Dems are down one critical Senate seat until January, due to their own Machiavellian ways. Don’t you just love it when their “chickens come home to roost?”

After the last election, Dems assumed virtually dictatorial powers, because they controlled the presidency, had a majority in the House of Representatives, and had a filibuster-proof majority of sixty seats in the Senate.

With the passing of Ted Kennedy, they have lost that critical edge by one senate vote. Now the governor of Massachusetts is a Democrat, Deval Patrick, and under normal circumstances, as it is in most states, he could appoint a Democrat to fill the remainder of Kennedy’s term. But the Dems have already shot themselves in the foot.

Back in 2004, incumbent US president Republican George W. Bush was running for a second term. And John Kerry, a sitting Democrat senator from Massachusetts, challenged him. If Kerry had been elected president, that would have left his Massachusetts Senate seat vacant. And that would have been a problem for the Dems.

Massachusetts is a heavily Democratic state. Seldom has the state gone for a Republican president — Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 in recent memory. But there was a rare period from 1991 to 2007 when the state had Republican governors (due to successive Democrat administrations running it down into junk bond ratings).

• William Weld from 1991 to 1997
• Argeo Paul Cellucci from 1997 to 2001
• Jane Maria Swift from 2001 to 2003
• Mitt Romney from 2003 to 2007

So in 2004 Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor. And he could have filled Kerry’s seat with a Republican. Not wanting to allow that normal political process to unfold, Ted Kennedy strong-armed a law through the heavily Democratic Massachusetts legislature to take the appointment power away from the governor and not allow a vacant seat to be filled by appointment:

Prior to 2004, the replacement would serve out the remainder of the term of that Senate seat and also be eligible to run for it at the next regular election. The 2004 law, now in effect, does not allow a temporary replacement to be appointed and instead requires that a special election be held within 145 and 160 days….

In the summer of 2004, the law taking away the governor’s power and providing for a special election was approved by the House 122-30 and the Senate 31-7. It was supported overwhelmingly by all but seven of the House Democratic representatives and senators and opposed by all Republicans. Democrats at that time feared that then Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would have the opportunity to appoint a Republican to fill Sen. John Kerry’s seat if Kerry won the 2004 November presidential election. That GOP appointee, under the pre-2004 law, would have served in the U.S. Senate for four years until the regular Senate election in 2008.

During debate on the 2004 law, supporters of repealing the appointment power said that the temporary appointment system was archaic and takes power away from the voters by allowing a governor to make a political appointment that could last for several years….

So under the current law, which the Dems themselves voted in specifically to disadvantage the Republicans, the Dems cannot get back their sixty Senate seats before January. And this just at a time when they are trying to ram their unpopular health care bill down the American throat.

But now, in a revealing display of crass opportunism, the Dems are frantically trying to get legislation passed to allow the Massachusetts governor appointment power once again. We shall see. Even if they manage to manipulate the system one more time, it will take awhile, and that will be time taken from the health care battle.

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An interesting sideshow will be the choice of appointee. Ted Kennedy had designated his second wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy as his successor in the family seat. If she is not interested, Ted’s nephew Joseph P. Kennedy II is a possibility.

Outside the family, names mentioned include US Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, US Rep. Michael E. Capuano, and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Former US Rep. Martin Meehan has also been suggested.

If a Kennedy offers, all bets are off, of course. The family seat is regarded as hereditary, such is the mentality of Massachusetts.

A beer summit photo-op betrays Obama’s self-interest and lack of empathy. A picture posted by the White House to portray the president as mediator between a policeman and a black man has turned into a public relations disaster. Writing at the American Thinker, Thomas Lifson notes:

I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing. Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?

But Lifson has gone the extra mile here. He shares an archival picture that contrasts the personality of Obama with that of the second George Bush:

In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful. Do they understand that the others are also human beings with feelings? Especially when they think nobody is looking….

A nice comparison of the character of the two most recent presidents. George Bush with Senator Robert Byrd….

Tail wag: American Thinker

As so often happens we write a post that lends itself to an update. Well, last week I wrote the following:

The Obama campaign is driven by being an antidote to the Bush administration which, like it or not and for many different reasons (partly George’s own fault, partly through media projection), is a laughing stock not only in NZ, but around the world. Anything but Bush. Mark my words: The Obama camp is going to drive that point hard over the next two months, that McCain will be “four more years of failed Bush policies,” and the McCain camp would be wise to do as much as they can to distance themselves from the Bush administration.

