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by Michael Baram | May 14, 2013 | Opinion

Divertimento

Years ago I heard a story, told by the great comedian, Danny Thomas, about a traveler in the South who came upon a farmer whose mule and wagon were stuck in a big mud puddle. The farmer, obviously at the end of his patience, was screaming, pulling, pushing, cursing, and kicking, but the mule, as mules are wont to do, stood  stubbornly in place and refused to move.

“Good morning, Sir,” said the traveler. “I see you’re having difficulty in getting your mule to move.”
“Any fool can see that,” replied the farmer.
“You’re doing it all wrong,“ said the traveler.
“Then you tell me how to get this stupid animal out of the mud, Mr. Know-it-all,” the farmer challenged.
“You have to talk gently to the mule. Mules respond to soft tones,” came the response.
“All right, you show me,” the farmer demanded.
With that, the traveler looked about until he saw a thick piece of wood lying on the ground. He picked it up, approached the mule and slammed it across the animal’s forehead.
“What are you doing?” screamed the farmer. “I thought you said I had to speak softly to it!”
“That’s right,” said the traveler. “But first, I gotta get his attention.”

-*-*-

The current state of the Republican party is one of trying to bring the message of self respect, personal responsibility, small government and lower taxes to minorities of all kinds who have been conditioned for generations to depend on Big Government. They look to it to solve all their problems; to cradle, coddle, and cuddle them so they will never have to worry about assuming responsibility for their own lives. Stubbornly standing in the mud puddle of Democratic propagandizing, never being permitted to see the truth, the masses are force-fed a diet of misinformation, distorted history and outright lies via a compliant media and an education system dedicated to keep them dependent on government largesse. The only obligation demanded of them is to vote for the party which “cares.”

What the Republicans have to do, and fast, is to change their tactics from trying to win hearts and minds through a failed policy of being Mr. Nice Guy (which only seems to result in a drubbing on Election Day) to telling them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A collision with reality, if you will.

When a history-challenged self-proclaimed-maven like Whoopi Goldberg challenges a John McCain-type candidate with a question like, “If  you’re elected, will slavery return?” instead of foolishly grinning, Mr. Candidate should have the guts (on national television) to reply, “No, Whoopi. Let me remind you that the Republican Party was founded on an anti-slavery platform and that 300,000 young men, fighting under a Republican President, gave their lives to end that slavery.”

The View Hag might get him thrown out of the studio, but someone in that audience of millions will be paying attention.

Preaching to the choir will not awaken those who aren’t in the choir. The loudspeakers have to be mounted to reach over and beyond the heads of those who have willingly tuned in to hear the same message again and again. Since the mainstream media is obviously a tool of the Democrats, they have to be circumvented. That means we, of the loyal opposition, have to resort to billboards, bumper stickers, even skywriting if necessary, to make the message visible enough that someone will sit up and take notice. It might be easy to rip off a bumper sticker, but it’s harder to pull down a billboard on the side of a freeway. Even harder to shoot down an airplane. And, although (from what I’ve seen on videos), the average person or college student doesn’t watch Fox News or C-Span but willingly swallows the swill fed to them by NBC, CBS, MSNBC and the rest of the Democratic Party’s ventriloquist dummies posing as news outlets, the messages have to be outdoors where they can’t be missed. They should be short and to the point. Don’t forget, we are now a society nurtured on sound bites.

Citizen X drives or takes a bus to work. He’s going to see a billboard saying, “Thank the Democrats for replacing physical slavery with economic slavery.” Messages can be tailored to geographic location.

“Welcome to Chicago, Murder Capital of America. A Democratic City.”

“Welcome to Detroit, or what’s left of It. Thank you, Democrats.”

A bumper sticker asking, “Are you better off than you were before? Which party runs your town?” will not escape notice in a traffic jam.

An airplane dropping leaflets would be nice, but the anti-littering laws would get in the way. However, mass mailings of flyers is legal (and all too common, judging by my mailbox).

“Abraham Lincoln – Republican. His killer – Democrat.”

“Martin Luther King, Jr. – Republican. His killer – Democrat.”

“Famous Democrats: George Wallace, Orville Faubus, Lester Maddox, Bull Connor.”

“The KKK – Strike Arm of the Southern Democratic Party”.

“The 1964 Civil Rights Act was opposed by most Democrats. The Republicans got it through Congress.”

“Jim Crow – Created by the Democrats.”

“Jesse Jackson is a millionaire. Are you?”

It’s about time the Democrats were put on the defensive. They have controlled the media for years while they piled one lie after another on the American public, even to the point of politicizing the education system with their partners in slime, the teachers union. The only way we can be effective in combating this campaign of indoctrination is with an in-your-face barrage of facts and opposite opinions.

Get enough people to start challenging the myths which the Democrats have created and used to mire millions in social and economic stagnation. It won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy, but it can be done.

But first, we gotta get their attention.

by Michael Baram | April 10, 2013 | Opinion

Before entering the world of genteel poverty known as “Retirement”, I was a corrections officer in Washington State. The corrections facility where I worked was the only active prison in the country on an island (in Puget Sound), and transportation to and from the facility was by ferry. Now and then I would work overtime which meant a double shift, so when my regular shift ended at 10:30 PM, I would hustle to some other unit or a tower for another eight hours and, when I was relieved by the morning shift I would board the ferry to begin my trip home.

One morning I sat on the ferry next to a female officer and opposite a male officer, both of whom were dyed-in-the-wool liberals. As the vessel left the dock I took a book I was reading out of my backpack. The woman looked at the dust jacket and saw the name of the author; Ann Coulter. Now, a person not infused with left-wing ideology might have reacted by asking about the book or, possibly, showing displeasure at my choice of reading matter (or political leanings), but, rather than relate to me, she said directly to the man sitting across from us, “Isn’t it amazing how stupid conservatives are?”

Now, I had long been convinced of liberal arrogance and elitism, but this attack, without even trying to gain any information about the subject of the book, hit close to home. No indication of curiosity, no sign of seeking facts. Just a blanket condemnation, based on what could only be assumed to be visceral hatred, because the author was a known opponent of liberalism.

In retrospect, I should have taken up the challenge then and there, but, being new in the hierarchy, I was unsure of my exact position regarding more senior personnel and economic preservation overrode my gut instinct to get involved in an argument (especially after sixteen straight hours on the job).

Now, it would be logical if liberals, with all their chest-thumping about their superior intellect, would be represented by people whose similarly high intelligence would be reflected in statements brimming with profundity.

It would be logical, but…

During a debate on gun control, Sen. Dianne Feinstein stated, “We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.”

I’d like to know when the season starts. And what the limit is. I don’t want to break any laws, you see.

Are we to believe that our own beloved POTUS, Barack Obama, displayed a superior intellect when he called the person who administers life-saving treatment to armed forces personnel a “corpseman” even though he was reading from his ever-present teleprompter? Was it too hard for a Harvard-educated liberal to ask someone, “How do you pronounce this word?”

Well, maybe that would have chipped away at the myth of the omniscient Savior of The Western World.

I’d have to nominate Rep. Hank Johnson, D- GA, for a special award for displaying his scientific knowledge when he asked if additional USMC personnel might cause the island of Guam to tip over.  The fact that the admiral he was questioning didn’t laugh in his face is a testament to military discipline.

Let’s not forget Sen.  Joe Biden, candidate for the Vice-Presidency, during the 2008 campaign, saying to his interviewer, Katie Couric, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

Roosevelt wasn’t elected until 1932, and assumed office in 1933. Television was a laboratory experiment in 1929 and nobody had a set. Katie should have questioned him on his blatant ignorance of history, but hey, she was probably thinking of how she could ambush Sarah Palin and wasn’t really concentrating.

Does anyone remember Ann Romney’s appearance on “The View” (aka “Witches Coven”) when Whoopi Goldberg asked her, “Do Mormons serve in the armed forces?” If Whoopi had actually done some research, she’d have found out that twelve Mormons have been awarded the Medal of Honor, but I also have to fault Ann for being too nice to respond, “If you hadn’t quit school and switched to drugs, you stupid twit, you wouldn’t have to ask such a ridiculous question.”

(Yeah, I know, it’s cold. But I’m too old to worry about being diplomatic.)

And now, the latest shining example of liberal higher brain function, Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette. At a forum hosted by the Denver Post’s editorial board earlier this month, Rep. DeGette stated, “These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available…”

Uhh…Diana. Does the word “reload” ring a bell in that inter-cochlial vacuum of yours?

Considering the elitist attitude displayed by liberals, so convinced that their IQs are way above those of us commoners who cling to our bibles and our guns and actually get our hands dirty keeping this country going, I find these examples to be anything but encouraging.

