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DON'T BELIEVE LYING LIBERALS!
LET ALL CONSERVATIVES PUT ASIDE THEIR DIFFERENCES AND BAND TOGETHER TO
STOP THIS TYRANNY IN D.C.!
Remember what Ben Franklin said:
"We must
hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang
separately."
This is a buzz topic here in Australia at the moment. The Government came to Office with the promise of installing high speed Broadband Internet access to every house in Australia, something that has not eventuated yet, and expressions of interest for the huge contract have only just closed, and the worrying thing is that it goes to the lowest bidder. That same Government also promised to install Internet filters and is trying to force ISP’s to filter content at their end, effectively slowing Internet access back to almost dial up speed.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority conducted tests earlier this year on six filters that could be imposed on internet service providers. Five slowed internet speeds by at least 20 per cent. And two of them crippled speeds by more than 75 per cent.
And this is before we look at their habit of falsely blocking legal sites. A 1999 trial of internet filtering (censoring the internet has long been a bipartisan goal) even accidentally blocked some government websites. Filters have improved since then but, as ACMA’s test revealed, it is a certainty that some sites will be incorrectly blocked — let’s be honest, the technology to efficiently and effectively censor the internet isn’t quite ready yet…
The biggest problem is a little word that Mr Conroy slipped out in the middle of a Senate committee hearing. The pilot filter program will not only target the existing blacklisted sites, most of which are child pornography, but will also target “unwanted” content, whatever that means.
The Government has developed a secret list of 10,000 unwanted sites (there are only 1300 on the current blacklist).
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.
An earlier iteration of a net filter was introduced to the public with much fanfare, a Government Minister in attendance, and cameras running while an eleven year old boy was shown sitting at the computer. To everyone’s horror and embarrassment, the boy then circumvented the filter within 75 seconds. Needless to say, this filter did not see the light of day.
That last line is the most worrying thing of all. That list of unwanted content is also worrying, as the list of sites will obviously contain sites critical of the Government. Comments on the National Broadcaster’s online news site and others are already being censored by ‘moderators’. The stupidity of filtering may be well intentioned, but with the broad brush of getting everything, ordinary words will lead to censorship. Words like Classic which contain the letters A, S, and S in sequence, words like ‘Alfred Hitchcock, and even a word that describes the current Government, ‘Socialism’, which contains the word Cialis, one of the medications pushed by the Drug Company spammers. If this is introduced here in Australia, then I guess that puts us on a par with China with regard to censorship. With only 1300 sites on the blaclist, one wonders where the Government found 10,000 sites to prospectively ban.
Image Credit. Photo taken by Bjarte Sorenson. It is a Commons Image. Click on the image to show in a larger window.
The passing of Jorn Utzon may not mean much, but when taken in context with the image it falls into place. Jorn Utzon was the designer and Architect responsible for the Sydney Opera House, arguably the most recognisable structure on the Planet after the Pyramids.
Jorn Utzon (pronounced Yearn Ootsen) passed away peacefully in his sleep aged 90 in his home Country of Denmark. His story reads stranger than fiction.
When Melbourne was awarded the Olympic Games for 1956, it added further fuel to the fire between the cities of Melbourne and Sydney, the two largest cities in Australia, and the always existing rivalry between the two cities. Melbourne has always been the sporting capital of Australia as residents patronise all sports very well. In Sydney however, they like to think of themselves as different. After the Games were awarded to Melbourne, Sydney was quite miffed. If Melbourne was to be the sporting capital of Australia, then Sydney would compete as the cultural capital. Sydney already had a good start here as all those cultural events went to Sydney anyway. Opera was one of those and the only facility was the large Town Hall. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (now Corporation) was the National broadcaster, and the home of culture, no rock and roll for them. They hired renowned conductor Eugene Goosens for our national symphony orchestra, and performing venues were the bane of his life here. He persuaded the State Government of New South Wales to construct a designated Opera House and the site was selected at Bennelong Point, but it took him 8 years to finally convince the Government. When Melbourne got the Games, State Premier, Joe Cahill announced a competition for the design of what was to be known as The Sydney Opera House. The competition proved to be huge, and there were 750 entries, 450 of these from the three major English speaking countries, and from 50 Countries in all. A panel of judges was employed to scour the entries for the winning submission. There is a legend about the winning submission. Famed Finnish Architect Eero Saarinen was one of the judges, and he evidently arrived the day after judging had commenced. He found the entry from Jorn Utzon on the rejected pile, and was entranced with it, telling other judges who had already rejected it that this was far and away the best entry. Utzon’s entry did not technically meet the requirements of the rules for the competition, as his entry was basically just a series of sketches and drawings. Saarinen never stopped in pushing the case for Utzon and eventually the other judges came around, and Utzon was awarded the contract in 1957.
Utzon was already a successful architect in his home Country of Denmark, and had worked for Alvar Aalto and for Frank Lloyd Wright. His design was considered extremely radical for the time, and there was speculation that it could not be constructed to look like his sketches and drawings, and that because of the radical design, that costs would be huge. He had a staunch ally in the State Premier Joe Cahill, who cleverly got around the funding issue by saying that the project would be funded solely from money raised in the form of a lottery, called the Sydney Opera House Lottery, which is still in place today, and even at that time was the largest lottery prize available at that time and for nearly 20 years following its inception. Cahill’s Ministers for Public Works were Jack Renshaw first, and then Norman Ryan, with Pat Hills as his Minister for Planning.
Costs did in fact blow out, and for such an already expensive project, opposition politicians made daily play of the possibility for skimming those huge amounts in the form of corruption. Each accusation was most effectively dealt with by the affable Cahill and his list of further staunch allies in Government all willing to back Utzon with all they had. Utzon himself effectively worked at problem solving in the whole process, and was instrumental in finding new ways to use new materials for the project. He had to deal on numerous fronts, other than the architectural front, and he proved very easy to work with. However the main problem that plagued him was always having to justify himself to opposing political forces, and forever explaining the process. What those opposing politicians did not mention was that the blowout in costing had more to do with inflation that was running at around 12 to 15%, and the costs of materials was only going in one direction.
