As if we need another reason

I was in Kansas City, MO at a rugby tournament when there was a double dose of news: The Saturday Night Massacre and the first Arab Oil Embargo. At that time we imported just over 20% of our daily oil consumption. We now import nearly 60%. And that all arrives via sea lanes.
Investors Business Daily has an article which shows how Congress has made us incredibly vulnerable.
Our good close personal buddy, pro-liberty Hugo Chavez, has invited the Russian Navy to engage in joint naval exercises in the Caribbean. Now, considering that as we import so much of our oil from overseas, this joint exercise points again to why we need to drill now!
That we depend for so much of our oil on the kindness of others that are not favorably disposed to kindly view us and now we face a military threat that could disrupt oil deliveries should move (repeat SHOULD move) the left wing controlled Congress to protect the vital interests of the United States.
My suggestion: write to Amy Klobuchar and cite the IBD article. Write to Norm Coleman and tell him to resign from the Gang of 16. And again cite the IBD article.
If you live in any Congressional district where you have a Democrat representing you, write to them.
Go here to locate the Senators' and Congressmens' addresses.
I just sent the following letter to Senator Klobuchar:

Senator:

I have just read an alarming article in Investors Business Daily ( http://ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=305766737761086 ).

Hugo Chavez has invited the Russian Navy to engage in joint naval exercises in the Caribbean.

As the United States now imports nearly 60% of it's oil, the joint naval exercise points to a direct threat to our oil supply via the sea lanes.

This again points to the need to have access to our own domestic oil supplies.

I therefore urge you to eliminate any and all impediments to drilling for oil in any and all areas of the United States. This would include eliminating any and all extreme environmental regulations and sharply reducing frivolous lawsuits against oil production.

Respectfully,

Ella's Adventures Updated

Finally got the new pictures from the 2008 convention up on Ella's site.

Just click on Ella's Adventures in either menu bar or go to:

http://www.savagerepublican.com/ella

Al JaNBC

I'll let you fill in your own comment

Off to St. Paul

I received a call on Monday from the MN GOP, telling me that there was a ticket for me to the RNC on Wednesday. Later that day , I talked to Savage Republican and he told me that Ron Carey, Exec. Chair of the MN GOP had arranged for the ticket and the call.
I've been invited to a bloggers lunch today by Ed Morrissey. So, though I promised I wouldn't get close to St. Paul even if a 9mm were pointed at my brain stem. Well, though the MSM would erroneously call this a flip flop, well, I'm using the occasion to introduce myself to people to promote another cause:
On June 6th, 1944, then Lt. Dick Winters (Band of Brothers), in his and the 101st Airborne first day in combat, took a squad of men to attack and silence four 105mm howitzers that were zeroed in on Utah beach and threatened the landings (intelligence first thought the howitzers were 88mm). Lt. Winters took his squad and formulated an attack against a German heavy platoon/light company that were in charge of the artillery battery.
This action is still studied at West Point as a perfect fire and maneuver action.
Lt. Winters was cited and recommended for the Medal of Honor. Lost in the decades of history is the reason that citation was downgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross. Stephen Ambrose wrote that there was a directive that there would only be one Medal of Honor per division in the Normandy campaign. I've never heard of any evidence to either support or refute that statement. Lt. Robert Cole was the only man from the 101st to receive the MOH.
What I've wanted to do, and Savage Republican is giving great help, is to have that original Medal of Honor citation re-instated. There have been a couple of attempts to have this done. Unfortunately, there were too local and not also not widely publicized.
I also need to be VERY clear: this is NOT an upgrade. This a re-instatement of the original citation! An upgrade would be if the original citation were for a DSC and people are trying to get that citation changed to the MOH. That is not the case here.
We have bought the domain name www.honoreasy.com . We are in the process of getting the website up. It is an informational website only. We urge people to contact their Congressman/Congresswoman to urge them to pass a resolution affirming and re-instating the original citation for MOH for Dick Winters. We urge people to call and write the White House and President Bush to right this wrong.
We will have all the information you'll need to do this.
If you have a blog, include the link www.honoreasy.com .
Savage Republican and I will be updating you here and on the website.
BTW, here are two scenes from YouTube and the Band of Brothers DVD showing the action that Lt. Winters was cited for.