OK, so that may not be the most prophetic statement ever made and may be quite obvious to anybody with a pulse who has been paying attention to the campaign with only one eye half-open — but it is nevertheless true. And here is a perfect example of the left doing just as I predicted:

…The point is that Palin, and the circus she’s brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party’s record, and John McCain’s role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn’t accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she’s succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record — and McCain’s complicity in it. My friends, that’s accomplishment we can believe in.

Just look at the problem John McCain faced. George Bush has a disastrous record, and the country knows it. John McCain — the current one, not the one who vanished eight years ago — has no major disagreements with George Bush (and I’m sorry, wanting to fire Donald Rumsfeld a bit sooner doesn’t qualify) and wants to continue his incredibly unpopular policies for another four years. The solution? Enter Sarah Palin, a Trojan Moose carrying four more years of disaster.

So there it is: Voting for McCain is four more years of Bush according Arianna Huffington, a very popular and influential blogger on the left. It’s all on.

But let me point out a few things. Whatever were the reasons that McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, it wasn’t them or the GOP who started sounding any horns about it. They put her out there, and the MEDIA created the firestorm — not the GOP. We can sit around and discuss all day long the idea that this is just what McCain and the GOP hoped for, and that is probably a valid topic for discussion. My view is that the media, like most of the rest of the population, has a short attention span. We have collectively short memories, and the media is no different. Nobdy had heard of Sarah Palin until she was announced as McCain’s VP running mate, and the media scrambled for stories to report on. Then they became a dog with a bone: They will chew it for all it’s worth, and when the bone is pulp and has lost its flavor, the media will be onto the next bone. Just keep that metaphor in mind.

There were some other points made in Arianna’s article that need to be addressed to keep matters in perspective. Huffington continues:

And the plan has worked beautifully. Just look at what’s being discussed just 57 days before the election. Is it the highest unemployment rate in five years? The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The suicide bombing yesterday in Iraq that killed six people and wounded 54 — in the same market where last month a bomb killed 28 people and wounded 72? That the political reconciliation that was supposedly the point of “the surge” is nowhere near happening? That Iraq’s Shiite government is now rounding up the American-backed Sunni leaders of the Awakening? That the reason 8,000 soldiers may be leaving Iraq soon is so more can be deployed to Afghanistan where the Taliban is steadily retaking the country?

First she cites the “highest unemployment rate in five years” which is true, but it’s only slightly higher than where it had been hovering until now; a rate of umemployment equal to that which existed during the Clinton administration when that was considered OK. A pending recession in the balance, the Fannie/Freddie bailout, and the slumping housing market is not solely germaine to the United States. This is global. Here in New Zealand we’re already in recession, and the housing market has declined severely. Property values are low; nobody in their right mind is selling; it’s a buyer’s market. In a country of only 4.1 million people 39 finance companies have gone belly-up since May 2006, leaving many investors with virtually nothing. The whole world is feeling the pinch.

Regarding the Iraq situation, all I can say is that war and conflict is fluid; the dynamics change every day, sometimes every hour. It’s not a scripted one hour TV drama. And whatever happens overseas, the war will ALWAYS be a drum the left can beat like a life insurance policy that guarantees them a certain return on the investement.

The funny thing is that most people who have an interest, I believe, already have their minds made up regarding for whom they will vote. All this back-and-forth slinging of mud by sycophants on both sides is just media fodder. It’s nothing more than a really bad bloody soap opera, reminding me of this line from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Or the lyrics to the song, “Limelight“, from drummer/lyricist, Neil Peart (a big Ayn Rand fan, BTW), of the musical band Rush, paraphrasing Shakespeare in the last stanza:

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage.
Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact.

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem

Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme.

Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can’t pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.

All the world’s indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another’s audience
Outside the gilded cage

George Bush, his poll numbers almost as dismal as those for the US Congress, is not normally mentioned with Democratic icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Republican icon Abraham Lincoln. Arguably bashed as much as “the gangly ape” Lincoln was, Bush is thought to have little in common with them, except for presiding over a war. Could this week’s momentous legal decision change that? It could. But that would depend on George Bush.

According to Chief Justice John Roberts, the Boumediene v. Bush 5-4 decision marks a very dark day in Supreme Court history. To paraphrase Roberts, with a little help from FDR: This day will live in judicial infamy.