Utzon was dealt a body blow in 1959 when the Premier, Joe Cahill died. He was replaced by RJ Heffron, and as the inherent political stability under Cahill started to unravel, Jack Renshaw then took over as Premier. All the while the opposing side of Politics under Bob Askin was pressing home its points and the constant daily barrage took its toll now that the firm hand of Joe Cahill was gone.
The following is an urgent email from Elizabeth Kanas-Gonzalez of The Hill Chronicles.
I was asked to post the following video at my old site (The Hill Chronicles), but in the interim between the old site and the new one, please post it at your site for your readers.
This is about my arrest for a upside down flag in which i will be going on trial for .Yes I dared to say the Emperor has no clothes in this case our country is in distress.
please post my latest video and help get it out please this is very urgent please
–
WARNING: Due to Presidential Executive Orders the National Security
Agency (NSA) may have read this email without probable cause, warrant or
notice. And now the government is permitted to listen to you via your
own cell phone even when it is turned off. Under Executive Orders to the
NSA, and US District Court rulings for the FBI, either agency may do
this without any judicial or legislative review or oversight.
Please note: Mark Alexander in his article ELECTION NOTE stated ‘Should Barack Obama succeed in deceiving a majority of voters next Tuesday, our readers have suggested two methods of protest: Either displaying your flag upside down [a sign of distress] or flying it at half mast — or both, for seven days, and doing the same on inauguration day, 20 January 2009.’
When the Unbelievable happened Mark Alexander of The Patriot Post did the same thing, flew our Old Glory inverted.
Obama has twice taken an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.”
For that reason, this morning, the symbol of our national heritage of liberty, the American flag atop the 35-foot mast at our editorial offices, was respectfully lowered, inverted, and raised to full mast as a sign of national distress. It will remain inverted until next Tuesday, when we right it in honor of Veterans Day.
Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation’s great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of “hope and change,” into a state of what is best described as “cult worship” and all its attendant deception.
[The following is from her email explaining her change to a new Blogging venue:]
Hi Dear Friend!
I canned my old blogsite, The Hill Chronicles. PFFFFFFFFFFFFT to all things politics. I’m Through!
I will be opening up soon on Free WordPress. I am opening a site that will deal more in spiritual and moral issues.
I am going to call it – The Moral Compass.
I am just so sick of politics and I decided to get that baggage off my back. I feel much better! I will add you to my email so you will know when I am set up. I did keep an xml file backup of my writings – though that side of me is finished. UGH.
Welcome to the NObamaNation! It sucks – made me feel like I really made no difference. Though I am not a quitter, EVER, I am just going to focus on other issues away from the “dirty beltway crap.”
Have a great weekend and keep in touch. I promise I will let you know when I am back up.
“Mortgage Rates Fall as U.S. Expands Rescue” was the page-one headline in the November 26th Wall Street Journal. The story concerned a promise from federal officials to “pump” another $800 billion into the economy, bringing the grand total of the cost of various bailouts to something over $8 trillion. The term “rescue” is laughable but is used for the obvious purpose of confusing people about the calamity that has befallen our nation. If we’re not bankrupt now, we will be someday because we are being “rescued” by the federal government. This is the ultimate in what William Lutz, in his 1997 book of the same name, called “doublespeak.”
Ronald Reagan always warned of government officials who said they were there to help you.
I would have written that Journal story under the headline, “U.S. Plunges Deeper into Socialism.” But, of course, I’m biased.
It’s not fashionable these days to tell the truth about our financial and economic problems. The reason is simple – the media want to keep the American people in the dark about what is happening to their country. It is a catastrophe of historical proportions. And the obvious danger is that the loss of political liberty will follow the loss of economic liberty.
For many years to come we will be talking about the market meltdown of 2008 and what was done or said about it. Those media conservatives who defended the Wall Street bailout should be given special scrutiny. It is not too early to hold them responsible.
One apparent reason for covering up the nature of what is happening is the fear of further reducing consumer confidence. Still another reason is that many in the media favor the new Big Government policies. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, who is a member of Democratic Socialists of America, wrote a column, “Gods That Failed,” about this being a great opportunity to transform the U.S. into a full-blown socialist state. Meyerson, who thinks Obama will take us there, should be commended for his brutal honesty.
The God That Failed was a book by ex-communists who gave up on socialism. Meyerson thinks capitalism has failed and that the financial crisis has proven it. It’s too bad that so many conservatives, ranging from Fred Barnes to Hugh Hewitt, gave up on capitalism, too.
Conservative commentators are continuing in the masquerade by saying that President-elect Barack Obama has been moving to the center-Right with selections of people like Timothy Geithner of the New York Federal Reserve as Treasury Secretary. They ignore the abundant evidence that Geithner’s fingerprints are already all over this mess.
The terms “Left” and “Right” lose much of their meaning when the nation’s official policy, which began under and is being implemented by a “conservative” Republican president named George W. Bush, has already become socialist.
In this context, it is absurd for commentators such as Sean Hannity to refer to what is happening as the “Obama recession” when Obama hasn’t even taken power. This only further confuses people about the socialist nightmare that our nation has entered into, and which is now being implemented on a bipartisan basis. It is just silly to be trying to score partisan political points.
At this point the issue becomes degrees of socialism. Hannity is correct that it can get much worse under Obama because he has vowed to expand socialism to other areas of the economy such as health care and because he favors further integration of the U.S. into an international socialist system. That is where the battle now has to be fought. It is time to quit defending Bush, who will go down in history as the Republican Jimmy Carter.
