Rush Disagrees With Jim Baker

 

It’s Friday the 13^th! Whooooooooo! Being pre-occupied for most of the afternoon, I caught the last minutes of Rush Limbaugh’s program, wherein he labouriously allowed as to how he disagreed just a tiny bit with Jim Baker. You know—THAT JimBaker. Former Secretary of State. Former campaign manager of George HW Bush whom he put him up to accusing then Gov Reagan of putting forth VOODOO ECONOMICS. You know, tax cuts. That thing that got the old man beat by the promiscuous Arkansas Governor.

 

Rush was discussing a current gem out of the mouth of Mr. Baker: that we (I think he means you and me) cannot win in Iraq. Rush disagreed. But it was at the end of Rush’s 3 hours, so there was no room for additional (and very enlightening) information in re Mr. Baker. Should we genuflect when we hear of the cowboy booted country club republican campaign manager of the senior Bush? Not here. He managed the, now forgotten, spirited primary fight (one more time) between the eastern/country club repubs and those of us in the Taft/Goldwater camp. As you know (or should), the Bush I campaign against then Gov Reagan, lost. Mr. Baker did not turn out to be much of a political genius. But cowboy boots and all, he landed like a cat with nine lives. Whooooooooo! Someone in the Bush transition team began to trickle power to Baker before Reagan got to take the oath. Bob Novak wrote several articles in the Wash Post about the nefarious but successful effort from Nov to Jan 81 to knife conservatives as a Reagan administration was formed. Baker even ended up chief of staff to Reagan. This; the guy who did his best to defeat Reagan on behalf of the country club republicans!

 

Another gem out of the mouth of Mr Baker recently came in the last week as he pimped his new book on Glenn Beck’s TV program: In providing cover for his limp advice to Bush I about Sadam/Iraq in the war to liberate Kuwait he, in bleating our allegiance to the UN said: “(Kuwait) was the first time the UN had ever authorized force against a member state.” Say what? The republican (and the democrat) liberals LOVE Mr. Baker! He has always been there for them. So now he preaches defeat in Iraq. I have a question for Mr. Baker. If you are so smart, Mr cowboy booted country club Texas lawyer, how come you couldn’t deliver a second term for Bush I? You got beat by an oversexed Arkansas gov.-- Let me answer the question for you sir: you are arrogant. You are timid. Finally, you care only about your own bank account; your hunt club memberships where you rub elbows with other establishment types. What is right is irrelevant to you. It took the son of your patron to teach that.

 

There are a lot of James Baker’s in the repub ranks. As an example, they have practically wrecked the State of Ohio. The repub nominee for Governor, the dynamic Mr. Kenneth Blackwell, has had an uphill fight to defeat a complete moron democrat member of congress with lots of bones in his closet. I only had one bone to pick with my hero Ronald Reagan—he gave Bush I and Baker the chance they didn’t deserve. We’re still paying for that.

 

FAINTHEARTED !

 

Throughout the long road traveled (70+ and counting) many miles have involved political action or thought. As a Goldwater activist I have found myself with or within Republican groups. By default.  There is not the smallest crevice in all democratdom where a Conservative could reside. So--------here I find myself. But I have a major complaint. In too many cases repubs AND their allies(?), are what in my youth we used to call scairdy cats. Today’s vocabularies have stronger words for the same but Town Hall will not post with such usage. So I will settle for fainthearted.

 

What do we make of the current status of the philosophical struggle?  On the left and far left we have a conglomeration that includes:  democrats, socialists, communists, utopians atheists, anarchists and in general a significant crowd that hates America.  Remember, I’m talking about those here within the borders of this great nation.  Citizens all!

 

On the RIGHT of the political spectrum, we have republicans, conservatives, neo-conservatives, country club types, “moderates” ( I hate to put them here), capitalists, and opportunists.

