Back to Basics

If the nation was not contending with a horrible economy, taking a deep breath of relief after the capping of the BP oil well, and not distracted by other stories in the news, I am sure it would have been riveted by the trial of former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich.

If ever a trial called out to become a Hollywood movie, this one does. At the very least, a book or two should result from it.

Writing this the evening of Monday, August 9th, the jury has been deliberating since the closing arguments on July 27. When the verdict does come in, it will ignite a brief media frenzy, but a hung jury would as well.

The six-woman, six-man jury must grapple with 24 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, extortion, bribery, conspiracy, and false statements leveled against Blago. His brother, Robert, who administered the campaign fund in the last months of 2008, is charged with four counts of wire fraud and extortion.

In essence, however, Blago is charged with trying to “sell” the appointment to the vacated Senate seat of Barack Hussein Obama, elected president in 2008

In closing arguments on July 27, Blago’s defense attorney, Sam Adams Jr., described him as “insecure”, “silly” and “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” His defense strategy was that Blago was too stupid to be guilty of the charges against him.

The jury, however, was made aware that Blago had been an attorney before being elected governor, so one might assume he had some knowledge of the law. Whether he had knowledge of ethics, morals, or other virtues we hope to find in our elected representatives is anyone’s guess.

Since the Civil War ended in the 1860s,  the United States has been subjected to innumerable charges of racism, probably without exception from black non-whites such as Orientals, Hispanics, Indian, etc.

The United States of America, by and large, was founded, settled and grew government based on the very close to one hundred percent population of white émigrés mostly from west and central Europe going back to the early 17th century.  In those days the Indian population could not be counted as citizens due to their isolationist ways.

Still, even now into the early part of the 21st century, white people in the U. S. are probably at least seventy percent of the total population; even including the masses of illegal aliens who pour across our borders due to our federal government’s refusal to maintain enforcement of our laws.  The occupants of our current government are blatantly against our own laws and have chosen to support the corrupt and illegal ways of the Mexican government against their own people.

Which brings me to my point of this writing: Racism in reverse.

Since 2008 when we elected a president who is half white but who claims to be black, the leadership of our country has become, if not black in the color of skin, but in their minds and hearts.  Our half white president has chosen to surround himself with as many black culturally minded people he can find.  One of the most damaging to the United States as we have known it for centuries was the appointment of Eric Holder as our Attorney General.

Eric Holder is probably the most outwardly racist appointment of this very un-American administration.  The online dictionary based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010, defines racism as “a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others” which may have been the case in the early days after the Civil War.

But surely in recent decades this definition of racism has dwindled to a point where even the most flagrant areas of our country no longer practice racist tactics as a common rule.  I suppose that as long as there are people who have thoughts, some of those thoughts may very well be racist.  But white racism as defined in the dictionary above, no longer dwells in the hearts and minds of white Americans.

Despite the DeMarxists headlong rush to oblivion in November, we cannot count on our Republican leadership not to blow it. They need to show something that has been sadly missing thus far, in my opinion… leadership.

To date, they’ve failed in the first big test of whether they have the intestinal fortitude to be the majority in 2011. Elena Kagan should have been stonewalled out the gate. She has zero qualification for the Supreme Court. She’s an Obama creation. A political hack. A statist mouthpiece.

Did the Republican leadership stand as one and say ‘hell no’? Of course not. They went immediately into accommodation mode, giving Kagan all the wiggle room she needed to play cutesy games and not give one substantive answer to any of the really weak-kneed, almost pandering, questions by the committee. They’ve displayed themselves as indecisive and fragmented, when they should show the American Patriots, whose favor they curry, that they can stand for what we believe in.

Conservative opinion was unmistakeably against Elena Kagan’s appointment. We told the leadership from the outset that we wanted her appointment filibustered. There were comments such as ‘Obama deserves his appointments’. Flashback to Lindsey (I’ll go which ever way the wind blows) Gramnesty… and the Sotomayor hearings. As I recall, the nomination proceedings were scarcely under way and Graham was telling her, in front of the open hearing, that she ‘is going to be confirmed’. That’s enough to make a skunk gag. Sotomayor is far to left of anyone on the Court, and Kagan is to the left of her.

