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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

2/28/2008

The Real Inconvenient Truth

David Walker 1.jpg

David Walker, Comptroller of the United States

When I began this weblog in May of 2006, my intent was to focus on the fact that America’s leadership has betrayed its duty to our Founders and its allegiance to our people. In the nearly two years that AADB has been in existence, that betrayal has ramped up dramatically, to the point at which its connotations are nothing short of deadly to the sovereignty of our republic and the safety of our people.

Nearly all of our ‘leadership’ in all three branches of government, on the federal level, consists of men and women who bear little or no allegiance to our Constitution or the men who sacrificed so dearly to ensure us a sovereign republic, individual freedom, and limited government.

In Congress, I suspect that far more than ninety percent of those ‘leaders’ seated in the house and senate can anymore be accurately described as ‘public servants’. The large majority of our ‘leadership’ is nothing more than a well-heeled group of self-serving, agenda-driven elitists, convinced that they know better than we do how we should live, and that government should have the power to dictate those parameters.

In the White House, the vision of a united North America, and the needs and desires of the business class, dramatically outweigh this administration’s perceived duty to the average American citizen.

Our courts are filled with activist, left-wing agenda-driven societal architects, whose familiarity with, and reverence for, their Constitutional powers is minimal, at best.

God bless the James Inhofes, Antonin Scalias, Clarence Thomases, and the other perhaps dozen or so federal legislators and judges who still hold fast to their Constitutional callings. They are an honorable, but dying, breed. And I wish them well in what will prove to be their futile battle to reclaim America from the scoundrels.

Over the past five decades, the leftists among us have led us down a path that they insisted on painting in garden-like hues, but the ominous black destination that lies at the end of that path is becoming increasingly clear to right-thinking Americans.

The majority of Americans, when asked what they believe to be the most pressing issue facing America this election year, invariably respond ‘the economy’. And yet I sincerely believe those same Americans have absolutely no idea what kind of condition the American economy is in. The average American, simply put, defines the economy in terms of the cost of a loaf of bread, or whether or not he has a job.

Yet the American economy is a many-tentacled organism, whose health is directly tied to the sovereignty and security of our republic. And the American economy is in shambles.

The reason for the economy’s ill health is that the American ‘leadership’ of the past fifty years (the Reagan years excluded) has thrown fiscal responsibility out the window, and has used economic power to buy votes, and to surreptitiously and premeditatedly destroy every foundation upon which this republic began.

Ayn Rand was uncannily prescient in her description of this sickening evolution:

The goal of the 'liberals' as it emerges from the record of the past decades was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot -- by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli.

That fait accompli is close to being accomplished, but at what price?

Below is a transcript of an interview with David Walker, Comptroller of the United States. Mr. Walker is not an elected government official. He is, put simply, America’s chief financial accountability officer.

America’s Comptroller is head of the Government Accountability Office, and, as such, his duty (according the the GAO’ mission statement) is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. Over the years, GAO has earned a reputation for professional, objective, fact-based, and nonpartisan reviews of government issues and operations.

Yet Mr. Walker is aghast at what our government is doing to our economy, our security, and our children’s inheritance – and no one in Washington is listening to him.

Why? Because no one in Washington anymore considers himself accountable to anyone (least of all the American people), or anything … except the realization of an elitist agenda.

I urge you to read his words. They are candid, and not motivated by political concerns. They simply scratch the surface of the ocean of fiscal, moral and political corruption in Washington. The tentacles from the governmental irresponsibility he describes reach into every aspect of American life – the most frightening of which will be our deteriorating ability to continue to exist as a free and sovereign republic.

Interview with David Walker
(Mr. Walker’s words in italics)

When the stock market plunges like it did this week, everyone pays attention.

But short-term losses aren’t that important to the man you are about to meet. David Walker thinks the biggest economic peril facing the nation is being ignored, and for the past year he’s been traveling the country, like an Old Testament prophet, urging people to wake up before its too late.

Who is David Walker, and why should we care? He’s the nation’s top accountant – the Comptroller General of the United States. He’s totaled up the government’s income, liabilities and future obligations, and concluded that our current standard of living is unsustainable, unless some drastic action is taken.

And he’s not alone. It’s been called ‘the dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows’ -- a set of financial truths so inconvenient that most elected officials don’t even want to talk about them.

Which is exactly why David Walker does.

I will argue that the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility.

As Comptroller General of the United States, he runs the Government Accountability Office, The GAO, which audits the government’s books and serves as the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.

I’m gonna show you some numbers. They’re all big and they’re all bad.

So bad that Walker has given up on elected officials, and taken his message directly to taxpayers and opinion-makers, hoping to shape the debate in the next presidential election.

We’ve been to thirteen cities outside of Washington. The American people are absolutely starved for two things: the truth … and leadership.

He calls it ‘The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour’ and he is telling civic groups, university forums, and newspaper editorial boards that the U.S. has spent, promised and borrowed itself into such a deep hole that it will be unable to climb out if it doesn’t act now.

As Walker sees it, the survival of the Republic is at stake.

What’s going on right now is that we’re spending more money than we make, charging it to a credit card, and expecting our grandchildren to pay for it. And that’s absolutely outrageous …

We’ve gone from surpluses to huge deficits, and our long-range situation is much worse.

The fact is that we don’t face an immediate crisis, and so people say ‘What’s the problem?’ The problem is that we suffer from a fiscal cancer. It is growing within us. And if we do not treat it, it could have catastrophic consequences for our country.


