Sure — just read the headlines:

4 US soldiers killed during Iraq cities pullout

Bomb in Iraq’s Kirkuk kills 30 as U.S. troops leave

Iraq Braces for More Violence

90,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, 4.5 million Iraqis are now refugees, and we’ve pumped nearly a trillion dollars down the Iraqi rathole, with future costs expected to bring the total to three trillion. Over 4,300 American troops have lost their lives, and 31,000 have been wounded. This is victory?

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Donald “Doc” Douglas (AKA “Americaneocon”) pushes a post-Trotskyite ideology using the language of conservatism, convincing the gullible he’s a conservative.  But true to the Trotskyite foundations of his big-government, globalist philosphy, he sides with leftists on all the vital issues of the day.

Like any other leftist, he disparages true conservatives who want to preserve our culture and restrict the power of the Federal government. So Daniel Larison is dismissed as an “idiot,” and Pat Buchanan is a “bigot.”

To appreciate the extent that “Doc” Douglas promotes leftist ideology, we need to notice how closely he mirrors the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center. A traditional conservative who wins an argument with him will be blasted as a racist, and Douglas is quick to use the SPLC to back up his charge. Also like the SPLC, Douglas equates criticism of Neocons with “anti-Semitism,” as he does in a post entitled, Anti-Semitic Neocon Derangement. Notice how similar Douglas’ rhetoric is to this statement, from a video of an SPLC-sponored expose of opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens (1:40 in):

Eric Boehlert: “A lot of people on the far right don’t like Neoconservatives. Pat Buchanan wrote a whole book about how he basically hates Neocons. So it’s still in the realm of the right-wing mind set.”

Heidi Beirich: “Neocons for the most part in white-supremacist circles are identified as Jews. So it’s actually an expression of anti-Semitism when he has material like that about Neocons. It comes from his right-wing, crazy, anti-Semitic views.”

While traditional conservatives oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, leftists support it. Again, Douglas sides with the left on this explosive issue. After the American people stopped the Bush-Kennedy-McCain-Lindsey amnesty package two years ago, Douglas wrote:

I’ve supported the reform legislation as a way to move forward on the issue. I hate the lawbreaking of illegal immigration, which will continue in the absence of the bill. I also hate the relegating of people to the shadows.

With a blog entitled “American Power,” Douglas is clearly a government supremacist, always in favor of any increase in DC’s authority over Americans. President Obama gets high marks from Douglas for displaying “Neoconservative Pragmatism” in pushing his big government/imperial programs. And when Obama continued Bush’s war on habeas corpus, Douglas whooped with joy in a posting he entitled “Change! Obama Will Hold Terror Detainees Indefinitely! The concern that this socialist president will use his power to declare any American an enemy combatant without access to the Bill of Rights doesn’t seem to occur to Douglas.

Speaking of a president illegally imprisoning political opponents, it’s only natural that Douglas idolizes Abraham Lincoln:

Lincoln embodied “the nation’s avowed core values,” as do neoconservatives. …

I love President Lincoln. My visit to the Lincoln Memorial in 2007 was one of the most important political experiences of my life. I look forward to making that pilgrimage again.

Ewwww!  C’mon, Douglas!  Get a room!

So beware, conservatives. Identity thieves are active on your computer.

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While I live in Arkansaw, Wisconsin I grew up in Beloit, Wisconsin which is right on the Wisconsin-Illinois border and equidistant from both the state capital in Madison and Rockford, Illinois,  home of TRI.  On Sunday ESPN’s news program Outside the Lines did a profile of Beloit and nearby Janesville, Wisconsin and how the bad economic times were affecting local sports in each community, from the youth level to minor league baseball.

Beloit and Janesville were places heavily dependent on manufacturing and now much of it is gone, from Beloit Corporation, the once great paper machine making powerhouse of the world to Parker Pen, to Alcoa where my sister once worked, to GM, which shuttered its Janesville plant a few months ago which put 4,000 people out of work.

