… that Greg Crosby’s got it spot-on.

Further evidence, to my way of thinking, that today’s Democrats are no less an enemy of the United States than al-Qaeda; not necessarily by design, but via either naivety or downright stupidity, take your pick.

And they call Bush stupid!

Here’s one I couldn’t resist posting:

THREE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:

1. COWS

2. THE CONSTITUTION, and

3. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

COWS
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give them all a cow.

THE CONSTITUTION
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years and we’re not using it anymore.

TEN COMMANDMENTS
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a
courthouse………You cannot post “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” and “Thou Shall Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians - it creates a hostile work environment.

H/T Shana

Just because the folks on the left side of the aisle are lying scoundrels doesn’t mean that Amy Proctor has them pegged!

H/T Old Soldier

…and will continue to do so until some doubting Thomases realize that it is not merely a spaced out, paranoid, Ludlumesque conspiracy theory, but a bona fide, real life stealth agenda that may well rear its hideous head, much to the unpleasant surprise of most and the joy of some, in the latter case a lot of mega-rich businessmen with extranational interests and as many anti-American entities who have long envisioned the decommissioning of both our sovereignty and the U.S. Constitution, as early as the year 2010.

The horse in question is, of course, the North American Union {NAU, for short}, better known as the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership {SPP}.

Disguised as a mere agreement of cooperative effort between the three countries (the U.S., Mexico and Canada) that comprise the continent of North America, the SPP actually masks something rather more involved, that being a merging of the three governments, in much the same way as the countries of Europe have combined to form the European Union {EU}.

As in the latter case, this union would include the elimination of sovereign borders and a congress consisting of representation by the governments of all member countries. Because our Constitution is unique, changes would be mandated to accommodate the governing sensibilities of Mexico and Canada, not least those articles concerned with the rights of citizens. Property rights, free speech rights, the right to keep and bear arms, rights of protest and assembly….

Mexico’s civil and human rights policies are downright oppressive compared to ours, and changes engendered would have to include compromises that would be unacceptable to most Americans, including many of those Utopian liberal idiots who would endorse such a change until, too late, they realize what they have brought not only upon themselves, but upon the rest of America.

The only people who would not have a problem are those possessing assets in eight figures and above, whose wealth would place them, as always, high above the “pedestrian” concerns of the rank & file citizen.

There are two arguments I’ve encountered that encourage this entire issue to be consigned to the “conspiracy theory” heap:

1. Why isn’t there any mainstream media coverage on the SPP vs NAU kerfuffle?

2. It couldn’t happen because the American people “won’t stand for it”.

In answer to “1.”, well the Bush Administration, the Council on Foreign Relations {CFR} and their counterparts in Mexico and Canada have shared neither their work nor their under-the-table negotiations with the congresses/parliaments or media of their respective countries, and have even gone as far as barring the press from covering some of their conferences, one of which I referred to in a previous post on the subject that was held in Canada.

As far as “2.” is concerned, well, face it — a stealth agenda can be termed thus because it is not one the public will be briefed on prior to an election, but one that will be gradually prepped, the final implementation reaching fruition within months after an election day, and presented with the usual deceptive honey coating of any distateful political presentation.

Whether the governed will “stand for it” or not is a moot point, the only alternatives, once the change has been made, will be the threat of voting out the incumbents involved in the next election, which won’t amount to a hill of beans as there would be plenty of time for those at the helm to accellerate their plans before another voting cycle arrived, and armed revolution, which might have been a distinct possibility a couple of centuries ago, but is highly unlikely today — the nature of the American people as we were in the 1700s has been profoundly diluted by the gradual surge of liberalism in this country that has so tainted and distorted the perception of the original intentions of our founding fathers by all too many Americans.

All that said, I have a couple of links here, both going back to the middle of last year, that give further evidence than I have previously presented to the existence and concept of the NAU agenda.

First, let’s become acquainted with one Robert Pastor.

