LowDownCentral.com - Feature Article

Monday

01Feb2010

Mooning the American Spirit

Monday, February 1, 2010 at 04:00AM

by Lance Thompson

The last Americans to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, did so in December 1972–thirty-seven years ago. If President Obama has his way, it’ll be 37 years before any more footprints are made in the lunar dust, and they probably won’t be made by an American.

That’s because Obama plans to cancel this nation’s manned space program. He will cut funding for the new Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles, the Orion crew capsule, and the Altair Lunar lander, on which over $8 billion has already been spent. There will be no money for a moon base, nor any reason for one, since the moon will no longer be a destination for NASA. Instead of reaching for the stars, NASA will cast its eyes downward, in a vain attempt to quantify the discredited myth of global warming. No better example of cosmic navel-gazing can be imagined.

Of course, the International Space Station will still roam the skies in low-Earth orbit, but Americans who want to get there will have to buy a seat on a Russian Soyuz capsule. That’s $51 million dollars per astronaut, not counting the baggage charge. We will thus be subsidizing the Russian aerospace program while dismantling ours.

Russia will not be the only player in the space game. Communist China’s space program has advanced significantly. North Korea and Iran are building rockets that will do double duty–lifting payloads into space or lofting warheads over their neighbors. India’s space program is just beginning. Only the United States is turning its back on the frontier that it conquered these many years ago.

In the early 1970's, when the country was facing tough economic times, the space program was a tempting target for budget cutters. We faced a recession, an unpopular war, rising unemployment, a languid stock market, an increasingly powerful Soviet Union. The shared national purpose that launched thousands of young people into science and inspired feats almost beyond imagination from our country’s aerospace and technology workers was no longer a unifying crusade. Having witnessed the ultimate fulfillment of the century’s greatest technological challenge and America’s ascendancy to undisputed master of the cosmos, all during his presidency, Richard Nixon cancelled the Apollo program.

We have a new century and a new President who doesn’t mind writing multi-trillion dollar bad checks on America’s taxpayers’ accounts to pay for thousand-page collections of earmarks, bribes and political kickbacks. But an investment that is less than what it cost for Obama to buy a controlling share of General Motors is too much to spend on keeping America first on the last frontier.

The issue isn’t money, because obviously the President doesn’t mind spending all that we have, or ever will have. It goes much deeper, into a vital aspect of the American character that Obama will never understand.

America started out as a frontier. Americans are drawn to the frontier. America needs a frontier. We are a nation of dreamers, strivers and achievers. We thrive on challenge, we grow strong in the endeavor, we redefine ourselves with each new summit conquered. Obama’s political agenda clearly demonstrates his core belief that Americans need to be taken care of. Universal health care, nationalization of private industry, redistribution of wealth all rise from the same conviction–the government must guide, regulate and manage America’s inherent restlessness, or we will face disappointment and disaster.

But Americans don’t need to be shown how to overcome adversity–that is our heritage. We have faced disappointment, disaster, and much worse in our past, and it has only deepened our resolve. All we need is a goal. Personal, public, local, or national, the great achievements of Americans fuel our continued progress. Americans conquered the air, joined the seas at Panama, split the atom, and put men on the moon. We are more than ready for the next challenge–we eagerly seek it, and desperately need it.

We are inspired by those who encourage us, support us, and join us in such efforts, because we know the journey defines our character as much as the destination. Those who fail to understand that fundamental aspect of the American character will seldom lead for long, and will never be remembered fondly.

LowDownCentral |

Symbolism in Massachusetts

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 04:00AM

by Lance Thompson

Both sides have spun their versions of what Scott Brown’s decisive upset of Martha Coakley means in political terms. Conservatives cheer the end of the Democrat supermajority in the Senate, Democrats from the President on down characterize the victory of the Republican in true-blue Massachusetts as a symptom of Bush fatigue. But there are some interesting symbolic factors which may be significant for this election year.

First is the widely-discussed pickup truck, a GMC Canyon with 200,000 miles that was Scott Brown’s executive ride. The mere fact that Brown has put 200,000 miles on the vehicle shows that whenever it was new, it was not acquired as a conscious political symbol. Nonetheless, it is.

Trusty trucks with two hundred grand on the odometers are the transportation of choice for middle class working people. They are driven by Americans with mortgages to pay, groceries to buy, and private sector work to do. As Scott Brown has shown, people like this actually live in Massachusetts, much to the surprise of the Democrats in Congress. He is not just “in touch” with the middle class, he is one of them. He knows what they value, where they work, how the live, and how much they’re upset by the Democrats and their drive for nationalized health care.

