A Hundred Days?

Waiting one more day won’t make President Barack Obama an FDR any more than waiting 901 days will make him JFK. One might as well wait for flu-ravaged pigs to fly over NYC.

We are to fear everything and everybody on Earth except Obama, Obama’s creations, those Obama affirms via apologies or otherwise, and foreign man-made disaster causers (formally known as terrorists) and dictators, but I repeat myself. After all, Barry was only 39 years old at the time of the man-made disaster of September 11, 2001.

Having slept through the Millennium non-bombing and 911, a Homeland Security Chief (now confident Mohammed Atta didn’t traverse Horseshoe Falls on his way to Manhattan) Janet the Napsterpolitano has been directed only to fear as potential terrorists those armed forces of the United States returning from having defeated those formerly known as terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporters of the Second Amendment and the rest of the dead Constitution, i.e. conservatives.

Fear the religious right hearers of pro-life sermons. Don’t fear 20-year pew-parked butts that heard Hate G-D, US-KKK-America sermons.

We are not to fear Barack’s Big Government non-stimulative, except for government growthulus creations, nor his $3.6 trillion budgeted Humongous Government re-creation. Yes, we should have been terrified of Bush deficits of 3.4% of GDP but not Obama’s of 12.8% for, after all, The One is now in charge.

Don’ fear the Fed’s $1.2 trillion printed dollars. Fear puny billions paid in insurance sales commissions.

Fear corporate CEOs not appointed by the President of the United States, especially those deserving of having the Da’ Boss step aside so that pitchfork-wielders can lynch them at banks in America and even more so the at the Bank of America that dares make a profit. Don’t fear CEOs appointed by Obama to preserve universal Government Medicine (GM) for autoworker retirees.

Fear Americans earning more than $250K per year unless the excess is book royalties audaciously earned hoping for a Marxist father’s dreams to come true. Don’t fear millions of more Americans earning less than a quarter of a million. Haven’t you heard that the Speaker Ordained by Obama, Pelosi stimulated unemployment benefits to the tune of $25 more per week?

Fear Edison’s light bulb. Embrace lights out parties. Fear carbon emissions unless they are expelled by Obama and his Earth Day transportation vehicles. Don’t fear a bankrupt coal industry.

Fear nose water-swabbings as a recruiting tool for man-made disaster seekers. Don’t fear aggression inviting weak horses or paper tigers.

Fear busts of Winston Churchill occupying space at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Don’t fear IRS busts of Cabinet members for tax fraud.

Fear tea parties that seek to slay baseless bailouts. Don’t fear the Democratic Party of Death that bails out abortion seekers abroad with your tax dollars.

Fear shopping at the non-union Wal-Mart near you that insists on secret ballots. Never fear that POTUS will ever photo-shop Air Force One publicity shots near sites of prior man-made disasters.

Fear the drafters of legal memos under the Bush Administration that didn’t authorize The Rack, disfigurement nor digital extremity removal. Never fear Ex Post FactOBAMAalism.

Even as a Democrat in the 90s, I scoffed at all the “scare” talk by the Clinton Administration of supposed “crises” ginned up to justify new or increased government spending. Quite instructive in my 2000 conservative conversion was how the Newt-Clinton adherence to Reagan style capital gains tax cuts unleashed the private sector to deliver the American Dream.

My optimism about this country’s future had known no bounds, until now.

I had a conversation with a vivacious near 30-something female insurance broker yesterday still in a week old funk, disillusioned by all those that cross her path that seem to have lost hope. Part of this is due to her coming of age at a time of economic boom times and the experience of her and so many of her acquaintances experiencing a Great Recession for the first time in their adult lives.

But I think there is much more to my friend’s depression than the recession. Yes, the President “inherited” the worst economic crisis since the one President Ronald Reagan was bequeathed in 1981. No matter that Senator Obama aided and abetted its creation via votes to keep Fannie and Freddie in the bad bank loan coercion and guarantee business.

What is truly scary about the present circumstance is that, unlike a President Roosevelt confident in an American peoples’ ability to overcome fear and a Reagan who echoed FDR’s optimism in conjunction with policies that got the government out of the way for We the People to bail ourselves out, the current occupant seems to view entrepreneurial job producers as enemies to be punished by policies that keep them on strike.

Over the past 30-45 days not one Obama supporter has come up to their known conservative columnist foil to brag on Obama’s performance and rub salt into his 2008 Election result wounds. Many do approach me quietly to admit their vote for Number 44 might have been a mistake.

Hopefully this hard time will concentrate the mind like those of the 70s did, and the majority of this center-right nation will get its mind right as the GOP gets its message right.

I fear that over the next 1362 days this hard time will turn into very hard times that are even now testing the American character. But don’t fear that at the current rate, the Commander-in-Chief won’t kill at least 39 more pirates.

Have no fear as you do the math.

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 for verification links may be accessed.

One can hardly hear one’s self think for the din of liberal Christians gleefully announcing the decline and fall of “Christian America” and conservative Catholics and Evangelicals rushing to agree.

That America has been Slouching towards Gomorrah at various speeds since at least the early 1960’s, as Robert Bork documents in his book, is hard to refute. So, what is the occasion for the latest iteration of that decade’s “God is Dead” declaration?

The occasion that has the Drive-By Media’s favorite Christian-bashing religious talkers abuzz is the 2009 America Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) which boldly declares that:

“…in 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001…”

We covered the obvious statistical insignificance, and obvious media “fog” trumpeting a mere one percent change in our recent “Foghorn Leghorn: Losing our religion? Not“.

The foghorn device used by Newsweek’s John Meacham and others to trumpet Christian America’s end is the 1990 ARIS poll that showed 86% of U.S. adults identifying as Christians.

So, shouldn’t the “decline and fall” have been declared in 2001, after a 9% drop during the 90s to 77% or is the magic number for “endings” now the 76% in this year’s survey?

Of course, there is an agenda at work here, more evidence of which is revealed by Meacham’s and many others’ failure to cite the 2001 poll. How inconvenient that initial stories about the 24-page summary did mention it.

So, why didn’t the Drive-Bys declare God dead in 2001 and why, in 2009, when the real story is how remarkable has been the stability of Christianity in America during the first decade of the new millennium?

Could it be because in 2000 we had just elected an Evangelical Christian as President who opposed abortion and named Jesus Christ as his savior? Could it be because in 2008 we elected a man that considers the question of when a baby has the right to life is above his pay grade and who covers up the name of Jesus when speaking at Georgetown University?

The sociologist Peter Berger once remarked that if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. I recently addressed why we are so ruled here, but for now, let’s review one of those elites.

Professing devout Roman Catholic, Washington Post columnist and liberal democrat, E.J. Dionne reveals the left’s agenda and the soul of his and President Barack Obama’s brand of Drive-By “social gospel” Christianity in a recent column declaring that:

“As a Christian, I find these figures neither alarming nor surprising.”

We’ll skip the usual media scoff that if something isn’t surprising that its not news, and skip to the more revealing confession that this Christian is not “alarmed” at a 10% drop in the number of American Christians since 1990. It still isn’t news, given that 9% of the drop occurred before 2001, and, sadly, it also isn’t news that a liberal Christian treats declines in the number of adherents to his faith with same attitude that one would acknowledge those that switch from Coke to Sprite.

Ten percent more may not inherit eternal life. Ten percent more consume less caffeine. Ho hum.

More Dionne soul revelations:

For nearly a quarter-century, Christianity in the United States has been defined to a large degree by the voices and the ideas of a very conservative strain of evangelical Christianity that, over time, became highly politicized and closely allied with a single political party.

These conservative Christians had as much right as any other group to bring their core concerns to politics. But in doing so, they narrowed the Christian message. They sometimes became apologists for politicians whose behavior and attitudes could not easily be called Christian.

So, for liberal Dionne, the decline in the number of Bible Believers is just fine if it means a return to a time when conservative Christians stand mute in the face of unelected judges’ re-writing the Constitution to legalize abortion, ban God from the public square and treat the utterance of his name as an obscenity in public schools.

But I thought Dionne was a Christian? Couldn’t the decline in the number of Christians also mean a decline in his brand of Christianity? Obviously he doesn’t think so, and that says a lot more about his faith than any foggy notion about who “politicized” religion.

And as to the notion of being apologists for unchristian behavior and attitudes, are we to judge such behavior less severely when committed by non-Christians or liberal Christians who have a harder time committing the sin of hypocrisy given their lack of standards? Yet, didn’t Bill Clinton tote a Bible to church on Sunday, but I digress.

Dionne continues:

Religion is always corrupted when it gets too close to political power. It’s possible to win a precinct caucus and lose your soul, to mistake political victory for salvation itself.

It is this approach to Christianity that is decidedly in decline, thank God, in part because conservative Christians themselves are rediscovering the Church’s mission to the poor, the sick, the strangers and the outcasts. This augurs new life, not decay.

Dionne speaks of losing souls while chastising the religious right, in the same breath that is “not alarmed” at a 10% drop in Christian believers? Maybe his concern is for “souls” that favor “choice” over life rather than souls seeking life after death?

Then Dionne slanders the Christian Church when he suggests conservative Christians needed to “re-discover” the Church’s mission to the poor, the sick, the strangers and the outcasts.

Get thee behind me Satan! Figuratively speaking only, as Dionne is sweet, yet ignorant man who means well. But, surely Dionne is not so ignorant of all the charitable work done by his own pro-life, anti-gay marriage church or that Southern Baptists trail only the Red Cross and Salvation Army in worldwide disaster relief.

