Poverty, Mass Murder, and Liberals: A Complete Package

Words evolve. They take on new meaning over the years. Social and political movements appropriate certain words, redefine them, and then use them to shape the ideological battlefield. The classic example of that, of course, is "bolshevik" and "menshevik." The Bolsheviks were, in fact, the Mensheviks and vice-versa. The word bolshevik, derived from the word meaning "majority," was appropriated by the radicals who were in reality the minority of the old Social Democratic party. The minority labeled the majority the minority and got away with it. Clever. There are many other examples of this in history such as the insistence on calling nazis and fascists right-wing when they are clearly left-wing products.

In our once great, still beloved, but evermore daft United States, precisely those who are not liberal, as in broad minded and generous in their attitudes towards others, have appropriated "liberal" as theirs. The political philosophy of this "liberalism" is one which portrays life as a series of problems that needs addressing by the state--the state guided and run, mind you, by the "well-educated liberal elite" produced by our increasingly decrepit "liberal" universities and informed by "liberal" Hollywood and "liberal" Big Media. Modern U.S. liberals are a variant of European social democrats who believe in a big state and mistrust the individual; the big difference being that US liberals have much more power in the world than their European co-religionists ever could hope. They advocate the "positivist" attitude so aptly summed up in the motto emblazoned on the national flag of Brazil, "Ordem e Progresso," so long, of course, as they are in charge of imposing the order and defining the progress. They take positivism's emphasis on rational thought and logic, and its opposition to superstition and fantasy, and turn it on its head into a "science-based" fantasy that somehow just so happens to lead to more power for them and their state. Global climate change is one sterling example of how liberals have taken a legitimate scientific-based concern over pollution, and turned it into a monumental hoax, known as Manmade Climate Change. That hoax somehow, just somehow ends up demanding more money and power for--guess who?--the liberals and their state. As we will discuss, this philosophy comprises followers who proclaim a great love for humanity while in practice exhibiting a great hatred for people.

Sorry for the long-winded intro, but it brings us to today's topic, for which I provide the following bumper sticker, "Liberals love humanity and hate people." Oh, and by the way, liberals will get you killed. Yes, killed. Modern liberalism kills people, and does so by the millions, all in the name of humanity, of course. It should have a warning label that asks you not to practice liberalism at home, or something along the lines of "I am a trained professional, do not attempt liberalism on your own."

Liberals hate all sorts of people but their special, most lethal hatred is reserved for the poor and the "uneducated." They kill the poor by the bushel, by the ton, by the hectare . . . they kill them at home and abroad. No poor person is safe from the lethal loving embrace of the liberals.

So many examples, it's hard to know where to begin. I don't pretend to provide an exhaustive account of liberal mayhem, just a glimpse at the tip of the iceberg. So, where do we start? How about with DDT? This extremely useful pesticide was virtually banned around the globe for decades because of the bogus writings of Rachel Carson, the lesbian biological mother of today's whacky environmental movement. The ban on DDT, ostensibly to save birds, puppies, and other wonderful warm things, resulted in the deaths of millions of poor persons around the globe from malaria and dengue, which came soaring back on the wings of now safe mosquitos. This tradition of sacrificing the poor on the altar of Gaia continues to this day.  The insistence on the global warming hoax, long after the "science" has been shown to be false, perpetuates policies, e.g., ethanol in gasoline, opposition to domestic drilling and nuclear energy, that increases the cost of living, promotes food shortages, stifles employment, and, yes, leads to death. The opposition to cheap energy and food, the zoning restrictions in upperclass neighborhoods, all under the guise of protecting the environment, take direct aim at the lives and welfare of the poor. Liberals kill.