So, I ask, if liberals are so damn smart, why do they constantly vote for such idiots?

by Michael Baram | November 25, 2012 | Opinion

It’s all over except for the soul-searching. And the recriminations, and the blame-casting, and the “if onlys”, and the “where did we go wrong?” and the endless hand-wringing. Not to mention “Dump Rove” (and a dozen other pundits who called it wrong on November 6). Oh, yeah, I almost forgot; “The other guys cheated.” (Really, it’s highly probable that they did, but that’s another story.)

But one thing remains, clear and glaring. The Republican Party, trying to deliver a conservative message to the electorate, failed because they chose the wrong messenger (yet I voted for him, because he was our standard bearer). And the audience was the wrong audience. People who are infused with a belief in the nanny state don’t want to hear about doing away with it. What we do need is someone who can better explain to the voters how and why small government is to their advantage.

Enter the knight on the white horse, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Cal Thomas wrote,

“Rubio has the message the Republican Party needs. It’s a long way to 2016 and there are many good potential presidential candidates, but Marco Rubio could be the one candidate conservatives have been waiting for: the second coming of Ronald Reagan.”

However, while some are rushing to greet Rubio as the potential Republican candidate, there remains the issue of the constitutional requirement for the office.  Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution states:

“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President…”

In his 1758 work, Law of Nations, Emer de Vattel (1714 – 1767), wrote, “Natural-born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.” Vattel’s work was heavily relied upon by the original Congress, according to Benjamin Franklin, since they were, basically, building a political system from scratch. Yet a definition which seemed apparent to our Founding Fathers was never written into law.

Although lower courts have tackled the subject of citizenship, the Supreme Court has never addressed the issue of “natural born”, despite challenges to the eligibility of (surprise!) some Republican candidates.

On April 30, 2008, the Senate passed a resolution to that effect, “Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.” SR 511 states the following:

“Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a `natural born Citizen’ of the United States;

“Whereas the term `natural born Citizen’, as that term appears in Article II, Section 1, is not defined in the Constitution of the United States;

Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country’s President;…

Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That John Sidney McCain, III, is a `natural born Citizen’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.”

In other words, the U.S. Senate defines “natural born citizen” as an individual who was born:

1. On American soil (which includes U.S. overseas military bases); and
2. Of parents who were American citizens at the time of the child’s birth.

For the record, Senator Barack Obama was among the signers.

During the presidential campaign of 1964, a challenge to Barry Goldwater’s candidacy was raised, since he was born before Arizona  became a state (in 1912….Happy Anniversary, Arizona!) But at the time of his birth, Arizona was a territory subject to the laws of the United States and, for all intents and purposes, qualified as a state where eligibility was concerned.

Marco Rubio was born in 1971 in Miami, but his parents became US citizens four years later. If we are to go by Vattel’s writings and their acceptance as authority by the framers of the Constitution, Senator Rubio does not qualify as a “natural born” citizen as required by the Constitution, despite all the good wishes and hopes of the Republican Party membership.

By the same token, Barack Hussein Obama, whose (alleged) father was a Kenyan national and a subject of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, is, according to Vattel and the U.S. Senate, ineligible to be President of the United States, but the Democratic Party and its propaganda arm, the blatantly biased media, twice chose to ignore the Constitution in the name of power. Now, if it turns out that, as some people charge, Obama’s real father was Frank Marshall Davis (or even Malcom X…yes, that has been bandied about), then the “two parents who are citizens” issue is settled.

In the meantime, Obama was never properly vetted thanks to the “at all cost” effort by the DNC to gain power, the Constitution be damned.

But you can be sure that they will not stint on hypocrisy regarding Rubio’s eligibility.

—–

See also  Senator Marco Rubio’s father was not a naturalized citizen when Marco was born  hat tip Barbara Mabray.

by Michael Baram | November 17, 2012 | Opinion

“I won’t vote for _______ because he’s not a real conservative.”

How many times did I see that threat posted here and there on the internet in the weeks leading up to the election? I wish I had a dime – OK, a dollar – for every time I tried to reason with people whose loyalty to conservative doctrine was so inflexible that it precluded any chance of inclusivity, especially when it became obvious that the Democratic corruptocracy would stop at nothing to guarantee Obama’s reelection.

We never learn. Those who voted for Perot in 1992 helped elect Bill Clinton. Those who voted for Johnson or Paul this year got Obama re-elected. Let me put it in simple terms for people who will not compromise under any circumstances: If you split the vote, the bad guy wins. Every time.

When the Romans were besieging the Second Temple in 70 AD, those inside, presumably defending the temple, were at each other’s throats over political differences. When preserving ideological purity overrides common sense and the need to save the country, well….we saw the result on election day.

Now, I grant you that, given the increasing reports of voter fraud coming out of the battleground states, the reelection of the Failure-in-Chief was probably preordained. However, that does not – must not –necessarily signal the end of our constitutional republic. Presumably, if the Constitution survives the next four years…if WE survive the next four years, the liberals will have a new god to put up for election. (Excuse me while I laugh. I just thought of Joe Biden.) It’s up to the “purists” to decide if they want to restore freedom or sacrifice it on the altar of ideology.

It might be easier to live with a weakened vote if the election were fairly conducted, but let’s face it, Folks, the Democrats had everything working for them. Thousands of votes were bought with free cell phones, food stamps, and extended unemployment benefits. That’s thousands of votes by people who failed, or refused, to see beyond the next few weeks; the question, “What happens when the money’s gone?” never addressed. A hero-worshiping media, dedicated to Obama’s reelection, blatantly ignored the fallout from the Benghazi Blunder and glossed over the deaths of four men. This, by the way, is the media which brought about the downfall of Richard Nixon because of an amateurish break-in in which nobody was physically harmed.

Blame must be shared by the Republicans who ignored the reality of changing demographics and the increase in immigrant populations, made up largely of people from cultures dominated by big, paternalistic governments, and who simply did not understand the challenger’s message of limited government and self-reliance, or feared the concept. A minestrone of dependent factions, embracing big government as the means and the end. No matter who will pay for it, since class warfare makes it easy to place the entire burden of financing on “the rich” (whose numbers are dwindling in relation to population). The traditional “melting pot” is dead, replaced by a Balkan-like population of antagonistic blocs, each voting in its own interest, with most of them having little idea of, or desire to learn, what “American” means.

The Romney camp, as I see it, also failed to address the issue of thousands of voters coming out of a failed education system which stopped teaching about the Constitution and what made this country unique a long time ago. In her column of November 14, Marybeth Hicks wrote:

Going back more than six years, it’s clear our nation’s college students are largely civically illiterate. According to surveys from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, college freshmen typically flunk a 60-question civics test with an average score of just better than 51 percent; college seniors flunk it with a score of around 53 percent.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, our country’s high schools taught less about the constitution in 2010 than they did in 2006, a trend that continues. In fact, in 2010, only 67 percent of high school seniors studied our founding documents, meaning about a third don’t study our government in the year before they are eligible to vote. 

Nor did the campaign do a very good job of convincing the aging population of American-born voters, the generation which grew up during the depression and fought WWII, that the government-run support structure dating back to the Roosevelt years is doomed to collapse unless reforms are instituted now. Most of these voters only understood the fear-mongering by the Democrats that the “rich Republicans will push your wheelchairs off the cliff”.

We have four years to study and learn from the presidential campaign of 2012. Four years during which, hopefully, the people who voted for Obama will realize that elections have consequences and everything comes with a price. As I write this, Hostess is going out of business and firing its employees. Papa John is raising the price of his pizza, and a chain of Denny’s in Florida is tacking on a 5% surcharge to cover the added expenses foisted on it by Obamacare. We can hope for a change in attitude among the electorate during this period, assuming the country doesn’t collapse totally in the interim.

Don’t say, “Don’t hold your breath.” I prefer to hold on to a shred of optimism.

by Michael Baram | November 7, 2012 | Opinion

“The nation is divided like never before – intentionally so. That has been Obama’s game plan from the beginning – to build a constituency of special-interest groups that truly believe their salvation is found in bigger government, more programs, irresponsible spending and unconstitutional policies.” – Joseph Farah

Remember this date, November 6, 2012. For it was on this date that a nation which fought bravely for its freedom and fought to keep that freedom for 236 years voted that freedom away in exchange for an increasingly powerful government and the promise that its citizens would never have to strive on their own to determine their future or take the risks which bring the rewards of success and prosperity.

I had hopes. I really did. I hoped that the American electorate would respond favorably to the message brought by a successful entrepreneur, a businessman with a solid history of success and who understood what this nation needed to get back on track and restore itself to greatness. I hoped that the trend to stifling rules and onerous taxation would be reversed and that the economy would experience a “new birth of freedom”.

