August 27-27; Second Manassas and the defeat of Gen. John Pope. "A heavy, soaking rain fell across northern Virginia on the night of August 30-31, 1862. Despite the storm’s intensity, it could not wash away the bloodstains that reddened the fields and wood lots along Bull Run creek. On the two previous days, more than 100,000 Northerners and Southerners had killed and maimed each other.
If General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had a single crucible that forged it into one of history’s finest commands, it was perhaps this familiar killing ground at Manassas."(Video)Numerous excellent links at this site.
Will they try him and Obama together or separately? "It added that it is considering legal action against all those "acting in concert" with the SEAL on his book, "No Easy Day," which is scheduled to be released Tuesday." Navy SEAL Author Rejects the Pentagon's Legal ThreatUpdate: "Former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette is going to tell his version of events surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden, even if the Pentagon sues him for every last penny. pe Read more at the Tunnel Wall.
It would appear the traitors within the Republican Party have just plunged a knife into the back of the American people!
The details here.
This will not stand!
I hope Mitt Romney understands that he doesn't get elected without patriot support.
My
Fellow Americans, we have a very serious problem with the U.S. Secret
Service (SS) and the Presidential Protective Detail. Clearly, the SS
see themselves as personally loyal to Obama to the exclusion of the
U.S. Constitution. This is a typical fascist evolution. In Raleigh,
North Carolina residents were demonstrating against Obama in 2007 when a
cavalcade of vehicles sped through the city with his presidential
candidate SS Protective Detail. Reports said that the Detail's reaction
to ordinary citizen peaceful protest lining the streets of downtown
Raleigh was to brandish their fully automatic weapons out the lowered
windows of their black SUVs,
with the tailgate to the last SUV in trail lowered with a belt fed
weapon extended out over the tail gate. This was done to intimidate the political opponents of Obama. This was among the first incidents of continuing SS gross misconduct.
Today this over reaction to peaceful
demonstrators against Obama has become Presidential Protective Detail
Standard Operating Procedure:
SS regularly intimidates
local police departments as well when the president comes visiting
and treats the police as the enemy of the president. The photo above
was taken in the summer of 2010, after Obama had dinner at a local
Chicago Restaurant. Please note the SS agent's hand and what it is
doing in the picture above.
I am very much afraid that the SS of old has been replaced by a new SS designed to intimate, harass and imprison Obama's political opponents. The SS now pursues Obama's
political agenda, beyond doing its job of protecting the president.
This is the reason why the SS should be highly suspect in any
investigation it performs on members of the US public. History shows
us that fascists like Obama have accomplished very much the same
thing. Obama should be exposed and ridiculed for the perversion of what
was a special and sometimes heroic service to every president. Today,
the SS are just another cadre of political thugs.
As in this Turkish incident the SS are continuously used as a political arm of the Obama administration used to intimidate those whom the president wishes to be terrorized. This is typical of any fascist political leader. Obama is no different.
Its really amazing how paranoid the Secret Service Details are.
They are briefed, IMHO, that there will be a public backlash to Obama’s purposeful policy to disintegrate American society.
They are on edge and their masters are paranoid.
It is a sign that the Obama Regime's policies are indeed being performed to make Americans violent.
Joe Biden's SS Protective Detail has run over people in gross disregard for public safety. One citizen died.
It is clear that Obama does not
support the 1st amendment rights of all Americans, or our right to
freely assemble. This is very clear in the behavior of the SS
Protective Detail, who one day they may open fire on crowds of
innocent Americans.
Brandon Raub Ordered Released by Circuit Judge
Posted by Christopher Manion on August 24, 2012
In a stinging rebuke to the FBI, the Secret Service, and other self-appointed Thought Police, Hopewell Circuit Judge W. Allan Sharrett ordered the immediate release of Brandon Raub, whom Virginia authorities had imprisoned last week because of anti-government comments that he had posted on the Internet.
Judge Sharrett found "that a document ordering Raub's transfer this week from a Hopewell hospital to the Salem VA Medical Center was faulty and "so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy."
Special thanks and congratulations are in order for the vital role played by the Rutherford Institute, which immediately came to Raub's defense and exposed the scandalous series of illegal actions on the part of Virginia officials that railroaded Mr. Raub into a psychiatric jail for a thirty-day term without being charged of any crime.
Readers should note that every level of government, from the federal to the local police in Chesterfield County, here in Virginia, were complicit in this illegal arrest and incarceration.
