Yes, if he discovers France ever mistreated Kenya and/or his paternal relatives.

The British tried to kill George Washington and did kill thousands of Americans’ great grandfathers during the Revolution. They sacked the White House and Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. Yet, the United States saw fit to let bygones be bygones in order to join hands with the United Kingdom to defeat the Kaiser, Nazism, Communism and al Qaida after 911.

That’s not good enough for America’s 44th President:

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government’s art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush’s tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

America long ago reconciled with Britain, Germany, Japan and Vietnam. But America’s diplomacy with our greatest ally on Earth is snubbed by the latest natural born citizen to be Commander-on-Chief on behalf of Kenya?

Diplomats were at first reluctant to discuss the whereabouts of the Churchill bronze, after its ejection from the seat of American power. But the British Embassy in Washington has now confirmed that it sits in the palatial residence of ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald, just down the road from Vice President Joe Biden’s official residence. It is not clear whether the ambassador plans to keep it in Washington or send it back to London.

American politicians have made quoting Churchill, whose mother was American, something of an art form, but not Mr Obama, who prefers to cite the words and works of his hero Abraham Lincoln. Indeed a bust of Mr Lincoln now sits in the Oval Office where Epstein’s Churchill once ruled the roost.

Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill’s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President’s grandfather.

Want to understand the foreign policy of the United States in the Naughts of the 21st Century? Educate yourself on the grievances of the African home of Olympic marathoners and the Marxist dreams of Barack’s dad.

No matter that Churchill stood alone against the Nazis before Pearl? Oral history has it that an Obama was once tortured by English soldiers.

With liberals its all personal. No matter if someone else’s gramps was killed. If MY foreign pappy was harmed, then alliances for the country I lead are shaky.

Sounds like a Duke-Duchess European feud that could lead to a war of roses despite the fact that Britain has been our greatest ally for a century and more?. But since Iran has never harmed a hair on the head of a Kenyan Obama, not only would gifts of Ayatollah busts be kept, we’ll trash America for making you resort to hostage taking and more for the past 30 years in our first press conference.

This is what we elected.

God help us.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Prior to this past weekend I had always considered home ownership to be the essence of the American dream. (Apologies for the length of this essay.)

No longer.

That was before I was shaken to my core by a prominent conservative blogger’s proposal on a radio show that the government mail $10,000 checks to families of four and criticism of the conservative-galvanizing rant against Obama’s mortgage bailout plan by CNBC’s Rick Santelli.

I now see a clear and present danger of an American nightmare in which we lose not only our houses, but even the sweet land of liberty upon which houses can be built. Obama and the dems are dangerous, but an even greater danger would be if conservatives lose their nerve.

The $10K check proposal was inspired by revulsion for the bank bailouts; despair for families and small businesses that still can’t get credit; despair for small businesses put out of work by the recession and despair for those that face foreclosure due to recession related loss of income, with the amount of the checks derived by dividing the $800B amount of the bank bailout by 300 million Americans. The logic being that “if we are going to bail out the banks that caused this, we might as well stimulate a consumer economy and give help people stay in their homes.”

But it was obvious that this respected conservative was animated in his fury against the banks by Santelli’s use of the word “loser” and a false assumption that Santelli had reserved his angry opposition to bailouts for distressed mortgage borrowers instead of banks. It turns out that Santelli has been consistent in his rants, but that only the former garnered wide publicity outside CNBC.

I agree that Santelli’s use of the word “loser” is a poor one, though technically correct in that he refers to those that are “losing” their homes, but that what is significant is why his rant resonated so strongly with so many Americans:

Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?

TRADER ON FLOOR: That’s a novel idea.

…

SANTELLI: No they’re not, Joe. They’re not like putty in our hands. This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand.

(Booing)

President Obama, are you listening?

TRADER: How ’bout we all stop paying our mortgage? It’s a moral hazard.

…

SANTELLI: We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.

Of course, many people facing foreclosure in this crisis are identical to people that have lost homes since the first home loan centuries ago. They lost their job due to no “fault” of their own. If a government program to abrogate mortgage contracts to prevent foreclosures was appropriate, certainly the best argument would be that we help those without fault. But that has never been advanced as a reason for such a program and isn’t a prominent reason for the Obama plan.

No, the main reason advanced for granting a civil right to stay in homes to a special class of borrowers from 2003-2007 is that the “collateral damage” is unacceptable. Yes, there is also the claim that so many borrowers were duped by “predatory lenders” (an insult to the intelligence of average Americans), but surely that moral claim is inferior to the one that could be made for the newly unemployed. Remember, this crisis began before a great rise in unemployment. We are also told that millions would be rendered homeless, but given they weren’t homeless before and the fact of available rental apartments, we dismiss that as a lunatic scare tactic.

The collateral damage we are invited to fear is the effect of so many foreclosures on the banks and on the values of the property of their neighbors. Even Charles Krauthammer has bought into the latter argument despite his earlier recognition that recovery cannot begin until a “floor” in housing prices is reached.

The Obama plan repeats the Fannie/Freddie policies that caused the bust in the first place by keeping people in homes they can’t afford and trying to prevent further drops in prices.

We were told that Banks were too big to fail and now some conservatives consider the rest of us too little to fail?

This gets to the crux of the “foreclosing of the American mind” but first let me be fair to my conservative friend’s reasoning and be brutally honest about my underlying fears concerning the nerves of the American people in this crisis.