Why I loathe the media

Any questions?

RNC Convention

Like in 2004, Ella the Elephant is attending the convention.
For her daily updates please visit her daily blog at the savage pacer
http://www.savagepacer.com/community/blog/ella

One more drop redux

Yah gotta love video camcorders everywhere. This nasty bit of left wing true thought was captured on a flight from Denver to Charlotte (link here-read the comments! The below YouTube is a cleaned version from the Red State link so as to be better able to hear these two heartless creatures)

The speaker is none other than former Chair of the DNC Don Fowler. His companion is Congressman Jon Spratt (D-SC).
Like Michael Moore last week, they are giddy that Hurricane Gustav is going to hit the Gulf Coast during the Repubs Convention. No thought of concern for the misery, suffering, injury and death that a now Category 4 hurricane will cause. Just laughter. What an absolutely despicable lot! Absolutely despicable!
When will the decent people of America finally wake up and dump the Dems and the left?
There is NO compassion there. No belief in liberty, goodness, decency, America. None.
And those of you who vote Democrats into power ignore this bit of wisdom:
"Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep." -- The Longshoreman Philosopher
Again, be sure to read the comments in the link from above.

Grab the queen bee

From True North, I came across this link. What I found interesting was the third and second to the last paragraph as a counterpoint to the report of a search warrant served in St. Paul.
Chief states that talking to some MPD officers, he learned that as two uniform officers on bikes approach about a hundred "youths" the "youths" scattered. I wonder why?
The officers went on to say: " The police said there has been a large dispersal of many hives already, but they will surely re-connect by Monday or Tuesday. They said they have found stockpiles of re-bar rods, 2 x 4s with nails in the ends, buckets of feces, bike locks, hacksaws and other destructive toys of anarchist youth." Rebar, 2x4's with nails? Of real concern for me are the bike locks. They would be used to put across door handles to prevent exiting. And what would prevent one or more of these pukes from throwing a firebomb inside, then locking the door with a bike lock?
I am as concerned about about 4th Amendment rights as anyone. I've repeatedly spoken out against the USA PATRIOT ACT. I despise McCain/Feingold. However, this sign:













does not give these pukes super 4th Amendment protection when it involves them seeking to harm those of us who seek to peaceably assemble for a legal and legitimate purpose.
Reap what you sow.
Bye-bye anarkids!

A Cheap Yuk

From a friend , from Jib Jab, the home of Equal Opportunity Skewering:

One more drop

Like we need more evidence that the left is evil, supports evil or spreads evil, we have, for your due consideration, the male harpy of the left, the honors graduate of the Joseph Goebbels/Leni Riefenstahl School of Propaganda, his satanically benighted holiness, Michael Moore.
St. Michael commented on Keith Olberman "

I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said, laughing. “To have it planned at the same time – that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for day one of the Republican Convention, up in the Twin Cities – at the top of the Mississippi River." A hurricane. A Category 3 hurricane that has already killed 80 people in the Caribbean. A hurricane that has wreaked havoc, destruction, fear, misery, pain and suffering.That threatens more of the same and is projected to hit the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast where fears from Katrina still linger. And his quackiness proclaims that, in his malicious, malevolent purview, that he's pleased as he believes that a killer storm is rich in irony as it relates to the Republicans. And he says so shamelessly, but attempts to lessen his gross callousness by saying that he hoped nobody got hurt, completely ignoring the 80 already dead and the misery and injury already caused.

This is the sought out one who was given a seat of honor next to Little Jimmy Carter at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

Further proof the left is not caring, not sensitive, not compassionate.