Dionne advances a hideous 40-year old lie that conservatives don’t care about the poor, when all he can point to is our opposition to expanding the welfare state. What he cannot point to is any effort by the GOP to render asunder what President Reagan called the “safety net for the truly needy.”

Moreover, they can’t refute the fact that conservative tax and regulation cut policies produced results in the 60s, and the 80s-2006 that raised standard of living of all Americans, especially the poor. Finally, Dionne can’t deny that welfare reform worked, yet his President and party just killed President Clinton’s greatest achievement (with Newt’s prodding) in the non-stimulus bill.

No, Dionne, the mission to help the poor is why many of us Christians left the Democratic party for the GOP. We tired of liberals like you misquoting Jesus to justify class warfare that hurt the poor but made you feel better, Much as we tire of Obama’s scoffing at Scripture to suggest that America’s history can’t withstand the scrutiny of the Sermon on the Mount.

More on that in a later column, but in the meantime why don’t you consult the former slaves of the USSR and the liberations of WWII and see if maybe the U.S. military of a more Christian nation was the greatest peacemaker in recent history that Nobel failed to prize.

And while you celebrate American Christian decline, albeit ten years late, you might review the emergent church in America as well as Phillip Jenkins’ “The Next Christendom” and ponder how these supposed politically obcessed evangelicals managed a “Go ye” mission that has the faith growing by leaps and bounds, especially in Latin America, from whence most of our population growth is coming over the next two decades.

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 for verification links may be accessed.

The failures of all conservatives for the last 45 years, not just the failures of Reagan’s social conservatives for the past 30 years, have led to the present circumstance.

Recent remarks by James Dobson of Focus on the Family (referred to below) concerning the culture battles/war have been picked up on by the Drive-by Media to declare victory over the supposed theocracy-seeking social conservatives in that war and to blame “radical right wingers” for recent GOP election losses.

Such is par for the course from the Left.

What troubles me more is when conservatives echo such claims, especially such thoughtful ones as Sandra Wise, as in her recent “We have lost the culture wars”, Words to the Wise:

Dr. James Dobson was widely criticized for recently making the statement that we have lost the culture wars. I saw him on Hannity this past week and he backtracked a little. He clarified himself by saying that we’ve lost the current battle, but not the war. He talked specifically about abortion, and the fact that all of the progress that had been made is currently being rolled back by the Obama administration. He believes that even partial birth abortion will be legalized again.

I think Dr. Dobson is too pessimistic and quite inaccurate concerning abortion. Yes, the odds are great that we won’t be able appoint a fifth vote to reverse Roe v. Wade on the Supreme Court given the Democratic Party majorities in the U.S. Senate and the Death Cultist in the White House, but the odds favor maintaining the current five-vote majority in favor of many state restrictions that fall short of reversal of Roe.

Dr. Larry Sabato has just published a book which explains the overwhelming Democrat gains in the last election. He believes that any Democrat candidate would have won the Presidency and that it was not all about Obama as everyone thinks.

Sabato explained, in an interview this morning on Fox News, how the changes in the demographics of the country affected the last election. One, the growth of the minority population which voted overwhelmingly Democrat, and the youth vote. He pointed out that younger people tend to be fiscally conservative but socially liberal.

These trends will continue and I don’t see the country moving back to being conservative on social issues any time soon. In the next few years, States will continue to legalize gay marriage, as the country moves more and more towards accepting gay marriage as a civil rights issue.

I think that Dobson was right the first time. We have lost the culture wars. The battle lines were drawn in the last election and we lost big time.

I haven’t read Sabato’s book, but am aware that McCain led Obama post-Palin and pre-credit crunch when the moderate Republicans candidate of choice since 2000 blew the election by agreeing with his Democrat opponent to pull the TARP over our eyes. I know that Obama won by less than overwhelming margin that could easily have been overcome with a more enthusiastic conservative base.

I also know that social issues played insignificant roles in the 2008 national election dominated by the economy and the 2006 congressional elections dominated by the Iraq War.

Yes, young people are more socially liberal than the general population, but they are more pro-life than baby boomers. Yes, blacks registered in record numbers to vote for the first viable black candidate, but they are more socially conservative than the general population.

Sandra, “states” are not “continu[ing] to legalize gay marriage, as the real “movement”, defined by the preponderance of actual laws passed, in the country has been We the People in referenda and state legislatures passing laws and Constitutional amendments defining marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman.

No referenda by citizens of a state and only one state legislature has approved of gay marriage. Even the citizens of the deep blue states of California and Massachusetts, when given the chance, have rejected gay marriage.

The only “movement” towards changing such laws is the same movement we have been losing in the courts since the 1940s, and especially since the 1960s.

Conservatives have been losing the culture wars primarily within the culture, not politics, for 50 years primarily due to non-participation of enough conservatives in the institutions of the culture, i.e. press, law, academia and Hollywood, and also due to un-elected judges and the federal bureaucracy.

When conservatives gain control of the bureaucracy or the congress/white house, we play too nice.

Social conservatives entered the political arena precisely because their free speech rights were threatened and due to abortion, etc and other laws being imposed by secularists via judges, etc thus usurping we the peoples’ right to self government, Liberty.

We are happy to compete within the federalist system and the culture, in the arena of ideas and let the chips fall where they may. We came into the national political arena due to usurpation of our Liberty.

Had other conservatives helped both before and after Dobson and Reagan entered the fray, and had the political spine to fire bureaucrats and “Bork” their judges been present (albeit based not on personal smears, but rather via objections to the unconstitutional Oath violating “living Constitution” interpretation mode), we would have fared better in the culture wars.

Of course, there is much truth to the idea that Christians and other so-cons may have invested too much in the political arena. After all the main purpose of the Church is the saving of souls and even if Roe is overturned, one must still win the hearts and minds of people in states.

But, we must not be doing so very badly given gay marriage votes and the deep drop in the number of abortions.

This member of We the People has not, and never will, give up on cultural battles, much less the war, and given the Obamanation we are witnessing, I suspect a GOP comeback that will be partially driven by revulsion at the far left non-values of the DC Democrats that are anathema to the traditional Judeo-Christian values a large majority (76%) of Americans still hold.

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all for verification links may be accessed, including Reagan’s own words on abortion and the culture war.

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

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

Or, follow up addenda to previous DeVine examinations and Gamecock rooster crowings on law, politics and announcements of dawns…

Only one day to celebrate Mother Earth when there are 12 days of Christmas?

Before our re-examinations, consider one of our favorite Democrat Examiner’s take in her “Bars and oh my stars, Confederate Heritage Month MONTH, is upon us”, as Dolly Purvis writes:

…I’ve kept April 27—that special day when we mark the Cawse on Confederate Memorial Day—on my calendar for the past 15 years. My heart jumps when I recall that Southern memorializing is a state holiday in Georgia. Even so, until the Georgia General Assembly gave us an official Confederate month, finding like-minded souls was about as hard as predicting whether Tom Glavine will be healthy enough to get through five innings. All we need to do now is look for Confederate Heritage Month banners, sponsored by Bud Light, across the front of the Racetrac down the street.

Indeed, it is good to be one of us…

There are those among us who have a ravenous appetite for Civil War history. These are the guys we see at the re-enactments, who strive for historical accuracy in every detail. This, I applaud. Yet, the other 99.7 percent of Confederate Heritage Month revelers (with a cold beer in their hands) will probably give a hearty Rebel Yell and try to reconcile Shelby Foote’s Southerness with theirs.

A month each year to celebrate a five-year war may be excessive, while a mere 12 days per year to celebrate God being made flesh is certainly inadequate, but what are we to make of liberal pagans and their celebration of man as God despite the felling of the Berlin Wall and all that 20th Century slaughter at the hands of their champions?

In the aftermath of my Earth Day celebration of liberal pagan sacrifice of children to their global warming idol, I was waxing nostalgic of past days traversing Gaia and ran across Pilgrim’s (The Minority Report) Post-Modern Baalism (Baal, God of Thunder, pictured) missive penned on the Ninth Day of Christmas, 2008, where he presciently writes:

A new Congress with a larger number of Ds will convene in the first week of January, and a new President, Barack Hussein Obama (D) will be sworn into office on January 20th, 2009. This new Congress wants to move quickly with new legislation ready for the new President to sign on day one. Let me list the issues and their Baalist counterpart.

1. planned parenthood reproductive freedom=Baalist fertility worship

2. providing funding and clinics for abortions=Baalist child sacrifice via burnt offering

3. gay rights and comprehensive sex education=Baalist ritualistic promotion, practice, and celebration of both heterosexual and homosexual promiscuity

4. radical environmentalism for controlling climate change=Baalist pantheistic worship of “mother earth” (reverence of creation over the Creator).

The persistent cuss of a Pilgrim must have “borrowed” the crystal ball of Cockstradamus but I doubt even that chicken could have foreseen Pervez-erted Hilton (pictured) as the Left’s face against traditional marriage at the Miss USA pageant. Other than that, one could have read Pilgrim’s blog, taken a cruise around the world to worship Mother Seas and come back to dry land none the less wiser of America in the Age of the Celebrated Surrender Frog of Cook County.

But speaking of surrendering to “our” enemies, one mustn’t imagine that ObamaDems enemies are the same as ours, nor that they lack the spine to fight them.

ObamaDems’ enemies are those that swabbed KSM et als noses to save LA, the other Lower Forty-Seven, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam, those that authorized the swabbings and lawyers that did legal research on the propriety of same.

Ok, no, the ObamaDems lack the spine to put Cheney or Bush in the dock or sue an actual Jack Bauer, but, seem to maybe have the spine to at least pretend Holder may indict the authors of footnote citations to Federal Reports.

