The South: Carrying arms and more

“The universal practice of carrying arms in the South is undoubtedly the cause of occasional loss of life, and is much to be regretted. On the other hand, this custom renders altercations and quarrels of very rare occurrence, for people are naturally careful what they say when a bullet may be the probable result.”
LtC Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, HM Coldstream Guards, 24 May 1863

“The Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”
London Spectator in reference to the Emancipation Proclamation

“Let danger never turn you aside from the pursuit of honor or the service to your country … Know that death is inevitable and the fame of virtue is immortal”
Robert E. Lee

“You have no right to ask, or expect that she will at once profess unbounded love to that Union from which for four years she tried to escape at the cost of her best blood and all her treasure. Nor can you believe her to be so unutterably hypocritical, so base, as to declare that the flag of the Union has already surpassed in her heart the place which has so long been sacred to the ‘Southern Cross.’ ”
General Wade Hampton

“Our poor country has fallen a prey to the conqueror. The noblest cause ever defended by the sword is lost. The noble dead that sleep in their shallow though honored graves are far more fortunate than their survivors. I thought I had sounded the profoundest depth of human feeling, but this is the bitterest hour of my life.”
Colonel John Singleton Mosby

“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
Major General John B. Gordon, from his book, Causes of the Civil War.

“Instead of friends, I see in Washington only mortal enemies. Instead of loving the old flag of the stars and stripes, I see in it only the symbol of murder, plunder, oppression, and shame.”
Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Confederate Spy

“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”
London Times, November 7, 1861

Link

War drum: Tool for destruction of Constitutional liberties

Godfather Politics

Verbatim Post

Tamir Pardo, chief of Mossad since last January, in a meeting with Israeli ambassadors, said that there is no threat to Israel from Iran, and Iran is only engaged in peaceful research in its nuclear facilities.

Pardo is not a name that can be easily ignored. He is part of a generation of exceptional military leaders who fought in the wars for the defense of the State of Israel. In addition to his experience as a communication expert with special forces, Pardo was also part of Operation Entebbe in 1976 – the most daring special forces and intelligence operation in the 20th century, where 100 commandos flew 2,500 miles to a hostile country to rescue Israeli hostages. (Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, commanded the operation and was killed in action.) Pardo knows both the intelligence and the military side of his work; he is a true expert.

In his assessment of Iran Pardo echoes the words of his predecessor, Meir Dagan, himself a decorated soldier with a long and illustrious career. Dagan also spent the last years of his term at the head of Mossad opposing a military attack against Iran. That two consecutive chiefs of Mossad say the same thing about Iran can not be overlooked by any politician, whether Israeli or American.

This comes less than a year after Netanyahu himself declared to the US Congress that Israel can defend themselves and therefore they do not need the US to defend them. The context of his speech should have made it clear to his American listeners that there is no threat from Iran that needs any large scale military action. In addition to it, an unclassified report by the Pentagon reveals that the regime in Tehran has no thoughts of attacking anyone but is rather concerned with its own survival. Other reports by intelligence experts, with CIA at the head, show that Iran is not even close to developing a nuclear bomb, and that there is no threat. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the oldest and most popular newspaper in Israel, also ran an editorial saying that even if Iran had nuclear weapons, they would act rationally.

In the face of all these opinions by the experts, the American political class – of both parties – continues to bang the war drums as if nothing hasn’t been said. Suspiciously, most commentaries published on the “nuclear threat from Iran” have for authors members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the elitist organization that somehow always recommends policies in favor of more government control at home and UN dominance abroad. None of the commentators have any intelligence credentials – nothing even close to the experts who say otherwise. The banging of the war drums is strictly political, based on political agendas, not on any real data or analysis. Obama’s Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, is openly calling for declaring war on Iran because of their development of a nuclear weapon, without even consulting the experts. On the Republican side, almost all of the presidential candidates based their political career or the “Iran scare,” and some of them openly promised their supporters that if they get elected, they will bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. The idea that Iran is engaged in peaceful research only – shared by all the experts in the intelligence circles – is considered ”dangerous” and “kooky.” In fact, the experts are deliberately ignored.