It will be hard for Congressional Republicans to fight this socialist trend when their leadership in both Houses backed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s initial $700-billion Wall Street bailout. In the House, where most Republicans opposed the Wall Street bailout, they inexplicably elected Rep. John “Bailout” Boehner as their leader, even though they have lost 50 members under his leadership. And they elected Rep. Eric Cantor, another bailout backer, as their number two. The saving grace is the elevation of Rep. Mike Pence, an opponent of the bailout, to the position of chairman of the House Republican Conference. This is the number three spot. Pence, a former talk radio host and articulate conservative, should take the lead on economic matters and leave Boehner and Cantor in the shadows where they belong.
In the overall scheme of things, analyst Dick Morris was correct in his recent column that “what is happening is the end of the consensus around free market economics engendered by the fall of communism. The era of free market consensus lasted from 1989 through 2008. It is now over.” In a previous column, Morris was also right on the mark, declaring that Bush was leaving America a legacy of European socialism. He warns that it could get far worse under Obama. Read the rest of this entry »
The MSM’s nauseating, pro-Obama bias during the campaign was almost too much to bear. The Libs won, and the un-Fairness Doctrine is on the front burner, once again taking aim at right-wing talk radio.
The fallback position for Conservatives has always been, “well, we always have the right-wing blogs.” But even that has been somewhat in dispute. During the campaign, many anti-Obama blogs running on Blogger software were shut down by Google, which owns the software. That may have been due to Obamabots’ falsely (imagine that) complaining to Google that the sites were spammers, in which case the company’s policy of shutting down the sites pending an investigation kicked in and the bloggers were out of business. The moonbats succeeded in shutting down Republican blogs and Pro-Hillary blogs.
Now it appears that Google is trying to finish off the right-wing blogosphere once and for all. Pam Gellar at Atlas Shrugs, has written a lot about Obama’s birth certificate controversy. She had a very high Google ranking for those search terms. Google, in a blatant attempt to protect Obama (Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, was a staunch Obama supporter and was in line for a cabinet post) has decided that the story is not newsworthy, and has stripped Gellar of her rankings, a technique known as “sandboxing.”
Pamela Gellar of Atlas Shrugs claims the search engine giant has banned her groundbreaking articles about Obama – a technique many people refer to as “sandboxing.”
“There was no warning, no notice, nothing,” Gellar told WND. “They have basically sandboxed me.”
“Sandboxing” happens when Google strips a website’s rankings from its search engine results. According to some theories, this happens to new websites when Google puts them into a holding area known as a “sandbox” until the site gains credibility.
However, Atlas Shrugs is not new, and Gellar believes her stories have been intentionally suppressed by the Internet giant – especially ones about President-elect Obama. She said her exclusive stories about Obama’s birth certificate that once received thousands of hits every day will not come up in Google word searches.
“I was in the top five search results before the story got legs,” she said. “These stories drove 12,000 to 15,000 people to my site every day.”
But now a November earnings report from shows her Google clicks and revenue flat lining since Nov. 20. Daily page impressions dropped from an average of 20,000 and 45,000 to single digits – overnight. Also, her Google images hits are slowed to only 4,720 since that day, while Yahoo and other search engines list them in the hundreds of thousands.
“The media gives blogs the silent treatment,” she said. “The only thing we have is these searches. The Google word search is gone – all gone. When you are in my business, that’s how you build readership.”
My buddy Clyde at My Aisling also noticed earlier in the week how a post by Diamond Tiger on the birth certificate issue submitted to Real Clear Politics’ Reader Articles was pulled by RCP on at least two occasions.
If there is an effort to suppress any news about this issue, what will happen if the Supreme Court accepts the case for argument? There will be a lot of people wondering where this has been. At Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, our family was discussing politics – thankfully, this branch of the family is nearly universally conservative. I was telling them about how the birth certificate issue was scheduled for a hearing on December 5 at the Supreme Court. Nobody could believe that they hadn’t heard of such a hugely important issue before now. I told them that the MSM won’t report it, but that they could find it on Conservative blogs. Now, a day later, I am not so sure.
[And there are many more cases of this Communistic type censorship going on, during the election and continuing today. We've been censored at RCP (Real Clear Politics) a number of times. Here's the title of one that got them to put the original Title back (Title only, no description): The Truth Hurts - RCP Censorship Is Alive and Well!Also adding something to the effect of in Violation of Freedom of Speech or in Violation of the 1st Amendment rights. ---ed]
In the Year of Bottomless Bailouts, I am most grateful this Thanksgiving for Americans who refuse to abandon thrift, personal responsibility and self-reliance. When the moochers and entitlement-mongers drive you mad, remember that our nation still serves as home to millions of citizens who do for themselves. Like our Founding Fathers, they are God-fearing people – the ones elitist pundits ridicule as “oogedy-boogedy” – who will never put their faith in the Cult of You Owe Me.
They are people like my reader Jen, who runs a family farm called the Double Nickel in New Mexico. Tired of all the hand wringing, “in times like these” rationalizations for unprecedented federal intervention in the financial markets to rescue beleaguered businesses and homeowners, Jen wrote me a letter this week about her own plight and triumph over adversity:
“I am writing to you to share my story of how one can survive hard times and land solidly on one’s feet. … So here goes: My husband had an auto accident on January 1, 2005, and our lives and finances changed dramatically. Our income was cut in half, as he has permanent injuries and went from being a field officer to a desk job in a less fast-paced career.”
Instead of staying in a home they couldn’t afford and waiting for a mortgage rescue from the savior Barack Obama, Jen, her husband and their four children moved to New Mexico because of the much lower cost of living and college tuition expenses. One of her sons is now a soldier – the third generation in her family to serve, including Jen’s father, who was killed in Vietnam. The other kids are home-schooled students (among a growing population of home-schooled kids, whom “The View’s” condescending co-host Joy Behar recently derided on the show as being “demented”). Jen continues:
“We sold our lovely home, bought a rundown, fixer-up place and converted it into a farm that could provide garden vegetables to can and an area to have some animals to provide eggs, chickens, ducks, turkey, geese, sheep and goats. … Freecycle and Craigslist turned out to be wonderful assets, as most of our animals came for free or for barter — and the children and I mucked out stalls on a ranch for sheep.”
