In the wake of the Fort Hood Massacre and the “11th hour” state of the American economy and Liberty at home and abroad generally, one column honoring veterans on the occasion of the November 11th national holiday was not enough.

In our three previous columns concerning the treasonous murders (now at 14 counting the unborn child of one of the victims) perpetrated by Major Malik Ali Hasan, we primarily addressed the deadly political correctness (cowardly lying) that causes Democrats in Congress to fear asking Census form completers if they are U.S. citizens and allows known, overt, enemies of the USA to serve in its armed forces.

We suggested that November 11, 2009 mark the day We the People declare war against the PC-Police. Since yesterday, we also have considered other matters related to honoring vets, especially including:

• The contrast between the Obama Administration’s dismissal of suspicions against Hasan last spring with then Attorney General John Ashcroft’s post-911 round-up of Muslim/Arab country visa-overstays
• Obama’s treatment of the military as dependent children victims rather than congratulating their great Victory in Iraq
• Obama’s (and Hillary’s) refusal to honor the veterans that won the Cold War and made the de-construction of the Berlin Wall possible twenty years ago last Monday, including the absence of any utterance acknowledging the role of President Ronald Reagan
• The refusal of the ObamaDems to do anything for the general welfare of returning vets other than stimulate government growthulus to remove quality health care alternatives to the sorry state of VA hospitals.

President George W. Bush: “John, don’t let this happen again.”

Attorney General Ashcroft heeded his Commander-in-Chief’s words and America’s homeland was kept safe for over eight years. The Bush Administration suffered the slings and arrows of many democrats and the Drive-by media for “profiling” more than 900 illegal aliens that had overstayed their visas.

The same liberals and media that accuse conservatives of wanting to round-up the one-tenth of the population of Mexico that lives in the Lower Forty-Eight during the immigration reform debate years after 911, apparently preferred a round-up of tens of millions rather than any discriminating judgment of likely threats in the hundreds, the day after 911.

I have no doubt that the homeland security measures; enhanced interrogations of captured terrorists; removal of the Taliban and al Qaida’s safe haven nation-state in Afghanistan; and taking the fight to the enemy generally, and terrorist state supporter/war ceasefire abrogator in Iraq, all were critical elements in keeping us safe under Bush.

But I doubt that any act is more responsible for planned preventing follow-up attacks soon after 911 than Bush/Ashcroft’s defiance of the PC-police in getting the 900 off the Fruited Plain forthwith.

Victory in Iraq/Iraq as Connecticut

Iraq is poised to have elections again…..ho hum? Yes, isn’t it wonderful that this isn’t news! Neither are city council elections in Bridgeport.

We have won a great victory for democratic republicanism in the Middle East. The sectarian parties decrease, while the secular parties increase. President Bush’s vision of an alternative to Islamist extremism and/or totalitarian despotism has been made real by the armed forces of the United States and the lovers of freedom in the lands of Babylon.

Yet, our President speaks only of ending a war, not victory. He used to speak of “taking care of the troops” as if their reason for existence is to take care of us. He wants to bring them home to take care of them? Yet, when they get home, his FBI investigates a jihadist threat in their midst and lets the threat remain. He not only doesn’t take care of them, as promised. He is a danger to them, even in forts in the Lone Star State.

We must honor our vets and commons sense by killing the PC-police under all 50 stars and even the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Merkel’s back-handed compliment to Gorby/Reagan’s War

President Obama was the only Western leader that refused German leader Angela Merkel’s invitation to attend the 20th anniversary celebration of the bringing down of the Berlin Wall. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added insult to injury by failing to mention Ronald Reagan’s role in the events that led to removal of that communist stain on the landscape of Europe.

I was pleasantly surprised with Merkel’s “thanks” to the former Soviet jail-keeper of millions, Mikhail Gorbachev, though, when she said:

“You made this possible — you courageously let things happen, and that was much more than we could expect.”

Sounds like a slap in the face to me, when you would expect a leader to “not let” (see KILL instead) people bring down a wall imprisoning millions of innocent people. She thanks Gorby for not slaughtering innocent people. Heck, where’s Hasan’s congratulations for such courage? He was peaceful that day as well, but like Gorby (whose hands were already bloodied in Afghanistan, Hasan would get red stains later, but I digress.

The real courageous people responsible for the bringing down (I do not say the mere “fall” of the wall, as that word fits into the fake history of the left that it was “inevitable” that the wall would come down of its own weight) the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain across all of Europe were the veterans of the armed forces of the United States that liberated Western Europe in WWII (under FDR) and later South Korea; fought in Vietnam; and other wise put their lives on the line under the direction of containment policy Presidents Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford and even Carter (more later) and under the direction of the only leader on Earth that sought to defeat the USSR (and did), Ronald Reagan.

The truth would set even Obama free, if he would only acknowledge it, and begin the healing of this land, and I would suggest he start with Peter Schweitzer’s “Reagan’s War”. That book recounts Reagan’s lifelong war against communism’s slavery of half the globe beginning with his heroic placement of his life on the line in 1940s-50s Hollywood against an attempted takeover of the unions by communists.

There were commie union organizer bullets with Reagan’s name on it. He broke the picket line anyway; much as he defied violent hippies at Berkeley in the 1960s; weathered Hinckley’s shots in the early 1980s and the violent nuclear freeze proponents and intermediate range missiles in Europe in the mid-80s.

Schweitzer documents Reagan’s “we win, you lose” plan formulated in the 1950’s and its precise implementation over the objections of nearly everyone in the 1980s; Lech Walesa and Polish Square re-namings in the 1990s along with various East German congratulations for bringing the wall down.

The book cites Kremlin diaries and tapes that credit Reagan’s military build-up; public calling out of the Soviet Empire as evil; and especially his refusal to drop Star Wars at Reykjavik as being responsible for the end of the USSR.

Contrary to leftist Democratic Party fiction, the fall of communism was not inevitable. The USSR was stronger in 1981 when Reagan took office than at any time in their history, save for before and immediately after WWII. The cuts in defense under LBJ, Nixon and Carter left Gorby with superiority in land-based missiles and troops on the move on three continents.

Reagan turned all that back by rejecting the mere containment/military equivalence policies he always saw as immorally sentencing two billion people to perpetual slavery for a policy of military superiority; confrontation and economic competition. He devised the plan in the 50s, implemented it in the 80s and saw it come to fruition in the 90s.

Obama could honor the vets that achieved the above and include his liberal hero Jimmy Carter, whose greatest act as President was to arm the Afghan resistance that led to the only Russian military defeat in history. I do find Schweitzer’s conclusion that Carter’s motivation was more personal than strategic, having kissed Brezhnev and trusted him, much as he had Iran’s Ayatollah. It is this personal way that too many democrats look at the world that makes them so feckless, weak and dangerous in foreign affairs. Not holding breath on this one, but maybe the economic facts of life could change the other major trait, which is that:

Dems don’t double dip care about jobs

Months ago President Obama floated a trial balloon that would have increased medical costs for veterans, while paying the bills for illegals. The balloon busted before even Fox News could bang the drum to try and get the see and hear no evil drive-by media monkeys and dems and indies still in denial to see the product of Rev Wright and Bill Ayers.

I think most Americans see Obama more for what he is now after Gates-gate and his Fort Hood 911. They were already starting to see the ObamaDems for what they are with the rush to pass a stimulus that only saved and created government jobs We the People have to fund thru taxes or inflation.

Does Obama care if former and retiring vets have jobs? What about their children and grandchildren? What about the 20% of We the People that are under- or unemployed? No signs yet, as documented by The Detroit News:

Americans are angry with Washington as much for what it isn’t doing as what it is. What it isn’t doing the most is paying attention to the still-raging economic disaster.

Last week’s job numbers show unemployment nationally bumping past 10 percent and surpassing 15 percent in Michigan. Unemployment keeps climbing, even though President Barack Obama and Congress nine months ago committed $787 billion to creating jobs.

Since then, neither the White House nor Congress has spent a minute honestly analyzing whether the stimulus program is accomplishing its goal, and if not, what other approaches might work. Instead, the administration is spinning dismal economic reports into positive news, allowing both it and Congress to ignore the economy while they pursue their ideological ends.

But while the economy tops every list of public concerns, job creation is not the hot topic in Washington. In fact, Democratic leaders, obsessed with reworking America, have proved more than willing to sacrifice precious jobs during the worst economic climate in a half-century.