In his pressing enthusiasm for realizing the NAU, Robert Pastor argued in a 2004 article in CFR’s Foreign Affairs, entitled “North America’s Second Decade,” that the United States would benefit by giving up U.S. national Sovereignty. “Countries are benefited,” he wrote, “when they changed these [national sovereignty] policies, and evidence suggests that North Americans are ready for a new relationship that renders this old definition of sovereignty obsolete.”

Truncating,

Critics who argue that the NAU is a “conspiracy theory” are well advised to take a hard look at Robert Pastor. With U.S. policy toward Latin America, Dr. Pastor first approached the issue in writing (for the radical IPS, as we have noted), next as a university professor, and finally as a government official. Had John Kerry won the 2004 presidential election, Robert Pastor most likely would have emerged with a government position from which he could have pursued his NAU agenda. Given the re-election of George Bush, Dr. Pastor has surfaced within the CFR, an influential “think-tank” NGO whose history of impacting U.S. policy would suggest the CFR impact on SPP.gov could easily be more than academic.

This article contains several excellent links, and I would highly recommend taking the time to read all of them.

Presidential candidate George W. Bush stated in August 2000 in a speech on Latin America in Miami Florida:

“…By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.”

Our intentionally unsecured borders and our government’s deliberate and unapologetic lack of enforcement of our immigration and employment laws is merely a necessary step to a much larger goal - a “New America” in a “North American Community.”

A New America that would replace the traditional self-governing “Old America” for which our founders sacrificed and our grandfathers fought to pass on.

In March 2005, President George W. Bush and the leaders of Mexico and Canada announced the establishment of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.” This represents the official public beginning of an ongoing series of agreements and implementations aimed at combining the economies, populations and cultures of the nations of North America into a borderless “North American Free Trade Zone”.

Think: “I pledge allegiance to the Continent and to the Commerce for which it stands.”

Along with mass, uncontrolled immigration, legal and illegal, trade agreements are a favored tool in the transformation. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the recently passed Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the upcoming attempt to put the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in place would guarantee a unending “free flow” of goods and people across our traditional borders.

Grateful hat tip, Cubed

… no money, including membership dues, to the Republican (or any other) Party this year can be found here.

For the last few years, I haven’t seen them justify my support and while I contributed prior to this last November election, voted a straight Republican ticket and will undoubtedly do so again in 2008, until they start listening to what we, the people who put them and keep them in office want they will receive no more monetary support from me.

However, on a cheerier note, the man who has for some time been my own first choice as the next President may run in 2008!

Tom Tancredo will get a contribution from me if he decides to run.

The rest of those complacent, self seeking denizens of the Hill need to grow their spines back and start acting like Republicans before they see any more of my money…

…here in Charlotte, it’s a warm, pleasant spring day in the middle of January, and I’m enjoying it working out back on my deck and taking this blogging break surrounded by green (fortunately, four of the big trees in my backyard are evergreens, and my grass and shrubs are mostly the kind that stay green all year). This being one of the places birds fly south to for the winter, there’s lots of assorted chatter going on in the trees, and the Bach I have playing at the moment is at a perfect low volume to allow the bird music to improvise with it. Aaaah….

The great Phin, to whom I owe quite a lot, has moved me to a WordPress publishing platform and for the last couple of days I have seen no spambot traffic to speak of. This is my first post- move post, and WordPress looks completely different from Moveable Type, so at the moment I’m hoping I do it right.

In the past week and then some since I last posted, I have read a few news items and blog posts that I want to share here while I prepare to start posting more regularly again, such as….

In the last few days we’ve seen Mahmoud Abbas demonstrate the exact definition of a moderate Palestinian.

On the eve of a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told supporters on Thursday that they should turn their guns on Israel and not on each other.

Well, he was Arafat’s protege, and as they say, the fruit never falls far from the tree. Still, it was sound business; As long as he had the stupid, gullible asses we call politicians and diplomats believing he was interested in peaceful coexistence, he was eligible for yours and my tax dollars. How nice.

Then, we were presented with another great example of liberal hypocrisy, courtesy of the New York Times in another of those portsider “do as I say, not as I do” episodes.

Earlier today, Boston Globe representatives of the New York Times Co. met with executive committee members of the Boston Newspaper Guild — confirming plans for a new round of employee buyouts and job outsourcing.