All this leads to the obvious conclusion that the war drums are simply a tool for a political agenda. And that political agenda is not the national security of the US or the defense of Israel as American ally, but the destruction of the Constitutional liberties in America by the political class. The laws that came out of the “security scare” in the last 10 years are all aimed at one or another of our liberties as guaranteed in the Constitution. The Patriot Act is a good example of it, with its monstrous child, the TSA. The latest act by both Republican and Democrat Senators – the law for indefinite detention of American citizens by the military – is another example of using “foreign threat” to deprive Americans of their liberties. The experts agree: the threat is not real. But the opinion of the experts does not match the intentions of the political class. Therefore the experts are ignored.

We will discover one day that the experts were right, and the politicians were lying. Hopefully, we will still have enough liberty left to oppose the agenda of the politicians.

The blind spots of progressives

Via Looking in the Mirror

Drug War Rant
Verbatim Post

Glenn Greenwald has a comprehensive must-read election piece about the problems with progressives who put all criticism of Barack Obama off-limits and dismiss Ron Paul out-of-hand.

Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies

Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil.

Greenwald also mentions the war on drugs numerous times in this powerful piece. For example, on Obama:

He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason.

And he explains why some progressives react so vehemently against Paul…

The parallel reality — the undeniable fact — is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul’s candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years.

Excellent critical analysis in an election season of sound-bites and partisan politics.

Fired for being brave: Store clerk loses his job after tackling armed robber who threatened to shoot him

Another unbelievable

Via Looking in the Mirror

Sales Clerk fights back, gets fired: fox10tv.com

Union Captain Murrey Proclaims a Toast

It is written that the Northern ships that came South laden with occupation troops for coastal North Carolina, and returned north laden with furniture, pianos, artwork, libraries and jewelry liberated from local homes -- and apparently this was Lincoln’s plan to restore The Old North State to the Federal Union. The “Captain Murrey” referred to below was probably Alexander Murray of Pennsylvania, commander of the Northern gunboat Commodore Hull.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

Union Captain Murrey Proclaims a Toast:

“With their young men away at war, Washington and most of Beaufort County came under the heel of the Union Army. They found the town evacuated by its defenders and abandoned by about three-quarters of its inhabitants. All who could possibly leave, and find refuge with friends and relatives further inland, had done so.

The occupation force included units of the 24th Massachusetts Cavalry; 3rd New York Artillery; 3rd New York Cavalry; and some Marine artillery. Gunboats anchored across the river, off the town. Union forces continued to occupy Washington from the end of March 1862, until 20 April 1864.

On March 30, Captain Murrey, commander of the gunboat Commodore Hull, invited six of the older men who had remained in Washington, to dinner on his vessel. He is alleged to have gotten them drunk, then proposed a toast: “To the reconstruction of the Federal Union, a plantation in Georgia with a hundred niggers, and a summer residence in North Carolina.” It is recorded these men all drank with zest to this toast.

During this period, conditions in Washington were growing steadily worse. Older men who were compelled to remain with their business, had sent their wives and families away. Food was scarce. Though the freed Negroes who had collected in the town were given better food than the inhabitants could procure, bands of these Negroes roamed the streets at night, pillaging and stealing. Strong protests were made by the representatives of eastern North Carolina to President Davis, to return North Carolina troops from Virginia, to clear Union forces from their homes.”

(History of Beaufort County, C. Wingate Reed, Edwards & Broughton, 1962, pp. 184-188)

Union Captain Murrey Proclaims a Toast

Extreme High-Lining

Via View From The Porch

A Furious Tide

The Fourth Dimension of Warfare

Part IIA— Revolt to Revolution, its Potential and Development

by Seneca III

Epilogue as a prologue:

The tides of human affairs rarely rise and fall to a regular timetable, unlike those of the oceans with their predictable lunar rhythms. Rather, the mass consciousness of nation states ebbs and flows in fits and starts, with long periods of slack water followed by furious surges. Here, now, on the eve of the third year of the second decade of the 21st century we find ourselves yet again on the cusp of such a surge. In greater numbers we are awakening to the sobering reality that all but a few of the freedoms we for so long and so carelessly took for granted have been spirited away during the times of affluence and indulgence, and that we in the West have degenerated into little more than a collective of embryonic police states.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“All men are created equal.”
— Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, 1776, in refutation of the concept of the Divine Right of Kings

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
— Lord Acton, historian, philosopher and moralist in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887