Yes, they raise turkeys and other animals, and sell them for profit. This enterprise makes them, in the eyes of The New York Times editorial board, which recently decried Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s visit to a turkey farm, “executioners.” That’s language the Times would never think of using to describe, say, the Weather Underground terrorists who targeted police officers in cold blood. But poultry farmers? Brand ‘em with an “M” for murderers.
But I digress.
Instead of awaiting the next stimulus check from the Borrow-Spend-Repeat-Panic politicians in Washington, Jen explains how the family has cut costs:
“I learned how to make my own shampoo, toothpaste, soaps, cloth napkins, dish scrubbies, potholders, skirts (mend all clothes) and most meals from scratch. We heat our home exclusively with wood, and I am currently growing a winter garden. The spring garden will be in containers by the last week of December to prepare for spring planting. I do not see this as a downfall or a tragedy. For those worried about holiday spending: I spent only $100 for a family of six last Christmas, and most of that [on] underwear, socks and the meal.”
And she adamantly rejects the victim card:
“This accident has been a blessing for my family. The pain that my husband has daily is not the blessing, but that he is alive and able to continue to watch his children grow into adulthood.
“It also has been wonderful to know that we live in a nation that affords us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves from suburbanites to a country-dwelling farm family. I am ashamed to see the American spirit that made our nation so great now turned into nothing.”
Thanks to self-reliant Americans like Jen, that spirit lives. In times like these, they are our greatest blessing.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.
I haven’t seen this movie, and for that reason, I’ve refrained from commenting on it. I was going to specifically not make any comments, mainly because in not seeing it, there may be a perception that I am just kibbitzing from the sidelines as an uninformed critic. The movie is currently a fairly hot topic here in Australia, mainly for the reason that it effectively takes Australia the Country to the rest of the World. Even the left leaning Government here has cashed in on the movie, giving Baz Luhrmann $40 Million of taxpayer’s money, to lift scenes from the movie and use them in a tourist advertising blitz, something that has drawn sharp comment from sides both for and against the use of the movie as a tourist campaign. There is also comment of the movie’s inaccuracies in the way it deals with some of the historical events portrayed. Baz himself said that he specifically wanted to introduce some of those points to offer comment of his own, and also to add some dramatic effect, but when those points go out to wider World, then the tendency might be to believe the movie as a true representation of historical fact.
So, if you do go and watch the movie, be aware that some of the history has not only been fabricated, but then it has been blown out of all proportion on top of that. For the sheer scope of Australia, the movie shows this very well, but as to history, be well aware that this is just one person’s interpretation, and is not really the truth.
Having just seen Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, I am not surprised it’s flopping in the US:
I’ll review the movie in full on Wednesday. But I just want to describe the one scene in the nearly three hours of this mishmash that perhaps summed up best what made this film not just poor storytelling, with preposterously implausible plotlines and the most wincing cliches, but a ludicrous and nasty rewriting of our history to boot.
Nullah is a part-Aboriginal boy stolen from his white guardian, a British artistocrat played by Nicole Kidman, by corrupt police acting under a racist law that a pitiless mission official tells Kidman’s character is designed to breed out Aborigines.
As Nullah (beautifully played by the magnetic Brandon Walters) is marched down Darwin’s docks with other captured boys to be sent by boat to the Garden Point home on Melville Island, a sneering white boy holding a joey (yes!) stops and abuses him: “Creamy, didn’t your mother want you?” A racist white kid holding a kangaroo in a film called Australia – could there be anything more archetypally us?
To add to the white sin, the Japanese army is sweeping towards Australia and the boys are being sent to an island that one character notes “will be the first place the Japs hit’’. White women and children are being evacuated from Darwin in the background, but here the Aboriginal boys are being sent to their deaths by racist white men. To really grind in his point, Luhrmann has the Japanese not just bombing the children’s home at Melville Island (which they didn’t) but invading it as well.
Bear in mind that the film is sold in captions at its beginning and its end as based on historical truths, and is being reported as such, too.
Now note a few historical truths that Lurhmann overwrites to tell his story of white infamy in this one scene.
First, as I’ve said before, a Federal Court test case has found no evidence that children in the Northern Territory were stolen just because they were black, rather than in trouble,
But what of this story that Aboriginal children were callously and deliberately sent into danger at Melville Island, while whites were evacuated south?
Indeed, the Darwin premiere of Australia was watched by people who knew very well that children had not been sent to Melville Island as the Japanese drew near, but evacuated from it. Among the audience was Ilene Neville:
“I’m very excited,” said Ilene Neville, who was a seven-and-a-half-year-old member of the Stolen Generation when bombs began falling on Darwin.
“We were watching them fall from the sky and then the priests and nuns told us to get under our mattresses.”
After the first raid she was moved by train to Adelaide River and then on to Alice Springs in a US military convoy.
Australia is a movie of caricatures and cliches, based on lies and promoting the easiest kind of morality there is – damning others for doing what you’re too lazy to even try to understand or even get right.
Last week’s guilty verdicts in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist fundraising trial were a welcome conclusion to a long and hard-fought case. As reporting earlier in this decade by this newspaper’s Steve McGonigle showed, the Richardson-based Islamic charity, once the largest of its kind in the nation, secretly funneled money to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and sought to cover up the connection.
The government’s victory over five leaders of the now-defunct HLF means real progress in shutting off the financial lifeline that sustains Mideast terrorists.
How did federal prosecutors win this retrial, after the first HLF trial ended with a hung jury? They pared down their case and didn’t overwhelm the jury with too much information. Result: a critically important win for the counterterrorism cause and a road map for prosecuting future such cases.