The cancer, Walker says, are massive entitlement programs we can no longer afford, exacerbated by a demographic ‘glitch’ that began more than sixty years ago – a dramatic spike in the fertility rate called the ‘baby boom’.

Beginning next year, and for twenty years thereafter, seventy-eight million Americans will become pensioners, and medical dependents, of the U.S. taxpayer.

The first baby boomer will become sixty-two, and be eligible for early retirement or Social Security, January 1, 2008. They’ll be eligible for Medicare just three years later. And when those boomers start retiring en masse, that will be a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state, if we don’t get serious.


To illustrate that fact, Walker uses a PowerPoint presentation to show what would happen in thirty years if the U.S. maintains its current course, and fulfills all the promises politicians have made to the public on things like Social Security and Medicare.

By 2040, if nothing changes, the federal government is going to be able to do nothing more than pay interest on the mounting debt, and some entitlement benefits. It won’t have money left for anything else: national defense, homeland security, education … you name it.

Walker says you could eliminate all waste and fraud, and the entire Pentagon budget, and those long-range financial projections will barely change.

What’s shaping up is an actuarial nightmare.

[Not having enough wage earners to pay Social Security benefits] is part of the problem. But the real problem is healthcare costs. Our healthcare problem is much more significant than Social Security. The Medicare problem is five times greater than the Social Security problem.

But instead of dealing with the problem, the president and the congress made things much worse just three years ago when they expanded the Medicare program to include prescription drug coverage.

The Prescription Drug Bill was probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s. We’ve promised way more than we can afford to do: eight trillion dollars added to what was already a fifteen to twenty trillion dollar underfunding.

We’re not being realistic. We can’t afford to keep the promises we’ve already made, much less to be piling on top of them.


With one stroke of the pen, Walker says the federal government increased existing Medicare obligations by nearly forty percent over the next seventy-five years.

We’d have to have eight trillion dollars now, invested at treasury rates, to deliver on that promise. And we have zip.

Walker says we have promised almost unlimited healthcare to senior citizens who never see the bills, and the government is already borrowing money to pay them.

The system is unsustainable. It’s the number one fiscal challenge for the federal government. It’s the number of fiscal challenge for state governments. And it’s the number one competitive challenge for American business. We’re going to have to dramatically, and fundamentally, reform our healthcare system, in installments, over the next twenty years.

If we don’t, it could bankrupt America.


You’re probably expecting to hear from someone who disagrees with the Comptroller’s numbers, projections, and analyses. But hardly anyone does.

He is accompanied on the ‘Wake up Tour’ by representatives from the conservative Heritage Foundation, left-leaning Brookings Institution, and the nonpartisan Concord Coalition.

The only dissenters seem to be a small minority of economists who believe either that the U.S. can grow its way out of the problem, or that Walker is over-stating it.

Unfortunately, they don’t get it. I don’t know anybody who has done their homework, has researched history, and who’s good at math, who would tell you that we can grow our way out of this problem.

Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, validated much of Walker’s take on the situation at congressional hearings this year (’Economic growth alone is unlikely to solve this nation’s fiscal problems’) -- and so did ranking republicans and democrats on the senate Budget Committee.

This is not just about numbers. We are mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren at record rates. And that is not only an issue of fiscal irresponsibility. It’s an issue of immorality.

link to interview

As comprehensive as this interview is, Mr. Walker did not even touch on the issue of America's mirage-based monetary policy (fodder for another essay, at another time).

Below are just four, of countless, telling charts that exhibit small snapshots of the true nature of America's economy, without spin or fudge factor. I hope to elaborate on these and other economic indicators in future essays, and hope that some of you will contribute your knowledge as well. Thanks for the steer to the charts, First_Salute.

Money Supply Growth.gif

Money GDP Annual Growth.gif

Money Financial vs Trade Weighter $.gif

Money Annual Consumer Inflation.gif

source

The American people have always been, and still are, a good and decent people. But our leaders are dishonest, immoral and self-serving. The honest and decent among us had better soon awaken from our apathetic stupor or the seeds that our criminal leaders have sown will grow into choking weeds more powerful and ugly than we can imagine ... and they will have stripped from us the power to cut them down.

~ joanie

2/27/2008

Rest in Peace

Buckley.bmp
William F. Buckley
1925-2008

2/25/2008

Barack Obama Embarrassed by
Billionaire Link to Home Deal

Obama.jpg

by James Bone in New York and Dominic Kennedy in London
(from TimesOnline.com)

Barack Obama now admits his involvement in this land deal was a ‘boneheaded mistake’.

A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses.

The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.

A company related to Mr Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr Obama's bagman Antoin "Tony" Rezko on May 23 2005. Mr Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million.

Three weeks later, Mr Obama bought a house on the city's South Side while Mr Rezko's wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15.

Mr Obama says he never used Mrs Rezko's still-empty lot, which could only be accessed through his property. But he admits he paid his gardener to mow the lawn.

Mrs Rezko, whose husband was widely known to be under investigation at the time, went on to sell a 10-foot strip of her property to Mr Obama seven months later so he could enjoy a bigger garden.

Mr Obama now admits his involvement in this land deal was a “boneheaded mistake”.

Mrs Rezko’s purchase and sale of the land to Mr Obama raises many unanswered questions.

It is unclear how Mrs Rezko could have afforded the downpayment of $125,000 and a $500,000 mortgage for the original $625,000 purchase of the garden plot at 5050 South Greenwood Ave.

In a sworn statement a year later, Mrs Rezko said she got by on a salary of $37,000 and had $35,000 assets. Mr Rezko told a court he had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets, no unencumbered assets [and] is significantly in arrears on many of his obligations."

