Burned Out By Obama

Obama’s Wave of personality cult is crashing, his star is falling over Chicago.

Two incredible blog entries today that we can only pray and hope is indeed the trend in regards to the most disastrous and destructive President in American history.

First, Daniel Greenfield AGAIN knocks one out of the park – and this may be his finest essay to date.  Spot on analysis of the cultural anomaly that made Obama and the consequences of a fake and manufactured candidate; a nation burned out by Obama.

His entry is required reading start to finish – but here are some outstanding pull quotes:

A Star Falls Over Chicago

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog

Obama was always a petty man and his campaign has descended into pointless pettiness, into Team Big Bird, binders full of women and bayonets and horses. Like so much hipster culture, it exists so that the participants can entertain each other with something that no one else thinks is funny or clever. And that elitism is precisely the point. It’s the last resort of losers who hide from their lack of taste behind walls of exclusivity.

The Obama Campaign was never serious, but it once aspired to an Oprah level of seriousness, to the dignity of the self-help sections where trite observations are recited with great solemnity so that they sound like they must mean more than they do.

Obama’s seriously intent tone, the one that signals you to pay attention, no longer works on even the faithful. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they have stopped coming once they realized that just because the bell rings doesn’t mean that dinner or a functional economy will be served. The weighty tone that he once used to deploy to great effect, borrowing the tricks of the preachers that he encountered in his huckstering days, has come to seem as empty as Oprah’s smile or Bill Clinton’s sincere head nod, just another of the tricks of hollow public personalities signifying nothing.

For years and years, he has talked and said nothing of any import. All the talk, the endless speeches and addresses, the verbal and facial tics that indicated seriousness of purpose, have never led to one single thing. Not one problem solved, not one crisis resolved and not one plan laid out and completed in four years with something to show for it.

Somewhere along the way, Obama became boring. He became that one man at a party that you don’t want to talk to because he will go on forever and all his chatter leads nowhere, because for all his conversational skills, he is capable of nothing but talk. And after talking to him for ten hours, you don’t know him any better than you did after ten minutes.

Voting for Obama was never the right choice objectively, but it was the right cultural choice, it was the trend, the impulse that everyone seemed to be following, the style that everyone was wearing and the book that everyone was reading. But trends like that don’t last. How many people will have Lady Gaga songs in their players or Fifty Shades of Grey on their bookshelves ten years from now? This too is the fate of the president of the trending topic, the commander-in-chief of the pet rock and the mood ring with his binders full of women and t-shirts with pictures of horses and bayonets on them. A joke that like Snakes on a Plane or All Your Base Are Belong To Us never gets old until 5 minutes later.

Americans escaped to Obama and now they’re escaping from Obama. The vacation was already being cut short in 2012 and now it’s approaching its blackout date. Instead of taking Americans away from everything, Obama took everything away from them, and now they’re gearing up to take it all back and put him on a back shelf next to last summer’s beach reads and last decade’s pop hits.

Obama is over. And confronting his ‘overness’, that deadliest of fates for a hipster, he is crawling back to pander to his original audience, the graphic designers who put together posters of him on their free time, the celebrities who were eager to form his Jack Pack, to be his Joey Bishop or his Marilyn Monroe, the musicians singing about him, the netroots bloggers cranking out their sensations of euphoric immediacy at being in his presence and the professional leftists cheering for him to take down the American Empire like Godzilla took down Tokyo.

Obama has gotten desperate. His fundraising emails walk the thin line between emotional blackmail and hysteria. Increasingly they read like Cousin Larry phoning for bail money from Tijuana. Shrilly needy they demand that we pay attention to him, that we love him, adore him and spend money on him. They are the missives of a man who cannot conceive of a life outside the spotlight, the vapid fear of a celebrity who cannot confront the real world and cannot understand why their public is walking away.

We can only hope that Americans agree with and that the analysis Daniel has put into this essay, bears more positive fruit in ending the long nightmare for America.  Be sure to read all of his essay at the Sultan Knish blog and hopefully, like me – a smile will hit your face as his words sink into the conscience.

The second uplifting essay is from the American Thinker’s C. Edmund Wright who insists Obama’s wave will bust the liberal bubble altogether.

The Wave That Breaks the Liberal Bubble

Can you feel it?

The wave, that is.  I speak of one that will wash away far more than just a failed presidency.  This wave will have the torque to rock the entire liberal bubble — the political/media/crony bubble — leaving it forever exposed.  Ironically, those inside this bubble will be the last to know — which is precisely why it will happen.  Those who would rule over us, and insult us with outrage over Big Bird, academic debate-scoring, “binders” memes, and specious jobs statistics know nothing about us.  This includes those inside the bubble who purport to represent our views.