The HLF conviction tarnishes the reputation of Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America and the 300 other Muslim organizations and individuals named by prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators over their relationship to HLF.
Yet these groups and individuals were not – repeat, not – on trial. They’ve been neither charged nor convicted of anything. Their status as unindicted co-conspirators – a designation approved by the court – was bolstered by trial evidence linking HLF and other Muslim organizations to common Islamist roots in the international Muslim Brotherhood. After this verdict, it is harder for the leaders of these HLF affiliates to present themselves to the American public as mere civic advocates.
It’s important to not scapegoat all Muslims – even those who innocently support these groups – through unfounded fear. What the verdicts and trial evidence should do is prompt American Muslims to demand more transparency from their leaders and to be more aware of what supporting them really means.
“We have to look back as a community and reassess our moral compass,” Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and moderate Muslim leader, told us after the verdict.
Precisely. The government got the HLF defendants by clarifying its case. This should be a clarifying moment for others, too.
We have a saying in Australia that I have used here for the title, and I suppose the same saying is popular in the US. It would seem that the saying applies equally well for this situation.
(Robert) Gates, who has served as President George W. Bush’s defense secretary for two years, will remain in the Cabinet for some time, probably a year, according to an official familiar with discussions between him and the president-elect.
A campaign promising change, above all, is going for continuity instead. And the recycling of past figures isn’t stopping there:
Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former rival for the White House, is said to have accepted the post of secretary of state.
I mentioned in a series of earlier posts my love of music, mostly from all sources. As i aged, that appreciation expanded. I still am not all that keen on ‘Musicals’ per se even though some of the music and the songs have translated well to popular music, and some have been covered by big names.
I never was all that keen on rap, excepting for that wonderful crossover from rap into pop by Debbie Harry and Blondie with their song ‘Rapture’.
Techno is okay and again I like the early crossover from the German band Kraftwerk at the dawn of Techno with ‘Autobahn’.
Luciano Pavarotti made me actually like even some form of Opera because the song of the 20th Century would have to his version of Puccini’s Nessun Dorma, and even Opera has gained popular airplay, soprano Sarah Brightman also crossing over.
I started to really appreciate music in the early and mid sixties. At that time, especially here in Australia, the English music scene was King, and my love of music started with that era. The artists and the bands are too numerous to mention, suffice to say they would be all the usual suspects.
Then came Dylan, and Neil Young among many, but Young still far and away my favourite artist of all time, covering the whole body of his work, an immense talent with an even larger body of work, still contemporary even now in his early sixties. I have a huge collection of music, so the names are just too numerous to mention. Pink Floyd would be my favourite Band, but the list could be just endless.
So coming to that appreciation in the early 60’s I was never really a great fan of Elvis Presley, because this was when he was having his hiatus between his first career and his second career. Had I been older, then I feel sure Elvis would have been a big influence in that love of music. So, when he came back in 1968, the time had passed. I really liked his ‘Suspicious Minds’, but the rest was just okay as far as I was concerned.
His comeback concert did not receive all that much airplay here in Australia at the time that I can remember, and the album sold well, but not being that much of a fan, I paid little attention to the album and the songs from it. I first saw the full concert I would guess almost twenty years later, and I guess it was good, but I was still not much of a fan, just waiting for the ‘Suspicious Minds’ song, which I don’t think he even sang in that concert, because it didn’t come to popularity until 1969, when he also had ‘In The Ghetto’.
However, that concert was notable for one song for me. Here was a man who had nothing to prove. He could have retired comfortably on the royalties of his his first career, and the gamble coming back in the midst of the band era when so many other names were well established was a big ask. He had the strength to carry it, and the rest is history.
However, that one song from the concert was the last one.
‘If I Can Dream.’
When I saw that, it made me sit up, not because of the song itself, but the passion and feeling he put into it. Here was a man who was singing not just the words, but from his heart. That song was never big here in Australia, but now, every time I hear it, I stop what I am doing and just listen.
In these times when there is so much happening that might seem troubling, it’s often a good thing to sit back, and just listen to this song. The music accompanying Elvis is great but the words of the song, and just the way he sings it, are what is most stirring of all with this song.
I found a copy on ‘youtube’, and believe me there are many copies. Some are remixes, but this original in one complete take would have to be the best.
So take some time and play the song, turn up your speakers, and listen to an American who was proud to be an American.
This version was posted by madmin22, so there’s a hat tip to him for this.
“Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with gratitude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory … that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.” –Samuel Adams
PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
Pilgrims Regress
By Mark Alexander
In the aftermath of a momentous election, an election sure to change the course of our nation, it is tempting to despair. On this Thanksgiving, though, let us resist that powerful temptation and instead take stock of the blessings of liberty.
President Ronald Reagan often cited the Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving as our forebears who charted the path of American freedom. He made frequent reference to John Winthrop’s “shining city upon a hill.”
As Reagan explained, “The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.”
Who were these “freedom men,” and how did they eventually blaze the path of true liberty? They were Calvinist Protestants who rejected the institutional Church of England, believing that worshipping God must originate freely in the individual soul, without coercion. Suffering persecution and imprisonment in England for their beliefs, a group of these separatists fled to Holland in 1608. There, they found spiritual liberty in the midst of a disjointed economy that failed to provide adequate compensation for their labors, and a dissolute, degraded, corrupt culture that tempted their children to stray from faith.
Determined to protect their families from such spiritual and cultural dangers, the Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620, sailing for a new world that offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. After an arduous journey, they dropped anchor off the coast of what is now Massachusetts.
On 11 December 1620, prior to disembarking at Plymouth Rock, they signed the Mayflower Compact, America’s original document of civil government. It was the first to introduce self-government, and the foundation on which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were built. Governor William Bradford described the Compact as “a combination … that when they came a shore they would use their owne libertie; for none had power to command them.”
