Oregon Magazine - Editorial page

Oregon Magazine Editorial Page
February 2012 Vol. 12 No. 2

Praemonitus: Veritas per inutilis philosophia tuus.

Reader note: this is being posted a couple of days early due to schedule problems. The January editorial is just below this one. (LL)

Who Won the First District?

It's impossible to tell at this writing, which is on the 30th of January. This is/was a special election to replace David Wu from Oregon's First District. (To fill his vacated seat for a year.) We know this: the Democrat, Suzy Something, was endorsed by the Oregonian and all the other Portland newspapers of record, the Astoria paper and most of the valley papers from the suburbs.

All the oddsmakers were picking Suzy by big numbers.

So, if this election turns/turned out as predicted, all the liberals will be describing it as a victory for the Progressive movement and a harbinger for the big one, ahead.

Like everything else Oregon's media says, it's just noise. Wu was a Democrat. Replacing him with a Democrat will not change the balance in the U.S. House, at all. And considering the politics of this state, the results will be about as surprising as rain in November in these parts.

The election, unless the Republican wins, means nothing about the fall.

But, even if it is a loss, Rob, the Republican, looked pretty good. In the next contest, for a full two-year term, the lessons he has learned just might allow him to put up a real scrap. He'll know what to say because he'll know what will be said about him.

Knowing how the enemy plans to attack can shape the outcome of the battle.

(LL)

Who's Going to Win?

December 31st, 2011 --   As we see it here at Oregon Magazine, the real question is, "Who has already won?

We view Man as a collection of cultures. The life in each place is shaped by those very deep networks of experience and tradition. If you watch a Fourth of July parade in Ohio when you are six, you have one world view. If you watch a lamb being sacrificed to a pagan tribal deity when you are six, you have another world view.

Is there proof of this concept? Yes.

Find another way to explain people fleeing a place where they cannot find work, arriving at a place where they do find work, then joining together (as in the organization, La Raza, or "The Race) in an attempt to change the place where they found work into the place they left.

This is not conscious, logical reasoning. It is an emotional response woven from the early experiences -- from the warp and woof of the cultural kilt that blanketed them from their beginnings.

The American culture is made of Judeo-Christian themes. It has threads the color of George Washington, Andrew Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, John Wayne, the Western Expansion, the Gold Rush, Mark Twain, the Battle of the Bulge, the Wright Brothers, the private suburban two car garage, freedom of the press, synagogues standing a block away from Catholic churches, Buddy Holley and the Crickets, hot rods, oil derricks, shopping centers, Christmas, stagecoaches, moon landing vehicles, hamburger stand franchises, skyscrapers, Wall Street and Main Street.

All of this may be contained within one single word: dynamism.

The individual pursuing his own path toward his own future. That is why my Irish and Norwegian ancestors sailed across the sea to look at the Statue of Liberty. It was about their own dream. The American Dream is made of the individual dreams of millions of people, from all over the planet.

For decades now, America has been turning towards a collective dream. The results of that path are clear. Where once difference amalgamated like individual notes into a symphony made of freedom, now differences are collective identities.

An African-American, when it means the same thing as Irish-American, is fine. When it becomes a separate identity in law, you have division not the dynamics, the energy, the creativity generated by the Constitutional umbrella envisioned by the Founding Fathers of this national miracle that is the United States of America.

Where once the parts created a national clock, now the parts compete to see what they can take from each other. The mechanism is now made of culturally competing components instead of culturally different parts working beautifully together, regardless of their other differences.

That said, we think that the old, dynamic culture is rising up, again. It is demanding that the America that worked be revived. The Tea Parties are the evidence. They do not want the property of others unless they purchase it, themselves. They do not wish to be subsumed into a collectivist culture, their lives, their beliefs, their very speech controlled by political correctness -- but prefer the old culture where a man built his own future with his own hands, brain and a little luck. They believe that compassion requires personal sacrifice, and that there is no compassion involved when a bureaucrat gives their money to somebody else. Even the recipients of such welfare they believe, are victims of that kind of compassion -- for there is no pride in receiving it.

As i said at the top of this essay, it is dynamism that the collectivists have destroyed in America. The Tea Parties represent a rebirth of this quality. It is a cultural, American, thing.