For the first time ever, alien prisoners captured on a battlefield are to be granted habeas corpus rights. The Mujahadeen are to get the Constitutional rights of a US citizen. A lawyer’s dream? A legal nightmare for the US military and court system? It’s certainly one giant step for turning warfare into lawfare. The American soldier, besides the national defense, must be ready to gather evidence for his own defense. His every action, including pulling a trigger, can be subject to subpoena. Judges now rule 300 million Americans?

Liberals and Democrats are grinning wide. They feel they have socked it to George Bush again and struck a blow for “human rights,” a progressive twofer. The SCOTUS decision was a case of five liberals (including a Bush pere appointee) against four conservatives.

Conservatives and Republicans are groaning that, for liberals, the desire to bash Bush and score points trumps common sense and national security every time.

Republicans say these Guantanamo prisoners, being held indefinitely, are very dangerous Islamic fanatics. (Monica Crowley, who visited there and saw them up close, concurs.) It’s been documented that some of those released have gone on to kill Americans. The Democrats counter that not all of them are dangerous, some are innocent, and therefore you need to put them all through the (already clogged) US court system, no matter how much time, money and chaos it takes.

The gringomanic response:

Of course the Democrats are transparent, increasingly partisan, increasingly “progressive.” To see them is to see through them.

But as for George Bush, how serious is he? Mildly? Very? Or what?

If Bush is deeply concerned, he doesn’t have to cite Franklin Roosevelt, who thought nothing of holding German prisoners in WW II, when no Democrat “progressive” would dare to squawk about their “human rights” and did not even complain when FDR and the military tribunal ordered them executed.

What is to stop George Bush from hearkening back to Abraham Lincoln, if he’s serious? In 1861 Lincoln suspended civil rights wherever he thought peaceniks and others endangered the war effort. There was no ACLU on the attack.If there had been, all indications are that Lincoln would have tossed it into prison without a second thought. In 1862 Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and had copperhead democrats arrested for interfering with the war effort. The ACLU wouldn’t have stood a chance against Lincoln.

George Bush would not have to go near as far as Honest Abe. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus nationally, and for U.S. citizens. Bush could be much milder. What is to stop him from suspending habeas corpus for any alien prisoner — who arguably does not have that right in the first place? Georgie could suspend it just for good measure, for anyone who believes that the five liberal activist Judges were acting Constitutionally.

There is precedent, as the legalists like to say. It is there for the President.

Would a globalist guy like George Bush, a “compassionate conservative,” never too fussy about borders, be inclined? Would he mind the full-court press of liberals barking and yelping at him for suspending a “global right” of these aliens — a “right” that never was until their Judges said it is?

Today in Israel, President Bush said attempting to appease terrorists is foolhardy, indicating such moves never have worked, and never will work, because Muslim radicals have declared unconditional war.

In their eyes, the only path to peace is our unconditional surrender.

Sen. Obama wants to partner with “moderate” Islam, pull out of Iraq, and combine military, police, foreign aid and diplomatic action to conquer terrorism.

Both the President and Sen. Obama are wrong because they wrongly assess Islam overall.

We underestimate the enemy by saying only radical Muslims fight us. The truth is, the entire Islamic world stands opposed to the West, and the entire Islamic world is driving global violence toward the goal of world domination.

If you disagree, fine, but read on and examine the evidence.

We have debated what to do about terrorism since that day in 1972 when five Palestinian Arab terrorists murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Germany.

Since then, Islamic terrorists have executed thousands of attacks worldwide killing millions of innocent men, women and children, and injuring millions more. If you doubt these figures, consider the almost one million killed in Sudan alone. In Iran, they teach little children to be suicide bombers. Increasingly women and the mentally retarded are used for suicide attacks.

In the last two months, there have been 300 attacks worldwide resulting in about 1,600 deaths, and thousands of injuries (source).

Note the perspectives of Michael F. Scheuer, the founding head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, delivered last August:

“Obama and all the other candidates in the other parties constantly say that ‘we have tried the military option and it does not work.’ This of course is a bald lie; U.S. military power has been used most daintily in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the military power we have delivered in both places so far is the best we can do, then American taxpayers have been monumentally swindled in the amount of taxes they have paid for their military during the past 25 years. And another billion dollars for aid for Afghan reconstruction would just be another billion wasted. It appears that Obama and his fellow candidates in both parties have not learned that programs for economic recovery, internal stability, and nation-building cannot be started with any hope of effectiveness and durability until the enemy has been definitively annihilated. If Obama is right and the military option has failed, then more aid is just throwing money away because – as all can see – the enemy is growing in size and ferocity and shows no signs of being on the edge of annihilation.”

