My Winners and Losers of 2010

Winners:

1. Pope Benedict - his visit to the UK went much better than the atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens had hoped earlier in the year. The question some ask is whether his visit was relevant given the extreme secularization of the UK? The answer is is the Gospels and the parable of the mustard seed..........
2. Sarah Palin - the gun toting Alaskan mom landed a multi-million gig as a reality TV star....let's hope she stays on the boob tube rather than being a political boob....no pun intended (!)
3. Barack Obama - the GOP victory saved him from certain oblivion with the GOP landslide in November. Given that this party is dominated by the Lott's, Bush's and McConnell's and really stand for nothing except power and perks, Obama will have the perfect foil to run against in 2012....the stupid party that will not heed the message of the electorate but will rather run in the same old direction of militarism, bailouts for Wall Street, globalism and a growing national security state. The American people only have a choice of two parties each of which share the same core philosophy of un-Americanism.
4. Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street Cabal - what can you say.....too big too fail.....invented the scam.....borrows unlimited capital from the Fed at 0% interest and then investments in Treasury Bills......has record profits and bonuses of old by trading paper.............make the robber barons of the 19th century look like saints!
5. Apple Computer - MAC, IPhone, IPOD, Itunes and now IPAD....one hit after another. What has Microsoft dome lately that can even compare?

Losers:

1. Gordon Brown - you spend your whole career as a self proclaimed financial master and when you get your big chance at the top job, the bottom falls out on you and you get defeated by a bunch of neophyte Oxford kids with no real agenda except being anti-Brown and solving the financial crisis with higher tuition fees and other regressive program cuts.
2. Mel Gibson - how does such a man as accomplished as Mel get mixed up with a Russian gold digger and get her pregnant to boot? However, his Passion of the Christ will long outlast the man and he will be remembered for directing this movie many years from now.
3. Catholics in Iraq - thank you George Bush for initiating a war that initiated a pogrom that even the Muslims could not accomplish in 1400 years - the decimation of the ancient Chaldean culture and Catholic presence in Iraq.
4. General McCrystal - so you are given command of a war that is impossible to win knowing that mandated withdrawal is only a few years away. Your civilian amateurs in Washington don't have a clue about the country and then you get fired for telling the truth. Maybe I should have him as a winner because anyone associated with this mess will be linked with another general named Westmoreland.
5. Democratic Party - the traditional home for many Americans, including myself and family, has fallen into the tight clutches of the Marxist left represented by Obama and the Clinton's. While trying to transform the USA into another European style socialist democracy as just another clog in the New World Order, it must depend on illegal immigrants, coastal lefties, government unions, feminists, pro-abortion voters and tons of 'job creation' pork to gain a majority nationally. What ever happened to the Jefferson-Jacksonian vsion of the party as the partry of the People rather than the radical freaks?

Happy New Year Thoughts

Tomorrow is the last day of the year. Out with the old and In with the new.....the old saying goes with the belief that next year will be better than the last. The main motif underlying the political ideologies of the day is the belief in the idea of Progress. Many better minds than my own (Christopher Dawson for one) have debunked this progress ideology. It premise is that the history of mankind has been a constant upward struggle from the primeval sludge of a dark Darwinian past where our human branch parted from our cousins, the chimps and apes, as we moved forward through trials and tribulations of millenia to the present age. Progress means a belief in evolution and not just the bodily kind but spiritual and moral evolution. Hence, our great Christian past of the past 2,000 years is viewed as a negative aberration in the ultimate goal of physical perfection, socialism, constant pleasure, atheistic morality and the defeat of death.

The Progress ideology is all a bunch of modern mishmash thinking that started in the last 250 years as the intellectuals such as Roseau, Voltaire and their kin shrugged off traditional Christianity for a belief in what could be called secular humanism. With the gigantic help from Darwin and Marx and later Freud, a neat little philosophy of progress was constructed that connected the dots of the secular humanists and which has led to the moral and political destruction of the 20th century warfare led by evil men who hated God but believed in a glorious ideological future based upon variations of the progress ideology.