It ought to infuriate anyone who’s lost a job, can’t find a job, is worried about his job or lives in a community ravaged by a lack of jobs that Congress devotes nearly all of its energy to arguing about health care. The promise of health care reform was not what got Democrats elected. Voters tossed Republicans on their fannies for ruining the economy, not because they didn’t enact wildly expensive social programs.

Read it all via link above…

Americans are angry and scared of the faltering economy that seems destined for a double dip and a President that assumes all whites are racist and no Muslims are terrorists, despite obvious evidence to the contrary over the past 40 years, and specifically over the past 4 months and 4 days.

We know what creates job. We saw Coolidge, JFK, Reagan, Clinton-Gingrich and Bush43 do it. Cut taxes and regulations and let Americans bail themselves out.

If Obama doesn’t start honoring veterans, as well as America generally, he will receive a dishonorable discharge after only 4 years.

Wouldn’t it be nice if on Thanksgiving Day would could thank God Obama finally got his mind right? Yes, but not holding breath and still counting pennies for a turkey wing.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Today’s national holiday honoring America’s military vets began as a celebration of the Armistice-signing end of The Great War on the “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” in 1918. Less than two years earlier, President Woodrow Wilson sent America’s finest “over there” to save Western Civilization from freedom’s enemies.

But when even our armed forces are so paralyzed by a leftist-inspired “politically correct” American culture that they can’t remove an obvious threat to their own troops, own their own base, and in Texas for God’s sake, I wonder if Liberty itself is in its 11th hour.

We now know that those with the power to remove Major Nidal Hasan for access to our troops were aware of his seditious statements and behavior, including and not limited to: showing a Power Point call for jihad to other medical professionals in the Army; numerous expressions of opposition to America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and sympathy for the call for Muslims to unite against us; his collaboration with an an Imam that inspired three of the 911-hijackers; and numerous e-mail contacts with a known recruiter for al Qaida.

American security agencies investigated the killer of 13 and wounder of more than 50 at Fort Hood and did nothing. It appears that some of the investigations may have been conducted and concluded before the Empathizer-with-Islamists-in-Chief was inaugurated last January. We know that many of Hasan’s threatening actions took place as long ago as 2007, so this PC problem is endemic in the culture and so not necessarily correctable by the presence or absence of a war hawk in the White House.

How many pro-jihad sermons could Hasan have preached to shocked doctors and RNs before his commanding officers would discharge him from his duty to protect Americans from the Islamist terrorists to whom he adheres. Do we simply allow traitors to operate openly rather than risk being called a racist? How many must die for this idiocy.

The term political correctness was first coined by the founder of the evil empire, whose defeat we celebrated two days ago on the 20th anniversary of the Destruction (It didn’t merely “fall” of its own weight) of the Berlin Wall. Vladimir Lenin considered controlling the language to be a necessary predicate to enslaving the masses with Marxism. Lenin also considered lying to be a valid tactic to further the communist faith.

A better term for PC, as Dennis Prager stated on his radio show this week, is: lying cowards.

Lying cowards cry racism and bigotry when it does not exist.

Moreover, the lying cowards in the Drive-by media and on the left want to divert attention from the religious and treasonous aspect of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 911 (more killed and wounded at the hands of Hasan than via Anthrax or the D.C sniper, who was executed yesterday in Virginia). They want to characterize the killing as “insane” or an “act of passion”, as if that excuses or diminishes the venality of the killings or has any relevance to the failures of our military and national security leaders to take actions to remove his threat from his fellow troops.

What matters is that otherwise intelligent people acted like fools, ignoring the obvious with glazed-over eyes looks and fearing the lying cowards that could call them a bigot more than they feared the likelihood that an obvious enemy of the nation they serve would one day levy war against them.

Which do they fear more today? How many innocent civilians and/or veterans in forts, trade centers or pentagons must die before enough Americans muster the courage to declare war on the PC lying cowards that turn our mental judgments to mush.

Or, has affluence and sloth produced a people too weak to wake up before we go the way of Rome?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The Constitution guarantees states a “republican” form of government. Republics make law via legislatures, not by judicial fiat or the mob rule of pure democracy.

Conservatives like me, applauded California’s referenda reversing its Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage creation.

We admonished same-sex marriage supporters to exercise their free speech rights in the arena of ideas. They did so in Maine, successfully lobbying the Pine Tree State into enacting a same-sex marriage law, only to be rebuffed by a public referenda law that strips the constitutional republican bark off Maine’s pine tree.

This conservative supports traditional marriage as the exclusive version, but I also love the rule of law and the finality necessary for it to be respected. Maine’s referenda as veto invites legislatures to abdicate their accountability and prevents legal finality, much like Roe v. Wade’s judicial fiat.

[This column originally appeared as part of a "Pro & Con" feature on page A11 of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday, November 8, 2009. If a link becomes available, it will provided here.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Massive outpouring of adulation for Reagan at the time of his death and funeral shamed most Leftist Democrats and Drive-by media into sharing credit with Reagan for the fall of the Evil Empire. But with President Barack Obama barely noting the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, his fellow ideologues re-write history by lauding the Communist leader whose head Reagan placed on the ash heap of actual history.

When a communist Oswald snuffed out JFK, the anti-anti-communists in the Democratic Party completed their takeover of the party; snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam; nominated and elected a bemoaner of our “inordinate fear of communism”; appeased communists in Nicaragua; and, publicly and surreptitiously aided and abetted the Soviet-desired nuclear freeze and opposition to intermediate missiles in Europe.

Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II defeated Mikhail Gorbachev anyway. I do recall that Walter Mondale issued a tough statement and Mickael Dukakis rode in a tank along the way to feign toughness they didn’t believe in.

We saw a repeat of this typical aggression-inviting, weak on defense posture from the Democratic Party over the past decade after their 911-inspired support for the Iraq War didn’t result in a new Connecticut in the Middle East within 72 hours of the Shock and Awe. Democrats celebrated the prevention of homeland attacks after 911 by launching the “Bushlied Era” and feigned toughness on the Afghan theater and finding Osama bin Laden.

I knew the Democrats were faking it all along.

They never met an enemy since November 22, 1963 that they wouldn’t appease and never sought to claim credit for the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall before June 5, 2004, i.e. the day Ronald Wilson Reagan died.

I recall the obvious shock in the press that all their efforts to brand Reagan an affable dunce racist, the Reagan years an orgy of greed and the fall of communism as inevitable had failed when they saw the massive outpouring of love from the overwhelming majority of Americans for their fallen hero.

I’ll never forget that only after Reagan’s funeral did I hear Democrats laud Reagan for his efforts to defeat the Evil Empire and to claim shared credit.

And so, I am not shocked to see the latest Democratic Party President to dither while our troops languish in Afghanistan; refuse an invitation to celebrate the fall of an empire inspired by the same dreams of his own Marxist father; and hold out a standing invitation to meet, without pre-conditions, to a Holocaust-denying, Islamist terrorist evil empire in Iran.

Could it be that this same leftist mentality, enabled by the Democratic Party for so long, is responsible for allowing a subversive terrorist to remain a Major in the U.S. Army for years?

We think so.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Administration policies pit America against freedom fighters at home and abroad as President prefers spotlight shining on him, rather than Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill

Five moments define the Reagan Presidency for me, with the greatest of them (1) occurring on November 9, 1989, when freedom-loving East and West Berliners tore down (video of the fall) the symbol of Communist tyrannical oppression, some ten months after the Gipper’s Farewell address.

Yet, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that Republican Ronald Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear down (2), America’s Democrat Chief Executive refused an invitation from Germany’s unified leader to commemorate the moment that ended the mass imprisonment of half the globe by adherents of the socialist ideology of Karl Marx.

President Reagan famously dubbed the prison run by its warden, the Soviet Union warden, an “evil empire” in a 1983 speech to Evangelicals (3) in which he also demanded the Judicial wall of separation be torn down, between We the People and laws protecting innocent life in and out of the womb.

The fourth moment that best defines Reagan’s Morning in America years was the dark cloud of Ted Kennedy-led Democrats trashing Judge Robert Bork, the man Reagan chose to tear down that judicial wall behind which five lawyers still stand behind too often to usurp our right to self government with Politburo-like impositions from “experts” that know best. The Democrats showed how vile they are in that episode. The contrast with Reagan is stark and informative.

Our 40th President also rejected the Marxian, liberal economic view of history by citing Whittaker Chamber’s in the Forward Letter to his Children in “Witness”:

It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind.