I was wrong.

Despite alienating Christians and Jews, independent business owners, coal miners, and the military, making homeowners fearful of not being able to maintain their payments on homes whose values have plummeted, and enlarging the underclass of recipients of public assistance by relaxing welfare rules and giving out food stamps in record numbers, Barack Obama managed to win re-election, further guaranteeing that this once-proud nation, which had stood as a beacon for those with the ambition to become more than their societies would permit, would continue inexorably on its slow but steady descent into the morass of low expectations and stagnation.

In the weeks before the election, we read of threats by radical Black groups to riot if Obama lost. We never saw such threats from Romney supporters. Four years of increased racial divisiveness, nurtured by the President and his Attorney General, did nothing to wake up a nation which believed it had left racism in the dust of history. A co-operative media which hid Obama’s shortcomings while trumpeting every slip of his opponent had become a mere propaganda machine for the Democrats and nobody really cared. Millions of voters, their ability to research, dissect, analyze, and comprehend dulled by an education system geared to producing complacent liberal drones dutifully pulled the lever for the candidate who merely repeated the same old promises which, as the last four years have proven, were as empty as the heads of those who voted for him.

In the last year it became abundantly clear that our President’s foreign policy was based on increasing the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (which is dedicated to installing a reactionary and repressive rule over billions and has even managed to place its agents in the top levels of our government) in the Middle East. This is no secret, despite the media’s attempts at dismissing the threat. It was Obama’s cooperation with the Brotherhood that led to the disaster in Benghazi. Which leads to another question.

Where is the outrage when a blatant cover-up of the truth about Benghazi results in an assault on our cherished freedom of expression?  Nakoula Bassely Nakoula sits in jail for making a movie critical of a religion which degrades and brutalizes women and whose adherents erupt in violent, deadly riots every time someone suggests that they have a tendency to brutalize their women and are prone to erupting in violence. And, to top it off, our re-elected President actually said that the future must not belong to those who insult the prophet. In other words, your freedom of speech is totally dependent on what the President considers proper. But, I guess that doesn’t matter any more.

I should add a bit of advice to young men and women who are contemplating joining the military, or serving in the Border Patrol, or maybe finishing college and going on to work in an embassy. Be advised that you are all expendable, as evidenced by Obama’s callous indifference to the deaths of our Navy SEALs, Border Patrol agents, and our ambassador and others in Benghazi.

During the last half of the 1990s, television was blessed with an innovative, well-written science fiction series, Babylon5, which dealt with an ongoing Byzantine drama taking place on a space station filled with representatives of a multitude of races in ever-shifting loyalties and situations. In one episode, an alien ambassador, having learned that an ancient, malevolent race has returned and destroyed one of his planet’s advanced bases, tells his assistant, “Weep for the future, Na’toth. Weep for us all.”

I usually try to find some humor in any situation. It’s what sustains me when times get rough. But, after this election, I can only weep.

by Michael Baram | October 31, 2012 | Opinion

“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party.

On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”

- George Orwell, “1984″

When I was a kid (back when cavemen ate dinosaurs) I joined the Cub Scouts. My parents got me a blue uniform which I wore with pride as I went to weekly meetings at our local Jewish Community Center. A few years later I graduated to the Boy Scouts, and my parents bought me a green uniform which I wore with pride as I went to meetings at our local Jewish Community Center.

It was at those meetings that I learned the meaning of flag, country, loyalty, responsibility, and respect for others. And, in summer camps, I learned about living with nature and respecting it. But all this was voluntary. Nobody grabbed me or drafted me in my classroom, at taxpayer expense, to learn to parrot propaganda for this or that politically-based cause. Especially for the purpose of apotheosizing a man chosen by vote to lead the country for a Constitutionally-limited period.

Things are quite different today. Four years ago, amidst the adulation and religious furor surrounding the candidacy of Barack Obama, we were “treated” to the spectacle of uniformed African-American youths predicting loudly that their dreams would now be realized under his rule (as if no Black youths ever achieved anything before Obama came along.) I wonder if these kids’ dreams have been realized in the last four years, given the high unemployment rate among Black youths.

Then we had a group of schoolchildren in Venice, CA, wearing matching t-shirts, led by an overly excited, animated, and exuberant woman, singing about how Obama would change the world, mindlessly repeating the Obamaniks’ “Yes we can” mantra. Tell me, boys and girls, after four years of “Yes we can”, are your fathers still working? Are you still living in the same houses or were they foreclosed? What’s it like, living in the perfect world you were promised?

There were others here and there, groups of impressionable children being indoctrinated into the Cult of Barry, dutifully repeating what they had been programmed to say and sing.

Now, for the last couple of years, we have thankfully been spared the spectacle of brainwashed tykes praising his glory via song and story, having only the endless fulsome adoration by the media to remind us of the Paragon of Perfection and his infallibility (since anything that goes wrong is George Bush’s fault). But, now it’s an election year, and all the plugs are pulled. Except for the ones on Joe Biden’s scalp.

A few days ago a video was released featuring a group of angelic pre-adolescents singing, not of hope and change and a promise for a more wonderful future under the leadership of The One, but of the apocalypse to come if the Republicans win the White House. We are treated to dire predictions of “an America, where strip mines are fun and free “, and “sick people just die”. It just gets better as we finally manage to kill the polar bears and fry the atmosphere. If I didn’t know any better, I’d go broke replacing my Depends. I guess, though, that we can take some small comfort in the fact that the video is in black and white. I guess the campaign is running low on cash and can’t afford full color. (I know, it’s a computer program…I just thought I’d be sarcastic for a change.) Even David Limbaugh mentioned the video in his excellent article of October 30.

The crass, cynical exploitation of children, blessed as they are with limited reasoning capacity because they are…CHILDREN…defies all standards of decency. What can we expect next? Explosive vests? Children marching with AK-47s? Obamajugend standing in orderly rows as they salute with outstretched hands? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Every totalitarian movement depends on control of the children in order to keep the parents in line. The year 1984 may have passed, but the chilling prophecies of the novel don’t need a number to become reality. Perhaps some of you may remember the scene in “The Killing Fields” where Dith Pran returns from his “labor for Socialism” in the fields to nurture his one tomato plant with its one tomato, only to find that a child has ripped it out of the ground out of her duty to the state.

We have a chance to elect a president who belongs to a religious group which is very family-oriented. I hope, as should we all, that a Romney presidency will set a new standard of education, where our children will once again be OUR children, and not the tools of this or that political movement.

A century ago, V.I. Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”  Let’s prove him wrong.

by Michael Baram | October 16, 2012 | Opinion

As we approach the end of Barack Obama’s first four years in the Oval Office, we can join him in pointing with pride to his accomplishments. Why, how can we possibly forget his promise to slow the rise of the level of the oceans? Granted, though, that his statement was made six months before he assumed office, but hey, things like this take time.

He did slow the rise of the oceans, didn’t he? He must have, because sea level seems to be pretty near where it was in June of 2008.

Hmm, now that I think of it, the sea level in June of 2008 was pretty much where it was in June of 1958. However, to be fair, I kind of stopped going to the seashore when “Jaws” came out.

Ok, maybe such feats are within the purvue of a deity and not of a mere Chicago Übermensch. So I guess we’ll just have to cut Barry some slack over that one.

Then there was his promise to cut the deficit by half by the end of his first term. It was a whopping $10 TRILLION when Obama took office, so now, after nearly four years, it should be only a “manageable” $5 (lower case) trillion. Success, no?

Huh? $16 TRILLION? Yes, I am doing the math, and it doesn’t add up to one half. Even after I replaced the battery in my calculator. I guess Mr. Obama didn’t perform that miracle either. Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

But how about the Chicago Olympics? After all, he got the Nobel Peace prize, then returned to Europe to get the….what? Rio got them? Chicago didn’t deserve them? Well, I got news for you Scandinavians. Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel Prize either. But that’s another story. Entirely.

Moving on to the next success, how about unemployment? He promised to lower it. It was 7.8% when he took over and hooray! It went to 8.3% but, mirabile dictu, it dropped to 7.8% last week. Just before the election. That’s a success, isn’t it?

Oh wait – they forgot to count California. Ooops! (Now THAT’S a good reason for Biden to grin, chuckle, and ROTFL. Gotcha on that one, voters. Heeheehee.)

Hey, come on, Barry. Work with me. Instead of working against the people.

Green energy – that’s always a winning proposition. All that money funneled to Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt. They’re bankrupt, darn it, employees fired. I guess you have to be really good to be that bad, but why is it always with OUR money?

