Washington Comedian

It was Will Rogers who said, “It’s easy to be a comedian. You have the entire Government working for you.”

How can I say that? Well, the Senate just gave a vote of confidence to the new four star general David H. Petraeus, and wished him “God Speed,” and other things that would sound good in the Media, then set to work trying to cut his support out from under him while encouraging the enemy.

Of course, this betrayal was called “patriotic.”

Will Rogers was right.

Petraeus Senate Will+Rogers Iraq+War

Nagging the Buggers

One of the more interesting parts of writing something original is doing the research. Yesterday I got a call from the NSA, a super-secret intelligence agency. They wanted to tell me about the work they had done in response to a request I made.

I have been writing about someone who was involved in the space program for two governments in the 1960’s. He died a couple of years ago and on his way out, he told me lots of things he had done. He was a very modest man whose life included huge achievements. I have come to realize that he wanted me to write about them, but he didn’t want to ask.

Before I write about anyone of the Cold War era , I consider whether his or her life involved secrets. Then I try to determine which agency might have information about him. I make my requests to the agencies first, because they take the longest. Usually, it is the FBI or the CIA. But I knew my subject reported to two intelligence agencies and that he was not allowed to tell one what he had told the other. I bet that one of them was NSA. And I bet right.

An acquaintance in a chat room had once worked with the NSA. He advised me not to “ping” the NSA. It was too late. I had already sent them a request fax. After all, they have a web site saying they have a Freedom of Information Office. So I requested information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And several weeks later they called me.

A very nice lady told me that the person I was searching for had indeed been a contractor and told me which years. She added that they had destroyed his file twenty years ago and had nothing left but an indoctrination form with his signature on it. I was floored! I was sure the NSA would never admit to hearing his name uttered in their offices or even in the environment of Washington, DC. I thanked the lady and hung up the phone.

Then I thought about it for a moment. The word “contractor” almost sounded like my friend was hired by the agency for pay. He was an ex-army officer, a well-established professional man who didn’t need the money, and I knew he would never accept pay for assisting his government. So I called back.

This time, I startled the lady who had talked to me a few minutes before. I asked what a “contractor” was to them in the 1960’s. She stammered a bit but finally responded that he was not an employee, but was a person who was lent to them by another, er company.

I am working on the other, er, company for more information as this is being written. I hope they are just as helpful.

By the way—the Federal Government does not all throw away all copies of anything. It was only a few years ago that I wrote a book based on the files of the Secret Service from 1873. They were in a dusty corner of the National Archives. Maybe my great granddaughter will dig something out about this friend before she dies. She is two years old as I write this.

NSA writing CIA FOIA Cold+War Space+Program

Homage to Writers

I can guess how they felt, the two teenagers who wrote me thank-you notes because I gave them copies of two of my books at Christmas time. The kids probably felt embarrassed at having to submit their writing skills to a man who writes books. But they did a good job.

The reason I know how they could have felt is that today I sent a letter to one of America’s finest writers, and I was very careful to be on my best writing behavior as I did it.

The author was Wendell Berry, and when he writes a book, it is immediately reviewed by the N.Y. Times and the L. A. Times. Wendell’s great-grandfather and my great-grandfather lived in the same town at the same time, and both seemed to have helped Gen. John Hunt Morgan (CSA) escape from the Yankees in 1863. We have been comparing notes for some time. (A bit of the story about my ancestor and President Lincoln’s dealings with him can be found on this web site in my Nov. 28 Post to this Blog.)

So, I was nervous about writing to Wendell. And I can say it here because I know he will never see this Blog; he is famous for avoiding computers. Well, maybe there is a crack in his armor. Most of his notes to me have been hand-written. But I noticed his last letter had been composed on a computer.

Maybe someday Wendell will become sloppy with the rest of us keyboard bangers.


Wendell+Berry Writing Civil+War

Screwing the Stockholder/Citizen

It was about 1955 that a wonderful British movie was released in America. It was called, I’m All Right, Jack and its star was an unknown actor named Peter Sellers. He went on to great fame from this first movie.