I wrote “A Hard Time vs. Hard Times” last year during the credit crisis and suggested that no matter who was elected, Americans would face a test of character because even if the government implemented perfect supply side and bank stabilization policies we faced a hard time for a year or so due to the natural consequences of the loss of wealth and lack of savings. We would face long, hard times if we fail the test of character.

Now, let me address the arguments for the $10K check proposal that this is a unique situation from normal recession cycles and that since we are a consumer driven economy that we should stimulate consumption in this way.

I would concede that there are unique aspects to this crisis of government policy failures, but that the cause of same does not suspend the rules of human nature re debt and savings and that therefore, time is required to solve the matter, along with correct policies. People will have to save money before they are comfortable taking risks on spending and investing. Government policies forcing banks to eat their loans will deter future lending. And if writing checks to people would solve the matter, then the USSR would have been Shangri La.

Throwing money at the problem to relieve all present suffering and hoping it reduces the length of the recession, when time for healing is baked in the cake, only exacerbates the problem; lengthens the recession; increases the danger of inflation; and threatens to foreclose the American mind.

Included in “all present suffering” is the holocaust of having to move and rent; the calamity of living in an owned home with less equity; and the deluge of consuming less goods.

I am reminded of the reactions to Katrina here and abroad. Foreigners marvelled at how few died and how little suffering was had due to rescue efforts and our government safety net. Too many Americans saw a reporter on camera with a refugee within 24 hours and concluded that since Shepherd Smith was there surely Bush should be there with manna from heaven to prevent more than 5 minutes of suffering and all refugees in the Waldorf-Astoria watching cable before midnight.

How did America become America?

It didn’t become the most prosperous, benevolently powerful, liberating force in history by pain avoidance. We have seen what happens when government is Daddy. In the USSR the right to a home turned out to be the right the share a two room apartment with three other families (see Ninotchka). In Europe, it means that you have a perpetual state of mediocrity and an inability to defend oneself from foreign enemies. It is only because the United States stands in the way of the usual course of history’s conquering despots, that most of the free on Earth are safe.

And now we get to the crux of impending mind foreclosure: Why is it that the United States is so wealthy and strong that we can have obese folks in poverty and still out gun slave holding tyrants?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Especially liberty and the pursuit of happiness and its lynch pin element of the right to private property. One has the right to the fruits of one’s labor. Our system has encouraged people to take risks, and the facts are in after 5000 years of human history and 233 years of American history: our system that allows success and failure results in less suffering and more happiness than all the other systems.

We revere so many of our forefathers for their great sacrifices, from the Pilgrims and Washington’s army (at Valley Forge, pictured) thru the Greatest Generation that endured the Great Depression and won WWII.

They suffered to make and keep this nation exceptional. They were not bailed out. They rejected the class envy of France and class system of Britain.

Current government policies threaten to discourage risk taking, because for every person bailed out, there is a person that is bailed on. The producers of society won’t produce if the prospect of getting bailed on is prominent.

As for the banks, I do see a distinction between them and the rest of us, but was against the Paulson bailout. However, it is the duty of government to regulate a banking system. It may have been best to let some banks fail last year. I don’t know what those consequences would have been. (Many believe that had Hoover not passed Smoot-Hawley and raised taxes after the 1929 market crash, that the recession would have ended in a year or two. I don’t know.)

But the fact that we may have made mistakes in trying to save a necessary institution of free enterprise in banking, would not lead me to give up the ghost on prudent fiscal policy and propose a massive expansion of the welfare state safety net for the truly needy to re-define “truly” as avoiding having to move and rent.

My mind is open to policies I would reject out of hand in non-crisis times, but we must keep our bearings and not lose sight of values essential to our long term prosperity by dumbing down acceptable suffering in an affluent society, or we will lose the ability to stay or regain affluence, and with that, Liberty itself.

Remember the suffering of those at Valley Forge; keep this hard time in perspective; never lose hope; never give in to despair and join me in the fight to keep the lights of the Shining City on a Hill burning.

Remember the Battle of New Orleans, when the Brits held Washington, D.C. and threatened to tear America asunder. One man with courage made a majority in 1815 and brought us back from the brink against the greatest army on Earth. (General Andrew Jackson pictured)

We can prevail against an army of community organizer-in-chief led acorns if we don’t give up.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

What a service Mark treated us to every Sunday. His comments and diaries were also wonderful, and are also missed, but the missing really hit me just now, as I wanted to trash Crist’s performance on MTP as I know Mark would.

Knowing that Mark would inform me of all that mattered on the Sunday Shows was a real blessing that made the life of a geek political junkie more manageable. God bless Mark’s family.

I, like Mark, have been addicted to the Sunday Shows for decades. It started for me with Lawrence Spivak on MTP. The best ever as This Week when David Brinkley and George Will asked the questions. Will is the best questioner by far. So good that ABC stopped subjecting Democrats to his questions.

Of course we loved Russert and miss him.

I must say though that David Gregory is great. He is fair. He understands conservatism and seems to respect the ideas and he asks great questions of all.

Loved Sanford and Jindal today.

Inspired by Attorney General Eric Holder to have frank discussions about race, let us shed any shred of cowardice on the occasion of the House Majority Whip’s racist attack against his home state’s governor and discuss it frankly.

South Carolina’s Republican Governor, Mark Sanford suggested that he might reject certain portions of the stimulus bill due to federal legal conditions that would place a burden on South Carolina taxpayers.