Brown’s truck is a product of General Motors, a company that once dominated the American market. Barack Obama, during a last-minute campaign stop in Massachusetts before the election, mentioned Brown’s truck often, exhorting voters to pay no attention to the it. “Anybody can buy a truck,” he famously concluded, to cheers from his supporters and derision from his opponents. In fact, since Barack Obama’s administration took billions of taxpayer dollars to buy a controlling chunk of General Motors stock last year, it’s not that “anybody can buy a truck.” The truth is, “Everybody has bought a truck.” Theoretically, all Americans own small portions of General Motors trucks, thanks to Obama’s government takeover of private industry. This symbol was not lost on Massachusetts voters.

Another symbol dismissed by the MSM is Scott Brown’s military service. Brown served thirty years in the Massachusetts National Guard. He has the rank of lieutenant colonel, and serves as the 26th Brigade’s Staff Judge Advocate General. He has experience as an infantry officer and quartermaster officer, is jump qualified, and earned the Army Commendation Medal. All of that requires the dedication and selflessness that characterizes Americans in military service. Brown’s military record was not a focus of his campaign, but it does reveal character.

Pollsters have told us that Americans are rejecting the liberal agenda of the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean they are rushing back to embrace Republicans. Americans have been burned by both parties. They are searching for leaders they can believe in. The same pollsters tell us that while the President’s approval is below 50%, and Congress’ approval is about half that, Americans rate our military as the most highly trusted and regarded of our institutions.

All Senators and congressmen and presidents take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. So does every American who serves in uniform. The difference is that our troops back up their oath with their lives. This fall, there are over two dozen congressional seats where candidates with proud military records are in contention. If American voters are looking for people they can trust and believe in, they may find a record of military service very convincing.

The last symbol is Scott Brown’s bullhorn. While the President, who has given over 400 interviews and over a hundred press appearances–more than any other president in the first year of an administration–bemoans the fact that he hasn’t spoken directly to the American people, Scott Brown did exactly that. He stood up in the bed of his pickup truck, and spoke to the crowds without handlers, without teleprompters, without elaborate Greek revival backdrops. He took his plain-spoken case directly to the voters, and they liked what he said. A bullhorn may sound like an impersonal communication device, but it spoke louder and more convincingly than Coakley and her powerful surrogates.

It also reminded me of the bullhorn George W. Bush used when he stood on the pile of rubble that was once the World Trade Center after September 11th, 2001. The President had borrowed the bullhorn from a veteran firefighter who had spent countless hours digging through the debris in a search for survivors, to commend the crowd of volunteers who were doing the same thing. Someone in the crowd yelled, “I can’t hear you.” Bush replied, “I can hear you. The world can hear you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear from all of us soon.”

That’s how to talk directly to the people.

LowDownCentral |

2 Comments |

Email Article

Print Article

tagged

Barack Obama,

Democrat Supermajority,

Scott Brown in

Friday

15Jan2010

Democrat Success Story

Friday, January 15, 2010 at 04:00AM

by Lance Thompson

Even though “Democrat Achievements of 2009” would fall into the category of titles of the world’s shortest books, such a book would not be entirely empty. In fact, Democrats can legitimately claim that in the last year, they have accomplished something that the GOP has repeatedly failed to do for at least two decades. The Democrats have managed thoroughly to discredit liberal political philosophy and governance. This is no small achievement.

In the years after Reagan, Republican politicians warned against liberals; run against liberals; chastised, ridiculed and accused liberals in order to gain political advantage. Liberals even changed their name–to “progressives”–to avoid the feared liberal label. But the charges began to ring hollow as big-government Republicans raised taxes, increased spending, expanded entitlements, and argued for lenient immigration policies. Were liberal politics only bad when practiced by Democrats, and tolerable when enacted by Republicans? Evidently not, because the GOP lost control of Congress in the past decade when they offered no clear alternative to liberal Democrats. In 2008, they lost the White House, too.

Suddenly, the Democrats had a commanding majority in the House, a supermajority in the Senate, and one of their own in the White House. They enjoyed an adoringly uncritical media and a wave of electoral bliss seldom equaled. In effect, they had a brand new credit card with almost unlimited political capital. How did they spend it?

President Obama began by assembling a cabinet and administration full of tax cheats, liars, strong-arm political operatives and communists–many of whom were amateurs at national politics, but almost all of whom had more experience than their boss. Democrats funded bail-outs and stimulus bills that were full of earmarks, political pay-backs and liberal pet projects that doubled the already swelling debt. As terrorists attacks again struck American soil–in Little Rock, Fort Hood, and on a Detroit-bound plane--Obama fought to empty Guantanamo and give terrorists the Constitutional rights of American citizens. Obama’s team nationalized private industry, abandoned long-time allies, bowed in supplication before our enemies, and embarked on passing massively expensive and unintelligible health care reform that would multiply our debt yet again.