Upon landing, the Pilgrims conducted a prayer service and quickly turned to building shelters. Under harrowing conditions, the colonists persisted through prayer and hard work, reaping a bountiful summer harvest. But their material prosperity soon evaporated, for the Pilgrims had erred in acquiescing to their European investors’ demands for a financial arrangement holding all crops and property in common, in order to return an agreed-to half to their overseas backers.
By 1623, however, Plymouth Colony was near failure as a result of famine, blight and drought, as well as excessive taxation and what amounted to forced collectivization.
In desperation, the Pilgrims set a day for prayers of repentance; God answered, delivering a gentle rainfall by evening. Bradford’s diary recounts how the colonists repented in action: “At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number.”
Property ownership and families freely laboring on their own behalf replaced the “common store,” but only after their ill-advised experiment with communism nearly wiped out the entire settlement.
In their simple representative government, born out of dedication to religious freedom, the Pilgrims replaced the rule of men — with its arbitrary justice administered capriciously at the whim of rulers who favor some at the expense of others — with the rule of law, treating individuals equally. Yet even these “freedom men” strayed under straits. So could we, if we revert to materialistic government reliance instead of grateful obedience to God. Sadly, we’re a long way down that path already.
Closing his farewell address in 1989, Ronald Reagan asked, “And how stands the city on this winter night?” Contemplating our blessings of liberty this Thanksgiving, nearly 20 years after President Reagan left office and 20 generations past the Pilgrims’ experience, how stands the city on our watch?
Publisher’s Note of Gratitude
Tuesday, I arrived port in San Diego aboard CVN-76 — the USS Ronald Reagan. She is the largest, fastest and most powerful warship on the high seas. I joined the Carrier Group in Pearl Harbor a week ago for the last leg of its six-month deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve always felt that American Jews should be thankful that this lovely American holiday is so friendly to Jewish participation. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, there’s absolutely nothing non-kosher in the scrumptious holiday fare.
Many American Jews who make aliyah to Israel try to keep up the turkey-day tradition …but as the years slide by it seems more and more foreign. …and as the kids grow up they see it like some quaint and colorful custom from the “Old Country” that their immigrant parents came from. Which, of course, it is.
On Thanksgiving Day, Americans give thanks to God. Used to be everyone knew that but the multiculturalists among us have done their damnedest to hide it, so it’s become necessary to state it up front.
When I ask my students, “Who is to be thanked on this national holiday?” they look puzzled. “Indians?” they guess. That’s a clue about what we’re becoming in the 21st century. Only after discussing it some will a student say, “Wait a minute. Isn’t it God?” Those of us fortunate enough to have extended family members in their eighties can ask them the question as a kind of experiment. My prediction is that they, too, will look puzzled, but not because they don’t know the answer. They’ll be puzzled that anyone would even ask the question.
Americans face uncertainty this winter, but not the kind we thought we’d be facing. Just a few months ago we were worried about high fuel costs when gas prices and heating oil prices were around $4 per gallon. Those costs are back down to manageable levels, but now the economy itself is uncertain. People are being laid off. Nearly all of us know someone who has either been handed a pink slip or whose business has slowed dangerously. The stock market is doing a slow-motion crash. Corporations and banks are failing left and right and few economic advisors are predicting that bottom will be reached anytime soon. Unlike his soaring rhetoric during the campaign, our newly-elected president is sending out spokesmen to damper down expectations that he’s going to fix everything next year, the year after, or even in four years.
This year, I’m thankful for basic things like life, health, family, food, clothing, shelter, and heat. After several years of idleness, I’ve dusted off my chainsaws, dropped trees, and worked them up with my splitting maul – and it felt good. I’d almost forgotten how satisfying it can be to work on the woodpile when it’s getting cold. It’s simple and meaningful work in a complicated world. When I moved my young family to Maine thirty-one years ago, that became my routine because I had no choice. Oil was too expensive. The kids pitched in and it was all good. On the woodpile, there’s no disconnect between the work you do and the reason you do it. It’s hard work, and there’s no better feeling than looking at a full woodshed when the snow starts to fly. For a man whose job is to take care of his family, it’s a labor of love.
Back to basics is good. So is self-reliance. There was a time when Americans depended on themselves for just about everything and wouldn’t think of calling on government unless there was an emergency. There were no such things as entitlements. We were strong then because the only thing we felt entitled to was the opportunity to work. We always believed in helping each other, but that help was direct. It was bringing your tools over to your neighbor’s and working with him. It wasn’t in the form of government shaking you down for taxes to be spent on people you believe should be doing more for themselves. There’s no satisfaction in that.
Thanksgiving Day is uniquely American. It started with ordinary people celebrating the fruits of their own labor, working side by side for their common welfare – their life, their liberty, and their pursuit of their happiness, all of which they knew were theirs by right. They also knew where those rights came from – from their Creator, not from their government. A century and a half later, their descendants put it down in writing and sent it to the king.
On that day back in 1621, however, they gave thanks to God.
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Tom McLaughlin. Tom is a history teacher and a regular weekly columnist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. He writes about political and social issues, history, family, education and Radical Islam.
Here in Australia, we do not have Thanksgiving, and we have no equivalent. To all those who do read my posts, I wish you all the best of wishes. This is a time to be with your families, and to give thanks that you all have each other.
This is what might seem a complex exercise on the surface, but it will show in relatively simple terms just what is actually required to even start thinking about replacing those coal fired power plants that we are told are contributing towards anthropogenic global warming, if you actually are prepared to believe that they are a major contributing factor in that process, and that Climate Change is just a cyclical thing that our Planet is evolving through.
My thoughts on that argument are known to those who read my posts, so what I am going to do here is to argue from the point of those who do believe that argument. What I want to do is to show you just what is entailed in a process that people have been led to believe is actually a simple thing to believe, and is in fact an extremely complex thing. What is needed her is Government will to actually go down this path.
