IN HOMS, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM
Homs has been under siege for 19 days. The tanks and artillery of Bashir al-Assad have formed a ring of steel around the city where the revolt against the regime first drew breath. For most of this period as well as for most of the last year, the world has depended on amateur videos over the Inter Net for information on a war by a Government against its own people that appeared so vicious as to be beyond belief. Foreign journalists and media have been banned by Assad and his Alawite henchmen to keep the world ignorant of the atrocities that have sparred no one. In Homs in particular no one is immune from brutal extinction. Babies die as easily as adults and the old and the sick. There is no where to hide . No hospital…no mosque…no school. Sanctuary is a meaningless word as average people are exterminated as casually as ants at a picnic. The unthinkable had become the new normal and yet the world remained aloof and ignorant until Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were deliberately targeted via their cell phones signal by Syrian artillery and murdered for bearing witness to the latest genocide of the new millennium.
Thirty years ago Hafez al-Assad the father of Bashir, butchered the citizens of Hama in much the same way and for much the same reason. The rotten apple never falls far from the diseased tree. After at least 10,000 were slaughtered and the peace of the sword was imposed, this strategy for combating insurrection became known as “Hama Rules”.
The people of Syria, tired of being an Arab vassal to the mad Persians of Iran were not immune from the passions of the “Arab Spring” as it swept through the Maghreb and then the Levant. They saw change and wanted it. For most it was a chance to escape the claws of history in return for a normal life for themselves and their children. It was the possibility of change that didn’t demand blind hatred of all thing un-Islamic as a prerequisite for “normalcy”. It was a light at the end of a very long and very dangerous tunnel that has lasted 42 years. But Assad supported by Iran, Russia, China and Hezbollah defied both his people the world and his fellow Arabs and “Hama Rules” have now become “Homs Rules”
Into this cauldron came a small band of brave, intrepid journalists who used smuggler routes to enter and exit the city in order to report first hand what the citizen journalists with their cell phone cameras had been struggling to tell the world for months. French TV reporter, Gilles Jacquier was killed in January and two time Pulitzer winner Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died 10 days ago of natural causes brought on by the stress and lack of sanitation of a country ravaged by war.
Marie Colvin, an American born in Long Island but who reported for the London Sunday Times was in Homs for the second time. She was there with her photographer partner Paul Conroy, who was wounded by the 11 rockets that killed her and Ochlik. Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro was also gravely wounded and still awaits evacuation along with Conroy and the remains of Colvin and Ochlik. Only Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, photographer William Daniel and a Syrian journalist known only as Hussein managed to escape either death or injury.
Colvin was a veteran war correspondent of thirty years. She had seen action in the Gulf War, Kosovo, Chechnya and Sri Lanka where she was wounded in an grenade attack and lost the sight of her left eye due to shrapnel which she still carried in her head and torso. From that time forward she was instantly recognizable by the black eye patch she wore that colleagues said gave her a “pirate” aura that belied a natural warmness that made the most vulnerable trust her and confide in her.
Their make shift Press Center was located in the Baba Amr section of the city where the poorest of the poor lived and where the suffering and destruction was the worst. Colvin was supposed to have left Baba Amr the day before but she wanted to finish what was to be her final dispatch. As was usual with her work she highlighted the impact of the devastation upon the children, the women and the most vulnerable. It was going to become her masterpiece and was entitled ‘We live in fear of a massacre”. It began like this:
“They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.
Among the 300 huddling in this wood factory cellar in the besieged district of Baba Amr is 20-year-old Noor, who lost her husband and her home to the shells and rockets.
“Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.
“We had had nothing but sugar and water for two days and my husband went to try to find food.” It was the last time she saw Maziad, 30, who had worked in a mobile phone repair shop. “He was torn to pieces by a mortar shell.”
For Noor, it was a double tragedy. Adnan, her 27-year-old brother, was killed at Maziad’s side.” She then went on to describe daily life in Baba Amr:
“Everyone in the cellar has a similar story of hardship or death. The refuge was chosen because it is one of the few basements in Baba Amr. Foam mattresses are piled against the walls and the children have not seen the light of day since the siege began on February 4. Most families fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs.
The city is running perilously short of supplies and the only food here is rice, tea and some tins of tuna delivered by a local sheikh who looted them from a bombed-out supermarket.
A baby born in the basement last week looked as shell-shocked as her mother, Fatima, 19, who fled there when her family’s single-storey house was obliterated. “We survived by a miracle,” she whispers. Fatima is so traumatised that she cannot breastfeed, so the baby has been fed only sugar and water; there is no formula milk.
Fatima may or may not be a widow. Her husband, a shepherd, was in the countryside when the siege started with a ferocious barrage and she has heard no word of him since.
The widows’ basement reflects the ordeal of 28,000 men, women and children clinging to existence in Baba Amr, a district of low concrete-block homes surrounded on all sides by Syrian forces. The army is launching Katyusha rockets, mortar shells and tank rounds at random.”
In Baba Amr and the rest of Homs death was a constant companion. Colvin went on describing it in graphic detail.
"Snipers on the rooftops of al-Ba’ath University and other high buildings surrounding Baba Amr shoot any civilian who comes into their sights. Residents were felled in droves in the first days of the siege but have now learnt where the snipers are and run across junctions where they know they can be seen. Few cars are left on the streets.
Almost every building is pock-marked after tank rounds punched through concrete walls or rockets blasted gaping holes in upper floors. The building I was staying in lost its upper floor to a rocket last Wednesday. On some streets whole buildings have collapsed — all there is to see are shredded clothes, broken pots and the shattered furniture of families destroyed.
It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter that anyone can remember. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbours. Many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food. Fearing the snipers’ merciless eyes, families resorted last week to throwing bread across rooftops, or breaking through communal walls to pass unseen.
The Syrians have dug a huge trench around most of the district, and let virtually nobody in or out. The army is pursuing a brutal campaign to quell the resistance of Homs, Hama and other cities that have risen up against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, whose family has been in power for 42 years. “
Colvin described the uneven nature of the battle and then most importantly became the voice for the average citizen of the abattoir that Homs had become
“In Baba Amr, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the armed face of opposition to Assad, has virtually unanimous support from civilians who see them as their defenders. It is an unequal battle: the tanks and heavy weaponry of Assad’s troops against the Kalashnikovs of the FSA.
About 5,000 Syrian soldiers are believed to be on the outskirts of Baba Amr, and the FSA received reports yesterday that they were preparing a ground assault. The residents dread the outcome.
“We live in fear the FSA will leave the city,” said Hamida, 43, hiding with her children and her sister’s family in an empty ground-floor apartment after their house was bombed. “There will be a massacre.”
On the lips of everyone was the question: “Why have we been abandoned by the world?”
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said last week: “We see neighbourhoods shelled indiscriminately, hospitals used as torture centres, children as young as 10 years old killed and abused. We see almost certainly crimes against humanity.” Yet the international community has not come to the aid of the innocent caught in this hell. Abdel Majid, 20, who was helping to rescue the wounded from bombed buildings, made a simple plea. “Please tell the world they must help us,” he said, shaking, with haunted eyes. “Just stop the bombing. Please, just stop the shelling.” …The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror. Almost every family seems to have suffered the death or injury of a loved one.