Mrs Rezko, whose husband goes on trial on unrelated corruption charges in Chicago on March 3, refused to answer questions about the case when she spoke by telephone to The Times.

Asked if she used money from her husband to buy the land next to Mr Obama's house, she said: "I can't answer these questions, I'm sorry."

Asked how long she and her husband had known Mr Auchi, she replied: "I will not be able to answer this question."

Mr Auchi's lawyer, asked whether the Fintrade Services loan was used to buy the land which became Mr Obama's garden, stated: "No, not as far as my client is aware."

Mr Auchi's links with Mr Rezko are a new political headache for Mr Obama, the charismatic Illinois senator vying to become America’s first African-American president.

Hillary Clinton has sought to make Mr Rezko, who has bankrolled Mr Obama's political career since his first run for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s, into an election issue by calling him a "slum landlord" in a televised debate. She has repeatedly suggested that Mr Obama has effectively not been "vetted" by media scrutiny and will not withstand "the Republican attack machine".

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr Obama, told The Times: “The bottom line is Obama does not recall ever meeting him [Mr Auchi].”

The house-and-garden deal raised questions about whether Mr Rezko, a property developer and fast-food restauranteur, made it possible for the Obamas to purchase a mansion they could otherwise not afford.

Mrs Rezko paid the asking price for the garden but the Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million, - $300,000 less than the asking price. The sellers deny they offered the Obamas a discount on the house because the garden had fetched full price from Mrs Rezko.

Mr Rezko has since been indicted for allegedly scheming to pressure companies seeking business with the state of Illinois for kickbacks and contributions to the governor Rod Blagojevich's campaign. He goes on trial on March 3.

A prosecution document filed last month alleged that a "political candidate" - identified by the Chicago Sun-Times as Mr Obama - received a $10,000 campaign contribution from what is said to be a $250,000 kickback in the corruption case. That means Mr Obama's name could figure in Mr Rezko's trial, although he is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Mr Obama insists he never used his office to do favours for Mr Rezko but admits that, as an Illinois state senator, he once wrote letters to housing officials urging them to provide money in support of a proposed apartment building for elderly people which Mr Rezko wanted to build.

Mr Obama has publicly sought to atone for his closeness to Mr Rezko, paying $150,000 to charity to distance himself from a man accused of political corruption.

The spotlight fell on Mr Rezko's ties to Mr Auchi last month when the Chicago businessman was thrown in jail for violating his bail terms by failing to declare a different $3.5 million loan from the British billionaire, made in April 2007. Prosecutors feared Mr Rezko, who travels widely in the Middle East, might flee to a country without an extradition treaty such as his birthplace of Syria.

Mr Auchi was convicted of corruption, given a suspended sentence and fined £1.4 million in France in 2003 for his part in the Elf affair, described as the biggest political and corporate scandal in post-war Europe. He, in a statement from his media lawyers, claims he is appealing against the sentence.

Mr Auchi founded his Luxembourg-based General Mediterranean Holding (GMH) in 1979, a year before he left Iraq. He says that he did business with his native country when it was considered a friend of the West but ceased to trade with the late Saddam Hussein's regime once sanctions were imposed after the invasion of Kuwait.

Mr Rezko has told a court that Mr Auchi is a "close friend." Mr Auchi's lawyer told The Times: "It is untrue that my client and Mr Rezko are 'close friends'. Mr Auchi first met Mr Rezko after the 2003 Iraq war and they have a business relationship."

Mr Rezko and Mr Auchi have been partners in a pizzeria business in the Mid-West and a major 62-acre land development in Riverside Park in Chicago.

According to court documents, Mr Rezko's lawyer said his client had "longstanding indebtedness" to Mr Auchi's GMH. By June 2007 he owed it $27.9 million.

Under a Loan Forgiveness Agreement described in court, Mr Auchi lent Mr Rezko $3.5 million in April 2005 and $11 million in September 2005, as well as the $3.5 million transferred in April 2007.

That agreement provided for the outstanding loans to be "forgiven" in return for a stake in the 62-acre Riverside Park development.

A posting last week on a GMH-owned website, middle-east-online.com, portrayed Mr Auchi as a Middle Eastern "Donald Trump" with a global business construction empire.

Mr Auchi visited the United States in 2004. Pictures show him meeting Emil Jones, the president of the Illinois state senate, an ally of Mr Obama, a former state senator.

Both Mr Auchi and Mr Obama say they have no memory of meeting each other. But, according to a source, the two may have had a brief encounter at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago where Mr Auchi’s visit was being honoured with a dinner attended by the Governor when Mr Obama, coincidentally in the hotel, dropped in.

An aide to Mr Obama said he did attend an event at the Four Seasons at which Mr Rezko was present but does not remember meeting Mr Auchi. "He shook a lot of hands and met a lot of people," the aide said. "We do not remember individual people."

Prosecutors say that, after Mr Auchi was unable to enter the United States in 2005, Mr Rezko approached the US State Department to get him a visa and apparently asked "certain Illinois government officials to do the same." Mr Obama denies he was approached. Mr Auchi's lawyer has emphasised to The Times that it would be entirely false to imply that money had been lent by GMH to Mr Rezko in return for Mr Rezko seeking to assist Mr Auchi to obtain a visa. The two men's relationship, the lawyer stressed, was a busines s one.

Mr Auchi's lawyer said the purpose of the Fintrade Services loan was to "assist the financial position" of a pizzeria company called AR Pizza, in which GMH held a shareholding. He said the loan had since been repaid in the form of a greater stake in the Chicago 62-acre land project.

