The Shark Tank has an interesting story today on Ozzie de Faria, a Republican candidate for congress in Palm Beach who's claiming he's endorsed by the Tea Party. The Shark Tank reports that the Tea Party organization de Faria claims is supporting him doesn't exist and all signs point to him being a Democrat plant looking to suck votes away from other Republican candidates. Read about it for yourself at the Shark Tank.

Ozzie de Faria

From the blog Musings of a Mad Conservative comes an amazingly good piece on the events of yesterday. Read "The Amazing Unraveling President."

[...] For years, we conservatives have known that the word compromise to liberals simply means capitulate to our demands, and give up completely on your principles. I guess, after decades of seeing this be the result of the political discourse, President Obama really can not be blamed for wishing this to be the case once again. There is a difference however between previous times of compromise and today's reality. Not only are we at a national crossroads of philosophy today, but we quite literally are stretched to the very limits of what our national economy can handle. During this latest meeting of attempted compromise our President stood up from the table, said, "don't call my bluff Eric, or I'll take this directly to the American People." This literally has me bursting at the seems, so I'll try to hit it all. [...]

American Thinker is one of the best resources conservatives have to study the issues America faces in these perilous times. Today, there are three essays that are "must-reads," the first being the most important.

Obama's Final Solution by James Lewis (H/T Honey)

President Barack Obama is the most dogmatic and dangerous leftist we have ever seen in this country. He is not hard to understand. Obama is very simple. All his ideas were frozen in concrete a hundred years ago by Marxist-Leninism around 1920. In Dreams from My Father, Obama celebrates third-world Socialism, but that's just Marxist-Leninism with a racial overlay. Obama's ideas are all old and discredited. They have failed from the Soviets to Cambodia. North Korea is facing another mass famine today, so terrible that it can't even feed its own army. That is yet another failure of Marxist-Leninism. Over and over and over again. For radicals it doesn't matter. You have to break a lot of eggs to make that omelet.

Just as Jimmy Carter kicked over the Shah, a crucial pillar of support for American and Israeli security thirty years ago, Obama has just done with Egypt. By forcing Mubarak to resign, Obama has sabotaged the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of the last 30 years.

Turkey has also radicalized, and nobody in the American media seems to be taking notice. They must know the facts, but they are not telling us.

The United States is standing by or actively sabotaging the moderate Arab states while Turkey and Egypt fall into the "Death to Israel!" camp. Those are the three biggest states, with three of the most modern armies in the Muslim world. It means that some 200 million people from moderate or friendly states have joined the rejectionist camp, and that Obama has actually reversed the progress toward peace made in 30 years. [...]

A reminder from Solzhenitsyn by M. Catharine Evans

Can the kind of communism which Russia experienced after the Revolution in 1917 ever exist in America? According to Russian author and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn it most certainly can. Deceptive regimes whose leaders talk of economic justice, but deliver hell on earth threaten our freedom to live and work in the way our founding fathers planned for us. The composers of our Constitution entrusted their endeavor to a higher being who blessed America with unimaginable gifts.

Freedom "is counted sweetest" by those who have endured the brutality and ugliness of communism, so Aleksandr Solzehnitsyn (1918-2008) winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, prison camp survivor (for writing a letter in 1945 criticizing Stalin), intellectual (but he disdained the gulf between the people and academics) and exiled writer has much to tell us Americans on this Independence Day.

Solzhenitsyn was one of the greatest thinkers (others say prophets) of the twentieth century; we are lucky he survived the gulags and his battle with cancer. He lived as a dutiful Marxist and atheist up until his arrest at the end of World War II. He then became Christian while imprisoned.

He clearly articulated the opposing forces of Christianity and communism in the postmodern world. The writer received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in May of 1983. The award, first given to Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1973 was founded by Tennessee philanthropist John Marks Templeton. The exiled dissident and Vermont resident accepted his prize with an address that every American should read today. [...]

The Education of a Compassionate Conservative by Ed Kaitz

[...] National Review editor Rich Lowry doesn't seem to care much for Texas Governor Rick Perry. In a recent essay entitled "The Rise of Uncompassionate Conservatism" Lowry admonishes Gov. Perry for "stomping all over [compassionate conservatism] with cowboy boots emblazoned with the words 'Freedom' and 'Liberty.'" Lowry, who considers Gov. Perry the "Republican noncandidate flavor of the week," aches for the luminous days when George Bush won over "the center as well as the right" with his signature insight into the wonders of compassionate conservatism.

For Lowry, Gov. Perry's "unadulterated doctrine" only appeals to the "doctrinaire" and simply proves that Perry has "been spending too much time at Federalist Society seminars." So instead of educating his readers concerning the false dichotomy between being a compassionate conservative and being, well, Rick Perry, Lowry's commentary only proves that he, like Bush, has swallowed to some extent that most ingenious of all leftist philosophical creations: that "compassion" can most effectively be sold as an organized, planned government thingy.