Rather than leading our industry by example and competing vigorously with a creative business plan, New York has chosen to reduce staff and outsource in order to go along with the status quo. These actions are repulsive given the fact that the New York Times preaches ethics at every turn, and routinely lectures the nation on how to treat working Americans.

Once again, the Times Co. is standing true to a “Do as we say, not as we do” mentality. While the Boston Newspaper Guild recognizes a decline in revenue at the Boston Globe and throughout the industry, we disagree with the methods that New York employs to combat these circumstances.

All I can say to that last paragraph is, Yo, mainstream media! Of course there is a decline in revenues, you blockheads! Those readers of yours — the former ones, that is — got tired of your partisan political spin, omissions of such “picayunes” as the truth and your altogether Cold War Pravda approach to reporting the news. In short, they have come to realize that you believe they are stupid and that you are insulting their intelligence.

As for the rest, what’s new? Liberals believe that what they feel is best for everyone else doesn’t apply to them. They are speh-shal. Ask Nancy Pelosi, for example, how many of the employees in her private businesses belong to unions…

In the Blogosphere, Thespis, of Thespis Journal fame, has a great post up on Barbara the flake Boxer putting her foot in her mouth — kinda sorta like John Kerry did with his “joke” that labelled our brave troops in Iraq as dumb losers, in that the rest of the Democrats hastily distanced themselves from the gaffe rather than support it (crickets chirping, anyone?) — in a Blogburst For Condi.

BobG at Sweet Spirits Of Ammonia discusses Juan Williams’ new book, and does it so well that he’s gotten it onto my own reading list despite my personal umbrage with its author’s overall political point of view.

And on an interesting note, how about a rather non-detailed report about high-tech surveillance devices built into Canadian coins?

Nope, I’m not done yet, one of my favorite columnists, Greg Crosby, has an enjoyable New Years reflection I’d like to share.

Sorry I haven’t posted anything since New Year’s Eve, but I’ve been beyond swamped in catching up on a ton of work I took a couple of breaks from to entertain over Christmas and New Year’s, reading credit reports and checking references of prospective tenants to rent my house to, preparing the house for a tenant as much as I can while still living in it and sorting things out for my own move, and I’ve had precious little time to spend keeping up with my email, let alone my blog.

I finally got some time to visit a few of my favorite sites and do a little bit of other reading, and ran across this Ronald Reagan quote at the head of the comment section over at Gayle’s blog:

If we ever forget we are a nation Under God, we will become a nation gone under.

It brought to mind an excellent OpEd by Dennis Prager that appeared in Wednesday’s Jewish World Review that I would like to share, which can be found here.

As in all things, the atheist left in this country bases their propaganda strategies on those of their communist brethren of Cold War Europe — knowing that they’ll never sell their anti God agenda to the masses using any kind of honest approach, they choose instead to sleaze sneak around behind our proverbial backs; revise history, depicting our founding fathers as atheists wherever they can get away with it, working through our education system, and quell all public symbols and references to G-d via the legal system.

Their godlessness, hell, downright soullessness makes it easy for them to impugn, besmirch, exaggerate, spin, attack and lie without compunction.

Their utterly twisted goal is to engender spiritual barrenness in future generations, a prerequisite to establishing the kind of leftist country they wish to see America become.

Personally, I pray to G-d that America’s belief in Him remains firm, and that this enemy within fails miserably. I love my country and its traditions and Judeo-Christian beliefs just as they are, thank you.

….we’d seen the last of the ilk of the Lads From Lagos, along comes a scam that’s seen great success targeting naive, desperate and/ or just plain stupid landlords and potential landlords.

Now, it’s part of my professional life to be aware of scams that a client needs to be protected against, but my area in that regard is mainly corporate — I’ve never had a real estate client and until I bought my house back in January, had never executed a real estate transaction.

Having to relocate for business purposes but not wanting to sell my house, I ran ads in the Charlotte Observer and at Craig’s List to rent it out. The only contact information I have included has been an email address. I’ve received several inquiries, including a number from overseas.