Note the remarks of Newt Gingrich lent almost a year ago, saying he is deeply worried, because Iran will get nuclear weapons and use them, and we in the West are asleep, lazy, unprepared and unwilling to defend ourselves — Modern road to White House ‘verges on insane,’ says Gingrich.

Still not convinced? Watch, and weep — ISLAM: WHAT THE WEST NEEDS TO KNOW.

This is by far the most important issue facing Americans, and all freedom loving people everywhere. Global Islamic revolution is upon us. It is growing. It will prevail unless we take a comprehensive, systematic, aggressive stance not only to oppose it, but to destroy it.

The future security of the entire world depends on who becomes President in November, and whether or not the West rediscovers its courage.

President George W. Bush has been the recipient of the most concerted, hate-filled propaganda campaign ever launched against a sitting President. Washington’s bureaucracy has aided and abetted this outrageous Democrat offensive by conducting a deliberate intelligence misinformation and sabotage war. The mantras have been repeated so many times, they have insinuated themselves into our daily jargon. “There were no WMD,” Bush’s “misadventure in Iraq,” or “The President’s failed Iraq policy.” Or as someone recently said to me: “I just think he’s so stupid.”

Mention the name “Bush” and people bow and shake their heads. It is as though no one even wants to acknowledge we have a President by that name. Bumper stickers declare: “I Can’t Wait for 2008.” Many conservative pundits have participated in this pile-on. That the Bush presidency is an unmitigated disaster is a given even among conservatives who should know better.

There is nothing new in the pattern, except for its nonstop intensity. All recent Republican Presidents have faced overt hostility from the press and popular culture. And as their time got short, the vitriol always intensified. Reagan capitulated early, handing up sacrificial lambs during Iran/Contra and offering little support for one of the most qualified Judicial Nominees in our nation’s history, Robert Bork, who was forced to face an unprecedented wave of personal attacks without the support of the President who nominated him. In recalling the Reagan years, this is often overlooked.

In typical fashion, the Republican establishment has once again capitulated and completely surrendered the argument to its enemies. Many Republican Washington insiders see this as an act of self preservation. The cacophony of negative press stories drowns out any voice that does not follow their script. One becomes self-conscious and intimidated. Why say anything if to do so risks the mass media turning their merciless invective on you?

Also, Washington insiders live in Washington. They are trying to live dual lives: supporting a Party that stands for American values in a city that doesn’t want them, while simultaneously attending cocktail parties, joining clubs and sending their children to school with these same people. But what do they expect? Republicans, whether they earn it or not, represent the Party of principle, and are thus a threat to Washington’s deeply embedded culture of corruption. They will never have an easy time of it.

Recall the experience of liberal Senator Bob Packwood (R-OR). He was hailed by feminists for supporting their causes — until he made the mistake of groping one or two of them. Then the harpy brigade descended. For all the invective one would have thought he murdered babies. But lecherous Teddy keeps on groping while Bill Clinton gets a pass on rape. Packwood’s real error: he became a vulnerable Republican, and Democrats will always use the opportunity to rid themselves even of Republicans who vote their way — much better to have an always reliable fellow Democrat.

Every President has had his failings, and President Bush is no different, from his incomprehensible defense of illegal immigrants, the Medicare prescription drug program and his frustratingly suicidal habit of neither articulating nor defending his positions. But despite it all, I suggest to you that he deserves much more credit than he has been getting, even from those who should know better.

For example, we take for granted the fact that he hasn’t backpedaled on taxes. But why should we take it for granted? Reagan backpedaled. Bush’s father did in a big way. We forget that Bush was the first president with the guts to discard the insane Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, by which we were prevented from developing any effective missile defense for thirty years, while the Soviets blatantly cheated as they have on every other treaty we ever signed with them, and developed quite a sophisticated one.

We also discount the huge effect of his appointments to the federal bench. Supreme Court judges Samuel Alito and John Roberts will be with us for a while. A Newsmax article recently reported that, according to the Court’s Federal Judicial Center, Republican judicial appointments now outnumber Democrats’ 463 to 350. Bush has appointed 258 appellate judges, and unlike some Republican appointments in the past, most of his are solid conservatives. Seven of ten sitting judges on the crucial DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently overturned DC’s onerous handgun ban, are Republican appointments, three of those by G.W. Bush.