No one at any level of government stepped forward to defend Mr. Raub's First Amendment rights until the Rutherford Institute initiated legal action in his defense and took the matter to court. That includes Virginia Republicans Rep. Bob Goodlatte and former Senator and current Senate candidate George Allen, both of whom did not respond to requests I placed with their respective offices.
This should be a lesson — and a warning — for us all
The odd thing about Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate is that the news was received with elation by both sides, by both Republicans and Democrats, by both the right and the left.
Both sides see the potential upside for themselves. The right sees a
vice-presidential candidate who compensates for the deficiencies of
their presidential candidate, providing more energy, more regular-guy
charisma, and most of all a clear and compelling vision. The left sees a
candidate who has taken a strong stance in favor of a proposal they are
comfortable attacking. Ryan offers them relief from having to run on a
weak economy and allows them instead to run against an agenda they think
is deeply unpopular.
So everybody's happy. But as John Dickerson points out,
both sides can't be right. No matter what side you're on, if you don't
feel a pit in the bottom of your stomach right now, you've lost the
thread.
This is a high-risk, high-reward proposition for both sides. But
the risks and rewards are not evenly distributed. The risks are much
greater if you're on the left, and the rewards are much greater if
you're on the right.
For those on the right, the downside is bad—but not as bad as you might
think. While a Romney-Ryan loss may be pinned by some on Ryan's
radicalism, it is far more likely to be pinned on Romney—on his
campaign's failure to respond early enough to a ruthless negative
campaign, or his awkwardness in explaining parts of his past record, or
the general perception that he lacks conviction on the big issues of the
day. Like Sarah Palin, Ryan is likely to be remembered as the part of
the ticket people were most enthusiastic about—and unlike Palin, if Ryan
goes down, it won't be due to his own failings. He does not have a
messy family life, and he has demonstrated that he is well-informed,
well-prepared, and able to handle himself ably in press interviews. So
if he does not become vice-president, I suspect Paul Ryan will be first
in line for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
And he'll be watching and waiting, because he knows that the economic
and fiscal issues that define his agenda are not going away. In fact, he
will expect that under Obama they are all going to get worse. Federal
entitlement spending isn't going to be controlled; it's going to grow
even faster once Obamacare comes fully into effect. A
Democrat-controlled Senate that has gone three years without producing a
budget will go four, five, six, seven years without a budget. If the
economy hasn't responded by now to fiscal and monetary stimulus, it
probably won't do so next year, either. After all, there are many
European countries where Obama-like policies have kept growth
permanently down at our current, anemic level of 1% to 2% per year and
unemployment in double digits. So Ryan and the Republicans will be ready
to say, "I told you so."
And what is the upside for Obama if he gets re-elected? Well, he gets to
veto a repeal of Obamacare. And he will feel empowered to pursue more
of his agenda, maybe on global warming, maybe undoing welfare reform,
maybe on immigration, and so on. But here's the problem for Obama.
Unless something changes really radically—unless Obama wins with a much
bigger landslide than I think he can hope for—no one is realistically
projecting that Democrats are going to win back the House, or that they
will get back their brief filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. In
fact, even with an Obama victory, Democrats may not keep the Senate at
all. So while Romney and Ryan are playing to win a mandate for their
agenda, Obama is very unlikely to win a mandate for his.
In short, if he is re-elected, Obama gets the "reward" of facing all the
same problems he has now: a stagnant economy, a runaway debt, a hostile
Congress, and a half-dozen foreign policy problems waiting to become a
big, intractable crisis. I think Obama still benefits, for the moment,
from the fact that the recession hit before he came into office, so
people still blame it on his predecessor. But at this rate, he's likely
to re-live George W. Bush's second term.
In 2004, voters gave Bush a
second chance to solve the mess in Iraq. By the end of 2006, as the
chaos and insurgency just kept getting worse, they wrote him off, and
even the success of the surge in 2007 came too late to make people
reconsider. Obama faces the same problem. Voters may give him a second
chance on the economy, but if it doesn't improve sharply in another year
or so, he will get the blame, and he may finish out his second term
with Bush-like approval ratings down around 30%--and Joe Biden as his
successor.
But what do the Democrats have to lose if the Romney-Ryan ticket wins? A lot.
