A Glimpse Of What Socialized Medicine Would Produce

In another example of government bureaucracy s lack of compassion toward elder health care and complete disregard for accepted clinical treatment standards and the Hippocratic Oath. The federal government(DHHS) is demanding repayment of hundreds of millions of dollars from hospices that exceeded arbitrary Medicare reimbursement limits because they enabled residents to live longer than permitted by the government. The key words are "live longer than permitted". Showing no sense of humanity, the federal government’s retroactively assessed reverse charges are being sent to hospices that already spent the funds delivering care for the terminally ill in prior years.
The result of this retroactive Medicare reimbursement demand is that many hospice providers will be put out of business. The unintended consequences of this bureaucratic meddling will reduce the number of hospice facilities and encourage the remainder to withhold care while simultaneously demanding premium increases. It is rarely clearer that government health care and its cost-control rationing is a prescription for an early grave. And still we have Democrats running for President advocating socialization of the Fine Health Care system we now have for the majority of Americans. Better they build government clinics and hospitals for the indigent, and staff them with Doctors, PAs and Nurses who are delinquent in paying there student loans, which in many cases amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We have a 9.13 trillion dollar National Debt. The three leading drains on the U.S. Treasury are Medicare, Social Security and the War. We can't quit spending for the war, or we will loose yet another war that we were wining, as we did in Vietnam.

If you don't believe that statement just read the memoirs of North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap that were recently published. He wrote," the American media won the Vietnam war for the Vietcong. “What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it,” then he wrote. “But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!” Giap’s words are an important lesson from the past, to be sure. He says, "had the U.S. kept bombing Hanoi for just a few more days after Johnson called a halt they would have surrendered!"

Perhaps politicians should concentrate on waste and extravagant spending first, before they advocate more burden on the already heavily taxed American middle class.

An example of waste outside the realm of 10,000 dollar toilets for Congressmen and other such extravagant spending is the lack of communication between the IRS and the Medicare Auditing arm of Health and Human services. This would be a good place to start.

The following was reported recently by The Washington Post: The federal government has failed to collect more than $1 billion in back taxes owed by Medicare doctors and suppliers, nearly half of it payroll taxes deducted by health-care providers who spent the money on luxury cars and other personal expenses rather than sending it to the IRS, a congressional report says.
The money has not been collected because the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare, has failed to connect its computers to the Internal Revenue Service and other Treasury Department divisions, the Government Accountability Office report says. Such a connection would allow the agencies to quickly identify who owes taxes and begin deducting that money from checks the federal contractors receive from Medicare.

The situation is particularly distressing because there could easily have been a system in place to fix it. Apparently. in 2001, when the GAO first suggested to HHS that it could coordinate with Treasury to identify tax deadbeats, HHS said the two agencies' computers were not compatible, making it impossible to work together. HHS computers were updated by 2004, giving the department no excuse.
Imagine how much confusion we would have if the whole medical system was socialised if these type things were allowed, and in a free society it appears there is no limit to the graft and corruption that can occur.

Carbon Credits Another Step to World Government Control

The United Nations was founded in 1945 to replace the failed League of Nations, in the hope that it would intervene in conflicts between nations and thereby avoid war. The first session was convened on January 10,1946 in the Westminster Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations. It actually came to exist on 10/24/1945 when The Republic of China, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, France and the United States signed the Charter. It now is located at "Turtle Bay" on the Hudson River.

Today the budget of the UN is 4.19 billion dollars, of which the U.S. pays 22%. Communist China pays 2.05%, United Kingdom pays 6.15% , Russia pays only 1.10 % of the UN budget. One of the oil rich Nations pays $18.7 million dollars, and the United States, an oil poor nation, is assessed $423,464,855 annually. This despite that each Country has the same vote and veto power over any proposal made by the United States to the U.N.

Why are these statistics important? Because behind the headlines and fears of doom from Global Warming, there is a movement by "Goreites" and international bankers and brokerage firms to jump on the "band wagon" to profit from Global warming. It comes in the form of Carbon Credits. The Kyoto Agreement produced the Carbon Credit scheme as a way for Nations and international businesses to contribute to the anti-CO2 problem without actually reducing their CO2 emissions. They can buy carbon credits!

Carbon credits create a market for allegedly reducing greenhouse emissions by giving a monetary value to the cost of polluting the air. Emissions become an internal cost of doing business and are visible on the balance sheet alongside raw materials and other liabilities or assets.
For example, a business that owns a factory putting out 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a year. Its government enacts a law that limits the emissions that the business can produce. So the factory is given a quota of 80,000 tonnes per year, 20,000 less than last year.The factory either reduces its emissions to 80,000 tonnes or is required to purchase carbon credits to offset the excess.
After costing up alternatives the business may decide that it is uneconomical or infeasible to invest in new machinery. Instead may choose to buy carbon credits on the open market from organizations that have been approved as being able to sell legitimate carbon credits.Which still leaves the company producing 100,000 tons of pollution, but makes some Carbon Credit broker a fee!
One seller might be a company that will offset emissions by planting a number of trees for every carbon credit you buy from them under an approved CDM project. So although the factory continues to emit gases, it would pay another group to go out and plant trees which allegedly will draw back 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
Another seller may have already invested in new low-emission machinery and have a surplus of allowances as a result. The factory could make up for its emissions by buying 20,000 tonnes of allowances from them. The cost of the seller's new machinery would be subsidized by the sale of allowances. Both the buyer and the seller would submit accounts( to whom? a World regulating organisation?) for their emissions to prove that their allowances were met correctly.

Credits were chosen by the signatories to the Kyoto Protocol as an alternative to Carbon taxes. It is easier to convince a credulous public to accept Credits than to impose taxes. A criticism of tax-raising schemes is that they are frequently not pledged as security, and so some or all of the taxation raised by a government may be applied inefficiently or not used to benefit the environment. IE your social security taxes!
The theory of the Carbon Credit advocates is: "By treating emissions as a market commodity it becomes easier for business to understand and manage their activities, while economists and traders can attempt to predict future pricing using well understood market theories. Thus the main advantages of a trade in Carbon Credits over a carbon tax are:
the price is more likely to be perceived as fair by those paying it, as the cost of carbon is set by the market, and not by politicians. Investors in credits have more control over their own costs." (source Wikapedia)
The flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol supposedly ensure that all investment goes into genuine sustainable carbon reduction schemes, through its Internationally agreed validation process. Here again you have a World Government body deciding and dictating how business in the United States will be conducted!

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, has strongly come out in favor of government regulation that creates long-term value for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and new technologies. Voluntary action, it reasons, is insufficient. It also will guarantee a market for it's investment in Carbon credits!