It hasn't been all bad but it could be so much better. I yearn for the values of the past and the way people treated one another with courtesy and kindness; when you ate food that wasn't tampered with and you assumed that it was grown on a family farm; when a blue collar man could support a large family, buy a home and send his kids to college; when government minded its own business and didn't mandate helmets, body scanners at airports and read your emails with spook age software; when a country went to war after it was attacked rather than before; and when the Bill of Rights was taken seriously and the media was not a tool of the government and oligarchies. I could go on and on but you get the idea...............

My late Mom used to talk about the good old days. She remembered Civil War veterans marching in Memorial Day parades in New York City and even myself as a very young boy used to talk to the neighbor across the street who fought in the Spanish American War. Frankly, I don't believe in progress (especially as I discern the rapid disintegration of society) but would rather attempt to recapture the values and behavior patterns that made this country great and the envy of the rest of the world. We need to go backwards if we are ever to have a great country again.

So, as we enter the New Year, let's put progress on hold and hearken back to a glorious Christian past that built Cathedrals that are still marvels of the world and gave our civilization a soul and purpose once upon a time. I believe in God's providence and this current madness is part of His plan.

Happy New Year and God Bless You!

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

I was in the Catholic seminary twice in the 1960’s. The first time was a very strict environment where homosexuality was anathema around 1963. I went back in the late 60’s to find a small clique of homosexuals had been admitted from the outside and even those early days of ‘gay lib’ were quite open in their un-masculineness and the superiority of their ‘condition’. In this particular case, I believe the entrance criteria and screening process was changed in my four years away form religious life. In short, this group of about 5 homosexual men completely demoralized the other 20 or so normal (heterosexual) men in the class and caused many of us to seek our destinies outside of the priesthood.

I went from the seminary to the US Navy during the Vietnam war. I know times have changed but their is no other environment on earth where there is less privacy and close physical contact than on a Navy ship where nudity is quite open and taken for granted. This change in policy is nothing more than a pro-homosexual policy and it will evolve into its own affirmative action program and we will be hearing soon about the lack of active gays at flag or general rank. Acceptance of open and active homosexuals into the clergy has almost destroyed organized religion in the West and only a dunce will deny this fact.

Two possible outcomes from the aberrant congressional decision will be to either to severely weaken the military due to the aversion of A-type young men wanting to cavort with active homosexuals and/or one more reason for coup d’ etat among senior officers sickened by degenerate civilian control, oligarchic criminality and a desire to restore the true understanding of the US Constitution. I think our ancestors were thinking similar thoughts for different reasons in the mid-nineteenth century.

As a military veteran I am sure I speak for millions like myself. Although my written comments above will have some label me as a victim of homophobia, nothing could be further from the truth. It would be trite to say that I have many homosexual friends and acquaintances but it is true and I judge people not any differently because of sexual orientation but take them as individual humans beings. I take Jesus's dictum to heart, "Let him without sin, caste the first stone."

But we are not talking about a human rights issue about whether openly homosexual or lesbians should be able to serve in the military (or clergy for that matter) but about overturning the core morality of western civilization of two millenia. As St. Thomas More defended himself at his trial by Christian tradition and history as his witness, so too we look to the past as a judge for our positions. To be completely relativist and dismiss the wisdom of the ages is to be blind to human experience. Although you will not see it written, the feminist and now homosexual social experiments in the military are and will continue to be a failure. I have read numerous articles about the failure of integrating women as active members of Navy ships with pregnancies, abortions and fraternization as just a few of the negative results.

Let's be honest, heterosexual men are repelled by the thought of homosexual acts. Expecting normal boys to be tolerant of an openly homosexual man sleeping close to him in the next bunk is to the height of wishful thinking. Just as kids can be cruel, so too can young men full of testosterone, can be very cruel and vindicative. Does this heighten morale and esprit de corp?

I think not.

Perpetual Motion Machines

After six decades of losing individual freedoms, the cherry on top of the cake has to be the new body scanner at the airports. I have been through one three times in the last month and each time I was told, "Put your hands above your head and don't move!" Sound familiar doesn't it to a policeman addressing a criminal.....as my unclothed body is inspected by a government goon who looks like a person on a permanent diet of double whoppers. But then again, any traveler is considered a potential criminal subject to an unwarranted and I believe unconstitutional body search.... just like any taxpayer is considered a potential cheat by the IRS and subjected to audits and draconian penalties. Our forefathers are turning in their graves at the loss of liberty over the past 150 years but accelerating at a very rapid rate since 9/11. Where is the ACLU?