History redux

I assume that most of you know me as a historian. Mainly war and especially WWII. I happened across an article today from the WSJ written by two mediocre Senators who garner great headlines amongst the press and Republicans: namely Lieberman and Graham.
They've just returned from a trip to Georgia and scribed an article issuing a warning about Russia and Russian intentions. I agree with the premise that "Russia's invasion of Georgia represents the most serious challenge to this political order since Slobodan Milosevic unleashed the demons of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans. What is happening in Georgia today, therefore, is not simply a territorial dispute. It is a struggle about whether a new dividing line is drawn across Europe: between nations that are free to determine their own destinies, and nations that are consigned to the Kremlin's autocratic orbit." However, what caught my eye and is now sticking in my craw was this sentence two paragraphs down:"The first priority of America and Europe must be to prevent the Kremlin from achieving its strategic objectives in Georgia. " I stopped at the end of that sentence. What's the population of Europe again? What is the EU's GDP? How strong are it's armed forces? Didn't America rescue Europe twice in the twentieth century? Didn't we preserve it for fifty plus years during the Cold War? And yet the armed forces of Britain, Germany and France couldn't handle the Balkans without the U.S. Air Force? And now, once again, there is the suggestion that Europe can not/will not act in its own long range interests?
In the early 80's, Ronald Reagan strongly urged the Germans NOT to have or accept the Russians building a natural gas pipeline into Germany. His concern was that the Germans would become dangerously dependent on Russian largess and mercy should the Russians ever need to have Europe back down. Germany now receives a worrying percentage of its energy from Russia. This Russian hammer over Germany and the EU is reminiscent of the first OPEC oil embargo in 1973: the Japanese received a majority of their oil from OPEC. OPEC told Japan to either denounce Israel of face a total OPEC embargo. Japan denounced Israel.
And so the only nearby armed forces that can respond to Russian aggression against say Poland or the Ukraine are based in countries that need Russian natural gas to function.
Not a lot of forward thinking in Europe. Matched neatly by the lack of any forward thinking in Washington as evidenced by $4.00/gal gasoline.
Victor Davis Hanson always has particularly sharp insight. Go here and pick out some of his articles on Russia and Georgia.

Heller and the 2nd Amendment- the war continues

Dick A. Heller has finally registered his revolver. Heller is the security guard who was refused a permit to have a firearm in Washington D.C. and subsequently sued. The result was the landmark case "Heller v D.C." which resulted in the Supreme Court ruling, for the first time, that the 2nd Amendment guaranteed that right to keep and bear arms is an individual right.
However, as I blogged, that ruling is not and will not be the end of the war against the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment.
As the heller article reports:"Heller recently sued the city again, saying the registration rules adopted by the D.C. government after the ban was overturned are too cumbersome and violate the spirit and letter of the court's decision...."I am not surprised at all. As a matter of fact, the NRA has instituted a number of suits based on Heller. And I applaud them for it.
As I warned, the SCOTUS proclamation on Heller means that the fight will continue in the Congress, legislatures and courts. Heller was only a single victory in a single battle, albeit an important one.
The war on and for liberty: It will never end.
But there seems new energy to press the war forward.

McCain giveth and McCain taketh away

I'll let you go elsewhere to read how well Senator McCain did against the Pelosi anointed one at Saddleback Church on Saturday. I'd give McCain a solid A. I'd give BHO a solid F...minus. Especially now that he has become such an accomplished liar when it comes to killing babies.
And when Senator McCain gives a straight out, solid, eyes on performance, he then comes out with this:



What the H*** are his campaign advisors thinking? "Washington is broken". Yup. And you helped break it! "The Original Maverick", "He fought Big Tobacco" and drug companies? He'll fight Big Oil and Wall Street?

Hey-Congratulations guys! I'll bet you get a great big thank you card from Barack Obama's campaign treasurer for saving the BHO campaign a bunch of money by running their campaign ad for them.

