How do you take the measure of a man?

For those who don't follow such things, Chris Henry, a young wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals died this week in a car accident. Even just that sentence begins the idea behind this post. What really happened was that he had some type of dispute with his fiancée, and as she left their home, he jumped into the back bed of her pick up truck.

 

He fell, or was thrown, from the car, severed his spinal cord, was in critical condition for approximately half a day, and finally passed away.

What struck me were the incredibly disparate things that were heard about him.

 

Again, for those that don't follow these things, Henry was one of the members of the Bengals who largely were responsible for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to install a stricter behavior requirement. Henry, in fact, had been suspended from the league.

 

The owner of the Bengals, however, believes in giving troubled players a second chance, and, even over the objections of his coach, Marvin Lewis, known for HIS openness to "questionable" players, brought Henry back.

 

But those who knew him for years universally described him as quiet, sweet, shy, caring, loving, considerate, respectful, and many more hyper positive attributes.

But these were not the typical post mortem type of statements but I sensed that they were truly genuine expressions of feeling for this tragic young man.

 

What is also true, though, is the description that the judge gave him just over a year ago during sentencing for his latest crime "Young man," the judge said to him, "it seems you have become a one man crime wave".

There were arrests and convictions for drugs, assault, and all the usual other offenses associated with the overpaid, babied athlete.

 

And yet, there were those testimonials. And not a few, but dozens. By good, honest people. There were the 4 children, who by all accounts, he adored. But for whom, he clearly was a terrible example.

 

And I was left wondering, what makes us who we are? When do we say "this person is bad" or "this person is good"? Can we ever say either? I am one who decries the failure by our society to ever simply say "this is wrong", so it is a particularly difficult question for me.

 

No answers here, simply questions.

The ultimate hate crime

Police in Poland have reported that the infamous sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" that stood over the entrance to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, was stolen this week.

 

"Work will make you free" was posted at the entrance to many of the Nazi death camps in a perverse campaign to make the newly arrived murder victims believe that they were not entering extermination facilities, but that they were "ONLY" being made into slave labor.

 

However, the Auschwitz sign, even in this gallery of infamy, was the most infamous.

Auschwitz of course was the murder capital of the Nazi Empire, where at least 1 million Jews met their deaths and where countless Polish, Russian, and Czech prisoners of war were also exterminated, along with the Gypsies, Homosexuals, mentally and physically ill, and other 'undesirables' of the Nazi's.

 

Officials at the memorial quickly replaced the original sign with a copy that was made several years ago when the original was having restoration work done.

Many of the facilities in the camp are in dire condition – the barracks were not built to last 60 years, and there is significant funding shortage. The German government has pledged approximately $30 million dollars, roughly half of what is needed, to rehabilitate the facility, which receives 1,000,000 or more visitors a year.

The alarming thing about this act, so brazen, so vicious, is the reflection of what has been an alarming increase in anti-Semitism throughout the world.

Agencies that track hate crimes have all noted this. In fact, just this week, the Canadian foreign minister, in a speech regarding anti Semitism in Jerusalem, discussed the rising number of incidents in his native land. Worse, during his time in Israel, swastikas were painted on several synagogues in Toronto, home to a large Canadian Jewish population.

As I have written before, the history of the world, since biblical times, has followed a frighteningly similar pattern.

Roughly, it goes as follows. Some cataclysmic murderous event: e.g. the Inquisition; the Holocaust; the pogroms; the Crusades, etc, followed by a period of apology and guilt on the part of the offenders, than acceptance of Jews and assimilation by Jews back into the general society. This is then followed by increasing tides of anti-Semitism, usually starting with the same type of stereotypes and finally after about a century, the next "Holocaust".

 

Depending on what year you want to trace things from in Europe, it's been between 70 and 80 years since the real escalation with the publication of the Nazi 25 points in 1920; election of Hitler in 1933, the Nuremburg Laws of 1935; or even Kristalnacht of 1938.

It is thus no surprise, based on 3000 years of history, that we are entering the descending period of this cycle once again.

Except that now, things are accelerated and more sophisticated. And "Israel" has, in many instances, replaced "Jew" as the word used.

Where have you been?

Well, to answer the question that I keep receiving via email, it's simple.

Every once in a while things get so bad, so corrupt, so backward, that I find myself unable to continue to relay the news to everyone.

What most of you who don't spend time studying the things that I do probably don't realize, is that I sanitize by a factor of about 99% most of what I read.

And no, I don't read the lunatic fringe websites, I read source material. From the published sermons of the leading imams, to Al Aram and Al Jazeera, to the CBO and the Federal register.

Running through the Arab press every day, or listening to the call to prayer, is truly frightening.

As we speak, the usual Christmas time "blood libel" is running rampant (for those who don't know, this is the continuation of the anti semitic story put forth by Czar Nicholas that says that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood for matzoh).

But it is so much more than that.

There is a full on, universal effort to teach that Jerusalem has no religious or historic significance to Jews or, by extension, Christians.