The growth of government and the prevalence of political correctness are daggers at the heart of individual liberty. Now, they want to censor the Internet due to the Wikileaks disclosures over the past 2 months. Any action by an individual or a small group results in the entire population having to endure draconian responses by government which results in millions of wasted dollars spent and thousands of more bureaucrats harassing us at airports or online policemen. In the meantime, our government prosecutes illegal and unwarranted wars whose chief result is to create more terrorists for years to come while the Feds are unable to stop the whistle blowers within the government from disclosing the inanity and stupidity of our 'public servants'.

And who said there was no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.....................

Merry Christmas

In these days of doubt and uncertainty, there is always hope at Christmas. The Creator of the universe came down to earth as a little helpless baby in a world much more savage and unfair than our own. When I look at my innocent little children and the wonders of His beautiful creation , I think that God indeed in good and loves us in ways that are unimaginable. We should never feel alone or ever give up hope because in our darkest hours He is there by our side like a father caring for his little child. What father would not give his life for his children? Our heavenly father loves us and I am sure at the moment of the birth of Gesu Bambino, God the Father looked upon His greatest creation.

Let the skeptics and atheists scoff at our 'simplistic' beliefs and our 2,000 year history of superstition and ignorance. We believe in the humility of Bethlehem and as they try to fathom the mysteries of the universe in their ivory towers, the ultimate Truth was the suffering servant who was a baby once upon a time worshiped by the Magi and the shepherds.

Glory to God in the Highest, and Peace to men of good will.

Information Age

I was recently in London for two happenings: the pampered middle class student student riots at Westminster and the arrest and detainment of Julius Assange for improper condom usage. I find both events baffling and absurd in the extreme. I had to listen on BBC last week to a feminist declaring that Mr. Assange was indeed a dangerous creature due to his criminal use of a deadly weapon with 'prudish' Swedish women who appeared to openly and freely have sex with him and in one case invited him back to her apartment. Oy veh! No use discussing a this bogus trumped up charge and one of the 'virtuous' women had prior links to the CIA....enough said.

The London students riots are over the issue whether the cost of a university education in the UK should be shared more by the individual student and his family rather than the aged pensioners, working class stiffs and society as a whole. Many things can be said about this 'societal' change and I heard a number of arguments against the hike from my UK colleagues but my take is that it is just another indicator of the death throes of 20th century socialism. The fallacy of the welfare state combined with declining birth rates ( abetted by government promotion of birth control, abortion, gay sex, euthanasia) leads to ultimate bankruptcy - is a university education a luxury or a necessity when hospitals and other services are being curtailed or shut down?

If a Russian journalist disclosed the inner workings of Kremlin politics would he be so pilloried and threatened as the creepy Mr. Assange? No, he would hailed a hero. It speaks volumes of the ignorance of our governing and media class to call for his assassination or for Mr. Assange to be extradited to the USA to face espionage charges. The only grounds for the charge of espionage is that he is a 'global' citizen in an American hegemonic world. These scenarios should make the skin crawl for all freedom loving traditional republicans. Our politicians would feel right at home in the court of a Roman emperor and their utter disregard of American founding principles.

The Assange affair has all the hallmarks of a 'false flag' operation by intelligence agencies to further the rationale for censorship and regulation of the Internet. And BTW what does freedom of speech mean anyway? It is up to government to keep its secrets and it is debatable whether discussing the sexual foibles of foreign leaders deserves to be classified as a national security secret.

So what have we learned in 2,065 years?

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." Cicero - 55 BC

Evidently Nothing !!!

However, the situation is not hopeless if history is any guide................Rome went on from the Republic of Cicero to the great prosperity of the Empire for the next 300 years until the inevitable decline was accelerated.