To begin with, a Romney-Ryan win is likely to reverberate down the
ballot, helping Republicans retain a big majority in the House and win a
clear majority in the Senate. And it gets worse: Romney and a
Republican Senate would likely get to appoint, and approve, a few more
Supreme Court Justices. At the very least, this would help maintain the
conservatives' 5-4 majority on the court. At most, it could tip that 5-4
majority into a 6-3 or even a 7-2 majority. The court's most
conservative members—you know, the ones who would have found Obamacare
unconstitutional—might even gain a solid 5-member majority. In short,
the left could find itself shut out of power in all three branches of
government for at least four years—or for a decade or more.
And that's just the beginning. What if Romney and Ryan adopt Reaganesque
economic policies—and achieve Reaganesque results? Reagan saw the
economy dip sharply into a new recession just as he took office—but it
started bouncing back sharply in 1982 and kept growing at rates between
4% and 7%, three to four times stronger than today. If Romney-Ryan can
get anywhere near that—if the economy springs to life by 2014 and keeps
on going, they will be the ones who can run in 2016 on the "morning
again in America" theme, growing their congressional majority and—most
important of all—validating small-government policies and converting a
whole new generation of voters to the cause of free markets.
You can see the huge upside for the right and the reason why they are so
excited. Ryan makes them even more excited, because the prominence of
his signature budget plan means that if Romney and Ryan win, they win
with a mandate to reform the big middle-class entitlements. That would
sure take the jolt
out of the "third rail"! From "touch it and you die," the rule would
become: "touch it and you become vice-president." But I don't think
anyone quite realizes the long-term political impact of the reforms
themselves. Or rather, the left does realize the impact but doesn't like
to talk about it.
By limiting the growth of the big entitlements, Ryan's plan would make
federal benefits a smaller, marginal part of most people's lives—and
thus would reduce the constituency for these programs. The big secret of
the Medicare and Social Security entitlements is that they don't just
help the poor. They rope in the middle-class, too, recruiting them as
shock troops for the welfare state. Why are Democrats hoping that Ryan
will lose Florida for Romney? Because the state's huge cohort of
middle-class retirees are dependent on entitlements and on a big federal
government. But what if, 20 years from now, that is no longer the case?
We've already reached the point
where new retirees are likely to receive less in Social Security
benefits than they paid in. That is only projected to get worse, and if
the entitlements are reformed and whole swathes of the
upper-middle-class are effectively means-tested out of their
benefits—which will have to happen to keep the system solvent—then the
deal only gets worse.
So what if, a few decades from now, Social Security and Medicare
represent a small portion of most retirees' livelihood—and also
represent a system in which they have lost tens or hundreds of thousands
of dollars over their working lives? Under entitlement reform, the
natural political constituency for big government will shrink—while the
natural political constituency for small government will grow.
That is the prize the right is fighting for. That is the reward that makes it worth the risk of putting Paul Ryan on the ticket.
And there's one last thing. Paul Ryan is known as a persuasive speaker
and an appealing personality. This is how he is like Ronald Reagan: he
gives small-government policies a reasonable, persuasive voice and a
genial, likeable face. In the back of their minds, folks on the left
have to be thinking along the lines of a vulgar but dead-on accurate parody in The Onion. Or for a more family-friendly version, read Maureen Dowd fretting in today's New York Times
that "Not since Ronald Reagan...has the GOP managed to find such an
attractive vessel to mask harsh policies with a smiling face." So not
only will Ryan reduce the role of government in people's lives, but they
will love him for it. As they should.
In short, an Obama victory would not solve any of Obama's big problems,
it would not give him a clear mandate, it would not shut Republicans out
of power, and it would not kill the cause of entitlement reform. But a
Romney-Ryan victory would shut Democrats out of power in the short term
and could take away the constituency for big government over the long
term.
That is why this election has suddenly gotten so exciting. In its
consequence for the two political parties, and in its consequences for
the nation, it is high-risk and high-reward.
Obama the capitalism-hating, liberty-hating, America-hating,
godless Marxist/communist must be completely destroyed!!! To
allow him another term in the presidency would be to allow the total
destruction of America.
As much as I detest what the Republican
party has become, there is no other party on this earth that can come
anywhere close to accomplishing what must be accomplished to keep
America from spiraling down a Marxist/communist toilet.