…

They really believe this, and they really believe that the world revolves around them.  For years, it did — as most power, communication and information originated inside the bubble.  Three networks, two wires, one cable, and three dailies ruled the bubble and the opinions of the world.  We know the rest: along came Rush, Drudge, Fox, Hannity, Levin, Savage, Beck, and the conservative websites.  Breitbart emerged and inspired millions to embrace tech toys to expose the “racial Marxism” of the Democrat-media complex.  Thanks to the delightful capers of O’Keefe and Giles, we all know ACORN.

Liberal mischief was exposed.  A union thug fakes racism at a Tea Party — it goes viral.  SEIU members confess to being paid to protest — and it goes viral.  A Democrat congressman insults a youngster — it goes viral.  Chris Matthews wets his pants, and it goes viral.  Weiner…well, you know — and it goes viral.  The entire bubble is intellectually naked, and everyone sees the political porn without the networks, cable channels, or newspapers that once controlled access.

In the bubble, where politics is but a game, they miss the cumulative effect of all this.  They have no sense of the undertow pulling on many.

MORE at the American Thinker link.

We’re At War Folks, let’s start acting like it.

By INVAR

11-2-09

I’ve given a lot of thought to where we have arrived, and the cognitive dissonance that exists among Americans that refuse to allow themselves to accept a serious reality; that we are at war. 

We are at war for our very survival as a culture. A war that will determine if we live as destitute and dependent slaves of a Marxist oligarchy, or fight to retain what is left of our liberties for a little season longer.

It’s not a shooting war – yet. But the machinations set into motion most assuredly guarantee misery and death at the hands of the state and by the consequences of what the state is doing.

What I find disconcerting is the refusal of Americans to accept this reality. We constantly hear by those who think themselves leaders about the need to ‘compromise’; the need to be ‘civil’; the need to be ‘Christian’; the need to be moderate’. What that says to me is that the leaders of the nation are telling us to bend over, take it and enjoy it – because that is what ‘civil’ people do. That is what ‘Christians’ should do.

Of course if you don’t submit to such admonitions, you are called a hypocrite, and extremist and so forth – applying Rule No. 4 under Tactics of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: 4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”. Of course that is done so that they can destroy you and your opposition to what they plan to do to you. It’s called using your own morality against you. They make you fight according to the rules they say you should adhere to – while they move outside those rules to wage the war while forbiding you to defend yourself by misapplication of your rules.

What they essentially want is for us to be carpets and allow tyranny to walk all over you – because as some would say: that is what Jesus would do.

Well that’s nonsense. Biblically speaking all one has to do is read the bible’s accounts of what happens when Jesus returns in Zechariah 14 and in Revelation to understand he’s not coming back as a lamb – but as a warrior seated on a white horse with a sword – to wage war on those who come against Him at His coming. Once again illustrating the true adage that peace comes through the other side of war.

But still we’re told by among our own numbers that we need to stop being confrontational, to be generous to our enemies while they prepare to rape us.

Meanwhile the Marxist juggernaut plows onward, ripping up our solid foundations and imposing with little to no opposition – tyranny of a sort never seen on these shores.

Americans are willfully oblivious to what is happening to them. They refuse to recognize the war that the Left have waged upon their liberties for decades. 

It’s not too dissimilar from the indifference we and our leaders held towards radical Islam in the 80′s and 90′s, even though the leaders of Jihadist Islam declared war on America and the West in both word, thought and deed. We slept in the face of a clear and present danger – and ultimately thousands lost their lives by their hands and we awoke one bright September morning to horror that bewildered the majority of the nation that never saw it coming.

Likewise the Marxists in this nation have declared war on We The People, Our Constitution, our Rights and Liberty itself. They have done so in word, thought and deed, and we would understand what they are doing if only we paid attention to what they were actually doing via stealth and double-speak. They have achieved via deceit, the highest positions of power in the land, and thus having control of our education system, the media and government – have gone from subtle sabateurs – to in-your-face warfare.

They are bold in their declared war of “hope and Change” against the foundations of America. They have gone to war against God and Christian Principles and values in our society. They have lofted up government above God and made the people dependent upon them for their sustenance. They protect sin and abomination by law – and are about the task of criminalizing our faith and our very thoughts.

All under our very noses, while we watch them do it.

And yet we are told to be civil. To compromise. To engage in dialogue, so that we might somehow persuade those that support tyrants to our way of thinking.