Liberal welfare policies create havoc throughout our society. What slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, and racial discrimination could not do, liberal polices have done, to wit, destroy the black family and turn millions of blacks into permanent wards of the state and of the liberal political machines that control most of our cities. Liberal immigration policies, beginning with the disastrous 1965 Kennedy-Johnson immigration law, insure a constant stream of poor third world immigrants, altering irrevocably the nature of our society and ensuring that the struggling black (and white) American poor cannot compete with the ultra-poor pouring in from Mexico, El Salvador, Bangladesh, and so on. Liberal minimum wage laws ensure the disappearance of the starter jobs, once a platform for the poor to spring out of poverty. All of these people, the old poor and the newly arriving poor, need, of course, social programs and more and more government help. The liberal political machine dispenses jobs and money, and the productive sectors face rising taxes, a labyrinth of regulations, and the constant presence of "helpful" government regulators and enforcers. Let the poverty and misery spread!

Liberal gun control policies also target the poor. The poor in our cities must live with the drug dealers, gang bangers, and the other hoods in the hood. The comfortable liberals live in secure high-rises, and tony suburbs well protected by overpaid and over equipped police and fire departments and expensive security firms. The poor must put up with the inability to defend themselves; they must allow themselves to be murdered in the name of ridding America of gun violence.

Likewise liberal education policies deny the poor the right to choose the schools their children will attend. Instead an alliance of politicians and teacher unions keeps the poor trapped in failing and unsafe schools, while the wealthy liberals, well, you know what they do, and it isn't to send their own kids to those schools.

The examples are endless. From the liberal refusal to allow us to become energy independent, the liberal refusal to see what Islam does everywhere it takes root, and the liberals' seemingly endless assault on the family, everywhere we look we see the death and destruction that modern liberalism brings to our shores and promotes overseas.

To speak out on this is to risk being labeled a racist and hate-monger. To fail to speak out, however, means being complicit to some of the greatest crimes on the planet: the crimes of the liberals.

The Boston Bombing: The Nonsense Grows, or Let's Call the Elephant a Poodle

We all knew it would come. It had been there all along. Of what do I speak? You already know: the continuing liberal desire to live in a fantasy world, one scripted by Hollywood hacks, and sustained by the soothing hallucinogenic teas brewed by academia and the media.

We see that our Canadian friends have arrested a couple of--Surprise!--Muslim loons apparently plotting to blow up the New York to Montreal train. The preliminary information shows a possible AQ involvement and a link back to Iran.

This possible link to Iran, of course, has the liberal "experts" in an uproar. There are many stories and comments out there, denying or minimizing that possibility, this is one--there are many others.  The comment boards are full of pontificating libs pointing out to us Neanderthal conservatives that AQ is Sunni and Iran is Shia and "They hate each other! Positively hate each other! No way would they work together!"

Rubbish.

There is a long history of AQ taking refuge in Iran and operating from there. Sunnis and Shias are quite able to kill each other and to work together to kill us. They work together in "Palestine" against Israel, they work together in Latin America raising money, and they both love killing westerners all over the world.

The libs who argue that such Sunni-Shia cooperation is not possible also would have seen it as impossible for the racist Imperial Japanese and the racist Nazi German regimes to cooperate, or for the Communist Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany to do so. Franco's Spain and Castro's Cuba also had excellent economic and diplomatic relations. Let us also not forget, for example, that the Communists in France cooperated with the Nazi occupiers by turning in non-Communist members of the Resistance. These things happen.

The world of politics and political religion does not always keep to the Hollywood script.

The elephant in the room continues to be Islam, whether of the Sunni or the Shia variety. Both major branches are intolerant and violent; both advocate death and destruction and promote ignorance. They both hate the West.

Paying Our Executioners, or You Can't Spell Massachusetts without Ass

Well, well, well. How about that? It appears that our own New England is not too different in some ways from the Olde England of kings, queens, knights, unicorns, and dragons. Information is gradually, reluctantly emerging about the Mad Muslim Bros of Boston, and it gives further support to the wise old saying, "You can't spell Massachusetts without 'ass'."

Our tolerant, liberal, and inclusive system was providing these clowns (their name, I will never write) with welfare. I guess that answers one of my early questions about how these creeps supported themselves. The older one, of course, had his idiot convert wife working 80 hours a week while he sat home and collected his, yep, welfare checks. The younger murderer got his citizenship, a scholarship and welfare. Yes, just as in the olden times when you gave your executioner a gold coin to encourage him to make a swift and painless job of the beheading, it seems we pay our executioners. Even more interesting is that these cretins' scumbag parents were also collecting, even though they did not live in the USA.