The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.”
— George Orwell, ‘1984’

“First we shape our institutions, then they shape us. And when those institutions break the covenant we must reshape them, as often as is necessary.”
— Seneca III

In Britain and continental Europe functional democracy is dying, and it is dying for three specific reasons:

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Rick Santorum, company man

Conservative Heritage Times
Verbatim Post

Patroon

In 2004, then Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey challenged the U.S. Arlen Specter in the GOP Primary. It was the most serious intra-party challenge Specter had faced ever and Toomey, thanks to the help of the Club for Growth, was able to get near-ever with Specter in the polls. Perhaps an endorsement from then U.S. Rick Santorum, who was a fellow Catholic and shared many of the same ideas, would put Toomey over the top.

Instead, thanks to pressure from Karl Rove and the amoral party apparatchiks in the Bush II White House, Santorum not only endorsed his Senatorial collegue, he even cut a commercial for him as well. Sure enough Specter edged Toomey and went on to win re-election. Five years later Specter swicthed parties and became the key vote to give the nation Obamacare whereas a Rick Toomey in the U.S. Senate (two years too late) would not have done this. Thanks for nothing Rick.

There were many reasons why Santorum was crushed in 2006 by current U.S. Senator Bob Casey Jr. but one reason not readily explored is the fact for many conservatives in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s socialist-like act of party loyalty was a betrayal of everything he supposedly believed in both politically and in his faith as well. So they stopped supporting him, big time. What kind of man portrays himself as someone being of “family values” and then goes and endorses an abortionist for the U.S. Senate? A company man, that’s who. Who, when he lost his job, didn’t go back home to Pennsylvania but went to work for a think tank in the company town. Because that’s what he is and that’s the kind of President he’ll be.

You can sum up Rick Santorum this way: It’s more important to him to blow up Iranians than it is to stop abortion.

Ron Paul Rising Separates the Phony Conservatives from the Real Patriots

Via III Percent Patriots

Lone Star Watch Dog
Verbatim Post

I just have to get a laugh at how the phony warmongering neo conservatives are falling over themselves trying to discredit Ron Paul. I read websites and the broadcast of these phony conservatives. Starting with Michael Reagan, his father is problem rolling over in his grave now when he endorsed Newt Gingrich saying he will keep his father's legacy alive. Newt the man who cannot keep it in his pants who is for carbon taxes and individual mandate for Obamacare. As far as I know, it was Ron Paul back in 1976 when he was a freshmen in Congress, While the Rockefeller, and Country Club wing of the Republican party scorned Ronald Reagan. Ron Paul was one of the only five Republicans in the House of Representatives who endorsed the former California governor for President.

We are starting to see the phony conservatives. Sean Hannidy either has Newt or Mitt on his show. Ann Coulter has endorsed Romney. Newsmax calls Ron Paul's foreign Policy dangerous. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage say the Texas congressmen will destroy the republican party. Neal Boortz who says he is a libertarian is insulting Ron Paul supporters. We can see the fear in the Iowa Governor's eyes fearing a Ron Paul victory. We see phony and fake polls trying to say Romney is rising in the polls. Michelle Bachman accuses the Ron Paul campaign bribing her staff to defect to his campaign. World Net Daily is smearing Ron Paul saying jihad will prevail if we do not fight wars for Israel. Publications like National Review and the Weekly Standard have shown their true colors as a phony conservatives part of the political establishment.

The sad reality I think many long time time followers who were duped by these phony conservatives for years about cutting spending, being pro life and shrinking the size of goverment. When a candidate like Ron Paul comes along who votes against every unbalanced budget, expanding the size of government who stood for the life of the unborn was is the real deal. A man who will follow through what has been talked about for years, These phony neo cons demonize the real conservative who will actually follow through on his promises to shrink government and balance the budget.

Now we see the phony patriots and Christians coming out of the work work against Ron Paul. Even the American Family Association is endorsing the adulterer Newt Gingrich. The NRA gave Ron Paul a less then perfect pro gun record when he is the most pro second amendment candidate in the field. It just proves these organizations are just controlled opposition funded by the same forces behind the scenes. This election year we will see the wheat separate from the chaff. We are seeing the phonies and the real patriots out in the open. Which shows within the conservative movement we can see not only the shattering of the left right paradigm. We can also see the shattering of the phony right and real Conservative movements rising going back to their roots of liberty and justice for all.