James Clyburn (D-SC) lashed out at Sanford as a “plantation owning slapper of African-American faces.”

The highest-ranking black congressman said Thursday that opposition to the federal stimulus package by southern GOP governors is “a slap in the face of African-Americans.”

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said he was insulted when the governors of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and his home state, which have large black populations, said they might not accept some of the money from the $787 billion stimulus package.

So, opposition to the stimulus is not a slap in the face of whites and Clyburn is not insulted by stimulus opposing Governors of states with small black populations?

“These four governors represent states that are in the proverbial black belt,” Clyburn said.

Clyburn is obcessed with race. He is not alone. Along with abortion rights and weakness on national security, nothing better defines his national Democratic Party than race obsession, even in the wake of the election of Barack Obama.

In fact, the biggest slaps in the faces of African-Americans since the late 1960s have been administered by Clyburns party. Their welfare policies kicked the black man out the house and made Uncle Sam Daddy before Newt and Clinton fixed it in the 90s, only to have Clyburn and Obama’s dems return to the failed policy via the stimulus last week. They favor Jim Crow-like race-based laws that treat blacks like disabled dependant victims. They oppose school choice laws that would allow poorer blacks to send their children to better schools. Their abortion policies have effected a virtual genocide in the Black community. They carried out a high-tech lynching of a conservative black man when he was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Clyburn denies he was questioning the motives of the Southern governors. He denies that he was implying they were racist. Yet, wouldn’t poor whites be impacted the same as poor blacks by the proposed policies? Consider Clyburn’s choice of words with respect to the Governor of the Palmetto State:

“He may not need help for the plantation his family owns, but the people whose grandparents and great-grandparents worked those plantations need the help” in the form of federal money.

Plantation owner Sanfords vs. blacks’ grandparents and great grandparents that worked “those” plantations? Sanford is not from South Carolina. Slavery ended in 1865. Great grandparents weren’t alive then? Working in 1903, maybe? Well, they had a job.

But under Clyburn’s rule of his Sixth Congressional Plantation District many don’t have good jobs or good schools, despite Clyburn’s good efforts since his election to the House seat 16 years ago.

Now that is a slap in the face.

The frank truth about race is that it doesn’t matter to most people. Most Americans are beyond race. We understand the equivalence of individual brains and beating hearts under the pigmented dermatosis and that green money affects black and white alike.

Jim Clyburn understands it too, but chooses to slap blacks and whites in the face with racial rhetoric to maintain power over victim dependents. In fact, he and others similarly situated, like John Lewis (D-GA) and Mel Watt (D-NC) must have slapped themselves a bit as they confessed to being shocked that America would elect a black man as President before the election and even backed Hillary or remained neutral early on. Out of touch liberals that demonize whites believed their own rhetoric. So used to disingenuously playing race card against Republicans, Clyburn even lashed out at Bill Clinton for mostly tepid, and completely non-racial criticism of Obama during the S.C. primary.

Of course, the media give Clyburn a pass. He doesn’t have to give three Trent Lott-like apologies. He and his ilk’s pathologies are protected by the drive-bys but not by The Examiner.

No coward here Mr. Attorney General!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Listening to our new President’s bank and American free enterprise killing words of late reminds me of Roberta Flack’s 1973 box office hit, “Killing me softly with his song“:

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

I am struck by how perfectly Flack’s phrase, “strumming pain”, fits President Barack Obama’s governing style. This decidedly un-FDR, un-Reagan affirms no confidence in the ability of the American people to right the economy (nor even a passion that it be righted) and sees no vision of a Shining City on a Hill. No only should we fear fear, itself; the only thing we need not fear is the Shining Obama behind a teleprompter.

Rather than allow Americans to relieve their own pain, he prefers to strum it as the chords that provide an ongoing opportunity to fundamentally change America.

I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
To listen for a while
And there he was this young boy
A stranger to my eyes

The Hope and Change song and “cool” style gave life to his campaign to make the young stranger President of the United States. Obama is still cool, but his latest solos and Geithner duets kill all that they serenade.

Was President Obama guilty of attempted murder or reckless homicide against Bank of America last week with his hints of a possible “Swedish” bank nationalization. He has since backed off, but the damage is done. Why would anyone buy BofA stock now? CEO Ken Lewis had the bank’s stock back on the upswing despite being forced to buy toxic Merrill Lynch and take federal funds before Obama’s slip. Was it intentional? Bank of America made a profit last year. It pays it bills. It makes money. Yet, it gets labeled “underwater” given the low value of its stock assets as compared to its liabilities. But it makes money and pays its bills, so does Obama want BofA to be owned by the USofA?

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

Telling our whole lives with his words and still strumming the pain. Yes, he wants to tell the banks how to live, but doesn’t stop there by a long shot.

Home loan borrowers before 2003 shall help irresponsible such post-2003 borrowers who have a right to stay in “their” homes (even if they paid little or nothing down and haven’t made payments in months) make their payments. Obama wants Bankruptcy judges to be empowered to re-write mortgage contracts, so wedded is he to these special 2003-date borrowers. Does he understand that he is abrogating two of the most fundamental underpinnings of American prosperity in one fell swoop, i.e. the right to contract and the rule of law? But remember, he wants to “fundamentally change” America. You know, the America that is the most prosperous in the history of the world.

Does he understand that such a change would mean that most all future mortgages would only be written by his government and that every foreclosure would be on the taxpayer? Does he understand that the federal government would be seizing American’s assets right and left? I think he does.