Somehow, the Republicans have gotten the idea that if we don’t make nice with the DeMarxist nominees, we can’t get our own through when the time comes. In the Marine Corps we’d call it ‘cowardice in the face of the enemy’. In the case of the so-called Republican leadership, it’s ‘folding before the enemy is engaged’.

I see that John McCain has come to the party late… a little like his new-found religion on illegal amnesty and border security. The point is that if the Republicans can’t show leadership on this, can we trust them to lead? We still remember, all too well, the pathetic Republican performance of the Bush years. It’s one of the reasons incumbents have been dropping like flies. There will be more!

You cannot expect us to get behind an incoherent and fragmented message. We’ve been there and done that. There’s too much at risk this time. We have to stop and derail this DeMarxist rush to tyranny at any cost, and we have to do it now! Here is a golden opportunity for the Republicans to articulate a clear, simple message. We have to return to the Reagan model. The conservative message resonates every time that it’s clearly defined… and every time it’s followed, it’s a success.

Here we go again. I’ve long reported on the danger of illegal alien sanctuary city policies embraced by woefully misguided (at best) and criminally reckless public officials seeking to appease the open borders lobby. One of the countless casualties of this deadly pandering was Houston PD officer Rodney Johnson, who shot and killed during a traffic stop in 2006 by an previously deported illegal alien protected by Houston’s sanctuary law. His widow, Josyln, continues to speak out against continued non-enforcement policies — and she is livid that the Houston police chief will now be joining the Obama administration:

The widow of a Houston police officer killed by an illegal immigrant said Sunday that the policies left in place in her city by a top immigration official in the Obama administration continue to put officers in danger.

That official, former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, is taking a job to oversee partnerships between federal and local officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, during his tenure in Houston he resisted enforcing immigration law and criticized ICE’s key program that draws on local law enforcement’s support. Hurtt is now facing a lawsuit over those policies filed by Joslyn Johnson, whose husband, Rodney, was killed in 2006 by a once-deported illegal immigrant who had been arrested three times.

Joslyn Johnson, herself a sergeant in the Houston force, told Fox News that the policies that kept local officers from checking the immigration status of suspects remain in place and pose a risk to her and her colleagues.

“It has remained the same. It has not changed,” Johnson said.

Johnson is suing to seek a change in policy so that federal immigration databases are widely available to local departments. Johnson’s original court petition — naming Hurtt as well as the city and the police department — claimed that the department’s failure to discover the gunman’s immigration status and report him to federal authorities enabled him to stay “at large” in the country.

These open-borders sympathizers endanger us all — and it will only prompt more of an Arizona-style backlash in other states and cities across the country.

“Illegal alien sanctuary” or rule of law community: It’s your choice.

The Obama administration is under fire for reportedly offering another Senate candidate job for a political favor (AP)

One of the jobs floated by a top White House official to Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, in an attempt to get him out of a primary challenge to an incumbent Democrat, would have paid him $165,300.

The director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency is paid an annual salary at the Executive Level III, according to the Plum Book, the government publication that lists roughly 9,000 appointment positions every four years after a presidential election.

The Office of Personnel Management lists Executive Level III positions as receiving a salary in 2010 of $165,300. A spokesman for the USTDA confirmed this number as the director’s salary.

The USTDA’s director position is a post requiring Senate confirmation.

USTDA has an annual budget of $55 million and 78 employees. The director’s post was one of three government positions that were dangled in front of Romanoff by deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina, according to both Romanoff and the White House.

The other two positions were Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin America and Caribbean at USAID and Director, Office of Democracy and Governance at USAID. Neither of those jobs appeared to be as high-paying as the USTDA position, based on searches of OPM’s website.

Actually, I phrased the title question wrong.

Question: Who the hell is Michael Posner, and why the hell is he apologizing to China?!

Answer: Michael Posner is the former head agitator at the transnationalist Human Rights First, who represents the textbook State Department mindset of pandering to the worst America-bashers without hesitation or shame. Foggy Bottom isn’t just stuck on stupid. It’s stuck on American self-sabotage.

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that Posner had a significant role in the attempted George Soros-ization of Ground Zero in 2005.