The story was about a factory in England that was not doing well. Its owner had given up. He was retiring and moving to a nudist colony on the beaches, somewhere. As he left, he had his nephew, a bright and enterprising industrial engineer, try to modernize the business.

It turned out that everyone in the business had his fingers in the revenue stream—that is what the “I’m all right, Jack” expression means (I’ve been taken care of). So from the humblest hourly employee to the union steward to the managers, everyone was quite comfortable. And they all fought the young man as he tried to make the business profitable. No one would admit what he was doing, though.

By the end of the movie, the enterprising young industrial engineer had given up and also retired to the nudist colony to join his uncle. The corrupt business was a metaphor for British industry and its moribund economy of the times.

As a long-time employee of General Electric with three years on its corporate staff, I have seen the same “I’m all right Jack” attitude in various G.E. operations. And in quiet moments spent alone with people in other companies I have found the story to be similar in their experiences.

Why isn’t it all right to be “All Right, Jack”? It is because there is a group left out of each population of comfortable people—the stockholders. The people who are “All Right” are systematically screwing the stockholders! There is no one in the business who is looking out for its owner.

Extreme examples are General Motors and Ford, whose management slowly gave away their business to labor unions. Employee benefits are so huge that these companies cannot compete with manufacturers from outside the U.S.

Screwing the stockholder has become a standard practice in America. And the practice did not stop with industry. It went on to Congress, where the American public has become the stockholders with Congress as managers and professional bureaucrats as hourly workers. Slowly but steadily Congress and its helpers are screwing us stockholders (citizens). And there is no one who is looking out for us. Certainly it is not the media. The media “is all right, Jack.”

Congress Politics General+Electric General+Motors Ford+Motors Media

Show-Biz Congress and Wages

Congresspeople seem overly worried about the “little man” these days. They want him to have a raise in wages. But they don’t want to pay for the raise. They want you and me to pay for the raise, as usual. So Congressmen will soon vote to raise the federal minimum wage. It is a perfect solution to a non-problem. It will not cost them anything, it will attract votes because of their compassion, and the raise will do no good at all. In fact, it may harm some of the “little people,” but it will look good and that is all that counts. It is simply a matter of putting on a good show; after all Congresspeople are in show-biz of a sort all the time.

Economics is a study of supply and demand. Economists know that when the price of something rises, people will use less of it. Raise the price of labor and fewer laborers will be employed. But more people will leave school to fill those higher-priced jobs.

The real reason for raising the federal minimum wage is that it pleases labor unions. And labor unions provide a great deal of money and other support for politicians in whom they are well pleased. Labor unions use the minimum wage to boost their demands for more money for the people they represent.

In the United States for the past 200 years there has been a steady increase in wages. Was this increase due to pressure from labor unions or people in Congress establishing minimum wages? Certainly not. The increase in wages has been due to a shortage in laborers in this country. That is why the United States is a country of immigrants!

There has been a steady pressure to bring in people from other countries to fill the demand for workers, because private individuals have created millions of jobs. Government wastes, private individuals create.

It is simple economics again—if the demand for something grows, the price you pay for it will rise. Labor is no exception.

Some say people in Congress are aware of the demand curve. I say they are too busy putting on a good act and too ignorant of economics to be aware of the most simple economic facts. They are better at dropping their pants than they are at dropping the price of something. They are better at posing and being “shocked and surprised” than they are at actually doing something useful.

Congress will no doubt pass an increase in the federal minimum wage very soon. And they will feel good, despite the damage they will have caused. But Congresspeople won’t know the difference and they will congratulate each other as if they did.

And we pay these people, the ruling class, huge sums of money to wander around blindly and do really dumb things!

minimum+wage politics Congress

Ruling Class of America

Many of us have recognized for some time that when members of Congress talk about taxing the income of the rich, they really are working from the view that all income is theirs (the government’s) and they will let the rich keep some of it. It would perhaps better if the government taxed wealth, instead of income. But that would affect the Teddy Kennedys of the country and they would never allow that.

