Category: Current Posts

Here I am, autographing the very first copy of my very first book.

Read more about “Backlash” here: www.backlashbook.com.

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Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary handily as expected, but not before giving the Democrats, as well as his Republican rivals a gift: “I enjoy firing people,” he said in a speech just before the voting started.

An unfortunate choice of words, when what he was saying in context was, “I like being able to change health care providers if my current one isn’t giving me good service; something we won’t be able to do under Obamacare.”

Naturally the Democrats had a TV ad produced in about five minutes, with just “I enjoy firing people” as its sound bite and Romney depicted as a greedy capitalist who salivates over spreading misery.  Romney’s disingenuous Republican primary rivals piled on as well.

But after I thought about it, maybe a president who enjoys firing people is exactly what we need.  After all, the national debt is now north of $15 trillion, which is equal to our Gross Domestic Product.  That means we owe as much as we produce annually.  That can only point to disaster, threatening our national security and even our existence as a nation.

So, what needs to be done? Well, a great deal actually, but a start would be to take a look at the Federal government and see what expenses could be cut.  As a businessman like Romney knows, payroll is always your largest expense in a business.  Now that may not be true for the Federal government, since it simply gives money away by the boatload and no private business can do that and survive, but certainly staffing levels are something that should be examined.

For instance, I believe it was Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution of 1994 that asked why we need a Department of Education in the Federal Government.  Makes sense, since the Federal Government doesn’t actually run any schools.  Eliminating the department would cut about $100 billion from the annual budget.  Not much, you say.  Yes, but $100 billion here, $100 billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money (with apologies to Everett Dirksen).

Next, there needs to be a house-cleaning at the EPA. Maybe we shouldn’t eliminate the department, but the outrages that emanate from it make it high on my list of targets for reorganization.  The latest insanity is hitting oil companies with fines for not using a bio-fuel that doesn’t exist! See this link for details.

I could go on (and on) but you get the idea.

Barak Obama claimed to be concerned about waste, fraud and abuse in the Health Care/Insurance industries as a basis for instituting Nationalized Health Care, but there is no greater locus of waste, fraud and abuse than the Federal Government and its bloated bureaucracy, plus the lobbyists, crony-capitalists, overpriced contractors and boondock boondoggles that cling to it like parasites.

So maybe the best thing in the world would be someone who knows how to turn a situation around, and can start by doing the painful work of cutting where cuts are needed.

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My pastor recently returned from a trip to Israel, where he and a group of pastors toured the usual holy sites: Golgotha, the Garden Tomb, the Sea of Galilee, etc.

Also part of the trip was information about the current situation there in Israel, with the shifting political situation in many of the surrounding countries with doubts about whether the “Arab Spring” will, in the end, be positive for Israel.

It’s actually not looking good.

I forget what Jewish philosopher/comedian said it, but it’s easy to understand why some in that beleaguered country might wish, if they are God’s Chosen People, “Please God, choose someone else!”

My pastor told of meeting more than one Palestinian who told him frankly that he much preferred the Israelis to Hamas, which rules Gaza.

He also told of seeing video, edited by an American News organization to make it appear that the Israeli army had shot an unarmed Palestinian civilian, but then seeing the raw footage showing the Israeli’s taking an AK-47 from the man that he had been firing at the Israeli’s before they shot him.

That’s why we call them the “Lame-stream Media”.

It’s been my experience that, every time I have had first hand knowledge of any news story, the media has gotten it, not just wrong, but usually 180-degrees out of phase.  The adage is true when it comes to the American media: Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.

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Well, I’m disappointed that Herman Cain dropped out of the Republican presidential race.  Several thoughts come to mind.

First, what was he thinking?  The accusation of the affair was apparently true,  in spite of the fact that the woman is a known stalker.  I can only ascribe the fact that he didn’t disclose the information to his staff as proof that you have to have a really big ego (and sense of invincibility apparently) to run for president.

Second, it’s pretty obvious that the revelations, coming spaced as they were for the greatest news impact, were orchestrated probably by Democrat party operatives.  Why was it so important to knock Herman Cain out of the race, once he began to score high in the polls?

Because there could be no greater threat to Democrat orthodoxy than an African-American presidential candidate who is Republican and conservative.  The holy writ of the Democrat party is that Republicans are racists and do everything they can to hurt “the poor” (read “black people”).  The truth is quite different, of course.

The Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression as it’s known here in Georgia) broke out because the first Republican president was elected.  The Southerners correctly deduced that the election of a Republican president would signal the end of the enslavement of the Negro, because the Republican party was the child of the abolitionist movement.  The overwhelmingly Democrat Southern legislatures promptly voted to secede.  The slaves were indeed freed by the Republican president and, when the war ended, Republican union generals imposed martial law on the Southern states until they voted to approve the Constitutional amendments ending slavery and giving blacks the right to vote.

After martial law was lifted, the solidly Democrat South systematically imposed Jim
Crow laws to prevent African Americans from voting and also established the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize and execute African Americans it judged didn’t “know their place”.  Storied Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was a prominent member of the Klan.

For 100 years this was reality in the South.  I myself risked the ire of the law in Arkansas by allowing my black friends to stay in my dorm room in a county where it was illegal for blacks to stay within its borders overnight.  This got me called a “n****r lover” for the first (but not the last) time in my life.  I also witnessed Klan rallies in Mobile in the 1970s and a young black man was lynched while I lived there.

In the 1960s, more than one Democrat governor stood in the door of state college administration buildings to prevent black students from enrolling.  Segregation was the law in the South and African Americans who traveled found it difficult to find food and lodging — even water.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, but only congressional Republicans voted for it as a bloc.  The Democrats were divided between the “Solid South” and the rest of the country, with Democrats such as the aforementioned Byrd, Al Gore, Sr., and many others voting against it.

So why do 95% of African Americans always vote Democrat?  And why would the nomination of Herman Cain as the Republican presidential nominee have precipitated a crisis of biblical proportions in the Democrat party and especially in the African American community?

The answer is that Democrat presidents introduced and pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including LBJ, who being from Texas, might have voted against it if he had still been in the Senate.  Johnson also implemented the “Great Society”.  A War on Poverty that has drained trillions from the Federal treasury since it established Food Stamps, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare, and Work Study.  By this means the Democrats convinced African Americans that their party was the party of the people; the party most compassionate for the poor.  And of course, “poor” was the black race’s “place”.

Herman Cain’s candidacy would have unmasked the largely hidden fact that the African-American community is actually conservative.  In spite of welfare programs which have decimated the African-American family, African Americans are overwhelmingly fundamentalist Christian (unless they’re Muslim, which is even more conservative).  The soaring illegitimate birth rate in the community is directly attributable to Liberal Democrat programs for the poor which obviate fathers.  And abortion was initially promoted as a way to limit the birth rate of the black community.

They are also conservative fiscally as a rule, the excesses of hip-hop artists and basketball stars notwithstanding.

A self-made man like Herman Cain, who didn’t go hat-in-hand to the NAACP, the SCLC or the Black Caucus, not to mention the Democrat Party, all the while promoting a small-government, rugged-individualist philosophy, would explode the myth of the Democrats’ unshakable support of the Black community.  But growing numbers of African Americans are straying from the Democrat plantation and asserting that conservative policies which encourage economic development within the Black Community are the best way to improve the lot of the poorest of the poor.

The prospect of TWO African Americans facing off with philosophies poles apart would have shattered the hold the Democrat party has had on the Black Community and shattered the old Civil Rights orthodoxy as well.  Cain would have necessarily drawn a percentage of the Black vote away from Obama, something that would have certainly prevented his reelection.

So with Cain’s withdrawl, the crisis has been averted.  For now.

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So, we’re told, there are now five women accusing Herman Cain of sexual harrassment, although the two latest are the only ones who have a name, date, place, and detailed account.

Sharon Bialek of Chicago today gave high-profile interviews saying that Cain implied with a touch and innuendo that a sexual favor would help her get a job.  Accompanied by celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, she appeared on (at least) ABC and NBC this morning.  One or both of the interviews were prerecorded because I saw the ABC interview and immediately changed the channel to NBC and saw almost the identical interview again.

In fact what I heard on NBC had Ann Curry asking almost identical questions and getting virtually identical answers as I had heard moments before with ABC’s George Stephanopolis.  Here’s an example.

ABC: “Cain is also…saying that you [Gloria Allred] are a long-time Democratic activist”.  Allred: “Just recently I held a news conference in New York against Congressman Anthony Weiner and my client said he should resign.” (video interview)

NBC: “Here is another question being raised by the right… is this a politically motivated effort on your behalf?”  Allred: “Absolutely not. the last big news conference I did in New York was against Congressman, Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner.  My client said he should resign…” (transcript).

Wow!  Is there an echo in here?  Did Stephanopolis and Curry get the same script?