 

Being of the “right” my complaint about MY fellow travelers is that too many of them are timid, timid, timid.  They could, nearly all, take lessons from the left.  The left practices a golden rule of politics (pardon me Nancy):  When faced with a choice between two slobs – you choose your own slob!  The left understands this as they march in lockstep.  The right in too many cases, is quick to turn against their own, if transgressions occur.  Examples are legion.  While tut tutting tricky dicks keystone cops routines, mild mannered senate republicans caved on Clintons  stained dress.  While d’s went along half heartedly censuring a d MC who buggered a page and won several re-elections, the right in all its glory is hiding under their beds in terror in re an MC who practiced internet sex with (former?) pages.  The next speaker, who marched in the homosexual parade in beautiful downtown San Francisco, just behind the hero of the man/child bunch, is pounding poor meek mild Dennis Hastert about being slow to give the heave ho to a homosexual member.  Let’s close our eyes and imagine the loud noise if he had been heavy handed with one of the lefts privileged class – homosexuals, republican or otherwise!

 

So I ask; why do the democrats have the brass to violate the adage:”He who lives in a glass house should not throw rocks”?  The answer: because they know republicans and most of the right are timid.  That they are quick to play by the Marques of Queensberry rules.  That they tend to Mr. Clean, to where it is nauseous.  Playing nicey nice makes the republicans feel good and makes the democrats laugh so hard they can barely keep a straight face when they talk of republican corruption.

 

 

The list of those on the right who are jumping all over their House Speaker a month before a critical election, is long, and even could be labeled prominent (not):

George Will, The Washington Times, Laurence Kudlow, John Boehner, Debra Price, etc, etc, etc.

 

The democrats are laughing out loud.  Are you?  I’m not.

 

THE LEFT-CARTER-AND THE DEMOCRATS

September 17, 2006

 

There is an older movie in technicolar that included Walter Matteau and Joey Bishop that was a parody of marital infidelity. There’s a scene where Bishops wife walks in on him in a dalience with a voluptuous-half dressed woman in their bedroom. While the wife rails-the strange woman gathers her clothes to beat a retreat—Bishop calmly puts on his pants; his robe and ascot and with pipe in hand goes to sit in a high backed living room chair with great attention to his newspaper. While his wife raves of his despicable act, he expresses incredulity as to why she is carrying on so. Looking the misunderstood innocent, he stays so completely with his lie that his wife begins to doubt what she saw with her own eyes.

 

For decades now, Jimmy, the most disastrous President in modern times, has sought to mask his disasters with a cuddly do-gooder front. Recently we hear him on radio doing a commercial urging us to give blood-you see the supply has dwindled. A well known   charity-building houses for the poor; carries with it his sickening toothy smile. Where there is a blood thirsty dictator under heat-there’s Jimmy (N Korea, Venezuela etc) He just loves dictators-especially if they are of the left). Where there is a thug needing credibility in an election that has a smell like a cheese left in the summer Alabama sun for months, Jimmy goes running to provide cover. In his many world travels, when given half a chance, he gives rambling anti American speeches, chiding us for not following his oh so successful 4 years with more of the same. But it’s NOT just Jimmy.

 

How have we found ourselves listening for years, to the propaganda drumbeat of the Democrats and their allies in the press and elsewhere-BUSH LIED! BUSH LIED! BUSH LIED! Does anybody ever read the repetitive democrat pleas before the President moved in Iraq, for SOMEBODY to do just that. How many anguished  quotes from prominent democrats whined of our vulnerability to Iraq-Sadam and the WMD”s ? Given the incontrovertibility of the democrat raving pre-Iraq, how have they gotten away with it?  What ever happened to the old saw-He who lives in glass house should not throw rocks? My answer is: they have had an army of aiders and abettors. Some in strange locations. The darlings, Mr and Mrs Plame. Having just come out of a very quiet time to join McCain in criticizing the President, former secy Powell who KNEW it was not the White House that leaked. Our liberal democrat media practicing what Goebbels taught over 60 years ago. “Repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth.”