He regularly sidetracks harmful legislation, despite his supposed “lame duck” status. He vetoed the Democrats “SCHIP” bill, (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) which would have granted free health inusrance to “children” over 21 years of age and increased coverage for people earning three times the poverty level. It was correctly identified as “back-door socialized medicine.” He got the worst parts of an ill-conceived Democrat energy bill removed by threatening a veto. And there are countless other similar actions that we either don’t notice or take for granted.

George W. Bush and the current crop of Congressional Republicans have been branded as “big spenders.” While they sadly have earned this label, don’t pin any hopes on Democrats for reversing the trend. For a good laugh, read my earlier article on Democrats much-ballyhooed and completely disingenuous restoration of PAYGO (Pay-As-You-Go) spending restrictions. Moreover, while Democrats vociferously harp on Bush deficits, by historical standards the deficit is small and declining. At $163 billion, the deficit now absorbs a mere 1.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), significantly lower than the historical average. But even at its 2004 high water mark, the deficit absorbed only 3.6 percent of GDP — less than the highest deficit of the Clinton presidency, 1993, which consumed 3.9 percent of GDP.

This is because, thanks partially to his tax cuts, we have had a robust economy for most of G.W. Bush’s two terms, despite the enormously recessionary impacts of the 9-11 attacks and the Dot-Com-driven stock market collapse in 1999. You wouldn’t know this to listen to the gloom and doom economic reporting by the mass media, however.

But Bush’s greatest failure, according to the partisan naysayers and a few hapless Republican fools, is his record on Iraq. I submit to you that his leadership as Commander in Chief, while imperfect, has been head and shoulders over any other President in recent history. Think back.

Lyndon Johnson’s disgracefully timid and incompetent micromanaging of the Vietnam War needlessly cost tens of thousands of young American lives. Rather than admit it and change, Johnson took his marbles and went home, resigning in disgrace. Following the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, Reagan impotently withdrew all U.S. forces, rather than face off the terrorist supporting states responsible: Syria and Iran. George H.W. Bush’s unwillingness to finish the job in Iraq further encouraged the world’s thugs to believe that they had nothing to fear from the United States.

Clinton’s ignoble blundering in Somalia and impotent gestures toward Iraq further cemented the reputation of American political leaders as feckless cowards. It was discovered in after action analysis that Clinton’s much ballyhooed air campaign against Yugoslavia, where a 30,000 ft. altitude insured pilot safety, destroyed only about 5 or 6 tanks, not the hundreds initially reported. (The rest were decoys.) Was Clinton really concerned about pilot safety, or did he just want to spare his communist friends any serious damage? Given his publicized contempt for the military and his many communist connections, I suspect the latter. In either case, his much vaunted air campaign was in fact an abject failure.

While George W. Bush has clearly made mistakes in his prosecution of the War in Iraq, he has, unlike other leaders, had the courage to admit and correct many of those mistakes. Halting the attack on Fallujah in the spring of 2004 was a mistake — corrected. Allowing the Madhi Army free rein was a mistake — corrected. The pre-Petraeus conventional approach, a mistake — corrected. Few political leaders in recent times have been willing to do this in any circumstance, let alone during a shooting war. And Bush’s unflinching determination to prosecute this war in the face of a relentless, overwhelmingly hostile, even seditious Western media campaign to discredit the entire effort, and treacherous, underhanded bureaucratic sabotage, may yet see this conflict to a successful conclusion.

We must stop and recognize that this tidal wave of negativity is manufactured relentlessly by our almost uniformly leftist, anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-American mass media (with a few notable exceptions), in collusion with the leftist Washington political establishment. Nothing any Republican does will ever satisfy them. Like the Iranians or North Koreans, they welcome Republican attempts at conciliation as a ripe opportunity to take further advantage. They will never like or agree with them. They want to destroy them. And they may well succeed in the upcoming election cycle if we don’t come to our senses.

And while some may be breathing easier with Hillary’s slide in the polls, I wouldn’t hold my breath. She is still the candidate to beat, and I have said since the beginning, as far as her electability is concerned, she is not even thinking about getting a majority of voters. Like her husband before her, she is counting on the entrance of a third party candidate to split the republican vote. As I predicted early on, I believe this will be New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Despite his earlier denials, Bloomberg is now making rumblings that he will, in fact, run.

Get it through your head and get over it! The next election cycle is critical to the survival of our Constitutional Republic. Whatever failings you see in our government and leaders, Republicans must come together and reassert the values they stand for: a strong America, lower taxes, limited government, individual rights, individual responsibility and a healthy, mature, decent culture — American values.

