It’s unfortunate that the modern liberal establishment that dominates the educational field deems it necessary to indoctrinate their captive young audience, there but for a legally required, important basic education, into the realm of leftist politics, the children’s parents’ views not a factor. As the left moves us further and further into their liberal political spectrum, they also seek to remove the rights of parents with opposing views to impart those views on their own children. In fact, they apparently prefer that children receive a “state education and upbringing” rather than one based upon their mothers’ and fathers’ doctrine.

The Nazis did the same thing in occupied countries during WW II, “the big one” and the U.S.S.R. also, as standard basic schooling procedure.

Michelle Malkin talks about one perfect example.

Fortunately in the case in point, the actions involved were those of an individual teacher as opposed to those of many entire faculties or school policies, but the point is there. It’s a shame that a parent today has to worry as to what indoctrination his/ her children might be exposed to at the hands of those paid to educate them.

Former Oklahoma Representative(R), J.C. Watts, a man both active in and intimate with the labyrinth of today’s political quagmire and an impressive, right-thinking intellect has a few things to say regarding the effect of the liberal propaganda machine on public opinion.

For example: global warming. I’m neither a scientist nor a meteorologist, but I know enough to understand that our climate has cycles. It’s true; we have experienced somewhat of a warming trend in recent years. Given this, Al Gore and his buddies who believe automobiles are the greatest threat to civilization today have found willing accomplices in the mainstream media, and now have many of us believing our world is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

The next time a good old-fashioned nor’easter sweeps across the Atlantic Coast, shutting down commerce, industry and education, you’ll probably find our old friend Al huddled in front of a fireplace belching unfiltered ash into the once-pure air we are forcing our children to breathe.

But that’s another column.

This one is about another big lie, and the consequences of unanswered attacks.

Just as the big media has had a field day with global warming, they have really teed it up on the war in Iraq. They have repeated the revisionist history offered up by Democratic leaders nationwide as if it were fact.

And it’s working.

Read on…

I absolutely love it when liberals I meet tell me they believe — no, strike that, when a liberal expresses his or her beliefs, he or she states them as indisputable fact and will consider no suggestion that there is any possibility to the contrary — that the Mainstream Media favors conservative politics.

Face it, he or she is either brainwashed, lying or simply obtuse.

If the media is pro Republican, news reports should minimize any mistakes made by the Bush Administration in, say, Iraq while playing up the positive news, such as infrastructure improvements, good Samaritan activities by American troops, new schools in Iraqi cities and good fellowship on the part of the rank and file Iraqi citizen. Their editorials would emphasize the enthusiastic response of the Iraqi people to the opportunity to embrace democracy.

If, on the other hand, the media is pro Democrat, the opposite will certainly be true. Bush Administration errors or perceived errors will be brayed forth for all they’re worth and positives would be blatantly ignored. MSM journalists will play “see no positive, hear no positive, speak no positive,” just like the three little monkeys, where all things Iraq are concerned.

If the media is actually doing its job, which is fair, accurate and balanced reporting, the reports we read, watch or listen to will include, in their entirety, both the negatives and the positives.

Hmmm, pick up the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Las Angeles Times or the San Francisco Chronicle on any given day and take a gander at the headsheet, or tune into the CNN, NPR, CBS, ABC or NBC news. Then compare what you see and hear with the above three paragraphs and decide which best fits the news reporting before you.

If you cannot acknowledge that you find that the middle paragraph best fits, well…

Mona Charen’s offering up, once again, a spot-on column.

One Marine, Sgt. Todd Bowers, who did two tours in Iraq, described the attitude of many press types. “They didn’t want to talk to us.” Why? I asked. “Because we were gung-ho for the mission.” Bowers, who was saved from grievous injury when a bullet lodged in the sight of his rifle (a sight his father had purchased for him), is chary about the press.

In his first tour, he noticed that members of the press were reluctant to photograph Iraqis laughing, giving the thumbs up sign, or cheering. Yet Bowers saw plenty that would have made fine snapshots. In Baghdad, Al Kut and Al-Nasiriyah, Bowers reported no signs of anti-American feeling at all among Iraqis.