Reagan believed that the first step on the F.A. Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” is putting one’s faith in Man’s expertise rather than accepting God’s wisdom.

But quite possibly, the moment that best defines Reagan’s Liberty-loving message, was his first (5):

” In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

The crisis present in 1981 at the time of President Reagan’s First Inaugural Address was the, then, worst American economic crisis since the Great Depression. This week we learned that unemployment in the current Great Recession topped 10% for the first time since the Carter Recession that Reagan inherited.

Barack Obama and most of the elected officials and other leaders of the Democratic Party, i.e. ObamaDems, are old enough to remember that the 80s recession ended, followed by a 25-year recovery the likes of which the world had never seen; when Reagan killed inflation and bolstered the dollar with a steady money supply and tore down the tax and government regulatory walls that were preventing the liberty-driven creations of wealth and other happiness pursuits. They know that a Newt “GOP revolution” Gingrich-inspired President Bill Clinton declared the “Era of Big Government” over with capital gains tax cuts, free trade and welfare reform to keep the Reagan Recovery going.

Dems don’t care

Yet, ObamaDems, seemingly an unnatural species of humans not particularly enamored of prosperity (see Dems don’t Care), are about the business of destroying the dollar with deficit spending triple the worst in our history and Federal reserve out of control; and, incredibly, re-building the same high tax and massive regulation walls that led to the present crisis, as well as the one Reagan inherited 29 years ago. (And if you try and scale that wall, Obama sends out the pitchforks!)

As my Boortzian Stone Mountain Conservative non-political observer, best described ObamaDems in July: They want us to surrender!

What led to this housing bubble/credit crunch caused recession if not Democratic Party implemented (and protected by Senate filibusters in the Bush years) market regulations requiring banks to accept mortgages from families that couldn’t afford them, and then guaranteeing them with tax payer funds?

But it appears that Obama and his “never let a crisis go waste” Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acolytes prefer crises that allow them to present government as the “solution”. Because their solution is not economic prosperity for all. rather, it is economic dependency on them, for all. After all, they are the experts.

ObamaDems refuse to let We the People bail ourselves out!

So, it shouldn’t be surprising that Barack Hussein Obama alienates Iran’s freedom-fighters trapped inside the Mullah’s walls of religious oppression; or Jews having to wall themselves away from Islamists and the Palestinian death cult, featuring adolescent suicide bombers of proud parents. It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama wants judges that have “empathy” rather than respect for Constitutions.

ObamaDems crave power and craven power requires walls to repel the non-acquiescence of Liberty.

The brick and mortar for the building of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtains are bread-driven crises. Just ask Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Then read the Dreams of Obama’s father.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Has political correctness turned U.S. military bases into free speech, gun-free zones?

Before we address why an apparent anti-American subversive who frequently spoke in support of Muslim solidarity in jihad against the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq and, yet, was allowed to remain an officer in the U.S. military, DeVine Law Layman has a question for those with experience on military bases and any JAG officers within hearing of this rooster and Michael Ledeen’s voice:

Gun Control on Military Bases (?)
Lots of folks have wondered why there weren’t more soldiers with guns at Ft. Hood, and I’m one of them. Our younger Marine is home for the weekend from The Basic School at Quantico, and Barbara and I asked him if there were Marines with guns on the base. There are. Lots of them. And they move around all the time, checking places where Marines congregate, from classrooms to outdoor obstacle courses and parade fields and barracks. Apparently it occurred to the base commander some time ago that it was a bad idea to leave his men and women unprotected. (emphasis added?

Why would it take four long minutes to take down a mass murderer surrounded by hundreds of military officers on a U.S. military base? This is not the kind of competence and efficiency we are used to witnessing when our armed forces face the enemy off base? A spokesman for Fort Hood kept repeating that “they don’t carry guns in their home neighborhood”. What did he mean?

This incident reminds me of the Massacre in Blacksburg, made possible by Virginia Tech’s gun-free zone invitation to killers. What gives at Fort Hood? I’m asking.

So traumatized by racial epithets that he remains for eight long years?

DeVine Law sees the formation of a not guilty by reason of insanity or “fighting words” defense for Nidal Malik Hasan emerging with family members’ and others’ alleged recollections of complaints from the killer about his traumatizing endurance of racial epithets beginning soon after September 11, 2009.

This reminds of Anita Hill’s last hour allegations of actionable “sexual harassment” against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomasduring his nomination hearing. Ms. Hill was so traumatized by a supposed “pubic hair Coke can” joke that she followed him from job to job for as many years as Hasan kept drawing a check from a U.S. Army he loathed.

DeVine Law has another question for those with experience in the Armed Forces of the United States:

Is it hard to remove obviously dangerous, subversive members of the military from the non-subversive members? Are brigs still in use?

On the same day of the Fort Hood Massacre, Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted down a Republican proposal to include the following question on Census forms: Are you a U.S. citizen?

Has the same kind of political correctness that controls the ObamaDems of the Democratic Party, now disarm our Armed Forces from protecting themselves?

Serious questions.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Leadership, not race, will decide Atlanta mayoral run-off

The dead-tree drive-by media in Atlanta, as predicted here and here, has beaten the racial drum incessantly since Mary Norwood (46%) failed to garner the required 50% plus one votes to avoid a December 1 run-off against runner-up Kasim Reed (36%).

The latest insult to Atlanta voters cites MSM polls showing a strong inclination for people to vote for those of their own race. Who knew? I would remind folks that the AJC’s pre-Election Day polls had Norwood winning outright with Reed 20 points behind in her dust.

I’ll bet that polls would also show that most Atlantans prefer Democrats of any color and that Republicans resent being trashed by a former Republican depending on them for votes. But for the media to report on such matters would require “journalists” to avert their gaze from skin pigmentation.

Media that thinks Jim Crow still rules Dixie needs to eat crow

How fascinating do they find the variations on “one-drop” rules for legal marriages under Jim Crow? I wish they would join us in the 21st Century of Shirley Franklin’s landslide re-election victory four years ago. Maybe they missed that election in which white and black voted for color-blind leadership.

If the media would get over their obsession with black and white, they would also note that neither Reed nor Norwood have once appealed to voters based on racial solidarity. In fact, they have both explicitly denounced a Clark-Atlanta university appeal to same and have both stressed issues and leadership abilities in this race.

The AJC might also look at its own poll and note that the margin of victory on Election day was less than the percentages of assumed racial voting and that we can expect, based on their own poll, that from 15-25% of voters will vote across racial lines.

Racial culture has changed but media still projects their own racism

It used to be the case many black city majority elections, that the winner had to appeal to race. Any such appeals today would most certainly ensure defeat if one candidate so indulged while the other stayed on the high ground the drive-by media ignores.

I continue to remain convinced that much of the drive-by media projects their own racism onto We the People, assuming we share their monochromatic view of the world. They still live under Jim Crow and I only hope one day they are made to eat crow.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Headline you never see: Republicans block census citizenship question

Another you never see: Democrats block Census citizenship question.

The reason you never see the first question as an MSM news headline is that Republicans don’t object to asking the people being counted to determine the apportionment of the political power in this country among the States, the following question on a census form:

“Are you a U.S. citizen?”

The reason you never see the second question as a headline is that when Democrats, voting in the Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Senate, make it illegal to ask such an obviously relevant question, their PC-police allies in the Drive-by media, acting as an “accessory after the fact”, takes the Fifth, and refuses to name the Democratic actors in the original crime with the generic headline:

“Senate blocks census US-citizenship question”

“Senate”?

Are the Democrats proud of their vote or not and are we also not permitted to ask them questions not on a census form?

Given the vile excuse for journalism most Americans depend on, is it any wonder that so many have yet to discern the stark differences between the parties on economics, common sense immigration policies, defending the country and law and order in general.

So many members of the “World’s Oldest Political Party” are either: simply unaware of how many of their representatives simply do not share their values (and work to directly undermine their values with their votes in Congress) as opposed to the conservative acts they put on during campaigns; or, are in denial. I realize now that I was in denial about that party until I left it in 2000, but I digress.

Even Barack Obama gave the wink and nod to the far left while purposefully sounding conservative in the campaign, but the champion frauds can usually be identified today as “Blue Dawgs”. Not one of 60, too Yellow to ask a simple question, Dawgs in the Senate turned blue enough not to cower to the PC police and lobby for illegal immigration.

