More On Eric Holder

Change, huh? Then how come all the names Obama's picking are right out of the Clinton playbook?

From Jim Meyers's article in Newsmax:

Holder also played a key role in the snatching of 6-year-old Cuban Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives’ home in April 2000, according to the Web site. Gonzalez was to be sent to Cuba where his father lived. 

...

Holder has already come under fire due to his involvement in the Mark Rich pardon in the final hours of the Clinton presidency.

Billionaire Rich renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Switzerland to avoid prosecution for racketeering, wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and illegal trades with Iran in violation of the U.S. embargo following the 1979-80 hostage
crisis.

Seventeen years later, Rich wanted a pardon, and he retained Jack Quinn, former counsel to the president, to lobby his old boss.

Holder had originally recommended Quinn to one of Rich's advisers, political analyst Dick Morris reported. And he gave substantive advice to Quinn along the way.

Once the pardon was granted, Holder sent his congratulations to Quinn.

Are We Surprised?

Barack Obama has nominated Eric Holder for attorney general.

From Alan Gottlieb in the Second Amendment Foundation's press release:

The nomination of Eric Holder for the post of attorney general of the United States sends an “alarming signal” to gun owners about how the Barack Obama administration will view individual gun rights, as affirmed this year by the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

"Eric Holder signed an amicus brief in the Heller case that supported the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, and also argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right," noted SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. "He has supported national handgun licensing and mandatory trigger locks. As deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, he lobbied Congress to pass legislation that would have curtailed legitimate gun shows.

"This is not the record of a man who will come to office as the nation’s top law enforcement officer with the rights and concerns of gun owners in mind," he observed.

Holder’s nomination, like the appointment of anti-gun Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, tells American gun owners that Obama’s campaign claims supporting the Second Amendment were "empty rhetoric," Gottlieb stated.

During his campaign, Obama claimed to be a centrist, claimed to work "across the aisle," and claimed to support gun rights. He claimed his previous record did not reflect the path going forward he planned to take.

So far, everything he has actually done since the election is consistent with his radical-leftist record and not with the lies promises he made to the subjects citizens who elected him to rule serve this country.

Some of us are not one bit surprised. But then we were paying attention.

How Obama Got Elected

By now, it should be painfully obvious that 52% of American voters were not paying attention earlier this month. The truth was out there, but they could not be bothered to see beyond what filmmaker John Ziegler calls "media malpractice."

His new website is providing insight into exactly what level of ingnorance was involved:

"On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama's limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple... the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job."

His upcoming film, Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected, should prove very interesting indeed. Dare we hope the people who really need to watch it actually do?

We Got What We Deserved

The wind howled all Election Day and on into the night. When I went to vote, it tore the door out of my hand. The smiling pollworkers said, "It's been doing that all day."

There was power in the air, and I have a hunch that exactly what needed to happen, happened.

Was it what we wanted? No. But it was what we deserved.

On another gun blog this morning, I saw someone post a comment that he would never bother voting again.

We did it to ourselves and got what we deserved.

According to this morning's news, overall Republican turnout was only 32%, an all time low.

We did it to ourselves and got what we deserved.

Didn't vote because the Republican party fielded a lame candidate? Whose fault was that lame candidate? Somebody elses? Sounds like abdication of personal responsibility to me, and that's a Democratic Party tactic.

We did it to ourselves and got what we deserved.

Voted for some third-party candidate with no chance whatsoever as a "statement?"

We did it to ourselves and got what we deserved.

This morning when I came in from doing outside chores, one of my dogs had knocked a book, "Acheron" by Sherrilyn Kenyon, onto the couch. When I picked it up, it fell open to a page where one of the characters says, "Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right."

We who know there are no coincidences, and pay attention to what happens around us, listen to the subtle messages.

Had McCain been elected, it would have been too easy to forget he was actually a RINO and fall back into apathy. Now we must get off our collective posteriors and do something. If we don't, if we repeat the mistakes of history, then we will lose our black rifles and AKM's and ability to defend ourselves effectively from violent crime. We will end up with Chicago-style gun control and crime non-control, and will be expected to roll over and die for it. We will end up with socialized medicine and all the waste and intrusiveness it entails.