Two days ago in my local paper there was a story that said the Supreme Court of California will decide whether a law that was passed overwhelmingly by the people of that State, is constitutional. The Supremes start out with the notion that all laws are unconstitutional and THEY will decide what we will and will not have on our law books. Since what they decide is often formed from their whims about what life should be like, and not from existing laws, this is a kind of double slap in the face of citizens. I suspect that nine cheap lawyers in black robes are no better qualified to make these decisions than are the people of California.

Our Constitution was written to protect us from government. It puts limits on ALL three branches. But the imperious ruling class tends to forget that.

Supreme+Court California+Supreme+Court Politics Taxes Congress Constitution

Judge Sides with Bush on Terrorism Law

In an AP story this morning (where it was hard to find) Judge James Robertson of the Federal District Court said “detainees (at Guantanamo Bay) can’t challenge their imprisonment in federal courts.” Originally, the judge said the prisoners could challenge their imprisonment in federal courts. Then Congress passed a law that said otherwise and for some reason, the judge must have actually read what Congress had passed.

How long the judge’s ruling will last is open to question. He is the same Clinton-appointed judge who ordered the government to change the style of U.S. currency. The Constitution is clear about the responsibility for designing money and it explicitly appointed another branch of the government to handle that duty. It goes to show that the Constitution is not an impediment to much judicial thinking, these days.

Coddling criminals and extending to aliens the same rights as citizens is a fairly recent battle that belongs in the land of the Liberal, not the land of the Constitution. But the handling of enemy combatants is not new.

When President Lincoln enacted his tough laws against northern citizens (most of whom happened to be in the opposite political party), he usurped the powers of Congress. Only Congress can suspend the right of Habeas Corpus, for instance—not a president. But Lincoln did it anyway. The question during the Civil War was not “Shall a President act in a tyrannical way towards citizens of another country (CSA)?” Rather, it was “Shall a president act in a tyrannical way toward the citizens of his own country?” Where was the Supreme Court during this period? Shamefully hiding under its collective desk. Meanwhile Lincoln had some 13,000 American civilians in the north tried by military tribunals and tossed into prison (Doubt what I say? Read your history books for this period.)

During the Civil War, most of Congress and the President were on the same side of the issues, so the President’s actions suited Congress. Jointly they raped the public and took away their rights as though American citizens were aliens. Now, during the Iraq war, many who are in Congress and on the federal bench are not on the same side as the President and therefore feel obliged to make sure enemy combatants are given the full rights of American citizens.

Why should enemy combatants have the same rights that American citizens have? Beats me. Not even the weird Supreme Court of the 1860’s could come up with that.


Supreme Court
Habeas Corpus Abraham Lincoln Civil War Guanamo Bay
Conservatives

Cousin Horace

Finding a long lost cousin is usually a pleasure. Ten years ago I went to central Kentucky near Lexington, from the Los Angeles area to conduct research on my family. I had a question to ask of the man who was in charge of the Georgetown City cemetery. It is a beautiful place. He did not have the answer, but offered me a list of people who might know the answer. One on the list was a cousin I had not seen or heard of in forty-five years.

I called Horace Grover Gaines, my cousin. It took some convincing, but soon he showed up at the cemetery office to answer my questions directly. He was a big, nice looking man with an eye patch. He was definitely pirate material. Older than I by about nine years, He had been undergoing surgery on the cornea of one eye. It was clearly uncomfortable for him, but genealogy was important and I was going back to California soon. So he stayed with me and took me around town and his farm which had historical significance for several reasons.

The caretaker of the cemetery was very deferential to Horace, so I figured Horace was an important man in the community. Among other things Horace was the director of the cemetery. He was also the director of the biggest bank in town and served on the board of education, the draft board (in times past), and all sorts of community endeavors.

Horace was immensely likeable. And knowledgeable about our family in common. He had paintings of our ancestors in his home. He had records I had never imagined. But I had something for him as well: I convinced Horace that the farm he owned had been carved from the Kentucky wilderness by our common ancestors in 1783.