AR Pizza has since become a defendant in a civil lawsuit by the Papa John's pizzeria chain, which alleges that it continued to operate a string of former Papa John's franchises under the name "Papa Tony's" without permission.

Mr Auchi's lawyer said: "My client played no part in the management and/or day to day running of AR Pizza, the GMH Group being an entirely passive investor in the company. Further, there was no need as a mimimum return on the investment was guaranteed. As to the court proceedings, my client is not a party to these. He denies any wrongdoing in relation to his involvement in AR Pizza."

Mr Rezko was also a major fundraiser for Governor Blagojevich. The governor's chief fundraiser Christopher Kelly, who also served as his gambling adviser, is fighting tax charges related to betting losses. The Associated Press reported that last month Mr Auchi's conglomerate also gave a loan to Mr Kelly secured on a Nevada land deal which the governor’s bagman was involved in.

link to (London) timesonline.com article

submitted by Luis
(contributing team member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

The Cat's Out

PigInAPoke2.gif

First_Salute, a good friend and frequent contributor, posted a link to an essay under a recent entry here. The essay, in part, refutes one of my own essays, entitled ‘Come November’. Despite the fact that the author mildly disagrees with my opinion about the danger -- to both our republic in general, and the republican party in specific -- of continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils, his essay is well worth reading at this point in the election process. November is eight months away -- and, during those eight months, despite the media’s attempts to paint Barack Obama as a young American patriot with a vision, determined to cleanse Washington of its decades of corruption and pandering to special interests, the truth may well find its way through the determined and subjective media filters.

The truth took a giant leap forward last week after Obama’s victory in the Wisconsin primary. And the dispenser of truth was none other than the candidate himself. The media must be aghast at the fact that the ugliness they have been feverishly attempting to disguise was brought into full view by the very person they have been trying to camouflage.

This next election may well determine whether America continues to exist as a free and sovereign republic. Although I am still determined to stand my ground against a republican party that has consistently betrayed its proud patriot foundations and its membership base, I urge all readers here to seriously consider the essay below. The author makes some profound and well-considered points that all Americans must take into the voting booth with them, come November. The only area in which I disagree (if you can call it that) with the author is that I believe the list of ‘promises’ he would extract from John McCain are nothing more than a patriot’s pipe dream. His list is impressive -- and it reflects the deep concerns voiced here and elsewhere by informed American patriots -- but the chances of McCain agreeing to all of the author’s terms are virtually nonexistent. With that said, below is J.R. Dieckmann’s brilliant article in its entirety -- thanks, First_Salute (link provided below the text):

Obama Changed My Mind About McCain

by J. R. Dieckmann

On Tuesday night, Feb. 19, 2008, Barack Obama let the cat out of the bag for the first time, when he gave a 45 minute, off the cuff speech after his victory in Wisconsin. For the first time in his campaign, he talked to some extent on substance, rather than in just empty platitudes and feel good rhetoric. For the first time he talked of more than just “hope for change” and “change for hope” and leave the rest to the fantasies of his supporters‘ imaginations. What he was proposing was pure socialism, correction - communism, straight out of the teachings of Saul Alinsky and Karl Marx. It all centered around government control over everything from the energy industry, to home mortgages subsidized with our tax money, to government run healthcare. Some will say it was just extreme left wing liberalism but I call it what it is - communism. Take money from the rich and give it to the poor, not only within America but internationally, all in the interest of global equality, paid for by the American taxpayers.

Clinton's speech wasn't much different but she was cut off when Obama took the stage. Americans need to realize that what these two charlatans are trying to do is to lead America straight into communism. And they are no longer being subtle about it. Whenever questioned about it, they dance around it and divert the subject to something else, never answering the question, or giving two completely opposite answers in the same statement. Only liberal politicians being interviewed by the liberal media can get away with this. It’s like having a conversation with an automated phone tree.

The communist threat to America has been brewing for decades right here in our own country and now it’s coming to a head. It is now trying to take over the highest office in the land. It’s time we started calling it exactly what it is and stop this political correctness that has us referring to communism as simply “progressive” or harmless “liberalism.” Some call it American socialism but it has it’s roots in pure communism.

Clinton and Obama don't have a clue what America is all about. Their idea of America is everyone living on welfare with their lives supervised by government social workers, and all business regulated by a government that can’t even regulate itself in compliance with the Constitution. They see big government as the solution to America’s problems when, in fact, in most cases the government is the cause of them. When has the government ever solved a problem without creating three more, or solved a problem for one group by taking away the rights of another?

In Oxnard, California we now have 14 year old Brandon McInerney on trial not only for the murder of 15-year-old Lawrence King, but is also being punished for “wrong thinking.” Since King was gay, McInerney has had “hate crime” added to his charges. This is not the first time an American citizen has been charged with “wrong thinking.”

You can now go to jail for your thoughts if you have a problem with one of the left’s pet minority groups. I am not advocating the killing of gays, but what about our American right to freedom of thought and speech? The politically correct, socialists/communists have now taken that away and will punish you for your thoughts. Right thinking will be rewarded, wrong thinking will be punished. The ideal communist plan.

For the first time in my life I realized that as much as I dislike John McCain, I will have to vote for him in November. There has been much discussion between myself and my fellow writers and publishers over this as I contended that a vote for McCain would violate my principles and values, and validate the left turn of the Republican party. But the platforms of both Obama and Clinton make McCain almost look like a conservative. They are even worse than I had thought, once you get past the platitudes and rhetoric. Not that I would ever have considered voting for either one of them, but neither would I have considered voting for McCain.