Right now the unemployment rate in Beloit is at 18 percent. That’s 18 percent not including all those who have given up looking for work (thanks to the Feds, who deliberately hide true unemployment rates in order to keep consumer confidence high) so imagine the true rate being near 30 percent. That’s higher than anything we saw during recession of 1982. Even in good economic times there was always an underclass and rough neighborhoods where violence took place and where gangs were a part (not a huge part) of the scene.  Needless to say growing up in Beloit did put somewhat of a mark on you when meeting people from around Wisconsin.

And yet, Beloit is also the home of “Yale of the Midwest”  Beloit College. It may of had some snotty Ivy League rejects as students from out east but it’s a valued asset to the community. It has a Class A minor league baseball team that I spent many summers at Telfer Park watching. It has nice park areas and as the ESPN piece shows, plenty of community involvement in things like youth sports. Without all this,  Beloit could have easily become a place like East St. Louis or Cairo, Ill. or Benton Harbor or Flint, Michigan, mid-sized communities that because of deindustrialization became hollowed out ghost towns and economic ghettos filled with people too poor to have anywhere else to go.  Old Beloiters owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Boys Club, the YMCA and YWCA, the summer schools and summer programs run from the elementary schools, all the youth baseball, football, basketball, soccer and hockey programs and all their volunteer coaches and parents from keeping this fate from happening.  But it just seems like for every step forward Beloit takes, it takes two steps backward and now could easliy slip into a Detroit stage. And with GM closing, Janesville, which is twice Beloit’s size (65,000 people), will  start to see itself deteriorating as well. It’s inevitable. You can’t replace 4,000 jobs all at once making windmill turbines.

It’s painful watching people you know on TV going through rough times. It’s painful watching the place where you grew up suffer for all those you left behind. The only consolation, I guess, is through Facebook where I can get together with fellow former  Beloiters, all those I went to school with, and relive your childhood memories of happier times. As I wrote, “Ahh, what can one say? Even though we all live far away, it’s still home.”

Cue Bruce Springsteen…Your Hometown

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Below is from an article at the American Spectator website. The dialogue is between two fictional characters from a novel, but it does have a ring of truth to it. Plus it is hilarious.

a character asks Davenport: “Why is it that Democrats are always having money scandals and Republicans are always caught in sex scandals?”

Lucas replies: “My theory is that Democrats are guys who know how to get girls but not how to make money. Republicans are guys who know how to make money but not how to get girls. When they each encounter both readily available in politics, they fall for the one they’re not used to.”

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Sometimes it’s best to let the thing speak for itself:

Media Matters for America held a panel discussion on the growing culture of extremist, anti-government, and violent rhetoric in conservative media. Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, who has written extensively on the subject, hosted leaders from the Southern Poverty Law Center, America’s Voice, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Council of La Raza, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to examine how the mainstreaming of extremism impacts our security, politics, and culture.

The video reveals grim ideologues who make the Poltiburo look like the Marx Brothers. Don’t take my word for it — watch the video, and see if you don’t recoil from the morbid, suffocating attitude of these would-be Grand Inquisitors. Nancy M. Zirkin of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights appears as stiff and congealed as an embalmed corpse, and her denunciation of the “hounds of intolerance” (??@@!!) sounds as if it were voiced by one of those creepy Chuck E. Cheese animatronic critters on low batteries.

Listen in on Adam Luna of America’s Voice as he equates dissent against Wall Street’s Open Borders agenda with criminal violence (about 3:48 in):

“Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan — they say the exact same things, so while there’s a strong campaign to distance the organizational connections between people, the one thing that links them all is their speech — what they say to incite a group of people to take action on Congress to stop progressive legislation from happening, but that climate, that language, is also seen in the folks who act out very violently.”

In other words:

1 – There’s a vast conservative conspiracy to hide the assumed connections between border security activists and murderers. (Unspoken: Pointing out the real connections between La Raza and the reconquista MEChA is an act of racism.)

2 – Anyone who works legally through the political system by petitioning their representatives in government to “stop progressive legislation” have been “incited” to do so. Meaning they’re so pliable they’re not worthy of participation in civic affairs.

3 – Murdering Latinos and opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants stem from the same rhetoric and are therefore morally equivalent.