With all its failings the Republican Party is yet America’s last hope. We American citizens may not be able to rescue America from the un-Americans, but we should at least stop assisting them in our own defeat. We can start by acknowledging and defending the record of this American President and reaffirm our support for the Republican Party — no matter who the candidate is.

It’s almost a done deal. While most patriotic Americans have been preoccupied this summer with the invasion of illegal aliens across our southern border with Mexico, President Bush has been quietly finalizing plans with Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderon to eradicate our national sovereignty. They’ll wrap it up on August 20 at a meeting in Montebello, Quebec.

Soon the United States will be subsumed into a North American Union, just as the nations in Europe have been gobbled up by the European Union. Boundaries will melt away and our dollar will be replaced with the amero, giving the “globalistas” an opportunity to get rid of that pesky phrase In God we trust which reminds us of our rapidly vanishing heritage.

Judging from reports we receive from our friends across the pond, this is not a good thing for nations with successful economies. What it does is bring all the participants into the same business climate, a sort of socialism at the national level — an advantage for the less robust nations and a huge disadvantage for the vibrant economies.

One of the worst results of such a union is the migration of people within the union that results. In the European Union, for example, poor Romanians are pouring into the United Kingdom and dumping themselves onto the overburdened social services system. Currently in the United States, illegal immigration across our southern border is overtaxing our schools, hospitals, law enforcement and welfare systems. Within the North American Union, the fiscal penalties to our citizens would be greatly multiplied, and it would be legal.

As this calamity bears down on us, the mainstream media are strangely silent. One has to look to Canada to find anyone sounding the alarm. We want to call our readers’ attention to this copyrighted article by Global Research. We excerpt a portion here under the principle of “fair use” but we urge everyone to visit their website and read all of it:

Canadians Completely Unaware of Looming North American Union
Bush and Calderon to Visit Canada
By Kevin Parkinson | Global Research, July 17, 2007

In just over a month’s time, on August 20, the most powerful president in the world will be arriving in Montebello, Quebec for a two-day conference. President George W. Bush will be meeting with Stephen Harper and their Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon. So far, the silence from the Canadian and American media has been deafening.

Talk to 90% of people on the street and they won’t know about this upcoming conference, and if by a slim chance they do, they won’t know the purpose of the meeting or why the leaders of Canada, United States and Mexico are meeting in the dog days of summer under what amounts to a veil of secrecy.

So, what’s this upcoming conference all about, and why are the newspapers, radio and television keeping silent about it?

The purpose of the upcoming conference is to ratify the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which was initiated by Bush, Martin and Fox in 2005 in Waco, Texas. Essentially, this so-called ‘partnership’ will result in what the politicians refer to as ‘continental integration’-newspeak for a North American Union- and basically a harmonization of 100’s of regulations, policies and laws.

In layman’s terms, it means that once this ‘partnership’ has been ratified which is a fait accompli; we will be following in the footsteps of the European Union. It will mean that Canada will become part of the North American Union by 2010, and that our resources, agricultural, health and environment issues, to name a few, will be controlled not by Canada, but by the government of the North American Union.

A huge ‘NAFTA’ highway, one quarter of a mile wide, is already being built in Texas, where private land is being expropriated, and will eventually reach the Manitoba border….

The NAFTA superhighway is being developed by the North America Supercorridor Coalition (NASCO). [You can read their mission statement here in PDF format.] The road, already under construction, will be four football fields wide. It follows the US Interstate 35 corridor from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minnesota. Americans who think that the use of eminent domain in Kelo vs. New London (summary) was egregious have not seen anything yet! What is worse, the resources of the original I-35 corridor, originally mapped, graded and developed by the American taxpayers, will be operated as a for-profit toll road by a private Spanish company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A..

The initial plan for the unification of Canada, the United States, and Mexico was developed by a multinational task force of the Council on Foreign Relations. [You can read their entire report here in PDF format.] The report recomments “the creation by 2010 of a North American community” asserting that

North America is different from other regions of the world and must find its own cooperative route forward. A new North American community should rely more on the market and less on bureaucracy, more on pragmatic solutions to shared problems than on grand
schemes….

Translation: The grand schemes of the patriots who created the United States are no longer relevant. It is more important to preserve wealth than to cherish the principles that created the greatest society in human experience.

