The Blogbat Weblog (3.0)

Enemedia Seek to "Bork" The Only Reagan Conservative

2012-03-14T08:17:00Z

President Reagan with Judge Robert Bork at the White House, 1987

Tonight Barack Obama won. The left, as we all very much know, wish to see Barack Obama re-elected as America's tyrant-in-chief and in every Republican primary tonight Barack Obama walked away with another victory on the road to re-election in November. The left realized over half a century ago that in order to impose its will in a country where only a tiny minority of Americans self-identify as "liberal", the left must fight a war of misinformation, for which it needed to use the hammer and anvil of education and the media.

The enemedia (enemy-media) accomplished this quite well in 1987 after misogynist liberal Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement. Powell sided with the majority in the infamous 1977 Coker v Georgia case in which the liberal Court nullified Georgia's death penalty for aggrivated rape. In Powell's concurring opinion he infamously stated: "Although rape invariably is a reprehensible crime, there is no indication that petitioner's offense was committed with excessive brutality or that the victim sustained serious or lasting injury." No "serious or lasting injury"? Naturally, there was no outrage from feminists on the left because Powell was a liberal. The more things change...

So Reagan decided to replace Powell with not only a conservative Originalist, but also one of the truly greatest legal minds of our time: then-DC Circuit Judge Robert Bork. The media circus began with 'round-the-clock character assassination of Bork by Democrats Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and the other usual suspects with the help of the far-left media. It worked, and it was a watershed. Not since Watergate had the media been so influential in changing the outcome of a contest for high office - in this case, a nomination for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

One of the primary roles of education for leftist academia has been to subdue critical thought, which clearly has been subdued increasingly over recent decades - and the role of entertainment media must also be noted in pushing the notion that one should always follow one's emotions rather than seek objective truth. And so our government of wolves has been salivating over our nation's transformation into a flock of sheep.

In the last two decades, the news media - though having had a left-wing bias for much longer - decided it was time to pull out all the stops in pushing its preferred policies and candidates. In 2004, it failed, thanks to a GOP unified behind an incumbent president. It was not enough that one or two bloggers could prove what is now known as Rathergate; those blogs needed also to be widely promoted and supported by a movement in order to not be simply ignored. When CBS tried to smear President Bush with a forged document claiming he was a draft-dodger, it backfired: the critical information reached the voter and rather than seeing Bush destroyed, Dan Rather's career came to an abrupt end.

In 2008, there was no incumbent Republican president in the race, which only poured gasoline on the establishment's unhinged jihad on conservatives within the party to purge them from every appointed and elected office. By the summer, the establishment had succeeded in imposing John McCain on the party, with much help from the far-left media, which had its own separate agenda, but nonetheless momentarily allied itself with the GOP establishment to ensure the weakest possible candidate - and also the most liberal and controllable, in the unlikely event he should win - would face Barack Obama in the fall. Conservative bloggers went to work again, uncovering a treasure trove of damning information about then-candidate Barack Obama, but this time the establishment-led McCain campaign kept its distance and gave such efforts no legitimacy - in effect, signing its own political death warrant. Enemedia spared no expense or salacious story trashing the McCain campaign while at the same time the McCain campaign repeatedly told conservatives they were not wanted. Certainly Senator McCain was happy to try to create a coalition by bringing a conservative onto the ticket, but this clearly roiled many of the hardline establishment who sought to solidify their control of the party since the late 1990s. Since 2008, there has been a steady stream of sad discoveries about McCain campaign staff working to sabotage Sarah Palin, apparently willing to prove another great truism once again, that the establishment would much rather see a Democrat win the White House than a conservative - apparently on any part of a ticket.

Ultimately, however, even the establishment purists would prefer to see one of their Republicans in the White House to a Democrat, however that may be accomplished. The American Spectator in October of 2008 noted several former Romney 2008 staffers then working for McCain-Palin sought to sabotage McCain-Palin in order to allow Barack Obama to win in 2008 (and implement Obamacare - based on none other than Romneycare) so that Mitt Romney would have a shot in four rather than eight years without running against a sitting president of the same party:

Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House, have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election. "Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won't be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012," says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin. "The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney. He's in charge on November 5th."

In 2012 it has been much the same - in fact, as we know, with many of the same tired players. Presently, the far-left media are using Rick Santorum to push Reagan Conservative Newt Gingrich out. Santorum's qualifications for such an honor are that he is most likely to be defeated by Mitt Romney, but in the unlikely event he isn't and in the even more unlikely event Obama were to self-destruct, still promises to be controllable (he is a "team player", after all) as a Senator with a record as a big-spending, big-government, China-friendly, manage-the-decline shallow slogan-chanter. Indeed, one of the few differences between Santorum and Romney lies only in the theme of the shallow slogans they mindlessly chant. Bothwere pro-abortion self-described anti-Reagan progressives until it was politically unhelpful to be such, and both have an equally disastrous record in government.

If the media succeed in weaponizing Santorum against the only Reagan Conservative with a proven record of success - Newt Gingrich, they will then destroy Santorum so that Romney will win the nomination, after which they will destroy Romney. It's such an old playbook that really, enemedia can do it with their eyes shut. If Americans do not seek to educate themselves, then they will be spoon fed a deadly toxin like infants by the agenda-laden far-left dinosaur media and will act foolishly based on the misinformation they've received and not only will Newt Gingrich - another great Reagan Conservative leader with one of the greatest minds of our time be "Borked", so too will our nation. "How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding," but "a fool despises wisdom and instruction". (Prov 3:13, 1:7) An apathetic people and representative government cannot exist concurrenty for long.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

It's Kinetic National Security Amateur Hour at the Romney Camp

2012-03-13T09:05:12Z

Romney on Iran: "They have to understand that we will take military, kinetic action if they continue to pursue a nuclear option." The phrase "kinetic military action" is Obama legal speak for "war we don't want to get permission from congress to prosecute."

Aw, someone told Mittens to use a big-sounding glam-national security catchphrase. And bless his heart, last Friday on the Rick and Bubba Show the failed liberal un-Governator from Massachusetts actually threw caution to the wind, managing to awkwardly salvo the boilerplate that his advisors so painstakingly - probably for hours - maybe days, weeks - labored and toiled with him over blood, sweat, and tears so he would lob it properly at the enemy. And like a Russian nesting doll of foreign policy FAIL, the term itself reveals the tragic ignorance of whoever brandishes it. Indeed, his advisors probably spent hours, days, weeks, even years, learning raptly, uprearing, and canonizing this one precious phrase from the Obama administration (the RINOs' Good Shepherd is always the liberal Democrat, you know) along with countless other focus-group-tested buzzwords and - as Beltway Confidential dubbed them, "ungainly euphemisms":

Near as I can figure, "kinetic action" is redundant - like "wet water." But Harvard Law professor and former head of the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith thinks there's a reason the Obama administration is at, er, "kinetic military action" with the English language here.

Gene Healy went on to quote Goldsmith as saying it was a means to avoid congressional authorization in Libya and who knows where else next (Romney-endorser John McCain is hovering like Gollum over his list this very moment). You could imagine the monody that rose from the catacombs where Romney's venerated "advisors" dwell. How will we ever again enjoy the bountiful fruit of presidency-by-proxy if these advisors cannot manage to imprint on Willard a single Hogwartsian phrase properly turned to unlock the heart of every blushing American voter.