Such is madness!

It’s a tool of the enemy to divide and conquer us from within. Men with no loyalty except to their power and ideology preying upon those who always want to see the better angels of mankind; who pervert the scriptures and preach to the biblically ignorant that Jesus was a Socialist – and to be a good Christian means we must adopt the Marxist plank – to eschew war but to wage it on those who refuse to convert to the new religion of ‘compassion’.

We have lost the language, and allow the enemy to define it for us – whereby we play by their ever-changing rules. Then we have those among us who tell us it’s all rotten and wrong unless we follow them and their “truths”. They assail those who stand up to tyranny because they do not follow specific ‘chosen’ leaders, so the opposition to a clear enemy becomes muddied and lost as we battle among ourselves and afford the Marxists the achievement of their goals without hardly any opposition.

Anarchy is being bred, along with the portents of a bloodbath that will make the French blush in astonishment.

One day, a majority are going to wake up to an absolute horror that their lives are in, and they will suddenly ask themselves “how could this happen?”. I fear by the time that happens, it will be too late to stop the things that will be visited upon us – things our minds cannot wrap themselves around. 

For now a majority refuse to recognize reality, because they assume their lives will somehow return to what they were – as if that was the way the world resides normally. They have no clue that our very short 70 year stint of prosperity and world leader is an anomaly in world history. Those that are aware – are perhaps planning to go grey, sit on the fence and let the tyrants march on through so they can remain unnoticed and untouched – but eventually they too, will be left to beg for whatever bread crumbs they can obtain from the Oligarch’s table.

If we are to avoid that fate – we must be at war.

Before that war turns hot, or before we are being loaded into camps or prisons – the war has to be fought here and now on the battlefield of ideas and discourse. If we do not fight it now, then into bloodshed, camps and prisons we will go. That is the fate the Marxists have envisioned for those of us beholden to liberty, who openly defy them.

We cannot pussyfoot around with playing nice with Marxists and their supporters. We cannot pretend this is a civil society where we can all agree to disagree about the trunk of the tree. The trunk of the tree of liberty is what sustains and keeps us, and we cannot entertain those that say we need to cut it down and replant it – or waste time arguing with those who pretend to be of us – while preaching that the fruit you freely choose to eat from the tree is rotten and to eat the fruit of their tree instead.

They need to be opposed and fought. We need to reject the calls for compromise with those who work to undermine our liberties and refuse to engage fools in debate when their clear motive is to ridicule and sow discord among us. Ideas and agendas anathema to liberty need to be cut down, stomped on and rendered irrelevant.

We do not need to answer fools according to their folly, we simply need to kill their foolishness and not permit it to remain or give it any legitimacy. Marxist thoughts, ideas and plans need to be shown what they are and burned in a fury of outrage and contempt. No quarter must be given to the enemy and his ideas, for assuredly – they will give yours no quarter. They are actively engaged in demonizing you. They will demonize and criminalize you regardless of how reasonable you sound, no matter whether you remain silent or not. They wage war on us – whether we want it or not.

They want us to lie down and compromise and capitulate. They want us to surrender by sitting down and shutting up while they move to tighten the noose around your neck. 

If you struggle and oppose these efforts – they may charge you with hate crimes, hating the poor, being racists and Nazis. The truth is they are projecting what they themselves are. So call them on it. They hate us anyway – so why pretend otherwise? They are at war with us – let’s start acting like it!

We can choose not to fight and be at war – but that makes little difference to the Marxists and the Politburo in power, because THEY are assuredly at war with you and liberty in this nation.

It’s time to fight this war.

Sharpen your swords and cut down the nonsense when you read it. Train your guns on the enemy’s ideology and show it no mercy.

God does not compromise with the Devil, and neither should we.

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

The gods of The Liberal Left

The gods of Liberalism

Matt Barber

Modern-day liberals – or “progressives” as they more discreetly prefer – labor under an awkward misconception; namely, that there is anything remotely “progressive” about the fundamental canons of their blind, secular-humanist faith. In fact, today’s liberalism is largely a sanitized retread of an antiquated mythology – one that significantly predates the only truly progressive movement: biblical Christianity.

While visiting the Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va., a few weeks back, I heard a troubling, albeit thought-provoking, sermon. Pastor John Mabray addressed the ancient Canaanite practice of Baal worship and, though he didn’t reveal it by name, connected the dots to its present-day progeny: liberalism. Baal, the half-bull, half-man god of fertility, was the focal point of pagan idolatry in Semitic Israel until God revealed His monotheistic nature to Judaism’s forebears.