It is, as we see it, the driving force in this land, at this time. Cultural forces being what they are, it has already won.

(LL)

Crater Lake Could Swallow the Empire State Bldg.
Or, the Empire State Bldg. could swallow Oregon ...

December, 2011 -- There's a certain symmetry in these concepts. Crater Lake may be visited in America, but New York City thinks it is America. How do I know? Simple. the Tea Parties didn't begin in NYC, so the MSM thought they were unimportant -- still do, in fact, even after 2010's national elections. How could anything not rooted in NYC be lasting in nature? What idiot would suggest a thing like that?

But, the "occupy" movement, to this same clot of NYC, self-congratulatory, Pulitzer winning inflated egoists, is a BIG DEAL because it did start in NYC. Importance, it turns out has a geographical component. If it starts in the Big Apple, nothing else matters.

To them.

It's a common fantasy, and is created by urbanization. Cities, by nature dependent locations, are just like ancient fortresses. They don't create the basic stuff humans need to survive. Cut off their food and water and in no time they fall. In fact, just stop sending them steak and lettuce, then point at some good farmland and say, "There's where we do it. Have fun," and walk away. They won't have the faintest idea what to do. A year later, 90% of them will be dead.

The arrogance of the Urbanite hides their total dependency on us hicks. NYC or Portland, Oregon, it's the same Hollywood fantasy.

Speaking of that, have you noticed that nearly all movies in the last five decades are either mildly pornographic or moving comic books? Try to imagine Hollywood making a film like To Kill a Mockingbird, these days. (Not a chance, because no naked bodies.) Or, 12 O'Clock High, for another example. (Not a chance, because no naked bodies.) Going My Way? She Wore a Yellow Ribbon? The Maltese Falcon? Key Largo?

You might as well expect accurate reporting from NBC or the New York Times.

Perhaps it's like Rome

Lusty folks roll up their sleeves and build an empire-sized state. Their children live much better lives. Their grandchildren seem to think they deserve benefits without danger. Their great-grandchildren think they deserve benefits without effort. This leads to the collapse of the structure.

We like to think that this brand new thing called America is not like a human body which grows into health and strength, then gradually declines and dies. This Republic ("representative democracy") is the water from the magic fountain, and has the capacity to defeat the old diseases -- to renew its vigor and refresh its cells. Right?

Maybe. It's the first type of government in the history of the planet which has the medical tools to fix its own broken bones and cut out the cancers from the world's tyrannical past. The rules are there for us to use. The Rise need not come with a Fall, this time -- assuming the descendants of the founders actually understand what they inherited, and aren't a bunch of jerkoffs.

(LL)

Concerning the alteration of tradition for political convenience ...

October 25, 2011 -- They asked a question on the air. This was the morning FOX show. They wanted to know what you think about education, today. I think with rare exceptions, it's socialist junk. Compared what we used to have, public schools today are PC hovels and political campaign money laundering devices. I compare historic academic achievement levels in classical America to those of today. The classical period in question could be the era prior to "modernization" of public education to its current form - Say, 1900 -- 1950, with 1960-2010. Content is the key. What the kids learn.

This latter period contains the "separation of church and state," the introduction of radical feminism that has destroyed the American family, affirmative action and a host of Progressive alterations of the previous traditional norms.

In effect, this latter day cultural mode has eliminated the celebration of traditional holidays (or altered former celebratory characteristics) dramatically. Christmas, the Fourth of July, Easter and so forth. In Portland, Oregon, one of the historic streets was named "Union Avenue" then was renamed "Martin Luther Kind Blvd." There's a certain irony, there, since the Union designation had to do with ending slavery in America, while the MLK label refers to the battle to end the widespread effects of the Democrat's Jim Crow. (During the late 19th and early part of the 20th Century, a Democrat could not achieve public office in Oregon without the permission of the KKK.)

So, Union Avenue was about a savage war to free blacks from bondage, and MLK BLVD is about finishing the earlier work. Which is the greater accomplishment -- ending legal slavery or Jim Crow? Which cost the most lives?