Khaled Abu Salah, an activist who took part in the first demonstrations against Assad in Homs last March, sat on the floor of an office, his hand broken and bandages covering shrapnel wounds to his leg and shoulder. A 25-year-old university student, who risked his life filming videos of the slaughter of Baba Amr residents, he narrowly escaped when he tried to get two men wounded by mortar fire to a makeshift clinic.
He and three friends had just taken the wounded to the clinic, which was staffed by a doctor and a dentist, and stepped away from the door when “a shell landed right at the entrance”, he recalled last week.
“My three friends died immediately.” The two men they had helped were also killed.
Abu Ammar, 48, a taxi driver, went out to look for bread at 8am one day last week. He, his wife and their adopted daughter had taken refuge with two elderly sisters after their home was hit by shells.
“When I returned the house was obliterated,” he said, looking at all that remained of the one-storey building. Only a few pieces of wall still stood. In the ruins a woman’s red blouse was visible; bottles of home-made pickled vegetables were somehow unscathed. “Dr Ali”, a dentist working as a doctor, said one of the women from the house had arrived at the clinic alive, but both legs had been amputated and she died. “
Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik died to tell the world the graphic truth of the horror of Homs. If she and her colleagues had not put their lives on the line the world would still not clearly comprehend a human calamity that even Colvin who had been to some of the worst places on earth, said was the worst she had ever seen.
While politicians dither and the diplomats clear their throats and soldiers who know better talk about “rational actors”… the people of Homs feel alone and abandoned …unloved by a world that have “more important things” to worry about than the massacre of their fellow men. To a very great extent the difficulty in telling the story up until now allowed the rest of the world to close their eyes and cover their ears. But because of the sacrifice of Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik and their fellow journalists that luxury is no longer available. The ability to sweep the reality of Homs under the rug is no longer possible. If we turn away now it is a statement about us and not about the demonic Assads. Everyone should read Marie Colvins last dispatch and ask themselves what they can do to stop the cold blooded killing machine of the Ba’athist tyranny. And if that doesn’t move you to at least call your Congressman or your Senators, keep in mind that the removal of these murderers in Damascus will disrupt and perhaps stop Iran from pursuing their proxy wars in Lebanon and Gaza, thereby pulling the region back from the precipice of Armageddon .
But there is also now one true certainty, because of their courage and sacrifice, the world is now forced to hear the screams of Homs.
ERLANDSSON 02/24/2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
VADA A BORDO GOP
VADA A BORDO GOP!!!!
Right now the American ship of state resembles the Costa Concordia more than it does “a shining city on the hill”. Our economy is in shambles despite small decreases in unemployment due to people leaving the workforce altogether. Our national debt is 102% of our GDP putting us in a class with Greece and Italy. Our uncontrolled government spending is around 25% of GDP when it should be between 18% to 20% . The Congress has not passed a budget in over a thousand days and over 25 budget and jobs bills passed by the House of Representatives have been pronounced dead on arrival by Harry Reid when they land in the Senate. President Obama vetoes the XL Keystone pipeline after all environmental tests have been met… killing 20,000 jobs or more and his out of control EPA threatens the most prosperous state in the nation…North Dakota… with regulations that will stop oil fracking in it’s tracks. The Executive branch decides the Legislative branch is in recess even as it passes an extension of the Payroll Tax Cut for two months during the very period that it is not supposed to be able to pass anything. The Executive branch then establishes a new level of chutzpah by appointing new members to the NLRB and a new Director to the controversial CFBP with sweeping powers and little if any congressional oversight.
Then the President, in the form of the always dour Katherine Sebelius of the Dept of HHS, announces that Catholic Institutions will have a year to adjust their most profound religious beliefs in order to accommodate the ukase of the First Secular Church of the United States with regard to what their Health Insurance coverage must contain …i.e. morning after pill…contraception etc thereby declaring war on the First amendment and the nation’s almost 80 million Catholics.
But wait …it gets worse! The US Department of Justice not satisfied with selling guns through straw buyers to the Mexican Drug cartels without anyone in the leadership of DoJ being aware of it, has instead decided to double down on states that pass laws requiring voters to prove who they are via Photo Ids. Keep in mind this does not necessarily prove if they are eligible to vote…just that they are who they say they are and are a living corporeal being. This in the fertile mind of Eric Holder is discriminatory. To who…cartoon characters, lycanthropes and the undead???
The EPA not content with their hosing North Dakota threatens to fine the producers of motor fuel for not using cellulosic ethanol a fuel substitute that does not exist. This is happening right after they threatened a Priest Lake Idaho couple named Sackett with $38,500 daily fines for building a house on wetlands that were not wet to begin with and then ordering them to restore their property to “wetland” condition which in point of fact would mean “creating “ wetlands for the first time. Are you confused yet? The Supreme Court is now looking at this case very carefully and court observers are saying off the record that the continuous shaking of the nine justice’s heads as they read through the transcript, is making observers take copious amounts of Dramamine.
On the international front, the military is being hollowed out to celebrate a peace “dividend” without a peace… a world where a militant China is determined to project power far into the western Pacific…an irredentist Russia seeking to regain superpower status at the expense of the west…a clinically insane Iran that desires Armageddon to fulfill the prophetic promise of a world wide Caliphate …terrorists now so embedded with the drug trade that it becomes difficult at times to decide which threat they pose is the most dangerous and a North Korea resembling “Wonderland” with nuclear war heads.
So how are the leaders of the Grand Old Party, in the midst of what each candidate says “is the most important election of our life time”, responding to this catalogue of horrors? Why they are in full throated “Gingrich derangement syndrome”. They are determined to force Mitt Romney down the throats of Republicans, Conservatives, Tea Party members, Independents, Reagan Democrats and any other group of voters they can identify. All this despite the fact that anywhere from two thirds to three fourth of primary voters to date simply don’t want him after six years of running for President.
I don’t have anything against Mitt Romney. If he becomes the nominee I will gladly vote for him but not because the so called “leadership” wants him but because on some days my despair at the destruction of this country makes me I believe that even the first name in the phone book would be a better and less dangerous President than Barak Obama.
Having said this, the leadership of Republican Party is being offered what to them is the worst of all possible choices. A candidate who thinks…a candidate with ideas…a candidate who wants a fundamental transformative restoration of American Exceptionalism. And it scares the hell out of them!
There is a reason that you rarely if ever hear the phrase “Republican thinker”. Even Republicans who actually fit this description such as Paul Ryan or Jim Jordan are usually viewed as “conservative thinkers”.. Are there any “Republican Think Tanks”? All that come to mind seem to be Conservative” or “Libertarian” as opposed to any entity identified as being the intellectual muscle behind a major party that seeks to govern with …exactly what principals???
Entre Gingrich with ideas percolating and bubbling in a frothy stew of proposals designed to right the ship of state and take it off the shoals of destruction and the leadership says “no thanks we’ll wait for the rescue boat that may never come rather than have to deal with someone we can’t control!”
The dirty little secret of mainstream Republicanism is that it is timid and weak and far too accommodating of Democrat displeasure out of a subliminal fear that making money and being successful is wrong and they therefore must be in a constant defensive posture. They have come to believe what the other guys say about them and their reflexive political correctness strangles every analytical impulse they have.
