Government Is Not Our Friend

-By Warner Todd Huston

Small-government conservatives have always been suspicious of government. Whether city, county, state or federal all government is looked on as a troublesome but necessary evil that must be tightly controlled and oft times opposed. This anti-government attitude, of course, is a complete mystery to socialist Democrats. They just don’t understand why conservatives mistrust government and why they eye it suspiciously. So, looking for a way to explain in real terms why conservatives loathe government is sometimes not an easy task as the ideas are often very esoteric. Thank God the corrupt governments in Barack Obama’s Illinois are always there to supply a ready example of why government is often the enemy of a free people.

In that mien, here is another perfect example of how government often does not serve the voters, how it does what ever it wants to do despite the voters, and how government often thinks it knows better than the very voters that it is supposed to serve.

In 2009 the Illinois State legislature in its Springfield-based capitol passed a video gambling law that for the first time legalized video poker machines across the state. The progress of this law was very contentious with most Republicans and some Democrats standing in opposition to this immoral legislation and a sop to the opposers was put in the bill as sweetener to assure passage. An “opt out” clause was put in the bill so that those conservative districts that were so opposed to video gambling could exclude themselves from allowing the immoral act of video gambling in their jurisdiction.
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Government Is Not Our Friend”


Still hope for the best? History tells us we’ll change for the worst!

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

Now we know what it must have been like in 1933 for decent Germans during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Ever since the unconstitutional communist coup of Obamacare passed earlier in the week, the full anger and fury of US socialists has turned on the last of the free-thinking, conservative holdouts, a.k.a. patriotic Americans. I am old enough to have seen this phenomenon in every country where post WWII socialism, in its various guises, took over.

In 2001 I wrote an editorial on what the socialists of the Labour Party in the UK would ultimately face if they continually accused concerned British citizens of parochialism, racism and bigotry when they spoke out against Labour’s gross mismanagement and malfeasance coupled with its obscene immigration policies encouraging massive and uncontrolled immigration into the UK from hostile, aggressive, alien Third World countries. I predicted that as Labour continually smeared people of good will, these same people would not only vote Labour out of office but would gravitate away from main political parties to ones that would offer them acceptance.
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Still hope for the best? History tells us we’ll change for the worst!”


The Causes and Consequences of Liberal Superiority Complex

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Liberal-progressive-socialists, from Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte in the 1800s and Karl Marx in the mid-1800s, to present-day liberal-progressive members of the Democrat/Socialist Party, have believed as an article of secular religious faith that their superior intellects alone are capable of intuiting the inevitable course of history. Those who disagree with their reading are written off as cranks or imbeciles, unworthy of serious consideration.

For liberal-progressives, apparently, the inevitable triumph of socialism is “settled science” with which all the world’s important people agree.

Read Chris DeMuth’s post on the American Enterprise Institute website.
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The Causes and Consequences of Liberal Superiority Complex”


Liberals Value Good Intentions Above Both Truth and Outcomes

-By Warner Todd Huston

Amusingly enough the Washington Post has a blog called PostPartisan. I say amusing because it is obvious that there is nothing “post” partisan about it if a rant against tea partiers by Jonathan Capehart is any indication. He thinks that Obama was speaking to the tea partiers in his latest healthcare address and so posted his titled, “A message from President Obama to Tea Party America.”

In an effort to come rushing to the aid of the president and in an effort to castigate all those racist tea partiers he so dislikes, Capehart excerpted a segment of Barack Obama’s recent healthcare speech (what is this one, like number 200 or so?) and pointedly asked tea party activists what was wrong with it — or rather what is wrong with them for not being in thrall to this president?