Included in the details of the report:

• “…once unloaded from ships, containers may cross land borders within the region without the need for further inspections.” This puts US safety in the hands of inspectors in Mexico, who have a history of accepting bribes.
• “…a common security perimeter for North America…. a common security perimeter for North America … will require specific policy, statutory, and procedural changes in all three nations.” We will have completely sacrificed our sovereignty to set our own standards to the union. All a terrorist will have to do is get into Mexico and he is home free.
• “…common approaches toward international negotiations on the global movement of people, cargo, and vessels…” This would include common external trade tariffs set by the union, not by the member countries.
• “NORAD should evolve into a multiservice Defense Command that would expand the principle of Canadian-U.S. joint command to land and naval as well as air forces engaged in defending the approaches to North America.” So Canada and the United States would assume the defense burden, and include Mexico under the umbrella.
• “,,,a … North American Border Passwith biometric identifiers. This document would allow its bearers expedited passage through customs, immigration, and airport security throughout the region.” Free migration throughout the union with a biometric identification card — what a bonanza for terrorists and drug smugglers!
• “…increase labor mobility within North America…” What was that battle we just fought in the Senate?
• “…Implement the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States andMexico…”

An article in Human Events published last year warned of the consequences:

Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City….

The article continues:

The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plain view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration.

A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.

The dire consequences are endless. Our failing Food and Drug Administration, for example, cannot even protect us now from imported poisons from China. What will happen when there is no boundary inspection at all? Our bureaucratically moribund Immigration and Naturalization Service cannot even find and deport 600,000 criminal aliens who have already been convicted. How in heaven’s name do they expect to handle the biometric identification card? Our senior citizens cannot count on social security to hold up over time, even without including hordes of Mexicans in the plan. We have not even proved ourselves capable of managing our own national affairs, and now we are to be exposed to the even worse problems that plague Mexico.

The consequences for Canada are negative as well. Not only is it exposed to the spillover from Mexico that does not stop in the United States, but it will be forcibly deprived of oil and natural gas reserves, for the common good.

Canada’s vast oilsands … now provide a viable new source of energy…. North America is blessed with an abundant resource base. Exploiting these resources on a long-term, sustainable basis requires that the three governments work together to resolve issues and ensure responsible use of scarce resources and the free flow of both resources and capital across all three borders.”

Political activist Jerome Corsi sums it up:

North American Union to Replace USA?

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration’s true open borders policy.

Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union was formed.

Here’s another steadfast source of research on the “global elite” — The August Review. If you have any hope left for the United States, read as many articles on their website as possible. Here are some paragraphs from just one:

The global elite, through the direct operations of President George Bush and his Administration, are creating a North American Union that will combine Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into a superstate called the North American Union (NAU). The NAU is roughly patterned after the European Union (EU). There is no political or economic mandate for creating the NAU, and unofficial polls of a cross-section of Americans indicate that they are overwhelmingly against this end-run around national sovereignty….

Modern day globalization was launched with the creation of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Its membership consisted of just over 300 powerful elitists from North America, Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Trilateral Commission was to foster a “New International Economic Order” that would supplant the historical economic order.

In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Trilateral Commission nonetheless established a headlock on the Executive Branch of the U.S. government with the election of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a presidential candidate by Brzezinski, Carter was personally tutored in globalist philosophy and foreign policy by Brzezinski himself. Subsequently, when Carter was sworn in as President, he appointed no less than one-third of the U.S. members of the Commission to his Cabinet and other high-level posts in his Administration. Such was the genesis of the Trilateral Commission’s domination of the Executive Branch that continues to the present day….

Why would the Trilateral Commission seek to dominate the Executive Branch? Quite simply – Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would have been impossible to accomplish through the only moderately successful lobbying efforts of the past; power to use the government as a bully platform to modify political behavior throughout the world.

Of course, the obvious corollary to this hegemony is that the influence and impact of the citizenry is virtually eliminated….

….To look into the face of these global elites is to look into the face of unmitigated greed, avarice and treachery.

For more reading on this subject, visit an excellent resource list maintained by the Eagle Forum.

If all of this has left you feeling depressed, dear readers, visit The Onion for a very clever and detailed spoof of the subject.

Tony Blair has suffered major political fallout for his willingness to stand up against Sadaam’s regime of terror. As such, we know that the UK is pulling troops out of Iraq, and won’t be there much longer at all. In the minds and words of many liberal anti-war activists, being in Iraq only makes the UK a target for terror. So, if the UK pulls its troops from Iraq, terrorists will not target the Brits.