But here’s my favorite part — Clarissa Martinez of La Raza denounces the “freedom” of anti-amnesty activists to air their opinions:

“I’ve been shocked to the extent that people are saying things unchecked because they’re making money.”

While Martinez demands censorship of those who dissent from the globalist agenda, Heidi Beirich slumps forward in her seat, stewing in outrage at those crazed right-wingers and murderous nativists. Yes, isn’t it horrible people are allowed to make money from sensationalism?

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because apparently that is who gets all the action. Slightly gawky and awkward with women? No worries. Get yourself elected, and you’ll be gettin’  busy with the ladies in no time.

In all seriousness, sex is the universal vice of men. Not every man is prone to over indulge in alcohol. Not every man is prone to excessive gambling. Nor drugs. Nor corruption by money. But very few men aren’t vulnerable here. That is why it takes so many otherwise prudent and decent people down. Stanford could say no to Obama’s money, and we as conservatives owe him for that, but he couldn’t resist this temptation even with so much on the line.

This is why character matters. Why it is the starting point without which policy positions are meaningless. Many during the Clinton Lewinsky saga said the affair didn’t matter. That it was only prudes and Puritans who cared. It was just about sex after all. But it matter in many way BECAUSE it was about sex. A man who falls here is blackmailable. A man who falls here is perpetually distracted by his erotic interests and fears of discovery. And while in many ways it is hypocritical for them to do so, the people do hold you accountable for it, particularly if you are married.

The sad part of this, other than the hurt to his family, is that the “Republicans” (In Name Only) who criticized Sanford for not taking Obama’s bribe money deserved to be challenged for their treachery. There needed to be a faction of “Sanford Republicans” in South Carolina giving these clowns grief and hopefully even primarying them. But that is all up in smoke. The Obama bribe takers can rest easy now.

Now that I’m done preaching, as far as the politics are concerned, I agree with Patroon that Sanford pretty much lost me with the “I defer to Newt” remark. Also Patroon said, “there was just something about Sanford, call it a gut feeling, that didn’t make him presidential timber in my eyes,” and I agree. Not so much that he couldn’t perform the job of President, but that he couldn’t get elected President. He has always struck me as a bit awkward. As someone not entirely comfortable in the spotlight and with people. He seems like the kind of kid in High School who would have been on the chess team (I was) and/or going to a Star Trek convention (I never did), and slightly oblivious to it all. He must have some political skills to get elected multiple times and to be the leader of the Republican Governor’s Association, but in an age when television matters so much, I just didn’t see him going over big in a presidential campaign. Maybe Weaver or Jack Hunter if he reads this could comment on what Sanford is like in person or how he is perceived in South Carolina. That would be much appreciated.

This whole disappearing to Argentina affair (pun intended), reinforces that impression. What could he possibly have been thinking? Did he really think he could get away with just leaving the country and no one would know he was gone and no one would ask pesky questions? This strikes me as a guy who was just “chucking it all” so to speak in desperation. Maybe he didn’t want to break it off with the lady from a distance, but he could have flown her up here or something. It seems to me either a desperation move consequences be damned or slightly out of touch with reality.

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Grant Havers wrote a good online article on Takimag.com dealing with the lack Protestant voices within the broader paleo community and how a religious subsdivide is within said community between predominate Catholics and Protestants and Jews (Paul Gottfried has also talked about this as well.) Indeed the early conservative intellectual movement was largely Catholic and Jewish based.

I would heartily agree that time spent arguing about Protestant “modernity” is time wasted.  The Reformation happened for many reasons (one being that the mother Church truly became the Whore of Babylon and could honestly say such divisions within our ranks may very well be divine punishment), but none of which should divide us now in 2009.  If we can’t past those hang-ups we’re not going to go anywhere. Making such sweeping assertions about the problems of the modern age being the fault of Luther and Calvin is beyond useless. Havers has a very good quote about this:

“The constant decrying of Protestant modernity has been arguably very successful in driving Protestants out of the paleo camp and into the hands of neoconservatives, whose rhetoric about America’s chosenness resonates with many Protestants.  What Sam Francis once described as over-the-top Catholicism among paleos is simply a gift to movement conservatives.  It is also a very strange thing to call oneself a conservative if one is uncomfortable with the conservatism (that is, the older Protestantism) of one’s nation.  What exactly, then, is one trying to conserve in America?”