A British court has now issued a warrant for the head of the opposition party in Israel, Tzipi Livni, who was foreign minister during the "Operation Cast Lead" defense against Gaza.

Worse, the European Union has voted to declare Jerusalem a divided city, and condemned Israel control of it.

In Afghanistan, we have been lied to by our King once again. You think he is sending 30,000 troops? NOT. He has sent 43,000.

Like all of his lies, it is so stupid, and so transparent it boggles my mind why he does it. To placate the left wing, I guess, but to me it is just another example of his ridiculous mendacity.

Or how about Hilary Clinton's admission this week "I guess our Iranian policy of negotiation hasn't worked".

And the final admission of what I have been saying for 2 years now, that this idiot, accepts an Iranian bomb, believing he can control them.

But here at home things are worse.

14 TRILLION dollars. 37 TRILLION dollars in unfunded medicaid liabilties.

These are numbers so large that they are inconceivable in the true sense of that word.

Here in NY, Governor Paterson has simply WITHHELD a percentage of funding across the board from all cities, school districts etc.

Why? He stated that he would not be the governor who oversaw the insolvency of NY State.

If you think this is a problem of ours alone, you are wildly misinterpreted.

California and NY. Don't you think the two largest states are reflective of the overall national problem?

It will take at least a generation of solid, no holds barred, no compromise effort to undue what this disaster of a President has wrought.

We as a nation will be bankrupt.

Let me repeat that. We will be bankrupt.

There have been significant moves already to remove the dollar as the international currency.

If China, Russia, or any of our other creditors decides to say, "no, we don't need any more Treasury bills, thank you", we are finished at that moment.

And this has already started. There have been several unsuccessful Treasury auctions recently.

Without going into the details of this, let me explain it this way.

If this happens, there will be a depression of BIBLICAL proportions.

50% unemployment. Death by starvation, mobs roaming the streets.

And what is going on?

Another $1 TRILLION stimulus being legitimately discussed.

Taking the TARP payback money and NOT using it to pay down debt but to fund a jobs bill.

INSANITY!!!!

I cannot describe how bad this is.

And now, the inevitable has happened.

While you were sleeping, the FED has been pumping Billions of dollars into the economy.

All well and good, however with virtual 0% interest, what this guarantees is runaway inflation.

And it has started. The inflation rate for last month was just announced. 1.8%. The core rate, excluding food and energy? .5%

That is now 6% inflation.

This may not seem significant, but what it means is that every dollar you earn is worth 94 cents compared to yesterday.

And it will get MUCH worse.

He told us "change" and that is what we've gotten.

He is now in direct personal control of every aspect of your life when this health care reform passes.

From banking to insurance, business to personal, arrests to wiretapping, torture to rendition.

You are not safe.

WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!

114, “Endangerment” and the ascension of Neo Fascism in the United States

One of the revolutionary concepts that Hannah Arendt put forth in her ground breaking study of the first half of the 20^th century, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" was the use of governmental institutions in their most banal form to control the population and to suppress opposition.

 

As many of you who read my blog know, I have long promulgated that Obama has nothing so much as the expansion of his own power as his goal and that he accomplishes this from the right and the left.

 

Events of this week are prime examples of that fact. The Health Care Bill being discussed in the Senate contains as many as 114 new commissions that will directly supervise your life. You have heard discussions of the Federal Government taking over 1/6^th of the US economy; however it is this fact, the direct supervision of your health care decisions, which is most frightening.

 

The next thing that happened, was an official EPA ruling that declared CO2 emissions as an "endangerment" to humans. This is an official term and the net result of this fact is that it gives authority to the executive, i.e. Obama, to control ANY, I repeat, ANY company, organizations or other entity that emits CO2.

 

As you may or may not know, for example, this includes farms, since it has been shown that cattle produce more CO2 emissions than automobiles!

 

What is particularly frightening is the use of this same definition, open ended authority of this man to take control, which was used before congress to justify the takeover of the auto industry and of the banking and insurance industries, as well as the definition used in court to justify the expansion of the arrest without warrant program.

 

More of this will be occurring next week in the Copenhagen meeting on global warming. Understand, I do not subscribe to the conspiracy yelled about by the global warming deniers. I believe that we should do anything possible to "go green", mainly for national security reasons.

 

However, what will be happening there, is the expansion of what I have termed the "Koh-inization" of America. Obama's appointment of the former Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, who believes that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution does not pertain to international agreements, flying in the face of the last 150 years of American history.

“A date that will live in infamy…”

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days, or even weeks, ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Support the troops? Please show you care… Here’s how.

Once again this year, Xerox corporation is involved in a wonderful program in which anyone can send a thank you card to a soldier currently serving overseas, for free. Just go to http://www.letssaythanks.com/ThankYou.aspx and you can choose a card designed by a child and one of many messages to be sent.

 

It is such an easy way to say thank you to those who are putting their lives on the line for all of us, everyday.