A quote from Dr. Ignatius Piazza's Front Sight blog post, "The Life Cycle Of A Nation:"

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

"1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
"2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
"3. from courage to liberty;
"4. from liberty to abundance;
"5. from abundance to complacency;
"6. from complacency to apathy;
"7. from apathy to dependence;
"8. from dependence back into bondage."

So WHERE are we, citizens of the United States in the historically proven Life Cycle of Nations?

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by Democrats: 19, Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by Democrats: 580,000, Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by Democrats: 127 million, Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by Democrats: 13.2, Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republicans won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare . . . "

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the complacency and apathy phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

Personally, I think Professor Olson is being generous here putting us at Step 6. I'd put us more at 7 headed for 8. You want to see Step 8 in all its glory, look at the bubble-wrapped, nanny-state, socialist nightmare that is formerly-Great Britain.

We have two years to work toward breaking the back of the Democratic majority in Congress. Two years after that, we need to revitalize the Republican party so a truly viable candidate ensures Obama will be a one-term President. While it's a pleasant fantasy to expect people like Peggy The Moocher to turn on their great savior when he does not in point of fact make all their nasty bills go away with a snap of his fingers, we cannot afford to depend on it.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, "In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve." Well, we got it, folks. If we don't like it, we have to fix it ourselves.

Buttprints In The Sand

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of the Goddess they were,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,
and I asked Her, "What have we here?
These prints are large and round and neat,
But much too big to be from feet."

"My child," She said in somber tones,
"For miles I carried you alone.
"I challenged you to walk in faith,
"But you refused and made me wait.

"You would not learn, you would not grow,
"The walk of faith, you would not know,
"So I got tired, I got fed up,
"And there I dropped you on your butt.

"Because in life, there comes a time,
"When one must fight, and one must climb,
"When one must rise and take a stand,
"Or leave their buttprints in the sand."

Author Unknown

The Pagan version of the "Footprints" poem reflects the importance of personal responsibility in most of our Traditions. If our situation sucks, we probably made a significant contribution to the suckage, and it's up to us to fix it. "For if you find not that which you seek within yourself, you will never find it without."

So now that we've allowed a Democratic majority in Congress and put a Marxist in the White House, are we going to just sit there in the sand?

Into The Cauldron

It's Election Day today.

I drove past my polling place this morning long before it was due to open. The parking lot was already full. Hopefully I won't have to wait for hours to vote this evening.

I've been lucky to avoid the annoying political phone calls and personal attacks experienced by others. The only sign I have up at home is the one that says "No Trespassing" next to the locked gate. Maybe the gun photos and "keeper" targets in my office act as Obamabot repellant.

There are indications here and there that common sense may be reasserting. I received an e-mail the other day from an acquaintance who had been a vocal Obama supporter from the beginning. Now he's exhorting everyone in his address book to vote against Obama.

No matter how this election turns out, the results will be far from the ideals upon which this country was founded. Self-reliance, responsibility, and initiative have been replaced by narcissism, entitlement, and dependency. As society fosters and rewards infantile characteristics, other infantile behaviors come along for the ride. Just read any Democratic Party forum to see sterling examples of so-called adults acting like ill-mannered children.

Reports of voter intimidation and fraud are coming in already. The Obama campaign seems to use a playbook co-written by Richard J. Daley (aka King Richard the First -- hizzoner's son Richie is King Richard the Second) and Robert Mugabe. The ACORNs aren't falling far from the tree.

We who work on the quantum edge of tilting the scales of probability with our Will understand the Law of Unintended Consequences better than anyone. Whatever the outcome of this election, may the major parties' unintended consequences include the awakening of the American people to what depths this country has descended.

In my Tradition, the Cauldron is chaos, the place of all possibilities, that which comes after the end and before the beginning. It is where destruction is transformed to creation. May the power of the Cauldron help transform this mess into the best possible outcome.

For the greatest good of all.

In accordance with free will.

So mote it be.

P.S. -- My pre-ordered copy of Laurell K. Hamilton's new Merry Gentry book, "Swallowing Darkness," was just delivered a day early. Gotta love those "little coincidences." Now I know what I'll be doing tonight instead of subjecting myself to more political blather.

My Plan For E-Day

The polls won't be open yet when I leave for work in the morning, and I work too far from home to run back and vote in the middle of the day. That leaves voting on the way home.

I could have voted early, but there's something about the ritual of going inside the teensy tinker-toy booth with the totally inadequate privacy curtain, clutching your paper ballot and fat kindergarten pencil here in low-tech Nebraska.