Tuesday night I realized that nothing, not even McCain, could be as harmful to our country as those two "Democrats" still in the race for president, and perhaps even worse, their respective spouses. I use the term "Democrats" loosely for they are Democrats only in party registration. Philosophically, they are both communists. Obama is a "Chicago Union Mafia" communist while Clinton is a Soviet Marxist communist. Both would destroy American liberty and the free enterprise system, and laugh about it.

When have either of these two candidates ever spoken favorably about the free market, entrepreneurship, or American business and industry? When have they ever paid due respect to the U.S. Constitution, or praised it? To them, these institutions are evil and must be eradicated. All we ever hear from them is how poor Americans really are and how much they need government assistance from Democrats. Aren’t we all getting a little sick of hearing these isolated stories of the misery of the downtrodden, of how Americans are living hand to mouth and unable to pay for both food and medicine, and how they’re losing their homes (that they couldn‘t afford to buy in the first place)?

Do you know anyone who fits these descriptions? I don’t. They attempt to create a false picture of America, then offer their socialist solutions for it. It’s the same old propaganda game of creating a false premise, then a solution to fix it. The only people who relate to this hysteria are the people who show up at Obama and Clinton rallies simply because they have no place better to be, like at a job. In the case of Obama, he seems to be advocating for only the poor black community without actually saying so, but that is where you find the conditions he describes. His solution to the problem is to keep them dependent on big government with the taxpayers’ money and somehow, that will lead them to the American dream.

The fact is that there are some poor people in America. We call them “the homeless.” These people that the Democrats are talking about would be considered middle class in most other countries, even rich in some. In America they are called “poor” because they have only one large screen color TV, one car per family instead of two, perhaps one computer with a dial-up connection to the Internet in their two bedroom household, and their cellphones are not the latest model that include the Internet. They are poor only when compared to the living standards of the Obamas and the Clintons, but they are far from digging in dumpsters for their next meal.

I understand that it’s hard to raise 3 or 4 children on the wages of one unskilled single mother, but who created that problem in the first place? It wasn’t the average American taxpayer. So why should they have to pay for the excesses and indulgences of others so that they can live a lifestyle beyond their means without taking personal responsibility for their own actions and the lives of their own children? People who want to live in America need to learn what it means to be an American, and accept that responsibility, if they want the benefits America offers. There is no “free lunch” in America and the hard working citizens shouldn’t have to pay for it.

On National Defense, Obama proposes the immediate withdrawal of troops from the “war on terror” (which is also improperly named due to political correctness - is actually the “war against Islamic aggression” or the “war on Islamofascism“). He would replace the fight against Islamic terrorist organizations and their sponsors in Iran with “negotiations” and “diplomacy.” He is so ignorant on foreign policy and affairs that he doesn’t even understand that the enemy we face today has no interest in, and nothing to gain from, negotiating with the U.S. other than the forestallment of their own demise.

Negotiations will produce no advantage for the U.S. but only give the enemy more time to conquer us which is their only real interest and objective in this war. What is there to negotiate over? Will Obama offer them one million detached heads instead of 300 million? Will he approve of Iran building nuclear weapons in exchange for their word not to use them on us? Will he sell out Iraq to al Qaeda in exchange for no more threatening videos from bin Laden?

I do not make the decision to poke the hole (or “pull the lever” in some states) next to McCain’s name lightly. I would rather poke him in the eye. At least McCain is not a communist, and fighting this war against communism in America is just as important as fighting the war against Islamofascism.

But in exchange for my vote for McCain, I want something in return. I want McCain's solemn oath to the American people that if elected, he will:

    1. Never sign any legislation that grants amnesty, or anything like it, to illegal aliens. That he will not only secure the borders and crack down on employers who would consider employing illegals, but also conduct serious efforts with DHS and ICE to eliminate the illegals already living in our country. That he would support the cutting off of federal funds to "sanctuary cities" for illegals. America has 17 legal guest worker programs that can be used instead of employing illegal aliens. We don’t need them in our country in spite of the pro illegal propaganda some people are promoting.

    2. Get his head on straight about "global warming" and learn the facts that disprove the myths he believes in. That he will work toward energy independence for America and promote domestic oil, coal, and nuclear development as a major priority, including drilling in ANWR, and put a stop to this insane biofuel subsidizing with our money. Recognize that corn is needed food, not fuel. We can become energy independent within a decade if we can only find the political will to do it. We have the resources right here in our own country. We need only to exploit them and use them. McCain must not allow the environmental organization to dictate our energy policies and hamper American energy independence. McCain must denounce the socialist “global warming” swindle and expose it for what it is.

    3. Work with Republicans in Congress as hard as he has been working with Democrats over the past decade. In one of his victory speeches after "super Tuesday," he said he would reach out to work with Democrats. I want to hear him say he will reach out to work with Republicans. If he doesn’t want to do that, then I would suggest he switch parties right now and run against Obama and the Clintons in the Democrat primaries, and open up the field for a real Republican candidate.

    4. Not try to micromanage the Islamic War and let the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff do their jobs. Allow intelligence interrogators to do what is necessary to protect the country from terrorism, including waterboarding, and keep captured terrorists away from our country and out of our civilian courts. Acknowledge that Guantánamo Bay is the best place to keep them and is necessary for the defense of America.

    5. Keep his campaign promise to veto any and all pork barrel legislation that may come out of Congress, cut government waste and unconstitutional spending programs, and significantly reduce the size of the federal government. Don’t wait until his second term to find his veto pen as Bush did. He may not get a second term.
These are the conditions I want from McCain in exchange for my vote. Will I get them? Of course not. But these are the things all conservatives should demand from McCain before we enter the voting booth in November if he wants to win the election. Otherwise he risks many of us not showing up at the polls at all.

