy Roosevelt’s book, “Fear God and Take Your Own Part”, reproduced in “What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur’an” by William Federer.
Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight.Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, an on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor. …..The civilization of Europe, American and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization because of victories through the centuries from Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century. During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today, nobody can find in them any “social values” whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influences are concerned.There are such “social values” today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.
.....victorious with terror
"I have been made victorious with terror"
Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand." Abu Huraira added: Allah's Apostle has left the world and now you, people, are bringing out those treasures (i.e. the Prophet did not benefit by them). Fighting for the Cause of Allah (Jihaad) Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Book 52: Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220
THE S.E.A.L. MOTTO
We train for war and fight to win. I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. The execution of my duties will be swift and violent when required, yet guided by the very principles I serve to defend.
Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold. In the worst of conditions, the legacy of my teammates steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail.
The Freedom Fighter's Journal
This Blog is dedicated to the heroic men and women of the world past and present who have stood up for liberty often at the cost of their lives; lives often spent in dubious battle against the forces of tyranny; lives that often end at the end of the tyrant's rope and the anonymous grave; but whose last thoughts often echo the words of Nathan Hale, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
Brilliant and Psychotic
"The Freedom Fighter’s Journal. Written by Ronbo, this BLOG is scary! Vacillating between brilliant and psychotic, if you come back often enough you will find yourself wondering if this is the writing of a tortured patriotic soul or that of a demented spirit awaiting the next white room vacancy in central Florida. But what matters is that the topics make you stop and think! And after all, this is the “Thinking Bloggers Award.” -- THE GRAY DOG
RONBO
The Freedom Fighter
Danger To The West
The biggest danger to the West is this climate of defeatism, appeasement, and cultural collapse now on display for the Islamists to see. This is the single biggest impetus to Islamist terrorism. We all have to grasp that terrorism is not the biggest threat we face. The biggest threat is the ideology that drives it. It’s not enough to fight terror, vital though that is. The principal battleground is the world of ideas, the battle for hearts and minds. The Islamists see this very clearly. They understand that psychological warfare — the fomenting of paranoia, resentment, hysteria, and demoralization — is their most effective weapon. If they can hijack the human mind to the cause of hatred and lies, they have an army; and if they can bamboozle and demoralize their victims, they will win.