For his part, Cain insists in the strongest terms possible that he has never heard of or met Ms. Bialek.  In his news conference, he was categorical, stating that he “rejects” the accusations and that he has “never harassed anybody.”

Some of the questions in both interviews were obviously calculated to enhance Bialek’s (as well as Allred’s) credibility, as when Stephanopolis established that she is registered as a Republican.

Without recounting the checkered employment and legal history of Ms. Bialek, it’s obvious that somebody’s lying.  If it’s Cain, he has left himself no wiggle room whatever, which seems to me a pretty strong position, unless the facts don’t back him up.

If it’s the women who have been put up to making false accusations, it can only demonstrate how absolutely scared to death the Democrats are that an African-American conservative is getting a hearing.

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Talk about cliches! Talk about racial stereotypes!

Where have we heard this before? A self-made black man with a conservative bent is being considered for high public office.  What’s a liberal mainstream media to do?

Play the sexual harassment card of course!

Today it was revealed by the one-percenter-George-Soros-funded Politico.com that there had been sexual harassment charges against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain when he was president of the National Restaurant Association back in the 90’s.  The whole thing had a vaguely familiar ring to it.

Then I remembered.  Back in the early 90’s, when George Bush 41 nominated Clarence Thomas, coincidentally also a black conservative from Georgia, to the Supreme Court, the left-wing media and political establishment had a cow and that cow’s name was Anita Hill.  She made a series of increasingly unbelievable claims of sexual harassment which ultimately no one could take seriously. Thomas was confirmed and still sits on the Supreme Court today.

The accusations in the Politico article are laughably vague, but will probably get more shrill as time goes by.   For his part, Cain can only remember one of the women making a formal accusation and cannot remember ever being alone with either one.  The one who made the formal charge of sexual harassment left the employ of the Restaurant Association with only a small severance payment, not a big payday of hush money.

This all just goes to show that Thomas and Cain are among a few African Americans (may their tribe increase!) who have committed the unpardonable sin of escaping the Democrat plantation, or, if you can relate to this metaphor better, they have not only refused to sit in the back of the White Guilt Democrat bus, they have gotten off the bus at the Republican bus stop!

And so they trot out the old sexual harassment charge again.  Seriously? Don’t they see how that perpetuates a racial stereotype?  But that’s the problem.  All African Americans are two-dimensional stereotypes to white Democrats.  African Americans are just a dependable, monolithic voting bloc and it’s really inconvenient when they begin to think for themselves and get out of line.

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There were high fives all around at the White House at the news that Moammar Qaddafi had been finally caught and killed, so Libya followed Egypt in toppling a long-standing dictatorship (Mubarak was technically President), which itself followed Iraq and the deposition of Saddam Hussein through more direct American intervention.

President Barak Obama, who is a “Christian( ! )”, has celebrated the “Arab Spring”, the apparently spontaneous uprising of people in several countries of the Middle East as a new birth of democratic freedom.  However the facts are much different.

In Iraq, the Assyrian Christian minority (about 3% of the population) traced its roots back to Apostolic times, possibly after Thomas’ missionary journeys, and had enjoyed relative protection and freedom for centuries, even under Saddam Hussein.  Since Saddam’s ouster however, as many as half a million have left the country because of radical Islamic persecution, including orchestrated car bomb attacks on multiple churches and slayings by radical Islamists.  Those who haven’t left the country are displaced refugees near the remote old city of Nineveh.

Meanwhile, a similar persecution has begun in Egypt, since the removal of Mubarak.  The Coptic Christians of Egypt, which also trace their history back to the first century, had also been protected under Mubarak.  While they couldn’t proselytize, they at least were able to coexist with Muslims as about 10% of the population.

Now however, with the relatively pro-US, relatively pro-Israel Mubarak gone, the anti-Christian violence has begun, with a series of church burnings and then killings of Christians who protested.  It can only be a matter of time before the historic Coptic church is exiled if not wiped out.

Meanwhile the White House and the “Lame Stream Media” celebrates the “Arab Spring” while ignoring the plight of these historic Christian communions. “Arab Spring” is apparently Winter for Christians.

John Adams said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In the “Arab Spring” we are seeing what happens when what we are told is democracy is implemented without a moral commitment to freedom of religion.

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Liberals don’t seem to want to be called “Liberals” and Leftists don’t ever want to be known as “Leftists”.  Socialists and Communists never seem to want to be called what they are either.   “Progressive” is the term they all seem to prefer, in America at least.