All this makes you feel warm and tingly about our immigration policies, right? Let's have more immigrants like these for the sake of diversity! Yes, indeed. If some hard-working, creative Scots, Germans, Irish, Italians, Japanese, Scandinavians, or English want to come here, no way! Let's get more of these murdering Muslim Bozos! Do it for diversity!

I know that what I write next will be misunderstood, but here goes.

I am starting to smell a Fast and Furious rat. By that I do not mean, repeat, do not mean that the FBI or any other US agency sent the Boston bros out to bomb the marathon. On the basis of just experience, and I emphasize that I have no direct knowledge of this case, I am starting to suspect that the older murderer had been recruited by the FBI to infiltrate Islamist cells. Little bits of information that are coming out are starting to convince me of that:

--The mystery of how the brothers got visas. On what basis were they admitted?

--The Russians warned us about the older pig, but we "ignored" it.

--That older assassin traveled to Russia and stayed there for six months. How did he pay for that? Was it just welfare money, or was there other government money involved? Did anybody interview him after he returned? The dirtbag mother claims that the FBI talked to big boy several times: might she be telling the truth here? Did the Russians provide us any information on his activities in Russia?

--The quickness with which the murderers were identified indicates to me, at least, that the FBI had their pictures in the system, and that some FBI agent might have had an "OMG!" moment when the killers' faces emerged. I can imagine that conversation, "Hey Harry. Isn't that the guy you recruited? You know, that Dagestani or whatever guy in Watertown, sure looks like him."

As I said above, I have no hard evidence for what I am writing. I am speculating, but doing so on the basis of many years of working on drug and terror-related issues. This has many of the features of a recruitment gone bad; of the FBI getting played by a psychopathic true believer. This might be a useful line of inquiry . . . you know, for the same people who cleared up Fast and Furious and Benghazi.

Meanwhile, let's keep paying our executioners.

Earth Day: Rededicate Yourself to the Fight Against Gaia

I almost forgot it was Earth Day.

I usually take advantage of this Magnificent Day to remind one and all that for all the fawning and gushing over the Earth by certain folks, the Earth is out to kill you. Mother Nature is homicidal. Don't believe me? Go for a trek across Death Valley in July; go for a walk in the Himalayas without a coat; go swim with the Great Whites; sail on the Titanic, etc.

Mother Nature, our beloved Earth Goddess Gaia, is a mass murderer.

The history of civilization is in great part the story of man's fight against Gaia. Those societies most successful in holding back the Evil Goddess are the most successful, period. We build houses, invent medicine, wear clothes, run heaters and air conditioners, and fly rescue choppers in our never-ending battle against Gaia.

Remember that the next time one of your tree hugging friends blathers on about Earth Day.

Boston Bizarre

I am livid about events this past week in Boston.  In fact, I am spitting mad.

Let me start with law enforcement. OK, OK, lots of praise out there for the law enforcement agencies that nailed the two SURPRISE Muslim terrorists who killed and maimed innocent people for no reason at all, except one -- and we will get to that one. Praise? Yes, I praise the FBI for their amazing forensic abilities. I have worked with the FBI on bombings before in Indonesia, South Asia, and Central America and they are outstanding at going through a bomb blast site, collecting evidence and making good use of it. If the full force of the FBI is unleashed on you, you will not get away. No other police or intel agency in the world can match the FBI on that score. I had no doubt that once the FBI got fully mobilized the Boston bombers would get nailed. The other law enforcement? I don't know. I lived three years in Boston and the cops there never impressed me as particularly smart, well-trained, and professional. Maybe, however, they were brilliant this time round. I withhold judgment.