I Love Greed

Via III Percent Patriots

What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done? It's really a silly question, because the answer is so simple. It turns out that it's human greed that gets the most wonderful things done. When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I'm talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Let's look at it.

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From Israel: Vote Ron Paul and Let My People Go!

Via Daphne, Jaded Haven

Lately I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I sit here in my living room in Karnei Shomron, Israel, on the 8th night of Chanukah, wondering what other miracles lay in store on January 3rd and in the months ahead. The name Ron Paul is constantly at my fingertips. I’ve typed it in so many times the past month it’s insane. I’m experiencing an excitement I’ve rarely ever felt, and I don’t even live in America anymore. During the last Republican debate I woke myself up at 3am Israel time to watch an 8pm EST live stream on YouTube, with no fatigue whatsoever. I’m on overdrive, and I can’t calm myself.

I’ve only recently figured out what this excitement actually is.

I first got interested in the whole freedom movement when I heard that Ron Paul wanted to end all foreign aid, including to my country, Israel. This seemed like a spectacular idea to me. I hate the idea of taking American tax payer money I don’t need. The only reason we take it, by the way, is not because we need it. It’s that we don’t want to feel alone, and Jews always feel a deep existential isolation and loneliness. “As I see them from the mountain tops, gaze on them from the heights, this is a people that dwells alone, not counted among the Nations,” says Balaam of the People of Israel in Numbers 23:9. We still feel that loneliness. So we take the money. It’s shameful, it’s theft, it’s destructive, it’s morally wrong, and it makes people hate us for tying them into a conflict they have no business trying to solve. I wanted it to end and didn’t trust any Israeli leader to give it up on his own, so I looked up more about Ron Paul.

What I found was fascinating. On the forums, I learned of people who, back in ’08, literally gave their lives short of death to this man. Some poured money into his campaign they could not afford to give, and some even lost their marriages because of their single-minded insane dedication. This shocked me. I couldn’t yet understand it, but after a few days of listening to him, it began to click.

What is it about Ron Paul that inspires such extremes? Such maddening support on the one hand, and such fear and loathing on the other? I can give the answer in one word: Soul.

The essential soul of a human being is by definition free.

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NCFIRE Illegal Alien Crime Report for December: 58 Word document pages long!

We have posted the latest monthly issue of the North Carolina Crime Report by Suspected Illegal Aliens on our website. This report covers crimes by suspected illegal aliens in NC for the month of December. It is 58 Word doc pages long!

The amount of monthly crimes by suspected illegal aliens in NC is staggering. These crimes are not compiled in any statewide database and that tends to make the problem look smaller than it really is. By issuing these reports, our goal is to draw attention to the size and scope of the problem in NC. This is not ALL of the crimes by suspected illegal aliens in NC and we do not report every crime, in every county each month. There is simply not enough time to enter it all! That is the magnitude of the problem we are facing.

This report can be viewed on our website: www.NCFIRE.info or downloaded directly here: http://www.ncfire.info/december2011.pdf. You can also view the past 3 years worth of monthly NC crime reports on our "Crime Report Archives" page here: http://ncfire.info/crimearchives.htm

This ongoing and worsening crime wave on our citizens by illegal aliens has got to stop. It is killing us: financially, emotionally and physically.


James Johnson
President-NCFIRE
North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement
www.NCFIRE.info
www.Facebook.com/NCFIRE
NCFIRE@ncfire.info
1-888-885-0879

Emancipation and Murder: Beaufort County, NC

To help suppress the American drive for independence in 1775, Lord Dunmore of Virginia incited a race war by encouraging African slaves the British had imported to massacre their plantation owners -- men, women and children. The British would repeat this strategy in 1814; wealthy New Englanders would attempt it in 1859 through John Brown; Lincoln would use it in 1863 to suppress another American drive for independence. The descendants of Lord Dunmore’s “Ethiopians” of 1775 became Abraham Lincoln’s “Colored Troops” of 1865.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

Emancipation and Murder:

“With the majority of her young men away at war, Beaufort County’s [North Carolina] greatest fear was for a British instigated slave uprising. At the beginning of the war, Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia…had threatened: “By the living God, if any insult is offered to me, or to those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to the slaves and lay the town (of Williamsburg) in ashes.”