One of the first such contacts was an email from someone in Luxembourg, a man’s name in the signature, a woman’s as the owner of the email address. He explained that he is moving to Charlotte and in need of a place to live. I emailed him photos, he said it was exactly what he was looking for. Then he emailed that he would like to put up part of the deposit in advance, but that he needed most of what he had to pay for his travel, etc. He asked if he could send me the full amount of the 3 months’ (1st, Last, security) deposit to show his good faith, and if I could then cash it, keep one month and Western Union the balance to a woman in Montreal, whose last name was Smith.

Ahem!

I emailed him back that this was a bit confusing. He replied that the woman whose email he was using and the woman in Montreal were one and the same, his wife, but that she used different names in the two countries. He would pay the other two thirds of the security deposit and furnish his credit report and references when he arrived in the U.S.

Needless to say, this all sounded just the tiniest fraction of a wee bit unconventional all around. I seriously doubted that this person was going to be my tenant (well, duh!). However, curiosity piqued, I emailed him where to send the money, informing him that I would neither wire the balance to Miz Smith in Montreal or make any refunds of any kind until the payment instrument had cleared at my bank and they had credited the money to my account. I also told him that I needed him to scan his passport and email it to me.

At least twice (by then, it was more a joke, something to amuse myself), I asked him where the passport picture was, and he was “scanning and emailing it now”, but it never arrived, nor did a deposit. I wrote the respondent off as either a flake, someone who seriously needed to get his/ her affairs in order or a would-be scammer whose only barrier to success was a total absence of intelligence, and emailed him that I wasn’t interested in any further correspondence.

Subsequently, I have received email inquiries from a “woman” in London and a “man” in Australia. The former claims to be a computer engineer, the latter a “straight, Christian male model” who hails originally from Spain. Both have emailed that they would like to send me the full deposit, then have me Western Union two thirds to third parties who will apply the money to the respondents’ travel to the U.S. Each had a story, naturally, and each would pay the balance of their deposits and furnish their credit reports and references when they arrive in the U.S.

One thing that stood out in their correspondence was the fact that even though my ads indicated that I am renting out a 7 room house on 1/3 acre of land, their responses were either that they were interested in the APT for rent or the “room mate” availability. After having been emailed pictures and been told the nature of the rental, they all replied calling it the APT.

“Hmmmmm……” I thought, thinking about the respondent from Luxembourg, and not being a believer in coincidence, “Even though I haven’t had any inquiries from Denmark, there’s definitely something rotten there.”

So I visited Google and typed in, “renter scams”, and this item practically jumped out of the page at me.

“Durn!” I said (that wasn’t actually the term I employed), and when I read the Laramie (yeah, Laramie, as in Wyoming) newspaper article linked at the site, I was surprised at how many idjits there are in the world.

I mean, somebody you’ve never met or transacted with before sends you a check, asking you to forward part of it on to a third party, or asks you for a refund right off the bat, and you comply before the check has even had a chance to clear?

Clarification: I was only momentarily surprised, then I remembered the success of the Nigerian scammers (see Lads From Lagos, up top) and even some really big scores from the days when I worked in the futures industry. One of my clerks had brought me an account payout request, from one of our smaller branches, for half a million bucks. On looking at the account, I saw that it was a new account with the opening funds in the same amount received only two days previously. The account had made money and the A/E had blown out all the positions, so the entire equity was available.

On calling the branch ops manager and asking him how the funds received had been received, figuring via a fed funds wire, I was shocked to hear that the money had come in the form of a cashier’s check.

“Are you nuts!?” was my response. “Have you deposited the check?”

“Not yet,” he replied.

“What bank does it come from?”

He rattled off the name of some bank I’d never heard of, explaining that it was in the Marshall Islands. When I stopped laughing, I told him to expect a wire shortly instructing that no further transactions of any kind were authorized for that account until further notice, then called around to friends and counterparts at other houses. I learned that the bank didn’t exist, and that several other top brokerage firms had been ripped off for collective millions by these same scammers.

So yeah, my surprise at the number of people who get skinned by such scammers dissipated pretty quickly.