 

So now what???? Recently Ms Pelosi, our next Speaker, holds a press conference where she and her colleagues of the left are finally going to tell us what THEY are going to do when we return them to that power they so crave. You are never going to guess who she rolled out to criticize the President’s Iran policy! Jimmys national security chief! The guy who gave us the hate filled ayatollahs. The guy who abhorred the Shah’s lack of perfection. The guy who dithered while, what some have called the first real battle in the war with terrorism,(the hostage crisis) was lost. As he joined madam speaker at the microphone, this is what he actually had the brass to say: the President(this one) has been”the catalyst for a general deterioration of the conditions in the Middle East and of American influence in the Middle East” May I ask: How did giving us the ayatollahs and over a year of our embassy hostages, while doing nothing but dither, help our “influence” there? Jimmy and his man never heard the concept that murderous thugs respect power.

 

Continuing he says:“The war in Iraq  not only is going badly, politically as well as militarily, but IT has already elevated Iran into the principal geopolitical force in the region”. So Jimmy’s man thinks having Sadam AND Iran bestride the middle-east, would be a good thing. With hostages and all. With the WMD’s we all know he had. With him giving sanctuary to ailing terrorists. With him paying cash rewards to the families of  children who blew themselves up to murder Israelis. With him gassing the Kurds and other Iraquis who crossed him. As Rockefeller( how are the Repubs tagged with being the rich peoples party with a guy like Rockefeller a democrat?) recently said we would be better off with Sadam back in power. Close your eyes and picture that!

 

Finally, close your eyes again. Picture Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco queen of the left running the business of the House of Representatives! Extend your imagination. The great war hero Kerry. Teddy the rotund one. Alcee Hastings the impeached Federal Judge now in Congress and lined up to lead the House Intel committee. And on and on. These people live in glass houses but have honed the big lie with the help of their fellow travelers. They are one terrible joke. And the joke is not funny.  

 

McCAIN AND TORTURE

September 15, 2006

 

Yesterday John McCain, with Lindsay Graham and John Warner in lockstep with him against our President, continued his chest thumping me me me in his mental quest to avenge South Carolina.

 

It is with trepidation that I write this. I have a 291/2 yr career in aviation in the United States Military but the closest I ever came to combat was with a thermo nuc in a B-47 during the Cuban Missle Crisis. 17 years were in a Reserve flying organization that the NCA chose not to activate. So-go ahead call me a chicken hawk!

 

My motivation in writing on this subject is my political philosophy. I am a Conservative and blog to express that philosophy in a (hopefully) cogent way. So here goes.

 

The perfidy pursued by Messrs McCain, Graham and Warner on 9/14 was disgusting. After months-or is it years, listening to leftist democrats whine endlessly about poor terrorists being tortured at Abu Garib-even Guantanamo,  that has been solely aimed at the President’s approval ratings and the democrats political health, now we have these 3.

 

McCain’s limp reasoning for taking one more opportunity to “get even” is obvious nonsense. As I understand his obscure reason for such disgusting conduct it is the old democrat saw we must not be firm in our defense of America because of “world opinion”. More specifically he says if we confuse the magic Geneva Convention Clause dear to our enemies and their kind and gentle treatment of our troops when captured; we will be causing the torture of our troops.

 

Senator McCain and his fellows in the hellholes in N Vietnam were tortured unspeakably by Jane Fonda and John Kerry’s pals.  I ask the Senator;  Where was the Geneva Convention ? Huh? How dare he compare the United States to the vicious dictator regimes of the world! Did he watch the merry old terrorists beheading the innocent? The non military who died screaming? Does he or the 2 syncophants from yesterday really think that anything they do can have ANY effect on the vicious-bloodthirsty conduct of THIS enemy? WHY do the sights and sounds of the bodies falling to the ground around the then existing World Trade Center not have any effect on these guys?