To me, breaking free of the chains made the second event possible, and so the Civil War is the more significant of the two. They couldn't have been done in reverse order. I interpret the renaming of that street to the taking of current political advantage. The reason why another street wasn't renamed was because Union Avenue went through the traditional black district, and the Democrats wanted cover for the fight to keep the slaves in chains, and the savage decades of their creation, Jim Crow. But, then, with our public schools none of them knew it.

History had to be re-written if the slavers and creators of Jim Crow were to get that voting bloc

There was a time when Civics were a major part of education in this nation. Since the Sixties, the erosion of the traditional culture that produced a rich nation and a world-class military which defended freedom around the world has been replaced by injustice in the name of justice and ever-increasing serfdom (government control over the lives of private citizens) in the place of freedom

During the era of traditional cultural beliefs celebrated by the holidays under discussion, the family was strong. There was pride, and the economic dynamism of freedom. The erosion of those founding cultural practices has left us with the present mess.

For those who are part of the PC American history rape, be aware of the following. Tradition matters to us Tea Party types. Holidays are symbols, like flags, and the classic traditions of America -- if the Tea Parties have anything to say about it -- will not be eroded further. (They will be revitalized.)

We saw what Hitler did with symbolism. We have watched the symbolism of the Islamic "freedom" movement. We have seen our schools turned into socialist swamps teaching Marxism. We have watched liberals spend our tax dollars for spandex bike paths and feminist education community centers that are actually just abortion information centers) while our economy is turned over to bureaucrats and our parades go from floats containing veterans to floats celebrating immorality.

It's the Tom Brokaw Syndrome

He's the man who wrote a book titled "The Greatest Generation," then spent each evening on network news supporting the Left. I don't think Tom was even aware of what he did. At times I, and my millions of Tea Party friends, wonder the same about the MSM, today.

Many great citizens got a fine education before traditions came up for discussion. Support what you wish, but remember the election of 2010. I don't mind offending some people with Christmas Trees in a Portland public area. I don't care if teachers didn't like Washington's Birthday, and wanted to change it to President's Day so that presidents that were garbage compared to him were elevated to his level. I doubt that North Koreans celebrate Christmas or Easter. I think I know why they don't.

They think classical American symbols, just like religion, are an opiate for the masses. What America needs is a return of the massas. (Socialist massas, to be precise.)

LL

Did Obama Bring Gas Prices Down?

We're talking about the zillions of gallons he "released" from the national Emergency Reserves.   Oil stored by the government for special needs -- disasters, war and elections. The amount "released" was the equivalent of two or three days usage in the United States, so unless Americans are stupid, the motivation couldn't have been political. Or, to put it another way, only economic idiots would believe that "release" was the reason gasoline prices dropped a bit, after the event.

Commodity speculators (rich folks and corporations which have an ongoing need for the stuff) call this the "futures" market. It's gambling on a roulette wheel that has only two slots for the ball to drop into -- up or down.

A three day national supply release is a drop in the bucket. Maximum effect on the price of petroleum would be maybe a dime a barrel for a half an hour on Thursday. This is because oil is a commoddity that is sold on a world, not an American national, scale. 3 zillion gallons would barely make the world oil market needle twitch.

So, since intelligent people know all this, why would he do it?

All we can think of is which oil company bought that oil, what they paid for it and who ended up with the money. 3 zillion gallons from the taxpayer-funded national emergency petroleum reserves would represent pure profit for whoever's campaign fund or union retirement plan gets the dollars.

(LL)

Control Tower Snoozers

May, 2011 -- Regarding the airport traffic controllers who have been sleeping on the job, lately, we have read that each one costs $161,000 per year. Rather than doubling the team size, and so the cost of these (mostly small airport) government positions, as the Obama regime has suggested, why not provide a cot for the resident controller to nap on, and hire a local resident who needs a job to wake him or her up when a plane calls the tower?

(Any HAM, or Amateur Radio, operator could handle the job.)

This "assistant" job would cost a tenth of what a qualified controller requires. The only work credentials would be of the reliability type, and could be met by any HAM in town. A retired one would be perfect, since they know more about mobile and fixed radio technology and communications than most official controllers. Find one with a private pilot's license and you have the problem solved. Failing that, it should be awarded to somebody on welfare who presently spends most of their night watching late-night television shows, anyway. It would ease the community burden in that area, as well.

