In my backyard...

From Fox News (full article):

A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades.

Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," at a posh Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.

Sounds like a hoot. To boost registration, might I suggest offering the first 500 to sign up a stylish leather suicide bomber vest from Harrods of Riyadh, and a copy of the hot new bestseller, "72 Pick Up Lines for 72 Virgins."

A Two-fer

Boy. Two Biden gaffes in one day. I must have been a good boy recently.

First, "take a look around."

Then, "we have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt."

I don't know what particular cognative deficiency it is in particular that causes Obama to keep Slow Joe around; all I can say is, I'm profoundly greatful for it.

Still, it does seem just wrong that a man like Biden is allowed to hold an office once occupied by the likes of Adams, Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt.

HOLY FLIPPITY CRUD.

IDB finds that the current healthcare bill the house is currently mulling will make... well, I'll just let them say it:

It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

Full article.

[HT: Bill Dupray]

Crowder on Canadian Medicine

One of my favorite newer pundits, Stephen Crowder, delivers a brilliant on-location report of the Canadian medical system. Originally posted on PJTV.com, and with thanks to the spunky Wendy Sullivan of twitter.com/rightgirl and Brass Balls Radio fame for the youtube link:

This is what awaits us, people.

Big Spender, Big Grifter

So I saw today that Obama is requesting another $12 Billion for some educational program or other. And I realized my first impression was not to care.

Which got me thinking: Is Obama's game plan to ask for so much money, so fast, to fund his socialist ponzi scheme, that we just stop paying attention? Seriously. After a while, discussion of this billion or even that trillion just becomes so much white noise.

Ultimately Obamanomics will fail, because millions of people will realize that their just as broke and unemployed, and their 401(k)'s just as destitute, as they were a week, a month, six months, a year... ago. But in the meantime, he's doing a pretty good job exploiting people's short term memories when it comes to just how fast and how deep he's digging the hole.

Broken Record

Reminded of They Might Be Giants' song, Ana Ng. "Everything sticks like a broken record." Like a broken record, I keep marvelling at my total absence of will to blog. From whence my sluggardliness cometh?

Partially, because of ennui/cynicism. It's easier to be a grumpy old man and sit there and kvetch at the news verbally rather than in print.

Partially, because, I figure, since Obama & Co are doing such a perfectly good job of making complete ass pies of themselves, what's left for me to contribute?

Partially, because in order to adequately describe the absurdity and stupidity that is the Democrat regime, I would have to invent new words, like "absostupidilliness," and I just...eh.

Holder wants to charge Bush administration officials for War Crimes. Sigh.

Holder isn't worthy of picking up a Bush administration official's dry cleaning.

Dems are trying to make an outrage out of this secret CIA program, never instituted, to assasinate Al Queda terrorists. Let me type that again. No, let me cut and paste, for I lack the strength: Dems are trying to make an outrage out of this secret CIA program, never instituted, to assasinate Al Queda terrorists. Set aside for a moment the fact that the only TRUE outrage is that it was never instituted...

I can just see the next blockbuster headline on the NY Times: "Democrats Outraged at Bush Administration Policy of Feeding Starving Orphans."

If there was a way such a headline would provide cover for Pelosi's bony rump, you know they'd run it.

And now, on the heels of cap n' tax, the dems are going to fast track socialized medicine to President Skippy's desk.

I'm just going to stop here.

Self Evident

John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is one of the documents that remains permanently on the (appropriately) right side of my blog. So I won't re quote it.

I will however re quote the final sentence because it gives me chills:

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

What great men signed the Declaration. They knew they were risking their lives, and many lost all in the defense of freedom. As Benjamin Franklin famously said upon signing this great document:

We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately

Ronald Reagan detailed the cost to several of the signers of the declaration in his 1981 Independence Day address [h/t conservapedia]

What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.

John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton.

Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.

But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, 3 million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world.

Praise be to God for such men of courage and altruism. Hopefully I'll spare them more than one thought as I attend parades and barbeques tomorrow.

Happy Independence Day.