Market analysts have called the U.S carbon market a "hibernating giant." With Goldman Sachs leading the way. Greed is the middle name for these people.

Goldman Sachs has a history of making long-term strategic investments in new product lines. Gus Levy, its former legendary partner, famously conceded that the investment bank was greedy, but clarified, "long-term greedy." The fact that the powerhouse of capitalism is taking the plunge into environmental markets is perhaps the embodiment of this mantra, and the surest signal yet that there is money to be made on sustaining ecosystem services.

Goldman Sachs has made overtures to leadership in Communist China, one of the Worlds worst polluters, to form a joint venture with their Carbon Credit scheme. It is Reforestation, to creation of a carbon sink--a carbon reservoir that is increasing in size--in which plants and other organisms use photosynthesis to remove carbon from the atmosphere by incorporating it into biomass and release oxygen into the atmosphere. The carbon sink concept has become more widely known because the Kyoto Protocol allows the use of carbon dioxide sinks as a form of carbon offset credit, which can be traded on global markets subject to obtaining United Nations approval through a formal application process. My question is how long does it take a tree to grow before it is a CO2 "sink"?

Do Americans really want to go down this road. It only leads to more World Government control, and less freedom for us.

Is Poor Officiating Tolerated BY NFL?

In September of 1920, 14 team representatives met in Akron, Ohio to create a new football league. In the interest of ticket sales and crowning a yearly champion, they decided to form the American Professional Football Association. On October 17, 1920, the Decatur Staleys( who became the Bears) played their first NFL game.Their coach was George Hallas, who changed the name to Bears when he bought the team for $100.00 in 1922. The owners adopted the name National Football League also in 1922. The league currently consists of 32 teams.
The first Commissioner, Elmer Layden, was appointed in 1941. He was a member of the legendary "Four Horsemen" of Notre Dame's 1925 football team.
Layden left Notre Dame in February of 1941 to become Commissioner of the NFL, a post that had been renamed upon him taking the job. Prior heads of the league had been referred to as presidents. In five years as Commissioner, Layden struggled with less skilled players due to many "stars" being drafted during WWII.
The NFL muddled through for years as a small group of 10 teams with small attendance and no television contracts.

When Pete Rozelle was appointed Commissioner, in 1960, after more than 23 ballots by the owners, the NFL .was still struggling financially.
The election of Pete Rozelle as Commissioner turned out to be a fortuitous event for the NFL.

When he took office there were ten teams in the NFL playing a twelve game schedule to frequently half-empty stadiums, and only several teams had television contracts. By the time of Rozelle's resignation, the number of teams had grown to 28 and team owners presided over sizable revenues from U.S. broadcasting networks. The NFL in 1960 was following a business model that had evolved from the 1930's.

Mr.Roselle negotiated television contracts for all NFL games, and persuaded the owners of the large City teams to share TV revenues with smaller city owners. In doing so, Rozelle not only cleverly played one television network against the other, but also persuaded NFL team owners of the Baltimore Colts, and the Washington Redskins to agree to share revenues between teams of smaller cities like Green Bay, as the competing AFL had done since its inception. His business model was essentially a "cartel" that benefited all teams equally, from revenue sharing to the player draft.
This money has not only changed the wealth of the owners of NFL teams and the players. It has made the NFL organisation a major influence in the game itself.
The reason for this is the dramatic and exorbitant amount of money the NFL receives for the television rights to it's games.
Beginning in 1962 when CBS paid the NFL 4.65 million dollars for the contract to televise all regular season games. The revenue has exploded to a total of 3.735 billion dollars paid by the networks involved in televising NFL games in 2007.

The NFL's status as a prime offering that makes billions in advertising for the networks has led some to conclude that unbiased coverage of the league is not possible.

ESPN attempted to run a dramatic series showing steamier aspects of pro football, "Playmakers", but dropped the series after the league reportedly threatened to exclude the network from carrying its games under the next set of TV contracts.
The NFL also has a strict policy prohibiting networks to run ads during official NFL programming (pre and post-game studio shows and the games themselves) from the gambling industry, and has rejected some ads from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Commissioner Roger Goodell explained in 2007 that he did not think it behooved the sport to associate with sports betting. Additionally, the networks and their announcers cannot discuss or run graphics showing point spreads during NFL shows. They do allow Fantasy Football, however.
Despite all the above it is my opinion that either the NFL has some incompetent Referees, Linesmen and Umpires, or they have a potential scandal brewing over the Officials involvement in determining the outcome of games. This could be the Achilles Heal of the NFL.

The Coaches, game announcers and players are forbidden from commenting negatively about the officiating of games. Those coaches who do are severely fined. Those announcers who express criticism of the officiating seem to do it in a way that lends one to believe they are incompetent or did not see what happened.
The Commissioner routinely fines players for their infractions on and off the field, and these fines and suspensions are made known to the Media. But the league goes merrily along through the years without publicly chastising any official for actions on the field of play.
Scandals involving officials have surfaced in other major and collegiate sports. Why not the NFL?

We all see games each Sunday that have obvious missed calls, or phantom calls for holding or interference. But the final four minutes of the Game between the Patriots and Ravens was the worst I have seen in over 40 years of watching NFL games on TV. The Patriots have to be the luckiest team in the NFL or the officials gave them the game! I am neither a Raven fan nor a Patriot hater!

The Ravens won every category of statistic in that game but the score. The last four calls by the officials in the final minutes determined the eventual winner, New England Patriots.

There were two calls on 4th down plays, a 3rd on a pass interference call. The additional down, after Brady failed to score on a quarterback sneak, in the final minute due to a phantom time out was the topper. The winning drive in the final minutes covered 73 yards and required two fourth-down conversions, one on a defensive holding penalty, on a pass play where the ball thrown was incapable of being caught, 6 seconds before Gaffney beat Dawan Landry in the left corner of the end zone.

Is the problem with officiating caused by people who are unproficient?

The officials make from $25,000 to $70,000 per season depending on seniority. For a part time job that ain't bad, so they should be able to find 119 men/women who could call the game correctly.

Or does the league tolerate incompetence because they don't want to rock the "Money Boat"? An officiating scandal not only would rock the boat it could sink it!

Where Is The Outrage?

It is troubling to this blog writer that three politically powerful groups have been strangely silent, if not active supporters, of the Muslim Community and it's organizations, despite the obvious animus written and spoken in their dogma against these groups.

The three groups I am referring to are the Feminists. Gay and Lesbian Groups and the Jews.

None of these groups have come forward to condemn what is an apparent threat to their existence, if the Muslim movement gains political or military power in the U.S.