Capehart is mad at those tea partiers that think Obama is a “Manchurian candidate sent here to destroy the United States” and found the following segment of Obama’s millionth healthcare address particularly inspiring, claiming that it spoke to the “true character of this nation.”
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Liberals Value Good Intentions Above Both Truth and Outcomes”


Publius Podcast: And the New York Times Never Mentions the Word Islam

Nicholas Kristoff does a review of a book about the oppressed life of a young Muslim girl that was married off at 10-years-old. Kristoff laments this poor girl’s plight but not once mentions that she was from an Islamic culture. How can he discuss the evils of these sort of arranged marriages without mentioning Islam? You tell me…


Support Mounts to Move Illinois Primary to March

-By Warner Todd Huston

I expect that this will happen sooner rather than later, but it looks like very few people want to leave the Illinois primary at the ridiculously early February date. It seems fairly obvious that the primary will end up moved back to March like it was before.

Of course, the sad thing is that no one is focusing on why it was moved to February in the first place. It was a cynical ploy by the Illinois Democrat Party to nominate Barack OBama early to help his presidential campaign.

As always, Democrats only care what warped *new* “rules” they can make up out of their rear-ends in order to push their agenda. Logical, common sense, and tradition means nothing to a Democrat.
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Support Mounts to Move Illinois Primary to March”


Democrats Don’t Care About ‘Health,’ It’s All About Politics

-By Warner Todd Huston

Robert Creamer of the HuffyPost penned a very revealing piece that proves that Democrats simply don’t care at all about anyone’s “health,” but that this whole fiasco is solely about political “wins” and power. If someone happens to get a little healthcare out of the thing, that is purely incidental to the actual purpose of Obamacare.

Creamer’s piece describes the top 10 reasons why voting yes on Obamacare is “good politics for Democrats.” Tellingly, not one of the reasons is because healthcare “reform” is good for the people. In fact, most of his “reasons” that Dems should vote for Obama’s socialist take over of our healthcare system is because it’s good for Obama’s political fortunes.

One would think that Democrats should vote for this “reform” because it’s good for the people, but that idea doesn’t seem to factor into Creamer’s reasons at all. And from the political calculations we’ve seen during this last year of healthcare debate, he isn’t much different than those whose vote will create this socialized healthcare program.
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Democrats Don’t Care About ‘Health,’ It’s All About Politics”


Lord of the Rings Updated for 2010, The Dark Lord ACORN Lives

-By Warner Todd Huston

The last book of the famous Lord of the Rings Trilogy is ripe for some updating, so here’s a proposal to that end. The Dark Lord Sauron is a perfect evil villain, of course. He’s shadowy, unseen, hard to grasp, but pervasive and the personification of oppression and evil. But his name needs to be updated and so does his downfall in order to reflect today’s sensibilities.

So, instead of being named Lord Sauron, his new name will be the Dark Lord ACORN. See, the evil still works but it’s updated, ya know?

Now we all know that in the original final book of LOTR, The Return of the King, the Dark Lord and his forces are beaten by the combined forces of the good people of Middle Earth. Evil is vanquished and all live forever after in love and harmony. The age of magic does pass, but a new idyllic age of man dawns.

Well, poppycock says I. We all know that evil isn’t so easily vanquished, don’t we? We need to rewrite the demise of the evil Lord ACORN to one more befitting of reality.
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Lord of the Rings Updated for 2010, The Dark Lord ACORN Lives”


Obama Set to Create More Joe Stacks

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Republican members of the House Ways and Means committee today alerted the country to the appalling fact that Obama and his Democrat cohorts will be creating 17,000 new IRS agents with the President’s signing of Obamacare.

With animosity against the Internal Revenue Service growing, it seems clear that Obama is creating more Joe Stack IRS plane attackers with this move. Stack’s main reason for slamming his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas was because of what he saw as the evils of the IRS and with Obamacare creating a giant new army of intrusive and unaccountable IRS agents, Stack’s evil act is sure to be repeated in the future.
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Obama Set to Create More Joe Stacks”


NPR: ‘Patriots’ Are Dangerous to Our Government

-By Warner Todd Huston

Public supported National Public Radio (NPR) posted a report on March 17 during its “All Things Considered” radio show that warns its listeners that “patriot groups” are dangerous and are apparently increasingly prone to attacking government officials and facilities. Oddly the two examples it uses to prove its case have no ties whatsoever to any “patriot groups.”