OK, how about  making us energy independent by developing drilling here? Oh, another “ooops.” Obama gave $2 billion of our dollars to Brazil to develop their offshore drilling capacity so they could sell their oil – to China! But the President said it would make the US a better customer. I guess giving Brazil the Olympics was just the beginning.

Let me think. I’m grasping at straws here. Does getting us downgraded by Moody’s from AAA to AA+ count as a success? A + is good, isn’t it? No, I guess not. But we can take comfort in the fact that we’re not Greece. Yet.

Of course, Barack Obama does not seem to be rushing forward to take credit for the above “accomplishments”.

Hold on! Wait a minute! Wait one freakin’ minute! I just heard the celestial chorus sing out, “But he got Osama bin Laden!” Yayyyy!

Hold on to your hats, folks. For it now seems that our President is more qualified to take credit for what others have done than to exercise leadership where it’s needed. Last week, Major General (Ret.) Paul Vallely reported that the executive order to get Osama bin Laden was signed, not by President Obama, but by then director of the CIA, Leon Panetta. The White House was frozen out of the decision-making process because presidential adviser, Iranian born Valerie Jarrett, had nixed the idea thrice previously. POTUS was on the golf course (where else?) when he was informed that our helicopters had crossed into Pakistani airspace. Which makes me wonder if we actually elected Ms. Jarrett to be the President.

Yet, We the People were treated to photographs of His Exaltedness sitting in the operations room along with his underlings, breathlessly following events as they transpired in Abbottabad. And, when the operation was successfully completed (minus one helicopter full of secret hi-tech gear, which will definitely influence our enemies’ ability to counter our efforts in the future), it wasn’t long before the Ego-in-Chief took full credit for the operation, outing Seal Team 6 in the process (and probably contributing to the ambush which resulted in three dozen deaths).

So, now I’m adding things up and I see that the only success Obama can point to belongs to someone else, and he even managed to screw that one up. Unless throwing the State Department and the intelligence community under the bus for the Benghazi Bungle can be considered a “success.”
(Tell me, does “Throwing Under The Bus” qualify as a sport in the Rio Olympics?)

Looking at the balance sheet, would it be proper to say to our President, “You didn’t build that?”

by Michael Baram | September 27, 2012 | Opinion

The headline jumped out at me like a crocodile at a young gnu: “More Americans now commit suicide than are killed in car crashes as miserable economy takes its toll”. “Wow!” I thought. Are things so bad that thousands prefer death to living under Obama for four more years?” Then I asked myself, “Why do I ask such stupid questions?”

Of course people who are mired in debt, whose homes are facing foreclosure, whose savings and retirements are in danger, and who are either unemployed or on the brink would have little reason to go on under such conditions, especially with the idea of “No Hope And No Change”….ok….let me rephrase that last….make it “the thought of ‘Forward’” as the best the Democrats can come up with to gain our allegiance. In times of such angst, it is only natural for us, the voters, pounded, pressed, and pummeled by a triple whammy of economic woes, a foreign policy in total disarray, and a Constitution being fed into the shredder, to seek encouragement from someone. Unfortunately, that someone is our president, Barack Obama.

So, when everything seems to be going to Hades in a hand basket, where is he?

Try the National Security Brief. Oh, he doesn’t go to those. Too boring, Mr. O?  Or simply above your pay grade? How about hard at work in the Oval Office till the wee hours of the morning, trying to solve our problems? Nah, he’d be too tired for his umpteenth round of golf. Judging by headlines touting the South Side Smoothie’s latest accomplishments, it appears that he’s devoting most of his time flitting hither, thither and yon drumming up support for another four years of guiding our nation on its downward spiral to become a worthy contender to Zimbabwe for the title of “World’s Biggest Basket Case”.

Hardly a day goes by without some story (with attendant photos) of Fearless Leader speaking before a crowd of everyday folks (aka union drones) or cementing his credentials as Commander-in-Chief before a bunch of military personnel who have been offered the choice of sitting for an hour of presidential drivel or sitting in the brig.

But where Mr. O truly shines is when he meets with celebrities – especially wealthy ones who can rake in the big bucks to help finance his campaign. Schmoozing with George Clooney at a fund raiser where other pop culture icons pay $35,000 a head for a chance to rub a presidential elbow, or being advised on matters of foreign policy from experts such as Barbra Streisand or Sean Penn. It was enough that Bill Clinton was so stagestruck that he hobnobbed with Hollywood luminaries as compensation for his feelings of inadequacy, but Obama goes that one step further. The adulation he experiences from the uber-wealthy liberals of the media and the entertainment industry fortifies his narcissism and his messiah complex. “OMG, I was at a reception with the President. He smiled at me! I’m so thrilled I got a tingle up my leg. I am so blessed. Next time I will position myself better for a chance to touch his robe.”

As they say on the internet, “GMAFB”.

Now, I have to admit that, like all politicians, the President has to campaign. It comes with the territory. But when he chooses job perpetuation over the needs of the country, especially with a failing economy (did I mention his increasing the debt by 50%?) and turmoil in the Middle East (did I mention his encouraging the Muslim Brotherhood as it replaces one government after another?), then something is rotten in the State of Denmark. (Note to liberals: I know, Denmark is in Northern Europe. It was a reference to corruption at the highest level. You see, there was this guy named William Shakespeare and he wrote a play about a Danish prince, but if you went to public schools and were taught by products of teachers colleges, you probably didn’t understand the allusion.).

With Iran, headed by a delusional psychotic, about to go nuclear and vowing to eradicate our only real friend in the Middle East, where is Barry? Why, of course he’s conferring with Benjamin Netanyahu over a common interest in restraining the Twerp of Tehran. Oh, wait, he changed his itinerary. He’s conferring with David Letterman in order to maintain his star status.
“What was the debt when you took office?”
“I dunno. That’s above my pay grade, Dave.”
(Now I have to admit that the above quote is based on hearsay. I don’t watch Letterman because, frankly, I find the sinking of the Titanic to be funnier.)

Then, it’s off to confer with other world leaders about the potential for a global economic collapse.  Uh – again, my bad – that’s been changed. He’s on “The View” as “eye candy”, basking in the worship of such mental giants as Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg. (I have to be thankful that the show also includes Elisabeth Hasselbeck. If it weren’t for her presence, the total IQ of the ensemble would never rise above the double-digit range.)

Now, mind you, these schlock appearances on talk shows come on the heels of the murder of our ambassador to Libya in what the administration pirouetted away from admitting was a terrorist attack by al Qaeda and could have been prevented if our President had attended his security briefings instead of:

A) Campaigning
B) Playing golf
C) Hobnobbing with the common man who happens to be a left-wing billionaire
D) Suing Arizona for enforcing the laws he refuses to
E) Doing a lousy impersonation of Smokey Robinson
F) All of the above

And so it goes. Barack Hussein Obama, unable to govern as a President should, has found his place in the sun. On the small screen. I guess we can be thankful, at least, that he’s not officiating at NFL games.

One man’s nighttime lesson in political correctness.

by Michael Baram | September 5, 2012 | Satire

It was one of those nights when, having eaten things I know I should not have, I was having difficulty getting any sleep. It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that I was finally able to drift off into a semblance of slumber, and that’s when things began to get interesting.

As darkness closed in on me and my breathing slowed, I heard a faint “Psst!” from the corner of my bedroom. I opened one eye and discerned an apparition standing next to the dresser.

“Who the hell are you?” I mumbled groggily.

A raspy voice replied, “I am the Spirit of Political Correctness.”

“Yeah, right,” I retorted, and turned on my side in a vain attempt to regain unconsciousness.

“No, really,” the vision continued. “I am the Spirit of Political Correctness, and I have come to teach you a thing or three regarding your racist attitudes and prejudices.”

“Yeah, right,” I repeated. “Listen, Spir, can we do this some other time when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep?”

“Call me ‘Chris’,” the wraith replied. It was then that I noticed his rumpled sport jacket, white and blue checked shirt, and pink and orange diagonally striped tie.

“Chris?” I groaned? “I should have known from the raspy voice. OK, what do I have to do to get rid of you besides blowing up MSNBC?”

“Once I have exorcised your racism, you can get on with your unprogressive, troglodyte, fly-over country existence, so let’s get started.”

I knew he wouldn’t disappear just by my wishing it. “OK, I said. Shoot.”

“That’s racist!” the obnoxious intruder spurted.

“What? ‘Shoot’ is racist? Get real, Dude!”

“Do you know how many African-Americans are murdered by firearms every day? ‘Shoot’ is racist code for ‘Black’.”

“Chris, you have to be kidding. I can’t say ‘shoot’?”