There is another group that he tells how to live via his stimulus bill: the unemployed. Don’t worry about getting a job. Obama killed welfare reform as we know it. Obama will take care of you while you volunteer for ACORN.

I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters
And read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

Obama is keeping right on by halting the process to expedite leases for offshore oil drilling, bankrupting the coal industry and calling what you breathe out “pollution” so that the government can dispense with puny stimulus bills and bailouts and just out and out tell all businesses how to live, as he kills them. He’ll really have some pain to strum when Boston returns to wood stoves for heat and is as smoggy as 18th Century London.

He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me
As if I wasn’t there
And he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong

(Repeat Chorus)

Turn off the American free enterprise killing music and sing your own song in your Representative’s and Senators’ ears. Instead of letting Obama and the Dems fundamentally change America, let’s fundamentally change where they go to work in 2-4 years.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Yesterday in Denver, President Barack Obama signed the much ballyhooed 1079-page government-growth-ulus bill that neither he nor Congress had time to read before enacting it into law.

As one of their We the People bosses, Gamecock suggests a group reading on the order of the “reading the Bible through in a year” programs or public library book clubs. For instance, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library is in the middle of a community read of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” just now.

Would that all that needed to be killed in this alleged economic “stimulus” bill were a single bird.

The bill more resembles a pig giving the American people the finger. Most of the negative publicity for portions of the bill that Republican opposers revealed has been pork, but this War and Peace length tome contains many more significant plot twists and turns than mere Bar-be-que fodder.

In order to read the bill through before New Year’s Day 2010, beginning on Monday, February 23, 2009 we would have to read only 24 pages per week. I would suggest that one read five pages per day on weekdays and spare yourselves the torture of possible ruined weekends.

To compare the burden to Bible readings, my KJV version of Holy Scripture is 1291 pages long, requiring the reading of a mere six pages per weekday beginning next week.

But while you will encounter no six-day creations nor parting of Red Seas, you will discover the respective resurrections of the Great Depression-causing Smoot-Hawley II (Buy America provision requirement on all federal contracts) and Welfare as we used to loathe it.

You will marvel at the miracle-like 30% growth in the welfare state, the saving of state and federal government jobs that your taxes will have to pay for and the creation of greenie extremist lawyer and bureaucrat jobs to kill private sector jobs via environmental impact studies and lawsuits for small animals.

There will be no building of Towers of Babel, Tennessee Valley Authorities nor Hoover Dams, but you will see the exponential growth of babbling government meddlers in your business to the tune of 300,000. That is 295,000 more than Christ fed with his loaves and fishes.

President Obama and his bosses Pelosi and Reid are busy people with busy “work” trips to, respectively, rescue mortgage scofflaws in Phoenix, compare notes on socialism in Paris and study Las Vegas-Hollywood high-speed rail lines for idle rich boondoggles. But what happens in D.C. and Denver must not stay in D.C. and Denver.

We the People rule here. Let’s read the handiwork of our employees together. But let us write the final chapter:

Fire the lot of them that saddled us and our progeny with this burden and elect new yea/nay voters that will repeal the monstrosity.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report</a

The Pathology (of the left, and especially in Black America) III

There was a time for widespread government initiated affirmative action and Black History Month. That time passed over twenty years ago, with the election of Barack Obama as the first black President being the result of the proof of the passing of the need, not the cause.

The underlying reason for the need was the prevalence of white racism as a significant factor in preventing blacks from achieving the American dream. We celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday because of his successful civil rights movement that brought an end to de jure, or legal, racial discrimination.

This majority white nation Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act; made Sanford & Son, Cosby and Oprah its most prominent cultural icons in the 70s-2000s; and elected and re-elected Republican presidents that made blacks national Security advisers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretaries of State in the 80s-2000s; all before the Obama Inauguration.

In that process of growth in which the vast majority of whites embraced MLK’s moral argument for character content judgment, whites were rightly forced to shed their racist pathologies in public. No more would hatemongers be given mainstream status. No more could unrepentant (and even most of the repentant) white racists be serious contenders for cultural, much less electoral acceptance.

Last Spring, we suggested that the prominence of Obama’s candidacy (and especially the revelations of the racist and hateful anti-American statements of his mentor and pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright) would force many leftist, but especially the sub-set of black pathologies to be exposed and dealt with.

Then candidate Obama was forced give three speeches on race and to disassociate himself twice from the man whose first sermon he heard inspired his first autobiography.

But the black community was still given a pass by the media. Otherwise, how can we explain the invitation to speak, on the day before Inauguration Day, from the most prominent predominately black university in the United States to a man that:

a) calls his country “G-d damned”America;
b) accused his country of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki without batting an eye;
c) characterized 911 as America’s chickens coming home to roost; and
d) generally and specifically accused the United States as always having been and still being a white racist country complete with outrageous conspiracy theories to boot.

Reverend Wright, joined with such other prominent black leaders as John Lewis (D-GA) and Charlotte’s Mel Watt (D-NC) is suggesting that America was too racist to elect a black man as President.

How could such men be so out of touch?

Part of the reason is that the drive-by media shields their community from deserved criticism of their left wing kooky statements. I am reminded of Lewis (a true American hero for his role in the Civil Rights movement, esp at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama) in his floor speech in the 90s when he accused Newt and the GOP of “coming for your children” when they merely reduced the increase in the school lunch program.

Another part of the reason is that drive-by media and many poverty pimps of both races perpetuate the myth of widespread white racism.