Funding for these people could come from the billions still unspent in the famous "TARP" jobs fund held by the White House -- thus would not increase the national debt by one single dime.

(LL)

Why doesn't the New York Times know what the definition of "democracy" is?

Heard this morning on Portland, Oregon's KPTV: People across America are demonstrating against the Wisconsin legislation which threatens the middle class and union's rights.

Wisconsin labor protest reverberates in Oregon

February 27, 2011 -- The history of the West (Europe and North America) is a violent one, but then so is the history of every other part of the planet. I'm interested in the West because it's where citizen rule was invented.

Freedom isn't always appreciated by those who have it. Right now, millons of Americans are acting like they want to throw it away. But, I don't think they're doing it intentionally. It's one of those "stupid" things Man does.

The legislative senators in Wisconsin have left town to block a vote on government union "rights" which they say the Republican governor and legislature are trying to take away. As an aside, these "rights" do not exist. Proof of that is the fact that federal government employees don't have them. Famous Democrats in Congress and the White House saw to that. (Rights are things embedded in the U.S. Constitution, and are very difficult to take away. No state governor or legislature can do it by themselves.) Anyway, the unions in Wisconsin are revolting. This is interesting, to me, because the senators who have deserted the legislature and physically departed the state are "Democrats." Without the initial capital "D," the word means "government by direct vote of the people."

(Not that America is a pure "democracy." It is a Constitutional Republic -- which is a structure that uses direct vote of the people (democracy) to select representatives who do the actual governing -- limited by the rules in that Constitution.)

Those old enough to recall the Sixties remember the Progressive/union/hippie cry of "Power to the People." Since the present majority in the Wisconsin legislature (plus the governor, himself) was selected by a direct vote of the people, what these "Democrats" are doing is revolting against a "democracy."

It's like a Catholic priest denying the existence of Christ.

So, where American "Democrats" are concerned, "Power to the People," as Reagan once observed, actually means "Power over the People."

The fact that not one of the major media outlets in America (New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, the big magazines like TIME, etc.) has mentioned this proves either that all major MSM journalists are drooling idiots, or liars.

Oregon Magazine votes for the former. Villains are threats, but in no way as serious a threat as stupidity. That is the task of "education" in Oregon and all across this nation. These fools in your newspapers, magazines and electronic media were educated in American journalism schools like Columbia University. They get the same "education" right here in Oregon. If you want to know whose text to dismiss offhand, check to see if the staff ever won a Pulitzer. Most Pulitzers are given to journalists who don't know what the word "democracy" means.

(LL)

Will they balance Oregon's budget?

January 30th, 2011 -- We talked to an Oregon Republican about this the other day. He is a member of your legislature and is brimming over with "conservative" ideas. He believes that a "compromise" can be found that will accomplish the task. Our new governor has to do it, he said. It's in the state constitution.

I've lived in Oregon for 69 years.

At best, it will look like they've done it, but when the "compromise" is studied in detail, it will reveal the reverse. This is because Oregon Democrats are not now, and never have been, interested in limiting spending increases to revenues. Their public statements on such matters cry fiscal responsibility to the heavens, but their private actions represent a religious dedication to "investments" in education*, infrastructure and so forth. And, the only difference between an Oregon Democrat and an Oregon Republican -- with extremely rare exceptions -- is that the Republican wears a tie.

If you know an accountant, when the final budget is released, have him go over the thing. If he's not a liberal accountant, he'll discover the con jobs. What is a poliltical budget con job? Here's an example:

The federal social security "lock box" doesn't contain a dime. Back in the days of LBJ, congressional Democrats and RINOs eliminated the FDR-era requirement that the socsec funds that are taken from worker's paychecks be put there, and remain there until needed for retirement benefits.

This made the socsec trust fund available for other uses, like welfare, bridges to nowhere and so forth. From that day, the lockbox has contained only IOUs. Let's say that they are treasury bonds. The congress takes out a billion dollars and puts in the same amount of T-Bills. From an accounting standpoint, the fund still contains a billion dollars.

But, ask yourself the following question. Who pays out the money when a treasury bill is cashed in?

The taxpayers. You.

So, your socsec donations to the lockbox are taken to fund the EPA's study of the population status of the lavender burping frog, and when you retire, the money to provide your socsec check comes from those bonds.