“Not  any more,” he cried. I could see spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. I really wanted to get to sleep but by now I could see I was a prisoner of this putz.

“Now,” he continued, “about your attacks on the Messiah, President Obama.”

“Oh,” I blurted. “You mean President Barack Hussein Obama.”

“Don’t say ‘Hussein’. It’s racist.”

“But that’s his middle name!” I began screaming out of frustration.

“You can only say that if you’re a minority. Otherwise it’s racist.”

I could see where this discussion was going. I was gonna lose no matter what. The cards were stacked against me from the getgo. “OK, I promise, on my honor, never to say ‘Hussein’. Satisfied? Can I go to sleep now?” I pleaded.

“Hell no!” he blasted, the spittle now flowing freely. “Now, let’s deal with your calling our dear leader ‘incompetent’.

“’Incompetent isn’t a racist term,” I wailed.

“Do you call Romney ‘incompetent’” Chris queried.

“Of course not. Romney is not incompetent.”

“That proves that ’incompetent’ is a racist code word for ‘Black’. Everyone knows that,” Chris charged.

“You’re an idiot,” I screamed.

“This isn’t about me!” he screamed back, droolingly. “Now, let’s address your use of the term ‘Chicago politics’.”

“Now you’re going to tell me ‘Chicago politics’ is racist? Give me a break.”

“Who lives in Chicago?” he demanded.

“A lot of Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans…”

“See!” he exulted. “Racism! Racism! I knew it. You’re a racist!”

“For crying out loud!” I bawled. Why don’t you throw in Newark to make the travesty complete?”

“Now that you mention it,” he chortled.

“Is Miami off limits too?” I asked.

“Miami is full of Cubans. They’re Republicans and Conservatives. That city doesn’t matter,” Chris explained.

And so it went, word after word, expression after expression, all expunged from the English language while I fought to come up with euphemisms to avoid being rendered totally speechless, but with little success. Finally, my visitor pulled a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Here, take this,” he commanded.

“What is this,” I asked.

“It’s a list of acceptable words to use when talking about our President,” he explained.

I perused the list. There were only a couple of dozen words I was permitted to use; words such as ‘perfect’, ‘wonderful’, ‘godlike’, ‘compassionate’, and ‘fabulous’. “Fabulous?” I blurted, dismayed.

“A contribution from the gay community. As long as it’s an accurate description, we’re using it.”

Desperate to score at least one point in this duel, I feebly offered, “You know, I shouldn’t be lectured to by a guy who wears a checked shirt with a diagonally striped tie. It’s very poor taste in clothing.”

“Don’t say ‘poor’. It’s…..”

“I know, it’s racist.”

“Precisely.”

“What am I to do?” I wondered aloud. “How can I possibly express myself when nearly every word is taboo?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Chris replied, his voice reeking of the triumph only bullying can produce. “It’s my solemn duty to set a standard of civility for political discourse, even if it means pounding you into the ground, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

Seeing an opening, I lunged. “I’ve seen you in action. ‘Civility’ is not the word that comes to mind.”

He parried deftly. “This isn’t about me!” Then he riposted with, “it’s about making you toe the ideological line.”

I needed sleep. I was out of arguments against this professionally prepared Torquemada.

“OK, I’ll only praise Barack Hus….er….Barack Obama from now on. Now, can I please go to sleep, Chris?”

“I guess so,” he answered. “I’m done with you. But WE are not finished. You can expect a visitation from someone soon. Someone who will teach you what civil and rational political discourse is all about, and believe me, he’s much worse than I am.”

“Who could possibly be worse than you?” I asked, instantly regretting that question.

My visitor grinned, smiled, chuckled, guffawed, and shouted “Bill Maher”. And with that, he was gone.

by Michael Baram | August 13, 2012 | Opinion

“We seem to seek negative victory rather than affirmative victory. I will take off my coat and fight to the end against any candidate who persists in this demagogic appeal to the masses of the working people of this country to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor.” – Al Smith, 1932

Poor Al. He was an optimist. The son of an Irish mother and a father of Italian-German descent, who grew up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Smith lived the immigrant experience. He believed in the “melting pot” – the idea that no matter where you came from, your children would be first and foremost Americans. Committed to a society with totally unlimited and equal opportunity, he challenged Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1932.

Unfortunately for Smith (and, as it turned out, for the entire nation) the party chose Roosevelt. In fact, Roosevelt enjoyed the support of William Randolph Hearst who, though originally an ally of Smith, actively worked against him. (Does “big media” ring a bell?)

Smith, the working-class idealist, for whom the Democratic Party represented (outwardly) equality among classes and races, lost out to Roosevelt, the Machiavellian patrician cynic who saw pitting class against class and race against race as legitimate tools in his quest to transform America and increase presidential power.

Does that sound familiar?

And Roosevelt was successful beyond expectations. As the Depression continued, those who had been on the lower end of the economic ladder suffered the most, especially poor southern blacks who abandoned their traditional support for the Republican Party. Although the facts were conveniently ignored by the Democrat party outside of the South, the Democrats were the slave owners, the formulators of Jim Crow legislation, and the founders of the KKK. Nevertheless, black Americans switched their loyalty for the promise of a bigger slice of the pie. It did not matter that the first minimum wage law was passed at the urging of northern unions, predominantly white, who objected to employers’ hiring of low wage black workers and bringing them up from the South.

Yes, boys and girls, the minimum wage is racist in origin.

Included in Roosevelt’s hodge-podge of programs – which, although intended to solve America’s economic woes, actually delayed recovery – was the overbearing National Industrial Recovery Act, which, within its myriad provisions, even controlled which chicken a customer could choose from a coop.

Can you imagine such idiocy applied to a health care system by the government? Oh…wait a minute. OK, let’s label that question “rhetorical”.

The NIRA pitted the government against business, was poorly constructed, and doomed to failure. But for a brief period the government could crow about “defending the little guy” against the rapacious, evil bosses and capitalists.

Does that sound familiar? Does Occupy Wall Street, a movement which enjoys the support of the current administration, have any original thoughts? OK, let’s label that question “rhetorical” too.

Eighty years ago Americans voted in a government which promised to change things around. They got what they voted for – eight more years of Depression, poverty, fear and uncertainty under the benevolent guiding hand of a group of intellectuals and elitists, most of whom had never run any kind of business. Even Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, was forced to admit, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work … After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot!” At least Morgenthau paid his taxes.

Fast forward to 2012. We’re in another recession. (I guess we can be thankful it’s not a Depression, but if you don’t have any income, who gives a damn about semantics?) Billions upon billions of your dollars are being thrown at failed attempts to solve the problem, millions upon millions of your dollars are thrown to Obama’s cronies and supporters (think “Solyndra”….no, think BIG….think “Chrysler”).  A sycophantic media covers or ignores the President’s failures (not to mention a murky past) and, like Hearst, is actively working on his behalf in his bid for re-election. We’re witnessing racial strife on a scale we haven’t seen since the sixties, open class warfare (what else can you call it when a working stiff like Roseanne Barr – net worth $85 million – can get away with demanding the decapitation of anyone worth $100 million?), and, while a militant Iran prepares to arm itself with nuclear weapons our government sits by and does nothing, just as we ignored German re-armament in the thirties.

Oh, well. At least the religious issue hasn’t reared its ugly head, except for mentions of Mitt Romney belonging to a “cult”. Oh, wait another minute… Al Smith was attacked by the establishment for being Catholic. Ironically, while New York Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan is suing the Obama administration for its position on forcing employers to pay for abortion and birth control services, he’s invited President Barack Obama to dinner anyway. At the annual Al Smith Dinner.

-*-*-

by Michael Baram | July 1, 2012 | Opinion-editorial

“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

(Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 10, paragraph 3)

Oh, to have the luxury of living in New York where your most pressing problem is a mayor who won’t let you buy a Big Gulp. Or Seattle where the price of Starbucks is almost unbearable (assuming you’re still employed and able to afford to pay $4 for a ten-cent cup of hot flavored water).

But many of us live in hotter and dryer climes where the neighbors tend to stream over the border without asking permission or, when the mood strikes them, send bullets as surrogates, a situation which tends to raise one’s blood pressure beyond the suggested 120/80 level.

When rancher Bob Krentz was murdered two years ago, the story was largely ignored by the mainstream media (or buried opposite the ads for big savings on sofas). If it hadn’t been for the predominately conservative on-line media, Mr. Krentz’s murder….no, let’s call it what it really was, an assassination…. would have been a sad, minor footnote in a long story of border violations and violence directed at the people of Arizona. But the public outcry in our patch of sand resulted in the passage of SB1070, aimed at enabling law enforcement officials to remove more criminals from our streets.