The easiest marks are those who allow wishful thinking to dominate over common sense. The broker who took on the scamming client saw more commissions coming out of a $500,000.00 account than from among a pool of clients who rarely had even ten per cent of that amount in house, and just as important, he envisioned being a heeeero in the branch office, eventually getting out of his cubicle and into his own office, with a “title” — that’s one way brokerage houses “stroke” their better producing A/Es. Branch management envisioned such accounts as putting their branch on the map. The scammer envisioned another in a series of gleeful laughs at “stupid Americans” and a visit to his offshore banker. The broker, the ops manager and probably the branch manager, unless he had some serious connections, would have been pounding the pavement had common sense — me — not prevailed in the matter.

The first time I ever received a Lads From Lagos email (some minister of education or other, after the former president had been beheaded, needed help getting twenty mill out of the country that he and the headless fellow had embezzled from the treasury and would cut me in on 20% for my assistance), being new to the Internet at the time, I forwarded it straight to the Bureau, and learned what the scam was about shortly thereafter. Man, I really could’ve used that four million, too (sigh)….

In the case of the rent deposit scammers, the hits are much smaller, but we’re still talking significant money to a small businessman or someone like me, who is looking to rent out a single property. For example, let’s say you have a unit for rent and are asking for a thousand a month, with a deposit in the amount of three months’ rent. The scammer sends you a counterfeit cashier’s or traveller’s check, or a money order for three thousand and asks that you wire two thirds to a third party, or they send you, say, five thousand and ask, as a favor if you’ll mail the two K extra to said third party, offering to give you some extra cash when they arrive, as well as the balance of the deposit in the first case. You deposit the payment instrument at your bank and wire the two thousand. A day or two later, they email you that they’ve had a change of plans or whatever, and want you to return their entire deposit, which could be either one thousand or three thousand, given the above numbers. Being an ethical person who believes everyone else is as honest as you are, you comply immediately. Having other things to do, you put it off for a day or two and suddenly learn from your bank that you’ve been ripped off. You’re in luck! They only got you for a couple of thousand, plus the bouncing check fee the bank’s going to charge you (And the banks were made of marble, with a guard at every door, and the vaults were stuffed with silver, that the people sweated for….).

Now figure that the scammer who hit you has used software that gathered a list of thousands of rental advertisers and emailed all of them. What, you have to wonder, percentage of these potential victims has been suckered? Like PT Barnum was credited with saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute”.

Brings to mind an old (is there any other kind?) Neil Sedaka song called Run, Sampson Run and the line, You can bet your bottom dollar he was gonna get clipped.

Everybody, Happy New Year!!!!

Kerry eats alone, heh heh.

Our troops pretty much told Kerry what they think of him by not telling him anything at all.

The schmuck!

H/T James Taranto

So, Chanukah and Christmas have come and gone.

So has Ramadan, the month in which many devout Muslims traditionally endeavor to slaughter as many infidels as possible, chaffing at the bit to get to those virgins they have long been conned into believing await them in “Paradise”. Given the respect of Islam for women, I suppose the Islamess (now, that wasn’t very PC, was it?) who manages to murder some unbelievers during Satan’s Month gets 73 male virgins to stifle and abuse her for all eternity.

One of the reasons police officers hate getting involved in domestic battery cases is that on all too many occasions, after all the paperwork and expended energy and man (or woman) hours, the female victims forgive dear hubby and drop the charges. There are battered women out there who do this repeatedly and, worse, stay with the abusive husband after multiple beatings and the psychological abuse that goes hand-in-hand with such a relationship. One of my friends who’s a big city cop, a detective with over 25 years on the job has become so cynical about the issue he once said to me, “What’s all this about battered women? Personally, I think they taste better raw.”

Now imagine a religion whose very scripture dictates that women live like the above described, slaves to their husbands, fathers and brothers, without the options of escape that women have in the civilized world(oil revenues do not make a country or region civilized, only rich).