Curiosity is viewed as a flaw to these people and those who challenge the status quo in ways the public yearns for and applauds, are dangerous apostates to those who believe change means nibbling around the edges not sending the meal back and demanding real food.
Much of the Republican leadership has lost all contact with the people they claim to represent. Severe economic hardship coupled with cultural chaos has a way of making those who suffer undergo a “Conversion on the road to Damascus” when it comes to those whom they will choose to follow. When Newt Gingrich takes on the media that has protected and celebrated the cultural and political icons of the left… those who have to live in the everyday world and have to contend with the destruction they have left in their wake…cheer. We cheer because at long last someone has heard us…someone is speaking for us…someone is fighting for us. Someone wants to save our country . So I have a very simple message for Governor Chris Christie, who today said of Newt Gingrich that he 'Has Been An Embarrassment To The Party' and to the rest of the leadership of the Republican Party. You are out of touch. Vada a bordo cazzo!!!!
ERLANDSSON
Right now the American ship of state resembles the Costa Concordia more than it does “a shining city on the hill”. Our economy is in shambles despite small decreases in unemployment due to people leaving the workforce altogether. Our national debt is 102% of our GDP putting us in a class with Greece and Italy. Our uncontrolled government spending is around 25% of GDP when it should be between 18% to 20% . The Congress has not passed a budget in over a thousand days and over 25 budget and jobs bills passed by the House of Representatives have been pronounced dead on arrival by Harry Reid when they land in the Senate. President Obama vetoes the XL Keystone pipeline after all environmental tests have been met… killing 20,000 jobs or more and his out of control EPA threatens the most prosperous state in the nation…North Dakota… with regulations that will stop oil fracking in it’s tracks. The Executive branch decides the Legislative branch is in recess even as it passes an extension of the Payroll Tax Cut for two months during the very period that it is not supposed to be able to pass anything. The Executive branch then establishes a new level of chutzpah by appointing new members to the NLRB and a new Director to the controversial CFBP with sweeping powers and little if any congressional oversight.
Then the President, in the form of the always dour Katherine Sebelius of the Dept of HHS, announces that Catholic Institutions will have a year to adjust their most profound religious beliefs in order to accommodate the ukase of the First Secular Church of the United States with regard to what their Health Insurance coverage must contain …i.e. morning after pill…contraception etc thereby declaring war on the First amendment and the nation’s almost 80 million Catholics.
But wait …it gets worse! The US Department of Justice not satisfied with selling guns through straw buyers to the Mexican Drug cartels without anyone in the leadership of DoJ being aware of it, has instead decided to double down on states that pass laws requiring voters to prove who they are via Photo Ids. Keep in mind this does not necessarily prove if they are eligible to vote…just that they are who they say they are and are a living corporeal being. This in the fertile mind of Eric Holder is discriminatory. To who…cartoon characters, lycanthropes and the undead???
The EPA not content with their hosing North Dakota threatens to fine the producers of motor fuel for not using cellulosic ethanol a fuel substitute that does not exist. This is happening right after they threatened a Priest Lake Idaho couple named Sackett with $38,500 daily fines for building a house on wetlands that were not wet to begin with and then ordering them to restore their property to “wetland” condition which in point of fact would mean “creating “ wetlands for the first time. Are you confused yet? The Supreme Court is now looking at this case very carefully and court observers are saying off the record that the continuous shaking of the nine justice’s heads as they read through the transcript, is making observers take copious amounts of Dramamine.
On the international front, the military is being hollowed out to celebrate a peace “dividend” without a peace… a world where a militant China is determined to project power far into the western Pacific…an irredentist Russia seeking to regain superpower status at the expense of the west…a clinically insane Iran that desires Armageddon to fulfill the prophetic promise of a world wide Caliphate …terrorists now so embedded with the drug trade that it becomes difficult at times to decide which threat they pose is the most dangerous and a North Korea resembling “Wonderland” with nuclear war heads.
So how are the leaders of the Grand Old Party, in the midst of what each candidate says “is the most important election of our life time”, responding to this catalogue of horrors? Why they are in full throated “Gingrich derangement syndrome”. They are determined to force Mitt Romney down the throats of Republicans, Conservatives, Tea Party members, Independents, Reagan Democrats and any other group of voters they can identify. All this despite the fact that anywhere from two thirds to three fourth of primary voters to date simply don’t want him after six years of running for President.
I don’t have anything against Mitt Romney. If he becomes the nominee I will gladly vote for him but not because the so called “leadership” wants him but because on some days my despair at the destruction of this country makes me I believe that even the first name in the phone book would be a better and less dangerous President than Barak Obama.
Having said this, the leadership of Republican Party is being offered what to them is the worst of all possible choices. A candidate who thinks…a candidate with ideas…a candidate who wants a fundamental transformative restoration of American Exceptionalism. And it scares the hell out of them!
There is a reason that you rarely if ever hear the phrase “Republican thinker”. Even Republicans who actually fit this description such as Paul Ryan or Jim Jordan are usually viewed as “conservative thinkers”.. Are there any “Republican Think Tanks”? All that come to mind seem to be Conservative” or “Libertarian” as opposed to any entity identified as being the intellectual muscle behind a major party that seeks to govern with …exactly what principals???
Entre Gingrich with ideas percolating and bubbling in a frothy stew of proposals designed to right the ship of state and take it off the shoals of destruction and the leadership says “no thanks we’ll wait for the rescue boat that may never come rather than have to deal with someone we can’t control!”
The dirty little secret of mainstream Republicanism is that it is timid and weak and far too accommodating of Democrat displeasure out of a subliminal fear that making money and being successful is wrong and they therefore must be in a constant defensive posture. They have come to believe what the other guys say about them and their reflexive political correctness strangles every analytical impulse they have.
Curiosity is viewed as a flaw to these people and those who challenge the status quo in ways the public yearns for and applauds, are dangerous apostates to those who believe change means nibbling around the edges not sending the meal back and demanding real food.
Much of the Republican leadership has lost all contact with the people they claim to represent. Severe economic hardship coupled with cultural chaos has a way of making those who suffer undergo a “Conversion on the road to Damascus” when it comes to those whom they will choose to follow. When Newt Gingrich takes on the media that has protected and celebrated the cultural and political icons of the left… those who have to live in the everyday world and have to contend with the destruction they have left in their wake…cheer. We cheer because at long last someone has heard us…someone is speaking for us…someone is fighting for us. Someone wants to save our country . So I have a very simple message for Governor Chris Christie, who today said of Newt Gingrich that he 'Has Been An Embarrassment To The Party' and to the rest of the leadership of the Republican Party. You are out of touch. Vada a bordo cazzo!!!!
ERLANDSSON
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART TWO
CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART II :MORALITY, CIVIL LIBERTIES AND FOREIGN POLICY
Secy. Of State Hillary Clinton wants to make tolerance, equality and protection under the law for gay and lesbian persons in the more than 70 countries that criminalize being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or trans-gendered, a standard for aid and assistance as well as cordial relations with the US. There should be no conservative objection to this and in fact it should be robustly supported by people within the conservative movement.