Obama and
his Marxist government must not only be defeated, they must be crushed
and totally destroyed!! We must pray that God Almighty Himself moves
Heaven and Earth to rid our government of this unholy, filthy, communist
scum that has infested the democrat party, our government and our
society!! And we know that God will not do that. He leaves these earthly
tasks to us. It's OUR country and if we wish to keep it, we must move
the mountains ourselves and do whatever it takes with whomever we have
to get the job done!!
America will NOT go down without a fight!!
Free Republic will not standby and do nothing while Obama destroys
everything we hold dear!!
Damn Romney and his RINO history! Damn
the GOPe for making this fight twice as hard as it should be! ANY
Republican with a halfway decent record would crush Obama like the
vermin he is. Well by God, if it has to be Romney, that SOB better grow a
pair and he'd better get his butt in gear and fight like there's no
tomorrow, because there's not!! This is do or die time!! And Rove had
better turn out to be at least half as smart as he thinks he is. He
engineered it. Now by golly, make it HAPPEN!! And our friends Hannity,
Coulter, Rush, Levin, et al, had better start cranking it up another
notch. The tea party is ready to rumble. The tea party sweeps of 2010
was just a warm-up for the tea party flood of 2012 that's going to wash
America clean of godless communist/unionist scum from sea to shining
sea.
We are going to send that paper hanging SOB packing and then
we're going to rip out all his Marxist B/S by the roots and fumigate
the ground so it can never grow again!!
All Republicans,
independents, grassroots conservatives, tea party members, moderates,
Reagan democrats, Christians, Jews, life, family, liberty,
decency-loving patriots of any stripe must work like the blazes for the
next couple of months and then turnout on election day and drag their
friends, relatives and co-workers to the polls to vote that communist
bastard and as many godless, liberty-hating, capitalism-hating,
God-hating, liberal progressive, corrupt Marxist communists bastards the
hell OUT as is humanly possible!!
We'll deal with Romney and the RINOS later.
Let
the wailing and weeping commence. I've spent the last sleepless night
over this miserable situation that I'm going to spend. I love America,
Life and Liberty too much to let it fail.
Praying with all my might that this is in accordance to God's will and plan. God works in mysterious ways.
Jack Idema at the high water mark of media deception.
BY PENNY ALESI
Jack
Idema passed away January 21, 2012.
Our
last conversation was on January 10, 2012. As I have stated before, I had made
two promises to him in that conversation. The first promise involved
saving Nina and Tinka, our pets, and this difficult mission was accomplished. The second promise
was to follow through with the uncompleted book we were working on in Mexico.
Jack
Idema owed me thousands of dollars for my credit card debt (He used my American
Express Card without my permission and ran it up to the maximum) and my medical
expenses. He gave me the permission to go ahead with the copyright and do what
I wanted regarding the book in progress. I reminded him that he had given the
permission a long time ago when he gave me the printed rough draft transcript
along with his dog tags.
Furthermore,
when he was in the hospital in September 2009, Idema told me to copy everything
on his computer on memory sticks in case he didn’t survive his injuries that
happened in a near fatal traffic accident in Mexico. He said, “Now I will need to use all of it.” I said, “
yes,” but I was not about to go into detail of all the photos he gave me and I
was not going to glorify what we both knew was nonsense.
Instead,
I would concentrate on what I knew for fact and while lived with him, so it was
not going to be the original book he planned, rather it would be a combination
of his draft, but now with the Mexican chapter(s) added that told the full
truth about everything I had encountered in his life from the beginning. As is
the reason I am not mentioning names at this time. All names will be in
the book. I had started posting information on Ronbo’s blog for awhile now; so
I am quite prepared. Actually, thanks to Jack’s meticulous emails and documents
he copied for me, I have all the information I need.
On
a personal note, this will actually be easier than I had ever believed! It will
also prove that the lawyers, the Idema Fan Club and Idema himself, deliberately
stole my old life.
After
he died, the Idema Fan Club wasted no time in posting lewd photos and blogs
about me. They blamed me for his death; when he was the one who infected me
with AIDS. Jack didn’t care because he knew all of it was going to come out
eventually. He was so angry with all the people that were in his life that he
didn’t care what I said anymore. Jack was not only mad at his inner circle, he
was also extremely angered by two of the Idema Fan Club members. They were
aggravating him big time and hanging on to him so they could cash in after his
death he told me. One of them he called a dwarf bobblehead who lived off
donations from an ailment that he has since he was young, and basically was a
deadbeat dad that chased fame and fortune. The other one was as he called an
unfortunate hag that he had sex with because he owed her for writing a blog for
him.