DeVine Gamecock Lawyer will explore this “Ex pOst factoBAMAalism” in greater detail this weekend, here at Examiner.com and at TMR’s Hinzsight Report and the Many Faces of Barack.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix Conservative Examiner, Scott Martin, rose to the occasion like his city’s name sake, this time from the ashes of Obama’s trashing of the heroes that have kept us safe since 911, with the best description of the nose swabbings (go to link for description) that the ObamaDems (but hardly anyone else on the Fruited Plain) call “torture” (guess they never heard of the Rack, chopped off fingers, floggings, etc):

Assuming that you think America engaged in torture, which I doubt most Americans do when they’ve looked at the actual acts, we now have word from the CIA of the fruit of their effort.

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

KSM was a little less cocky after the waterboarding.

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack — which KSM called the “Second Wave”– planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles…”
“In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques,” says the Justice Department memo. “Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general US population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience, and would be unable to ‘do what was necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.’”

Meanwhile, citizens of Los Angeles and those similarly situated in these United States gaze upon the picture of your skyline as it still appears, no thanks to ObamaDems, unlike NYC which is missing twin towers, but I digress.

Finally, we were recently excoriated for TMR column pointing out President Obama’s consistency with the sermons endured via his 20-year pew-parked butt when Rev. Jeremiah Wright (pictured at top with Obama) spoke of a G-D KKK-America run by rich white people and a world ruined by greedy white people. President Obama told Bank CEOs in a face to face meeting that they best do what he says as “his administration [was] all that stood between them and the pitchforks.”

Lest we lose the analogies, KKK lynchers often wielded pitchforks. So it seems that Obama had no problem with the KKK or pitchforks per se, but rather only cares that he wear the hood that directs the mob or that he be the hood in charge of a Chicago type mob, that we wrote of in A Piece of the Action.

Well, it seems that Civil Rights Examiner J.D. Tuccille also sees some Capone in Obama with his recent suggestion that they will insist on converting TARP preferred stock to common stock rather than accept re-payment:

In February, Forbes columnist John Tamny cited examples of government officials using their new leverage over banks to impose policy changes and make politicized business decisions for once-independent companies. Tamny warned:

With the acceptance of TARP funds, apparently banks can no longer exclusively seek profits. They must use the money of depositors to forward the desires of a new and very intrusive shareholder: the federal government.

Mobbed-up trucking companies, government-controlled banks — what’s the difference? In the end, an offer you can’t refuse is an offer you can’t refuse.

Here’s hoping that ObamaDems wake up from nightmares donkey heads in their beds the morning after the next two election days so that we can preserve the American Dream and so liberals can finally comprehend true torture as they look for the donkeys’ beheaded bodies.

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 for verification links may be accessed.

From the diaries by Erick.

Would Usama bin Laden and KSM (pictured, who gave up intel that saved LA from its 911 thanks to waterboarding), Iran’s Mullahs and MembersOnlyJacket-ijad, and Kim Jung Il prefer that CIA agents fear prosecution by succeeding administrations for the carrying out of lawfully given interrogation orders? That CIA lawyers fear such prosecutions for confidential legal opinions?

The answer is obvious, yet President Obama is criminalizing politics and the fighting of wars much like a new junta taking over after a coup:

Read More →

Gamecock’s Earth Day wish? Subdue it and have dominion over it, as in Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”, but I digress…

When Moses descended from Mount Sinai 5000 years ago with the Ten Commandments, the pagans of Canaan were sacrificing virgins to Baal. The Hebrews and Christians civilized the Western World including founding most of the great universities, where, within several centuries, those behind the Ivory Towers indulged in making themselves God.

The 21st Century liberal pagans may be worse than their ancient ancestors however, given their sex education zealotry likely sacrifices many children’s virginity before the tots are themselves sacrificed to Gaia:

There’s a new bogeyman lurking in the closet, and this one isn’t imaginary. Us. One out of three children aged 6 to 11 fears that Ma Earth won’t exist when they grow up, while more than half—56 percent—worry that the planet will be a blasted heath (or at least a very unpleasant place to live), according to a new survey.

And this new bogeyman is brought to you by those that said the Bible’s Hell was too scary for kids? You know, the one occupied by the “imaginary” Devil aka Satan, Beelzebub and Lucifer.

At least the fear of eternal damnation scared many of us straight, whereas the fear of SUVs, Edison’s bulb (see pictured, invented by faux Earth warmer), coal, and nuclear power scares us into Smart death-trap Cars, mercury spills, wood burning stove smog and black death from rats feasting on horse street dung.

And I’m thinking that the use of wood as a last resort in a Green Obama World offsets the desired increase in bidet sales due to mandatory weaning from Charmin squeezing?

On a sliding scale of anxieties, minority kids have it worst; 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children believe that the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they reach adulthood.

Seems even liberal policies impact minorities and children worse too?

Interestingly enough, kids vex over the state of the planet, especially when it came to safe and clean air and water, regardless of any pro-environmental measures on the part of their parents. A staggering 95 percent of the children surveyed said their parents pitched in by recycling, using rechargeable batteries, and conserving water and electricity.

Well, at least the children’s inate common sense got this right, even if its 180 degrees out of phase. Yes, recycling is about making mommy and daddy feel good, and that’s all.

“We commissioned the survey as a result of my own childrens’ experiences with the recent fires in Australia as they expressed much concern for both their safety and the planet’s,” said Sharon Lowe, founder of Habitat Heroes, in a press release. “While it is upsetting to hear how many children in the United States have expressed similar concerns, I am more committed than ever to help educate children around the globe in a way that is not scary to them.”

That’s great to hear Ms. Lowe. Why not start with the truth instead of lies, like the lowdown on the cooling of the planet for the last ten years and the massive warming by Mother Nature (see The Sun, actual warmer of the solar system) 10,000s of years ago when half the east coast was under the Atlantic before the first Chevy rolled of the assembly line to be driven by puny Man.

Then comfort the little ones with the amazing fact that if The Sun (now suing Al Gore for defamation) were to get all spotty and flood Myrtle Beach, S.C., that they will have weeks to pack up and move to Conway (30 miles inland).

Then maybe we can get back to children worrying about reading, writing, arithmetic and character traits like honesty, chastity and courage.

The GOP can make great gains in this area by tying the scare tactics with the recession, especially as Obama-Dem generated higher energy prices kick in. They can also point to all the good jobs lost in the oil, coal and nuclear power industries as the only jobs created are for environmental lawyers.

Global warming is fast becoming a warter cooler joke for those still employed where water coolers are located.

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 for verification links may be accessed.

The Great Recession tests the Charlotte and American Character

We are going to have a hard time no matter what plan wins this weekend. The issue re times is, will the plan ensure long hard times.

I wrote those words amidst the credit crunch last September when Charlotte’s unemployment rate was under 6%. It now stands at over 10%. Friends and business associates lose their jobs every week and nearly all live in constant worry about their future.

No matter which TARP plan had been adopted by Bush’s Paulson (pictured above with Bernanke), Obama’s Geithner (pictured below), or whomever McCain would have imposed, America was going to have a hard time given the mistakes in policy I document below in a re-print of my column foreshadowing the likely generational test of American character we were about to endure.

The enduring has begun and I am now convinced that the recession is, indeed, accurately titled by Examiner.com in our network-wide accounting of same taking place today, as The Great Recession.

Any chance that the hard times could be limited was lost with the election of Barack Obama and his massively irresponsible policies that have will keep investors on strike for years to come and that promises to destroy America’s currency.

The new president and Democrat majorities (Speaker pictured with President above) had a chance to limit the recession to post-WWII averages but forfeited that chance with a stimulus bill that only stimulates government growth. The only reason the economy hasn’t plummeted faster and that the stock market has had a mini-rebound is due to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s printing press stimulus.

From September:

Many Americans are now in the midst of a year-long hard time born of skyrocketing energy prices and/or the housing/credit crunch. It has been nearly impossible to get small business loans for many months and home loans for all but the top ten percent of credit risks for many more months.

This column has long chronicled the Democratic Party’s explicit policy of energy self suicide since 1978 in restricting access to expanded oil drilling and their regulations (especially including the Endangered Species Act and environmental lawsuits) making the building of oil refineries and nuclear power plants nearly impossible.

Below, I discuss the artery-hardening diet the Democrats have force-fed the credit markets since 1998 that is the cause of the present crisis. But before we look at what got us to this precipice, let us look at where we are.

Bush Debt vs Obama Debt (see chart and recounting of September crisis in original article at Examiner.com)

April 2009
We now know that they were not held accountable in 2008. They must be held accountable in 2010 and if we want to limit the damage that will cause more real hard times and that will have to be repaired after 2010, Tea Party-inspired Americans must let their representatives in Congress hear their voices NOW so that they will stop:

Cap and Trade or EPA regulations that will devastate the poor, lower and middle income families, large and small businesses, and the over all American economy with the higher energy prices Obama said we needed to be taught a lesson and to bankrupt the coal industry;

The $3.6T budget that will devastate the US Dollar, bankrupt the nation and mortgage the future of America’s next generation to foreign bondholders; and

Socialized medicine.

They must be held accountable politically. Their policies must be rejected economically.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Examiner.com columns
Legal Editor for The Minority Report
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

We cheered recent actions by self-described coalitions of moderate Democrats, primarily in the U.S. Senate, who, with unanimous Republican support, blocked passage of the huge energy tax called “cap and trade” and wondered aloud if this marked the Dawn of Blue Dawg Democrat power.

It didn’t.

The only other signs of potentially powerful coalitions that could block bailouts, massive budget deficits and higher taxes were statements by some prominent Blue Dawg Democrats and some votes in losing causes on the (non) Stimulus and Omnibus Spending bills as well as the Budget.