As I have opined previously, these are about rights for all individual where no one is exempted. This should also not become an opportunity to disingenuously bash conservatives who are looking for fidelity to the Constitution as the bottom line in the conduct of our foreign policy. Gov. Rick Perry allegedly said that this policy Secy. Clinton outlined, constitutes “ a war with people of faith in this country”. If that statement is true and in context, then Gov. Perry is both politically, morally and spiritually wrong in my opinion. Since the latter two are areas where the essence of debate centers on questions of interpretation of dogma and thereby in the realm of opinion or faith, I will focus on the secular realm of politics.
Human rights for all individuals should be at the center of all American Foreign Policy. If it is not, than we are a fraud and not the exceptional nation we claim to be. Unfortunately we see all too frequently that the sanctity of human life expressed in freedom from tyranny, is more of an imperative with some countries than with others. The plight of women and girls in some “friendly” Islamic countries as well as Christian minorities throughout the greater Muslim world comes to mind .
In point of fact we pick and choose who we want to lecture about human rights abuses and excuse those who we do not want to offend for a variety of pragmatic reason usually associated with military and/or economic necessity. Often piety about the rights of certain oppressed groups satisfy domestic political agendas more than they actualize real foreign policy goals or even bedrock statements of principles.
This has been the reality of foreign policy for a very long time for many, if not all countries of the world. But we are not just any country and as enticing or practical the specter of watching what we do and not what we say may be, at the end of the day we have always paid dearly for being “outed” as not being sincere when we sacrifice our principles for expediency. We have gotten in bed, far too often with people that run the gamut from nasty but harmless to malignant and demonic… all in the name of the best interests of this nation. When the inevitable “other shoe drops’ we almost always find ourselves worse off than before.
The rights we champion are who we are. They define us in their practice better than any words can. If we use them as mere enticements or bait for suffering people who think we mean what we say then all we are doing is a kind of diplomatic carnival sideshow. If our real objectives entails ending the absence of freedom and human rights as merely a side effect,fringe benefit or ploy than we damn ourselves by our lack of integrity even while we believe we are playing the historic game of nations brilliantly.
Making human rights for all individuals a center of our foreign policy is not and cannot be construed to be an act of naviete. We must reject this notion because implicit in it, is the belief that we cannot define who we are and determine our own destiny.
Our enemies believe us to be weak because we kowtow to criticism or disarm ourselves unilaterally in the notion that all leaders of all countries will become enchanted by the power of our good intentions and the seduction of our words. None of that has ever worked in a world that has always been a dangerous place. The truest of all axioms in the world of foreign relations and diplomacy if that if you want peace then you should prepare for war. To this truism should be added “and stand always by your ideals without deviation”.
So if we are adding the rights and dignity of LGBT persons as part of the expression of what American freedom means as opposed to freedom elsewhere, than we should be prepared as part of keeping our homeland free, to fight for it elsewhere with every means at our disposal because a world that resembles us in the rights afforded its citizens, is a safer world, a more prosperous world and one where real hope replaces cynicism .
Conservatives should never feel threatened by the fact of any individual simply asking for their natural human rights. We don’t have to agree with or be silent about lifestyle, policy, legislation,, speech or public behavior that we may find privately abhorrent, but we do have to let the world know that even clamorous disagreement doesn’t mean that in our rowdy democracy, it will inevitably end in the denial of human rights or worse.
ERLANDSSON
Secy. Of State Hillary Clinton wants to make tolerance, equality and protection under the law for gay and lesbian persons in the more than 70 countries that criminalize being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or trans-gendered, a standard for aid and assistance as well as cordial relations with the US. There should be no conservative objection to this and in fact it should be robustly supported by people within the conservative movement.
As I have opined previously, these are about rights for all individual where no one is exempted. This should also not become an opportunity to disingenuously bash conservatives who are looking for fidelity to the Constitution as the bottom line in the conduct of our foreign policy. Gov. Rick Perry allegedly said that this policy Secy. Clinton outlined, constitutes “ a war with people of faith in this country”. If that statement is true and in context, then Gov. Perry is both politically, morally and spiritually wrong in my opinion. Since the latter two are areas where the essence of debate centers on questions of interpretation of dogma and thereby in the realm of opinion or faith, I will focus on the secular realm of politics.
Human rights for all individuals should be at the center of all American Foreign Policy. If it is not, than we are a fraud and not the exceptional nation we claim to be. Unfortunately we see all too frequently that the sanctity of human life expressed in freedom from tyranny, is more of an imperative with some countries than with others. The plight of women and girls in some “friendly” Islamic countries as well as Christian minorities throughout the greater Muslim world comes to mind .
In point of fact we pick and choose who we want to lecture about human rights abuses and excuse those who we do not want to offend for a variety of pragmatic reason usually associated with military and/or economic necessity. Often piety about the rights of certain oppressed groups satisfy domestic political agendas more than they actualize real foreign policy goals or even bedrock statements of principles.
This has been the reality of foreign policy for a very long time for many, if not all countries of the world. But we are not just any country and as enticing or practical the specter of watching what we do and not what we say may be, at the end of the day we have always paid dearly for being “outed” as not being sincere when we sacrifice our principles for expediency. We have gotten in bed, far too often with people that run the gamut from nasty but harmless to malignant and demonic… all in the name of the best interests of this nation. When the inevitable “other shoe drops’ we almost always find ourselves worse off than before.
The rights we champion are who we are. They define us in their practice better than any words can. If we use them as mere enticements or bait for suffering people who think we mean what we say then all we are doing is a kind of diplomatic carnival sideshow. If our real objectives entails ending the absence of freedom and human rights as merely a side effect,fringe benefit or ploy than we damn ourselves by our lack of integrity even while we believe we are playing the historic game of nations brilliantly.
Making human rights for all individuals a center of our foreign policy is not and cannot be construed to be an act of naviete. We must reject this notion because implicit in it, is the belief that we cannot define who we are and determine our own destiny.
Our enemies believe us to be weak because we kowtow to criticism or disarm ourselves unilaterally in the notion that all leaders of all countries will become enchanted by the power of our good intentions and the seduction of our words. None of that has ever worked in a world that has always been a dangerous place. The truest of all axioms in the world of foreign relations and diplomacy if that if you want peace then you should prepare for war. To this truism should be added “and stand always by your ideals without deviation”.
So if we are adding the rights and dignity of LGBT persons as part of the expression of what American freedom means as opposed to freedom elsewhere, than we should be prepared as part of keeping our homeland free, to fight for it elsewhere with every means at our disposal because a world that resembles us in the rights afforded its citizens, is a safer world, a more prosperous world and one where real hope replaces cynicism .
Conservatives should never feel threatened by the fact of any individual simply asking for their natural human rights. We don’t have to agree with or be silent about lifestyle, policy, legislation,, speech or public behavior that we may find privately abhorrent, but we do have to let the world know that even clamorous disagreement doesn’t mean that in our rowdy democracy, it will inevitably end in the denial of human rights or worse.
ERLANDSSON
Sunday, December 11, 2011
CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART ONE
CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE. CIVIL LIBERTIES AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The persistent accusation that conservatives are not sympathetic to and are even hateful towards individual civil and human rights for all individuals who live within broadly acceptable norms of lawful behavior is I believe, either not true or overstated for emotional or political reasons.