In his sermon, Pastor Mabray illustrated that, although they’ve now assumed a more contemporary flair, the fundamentals of Baal worship remain alive and well today. The principal pillars of Baalism were child sacrifice, sexual immorality (both heterosexual and homosexual) and pantheism (reverence of creation over the Creator).

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of  the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.  Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to⁾ the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.  - Romans 1: 21-24

Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of “mother earth.”

The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy and childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of “unplanned parenthood” were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to “terminate” the unwanted child.

Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar. The worship of “fertility” has been replaced with worship of “reproductive freedom” or “choice.” Child sacrifice via burnt offering has been updated, ever so slightly, to become child sacrifice by way of abortion. The ritualistic promotion, practice and celebration of both heterosexual and homosexual immorality and promiscuity have been carefully whitewashed – yet wholeheartedly embraced – by the cults of radical feminism, militant “gay rights” and “comprehensive sex education.” And, the pantheistic worship of “mother earth” has been substituted – in name only – for radical environmentalism.

But it’s not just self-styled “progressives” or secular humanists who have adopted the fundamental pillars of Baalism. In these postmodern times, we’ve also been graced, regrettably, by the advent of counter-biblical “emergent Christianity” or “quasi-Christianity,” as I prefer to call it.

This is merely liberalism all dolled up and gratuitously stamped “Christian.” It’s a way for left-wing ideologues to have their “religion” cake and eat it too. Under the guise of “social justice,” its adherents often support – or at least rationalize – the same pro-homosexual, pro-abortion and radical environmental policies pushed by the modern-day Baal worshiper.

Though the “Christian left” represent what is arguably a negligible minority within larger Christianity, the liberal media have, nonetheless, embraced their cause and seized upon their popularity among elites as evidence that the so-called “Christian right” (read: biblical Christianity) is losing influence – that Christianity is, somehow, “catching up with the times.”

Because emergent Christianity fails the authenticity test whenever subjected to even the most perfunctory biblical scrutiny, I suspect it will eventually go – for the most part – the way of the pet rock or the Macarena. But this does not absolve leaders within the evangelical community from a duty to call leaders of this counter-biblical revolution on their heresy. It’s not a matter of right versus left; it’s a matter of right versus wrong – of biblical versus non-biblical.

Nonetheless, the aforementioned pillars of postmodern Baalism – abortion, sexual relativism and radical environmentalism – will almost certainly make rapid headway over the next four to eight years, with or without help from the Christian left. The gods of liberalism have a new high priest in Barack Obama, and enjoy many devout followers in the Democratic-controlled Congress, liberal media and halls of academia.

Both Obama’s social agenda and that of the 111th Congress are rife with unfettered pro-abortion, freedom-chilling, pro-homosexual and power-grabbing environmentalist objectives. The same kind of “hope, action and change,” I suppose, that was swallowed up by the Baalist Canaanites of old.

So, today’s liberalism is really just a very old book with a shiny new cover. A philosophy rooted in ancient pagan traditions, of which there is naught to be proud.

There’s “nothing new under the sun,” indeed.

The Republican Party Needs to Be Served Divorce Papers

By INVAR

Colin Powell’s latest rant against Conservatives and John McCain’s dismissal of support for a Sarah Palin Presidential run in 2012 while scolding the RNC for criticizing Obama, serve to remind us that the Moderates and Mavericks that hold the reins of power in the Republican Party have made it abundantly clear to anyone with a modicum of common sense: Conservatives are loathed and hated by the very party they are politically married to.  They lecture us against listening to those preaching a Conservative message, the equivalent of an intolerant secular husband refusing to allow his religious wife to go to church because he doesn’t like their doctrines.

Powell’s rant against Conservatives and their ideology, including suggesting that Rush Limbaugh be expunged from the GOP on CNN is particularly instructive of the abuse Conservatives have endured for years.  This from the man who lectures Republicans on the virtues of abandoning Conservative values for liberal Democrat ideas to win elections, and then endorses and votes for Obama?

With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?  

Does the word ‘traitor’ to the principles the GOP was supposed to have even cross anyone’s mind?  How about ‘adulterer’?

No, as always Conservatives will put on extra justification make-up and pretend they slipped and fell in order to convince themselves that they deserve the treatment because they listen to talk radio or are too outspoken on certain social issues that are ‘out of step’ with the mainstream.

Conservatives have a serious if not fatal case of Battered Housewife syndrome.