Is it the hatred for the current occupant of the White House or is it something else that keeps these three groups, and too many others from asking why if there are radical Muslims and peaceful Muslims? Why don't the Muslims as a group, who professes to be a peaceful Religion, do not renounce the parts of the Koran and the Hadith that proclaims the following: One Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad appeared in Egyptian publications in the 1930s and 1940s:
"The resurrection of the dead will not come until the Muslims will war with the Jews and the Muslims will kill them; ... the trees and rocks will say, "O Muslim, O Abdullah, here is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."2 The holy writings of Islam also contain benign references to Jews, which often are cited to support the fantasy of "harmonious relations between Muslims and Jews in Arab lands." Wherever Jews have lived under Arab Islam, however, their conditions appear to have been determined by the negative images of Jews within the Hadith Reports and the Koran, the juridical source of Islamic law, images found in such statements as the following:

"Muslims Oppress women in general. Men are allowed to have as many as four wives simultaneously and as many concubines as they wish or can afford. Men can easily divorce their wives and automatically have the custody of the children, if they so decide. Women have subservient status to men in all areas of the Sharia law. Equality under the law has no meaning in Islam. Just one example of the dreadful way of treating women in Islam is a case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped. The Islamic court convicted the woman to prison term and lashes for having committed the “sin” of riding in a car with a male who was not her relative. This is a standard form of Islamic Shariah justice—a savage heritage of barbarism that ruled the Arabian Peninsula some centuries ago."

The Islam solution for Homosexuals should be a subject the Gay and lesbian Community would fear. Muslims deal with homosexuals, for instance, by hanging them "en mass", even though homosexuality is just as prevalent in Islamic lands as anywhere else. Recently an Ayatollah made a ruling on homosexuals. He said that they should be hanged and tortured before they are hanged.

This reminds this blogger of the type of Punishment King Henry the VIII wrought upon people who threatened or disagreed with him. In 1535 he had Sir Thomas Moore tried, found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered for refusing to sign an oath rejecting Catholicism and recognizing the Kings New Church (Anglican Church of England) that King Henry formed because the Pope refused to grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, so he could Marry Anne Boleyn.

The Muslim Religion is considered the most anti-homosexual of all world’s religions by condemning the practice and enforcing strict punishments. Twenty-one percent of the world follows Islam giving this denomination great power and influence. There is no degree of acceptance and the Koran clearly states that it is sinful and undisputedly illegal.
(Koran 4:16)If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both...
(Koran 27:55)Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than Women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant!
The Hadith are a group of passages and rights claimed to be written by Muhammad and are used in teaching Islam.
“When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes.”
“Kill the one who is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to.”he following is a quote from the Quran:

If this were not enough to alert all Americans to a potential threat to freedom that is posed by the Muslim movement.

Then the Israeli-Palestinian problem should alert the American Jews to awaken to the threats posed to their fellow Jews in Israel.

The recent Annapolis Conference, that had the purpose of getting Israel to give more concessions to the Palestinians, is a case on point.

Diplomats have tried in vain for decades to resolve the Palestinian crisis, but when you know that the children are being brain washed in their schools to hate Jews. It is hard to fathom the idea that diplomacy will bring peace to that region of the world.

" Palestinian Authority school children are actively taught that the Jews and Israel are the enemy, in a broad range of contexts. The school texts portray the Jew as the enemy of believers, the enemy of Islam, the enemy of the Arabs, as well as generally evil and dangerous. Jews are killers and robbers and have stolen Arab land. Modern events are misrepresented to portray Israel and Jews as the evil force in their world. Zionism is equated to Nazism, together they are depicted as the prototype examples of racism. These themes also appear regularly on Palestinian Authority television."
The preceding quotations were taken from a study by The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, which is based on 85 current Syrian textbooks.

Congress Moves Toward More Deaths On Highways

Will Rogers once said, "We're all ignorant, just about different things." The business of our governments is often complex and hard for regular folks to follow. Responsible elected representatives work to inform and enlighten their constituents - not to use their ignorance against them.

What Congressional Democrats are doing in the name of Ecology is a perfect example of the harm our elected officials can do to us while they profess to be doing "the peoples" good.

House and Senate Democrats have proposed a 40% increase in the mileage passenger cars get per gallon of fuel. They also are dictating through the back door what fuels will be used in our cars.

Business week has reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a longtime protector of the auto industry, settled their differences in an agreement late Friday on the fuel economy, or CAFE, issue, clearing the way for a House vote on a broader energy bill, probably on Wednesday.
Automakers would be required to meet an industry wide average of 35 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks, including SUVs, by 2020, the first increase by Congress in car fuel efficiency in 32 years.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the compromise "good news" and said he hoped to take up the legislation quickly after the House acts.
Dingell said the tougher standards are "both aggressive and attainable" and include provisions that give manufacturers the needed flexibility to bring SUVs and small trucks under compliance and to avoid job losses.
"We have achieved consensus on several provisions that provide critical environmental safeguards without jeopardizing American jobs," said Dingell in a statement.
Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that the tougher CAFE requirements "will serve as the cornerstone" of the energy bill, which also is expected to require a sharp increase in ethanol use as a motor fuel and require nonpublic electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources such as wind or solar energy.
The amount of ethanol required to be used as a motor fuel would be ramped up to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, a sevenfold increase over today's production.

No where in their legislation will be the same kind of attack on large trucks, that they are aiming directly at the "individual" motorist.. They are too wedded to the Teamsters Union politically to include the greatest threat to our safety on the highway in their legislation.

Nancy Pelosi "crows" that this legislation is for the attack on global warming. She said: "It is a major milestone and the first concrete legislation to address global warming," declared Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was involved in the discussion with House Democrats as the agreement with Dingell was worked out. Not a mention of preserving the precious life-blood of our Capitalist system ,oil. She is doing this at our peril to satisfy her constituents who worship at the false idol of Conservation!

No consideration for the safety of those who drive these new vehicles is mentioned. The only way we have come to today's mandated mileage per gallon is to strip automobiles of the steel that once protected them and replace it with fiberglass and plastics. Thus making us more vulnerable to the behemoths of the highway, semi-trailer trucks.

Over 40,000 Americans die each year on our nation's roadways - a price quietly accepted by most of us. ("Only" about 58,000 Americans died in the entire Vietnam war and that brought out riots in the streets.) Aside from the fatherless or motherless children - or the grieving parents - or entire families wiped out in seconds, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported a few years back that its research revealed that the monetary cost, alone, of deaths on American highways exceeds the national debt each year.