Indeed. We need more Aaron Wolfs, Grant Havers, Red Phillips and the like. Not more sectarianism.

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Indeed it is if you’re looking to “get away from it all” or from a balky legislature whichever comes first. South Carolina Govenor Mark Sanford wasn’t content to just head off from home without telling anyone in his family or his staff where he was going, nor create a subterfuge about hiking the Appalachian Trail. No, apparently Gov. Sanford during all this time away was really in Argentina having an affair.

Given that none of us are perfect I’ll stay away from the morality of the situation only to comment that there was just something about Sanford, call it a gut feeling, that didn’t make him presidential timber in my eyes. Take his comments when asked a question about his foreign policy views. After all he did serve in Congress, he must have some ideas about ideas about how the U.S. should conduct foriegn policy, especially if he was contemplating a run for the White House. Instead he said. “I’ll defer to Newt” i.e. Newt Gingrich whom he was appearing with on the same Sunday talk show. “I’ll defer to Newt” pretty much eliminated him in my eyes even before this Argentine “affair”. It does get some insight into his manner of thinking.

I don’t disagree with Jack Hunter that Sanford made a lot of enemies inside the GOP establishment within the Palmetto state. But if you’re going to fight the Man you better be not just stout of body but of mind and heart as well.  Otherwise they’ll get you if you’re not. You don’t have to be Lee Bandy to wonder part this was not somehow orchestrated or least in the way Sanford’s critics sent reporters out on the trail like bloodhounds (Who would have reported Sanford missing other than Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer or Sen. Knotts?)

In any case, if Ron Paul eschews another run for the White House in 2012, Gary Johnson will not have any competition now for Paul’s supporters.

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Scott McConnell of The American Conservative has a great piece today on how immigration policy affects foreign policy. While he makes several valid points, I think his main thrust misses the target.

McConnell argues a multicultural America will be a docile America, one that will no longer want to bomb the rest of the world into submission. His reasoning is that floodtide immigration will dissolve both American will and ability to assert American interests.

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Hopefully it’s nothing serious but apparently Gov. Mark Sanford has been out of contact not just with state officials but with his own family for the past few days. His last whereabouts were reported somewhere near Atlanta. No one with the state’s law enforcement agencies knows where he is either. For someone thinking about running for president in 2012, this is very odd behavior.

Update: According to Politico.com, Sanford was located Monday aftenoon hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

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It’s quite amusing to watch the homosexual lobby become extremely disgruntled with President Obama in recent days. Since Obama wants to get re-elected in 2012, he’s smart enough not to touch the social issues very much at all. Today he threw a small amount of red meat at his homosexual base by signing an executive order granting certain benefits to same-sex partners of Federal employees. Despite this, the homosexual lobby isn’t happy and they think he hasn’t done nearly enough to advance their agenda. Continue Reading »

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Of course, Mark Washburn’s right. The governor of South Carolina should happily accept the megapennies from Heaven President Obama is so generously offering. After all, as Washburn points out, “National debt is somebody else’s problem.” But Sanford just doesn’t get it.

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Wired magazine has an interesting article:  “The New Socialism:  Global Collectivism is Coming Online”.

Charles Columbe writes”Old Paleos and New” in Takimag.com

Here’s the article from the Wall Street Journal “Imagining the Break-up of the United States”

I got this link from Dixienet.org, the decentralist website Let a Thousand Nations Bloom

J.J. Jackson’s latest:  “Will Bondholder Revolt Lead to New Stimulus Plan?”

Laurence Vance’ s latest:  “Mr. Obama, Tear Down this Empire.”

And some good news, neocon Dennis Ross was demoted as special envoy to Iran (apparently you can’t be a special envoy to a country you advocate attacking in your latest book) and will take up some post at the White House. Hopefully it will be somewhere in the basement.