Therefore,
Idema wasn’t perturbed when I said how I was going to treat the book he once
worshipped. He knew everything I was saying to him was all the truth, as he was
sick and dying and gave me permission to go after all of them via his fictional
book and tell the true story. He just wanted me to promise that I would get the
rights to do it legally and not to leave anything out. He couldn’t be hurt
anymore reputation wise. The stunt he pulled regarding replacing his name on
the cover of The Hunt for Bin Laden, and removing Robin Moore’s, was the final
nail in the coffin he said. He did because he was broke and he knew his days
were numbered so it didn’t matter to him.
During
the same phone call, Idema told me that in December 2011, he and two of his
lawyers got into a horrible fight on the phone concerning his last con. The
three of them had tried to extort a large sum of money from an aviation company
in Georgia via email and fax. Idema had blamed them for negligence and wanted
compensation for the stranded plane in Pennsylvania. He was broke and desperate
so he thought this might would work, but it failed like most of his criminal
activity.
The
end result was the complete breakdown of communication between Idena and his lawyers.
One of them, who is now executor of his will (a phony will in probate right
now), told him he didn’t care how he died he just hoped it would be soon. The
other lawyer was pissed because Idema used his letterhead before checking the
fact that he was suspended. That lawyer was all for it when he thought the
other lawyer’s letterhead was being used. Idema told me he was fed up with all
of them. They had screwed up Isabeau Dakota and was supposed to dissolve not
suspend the corporation. The lawyers had done everything they knew that would
eventually put them in the driver’s seat when Idema died.
This
communications breakdown screwed over Harvest Ministries who had rented the 450
Robeson Street building in Fayetteville, NC. Idema had assets well worth over a
million dollars when his father died in 2008. However, Idema and his lawyers
managed to spend almost all of it, which made a mockery of the late elder H J
Idema’s memory.
All
the fraud, frivolous lawsuits and lies kept mounting. In the last two years I
have spoken and met with many people who have shared their Idema stories with
me. I have sorted through piles of photos, court cases, documents, videos,
audios, anything and everything related to Idema. I became friends with his ex-wife,
Viktoria. She has been immensely helpful in restoring my state of mind. She has
convinced me that he was evil then and got worse when he was with me. Viktoria
has a wonderful life now and a fantastic loving husband. She helped me separate
a lot of Idema’s so called true stories and made me see all the lies.
The
Sixth Pillar was originally to be completed and given to Mimi Strong back in
2006 for publication. This fell deal didn’t work out, Idema and me were
going to do it alone. As I said earlier, while we were working on the
book, I had reservations due to the fact it was clearly fiction. For example, the
emails he wanted published included fakes from Donald Rumsfeld and William
Boykin.
Idema
believed because The Hunt for Bin Laden was such a huge success, this follow-up
book would be of the same magnitude, if not bigger. However, this was in the
time frame of 9/11 and is not the urrently the case.
I
am not addressing the lies told in his rough draft now. It is froth with
superficiality that shines through the first paragraph and in most of the photographs below. The thing about Idema was this: He was the undisputed
king of information manipulation who knew a little bit about everything and was quite convincing at his game of
deceit.
Therefore, I will relate the final chapter in the life and death of Jack Idema with real names, places and events.
Since 2006, I have called the Democrat Party, the "Democommie Party" when the hardcore radical left took control.
This
became plain for all to see in the attempt by Hillary Clinton and her
husband to mount a moderate counter coup in 2008 that the Chicago
Communist Obama Mob ate alive and made POWs Of Bill And Hill.
Yes, as a former retired
professional soldier of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence & Security
Command (USAINSCOM), Cold Warrior of the 60s, 70s, and 80s - and one who
opposed the Communists in a dozen allied countries in Europe and Asia during the bad old
days - there is absolutely no doubt in my formerly military mind that
your analysis of President Obama is right on target.
Indeed, our
current psychopath president is a degenerate low I.Q. Communist and the
greatest traitor in American history, who hopefully will be tried for
the supreme penalty allowable by law on the day after the righteous vote
of the American People in less than 90 days removes him from Oval
Office.
SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!