The fact is that even if all 47 of the Blue Dog Coalition (BDC) voted against the Obama/Pelosi agenda in the House, they couldn’t stop it. But far from all of them vote against their dear leaders, even after having campaigned against such liberal policies. Only 8 Democrats voted against the Stimulus and 20 against the Budget (12 of whom were non-blue liberals that thought the $3.6 trillion too little).

Heath Shuler (D-NC), a self-described fiscal conservative from Western North Carolina and one of the stars of BDC inexplicably voted for the budget after having voted against the Stimulus.

It seems that the blue dog brand of fiscal “responsibility” most resembles the kind that got former Republican Senator Bob Dole called the “tax collector for the welfare state” during his presidential campaign in 1996:

This year and next, big deficits are needed to pull the economy out of the ditch. But in the longer term, deficits must come down. The ”pay-go” rule, a Blue Dog obsession, is the way to impose discipline. It requires lawmakers to offset the costs of legislation with tax increases or spending cuts.

By the way, these centrists are not Lite Republicans. When Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said, ”I want to ask my friends, the Blue Dog Democrats, do you really want all this government?” he truly asked the wrong question.

The Blue Dogs have no ideological objection to government. They support such Obama priorities as healthcare reform. They just want them paid for.

I don’t think the large number of democrats and independents that drank tea on tax day were clamoring for higher taxes. I think their definition of fiscal responsibility means reducing the size of government and that potentially the most powerful political message sent by the Tea Parties is to Blue Dawg democrats that they best vote like they talk.

Consider the bold Freshman talker from Eastern North Carolina, Senator Kay Hagen:

The Democrats’ newest female star senator, Kay Hagan, surged into office last fall, swinging on the coattails of Barack Obama and his progressive message of change.

But since taking the oath of office, Hagan has signaled repeatedly that she won’t fall in lockstep with her president.

In her first three months in Congress, Hagan has criticized Obama’s budget, sponsored an opposition bill to a piece of tobacco regulation legislation that he supports and joined a conservative-leaning group of Democrats calling themselves the “Moderate Dems.”

Still, she has voted with Obama on every major piece of legislation so far.

Talk has always been cheap and has gotten a lot cheaper during this recession, but it appears that the notion that there are very many moderate to conservative democrats with the courage and inclination to vote that way is still a myth I dubbed “Drawl and that’s all” three years ago.

I do applaud the efforts of Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) in reducing the Stimulus, voting against the Budget, blocking Cap and Trade for now and slowing comprehensive health care reform, again, for now, and hope that their coalition can slow the Obama agenda. But one would have more of chance to have one’s hopes realized by pulling for the Washington Nationals to win the NL East than that moderate Washington Democrats will actually accomplish anything.

Even their efforts on cap and trade are being undermined by the Obama Administration via regulatory classification of the air we exhale as a pollutant.

The fact is that one, and nearly only thing voters accomplish when they replace an elephant with a cross bred jack ass and a blue tick hound is to empower San Francisco liberals to nearly triple Bush deficits; slash defense; raise taxes; appease enemies; and keep job producing investors on strike.

Maybe the pork they bring home will go to different constituents, but I doubt that and the soothing sound of their conservative rhetoric will suffice as a substitute for not stopping failed liberal policies that threaten the prosperity Americans expect.

Voters must watch what Blue Dawgs do rather than what they say.

Maybe if they invite them to a party and replace the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Kool-Aid in their water bowls with tea, they can make the Dog’s bite as big as their bark.

[Update]

In response to a comment, I felt compelled to add the fact that you will search in vain since at least the late 1980s to find even ONE democrat that comes close to voting as conservatively as the worst RINO. For an example, see the ACU.

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 for verification links may be accessed.

Apologies to Dixie kin for “sweet tea” (pictured) redundancy as we are trying to reach a larger audience that includes northern economics Nobel Prize winners clueless about the 25-year Reagan Recovery.

For the first time in memory I won’t have to wait for the Braves score to know if an April 15th can be blunted by some good news. Having worked for myself for 17 of the 20 years of my professional life, I always wait till the last possible moment to fund those governments The Gipper identified as The Problem.

For this Tax Day will now have to share its previously exclusive billing with a tradition older than the venerable First Amendment, much less the invidious Sixteenth.

Today, the conservative grassroots of America will follow an example began in now ultra-liberal Boston and hold over 500 tea parties from sea to shining sea in every one of the Lower Forty-Eight in addition to the former and/or current home states of Barry Obama and Sarah Palin.

The Queen City in which I reside holds its own 2:00 pm version on Fourth Street near the Government Center after its 1:00 pm beginning outside the local dead tree Drive-by Charlotte Observer to underscore its frequent failure to observe anything that doesn’t fit their big government agenda.

We will examine the Charlotte Tea Party in this space tomorrow where we have frequently had to employ a Leghorn to blow away The Disturbers and its Drive-by allies’ Foghorns that distort the facts or leave them out all together.

Who knew that George Orwell would get it exactly right and exactly wrong in his 1984, that a free media would choose to reduce the dictionary and re-write history on behalf of tyrannical government rather than a tyrannical goverment imposing an un-free press.

Tyrannical government you say?, you angry, dangerous Obama/Napolitano-identified right-wing terrorist threat.

No, not the ominous Bushlied threat via library cards and non-draft armed forces at war with Islam by liberating Muslims and ridding their territories of megalomaniacal dictators and Taliban religious extremists. Identified American victims to date: 0

No, not the tens of thousands killed by Bush that trained to re-shape pentagons and WTCs. They are no more. Identified American victims to date: 0

No, not even the remaining would be reshapers now called purveyors of man-made disasters, formerly known as illegal enemy combatants or, God forbid, terrorists.

Their kind killed 3000 in one day and thousands abroad before and since while the Obama Left cites Timothy McVeigh ad nauseum to justify killing millions via abortion, once while a President Clinton blamed right wing talk radio for a McVeigh, but I digress.

No, not the crazed Code Pinks nor throwers of pies at Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and Ann Coulter.

Rather, the danger comes from vehicles bearing Ron Paul bumper stickers; non-delinquent mortgagors championed by Santelli; and opposers of ending Newt and Bill’s welfare reform as we knew it. The imminent threat are those that opposed bailing out banks and AIGs; favor spanking Fannies; and hope Freddie’s Dead.

Such is the state of Homeland Security in the Age of Obama in which all threats from abroad including any foreigners here with visa overstays given that the Geithner economy talk down and the president’s policies that promise to destroy the dollar and keep investors on strike (h/t to Randy Streu) since the Democratic Party takeover due to promised tax hikes have removed the illegal immigrant threat by making job prospects better in Juarez than Walla Walla.

But in case any illegals remain, don’t dare cross Speaker Pelosi and deport them and please get them quickly legalized so they join unions and get wage rates up, as Obama dreams.

Now comes a former Obama campaign apologist with a Swedish medal around his neck that has switched Kool-Aid brands while still eschewing tea, no matter the level of sweetening.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman used to be a credible economist in the 90s; lost his way with political partisanship in the early to mid 2000s; and now sees The Messiah’s tripling of the federal debt and tripling of the budget deficit as a portion of GDP from Bush’s worst 3.8% to Obama’s first 12.8%; $750B stimulus; $450B omnibus spending bill; and $3.8 Trillion budget as puny.

Under the influence of the old Kool-Aid he often echoed his recent trashing of the Reagan recovery due to its budget deficits in the 3-5% of GDP range and unfair tax rate cuts for the rich.

Guess he missed Bill Clinton’s end of big government State of the 1995 Union and largest capital gains tax cut in American history, or does he trash the 90s as well.

All he seems to love and promote as an answer to the current recession is a return to a command economy on the order of WWII. He thinks we need a stimulus 4-5 times as large as Obama proposes.

I quite agree. The problem is that it can’t be gotten from government spending. It can only be gotten from the private sector, where reside those supply siders we call Americans that create real jobs that last.

Krugman seems to view the economy of the United States circa 1941-1945 as idyllic. Guess he missed the rationing and the war. Moreover, after the hay days of the 1950s when an American homeland untouched by Axis bombs held monopoly status, this country maintained its superiority via supply side policies of JFK, RWR, WJC/Newt and GWB that left more of the fruits of Americans labor in American hands.

Then came Frank and Dodd and Obama and Hillary all voting to let Fannie and Freddie direct the market.

Paul, its time for your intervention. Meet some Indian garb-clad white males angry at the Stamp Act and the Tea Tax. Meet black males Crispus Attucks angry at the British taxers and troop quarterers and Frederick Douglass angry at federal and state governments he wishes would leave him and his folk alone.

All we tea drinkers want are our rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

For Southerners that means Sweet Tea! and unlike Krugman’s, the Charlotte Observer and the Drive-bys’ and President Obama’s and Secretary Napolitano’s Kool-Aid,

Luzianne doesn’t get cloudy!

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and Examiner.com, where all for verification links may be accessed.

My self-imposed 48 hours of patriotic celebration of the swift and flawless rescue of the Maersk Alabama ship, crew and captain by the US Navy under the command of the President of the United States, is now over.

As promised, I will soon post a complete survey of the perilous Obama post-pirate Presidency (O.P.P.P) that America now faces, including a more complete review of the Somali piracy problem itself.

But I could not resist some immediate observations after President Obama’s own “Mission Accomplished” moment from yesterday:

President Barack Obama vowed Monday “to halt the rise of piracy,” while shipmates of the rescued American freighter captain called for tough action against Somali bandits who are preying on one of the world’s busiest sea routes.