Also, for the purpose of the exercise, I’m going to assume that every Authority gives the green light and fast tracks each of the new proposals, something that has never happened yet with any plant of any type at all.
For the purpose of the exercise, I am going to highlight the plant I always have, that of the Bruce Mansfield Plant in Pennsylvania, not for any other purpose than that is the plant I always use as a reference.
This Plant at Shippingport has a nameplate capacity of 2740 MW production, so for the purpose of equivalency, I am going to use that nameplate capacity as the replacement number, so for the plants I mention here, the total power output will have to equal that 2740 MW.
A NEW COAL FIRED PLANT
Let’s replace like with like first, and for the purpose of the exercise, I’ll take you 27 years into the future and have this new plant fitted with Carbon capture and storage (CCS) capability, a process operating nowhere in its entirety on Earth right now, and even if it can be proved, is still a way way long off into the future.
The cost of actually building a new coal fired plant is probably the cheapest for the amount of nameplate power required, but even so the cost now compared to what it once was is a quantum factor higher. Because of that, the new Coal fired plant is around $3 Billion. It has a lifespan of around 50 years. At the end of the cycle the plant and the site will need to be cleaned up, and conservative costs now for cleaning up the site of a former coal fired plant are around $1 Billion. We said we are going to fit CCS to this plant, so that is also conservatively costed at around $1.5 Billion. All up so far comes to $5.5 Billion, and I can see you all now saying that is on the high end, and will still work out cheaper than all the others. However, that is not the end of it. There is the cost of the fuel for the plant itself, the coal that is burned to boil the water to drive the multi stage turbine that drives the generator. The amount of coal used is the most staggering figure of all, and one that people either reject out of hand as being false, or question on other fronts. A plant of this size will burn 6.5 million tons of coal each year. Currently the cost of the steaming coal used for this purpose is around $130 per ton, has been as high as $175 per ton, and for the purpose of the exercise, I will leave it in today’s price. So, 6.5 million tons per year, for the 50 year life cycle at $130 per ton works out to $42.5 Billion. Adding that to the original total, we now find the lifetime cost of the new coal fired plant rounds out to $48 Billion. The plant will come on line approximately 4 years after turning the first sod of dirt.
A NEW NUCLEAR PLANT
This would be the one that people would think would cost the most. There is conjecture as to the cost, so for this exercise, I’m going to split it down the middle between the most pessimistic costing and the most sanguine. That works out to around $3000 per Kilowatt, so for 2740MW that original cost works out to $8.2 Billion. The cost of rehabilitating the site is conservatively costed at around the same as for the construction cost, so the total is now $16.4 Billion. The cost of the fuel itself the rods is not as much as you might think. The cost would be a conservative one of around $1.5 billion over the life of the plant. These plants run at around 95 to 98% efficiency higher than for coal, and more than triple as for solar and wind. The plants also have a life span of 50 years, but have regularly been renewed for a further 25 years. The overall cost of all this for a Nuclear power plant now comes in at just under $18 Billion. The plant will come on line 7 years after planning is completed.
We sit here in Israel and watch the economic meltdown moving towards us like a giant tsunami wave on the horizon. The local TV and newspapers seem almost eager to bring dire predictions and reports of lost jobs and pension funds hit with big time losses.
If you live here in the Jewish State, does it seem that way to you too?
It has been three weeks since the seemingly inevitable occurred. Sen. Barack Obama is now President-elect Obama. My guy lost. Rather than offer an immediate, blame-all, knee-jerk post-election analysis of “What went wrong,” I felt obliged to think it over for a bit — and in the end decided how McCain lost, or how Obama won, was not truly the topic of the hour.
In the aftermath of the election, even Mr. Obama’s most ardent critics cannot help but succumb to the natural inclination to “rally around” the incoming administration. While we wish Obama all the luck in the world, we still cringe with hesitation at the unexamined character of the man the country just elected. I raise these doubts, yet again, because one William Ayers has now, unsurprisingly, only after Obama’s victory, decided to crawl out of his hole, re-release his book, and do the talk show circuit.
Alas, one more time, the implications of what the Ayers-Obama link actually means must be reexamined.
It was not until the final presidential debate that Sen. McCain raised William Ayers’ name to Obama himself. Good, I thought, here’s another chance for the would-be president to prove to me that his long friendship and association with an unrepentant Pentagon-bomber isn’t as big of a deal as I seem to think it is.
Sadly, Mr. Obama took the opportunity to chastise John McCain for talking about Ayers, using an old line every third-grader in the country is familiar with: “I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Sen. McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.” Basically, Barack was rubber, and McCain was glue.
Let’s be clear: the William Ayers connection says more about Barack Obama than it says about anyone else on the planet. That’s true for one reason only: Obama wanted to become our president and now will become our president. The only thing William Ayers suggests about McCain’s campaign is how inept it was in not raising this association — and a dozen others like it — earlier in the race.
President-elect Obama first said Ayers was just a fellow in the neighborhood, then said Ayers did bad things when he was but a child, and then, upon further revelation, Obama finally admitted he served on multiple boards with him. But its okay, Obama swore, because Ayers is now an “education professor” and the two were working on “education.”
Overlook for a moment how bizarre and radical the Ayers-Obama education “reform” actually was — so radical Hugo Chávez praised it personally to Ayers during a meeting in Venezuela — and instead focus on Mr. Ayers himself.
Ask yourself: if a man who bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, police stations, declared war against the United States, told children to kill their parents, wanted to bring upon a communist revolution across the country, only to get off on a technicality — and today says he wishes he bombed more — was in your company, would you look him in the eye? Would you shake his hand? Would you launch your career from his living room? Would you serve on multimillion dollar boards with him? Would you keep in frequent and friendly contact with him via phone and e-mail until 2005 — at the least — four years after 9/11, when Ayers asserted he was unrepentant for bombing whom he bombed?
Do you know anyone who would have behaved like that? Do you know anybody like our next president?