That sounds good, doesn’t it?  It evokes “The Carousel of Progress” at Disney; everything always getting better and better.  Who could be against Progress?

But there is another side to the story.  When you are “progressing” in your car, that’s generally a good thing.  Cars are meant to move you from point A to point B.  When you go out to go to work and your car won’t start that’s not good.  However, when your car is “progressing” toward at cliff or a brick wall at 80 miles an hour, that’s not so good either.

One of the objections to any change in the Federal tax code, from Steve Forbes’ Flat Tax to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is that they are “Regressive”, which is the opposite of “Progressive”.  When it comes to taxes, shifting more and more of the tax burden away from the lower income people and onto the upper income people is considered “Progressive”, but a tax system where everyone pays the same percentage of their income is considered moving backward — “Regressive”.

But currently, the bottom 50% of wage earners pays no income tax, and the top 5% pays more in income taxes than the other 95% (link).  It’s hard to see how that can be good for the economy, much less “Progress”.  But, the “Progressives” say, “the rich” can afford it, which of course is just an echo of the Marxist “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.”

We’ve been “progressing” from the flat 3% with no deductions when the income tax was instituted almost 100 years ago (America survived for 135 years without an income tax) until now the tax burden is so lopsided that it’s difficult to see how anyone can regard it as fair.  As depicted in “Atlas Shrugged”, there may come a time when the “rich” will decide it’s not worth it any more and simply quit.

This is not a good time for that to happen.  President Obama and the Democrat majority in Congress from 2006 to 2010 has doubled the national debt.  Every man, woman and child in America is responsible for $80,000 worth, but only the “rich” are expected to pay.

Sometimes forward progress isn’t good at all.  If forward progress was always good, cars wouldn’t need brakes or reverse gears.

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The surprising ascendancy of Herman Cain to the top of the Republican presidential hopeful heap has been interesting, but since we have 13 months before the presidential election, it may or may not make any difference.

However, the prospect of an election featuring Obama vs. Cain is VERY interesting, since the standard charge against Republicans and the Tea Party has been that they are racists.  That’s ridiculous of course, since Republicans freed the slaves and voted as a bloc for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, whereas Democrats brought about the deaths of 400,000 Americans rather than give Blacks full citizenship and stood in schoolhouse doors rather than let them be educated.

Obama was elected president at least partially because a lot of white people were ready to vote for an African American for president and they vaguely (or consciously) believed it would be racist NOT to vote for him.

The polls would indicate those white-guilt-afflicted people are over it.

Joseph Lowry, the grand old man of the Civil Rights movement, famously said that Obama was not an “authentic” American-American  because he didn’t have “slave blood”.

It’s true that Obama is African-American; in fact, his father was African and not an American citizen at all.  However, Obama’s American half was as white as I am.  And he was raised by his white grandparents.

Herman Cain, on the other hand, can hearken back to  great-grandparents who were slaves here in Georgia, and grandparents who were sharecroppers.  It doesn’t get more “authentic” African American than that.

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“Ask five economists and you’ll get five different explanations — six if one went to Harvard.”

Edgar Fiedler’s quote came to mind as I was thinking about the “Occupy Wall Street” protestors.  It seems if you ask five of them what they are protesting you’ll get six answers.

Putting aside the vague unhappiness expressed by the “Occupiers” in the motley hobo camps, there are things to be unhappy about, but Wall Street and the rest of Corporate America are not the total cause or solution of the problems.  The president and Congressional Democrats gush about the protests being a spontaneous answer to the Tea Party organizations, but it’s difficult to nail down a one-to-one list of opposing ideas.

In fact, one of the many things mentioned by members of the “Flea Party” is the National Debt, followed quickly by references to their own student loans.  Many Tea Party members would agree with the protesters about that, although they probably wouldn’t be able to stand the stench long enough to stand too close to them.

I remember the protests of the 1960s, and even then I thought they were stupid.  We live in a country where we don’t need to demonstrate and riot to throw off an iron-heeled dictator (so far), but we can achieve change through the ballot box.

Probably 99.9% of the protestors voted for “Hope and Change” (if they voted at all), but the change they voted for was like the woman who rejoiced when Obama won because he was going to pay her mortgage(!)

It turns out that even President Obama, who has gotten everything he wanted all the while castigating Republicans for opposing him, can’t change the forces of nature, like economics, the weather and human nature.  Apparently the protestors believed him when he said, “We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

Or not.

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