Then I'm going home and watching DVD's for the rest of the evening. The Witchblade Complete Series set should keep me from any more political spew for quite a few hours. Or maybe read the latest Jim Butcher/Dresden Files book to make it into electronic format. Anything but broadcast television on election night.

Plenty of time to find out how screwed we are the next morning.

I agree with Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority that we have a choice here between disaster and catastrophe. There may well be no candidate running who deserves to win, but there is certainly one who stands out as spectacularly deserving to lose.

I don't know whether stuff like this makes me glad I don't drink, or sorry.

POST SCRIPT: Dr. Ignatius Piazza of Front Sight Firearms Training Institute hits one out of the park with his blog post "The Life Cycle Of A Nation." I offer it here as a last call to DO SOMETHING with what we have to work with this time around.

Stalin's Heir

As we come down to the wire in this election cycle, Doc Russia presents a comprehensive analysis of Obama's rise to power.

An excerpt:

The recent incident where Biden was questioned as to how whether Obama was a marxist in light of his views of "spreading the wealth" crystallizes this belief. First, Biden could not illuminate the differences between Obama and Marx because, IMHO, there is no substantial difference. So, he pretends affront by answering with the rhetorical question "is this a joke?" Then, perhaps more tellingly, the incident comes complete circle in Stalinist format by the network subsequently being shut out of the loop, and even such tenuous examples of speaking truth to power are punished.

Here's a video discussing that interview and its consequences:

Any more, it looks like YouTube and the blogosphere are the only places to find the truth. At least until the Obama machine destroys the First Amendment along with the Second. After all, Obama says the Constitution reflects the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.

It's still not too late, folks. Doc Russia, like Ly Chho, knows communism when he sees it coming. VOTE!

Make Way For The Obama Gestapo

Their jobs will be so much easier after he takes our guns away.

Guess what. We already have a "civilian" defense force consisting of every armed citizen. It's defined in the Second Amendment. But since Obama's on record repeatedly working toward citizen disarmament, I'm guessing this is an intended end-run around those pesky Posse Comitatus and Insurrection Acts. You know, the ones that prevent bringing the full force of the military to bear against American citizens at home.

Wolverines!

Woman Shoots Returning Rapist

A 57-year old woman in Missouri shot and killed a man who returned to her home to rape her a second time.

The first time she was attacked, she tried to escape when she heard glass break in the basement. The man caught her, punched her in the face, forced her into a bedroom, and raped her.

The second attempt occurred less than a week after the first. The rapist broke in through the same basement window as before and shut off power to her home. She tried to call 911 but the phone was dependent on house current and wouldn't work. So she got a shotgun and waited.

When he broke through the basement door she shot him in the chest.

Updated to add news video:

So let's review here. The Authorities say we should run away from danger instead of defend ourselves. Okay, she tried that the first time. It didn't work.

They say we should call 911. She tried that the second time. It didn't work.

They say the police will take care of everything. Obviously the rapist hadn't been arrested when he came back, so that didn't work either.

What did work was a shotgun applied at center mass. Pretty much guaranteed to work.

The county prosecutor, Morley Swingle, said, "I will not be filing any sort of charge against this 57-year-old woman, who was clearly justified under the law in shooting this intruder in her home." Missouri law allows you to own firearms and defend yourself with them. But in Illinois, Barack Obama voted against Senate Bill 2165 which stated:

Amends the Criminal Code of 1961. Provides that it is an affirmative defense to a violation of a municipal ordinance that prohibits, regulates, or restricts the private ownership of firearms if the individual who is charged with the violation used the firearm in an act of self-defense or defense of another. Effective immediately.

Let me repeat: Obama feels actually defending your life is not an acceptable reason to violate a municipal defenseless-victim order.

Not to mention he believes said defenseless-victim orders to be appropriate and constitutional.

In summary, we have an example of truly effective defense that could only have been better if the victim had been able to use it the first time. We have obvious failures of more politically-correct "defenses." And we have a Presidential candidate who favors stacking the deck so this woman would have been forced to suffer violation a second time from the same piece of ambulatory human feces.

But what's one more kind of rape to the socialist agenda?

Disarm The Proletariat

So they can't resist when you go to redistribute their wealth?