As I sit here on election night next November watching the election returns come in, there will be no excitement, no anticipation, no pulling for my candidate for president, only a sick and sorrowful feeling in the pit of my stomach. If the Democrat candidate should win, it will be a great loss for the for the country and for Republican party, but they asked for it. If the Republican candidate, John McCain, wins, it will only validate the "big tent" Republicans strategy of moving the party to the left, and will be a great loss to conservatives for years to come. Either way we lose.

If McCain should manage to pull off a win, we can, at least, take comfort in knowing that the road to Communism will have some bumps in it and the fight against Islamofascism will continue rather than end in surrender. I will hold my nose and cast a vote for McCain, but not as a vote “for” McCain, but rather as a vote against communism. It’s time the rest of us who love this country do the same, not only in this election, but in all elections to come because if the country keeps moving in the direction it has been, it won’t be too long before elections will mean nothing at all and, in fact, may no longer exist in America.

With the dissatisfaction that exists today with the candidates on both sides of the aisle, rather than asking whom did you vote for in the election, we will soon be asking each other, “Whom did you vote against?” We can only hope that in the next election, we will have someone to vote “for.”

link to article

~ joanie

2/17/2008

Fickle and Uninformed

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submitted by Rob Maroni
(contributing team member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

2/08/2008

Come November ...

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Each republican candidate for president in the last six presidential elections (including this one) has been less a ‘republican’ than the one who preceded him. George Bush is less a Constitutional scholar, and reveres the Constitution and the sovereignty of America, less than did his father. George senior was less of a Constitutional scholar, and revered the Constitution and the sovereignty of America, exponentially less than did Ronald Reagan. And John McCain doesn’t know the meaning of reverence for the Constitution, or allegiance to protecting America’s sovereignty.

Each time we genuine conservatives support one of these turncoats, we define-down the republican party. It has now reached a point at which I no longer even recognize the party in which I have been registered for forty years. It has become a party that shares more with the democrats than it does with those courageous anti-slavery activists who painstakingly laid the party’s sublime foundation in an act of defiance against a tyrannical federal government more than a century and a half ago.

The only genuine republicans I can name today who are either currently serving in Washington, are serving as voices of conservatism in academia or the media, or who have been participants in this primary election cycle (James Inhofe, Rick Santorum, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, Thomas Sowell, J.C. Watts, Alan Keyes, and John Bolton, among them) represent a dying breed. They are throwbacks to what conservatism used to represent, and, as such, they are no longer welcome as leaders in today’s republican party. Their voices are stifled by their ‘fellow republicans’, and they are perceived as part of a ‘fringe element’. As things stand now, none of them would anymore stand a snowball’s chance in hell of gaining powerful political office, let alone the presidency.

What does that say about the republican party of 2008? It says that, over the past two decades, we registered republicans have allowed our party to incrementally exclude true conservatives for consideration to hold the highest offices in the land. And how have we done that? We have ‘gone along to get along’. We have held our collective noses and agreed to put in office men who are less and less like genuine American patriots, and more and more like leftist democrats, with each election cycle. And the phony republicans we have put in office have consistently worked with the democrats to stifle any efforts made by genuine conservatives to re-ignite the conservative voice in Washington. And the Constitution and America’s sovereignty be damned.

When Rick Santorum was the third most powerful man in the senate, John McCain invariably sided with the democrats every time Santorum or another conservative attempted to bring legislation to the floor that would steer this republic back in the right direction. McCain often wouldn’t allow conservative legislation to even see the light of day on the senate floor. For that reason, Santorum despises McCain, and has stated that he will never vote for him, commenting that McCain has been as much an enemy of conservative, pro-American thought as most democrats on the Hill.

My husband, who is every bit as conservative as I, plans to vote for Hillary in November. He is going to do so because, should McCain win the election, the mainstream media will continuously paint him as a ‘conservative’ (just as they are now), and, when he makes toxic mistakes (most likely in decisions regarding illegal immigration, abortion, stem cell research, tax increases, global warming legislation, granting due-process rights to terrorists, and the like), those mistakes will be portrayed as having been committed by a ‘conservative’ president. After which, you can count on the fact that no genuine conservative will occupy the White House again in our lifetimes.

Whether Clinton or McCain occupies the White House for the next four years, America is in for a rude awakening. I would prefer that a liberal democrat/avowed socialist be blamed for the geopolitical/economic earthquakes that are looming over the horizon. At least that way we will have the whisper of a hope that a genuine conservative may be able to eventually take the reins and pick up the pieces.

I could not, in good conscience, cast a vote for Hillary (my voting finger would spontaneously combust for sure). But neither will I continue to vote for leftists-in-conservative-clothing. Such imposters have succeeded in re-defining my party, handcuffing their genuine republican counterparts, and corrupting my government beyond recognition. And if an avowed anti-American leftist must damage our beloved republic for four years in order for the republican party to recognize that it had better return to its roots, then that may well be the terrible price we must pay in order to embark on that long-overdue journey.

I’ll be sitting out the election in November, at least where the presidential ballot is concerned, for the first time since I became eligible to vote – forty years ago. I will no longer play an active role in the hi-jacking of the republican party … or the suicide of our beloved republic.

~ joanie

2/06/2008

Minor Super Tuesday Musings

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I wrote the following e-mail last night to a friend with whom I have been discussing investing in precious metals, and I forwarded it to a few other ‘what’s-happening-to-the-economy’ friends this morning, one of whom suggested posting it here on AADB, so I am, with a few additions. (They don't call me the queen of run-on sentences for nothing.)