It's like robbing Peter to pay Peter.

There are hundreds of such tricks available to congress and state legislatures. The new "balanced" Oregon budget bill will use them to get around the "balanced" part -- which was supposed to match spending to revenues, but which now is just a financial scam.

Social Security, itself, is a pyramid scam. Illegal when Bernie Madoff did it, but legal when the government does it.

So, the "conservative" Oregon legislator we talked to fed us a line of baloney. He may have done it intentionally, or he may simply be ignorant when it comes to such things.

It doesn't matter which. In either case, you lose.

(LL)   *February 1st on the KEX (1190 AM in Portland) noon news, I just heard a tape of our new Governor saying precisely that.

Progressive Football

December 31st, 2010 -- Is Oregon winning?

Well, what does the word mean? In a football game, you tell who has won by the scoreboard. The team with the most points is the victor. But, in other areas of life? What's the scoreboard there?

In one of those areas, at least, there is a scoreboard.   In the realm of economics, the score is measured in positive or negative numbers. Politics can muddy up the meaning of those numbers, of course. In the past the unemployment numbers came from a statistical record that was defined by specific parameters.

Today, things have changed. Progressives like President Obama say the 9.6% UER is not accurate. You must also factor in the number of jobs his "Stimulus" package has saved.

Since I love football, I hope that the Progressives never infiltrate that sport and install new scoreboards at the end of those playing fields. A final tally which factors in the number of points the home team defense prevented the visitors from achieving in their victory over our guys would be too much to handle. If, when you include the eighty-seven touchdowns USC or the Huskies or Stanford was prevented from scoring during their four touchdown victory over their Oregon opponents of the day, the net result is a winning loss instead of a losing loss, you have arrived at Progressive football.

That will be it, for me. I will have seen my last football game.

(LL)

Why is Oregon Magazine shaped
the way it is, these days?

December, 2010 -- I have been questioned about the way this magazine is being done. In the old days, it was a place where readers could find art, lifestyles, fashions, sketches of interesting Oregonians, event listings, wonderful celebrations of our natural flora and fauna, history and so forth.

There was lots of fun stuff mixed in with the serious material. Why is it so heavily focused on politics, these days?

Well, the focus in America in 1776 was on two Georges. Washington and the English king. The focus in America during the Civil War was the Civil War. The focus in America, and Oregon, in half of the Nineteen-forties was WWII.

Journalism is about what's going on, and why. Daily journals, like newspapers, are event-driven. Monthly journals, like magazines, are more about analysis. They're about more depth -- deeper discussion of the sources and meanings of the forces headlining the front page of the paper, or the evening television news.

Events shape and reshape that focus for the daily media, and in a more reflective way, a publication like this one. The size of the various topics shift the presentation this way and that. This one bulges in importance, then that one's sudden importance replaces it. It's a vibrating soap bubble. The larger lumps at the moment take precedence.

Oregon Magazine -- a publication which in every incarnation since the Sixties has contained my work -- is, first and foremost, about what the editors think is important. Fun, pretty, fashionable, and locally interesting come second.

The topic of importance in Oregon, today, is political in nature.

It is our opinion that for decades this beautiful region, like the entire nation, has been slowly coming under the control of the socialist Left. This lovely and rich state of mind is now dominated by the influence of the Left, and our citizens are being slowly submerged beneath the surface of a bureaucratic blanket which is piece by piece swallowing their freedoms in the name of social "justice," "fairness" and "equality."

This is, we believe, a suffocating blanket, and is choking the life from the host. Because of it, our economy is dirt, our schools are PC swamps, our very vitality as a people is being sapped. The Oregon the pioneers risked their life to reach, is halfway to becoming another Euro-socialist state. In time, another Cuba, Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

The state's largest newspaper, the Oregonian, today (11/29) noticed that there actually might be something to this "Islamic terrorism" stuff the wild-eyed, right-wing crazies like us have been talking about for years.

By that mention, I am describing 99% of the media in the state, from private sources to "public" television, as sump-holes of left-wing, PC propaganda. From NPR to the Eugene Register Guard, they wouldn't recognize the truth if it was carved into a brick and hit them between the eyes.