Like it or Not: Mexico is America’s Next Afghanistan

I started this blog writing about the catastrophe that is occurring south of our border. In recent months I have refrained about writing about Mexico since it would turn into a Mexican themed blog. The following post is from the Redstate blog. Many, many thanks to successive USA presidential administrations who have allowed this human rights debacle to unfold before our very eyes. Most ordinary citizens who live in the Southwest saw it coming years ago but the politicians in DC, GOP or Dem, are still following the same failed policies.

Meanwhile in the UK, college students are rioting over increased student fees.....................is the world nuts or what?

With the exception of, perhaps, Texas governor Rick Perry, no public official wants to publicly admit an obvious fact: The United States of America will likely be forced to invade Mexico. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. The question then becomes: What to do with Mexico after we invade it and wipe out the drug cartels (as much as can be). Does the United States merely return Mexico to a nation state of corrupt politicians, failed economic policies, and lawlessness, ordo we annex Mexico and turn it into the 51st state?

For many of us, there is a certain false security in believing that, since most of America’s streets are not filled with the murder and mayhem that is going on just South of our borders, we have nothing to worry about. The feeling that most Americans likely have is: Well, it’s their problem, not ours. However, that illusion of security is quickly being eroded with the stories of American police officers being threatened by Mexican drug cartels, of kidnappings and drug murders in Arizona and Texas, of control of certain parts of Arizona and forays into New Mexico and Colorado by drug cartels, of teenagers being turned into hitmen, and American tourists being kidnapped or killedwhile on vacation in Mexico.

Mexico, with its kidnappings and more than 28,000 murders in the last four years alone, is being terrorized. Now, instead of economic refugees coming across our borders in search of jobs and income, humanitarian refugees are fleeing Mexico in order to stay alive. However, despite all of that, if one thought that only certain parts of Mexico are under the control of the cartels, that illusion was shattered on Tuesday when this map (see upper right) was presented on a heart-breaking post on RedState that shows that almost all of Mexico has been taken over by drug cartels.

Mexican Authorities Are Impotent, Unable to Control the Chaos

One of the cables that the much-maligned Wikileaks exposed was the concern over whether or not the Mexican government is even capable of undertaking the cleaning up of its own nation.

Another embassy cable sent in October 2009 quotes a senior Mexican official as saying his government was worried it was losing control of some regions to the drug gangs.

“We have 18 months,” Geronimo Gutierrez, at the time Mexico’s under-secretary of the interior, is quoted as saying.

“And if we do not produce a tangible success that is recognisable to the Mexican people, it will be difficult to sustain this confrontation into the next administration.”

“It is damaging Mexico’s reputation, hurting foreign investment, and leading to a sense of government impotence.” [Emphasis added.]

That cable was 14 months ago and the violence is still raging. The Mexican government has, so far, been unable to curtail the violence and it is likely that, without intervention, the country will become far more deadly than Afghanistan prior to 9/11. Worse, Islamic terrorists have been long suspected of using Mexico as a gateway into the U.S.

While America’s national interests are certainly being threatened, not just by the flood of illegal immigrants, but by the violence that is beginning to spill across our borders, the Obama administration chooses to pander to special interests pushing amnesty, while ignoring repeated requests for troops along our Southern border. Moreoever, the administration claims about the level of deportations in 2010 have come under scrutiny, leaving many to wonder if the administration is even remotely serious about secure borders, or just playing games for the media.

Like it or not, Mexico’s problems are our problems. For decades, politicians in Washington have cowardly turned a bi-partisan blind eye to the economic refugees (i.e., illegal aliens) that have transgressed our borders until it has become an unbearable strain upon our economy. Then, rather than securing our border and addressing the problem, the immigrants are now being used as political pawns in order to create a huge pool of 8 million progressive voters.

The Politics at Play: A Humanitarian Request vs. ‘Just Do It’

Whether the Obama administration lacks the desire to keep the nation’s borders safe or is merely playing politics with people’s lives remains to be seen. In either case, though, it is highly unlikely there will be any stopping the violence on our borders between now and 2013 unless something catastrophic occurs on the U.S. side of the border, or violence ramps up significantly with many more Americans being kidnapped or killed. Further, even with something disastrous occurring, it is doubtful that the Obama administration would ever have the cojones political will to put troops into Mexico as unilateral action as it would alienate the Latino community his party has become reliant on for votes in the Southwestern states.