The President has rightly received praise from the right for his cool handling of this first pirate attack on an American-flagged ship in over a century, including Rush Limbaugh and yours truly.

One ship and crew were rescued from pirates. That mission was accomplished, but the Islamist piracy problem remains, with more than 15 ships still being held by pirates, three of which were taken within the past three days.

I am reminded of a more famous “Mission Accomplished” statement by a United States President who did not receive reciprocal treatment from the left, despite his warnings of the longer war to come. President George W. Bush famously landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln to celebrate the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and then reminded:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We are pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We have begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We are helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. And then we will leave — and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

When Bush’s predictions of tough times in Iraq came true, most of the Democratic Party turned on him with their Bushlied meme that emboldened our enemies. President Bush stayed the course through thick (Hillary) and thin (Obama) attacks and votes against funding, and now, the Thin Man finally congratulated our armed forces in Iraq for their great gift to their people and even described their work as a “success”.

Not holding breath for the current CINC to praise his predessessor for making a former terrorist nation an ally safer for Americans than the ‘hoods of Detroit and Chicago.

After the aircraft carrier speech under the banner of a crew proud of their role in removing a megalomanical muderer of hundreds of thousands, their Commander in Cheif went on to win the larger war: with zero further attacks on US soil after 911; a decimated al Qaida worldwide; safe havens in Iraq replaced by Connecticut II; and havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan not safe from US forces and/or their drones.

President Obama was left a world and a United States much safer from terrorism. So far, most of his broken campaign promises continue Bush policies that have kept us safer. Many have not, but we will dicuss that later in the upcoming O.P.P.P column.

President Bush did not adequately address the piracy problem, and this column criticized him for that over a year ago. That same President was left a terrorism mess and cleaned it up. That was a much larger mess than piracy.

President Obama should, at least, take out the actual Somali port harbors that presently serve the pirate ships if not the inland lairs and other safe harbors of same. This does not require a ground operation like the one that led to Black Hawk Down.

Let the bombing begin.

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and Examiner.com, where all for verification links may be accessed.

But I am disappointed that my beloved Redstate hasn’t acknowledged the President’s good judgment in this matter and that so many here have used the occasion of an American success to make the perfect the enemy of the good even though this matter was resolved pretty darn close to perfectly.

Well, I don’t like echo chambers anyway, so…

Thank you President Barack Obama for your leadership and the great and heroic work of the United States navy Seals and the Captain of the Maersk Alabama himself in saving the ship, crew and the Captain!

This frequent conservative Republican critic is an American first, and one that knows how to recognize and celebrate a great victory for our country.

I also appreciate that we have sent a stark deterrent message to all future would be pirates that would dare transgress a ship bearing the Stars and Stripes.

[update]

We hope and pray that President Obama will now take further actions, many of which should have been taken over a year ago, to remove the safe harbors and actual port harbors in Somalia that serve the pirates, as suggested here.

God bless the United States of America!

And for those that boxed themselves into perpetual gloom and doom by demanding a rescue be consummated at the precise moment you thought about it and rushed a denunciation of President Obama to press within two days of the hostage taking, I pity you.

A question: Do you enjoy your food, or do you eat it just so others’ can’t enjoy it?

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

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

Rejoice Christians! He was lost and now is found. The Body is one more.

[Gamecock announced dawn from out of town this Easter Sunday and so was unable to pen his usual Holiday column. So, back by popular demand of the Hen House, my 2008 Easter column.]

Pope baptizes prominent Italian Muslim

Italy’s most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book “Long Live Israel.”

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

Vatican Television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with six other candidates for baptism. He later received his first Communion.

Allam, 55, told the newspaper Il Giornale in a December interview that his criticism of Palestinian suicide bombing provoked threats on his life in 2003, prompting the Italian government to provide him with a sizable security detail.

The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy — which Allam has frequently criticized as having links to Hamas — said the baptism was his own decision.

“He is an adult, free to make his personal choice,” the Apcom news agency quoted the group’s spokesman, Issedin El Zir, as saying.

Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of Coreis, the Islamic religious community in Italy, said he respected Allam’s choice but said he was “perplexed” by the symbolic and high-profile way in which he chose to convert.

“If Allam truly was compelled by a strong spiritual inspiration, perhaps it would have been better to do it delicately, maybe with a priest from Viterbo where he lives,” the ANSA news agency quoted Pallavicini as saying.

The nighttime Easter vigil service at St. Peter’s Basilica marked the period between Good Friday, which commemorates Jesus’ crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, which marks his resurrection.

Benedict opened by blessing a white candle, which he then carried down the main aisle of the darkened basilica. Slowly, the pews began to light up as his flame was shared with candles carried by the faithful, until the whole basilica twinkled and the main lights came on.

The pope administers baptism “without making any ‘difference of people,’ that is, considering all equally important before the love of God and welcoming all in the community of the Church,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

Allam, who has a young son with his Catholic wife and two adult children from a previous relationship, indicated in the Il Giornale interview that he would have no problem converting to Christianity. He said he had even received Communion once — when he was 13 or 14 — “even though I knew it was an act of blasphemy, not having been baptized.”

He did not speak to the press Saturday and his newspaper said it had no information about his conversion.

Allam said in the interview that he had made a pilgrimage to Mecca, as is required of all Muslims, with his deeply religious mother in 1991, although he was not otherwise observant.

“I was never practicing,” he was quoted as saying. “I never prayed five times a day, facing Mecca. I never fasted during Ramadan.”

Allam also explained his decision to title a recent book “Viva Israele” by saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas.

“Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants,” he said. “Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life.”

In 2006, Allam was a co-winner, with three other journalists, of the $1 million Dan David prize, named for an Israeli entrepreneur. Allam was cited for “his ceaseless work in fostering understanding and tolerance between cultures.”

There is no overarching Muslim law on conversion. But under a widespread interpretation of Islamic legal doctrine, converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death — though killings are rare.

The islamists can’t take away his inheritance as a son of the living God, Christ our Lord. They can’t touch him in eternity.

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Don’t you hate those commercial break teases for Late Local News urging you to stay tuned to find out what “prominent celebrity” was arrested earlier that night?

I get the same feeling whenever I hear anyone refer to mere “stem cells” or mere “stem cell research”, realizing that no significant information has yet been conveyed.

If I hear those near meaningless phrases from a liberal Democrat, I can usually conclude that the obfuscation is intentional so as to advance the lie that conservatives and Republicans are against all such types of research. Whenever I hear those phrases from a conservative, I know I am listening to a lazy thinker that is unwittingly aiding and abetting the opposition.

Speaking of mere stem cell research (SCR) is akin to referring to the deluge that lead Noah to build an ark, as a Spring shower.

There are many kinds of SCR, but only one type kills a human embryo which could have grown up to be President of the United States had it been implanted into a woman’s womb. Several types of SCR have produced breakthroughs in the treatment of disease. Embryonic stem cell research (ESC) is not one of them, despite over two decades of research. Adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood cells have produced such breakthroughs.

Moreover, “iPS” cells (pictured above) have made ESC obsolete, as Kathleen Parker brilliantly recounts in a recent column:

The insistence on using embryonic stem cells always rested on the argument that they were pluripotent, capable of becoming any kind of cell. That superior claim no longer can be made with the spectacular discovery in 2007 of “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS), which was the laboratory equivalent of the airplane. Very simply, iPS cells can be produced from a skin cell by injecting genes that force it to revert to its primitive “blank slate” form with all the same pluripotent capabilities of embryonic stem cells.

Hence, continuing to gather human eggs and sperm cells; fertilize eggs and sperm cells in laboratories; and harvest embryos to obtain the same kinds of cells one can get from the skin of an adult would be like carrying one’s dirty laundry down by the river while a perfectly good Maytag sits idle.

So, why do liberals still advocate ESC? Why isn’t iPS a household word? As to the latter, its probably because the exploiters of Michael J. Fox haven’t employed him to get off the meds to make it so one day at a time.

Before address the former question, let us revisit Parker’s documentation of the issue of which types of SCR have produced actual results:

Moreover, as Obama said, the majority of Americans have reached a consensus that we should pursue this research. Polling confirms as much, but most Americans, including most journalists and politicians, aren’t fluent in stem cell research. It’s complicated. If people “know” anything, it is that embryonic stem cells can cure diseases and that all stem cells come from fertility clinic embryos that will be discarded anyway. Neither belief is entirely true.

In fact, every single one of the successes in treating patients with stem cells thus far — for spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, for example — have involved adult or umbilical cord blood stem cells, not embryonic. And though federal dollars still won’t directly fund embryo destruction, federally funded researchers can obtain embryos privately created only for experimentation. Thus, taxpayers now are incentivizing a market for embryo creation and destruction.

Before September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush made his first presidential address to the nation on the issue of federal funding for ESC and agreed to allow funding for ESC lines already in existence, but not for new lines, so as not to encourage the harvesting of embryos for the purpose of eventual destruction.

Neither President Bush or the GOP ever sought to ban private ESC or SCR of any kind. The only issue was federal funding. Yet, the left, with the help of lazy conservatives, has successfully conflated the issues in the public mind even after the iPS breakthrough.

Its time to get to work. This issue is very much akin to others that the left advances. Take welfare policies that have been proven failures. In the Stimulus bill, Democrats killed welfare reform despite its spectacular success. They feel better about themselves “helping” people with checks that make a certain proportion of they future voters for Democrats.

Likewise, the left says they are for saving lives via ESC, despite the fact that only adult stem cells have led to any life saving. Results are the reason that private donors have put their money into what works, and not ESC, hence the Left’s obsession with government funding for yet another failed policy.