Some in the LGBT community for example, are currently making that charge due to certain campaign ads by Gov. Rick Perry in Iowa. Others cite the reactions to the efforts of Secy. of State Clinton to protect the civil and human rights of such persons via economic, political and diplomatic sanctions by the US, within the over 70 nations that now criminalize gay and lesbian people.
While it is ironic that Secy. Clinton makes this effort while addressing the inappropriately named UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, her efforts are important nonetheless, and should be supported by all people who believe in the basic natural rights of all individuals. Many if not most conservatives, don't like addressing rights on a group basis. Yet history has an unpleasant way of reminding us that the most prevalent way of demonizing individuals is by demonizing the "group" they either identify with or are associated with by others. Hence the struggle for equality and at times survival often must begin with group identity but should always end with individual liberty.
Hitler began the Holocaust by exterminating people with disabilities. They did not fit into his stereotype of what Aryans should look like and they had, in his opinion, no utilitarian value to the Reich. So they were murdered as a prelude to a larger horror in much the same way that a play goes into rehearsals in order to work out the kinks. Later in the second, and third acts would come homosexuals, Gypsies, Christians and finally the Jews This was done by men and women so ordinary that Hanna Arendt would later describe one of them, Adolph Eichmann, as being an example of the "banality of evil". This should be a reminder to all that true evil sometimes comes not with fangs but with a pleasing smile, making the good guys and the bad guys all the more difficult to sort out.
Because of this I believe we must look to the consequences of what is done in the context of what is said. Denial of civil and human rights to any person who is simply trying to exercise their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is evil from a civic, moral and spiritual perspective. The advocacy of violence and hatred towards any innocent person alone or in combination with others is not acceptable at any level of human response. Human history is replete with the fear of the "different" as alien and strange leading to the attempted or actual destruction of the " different" while innocent and harmless.
Conservatives believe the Constitution by it's very nature forces us to respect one another on the civic plain. Conservatives who are persons of faith have the Golden Rule to guide them in their treatment of their fellow souls and that guidance is clear and unambiguous. So where does the perception of Conservative indifference or animosity toward persons in groups ranging from the poor to the gay to the non-white emanate from?
I believe that a good portion of that belief flows from the national arguments over identity and discrimination that we as a people have been having since 1776. The timeless struggle to make the Constitution applicable to all, insists on both reason, tension and passion. How could any thing as important as human freedom not be intense and passionate. Ask almost any immigrant and they will tell you how unique and precious are the liberties of this nation in comparison to others.
But these arguments can be intentionally and unintentionally misinterpreted as bias, prejudice, callousness, and hatred due to the reaction to the tactics and strategies employed by all sides. Far too often the "means" become the "ends" with faux objectives eclipsing real goals.
I as a citizen may fight explicit sex education in the public schools for a host of valid moral and parental reasons even when the purpose of that education is the expressed desire to protect young sexually active teens from disease and pregnancy. I as a citizen must also however protect and defend the promoters of that which I may detest from physical and economic harm for the very advocacy that is making me angry. In order to make America work as it was intended to work I cannot and must not let my passion destroy my reason or my reason dilute my passion and prevent me from protecting in reality, that which represents one vital and indispensable right clothed in two adversarial points of view.
Many, if not most conservatives I know, do not support "Gay Marriage". For many their opposition is based on religious grounds. Others see the expansion of civil marriage as a "slippery slope" leading to the destruction of one of histories most fundamental human institutions. Still others believe that the efforts for same sex marriage are nothing more than a plot to erode and degrade the time tested norms of Western and certain non-western civilizations. Yet we must address all of this anxiety and suspicion in the context of what the pursuit of happiness means to individuals who have rights that are inalienable. Issues such as these exemplify the tension we cannot escape that are innate within the great American experiment . Again our struggle with this tension should always be guided by reason, passion, fidelity to the Constitution and harmonious with the tenets of our faith and sense of public and personal virtue.
For me the "Conservative" approach to the civil liberties and human rights of any individual ends with the supremacy of that individual's natural rights and the protections that our laws give them. They should never be victims seeking protections solely for themselves due to the originality of their condition. They only must merely be human.
All of us in this treacherous time need to possess enough humility to always question our beliefs for evidence of error, so that we may maximize "knowing what we do not know". For me this is a path to hopefully obtaining a modicum of wisdom and thereby exhibiting some evidence that I did not spend 68 years on earth wasting my time.
ERLANDSSON
The persistent accusation that conservatives are not sympathetic to and are even hateful towards individual civil and human rights for all individuals who live within broadly acceptable norms of lawful behavior is I believe, either not true or overstated for emotional or political reasons.
Some in the LGBT community for example, are currently making that charge due to certain campaign ads by Gov. Rick Perry in Iowa. Others cite the reactions to the efforts of Secy. of State Clinton to protect the civil and human rights of such persons via economic, political and diplomatic sanctions by the US, within the over 70 nations that now criminalize gay and lesbian people.
While it is ironic that Secy. Clinton makes this effort while addressing the inappropriately named UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, her efforts are important nonetheless, and should be supported by all people who believe in the basic natural rights of all individuals. Many if not most conservatives, don't like addressing rights on a group basis. Yet history has an unpleasant way of reminding us that the most prevalent way of demonizing individuals is by demonizing the "group" they either identify with or are associated with by others. Hence the struggle for equality and at times survival often must begin with group identity but should always end with individual liberty.
Hitler began the Holocaust by exterminating people with disabilities. They did not fit into his stereotype of what Aryans should look like and they had, in his opinion, no utilitarian value to the Reich. So they were murdered as a prelude to a larger horror in much the same way that a play goes into rehearsals in order to work out the kinks. Later in the second, and third acts would come homosexuals, Gypsies, Christians and finally the Jews This was done by men and women so ordinary that Hanna Arendt would later describe one of them, Adolph Eichmann, as being an example of the "banality of evil". This should be a reminder to all that true evil sometimes comes not with fangs but with a pleasing smile, making the good guys and the bad guys all the more difficult to sort out.
Because of this I believe we must look to the consequences of what is done in the context of what is said. Denial of civil and human rights to any person who is simply trying to exercise their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is evil from a civic, moral and spiritual perspective. The advocacy of violence and hatred towards any innocent person alone or in combination with others is not acceptable at any level of human response. Human history is replete with the fear of the "different" as alien and strange leading to the attempted or actual destruction of the " different" while innocent and harmless.
Conservatives believe the Constitution by it's very nature forces us to respect one another on the civic plain. Conservatives who are persons of faith have the Golden Rule to guide them in their treatment of their fellow souls and that guidance is clear and unambiguous. So where does the perception of Conservative indifference or animosity toward persons in groups ranging from the poor to the gay to the non-white emanate from?
I believe that a good portion of that belief flows from the national arguments over identity and discrimination that we as a people have been having since 1776. The timeless struggle to make the Constitution applicable to all, insists on both reason, tension and passion. How could any thing as important as human freedom not be intense and passionate. Ask almost any immigrant and they will tell you how unique and precious are the liberties of this nation in comparison to others.