Abused, neglected, beaten and discarded, Conservatives always crawl back into bed with the GOP because they think there is nowhere else to go.

For years, the GOP Bluebloods, D.C. Elites, and self-proclaimed “moderate” husbands of the GOP have been engaged in habitual adultery, battery and domestic violence against Conservatives, who have been a doting and faithful wife of the Republican Party.

They treat her with indifference, scorn, callousness, contempt and condescension except when he needs her to satisfy his urge to win elections.  When they lose – he blames her for the failure, notwithstanding the fact that his whoredom is well known by all.  Due the lack of stiff resolve and conservative principles that would satisfy both husband and wife, the adulterous GOP thinks the ideological prescription of Liberal Democrats is the Viagra needed to perform better in elections.  He is beset with a mid-life crisis of conscience, adopting the chic and hip to better maintain an image of political open-mindedness in the eyes of the Beautiful People in whom he seeks approval. He is aroused only by adulterous affairs with the prostitutes of Socialism and trysts with big government statists that better serve as his Geishas that he parades in front of the fickle debutante Media in whom he has his largest lust to bed.

Meanwhile the Conservative wife – has been faithful to her party to whom she married.  Always looking to trust; always to hope; always to respect the one she has ideologically pledged herself to.  She toils for him and the cause he says he serves.  She is up early and working the grassroots.  She serves his needs by sacrificing time and money for him.  She wears his ring with undying affection and lives her political life as a Proverbs 31 Woman. She has eagerly forgiven past mistakes and seeks to guide her chosen husband to the path of success. 

Still, he abuses her. 

He is a party, that assumes the doting housewife has nowhere else to go and whom can be enticed into forgiveness with empty promises, half-hearted repentance and a few cheap gifts thrown her way when he is caught in the act of betrayal.  He blows her a kiss while dialing the number to his many Liberal Leftist lovers in the media and the Democrat party.  He is seen cavorting with the mistresses that hate his wife and work tirelessly to destroy the marriage.  

He makes it publicly known that he dislikes his wife, and merely tolerates her.  When she protests, the GOP husband slaps the wife and admonishes her to shut up and be silent and deal with the reality.

In her tears and her devotion, the Conservative wife tries to change him from within.  But a womanizer does not change.  He gets more clever in deceit.   In desperation to avoid being tossed into the cold, she seeks to know what she must do to save the marriage and the answer is given boldly: become a whore and swing from bed to bed in whatever trysts her political husband desires.

Clearly there are irreconcilable differences between Conservatives and the Republican leadership.  It is time for the Conservative wife to divorce her cheating, unfaithful husband – who long ago abandoned the principles that made the wife fall in love with the party in the first place.

It is time for Conservatives to leave this adulterous relationship and become her own party.

Contrary to what the adulterous husband of the GOP will frighten her into believing, Conservatives will become healthy and successful on our own, with our principles intact.  In short, the Battered Wife must see the whoredom of her former spouse and recognize that the abuse heaped upon her will never cease under his roof.  She must leave and establish herself if she has any hope of influencing and saving the country.  Yes, I said country because the GOP adultery with Socialism affects more than just her own household – like all sin, it affects their children and the whole nation at large.

If the sanctity of the Conservative ideology has any real meaning, then it must be depart the scum that would otherwise continue to tarnish it.  Conservatism must become it’s own party.

While many 3rd party suitors will attempt to woo her – the former battered wife has no need to date – she has all the power and ability to make her own way and make her standards of liberty, regard and respect for God, less government, free market Capitalism, strong defense, personal property and personal responsibility the foundation stones upon which her new home will stand.

It is time for Conservatives to establish their own party, and let the GOP go the way of the Whigs, or become folded into the Democrat party by which in all practicality it already is.

If the Battered Wife Conservative continues to allow themselves to be frightened and talked into staying in this abusive relationship, eventually the abusive husband will irreparably harm if not kill her altogether.

It is far past the time to save our ideology and serve our cheating jerk of a party with divorce papers and walk away.  The GOP brand is forever sullied and contaminated with the stink of it’s adulterous affairs with the Left.  The Party left us a long time ago while we remained faithful. –  Before God, we are justified in this divorce because of the hardness of the hearts of those who slept around with the Left and pretended to be our husbands while robbing us all of liberty.

Bob Parks: Last Word on Ron Paul and His ‘In Your Face’ Supporters

Mr. Parks nails it all in a nutshell with these two columns. Thanks Bob.

I know what you mean.