But we are still left with the reason why they want to drag the laundry down to the river? Could it be that their real agenda is not saving lives and curing diseases? Could it be that they see poll trends away from abortion on demand and want to fix in the public mind that the “destruction” of a human embryo is a life-saving rather than the life-ending event that sane people know that it is?

One thing I am sure of is that the vast majority of Americans drive cars rather than ride horses to get from point A to point B, and that they would be aghast to learn that liberals insist upon using embryos to obtain a product that can obtained from the peelings of a man’s sun-burned back.

So, let’s be about the business of educating the public. In the process we can refute the lie of the that social conservatives are extremists, which lie too many secular conservatives advance in the name of supposed political practicality, some due to ignorance and some country clubbers due to opportunism born of their disdain for those that Nixon and especially Reagan brought into the party and which led to actual governing majorities and that displaced them as losing tax collectors for the welfare state.

Repeat after me: iPS, iPS, iPS….

And never, ever refer to mere “stem cell” research, nor let a liberal or lazy conservative get away with it in your presence.

President Obama recently lifted the Bush ban on federal funding proclaiming that scientific decisions be made based on “facts, not ideology.”

Obama wouldn’t know a fact if it hit him in the back while not bowing to Muslim potentates or bowing to the his far left ideological allies.

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

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

Originally published at Examiner.com where additional links for supporting information may be accessed.

The Charlotte Observer, Tar Heel House Democrats and their useful Republican idiot allies against private property rights are losing their war against tobacco they thought they had won after last fall’s election results.

The proposed ban on smoking in restaurants and other businesses is now in the hands of the N.C. Senate, where it has the support of the powerful Democratic leader.

“My take would be that, yes, we would pass it,” Marc Basnight, the Senate’s president pro tem, said yesterday.

But the bill’s fate is far from clear, because it faces new opposition from the state’s restaurant owners, who are angry over an amendment to the bill that occurred in the N.C. House.

Until this week, the N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association had stayed on the sidelines. The group agreed to remain neutral as long as the smoking ban applied evenly to all restaurants and bars. The original bill, sponsored by state Rep. Hugh Holliman, D-Davidson, would have done that.

But on Wednesday, some House members successfully passed an amendment that carved out an exception for establishments that are restricted to people 18 or older.

As a practical matter, the amendment would let age-restricted bars and nightclubs continue to allow smoking.

But restaurants would have to prohibit indoor smoking — or, if they wanted to allow smoking, they would have to restrict their clientele to adults only.

“It no longer presents a level playing field,” said Paul Stone, the president and CEO of the restaurant association.

It seems that the North Carolina House didn’t get the memo about caring enough about the health of children in private clubs, much less adults anywhere, if you believe the local dead-tree Drive-by media’s latest crocodile tearjerker about second-hand smoke:

Over the years the legislature first banned smoking in its chambers, then in its own buildings, and finally in all state buildings. Thus state employees are protected, and so are citizens who visit state buildings.

But elsewhere in the state,citizens and workers are not protected from the ill effects of smoke. Rep. Hugh Holliman’s bill would have done so by banning smoking in all workplaces, including restaurants and bars. Holliman told his colleagues his bill was about a health issue – and not about private property or personal freedoms. His proposal not only banned smoking in workplaces and public places indoors, but also would allow local governments to adopt stricter smoking controls.

But when the House began work on the bill Wednesday, legislators were more eager to protect the ability of current smokers to light up than they were to protect the public, including workers, from smoke. The House approved Rep. Nelson Cole’s amendment to allow restaurants and bars to allow smoking if those businesses banned admission or employment to those younger than 18. That significantly weakened the bill for nonsmokers and workers over 18 in those places. That amendment also turned the state’s restaurant association against the bill, because family restaurants would have trouble competing with most bars for customers.

The House approved another amendment Thursday to exempt private nonprofit clubs from the law. That means workers there, and nonsmokers and their children who attend functions there – will also absorb smoke into their bodies and potentially suffer the consequences at some time in their lives.

Where to begin, and you will excuse my glee, as I pointed out many, many moons ago over many peace pipes that if the issue were really dangers over second-hand smoke, the Observer, Holliman and all the mob-like crusaders, would simply require that employers offer workers masks to wear while in a smokey atmosphere, much like the requirements for textile workers and coal miners.

The zealots long ago toned down their wailing about the health of customers given that the market has provided numerous eating choices in non-smoking environments.

So they concentrate their efforts with “do it for the children” and “protect the workers.”

Yet, they seem to care more about having a waiter not be dressed like a bank robber (Jesse James, pictured, safe from second-hand smoke) than the lungs of the masked garcon.

The fact is that it is the anti-smoking zealots that are the robbers, i,e, robbers of the fruits of others’ labor.

But of course the issue has never been about threats to health from second-hand smoke. Common sense tells you, as well as recent studies, that when a substance takes 50 years to kill you when you suck 20 thru a straw everyday, it would take hundreds of years of breathing it in at one part per billions.

Our founding fathers, many of whom were tobacco farmers, considered the right to private property to be indispensable to Liberty. Restaurants and bars are the private property of people that worked hard for the fruits of their labor to build a business.

Yet, the anti-smoking mob, with plenty of anti-smoking choices for their dining pleasure, deign to demand that all restaurants and bars cater to their air quality preferences.

Well, we defeated such a mob called the British over 200 years ago. And we did it for the children!

Originally published at Examiner.com which includes additional info and links

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

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

or Innocents Abroad, with compliments to the late Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain and his Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

For update go to: Examiner.com

Given the Saturday-Monday NCAA basketball Final Four and opening night and day of Major League Baseball, I confess I have not been glued to CNN’s (Celebration Next to None of) Barack and Michelle Obama’s European vacation from reality. I really don’t know if Camelot’s King Arthur for a third common era millennium and his Queen have returned to the weaker America they desire. I suspect not though, since I haven’t read of any more threats that the Administration would lift its finger from the pitchforks’ bound for CEO lynchings dike nor have the arugula farmers been nationalized, but I digress.

Besides, one doesn’t have to be glued to broadcast or cable television to understand that the Drive-by Media and Old Europe have held a Second Fat Tuesday for the last four days with no Lent in Sight. What many observers may not understand however, is that the media and their liberal Democratic Party allies are celebrating for different reasons than the leaders of our foreign allies. Celebrations are also being held by our enemies complete with huge North Korean fireworks displays over the Sea of Japan and huge grins on the faces of the Dons of Obama’s rival mob in Moscow.

Liberals like Katie Couric, Nancy Pelosi and the Obamas want so much to be liked and want so much to believe that verbal conflict resolution (with unilateral grabbing of the ankles thrown in for good measure) can tame the savage (er, ah, differently cultured) beast, i.e. people that kill innocents (man-made disasters) as a matter of policy.

Many of our European allies, like our enemies, publicly celebrate Obama’s oratory and actions for the same reason the Tar Heels celebrate their vanquishing of the Spartans last night.

The President of the United States surrendered large swaths of sovereignty to our allies in word and deed while all but destroying any notion of peace through strength deterrence in the face of our enemies.

The surrender frog (PC police prohibits use of the more familiar surrender monkey term despite the declaration of a post-racial America) itinerary, appropriately began with the French:

1) Obama, shocked to learn that Sarkozy had replaced Chirac, withdrew his demand that European nations join his currency-destroying grandchild tax stimulus spending orgy when the French President he didn’t write a note to, furrowed his brow and said no.

2) The president of the nation that threw off a King and invented self government by We the creator-ordained rights People, bowed to an Arab potentate.

3) The President of the nation that liberated Europe twice; Marshall Planned Europe’s post war reconstruction and spends billions to keep sea lanes open for deliveries of American culture to a continent that loathes its own, described our nation’s attitude toward Europe before the Age of Obama as derisively rude in the face of “European leadership”. Guess we shouldn’t have littered France with all those headstones?

4) Oh, and as to the grabbing of the ankles, the would be-Messiah turned other cheeks while dreaming of a world without nuclear weapons (Plans for a world without thorns near rose buds nor sharp rocks on Maui beaches are scheduled to be rolled out in 2010) as he readily agreed with a CheshireCat-grinning invader of Georgia to turn our weapons into arugula plow shares. Formerly ill Kim joined the celebration less than 24 hours later with a long range missile launch. For his measure, President Obama found another cheek to turn within 18 hours and proposed slashing the budget for expansion of the increasingly operational Strategic Missile Defense and overall defense budget lest Kim’s fireworks be denied their full culmination and lest Tbilisi, Warsaw or Prague have any unrealistic notions of that worn out Liberty concept continuing.

5) Finally, we note that the President’s insecurity complex about his middle name was cured after a Midnight Run to Turkey. No word if hashish was the anecdote. B. Hussein Obama declared that America is not at war with Islam. Apparently being “at war” with Islam means liberating Muslims from genocidal Christians in Bosnia, murderous despots in Iraq and terrorists in Afghanistan.

For good measure, President Obama thanked Islam for its huge role in “shaping” America. Who knew our Hussein so loathed pentagons?

All in all, a pretty successful trip for a President and a Democratic Party whose version of America exceptionalism means being exceptionally ashamed for our past sins so as to be loved by their intellectual kin abroad and in dis-inventing the Model-T and Edison’s bulb at home.

Sadly, like Twain’s lead bullet-laden Calaveras County frog, Obama’s jump won’t be high enough either, so weighed down as he is with a dangerously naive leftist world view whose weakness has always invited aggression from enemies of Liberty filling power vacuums that nature abhors.

What is so sad is that whether it be Old Europe, Russia, or Iran, etc, whenever non-Americans cry “jump”, our Citizen of the World, erstwhile Teleprompter of the United States frog replies, “How high”?