 

Today, a piece by Richard Miniter in the NY Post makes all of the above one very large hysterical joke! DO NOT MISS THIS PIECE! Follows a short excerpt-“Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages.(Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono basis, with 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.) Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of “attorney client privilege”-even if they know the document inside is an Arabic-language note written by a prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.” Go to nypost.com, for the piece.

 

Call McCain a hero? He was! But his self centered conduct at such a critical juncture makes him anything but. Of the other 2 light weights? Warner chose to support a democrat against Ollie North in the state of Virginia. And Graham-he’s a lawyer!

 

FLIGHT 93-SHANKSVILLE

9/11/06

 

There is much to contemplate as we remember 9/11/01. Last night ABC began (against massive Leftist/Clintonian pressure) a program that examines the years before 9/11. Today we channel surfed the commerative events-NY, The Pentagon and Shanksville. Sadly, it is just THAT order we use in gauging the import or the heroism at each of the 3 sites.

 

NY-What happened in NY was monstrous! The 2 most dramatic buildings portraying American strength and success, were brought down amid unspeakable carnage. NY s firefighters waded into those buildings with the odds against them. With bodies of the doomed innocents raining down(scenes of which media suppress), they faced almost certain death.

 

THE PENTAGON-A symbol of American military might and focused hate by our enemies, the conflagration there and the heroic efforts of average Americans at rescue   coincided with the NY disaster.

 

SHANKSVILLE

 

Shanksville is a small town in Pennsylvania, just a few miles from the municipality of Somerset and located just north of  I-70. Today President Bush visited there and conversed with; hugged; even kissed the surviving family members. He showed his humanity among them as he has done before.

 

The Flight 93 families are special as seen through these eyes!

 

Strangely, I found myself in Sarasota, Fla as the President was that day. My reactions and recollections were a conglomeration. Like others, I watched on TV after my wife Mary Lou called from our home in North Florida to direct my attention to events. One recollection  will always be vivid to me. I clearly recall that having shared the chaos that were the 2 prior events, when I heard that an apparently hijacked airliner had crashed in a Pennsylvania field,  I knew—even exclaimed to myself, tho alone,  that the passengers had brought it down. Normally it  was a  unacceptable thought: but I thought-God bless them! God bless their bravery! Their prescience!

 

From the moment of hearing of what happened at that location and contemplating what must have gone on from gear up, to impact, I have always marveled at what was accomplished by those 40 souls, passengers and crew.

 

Our bountiful culture-our place in the world, tend to make many, if not most of us blasé-cynical even. Our freedoms and overall good life are accepted with little thought. Momentus events with considerable subtlety often get lost. I believe that has happened to the Flight 93 event. And it cannot be explained by the tendency of Americans to prefer the ‘circus’ to real life drama (last night twice as many viewers tuned in to Sunday football as did the 9/11 film). If it has an element of sublety most miss it.

 

FOR GODS SAKE, THINK about it! Isolated in that aluminum tube in which we have all resided, the passengers and crew observed, sought information, planned and acted! Who among us that survive in America on this day can really contemplate such as these? Airborne at 8:42 a.m. eastern time and gone to meet their maker and all who have preceded them in bravery in America, one hour 21 minutes later,  what they did can’t quite be compared to heroes who preceded them and doubtless have and will follow them.

 

They won the first battle of a war they hadn’t quite contemplated. In airborne isolation, with limited information and nothing but their flesh, bone, blood and makeshift weapons, they took on armed thugs who had already killed before their very eyes.

 

N.Y. firefighters went above and beyond their duties. Those involved suddenly at an apparent disaster at the Pentagon performed as many have over the course of our history. How do we compare and contemplate Flight 93  presented with such a fate?

 

Upon visiting the Shankesville site and surrounding communities this spring, I learned much. From the makeshift memorial; the park service shelter moved there for the use by the local’ambassadors’, to the Shankesville/Somerset community that protects the hallowed ground of the crash site, one can be sure that what happened there is being protected for posterity.