But the voter has to wonder, is this what we can expect from Romney: poorly repackaged retreads from the administration his entire campaign is ostensibly predicated on replacing? Romney does deserve some credit for realizing Iran has to be stopped - that's more than we can say for his wingman Ron Paul - but his complete and utterly excruciatingly embarrassing amateur hour with every facet of American National Security policy as a theory and as carried out within the context of even the most recent administration, and the tactical as well as the philosophical foundations that underlie how it is implemented, paint a picture of a man who is not built for president. This is by no means his first inexpert blunder or only crucial foible - and we're just in the talking phase where it's still considered easy. This type of pantomiming is like a knock-off of a poorly-made replica of a designer handbag, with its logo askew and poorly-stitched vinyl already coming apart in the shop. Unseriously dangerous. It reminds America once again that there is only one statesman in the room competent, capable, steady, learned, and set for the task, and that is Speaker Newt Gingrich, Ph.D., who for years has taught strategy and the art of war to our top generals. Given the delicate times into which we're entering, with whom would you rest easier knowing he were in charge of such a crisis? The answer is clearly the former Speaker. And that you should remember when you vote.

Rick Santorum's Quisling Moment

2012-02-18T10:31:16Z

As you might recall, we wrote a month or so ago about how Mitt Romney is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Communist China. Today, we write about Rick Santorum's Quisling moment. Like Mitt Romney, Santorum started out his career labeling himself a progressive, distancing himself from Ronald Reagan, working closely with unions and pushing other liberal legislation.

In his later years, Santorum referred to liberal fellow Senator Arlen Specter as his mentor and even endorsed him against a conservative primary rival "because it will further the causes in which I believe and because it's in the best interest of my state." Obviously, those would be liberal interests. Specter led the controversial charge for amnesty in 2006 despite a precedent-setting uproar by Americans who made history with the sheer volume of calls to the capital switchboard made to register their abhorrence of the legislation Specter championed. Instead of acquiescing to the will of the people, however, Specter marched up to his lectern on the Senate floor, pounded it with his fist and declared, "The will of the Senate will prevail!" Specter was soon removed from office, but Santorum continued to have nice things to say about him.

Enter Rick Santorum 2012, candidate for Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces, champion of contraceptive bans and backward Taliban-style rules for women - the obvious over-compensation for his liberal past. All of this would be as comical as a goofy sweater-vest were it not for the real damage his voting record as Senator has done, is doing, and will do to our survival national security interests.

To wit, Santorum voted in 1997 to allow the sale of supercomputers to China, whose military leaders have repeatedly sworn to destroy us, make war on us, and to literally "exterminate" our entire population. Maybe if Santorum had spent less time distancing himself from Reagan and Gingrich in the 1980s, he would have learned something rather important: giving your enemy the technological advantage is suicide. In recent years, China's fastest supercomputers surpassed our own for the first time in history, and by 2010 were an astonishing "47% faster than the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's machine". Make no mistake: this alone disqualifies Santorum to be Commander-in-Chief.

Our strategic advantage has long leaned on technology, given our comparatively small force size vis-à-vis China or the former Soviet Union. China's army alone is roughly the size of our entire population. Imagine that force size equipped with modern weaponry that far exceeds our own. That is defeat and the end of America. Rick Santorum voted for that.

Clearly, Santorum has failed to comprehend the strategic consequences of his actions, as the recent outcry over his outspoken opposition to manned space flight and a return to the moon demonstrates. Former Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney and current national security advisor to Newt Gingrich Stephen Yates rightly eviscerated Santorum's childish, out of touch, and ultimately suicidal space policy:

I am deeply concerned that Senator Santorum so easily relinquishes space development to the Chinese and Russians.

American success in space is not only about being the first to develop a station on the moon. It is just as much about the explosion of math, science, engineering and national security technology that will launch America into a new age of innovation and prosperity.

We owe it to ourselves to set grandiose goals and then achieve them. It is the American way.

As with Romney and Huawei (and many of his other failures), Americans might be more forgiving if there were some serious evidence of enlightenment; however, in the case of both Romney and Santorum such an opening of the mind has not transpired and both candidates continue to represent an indirect but existential threat to American national security.

H/T to @MissLiberty on Twitter for the heads up on Santorum's pro-China voting record and for the China supercomputer tech links.

Related:

China's Supercomputing Goal: From 'Zero To Hero'

Rick Santorum's Voting Record

Middle East Quarterly: Russian and Chinese Support for Tehran

China Plans Manned Moon Mission

China's Challenge at Sea

The Flaky Hypocrisy of Mitt Romney

2012-02-03T00:00:52Z

To be honest, I was a bit worried when rumors began circulating yesterday that birther Donald Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich. Trump is radioactive for a host of reasons. He's a grand-stander, he's a complete flake, loose cannon, and he has some character issues. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he will say anything to get ratings, including chase down those pesky imaginary varmints usually left to the Ron Paul fringe of conspiracy theory-land.

Trump is a perfect fit for Willard "Mitt" Romney, and that he has endorsed Mitt should be seen as a serious - but telling - liability to the Romney campaign. It reveals just so much that the pair has in common, which is all of the above. In addition to being a grand-stander, flake, and loose cannon, Mitt Romney also shares a similar lack in personal moral character: Romney abused his dog, is connected to physical, even sexual abuse of teens, and ignored national security officials with respect to the dangers of doing business with a Pentagon-designated Chinese espionage front group. Romney will also say anything to get elected - even flip on 17 of his supposedly dearest-held core beliefs. I guess you could say that Mitt Romney's a bit of a front group himself. Whether taking care of the family pet, watching over children or looking after the national security of the United States, Mitt Romney can't handle the responsibility.

Trump is likely to be an ESTJ while Romney is likely the ISTJ personality type, according to the Myers-Briggs personality type assessment. This explains their sense of connectedness and probably also suggests Trump is the more dominant member of their relationship. Trump is more likely also the more intelligent of the two, although that has not ameliorated Trump's flakiness. Both the ESTJ and ISTJ have many strengths that lend themselves to administrative tasks, but their weaknesses include close-mindedness, resistance to change even when change is warranted, a bizarre view of sex as a service to be rendered to them but not reciprocated, emotional detachment and lack of appropriate sympathy, putting their agendas ahead of the people they impact, and something else:

Under stress, ISTJs may fall into "catastrophe mode", where they see nothing but all of the possibilities of what could go wrong. They will berate themselves for things which they should have done differently, or duties which they failed to perform. They will lose their ability to see things calmly and reasonably, and will depress themselves with their visions of doom.

Indeed, that Meghan McCain-like prissy petulance has come shining through on many occasions for Romney. Charles Krauthammer outlined one example in October:

But the main event was the scripted Rick Perry attack on Romney, reprising the old charge of Romney hiring illegal immigrants. Perry's face-to-face accusation of rank hypocrisy had the intended effect. From the ensuing melee emerged a singularity: a ruffled Romney, face flushed, voice raised.

The presidency is a serious and highly stressful job that includes coping with a constantly changing landscape domestically and internationally. One needs not belabor that and indeed, we have had ISTJ presidents in the past; most notably, George Washington, as seems to be widely believed.

To be sure, there are many strengths as well as weaknesses associated with this personality type - as with all personality types - but Romney appears to evince many of the worst. Here is another assortment of the negative traits one can expect from an ISTJ of weaker character (PDF): "Spontaneity in the SJ tends to be suppressed, although when fatigued or under stress, the SJ can erupt into a temper tantrum, use biting sarcasm, or even, in rare instances, attempt to make a point through violence."

George Washington spent many years developing the character, depth, and self-awareness necessary to understand what it took to be a visionary leader with a good moral compass. Likewise, George H.W. Bush is likely also an ISTJ, and while lacking the imagination necessary to be a great president, he was not entirely a bad one, although he was able to better perform his duties in the afterglow of Ronald Reagan. But Bush also spent many years developing the discipline to blunt some of his weaknesses perhaps to a much greater extent than Romney has chosen to. Indeed, Mitt Romney has squandered his many years chasing varmints, telling voters what they wanted to hear and doing anything it took to pad his résumé, as well as mistreating pets and associating himself closely with those who mistreat children. And yet, Mitt Romney tries to point his crooked finger at his betters in order to project his erratic and and unreliable qualities thereon. Mitt Romney is a hypocrite.