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

AG moves to overturn conviction of Republican senator in virtually unprecedented action

This criminal defense lawyer of 14 years was shocked to see a North Carolina prosecutor disgraced and disbarred in the Duke Lacrosse team non-rape case. It is not rare for District Attorneys to abuse their discretion by indicting and prosecuting defendants they suspect are innocent. It is extremely rare for such immunity protected govenment attorneys to be punished for their illegal acts.

I thought Hell would freeze over before I saw the government’s fangs sink into one of their own, like Mike Nifong.

Democrat Attorney General Erick Holder’s motion to dismiss charges, even after a jury trial and felony conviction, against a former Republican senator makes me think glaciers may be forming in Hades:

Faced with embarrassing revelations about withheld evidence, the Justice Department on Wednesday moved to reverse the conviction of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who lost his bid for re-election just days after a jury found that he had lied about gifts and home renovations.

Justice Department lawyers asked a judge to dismiss the indictment against Stevens and toss out his conviction — effectively killing their own courtroom victory with a shocking admission of misbehavior by prosecutors.

The last straw, apparently, was the failure of prosecutors to turn over notes of a crucial interview in which a witness contradicted a statement he made later under oath at trial.

Holder deserves great praise

“I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

He said the department must ensure that all cases are “handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice.”

Not only does the Attorney General seek to overturn a Justice Depratment conviction in a high profile case, but also declares that there will be no second prosecution. This is very impressive and quite a rare move for a government lawyer.

I have major differences with Holder on policy, legal opinons and actions, and political views on race matters, but he deserves high praise for exonerating Senator Stevens, who has so well served the people of Alaska for most of his life, even isolated communities in Nowheres that need bridges!

The main reason given for the AG’s motion to dismiss was the Justice Department’s violation of the precedent setting 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case of Brady v. Maryland which required that govenment prosecutors must disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense.

The prosecutors who handled the trial have been removed from the case and their conduct is under investigation.

Holder is a mixed bag and we can only hope that this move, along with some his recent advice to President Obama to continue following many of president Bush’s policies with regard to executive war powers, are signs of better decisions to come.

I do vividly recall that in 2002, Holder agreed with President Bush that illegal enemy combatents were not covered by the Geneva Conventions.

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

I guess Barack took Rev. Wright seriously about US-KKK-A and all the world’s problems being caused by rich white people?

During a White House meeting last week between President Obama and CEOs of the nation’s top banks:

Obama, for his part, told the bankers: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

“For his part” is a “foghorn leghorn” attempt by the Drive-by reporter to conceal the fact that the most powerful man on Earth is a Chicago thug.

You will notice that Obama’s vile lynching threat was directed at the bankers. Earlier in the story, the unnamed dead-tree writer of the Charlotte Observer’s “Insider: The Charlotte Business Scoop”, recounted that the Queen City’s own Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, obviously joking, told the President:

“Mr. President, I am not going to suck up to Larry and Tim like the rest of these guys,” referring to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council.

The anonymous reporter referred to all this as “plain talk” in the column headline, in an obvious attempt to equate the two statements for obviously, if President Obama had replied to Lewis’ statement immediately with the “pitchforks” comment, the reporter would have said so.

No, Lewis’ statement was not plain talk. It was obviously a joke meant to lighten the atmosphere given that the Administration was probably behind recent false rumors that Lewis was about to resign from BofA.

But Obama’s statement was oh so very plain. Plain for a mobster.

[UPDATE] More details confirm Obama’s not so veiled threat to stop standing between the Pitchforks and the Bank CEOs:

“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.”

This from a man that called out the pitchforks against AIG employees receiving bonuses that he ensured via the stimulus bill. This from a man that is aware of the death threats made against those AIG employees.

No one can say they weren’t warned of Obama’s chosen pals: indicted felon Tony “Obama house money from friend of Saddam Hussein” Rezko, terrorist Bill “should have bombed America more” Ayers and Jeremiah “G-D America” Wright.

We even parodied Obama’s future presidency after a planet discovered by the USS Enterprise on Star Trek which had discovered a book on the Chicago gangs and organized its whole society around it.

Fact imitates fiction. It has become impossible to parody Democrats anymore.

But this satire ain’t funny. It’s chilling.

Da’ Boss can remove his administration from between the Bank CEOs and the pitchfork-wielding mobs at any thime if you don’t accept his “Piece of the Action.”

Can anyone direct me to a fort to fire upon, or will the Union’s Commander in Chief fire the first shot this time?

Or has it already been fired?

Sound outrageous? I’ll tell you who is outrageous. Barack Hussein Obama, whether its threatening to allow the lynching of bank CEOs or denying medical care to babies outside the womb that survive abortions.

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

We have recently written of signs that the bloom is coming off the Obama rose.

His popularity has fallen in the polls and disapproval risen, though not in proportion to the fall in 401k plans held even by liberal cable commentators, and certainly not in proportion to the evaporation of approximately 40% of the world’s wealth since his election, and thus, less wealth to spread with each passing day.

Moreover, while we expressed some optimism lately that Blue Dawg and other Democrats were significantly paring down President Obama’s nearly $4 trillion budget, it appears that all but a tiny remnant of Dawgs and Donkeys in the House were neutered yesterday by Obama’s Speaker and Castrator of the House (pictured).

We hold our breathe in hopes the Senate’s dawgs don’t turn yellow (pictured, too cowardly to vote their conscious?) at least with respect to raising energy prices and socializing medicine.

Sadly, though we doubt anyone should waste a breath hoping even the World’s greatest deliberative saucer-cooler will significantly pare back the Dollar destroying $4T juggernaut.

But let us use up some lukewarm air to combat Obama’s hot “spread the wealth” air first famously directed towards the cool air of Joe the Plumber in hopes that analogies to the real story of Thanksgiving and the skulls full of mush in our nation’s colleges and universities, may snap elitist soccer moms and dads out of their Hope for Obama stupors.

First, a story that may or may not be true (doesn’t matter) concerning an economic professor confronted by a class full of Marxists:

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.

Lastly, a story straight out of the annals of American history that proves Obama and Pelosi deserve an “F” as well.

RUSH: From my second bestseller, “See, I Told You So, “”Chapter 6, “Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving.” The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail [for America]. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford’s own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!

This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude [to God] grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.

First Compact: From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs led to starvation

Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the ’60s and ’70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.

Second Compact: Homesteading free market capitalism led to plenty

Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.

That’s right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn’t work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!

But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.

“The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,” Bradford wrote. “For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.”

Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself? What’s the point?

Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?

“This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Bradford doesn’t sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph’s suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the “seven years of plenty” and the “Earth brought forth in heaps.” (Gen. 41:47)

In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.

Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you’re laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school.

So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the “Great Puritan Migration.”

Now, you probably haven’t read this. You might have heard me read it to you over the previous years on this program, but I don’t think this lesson is still being taught to children — and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this? Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it’s not thanks to William Bradford. It’s not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple. Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you’ll get the point. The word “God” is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times… If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you’ll get thrown in jail, but that’s what the first Thanksgiving was all about. Get it. I’m telling you, read it. Maybe we can find it and link to it: George Washington’s first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Folks, if you haven’t read that, you need to read it. It will tell you the true story of Thanksgiving. I’m happy to share it with you each and every year as a tradition on this program.

I’ll bet the dawgs that turned blue from the cold Massachusetts winters would instruct Democrats today not to turn yellow in the face of the Obamanation they face lest they want to inherit a green world of sickness and death for the less fortunate and a world of wood stove smog and donkey dung filled streets for the living.

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

I hate lazy thinking, i.e. non-thinking.

Consequently, I rarely use the word “just” when trying to characterize people. Moreover, I loathe the use of vague, substance less words, often employed after the word just, in an attempt to define someone or an event. This is usually the tactic of one that is losing an argument or one that knows they can’t win the argument on substance through logic.

In the courtroom we call it blowing smoke (pictured: Defendant Al Gore testifying in slander case brought against him by my client, The Sun) when someone can’t argue the facts or the law. It is mostly employed by the left in politics, but certainly not exclusively.

Now, to the words “entertain” and “entertainer”, in the context of liberals’ and moderate conservatives’ (or lazy thinkers of all stripes) attempts to diminish the importance of Rush Limbaugh. By the word “entertainer” I assume most people mean one who makes a living in the arts. But when they use the words “just an entertainer”, what I hear is an elitist attempt meant, not primarily to diminish the the entertainer, but, rather, an attempt to elevate themselves and those they consider their intellectual kin in “important” positions in politics.

Yet, some of us with a little distance from the Washington, D.C. Beltway elites understand that the word “just” is more accurately and appropriately employed thusly: Brian Williams is just a teleprompter reader or Senator Voinovich is just a yes/no voter on mostly easy choices in Congress.

Every person is entertained by different things. I am most animated by profound truths delivered in a way that makes it understandable and vivid. Consider a recent conversation (subscription required) between The Doctor of Democracy and a George Mason journalism student assigned to report on Rush Limbaugh to his class:

On Real Journalism

RUSH: We rejoin Andrew in Fairfax, Virginia, who is a journalism student at George Mason University. There’s a textbook that his class has been assigned with a highly critical chapter of me after acknowledging career accomplishments and success, and Andrew has a presentation on this chapter before his class. How much time do you have, by the way, to get this done, Andrew?

CALLER: Well, I’ve put together my presentation, but I don’t present for another two weeks.