I haven’t heard the President asked his position on this question. But does anyone really wonder? The Rule of Law means nothing to some dogs, no matter the color.

And just hearing of all the alleged eye and ear witnesses to radical anti-American statements made by the Muslim-convert shooter before today’s shooting at Fort Hood, it is obvious that the PC-police are hazardous to the health of the United States military and America itself.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The 9.8% of Americans that are unemployed and the 90.2% that are either employed or have given up looking, are told that the Great Recession is over. Don’t believe a word of it or find a new word to describe the trouble we are in as a nation.

I wrote last year that no matter who was elected President that we, as a people, would have our character tested to the nth degree by the economic consequences of the Fannie Mae-Dem Congress/Fed weak dollar era of the past 10 years, as well as the private and public debt run up over the last 25 years.

I expected the recession to get this bad for this long and worse, and I expected a filibuster-proof Dem Congress (that started sending investors on strike when they took over Congress in 2007 with the promise of more regulations and higher taxes, all with the votes of Senator Barack Obama) combined with a left wing Dem President (whose father’s dreams were Marxist) to make things worse.

I was right, but, partially because I don’t expect ObamaDems to have a supply-side epiphany and give up the socialist Utopian dream any time soon, I must express my support for a number of measures they have advocated or discussed  that pertain to the economy and the Reagan-described safety net for the truly needy, as well as a number of foreign policy moves that deserve all Americans’ support.

It would have been nice if the Stimulus bill had been more than safety net relief and government growthulus. I would have favored a mass shovel-ready public works bill, but the ObamaDems chose instead to save and create state and federal bureaucrat jobs instead with the public works plan consisting mainly of signs that announce potholes are being filled by the Recovery Act. Nice signs. It appears that most of the puny funds for actual public works were delayed until the Summer of ‘10 (and election year). Go figure.

But, during times of recession and depression, the safety net does need shoring up, and for that reason, and to keep money flowing in the economy to keep a pulse going, I do favor:

1. Extension of unemployment benefits;
2. Extension of COBRA health insurance subsidies for those that have involuntarily lost their jobs through no fault of their own and need to continue health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions;
3. Extension of the Home-buyer tax credit (with the proviso that no one be allowed a credit larger than their total federal tax bill, inclusive of FICA), which Georgia’s Junior Senator, Johnny Isakson (R-GA) has championed; and
4. Small business lending initiative.

I understand the problems caused by Fannie/Freddie coercion of bad loans, but don’t see a tax credit (Conservatives are still for tax reductions, right? And you do note my proviso above?) unaccompanied by lowered credit standards and federal guarantees as in any way a continuation of same.

I would note that I oppose a separate program of mortgage conciliation that does seek to save homes for those that can’t afford them. Thankfully, that program has done very little and has the left wing of the Dem Party angry with Obama.

I would also note that I am not one of those that is angry at banks for not making lots of loans to businesses just now, despite TARP. The reason for the lack of loans is the bad economy and the dim prospects for profits from which loans could be paid back.

For the record, this Reaganite supply-sider favors supply side income, cap gains and estate tax cuts; as well as regulation cuts that would allow expanded oil and natural gas exploration and oil refinery and nuclear power plant building. But, I don’t expect that even those policies would lift the economy in a meteoric way until people save awhile and re-build their wealth before taking new risks. Which is an argument for, not against, Obama’s small business loan initiative.

We need to support the few things ObamaDems propose that will stimulate the economy, so I do.

And in the mostly embarrassing and disgraceful foreign policy wasteland of betrayals to freedom and rule of law-loving Honduras, Eastern Europe and Iranian dissidents we do see two bright spots: Pakistan is fighting the Taliban/al Qaida on their own initiative and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repudiated the Palestinian refusal to negotiate with Israel until they ceased all third bedroom additions to houses with newborn babies on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Yes, we know that Obama still deems such improvements to be “illegal”, but we are happy Prime Minister Bebe Netanyahu got a quarter.

Tomorrow, DeVine Law Gamecock returns to the column topic cornucopia of bad ObamaDem policies!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The racists in this drama are the media

No matter how incessantly the Drive-by media talks about white and black voters, the change in the relative fortunes of frontrunner Mary Norwood and runner-up Kasim Reed is about leadership qualities, and not the relative pigmentation of their skins.

Less than 48 hours ago, polls showed Mary Norwood might be able to garner 50% plus one vote and succeed Shirley Franklin as Mayor of Atlanta. Then the only poll that matters reared its head (Norwood 46%, Reed 36%), and it turns out that many Northern Atlanta voters in mostly Republican areas came in less enthusiastically than expected for their supposed Buckhead champion. She now faces a run-off against surging Kasim Reed.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is already peddling the racist line that is par for the course that has them regularly referred to as the Urinal-Constipation.

Don’t believe a word of it.

This conservative Republican knows better, which is why I announced my support for Reed yesterday.

Mary Norwood blew it by being equivocal about her Republican past. Mary must have forgotten that conservative Republicans are proud to be so, and proud of the candidates they have supported at least beginning with Ronald Reagan. Mary Norwood also must have forgotten that most all voters appreciate strength, leadership and honesty in an executive leader.

Kasim Reed did not forget this. He knows who he is, what he stands for, and is proud of it. Bravo!

I left the Democratic Party nine years ago last summer, and so I have major problems with many of the positions of Reed, and Norwood for that matter, given her apparent liberal conversion in the 90s. But liberal/conservative doesn’t matter that much the more local the race, and Reed is conservative on all the right issues for the City of Atlanta.

Mary Norwood’s only chance, if she has one, is to come clean on her past and turn out more of her supporters in the run-off than Reed.

But no matter who wins this race, Atlanta’s reputation matters most to me, and I don’t trust the simplistic, operationally racist, Drive-by media to be able to look past the skin color of the voters and the candidates. It makes me wonder if the purveyors of the racism charge are projecting their own racism, or that of their own institutions, onto others.
 

Atlantans can, have and will, and they see major differences between Reed and Norwood under their respective skins. Let’s let the coverage and conduct of this race leading to the run-off be an indictment of the racist media, and not Atlanta.

Atlantans are too busy for that kind of hate. After all, we have a city to run.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Atlanta remains a city too busy to hate, which fact caused the Rooster oracle to realize he wasn’t too busy to end his Sabbatical for an Election Day prognostication.

This I-85 South Carolina native has loved the Capital of Dixie since childhood. His brother was even born at Crawford-Long Hospital when the family moved to Bolton Drive during a Southern Railway shutdown of its Hayne (train repair) Shop in Spartanburg.

Our first love was the Braves (Mike DeVine Law Gamecock even loves the Braves more than his beloved USC Fighting Gamecocks for God’s sake), followed closely by the Falcons, Hawks and even, the now defunct, Nick Papadakis-led soccer team, the Chiefs. We loved Coca-Cola, the Varsity, Tech and the world’s busiest airport.

But mostly, we loved the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. that made great racial progress while also electing white and black mayors that fostered the growth of one of the great American cities.

This conservative Republican has been impressed with the governance of Atlanta for the last eight years by a non-racial, competent mayor named Shirley Franklin.

But we are most impressed now with the current campaign to succeed the term-limited City leader, for the non-racial conduct by all the candidates. Has their been some petty partisan party bickering even in this, officially, “non-partisan” race? Yes, after all, these are politicians, not candidates for sainthood.

But none of the campaigns have focused, at all, on the race of their opposing candidates, despite some puny attempts by two local college professors, and other outliers, to try and get blacks to gang up on the white poll leader.

Atlanta is a mature city focused on who can get the job done, and it appears to be moving towards that color-blind, judge by the content of one’s character goal of Martin Luther King.

Cockstradamus (pictued above) believes that this majority black Democrat city is about to elect a white woman for the first time, partially due to the resentment of many for the Georgia Democratic Party (and admitted Democrat candidates) attacks against Mary Norwood, that claim she is a closet republican.

Cockstradamus thinks that many black and white Democratic and independent voters resent the implication made by the GA Dem Party that they are mindless lemmings waiting for direction from on high.

We also note a possible affirmation of our apathy is good theory, given the likelihood of a low turnout. Atlanta has been hit hard by the Great Recession in terms of jobs lost, budget problems and crime. Yet, they seem to believe that all four of the major candidates are up to the job, and so are too busy to vote, so busy are they trying to make a living.

One thing is for sure: They are too busy to hate any candidate because of their race.