Trucks, including tractor-trailers, single-unit trucks, and certain heavy cargo vans with gross weight of more than 10,000 pounds - account for a disproportionate share of traffic deaths based on miles traveled. The fatal crash rate for large trucks is 2.4 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled - more than 50 percent greater than the rate for all vehicles on the roads. People in passenger vehicles are especially vulnerable in collisions with large trucks because of the great difference in weight between cars and large tucks. In two-vehicle crashes involving passenger vehicles and large trucks, 98 percent of the fatalities were occupants of the passenger vehicle.
Overweight trucks are even more dangerous than trucks that stay within the current federal weight limits. Overweight trucks not only take longer to brake and are more prone to roll over in crashes, but they also damage roads and bridges at rapidly increasing rates even when slightly overloaded.

Most of the fatal crashes involving large trucks occur in rural areas (67 percent), during the day (69 percent) and on weekdays (80 percent). (NHTSA, 2001)
Ninety-eight percent of people killed in two-vehicle crashes involving passenger vehicles and a large truck in 1999 were the occupants of the passenger vehicle. (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, 2000)
In 2001, there were 483 fatalities in Texas, 376 in California, 85 in Arizona, and 60 in New Mexico caused by large truck crashes. (NHTSA, 2001).

How much longer are we Americans going to allow those elected officials in Washington to continue to work for special interests and not the good of those of us who elected them? Time to throw them all out!

Congress Playing The Grinch To Troops in Iraq

Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families, especially those of our fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who have died in defense of American liberty while prosecuting the war with Jihadistan.

While Our brave men and women are making progress in the fight to clean out the radical Islamists in Iraq. Majority Senate Leader, Harry Reid, is planning to send the Senate home for a Holiday vacation (at tax payers expense) without binging up the Bill for a vote that would give the troops more money to continue the fight.

His Grinch like action will undoubtedly result in some unintended consequences. The first is that every soldier, sailor or marine killed during his Holiday break will be the result of his power struggle with the President in this blogger opinion.

Even more close to home, there is the very real possibility that many civilian workers at military bases here in the United States will be laid off if the money to continue the fight needs to come out of the Pentagon civilian budget.

Over the years beginning in the Presidency of George the first, may non-military positions on military bases were turned over to Civilians. This released more military people for readiness training and was a shot in the arm to the economy of the Cities where large military bases are located.

The Secretary of Defense has warned the Democrats who are blocking passage of the funding bill, that he may have to begin reducing the civilian work force if the money for the troops gets short. I hope he does it!

The bone of contention with the Democrats is how do they satisfy their constituents who are violently anti-war, and still appear to be supportive of the troops?

Mr. Reid has said the Democrats will not fund the troops with the money President Bush is requesting unless Mr. Bush agrees to withdraw the troops by next December.

Imagine telling a group of dedicated bank robbers that you will guard the Federal Reserve until next December, and then you will send the guards all home for rest. Do you think for one minute the robbers will try to rob a bank until one minute after the guards leave?

Well, the Al queda will do the same thing. Go underground, if the Democrats prevail, and wait until the troops are ready to leave, and then the "Massacre"will begin!

President Bush sternly pressed Democrats to approve money to fund the Iraq war "without strings and without delay" before leaving town for the Christmas holidays, something congressional leaders have already indicated they will not do.
After more failed attempts to pass legislation ordering troops home from Iraq, Democrats have said they plan to sit on Bush's $196 billion request for war spending until next year.
Bush said this will push the Pentagon toward an accounting nightmare and affect the military ability to do its job protecting the country.
"The American people expect us to work together to support our troops. That's what they want," Bush said Thursday after spending two hours meeting at the Pentagon with military leaders. "They do not want the government to create needless uncertainty for those defending our country and uncertainty for their families. They do not want disputes in Washington to undermine our troops in Iraq just as they're seeing clear signs of success."
The last paragraph was excerpted from an AP story online today, and illustrates why I called the Democrats in Congress the Grinch who ruined Christmas.

The Democrats Have a New "Big" Problem

When the dust had settled and the debris from the Twin Towers disaster had been removed, a movement began to undermine the War effort in Iraq. All the Democrat aspirants to the White House and the major players in the Democrat controlled Senate and the House began carping about the failures in Iraq. We can't win, we are loosing, time to bring the troops home and more such tripe was seen and heard every night on TV and radio.

People like Congressman Murtha furthered the attack, and said the Bush war was not winnable.

Fast forward to today, and we find that Democrats and RINO's are trying to force withdrawal by withholding funds to support the war effort. The "un-winnable" war was a big campaign issue for most Democrats, and then the worst display of unpatriotic behavior occurred when General Petraeus spoke to Congress on the progress his troops were making in Iraq.

Senator Hillary Clinton claimed he was lying, and the sycophants over at MoveOn.org. referred to the General as "General Betray Us"!

Well, Mr. Murtha just returned from a trip to Iraq , and it would appear he has seen the light of Truth. The following staement may be a problem for the Iraq anti-war zealots. The following is a quote from Instapundit.com, as written by Glenna Reynolds.

"Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), one of the leading anti-war voices in the House Democratic Caucus, is back from a trip to Iraq and he now says the "surge is working." This could be a huge problem for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders, who are blocking approval of the full $200 billion being sought by President Bush for combat operations in Iraq in 2008. Murtha's latest comments are also a stark reversal from what he said earlier in the year. . . .
Pelosi, who is scheduled to speak to a Democratic National Committee event in Virginia on Friday, will surely face tough questions from reporters regarding Murtha's statement on the surge.
"This could be a real headache for us," said one top House Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Pelosi is going to be furious."

This is a stark reversal of opinion as expressed by Congressman Murtha earlier this year.

The Pennsylvania Democrat, who chairs the powerful Defense subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee, has previously stated that the surge "is not working" and the United States faced a military disaster in Iraq.
Murtha told CNN on July 12, following a Bush speech, that the president's views on the success of surge in Iraq were "delusional."
"Well it's delusional to say the least," Murtha told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "As I said earlier, and you heard me say it, it's a failed policy wrapped in illusion. Nothing's gotten better. Incidents have increased. We have had more Americans killed in the last four months than any other period during the war."
Murtha added: "I don't acknowledge there has been any progress made. Maybe in Baghdad. But it just breaks out someplace else. We called for extra troops two years ago. We put money in for 30,000 troops. They haven't even been able to raise the 30,000 troops they have. So they have to break all their guidelines. But there's no progress being made."

Murtha even yelled at a reporter during a recent press conference, telling the reporter that the news coming out of the Pentagon regarding Iraq is not believable. "They don't need to do the things -- you're missing the point -- because the Pentagon says it, you believe it?," Murtha yelled. "You believe what the Pentagon says? Huh? With all the things that they have told us, you believe what -- I mean, go back and look -- 'mission accomplished,' al Qaeda connection, weapons of mass destruction, on and on and on, and you believe the Pentagon?"