By Alan Caruba I have been reading about Frank Marshall Davis since Dr. Jerome Corsi
tried to warn Americans about Barack Obama in his 2008 book, “The Obama
Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.” Dr. Corsi noted that “On December 5, 1956, Frank Marshall Davis appeared
in executive session before the U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating
‘the scope of Soviet activity in the United States. It was one of the
McCarthy-era committees seeking to expose communist considered to be a
security threat. A year earlier, in 1955, the Commission on Subversive
Activities organized by the government of the territory of Hawaii
identified Davis as a member of the Communist Party USA.” In the 1970s, when Obama was an adolescent growing up in the care of his
grandparents in Hawaii, among their circle of friends was Davis. His
grandparents wanted to provide a black man as a role model for the young
mixed-race child, the result of a short marriage between their daughter
and Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan she had met while both were studying
Russian at the University of Hawaii.
The odd thing about Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate is that the news was received with elation by both sides, by both Republicans and Democrats, by both the right and the left.
Both sides see the potential upside for themselves. The right sees a
vice-presidential candidate who compensates for the deficiencies of
their presidential candidate, providing more energy, more regular-guy
charisma, and most of all a clear and compelling vision. The left sees a
candidate who has taken a strong stance in favor of a proposal they are
comfortable attacking. Ryan offers them relief from having to run on a
weak economy and allows them instead to run against an agenda they think
is deeply unpopular.
So everybody's happy. But as John Dickerson points out,
both sides can't be right. No matter what side you're on, if you don't
feel a pit in the bottom of your stomach right now, you've lost the
thread.
This is a high-risk, high-reward proposition for both
sides. But the risks and rewards are not evenly distributed. The risks
are much greater if you're on the left, and the rewards are much greater
if you're on the right.
For those on the right, the downside is bad—but not as bad as you might
think. While a Romney-Ryan loss may be pinned by some on Ryan's
radicalism, it is far more likely to be pinned on Romney—on his
campaign's failure to respond early enough to a ruthless negative
campaign, or his awkwardness in explaining parts of his past record, or
the general perception that he lacks conviction on the big issues of the
day. Like Sarah Palin, Ryan is likely to be remembered as the part of
the ticket people were most enthusiastic about—and unlike Palin, if Ryan
goes down, it won't be due to his own failings. He does not have a
messy family life, and he has demonstrated that he is well-informed,
well-prepared, and able to handle himself ably in press interviews. So
if he does not become vice-president, I suspect Paul Ryan will be first
in line for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
And he'll be watching and waiting, because he knows that the economic
and fiscal issues that define his agenda are not going away. In fact, he
will expect that under Obama they are all going to get worse. Federal
entitlement spending isn't going to be controlled; it's going to grow
even faster once Obamacare comes fully into effect. A
Democrat-controlled Senate that has gone three years without producing a
budget will go four, five, six, seven years without a budget. If the
economy hasn't responded by now to fiscal and monetary stimulus, it
probably won't do so next year, either. After all, there are many
European countries where Obama-like policies have kept growth
permanently down at our current, anemic level of 1% to 2% per year and
unemployment in double digits. So Ryan and the Republicans will be ready
to say, "I told you so."
And what is the upside for Obama if he gets re-elected? Well, he gets to
veto a repeal of Obamacare. And he will feel empowered to pursue more
of his agenda, maybe on global warming, maybe undoing welfare reform,
maybe on immigration, and so on. But here's the problem for Obama.
Unless something changes really radically—unless Obama wins with a much
bigger landslide than I think he can hope for—no one is realistically
projecting that Democrats are going to win back the House, or that they
will get back their brief filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. In
fact, even with an Obama victory, Democrats may not keep the Senate at
all. So while Romney and Ryan are playing to win a mandate for their
agenda, Obama is very unlikely to win a mandate for his.
In short, if he is re-elected, Obama gets the "reward" of facing all the
same problems he has now: a stagnant economy, a runaway debt, a hostile
Congress, and a half-dozen foreign policy problems waiting to become a
big, intractable crisis. I think Obama still benefits, for the moment,
from the fact that the recession hit before he came into office, so
people still blame it on his predecessor. But at this rate, he's likely
to re-live George W. Bush's second term. In 2004, voters gave Bush a
second chance to solve the mess in Iraq. By the end of 2006, as the
chaos and insurgency just kept getting worse, they wrote him off, and
even the success of the surge in 2007 came too late to make people
reconsider. Obama faces the same problem. Voters may give him a second
chance on the economy, but if it doesn't improve sharply in another year
or so, he will get the blame, and he may finish out his second term
with Bush-like approval ratings down around 30%--and
Joe Biden as his successor.