But the don’t get it. Radical fundamentalist Islam is, at the end of the day, a movement that attacks based not on a demonstration of strength, but a demonstration of weakness. The Iranians are capturing British soldiers, detaining them, and, one assumes, trying them and eventually killing them (if London doesn’t do something drastic). No, this move to take troops away from the War on Terror only makes the UK look more vulnerable.

The same thing happened with the train bombings in Madrid. It was obvious that Spain was on the edge about whether or not it would stand up against these thugs and murderers. Radical Muslim extremists blow up a train and the next thing you know Spain is out, AND they have a new shiny socialist government.

It’s the same thing that Bin Laden figured would happen on 9/11. It’s been well publicised that Bin Laden saw the U.S. as a “paper tiger” that would fold under pressure. But, the opposite happened, at least initially. And thank God for George W. Bush’s steadfastness in the war on terror, too.

Of course, now the Democrats in the house are trying to fulfill Bin Laden’s prediction, if a bit late. They are demanding we get out of Iraq, and are, like much of the rest of the world, demanding that a millitary solution to Iran’s nuclear crisis be taken off of the table.

Look, appeasement didn’t work when we tried it with Hitler. It didn’t work with Stalin, either. These maniacs don’t respond to guestures of kindness; they only respond to a show of force. If we back out of Iraq and refuse to disarm Iran of its nuclear program, that will send a clear signal to the terrorist organizations, as well as rogue states, that we don’t have the will to see it through. We will have many more 9/11′s, and eventually one of them will be nuclear.

You can read this and other articles by Bob Younce on his blog Bob’s Blog.

by Dan Cameron Rodill

In a surprising move recently, MilitaryCorruption.com, while lashing out at Dems too, more or less adopts their call for admitting defeat in Iraq and getting out in this article — ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. This is not insignificant, as MCC, while attacking corruption and malfeasance in the military, proudly flies the flag of patriotism, setting it well apart from your typical peacenik, puffnik and cocktail mediacrities.

MCC calls for a phased withdrawal from Iraq, seeing this as not the Democrat desire for “cut and run.” While we can understand the lashing out against and frustration with Bush and his ex-SecDef Donald Rumsfeld (we posted here not long ago Two Fly Guys, a ruminating look at both Bush and Rumsfeld in context of historical war leadership) our Strategy Klatsch is not yet ready to echo MCC’s call.

Yes, we have grave doubts about how effective the Bush “surge” in Baghdad can be. (We have, in fact, no great expectations for it, as the assassins will simply withdraw and wait out the feminized, poll-driven U.S.A., now clearly a captive of its own lawyer-driven bread-and-circus, or pizza-and-DVD democracy). Still, we do not see “cut and run by increments” as either a wise or expedient response to the Muddle East.

But wise choices here can happen only by accident, or amazing luck. With invaluable media assistance, the political hacks and drones of defeatism can smell success coming. They know that George Bush, the Great Non-Communicator, was an excellent jet pilot in the National Guard, but subsequently, as President, a politically correct warrior who will let the lawyers have at his military, while restraining them from dealing proper justice to enemy-abetting leaks or to a Sandy Burglar who steals state documents to cover Clintinoid ass in the War against the Islamic Fanatic.

In other words, they understand that “compassionate conservative” Bush is no match for their own media-driven cliches and pieties. This is why, while we cluck at their well-orchestrated ground-swell of sanctimony (which also includes legitimate critiques of Iraq corruption, possibly as large as what occurred under the dismal Dems in Vietnam), we also concede that weaselhood and starry-eyed wimps may in fact succeed. If Vietnam and The Killing Fields and the rise of the Mad Mullahs in the ashes of US defeat, retrenchment and humiliation did not teach a profound lesson thirty years ago, a study of history is perhaps useless.

A great nation that simply withdraws or waits for inevitable mistakes and then feeds on them, whines about “neo-cons” who lead their Leader by the nose, and hopes, pathetically, that “dialogue” will stop creation of the Mullah Bomb in Iran (without a shred of evidence or hard logic on how) is what? It is only questionably “great,” and is unquestionably not the nation that in 1945, after universal sacrifice that is mocked or unknown in today’s all-my-trials lawyerdom, stood proud in victory over mighty despots and menace.

As a Vietnam war correspondent, Dan Cameron Rodill stayed in country as Vietnam was invaded by the communists, and continued to cover the fall of Saigon for CBS News while the entire CBS staff (including Bob Simon, Bill Plante and Ed Bradley) fled.