Last Word on Ron Paul
By Bob Parks (12/20/07)

While I agree with some of Mr. Paul’s positions, such as elimination of the Department of Education or the anchor baby magnet, there are some positions such as his belief that we should never intervene in the foreign crisis of others I find troubling. And let us not forget, that prior to Mr. Paul’s position on immigration, those who support him today called Republicans “racists” and “xenophobes” when we brought up those same points.

Many of those who support Mr. Paul are the first to align themselves with George Clooney et al on the humanitarian crisis that is Darfur. Should the United States decide to get involved and help the people there, it would involve a military mission, as those committing the atrocities wouldn’t just let us walk in and help out.

The very people who support Mr. Paul are always claiming to be the compassionate, specifically in their defense and support of Black people. I’ll never forget the late Peter Jennings’ numerous reports on the Rwanda refugee crisis and the urging for the US to help those poor people. The very people who support Mr. Paul, to this day, never criticize Bill Clinton for sending in our soldiers to aid in that crisis; a crisis in which we had no national security interests at all.

Those same people demanded we “do something” about the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, even though we had no national security interests there. But these people, under their newfound constitutionalism of Mr. Paul, would kick the people of Darfur to the curb. Or would they…?

Public pressure goes along with being the President of all people, not just Republicans, as Mr. Paul reminds us. Also, he’ll need the support of the members of the Congress and Senate to get his ideas implemented. That’s an ugly process. Will he take on the unions who support Democrats with the same zeal he attacks the war?

I also find it troubling that he takes the word of some like-minded, in some cases, short term former CIA agents who say that we are creating terrorists by our “occupation” in some Middle Eastern holy lands, while ignoring people like Frank Salvato and Dr. Daniel Pipes who document the intention of Islamo-fascists to kill everyone just because they’re not Muslim. There’s nothing in their rhetoric that says they’ll leave us alone if we removed every single base from foreign territories.

France and Spain pulled out of Iraq. What did they get as thanks? Bombings. Great Britain has reduced their presence in Iraq. What did they get as thanks? Bombings.

I’d personally have more respect (which is earned, not demanded) for Mr. Paul if he ran as a libertarian. Some of his views are not compatible with those of today, and if not for him, many that support Mr. Paul would be aiming all their slings and arrows at Republicans because, for the most part, they’re liberals.

What I’m looking forward to seeing is the vote count. Mr. Paul’s supporters dismiss the polls because he registers around 4%, but I’ll bet they’d be shouting from the mountaintops if he were in the mid-thirties. Depending on the state you live in, many of his supporters are going to have to do something they thought they’d burn in hell before doing: register as a Republican so they can vote for him. Whether or not that happens will be interesting to watch.

His supporters are passionate, but in some cases, are immature.

Getting in people’s face is not the way to endear people to your perspective. Most of the time, we hear calls for honest debate. But the intolerance for alternative views, taught and tolerated, in colleges today will not work in the street, or America’s dinner tables. Many people are put off from Mr. Paul more for the actions of his supporters who appear to be yesterday’s liberals. Excuse me for having suspicions when today they insist we vote Republican.

Politics is not a fad.

Mr. Paul has some good smaller government ideas, some of which will meet stiff resistance on Capitol Hill. What will the Paulies do, flood the congressional and senate offices with angry, pushy, insulting phone calls? I thought these were the same people who believed in diplomacy?

As a student of politics, there are too many weird marriages taking place within the Paul phenomenon. When liberals are willing to call themselves Republicans, for at least the short term, especially after all they’ve said about our party for the last decade, pardon me for throwing up a red flag.

OKAY, LET’S TALK CONSPIRACY

I’ve been writing columns for a few years now, so I’ve had the opportunity to see patterns when they look me square in the face and, based on my recent encounters with Ron Paul supporters, patterns have begun to emerge.

When looking at pictures of Paul supporters you see young and old alike, but you also see the peace signs, the word “love” reversed in the word “revolution”. What one clearly sees is a bunch of disenfranchised liberals who assume they’ve found a welcoming new home.

They’ve clearly identified with the anti-war message of Dr. Paul. Obviously, these people feel betrayed by the Democrats with whom they voted for in 2006 after being promised an end to the Iraq War. Democrats clearly have been unable to make good on their many promises. While that’s not news to real Republicans, the anti-war left has been left dismayed, betrayed, and rudderless.

Dr. Paul has the attention of the anti-war crowd, thus he’s attracted them into his camp, as they won’t trust a Democrat, at least for the foreseeable future.