The problem in Boston is Boston and the mentality that it so ably represents. This is perhaps the most tolerant, liberal, and accepting city in the world. It is a solidly Democrat voting bloc. The people, with the exception of the Chinese student, killed and maimed in the blast were almost certainly solid, tolerant, liberals who hate George Bush and swoon over Obama. Bomb blasts are what they got in return for their kindness, tolerance, and embracing of diversity.  I am also troubled by the sight of some one million-plus persons cowering like weak Eloi in their homes, businesses shut, transportation systems on ice, while ONE mad Muslim Morlock runs amok. Somehow I don't see that scenario playing out in, say, Dallas, or Tucson, or, well, you get the idea. What we saw in Boston with the Mad Muslim brothers gang was not exactly a replay of the reception accorded the James brothers gang in Northfield.

Next of course we have the media. OK, we all know they get things wrong: it is understood that there is confusion, the cops don't give out all the information, etc. But even simple things are still unclear. From where exactly are these two brothers? Not clear. How did they support themselves? Not clear. How did they get visas? Not clear. If a "foreign government" already had warned us about the older clown, and he had an arrest for domestic violence, how was he not deported? Why was he allowed to become a US citizen? Not clear. Did they arrive as asylum seekers? Not clear, especially since the father still lives in Russia and the mother, a shoplifter, seems to have disappeared and likely gone back. The younger clown either arrived a "year ago" or did his high school in the States. Which is it? Not clear. They had no friends or they had lots of them? Not clear. When did they become Mad Muslim Bombers? Who indoctrinated them? And on and on.

What we have is not only the standard confusion and expected media incompetence, what we have in addition is that everything gets run through an ideological, political correctness filter that limits inquiry and puts certain topics out of bounds.

Let's target the big elephant, the one reason people died and were maimed, Islam. When are we going to learn that we get nothing good by allowing thousands upon thousands of Muslim immigrants into the US, immigrants imbued with a political ideology that espouses hatred for us? We need to treat Islam today as we treated Communism and Nazism in the past, to wit, as a hostile ideology that advocates the overthrow of our government and destruction of our way of life. Period. All religions have their absurdities and contradictions and other foibles. Islam, however, at its very core is a belief system that preaches hatred for non-Muslims, disregard for their suffering, and demands that Islam be recognized, by force if needed, as the one and only faith. Islam is a deranged way of viewing the world. It detests intellectual inquiry; sees women as no better than cows; and advocates violence, yes, violence. It is not a religion of peace. You can be a good person or be a Nazi; you can be a good person or be a Communist; and, sad to say, you can be a good person or be a Muslim. It is a choice. I repeat, you cannot be both.

If Muslims object to this characterization then THEY must do something about it. Not just the perfunctory statements after these events to the effect that "Islam is about peace." No. The Muslim communities in London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, New York, Boston, Detroit, etc, must stand up and unequivocally denounce the preachers of hate, turn in those who practice it, and make clear that they have no place in those communities. The advocates of terror must be denounced, arrested, jailed, deported, shunned, etc. Until Muslims in the West do that, then we must treat them with suspicion and as potential enemies of the nation just as we did Communists and Nazis.

A Thought or Two on Bombings, Conservatives, Bill Ayers, and the "Victory" on Guns

Just a quick note as I prepare for a few days of travel.

Strikes me that whenever we have an incident of the sort that struck our fellow citizens in Boston, conservatives should immediately raise a hue-and-cry and demand that the police and other authorities check on the whereabouts and alibi of Obama's friend Bill Ayers.

Where was Bill Ayers during the Boston Marathon? I would hope that conservatives would immediately insist on asking where Ayers was and, at a minimum, what he thinks about the bombing.

Re the Senate vote that shot down the silly and ultimately destructive gun legislation amendment being proposed by Toomey and Manchin. Glad to see that it did not get the required 60 votes, but sad to see that we have to accept as a victory one in which the majority of Senators voted to violate at least the spirit if not the letter of the Second Amendment. Anybody surprised that McCain voted for it? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

I hope this will kill the rest of the gun legislation now before the Senate.

Troubling how our basic freedoms can hang on the votes of a handful of legislators. I hope voters next year will remember which ones voted to encroach on our freedoms.