 

After 2 visits to the site I was fortunate to obtain the last (then) copy of the flag that contains the words:”Our nation will eternally honor the heroes of Flight 93.”

 

Finally-Consider the plan, plots and many acts of murder perpetrated by islamic facists over the years. There has to be a dagger in their heart, from their failure at Shanksville.  There, 70 miles, more or less, S.E. of Pittsburg, the alledgedly religious thugs, who gathered on that aircraft failed. Before they met their end they knew they failed. The    soft Americans promised them by their cave bound masters, weren’t soft after all. The thugs who survived them know they failed. Whether they hide in the caves of Pakistan , Afghanistan or blow themselves up among the innocent, they know of that event—that failure. A woman attending the movie “United 93”, said upon leaving the theatre: that the movie showed “that when push comes to shove, we will prevail”. It’s obvious-despite the naysayer’s and the hate America crowd  regarding the stuff out of which we are made. The American people are a glorious bunch.

 

MORE ON THE FLAG

On this 4^th of July we in the US of A had more to contemplate than our nation’s birthday. Our space shuttle launched perfectly into the Florida skies. A pleasant display of fireworks it was. As we write of fireworks, we had those set off by the little dictator with the bad hair who contaminates Asia. Our President spoke with those sterling troops at Ft Bragg. But what WE will address for this moment, was a piece on Old Glory, by the formidable Christopher Hitchens, in the Wall Street Journal. Its title was: THE FLAG FETISH. How quaint, that he and/or WSJ chose the 4^th, for his diatribe.

Since Mr. Hitchens deigns to classify all of us who love and respect our beautiful flag as having a fetish, we can send him back to his pre-citizenship studies for some remedial training. He brandishes those studies as a crutch upon which he leans, to justify his rambling, obtuse piece on our flag. May we differ?

The content of the July 4^th piece on our flag displayed ignorance and the kind of convoluted reasoning so common today. Fetish? I have a fetish? My lifelong tendency to hang our flag or have a pole displaying it in my front yard is a fetish? Whether it was on frequent occasions during WW II in which my brother served and our parents involved me in its display; or through post 9/11, I had a fetish? How late for me to learn of such an ailment!

Using his own words we can identify how labored are the assertions of those, right and left, who look down upon those of us who display or otherwise “wave” the flag. How juvenile we are in the eyes of the omnipotent ones. Let’s look at his words.” It is precisely because the flag is important to some people that we must permit its trashing by others." Oh really? Don't we just love thinking about the 60's scum that did just that in behalf of the left here and afar, as they cheered our enemies? We let them get away with it then and it worked! Todays apoligists for our enemies are identical to those in that earlier time. You can almost smell their homogeneity.

Hitchens continues:"To legislate otherwise would be to enstate a taboo and that is EXACTLY

(my emphasis) what the First Amendment exists to forestall" A taboo? Where oh where in the name of judicial obtuseness were The Founders jousting with taboos? How can even the most crazed black robed lawyer find anti-tabooism in the Amendment he (and many others) pounds out of shape?

"Without ambiguities and ironies, it (the flag) would not be what it is--ambiguity and irony are just what the flag fetishists do not understand" So I am a fetishist who cheers taboos and who is too stupid to appreciate ambiguity and irony when I see it. THIS fetishist would ask where he finds ambiguity or irony in the photo of the Marines raising the flag over Suribachi; flying in a stiff wind at that makeshift Memorial in Pennslyvania for the gallant passengers and crew of Flight 93; in home after home after home in the weeks and months after 9/11; at base ops at Hickam field on December 7, 1941, or on military caskets in an endless stream from 1776 through THIS very July 4th? I see no ambiguity whatsoever. I see no irony save that the very flag that feeds my fetish, shields the likes of Mr Hitchens as he enjoys the fruits and protections of this great nation so permeated(as he says) with cowardice in its Congress. He labors over actions of Hillary. Hillary? What does SHE have to do with this subject?