I say they “assume” they’ve found a new home because these are the same people who’ve over the last few years have loudly and proudly called conservatives every name in the book. They’ve called us “racists”, “homophobes”, “bigots”, “hate mongers”, “sexists”, and more. They’ve called me an “uncle tom”, “wannabe white”, and that’s from white liberals. Look at what they did to Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and were damn proud of it.

However, now they’ve found a “man of principle” who just happens to be a… Republican.

Just because they now find certain conservative principles acceptable, doesn’t make any of them the real deal, and like elephants, Republicans never forget.

Paul’s supporters claim to embrace his message of smaller government. However, these are the same people who demanded federally funded student loans and free health care for illegal aliens. These are the same people who always advocate some new program for the poor and disenfranchised. And now, just because they’ve found religion, we’re to just open the door, forget about the years of slanderous shout downs, and say, “Welcome home?”

When certain candidates or a party realizes they are hemorrhaging support, the first thing they ask is “How do we get them back?” I’ve heard no Democrat presidential candidate attempt to lure the Paulies back home. Maybe… just maybe, that’s because they don’t want them back.

After all, would any of us open the door to people who occupy our offices, infiltrate our meetings, protest us in front of your workplaces, throw paint on our war dead memorials, and shout us during presentations in which we were invited? And now they expect us to say, “Welcome to the Republican Party” just because they now demand we listen to them and their candidate?

You’re damn right; there are sour grapes and deep suspicions here. I don’t trust these people for a minute.

Neither do I Bob. The threats, intimidation and worse are just hallmarks of this bunch who literally worship Ron Paul as some sort of political messiah. One supporter posted on several blogs and forums that Ron Paul was the Second or Third Coming of Christ.

In the many emails I’ve received from the Paulies, I’ve been talked down to like a child, had my intelligence questioned, cursed at, and all because I committed the mortal sin of not mentioning their candidate by name in a column where I was taking Republican presidential candidates to my own personal woodshed.

Their emails are all about their feelings. It’s all about “me”, “me”, “me”, and damn anyone who won’t hear THEM out.

Someone has to ask what the real motive is here.

Should Paul get the nomination and bring his supporters into our party, what kind of changes will they demand to bring from within? Will they demand political correctness be instituted? Will they attempt to stifle speech they don’t authorize? Will they shout us down? In fact, all the traits most of these people seem to have on display are those the Democrat Party seems to have no problem jettisoning.

And they’re jettisoning them right into the Republican Party.

That’s my conspiracy theory. I don’t think I’m that far off.

Not at all Bob. You’re right on target.

The rabidness of these Mob Zombies and the threats of everything from violence, death, lawsuits and shut down has only steeled my resolve from simply not casting a vote for their messiah, to actively campaigning AGAINST him as vigorously (if not moreso) than I am Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Hillary’s people have not yet threatened me with death for daring to write any disparaging remarks about their candidate. Ron Paul’s people have. If I had to judge the fruits – Hillary’s people respect the right to free speech, and Ron Paul’s supporters, those who supposedly support the Constitution – do not.

Now THERE’S a twist of the surreal for you.

No Risk Freedom: Nanny State Government Will Control Everything – From Housing To Religion

Another thought-provoking essay by Mark Steyn.

Let’s have a free market for housing and religion

By Mark Steyn

Last week the Bush administration decided to “freeze” for five years the interest rates of certain types of mortgages. You’ve probably caught the tail end of news stories about “subprime” home loans, lots of foreclosures, etc. Never a happy moment when the bank takes the farm.

So now the government has stepped in and said that, if you fall into a particular category of adjustable-rate mortgage (ARMs, in the biz) and you’re worried that it’s getting way too adjustable, don’t worry: The Nanny State is about to readjust it well inside your comfort zone. By fiat of the Treasury secretary, your adjustable-rate mortgage is henceforth an unadjustable adjustable-rate mortgage. These new UNARMs will spread their healing balm across the land until it’s safe enough for the housing “market” to once again be exposed to market forces.

The government has, in effect, nullified the terms of legal contracts mutually agreed by both parties — borrower and lender, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe and the First National Bank of Pleasantville.

This is a pretty remarkable act by a “conservative” administration. The government’s general absolution for imprudence by both borrower and lender doesn’t seem a smart move — for the U.S. credit markets, for real estate, for responsible borrowers for future homeowners, or for state and municipal taxpayers whose governments are being encouraged by Washington to bail out home “owners” by issuing tax-free debt.

Democrats bemoan the lack of “affordable housing” while simultaneously demanding government rescue home “owners” with unsustainable mortgages. But saving the latter obstructs the former: the principal benefit of a property-bubble correction is, after all, much more “affordable housing.”