Boston

I was writing about something else when the news of the attack in Boston came through.  We should all be cautious when commenting about these things as, inevitably, the first reports have a high degree of inaccuracy. I won't comment on the event itself, except to say I hope the perpetrators are caught and spend an eternity in hell.

I am troubled by some of the comments being made by senior officials. I understand the need to avoid a rush to judgment and caution is understandable and welcome. That, however, does not excuse the nonsense being said, for example, by Axelrod clearly trying to link the attack in people's minds to conservative opposition to federal taxes.

I am also surprised bothered by how quickly a host of officials, including the woeful Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, come rushing out to say there is "no evidence of a broader plot." This is the same sort of nonsense said about that creepy Islamist Fort Hood shooter and about the DC sniper. In my view, in neither of those cases did authorities fully explore the possibilities of much "broader plots." Why the hurry to say there was no "broader plot?" We all know "broader plots" get hatched every day all over the world in fetid little caves in SW Asia, in London and Parisian slums, and among foreign students here in the United States, just to name a few "broader plots" from the recent past. Why say such a thing? Is that supposed to give comfort to the public? It's stupid. Just say all possibilities are being explored.

We don't KNOW who did this, but I think most of us have a pretty good idea. Boston is the home of political correctness so we can expect a torrent of it, but others should be a little more circumspect not only in assigning blame but in ruling out where blame should go.

I hope the injured make a full recovery and, as I said, the perpetrators, regardless of who they are, get the justice they so richly deserve.

Those favoring "strict gun control" should note that the murderers here used no "assault weapon" in the attack, and that a host of local, state, and federal laws strictly prohibit building and using bombs. How'd those work out?

BTW, the attack seems eerily reminiscent of the bomb plot in the dark British "comedy" The Four Lions.

The World's Stupidest Newspaper: The Guardian

Just a quick one. I am wrapping up my taxes, and giving Obama his taste of my earnings.

On a break, I happened to peruse the British Guardian, and a result of this commentary on North Korea, I, hereby, and formally declare The Guardian and its writers the stooooopidest newspaper on earth. Sorry New York Times, even you cannot match this level of stupidity.

I love this line,

"the American involvement in using North Korea as a pawn in their Cold War jousting with Soviet Russia means that the Kims have been caricatured an enemy to use for propaganda purposes." 

I see . . . . and the best one, 

"the fact that most North Koreans seemed to have little problem with the style of leadership. So when we make fun of the craziness of Kim Jong-un, we're making fun of an entire belief system and culture, which is racism at its facile best."

Read it for yourselves. Hard to fathom a journalist could be such an idiot . . . or is it?

Ah, Yes . . . Nork Nukes and Obama

Well, well, well.

How the shoe gets on the other foot.

According to the Christian Science Monitor (h/t Drudge) it appears that the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has concluded that the repellent North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un has the ability to put nuclear warheads on a missile. The DIA, of course, also had concluded, along with the CIA and just about every other intelligence agency in the world, that the repellent Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons.

Given how George Bush was vilified for having "lied" to us all about Saddam's weapons, can we assume that the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, Hollywood, etc., will now begin to vilify Obama for the same Big Lie about Little Kim?

The situation on the Korean peninsula presents so many ironies that it is hard to list them all. For one, we will now see how Obama and Kerry deal with a "nuclear threat." We will also see that they must rely precisely on the weapon systems that they both so long opposed to defend us from Little Kim's Big Bomb.

This should be fascinating.

I await the Michael Moore movie.

Another Great One Leaves the Scene: Margaret Thatcher, RIP

It is hard to write about Margaret Thatcher. Her accomplishments were so many and so truly stunning that one can only stand in awe. All of us who appreciate the values of Western civilization and the need for a strong US-UK alliance are forever in her debt. She, Pope John Paul II, and President Reagan brought freedom to millions oppressed behind the Iron Curtain. In addition, she and Reagan fought a valiant effort to hold back the tide of socialism and dependency in the West. Her skepticism about the monster known as the EU has proven accurate. She knew what she was about.