He issued such an order for the defense of Norfolk, freeing all indentured servants and slaves “of the rebels, that are able and willing to bear arms.” He added the proviso that they join the British troops. Some two or three hundred Negroes were freed, and joined in the defense of Norfolk as “Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopians.”

In Beaufort County and other eastern counties where there was a large Negro population, this threat of slave uprising was an ever-present cause for concern. In July of 1775, shortly after Dunmore had made his threat, a “Horrid, Tragic Plan” for such an uprising was discovered. A loyal Negro slave who belonged to Captain Thomas Respess revealed the plot [of a] Tory named Johnson, apparently of another county, [who] engineered the plan. A Bath Town slave named Merrick was the Negro leader through whom he worked.

On the night of 8 July 1775, the slaves on each plantation were to turn on their masters, and slay them and their families. They would then join with the slaves from other plantations. Armed with the weapons of their murdered masters, they were to go farm to farm of the neighboring non-slave holding farmers and surprise and murder them. Moving westward through the counties, they were to be met by an agent of the British government, who would supply them with more ammunition. As a reward, they would later be settled in a free government of their own.

Over one hundred mounted patrollers were promptly dispatched to warn all plantation owners and farmers, and were directed to apprehend all Negroes found off their plantations. Over forty Negroes suspected of being leaders in the plot were apprehended. One group of about two hundred and fifty Negroes was located. When surrounded by two companies of Light Horse, they fled into the swamps.

Many of the captured Negroes confessed to their part in the plot. Records do not specify the punishment…[although] the law prescribed death for such an offense. Johnson, the instigator of the plot, escaped. Though the threat hung over the eastern counties for the remained of the war, no other attempt at an uprising was recorded.”

(History of Beaufort County, C. Wingate Reed, Edwards & Broughton, 1962, pp. 120-121)

Emancipation and Murder: Beaufort County, NC

Never Surrender--A Resolution for 2012 And Beyond

“"Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense"……..Winston Churchill, Oct 29, 1941

I do not know the author of the following article but he has a point. Surrender is not an option and this article make a good case for that position.

The Phases of Surrender
The first phase of surrender is failing to be armed, trained and committed to fight. We are prepared to surrender when we are unprepared to resist.

The second phase of surrender is failing to be alert. You must see trouble coming in order to have time to respond. The warning may be less than one second but it will be there and it must be recognized and acted upon immediately.

The Third phase of surrender is giving up your weapons.

The last phase of surrender is up to the monsters who have taken control of your life and perhaps the lives of your loved ones. The last phase of surrender is out of your hands.

Surrender during war

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Gladiator Gym Goes Virtual

Archaeology
Verbatim Post

A virtual re-creation of the gladiator school found in Austria.
(Courtesy the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology)

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology has allowed an international team of researchers from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI-ArchPro) to both identify a ludus (gladiator school) at the Roman city of Carnuntum in Austria and bring it before the public in an unprecedented way. What was once a vibrant city of 50,000 residents is now the site of an immense archaeological park. The newly discovered fourth-century A.D. gladiator school, the fourth largest ever found in the world, located just west of the largest amphitheater outside of Rome, is a self-enclosed complex that includes an inner courtyard, circular training area, living quarters, and a cemetery. The high-resolution images collected from the GPR survey show an under-floor heating system, bathing area, and walking paths within the complex. With the improved GPR technology developed by LBI-ArchPro, a complete picture of gladiator life is starting to emerge. Digitally re-created images of the ludus allow visitors to see how the school fit into the city’s landscape, and it’s possible to view them on a smartphone by using the free Wikitude World Browser software.

Archaeologists make virtual map of Neolithic Stonehenge

HERE

Neocons complain about the inevitable

Vox Popoli
Verbatim Post

Andrew McCarthy actually appears to be surprised that the USA is finally following the example set by the Soviet and British empires:

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban....

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

That's an absurd claim. It only ends the shameful chapter that began when the USA didn't immediately bring its troops home after exacting its revenge for the Taliban's support of 9/11. From their surprise over the failure of the "Arab Spring" to their complaints about the "surrenders" in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with their collective refusal to confront Islamic expansion in the West, it is clear that the neocons have the collective strategic cognitive capacity of a slow-witted World War I infantry general. They genuinely believe that sending more troops forward is the answer to every military question.