You would think the press might be interested in the observations of this Marine, seeing as Sgt. Bowers is a two-tour veteran of the war they are covering in Iraq, for the purpose of informing the American public. Does this make sense? I mean, if a soldier or an Iraqi civilian makes a statement disparaging or otherwise casting anything other than a positive light on our involvement in Iraq, it always, somehow, seems to rate a prime piece of real estate right there on the front page or as the top story in the evening news.

There was plenty of progress to report, if the press had been interested. When the battle of Fallujah was over, the Marines set up a humanitarian relief station in an abandoned amusement park. Together with Iraqis locally hired and trained for the purpose and with an assist from the Iraqi ministry of the interior, they distributed rice, flour, medical supplies, baby formula, and other necessities to thousands of Iraqis. For six weeks, Bowers reports, the distribution went beautifully, “like a well-oiled machine.” Not worth a story, apparently. Only when something went wrong did the press see something worth reporting…

When a liberal argues that he or she has developed his or her opinions by consulting diverse news sources, you can pretty much take that to mean one of the “Big 3″ networks or CNN over breakfast, the local liberal newpaper or NPR, perhaps, during the commute to work and more of the same at ten o’clock on the tube. Between dinnertime and the news, prime time sitcoms are interwoven with the politics of mainstream Hollywood liberals.

And yet, despite this unending uphill public relations battle conservative America is forced to undertake, the majority clearly favors our point of view by going to the polls and electing significantly more Republicans than Democrats to public office.

Go figure.

Here is a set of photos taken in Iraq by Michael Yon that we’ll never see in the New York Times.

The left, after all, wouldn’t be interested in the exponential improvements our “human killing machines” have helped the Iraqis enjoy in education for their children and in the sheer numbers of children now able to attend school for the first time.

Do they look happy to see an American, or are those the expressions of bitter hatred from young Iraqis who want us out of their country?

You decide.

And this one just in from my beloved Aunt Brenda.

How Government Works

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert.
Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.”
So they created a night watchman position and hired a person
at $18,000.00 a year for the job.
Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job
without instruction?”
So they created a planning department and hired two people,
one person to write the instructions for $22,000.00, and one
person to do time studies for an additional $22,000.00 per year.
Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is
doing the tasks correctly?”
So they created a Quality Control department and hired two
people. One to do the studies for $31,000.00 and one to
write the reports for an additional $31,000.00 per year.
Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?”
So they created the following positions, a time keeper for
$35,000.00 annual salary, and a payroll officer for an
additional $35,000.00, then hired two people.
Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of
these people?”
So they created an administrative section and hired three
people, an Administrative Officer at $155,000.00 per year,
Assistant Administrative Officer $125,000.00, and a Legal
Secretary for an additional $100,000.00 per year.
Then Congress said, “We have had this operating for one year
with a budget cost of $574,000.00 and we are $18,000 over
budget. We must cutback overall cost.”
So they laid off the night watchman!

So having been mostly raised by my grandparents, who were European Jews who both immigrated into the United States of America more than 80 years ago and being a Jew myself(a Conservative Jew and a Conservative American), I have a problem with the message{or lack of same} being delivered by my fellow Jews here in America.

It would seem that despite the lessons learned in the course of our heritage, which spans considerably more than a score of centuries, the “intellectuals” among us still haven’t learned any lessons from history.

An alarming percentage of Jews in the U.S. represent the left side of the global political spectrum, a failing, I have observed, that dates back to at least the early 1900s, when too many Jews belonged to the Communist Party and served the Kremlin. Intellectualism is an integral part of our faith, and for some reason certain brands of totalitarianism attract intellectuals to the point that they forsake reality in favor of the cloistered netherworld of false Utopian discourse.