I wonder how many of our "highly educated" university students have more than a vague knowledge of Thatcher. I am sure they know more about nonentity feminists such as Germaine Greer, Mina Loy, and a host of dopey Hollywood celebs. Margaret Thatcher, an ardent follower of the Friedrich Hayek/ Milton Friedman message of economic freedom, burst onto the international scene at one of the lowest points for the West since the days of Munich. The late 1970s were very distressing years for those of us who believed in freedom, were horrified by the unopposed spread of Soviet influence, and could not understand why our politicians failed to address how the economic situation had become so dire. The Britain that she inherited was little more than an offshore slum of Europe. Its international prestige was in the dumpster, and at home some of the most rabid labor unions imaginable were driving what was left of the economy into that same container.

To an outsider, it appeared that that single most admirable thing about Britain, its spirit, was a broken thing of the past. Not to Maggie. She gave her nation a shot of adrenaline; she refused to accept the "inevitability" of British and Western decline. At home she revitalized the economy and broke the mad unions' grip on power. Abroad she held the fort until the cavalry could arrive in the shape of Ronald Reagan who finally rid us of the calamitous Carter, a man who encapsulated everything wrong about that era. Was she perfect? No. I appreciate the pressure she was under but still think her dead wrong in her opposition to the US liberation of Grenada: for that one and only time Reagan and she had a serious miscommunication, one which in the hands of lesser mortals could have put an end to the unique relationship between the two leaders. The liberation of Grenada was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. She and Reagan mishandled it, much as Eisenhower and Eden had mishandled the Suez Crisis. They, however, turned it around; she and Reagan got back on the same game plan, and the US and the UK formed a helluva team that put an end to the Soviet nightmare.

Her intelligence, patriotism, devotion to Western civilization, and her sense of humor will be sorely missed. A tough act to follow. An act, in fact, that has not been followed.

RIP Margaret Thatcher.

A Little Off the Normal Topic: The Arrogance of Credit Reporting Agencies

In a foul, foul mood. I am doing my federal income taxes, and that does not make me happy. I always stall until almost the last minute and then get caught up trying to find this and that document before the dreaded deadline arrives. Anyhow, I will get around to it . . . I think, I hope, maybe . . . federal prisoners get internet access, don't they? Either way, then, I will still be blogging.

Doing my taxes coincided with the end of a two year battle to get the Big Three Credit Reporting Agencies here in the USA to correct an error on my credit report. First, I had to have an eight-month battle with the state of California, which, thanks to a mistake by the State Department payroll office, had for two years listed me as a resident of California when, in fact, I was a resident of Florida. This happened while I was overseas, and I failed to catch the CA vs. FL mistake. When I returned to the States, I went to live in Virginia, and paid their income and property taxes--which, I would note, ain't cheap. After my forced retirement by the Obamistas, I returned to Florida where I found a letter waiting for me from the California Franchise Tax Board telling me I owed many, many thousands of dollars for NOW some four years of California income taxes. I nearly had an attack of the vapors.

My battle with the CFTB is the stuff of legend. Not even the Norse Sagas can compare! Grendel and her mommy were nothing! Goliath, bah! St. George and his dragon? I laugh heartily! The battle went on for months while I tried to prove to the CFTB that I had not lived in California, had paid taxes in Virginia for two years, and that prior to that I had my home in Florida as my residence, and--Horrors!-- Florida does not have an income tax. The CFTB minions could not understand the concept of a state not having an income tax; they kept asking me for my Florida income tax returns. I sent them property tax receipts, copies of my homestead exemption, my Florida car registration, concealed carry permit, driving license, in-state tuition receipts for my kids' colleges. All went zooming over their heads until I got a very competent California-based CPA who scared them straight. The CFTB relented and sent me a letter saying the tax lien was lifted and, subsequently, sent me another letter saying the lien had been placed in error.

A tax lien is a terrible thing to have on your credit report. My credit score went from flying with the angels to digging with the earthworms. Ever tried to get one of three big credit agencies to correct an entry? Horrors await you. Transunion and Equifax were relatively easy; it took me only four to six months to get them to correct the entry in my credit report.