Headlined, “Hostility Against Federal Workers Troubles Officials,” NPR blames “patriot groups” on these attacks and worries that “anti-government hate groups” are on the “upsurge.” And what does NPR use to prove its case? Nothing but the say so the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center and a misconstruction of two recent attacks on government facilities by disturbed individuals.

NPR ominously begins its report with this:
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NPR: ‘Patriots’ Are Dangerous to Our Government”


When Indians Are Better Cowboys Than the Cowboys

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal that gave me pause even as it evoked outrage. It proved that the India has more backbone than America does where it concerns portraying Islamic terror in films.

The article was penned by Arun Venugopal. The writer is a young Indian-born, American-raised reporter who has knocked about in both Bollywood and the American film communities, and his piece is an eye opener.

Venugopal notes that the Indian film industry does not shy away from a “full throttle” portrayal of Islamic terror in its films.
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When Indians Are Better Cowboys Than the Cowboys”


The Left Turning Western Civilization into Alice’s Wonderland

-By Warner Todd Huston

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see”
–Alice of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Clearly the left are Aliceites. They are aficionados of Alice viewing the world through the looking glass. They want a world of nonsense, a world devoid of meaning so that everything can be molded and morphed at will into anything that appeals to temporary desires. It is called situational ethics, which are, of course, no ethics at all.

Today we have two examples of this, one in America and one in England. We’ll focus on England first.

The UK Telegraph is reporting about the new it, the new thing assuming a status of “personhood,” a genderless human. That’s right the Telegraph is purporting that a British citizen is “officially” a genderless human, neither male nor female.

Norrie May-Welby, we are told, was born a man but had a sex change operation in 1990. For a time this “person” lived as a woman. But now she-he-it has decided that, “The concepts of man or woman don’t fit me. The simplest solution is not to have any sex identification.”

And so, the Aliceites in British government decided to comply and make May-Welby an “official” person of “no specific gender.”
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The Left Turning Western Civilization into Alice’s Wonderland”


Publius Now on Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow blog Network

-By Warner Todd Huston

As of today, the Chicago Tribune has agreed to include my blogging among its growing network of Chicago area bloggers. It will be Publius Forum on ChicagoNow.com!

I know, I know, here I beat up on the Old Media nearly every day yet here is one of the nation’s biggest newspapers is adding me to its online news community!

Hilarious, I think!

So, look for Warner Todd Huston (that’s ME folks) on the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow.com network.

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/


AP Conflates Fake ‘Catholic’ Group With Catholic Church

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here is one of the sneaky tricks that the Old Media plays in order to support a cause. In this case it’s the Associated Press coming to the aid of Obamacare with “news” that a “Catholic” hospital group is coming out in support of Obamacare. Of course, the AP does not inform the reader that this purported Catholic group is not associated with the Church and is not authorized to speak for Catholics but it conflates this “Catholic” group with Catholics as if they do anyway.

With a headline that screams, “Catholic Hospitals Support Health Care Bill,” the AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports that the Catholic Health Association has come out in support of Obamacare despite the federal funding of abortion.

Naturally this report of Catholics in support of Obamacare is meant to fool readers into thinking that the Catholic Church itself, or some important segment of Catholics, are in support of Obamacare. If all you read is the headline and the first two paragraphs you might come away thinking that “Catholic Hospitals” support Obamacare.
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AP Conflates Fake ‘Catholic’ Group With Catholic Church”


The Rise of the Tea Party

-By David M. Huntwork

In less than a year well over a thousand independent groups have sprung up around the nation to organize and demonstrate against the attempted government takeover of entire industries, high taxes, crippling debt, and the agenda of President Barack Obama. While many have ridiculed and guffawed about the “teabaggers,” these motivated and angry voters have very quickly shown the ability to raise millions of dollars, target specific political races, grab headlines and media exposure, stage large rallies, and mobilize volunteers.