Indeed, the "compassion" card is the Holy Grail to a progressive Democrat. It's a philosophical ace in the hole that has allowed Democrats to rhetorically smother and intimidate Republicans for generations. It's an idea, as Ronald Reagan should have known, more formidable than the Soviet military. It's the reason a socialist like Barack Obama was swept into office in America a mere twenty years after communism was "defeated." It's the reason why Whittaker Chambers argued that for Communists, "the sense of moral superiority ... [allows them] to berate their opponents with withering self-righteousness."

The brilliant French philosopher and journalist Jean-François Revel spent his life warning Americans and Europeans of the tremendous power of the left's creative discourse on compassion and social justice. In books such as The Totalitarian Temptation, How Democracies Perish, and Last Exit to Utopia Revel collected a mountain of evidence in order to paint a very modern picture of a very old but successful, and enduring, leftist strategy. [...]

Lots of it to go around.

Oodles and oodles of hope and change!

A reliable source tells us that members of  Miami's Knights of Malta have just returned from a trip to Cuba, where they're reporting that they had a great time, the food was delicious and most importantly - that Cuba is not as bad as everyone claims.

Now let's be sure not confuse these modern-day "Knights" with St. John of Jerusalem and the Catholic Church's dashing crusaders for Christendom of the 11th century. This current bunch mainly sit around in funny looking clothes, practice weird initiation rituals, drink lots of wine (maybe that part is somewhat similar) and throw elitist parties.

Ironically, these Miami-based Knights of Havana and their spiritual leader, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, have yet to comment on the murder of Cuban dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto. It was a Baptist Minister who had the courage to stand up to the regime in defense of Soto.

How times change.

Ex-Justice Department Official: Obama Could Be Forced to Release the Osama Death Photos.

Barack Obama has finally decided against releasing a photo of Osama bin Laden's corpse as proof of his death. But the former chief freedom of information expert for the U.S. government tells Gawker that he may not have that choice.

Up until a few moments ago, when CBS News reported Obama's decision, the Administration had issued mixed signals on whether it intended to release graphic evidence of Osama's demise. CIA director Leon Panetta stated that he expected a photo would eventually be released, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton were reportedly opposed. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday that "there are sensitivities here in terms of the appropriateness of releasing photographs of Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of this firefight."

But all the agonizing may have been for naught. According to Daniel Metcalfe, the former chief of the Department of Justice's Office of Information and Privacy—a post that effectively made him the government's top expert in the Freedom of Information Act—the odds are better than even that a FOIA lawsuit seeking the photo's release would succeed.

A memo has surfaced that suggests the FBI had a mole inside ABC News in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombings:

A once-classified FBI memo reveals that the bureau treated a senior ABC News journalist as a potential confidential informant in the 1990s, pumping the reporter to ascertain the source of a sensational but uncorroborated tip that the network had obtained during its early coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The journalist, whose name is not disclosed in the document labeled “secret,” not only cooperated but provided the identity of a confidential source, according to the FBI memo — a possible breach of journalistic ethics if he or she did not have the source’s permission.

The ABC employee was even assigned a number in the FBI’s informant database, indicating he or she was still being vetted for suitability as a snitch after providing “highly accurate and reliable information in the past” and then revealing information the network had obtained in the hours just after the 1995 terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh.

The journalist “advised that a source within the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service advised that the Oklahoma City bombing was sponsored by the Iraqi Special Services who contracted seven (7) former Afghani Freedom Fighters out of Pakistan,” an April 17, 1996 FBI memo states, recounting the then-ABC journalist’s interview with FBI agents a year earlier on the evening of the April 19, 1995 bombing. (The Iraqi connection, of course, never materialized.)

Oh yes he did!

The next time you see a column or analysis by former Castro regime bureaucrat Arturo Lopez-Levy or former U.S official Lawrence Wilkerson, read this one beforehand so you can be fully aware of their mindset and where they're coming from.

My thoughts on their post are shown (in italics) below.

A Road Map to Solve the Alan Gross Case

Should be entitled "Fidel's Ideal Road Map to Solve the Alan Gross Case".

The trial in Cuba against USAID subcontractor Alan Gross, which will begin on March 4, presents an opportunity for the Cuban government to both demonstrate the legitimate basis for nationalist defense against U.S. interventionist policy and its good will towards the millions of potential American travelers to Cuba.

By the end of the trial, it should be clear that U.S. travelers to Cuba have nothing to fear if they keep a healthy distance from regime change programs and that Washington and Havana would both gain from dismantling hostile attitudes. Note they don't say "US government" sponsored regime change programs.