Atlanta, you make me proud. Gamecock would lean to voting for Kasim Reed if he weren’t viewing the Big City election from Clarkston and the Stone Mountain of Georgia, but we will flock to Manuel’s to celebrate the election, no matter the winner, because the real winner is….

Atlanta, the greatest city in America.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Post-2000 conservative epiphany, I have come to realize that many of the leaders of my former Democratic Party must not really care for the poor given their denial of the poor boats lifted by Reaganite supply side economic policies and given their continuing advocacy of proven failed liberal policies since the 1960s.

[See * at end of column for background.]

Even while an activist Democratic Party official, I mostly refused to acquiesce in the liberal line that Republicans didn’t care about the poor or that they would take away the checks form the poor, old and disabled.

But I can’t help but think that many Democrats care much more power gains through victim dependency given their history since JFK was assassinated and especially given their support for a Cap and Trade energy tax that would directly and drastically lower the standing of living of the poor and middle class by making it impossible for them to afford many of the necessities of life.

We saw last summer what $4/gallon gasoline did to lower income families, by forcing choices between driving to one’s job or having enough money to feed the children.

Make no mistake, even if I thought that man’s use of and breathing out of carbon could cause the shoreline to receded, I would not favor a draconian assault on the modern world and return to a green Dickensian world or horse manure-filled streets and buck stove smoke-filled air in London.

But the whole man-made global warming (MMGW), now conveniently known as “climate change” (as if) since the earth has cooled since 1998 (thus calling into question whether there is an non-man made global warming taking place), is a crock. My client, The Sun, in the inter-galactic case styled as The Sun v. Al Gore et al, warms the earth; not cow flatulence and Chevrolets. In fact, half of the Eastern Seaboard was under the Atlantic for 10,000 years, tens of thousands of years before the first Corvette rilled off a Dearborn, Michigan assembly line.

Hence, my initial disgust with South Carolina Republican (btw, the first DC GOP office-seeker I ever voted for) Sen. Lindsey Graham’s agreement with Sen. John “I served in Vietnam” Kerry (D-MA) on the “reality” of “climate change” (Well, we all have to agree there is climate change every day, hell every minute…but they mean global warming and say so in the column).

The Pink Flamingo objected to my harsh judgment of Lindsey, despite his history of sticking McCain-like pointy sticks in fellow Republicans eyes so as to secure co-starring roles on TV network Sunday Shows. We do recall that Graham spoke to La Raza during the illegal immigration amnesty debate and called all the opponents of the bill “racists”? I remember. I also know that when LG gets something right, like the war, he can be the best advocate on your side, but I digress. Here is the very specific (I like that) retort from SJR (link above):

The following paragraph from the NYTimes is being constantly ignored. You might want to pay a little attention to it. To come from John Kerry it is extremely revealing:

“…Failure to act comes with another cost. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. Imposed regulations are likely to be tougher and they certainly will not include the job protections and investment incentives we are proposing…”

There are at least two trains of thought on the danger of a President Barack Obama extra-constitutional Czar-like overreach in making law via new regulatory interpretations of existing statutes related to the EPA, CWA, ESA with respect to energy and environment restrictions on carbon as a pollutant and FDA with respect to tobacco.

Firstly though, whether or not a Cap and Trade bill would absolutely prevent unitary executive action would depend upon whether any new statute directly repeals existing vague language with respect to environmental protections, clean water and endangered species laws already in effect.

I doubt any new statute would deter Obama’s impatient regulators. After all, these folks have been waiting their whole lives to “fundamentally change” America (to use Obama’s campaign rhetoric - yes, he only used that specific phrase once before Axelrod schooled the Boy Prince…) and were frustrated when Bill Clinton triangulated with Newt and when Gore used to be the next President of the United States.

But, I should mention that many scholars think that the regulatory threat is a Red Herring since any attempts to increase carbon regulations via executive action would get tied up in the courts for many years.

In any event, that argument by the senior senator from the Palmetto State strikes me as more make weight, since Graham religiously asserts his faith in the fundamental premise of MMGW and in his support for a Cap and Trade tax on the energy that created the modern world and which tax is a sinfully regressive tax on the poor in the purchase of food and transportation to their jobs. It would eliminate any “luxury” like a weekly trip to any Grandmother living more than 30 miles away.

But, challenged to re-read the Kerry-Graham news deemed fit to print, I did find that I was pleased with a number of fundamental truths that Graham got a far left liberal to agree to, in writing no less. Yes, the truths are vaguely stated and offered as measures for merely tempering the effect of the NEW TAX on the American standard of living, but welcome, nonetheless, and quite useful for future debates.

The “good news” admissions by Kerry (link above) for the Left are that new on- and offshore oil and natural gas drilling and nuclear power can be part of the answer to our energy needs. They actually mention our need to end dependence on foreign oil; energy efficiency and pollution control.

Sign me up for all that. One wonders if they noticed how we cleaned up America’s air and water from 1970-2009 while greatly increasing the emission of carbon. The fact is that their Cap and Trade bill hinders all of those goals.

I especially liked these paragraphs from the Old Gray Lady aka The Times:

Second, while we invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar, we must also take advantage of nuclear power, our single largest contributor of emissions-free power. Nuclear power needs to be a core component of electricity generation if we are to meet our emission reduction targets. We need to jettison cumbersome regulations that have stalled the construction of nuclear plants in favor of a streamlined permit system that maintains vigorous safeguards while allowing utilities to secure financing for more plants. We must also do more to encourage serious investment in research and development to find solutions to our nuclear waste problem.

Third, climate change legislation is an opportunity to get serious about breaking our dependence on foreign oil. For too long, we have ignored potential energy sources off our coasts and underground. Even as we increase renewable electricity generation, we must recognize that for the foreseeable future we will continue to burn fossil fuels. To meet our environmental goals, we must do this as cleanly as possible. The United States should aim to become the Saudi Arabia of clean coal. For this reason, we need to provide new financial incentives for companies that develop carbon capture and sequestration technology.

In addition, we are committed to seeking compromise on additional onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration — work that was started by a bipartisan group in the Senate last Congress. Any exploration must be conducted in an environmentally sensitive manner and protect the rights and interests of our coastal states.

Implicit in the suggested go slow approach so as not to threaten jobs and the burden on the poor, discussed elsewhere in the column, is that this is not a real crisis.

Thanks for that admission most of all! We now have a major liberal Democratic Party leader on record. Let’s use it to kill Cap and Trade; enact supply side tax and regulation cuts; open up expanded oil and natural gas exploration; and build nuclear power plants and oil refineries.

Kerry is all for it. Thanks Lindsey.

* [This column was inspired by regular R412 commenter, SJ Reidhead aka SJR The Pink Flamingo, who objected to my harsh criticism of Lindsey Graham's co-authorship of a NYT editorial suggesting a left-right compromise on a Cap and Trade Bill before the international community meeting on the issue this month in Copenhagen, Denmark. A portion of this column will appear in an upcoming column I am working on for this week that cites some DeVine conservative agreements with the ObamaDems on particular matters.]

See also Dr. Roy Spencer’s An Expensive Urban Legend.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Given recent Cap-and-Trade Bill leaks, it appears neither care very much about living standards when compared to their love of being liked by Beltway Global Warming Religious elites

Last week we documented the exposure of the faux global warming consensus and the collapse of the affluent society fetish post $4/gallon gasoline.

Yet, in the middle of a Great Recession with the fall of the American Dollar driving gasoline and heating oil prices back towards $3/gallon, we hear rumors that some of the Evan Bayh-led Blue Dawg Democrats that have courageously kept the Pelosi assault on American prosperity energy tax bill out of Harry Reid’s hands, together with Lindsey Graham and other moderate (read: enamored of receiving invites to Georgetown liberals’ cocktail parties) republicans, may be ready to compromise and pass this wicked legislation:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has turned his back on the latest science, economics, the Republican Party, and American national security, by announcing his new partnership with Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to find “the winning formula” to pass global warming cap-and-trade legislation.

Graham is now touting his view that man-made global warming fears are real and can be “solved” by passing Congressional cap-and-trade legislation. Graham teamed up with Sen. Kerry to write an October 11 New York Times op-ed explaining that the GOP and Democrats should “work together to address an urgent crisis facing the world.”

We guess that the real crisis in Middle America losing jobs by the millions isn’t “cool” enough for Senators seeking co-starring roles on Sunday Shows.