Dealing with Experian, however, was a Kafkaesque nightmare. Months of writing letters, sending emails, going to their website, only to be referred to their phone number which no human would answer, just a recording referring me back to their website. The sales pitch was amazing. I had to subscribe to their service before they would even deign to examine my credit report. I had to have a credit report file number which, they said, I could only get by becoming a subscriber.

I did my research and found that they were lying. The internet is full of websites dedicated to Experian and its highhandedness. I, fortunately, found on one such site, a phone number which Experian does not publicize. After much insistence and shouting "Agent! Agent!" I got a very rude human whose first question was, "Where did you get this phone number?" She tried to refer me back to the website which I refused to allow. She eventually gave me a PO Box in Allen, Texas to which I should send all my "evidence." She told me exactly what the letter should contain. I did as told, providing the exact book and page numbers in the Sacramento County Registrar office where the CFTM acknowledged that the lien was in error. I even sent copies of the letters from the CFTB. Five weeks later I got back one of the stupidest, most poorly written letters I ever have received. The crack investigators at Experian had "determined" that the letter I had sent, at their request, mind you, had not been sent by me; they declined to proceed any further and closed my case, letting the erroneous information stand.

Folks, I spent nearly 35 years in bureaucracy. I know what a letter like that means. It means, it's almost five o'clock on a Friday, and I can't be bothered to look into some complaint from a guy in Florida who is not even a subscriber to our service. I contacted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) where a nice but clueless young man told me that the FTC had lots of complaints about Experian, and that I should send my "story" to the FTC. The FTC would not, however, do anything; they were just collecting statistical data. Right. I am going to waste my time doing that.

I called the Secret Bat Number at Experian, again, and had an even tougher time this go round getting somebody to talk to me. I demanded to know how their investigators had determined that the letter I had sent at Experian's request, with all the information and supporting evidence requested by Experian, had, in fact, not been sent by me. The rather rude woman on the other end of the line, said it was because, "You used a third party company in your effort to repair your credit score." My reply was, "You are making that up. There was no third party company, and you know it." She tried, once again, to sell me a subscription to their service. I refused and said, "You are costing me the ability to buy a house. You fix this, or I will file a lawsuit." I did not know at the time that, apparently, if you say you are trying to buy something and an erroneous credit score is preventing that, they have to act, including giving you a file number. She took all my information, trying repeatedly to get me to send it all again to the address in Allen, Texas--I refused--and warning me, "We can't correct something just because you say so." I kept my temper, gave her all the information on the Sacramento County Recorder, and had to listen to her tell me it would take 45 to 60 days for them to get back to me.

Two weeks later, I got an email deleting the lien info and restoring my score to its former stratospheric heights. The whole thing left me with a very bad taste in my mouth, and an unease over how we have allowed remote, arrogant, and, above all, anonymous bureaucrats, whether in government or large corporations, to have so much power over our lives.

OK, OK. Therapy session is over, I feel better now. Back to politics . . .

Pizza in Geneva, Korea, and the Cost of Unfinished Business

Many years ago working in Geneva, Switzerland, my colleagues and I would put in very long hours and come out of the office much after stores and restaurants in that pleasant but deadly dull town had closed. At least back in those days, "downtown" Geneva had only one place to eat after a certain hour, the railway station. That station had a dark and depressing pizzeria owned by Swiss-Italians and run by Arabs that stayed open late. There we learned that regardless of who invented pizza, the only place to get a decent one was the USA. Made in a wood-fired stove, the pizzas produced in la gare de Genève were expensive, tiny, thin horrid affairs, burned on the bottom and uncooked on top. They were essentially cheese and tomato on charcoal. You had to be pretty hungry to chomp down on that. We were, hence, we gagged, complained, paid, and, yes, returned night after night.

The memory of that pizza in Geneva leads me to today's topic: the situation in and around the Korean peninsula.

Modern liberal democracies have a disturbing tendency to leave matters unresolved, especially when it comes to international conflict. We start projects, and never quite finish them. We engage in half measures, much like that burned and uncooked pizza in Geneva all those years ago. Shifting metaphors, and getting into something more manly man than bad pizza, we act like a hunter who decides to go out just to wound the bear. This strategy seems to pass among the "best and brightest" as a model of sophistication and subtlety. Just about any hunter, however, can assure you that it is not a wise or even a good tactic.