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Paul Gottfried’s article on Takimag.com on the Tiller shooting is a disturbing turn towards behavior that may seem like righteous zeal or justified murder but in reality is heading towards anarchy in the guise of morality.

If you believe that Scott Roeder killed the wicked Dr. George Tiller, then you should have no problem believing that John Brown killed the wicked pro-slavery folks of  Kansas by hacking them to death. You should have no problem with the four terrorists who bombed Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin in1970 which killed a man but was done to stop the wicked government from illegally bombing Vietnam and you should have no problem with Tim McVeigh’ s attack upon the Murrah Federal Building in response to deaths at the hands of the ATF and the FBI of all those who died at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Indeed, Gottfried could hoist a glass with Bill Ayers, who after all, resorted to terrorism in the Weatherman Underground against government murdered millions with its actions in Southeast Asia. What’s the moral difference? Murder is murder right? And before anyone says right wing murder = good, left wing murder = bad, please stop. For the ideology is all the same, the belief that social change can be brought about by violence.  Roemer certainly thought so which is why he killed George Tiller. The aforementioned would also agree, the wicked must be dealt with right? Who cares if they are sanctioned by law or happen to be the authorities themselves?

We can debate the logic of the Hitler example but we must remember one thing, abortion is not forced upon us. All abortion could end today if no decided to have one (that was not true under the Nazis where abortion was state policy). Hitler may have come to power through elections but once in power forced conformity upon the populace or face a prison camp.

You can kill George Tiller but someone has already taken his place, so nothing was really accomplished by this act other to damage the movement for which Roeder claimed to serve, as the”righteous” so often do.  I don’t disagree the Right to Life movement has been ineffective, but not because they have failed to lead an insurrection against abortion ala John Brown.  And are the abortion doctors any less guilty of murder than those politicans who allowed them to do so through canyons of the law? Or how about those who write the checks to fund Planned Parenthood? Or those who still advocate for abortion in the media? How many people do you wish to kill or imprison for their crimes?

Those who would unleash anarchy to serve a moral end have no more claim to righteousness than those anarchists and nihilists who simply wish to tear everything down, because there would be no beginning or an end to whom you would inflict devine punishment. We’re all guility to a certain degree for allowing abortion to exist (and it would continue to exist even if it were outlawed across the country). But to destroy the village in order to save it? No, that’s not an option I choose to take part in nor should other men good will either

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Justin Raimondo prepares us for the left-wing version of HUAC, coming to a Congress near you..

Here’s a couple from Chuck Baldwin:  “Gods Comes Pretty Cheap Nowadays” and “The Freedom Documents” the perfect gift for Independence Day.

Juan Cole has some good analysis as to why the Iranian election was stolen in “Ahmadineajad the Fraud”

Lew Daly wrote this interesting political article for Front Porch Republic entitled “Face Right, Move Left”

Also from Front Porch, considering that FDA is now going to be regulating tobacco, Katherine Dalton writes “A Eulogy for Tobacco”.

Here’s an email from the Campaign for Liberty which details some of the progress they’ve made in over a year’s time:

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They will still have their bogeyman to fear monger about. I have no doubt that the election was rigged, but lack of a functioning democracy does not increase the case for bombing them which is what the neocons want.

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Will wonders never cease? Our old neocon nemesis, Dr. Donald Douglas, is on the right side in this post against that twit Charles Johnson at Little Green Phonycons. I’ll have more to say on Johnson later, but briefly he defended the original DHS/SPLC smear job and is now claiming that conservative outrage was unwarranted.

Both Johnson and Douglas are ardent interventionists, but even Douglas is appaled by the left-wing’s attempts to exploit the Holocaust Museum shooting. Johnson thinks it is all just peachy.

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I’m not the only one who thinks the neocons are secretly rooting for Ahmadinejad.

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British National Party victory song:

[HT: RS]

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One of our editors alerted me to the results of the European Parlimentary elections and it looks like the British National Party will get its first-ever representative in the MEP along with Geert Wilders party in Holland. You can check out the results here.

We have a new submission from writer  J.J. Jackson. Check it out here.

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