The real climate change catastrophe is what they and their “international community” liberals want to do as a response to the now proven false global warming crisis:

We have “less than 50 days” to save the planet, declared Gordon Brown last week, in yet another desperate bid to save the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in six weeks’ time. But no one has put the reality of the situation more succinctly than Prof Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world, who has done as much as anyone in the past 20 years to expose the emptiness of the IPCC’s claim that its reports represent a “consensus” of the views of “the world’s top climate scientists”.

In words quoted on the cover of my new book, Prof Lindzen wrote: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”

Such is the truly extraordinary position in which we find ourselves.

Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

How long will it be before sanity and sound science break in on what begins to look like one of the most bizarre collective delusions ever to grip the human race?

It appears that Brits asked to pay more taxes based on the fraudulent theory are now balking, and I suspect that any Democrat (whether yellow or blue) or Republican (whether named Lindsey or not) that were to assault poor and middle class living standards with an energy tax bill, would find that the real catastrophe for them would be losing their cush jobs in Washington, D.C.

[update at 4:13 pm EST]

From R412:

Comment #2

Okay Mike, who put out the political hit on Lindsey.  This is not what I expected of you.

This is what is in the NYTimes article, BUT everyone is ignoring it.

“Failure to act comes with another cost. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. Imposed regulations are likely to be tougher and they certainly will not include the job protections and investment incentives we are proposing.”

Great and fair question and am glad you asked, as it shows the need for me to be more comprehensive and will, therefore update the column forthwith!

smile

Yes, I read that, but that assumes Obama is not already using the EPA’s vague language and sup ct and bush admin gift of carbon as pollutant (which they didn’t even need given the vague language of the statute) or that he would be deterred from using same if the Congress passed some law so weak on the issue from the libs perspective and thus, exonerating of Graha.

I am not so convinced.

Moreover, it does not justify Graham’s mindless acquiescence or dare we fear actual belief in the fauz science that is used as a front for the socialists turned greenies to attack capitalism.

The correct position is to have the courage to attack the PC climate police, esp now that it doesn’t take any courage given the debunking of the science and the turn in the public’s indulgence of this fetish.

Lastly, I would PREFER that ObamaDems own a carbon tax bill that takes effect NOW, as so great would be the immediate suffering and the resulting HUE and CRY, that we could win a filibuster proof majority that even Lindseys couldn’t stop.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

 The extended sabbatical of the most famous living poultry oracle left the freezing temperature locale of Gore’s latest Global warming conference and arrived at the World’s Largest Cocktail Party last night in Jacksonville, Florida for the real climate change known as Dixie. (see also global warming happens every Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice…)

[This column also serves as a special Halloween guide to all the characters that regularly contrubute to Mike gamecock DeVine's blogs and columns for The Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Minority Report, Race 4 2012, Redstate, Patriot Room, Town Hall, and Examiner.com.]

Braves-Gamecock (pictured above) called his brother in the announcement of dawns to discuss the usual Saturday religious services from late August thru Pearl Harbor Day known as College Football and to see if Cockstradamus (pictured below) wanted to end his prognostication pause with a bark for the Dawgs against the Gators.

We regret that the chicken who predicted the creation of Huckabee on FNC continues to keep future visions to himself, but did get an earful of crowing concerning all the grief the Cocky version of Jimmy the Greek took for the two years past when he called the whole global warming aka climate change supposed consensus and political power a “fetish” of the spoiled affluent society that would evaporate with $4/gallon gas and the Great Recession, not to mention any suggestion that they give up Le Seur peas for the Bi-Lo brand lest we lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island in 50 years.

The American public cares not a whit about it anymore.

This year, we have seen more and more scientists have the courage to speak truth to government grant-giving power as my client in the case of The Sun v Gore has allowed the Earth to cool for 11 years.

The bluest thing the Blue Dawg Democrats (leader pictured) have ever done, to date, is to block the cap and trade tax assault on the poor, middle class and small business bill in the Senate. Yes, we hear that Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to give up his senate seat by compromising on the bill and are sure ObamaDems may well accommodate him and defy the public if they can sneak this monster thru. And yes, we are even more sure that Lawless Obama will usurp the power of Congress if they don’t make this law, by simple executive regulatory fiat that is hidden and creeps all over American living standards just in time for Obama, Pelosi and Reid to have been re-elected, before it kills trips by the poor to see grandma 35 miles away lest they can’t keep the gas on to stay warm amidst the climate change, but I digress.

Cockstradamus was right.

Now, here is hoping the Dawgs upset Tebow-Nation and eventually get half a brain and end the annual trips to same. Earth to Georgia: gators can take a bus to Athens!

And of yes: USC Fighting Gamecocks (gamecock pictured, courtesy of The Minority Report) volunteer to beat Tennessee.

DeVine Law (pictured above) and Foghorn Leghorn (pictured below) approved.

Remaining questions and issues: Thank God that neither Supreme Court nor Bush Administration didn’t mention chicken breath when they labeled CO2 a “pollutant”;…

more links will be added here all weekend

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

This column has a column topic section titled “pitchforks“, so ubiquitous has been President Barack Obama’s “Chicago Way” tactics to “clear the field” of opposition to his policies.

Obama has long practiced clear the Field politics as opposed to honest debate against opposition, going all the way back to the leaking of his senate opponent’s confidential sealed divorce records. The first such utterance specifically to unleashing a pitchfork wielding populist mob against opponents as President was this exchange with bank CEOs in April:

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Tomorrow night is an occasion celebrating the most famous wielder of a pitchfork, variously known by the appellations of Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub and, most famously, The Devil.

The most recent folks to be pricked by ObamaZebub’s pointed stick have been doctors, insurance companies, and, most famously the evil Television equivalent of evil Talk Radio, i.e. Fox News Channel. But why have the pitchforks been sicked on a non-broadcast cable news outlet that garners but a fraction of the audiences of the CBS, NBC and ABC (all in the tank for ObamaMessiah) news, individually and combined?

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times recently risked sustaining steel-pointed, fork-shaped injuries when he reported:

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

Read the whole column that reports on behind the scenes meetings between FNC’s Roger Ailes and White House adviser David Axelrod, as well as Obama’s meetings with his advisor’s and see if you can think of any President we have ever had with such thin skin and less confidence in his message?

I couldn’t.

The fear that the Drive-By media is being shamed into actually covering news that doesn’t fit their preferred story lines is welcome news for anyone that cares about this nation’s electorate being informed.

Examiner.com has never been in the tank for any politician. We don’t do drive-by hits. We examine the facts and report. And if we have a point of view, left or right, we say so.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Harry Reid must be as slimy as Tom Daschel was in the Democratic Party Cloakroom

The conversion of former Georgia Lieutenant Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller from Yellow Dawg Democrat to the DINO (Democrat in name only) that endorsed President George W, Bush for re-election at the 2004 GOP convention began with his first encounter of the glazed-over, in denial lying eyes of “Bush-lied” fellow Democrat Senators in caucus meetings on Capitol Hill in 2003-4.

So disgusted with the un-patriotic, US-enemy emboldening speech and actions of the Democratic Party after mass stockpiles of WMD were not found in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, that he stopped attending their meetings. But Senator Miller, appointed by Roy Barnes, then Democrat Governor of the Peach State, to complete the term of Paul Coverdell after his death, never got so disgusted that he changed parties.

Joe Lieberman is younger than Zell Miller and making bold, unprecedented moves against the party he has caucused with for his entire career, even considering the fact that he is, technically an “Independent Democrat” and not the plain vanilla variety after the World’s Oldest Party tried to defeat him for re-election after he dared to support a Republican Commander-in-Chief while his nation was at war. The wars, we might add, that the vast majority of democrats voted to launch, support and fund for years, but I digress.

Has any senator since the late 1950s or early 1960s announced his intention to filibuster major legislation proposed by his own Majority Leader, until Senator Lieberman announced his intention to filibuster the Harry Reid version of ObamaCare less than two hours after the senior senator from Nevada proposed it earlier this week? Could any conservative Republican had made a more categorically conservative argument against ObamaCare than this:

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Mr. Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”

I will not argue that Joe’s statement is unique as compared to statements regularly made my conservative Republicans, because we have many in the GOP that do so. But Lieberman, unlike Republicans that regularly disagree with their party and who go out of their way to reach across the aisle to Democrats, only very rarely gets invited to co-star on the Sunday Shows to be praised as courageous.