I cannot bring myself to discuss the current sorry state of what passes for the American ‘election process’ just now -- for lack of time to address the subject in the manner it deserves, and for at least current lack of interest in doing so, because the entire effort seems pretty much futile just now. The brief message below simply deals with a very small sliver of what passes for our economy these days. I hope to add more in the near future. In the meantime, I’m sure many of you are capable of adding much more in-depth commentary on the broader economy, and I hope you’ll take the time to do so.
__________________________________

‘Super Tuesday’, February 5th, 11:29 PM:

Put plainly and succinctly (and from the perspective of someone who is by no means an expert in investing, in precious metals, or anything else): ever since I decided to stop trusting the 'experts' and began serious personal investing on my own -- maybe fifteen years ago -- I have believed in owning a significant amount of physical gold, silver and platinum.

I see the future of this country in terms that will change from a current misty grey to a very unfortunate black. Our economy -- and that of the world, whose foundations rest in ours, like it or not -- is based on conveniently-created mirages, crafted by men whose focus is on personal and ideological power. They no longer bear any allegiance to our Founders' vision, or to real economic theory/free market theory.

People talk about the fluctuation in the price of precious metals. That fluctuation is discussed in terms of American dollars. Yet the American dollar is on the verge of worthlessness (maybe in our lifetime -- maybe in our children's -- but worthlessness nonetheless), simply because its value rests in the hands of men who do not respect industry, or work ethic, or genuine success, or honesty itself. They respect power. And it is backed by a government that is corrupt to the core.

There will come a day when no amount of dollars will buy a person what he needs. And yet something else will have to be of value. I believe such value will be found in two categories: (1) the natural resources we actually need in order to live, and (2) the ability to create, repair and invent ('make do') -- representing a reversion to 'the old (and in many ways better) days'. And where the actual 'buying' of what we need to survive becomes necessary, we will be forced to resort back to a 'currency' that has been deemed of value in historical terms -- high on that list being precious metals. After all, our dollar, when it had any intrinsic value, was backed by such metal.

I believe that much more than a recession is over the horizon -- maybe not in our lifetimes, but at least in our children's -- and that recovering from that 'more than a recession' will be brutal, if possible at all.

We had the wherewithal of character to recover from the Great Depression, but we were a different people back then. And, even more importantly, so were our leaders. Americans in the 30s also had the good fortune not to have an enemy -- obsessed, bloodthirsty, gaining strength every day, and not contained within any borders, nor kept outside of our own -- breathing down their necks. Had they faced such a deadly threat, they at least knew their leadership would genuinely despise it, identify it, keep it at bay, and attempt to eradicate it.

As a people, we are without integrity, without 'grit', and without a knowledge of our roots. We want to be entertained more than we want to do what is necessary to survive as a free people. And our leadership doesn't give a damn about America's (as our Founders conceived her) survival. They see our Founders' vision, and the America that existed up until fifty years ago, as something that requires covert 'fixing' -- so that a global elite can call all the shots and reap all the rewards made possible by those of us still willing to work.

I just came home from my office. In addition to working there, I purposefully insulated myself from the political news of the day. Turned on Fox(what passes for)News when I arrived home, and realized that we have indeed underestimated the ignorance of the American electorate. We're daily taking major steps toward that line of demarcation known as the point of no return.

It's a sad day in America.

~ joanie

2/03/2008

We Have Found the Enemy --
and the Enemy is Us

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Today is February 2, 2008.

I am over fifty years old. I am a product of American values, observed and experienced in the 1950s and 1960s, and sorely tried in the Vietnam, Watergate, and Carter years of the 1970s, and again in the Clinton years of the 1990s.

This is the timeframe and events that formed my political worldview. I grew up when we still said a prayer and read Psalm 23 at the beginning of the school day. I remember doing the duck and cover in elementary school, to be safe in the event of a Cold War nuclear attack, even though being only 12 miles from NYC, the odds of surviving such an attack or its aftermath was just about a negative number. I remember the pride in America and its flag; the meaning of independence, especially on the Fourth of July. My father's parents were immigrants and my mother was an immigrant, and the old country was just that--the "old" country. Most of my uncles served in the US Army and Navy during WW2, while my father was a foreman in a defense plant. The prosperity, music, and the social fabric of America in the 1950s and 1960s are still a source of inspiration to me. Because of my parents' background, we always helped anyone in need that came our way. My parents would brook no discrimination, even when at the time it was common to discriminate on the basis of skin color. No, the promise of America was for everyone. Sometimes, only an immigrant can appreciate America's true value, as did my parents.

I remember well the Carter years, with its mind numbing cowardice in the face of dangers from the USSR and Iran, and how it caused us to doubt our greatness. And I remember a man named Ronald Reagan, and how he inspired an entire nation to rendezvous with its destiny once again, and in an inconceivable turn of events, won the Cold War and knocked down the Berlin War without firing a single shot. His courage and belief in America inspired policies that freed all of Eastern Europe and kept budding Islamofascism at bay, all the while he was opposed and reviled by the Democrats, the America-haters and the Communists worldwide.

I remember the horror of the Clinton years, when a rapist and abuser of women was the Commander in Chief, aided and abetted by a power hungry woman who hated the military. I remember fighting for his impeachment, only to be betrayed by a Republican Senate that had no courage, or that was compromised by stolen FBI files and failed to discharge its lawful duty to remove a lawbreaking President who brought shame to the Oval Office. I remember recoiling in horror and shame when a six year old boy whose mother drowned in an attempt to bring him to freedom from Cuba was removed from a private home under the force of arms and returned to Fidel Castro.