If the 40 brave souls aboard Flight 93 could grade Hitchens rambling/idiotic
piece, would they give it an A or an F? For me it's not even close.

 

 

 

 

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NORTH KOREA FUROR

 

One has only to blow up to poster size, the color photo of Madeline Halfbright and the dictator with the bad hair, as they smile with glistening pearly whites and touch glasses filled with celebratory champaign, to gauge the nonsense being thrown around about the far east fireworks we observed recently.  The Clinton lady has been running about all over the place lately, pontificating on one of the bigger disasters she propagated during her “service” as our Sec of State. Somehow, this thing, whatever it is, is Bush’s fault. You know: like The Hurricane-Global warming that isn’t-Aids-Euro socialist distain for the U.S.-Islamofacist hate for us and blah blah blah.

 

With Sandy Burglar, of stuff it in your pants fame, occasionally at her side, she is every where at once getting face time for her nonsensical ravings. Having in the past declared the bad haired one sane and interested in our Academy Award process and further having embraced one of many of Jimmy Carter’s, of attacking rabbit fame, masterpieces of anti-American diplomacy, she now plays CYA. What did Goebbels once say: Tell a lie often enough it becomes truth. The lady has (at least) 2 goals as she floods cable and other news. She must shout loud enough to drown out any voice that might ask her embarrassing questions about borderline criminal conduct of the affairs of state viz the little dictator. And, she hopes the dopes will marvel at the pearls of wisdom she mouths.

 

Against the direct request of The President at the time, Bill Clinton, Jimmy went off on one of his kissy face travels to hug one of the dictators who hate the U.S. As he typically does while away from American soil he commiserated with the Korean Communist and remonstrated in favor of being nice to our enemy. Communications of that time are replete with Carter’s effort to explain away the dictators belligerence while throwing in alledged examples of our shameful treatment of this nice man. Clinton, as usual busy with other matters, went for Jimmys dodge and the result was celebrated with that clinking of glasses. Yet Ms Halfbright now has the gall to bloviate on what we should do now. The brass of  the likes of her and other architects of  America's hoped for defeat, shines like a newly polished spitoon. The very moroons: Jimmy, Halfbright, Burglar et al who gave us this mess in the first place, with their admiration for the dictator, are shouting the loudest for us to do something. Whether it's to bomb the insane one(which would kill his captive people in droves); or kiss the lower portion of the dictator's anatomy or just talk with him (about what is the great mystery), their voices are raised in a high pitched squeal. Their transparent strategy to divert attention from their many screw-ups is reminiscent of Criminal Defense Attorneys I used to joust with in muder trials. Especially those with clients guilty as hell on the face of things. They yelled a lot!

 

  

 

July 11, 2006

 

GENEVA CONVENTION ?

 

The Bush Administration, whatever THAT  means, has done it again. Cruising in overdrive after a week or so of restoring our confidence in his/their-whatever, being competent, he/they go and show weakness and a touch of stupidity. I say he/they and his/their, because I never know whether the stuff that happens in a Republican Presidents administration comes from HIS policy or from the sneaking of some country club republican dweeb that always abound in Washington or some Clinton or other democrat/leftist holdover. We always hope it wasn’t GW, just like we always hoped it wasn’t Reagan, but, rather, those above mentioned.

 

THIS time we have some half wit in the Defense Department(I saw a lot of them in my 2 yrs there) (bureaucrat or appointee) in a  Deputy Secy slot spewing forth that the terrorists in Guantanamo have the protection of the hallowed (unless it protects U.S. , Israeli or other Allied troops) GENEVA convention. Balderdash! Nonsense! To name but one reason it doesn’t apply, (there are plenty) I ask the rhetorical question: Where in the name of lace panties,  are THEIR uniforms? What signatory of the GC claims these thugs? And, whenever considering this subject area, I ask myself: What would the 40 brave souls on Flight 93 think?