But these arguments can be intentionally and unintentionally misinterpreted as bias, prejudice, callousness, and hatred due to the reaction to the tactics and strategies employed by all sides. Far too often the "means" become the "ends" with faux objectives eclipsing real goals.
I as a citizen may fight explicit sex education in the public schools for a host of valid moral and parental reasons even when the purpose of that education is the expressed desire to protect young sexually active teens from disease and pregnancy. I as a citizen must also however protect and defend the promoters of that which I may detest from physical and economic harm for the very advocacy that is making me angry. In order to make America work as it was intended to work I cannot and must not let my passion destroy my reason or my reason dilute my passion and prevent me from protecting in reality, that which represents one vital and indispensable right clothed in two adversarial points of view.
Many, if not most conservatives I know, do not support "Gay Marriage". For many their opposition is based on religious grounds. Others see the expansion of civil marriage as a "slippery slope" leading to the destruction of one of histories most fundamental human institutions. Still others believe that the efforts for same sex marriage are nothing more than a plot to erode and degrade the time tested norms of Western and certain non-western civilizations. Yet we must address all of this anxiety and suspicion in the context of what the pursuit of happiness means to individuals who have rights that are inalienable. Issues such as these exemplify the tension we cannot escape that are innate within the great American experiment . Again our struggle with this tension should always be guided by reason, passion, fidelity to the Constitution and harmonious with the tenets of our faith and sense of public and personal virtue.
For me the "Conservative" approach to the civil liberties and human rights of any individual ends with the supremacy of that individual's natural rights and the protections that our laws give them. They should never be victims seeking protections solely for themselves due to the originality of their condition. They only must merely be human.
All of us in this treacherous time need to possess enough humility to always question our beliefs for evidence of error, so that we may maximize "knowing what we do not know". For me this is a path to hopefully obtaining a modicum of wisdom and thereby exhibiting some evidence that I did not spend 68 years on earth wasting my time.
ERLANDSSON
Sunday, November 27, 2011
AFTER THE AGE OF "GREEN" ENERGY...THE AGE OF "SOYLENT GREEN"
AFTER THE AGE OF "GREEN" ENERGY...THE AGE OF "SOYLENT GREEN"
If you live long enough, a lot of science fiction, begins to resemble reality. David Brooks' Bastille Day NYT's essay this past July entitled "Death and Budgets" is the kind of sophisticated sophistry that the "chattering classes" of the right and left love to embrace over cocktails to prove that there really is common ground on issues of importance. In this instance however it is the effort to find moral consensus for what constitutes a life of quality and then shoehorn it into politics,policy, legislation and regulation.
The insertions of bookkeepers with lampshades between Doctors and patients and their families is really a predictable result of living beyond our means and looking for the lowest of low hanging fruit to balance our national ledger. We got to this point in history because in far too many instances our vision of a good and just society ( "the better angels of our nature" as Lincoln put it) is becoming defined by the acquisition of things (pepper spraying rival customers at a WalMart on "Black Friday" for an XBox comes to mind ) and not by the applications of moral imperatives based on time honored values.
John Adams once said "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is the essence of "American Exceptionalism" for both the religious and the non-religious. We take care of one another... we do not put our old and dying on an ice flow because they have become an economic drag on the tribe...we do not place a cost benefit test on issues of life and death. History has shown us where eugenics, in all it's many guises, takes us. It inevitably leads to an Auschwitz or some other perfectly moral and perfectly legal "final solution" hammered out by "reasonable" people over a working lunch. Our duty and history as Americans however is to strive and even fight to practice the morality of the "Golden Rule" and not just pay it lip service.
Death comes to us all. Our civic freedoms may allow us the right to choose the circumstances of how we decide to depart even while for many, religious beliefs may reserve that decision for God alone. Bureaucrats, budget mavens, politicians and pundits posing as prophets have no place at the table whatsoever.
In the 1973 film "Soylent Green" we find ourselves in a future NYC of 44 million people with foul air and massive shortages of food. Euthanasia is promoted for the old as a civic virtue and made to appear not only patriotic but appealing. In the end we discover that the supposed artificial food Soylent Green that sustains most of human kind, is made from the flesh of the old. When the film first played its message was the danger of overpopulation. Today the message is more nuanced but still as relevant. When society is in crisis... there are always those who will look to find a solution that really doesn't solve the problem. Rather they will look for a way to preserve a hierarchy of privilege and call it reason
ERLANDSSON
If you live long enough, a lot of science fiction, begins to resemble reality. David Brooks' Bastille Day NYT's essay this past July entitled "Death and Budgets" is the kind of sophisticated sophistry that the "chattering classes" of the right and left love to embrace over cocktails to prove that there really is common ground on issues of importance. In this instance however it is the effort to find moral consensus for what constitutes a life of quality and then shoehorn it into politics,policy, legislation and regulation.
The insertions of bookkeepers with lampshades between Doctors and patients and their families is really a predictable result of living beyond our means and looking for the lowest of low hanging fruit to balance our national ledger. We got to this point in history because in far too many instances our vision of a good and just society ( "the better angels of our nature" as Lincoln put it) is becoming defined by the acquisition of things (pepper spraying rival customers at a WalMart on "Black Friday" for an XBox comes to mind ) and not by the applications of moral imperatives based on time honored values.
John Adams once said "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is the essence of "American Exceptionalism" for both the religious and the non-religious. We take care of one another... we do not put our old and dying on an ice flow because they have become an economic drag on the tribe...we do not place a cost benefit test on issues of life and death. History has shown us where eugenics, in all it's many guises, takes us. It inevitably leads to an Auschwitz or some other perfectly moral and perfectly legal "final solution" hammered out by "reasonable" people over a working lunch. Our duty and history as Americans however is to strive and even fight to practice the morality of the "Golden Rule" and not just pay it lip service.
Death comes to us all. Our civic freedoms may allow us the right to choose the circumstances of how we decide to depart even while for many, religious beliefs may reserve that decision for God alone. Bureaucrats, budget mavens, politicians and pundits posing as prophets have no place at the table whatsoever.
In the 1973 film "Soylent Green" we find ourselves in a future NYC of 44 million people with foul air and massive shortages of food. Euthanasia is promoted for the old as a civic virtue and made to appear not only patriotic but appealing. In the end we discover that the supposed artificial food Soylent Green that sustains most of human kind, is made from the flesh of the old. When the film first played its message was the danger of overpopulation. Today the message is more nuanced but still as relevant. When society is in crisis... there are always those who will look to find a solution that really doesn't solve the problem. Rather they will look for a way to preserve a hierarchy of privilege and call it reason
ERLANDSSON
Friday, November 25, 2011
AN OPEN LETTER TO CONSERVATIVES
AN OPEN LETTER TO CONSERVATIVES WHO WANT TO PLAY POLITICS WITH IMMIGRATION
First and foremost I am a conservative who is a husband, son, grandson, nephew and cousin of immigrants. In addition my extended family all live abroad including two stepdaughters, one stepson and all my grandchildren and there is literally no way I and my wife, who is a US citizen, can bring them to the United States so that our family can be reunited and I can enjoy the comfort of their love and presence in my final years. The other part of my family all came here legally and with regard to my wife, at great expense while overcoming barriers this government has thoughtlessly put in the way of those who try to do things by the rules…rules, I must add that seem to keep changing by the year. My wife has an application to bring our youngest unmarried daughter here that will take by our best estimate, 20 years before it is even reviewed. I will be long dead by then. I raise all of this to make three basic points :
One is that legal immigration is broken in this country and is in itself a cause of illegal immigration. We simply do not have a comprehensive and coherent policy as to who we want to let into this country and why we want them here. If we did we would not now have job shortages in certain parts of the country in agriculture and skilled trades that inexplicably unemployed Americans don’t seem to want to fill.