Give McCain a huge F double minus for this one.

One layer of separation

By now, I'm sure you've read of the murder of Todd Bachman and the vicious assault on his wife Barbara in Beijing where they were attending the Olympics. Todd Bachman was the CEO of Bachmans here in Minneapolis.
You've read my many blogs about the 8th Air Force Historical Society. I was introduced to the Society by the fact that my great uncle John and Larry Bachman were board members at the Masonic Home. Larry flew B-24's in WWII. Larry came back from the war and became an executive of Bachman's.
Todd Bachman is Larry's second cousin (Larry's brother and his only sibling Roy, was killed in WWII in the Pacific). When I heard the news early this morning and heard the last name "Bachman" I only thought fleetingly about a relation to Larry or maybe Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. It wasn't until this afternoon I heard a reference to Bachman's. Larry is my very good friend. I called him immediately after I heard the reference to Bachman's on the radio. We talked a while about the call he got early this morning from his son Dale.
Larry told me that Todd lived next door to Larry and his wife Louise, who recently passed away, and that Louise was nearly a second mother to Todd as his mother worked at the store.
Please remember Todd's family and all the Bachmans in your prayers. And pray for Todd's widow Barbara as she is fighting life threatening wounds.
For more information, Bachman's has established a website.

The hardest working Congress

In case you are wondering why Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats need to adjourn instead of actually voting on an energy package - Uncle Jay will explain why they need rest.

Rush's 20th and a divided nation

All this week Rush has been celebrating his 20th Anniversary. He done some flashbacks, played recordings of people who've called in to congratulate him all week congratulating him on his spectacular radio career.
My first blush with Rush (oh my, the poet comes forth) was in 1993. It was June, just after my Dad had passed away. A number of my friends were asking me if I heard , on the radio, this guy with a strange name. I said no, I hadn't. But one afternoon I tuned in to AM1500 and heard this guy named "Rush" something. Hey. This guy is saying what I'd been thinking and had been taught by my Mom and Dad. Well, I had never had a reason to listen to AM1500, but now was there each day. After Rush came Joe Soucheray who had a brand of what used to be common sense living we called conservatism (Joe called it "Garage Logic" figuring most problems could be logically discussed and figured out in the garage). About a year later a new guy appeared at 5:00pm. His name was (and is) Jason Lewis. Another guy named Dave Thompson filled in over the hours. This was now my entre into talk radio.
Now, here in Minneapolis we have five talk radio stations (six if you count failed 950 Fresh Air). I've left AM1500 behind. Joe Soucheray just got too sophomoric. His "bits" became poor locker humor episodes. He also lost me when he fell over for Carl Pohlad's stadium robbery deal (Joe is also a sports guy over at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He also does NOT live in Hennepin County and so doesn't pay a damn dime for the stadium he wanted). Added to that was when AM1500 lost Jason Lewis and proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly with schedule and on air personality changes. So, now I listen to AM1280 , KTLK and Glenn Beck on the internet.
In 1999 I got my first computer. And shortly thereafter I discovered Al Gore's greatest invention (no, not man made global warming, though he has and does vigorously imagine it). No. I mean the internet. And I discovered a whole new world where the MSM didn't reign and didn't control. I found out that Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and their ilk had been either lying or deceiving me and the rest of America. I found that Big Education had created a generation of ignorant bobble head children imbued with hating America. I found that there was truth out there. And I was angry! I could do more research in an hour on the computer that I could in a month in a library. I could email hundreds of people. With a blog I could write my thoughts (BTW, SavageRepublican.com gets well over 1,000 hits a day). The monopoly and the back of the lefts grip on "truth" was broken. I've also bookmarked Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Yon, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and Hot Air (following my friend Ed Morrissey) just to name a very few.
So, when you hear about a divided America, it's because people like you, people like my brother, my sister,my friends and fellow lovers and defenders of liberty like me have discovered where we can find the truth after having been lied to and deceived for decades.
And we're fighting back.
And it started with Rush.
Congratulations Rush.
And thanks.