But what do the Democrats have to lose if the Romney-Ryan ticket wins? A lot.
To begin with, a Romney-Ryan win is likely to reverberate down the
ballot, helping Republicans retain a big majority in the House and win a
clear majority in the Senate. And it gets worse: Romney and a
Republican Senate would likely get to appoint, and approve, a few more
Supreme Court Justices. At the very least, this would help maintain the
conservatives' 5-4 majority on the court. At most, it could tip that 5-4
majority into a 6-3 or even a 7-2 majority. The court's most
conservative members—you know, the ones who would have found Obamacare
unconstitutional—might even gain a solid 5-member majority. In short,
the left could find itself shut out of power in all three branches of
government for at least four years—or for a decade or more.
And that's just the beginning. What if Romney and Ryan adopt Reaganesque
economic policies—and achieve Reaganesque results? Reagan saw the
economy dip sharply into a new recession just as he took office—but it
started bouncing back sharply in 1982 and kept growing at rates between
4% and 7%, three to four times stronger than today. If Romney-Ryan can
get anywhere near that—if the economy springs to life by 2014 and keeps
on going, they will be the ones who can run in 2016 on the "morning
again in America" theme, growing their congressional majority and—most
important of all—validating small-government policies and converting a
whole new generation of voters to the cause of free markets.
You can see the huge upside for the right and the reason why they are so
excited. Ryan makes them even more excited, because the prominence of
his signature budget plan means that if Romney and Ryan win, they win
with a mandate to reform the big middle-class entitlements. That would
sure take the jolt
out of the "third rail"! From "touch it and you die," the rule would
become: "touch it and you become vice-president." But I don't think
anyone quite realizes the long-term political impact of the reforms
themselves. Or rather, the left does realize the impact but doesn't like
to talk about it.
By limiting the growth of the big entitlements, Ryan's plan would make
federal benefits a smaller, marginal part of most people's lives—and
thus would reduce the constituency for these programs. The big secret of
the Medicare and Social Security entitlements is that they don't just
help the poor. They rope in the middle-class, too, recruiting them as
shock troops for the welfare state. Why are Democrats hoping that Ryan
will lose Florida for Romney? Because the state's huge cohort of
middle-class retirees are dependent on entitlements and on a big federal
government. But what if, 20 years from now, that is no longer the case?
We've already reached the point
where new retirees are likely to receive less in Social Security
benefits than they paid in. That is only projected to get worse, and if
the entitlements are reformed and whole swathes of the
upper-middle-class are effectively means-tested out of their
benefits—which will have to happen to keep the system solvent—then the
deal only gets worse.
So what if, a few decades from now, Social Security and Medicare
represent a small portion of most retirees' livelihood—and also
represent a system in which they have lost tens or hundreds of thousands
of dollars over their working lives? Under entitlement reform, the
natural political constituency for big government will shrink—while the
natural political constituency for small government will grow.
That is the prize the right is fighting for. That is the reward that makes it worth the risk of putting Paul Ryan on the ticket.
And there's one last thing. Paul Ryan is known as a persuasive speaker
and an appealing personality. This is how he is like Ronald Reagan: he
gives small-government policies a reasonable, persuasive voice and a
genial, likeable face. In the back of their minds, folks on the left
have to be thinking along the lines of a vulgar but dead-on accurate parody in The Onion. Or for a more family-friendly version, read Maureen Dowd fretting in today's New York Times
that "Not since Ronald Reagan...has the GOP managed to find such an
attractive vessel to mask harsh policies with a smiling face." So not
only will Ryan reduce the role of government in people's lives, but they
will love him for it. As they should.
In short, an Obama victory would not solve any of Obama's big problems,
it would not give him a clear mandate, it would not shut Republicans out
of power, and it would not kill the cause of entitlement reform. But a
Romney-Ryan victory would shut Democrats out of power in the short term
and could take away the constituency for big government over the long
term.
That is why this election has suddenly gotten so exciting. In its
consequence for the two political parties, and in its consequences for
the nation, it is high-risk and high-reward.
American Freedom Fighters are the most dangerous killing machine on the face of the planet: A terrible swift sword of liberty that if given just the right threat and level of pressure will go into full gear and wreak unimaginable destruction on those who threaten The Great Republic. --RONBO
"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.