To those of us who honor and observe our religion(I’m not a golden example: I fast on Yom Kippur while asking God to forgive my sins of the previous year, avoid leavened food products during Passover and try to live as the Talmud directs, but I love pork and I miss a lot of our holidays), the security and continued existence of Israel is of paramount importance.

Israel is the capitol of my faith, just as America is the land of my birth and the country to which I owe my allegiance(while I am an American first, and the U.S.A. is my country, Israel is the capitol of a community of which I am a member that is spread across the globe, a nation that took over two millenium to recover). So while I don’t live there, it is as important to me as a Jew as Washington, DC is to me as an American.

Pretty recently, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ceded the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, as dumb a move as Bill Clinton made with the assistance of the late terrorist/ Palestinian leader, Yassir Arafat, helping a man who had been a terrorist for almost three decades “win” a Nobel Peace Prize.

Israel is being given to the Arabs, component-by-component, by a Prime Minister who is apparently in leave of his senses.

I can’t lay the blame on too many things he does, because I don’t live in Israel, but I will say that a huge amount of the anti-Israel rhetoric we are bombarded with comes from the left and can be lain at the doorstep of influence generated by some of my fellow Jews.

Jewish American leaders urged Rice to change tactics and directly impose on Israel an agreement to re-open the Rafiah border, but even liberal leaders worry Israel’s security has been breached.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week broke her previously stated policy of “guiding, but not directing” negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Rice used “unusual personal involvement” to pressure Israel and the PA, according to the liberal New York Jewish daily The Forward.

Under the agreement, Israel agreed to drop its demand for direct surveillance at the Rafiah border and to rely on video cameras without having authority to intervene on matters of security.

Our government(the United States Government), particularly the State Department, is involved heavily in peace negitiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We know this and approve, assuming that our officials are sincere about wanting peace to reign in Israel.

The problem is that like the Global War on Terror being prosecuted by the Bush Administration, the very defense of the Jewish State is under attack by the left, not only in Israel and the United Nations, but by Jews here in the United States.

HOUSTON, Nov. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ — Representatives of the 1.5 million Reform Jews in North America voted overwhelmingly today to oppose the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court of the United States because it “would threaten protection of the most fundamental rights” that the Reform Movement supports.

“On choice, women’s rights, civil rights and the scope of federal power,” Alito would “shift the ideological balance of the Supreme Court on matters of core concern to the Reform Movement,” according to the resolution adopted by the more than 2,000 voting delegates from more than 500 congregations in all 50 states. The vote came at the closing session of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Biennial Convention, which met in Houston Nov. 16-20. The Union represents the largest branch of Judaism in North America.

Yes, the same folks who oppose the confirmation of a conservative SCOTUS justice candidate in the United States, someone whose beliefs echo those of our founding fathers and a political system based on the Constitution that has made America the greatest country in the world, include a more than significant number of Jews whose view, in and out of Israel, of a perfect world does not include the existence of Israel.

At least, their actions do not indicate any serious interest in any future for the Jewish State. I cannot say that all of these people, or even the majority of them wish harm to Israel, but I will say that too many of them are living in some fantasy world or other

These leftists, most of whom would indubitably resent being referred to thusly, are either living in some Utopian dream world where the general belief is that there is some remote possibility that the Palestinians will be satisfied with having a part of Israel as their own, and that once they have this parcel of real estate and the sovereignty of such political ownership, there will be peace.

They couldn’t be farther from the truth.

How could they, when they are such avid proponents of the Rafah Agreement, which negates important security features of the agreed-upon Roadmap treaty, so strongly undermining Israel’s authority to defend itself?

Muhammad Dahlan, one of the PA signatories on the agreement, emphasized in a post-signing press conference, “It was agreed that Israel will have no right to prevent any Palestinian citizen to pass through the Rafah Crossing after it is re-opened.” Wanted terrorists could thus pass safely between Gaza and Judea.

Israel will be able to monitor those who enter, via a joint control room in Kerem Shalom, to which data and video images will be sent from the Rafah Crossing in real time or near real-time. However, if a suspected terrorist is noted, Israel will not be able to demand that he be kept out or detained.