In Obama's own words, his support for a "ban on concealed carry laws."

Pretty much what you'd expect from someone who voted to uphold the criminal prosecution of people who use firearms in self-defense (Illinois Senate, SB 2165, March 25, 2004, vote 20 and May 25, 2004, vote 3).

PAY ATTENTION! VOTE!

Quote Of The (Election) Day

From Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Norman Thomas:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."

The question now is, will enough of the worshippers of the Obamessiah wake up from their dreams of suckling the government teat for the rest of their miserable lives in time to postpone prevent this happening?

More NRA Election Videos

Just in case your local media outlets aren't showing both sides of the issues before the election.

"The Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama"

Guy Benson and Mary Katharine Ham refer to themselves as "young conservative journalists." In collaboration with Ed Morrissey, they have compiled a most impressive synopsis of what they describe as "a number of Obama’s positions, statements, and associations about which he has been less than honest."

That's putting it mildly.

They admit they haven't hit everything. My own favorite of his abysmal position on guns is not included. But that's okay. They've hit just about every other reason to vote against him next month.

And I especially love this quote:

"In fact, if Obama wins on November 4th—and serves one full term in the Oval Office — the Presidency of the United States would be the longest consecutively held full-time job he has ever held without seeking another."

Read, and watch, the whole thing.

From An Illinois Lobbyist About Obama

Richard Pearson is the executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association. He has been active in firearms rights for over forty years, and has been the ISRA's chief lobbyist in Illinois for the past fifteen.

Here is an excerpt from his open letter to the gun owners of America:

I lobbied Barack Obama extensively while he was an Illinois State Senator. As a result of that experience, I know Obama’s attitudes toward guns and gun owners better than anyone. The truth be told, in all my years in the Capitol I have never met a legislator who harbors more contempt for the law-abiding firearm owner than Barack Obama.

Read the whole thing.

More Obama Blue Smoke And Mirrors

Via Gundoctor, we find this article in the Wall Street Journal:

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit."

Catch is, you don't have to pay any taxes to get these tax credits.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

Let me repeat, 44% of all Americans would PAY NO INCOME TAX AT ALL AND RECEIVE A CHECK FROM THE IRS EVERY YEAR.

And where does the money for such generosity, FOUR TIMES the cost of the current welfare system, come from?

THE OTHER 56% OF US.

Just reminding folks there are LOTS of reasons besides gun rights to keep Obama out of the White* House.

* Given the DNC and the Obama campaign's predilection to call everything a racial slur, I want to go on record as saying this is not racist.

From Someone Who Knows Communism When She Sees It

Kevin Baker at Smallest Minority relates a question asked by Ly Chho at the NRA press conference announcing their endorsement of McCain/Palin.

Mrs. Chho's parents are Chinese and she was born in Cambodia. She was raised and educated in Taiwan, and has been a naturalized American citizen for fourteen years. She is a new NRA member.

Her question at the press conference?

"I am a new NRA member. I have been a citizen for only fourteen years. I believe in the Constitution and the Second Amendment, and when I see Obama, I see Communism, and I am afraid. I believe he is going to win the election. Do you have any plans in place if this happens?"

Seems to me the best answer is to see that as many people as possible don't vote for the Obamessiah. When I hear folks talk about voting for candidates who don't have a snowball's chance of getting elected just to make a point, I'm reminded of the votes for Nader that may have been a factor in Gore losing out to Bush in 2000.

Is McCain an ideal choice? No. Prior to his selection of Sarah Palin as VP, I viewed him as the less disgusting of the two Democrats running. His insistence that a non-existent "gun show loophole" is a danger to public safety and must be "closed" is ridiculous.

But he beats the hell out of the prospect of living under the thumb of Dear Leader.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Ever wonder where all those in-the-tank-for-Obama poll results come from?

Classical Values explains The Numbers Game.

UPDATE: Steven M. Warshawsky at American Thinker has more on the lies spin polls.

Obama's Plan To Destroy The Second Amendment

Courtesy of Michael Bane and David Hardy, we have a exposé of Barack Obama's effort while director of the Joyce Foundation to destroy the Second Amendment through judicial obliteration.

Of course, Joe Biden's Beretta is safe . . .

Those Who Ignore The Past

May be doomed to repeat it.

Yuri Bezmenov

Uploaded by onmyway02

Courtesy of Breda.