 

Some portion of the first story I read about this revolting development emanating from Mr. Deputy Secy, rambles about the Unconstitutional/Arrogant Sup CT decision, that alledgedly forced this policy announcement. Why is the Executive so afraid of that bunch on the Court,  that now serve the interests of Internationalism rather than the Constitution? That care not a whit about the American people as they go thru their wild gyrations to find a way to wrap their arms about Osama Bin Laden’s driver. Sadly, one has to observe that it fears somebody, and certainly NOT Americans from whom the Executive seeks support. Like the Amnesty question so clearly abhorred by a very very large majority of Americans, we are sick of the cow towing to the leftists who worry so, about the terrorists safety and rights. And the leftists of whom I speak are not just wearing jackass buttons. Considerable of them wear the pachyderm label. Try Mr Specter for openers. And John McCain. And more. McCain tends to live his political life in the past. Whether it is in those hellholes in Hanoi he KNOWS did not resemble Guantanamo or anything else of a policy nature on captives of the US, or his close brush with political disaster in the Keating thing that made him a crusader rabbit for campaign finance “reform”. In Ohio we have 3 classic products of the country club republicans that have run the republican show there for several decades. Taft “the golfer”, Dewine “the dweeb” and Voinavich “the cryer”. With friends like them who needs enemies? But I digress (a little).

 

Bottom line, we have a lesser light in the Dept of Defense, one Deputy Secretary Gordon England now telling us, with the President’s approval apparently, that we must play by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules with murdering islamofascists. Described by Tony Snow as “not combatants in the traditional sense”, they of course, playing by the bite and kick ‘em in the groin rulesbook. Can we really win a war with such a bunch of tender souls as we have just described? Time will tell. As the plaintive cry says in the musical “1776”. “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

July 6, 2006

Amazing! After countless  letters to the editor directed to the liberal newspapers I have suffered over the years, here I am with my own blog thanks to Townhall com. Glorious! Just glorious!

The week preceeding America's birthday celebration  the subject of our flag not only had stories wailing about the shameful acceleration of flag waving but there were ample articles and columns of comment on the shortfall (by one vote) of the Amendment that made it to a senate vote. Not traveling among much of the lefts written ravings I nevertheless came upon mixed reviews in some surprising corners. One NOT so surprising was a piece on Friday by Ben Stein, of (among others) Ferris Bueler fame. Ben is an unabashedly pro everything American so his column in defense of the flag came as no surprise. But surprise or no, it elicited the following from my computer keyboard directed to the American Spectator website:

"AMEN to Ben's piece on the flag. Cant remember which, but in the last few days I read and re-read a piece in a conservative net location where they bragged about fear that a constitutional amendment protecting the flag might pass. They cited typical legal tripe about the glorious Constitution akin to the legal tripe (international law,it's alive etc.) that is used so often to ignore and decimate that very Constitution. Using what my con law prof called "judicial obtuseness" our liberal courts can justify anything and call upon some obscure concept alledged to be somewhere in that document.

Flag burning carries with it an obvious reality. Remember when our "youth" with their unwashed (really) demeanor were burning flags and even R.O.T.C. buildings, because they were encouraged and excused  for their scummy behavior? One recent argument is it we don't have it happen much. I can recall a time when allowing the flag to TOUCH the ground brought gasps. In that time respect and civility were predominant, not todays longing for for the lawless irresponsible 60's we see in liberal mouthpieces, nor the laziness that accepts the unacceptable.

 I am incensed when i see Islamic facists burning the American flag around the world. To allow it here, where 40 gallant American Heroes lie a part of a Pennslyvania field, is unspeakable. ---"

I was elated when Ben Stein responded favorably. More on the flag tommorrow. Meanwhile, try not to let it touch the ground.

Turk