Their strategic perspective is Hitlerian. The German Reichskanzler had the same inability to understand that retreat must always be an option if you don't wish for your troops to be utterly destroyed every time there is a temporary setback.

The neocons don't recognize that the clash of civilizations is much larger than a single nation here and there, and that each nation merely represents a single salient. And it is no more "surrender" to withdraw troops from places like Afghanistan or Iraq than it was for Von Manstein to extricate his troops from the Korsun Pocket in World War II. In fact, it is the exact opposite of surrender, because the withdrawal preserves the troops and allows them to fight another day.

McCarthy and his strategically ignorant colleagues quite clearly don't know the first thing about military history, war, or how it is fought. And given the way in which the governments of the West still refuse to lift a finger against Islam in their own countries, but only fight it in lands afar, it is readily apparent that these are merely the opening skirmishes in the greater conflict to come.

A five-course meal at Honolulu’s priciest restaurant after golf........Obama faces another tough day in Hawaii

NewsBusters
Verbatim Post

Tim Graham

Mediaite's Nando Di Fino reports President Obama has played at least two rounds of golf in Hawaii with a high school buddy, Robert “Bobby” Titcomb, was arrested as part of a prostitution sting, after he allegedly approached an undercover police officer for sex in downtown Hawaii.

"What seems particularly interesting (“refreshing”?) here isn’t that President Obama would still hang out with a friend who had been arrested; it’s how many media outlets have either made no reference to Titcomb’s arrest, or simply stated it in passing," he wrote. "Both The New York Times and The Washington Post briefly made a note of Titcomb’s past in reporting the vacation stories. In this day and age of 'gotcha!' controversy-driven political coverage, is it surprising not to see more of a big deal being made?"

And maybe even more surprising, there doesn’t seem to be a purely political divide within the media. FoxNews.com, for example, in a story about Obama’s golfing on Christmas Eve, didn’t even mention Titcomb’s arrest when reporting on his participation.

In fact, it seems it was a British paper, The Daily Mail, that made the biggest deal out of Titcomb’s inclusion, blasting it across its headline: A five-course meal at Honolulu’s priciest restaurant after golf with his hooker-loving buddy… Obama faces another tough day in Hawaii

The Mail story also reported:

After several hours on the course with Titcomb and two others, the president kicked back with the First Lady, his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, and several other friends at one of Honolulu’s priciest restaurants.

The presidential motorcade made a stop last night at Alan Wong’s Restaurant, located close to the Honolulu area where Obama spent his teenage years.

The Obamas sat down to a five-course dinner that include such menu items as the 'sassy salad' and a bacon-wrapped pork loin - for $75 each ($110 for wine pairings with each course).

The restaurant confirmed to MailOnline that the President's daughters Malia and Sasha did not join their parents for dinner...

While the Obamas may be away, that hasn’t stopped criticism about their expensive tastes while the rest of the country struggles to escape an economic downturn.

Michelle Obama came under the microscope yesterday after stepping out earlier this week in a dress worth $2,000.

Later that day, she appeared in a $950 skirt at a meet-and-greet with service members and their families.

Bagpipes

Via Ann, Belle Grove

HERE

Get Thee Hence, Janus!

Via Gates of Vienna

by Alphonsus G. Carter

We stand again inside this festive room,
Prepared to welcome Nineteen Thirty-Eight.
And will the new year break with murk and gloom?
Or does a dawn of joyous hope await?

What makes one year so different from the last?
Onstage this knight who struts and frets his hour
Will fret and strut the same when twelve has passed.
Why grant the minute hand such awful power?

Why wait upon the ticking of a clock?
And whence this urge to toast, and quaff, and cheer?
How many faces poised to weep or mock!
How many goodly creatures are there here!

The old year, now so keen to celebrate —
The chum with whom this very night I dine —
Come morning will unshaven and prostrate
In pain upon my davenport recline.

By all means, let us gather one more time!
Bid Nineteen Thirty-Seven fond adieu!
Let those assembled heed my reasoned rhyme:
’Tis all the same, the old year and the new.

Devastating Reality Check: Did the Feds Push "Fast and Furious" to Enact New Gun Laws?