Seeing is believing, and I compliment Congressman Murtha for his conversion, but the damage he did to the men in "Country" fighting an idealog enemy was something I am sure many people in uniform will never forget. It is not over yet by a long shot, but we are gaining ground on Our enemy, and Victory is possible and surrender is not an option for true Americans.

AN INTERNATIONAL PARADOX

Everyone seems to believe that despite the failures in the past, We can resolve the Palestinian/Israel dilemma. The Conference in Annapolis will finally lead to peace is the popular opinion.
Even the Congress, at least 135 members, sent a letter to Secretary of State Rice, urging her to make steps toward a lasting peace
U.S. Representatives Gary Ackerman a Jew (D-NY), the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, and Charles W. Boustany, Jr.an Arab, (R-LA), sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to express Congressional support for the Bush Administration`s efforts for convening an International meeting in Annapolis, Maryland about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and to urge a number of practical steps to bolster the prospects for its success toward peace.
The problem is the people in Maryland at the Conference are not the ones who can or will make peace. The radical militants in Gaza and surrounding territories must also want peace to have any agreement made in this Conference mean more than the paper it is written on.
The radicals showed their disdain for a peaceful solution by committing a murder in the West Bank area of Kedumim.
Ynet News reports that Ido Zoldan, 29, of the settlement of Shavei Shomron was murdered Monday in a late night shooting attack near the Palestinian village of Funduk in the area of the Kedumim settlement in the northern West Bank.
The terrorists opened fire at the Israeli from a passing car at around 11:30 pm. Magen David Adom paramedics who were called to the site attempted to revive the man, but pronounced him dead a short while later.
Zoldan was survived by his wife Tehila and his two small children.
The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah, took responsibility for the attack, saying that it was "a protest against the Annapolis conference and a response to Israel's crimes against the Palestinians."
There are two factions that must agree to a peaceful settlement on the Arab side, Hamas and Fatah. Thus far there is no historical evidence that either one has any intentions other than obliterating Israel from the face of the Earth!
Despite the dire history of failures, there are still leaders who think talking will resolve this problem, as evidenced by the following story excerpted from the AP news wire:
U.S. Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY), the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, and Charles W. Boustany, Jr., (R-LA), are this afternoon sending a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to express Congressional support for the Bush Administration`s efforts to convene an international meeting in Annapolis, Maryland about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and to urge a number of practical steps to bolster the prospects for its success.

And if there are not enough idiots serving as leaders of the Countries involved in this struggle for peace. The following story from The Jerusalem Post will show you another example of stupidity.
While our leaders in Washington want to take guns out of the hands of honest Americans, the Prime Minister of Israel allowed the transfer of weapons to a group dedicated to his and his Country men/women eradication.
Last week Israel's Prime minister Olmert approved the shipment of Russian made armed vehicles as a gesture to Abbas ahead of this week's U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit in Annapolis, Md.
At this conference, Israel is expected to outline a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank.
The armored vehicles were to be sent by Russia as part of a deal made between Abbas and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2003. Israel, which controls the West Bank borders, did not allow the transfer four years ago, but Olmert agreed to the vehicle delivery after Abbas, earlier this month, reportedly petitioned Russia to send the machinery.
Aside from the armored vehicles, Olmert also approved a shipment of 1,000 rifles and 2 million rounds of ammunition for Abbas' forces, particularly Fatah's Force 17 presidential guards and the Preventative Security Services, which serve as police units in the West Bank.
Many members of Fatah's declared military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, openly serve in the Fatah security forces. The Brigades is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, deadly shootings and rocket attacks.
Israel's army and security services strongly objected to the transfer of the armored vehicles both out of fear Hamas would seize the vehicles and because the machinery could provide cover to Al Aqsa gunmen who carry out attacks, according to senior IDF sources.
Knesset members today slammed Olmert's decision to allow the armored vehicles.
Benjamin Netanyahu, chairman of the opposition Likud party called on parties in Olmert's coalition government to "leave this reckless and failed government."
Hamas' vows to take over the armored vehicle transfers comes amid warnings from its leaders that the terror group is prepared to seize the West Bank if Olmert hands the strategic territory to Abbas.
"Israel thinks Fatah in the West Bank is there to serve it, but we will take over the West Bank the way we took over Gaza," stated Hamas' leader in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, at a major rally in the Gaza Strip earlier this month.
Al-Zahar, who served as foreign minister in the deposed Hamas-led Palestinian government, became the most senior Hamas leader to state in recent weeks the terror group plans to seize the West Bank just as it took complete control of the Gaza Strip this past June, taking over all U.S.-backed Fatah security installations and reportedly seizing control of large stockpiles of weaponry transferred to Abbas over the years.
Israeli and Palestinian security officials reported that they have specific information that indicates Hamas is quietly setting the stages for an imminent West Bank takeover attempt.
The officials said that among other things, Hamas has been acquiring weaponry in the West Bank and has set up a sophisticated system of communication between cells for a seizure attempt.
In what is considered the most threatening Hamas move, according to the officials, the terror group is thought to have heavily infiltrated all major Fatah forces in the West Bank and has been attempting to buy off Fatah militia members, many times successfully.
According to Palestinian sources, Hamas has, among other things, recruited important members of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The terror group particularly has targeted those who were against a deal this past summer in which Olmert extended amnesty to Brigades members as a gesture to Abbas.
The issue of Hamas infiltration of Fatah was thought to have been the Achilles heel that led to the terror group's takeover last summer of the entire Gaza Strip, including dozens of major, U.S.-backed Fatah security compounds there. Hamas' seizure is thought to be a partial consequence of Israel evacuating Gaza in 2005.
Hamas' infiltration of Fatah was so extensive, according to top Palestinian intelligence sources speaking to WND, it included the chiefs of several prominent Fatah security forces.
And yet the men in the striped pants and waist coats still babble on. You cannot make a deal with the Devil. This issue regrettably will be solved only militarily not by talk. As we talk our enemies grow stronger. When will we realize the facts and the truth? Isareal is our only ally in that part of the worldand we must not let it be weakened or destroyed.

HISTORY DOES REPEAT ITSELF

Secretary of State Codi Rice is making the same mistake today that Neville Chamberlain made in 1936 when he signed the Munich Agreement with Adolph Hitler.

In the agreement that turned out to be the worst case of appeasement in recent history. Mr. Chamberlain gave up the Sudaten Land to Hitler. A right he did not have to give as Prime Minister of Great Britain, but he did it and when he returned home he proclaimed his agreement was the instrument to end war in "Our Times".