Romney and Trump both remind America of the things most in need of repair in our popular culture and in our government. Romney's full-throated support and enlargement the Massachusetts nanny state was without question in large measure responsible for Massachusetts being 47th nationally on job-creation. Romney's vociferous support for abortion went far beyond passive acceptance; part of Romneycare included taxpayer funding for abortions, even minors, and even in cases overriding parental consent - Romney is on record endorsing all of it. There is little chance he will work to repeal Obamacare, for which Romneycare was the prototype. In fact, Romney and his team who designed it consulted President Obama to develop Obamacare, and President Obama was very grateful. Really, what part of Obamacare would Mitt Romney repeal? Not the individual mandate: that's in Romneycare. Not the death panel, that's in Romneycare, too:

SECTION 41. Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the executive office of health and human services, in consultation with the health care quality and cost council, commission on end-of-life care established by section 480 of chapter 159 of the Acts of 2000, and the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and the Reduction of Medical Errors, shall convene an expert panel on end-of-life care for patients with serious chronic illnesses. The panel shall investigate and study health care delivery for these patients and the variations in delivery of such care among health care providers in the commonwealth. For the purposes of this investigation and study, "health care providers" shall mean facilities and health care professionals licensed to provide acute inpatient hospital care, outpatient services, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and long-term hospital care, home health care and hospice services. The panel shall identify best practices for end-of-life care, including those that minimize disparities in care delivery and variations in practice or spending among geographic regions and hospitals, and shall present recommendations for any legislative, regulatory, or other policy changes necessary to implement its recommendations. (Chapter 305 Section 41)

Likewise, there is little chance Romney would repeal the Obama administration's decision to force religious institutions to violate the conscience by forcing them to "provide all employees access to health insurance providing artificial contraception, including abortifacients and sterilization services such as vasectomies and tubal ligations." We know this because while governor, Mitt Romney compelled Catholic hospitals to provide abortion services.

Not only is the single-most economically destructive and most expensive piece of legislation in US history Obamacare - and the same can be said for Massachusetts with Romneycare - but it is also the single most destructive of personal liberty and the right to life, thus rendering both among the most immoral pieces of legislation in our history. In point of fact, Obamacare threatens to take over 1/5 of the US economy, and Romneycare has been a cancer of similar proportions in his home state. For both, Mitt Romney has little concern about repealing.

Meanwhile, anti-science Mitt Romney wishes America saw him as smarter than the scientists at NASA. Mitt makes his pronouncements as if stuck in the mud like some regressive troll, as he promises to fire anyone who dares to have the vision to take us back out into space - even as China makes plans to build a base on the moon - were somehow anything but the broken, Old World manner of thinking to which America has been the shining rebuttal. Would the non-motor-savvy Romney also have fired anyone who kept talking of replacing the carriage with the automobile? Would the non-chemist Romney have threatened to fire Alexander Fleming before he had the chance to invent Penicillin because the idea of using mold to stop infections seemed absurd on its face? Clearly, anti-science Romney speaks of a great many things about which he knows nothing. Or to put it in the kindest possible light as Reagan had, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Not only is Romney a liberal, but a flake and a hypocrite also. On one hand, we have Newt Gingrich, a historian with a Ph.D. and endless experience in national security and policy formulation and as part of the Reagan Revolution and the revolution of 1994 that brought us four consecutive years of a balanced budget. On the other, we have messy Mitt, trolling the interwebs for quote sites with neat-sounding quotes that may or may not be accurately attributed to the one purported to have made them. Stable? Real? Mitt is a hollow casing, a plastic fruit; Mitt is a flake. Really, who else praises Hezbollah's healthchare system? That's ground even Sheila Jackson Lee dare not tread (although Obama does stand by his Muslim Brotherhood endorsement). Flake.

Underneath that thin plastic exterior and the Trump hair, we have someone with a dark, stormy emotional life almost completely devoid of sympathy for others and easily rattled by those who challenge him. This is because for so many years, Romney has been living a lie and he's terrified of being found out - not just for the things that are public knowledge but for the things that are not so public - some things kept in his closet we like to call skeletons. The embarrassing aspect of this for Romney is that as an ISTJ, it is more than obvious. Romney is literally screaming out from the mountain top his vulnerabilities and the things he most greatly fears.

All of these amount to some valuable insights into Mitt Romney's moral compass and capacity as an unreliable leader. Mitt Romney was a failed, small-minded, liberal governor overseeing a failed liberal big-government state and prefers to "hunt small varmints" by uttering useless slogans to win office rather than truly leading. It's fairly clear the governor merely wishes to finish the work Barack Obama started - to manage the decline. We simply can't afford it.

Ultimately, the joke will be on Mitt Romney, whom the establishment sees as a throwaway candidate. In case you were wondering why the establishment would choose a flake like Mitt Romney rather than a quality candidate who nonetheless reflected their view of things such as a George H.W. Bush or someone similarly as serious, one need only consider what many establishment Republicans seem to believe, which is that Obama either can't be beaten or shouldn't. Even Romney seems to agree. The long-talked about strategy is to field an unremarkable candidate who will not disrupt key congressional races and the effort to retake the Senate.

America wants to recover economically and morally, and that starts with not choosing a flaky, anti-science, serial liberal candidate of questionable moral character like Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was right about one thing, however, when he stated, "There are many reasons not to vote for me." And we couldn't agree more.

The Moon Is Made of Cheese, You Know

2012-01-28T05:19:00Z

You sure as heck can't land there, let alone build a base

You have to love those crazy anti-science troglodyte RINOs and liberal Democrats in Washington. If they had their way, we'd turn back the clock and all live in 14th Century fiefdoms (under their control, of course) in mortal fear of fire and the Plague. US Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich offers the only way forward for the human race; the rest can go read Obama's eighth grade-level SOTU address. Am I suggesting that Mitt Romney and his kind are dullards? Dumb as rocks, yes. Dumb as geese that look up when it rains so they drown, yes!

They also realize that Newt's vision will benefit the American people and perpetuate this greatest country "on God's green earth", as Michael Medved puts it. I was a bit serious when I said they want to turn back the clock, but they want to turn it back to before 1776 when rights were not seen as unalienable and no one anywhere on earth knew they could clamor for them. To the effete, the golden years were the millennia that went before our time - the American era. Put succinctly, we're dealing with a bunch of Dark Age revanchists.

Can you just imagine what the technology gained from such a project as a return to the moon and beyond would mean for the average American and for our country as a whole, particularly as we face down this decade the emerging need to defeat a new evil empire, Communist China? If it's true that every NASA dollar has a seven-fold ROI on what would then be just a percent or two of the annual budget, what rational person would object? I'll tell you: the same regressives who killed the Apollo Program in 1973, that's who. RINO Richard Nixon - a who literally slept with a Chinese honey trap while on a business trip before his presidency - and the liberal Democrat Congress. They killed the program promising to end poverty once and for all by spending all the NASA money and everything else they could find at it so that today we have more poor and none of the improvements a 40-year continued presence on the moon (to say nothing of Mars by now) would have brought us.

And I imagine that doesn't even factor in the economic benefits of people who become more productive as a result of the augmented quality of life experienced due to the phenomenal new technology in every sector. The return is literally exponential, just like everything else that is quintessentially American - and everything else the RINO-Democrat cabal seeks to regulate to death or outright kill.

There have been few truly visionary presidents or presidential candidates in the past century. John F. Kennedy took us to the moon but never lived to see it. Ronald Reagan fought to revive our space program and oversaw a successful shuttle program that was meant to do so much more - and almost never lived to see it. Newt Gingrich today sees it, gets it, and forges ahead to make it happen, and the establishment is doing everything it can to destroy him politically so that he will never see his vision fulfilled.