The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) movement has been defined as populist, conservative, and libertarian in tone. It is a movement diverse in leadership and organization but united in its defense of liberty and the constitution. Its members are technologically savvy and able to mobilize in a moments notice. It is anti-elitist, anti-big government, and anti-big business. It is a revulsion and revolt against perceived corruption and politics as usual. And it the most recent public face of the Liberty Movement that resides on the right side of the ideological spectrum.
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The Rise of the Tea Party”


A Couple of Union Stories in the News

-By Warner Todd Huston

Three interesting stories on unions have hit the media this week that should be watched.

#1- Bush’s Union Transparency Rules Retracted Under Obama

The Washington Times reports that Obama is still giving favors and pay back to Big Labor. This time Obama is eliminating the transparency rules that Bush had put in to try to keep unions honest and legal. Saddly, Obama doesn’t care much if unions are held to the rule of law.
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A Couple of Union Stories in the News”


AP Slips in ‘Poverty’ As Reason For Nigerian Massacres

-By Warner Todd Huston

True to its fealty to left-wing, western pop psychology, the Associated Press thinks it knows one of the principle reasons why roving gangs of Muslims are hacking Christians to death and burning their villages to the ground in Nigeria: It’s “poverty.”

Liberals that struggle to understand why man is often so cruel to his fellows seem always to have assumed that poverty is a key factor in violence and crime, but rarely it is the factor that liberals assume it to be. Poverty is no picnic, but it is not the cause of crime and violence. It is more likely a symptom itself rather than a catalyst.

It’s a chicken and egg question, of course. What came first, the poverty or the crime? But the simple fact of the matter is that poverty is seen in every corner of the Earth, yet crime rates vary wildly from area to area and era to era. So, if poverty is constant and is the catalyst for crime, why doesn’t crime hold at a fairly constant rate? It seems pretty obvious that crime is not directly caused by poverty.
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AP Slips in ‘Poverty’ As Reason For Nigerian Massacres”


Coffee Party Astroturf

-By Warner Todd Huston

What is it that the left and the Old Media said about the Tea Party movement? Didn’t they say it was not really filled with regular folks and didn’t they say it was not really a grass roots level effort because some nefarious “top-down” Republican groups were secretly behind the whole thing? That’s what Paul Krugman said in The New York Times. So did Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — after someone taught her was “astroturf” even was, that is. In fact, the whole left-wing Old Media establishment attacked the tea party movement as some fake, manufactured thing and claimed that it wasn’t peopled by regular folks like you and me. All you need do is put “astroturf” and “tea party” in a search engine and you’ll get thousands of hits revealing the left’s unhinged response to the tea parties.

So, since they seem to want us to believe that they hate “astroturf,” will the left-wing press get all upset that this “coffee party” effort really IS Astroturf? Will the Old Media explode in calls of “astroturf” as it did during the early phases of the tea party movement? Or will they pretend that this coffee party business is real grass roots and report on the effort based on that false assumption. Already it seems as though the coffee party effort is not meeting any real scrutiny and I just got an email that proves the essential “top-down” style upon which this effort is built.

Of course, we know the charge that the tea party movement is astroturf is untrue. While groups like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and a few others did rush to add their voices to the tea party events held all across the county last year (and continue to today) they neither originated the movement, nor did they invent the scope of events, nor did they control the message in any way. In fact they had to scramble to have any part in it at all. Even the big group’s efforts were ad hoc early on.
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Coffee Party Astroturf”


Unions Top the $1 Billion Club in California Political Spending

-By Warner Todd Huston

The California Teachers Association spent $211,849,298 on lobbying and political spending to get its way in California in 2009. Along with the CTA, the Calif. State Council of Service Employees and 13 other organizations spent a total of one billion dollars on political lobbying of the State House at Sacramento. All of these special interests have helped push California to the brink of insolvency.

But, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the two unions mentioned above far and away top the spending of the other top lobbying spenders in California. The next closest in spending was the Big Pharma clocking in at $104,912,997 on its political spending with various and sundry Indian casino groups whose spending was in the less than $85,000,000 range.