RUSH: Okay. Very good. I want to repeat what I said. The first thing I want you to tell them is that they’re in a journalism class. And you are quite unique in one way, and that is, most of the existing journalists in America today — the vast, vast majority, well over 90% — who report on me, never call me, never ask for my reaction to what they are going to report about me. They take it from what I told you: Media Matters or other left-wing “watchdog groups.” Their purpose is not to get it right. Their purpose is to discredit — and it’s not just me. It’s any prominent conservative, because I feel they don’t think they can win a substantive argument. So the way they attack is to try to discredit people who threaten them in the arena of ideas. I clearly represent a threat. You’ve done something as a student that most practicing journalists today do not do. You have called me. You have asked for my reaction to this. You ought to get an A for that alone.

On the individual as the world’s smallest minority

RUSH: But as far as the factual aspects of my presentation on this program, or wherever I speak — as far as whether I make it up or lie about it or whatever — the greatest source for information on my show, the greatest source for proof of what I actually say every day is my website: www.RushLimbaugh.com. On my website, there is a complete and total transcript available for every word I utter. There are links to the news items or stories or reports that I have used to make the statements that I make. Why would I lie all the time when I provide the proof right there for everybody to see? Critics never mention this. The journalists never go to my website. They rely on others who take out of context what I say. The other thing I want you to tell these students is that I am a soul mate of theirs. You and your students — because of your age and your future and where you are in life — you’re very focused on yourselves as individuals, and I am the greatest asset individuals in this country have.

I believe that the smallest minority in the world is the individual, and I believe if you do not respect individual rights, you do not really respect minority rights. The individual is unique. No two people are alike. I resist the tug of popular sentiment. Please quote me: “I resist the tug of popular sentiment to basically conform with movements and ideas that are not based on thought, but rather are based on raw emotion.” I have nothing but a fervent desire for everyone in your class to succeed, to be the absolute best they can be based on how willing they are to work hard, use their passion and the ambition and God-given talent that they have been given. I have no desire for anyone to be held back. I do not see people as men, women, black, white, red, green, orange. I see Americans. I see human beings. I see human beings who, unfortunately, are co-opted into a conformist way of thinking that it is in itself erroneous — such as all the reporting about me and all the opinions of me that have been formed by people who do not listen.

Illustrating absurdity by being absurd: “caller abortions”

RUSH: I believe that all human beings have a yearning spirit to be free, that we are endowed with it. I believe the founding documents. I believe that our existence is owing to a Creator who created us with inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Our Founding Documents, Declaration of Independence mentions these rights. They don’t come from people, they come from God. Life. Somebody has to stand up for life; somebody has to defend it. Now, anybody can go on the radio and say, “I’m pro-life, and those pro-abortionists are wrong!” Big whoop. What I’ve always strived to do, Andrew, is illustrate my opinion. Sometimes… I have a phrase: “illustrating absurdity by being absurd.” So the caller abortion was — and I will admit, it irritated a lot of people. It caused… And the reason why, Andrew, is because it made people confront the reality of their belief. Do you know what the caller abortion was?

CALLER: It was a, I guess a sound bite “with a vacuum sucking sound followed by a bloodcurdling scream.” That’s what it says in the textbook.

RUSH: Yes, it was. See? Okay. That’s in the textbook?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yes. That’s all that’s in the textbook about it?

CALLER: Um, yes.

RUSH: Yeah. See, that’s…

CALLER: Well, it says whenever you wanted to end the call, that you used the caller abortion.

RUSH: That’s a classic example of how what I do was distorted. That was actually a brilliant illustration of my belief about this. This took about 30 minutes to do, to set up, which also made it great radio. It gave us a lot of time spent listening on the ratings. But basically I wanted to illustrate this, and I looked at my telephone, and I asked the question, “When does a call become a call? Does the call become a call when you dial? Does the call become a call when you connect? Does the call become a call when I answer, the moment of conception? You call me. Your line connects with my receptacle. Bam! I answer the phone. Is that when the call begins?”

So I called the phone company, Andrew, and I asked them, “When does a call begin?”

They said, “What are you talking about?”

I said, “Well, does a call begin? When do you start charging for a call? When that call has life? When is there…? When you start billing for a call, does it happen at the moment the person has dialed it? Does it happen while it’s ringing? Does it happen with a busy signal, which means there’s call control on it? Does it happen when somebody answers?”

And they said, “Well, a call begins when it’s answered. A call takes two people.”

I said, “Thank you.”

So, that was to illustrate: When does life begin? See, I believe it can only begin at conception. When else can it begin? So I wanted to illustrate using the phone, making a phone call. Then I got a bunch of people pretending to be scientists and so forth on the phone to discuss this in great detail. But I said, “Until I decide to answer, that call’s nothing but a blinking light. That call has no life. That call has no meaning. That call has nothing to it until I answer it,” and then what happens? When I answer that call and I don’t want it? What if I’ve made a mistake answering that call? What if it’s a bad call? What if it’s somebody who’s not going to enhance the radio program? What do I do? I didn’t want the call. I took the call. I made a mistake! I went out there and I conceptualized the phone call, and now I’m stuck with a call I don’t want.

Well, I do what we do in the pro-choice movement: I simply abort it and pretend that the call never happened! So I turn on the suction device and I suck the call right out of the phone. That, to me, was brilliant, Andrew. I hope you’re recording this, and I hope you read this to your class. Because everything that’s done here, Andrew — whether it be done with humor or seriousness or with a satire or a parody, everything that’s done here — is designed to make a point. Nothing is done here frivolously. I don’t do anything just to make people mad, because that’s going to happen anyway when you tell anybody what you think.

On allegations of bigotry

By definition, people are going to not… Why do you think Tiger Woods doesn’t tell you what his politics are? Because he wants to sell all of his endorsed equipment to everybody, not just Republicans or Democrats.

But that’s not my business. My business is to tell people what I honestly believe. I love America. The racism and sexism and so forth? Yeah, I came up with the term “feminazi,” to describe the 12 women to whom the most important thing in the world is every abortion possible taking place — and the reason people get mad at that’s ’cause it’s dead-on accurate. As for racism, this is a constant, average, everyday charge the left makes against conservatives trying to fulfill the stereotype that we’re racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes. But the truth about that is you can tell your class this: I look at the majority of the black population in this country and I cry, ’cause I see that they have been conditioned to believe that the Democrat Party and large government programs are going to raise them from the life of bondage they believe that they’re in.

And after 50 years of voting Democrat, after 50 years of complaining about the circumstances they’re in, after receiving all these benefits the Democrats have passed out (AFDC) they’re still complaining. Their lives have been stolen from them. The federal government has become the father; the father has become absent. Single mothers are raising kids in neighborhoods and schools that you would not send yours to. The Democrat Party refuses to close them, and insists that those people still go to those schools while still voting Democrat. I think it’s a shame. I think the federal government and the Democrat Party has destroyed the black family. I love Americans. I love human beings! I want the best for them. I want what’s happened to me to be experienced by every damn person out there, and the people standing in the way are my enemy — and that would have to be liberals in the Democrat Party.

On the comparative offensiveness of Barack Obama’s pro-life stands

RUSH: All right, Andrew, one more point that I want to make for you to include in your presentation to the students on the caller abortions. Your textbook says that critics say I reached a low point with the caller abortion. Let me ask you a simple question. If a fetus is not a human life, why would a caller abortion offend anybody? If a fetus, a human fetus is simply an unviable tissue mass, there could be nothing conceivably upsetting about it. The truth is, it is a baby, and the pro-abort, political pro-abort groups, the NOW gang and other feminist groups, they know it’s a baby, and thus they hate me for exposing their mind-set. But if a fetus isn’t a human being, why would a caller abortion upset anybody?

And finally, Andrew, this. I understand caller abortions are offensive. But then why is President Obama to be praised for his anti-life positions? Do you realize President Obama three times as an Illinois state senator voted for legislation that would allow doctors to kill a baby successfully born during an abortion? Now, what’s really controversial, Andrew? A bit, a vacuum cleaner with callers being sucked off a phone, or an Illinois state senator who’s now president voting three times to allow doctors to kill a baby after it’s born because the mother wanted an abortion? Ask your students to consider that.

Everyone feel entertained? Anyone think that a conservative Presidential candidate that could entertain like that might have a chance to beat any Democrat?

Obviously.

Rush is Right! I wish we had many more “just entertainers.”

[Free audio may? be accessed here. I can't tell since I am a paying member of the website.]

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Yes, the announcer of dawns has left the country, but will continue his eight year old streak of filing a column on, and related to, all holidays and other notable days.

The Sun rises three hours sooner here in the Azores, than in Dixie, so this will be a concise, yet informative post.

Despite the fact that I feel a bit foolish for risking bureaucratic snafus that could deny my re-entry into the Shining City on a Hill, I will deign to inform the anticipators of eastern sunrises of all things April foolish.

Who was the first April Fool?:

Eve

When was April Fools’ Day first celebrated?:

One year after Eve bit the apple

By Whom?:

Lucifer

Who will be the last April Fool?:

Lucifer

Largest group of April Fools in America today:

Tied: Prior Bush voters that stayed home or voted for Obama in 2008 and useful idiot pro-life democrats

What color should one wear on this day to capture the spirit of the occasion?:

Whatever color Al Gore wears

What is the official symbol of the day?:

a jackass

How can you know if someone is lying to you on April Fools’ Day?:

When the lips of lawyers not in the Azores, elected democrats in DC, Teleprompters of the United States, and cabinet members of TOTUS speaking about taxes owed, are moving

Enjoy the day, despite its extended suspense, and take comfort that from April 2, 2009 through March 31, 2010, only democrats will continue to celebrate foolishness.

Small comfort, but that’s all we got.

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

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

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report