You have to hand it to the real knuckle-draggers like Caveman Mitt, who seem to live in a world devoid all of human history and the nature of progress - and thus an understanding of why we enjoy the benefits. It's as if they believe we were suddenly plopped down here with our cars, our microwave ovens, and lasik by some marvelous act of the cosmos (which we dare not profane by exploring). Anyone who loves science, progress, and wants to see man reach to the stars - and who doesn't want a terrorist regime like China to be our ambassadors to the heavens - I implore you to put aside your politics and obsession with social issues that have hardly budged in 40 years anyway. Let's make this happen.

Who wouldn't volunteer if given the opportunity to go, to explore the moon, Mars, and beyond, even if they could never make it back? Is this not the necessary next step for the human race? Those of us who get the importance of reaching out to the next frontier sense very deeply how much we simply can't not do this. It's the next step and the next "giant leap" - and one whose time has come to take. Let's put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes us; and we can start by electing the only man who can - or will - support that vision: Newt Gingrich.

"So there's the choice in life: one either grows or one decays - grow or die. I think we should grow." -- Robert Zubrin, Aerospace Engineer

Romney The Paper Tiger

2012-01-27T18:08:22Z

"The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him." -- Proverbs 18:17

Okay students, we know this better than most, don't we? I had to question Elliott Abrams' personal integrity two days ago after his failure to cite sources and offer context in the now-infamous and refuted hit piece against Newt Gingrich. In his article, Abrams pulled cherry-picked bits of qoutes out of thin air and used them to accuse Newt of being anti-Reagan, which sparked an avalanche from all directions - including a video of Nancy Reagan from 1995 - proving otherwise. If I had conducted a research project the way Abrams has, It's quite possible I would have been cited for plagiarism and expelled from my MA program. Plagiarism is more than stealing someone's words and failing to put quotation marks around them; it's also a failure to properly attribute them, which is where Elliott grossly erred apparently with malice.

Needless to say, Abrams is unimportant in the larger scheme of things, but the machine that used him and his disposable lies will do it again. So as conservatives, as voters, and as Newt supporters what is the takeaway with all of this?

One of the more famous lines from Star Wars was by Obi Wan: "Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?" The next time Romney's sleazy Charlie Crist operatives launch a bogus attack on Newt, give it a day. Romney's mudslinging of lies is becoming old hat, and when you consider 2008, it becomes ancient.

Mitt's isn't a campaign but a psychological warfare operation. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight unless your strategy is asymmetrical - in which case you'd better know what you're doing.
Mitt promised an "October Surprise every day" until the convention. In reality, maybe not every day but every day before a key event, such as a debate or a primary -- so expect it. Don't wither; hit back hard but intelligently.
These unsurprising surprises have proven to be factually bogus every time. Yawn. So we should stand confidently in the face of them. We must alert the American people that this is an old game that should be ignored. After all, aren't we as voters tired of this slanderous sleaze we can set our watches by when there are so many issues that really matter?
Don't react - act! Romney is not a particularly stable or secure human being, in fact the only card he has is his bluff, which we have the power to call. Find what rattles his cage and rattle it often, but keep the issues that matter most to Americans the focal point of the campaign. Newt wants to be president because he truly loves this country and Americans and wants it to be a better place for his grandchildren, which is why Newt has honed in on the issues that will most impact us now and in the future. This is why Newt leads unwaveringly by a massive amount in polls in the category of who's the most presidential.

As the saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

American Statism: Aping Putin?

2012-01-26T23:13:28Z

Newt Gingrich is in good company: Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Boris Nemtsov know what it means to be the dissident candidate and to face the darts of running against the establishment and its media. Stand strong, Newt. You are fighting for your grandchildren's future and for ours.

This is something I predicted would happen in 2009, that American statism without intervention would increasingly mimic the electoral authoritarianism of Putin's Russia.

As a boy I worked on Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign and read and watched everything that had to do with him. As I grew older, my love for the Gipper only grew as well. That's why I'm with Newt. I also know where Mitt Romney and his ilk come from: they were the ones who not only opposed Reagan but hated him - and hated the American people for wanting to be in control of their government.

In 2006 the establishment hit the first major wall of resistance since the era of Newt Gingrich as House Speaker. The American people were resolute to stop the amnesty legislation the Senate was seeking to pass that would allow millions of illegal aliens to cut in front of legal immigrants and American citizens and become a new voting bloc to ensure the votes of millions of Conservative Americans would be rendered inconsequential. In the height of the battle, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter pounded his fist on the lectern on the floor of the Senate and exclaimed, "The will of the Senate will prevail!" But the American people had a different idea, an idea that was firmly based in the words of Thomas Jefferson: "The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." And so the establishment lost and not long thereafter, Senator Specter was primaried out of office and replaced by a more conservative Republican.

The battle won, the war waged on. Increasingly, the establishment media became more brazen with each passing year. They were caught and frustrated in 2004, when Dan Rather's forged documents revealed an attempt by CBS to alter the outcome of that year's presidential election. In 2006, MSM struck back, both with its nakedly biased coverage of mass protests by illegal aliens and events leading up to the fall midterm elections. By 2008, the establishment's media was back with a vengeance. It began by anointing weak liberal Republican Senator John McCain for the nomination, then dutifully torpedoing him the moment the nomination was clenched in favor of Barack Obama. The coverage was so slanted, it became the focus of several feature documentaries and countless other serious points of examination. The sad part about American establishment media is that unlike Russian media, which is compelled at the barrel of a gun, the US press subjugates itself freely.

With Nancy Pelosi firmly in control of Congress and after Barack Obama's election in 2008, the establishment set to subdue the American people as they did the Native Americans so many generations ago, and to punish us for asserting our fundamental human rights as expressed in the Constitution. One of the means by which they sought to do so was by enacting Obamacare, which gave the state complete control over whether each of us would live or die without a trial or even the accusation of having committed a crime. Socialized medicine, they knew, was like a death penalty for the innocent, and it was touted by supporters like Robert Reich as a way to kill off the feeble and elderly.

What resulted, however, was probably not anticipated: a backlash that spawned the Tea Party, which became a movement so vast that one of its protests on the Washington Mall exceeded in size the total present for Barack Obama's inauguration, which itself had set the record for crowd size on the mall.

By November 2010, the movement had gained maturity, leading to the largest sweep of House seats in US history, as well as those in state houses. The establishment scrambled and quickly appointed stalwarts like Speaker John Boehner to manage the damage.

In 2012, the establishment is determined to use whatever means necessary to destroy any candidate who is a serious reformer, as we see with incomparable bias in MSM as well as Fox News and Drudge. And in the noise of the chaos of seeking to destroy Newt Gingrich, another negative side effect of all this nasty campaigning by Romney is that we might forget about our Tea Party candidates running in congressional races. Therefore we must both stand strong with Newt while giving of our time to the other races that matter, too. It's a good deal of work, but it is still so much less than that which those who wear the uniform must so often face.

This primary season we have a choice to make. We will either choose a man who stands with the far left and looks at you and me with contempt or we can choose Newt Gingrich - a proven Reagan conservative bold enough and moral enough to stand up to the establishment and carry the torch of the people - and Reaganism - into the White House. Let's go with Newt.