One of the great strengths of the United States is that property is not, by comparison with other developed nations, an overspeculative enterprise. Most of us buy a house, and it increases respectably in value but not spectacularly. In Britain, by contrast, you buy a basement flat in a rundown slum for a quarter-million pounds, put a cat flap in the back door and sell it as “extensively remodeled” for a half-million pounds.

I write often about the demographic decline in Europe — the lack of children — but quite a bit of that has to do with the space constraints. If you’re living in a small apartment, as many Germans do, do you really want three kids clogging up the joint?

America is one of the cheapest places in the developed world to buy a four-bedroom house on a one-acre lot. A few years back, I noted that a three-bedroom, air-conditioned home in Crawford, Texas, cost $30,000, but, if that sounds a bit steep, you could get a couple of acres and a double-wide for about a fifth of the cost. And a rather sour leftie said, well, what do you expect? Bush moves in, and there goes the neighborhood. Well, if that’s the case, you’d think he’d be applying the Crawford Effect and depressing the property market nationwide instead of artificially obstructing its operation.

One shouldn’t overstate the administration’s actions: in Zimbabwe, the government seizes your property; in the United States, the government seizes your property contract and then hands it back to you all fluffy and painless.

Comment: Unless of course the local government wants your property to put up condos and strip malls for windfall tax profits – then, as the KELO case in SCOTUS proves – the government can take your property and defy the Constitutional requirement of just compensation by redefining market compensation to whatever compensation the government feels like giving you.

Yet out on the campaign trail no candidate initially seemed very bothered by it. Musing on various ninnyish programs being mooted by candidates of both parties, Fred Thompson said the other day, “I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat.” It’s apparently not the primary responsibility of the government to tell you to suck it up (which is what columnist Michelle Malkin proposed as an alternative outreach plan to troubled mortgage holders). “The fact of the matter is we got an awful lot of knowledge,” Sen. Thompson continued. “Sometimes we don’t have a whole lot of will power, and I don’t know of any government program that’s going to instill that.”

There don’t seem to be a lot of takers for small government out on the hustings this season. We were told by plenty of experts that this would be the year in which the Christian right would be rendered politically irrelevant: Nominating Rudy Giuliani (a pro-choice candidate positively Chiracesque in his sexual habits and the taxpayer funding thereof) would leave the religious right out on the fringe. Instead, the evangelicals found a candidate, destabilized the race, and we’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking about nothing but religion. Mike Huckabee’s declaration in his Iowa advertising that he is a “Christian leader” seems a barely coded dig at Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, and Mitt’s big speech Thursday was his own attempt to put the Mormon question to bed.

As far as Christian conservatives are concerned, Gov. Huckabee is obviously a sincere Christian. But he doesn’t seem to be any kind of a conservative — not if you look at his record on domestic policy.

As for Gov. Romney, one of the most interesting passages of his speech was his contrast of America’s faith with Europe’s: “I’m not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty,” he said. “I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired … so grand … so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too ‘enlightened’ to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe’s churches.”

That’s very true. As America demonstrates, faith thrives in a free market. In Europe, the established church, whether formal (the Church of England) or informal (as in Catholic Italy and Spain), killed religion as surely as state ownership killed the British car industry. When the Episcopal Church degenerates into wimpsville relativist milquetoast mush, Americans go elsewhere. When the Church of England undergoes similar institutional decline, Britons give up on religion entirely.

Instead of a state church, Europe believes in the state as church — the all-powerful beneficent provider of cradle-to-grave welfare.

“Freedom requires religion,” said Mitt Romney, and, whether or not one agrees, in Europe big government has led naturally to small religion — a point Gov. Huckabee might want to ponder. I would rather we talked less about religion in America (which can take care of itself) and more about government, which seems to be trending in an alarmingly European direction, Democrats and Republicans disagreeing merely on the speed at which we’ll get there. Yet the two are explicitly connected.

Europe’s religious decline derives in part from the state’s usurpation and annexation of so many of the other supporting structures of society, including the church. I am in favor of a free market in religion and a free market in housing, but right now I’d like a conservative candidate with a clear-headed commitment to both.

Unfortunately in America, a growing majority no longer have faith in their church, instead they have shifted responsibility to the government, which will replace the church in charity and as arbiter of liberty.

Such is the path of tyranny.

For States of men in power will suffer no rivals of allegience, whether to God or anthing else.

Religion becomes faith in the state, and the state becomes the religion. Something you are witnessing happen right before your very eyes.