It makes one grind ones’ teeth with pure rage, unless one is an American feminist, then it’s perfectly okay. To say otherwise might justify being un-PC regarding Islam, and that would conflict with the political agenda of the left, to which the bulk of feminists belong. I’m sure there are a few feminists out there who are patriotic Americans, I just haven’t met any that I know of. All those I’ve met – I used to live in San Francisco and get out a lot, so trust me, I’ve encountered quite a few in my time – have been “card carrying” members of the portside persuasion.

So much for four paragraphs of my usual digression.

My Christmas weekend included a couple of colleagues from overseas who are “stranded” in DC through mid January working on a project, flying down to Charlotte to visit me from Sunday to Tuesday. On Christmas Eve, I roasted a 6 ½ pound duckling – my first, in fact – and found it to be quite a wrestling match just seasoning and stuffing the damn thing, it got pretty messy, but only in the immediate work space, and I got online for some tips. It came out perfect, crisp skin and tender meat, with most of the fat and grease bled off. We put quite a dent in my bar, especially in the single malt, tequila and brandy departments, and had a great and mutually informative time talking shop, telling funny stories and extreme off-color jokes and watching my Star Wars DVDs and Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts on the 62” Toshiba in the den.

Yesterday I had the TV on in my office while I did some work, and watched a couple of films via DirecTV.

One movie I watched featured Jordana Brewster, and really hit home with just how far Hollywood has gone in its liberal propagandizing efforts.

It was called D.E.B.S., and it was about an all schoolgirl (plaid miniskirts, shirts and ties) federal law enforcement agency (S.W.A.T. style), who are the D.E.B.S., vs. Brewster, same age bracket, who is a major international criminal.

It is a cutesy kind of film, and the only real plot is the blossoming lesbian relationship between Brewster and the leading D.E.B. The message was that love knows no gender, and the ending was one of those “happily ever after” kind of endings, the two lesbian lovers go away together at the end with the help and blessings of the rest of the D.E.B.S. on the team. There was no sex and no nudity in the movie, so….

…. it was rated PG-13.

Now, keep in mind that I have a lot in common with lesbians, there is one living inside me that…. Oh, never mind….

The other film made me wish I hadn’t turned on the TV at all, it proved to be the only Samuel L. Jackson film I’ve ever watched that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. It was called Freedomland and the only two descriptives I can produce for that one are “depressing” and “tedious”. No doubt the consensus of reviews called it “brilliant”, “inspiring” and the like. I found the part where Jackson’s character is trying to get the facts from the woman and her rambling on with her back story to be frustrating (perhaps because I’ve done investigative work, including interrogations, before, and it really sucks to have to endure unavoidable extemporaneous BS when all you want or require is “the facts”).

At the moment, I’m sort of recuperating from my guests’ visit, sipping brandy (hair of the dog, so to speak) with coffee and listening to some old stuff like the Beatles and some much older stuff like Bach, with some Al Stewart mixed in, including tracks like Timeless Skies, Lord Grenville and Roads to Moscow. My all-time favorite Beatles song, from Magical Mystery Tour is playing at the moment: Hello Goodbye.

So, Gerald Ford has passed away, the former President who was never elected – Agnew preceded him as VP, if my memory serves, and Ford succeeded Nixon, then pardoned him in the wake of the Watergate affair, which ticked off a whole passel o’ Democrats and was instrumental in Jimmuh Cahtuh beating him in ’76. I was a Democrat back then, and, well… I owe Carter a great debt – he was the POTUS that turned me into a Republican. Thank ya’ kindly, Jimbo! Too bad he turned traitor, altogether, an enemy of both the United States and Israel. And this is the legacy he chooses in his endeavors to correct the memories of his failed presidency. Go figure.

Go with G-d, Mr. Ford.

Ah, the track that just began is one I forgot I’d included in the play list, Emerson, Lake & Palmers’ Bitches Crystal. Come to think of it, that means Tarkus is next. Yay!

From the mellow to the vigorous….

I know, I’m rambling here, but… that’s why I titled this post thusly.

New Years 2007 is five days away, New Years Eve ending 2006 is four days away.

2007.

And the focus of my personal nostalgia exists in the 1960s and 1970s. I often feel like Fred Flintstone guest starring on The Jetsons.

Where the hell is a time machine when you need one!?