On the Mexico side, however, politics also come into play as Mexican authorities will be unlikely to ask for humanitarian assistance due to that country’s presidential election in 2012.

The PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years as a semi-dictatorship, has been in opposition for a decade after it lost power in an historic 2000 election to the PAN. It is gearing up for a comeback in 2012 with its young rising star, State of Mexico Governor Enrique Pena Nieto.

With a feeble economy and raging drug gang violence dogging Calderon’s ratings, many analysts are already putting their money on a PRI return, but Sunday’s results suggest many voters in Mexico are still skeptical of a party with a reputation of ruling with a mixture of corruption and authoritarianism.

The PAN and the PRD are unlikely to join forces again for the presidential race and either party on its own may have a hard time beating the PRI, which controls large blocks of voters from unions to farmer organizations in rural Mexico.

“The alliance was a successful bet, the results prove that,” Jose Gonzalez, the PAN’s deputy leader, told Reuters. “But for the presidency, frankly, it would be impossible.”

State-level voting in Mexico tends to focus on local, rather than national issues, yetthe PRI is keen to capitalize on Calderon’s sinking popularity as a slow economic rebound and out-of-control drug killings weigh on morale.[Emphasis added.]

With the presidency of Mexico at stake in 2012, Calderon’s party is unlikely to ask for help as it would give the PRI a campaign issue to capitalize on ahead of Mexico’s election. As a result of the political ramp up to elections in both countries and using the number of killings in Mexico over the last four years as a predictor, another 10,000 to 14,000 Mexicans and an unknown number of Americans will die before either country takes decisive action.

In 2013 and beyond, though, all bets are off. If the Mexican government cannot contain the violence in that country, or more bloodshed occurs on the U.S. side of the border, either the Mexican government may request humanitarian aide, or the U.S. would be justified in acting unilaterally to go into Mexico to end the drug cartels’ brutal terrorism (it’s not like it hasn’t happened before). In fact, if the violence on the U.S. side of the border does not cease, or escalates further, whomever is sitting in the oval office will be hard pressed not to go into Mexico.

Nation Build or Annex Mexico?

The question then become what to do afterward. Is the U.S. ready for another protracted foray into nation building? Or, in the alternative, does Mexico enter the United States as the 51st state?

Now, this should not be considered an ‘endorsement’ of either idea (see note below). Rather, it is more of a cost-benefit analysis that requires much more study:

Rather than nation building, which would be much more costly to the U.S. treasury (which can ill afford it), a case can be made for statehood (albeit, not without controversy), given the amount of Mexico’s citizenry that is already residing in the U.S., as well as Mexico’s historically mis-managed economy and resources (i.e., oil, farmland, beaches, ports, etc.). Moreoever, as so many illegal immigrants work already in the U.S., but send their earnings back to Mexico, by having Mexico become the 51st state, the money exported would not leave the U.S. but would stay in “our economy” and could offset the costs of an invasion/humanitarian mission. Most importantly, by assimilating Mexico into the U.S., with the Constitution it would solve the the issue of immigration reform in one fell swoop.

Note: Being well aware of the tin-hat/NWO conspiracy theories, this is not a CFR/TC conceived idea. Instead it is an examination of current events caused by a bunch of narco-terrorists and illegal immigration, as well as an attempt to figure out what do we do about it?

Irrespective of what happens farther down the road, the violence that is occurring today in Mexico and spilling over into the U.S. is something that cannot continue to be ignored by the administration, regardless how weak it may be. If things do not change in Mexico (or if the President refuses to secure our borders), sooner or later, the U.S. will likely have to send a large amount of troops into that country to wipe out the drug cartels. Mexico, today, poses as significant (or more significant) threat to the United States than Afghanistan and, as a sovereign nation, America has the right to defend itself and its time the White House (and other politicians) get honest with the American people about what they intend to do about it.

In the meantime, the Obama administration should stop playing politics with people’s lives along the border, ‘man up’ and get Rick Perry and the other Republican governors the troops they need to keep Americans safe along the border.

_________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776