The resultant hue and cry from the liberals turned a legitimate attempt at self-protection into a national (and international) cause célèbre, drawing an endless stream of invective from the left as well as legal actions by the Justice Department directed at Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Of course, the responsibility of a state, its governor and its law enforcement agencies to keep the residents safe and secure was conveniently ignored by “immigrant rights” groups and by the current Democrat administration, which depends on pandering to left-wing groups to assure its grip on power.

John Jay, writing in The Federalist, No. 3, stated,

“Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their safety seems to be the first.”

Given the blatant refusal of the federal government to fulfill its obligations under the Constitution, it’s no wonder that Arizona (and the other border states) are left with no option but to assume those responsibilities on their own, even though the Supreme Court’s latest decision regarding SB1070 struck down most of the law’s provisions (and our beloved leaders in Washington have since declared that they will not cooperate with Arizona authorities in enforcing the parts that survived SCOTUS’s selective surgery).

In his latest column, former Ambassador Alan Keyes wrote,

“When any branch or combination of branches of the United States government embarks on such a path of constitutional dereliction, it ceases to be a matter of federalism, concurrent jurisdiction or legal mumbo-jumbo of any sort. It is an assault against the states respectively and the people, one that aids and abets the destruction of their sovereignty, their safety and their liberty.”  

On the evening of June 24, 2012, various pro-illegal immigration and socialist groups staged a demonstration outside of Sheriff Arpaio’s Tent City in Phoenix, demanding a closure of the jail and an end to “discrimination” against minorities. (They might have included blaming the sheriff for Krakatoa, but it was dark some things might have escaped my attention.) In a glaring example of the lengths to which the opponents of law and order will go in their desperation to push their agenda, they imported hundreds of attendees from the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations general assembly which was taking place that weekend. The Unitarians were basically hijacked. Many of them did not know why they were there; they simply followed the instructions of their leadership.

So, we have a situation where a federal government, in collusion with an invading army which has no qualms about using the innocent and clueless as cannon fodder, is committed to sacrificing the border states’ sovereignty. One can only shake one’s head and wonder why. The fact that Arizona went for McCain in 2008, of course, has nothing to do with it. The fact that Texas went for McCain in 2008…ditto. Now, about that bridge I’m selling.

“The decline of Roman imperial power was a gradual and complex process marked by weakling emperors, corrupt bureaucrats, and the gradual admission of German soldiers into the legions.”

Is Washington setting us up for a repeat of the final days of the Roman empire?

How much more of this corruption on the part of our “leaders” can we endure?

by Michael Baram | June 12, 2012 | Opinion

The Democrats are about to nominate a known Black Panther and anti-Semite for a Congressional seat. This should be a wake-up call to 4.5 million Jewish voters.

I come from a long line of liberal Democrats.

Let me repeat that. I come from a long line of liberal Democrats. My parents were Democrats. Their parents were Democrats. (OK, I have to cut them some slack. The grandparents immigrated from Russia, endured the Depression, and their sons went off to fight in World War II, so their social views can be understood, if not agreed with.) My siblings are all liberal Democrats, my….oh, Hell….outside of me, the whole damn family thinks Obama is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I, on the other hand (according to the last political orientation test I took) am a libertarian with a leaning toward conservatism. (I knew that before I took the test, but I wanted verification.) My family thinks I’m nuts (and that I beat up on old ladies, shoot up the town with my guns and run minorities down with my motorcycle as a result of my “warped political views”).

However, since I crossed the bridge to the illuminated side of the political gorge many years ago, I have spent a lot of time researching the true nature of the Democratic party and its sad history of silence and tacit consent to disruptions of the public order (e.g. the “Occupy” movement, union violence, and its increasing support of the encroachment of Sharia into our legal system out of fear of “offending” someone). And I thought the Democratic party couldn’t sink any lower than it already has, until THIS jumped out at me like a demonic Jack-in-the-box.

The online Weekly Standard of June 11, 2012 reported that the Democrats of New York are supporting the nomination of former Black Panther and current Israel basher, New York City councilman Charles Barron, for the Congressional seat held by retiring Representative Edolphus Towns. Barron is on record making anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements, including likening the Israeli blockade of Gaza (which has pretty well put an end to arms smuggling yet allows humanitarian aid to flow freely) to “a concentration death camp”.

One can only hope that the voters of New York’s 10th Congressional District, which has a large Jewish population, would have the sense to reject such a blatant racist in the coming primary on June 26. But the very presence of someone like Councilman Barron on the ticket is a symptom of a deep-rooted carcinoma eating away at the Democratic party. Don’t get me wrong; if the Democrats come out of the November election like the Roman legions at Cannae I won’t shed a tear. But the party which prides itself on “caring for minorities” and boasts of its “anti-racist” agenda (ignoring the entire sad history of their own support of slavery, their opposition to civil rights, and their creation of the KKK) needs to take a serious look inward. There has to be something warped in the Democratic psyche if they count among their representatives such illuminaries as Barron, Cynthia McKinney and Sheila Jackson Lee.

It would be bad enough if this phenomenon were something new and surprising within the Democratic organization, but apparently the party’s drift to the extreme bigoted left has been a work in progress for some time.  In an opinion piece appearing in the August 09, 2004 issue of the Seattle Times, Edward Alexander wrote,

“Outside of the Islamic world, the anti-Semitic upsurge of recent years is mainly a left-wing phenomenon. It is therefore not surprising that it should have brought the Democratic Party, more swiftly than the Republicans, to that dark and bloody crossroads where politics and conscience collide.”

Where was the Democratic leadership when OWS protestors engaged in anti-Semitic rants in full view of video cameras? I’m trying to think of when I saw Debbie Wasserman Shultz on television condemning this behavior. I’m not having much success. (Please, don’t even mention Rep. Henry Waxman….the gnome looks like Heinrich Himmler, but that’s not his fault.)

The estimated Jewish population of the United States is about 6.5 million. Take away about half a million who are too young to vote (rough guesstimate, you understand). Since about 75% of the adult Jewish population votes Democratic, I would say that 4.5 million people had better ask some serious questions about which party bandwagon they want to board this time around.

by Michael Baram | May 21, 2012 | Opinion

No, there will be no dramatic death of Siegfried, no self-immolation of Brunhilde, no bearing of dead warriors to Valhalla (which is a different opera in any case), and no cataclysmic destruction of the Hall of The Gods, but there are indications that the Obama administration is beginning to show signs of an erosion of its traditional support structure.

While the last three and a half years have been marked by unwavering adulation of the President and blind acceptance of even the most egregious violations of the Constitution by this administration among  the traditional liberal bastions of near-mindless adherence and loyalty to the “Progressive” agenda, voices of disillusion, despair, and desperation are being raised.

Although the mainstream  media persist in either ignoring or denigrating any criticism of Obama (witness the vicious attacks on Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his exposure of the “birth certificate” as a possible forgery), individuals who previously praised every breath the President took are now questioning his (and the government’s) performance and policies.

Last month, actor/comedian Jon Lovitz (a registered Democrat and, until now, an Obama supporter) referred to the President as an  (expletive deleted) when Obama called for higher taxes on the rich (Lovitz says he’s already giving half his income to the government), and, this past week, criticized Obama as hypocritical for attending a $15 million fund-raiser at George Clooney’s home.

In a NY Times op-ed, former CNN anchor, Campbell Brown,  took issue with the President’s remarks about women, accusing him of “employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending”, adding that “most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state”

Since both Lovitz and Brown are Caucasian, I assume that the usual charge of “racism” will be invoked, as it all-too-often is, to the point where “racism” has lost all meaning and validity. But, when members of the President’s race add their voices to the dissent, one has to sit up and take notice.  Last week, Newark Mayor Corey Booker, an Obama ally, took issue with the President’s attack on Republican candidate Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, noting that many of his constituents are invested in financial firms. It seems that His Honor has a better understanding of economics than POTUS does.

Professor Cornel West of Princeton University, who has been described as a “prominent and provocative democratic intellectual”, pulled no punches when remarking on Obama’s ego and misaligned order of priorities, stating that Obama was “obsessed with being on Mount Rushmore”. And rapper Jay-Z joined the chorus of critics, saying that the economy (and unemployment) had to be dealt with.

Financial Times correspondent and bureau chief Edward Luce wrote, in a column entitled “Facebook President in Need of New Friends”: “Having marketed himself as the man who would transcend Washington’s cynical ways, Mr Obama’s brand was quickly tarnished. It was one thing to promise and fail to close Guantánamo Bay. It was quite another to produce a new rationale for indefinite detention without trial. Or his promise to clean out the lobbyists, who have never had it so good. Or the fact that Mr Obama has now prosecuted more people for leaking under the Espionage Act than all former administrations combined. And so on.”