In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Moon and Mars: Vision is as Necessary as Technology

2012-01-26T22:08:25Z

Below is a reposting of an article I wrote for the Henry Jackson Society back in 2009 on July 27th. I am reposting it here for two reasons. The first is that the database server at the original website has lost the article; the second reason is why I thought you should read it in the first place, which is that today we are at a crossroads. If we go in one direction we will embrace progress and a future full of wonder with technological advances that will boggle the mind, to say nothing of improving our quality of life in every area, from health care to transportation and communication. History of human progress demonstrates that we must push outward against the boundaries of the unknown or we begin to die. If we take the other road, however, we face being surpassed by enemy regimes like Communist China, the strategic implications of which alone should cause great worry. We as a people will regress through history until we are little more than a byword. Today the visionary is Newt Gingrich. His plan to have a base on the moon by the end of his second term in 2020 is ambitious but well within our reach if we would just decide to do it. Those who oppose him - the same cadre of anti-science, regressive liberal Democrats and establishment Republicans who killed the Apollo Program who today manifest in the likes of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney - mock his vision. But ask any NASA scientist, any serious astronomer and you'll notice they aren't laughing. Newt at times will quote Proverbs 29:18, which wisely advises that, "Where there is no vision the people perish..."

Without further ado:

The Moon and Mars: Vision is as Necessary as Technology
July 27th, 2009

This week marks the 40th anniversary of mankind's first landing on the moon. It is a journey that began long ago when mankind first set out to explore the nearby hills and trees and then stretched across the millennia. In the course of so many lifetimes, we began our first voyages across the ocean by boat and later by plane, followed by that giant leap on 16 July 1969, though it was also but another small step in many.

Progress has been the primary element to our survival since the beginning; it has been greatly valued by those societies which have managed to thrive even when great sacrifice was involved. Unfortunately, the tale of progress does not have a happy ending as yet. For, in the mid-1970s the U.S. Congress astonishingly voted to cut funding to NASA's lunar program, which by now would likely have spawned a host of great discoveries and possibly even a few manned missions to Mars and perhaps beyond. We will never know what could have come of that lost half century, but it is safe to assume much would have been the reward, because that has been the eternal nature of mankind's pattern of exploration and discovery.

Ironically, members of Congress who voted to kill the Apollo moon program in favor of expanding social welfare programs that many predicted would be a disaster and now we see were complete and total failures like for others to think of them as "progressives". During the same period such self-appointed "progressives" allocated funds like drunken sailors to a plethora of counter-productive social programs, they embarked on starving the two areas most necessary for survival: defense and space; the former allowing Soviet expansion to regress human rights around the world and the latter even endangered what was in the early 1970s a nascent space shuttle program. (1) (2) (3) (4)

There has been nothing progressive about enduring the backward thinking with regard to any of these things. And there is nothing progressive about essentially continuing for another half century in the same direction. Instead of being "progressive", such in Congress instead became "regressive", obsessed only with looking back to outmoded ways of running government, to organizing mankind based on race rather than character, and of course by halting mankind's journey to new frontiers.

While limited-thinkers continue to live in yesteryear and remain determined to keep the rest of us there also, the frontier calls. If the frontier of space is anything like all the other frontiers before it which we have faced, it will ultimately prove invaluable to our survival. Those hopelessly sentimental who do not understand this continue to lie down in the roadway, accusing us of being heartless for having the need to move forward. This farce serves no purpose and is the reason why today we have moved backward in our space program instead of being much farther along than we were half a century ago. Fans of the television series Star Trek might be dismayed to discover there would be no "Enterprise" in the 23rd Century had such regressives run things in the fictional space of that story's narrative. Indeed, the future history of the real world in which we live would be equally as bleak.

Today, astronomers and other scientists, small children, and the entire world wistfully gaze up into the stars and wonder if in our lifetimes a human being will ever set foot on Mars, return to the moon or even if we will be able to put another space station up, so far backward have we moved. Mankind, once the heirs to a bright future measured by great leaps now must sit content to watch re-runs of Star Trek or live in a make-believe galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile our own saga of space flight becomes one of long ago and the tools and resources we will need to thrive in our future as a species remain untapped by a disastrously retrograde mindset.

Is Iran a Threat?

2012-01-14T10:53:23Z

It's hard to believe but there are still some who discount the threat posed by Iran to the West once the regime acquires and readies nuclear weapons. But why is Iran a threat? To answer that question we must ask some others:

Would Iran like to see the West destroyed? Yes
Is Iran willing to take action to bring this about? Yes
Is Iran currently taking action to bring this about? Yes
Would the end of this course of action legitimately threaten the West? Yes
How seriously could Iran hurt us? A single nuclear weapon detonated above North America would emit an electromagnetic pulse capable of frying our electrical grid and nearly everything utilizing electronics. This could literally lead to the extermination of 90% of the population within a year.
Can Iran be deterred? No
Can the threat be defended against or mitigated? Not yet. The technology exists but it has not been implemented.
What is being done to defend and mitigate? Too little
How long before Iran's nuclear capability is operational? Estimates vary from a few months to a couple of years at the optimistic end of the spectrum.
How long before defense and mitigation techniques are operational? A few years.

As you can see, there is already a frightening gap between when many believe Iran will possess nuclear weapons and when we will be able to defend against them or reduce their impact.

Iran has already promised to "wipe" the US and Israel off the face of the earth. Newt Gingrich makes a very good point on this, as well. If a person believes it is a good idea to blow himself up with a suicide vest in order to kill just a few of his enemies, why wouldn't he want a nuclear bomb and be willing to accept the consequences of retaliation after launching a devastating attack on his enemies? But the threat is even worse than that of a single - or even a few - cities being destroyed by nuclear attacks at ground level. Presently, Iran's nuclear weapons program is being developed in conjunction with missile tests that include delivery systems being detonated at apogee to simulate an EMP attack. A single EMP event over North America could be sufficient to knock out our entire electrical grid, which may take up to a decade to replace.

Within the first year after such an event due to starvation, dehydration, and disease, up to 90% of the US population would be dead. That's from a single EMP from a single, fairly low-yield bomb, and Iran's leadership has talked openly both within political circles and internal military white papers and other documents about the desire to make an EMP strategy their top priority.

Furthermore, there is no deterrent as there was with the Soviet Union because the official form of Islam propagated and adhered to within the regime believes that they will herald in the era of the 12th Imam (their messiah) once Armageddon begins; furthermore, this is also the same belief system that glorifies the suicide bomber as a martyr for Islam.

The Iranian regime is willing to accept heavy losses by any retaliation and they believe it is their God-given purpose to obliterate the United States, and soon they will have the capability to do so. Furthermore, the US would be so badly weakened - if it exists at all - that retaliation and certainly any sustained conflict with Iran and its axis partners would be impossible from a resource standpoint. The best we could do is drop a few nukes on Iran, which Iran is willing to accept. I would say that is quite a real threat.

We must begin to accept reality on its terms rather than how we wish it to be, and in so doing ensure that no attack from Iran, its axis partners China and Russia, other allies or terrorist groups will be capable of inflicting serious damage.

Truth About Romney's Pro-China Involvement Surfaces

2012-01-11T06:49:36Z

UPDATE for yesterday's post: As it turns out, Mitt Romney as governor was a wholly-owned subsidiary of China. Rep. Duncan Hunter, member of the House Armed Services Committee excoriated Romney in 2008, advising voters then to steer clear of a pro-China Romney. To this date Romney has failed address the problem, demonstrating further how unserious a candidate he is for Commander-in-Chief - although there's very lttle anyone could say to save himself from the inevitable disqualification this type of footsie with a hostile regime that has called for "exterminating the US population" brings.

From Newsmax, 2008:

"As the founder of Bain Capital, Governor Romney has an obligation to utilize his influence within the company to terminate the proposed merger between 3Com and Chinese defense contractor Huawei," said Hunter. "In light of China's refusal to port several American naval vessels last week, it is increasingly more important that American military technology be protected from foreign companies, such as Huawei, that are closely aligned with the Chinese government."

Hunter refused to endorse Romney in 2008 for this specific reason.