It is part of the Big Lie program of the left and its main organ, the national Democratic Party.

Rev. Wright is a disgrace. It was a disgrace for Obama to have his family in a church for 20 years that gives standing ovations to racist hatemongers incl. Wright and Louis Farrakhan. It is a disgrace that Rev. Wright is not considered persona non grata in January of 2009.

American history has always been a history of white and black. A black man was the first casualty of the Revolutionary War in which blacks fought side by side with whites, as they have in all of Americas wars. Blacks were instrumental in freeing themselves from slavery. Blacks became the 13th most prosperous group on earth from 1865-1965 despite Jim Crow.

And with the election of President Obama, they have climbed to the highest rung of the ladder.

Yet, the drive-by media gives Howard University and Rev. Wright a pass that the segregationists of the 60s did not deserve and did not get. I am especially disturbed by this statement of Wright at HU that was not put in context:

Obama, he said, had freed himself from “other people trying to put him in a prison, defining him as they saw him.”

To do so, Obama also had to free himself from Rev. Wright and his kind that scare blacks into thinking so many whites are racist that they can’t make it in America without poverty pimps challenging “The Man.”

When will the black community shed such vile pathologies and ostracize their kooks like most whites (the leftist media still protects many of the 60s radical kooks as mainstream), and all conservatives and republicans?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Promoted by Erick.

It is fitting that if we are to celebrate just one President that it be the Father of our Country, without whose leadership and character there would be no Shining City on a Hill.

And yes, today’s federal holiday is still, and always has been, declared in federal law, as Washington’s Birthday, not any so-called amorphous “President’s Day” requiring celebrations of 43 Presidential oath takers:

TITLE 5 > PART III > Subpart E > CHAPTER 61 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 6103. Holidays

The following are legal public holidays:
New Year’s Day, January 1.
Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., the third Monday in January.
Washington’s Birthday, the third Monday in February.
Memorial Day, the last Monday in May.
Independence Day, July 4.
Labor Day, the first Monday in September.
Columbus Day, the second Monday in October.
Veterans Day, November 11.
Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November.
Christmas Day, December 25.

This is the law.

Read More →

Eighty years ago today, Al Capone’s South Side gang executed seven rival gang members in cold blood as part of its Chicago war with Bugs Moran’s rival North Side criminal enterprise. The names of the victims were: Gusenberg, P; Gusenberg, F; Kachellek; Heyer; Schwimmer; May and Weinshank.

The 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre shocked the conscience of Prohibition Era America and proved to be the beginning of the end the reign of Chicago’s “Scarface” Southsider. Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion two years later due to the efforts of Elliot Ness and his “Untouchable” Treasury Department agents.

Democrats couldn’t wait till the day for lovers.

Another Chicago South Sider came to power 24 days ago to lead mostly northern Democrat Party gangs in Washington. But while in the process of trying co-opt a weakened rival gang, President Barack “Cupid” Obama’s arrow missed the mark of all but three Untouchable Republicans leaving seven fellow gang members dead:

1) The Messiah
2) Hope
3) Change
4) Welfare Reform
5) U.S. military deterrence
6) Most Blue dogs
7) Credibility of the Census

Obama came to Washington promising a new politics and millions of new jobs. Like Capone and other messiahs, he promised a “piece of the action” to those that would follow; and offers they couldn’t refuse to those that wouldn’t. But the Un-Scarface invested too much trust to Bugsy Pelosi and Dingy Harry who gave out more prices of the action than Americans could stomach.

Exposed as unable to walk on water, or even to protect his own (Richardson, Daschel, et al), BHO resorted to The Big Lie that Republicans wanted to do nothing to stimulate the economy; welshed on his promise for bills to be on the web for public perusal for 5 days before passage; and overreached for control of the Constitutionally required counting of born persons.

The latter near criminal enterprise for a Con-Census drove formerly co-opted rival gang member Judd Gregg to betray his Don and return to a now re-branded as conservative GOP.

As the smoke clears from the 2009 pre-Valentine’s day massacre, the blurring of the lines between the parties due to GOP spending excesses of the past eight years are blurred no longer. The Democrats are once again the king of expanding government; values anathema to most Americans; weakness on foreign policy; and incompetence.

The Honeymoon was over a week ago, but Valentine’s Day once again proves to be a potent relationship killer.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Gregg’s conscience 2, personal ambition 1

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The reasons for staunch conservative Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) not to take the job of Commerce Secretary in any President’s administration, much less a liberal democrat’s, were always legion:

1) Gregg was one of many republicans that had called for the elimination of the Commerce Department as far back as the 1980s;

2) President Barack Obama had made clear since soon after his election that he favored a massive so-called “stimulus” plan that would greatly expand the welfare state and blow the deficit wide open; and

3) After announcing Gregg’s nomination, President Obama revealed that the White House would be brazenly seizing control of the taking of the constitutionally mandated 2010 census from Gregg’s own Department.

As we said here at the time, it was a selfish personal decision at the time to escape electoral politics and get a cush golden parachute job without having to go the Daschel route first by moving back outside the beltway for a time while lobbying lobbying firms for a cash-in job on K Street.

Then Judd decided to take a census, or a power greater than himself took one, and this time the conscience was at home:

“However, it has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me.

Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy…”

Bravo for finally getting it right. Must have cut himself shaving while looking in the mirror.

The mirror is now clear and it seems obvious that it was the census issue that cleared it up, not the stimulus.