I felt bad because I had not known Horace longer. He was a good, intelligent man and a funny one besides. Over the next few years we corresponded often and swapped information. I wrote magazine articles based on his data and almost got the Louisville PBS station to conduct a search on his farm for signs of our Revolutionary War ancestors. But they backed out at the last minute.

I did not know Horace was a war hero, a wounded veteran of Pacific battles in WWII. I also did not know that Horace’s mind was slipping into Alzheimer’s disease. I should have suspected something because he did not remember my mother, a pretty woman whom most men did not forget.

I did get back to Georgetown a few years later with my wife. I was pleased that she got to know Horace and that we met Horace’s daughter and her children before Horace was carried away by his disease. His wife had died. He had a wonderful woman friend who helped take care of Horace until the end, which came on October 14, 2006.

I read that this nation is losing around one thousand of its WWII veterans every day. Horace was just one of those statistics. Until, that is, I set up a web page for him. It will stay on the Internet until I am another statistic.

Kentucky

False Imprisonment

So there I was, about to turn off my computer a couple of days ago, and thinking about my great-grandfather Pryor. I had just written a small item about him for an attached web site. He has been dead almost a hundred years so there wasn’t much new with him. Anyway, I entered his name in the search spot in Google and wow! Up came a site for the sale of historical documents.

One of the documents for sale was a letter written at the Executive Mansion (of the President of the U.S.). The letter was written by Abraham Lincoln to Secretary of War Stanton about what to do with a couple of civilians who were in prison in Ohio.

One of the men was my great-grandfather. I knew he had been in prison at the behest of A. Lincoln but I didn’t know why. I always suspected it was because he had helped Confederate General John Hunt Morgan escape the Yankees in central Kentucky.

My great-grandfather did help Morgan, but the letter from Lincoln was written some eight months before Hunt had escaped! I had been wrong all these years about the reason for prison. Lincoln had tried by military court and imprisoned some 13,500 civilians in the North by the end of the War, so one more or less didn’t matter (KY was a neutral state).

Lincoln used the passive term when he wrote, “It is said that William S. Pryor is in prison . . .” He acted as if he didn’t know about it. But Lincoln’s good friend, Judge James Pryor was William S. Pryor’s fond uncle, and I bet Judge Jim leaned on Honest Abe a bit to let his favorite nephew out of the pokey. Abe, after all, was a very ordinary politician.

So I do not know why my great-grandfather was imprisoned. But I do know he was a lawyer and a good one from the size of his 1859 mansion.

Lawyers tend to lose their law licenses if they have been sent to prison, but imprisonment by Lincoln was reason for a merit badge, not a disbarment, and after the war my great-grandfather not only continued to practice law but also was made a circuit court judge. He served on the circuit for three years and then was appointed Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. He was on that bench for twenty-six years, longer than anybody before or after.

Evidently, prison was a only graduate course.

I still want to find out what pretext was used to imprison him, other than the fact that he was a Democrat and Lincoln was a Republican. Kentucky politics can get rough.


Abraham Lincoln,John Hunt Morgan, Civil War,Kentucky,E.W. Stanton

End of an Obsession

The only way to end the obsession of writing a book, I have found, is to start writing another book.

writing books

Milton Friedman, 1912-2006

When I began studying economics in college, the Great Voice in the field was that of John Maynard Keynes, the darling of the Left. He was the entrée. People such as Milton Friedman were side dishes, the cole slaw of economics.

John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory was sturdy and complex, and it obfuscated the fact that the author was basically just another socialist who saw big government as the answer to most problems in a society. It is no mystery that he had a huge influence over President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

We students were given the opportunity to read a slender volume called Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. It was not as pretentious and weighty as The General Theory, but it made more sense and was elegant in its reasoning.

Thus it was that I (and many others) came to see that Milton Friedman was a beacon of light in a sea of socialism. Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan also came to that conclusion as did Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain.

Friedman was not just an economist, he was a political thinker as well. He correctly saw that human freedom and dignity come as a natural result of free markets. For some strange reason, the Leftist Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976.