"This proposed deal, which Governor Romney can work to terminate should he choose to do so, is unpatriotic and damaging to national security," continued Hunter. As further detailed in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, Huawei has close ties to the military of communist China and allegedly aided Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.

As mentioned yesterday, "Huawei [is] linked by the Pentagon and other key figures in national security as an espionage front group of Beijing's Ministry of State Security (MSS)." In 2007, the tech-industry news site Cnet noted that Huawei is run by a former PLA officer by the name of Ren Zhengfei.

Meanwhile, Ren has gone about building Huawei into a success story disregarding the usual corporate niceties. In 2000--three years before the WMD craze got us all nutso about taking out Saddam--the CIA accused Huawei of secretly selling a communications system to Iraq. In the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, Huawei and two other Chinese companies were singled out for carrying out "extensive work in and around Baghdad"--mainly telecommunication switches and the installation of fiber-optic cable.

The article goes on to mention Romney's involvement:

[...]Friday we learned that Bain Capital is paying $2.2 billion to acquire 3Com. Part of the deal involves China's Huawei Technologies, which will acquire a minority stake in 3Com.
And, oh, by the way, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican presidential nomination--he headed Bain Capital for 14 years.
Six degrees of separation. In this case only 2--but who's counting.

In a later interview with Fox News, Hunter went farther and told Chris Wallace, "I think Mitt Romney's a no-go for that reason alone".

A note of disclosure: As a Newt guy, I'm not telling you to vote for Newt, although he is the best candidate on national security and I do recommend you do; however, I think as long as you stay away from Romney, Huntsman, and Paul, your choice will not be a candidate who potentially does direct damage to our national security interests. I personally think Newt would agree with the principle that one of the most important things we can do as Americans is to keep more bad actors out of the White House.

Sunday's GOP Presidential Debate and China

2012-01-10T09:25:34Z

During the 26-minute penalty box phase in Sunday morning's New Hampshire debate where far-left NBC host David Gregory banned Newt Gingrich from taking part in some of the most crucial parts - parts where 1%-ers like Huntsman and Perry and all the other candidates all far less qualified were heartily invited to opine - Willard "Mitt" Romney and Jon Huntsman fell into a dustup over China. Huntsman, the official spokesperson for the most genocidal regime in human history in a stunning are-you-serious display of ignorance for a supposed Sinophile stated that we should not seek to protect our interests in responding to China's trade war against us because it would cause a trade war. Come again? Meanwhile, Romney - now brought up to speed only in sound bites by one of his advisors who seems to be a closet fan of Donald Trump - doesn't know about this trade war stuff, but he sure would like to raise taxes on China because that's what he's had so much experience doing to people in his own state and it's safe - he knows how to do it. Play your strengths.

Cover of Richard M. Nixon

Mr. Huntsman certainly is not inexpert on the topic of China. He has spent many years in China first as a businessman and then as Obama's China ambassador - and his company has over $9 billion tied up in China (surely no conflict of interest there). Huntsman is incredibly knowledgeable on the topic, which again makes his blunders on the topic so stunning. Where he may be faulted is in the area of his affections, or at best, his understanding of what motivates the regime and what its implications are for the world - particularly in light of similar regimes throughout history, which is our only guide. Huntsman falters in part because he's no historian, no philosopher, and certainly no political scientist, but no amount of education can make up for a gut that is seemingly off its axis (or in the case of the Axis of Evil, riding high atop it). Fairly recently, a husband and wife team of highly acclaimed researchers Jung Chang and Jon Halliday embarked on a project which became a New York Times best-seller. The book, Mao: The Unknown Story - now banned in Communist China - was an unofficial biography like no other in terms of scope and attention to detail. Along the way, the book mentioned that in the 1960s RINO Richard Nixon made numerous trips to China on business. During his trips he fell in with a beautiful young honey trap who used her influence to affect a friendlier outlook on the regime and may have brought about Nixon's shortsighted and naïve misadventure of "ping pong diplomacy". That policy in turn opened the US up to the most genocidal regime in human history that despite all rainbow and unicorn talk by the administration continued to find ways to destroy us, and most likely played an important role in our defeat in Vietnam along with the genocide of millions in Southeast Asia. To put a nice spin on things, it seems high-school dropout Jon Huntsman is the very best imitation yet of Nixon, albeit with a better tan and a smidgen more personality. But I'm sure he will tell you he's not a crook.

On the other hand, Mr. Romney is in many ways the opposite of Huntsman and in other respects, quite similar. Breathtakingly inexperienced in foreign policy and up until very recently, almost as inarticulate as Rick Perry on the topic until a few of his advisors came to the rescue. Up until this year for Romney, "China" was only something stamped on the bottom of most of the products sold in his Staples office supply stores, covered in the fingerprints of the five-year-olds who were forced to assemble them. So one of the few areas that Huntsman and Romney shared in common with respect to China was that both men had a big money stake in preserving the status quo at all costs - even against the long term national security interests of the United States (though they might both be men of denial rather than malice). Another thing the two share in common is that both men as president would likely continue the failed China policies of the last four presidents, albeit for somewhat different reasons - one because he thinks he's clever, the other because he doesn't know a thing and therefore thinks it must not be important. One thing in Romney's (and almost everyone else's) favor, however, is that he never announced to the world that China's telecommunications company Huawei - linked by the Pentagon and other key figures in national security as an espionage front group of Beijing's Ministry of State Security (MSS) - was a great company or that it had a terrific "worldwide reputation", as Perry once had. But at this point we are only nuancing shades of fail here.

UPDATE: Actually, Romney was totally in bed with Huawei. We mosted more information about it here. And as far as not being a crook as Huntsman may be able to claim and Nixon wasn't, well...

By contrast, Newt Gingrich understands the China threat, its historical context, the nature of communism - and China's flavor of Marxi-fascism deliberately patterned after Nazi Germany - and the finer points of geostrategy, the need to be proactive, the value of covert operations, the importance of morale, and the importance of recognizing proxy wars for what they are along with all manner of asymmetrical warfare. Newt's playing for the right team and understands why and how to do it. The biggest travesty of Sunday morning's debate was not the predictably shallow aping of advisors by Romney or Huntsman's faithful wearing of the red (China) team's colors, it was the exclusion of the only practical, competent, trustworthy, and much-needed Newt Gingrich from this discussion. Nevertheless, Gingrich is the only one to have endorsements by the greatest minds and strategic thinkers of the Reagan era or today, including former Reagan National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane and Dr. Thomas Sowell. Speaker Gingrich's exclusion from the discussion in the last debate is a sad example of biased networks putting politics over national interest. It is important for all Americans that he be allowed to partake in the discussion of national security - an area in which we must have our best leaders step forward.

Obama-Media Complex: Made in Putin's Image

2012-01-08T13:10:18Z

I wrote a piece a couple of years ago detailing Russia's disappointing departure from rather short-lived aspirations of democracy in the 1990s and how Vladimir Putin's concept of a managed, electoral authoritarianism (to borrow from Francis Fukuyama) meant that by controlling the media he controlled the elections. As a result, Putin's government managed to guarantee the outcome because he controlled the information the voters needed to make their decisions.

So Newt Gingrich faces a confluence of things which for a host of disparate reasons seeks to have him lose to Romney. On the part of the pro-Obama media, we see an unflinching advocate with a bullhorn in on hand and duct tape in the other so it can both talk over and silence the opposition. With the bullhorn, the media strategically chants whatever it must at any given time to protect the administration. It then brings the duct tape into the GOP presidential debates and silences any it wishes to marginalize.