Pakistan, Illegal Immigrants and the Constitution

The title for this piece is probably the most discordant at first glance title I've ever put together. But, there is logic in my seemingly incongruous heading.
I just finished reading an entry over at Hot Air where my friend Ed Morrissey writes. There is an article about the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) and the danger to the US and the region that the ISI loyalties are engendering. There are comments about the ISI and a nuclear Pakistan and A.Q. Khan that can be made later. What caught my eye was in the comments section by a contributor called "coldwarrior". He makes mention of the diminishing Pakistani middle class. He states that they are leaving Pakistan and had at first gone to the UK. Their reception there was less than warming and so they've started to come to the US. And any country can not survive well with only an elite and a lower class. The movement of this population gave me pause however.
I restate the obvious when I talk about illegals coming from primarily Mexico to the US. Again it's no secret why they come to America. But what a horrible indictment of the Mexican government! That your citizens find it necessary to leave their birthplace because of no discernible economic hope of improvement. And they come knowing that that is hostility towards them, that they may very well be exploited. And yet they come. But, here was where I tied the Constitution into this immigration scenario from two widely divergent countries: The Founders put great emphasis on individual and states rights. They envisioned and created a federation of individual and therefore fairly autonomous structures called states. The rights of the states were well protected within the framework of the Constitution (read the IX [aka 9th] Amendment to the Constitution). The Founders created a framework of territories (states) where if a citizen found a state inhospitable or not to his or her liking, they were able to move to a state that they found more agreeable. That as a moral and educated people, as long as neither force nor fraud were employed in any activities, we were free to be about our business as best we saw fit to pursue it. Truth be told, that if the Founders wrote a Constitution that did not guarantee that sovereignty to the states and individuals, there would have been no ratification potential by the states at all! This was the idea behind federalism. That idea is now moribund. With an overarching federal government, there is now no place to go to escape bad and crushing federal laws, bloated and "badge heavy" bureaucrats and bureaucracies with bad rules and even worse outcomes. This is not what the Founders had created. They created a constitutional republic. We now live in a functional democracy administered by a class of bureaucrats. They Founders abhorred the idea of a democracy.
And so, the Pakistanis and the many Mexicans exercise a type of international federalism in coming to the US, legally or otherwise. But they do come.
And where do we Americans go to escape a tyrananny federal government?

USA! USA!

Joey Chestnut retain the Mustard belt.
Take that World.

Put your life at risk!

OK kids, put your life on the line! Risk being arrested and tried for treason and being executed! Step up! Sign the Declaration of Independence!
Now, a quick history refresher:
What does the 4th of July commemorate here in America? (Insert Final Jeopardy interlude music here). It commemorates the PASSING of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, not its signing.
Anyhow, here is what the final product looks like:



























Your signature appears at the bottom of the far left column.
So, there I am, Amendment X, risking the calling down of the furies for high treason against the Crown.
So be it. Bring it on!
By the way, here is the story of the Declaration of Independence and what happened to the signers.
Brave men indeed as there was no prohibition against "cruel or unusual" punishment. And high treason was punishable by drawing and quartering.