My second point is that the statement that Speaker Gingrich made on how to deal with undocumented individuals who have been here for a substantial period of time, have sunk deep roots into this country and have families here, has been one small part of his very public comprehensive plan on immigration for months as well as a reflection of his views in this area for years. It is not amnesty but a path to legality he seeks. The two are distinctly different. The newly discovered outrage of Rep Bachmann and the mis-characterization of his position by Gov. Romney is desperation politics disguised as principle and usually something we see from the other guys not “conservatives” who supposedly take an intelligent and high moral stand on all issues and those involving families in particular. For any one who wants to actually read his very well thought out positions simply go to http://www.newt.org/solutions/immigration and educate yourself before you jump to a conclusion that is more knee jerk ideology than reason.
His position on immigration is defined by three principles i.e.
1. No “comprehensive” plan can work. President Bush could not pass one during six years with a Republican Congress. President Obama could not pass one with a Democratic Congress. Immigration reform can be outlined as a complete proposal but has to be passed in a series of steps, with each one understood and passed on its own merits.
2. Under no circumstance can a path to citizenship be created which would allow those who have broken the law to receive precedence over those who patiently waited to become residents and citizens via the legal process. Those who adhered to our immigration law cannot be usurped by those who violated it.
3. We must reconcile the goal of legality with the reality that there are millions of immigrants currently here outside the law, some with a long set of family and community ties, and some with no ties. A system has to be established that establishes legality but no citizenship for those with deep ties, repatriates those with no family or community ties in a dignified way, and quickly sends home those who have committed criminal and other destructive acts.
His solutions are in ten steps: i.e.
1. Control the border.
2. Create a 21st Century Visa Program
3. “In-source” the best brains in the world
4. Allow foreigners who want to spend money, invest and create jobs in America to do so.
5. There has to be a legal guest worker program, but its management must be outsourced to a sophisticated manager of anti-fraud systems, such as American Express, Visa, or Mastercard.
6. Create a path to earned legality for some of the millions of people who are here outside the law.
7. Deportation of criminals and gang members should be efficient and fast.
8. Ensure that every new citizen and every young American learn American history and the key principles of American Exceptionalism.
9. English must be the official language of government.
10. Young non-citizens who came to the United States outside the law should have the same right to join the military and earn citizenship.
My third and last point is directed to all the candidates, the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, the entire country and my fellow conservatives in particular. The sub set the Speaker described in his debate statement and in his position papers is not simply comprised of “illegals”. It also contains a far larger number of American Citizens who under the policies advocated by Bachmann and Romney in particular, will lose a father or a mother or a spouse or a grandparent because once again politicians have failed to think this thing through and end up hurting American voters. In the end stupid, inaccurate and harmful attacks such as those we are witnessing on this issue will result in voters wreaking their revenge at the polls and justifiably so.
Gingrich was right when he challenged the Republican Party and the Conservative movement to live up to their claim of being the champions of the family. You can’t rip families apart because of a “magnet” theory that makes no sense when applied to the population under discussion, and then try to hide the damage you will do to American citizens. by claiming it is being done to benefit them as American citizens.
Sometimes Republicans exhibit a death wish born out a zeal for political perfection particularly when they seek that perfection by walking over a cliff.
And sometimes politics is truly “ a tale told by idiots…full of sound and fury …and signifying nothing”.
ERLANDSSON
First and foremost I am a conservative who is a husband, son, grandson, nephew and cousin of immigrants. In addition my extended family all live abroad including two stepdaughters, one stepson and all my grandchildren and there is literally no way I and my wife, who is a US citizen, can bring them to the United States so that our family can be reunited and I can enjoy the comfort of their love and presence in my final years. The other part of my family all came here legally and with regard to my wife, at great expense while overcoming barriers this government has thoughtlessly put in the way of those who try to do things by the rules…rules, I must add that seem to keep changing by the year. My wife has an application to bring our youngest unmarried daughter here that will take by our best estimate, 20 years before it is even reviewed. I will be long dead by then. I raise all of this to make three basic points :
One is that legal immigration is broken in this country and is in itself a cause of illegal immigration. We simply do not have a comprehensive and coherent policy as to who we want to let into this country and why we want them here. If we did we would not now have job shortages in certain parts of the country in agriculture and skilled trades that inexplicably unemployed Americans don’t seem to want to fill.
My second point is that the statement that Speaker Gingrich made on how to deal with undocumented individuals who have been here for a substantial period of time, have sunk deep roots into this country and have families here, has been one small part of his very public comprehensive plan on immigration for months as well as a reflection of his views in this area for years. It is not amnesty but a path to legality he seeks. The two are distinctly different. The newly discovered outrage of Rep Bachmann and the mis-characterization of his position by Gov. Romney is desperation politics disguised as principle and usually something we see from the other guys not “conservatives” who supposedly take an intelligent and high moral stand on all issues and those involving families in particular. For any one who wants to actually read his very well thought out positions simply go to http://www.newt.org/solutions/immigration and educate yourself before you jump to a conclusion that is more knee jerk ideology than reason.
His position on immigration is defined by three principles i.e.
1. No “comprehensive” plan can work. President Bush could not pass one during six years with a Republican Congress. President Obama could not pass one with a Democratic Congress. Immigration reform can be outlined as a complete proposal but has to be passed in a series of steps, with each one understood and passed on its own merits.
2. Under no circumstance can a path to citizenship be created which would allow those who have broken the law to receive precedence over those who patiently waited to become residents and citizens via the legal process. Those who adhered to our immigration law cannot be usurped by those who violated it.
3. We must reconcile the goal of legality with the reality that there are millions of immigrants currently here outside the law, some with a long set of family and community ties, and some with no ties. A system has to be established that establishes legality but no citizenship for those with deep ties, repatriates those with no family or community ties in a dignified way, and quickly sends home those who have committed criminal and other destructive acts.
His solutions are in ten steps: i.e.
1. Control the border.
2. Create a 21st Century Visa Program
3. “In-source” the best brains in the world
4. Allow foreigners who want to spend money, invest and create jobs in America to do so.
5. There has to be a legal guest worker program, but its management must be outsourced to a sophisticated manager of anti-fraud systems, such as American Express, Visa, or Mastercard.
6. Create a path to earned legality for some of the millions of people who are here outside the law.
7. Deportation of criminals and gang members should be efficient and fast.
8. Ensure that every new citizen and every young American learn American history and the key principles of American Exceptionalism.
9. English must be the official language of government.
10. Young non-citizens who came to the United States outside the law should have the same right to join the military and earn citizenship.