WE know only too well that his proclamation was a falsehood and hollow that led Hitler to pursue his dream of conquering all of Europe. All the Agreement did was give Hitler more time to build up his war machine.

"Chamberlain's Munich Agreement deal (peace for our time) (i.e., the surrender of the Sudetenland to Germany) with Hitler was internationally acclaimed and praised at home and abroad, by among others Pope Pius XI, Ireland's Eamon de Valera, the United States administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canada's William Lyon Mackenzie King. Chamberlain was acclaimed by many British people for avoiding another war."(source Wikapedia)

Not unlike the attitude of too many Americans today, Chamberlain expressed his reasons for his agreement with Hitler with the following words: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."

Fast forward to today, and you will find appeasement of an equal gravity. The Annapolis Peace Conference is predicated on the bring together Israel and The present Palestinian leadership to "hammer out" a peace process. The only problem is that the "hammering" will be done on the Israelis!

US and Israeli policy makers are premising the Annapolis Conference on foundations that have led to a series of bloody collapses in Oslo, Cairo, Hebron, Wye, Sharm el-Sheikh, Camp David 2, and the “Disengagement.” They assume that Abu Mazen has adopted a mentality of peace, thus granting yet another victory to the simplistic world of delusions over Mideast’s complex reality.

The late Professor Majid Khadduri, from Johns Hopkins University’, considered the world’s leading authority on Arab definitions of peace and war, noted that Arabs view peace as a tactical means for achieving their strategic objective – defeating the enemy. Peace constitutes a necessary, but temporary, break in the ongoing war against the enemy and/or infidel.

Israel will be forced to release more terrorists and surrender even more vital territory to hostile neighbors in return for more empty Arab promises. Given American pressure on the Olmert government to "take risks for peace" and make "painful compromises", there is cause for genuine Israeli concern since the current Palestinian leadership has never had any intention of preparing its people either for peace or for co-existence with Israel. You need only look at Hamas and Palestinian Authority-published textbooks showing maps of Palestine as encompassing present-day Israel, public statements (in Arabic), incitement in the media, and the toleration and encouragement of terrorist attacks to understand that there is no common ground here. This is not, as the U.S. State Department implies, a fight between two parties equally responsible for a terrible conflict. It is a war to exterminate the Jewish state that is being waged by Arabs and Islamists with differing strategies and agendas on the same extension of annihilation. Israel is our only ally in the Middle East despite the fact we "play nice" with Saudi Arabia where beheading in public is still considered proper punishment. But then Israel has no oil!

A LEAP TOO FAR!

There is no one who has lived or visited Los Angeles, Mexico City, Bakersfield, Dallas, New York, Pittsburgh or Cleveland, who will argue that there is a problem with the quality of the air we all have to breath to sustain our lives. You can see it, you can smell it and in some cities I have visited, you can even taste the air pollution!

But it is a serious breach of the truth and of scientific investigative results to jump from the dangers of pollution of the air we breath to the assumption that this phenomenon is causing "global warming".

The ''consensus'' among scientists, it is said, is that the planet's temperature is rising, the cause of the rise is the use of fossil fuels, and disastrous climate changes are looming unless drastic changes are made. The media likewise tend to take it as a given that the experts are in accord on global warming. So do too many politicians. ''The evidence of global warming keeps piling up,'' says Vice President Al Gore, who has made the issue a personal crusade,( AND A MONEY MAKING ENDEAVOR) ''month after month, week after week.''
So if the scientists are all in agreement, who said this?
''We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto. ... The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
''There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing (or will in the foreseeable future cause) catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.''

It is a petition signed by nearly 17,000 US scientists, half of whom are trained in the fields of physics, geophysics, climate science, meteorology, oceanography, chemistry, biology, or biochemistry.

The statement was circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine along with an eight-page abstract of the latest research on climate change. The abstract - written for scientists but comprehensible by laymen - concludes that there is no basis for believing (1) that atmospheric CO2 is causing a dangerous climb in global temperatures, (2) that greater concentrations of CO2 would be harmful, or (3) that human activity leads to global warming in the first place.

This was reported in the Boston Globe, 11/05/98 by Jeff Jacoby. But the beat still goes on. A relentless assault on scientific truth by those who would see the destruction of the Capitalist system and our way of life, so they can substitute a "One World" Socialist, secularist government. A world where the "special people, performing artists, political leaders and the mega-wealthy(aka Sorros), can tell us how we shall live with the full force of the World Government behind them!

With global warming, however, greenhouse "gasbags" can argue that auto emissions in Ohio threaten people in Paris, and that only global government can tackle such problems. National sovereignty? Democracy? Forget it: global warming has now brought the Left closer to global government, statism, and the eradication of individual rights than it has ever been before.

For decades, environmentalism has been the Left's best excuse for increasing government control over our actions in too many ways. It's for Mother Earth! It's for the children! It's for the whales! But until now, the doomsday-scenario environmental scares they've trumped up haven't been large enough to give the sinister prize they want most of all: total control of American politics, economic activity, and even individual behavior.

The oil industry is just one example of how much influence and damage to our economy and way of life can be caused by Environmental zealots.
Throughout the 1990s, the oil industry spent nearly 25 percent of capital investment -- more than $100 billion -- to comply with environmental regulations, and reduce air pollutants.

Oil refiner Premcor shut two Illinois oil refineries because it could not afford required upgrades; modifications in one refinery alone would have cost $70 million.
Gas prices have also been affected by the government. In order to fulfill various air pollution reduction plans, gasoline sold in the United States has been fractionated into about 17 different boutique fuels.
With three grades of gasoline, refiners produce more than 50 separate blends.
This is expensive, as each blend must be transported separately, which limits pipeline and storage capacity.
Moreover, it is difficult to replace supplies when there are disruptions and when refining capacity is taken off-line to clean tanks and pipelines when switching between winter and summer blends.
Unfortunately, these and other government mandates lead to a loss of $1 trillion in economic output and up to 5 million workers unemployed. Absent government intervention in the market, prompted by environmental pressure groups, refinery capacity would be expected to expand, reducing consumer prices. More economical and secure energy supplies are available if government gets out of the way.
Source: H. Sterling Burnett, "New oil refineries needed," Washington Times, November 26, 2007

And to top it all. Now President Bush has apparently caved in to the Global Warming scam. Look out America!

SPEAKER PELOSI AND UNIVERSITY OF DELEWARE

As I was growing up I learned that my great-grandparents on my father's side were immigrants who fled Germany. They were originally from the Cities of Weisbaden and Stuttgart in the Bavarian Heartland. They fled Germany not to escape the Horrors of Nazism, but to find a new more profitable life in the 1890's America that they felt had good future for their children. One of their Children was my grandfather and he spoke no English. In fact the complete family spoke only German for a few Years, and although they learned enough English to gain employment. The language spoken in their home was heir native German.