Further,

According to the agreement, however, Israel will no longer be able to unilaterally close the crossings in such situations. In case of terror alerts, Israel must first notify the US embassy in Tel Aviv, provide the specific information that motivated the request for a closure, and then wait for Washington to approve or refuse the request.

I fear that my fellow American Jews who embrace this idiocy(picture someone lying on the pavement with cardiac arrest, and the law stating that you must first call an 800 number and weather interminable telephone menus in order to obtain permission to administer CPR) are either completely out of touch with the world’s more brutal realities or, though I would hope to be wrong, anti-Israel.

The fact that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a woman I hold in the highest respect and esteem, went along with the Rafah Agreement confuses and disappoints me to no end, because she is more than conversant with all things terrorist and knows that the more you give them, the more they’ll attack, considering concessions as signs of weakness and/or victories on their part.

Fatah(the party of the Palestinian Authority), Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Islamic Jihad and the rest of the Palestinian terrorist organizations(yes, I include the PA’s party) will not stop terrorizing until they have obliterated Israel. In the meantime, they play their game, patiently leering as the Israelis make concessions to the Palestinians that the U.S. Government pressures them to make while the Arabs concede nothing, in fact do quite the opposite, continuing to attack Israel.

It is unfortunate that so many of my fellow American Jews have taken the leftist approach to politics, whether they call themselves liberals or progressives, because the left’s dogma apparently requires that its practitioners suspend any notion of free thinking and go with the collective’s thinking 100%, in for a penny, in for a pound. Whatever the left’s agendas might be, there can be no exception to any detail, there is only one drum to march to.

The followers of the left march behind their leaders into the same brand of slavery and speech restriction, suspension of freedom and individual rights that the Russians did when they succumbed to the lure of communism.

And they don’t seem to perceive this reality.

And where is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the man who is ceding territory to terrorism, in all of this?

My government is not giving me unmitigated support, so I need to create a new government!

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will announce on Monday that he intends to quit the Likud and form a new centrist political party, sources close to Sharon said on Sunday.

Sharon is to visit President Moshe Katsav on Monday and ask him to dissolve the Knesset. This would set off a process that would lead to elections in 90 days, unless an MK succeeds in forming a new coalition within the next three weeks.

Sheesh!

If this man is allowed to continue and if the Israelis keep going along with the plans for it as outlined by the U.S., there will be no more Israel and we Jews will once again be without a political subdivision of our own.

WTF is wrong with these people!?

….is the title of Mona Charen’s latest column, and I probably don’t have to elaborate on who she is referring to, but I will.

She makes a point that really should be considered by the American left, but of course won’t be, because while the Bush Administration is prosecuting a global war on terror, the liberals are prosecuting a domestic war on the Bush Administration.

During the 1990s under Clinton, remember Somalia, where Bubba panicked and withdrew our troops in a tail-between-their-legs manner at the first whiff of American casualties, he labelled the U.S. a bluff, and subsequently allowed terrorists to bomb two U.S. embassies and the U.S.S. Cole without executing any notable retaliatory measures. Well, Mr. Hillary did manage to destroy an aspirin factory with a well placed cruise missile, but if that accomplished anything at all, it was to piss off some Muslims who, if they hadn’t been jihadis before, well….

My point being that Clinton managed, in his own special way, to make the richest nation with the most powerful military machine in the history of the world look kinda sorta, well, toothless. Yellow. Impotent. Weak. Vulnerable. Moot.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, has let the world know that the U.S.A. is still the same strong nation it has been for a very lonnnng time, and that we are willing to make great sacrifices to advance the cause of freedom on our planet.

Since we went into Iraq, however, a sizeable chunk of our voting public, the politicians they support and the profoundly biased media that in turn supports them have done all they can to sabotage the war effort by demoralizing our troops by making their sacrifices and accomplishments appear to have been either worthless or for an evil cause and sending signals to terrorists that the majority of Americans are against our fighting them and the fascism they represent.