Is it too early to say that the downfall of the Obama administration is at hand? Perhaps. But it’s obvious that the luster has worn off and the foundation is showing signs of weakening. Don’t expect a major upheaval (unless Congress or the courts take action for any of a myriad of legitimate reasons), but every former supporter who adds his or her voice to the rumblings of disaffection represents a chip in the structure. It’s not so much a matter of how many people vote against Barack Obama in November as it is of how many people don’t vote for him.

-*-*-

By Michael Baram | May 15, 2012 | Opinion Editorial

“My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.” – Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery

I don’t spend as much time listening to talk radio as I used to, so I missed Sean Hannity’s recent show which featured former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. From the following, it was one interesting program.

Mukasey revealed that, when Osama bin Laden was killed, the Obama administration had drafted a “highly lawyered” memo to use in case the raid had failed. This memo would have shifted the blame for failure from President Obama to Admiral William McRaven,commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.

Fortunately, the raid succeeded, Admiral McCraven’s career was safe, and we were spared a political rerun of “Paths of Glory”, that great Kubrick work in which, to cover up failure at the higher levels, underlings are thrown under a bus. (Only, in WWI, they didn’t have a bus handy so they had the underlings shot. Believe me, it got the message across.) Instead of the usual administration butt-covering, we were treated to President Obama being able to strut and crow, taking credit for the planning and actions of others.

Which brings us to the subject of leadership.

I know, I know, “leadership” in the traditional sense is not part of this president’s vocabulary; he tends to confuse it with “do as I say, not as I do”, and I don’t see much hope of this changing in the foreseeable future. (Hey, did I just sneak in a joke there?)

Attorney-General Mukasey, in his discussion with Hannity, referenced Dwight David Eisenhower, who was Supreme Allied Commander for the Normandy Invasion. Eisenhower, who had never led troops in battle (as opposed to proven combat leaders such as the above-mentioned Montgomery), was nevertheless promoted to five-star rank and given overall command of “Operation Overlord”, the invasion of Nazi-held Europe.

Gen. Eisenhower speaks with soldiers of the 101st Airborne on the eve of D-Day. Image from Harpers.org

“Ike”, as he was known, was faced with a daunting task; not only did he have to coordinate the buildup of thousands of troops and materiel, he had to negotiate the treacherous shoals of politicians, prima-donna generals (Montgomery, Patton, and deGaulle, to name a few), and an overly-curious press while maintaining secrecy and dealing with a spate of training disasters. A heavy smoker (until 1949), Ike was smoking six packs of non-filtered cigarettes and drinking 24 cups of coffee a day while averaging just two hours of uninterrupted sleep a night. Then, he still had to worry about the Third Reich waiting on the other side of the English Channel.

As history shows, he pulled it off. Through personality and sheer determination, General Eisenhower assembled and launched the greatest seaborne invasion in history.

However, there was always the chance of failure. And here we see the nature of Dwight Eisenhower, the leader. In case everything had gone to Hell in a hand basket (and it nearly happened at Omaha beach where everything that could possibly go wrong did) Ike had prepared a hand-written message to be read to the public. It stated:

“Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

No shifting the blame, no seeking scapegoats, no sacrificing subordinates to preserve his reputation. Ike knew the price of leadership. It’s called “taking responsibility”. And yet, while being willing to accept responsibility for disaster if the need arose, he also took time to give due credit to the men under him, the grunts and sailors whose lives would be on the line. Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower was a true leader.

We cannot say the same for Barack Hussein Obama.

One final anecdote which aptly illustrates Ike’s reputation: On the evening before that historic invasion he visited a paratroop unit in southern England, one of the units who would be the first into combat. After bantering with the troops, Ike turned to leave. As he did so, one of the soldiers shouted out, “Don’t worry, General. We’ll get the job done for you.” It says a lot about a leader when his men are willing to go through Hell for him.

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by Michael Baram | May 6, 2012 | Opinion

“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.” – George Orwell, “1984”

I’m sure that we were attacked on September 11, 2001 by radical Islamists. At least that’s what I remember. Muslim extremists, using their religion as a justification to commit mass murder, did just that. And nearly 3,000 innocent men, women, and children died as a result. We know that, as the aircraft plunged into buildings and an empty field in Pennsylvania, the hijackers screamed “Allahu akbar”, praising a god who demands blood sacrifice in his name. I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of those who were witness to that horrendous event share that memory.

But, how long will that memory last? Will the next generation even be aware of the role that belief in a bloodthirsty faith played in the 9-11 tragedy or in other such incidents in the ongoing war against western civilization? (Yes, I did say “war against western civilization”.)

Last year, ACT! for America Education, a non-profit organization, studied 38 textbooks for grades 6-12 by such notable publishers as Harcourt Brace and Glencoe/McGraw Hill and found that the religious identity of the attackers was often not mentioned, nor was “jihad” in many cases. The report, entitled Education or Indoctrination: The Treatment of Islam in 6th through 12th Grade American Textbooks, “reveals a pattern of historical revisionism, omissions, and bias in the presentation of all aspects devoted to Islam in these textbooks”.

In other words, a whitewash of history.

If, perhaps, such omissions appeared in one or two textbooks, we could ascribe it to carelessness on the part of the editors or just plain incompetence. But when the pattern is repeated in 38 publications by respectable publishing houses it becomes cause for serious concern. There appears to be a deliberate and coordinated effort on the part of these publishers to avoid or hide the truth. Whether it stems from fear of repercussions via fatwah (Theo van Gogh was not murdered by a Buddhist), or a deep-rooted antipathy toward the United States, the West, and the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian influences which are the foundations of our civilization, the refusal to acknowledge the true nature of such a serious threat to our culture and future is reprehensible. As they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s not a goldfish.

Now, one might ask the obvious question: “Why aren’t the schools doing something about this?” After all, isn’t it the duty of our educators to ensure that our children learn the truth about the nature of those who are trying to destroy us?

And the answer is that our education system, staffed and controlled as it is by the ideological descendants of the 1960’s radical movement, views the jihadists as a modern-day Viet Cong, carrying on the struggle against colonialism and imperialism, with historical revisionism being an integral part of that struggle. The truth must be hidden, buried, or, at least, altered beyond recognition so that young and impressionable minds can be molded and prepared to accept Dhimmitude or conversion to Islam as the norm.

However, those who are complicit in this program have already forgotten a basic rule of violent social revolutions – namely that the hordes tend to turn on their leaders and most vociferous supporters, often with unpleasant results (as Maximilien Robespierre discovered). Those who willfully ignore the threat of jihad will quickly find out that the freedoms which allow them to undermine our efforts in defense of western values are incompatible with radical Islam. You can’t publish textbooks from a jail cell.

By Michael Baram | April 1, 2012 | Opinion-editorial

It’s Spring. March Madness is in full swing, baseball season is upon us, and other myriad and sundry sporting events exist to attract our spectator attention. But my absolute favorite spectator sport is professional football. I long for those four pre-season games, followed by the regular season, all leading up to the Super Bowl, and I fervently hope and pray that my team will make it all the way. (Without naming names, we came oh-so-close in January.) And, among the umpteen tactics which make the game so exciting is “the bomb”, that long – often unbelievably long – pass from the quarterback, beset on all sides by defenders, downfield to the receiver. It’s an exercise involving timing, coordination and physics. And, if everything works perfectly, it’s truly a magnificent sight, one that gets the fans on their feet and cheering wildly. But, in order for the play to succeed, the receiver has to be in the right spot at the right time. Obviously, if there’s nobody at the other end, the bomb won’t work.

Which brings us to the imminent Israel/Iran confrontation.

The all-too-real threat of Iran developing an atomic weapon has the world increasingly speculating, “Will Israel strike or not?” Unlike in previous situations where Israel had to deal with hostile states embarking on a nuclear weapons program and the targets, in Iraq and Syria, were well within the strike capability of the IAF, Iran’s distance from Israel creates a totally different situation. Any airborne strike would have to contend with the challenges of refueling and navigating over unfriendly territory, although the consensus is that traditionally hostile Arab states have more to gain from the removal of the Iranian nuclear threat than they have to lose by co-operating with the “Zionist entity”. (The operative word in Middle Eastern politics is “Machiavellian”.) However, the 2500 mile round trip from Israel to any Iranian target would increase the risk of failure and a resultant diplomatic disaster.

But there is an interesting development on the horizon. Correspondent Mark Perry, writing in the March 28^th issue of Foreign Policy, reports on the growing military ties between Israel and Azerbaijan. These ties include helping Azerbaijan modernize its defense capabilities and, by extension, the possible use of Azerbaijani airfields.