Indeed, the media's strategy at the moment is to see to it that the weak, threadbare liberal Mitt Romney wins the nomination. One might be a bit tongue-in-cheek and say that last night's debate was an ABC-orchestrated infomercial for a worthless product called Mitt Romney, although at least ShamWow had "wow" in its name. And it is true that Willard "Mitt" Romney is an incredibly flat dullard - although President Obama may arguably come up even shorter in that area - which is why both he and the left in general realize they must not only promote Romney but destroy his opposition beyond recognition, at least until Mr. Romney secures the nomination. What Alexander Solzhenitsyn once noted about the 20th Century seems just as true today about candidates like Romney, which is possibly another reason why the media prefer him: "Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."

The reality, however, is far more serious than a comical dysfunctional former governor with a 34 percent approval rating who abuses his dog and only talks about saving the life of the unborn if it saves his career. As we've learned, this is the way an MSM "debate" works in the modern era: Silence Newt, give Romney all the time, pronounce Romney the winner. Hello Vladimir Putin. And that should be the worrisome part. In effect, the American media is doing exactly what Russian media has been doing for twelve years since Putin took power with the exception that at least Russian media had to be coerced. American media hasn't had 300-plus journalists murdered by the regime - no, all it needed was some common ground and a few fancy invites to the White House. The shameful and perhaps most disturbing part about Romney (or perhaps evidence of his sheer stupidity) is that he's perfectly okay with this as long as the Obama media takes out Mitt's enemies, too. Even with the guy endorsing Mitt who tried to ride that ride back in 2008 only to have it turn around and bite him once he clenched the nomination, Mit seems utterly oblivious to the fact that being last to be lead to the slaughterhouse still means you're being taken to the slaughterhouse. It seems we have learned very little from the McCain disaster four years ago. But RINOs have been trying to inoculate themselves against conservatives ever since the Reagan Revolution, which is part of the reason why they so willingly join forces with Democrats and the liberal media to destroy conservative candidates.

Will Newt win it or is he somehow destined to become the next Garry Kasparov? I believe he will win, but it will be difficult. Newt is truly an historical figure of a potential magnitude of greatness that he may well go down as one of the actual top-four presidents in US history. So why would it be so hard if Newt finds natural resonance with the American people if he is such a gigantic figure? Again, the answer: the gatekeepers in the media. The American people cannot vote for someone they do not realize even exists, instead believing the evil cartoon character the media has created in his stead. Judging by the debate last night in which Newt was limited to fewer chances to speak than even Jon Huntsman who sits at the bottom of the polls, it's clear that the media realize Newt's initial surge came about by his ability to speak directly to the people much as Reagan did. The media would like to see Romney nominated because they believe he will lose to Obama, but even if Romney somehow defeats Obama, he is by far the closest thing they have to Obama outside of Hillary Clinton. So the media is working overtime to cut off Newt's mic while creating a host of fables about him that would be easily dispelled by any direct contact. So far, they've succeeded somewhat with help from the usually-right leaning but pro-Romney Drudge Report, Fox News, and over $10 million in false attack ads by Romney and his wingman Ron Paul, which the media have apparently forbidden Newt form defending himself against.

To borrow an idea from Speaker Gingrich himself, Newt plays chess, Romney plays checkers, and Barack Obama plays tic-tac-toe.* And right now both the checkers and the tic-tac-toe guy are playing "get the guy with the chess set". So we shouldn't by any stretch see this cabal of anti-Newt media or the virtual blackout during the debate last night as a nail in the coffin. Newt is smarter than all of them put together and I have no doubt that the champion of great solutions will solve this challenge, as well as the next, which is defeating Obama. Newt's sights are set and we need to stay behind him as he fights to restore the greatness of America, and certainly with each new step along the way, we begin that restoration, or to borrow from Newt's own words, "Nothing will turn America around more than Election Night when Barack Obama loses decisively." But as we seek to return the reins of power to the people, we also need to take time to reflect on the values that made us great. The media must also return to the values of integrity and fairness so that our great and free society can thrive and its people prosper. The media has been headed down a very dark path in which the lie has increasingly "become a moral category but a pillar of the state", as Solzhenitsyn also noted about life in the Soviet Union. He also famously said that "the strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand."

So as we elect Newt Gingrich as the 45th President of the United States next November, let's remember what Newt himself has told us: we also have much work to do. Health starts on the inside and works its way out, not from the top down. We have no way to predict what will become of Russia but we are in full control of what we as Americans become.

*"It's one thing if the White House can't play chess. It's another thing if the White House can't play checkers. But if the White House can't play tic-tac-toe..." - Newt, January 7th, 2012

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt. Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

History, Odds Are With Newt

2012-01-08T11:36:12Z

Like Obama, Romney is a reflexively liberal empty suit. Empty suit or not, both men are strongly ideological. In point of fact, every man has an ideology - whether it is shallow or deep, in contact with the real world or not, and that view of the world shapes his behavior. Romney essentially has the depth of a baking sheet but it is a rather liberal baking sheet. Being shallow for both these men means they are not only wrong but incompetent.

As for the election, I think we all realize that Romney almost certainly will lose to Obama, as RINOs have always done against liberal Democrats. In fact, it's really built into this campaign season and is part of why Romney is the establishment's anointed one. Romney's major backers back him because they have already embarked on a senate-first strategy. They believe him to be a suitable throwaway candidate who will not rock the boat for the effort to retake the senate. Certainly, the crusty and perhaps bigoted establishment would not be game for having a Mormon serve in the White House, so that alone is your first indicator he is a diversion. Others indicate his lackluster record as governor of Massachusetts and his inability to connect with voters - particularly southern voters - even as well as Al Gore or George H.W. Bush had. The establishment has concluded it will be impossible to defeat Obama, so the desire instead is to focus efforts on Congress and pick an unserious presidential candidate, saving better ones for another time. I fundamentally disagree with this approach and believe history bears this out, although his cynical backers most certainly are right about Romney's chances.

Let's take a look at just a few of the historical patterns.

First, only three of the last nine Republicans to win Iowa went on to win the Nomination. Of those, two were sitting presidents and unopposed and the other was the liberal Bob Dole who lost to the Democrat Clinton in the GE. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was one of the candidates who was beaten badly in Iowa by George H.W. Bush (the Romney of the day) and the campaign was nearly destroyed. For most of us, Paul Harvey doesn't need to read us the rest of the story.

Furthermore, no Republican presidential candidate running as a liberal like Romney has won the general election in the past forty years:

Ford 1976 (running as a liberal): Lost
Reagan 1980: (running as a conservative): Won
Reagan 1984 (running as a conservative): Won
Bush 1988 (running as a conservative): Won
Bush 1992 (running as a liberal): Lost
Dole 1996: (running as a liberal): Lost
Bush 2000 (running as a conservative): Won
Bush 2004 (running as a conservative): Won
McCain 2008: (running as a liberal): Lost

One reason for this is sheer demographics. Conservatives make up close to 50 percent of the US population as well as the majority base of the GOP. By contrast, self-described liberals comprise roughly 20 percent, with independents, the confused, the apolitical, and convicted felons making up the difference. Of those in that 30 percent who can legally vote, a candidate would be lucky to secure a third, i.e. 15 percent of the original pie. So it is vital for any GOP nominee to carry the base in order to win and we can see what happens to those who don't just by having another look at the list above.