As details and cost analysis of all these plans filtered down to the American people, the Democrat agenda became less and less popular. So, as it happens, did Democrats. The approval ratings of Congress continued to slide downward from even the low marks legislators earned during the Bush administration. But even more surprising, the historic, unprecedented, hope-and-changeling in the White House also saw his numbers fall. And the more he tried to sell the liberal package of multi-trillion dollar big government programs, the further he dropped.

None of this could have happened if the Democrats did not have the power to enact their agenda over the protests of conservatives and common sense. Democrats believe that the answer to bloated government is more government. The answer to ballooning debt is more spending. The answer to high taxes is even higher taxes. The answer to international threats is to apologize for our past, betray our allies, and promise to look the other way when rogue nations go on the warpath.

Any conservative who tried to warn us that this would be the result of Democrat control of two branches of government would have been dismissed as an extremist. Eighteen months ago, the idea of the United States in economic, diplomatic, and moral decline would have been unthinkable. Today, it’s an undeniable trend.

The Democrats have proved that, given no checks and balances, they are determined to bring this nation to its knees and saddle us with enough debt to keep us there. They have given the American people a year’s preview of a future under Democratic governance, and a majority of us want no part of it. Suddenly, the iron grip Democrats had on Congress is slipping away, with each new announcement of retiring legislators or party-switching representatives. Barack Obama is no longer a messenger of hope and change, but a huckster peddling an increasingly unpopular line of hokum. Conservative principles are defining the debate, only a year after so many pundits pronounced conservatism dead.

Moreover, the media that waved its pom-poms for Barack Obama is no longer cheering from the press box. It began with a few respectful questions that were ignored, avoided, or ridiculed by the party in power. But now, as the media senses weakness, they will become more aggressive, more insistent, more adversarial. Reporters read the polls, too, and no news outlet wants to be behind the trend. As they see Obama, Reid and Pelosi faltering, the press will turn on them, hound them, savage them, and participate in their downfall. Because if an outcome seems inevitable, the media likes us to believe that we heard it from them first.

So let us give thanks to the Democrats who governed in 2009. These true believers have done to the liberal religion what no heretic could manage. They have exposed their impotent idols and false gods for all the world to see, and have quickened their own demise.

LowDownCentral |

1 Comment |

tagged

Progressives in

Tuesday

05Jan2010

Man-Made Disaster Prevention

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 04:00AM

By Lance Thompson

Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano has retreated from her controversial statement on the would-be Detroit airline bomber. Having initially characterized the fortuitous intervention of airline passengers in the mid-air bombing attempt by terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as proof that “the system worked,” she now must face another unpleasant fact. Terrorist acts, or, to use Napolitano’s term, “man-caused disasters,” remain a threat. In response to the attempted destruction of a passenger jet, DHS came up with clever countermeasures such as limiting carry-on luggage, locking passengers out of airliner restrooms, confining passengers to their seats, and outlawing paperback books.

The Department of Homeland Security must study past man-caused disasters to predict future threats, and devise measures to thwart them. Looking back on 2009, it seems clear that there was no more debilitating man-caused disaster than the Obama administration’s national security policy. One could quibble that it should be a “men- and women-caused disaster,” giving equal credit to the ineptitude not only of Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, but also to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and DHS Chief Napolitano. But none of these people would have any authority if it hadn’t been for Obama’s presidency, so let’s just designate him as the man who caused the disaster.

Democrats and the mainstream media showed tasteful reserve in all but eradicating images of that other famous man-caused disaster that occurred on September 11th, 2001. To respond in kind, we will not dwell on a detailed review of the devastation of the Obama-caused disasters in foreign policy. We will gloss over Obama’s refusal to call the Fort Hood murders acts of terror, the transferring of confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to the United States for trial, and the granting of the rights of American citizens to all and sundry foreign terrorists. Let’s further avoid mentioning the unilateral cancellation of anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe, the warnings to Israel not to defend itself against the Iranian offensive nuclear program, and the tacit endorsement of the acts of international villains from Hugo Chavez to Kim Jong-il.

Still, the DHS must devise and employ countermeasures against such man-caused disasters. Here are a few suggestions:

Just as we now require background checks for some firearms purchases, we should likewise require background checks on any American voter who cast one (or more) ballots in Barack Obama’s presidential election. Such a voting record would immediately cast suspicion on that voter’s sanity and judgment, and would place him in a “high risk” category subject to full body search. And yes, this might include a cavity search. Security officers might want to start in the brain cavity that–in Obama voters–would likely contain much dangerous material.