Commission Chairman Ross Johnson said in a press release, “This tsunami of special interest spending drowns out the voices of average voters and intimidates political opponents and elected officials alike.”
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Unions Top the $1 Billion Club in California Political Spending”


Lies, Damned Lies, and Expert Testimony

-By John Armor

Before we get rolling, a pet peeve. Entirely too many reporters are too lazy to check their quotes. Time and again, they will say in their lede that “some wag referred to lies, damned lies, and statistics.” No, no, no. That was not “some wag;” that was the greatest of all American humorists, Mark Twain.

Twain’s Autobiography attributes the quote to the quick-witted British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disreali. But Disraeli’s biographers can find no trace of it. Apparently, Twain attributed it to someone else who was conveniently dead, to fend off attacks for using that shameful word, “damned,”

I’ve modified the Twain quote to apply to recent hearings before the Federal Communications Commission. I’ve testified before a handful of federal hearings. I’ve attended dozens of such hearings. And I’ve never heard more lying, by more people, not even from sitting through an entire day of traffic court and hearing the infinite reasons why each particular motorist was not guilty.
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Expert Testimony”


Liebau on Unions: ‘The System is Unsustainable’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Carol Platt Liebau posted a piece on RealCleaPolitics.com that also clangs the warning bells over the unsustainable situation that the various states find themselves in between their public employees unions and the states’ fiscal obligations. She focuses on California, but nearly every state in the union is quickly approaching the mess California is in.

Liebau writes of the effort that the teachers union in California led to get kids as young as five-years-old out of school so that they could be bussed to the state capitol in Sacramento in order to protest school budget cuts. Me, I think she races by this outrage too quickly.
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Liebau on Unions: ‘The System is Unsustainable’”


A Mess of a Column, Cuz News papers are Raaaacist

-By Warner Todd Huston

For the Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Laura Washington laments the degraded state of American newspapers. She says that “hard news” has been replaced by “fluff and titillating trash.” Washington also cries that real news is an “endangered species.” But if newspaper writing has been laid low, Laura Washington’s column is an example of that wretched state as opposed to an example of the opposite as this is one of the messiest columns I’ve seen in a while. And naturally it’s all because of raaaacism according to Washington.

Washington starts her piece scolding the news media for missing the Scott Lee Cohen story. Cohen, the winning Democrat Lt. Gov. candidate, had a strange history of violence and prostitution that no media operative seemed to ferret out before Illinois Democrats nominated him in February’s primary. Washington also laments all the many job cuts in the media landscape.

Worse, according to Washington, is that the reporters that are left are “being diverted to cover meaningless fluff and titillating trash.”
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A Mess of a Column, Cuz News papers are Raaaacist”


Unions Support This Detroit Socialist

-By Warner Todd Huston

The left is constantly attempting to wave its hand dismissively at our claims that they are socialists and communists. They claim they are true blue Americans and we are lying about them. Unions are one of the biggest perpetrators of this misinformation.

Well, it appears that in Detroit unions came out in support of a goof ball that claimed himself to be a socialist. They all stood in the Michigan cold saying their “yeas” as he spoke about getting a free university degree, and as he touted a socialist “right” to food and their own house.

Here we see members of the AFT and the SEIU nodding in appreciation of this socialist’s ideas. They stood by his side as he pronounced these socialist “principles.”

Anyone that tells you that unions aren’t socialists and communists needs to explain why unions came out in support of this un-American nut in Detroit.
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Unions Support This Detroit Socialist”


Gov’t Employees Now Make More Than Private Sector Workers

-By Warner Todd Huston

The news we have been warning you about is in. Government workers on average exceed the pay scale of those in private industry. The unsustainable situation is here. It is now clear that Bill Clinton was a bit premature when he said that the “era of big government is over.” Sadly he didn’t count on the era of big Obama to come.

One word explains why this upside down situation has come to fruition: unions.

USA Today is reporting that “the number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession.” The paper finds that workers at the high end of the salary scale are well represented in government. I’d say overly represented.
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Gov’t Employees Now Make More Than Private Sector Workers”


More On Stern’s Appointment to Deficit Reduction Panel

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ed Barnes of FoxNews has a nice recap on Barack Obama’s appointment of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Chief Andy Stern to his deficit reduction panel.