On a personal level, if a punk like Ayers requested my services, or wanted to further advance my career, I’d do some serious soul-searching. I don’t care if he wanted to begin a joint-venture to help old ladies cross the street. I would very impolitely point my finger in his face, tell him what I thought about him, and walk out of the room — all out of solidarity with the fellow countrymen he bombed and doesn’t feel bad about bombing.
That is how most Americans would react. That is how most men — real men, self-confidant and aware of their surroundings — would react.
Which is what manhood boils down to. That’s what character is all about. I don’t merely dislike Barack Obama’s unbelievably Leftist policies. I disrespect his behavior as a man. I consider it unbecoming of a man. In other words, it is unmanly.
We hear much talk about femininity and what contemporary feminism means for this generation of women. I see no such reason why we cannot discuss its logical gender-converse. Barack Obama’s personal cowardice and impotence while in the company of bad people undermines what modern masculinity ought to be about. His flippant attitude about these characters, and advantageous use of them to further his ambitions and political career, makes him less of a man than most men I know.
I am in no way suggesting women are to be held to lower expectations. Certain traits are not mutually exclusive to gender. But just as independence is considered an integral part of feminism — but not exclusive to femininity — so too forthrightness, internal self-assuredness, personal courage, and individual autonomy are fundamental principles of masculinity.
Australia is having the Climate Change debate in earnest, and has been having this debate shoved down our throats for a year or more now. Coal fired power generation has been (erroneously) blamed as the major cause, and there is the rush to move away from this form of power generation. The new Government is blindly pursuing the usual suspects Solar and Wind, and in the same breath also proposing the ‘clean coal’ option, all of them undeliverable in current terms with respect to cost and time to be brought on line. The complete aversion to using nuclear means to generate electricity means that this is not even being considered as an option, this from a Country with some of the largest Uranium deposits on the Planet, and the same Government willing to sell that Uranium to most Countries who do have that Nuclear power option already up and running. The following link is to an article from The Australian online news outlet and is worthwhile taking the time to read.
Ziggy Switkowski says 31 countries already have nuclear power – and Australia will suffer if it doesn’t stop mindlessly opposing the power source of any green future:
Our policy architects suggest there is no future scenario that will require nuclear power in Australia but:
* Deep greenhouse gas emission reductions will almost certainly prove beyond the capability of existing technologies and renewable energy platforms to deliver in the time allowed. The inclusion of nuclear power will be critical to our success. * Our lights will start to go out as investment in clean baseload energy generation stalls in an uncertain regulatory environment and the nuclear alternative is not validated.
* In a carbon-constrained future, nuclear-powered economies will exploit their cost advantages for clean energy in competing with Australian products newly burdened by embedded carbon costs.
The men, linked to the Taliban, were mounted on motor cycles and sprayed the acid from water pistols in streams onto the faces of the girls and their teachers. Most of the girls were wearing full Burkas so that offered some protection but being acid, then even material would offer very little protection.
A week later, ten men have been arrested for the offence and some have confessed to their involvement. Afghan President, Hamid Karzai has called for the men to publically executed, and if that is the way the law works in Afghanistan, then so be it. In the West they would probably find a good lawyer who might find a way to get them off a lot more lightly, but the legal system from Country to Country is the sole province of that Country.
However, the thing that made me think about it was that the men have admitted that they were ‘hired’ by the Taliban to commit this heinous crime, not just against women, but against mankind in general. They were paid $2000 each to commit this act, and now, if the Country gets it right, they will pay with their lives.
Now, here we have the Taliban. When they came to power before the West stepped in and tried to bring some semblance of democracy to Afghanistan, they introduced what we consider worse than draconian measures in that Country, in the name of the religion they follow. One of those draconian measures was that they forbade girls from any schooling whatsoever.
When the Taliban was thrown out, the fledgling Democracy reinstated education for girls, but most parents are still so scared of that awful past that they still will not send their female children to any schools and still keep them at home.
I am not a psychologist, but I want to make some observations about the psychology of these attacks.
Note that the men were hired and paid by the Taliban to carry out these attacks. That leads me to believe that the men who hired them actually knew that this was a wrong thing to do. Those who did the hiring would not just be the average guy in the street, but would those higher up the heirarchical ladder in that religious order, or whatever they might call it. They then proceed to tell these men that they are doing good work, and this will count towards their martyrdom. The same might apply for those who are persuaded to strap bombs to themselves and to blow theselves up in public places. Those upper echelons persuade their underlings that this will lead to their martyrdom, and fly them off to their heaven. It is their job as higher ups to persaude these nobodies to do things like this.
Now, if those higher ups consider this is the step to martyrdom and their heaven, then why don’t they do it themselves then?
The same applies for that terrible bombing in Bali and how three of the Bombers were finally executed a couple of weeks back. Their religious leader stood up for them all the way to the firing squad. Why wasn’t he with them when they set off the bombs if this was a short cut to heaven and glory.
No!
These people know it is wrong, legally, morally, and in terms of their religion. Otherwise there would be no religious leaders of their faith around. They’d be falling all over themselves to strap bombs to their own bodies, not exhorting their mindless uneducated followers to do their dirty work for them, and then damn well paying them to do it.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for these men who sprayed acid in the face of innocent girls just wanting to get an education. If the law of their new Democratic Country calls for their execution, then so be it. I have even less sympathy and no respect whatsoever for the nameless faceless men who PAID them to do this, all the time shaking their heads and saying, ‘No, it wasn’t me.’ If they are so proud of their martyrs flying off to their version of heaven then they should be proud to come out and say , ‘Yes, it was me. I gave those orders.’ Then they could fly off to their heaven too.
No, they skulk in the shadows looking for more people to pay a pittance to do their dirty work for them, all the while denying it was them, a silent admission in itself.
These were young girls at school and their teachers, not enemy soldiers with guns looking to kill you.
NET NANNY IS SLOW AND MYOPIC