Yet, who has displayed more of the kind of career threatening courage memorialized in JFK’s Pulitzer-prize winning book: Lieberman or McCain?

Did the GOP run a candidate against him in his last party primary? Was he ever deprived of power within the caucus? Has their been an absence of McCain or his “vice-president” Lindsey Graham on Sunday TV before Noon? I think not.

The junior senator from Connecticut continues:

Mr. Lieberman added that he’d also oppose a bill that includes Mr. Reid’s provision for states to “opt-out” of the public program “because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line.”

Lieberman was not content merely to threaten one filibuster. He felt compelled to issue a pre-emptive strike against the tricks the Dems have up their sleeve to try and fool the public into letting the nose of the socialized medicine camel under the free market tent.

Was Lieberman content merely to pronounce on the ubiquitous issue of the day? Not on your life. Yesterday:

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

“I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said in an ABC News “Subway Series” interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

Lieberman infuriated fellow Democrats in 2008 by supporting Republican presidential nominee John McCain as well as congressional candidates Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

Joe Lieberman has always distinguished himself from the blood-sucking vampire in need of a stake through its heart that we all know as the National Democratic Party, especially on national security and values issues (with the glaring exception of abortion, regretfully).

The Senate Cloakroom for donkeys must be reaching a stultifying level of disgust for Joe to defy his “leaders” in such brazen ways, and given the tenor of his conservative rhetoric, one has to wonder if he might be ready to cross the aisle as Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords did in 2002.

This conservative Republican rooster is ready to crow with joy if he does.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Henry Troutman, Jr., the son of the founder of the Atlanta law firm that became famous as Troutman Sanders in legal circles throughout the South and beyond, passed away at the age of 86 this week at his Hilton Head Island, S.C. home.

Troutman Sanders was intimately involved in all of the great legal and economic events of the past century that made Atlanta the great city it became and is today. Of special note, one of its former partners and good friend of mine, Hank Purvis (age 79 and father of Atlanta’s Democrats Examiner) fashioned the first deed of property unattached to the Earth that allowed for economic development above-ground, especially including the Centennial Park area.

Topics on which DeVine Law Gamecock (pictured) desires comments and debate:

Judicial Recusals

I do not generally favor judicial recusals unless a particular judge has a personal interest in the outcome of the case either due to a current close relationship with one of the parties; family relationship or monetary interest. I do not consider there to be a conflict of interest when an appellate judge, especially one on the U.S. Supreme Court, is asked to consider a lower court decision upon which they participated.

After all, one of the main reasons they are chosen is to render their opinions on the law.

So, it was with great disappointment when John Roberts refused to hear a critical executive war powers case, that he had ruled on while on the DC Circuit Court, soon after he was confirmed as The Chief Justice of the United States.

Some conservatives have recently suggested that newly appointed Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor recuse herself from considering the seminal appeal of a gun rights case seeking to apply the Second Amendment to the states, as it has to the federal District of Columbia. This suggestion is not based on her participation in the lower court case on appeal, which was from a different circuit; but, rather on a similar case from her circuit that she participated in. I would not call for her recusal even if she had participated in the Chicago case, even though I am certain she will vote against my position favoring incorporation of the right to bear arms to the states.

What say my legal colleagues?

Alito replacement of O’Connor historic

Given all the cases upon which retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the deciding 5th vote, I would argue that her replacement by Associate Justice Samuel Alito is and will be one the most consequential in history, unless one of the other conservatives is replaced by President Barack Obama in the near future.

Alito has already participated in free religious speech and church/state cases that have reversed many of O’Connor’s onerous tests that formed much of the basis for the assault pf religious free speech in the public square. Many local school districts have already gotten the message and have stopped being as intimidated by the ACLU.

Alito promises to be the tie-breaking vote on many abortion; eminent domain and other issues.

Thurgood Marshall was the greatest lawyer of the 20th Century and second only to MLK himself in his contributions to civil rights in America

I recently re-read Juan William’s biography of the late justice Marshall, who, it turns out, resented the media’s attention to and status afforded to MLK, but mostly to Malcolm X.

I don’t blame him, as related to X. After all, Malcolm was  a hater in a hateful cult most of his career and never achieved anything tangible and significant legally or socially. maybe he would have, had he lived longer after his post-Mecca pilgrimage epiphany that Allah calls him to love all people. But he didn’t. I would say that some of his actions did reveal the racism of Northern Whites, but much more so that of racist blacks.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

There is a rift in the Black Hollywood director community, but the real rift is the same as in the liberal-conservative, redstate-bluestate, Southern/anti-southern divides.

Tyler Perry of House of Payne and movie character Madea fame appeared on 60 Minutes this week to respond to criticism from Spike Lee:

“We’ve had this discussion back and forth. When John Singleton [made Boyz in the Hood], people came out to see it. But when he did ‘Rosewood,’ nobody showed up. So a lot of this is on us! You vote with your pocketbook, your wallet. You vote with your time sitting in front of the idiot box, and [Tyler Perry] has a huge audience. We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make, or that John Singleton or my cousin Malcolm Lee [would make]. As African-Americans, we’re not one monolithic group, so there is room for all of that. But at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it hearkens back to ‘Amos n’ Andy.’”

I only vaguely remember “Amos and Andy” as a child. Many people I know and respect that were never racist loved the show. I have never seen a whole episode of House of Payne, but I have seen Tyler Perry portray “Madea” in a video of the play “Madea Goes to Jail”, staged in here in Atlanta, and was blown away by how real it was and how conservative were the values it transmitted.

So, it was with great anticipation that I watched Perry’s response on CBS this past Sunday:

“I would love to read that [criticism] to my fan base. All these characters of mine are bait, bait to get people talking about God, love, family, and faith. You know, that pisses me off. It really does. Because it’s so insulting. It’s attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that’s why there’s no material speaking to them, speaking to us.”

“All these characters are bait, disarming, charming, make-you-laugh bait, so I can slap them into situations where they can talk about God, love, faith, forgiveness, family, any of those things,” says Perry.

And it is in the resentment of Lee and others concerning the “characters” that really reveals what underlies the spite. It reminds me of liberal criticism of some supposed caricatures of black folks that the critics lambasted as racist due to the big lips and other features of the drawings.

Turns out the drawings were accurate depictions of the black subjects, and it made me suppose that maybe many liberal blacks and whites harbour personal disgust (racism?) with respect to certain blacks. And this Lee/Perry episode makes me think that much of the spite directed at Perry’s characters is based on anti-Southern bigotry.

As Perry essentially says in his interview (see it all here), these folks exist, whether NY, Boston or Hollywood likes it or not. Most are in the South, but many are up north and out west as well.

And for conservatives, they are ripe for the picking to turn blue states red, much as my earlier column on Jason Whitlock’s apology to Rush Limbaugh shows as well.

Madea totes a gun to protect herself, her home and and her loved ones. Even in a perfect world the police usually arrive after the innocent are victims. Perry’s Atlanta while too busy too hate, ain’t a perfect world. But many in Atlanta and elsewhere are about building a more perfect union from the same Judeo-Christian principles that the Founders relied upon.

Spike Lee resents that fact almost as much as he resents non-politically correct un-reconstructed Southerners and Blacks.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Jason Whitlock has long been one of this Rush Dittohead’s favorite sports and social commentators, so it was with much chagrin when he wrote a column during the recent Rush-NFL Rams-bid controversy repeating false racist statements to Limbaugh and his Excellence in Broadcasting “network”. But I am not surprised that the Kansas City Star reporter has redeemed himself:

Let me first apologize to Rush Limbaugh.

Last week in explaining why NFL commissioner Roger Goodell needed to put an end to Limbaugh’s latest publicity stunt, I attributed racially insensitive quotes to Limbaugh that I read in two Missouri newspapers, saw on CNN and confirmed through a Google search. Prior to posting the article, I never found a denial of these quotes by Limbaugh, and had no reason to believe those statements were not true.

It was unfair to Limbaugh. And I regret that. I’ve commented on some of his earlier controversies. I’ve long been an admirer of his broadcasting skills.

It’s nice to read a real apology without the “in case anyone was offended” caveat, isn’t it.

I regret to say that Whitlock still doesn’t totally “get” what Rush is all about given later comments in the mea culpa that equate some of Rush’s commentary to the “divisive” antics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, but when one considers that much of Rush’s shtick is almost an inside joke for regulars, he can be forgiven. Moreover, when one reads the following from Whitlock, one realizes that he truly is of a conservative bent and open minded:

For the most part, I’ve never taken his political commentary all that seriously. There are virtually no modern-day political figures that I take seriously. Politics and politicians are too dishonest and too controlled by financial influences for my taste. I’ve never participated in American politics. I’ve never voted.