We are all familiar with the Vietnam experience where in General Douglas MacArthur's immortal words we asked out troops "to die for a tie." Despite the restrictions on the use of our power, the political meddling by the "best and brightest," the misreporting by the US and international media, and the actions of certain "winter soldiers," the US military won a stunning victory against the communists in Vietnam. The much-ballyhooed Tet offensive, for example, proved the end of the Viet Cong as an effective force and demonstrated conclusively that the North Vietnamese army could not stand up to the US military in head on combat. The US Marines' successful battle to save Hue from the North Vietnamese army is as heroic and stirring a feat of arms as any battle one can care to name. That overwhelming communist defeat and triumph by the US military was horribly misreported, deliberately twisted, and used to convince us that we could not win the war. And the rest is history.

If only Vietnam were the only example of the results of half-measures and deliberate sabotage. Readers can come up with any number of other examples such as Woodrow Wilson's imbecilic handling of the putative end of World War I, the Berlin Airlift, the Bay of Pigs and the subsequent half-measures used against the evil Castro regime, etc. Most examples of American foreign policy half-measures come from Democratic presidents. Most, that is, but not all. President Bush's (41) handling of the first Gulf War led inexorably to the second Gulf War as much as did Wilson's handling of the "end" of WWI lead us into WWII. The Reagan administration's failure to act decisively against the Sandinista gangsters left a horrible legacy in Central America which continues to haunt us. It produced the worst of all possible worlds: the negative blow-back for being interventionist without the benefits of victory over a vile regime that has helped destabilize the region.

The, however, truly stunning example of half-measures and unfinished business coming back to bite us is the Korean War. We, once again, see the consequences as Kim Jong-Un, a gangnam-style Pillsbury doughboy with a bad haircut, threatens to rain nuclear weapons on our Pacific bases and even our cities. Little Kim is the dictator of a decrepit country of zero importance to the world. This repellent little communist monarchy stands across the DMZ from the Republic of Korea, one of the truly great political, economic, and social success stories of the past seventy years. North Korea's leaders, however mad and absurd they might appear, know how to play with Western reluctance to apply total solutions. They look at the current leadership in Washington, and what do they see? The most anti-military President, Secretary of State AND Secretary of Defense in our history, i.e., the Three Stooges of the Apocalypse. They see us babbling about nonsense, and openly vowing to destroy our own military in order to provide free stuff to people who vote for Obama. We have a pompous, lying, rich boy, blowhard as Secretary of State who vows to do "whatever is necessary"( Note: In a style reminiscent of "Genghis Khan," eh?) but who has a record of opposing whatever is necessary, and has committed public acts of treason. We have the irony of having the very liberal Democrats who so opposed anti-missile defenses now being forced to move into place those very systems they sought to abort. The same bunker buster bombs which the Democrats opposed developing are being loaded into B-2s and would play a critical role in case of war against North Korea. The military which the Democrats have for years sought to cut and make into a playground for their social experiments now stands as the defense for Los Angeles, and other Democratic-governed urban centers. The ironies go on and on.

This is what happens when you go hunting to wound the bear.

WLA

I have Decided to Become a Liberal Democrat

I have decided to abandon being a libertarian with an asterisk.

I am now converting fully, wholeheartedly with no aims of deception or evasion to the creed of Liberal Democrat (LD). My new heroes are Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Sean Penn, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Streisand, and Cher.

I realize that I have spent my life in futility, in an evil, pointless battle against LDism.

I repent my false beliefs. I want the benefits that come with being an LD follower. My life has not many years left to run, so I can cash in now and let somebody else pay after I am gone. I am now a Democrat, a Liberal Democrat. I want free things, many, many free things.

I hope you continue to read my blog and appreciate the nature of the gut-wrenching soul searching that went into this conversion.

Thank you, and please note the date. I propose that from now on April 1 be renamed Liberal Democrat Day.