My third and last point is directed to all the candidates, the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, the entire country and my fellow conservatives in particular. The sub set the Speaker described in his debate statement and in his position papers is not simply comprised of “illegals”. It also contains a far larger number of American Citizens who under the policies advocated by Bachmann and Romney in particular, will lose a father or a mother or a spouse or a grandparent because once again politicians have failed to think this thing through and end up hurting American voters. In the end stupid, inaccurate and harmful attacks such as those we are witnessing on this issue will result in voters wreaking their revenge at the polls and justifiably so.
Gingrich was right when he challenged the Republican Party and the Conservative movement to live up to their claim of being the champions of the family. You can’t rip families apart because of a “magnet” theory that makes no sense when applied to the population under discussion, and then try to hide the damage you will do to American citizens. by claiming it is being done to benefit them as American citizens.
Sometimes Republicans exhibit a death wish born out a zeal for political perfection particularly when they seek that perfection by walking over a cliff.
And sometimes politics is truly “ a tale told by idiots…full of sound and fury …and signifying nothing”.
ERLANDSSON
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
THE AUDACITY OF ARROGANCE PART 2
The sense of absolute entitlement that the permanent political class feels it possesses becomes more evident with each passing day. One day it is Nancy Pelosi wanting to investigate American citizens who do not want the Park 51 mosque to be built and the next day it is the revelation that NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has figured out a perfectly legal but totally amoral way to make money off of the pain and suffering of 9/11 survivors without disclosing it to the public. These are big nasty demonstrations of the total contempt the "mandarin" class has for us.
Other illustrations are less dramatic but just as poisonous as I witnessed last night at a Bronx Community Board 10 meeting on crime in the Zerega/Westchester Square sections of the Bronx. Concerned citizens from there and adjoining neighborhoods met at a local church to meet the new precinct commander and talk about a horrific crime against a defenseless 79 year old resident as well as the deterioration of the neighborhood as a result of over saturation of "social programs" by the city.
The three local elected officials were there in their official capacity and Frank Vernuccio President of COMACTA (Community Action Civic Association) was there in that capacity and not as R/C candidate for the 34th State Senate District. The rule at these events is no campaigning but that didn't stop incumbent State Senator Jeff Klein from putting out printed material until Vernuccio called him on it. His response to Frank really says it all. With a sneer he told Vernuccio that"I am an elected official , I just didn't wake up one morning and decide to run for public office!"
In other words "The Talented Mr. Klein" believes the rules don't apply to him and no one has the right to even challenge him about it or challenge him for office for that matter. This is a classic example of the "broken windows theory of politics". Like its counterpart with regard to crime prevention, the breaking of the rules begin with small rules and than mushroom into big time violations within a very short period of time.
It is also a clear indication of the sense of disdain this man has for those who pay his salary. He is after all, the author of the infamous March 11, 2010 "Pay to Play" letters to unions and other groups where access to your elected Democrat leadership (of which he is part), comes with a $50,000 or $25,000 price tag. An earlier shakedown involving him occurred in August of 2008 when then State Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith told an assemblage of lobbyists at the Wiltwyck Golf Club in Kingston NY, that in anticipation of a Democrat takeover of the State Senate they should think of the fundraising event as an IPO. Smith went on to say that the lobbyists should get in early because then it doesn't cost as much and if they didn't get in at all then it would be painful for them after November. Then as if to prove he was serious he referred four different times , according to press reports, to Senator Jeff Klein as his "enforcer" and said Klein was going to be brutal and aggressive about collecting contributions.
If these actions aren't illegal than it is because those who make the laws have provided escape clauses for professional politicians ...namely themselves. If laws were broken than the lack of any serious investigation proves that the system is truly and irrevocably broken and must be replaced with something novel and revolutionary like ...equal justice for the "rulers" and not just the "ruled".
Full disclosure mandates that I declare I am Frank Vernuccio's campaign manager and therefore the readers can decide if my comments about his opponent are tainted with the bias of what is becoming a very hard fought political battle. I hope however they do not do so, because these things are real and ugly and they manifest what is wrong with our politics and our government. Further, before I am a friend and partisan, I am a citizen... and as a citizen I see what I see and I hear what I hear like all my fellow citizens. Last night I saw the real face of Jeff Klein and all I have to say to him and the rest of his fellow parasites... Frank Vernuccio only claims to be an American Citizen and he unlike you... didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be an arrogant aristocrat !
ERLANDSSON
Other illustrations are less dramatic but just as poisonous as I witnessed last night at a Bronx Community Board 10 meeting on crime in the Zerega/Westchester Square sections of the Bronx. Concerned citizens from there and adjoining neighborhoods met at a local church to meet the new precinct commander and talk about a horrific crime against a defenseless 79 year old resident as well as the deterioration of the neighborhood as a result of over saturation of "social programs" by the city.
The three local elected officials were there in their official capacity and Frank Vernuccio President of COMACTA (Community Action Civic Association) was there in that capacity and not as R/C candidate for the 34th State Senate District. The rule at these events is no campaigning but that didn't stop incumbent State Senator Jeff Klein from putting out printed material until Vernuccio called him on it. His response to Frank really says it all. With a sneer he told Vernuccio that"I am an elected official , I just didn't wake up one morning and decide to run for public office!"
In other words "The Talented Mr. Klein" believes the rules don't apply to him and no one has the right to even challenge him about it or challenge him for office for that matter. This is a classic example of the "broken windows theory of politics". Like its counterpart with regard to crime prevention, the breaking of the rules begin with small rules and than mushroom into big time violations within a very short period of time.
It is also a clear indication of the sense of disdain this man has for those who pay his salary. He is after all, the author of the infamous March 11, 2010 "Pay to Play" letters to unions and other groups where access to your elected Democrat leadership (of which he is part), comes with a $50,000 or $25,000 price tag. An earlier shakedown involving him occurred in August of 2008 when then State Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith told an assemblage of lobbyists at the Wiltwyck Golf Club in Kingston NY, that in anticipation of a Democrat takeover of the State Senate they should think of the fundraising event as an IPO. Smith went on to say that the lobbyists should get in early because then it doesn't cost as much and if they didn't get in at all then it would be painful for them after November. Then as if to prove he was serious he referred four different times , according to press reports, to Senator Jeff Klein as his "enforcer" and said Klein was going to be brutal and aggressive about collecting contributions.
If these actions aren't illegal than it is because those who make the laws have provided escape clauses for professional politicians ...namely themselves. If laws were broken than the lack of any serious investigation proves that the system is truly and irrevocably broken and must be replaced with something novel and revolutionary like ...equal justice for the "rulers" and not just the "ruled".
Full disclosure mandates that I declare I am Frank Vernuccio's campaign manager and therefore the readers can decide if my comments about his opponent are tainted with the bias of what is becoming a very hard fought political battle. I hope however they do not do so, because these things are real and ugly and they manifest what is wrong with our politics and our government. Further, before I am a friend and partisan, I am a citizen... and as a citizen I see what I see and I hear what I hear like all my fellow citizens. Last night I saw the real face of Jeff Klein and all I have to say to him and the rest of his fellow parasites... Frank Vernuccio only claims to be an American Citizen and he unlike you... didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be an arrogant aristocrat !
ERLANDSSON
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