We are old enough to remember a time when things were better. Not perfect, but much, much better, so we fight the central corruption of the philosophy that liberalism (socialism) has been promoting, hereabouts. This editorial approach has cost us dearly in terms of reader numbers. Oregon, west of the Cascades and in the more "hip" areas to the East, is in love with the Left. But, the recent mid-term elections told us that, if only to a small degree locally, our point of view is beginning to once more take hold in America.

If not here to any degree, yet, people elsewhere in America are rising up and saying, "This is not a socialist bureaucracy. We do not want a nanny-state. We do not want what these gray, bureacrats want. We are taxed too much and regulated too much. We are told to be silent, too much.

"We are told our lifestyles are too expansive, our cars too large, our homes too big, our diets too rich, our possessions too numerous -- and that all of these represent a kind of theft from the environment and the poor peoples of this state, this nation and this world.

"We reject these ideas as being sham arguments coming from those who wish to control our lives, our property and our society. You have taken the dynamism from this state and this nation, and we intend to restore it to its former glory."

That is why you don't see a lot of fashion, art or travel material in Oregon Magazine, these days. A war is on, and we want to be in the front lines battling the forces of the Left. We'd rather be writing about flycasting for cutthroat trout on the East Fork, but the fishing must be put off for later.

Right now, the job is war -- against threats both foreign and domestic.

(LL)

Women May Save America

During the 20th Century, most American women were Democrats. That means "liberals." Something is changing, there.

I have wondered for decades why they supported liberalism. I attributed it to their feelings of compassion, but that seemed odd to me for one very large reason. Affirmative Action. I could not, and still cannot, understand why white American women would vote for a political party which instigated a range of policies which treated with favoritism everybody but their own sons.

Here's just one example. The Hispanic Education Myth

Read it, then reflect on the text. Ask yourself why white mothers would do that to their own children. Are you a white mother? Do you think your children should be forced to sit in the back of the bus?

However, watching the rise of the Tea Parties, I have noticed that women are playing a frontline part of that game. They are up front in the demonstrations, up front as guests on the FOX programs and up front as candidates across America.

Female candidates for state offices, female candidates for federal House and Senate seats -- females running for everything from the local town council to national offices -- nearly all of them from and supported by the folks who share the Tea Party tent.

The Democrats say that this is a great danger to the nation -- that we must not go back. We must go forward. This is why liberals call themselves "progressives." The word means "progress."

The question, of course, is progress to what?

But, a better question is what do these Tea Party women want to "go back" to? That one, I can answer. They want to go back to the U.S. Constitution. And, that is exactly where America should go.

No more "special rights" for some Americans. No more "affirmative action" for some Americans. Equal rights for all Americans. You make it or not based on your effort, your skill or intelligence level and your luck. Same chance for everybody.

That's the kind of "progress" America needs right now. And, it looks like the people who in the name of compassion supported the American shift toward socialism have awakened to their mistake, and may have become the people who will save this nation from a looming compassionate slavery.

It's an amazing thing to watch.

(LL)

Editorials from the recent past

Reprise: Blood and Democracy

"There has never been in the history of the world a country in which a regime change happened at the bayonets of guns that has led to stability." -- Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal

Every major nation on Earth was purchased in blood -- most of them in combat. Some required revolutions against a colonial power. America is one of those. Some were the result of armed revolutions against internal tyrants. The Republic of France is one of those.. Other regime changes came about as a result of foreign invasion. This list includes Germany, Japan and Italy. The most stable nations in the world were created at the bayonets of guns. Prince Saud al-Faisal, in making such a ridiculous statement, displays a complete ignorance of world history.

(LL)

The Purpose of the Press

Recently, a famous black weekend network anchor named Simpson, said that she got into the profession "to change the world."

This is why when people ask me if the strident Leftist bias in America's mainstream media is a conspiracy, I say, "No, not exactly."

A conspiracy involves a group of people who plot secretly to do something for which they will not be blamed publicly. By definition, the conspirators know who is conspiring. They're together when they make the plan.

The American liberal media conspiracy, however, is different in that they don't meet to plot, transmit their plans to each other in plain view, and are completely unaware that what they are doing is pure Fifth Column stuff.

Miss Simpson is totally in the dark about the fraud she represents. She doesn't know the job of a journalist is to report the facts. She is busy every day shaping the news in ways that will change the world -- shape it so that it reflects her ideological view of how things should be.

