Apr 02 2010

Service. Faith. Sacrifice.

Category: media,national security,society,terrorism,USAharmonicminer @ 5:39 pm

We do not deserve people like this, but we should all thank God that they exist, and are willing to serve.

In all humility, we should bow our heads and thank God for them.

I can’t help wondering why the major media cover so few of these kinds of stories, and why Hollywood makes so few movies about these kinds of heroes.

On second thought, I suppose I don’t have to wonder.


Oct 25 2009

Hello World Government? Goodbye freedom? UPDATE

Watch this, from Lord Christopher Monckton, chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute.

I haven’t heard much about this from other sources…. I’m trying to get more information about it.  But if this fellow isn’t exaggerating, this is looking really ugly.

More info here and here and some especially scary nonsense from Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister.


Nov 14 2008

A bit late for Veteran’s Day, but worth the wait

Category: humor,music,USAharmonicminer @ 5:26 pm

Since my fellow blogger is a trombonist, I really couldn’t resist.

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Nov 10 2008

No words needed

Category: military,USAharmonicminer @ 3:12 pm

Reveille

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Oct 31 2008

The End is Not Near: Or is it?

Category: politics,USAharmonicminer @ 12:20 pm

Here is an article on American foreign policy couched as a book review.

In From Colony to Superpower, George Herring, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Kentucky, provides a comprehensive, competent and rather conventional narrative history of US foreign policy from the origins of the “empire of liberty” in the 18th century to its “unipolar moment” following the fall of the Soviet Union and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001…………….

Despite some major failures, Herring argues, American foreign policy has been “spectacularly successful.” Behaving, for the most part, like a traditional great power, the US has balanced its zeal to carry out a providential mission to spread Christianity and democracy with the pragmatic pursuit of its national interests. Unilateralist, but almost never isolationist, America conquered a continent, dominated its hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean, prevailed in two world wars, won the Cold War and “extended its economic influence, military might, popular culture and ‘soft power’ through much of the world.”

Add this to the list of books (and articles) heralding the much hoped for and frequently sought end of American hegemony on the world stage, in which authors try to make the case that the USA is “losing its grip” and is no longer going to be the “hyperpower” that has dominated the world since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Continue reading “The End is Not Near: Or is it?”

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Oct 09 2008

The Chicago Democrats’ dirty little non-secret

Category: corruption,election 2008,Obama,politics,socialism,USAharmonicminer @ 9:13 am

Obama’s political and professional alliance with Bill Ayers, unrepentant terrorist, has not gotten nearly the coverage it deserves in the media.   In what little coverage there is, the story seems to stop at the discusssion of whether Obama knew Ayers well, whether, or when, Obama knew that Ayers was a terrorist, how close the alliance between them was, etc.  These are all important questions, and Obama has given different answers at different times, all evasive.

What’s missing in the discussion is the simple fact that Ayers’ past was well known to the entire Chicago Democrat political machine. Ayers had been given the Citizen of the Year Award by the city of Chicago (read, Mayor Daley) in 1997.  Everyone in the Chicago political machine (in which Obama was a card carrying member) knew all about Ayers.  If Obama didn’t (unbelievable, but just for the sake of argument), everyone around him DID know, and thought it not important enough to mention to Obama.  It reveals all we need to know about the nature of the Chicago political machine, and about what members of that machine thought would matter to Obama.  But, of course, he knew all about it.  It’s just funny that his campaign thinks that claiming he didn’t lets him off the hook.

This tells us a few things.

The CULTURE of Chicago Democrat machine politics is radical to its core.  Can you imagine, say, Tulsa, Oklahoma giving a Citizen of the Year Award to an unrepentant terrorist who said, “We didn’t do enough.”?  (After all, Ayers only tried to blow up government buildings in other cities…  it would be different if he’d tried to blow up something in Chicago.)  This tells us that Obama is a favorite son of, honestly, a pretty sick political machine.

Obama made his political bones IN that culture, by being a good member of it, agreeing with its principles and procedures, etc.  Obama had no problems with it, never fought it, was never a “maverick” or a “unifier” across party lines, etc.  He was always, first and foremost, a party man, in a city where that party was seriously bent and famously corrupt.