Perry writes, “Access to such airfields is important for Israel, because it would mean that Israeli F-15I and F-16I fighter-bombers would not have to refuel midflight during a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but could simply continue north and land in Azerbaijan.”

Not only does this give the Israelis a friendly state on Iran’s northwestern border, but Azerbaijan is also contiguous to Georgia. While Iran can count on the Russians to lend moral and diplomatic support in the event of Israeli military action, Georgia’s relations with Russia can hardly be described as harmonious, and, despite the somewhat rocky nature of Georgian-Israeli relations, Georgia would relish an opportunity to tweak the Russian bear’s nose.

Additionally, on the western shore of the Black Sea sits Romania, a state which has enjoyed diplomatic, cultural, and commercial ties with Israel since the founding of the Jewish State. For Israel, the geopolitical situation in that part of the world lends itself to what would be a shrug of international shoulders, should an attack on the Iranian facilities become a necessity. Though the usual suspects will jump and scream for a while, eventually, matters will likely calm to a state of business as usual.  There is a saying in international politics that nations have no friends, only interests. And for now, Iran’s brinkmanship threatens the interests of many states in the region.

It is, as they say, a whole new ball game.

When Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders took off from the deck of the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, to attack Tokyo, it was a one-way trip, made possible only because their planes would be continuing on to airfields in China. Now, based on the Foreign Policy report, it appears that Israel has found a solution to “what do we do if….?”

Von Clausewitz once warned that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. True enough, but if Israel is to launch an attack on Iran, the odds in favor of an Israeli success have definitely improved. It’s the fourth quarter, the score is tied, and the clock is ticking down. Israel has the ball, the receiver is downfield, and the bomb is ready to be thrown.

Related:

AUDIO - Ex-Marine F4 Phantom Radar Intercept Officer explains to Mark Levin why Azerbaijan crucial to Israel’s strike on Iran

by Michael Baram | March 19, 2012 | Opinion-editorial

In truth, the present day Israeli Arab is both economically and socially better off within Israel’s borders than if he had joined the 1948 exodus.

Miri Shimonovitch / courtesy of Keshet Television

History is immutable, it is set in stone. Historians may very well argue the how and why, but the facts of what took place in the past remain. However, when the historical matter is a change in  geographical and political status of an ethnic group, a mythology often arises to mitigate or deny facts, effectively allowing responsible parties to avoid responsibility.

The most glaring and persistent example of such denial is the ongoing “Palestinian refugee crisis.” After three decades of British rule in Palestine, the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, resulted in the new nation being attacked the following day by the forces of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, along with two civilian militias; The Holy War Army and the Arab Liberation Army.

As we are all aware (aka “historical fact”), Israel (with a total Jewish population of 800,000) won this war and settled into a period of uneasy peace behind cease-fire lines which remained de-facto borders until 1967.  The war also left Israel with two refugee problems; one of them temporary and another which persists to this day.

There seems no plight on the planet that is more publicized than that of the Palestinian refugees. The world’s media, formerly pro-Israel until the country lost its “underdog” status by daring to win the Six-Day War, continuously bombards us with rehashed Palestinian propaganda. Time and again, once these anti-Israeli claims are proven false, the media suddenly loses their collective voice. There is never an “oops”, never a “sorry”. Rather, the media simply moves on, searching for the next way to embarrass Israel.

Conversely, the Palestinians, though fully committed to destroying the Jewish state by whatever means available – be it homicide bombings, slaughtering families in border settlements, or lobbing thousands of Iranian-supplied rockets against Israeli towns from Gaza – have managed to portray themselves as international “heroes”. Committing crimes which the world’s civilized societies typically condemn, oddly, when it comes to the Palestinians, the West accepts their deadly measures as legitimate.

To justify these horrendous crimes, the Palestinians have transformed victimhood into an art form. First, blaming the “the Zionists” for “expelling” 700,000 of them from their homes in 1948 and next, by demanding that they be allowed to return and reclaim their land.

While it is true that some elements of the then fledgling Israeli Army evicted Arab residents from sensitive border areas, actually, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians left their homes voluntarily in response to repeated Arab radio broadcasts urging them to make way for the “victorious” Arab armies,

The British police commissioner in Haifa reported on April 26, 1948 that “every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives…”

On October 2, 1948, The Economist reported,

“…Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. . . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.” 

Khalid al-Azm, Syrian Prime Minister in 1948–49, wrote in his memoirs, “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave.”

Even Mahmud Abbas, was quoted in the March 1976 issue of Falastin a-Thaura (at that time, the official journal of the PLO in Beirut), “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”

So, in response to urging by their own leaders, over half a million Arabs dutifully left their homes, only to be imprisoned by their own people in squalid refugee camps where, to this day, they remain dependent on handouts from the UN. Meanwhile, they continue to blame “the Zionists” for their own self-induced misery.

As for the world’s media, whether as a result of common ideology or common cowardice, they dare not raise the following question: Why, with all of their trillions of petro-dollars, have the Arab states done nothing to improve the economic conditions of their brethren, the Palestinians, instead of pushing them toward violence and self-destruction?

On the other side of the entire displacement equation, 800,000 Jews living in Arab lands were forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948 and their property confiscated. Two thirds of them migrated to Israel, which, in spite of cultural barriers and limited resources, managed to integrate into society as productive citizens with full representation in business, industry, politics, education, and the military. The remainder migrated to various Western nations, where they too successfully established themselves into those larger societal structures.

Today, the world prefers to ignore these facts, precisely because these descendents of the 1948 Jewish refugee population do not clamor for “justice” as vociferously as their Arab counterparts. Indeed, the squeaky wheel wins out again.

Lest we forget, what of those Palestinian Arabs who did choose to remain and cast their lot with the Jewish state? As it turns out, they are farmers and business owners, students and educators, soldiers and politicians, diplomats and judges (an Israeli Arab judge, George Karra, sentenced the former president of Israel, Moshe Katzav, to seven years imprisonment for rape).

In truth, the present day Israeli Arab is both economically and socially better off within Israel’s borders than if he had joined the 1948 exodus. Not only that, frankly, they are better off than the majority of Arabs living throughout the Arab world.

Think of that the next time the calumny of “apartheid state” from Palestinian apologists and Big Media rears its ugly head.

By Michael Baram | March 13, 2012 | Opinion Editorial

On March 1, 2012, a news conference was held in Phoenix which should have caused reverberations throughout the United States. Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s special posse, assigned the task of investigating the validity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, presented very strong evidence that the document was probably a forgery. Such a revelation should have made headlines all across the country. After all, a sitting president’s claim to his office might be invalid.

In any other country, we may well expect such news to be cause for a revolt. Ah, but this is America. Particularly, a virtually unrecognizable post-modern version of America.

What was the reaction of our post-modern media, the organizations which are supposed to be the watchdogs of society? Instead of the body – which Thomas Carlyle referred to as the “fourth estate”(more important than the nobility, the church, and the commons) – rising to the occasion and demanding that Congress conduct an investigation, they either ignored the matter or launched ad hominem attacks against Sheriff Arpaio (a response which the media has developed into an art form over the years).

The Chicago-Sun Times printed an AP article which used the occasion to accuse Sheriff Arpaio of “seeking to grab the spotlight in the same unorthodox fashion that has helped boost his career as a nationally known lawman.” They labeled the entire controversy as “widely debunked but which remains alive in the eyes of some conservatives.” To heck with President Obama. For good measure, the Sun Times sought to divert attention by pointing to other controversies associated with Arpaio.

MSNBC was also compelled to use references to those controversies, emphasizing that Arpaio’s office “is facing a federal inquiry involving alleged racial profiling.” True enough, but Washington has been unsuccessfully dogging the Sheriff of Maricopa County for decades now, and the matter has nothing whatsoever to do with the facts revealed in the press conference.

Quite notably, however, one well known news organ did treat the press conference with appropriate seriousness, stating, “…in the five days since his revelations there has been little in the way of serious reporting on the findings he presented in his presser. With six short videos, the Sheriff and his team presented a devastating case, one the tame US press is apparently unable to report.”

In a reference to Obama waving his so-called birth certificate at his April 27, 2011 press conference, crowing, “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” this publication aptly noted, “Quite the barb from a man holding a forged document.”

The name of the organization which uniquely appears to be standing up for Americans’ right to know the truth about our leaders?  If you’re wearing a hat, hold on to it. Pravda!

That’s right! The same Pravda which pushed the Soviet line during the decades long Cold War now comes to the aid of an unappreciated and embattled American lawman.

It’s a sad state of affairs when our former enemy has to do the job our own media refuses to do.