Over the past forty years Milton Friedman has positively affected the lives of millions and millions of people. His influence will be felt for years into the future by freedom-loving people.

What about John Maynard Keynes? The entrée has become stale. He is seldom mentioned, while the side dish has become the main meal for free countries.

Milton Friedman Economics Freedom John Maynard Keynes

History's Mysteries

It was a rainy Monday afternoon, that May 4, 1874, when Bill Smoot murdered James M. Walker in a small town in Kentucky. Bill pulled his trigger in front of all the townspeople as a warning. He was the head of the local KKK and Jim Walker had been trying to get the Klan to stop killing people—men, women, little boys and girls alike. The Klan was warning local citizens not to interfere.

It was probably the first time a white man had been killed by the Klan in central Kentucky.

After Jim’s murder, the Klan, along with the sheriff and some others, chased all the “good guys” out of the area, using guns as persuaders. One of the pursued was a deputy U.S. Marshal. It wasn’t until the Federal Marshal of Kentucky got into the act and threatened to jail the sheriff that the chase was broken up.

Smoot was tried by a state court and immediately acquitted. That is the way things worked with state courts. But Smoot was then hauled to Louisville to a Federal Court and tried for interfering with a Marshal in the pursuit of his duties. He was found guilty, with two subordinates, and sent to prison for five years.

That should be the end of the story. But Smoot was out of prison quickly, riding again with his gang.

It seems that on March 3, 1877, with only two days to go in office, President U.S. Grant pardoned Bill Smoot and his two friends. And he raised all kinds of questions.

Jim Walker was my great-grandfather and I had written about the murder and subsequent events. I even wrote what I had heard about a pardon, but the National Archives has been unable to find a copy. Then, last week, someone sent me an image of the Smoot pardon by email!

It seems that President Grant, a Republican, had granted a pardon to a KKK member who was a Democrat, an ignorant day laborer with a strong penchant for drink, with no money, who was from an obscure county in KY. Grant wrote in the pardon that he was encouraged to make the pardon at the behest of two Democrat senators and the Democrat governor of Kentucky.

How does a drunken killer with no money get the attention of such high level people? My research showed that most probably the governor of KY was in the Klan, but I do not know if the U.S. Senators were in the Klan. Even so—why go to all the bother of getting a presidential pardon for this lay-a-bout? Grant wrote in the pardon that Smoot was convicted for an infraction of the “Enforcement Act” (civil rights laws of the time) but Smoot was not convicted for that reason, so the pardon was probably not valid, but he was released anyway..

President Grant’s administration was known for its corruption, but no one seriously claimed that Grant was anything but honest.

Perhaps we will never know why Grant gave the pardon for a specific crime and not a general pardon. Nor will we probably ever know why he did anything about Smoot at all. Nor will we be enlightened about Smoot’s “pull” in high places.

We can speculate that Smoot had information about the Senators and the Governor that would be embarrassing, but that is all. There seems to be nothing about Smoot’s case that would be of benefit to Grant or the Republicans.

It is just one of history’s mysteries.


KKK U. S. Marshals Service

Trash is Trash, Except . . .

While the news media is trying hard to keep the explicit IMs of Representative Mark Foley on the front pages, it is also trying hard not to know about or print the explicit passages written in books to far more people by Senatorial candidate James Webb in Florida.

Foley is an R and Webb is a D. Maybe that is the difference.


Mark Foley James Webb Politics Media Bias

Benedict Arnold and His Descendants

One of several families who arrived by boat to establish Rhode Island Colony was the William Arnold clan. He had several children. I am descended from three of those children, but not from the fourth. The fourth son was named Benedict Arnold. No doubt he was a fine man, but it was his grandson or great-grandson who was the infamous traitor to his new country.

It was a pleasure to find that I was not a descendant of the Benedict Arnold clan. But he has plenty descendants in spirit if not in blood. Look at Hanoi Jane Fonda. Benedict just wanted power and position while Jane wanted to enforce her superior wisdom on us. It must have taken a monumental sense of self-importance to betray her country as she did.