Gregg decided that he could stomach swallowing basic political principles and abide the stimulus, but that he couldn’t be consiglieri for a criminal regime bent on corrupting the process by which electoral power is determined in the counting of Americans.

Judd, Live Free or Die, eh?

Bravo!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

The Charlotte Observer’s vendetta against the new police chief (pictured), that has made the Queen City safer, continues.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

First, it was the validity of his college degree, an irrelevancy given his sterling decades long record police chief in Richmond, Virginia.

Now, its the validity of the sharp drop in crime coincident with his first six months in office.

Let us review:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s crime rate has risen every year for more than decade before Rodney Monroe was hired in the Summer of 2008

Chief Monroe instigated new policies and tactics including more foot patrols; flooding high crime areas with foot and vehicle patrols and personally confronting known criminal recidivists

Crime drops a dramatic 7.8% for the second half of 2009

What’s not to like?

Well, for the liberal drive-by media, a lot.

Chief Monroe dares to combat crime the old fashioned way rather than with liberal touchy feely excuse giving social programs.

The drive-by media, including its dead-tree version in Charlotte operate according to two main rules: Never let liberalism be discredited and never let conservatism be seen as the reason for successful results.

Hence, the recent slander against Monroe for allegedly changing the way crime statistics are counted. No evidence for the allegation mind you, just “questions”:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police this week reported good news: Crime in January dropped dramatically compared with last year, continuing a remarkable run of declining crime since Rodney Monroe became chief.

Monroe credits his in-your-face style of policing for the success.

But the streak is so good, it’s left some wondering whether police tactics alone could be responsible.

Some residents and criminal justice officials wonder whether the department might be counting or classifying crime differently than it used to.

“Some” wonder?

Never let a good deed go unpunished.

Keep up the good work Chief!

The Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner has the back of anyone that enforces the law and protects the civil rights of the citizens, especially the civil right to liberty less restricted by criminals.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Obama pork bypasses dangerous Interstate exit ramps in Charlotte

[Originally published by TMR Legal Editor, Mike "gamecock" DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner @ Examiner.com where all for verification links may be accessed.]

The non-stimulating $1.2 trillion GovernmentGrowthulus/porkulus Obama-Pelosi-Reid bill will soon become law thanks to 327 Democrat and 3 Republican votes in the House and Senate. Barring a miracle, it is a fait accompli.

What is so sad is that Charlotte can’t even find a silver-lining in this dark cloud of a monstronsity of debt in any of the pork.

[At least FDR's New Deal left us with improved infrastructure if not an end to the Great Depression and thank God we are blessed with the best BBQ in the Carolinas during the Obama depression, if we can afford it, but I digress...]

Regularly deprived of needed state road funds by the rural-Democratic Party dominated State legislature that has left our Interstate highway exchanges in 1960-70s antiquated-style conditions, we now get stiffed by the most generous helping of pork ever passed at any BBQ or by any government in world history.

One of the most striking things I have noticed since I moved to the Queen City two years ago, is how old and dangerous are Interstate highway ramps whose circle circumferences are too tight and so regularly result in tipped over tractor-trailer rigs (pictured on I-85 ramp in Mecklenburg County) that cause death, destruction and traffic delays.

More modern interstate highway exchanges have much wider and safer ramps.

We were told that this so-called stimulus bill would target “shovel-ready” projects that could put people to work immediately.

We were lied to.

Instead, we get funds allocated for more light rail in Charlotte. Nothing is more non-shovel ready than light rail. Nothing is more shovel-ready than interstate highway ramps, as they already have huge right-of-ways surrounding the existing interchanges.

Oh, but the residence hall at Davidson gets money for renovations. Davidson is a private college for the wealthy. It gets public funds while semi’s continue to tip over and kill people on public roads.

Very stimulating President Obama.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

How many times in President Obama’s first press conference as President did he defend the stimulus bill by saying that the near unanimous Republican opposition is due to their desire to “do nothing”?

I lost count of recitations of the big lie tonight, just as I lost count over of the big lies over the last 40 years of all the times that Democrats told Americans that Republicans, if elected would starve the elderly and the poor and that black churches would burn.

The first question of the night was devastating:

And let me go to Jennifer Loven at [The Associated Press]. There you go.

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today in Indiana, you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis without action that we would be unable to reverse.

Can you talk about what you know or what you’re hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?

Unable to reverse? The United States of America?

He spoke for over ten minutes before calling on the next reporter for question number two, but never answered the question.

A president of the United States got called out as the anti-FDR, anti-George Washington and even anti-Abraham Lincoln. He must have realized at that moment when an AP reporter dared to commit the greatest slander one can commit against a Democrat by accurately quoting them that he was, at that moment, Jimmy Malaise Carter II.

Ten minutes of yak yak followed. He hope that so long an answer would make us all forget the question.

He was called out on his The Only Thing We Don’t Have to Fear is Obama Himself? and at that moment realized how insulting it sounded to many of his voters.

So he rambled for ten minutes plus.

Its hard to be a liberal Democrat. One simply can’t say what one actually believes. So one has to ramble for ten minutes and say nothing and forever repeat big lies.

The GOP has not advocated doing nothing but if the only two choices were this 25%+ GovernmentGrowthulus bill and nothing, then sign me up for the latter. But the GOP has advocated doing what has actually worked in the past to end recessions in the 1920s, 1960s, 1980s and 2000s, i.e. tax cuts, and especially those for those that actually create jobs.