When I was old enough to spend time away from my parents they sent me every summer to spend a week with my Grandparents in Northern, Wisconsin. Grandpa and Grandma still spoke German in their home to each other when they wanted to say something they thought inappropriate to my ears, but to me they would only speak English.

When I was old enough to understand my fathers motives. I learned that he had told his parents not to try to speak German to me. I am sorry he did that, but he wasn't interested in multiculturalism. He was concerned with my learning the language and the great culture that I was to live and work in when I "grew up".

For this reason it is hard for this blogger to understand the way teachers, politicians and leftist leaning advocates of the bi-lingual movement keep insisting we in the United States have to accept that people who speak Spanish only, should be protected from demands from employers that people they employ speak English.

The Wall Street Journal reported on November 19th that Nancy Pelosi, Democrat Speaker of the U.S. House is trying to force the Salvation Army to hire non-English speaking people!

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote just this month. "I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,' " he told the Senate last Thursday."
But that's exactly what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to do. In March the EEOC sued the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required its employees to speak English on the job. The requirement was clearly posted and employees were given a year to learn the language. The EEOC claimed the store had fired two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish on the job.

Previous to this disturbing event in Congress, the following was reported about the University of Delaware.

The WorldNetDaily reported on October 30th,2007, the following news from Delaware. It sounds to this blogger as though Speaker Pelosi and her ilk helped formulate the following mandate that denies students at the University of Delaware their Constitutional Right to Free Speech!

"The University of Delaware has mandated a program that requires residence hall students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according to a civil rights group."
Somehow, the University of Delaware seems unaware that a state-sponsored institution of higher education in the United States does not have the legal right to engage in a program of systematic thought reform. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of conscience – the right to keep our innermost thoughts free from governmental intrusion. It also protects the right to be free from compelled speech.

This is strangely reminiscent of the types of thought control action taken by Hitler and Stalin, not something one would expect to find on the Campus of an American University. Unfortunately those of us who send off our Teen age children ( and many thousands of dollars)to college, often send them to schools that spend most of their time reprogramming our children's minds, so that they conform to the Liberal bias of today's secular humanists.

Birds Of a Feather?

Reuters New Agency has reported that another politically involved woman has endorsed Hillary Clinton. No, Not a U.S. Senator, Mayor, or Governor. The endorsement comes from another kindred soul. Bernadette Chirac, a woman who like her husband Jacques left the Presidency of France shrouded in scandals involving her and her husband, Not unlike the situation the Clinton's find themselves in today.

"Bernadette Chirac came out today in support of Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Chirac is the wife of former French President, Jacques Chirac, who just left office in May of this year.
Hillary must be pleased as punch at this endorsement. Is it the woman thing, do you think? Reuters offered no political reason, just this:
"From the first look, the first words, Hillary Clinton is a friendly, smiling person who never lets herself be caught out," she said. She even expressed interest in attending the Democratic convention in Denver in August. "And if I can be of any use to her somewhere in the campaign, I'm available. I'd like to go with her and I'm going to suggest it to her."

This is strangely familiar to the mutterings of Senator Kerry when he was running for President, and claimed he had the endorsement of the leaders of the free world backing his election.
The main difference and yet a similarity is the kindred spirit relationship between Madame Chirac and Senator Clinton. Both are accused of criminal activity!

Mr Chirac, who had one of the longest continuous political careers in Europe - twice president, twice prime minister and mayor of Paris for 18 years - has moved out of the comfort of State palaces for the first time in 30 years. But while he is lauded for his resistance to the war in Iraq and reconciling France with its history by apologising for Nazi collaboration, Mr Chirac has seen brutal appraisals of what critics call his wasted 12 years as the economy stagnated, public debt grew and youth unemployment and discrimination fed social unrest on housing estates. In a survey last week, 54% said his time in power had been "bad" for France.
For weeks before he left office, Mr Chirac's staff at the Élysée were busy shredding personal notes and confidential papers. A special rubbish truck destroyed miles of video and audio tapes. Not unlike the Clintons.
Mr Chirac and his wife, Bernadette, move d into a luxurious flat on Paris's left bank, with a view of the Louvre, lent by the family of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese politician assassinated in 2005. Over the past month, furniture movers and officials have been transferring papers, works of art and cases of wine into the building. Sounds like the pilfering done at the White House as the Clinton's vacated it in 2000.
But when Mr Chirac returned from a holiday in Morocco he found decades-old corruption scandals returning to haunt him.

Judges are said to want to question Mr Chirac as a witness in an illegal party-funding scandal involving fictitious jobs, which claimed his protege and former prime minister, Alain Juppé. But an official in the ruling UMP party said Mr Chirac, who denies all knowledge of several corruption rackets, was unlikely to face sanctions.
Almost 50 people employed by Chirac's government, went on trial in Paris in the last few years, accused of involvement in one of the worst corruption scandals in French history.
Charged with rigging public works contracts in order to finance the country's major political parties, their testimony threatens to "dynamite" the country's political establishment and heap embarrassment on the French president.

These French scandals are very instructive in providing a lesson about a socialized economy, one that Hillary espouses that includes among other schemes, socialized medicine. This type system is very prone to bureaucratic and political corruption. Those who call for socialist policies in the United States, particularly in the Democratic Party candidates Obama, Edwards and Hillary, often tout the equitable nature of such a system.
For example, under a system of socialized medicine, everyone will allegedly have equal access and quality, whereas under a free-market system, the rich will have better medical care.
In reality, however, such is not the case. In a socialized system, bureaucrats and the professional political class control much of a given society's resources. They and those who are connected to them have better access to the fruits of the society, including better housing and medical care.
In both systems, someone inevitably has more and better access than others. The difference, however, is this: under a free-market system, those who earned their wealth through hard work and ingenuity get to buy such access for themselves and for their families with their own resources. Under a socialized system, those who are elected or appointed to oversee the welfare of all gain access to the resources of the whole society, not resources of their own making.
Perhaps the Socialized philosophies of both Mrs. Chirac and Hillary are what prompted this meddler in our political system to speak out for Hillary.

THE UNDER BELLY OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

The papers an TV news are filled with the fact that Hillary Clinton will not release her "First_Lady" papers until after the election in 2008. This provokes the feeling of "she has too much to hide" in any inquiring mind.

But she is not the only Democrat to refuse to allow the public to see prior political documents. Senator Obama has apparently "lost" his Illinois Senatorial papers. He spent six years in the State Senate, and he says he no longer has access to them ,so how can he release them.

