God Save America

by Erik Rush

You wouldn't attempt to go for an hour without breathing, a week without taking fluid, or a year without eating, would you? Of course not. You would languish and die. Highly undesirable, unless you were a zealot, fanatic or hunger striker. It's also highly unlikely you'd decide a straight lifetime diet of peppermint patties, malt balls and beer was a good idea.

A person or society that completely eschewed mental development wouldn't do very well either. Most people wouldn't advocate a system in which children weren't required to attend school, where education and learning were actively discouraged. Every day we see the results of such practice in the form of individuals and subcultures who have essentially lived on that basis, knowingly or not.

So we know that in order to flourish as entities and as societies (nations), we must nurture ourselves physically and mentally. Thousands of years of history and the medical breakthroughs of the last hundred years have shed light on the former in particular.

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By Alan Caruba

There’s a reason why political power was taken from the Republicans and given to the Democrat Party. Voters in the political center had concluded that the Iraq invasion has been a failure. They may be wrong, but the Middle East has a long history of befuddling the best efforts to reform it.

At the heart of the election was the conclusion that, given America’s famed managerial and military skills, what had occurred in Iraq was a failure of competency at the highest levels of government. The blame cannot be placed on our soldiers, airmen, and Marines. It was not a failure of the valor of our fighting forces.

It is now widely understood that the White House and Pentagon failed to provide either sufficient manpower or planning for the postwar period.

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by Christopher Adamo

Mainstream Americans are not overwhelmingly outraged over the lack of any "cut and run" policy in Iraq, thus dispelling the dubious notion that the November elections resulted from widespread disaffection over the war. Furthermore, the newly ascendant Democrat majority has clearly been pulling its punches in regards to the liberal agenda it longs to implement.

Initial analyses of the elections are proving correct, the Country was not embracing Democrat liberalism. Rather it was rejecting the "light beer" version that had been offered during the last several years by the Republicans.

Unfortunately, on what is perhaps the key defining issue of the times, neither the Republican "moderates" in Congress, nor the President, seem to have gotten the message. Ominous rumblings of a resurrected immigration "reform" measure (read: blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants) reflect as much.

For such an abominable measure to succeed, it would still require "bipartisan" cooperation from a significant number of fence-sitting Republicans. President Bush believes that he can assemble such a coalition. Perhaps he is correct in his belief, even if by doing so he will most assuredly railroad their chances for a Republican comeback in ‘08.

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by Jim Kouri, CPP

Now that the Democrats are in control of both houses of congress, Americans can look forward to their leadership putting their own interests ahead of the safety and security of citizens during the war on terrorism. In her recent column, Ann Coulter, in her usual hyperbolic style, called the Democrat Party a "sleeper cell." A good example of that is the recent actions of Senator Levin.

In August, 2006, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) arrogantly refused to stop blocking the Senate's confirmation of the head of the Justice Department's new antiterrorism division, a position that's important in a time of war with terrorist groups who wish to attack the United States.

However, it wasn't because of any complaint about the nominee, rather it's an effort to try to force the Justice Department to turn over information Levin can use to bash his own country and the US military.

Levin has been demanding that the Bush administration supply more information from FBI agents who reported witnessing aggressive interrogations of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba military detention center.

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by Jim Kouri, CPP

Terrorism is the most significant threat to our national security. In the international terrorism arena, over the next five years, it's believed that the number of state-sponsored terrorist organizations will continue to decline, but privately sponsored terrorist groups will increase in number.

However, the terrorist groups will increasingly cooperate with one another to achieve desired ends against common enemies. These alliances will be of limited duration, but such "loose associations" will challenge our ability to identify specific threats. Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah, and their affiliates will remain the most significant threat over the next five years.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation forecasts that sub-national and non-governmental entities will play an increasing role in world affairs for years to come, presenting new "asymmetric" threats to the United States, according to a report submitted to the National Association of Chiefs of Police and other law enforcement and security organizations.

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by Erik Rush

Are you familiar with the Channel Channel? Depending on the type of television service you have it varies, with the digital variety being the most state-of-the-art. It's the channel that shows the schedule of television shows being offered on the other channels to which you subscribe (and to quite a few you probably don't, or wouldn't with a gun to your head).