Finally, Romney has consistently failed to garner more than the mid-20s - far less than even his mentor Bush 41, the 1980 frontrunner at this point in the race. New Hampshire will almost certainly go for Romney, but the political terrain suddenly changes as they head south. South Carolina almost always votes for the eventual nominee, and both SC and Florida favor Newt. By this time Bachmann and possibly Santorum will have dropped out, adding their supporters and key percentage points to those also left by Perry who suspended his campaign tonight. That support isn't going to Romney and I predict this will cascade in Newt's favor. But no matter which conservative chess piece you place as the sole competition to Romney, Romney loses. The numbers are just there; they're diffuse among several candidates at the moment, but those numbers will be reaching critical mass just when they're needed. Make no mistake, 2012 is another Tea Party election and Newt is the strongest Tea Party candidate and conservative candidate in essence to take it to the general election.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt. Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

A List of Common Paulbot Logical Fallacies

2011-12-03T05:17:07Z

Instead of bickering endlessly with Paulbots, another timesaver I've discovered that is a great deal of fun is calling them out on their logical fallacies (Paulbots almost always employ several). This list is certainly not exhaustive but just a fun way of examining why Paulbots turn so many people off irrespective of whether their issues fail to resonate. So here they are in no particular order:

The three most common and annoying of these that I've found are argumentum ad nauseam (droning on and on until his opponent has to leave FB to return to life, then declaring victory) and Argumentum verbosium (splitting every possible hair with lengthy, tone-deaf, and often disjointed diatribes), and argumentum e silentio (a Troll Fallacy when a Paulbot assumes he has won simply because no one has the time to sit for hours and pointlessly engage him in a thread; i.e. perceived victory through your silence).

Other popular fallacies include: Post hoc ergo propter hoc [Bob has athlete's foot, which is why we were hit by a meteor yesterday; al Qaeda attacked on 9/11 because we have troops stationed in Germany (no explanation given for why al Qaeda didn't attack Beijing, who has annexed the entire country of East Turkestan)].

- Fallacy of the single cause (We only fight wars because the defense contractors pay off congressmen).

This fallacy might well be embedded in another fallacy, such as what is known as a red herring ( a response that avoids the original issue, e.g. I might say Russia needs to stop sending missiles to Syria to which a Paulbot would retort that our "military industrial complex" wants another war.

Some different types of likely Paulbot red herring fallicies include:

- Association fallacy (guilt by association), and appeal to emotion (e.g. appeal to fear - demonizing.

- Appeal to motive: shooting the messenger, e.g. "you're just a warmonger".

- Slippery slope: "If we stand up to Iran, sooner or later we'll have to put even more troops on the ground and occupy another country, which will make al Qaeda mad").

- Wishful thinking: Playing on our desire for rainbows and unicorn ponies rather than accepting reality on its terms and confronting it, e.g. "If we only tried to talk to the terrorists/China/the Soviets/Nazi Germany instead of bombing/building up our defenses against them, they'd become our best friends. This is also referred to as a naturalistic fallacy or simply, Pollyanna.

But wait, there's more!

- Circular cause and consequence/wrong direction (putting the cart before the horse, i.e. al Qaeda attacked us because we occupy their land, whereas the reality is that we occupy their land because they attacked us.

- Nirvana fallacy: Since a perfect solution has not yet been found, no solution should be applied, even if it is a fairly good imperfect one and the alternative of offering no solution will be worse.

- Ignoratio elenchi (another Troll Fallacy) is a point that may be valid but as interjected an unrelated discussion is a complete non-sequitur and can qualify as trolling. E.g. to any topic at hand, a Paulbot might blurt out, "We must audit the Fed!".

- Continuum fallacies occur when a Paulbot rejects your argument simply because you misplaced a decimal rather than being incorrect in the greater body of your point or supporting claims. This can also be a good way for someone to avoid arguing with you entirely if he feels he cannot defeat you.

- Reductio ad Hitlerum is the act of comparing someone or what they've said to Hitler or the Nazis in order to connect them with wanton evil. This is akin to another fallacy called the thought-terminating cliché, e.g. if you suggest we should bomb a terrorist hideout and you respond that I just want to see infants and puppies burned alive.

- The loaded question: Why do you beat your wife?

- Cherry picking: Acknowledging/finding only the information that seems to support an assumption.

- Misleading vividness: using striking details for an event (even if rare) as if the added granularity somehow supports the event being described is a problem.

- The Texas sharpshooter fallacy sort of a cousin to the cherry-picker fallacy, in which a Paulbot cooks up a cause for an event.

- Broken window fallacy: A Paulbot might argue that we're better off taking our chances with a nuclear Iran because to do anything about it might cost the lives of some of our service members and require additional funds for the Department of Defense, while ignoring the greater cost of allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons: "If we try to stop Iran from wiping us all out with an EMP, we may end up going to war, which might kill some of our soldiers and cost more money."

- Definist fallacy occurs when a Paulbot describes one concept in terms of the other, e.g. claims not to be a liberal but a conservative.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009. He hates the Turabian style format.

The Inevitable EMP: A New Holocaust

2011-09-11T15:06:55Z

As mentioned in my previous post, former China defense minister Chi Haotian called for the use of WMD to annihilate the US population in an act of ethnic cleaning never before seen in human history.

One such method of WMD attack - and also comparatively low-cost - that is gaining wider attention is the use of EMP (or Electromagnetic Pulse). China could employ this method through a proxy power such as Iran or North Korea or a non-state actor, thereby concealing the return address (or China may decide as it examines its cost-to-benefit ratio that such an attack is worth losses suffered during the response).

Here's how it works: A single nuclear missile is detonated at apogee above the continental United States, Europe, Israel, India, Japan or other target sending out several waves of energy toward everything within line-of-sight. Power grids, unshielded electronics such as your computer, transportation (cars, delivery trucks, ambulances, aircraft, etc.), radios and TVs would all be fried. This would have devastating consequences, as you might well imagine.

I believe this is one of the most crucial issues facing the world from a security standpoint. In fact, an EMP has the potential to kill up to 90% of the affected population within a year after the event due to the natural die-off resulting from infrastructure collapse.* It normally takes about ten years to replace major power transformers - and that's under the most ideal conditions. During that time, there would be no way to get food, water, medicine, and other essentials to market; there would be no means of transporting the sick, no method for regulating the indoor climate in hospitals and nursery homes or disposing of waste. Disease, starvation, and the elements would take their toll. And many of the illnesses and accidents treatable today would also become fatal. Refugees would also swarm the countryside, overwhelming those who believed their isolation and self-sufficiency would sustain them.

If any regime deserves to be taken seriously in its threat to annihilate an entire population, that regime is surely CCP China, which has murdered over 70 million of its own people and counting, making it the most genocidal regime in human history. This is also a regime that makes no effort to diminish the cruelty of death, as we see from its harvesting of organs from living dissidents and the practice of filleting others alive. The regime has also built a vast network of mysterious and pristine cities across its country, which are completely uninhabited, as well as massive underground bunkers. It seems reasonable to assume these serve a strategic purpose and it is clear that it would be strategically useful for a regime intent on initiating - and winning - a nuclear confrontation with an enemy.

As is widely known, Iran has already tested the idea of detonating a missile at apogee and is presently acquiring both missile and nuclear technology from China, Russia, and others within that axis.

However, even if we were to eliminate all nuclear weapons and other man-made sources of EMP tomorrow, of grave concern also is the threat posed by solar events such as the Carrington event of 1859. Such an event - which occurs about every 100 years - would be global. Without hardened infrastructure from the electrical grid to transportation and communications, we are all literally sitting under the gun. That is why the best first strategy for ameliorating this unthinkable threat is to increase our survivability, as mentioned above. The next solar event is inevitable and is also arguably already overdue, and the reduced benefit of a first strike will also deter potential aggressors who seek to use a man-made event to score a quick win.

Without the will to develop new and more secure technologies, there is very little we can do to mitigate such an event, be it naturally-occurring or as the result of an attack from China directly or one of its proxies. So it is key that we understand that the moment to act is now. Otherwise, the inevitable will come. It will either be man-made or sun-caused, but at the point at which it occurs, civilization will suffer a severe downgrade and millions - possibly billions - of unique human beings with hopes, dreams, and aspirations will slowly and agonizingly vanish from the face of the earth.

*Forstchen, William R. One Second After. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2009.