The media is giving him a pass on this issue by in large, but a search of the Chicago area newspaper archives reveals a possible scandal hidden in the "lost" papers of Senator Obama.

The following is a headline in some Chicago area newspapers:
"INTERNET EDITOR AND REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION FIGHTER ANDY MARTIN REQUESTS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO “DEAL” BETWEEN SENATOR BARACK OBAMA AND INDICTED INFLUENCE PEDDLER TONY REZKO.NEWS CONFERENCE DETAILS"

Internet journalist/editor Andy Martin on November 16, 2006, held a news conference to announce that he has filed a complaint with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the U. S. Department of justice seeking a criminal investigation into the financial links between U. S. Senator Barack Obama and indicted Illinois influence peddler Tony Rezko. The complaint also names U. S. Representative Luis Gutierrez. After his news conference, Martin went to the U. S. Attorney’s office to leave a letter for the foreperson of the U.S. Grand Jury.

Mr. Martin had this to say when questioned by reporters as to why he was filing this complaint: Mr. Obama says he made a ‘mistake’ when he entered into a deal with Tony Rezko,” Martin will state. “On the contrary, Obama committed a crime, and he knew it. Rezko was engaged in influence peddling, plain and simple. Obama was not some unsophisticated jerk. He had served as an Illinois State Senator, a body that has been a fulcrum of corruption for decades. He knew the ‘players.’ What Obama did is no different than the same kind of ‘honest graft’ that has sent Illinois politicians to jail since Governor Otto Kerner. Now that the election is over, it is time to focus attention on what I believe was Obama’s criminal conduct.”

And while the Sun-Times refers to dozens of housing rehab deals and to $43 million in taxpayer subsidies that were collected by Rezko-connected companies, Obama said the following in rebuttal to questions by Chicago Sun Times Reporters: "He worked on just four of those housing rehabs, and all he did was to create a legal corporate joint venture.""We set up the structures and that was the end of it,"

Sun-Times investigative reporter Tim Novak asked Obama how he could not have known that many Rezko buildings were horrible slums."My point is the implication is that we were out there facilitating these kinds of practices, and that just wasn't the case,"

For those who have never heard of Tony Rezko, I will add a brief description of his activities in Chicago during the last decade. Rezko is a Syrian born Muslim who made millions in Illinois and foreign real estate deals and "sweat heart pizza deals" in the Chicago area.

The "main dough" in Tony’s Chicago business is Pizza, but he was sued by the parent company,. He also owns 7 Subway sandwich shops on Illinois toll way, thanks to his chummy connections to the governor.

He has used his powerful web of connections( including the Muslim Community in Chicago) to aid most of Chicago area politicians (including Senator Obama), thanks to his donations to their political campaigns.

Since he was indicted last week, no one knows for sure where Rezko is. The FBI said that he was in an Amman Hotel; he also was reportedly in Qatar, where he is believed to be the Emir’s pal.Rezko could go to his native Syria, and simply not comeback. In addition to his legal troubles, Rezko is in really big financial trouble. His house in the ritzy suburbs of Wilmette has over 3 million dollar lean to GE Capital after defaulting on payments. His businesses are faltering.Rezko is also being sued by his former friend, also a native Syrian, Semir Serazi for defaulting on a million dollar loan, Serazi secured for Rezko.Serazi, who heads the Semir and Liyla Serazi educational foundation,a businessman and a noted philanthropist, www.Serazi.com, is seeking $10 million.

The irony of the withholding of documents by both Senators Clinton and Obama is that both are campaigning on a platform of "open" Government, and a promise to"clean out the "sleaze" in the White House. It sounds too much to me like "The Kettle Calling the Pot Black"! Neither one of these "front runners" deserves to sit in the White House any where but in the waiting room to see the next President!

400 YEARS OF DRIFTING AWAY

Two hundred and seventeen years ago, the President of the New Republic, George Washington, made a proclamation that We should set aside a day of Thanksgiving to God.
It was the 26th of November,1789.

Prior to that date the Pilgrims had made a Thanksgiving proclamation on June 29th, 1676, and it took place in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

The governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express thanks for the good fortune that had seen their community securely established. By unanimous vote they instructed Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a day of thanksgiving.

The proclamation concluded with the following words: "The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ."
The language is the same as was used in those early days of the New Americans, and it shows that despite being beset by disease, failed crops and severe weather. The New Americans wanted to thank God for their survival.
The people who would come to be known as the Pilgrims (known as the Pilgrim Fathers in the UK) were brought together by a common belief in the ideas promoted by Richard Clyfton, parson at All Saints' Parish Church in Babworth, East Retford, Nottinghamshire, between 1586 and 1605. This congregation held Separatist beliefs comparable to nonconforming movements not in communion with the Church of England). Unlike conforming Puritan groups who maintained their membership in and allegiance to the Church of England, Separatists held that their differences with the Church of England were irreconcilable and that their worship should be organized independently of the trappings, traditions and organization of a central state church.
The Separatists had long been controversial. Under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services, with a fine of 12d (£.05; 2005 equivalent: about £5) for each missed Sunday and holy day. The penalties for conducting unofficial services included imprisonment and larger fines. Under the policy of this time, Barrowe and Greenwood were executed for sedition in 1593.
Concerned with losing their cultural identity, the group arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America.
The colony, established in 1620, became the second successful English settlement in what was to become the United States of America, the first being Jamestown, Virginia, which was founded in 1607. Their story was to become a central theme in United States cultural identity.
But if you fast forward to today you can readily see that the main reason the Pilgrims came to the "New World", Religion, has been largely discarded and removed from most all forms of our daily lives.
Secular humanism has taken it's place. License has been replaced for freedom. If it feels good, do it. I am O.K. you're O.K. has taken over the real Truth.
Thanksgiving today, is just a day off work, with people of means gorging themselves and watching football. God has been replaced with television and the pursuit of pleasure. It is as if the God of today is the almighty Turkey.
In 1939 President Roosevelt started the movement toward secularizing Thanksgiving when he tried to move the date from the fourth Thursday, as proclaimed by President Lincoln during the Civil War, to the third Thursday of November.
His reason for proposing the change, as verified by his papers in the Presidential library, was to give one more week of Christmas shopping to help quick start the stagnant economy of the depression. He finally settled for the fourth Thursday due to severe pressure of a letter writing campaign against the change. Congress approved the date in 1941.
Tomorrow we all should give thanks to whatever Being you believe has allowed this Country to persevere, despite the threats and calumny that have afflicted Us in the last 400 years.
I myself will give thanks to Almighty God for his blessings and the trials and tribulations that have made us stronger, and I hope all of you will take a moment to reflect on the blessings that we still have and are worth fighting to preserve!