Moreover, Discover The Networks reports:

Michael Posner has been the executive director of Human Rights First since its founding in 1978. HRF describes itself as a group that “works in the United States and abroad to create a secure and humane world by advancing justice, human dignity and respect for the rule of law.” In practice, HRF is an open borders group that opposes all government efforts to control illegal immigration and strengthen American national security. Posner received his B.A. in history from the University of Michigan and his J.D. from UC Berkeley; before coming to HRF, he worked for the law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal. He has taught at Yale Law School and is a visiting Lecturer at Columbia Law School.

In September 2009, Posner became a key deputy of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s:

Michael H. Posner
Assistant Secretary
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Term of Appointment: 09/23/2009 to present

Michael H. Posner was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor on September 23, 2009.

Prior to joining State Department, Mr. Posner was the Executive Director and then President of Human Rights First. As its Executive Director he helped the organization earn a reputation for leadership in the areas of refugee protection, advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging crimes against humanity, and combating discrimination. He has been a frequent public commentator on these and other issues, and has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress. In January 2006, Mr. Posner stepped down as Executive Director to become the President of Human Rights First, a position he held until his appointment as Assistant Secretary.

With all that background in mind, open-borders radical Posner’s trashing of Arizona’s immigration law at a meeting in China should come as no surprise. No surprise at all. The “Human Rights First” is to Blame America First. Posner has not disappointed his far Left colleagues in his new governmental position of authority.

A real case of government healthcare…

One of my daughters became pregnant and found to everyone’s surprise she was going to have identical twins.  The news came with mixed emotions as well as difficult decisions.  This was not her first child and she, like many in the family, believes in natural childbirth without medication.  Only her first child was born in a hospital while all the others were born at home with a midwife.

She initially started seeing her midwife for prenatal visits, but when they discovered she was expecting twins the reality of government interference took hold.  The state of Arizona does not allow midwives to knowingly delivery twins, so they had to find a doctor.  They are on the state insurance, which poses it’s own challenges.  However, trying to find a doctor that not only would accept the state insurance but would also deliver twins and accept a patient at 10 weeks became almost an impossible task.  It took her a month to even obtain the booklet of doctors she requested from the state to start her search.  She went through the book and was more often turned down because the doctors no longer accepted the state insurance.  With the help of her midwife and fortunately a state employee willing to help, she was able to obtain the services of a high-risk OB team.

Through the ultrasounds they discovered the babies were identical twins, had separate bags of water but shared one placenta.  This put her in a higher risk category.  At one point during the pregnancy they determined she was experiencing twin-to-twin transfer and was then referred to a specialist.  Because of this the doctors wanted to see her 3 times a week and she underwent regular ultrasounds and non-stress tests.  During her third trimester an ultrasound indicated she actually had two placentas; that there was a division in the placenta that had not previously been noticed; the twins may not be identical.  At that time it was also revealed that she had not actual experienced twin-to-twin transfer, it was only borderline.  With only 4 weeks remaining until her due date the doctor told her she needed to find another doctor because she was now no longer considered high risk!

She took childbirth classes at the hospital she was to deliver at.  She is also a childbirth instructor so these classes were quite unnecessary from a childbirth aspect, but with this unusual pregnancy she wanted to be informed about the hospital, their procedures, as well as the special considerations in delivering twins.

During her regular doctor visits they discussed the expectations of delivery.  This resulted in a difference of opinion from the doctors and expectant parents.  The doctors believed in a medicated birth with a likely outcome of an induced labor as well as a cesarean delivery.  The parents believed in an unmedicated birth, as natural as possible, and only in an emergency to save the mother and/or babies did they want a cesarean.  They created their birth plan and the doctors made their modifications.  They were able to “negotiate” delaying an induction until 38 weeks.

She went in to labor naturally and the first baby came quickly.  They never made it to the hospital.  Labor never stopped and what seemed like a very short time later the second baby was delivered; he was a breech delivery.  Both babies were well and of good size, especially for twins (7 lbs. 14 oz. and 6 lbs. 9 oz.) with the mother and father cooperating during delivery; no one else was present.  This was a Sunday and at this point they did not want to go to the hospital because there was no need.  So they contacted one of their midwifes who came over to make sure mother and babies were okay – everyone was fine.  It also turns out the twins are identical, sharing only one placenta – the latest ultrasounds were wrong!