But our President uttered The Big Lie numerous times that the only choice other than Pelosi’s bill is doing nothing.

Damn liar.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

President Barack Hussein Obama is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

On Wednesday, with unemployment at 7.6%, President Obama declared:

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe…”

Thursday, the president said:

“The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across the country.”

In 1933, with unemployment at 25%, President Roosevelt declared in his First Inaugural address:

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

So, with unemployment three times what we face now, FDR expressed confidence in the American people to persevere without respect to any particular legislative action.

By contrast, President Obama declares that Americans can only avert catastrophe his particular $900 Billion and counting prescribed action is taken.

Actions matter, and in tomorrow’s column, in this daily series scrutinizing this critical debate over the so-called stimulus bill , I will scrutinize both the actions of FDR that prolonged the Great Depression as well as those that reinforced FDR’s confidence in an America people that did endure and went on to save the world from fascist domination and unprecedented prosperity.

I would suggest that Obama’s proposed actions more resemble those of Hoover without the Dam, and would suggest that FDR had not the luxury of hindsight that we have and that Obama and the Democrats seem determined to repeat mistakes made in the 1930s, some of which FDR reversed.

But I digress.

For today, my purpose is to remind with a quote from then candidate Obama directed at his opponent Hillary Clinton:

Words matter.

Yes, they do, and one of the reasons that both FDR and Ronald Wilson Reagan were great is that their words inspired Americans to excel.

Some have defended Obama’s fear tactics this week by equating them with President George W. Bush’s words after September 11, 2001 warning Americans that a vigorous defense at home and offense abroad was required to prevent further attacks on the homeland.

Over the past few years, I have even heard Bush critics cite FDR’s above “fear itself” quote as if it were a contrast. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The danger of fascism had not yet reared its expansionist head in 1933. When it did in the late 1930s, and especially after December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt did describe what we had to fear abroad.

By contrast, President Obama seems to have more confidence in despots abroad to play nice with us, that for Americans to overcome an economic crisis brought on by bad liberal housing/credit policies at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The fact is that Obama’s Pelosi GovernmentGrowthulus bill is the real danger to a quicker recovery.

Words matter, and Obama is becoming, fear itself.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and inspired by Redstate’s Moe Lane.

In his Washington Post column today, President Barack Obama throws down the gauntlet of a major change in strategy to pass the non-Stimulus bill now being debated in the U.S. Senate. The change: He is abandoning the 80-vote consensus strategy for a 60-vote strategy.

The key line that is the best proof yet that it will be critical that the GOP remain united against the ultimate bill no matter how many puny pork items are removed and no matter the less than optimal tax cuts that are added is this:

“In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis — the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems…”

Of course, Republicans have never said tax cuts solve “all” our problems. History shows that the right kind have rescued the nation from past recessions and spurred economic growth.

But what Obama is saying here is that supply side tax cuts, that are the only sweetener that could win over substantial GOP support, are off the table.

As I have pointed out in two recent columns, this is a GovermentGrowthulus Trojan Horse being protected by dispensable porkulus trips of bacon.

Obama’s statement here makes it more likely we will not fall for this danger mentioned by Obama:

“What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives …”

Action to match feelings? The failed liberal way.

What the Senate Minority Leader (pictured) Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the GOP must also do is craft a truly bold alternative amendment to replace the plan.

They should abandon the piecemeal amendments (like Senator Vitter’s) that would try and improve the bill to make it palatable to a few Republicans.

This bill is a clear and present danger to future American prosperity in both the short and long term. Our only hope to defeat it is unity against the core, permanent 30% growth in government provisions.

We must not aid and bet Obama and the Democrats in their 60-vote strategy to pick off a few Republicans for so-called “bi-partisan cover” with puny improvements.

The only way to accomplish this is to hold firm against the core of this bill and insist upon actual stimulus provisions. If we fail, then at least we will re-brand our party as the one that cares enough about economic suffering to propose proven result accomplishing stimuli, rather than signing on to proven failed liberal Democrat feel good do something crap whose only real accomplishment is to grow government.

Most of Obama’s voters signed on to his promise to create jobs in the provate sector they could get hired to do, rather than jobs they have to pay taxes to fund.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Even if Congress strips out all the “porkulus” from the non-stimulus bill, remaining provisions would require the hiring of 600,000 new, permanent government employees over the next four years.

That would represent a 25-30% increase in the size of the federal civilian workforce that would probably never be reduced.

Maybe we need a new label for this trillion dollar monstrosity, lest we aid and abet its passage?

I suggest it be called “GovernmentGrowthulus”.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) explains (pictured):

The bill’s selling point is that three million jobs will be created or saved by this package. What’s alarming is that each job will cost $286,000 to create or save. Moreover, one in five will be a government job.

Moreover, the bill’s revenue-sharing provisions would permanently entrench tens of thousands of employees of irresponsible states? Sarah Palin (pictured), Alaska’s Republican Governor, makes the case:

I am arguing…against increased federal programs that will become a state’s unfunded mandate to continue funding for generations.”

Still excited about removing millions for STD prevention and contraception stimuli?

The greatest threat to future prosperity of America is not pork, nor even the deepening recession. The greatest threat to dimming the lights of the Shining City on a Hill is liberty-sapping government meddling. Redstate’s StephC explains at Hillbilly Politics:

The more meddling there is, the worse things get and has been getting for decades. When is government, mothers, mothers-in-law, and nosy neighbors going to butt out and let us be the adults we are, make our own adult decisions and live with the consequences? It used to be called Federalism or Conservatism. It needs a new name, or at the least a new descriptor: Unmeddling.