It is precisely how journalism is done in North Korea and Cuba. It is how journalism is done in Islamic theocracies and other tyrannies in Africa, Asia and other places around the globe.

If you've ever flipped from show to show at network news time, and wondered how they all cover the same stories in the same way, it isn't because they check with each other before the broadcast. They don't need to do that.

They got into journalism to change the world. When you start from the same place, with exactly the same travel plan, you automatically end up at the same destination as the rest.

(LL)

Editorials from past issues

Black Caucus has nothing to do with being black

If the link is still good, read the AP story, below.

Black Democrats denounce judicial nominee Brown as another 'Clarence Thomas'

The Congressional Black Caucus denounced White House judicial nominee Janice Rogers Brown of California on Friday, with one member saying she was "cut from the same cloth as Clarence Thomas" and should be kept off a federal appellate court.

"This Bush nominee has such an atrocious civil rights record she makes Clarence Thomas look like Thurgood Marshall," said Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif.

But Republican senators immediately defended Brown. "If critics don't like Justice Brown's decisions, they should change the law, rather than attack her for partisan political gain," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

OMED: J.C. Watts had a seat during lunch with the "Black" Congressional Caucus. Other than that, his opinions were not wanted. Clarence Thomas is regularly castigated by liberal blacks for being an "Oreo," which means black on the outside and white on the inside.

In case you don't understand what is going on in your country, the "Civil Rights" movement at almost every level has nothing to do with civil rights. It is about political power for liberal special interest groups. It is about socialist redistributionism and elimination of those of your constitutional rights which get in the way of liberal control of your life.

The only true statement ever made by the primary sleaze bags supposedly representing blacks in America, today, was when they called Bill Clinton "the first black president." This is because to liberal blacks, being black has nothing to do with being black.

A Nation of Their Own

Today, 35 children, lined up to get sweets, were murdered in Iraq by what America's major media people call "insurgents." Recently, "insurgents" butchered hundreds of children at a school in a southern province of Russia.

Our question is why, in either case, the desire of these "insurgents" for a nation of their own deserves a single second of consideration.

Add in the Palestinian Liberation Front, Hamas and any other group demanding nationhood by the same methods. (These groups have targeted children many time during suicide attacks in Israel.)

War does indeed kill children and other living things. They have died in every war in history. The difference here is that the Islamic groups in question target them. And, so our question, again.

Should any group which intentionally, specifically targets children for violent death as one of the tools of their "insurgency" be allowed to have a nation?

Our answer in no. They should not even be allowed to remain alive. In fact, any nation that knowingly harbors such people should be brought down, and those who live there and refuse to help in the destruction of that government should be hunted down and destroyed.

The next time you hear some idiot like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw or Jim Lehrer present "insurgents" who intentionally target children as people fighting for their own country, cease watching that journalist forever.

From the Oregonian to the New York Times, when the newspapers and magazines do it, turn away from them, as well.

If you do not, then the blood of murdered children will be on your hands, too.

(LL)

The Conscious Foetus

Foetuses may develop consciousness long before the legal age limit for abortions, one of Britain's leading brain scientists has said.

Baroness Greenfield, a professor of neurology at Oxford University and the director of the Royal Institution, said there was evidence to suggest the conscious mind could develop before 24 weeks, the upper age where terminations are permitted.

"Given that we can't prove consciousness or not, we should be very cautious about being too gung ho and assuming something is not conscious. We should err on the side of caution."

OMED: Recently Portland was treated to the uninformed bombast of Hanoi Jane Fonda during a Baby Murder Inc. rally at a downtown location. A woman's right to choose was at stake, she said, referring to the late stage aborton legislation in the U.S. Congress, and 24 hour delay debate in our state legislature.

The Brits are now discussing the possibility of administering anasthesia to the foetus during standard abortions because of the report above. It would be the humane thing to do, of course. They are, after all, killing humans.

To do it without an anesthetic is equivalent to the medical practices of the Japanese in their WWII P.O.W camps, the Nazis in their Buchenvalds and the Iraqis in their torture chambers.

About 50 million babies have been killed that way, so far, by the "civilized" nations of the world.

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