Some think Jane Fonda got away with it—that is, was not tried for treason. But she did not get away with it at all. It is true that she did not go to prison, but look at how the general public remembers her. Few would want to be remembered that way.

After researching a book and writing 150 pages of it, I am even more aware of traitors in our midst. I am also aware of how the meanings of words have changed. My book is about the way civilians lived and contributed to the war effort during WWII. During those four years of strife when as many as a thousand military men died during a training mission with no battle going on, the American public put its head down and plugged away toward victory, one day at a time.

A few labor union leaders were the malefactors at home during WWII. They were willing to cripple the war effort just to satisfy their own selfish desires. Some of them were Communist and others were just short-sighted. But for the most part we all worked together to defeat not one, but two enemies.

Yes, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman had their detractors in America, but the Axis enemies had no reason to think a change in leadership here would result in a reduction in force of our troops at the battlefield.

Nowadays, the word “patriotic” has changed to mean an action that will weaken our country publicly. Our enemies can see what is going on. They know they can affect our elections because one party has told them so. The stated enemies of our country know they have allies in this land. These allies will shut down our intelligence operations, will open our borders, and will pull out our troops, if they get control of our government. That is called patriotism today but would have been called treachery during WWII years ago. I was there. I remember.

The simple fact is that dissention here results in a stiffening of resolve for our enemies in the Mideast. It kills our young men and women in uniform.

Benedict Arnold wanted power and position. Today, opposers to the protection of American citizens want no less. If they can convince enough Americans to vote their way, they will get their power back; but who will look out for the safety of our citizens?

It won’t be the Benedict Arnolds and the Jane Fondas of the country, the Dainty Americans with no will and no plan.

Jane Fonda Benedict Arnold Hanoi Jane Mid-term elections Traitors

Speaker Denny Hastert

I see by the newspaper that Speaker of the House Denny Hastert is in trouble. Not because he did something, but because he didn’t do something—fast enough.

Did Mr. Hastert fail to kill Usama binLaden?

Did Mr. Hastert play sex games with a young page girl in his office while on duty?

Did Mr. Hastert lie to a Grand Jury?

Did Mr. Hastert store ninety thousand dollars of marked money in his refrigerator?

Did Mr. Hastert proclaim that gay men were pedophiles?

Did Mr. Hastert loose a child rapist on the public?

He didn’t do any of the above, but they were done by people of the opposite party. There was no outcry.

What did Mr. Hastert do? He failed to expel a Congressman fast enough. The Congressman wrote nasty text messages which Mr. Hastert did not know about. There was no physical damage to another person as a result of Mr. Hastert’s lack of fast action.

Yet, from the outcry of those who either ignored or protected people who were involved in the dastardly deeds listed above, is enormous. The outrage they suppressed when obvious crimes were committed by Democrats has now been found.

It is good to let it out. I did not know the mainstream media had any outrage in their systems at all. They have held it in for so many years that I thought it had atrophied.

And now I understand. Outrage can appear only when it is directed at Republicans.

Understanding always helps.


Dennis Hastert Media Foley House of Representatives Democrats

Gold Stars and Dainty Americans

It was not very long after the WWII began that lists of names began to appear in the newspaper. These were the names of the local young people who had given everything they had for their country, the ones who were killed by the enemy, or were killed by accident or friendly fire. Every day for four years more names were listed.

Small banners began appearing in windows of houses. A broad red trim surrounded a white field with at least one star in the middle. A blue star indicated that a member of the family was in the military. A gold star signified that the family in that house had lost a son or a husband or a father (later, it could have been a daughter) in the war. The flags may have turned yellow from exposure to the sun, but they were seldom removed.

In a way, the gold star flags were a comfort to those who also had lost family. The flags made the statement, “You are not alone.” They were also reminders that this particular family had “given until it hurt” to the war effort and until you did at least that much, you should not complain. In every city across the country houses had windows with flags, lots of flags and lots of gold stars. The silence of mourning civilians bore testimony to their dedication to freedom and liberty. They make the whiners and complainers of the present era seem ridiculously small by comparison.