Just as the Transportation Security Agency keeps a “No-Fly List” (even if unenforced against likely terrorists), the federal government should keep a “No Hire List.” This list would be populated by operatives from the Democrat political machine in Chicago, long-term congregants of the Trinity United Church of Chicago, and anyone who owns a Che Guevara t-shirt. Additional persons to be included in the federal “No-Hire List” would be anyone appointed, pardoned, praised, bowed to or admitted without invitation to a White House party by the Obama administration.

As the TSA limits carry-on luggage, we should also limit the ability of any member of the Obama administration to carry on. They must be prevented from pontificating, speechifying and carrying on about how they won’t rest till our enemies are brought to justice. This sort of rhetoric is contradicted by an administration that permits terrorists and murderers to engage the highest-paid lawyers the ACLU can provide and expose the secrets of our national security to anyone trying to discover them. When this administration mouths the lyrics of patriotism and sings the praises of the men and women who defend us, every word is false and every note is sour.

Most important of all, every American must undertake to remain alert, vigilant and proactive as we guard against more man-caused disasters in the future. What can an ordinary citizen do to keep us safe? You will find the most effective means at your polling place. If Americans show more sense than their leaders next November, both the disasters and the men who cause them can be forever removed from authority. It won’t keep us safe from every enemy–but it will reduce the threat from the internal ones.

LowDownCentral |

2 Comments |

Email Article

Print Article

tagged

DHS,

Janet Napolitano,

Man-Caused Disasters,

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in

Terrorism,

War on Terror

Permalink

Wednesday

02Dec2009

Honoring KSM

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 04:00AM

By Lance Thompson

The Obama administration’s decision to try Kalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in a civilian court rather than before a military tribunal left many Americans mystified. Since Attorney General Eric Holder’s old law firm defends terrorists held in Gitmo (and did so while he was a senior partner there), we can assume that a Justice Department under his control will not successfully or even vigorously prosecute this confessed mastermind of the September 11th attacks. Much time and money will be wasted in parading KSM through the legal process. There is, however, a way to serve justice swiftly and, one might even say, diplomatically.

It is well known that KSM revealed vital information about the al Qaeda organization that enabled Americans to interdict terrorist attacks against our country. This information was obtained with the help of interrogation methods that included waterboarding. These methods, many believe, are the real target of the Obama administration in this trial, since KSM has already confessed to his integral role in the 9/11 attacks. In a civilian court, the methods of interrogation are as much on trail as the defendant, especially when the defendant’s prosecutors are sympathetic to and indistinguishable from the defendant’s defenders.

If Obama and Holder’s Justice Department do not really wish to prosecute KSM, and the defendant’s release is expected if not desired, then let’s not waste time with a civilian court or a military tribunal.

Instead of dragging KSM to New York for a months-long terrorist trial circus, let President Obama simply pardon him. And not in a quiet, weekend ceremony in the middle of the night, as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid handle controversial votes on health care. Arrange a reception in the White House Rose Garden, with a band, supportive members of the media, and a 70-virgin choir vocalizing Islamic chants.

Let Obama present KSM with some sort of award (too bad the Nobel Peace Prize is already taken for the year) recognizing his service to America. A cash stipend might not be out of order either–a million or two would hardly be missed in the federal spending spree currently underway. Obama could even claim that Paid Islamic Informant is one of the 60,000 phantom jobs created or saved by the stimulus bill.

Such accolades may seem excessive to those of us who view KSM as a confessed enemy of our nation and murderer of our countrymen. But consider how he will be received by his fellow terrorists once he is publicly congratulated and rewarded for the information he provided to the Great Satan. Who knows how many Predator missile strikes, covert assaults, and dead terrorists resulted from information KSM provided to his interrogators? He can hardly claim a hero’s welcome after ratting out his fellow rats.

Thus, I think al Qaeda will mete out the proper punishment to this blabbermouth with much less of the delay, hand-wringing and endless appeal that a US civil court trial would guarantee. If we’re lucky, maybe al Jazeera or some enterprising Islamist youtuber will post a grainy video of KSM losing his head at the hands of some sword-wielding fanatic.

This is the best way to punish KSM. But the real target of this trial is not the entity identified by those three initials. The real targets are the entities identified by the initials FBI, CIA, and USA.
Those are the enemies of the Obama administration. But in three years, we’ll have a chance to vote for president again. Then we can get rid of the ultimate three-letter enemy: BHO.

LowDownCentral |

TODAY ON LDC

Mooning the American Spirit

Symbolism in Massachusetts

Democrat Success Story

Man-Made Disaster Prevention

Honoring KSM