Barnes tells us that Obama’s appointment of Stern set off a “round of criticism.” That’s putting it mildly.

President Obama’s decision to appoint his close political ally, union leader Andrew Stern, to the newly created National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has set off a firestorm of criticism from business and conservative groups who charge he is a political radical who should be investigated for failure to register as a lobbyist.

The failure to register as a lobbyist charge is over the fact that Stern was one of the most frequent visitors to the White House but never registered as a lobbyist to legally cover his visits. Whatever the case is concerning the legality of Stern’s constant visits to the Obama White House, those that criticize this appointment couldn’t be more right.
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More On Stern’s Appointment to Deficit Reduction Panel”


Three Current Union Stories

-By Warner Todd Huston

Shuffling through the web I see a few current stories that might be of interest to union watchers everywhere…

Pennsylvanians awoke today to a tale from Investor’s Business Daily headlined, “Specter Tells Business He’ll Back Pro-Union Card Check.”

Apparently Benedict Arlen is a yes vote for cloture on the pro-union card check legislation. Not much of a surprise as he’s been very pro-union since his sudden switch to the Democrat Party last year.
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Three Current Union Stories”


Tea Party ‘Extremists’ Take Center Stage

-By Warner Todd Huston

The liberal media’s newest meme is to claim that the tea party movement is made up exclusively of John Birchers, militia types, racists, and “birthers.” Politico, for instance, had an extensive story about how legitimate conservatives are coming to realize that they’ll have to conduct a Buckley styled purge of the extremists if they expect the tea party groups to be taken seriously. Of course, the left has had its extremists for decades, unlike the right has never conducted any such purges, and has also benefited from a news media that has never highlighted the left’s worst nuts.

The whole idea that conservatives have to purge their wackier, more fringe members is something that at one level is obvious but at another is proof that the left and the Old Media are nothing but hypocrites. At still a third level there is part of the attitude exhibited by some of these far right elements that is a root motivation of the tea party movement, fringe or no.

As clownish left-wing commentators such as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, John Stewart or Stephen Colbert point fingers and guffaw at the fringes of the right and as the New York Times and Politico stroke their chins and look down their noses at the unruly tea party movement, it must be noted that none of these folks ever uttered a cross word against the Code Pink wackos, the communist infiltrators, anti-war hippies, Stalinist apologists, pro-abortion extremists, Euro-trash half-wits, eco-terrorists, and outright anarchists that have filled the left’s ranks since the birth of the new left after WWII.

At every lefty protest representatives of these hatemongering groups abound. They can be found on the campus of every American college and university, as well. But are these dangerous extremists ever discussed in our Old Media outlets when they highlight lefty movements? Never. The left’s extremists are simply never mentioned. It is as if every left-wing group in America is filled with conscientious old grandmothers and idealistic young folks innocently avowing their rights as citizens of the world. Never are the violence prone, the hateful nutcases, or the drugged out losers that fills the American left ever highlighted.
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Tea Party ‘Extremists’ Take Center Stage”


Some Tough Medicine for Getting Back to Good

-By Frank Salvato

I just watched an important video. It was a United News newsreel from December 2, 1945, and captured the official Japanese surrender proceedings aboard the USS Missouri, proceedings that brought World War II to an end. As I watched, I wondered how it must have sounded to my Father, who was fighting in the South Pacific during that time.

It would be impossible for me to be able understand how he must have felt at hearing Gen. MacArthur say,

“Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it, always. These proceedings are closed.”

My Father volunteered for military service during World War II, as did many who fought for the Allies from all countries. They did so not only because they understood the existence of evil in the world, but because they wanted to preserve the “way of life” their countries afforded them. For my Father it was to advance our American heritage – freedom, liberty, constitutionality and opportunity – to his children. It was for this belief that he risked life and limb in one of the bloodiest episodes in world history.
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Some Tough Medicine for Getting Back to Good”