Perhaps this is indeed, the era of the dainty American.


Gold Star Mothers Iraq War WWII Cindy Sheehan

Peacocks and Terrorists

Recently on an Internet List that concerned itself with genealogy, a few people took a detour about peacocks. Peacocks were not, as I recall, related to any of us. But I read various stories with amusement as people told how the found peacocks in various unlikely parts of the country.

Unable to stand it any longer, I chimed in. I said I had lived in Arcadia, California and could tell a thousand stories about peacocks and none was favorable, except for the rare occasion when I could cheer at seeing a flat one in the roadway. “They ran wild in the city,” I told readers, “and we citizens had to tolerate them. They were a protected species. We could not feed them, chase them off, look at them sideways or do anything else that might be deemed offensive. In fact,” I continued, “Arcadia’s peacocks have almost as many rights as terrorists in U. S. custody.”

I am waiting patiently for a complaint, but so far no one has said anything except one lady who added that “peacocks are terrorists.”


Arcadia, CA Terrorists Guantanimo

Obvious but Unasked Question

Now that Americans have had their ears hammered by Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and by Mr. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as they addressed the UN and the American press, it is time that someone in the press ask them the obvious question: “May a representative of our government go to your country, get on your national television stations and give his opinion of you and your government?”

Venezuela Iran Ahmadinejad Hugo Chavez Media UN

Media Bias for Sure

So after writing my last post to this blog I have been looking for some newspaper somewhere to relate what the Australians said to their radical Islamic citizens. Can you imagine that news media people have not found this story worth repeating?

Amazing!

Maybe I was too hard on the media. And then I considered what I heard on the radio this morning on a talk show. Maybe I am not hard enough.

Point One: The New York Times printed what I thought was tantamount to treason when it told the story about how the international banking system was being observed by intelligence agencies to see where terrorists were getting their funding. The Times did this even though their President asked them not to do it.

Did I hear any condemnation from the media for this breach of trust that occurred within its ranks? Not a word.

Point two: ABC ran a docudrama about the “Path to 9/11” and all Hell broke loose. In it the story was told about how our Government failed to take action against our enemies for many years. There was condemnation all over the place from the Media and others.

Conclusion: the Liberal Media does not care about the safety of this nation. It does care a whole lot about the Clinton Legacy.

September 11 Radical Islam Media Bias Australia International Banking New York Times

Aussies Shape up Muslim Immigrants

It seems that the Australians are fed up with political correctness. Their leadership recently told the Muslim population to accept the political and legal structures of Australia or find another place on the planet.

One of the major concerns of the Australian government was the statement by a Muslim leader that there were two sets of laws—Australian and Sharia. The Sharia law was brought to Australia from Islamic nations. It includes stoning of women and amputating the hands of thieves.

Is the government action just another case of “Islamophobia?” Last year, it was reported that Abdul Nacer Ben Brika, a radical cleric in Melbourne, was asked in an interview whether he thought Australian Muslims had a responsibility to adhere to Australian law.

He replied: "This is a big problem. There are two laws - there is an Australian law and there is an Islamic law."

And the Australian government has replied in effect, “No problems exist. There is one law. You signed on to it when you took the oath of allegiance to our country.”

Australians concluded that it was disrespectful to say of the new homeland, “Your laws are not good enough. We have our own.” And it is disrespectful. Further, what if Baptists suddenly decided to hang Presbyterians for their stand of predestination? Most people would call that “vigilante law” and would stop it in its tracks. Sharia law imposed in Australia or in the U.S. or in England is no different.

Of course, the politically correct and whining crowd has complained bitterly. But the toothpaste is out of the tube.

Add to this the story that news reporter Steve Centanni and a cameraman have been released in Gaza, but not before they converted to Islam at the point of a gun. Those Americans who are tired of having Christians ramming their gospel down their throats by means of persuasion should try Islam at the point of a gun. Some of these Muslim folks are not as peaceful as we have been told.

Sharia Law
Steve Centanni Gaza Palestinians Terrorism