His name is Don

He was a B-17 ball turret gunner. What he did was called "flying the ball". It, along with the tail gunner position were considered to be the most dangerous positions for the B-17 air crew.
His completed tour was supposed to be 25 missions that were upped to 30. But, he was shot down and served as a POW (prisoner of war). When being transported , the train he was on was strafed and jumped the tracks. Trains were considered "targets of opportunity" for fighters and it was not uncommon for American fighters to strafe POW trains as they were usually unmarked. He and a few other POW's, on seeing that they weren't being guarded after the derailing, took off and walked for five days, without food, and crossed the border into Switzerland where he was interred for the rest of the war.
He flew B-29's in the Pacific after being liberated in Europe, then flew B-52's.
I met Don at the Wednesday lunches for the 8th Air Force Historical Society, a group of many WWII vets including, but not limited to air and ground crew from the 8th, 15th, 9th, 12th, 7th and 20th Air Forces. We also have Navy and Marine ground and air personnel from the PTO. We also have vets from Korea, Vietnam, first Gulf War and now the second. And we have hanger-ons like me.
A couple of years ago Don was too ill to drive, so he asked me if I would pick him up for the lunches. Of course. I can't refuse a vet. How could I?
Well, I heard a bit of a different story about Don's career as a POW as we drove to Bloomington. He told me that he and a few others were fairly dissatisfied with their treatment in the Stalag. And he commented that the cuisine left much to be desired next to Mom's meatloaf. So, he said "We decided to leave. They weren't treating as nicely as we thought they should, and we heard the food was better in Switzerland. So, that's where we went." It was only later that I heard about his being on a POW train that was strafed.
And of course there was another story that took the entire twenty minutes on our second drive.
After Don was liberated, he got orders to report to California. He flew to, I believe, San Francisco. His next orders were to report to Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor. His next orders were to report to, again I believe, the Philippines. In all these orders he was never told the end point.
On that the far Pacific airbase he was told which officer to report to. The officer told him to suit up, which he did. Don, being an enlisted man, learned early on never to question orders or officers (who usually gave orders). Don suited up, was driven out to the flight line and was told to board one of these bad boys:



It's a Northrup P-61 Black Widow. And off to combat they flew. In combat, the pilot's screaming at Don "There's a Zero. Shoot the bastard!!!!" "Sergeant, what the hell's wrong with you? They're Japs all over the place and you haven't shot a single round!!! What the (very strong expletive here staring with 'F') are you doing?!?!?" Don's reply "I've never been trained as a P-61 gunner. Only a B-17 gunner!" Oops. Seems that some REMF (Rear Echelon Mother [Same expletive as before] military slang for someone behind the lines) had seen that Don went to gunnery school, was a combat experienced air crew gunner, and off he was ordered to the Pacific. To be the gunner on a P-61. Ain't the military bureaucracy grand?
Don flew B-29's afterwards,where his experience was much more relevant. And he was much happier. And the B-29 pilot didn't scream at him with nearly as much vigor (or as much colorful language) as did the P-61 driver. I failed to ask if the Air Force food was better than Swiss victuals. An oversight on my part, but a question for which Don would have had a wry answer.
Don had been in failing health over the past few years. He had gone from being old to being frail as are more and more of my WWII friends. He was on oxygen.
About two weeks ago Don fell and broke his hip. Rushed to the hospital Don was successfully operated on. All pinned up and on the mend Don was cracking wise with the hospital staff. But there was clot from the surgery. It broke loose,went to his heart and killed him.
His funeral service was Tuesday.
One of the members of his POW group led the prayer. He talked about our liberating God. How He liberated Moses and the enslaved Israelites. How He liberated Daniel from the lions' den. Liberated the three Israelites from the fiery furnace, the Israelites from Babylon and Paul and Peter from prison. Liberated Jesus from the grave. Liberated me from the consequences of my sins and my self-purchased first class one-way ticket for an eternal trip to hell.
Seems that the only acceptable currency for the purchase of liberty is blood. For us and our sins, it's the Blood of Jesus. For the luxury and liberty of being able to write, in English, and read this small memorial to Don, in the greatest nation on earth, the currency was and is the blood of soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen.
The blood of Don's brothers-in-arms.
And I feel the emptiness in my chest from missing him already.
So, go out and honor Don and others by fighting for liberty. Don and all those brothers-in-arms of his who risked all their tomorrows so we could have today.
Celebrate what he and millions of others fought and many died for.
Happy 4th of July.
By the way, here is a picture of Don and his air crew. Don is in the back row, third from the right.