Leftist politicians are even demanding a timetable for our withdrawal from Iraq, a sure way of letting the enemy know when we’ll be gone so they can lay back, conserve their strength, assets and ammo and wait to attack the new Iraqi government after we’ve gone.

This would play right into the hands of anti-Bush, anti-war liberals, because the Iraqis would almost certainly be defeated by the fanatics and bitter Baathists in their midst, and then the left could crow that Bush screwed up in Iraq, because we “lost.”

And these people call themselves Americans?

But now we are in Iraq. The full prestige and credibility of the United States is on the line. Iraq has been liberated from Saddam, yet remains under assault from jihadists, dispossessed Tikritis, and a variety of other assassins and terrorists. Al Qaeda’s ringleader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, maintains a network of suicide bombers and saboteurs who blow our people up when they can and cut off hostages’ heads when they require added amusement.

If we were to withdraw in the face of this onslaught, the message to al Qaeda and to the world would be obvious: defeat. Osama bin Laden took credit for chasing the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan and gloated that his forces had frightened the U.S. out of Somalia. How much more decisive would it appear to the jihadists if they were able to chase the U.S. out of Iraq? And not just to them, but to any potential adversary anywhere on the globe? Don’t Democrats ever consider these matters? If they do not, can they really be considered mature or responsible?

Whether the liberals like it or not, we are in Iraq now and if we turn tail and cut out we will lose not only the respect of all those other nations that joined the Coalition and fought at our side, but also that of our enemy, who would view our evacuation of Iraq as a weakness and an indication of cowardess, and the next chapter might well be 9/11 revisited.

It does not bide well for our country when one of our two principal political parties considers attacking POTUS more of a priority than spreading freedom to countries that haven’t previously had any.

Ex-con Heidi Fleiss is back in the news, this time in partnership with a Nevada brothel owner in a project to turn Cherry Patch Ranch, an old and established Nevada “house of ill repute” — legal in that particular one-in-fifty U.S. subdivision — into a women’s brothel where ladies in heat can rent “working boys” by the hour.

Now, given that feminists have a really big problem with women degrading themselves by plying the world’s oldest profession, what say you, Gloria Steinem and Camille Paglia, about females pimping males?

So Kofi wants money for renovations and upgrades at Turtle Bay.

November 18, 2005 — The renovation of the United Nations’ aging East Side headquarters could cost $1.9 billion — more than a third above previous estimates, U.N. officials said yesterday.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan blamed skyrocketing Manhattan real estate and construction costs, expensive security and the balky state Legislature for pricey revisions in previous plans.

He said it was “critical” for the General Assembly to approve a new scheme for the 53-year-old building, which he said had serious fire code, environmental and hazardous materials problems.

There is one member nation the U.N. has done nothing for and everything against, it is that same country that seems somehow to foot most of the bills for that corrupt, overbureaucratized, underachieving, expensively useless quagmire, in addition to being its host…. Wait, isn’t that the United States?….

We can see where Kofi’s going with this: New York{an American city} is to blame for high costs of real estate and renovation and the New York State{an American state} legislature is to be blamed for “pricey revisions in previous plans,” and oh, let’s not forget the high costs of security{provided by Americans}.

What do you bet that in view of all this, it will, in Kofi’s estimate, be the job of the American taxpayer, since the high costs are “America’s fault,” to finance the majority of renovation costs so that various and sundry tinpot dictatorships, socialist governments and Islamofascist states can condemn all that America stands for, on American soil, in increased comfort and “safer” conditions?

Well,

The United States would likely end up paying for a large share of the increase. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said yesterday his staff was studying the newly released figures.

John, how ’bout letting France pick up the tab for a change?

Freelance journalist Michael Yon’s latest online magazine entry covers the soiree held by the fierce warriors of the Deuce Four, celebrating their return home from Iraq, and is titled, The Punishers’ Ball.

Bruce Willis, one of the few right thinkers in Hollywood and truly supportive of and popular with U.S. troops, attended as a guest speaker.