Anyway, I came inside after shoveling lots of snow recently (contrary to what some of the troglodytes who flame me think, I don't have "people" for that) and the Channel Channel was on. Now, on a lot of systems the Channel Channel functions as follows: Only the bottom half (or three-fifths) of the screen is occupied by (scrolling or viewer-scrollable) programming. The top half (or two-fifths) is reserved for distracting advertisements, short pop-culture features and celebrity news. Very highbrow…

"Methane Man" was a minute or so clip of a guy dressed as a superhero (tights, mask and so forth) who performed - in front of an audience and cameras - various "stunts" using his own flatulence.

On the Channel Channel. In the middle of the day. For my kids to see. As if the periodic mini-deprogramming sessions in which my wife and I have to engage as a result of our children attending public school isn't enough of a pain in the rear.

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by Nancy Salvato

The word that most aptly describes the momentum behind education reform going into 2007 is disenfranchised. This can be applied to students in grades P all the way to 16. It can also be applied to adults who want to go back to school, who never completed school, or who are learning English as a second language. It can be used to describe those who find themselves on the wrong side of the law. This word can be mixed and matched with pretty much any type of person that is deserving of more opportunity; and who isn’t? To be sure, the word disenfranchised will inevitably be used to call for more education funding, to fight for more equitable education and to appeal for universal education. Disenfranchised is the sort of descriptor that can be mixed and matched by any education reformer for any type of reform because it appeals to the conscience; it begs the decent person to look out for those amongst us who might need a little action on their behalf. "It is the right thing to do." But be forewarned; those whose heartstrings are being pushed and pulled in every direction must try and be discerning about the various offerings and work through the maze of rhetoric so that the disenfranchised are truly helped by our efforts. Like it or not, sometimes the solutions can become part of the problem.

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by Jim Kouri, CPP

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on the most massive military buildups in history. Part of President Reagan's strategy for winning was to entice the Soviets into a competition it could never even hope to win. A communist economy by its very nature is ill-equipped to compete with a free-market, capitalist system whether it's foreign trade or weapons technology.

And so, slowly the Soviet economy became a basket case due to the communists' desire to exceed America in an enormously expensive arms race.

After the Cold War, with the Soviet threat gone and with Democrat President Bill Clinton in the White House, terms such as "the peace dividend" became commonplace within the Washington Beltway and in the mainstream news media. No longer was the political establishment interested in defense, and the new agenda for the US was domestic.

However, slowly and methodically Russia's steel-eyed leader Vladamir Putin began to rebuild and expand his nation's arsenal and its fighting forces. This new phase in Russia's military buildup has created fear in some quarters in the US that a new arms race exists. Recently the Russians deployed a nuclear ballistic system that their generals made clear could render US anti-missile defense systems ineffective, according to reports in the European news media.

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Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas wrote about the proposed NAFTA Superhighway in one of  his weekly columns. Unfortunately, none of the mainstream liberal media made no mention of this illegal agreement made between Mexico, Canada and the united States. The following article is from Rep Ron Paul's weekly column and it shows how dastardly some of the components of our government are working to destroy our country by undermining our sovereignty and our constitution.

By now many Texans have heard about the proposed “NAFTA Superhighway,” which is also referred to as the trans-Texas corridor.  What you may not know is the extent to which plans for such a superhighway are moving forward without congressional oversight or media attention. 

This superhighway would connect Mexico, the United States, and Canada, cutting a wide swath through the middle of Texas and up through Kansas City.  Offshoots would connect the main artery to the west coast, Florida, and northeast.  Proponents envision a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside.  

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By Alan Caruba

On December 5 some Starbucks customers in New York and Washington, D.C., two major media centers, could look up from their double lattes and see a small group of idiots dressed up as cows protesting outside their favorite bistro. Unfortunately for the protesters, the media ignored their valiant effort to advance the interests of Food and Water Watch, but good news for consumers.

Food and Water Watch is a spin-off of Ralph Nader’s anti-everything Public Citizen, a self-appointed organization famous for its opposition to modern technology, corporations, and globalization. The silly people in the silly cow costumes were, in fact a marketing ploy to frighten people into believing that milk produced by cows that have received bovine growth hormones are a threat to the health of Americans.

Nothing in the many years that bovine growth hormone has been used demonstrates any threat at all, although the protesters described it as a “cancer-related hormone.” The growth hormone is a synthetic version of the natural cow hormone, bovine somatotropin.

In this insanely over-regulated nation of ours, any hint of a cancer risk would have pulled it off the market long ago. While science confirms its safety, the theater of protest goes on.

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