A President Obama is all too likely, especially with a Democrat Senate doing the approvals, to appoint radical, radical people in important jobs.  It would be bad enough for him to recycle political hacks from the Clinton or Carter administrations.  But there is every chance that he will appoint a Secretary of Defense whose main impulse is to build DOWN the military, saddle it with impossible rules of engagement, use it as a further testing ground for all kinds of social engineering, etc., with military effectiveness being the last consideration.  His Secretary of State will have the happy job of giving away the store.  His Secretary of the Treasury (not likely to be Warren Buffet, despite the last debate), will probably help guarantee there is little store to give away.  I don’t even want to think what his other appointments would be like, but former ACORN membership is probably the least of our problems.

And given his union commitments, and his obvious willingness to play political hardball, there is no chance that he and a Democrat Congress won’t enact a “fairness doctrine” that will attempt to cripple Right leaning talk radio, and an end to secret union balloting, that will allow unions to pressure individuals to vote the union’s way.

Make no mistake.  This isn’t just a little gerrymandering to jigger the voting districts favorably.  The Left plans to permanently alter the face of American politics by creating such structural imbalances in the system that the center-Right can never catch up.  If they can make enough people dependent on government for their daily bread, and silence the rest, the game is over, and the American experiment in constitutional republican democracy will be finished, even if it continues in name.

And it will have come out of Chicago’s political machine, where more murders were committed in the last 6 months than the death rate of American soldiers in Baghdad in the same timeframe.  I’m sure they’ll do a wonderful job of running the nation.

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Sep 18 2008

What your history teacher or professor didn’t tell you

Category: education,higher education,USAharmonicminer @ 9:31 am

Amazon.com: 48 Liberal Lies About American History: (That You Probably Learned in School): Larry Schweikart: Books Here is the publisher’s weekly short review.

Textbooks have long served as a main battlefield in the culture wars and the latest salvo comes from Schweikart, a history professor at the University of Dayton (A Patriot’s History of the United States), who examines leading American history texts and other books that he sees as purveying a distinctly slanted view of American history—one that portrays the United States as oppressive, imperialistic, and evil. Each lie is deliberated in a brief essay. A chapter on the notion that FDR knew in advance that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor focuses largely on countering Robert Stinnett’s Day of Deceit. The belief that Columbus was responsible for killing millions of Indians (drivel) is, he says, based on faulty statistics. In examining the belief that Richard Nixon sent burglars into the Watergate office complex, the author accepts G. Gordon Liddy’s account of events over John Dean’s. Regarding the Rosenbergs, Schweikart cites Soviet documents proving they were indeed spies. Schweikart marshals an arsenal of statistics and scholarly studies, and while his own biases will limit his reach, he offers an object lesson in the need for scrupulous balance in the writing of history textbooks.

That line, “his own biases will limit his reach”, is standard boilerplate that is true of every book ever written (including the review I just quoted), and trotted out whenever the reviewer isn’t really friendly with the thrust of a book, but can’t find something specific to criticize.

UPDATE:  I am in mind boggle.  I am about to praise yet another LATimes editorial, which happens to quote Larry Schweikart approvingly on the matter of the guilt of the Rosenbergs in spying for the Soviet Union (which is established beyond shadow of doubt, despite the nay-saying of the Left).  If you’re a regular reader, you know how rarely I approve of major media reportage and opinion, but this is spot on.

I haven’t read this new book yet, but if it’s up to the author’s usual standards, it will be excellent. I’ll let you know.

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Sep 06 2008

Hey, Obama – About Those Comments You Made….

Category: China,Obama,USAamuzikman @ 1:01 am

August 21, 2008, Chester, Virginia. Barack Obama says the following:

Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics, Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”

September 5, 2008. Los Angeles Times, page A7.

CHINA: Schools Were Poorly Built:

A Chinese government scientist says a rush to build schools probably led to construction flaws that caused many of them to collapse in May’s devastating earthquake in Sichuan province, the first official admission that building standards may have contributed to the deaths of many children.

The quake killed nearly 70,000 people and damaged more than 1000 schools.

So I’m thinking – NOW I know why Obama wanted to boycott the China Olympics. He doesn’t own a hard hat. And who’d want to be inside the Birds Nest stadium in an earthquake without one? Do we dare to imagine what might have been had the earthquake hit Beijing?

So, if you had to ride out a 7.9 earthquake, which country would you rather be in? And with a straight face Obama tells us China’s infrastructure is vastly superior to the United Sates. Tell that to the 70,000.

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Jul 04 2008

The Declaration of Independence

Category: politics,USAharmonicminer @ 12:00 pm

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness., That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security., Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do., And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

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