The most effective government is the one that meddles the least.

And I doubt I could support the bill even if President Obama caved on all our conservative, supply side tax and regulation cuts wish list and all pork were removed, that the bill should be supported if the permanent growth in government core remains.

It is great that the GOP is again effective at educating the public of the excesses of liberal Democrats and that they stood together to unanimously reject Pelosi’s House version of the bill. The more the public learns of the outrageous line items in the bill, the more they turn against it. It is great that President Obama has caved on the Depression-causing Smoot-Hawley protectionist equivalent.

It is great that Obama has expressed a genuine willingness to accept more tax cuts from Republicans that would actually have a desperately needed stimulative effect.

And, it is great, as Aaron Gardner of Redstate.com suggests, that the daily Democrat tax-cheat scandals reinforce our efforts against their policies.

But my use of the word “desperately” is qualified by a number of factors that make the more desperate task that of de-railing permanent government growth:

a) No stimulus bill can change the laws of nature, which means that America is in for a not short period in which they will have to save money to justify more spending given the loss of home equity;

b) Housing values must reach bottom; and

c) Obama appears to have rejected the kinds of tax cuts that have proven most effective in ending recessions, i.e. corporate, capital gains and top-income rates (making the Bush tax cuts permanent).

One GOP alternative plan does propose the best kinds of tax cuts, but not the bills being offered by Republican senators, apparently based upon Obama’s preemptive rejections. Moreover, mortgage price-fixing doesn’t sweeten the pot anymore that FDR’s and Nixon’s price controls.

I am troubled by the above because the worst outcome of this debate would be for the core GovernmentGrowthulus provisions to remain but that many GOP senators will vote for the bill after much pork is removed and some tax cuts are added. They would be giving cover to the democrats when the bill inevitably fails and would dilute what’s left of their newly reinvigorated conservative brand.

We must find a way to get the public as exorcised about permanent government jobs as we have about Syphilis prevention as job generator.

Maybe we need to launch a Public vs Private version of the Democrats’ class warfare game.

John Q. Public voted for Barack Obama because he promised to create jobs that pay them, not jobs they have to pay for in taxes. They want jobs for non-lawyers, not environmental study job-killing lawyers nor other non-lawyer meddling bureaucrats in Washington and their state capitols.

We may have less than two weeks to make this case to enough democrats in the Senate to force a major re-write of the bill. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) seems receptive (pictured).

We must not give up, because we know from history since the 1930s that once we create government programs we rarely eliminate them. We slouch ever closer towards a European-style high unemployment, permanent low growth Gomorrah.

I plead with GOP senators to resist the temptation to see only voting for a bill as “doing something.” Follow the House lead if you can’t remove the GovenmentGrowthulus and do this thing: Vote no!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Hypocrisy is a puny sin and men will always have feet of clay.

Modern day liberalism is a huge sin and there is limited time to defeat its most recent mortally dangerous to America stimulus bill iteration.

The latest example (Daschle, a mere potential appointee) of why any media coverage of scandals, even when the scandalous are Democrats (and even when they directly implicate the President himself – see picture as reminder), always hurts conservatives. Why? Because substance, i.e. facts and history, is always on our side but also requires more effort to communicate than the clay feet of humans.

Conservatism advances when Americans are focused on the flaws of liberal policies. Witness the past few weeks as Republicans succeeded in highlighting many of the most outrageous paens to extremist liberal interest groups in the Pelosi government growth bill.

We must not get sidetracked with hypocrisy obsessions focused on individual Democrats. They have tax paying replacements.

It is vital that we try and get a stimulus bill that would actually help hasten the end of this recession. It is a long shot, I admit. Why? Because the odds are that even if we strip out all the crazy bridges to nowhere and add all the supply side tax cuts we dream of, that what will remain will be the 30% permanent growth in government core of this monstrosity.

But every minute we focus on the sins of a would-be HHS Secretary or even the competence of President Obama’s administration to vet nominees, is a minute not focused on the mortal danger of this pending legislation that we have only a few weeks to kill or re-write to a point of acceptability.

America needs a real stimulus. The best way to achieve it is to focus on the actual provisions of the bill, not clay feet.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

1) Want to prevent fatherless octuplets? Years ago, Gamecock dared suggest what many fellow pro-lifers would never utter, i.e. that one should not be allowed to harvest more than 1-3 embryos, and that a condition of same would be a commitment to have them all implanted so that one would not be creating life that would be discarded like refuse.

2) The so-called “stimulus” bill must be rejected, even if the Senate can get significant real stimulative supply side tax cuts added so long as the eight arms of an octupus-like 30% permanent increase in government remains.

3) The Cardinals missed eight tackles during the “Immaculate Interception” that led to the Sixth Super Bowl victory by the Steelers.

4) I already miss the eight years just completed in which our enemies feared our Commander-in-Chief.

5) Reports indicate the Senate version of the stimulus bill will exceed $8 Billion. I say, eight is enough!

6) Which of the Crazy Eight will submit the Biden-predicted International test: Iran, The Hezbos, Hamas, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, or, as Gamecock suspects, Russia.

7) Eight weeks until Major League Baseball’s Opening Day.

Eight months until Braves/Rays World Series?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

*Punxsutawney Phil (pictured above)