I am not right wing or left wing, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. I’m not beholden to any political agenda. An examination of my work at FOX Sports.com, the Kansas City Star and/or any of the places I’ve worked previously would reveal a free-thinking, hardcore independent.

I dislike and distrust everybody equally.

For the most part, doesn’t that attitude warm a conservative’s heart? it does mine, although given his overall philosophy, I wish he would vote because I think he would usually get it right!

My experiences with Whitlock have been almost totally positive over the years. He, like Limbaugh, was driven from many mainstream media sports talk shows due to his refusal to give race hustlers and thugs a pass. He also went to Jena, LA during that “noose” controversy:

The proof is in my work. As sports columnist, I went down to Jena, Louisiana on my own dime because I wanted to understand the Jena Six controversy. The way the “mainstream” media and Al Sharpton told the story made little sense to me. My suspicions were confirmed after visiting Jena. I wrote a long column for the Kansas City Star explaining how a little-known white minister — Alan Bean — crafted the Jena Six narrative, spoon-fed it to specific, liberal-leaning media members/outlets and watched from the sidelines as his totally one-sided, inaccurate narrative became accepted as fact by virtually all major media organizations.

I pay a price for my independence. I know what it feels like to be unfairly called a racist. It happens to me almost every week after one of my columns. Depending on the topic or the conclusion I reach, black and white people take turns arguing that I hate black or white people.

My point is some days I’m sympathetic to Limbaugh’s plight. He’s a push-the-envelope entertainer. His parody song “Barack The Magic Negro” is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on radio. It’s not racist. It’s genius.

Whitlock goes on to express some misguided views of much of Rush’s work, but I am not holding him responsible for fully understanding Rush. Whitlock is not a perfect man, and for that matter neither is Rush nor this crowing rooster, but Jason is about the same business as Rush: truth. Whitlock finds it more often than not, and has the Rush-like courage we need in this culture.

Whitlock joins other courageous black commentators like Juan Williams, Steve Smith and many black NFL players defending Rush. Had Rush’s white business partners had 48 hours more patience, I’ll bet the Rams would have been theirs.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns and Race 4 2012 website.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Bullying of CEO Ken Lewis and pay “guidelines” for non-TARP banks prove ObamaDems don’t care if TARP funds are repaid

DeVine Law had planned to weigh in on the ongoing debate over the constitutionality of executive branch “czars” since dueling Pro & Con (Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson vs. David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey) columns on the subject appeared in my October 1 edition of the AJC. 

I concluded, at the time, that Rivkin/Casey had the better argument in the all-Republican debate that President Barack Obama’s czars did not exercise the ”significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States” that U.S. Supreme Court precedent determined is required for U.S. Senate confirmation under the ”appointments clause” of the U.S. Constitution.

But as the end of October approaches I am persuaded that the Halloween masks of Czar#1 (Obama) thru Czar#33 (and counting) need to be removed, given the specter of thuggish Czarist “pitchfork” threats against TARP and non-TARP companies, akin to those leveled in the Chicago Way against Bankers last April:

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

 Persuasion, Coercion and Lawmaking

The “czar” that made the above thuggish mobster-type threat against Bank of America’s (BAC) CEO Ken Lewis, after he jokingly complained about rumours of draconian cuts in executive pay, didn’t have to be confirmed by senators. He was chosen by the Electoral College!

Lewis, who had already agreed to work for $2 for 2008-2009; invested millions of his own money in stock after the credit crunch and who was coerced to go thru with the Merrill Lynch deal after learning of their massive debt; has now been rubbed out by Obama’s pitchforks and forced to resign.

It seems that Lewis committed the unpardonable sin when he miraculously turned the Merrill deal into a profit-maker for BAC, thus frustrating the Obama-Geithner goal of nationalizing the banks. Earlier this year, Lewis also tried to return all of the TARP funds that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Obama’s Tax-cheat Treasury Chief-in-waiting had forced BAC to take, alleging the bank was “insolvent.” The problem with that allegation is that BAC has never missed one payment to creditors.

Therefore, before Obama had appointed the first czar, this government had already crossed the line between persuasion from the Bully Pulpit of the executive branch and its execution of the laws responsibilities to the usurpation of the lawmaking responsibilities of Congress and the coercion of Judicial mandates interpreting the law.

One might want to go back as far as the Fannie Mae gangs of Democrats that coerced banks to make loans to those that could not afford them since the late 1990s for earlier coercions as well. One might want to re-visit attempts by President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain to break democrats’ filibusters that kept Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the czar-like power to guarantee the toxic loans that, combined with Democratic Party policies after they took over Congress in 2007, that introduced us to the Great Recession Obama’s Rahm Emmanuel now uses as the crisis to justify the end of the rule of law and free market capitalism, but I digress.

Special Master please, not Czar

I chuckled two weeks ago when I saw that AIG was “asked” by Kenneth “Pay Czar” Feinberg, to reduce scheduled contractual bonuses. Asked? Then the chuckle reached belly-laugh this past week when Feinberg “announced” that all TARP recipients pay would be cut by 90%. No word on AIG et al’s answers after being asked and no word if pitchfork releases were threatened.

Feinberg says that these cuts are a “balance” of public outrage vs. making it more likely that the TARP companies pay back the loans from the taxpayer. He also “hopes” that the best employees of these companies won’t leave for better pay with non-TARP companies.

Feinberg was appointed by President Obama as “Special Master” on executive pay, and Feinberg insists that he not be referred to as a “czar”. But “master” is a term of art used by the Judicial Branch to refer to judges that make impartial  decisions based on law and equity.

We missed his judicial appointment and the only jury we saw was one man with large ears not listening to We the people, nor the Congress. Had Obama been listening, he would have remembered the U.S. Senate’s refusal to pass the 90% tax on AIG months ago and had he been listening to We the People, he would have washed away that Big Government Kool-Aid taste with Party Tea.

So you see, whether Obama’s czars are unconstitutional or not (even if the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court would declare them so), the problem of the ongoing transition from a Republic and the Rule of Law to Obama’s preferred rule by men won’t be solved.

Not a Slippery Slope? The slope done slipped.

We are also told by Master Feinberg not to fear a slippery slope that would have the federal government determine salaries in non-TARP funds-receiving companies. Yet, the very day cuts of 50-90% in TARP company pay are announced, Obama’s government issues suggestions for ALL banks and the FEd has now followed.

All this comes after Obama took over GM and Chrysler that now function as premium day care for the UAW workers with no work to do making cars no one wants to buy.

Had they cared about “saving” GM and BAC, (and about taxpayer money being paid back) they would have let GM survive in bankruptcy and let BAC pay their money back months ago. So the Obama motive in the present circumstance is made clear by their takeover of GM and refusal to accept BAC’s money: Obama wants to own BAC and keep GM as a permanent taxpayer funded Democratic Party operation.

Feinberg speaks of having CEO and other executive pay tied to long-term stock options, and  that would be fine if Boards of Directors weighed such a choice in the free market against similarly-situated firms with whom they compete.

But Obama, like czars, mobsters and Chavez-like dictators, eschews competition. He prefers to clear the field with Valentine’s Day brass knuckle massacres akin more to Halloween tricks after he takes the treats.

He was ACORN’s lawyer after all, even if he is loathe to admit it, and we can’t count on clearing any more ACORNs absent prostitution ring revelations.

We the People must wield votes in 2009-2012 like pitchforks

Don’t count on any action from a Congress, either, as some of their Blue Dawgs try blocking the cap and trade energy tax assault on the poor and middle class as Obama uses executive bureaucratic interpretations of the law to begin imposing such tax without their Blue Dawg representation.

We face a lawless gang in Washington whose czars may not face Senate scrutiny, but whose head Czar and his party ObamaDems will face We the People scrutiny in Novembers hence.

It has always required courage for conservatives, branded by the Drive-bys as criminals for being Republicans, to oppose the liberal status quo. The Chicago ways of Obama has made a Rush-like courage even more necessary given his pitchfork intimidation tactics.

Fortunantly, when the pitchfork thug ObamaDems slipped down the slope, they landed on Tea Partyers heads, who are poised to play Eliot Ness.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns and Race 4 2012 website.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.