I remember crying tears of gladness when our current President said the words of his Oath of Office on January 20, 2001, ending my personal nightmare, an eight year long nightmare, of having Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House.

The events of these last seven years are nothing like what I expected that cold, clear January morning. The events of September 11, 2001, the invasion of Iraq, the War on Terror, all of them returned me to the patriotic days of my youth. I saw a nation united in purpose for the first time in my adult life, as the nation had been torn since the Vietnam War.

But I saw a Republican President I believed in, and a Republican Party that was my home politically, shift in a slow, determined, unstoppable drift away from its principles, adopting the policies and views of the Democrats, to the point where we now face having as our Presidential candidate, John McCain, an enemy of conservatism, of Republican principles, and of American sovereignty.

As I pondered these things today, February 2, 2008, I have come to a very troubling observation.

We conservatives always had a home in the Republican Party. President Reagan even came here when the Democrat Party became too radical for him in the 1950s. We were the foundation of 12 years of the Reagan Bush era and we fought for the current President to give him eight years, even in the face of a national election being stolen from him.

But when our country was threatened by the prospect of a mass amnesty last May and June, allowing 20 million or more illegal immigrants to become defacto citizens by fiat, we erupted in a display of power that had Washington DC recoiling in terror. We derailed their plan to ensure the Balkanization of America by giving it 20 million more citizens who would not assimilate into the culture, and to ensure a cheap workforce, and to permanently undercut American workers' wages. Together with Global Warming and carbon credits, America could be brought to heel and managed.

We stopped McCain-Kennedy and its cousin, alright. But there was a price to pay for our insolence.

We, the America loving conservatives of the Republican Party, are no longer needed by this party. We are too narrow minded and old school. Flag waving and the supremacy of the American Way are passe. We are not inclusive. We are standing in the way of the elites in Washington DC from making their wet dreams a reality--making America an also-ran, not a super-power. America as a third world country, not as better than anyone else. An America that is afraid to face its Islamic enemies,that worries about what the world thinks about it, strangled in political correctness, surrendering its freedoms on a daily basis in the vain hope for security.

We keepers of the flame of American liberty are now the enemy. When Hillary labelled us the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, we took that has a label of pride. But now the Republican establishment has decreed that we are a conspiracy to be defeated within our own party, as we face the prospect of John McCain being rammed down our throats. John McCain, the Manchurian Candidate, the man who has betrayed every tenet of Republicanism in his quest for power, who has railed against conservatives at every turn, who is bound and determined to grant amnesty to 10% of Mexico's population now within our borders, he is the one being anointed by the elites as our candidate.

His job is not only to become the candidate of choice, but to be the means of the destruction of the power of the conservative base of the Republican Party.

Between McCain, Obama and Hillary, there isn't a dime's worth of difference in their political views. The Republican and Democrat established elites have melded into one entity, and they will win no matter who gets nominated or who wins the general election, especially if McCain is the nominee. All three believe in unlimited amnesty, an open border, cap and trade globaloney, giving rights to Gitmo detainees, and the restriction of free speech and gun rights.

The MSM is their collective cheerleader, actively working to marginalize us as a viable force for the America we visualize.

Many of us will vote Republican in November, only because we cannot, in good conscience, vote for Obama or Clinton. The Republican establishment knows this, and knows because we are principled, we can not do otherwise. Rather than enlist us to help, they are engaged in a policy of containment and neutering, because we stand in the way of their vision of America.

McCain as a candidate will be a disaster. The Republican establishment knows this. But they don't care, because the goal is not to win this election. It is to remove us from the political table, and for them to join with their Democrat brothers in the march toward an America subservient to global interests. Sovereignty is treated as a quaint, outmoded concept, even by many Republican governors who are pushing the globaloney nonsense that will cripple this nation.

The perfect storm of American politics is converging in a bid to elect one of three horrible candidates, McCain, Obama, or Clinton, to be our next President. The odds are that the Republicans will not only lose with McCain, but they will lose even more of the House and Senate, enough to relegate Republicans to a minority status for decades to come.

Where are the national Republican leaders speaking out against where our party is heading? As one looks over the events of the last 15 years, since the ascension and improbable election of a no good, draft dodging, lying huckster like Bill Clinton to President, we have witnessed a snowballing reversal of American values and fortunes. With Clinton II on the horizon, we face a complete collapse of American values and sovereignty and freedom with the "CHANGE" that is being promised for the electorate.

That "change" is starting right now for us. By Tuesday midnight, we will know if the fate the elites have decreed for us will become reality, if McCain is our candidate.

In the past few days, the lenses through which I view politics have changed in prescription. I see now that we are the enemy to our own party's leaders, whose leaders have decreed that our nominee will be the anti-conservative, anti-Republican candidate. The other candidates still open to us, Huckster, Romney and Paul each have their own problems with our values.

There are only a few short days to stop the McCain Screwball express. As we fought the impossible fight against McCain and amnesty last year, we have but a few days to influence our fellow conservatives and Republicans not to allow the predetermined outcome to occur.

I offer this screed in an attempt to understand what is going on today, to explain the inexplicable in what is occurring to our party and our chances for success in November against the second ascension of the corrupt Clinton Machine. I wish not to tell my fellow conservative who they should vote for, but I ask them not to vote for McCain.

Others, including the Republican establishment, have decreed for us who are candidate should be. America loving Republicans should reserve the right to make that choice.

by exit82
(contributing team member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)