Should visitors stay away from all regime change programs or, put differently, all programs that challenge the regime even if run by private individuals and organizations? And what counts as a regime change program? Isn't this contradictory to the whole discourse of anti-sanctions advocates that tourism will bring regime change

The trial serves three Cuban government purposes:

(1) It will mobilize the nationalist sentiments of the Cuban people to denounce foreign interference in Cuba's internal affairs. The trial must clarify whether Gross informed the leaders of the Jewish community in Cuba of his link to the USAID Cuba program sponsored under the auspices of the Helms-Burton Act. If not, this will expose a design flaw of a semi-covert subversive program in which the USAID placed Cubans at risk of long prison sentences without their informed consent, thus violating basic standards of international development assistance. By now it is evident that the Bush Administration, which conceived the project, was not interested in promoting Cuban civil society, but rather in using religious solidarity as a political weapon.

Given what we hear from the Middle East, Cubans might actually welcome foreign interference to help end a cruel and bankrupt dictatorship. Also, the program cannot be "semi-covert" when the authors provide a web link to the actual program! Some Cubans on the island may not have known about it, but only because the regime censors the internet.

(2) It will set an example and deter other Cubans, Americans, and nationals of third countries from participating in regime change programs under the Helms-Burton Act. No one after Alan Gross will be able to claim ignorance of the risk involved. Everything related to section 109 of the Helms Burton Act carries the stigma of illegal interference in Cuba's sovereign affairs and is punishable in Cuba by up to 20 years imprisonment.

Isn't Section 109 a per se an exception to the embargo? Therefore, Gross was not operating under Section 109, he was operating under a normal program not prohibited by the embargo.  Family visits, academic, cultural and religious travel are all permitted under the Helms-Burton Act. So by the author's logic all these people ought to be arrested.

(3) It will generate international condemnation of US policy and invigorate solidarity with Cuban sovereignty. By exposing the unilateralist, covert and interventionist nature of the USAID Cuba program, the trial will mobilize international opinion, not only triggering a more vigorous rejection of the U.S. embargo, but also tarnishing the credibility of the USAID in other countries. It is a blow, intangible but significant, to President Obama's foreign policy that focuses on the use of US popular appeal and bridge building. To the extent that the impact in countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and even El Salvador and Argentina, for example, will be greater, the State Department and the U.S. Congress cannot ignore the costs of disguising a Cuba regime change policy as international development assistance.

1. What we were previously told was a semi-covert program now becomes a covert program, despite the author's provided link to the "covert" program's web page on, lets remind ourselves, the World Wide Web. It's there, for all the world to see.

2. Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Iran do not count as international opinion. Most other countries will not buy into Cuban propaganda.

3. The authors obviously do not understand the very basics of "development".

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson's hope that Gross be tried and sent home is reasonable. Alan Gross is a victim of the hostility between the two countries and a policy that is not typical of American values and standards. His and his family's ordeal has attracted considerable humanitarian solidarity. As the first US citizen arrested under the law to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cuba, Gross should be given the benefit of the doubt and become an example of Cuba's goodwill towards the people of the United States.

Gross doesn't need to be given the benefit of the doubt. He is innocent, period.

If the Obama administration offers to facilitate a favorable international climate for the economic reforms taking place in Cuba, the utility of retaining Alan Gross, once the trial has concluded, would decline for the Cuban government.

Bad timing pal, those reforms just got postponed for five years, according to Raul.  Are they suggesting that it should be US policy to pay ransom for hostages? Are they aware of the risk this would create for all other US travelers to Cuba and elsewhere under this policy? This is worse than 185 Helms Burton laws strung together, one for every country. Hell, Somali pirates will soon start asking for a "favorable international climate".

Once the dividends related to the denouncement of the policy outlined in the Helms-Burton Act are obtained, the only benefit for the Cuban government in keeping Gross in prison would be the frequent mention of his case in relation to the situation of the five Cubans who were sentenced in Miami on charges of espionage in trials considered by Amnesty International and the UN group on arbitrary detention as lacking guarantees of fairness and impartiality. Although the cases must be analyzed separately, it is worth noting that the lawyer representing Gross at trial also serves as legal counselor for the families of the five.

Are the authors claiming that there is no Rule of Law in the US? It is Cuba that trails at the bottom of every freedom index in the world, not the US.

In these circumstances a visit to Havana by the two highest ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar would be very helpful. Such a visit could be preceded by a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Through interacting with the Cuban office of religious affairs and the leadership of the Cuban Jewish community, they would learn firsthand how their brothers in faith reject the Helms-Burton Act and any misuse of inter-religious contacts as a political weapon for regime change.

Journalists could accompany the entourage and report on the island's welcoming attitude toward US travelers. The visiting US delegation could meet the relatives of the five Cubans imprisoned in the U.S., hearing their views on that trial and becoming aware of the need for political courage on both sides of the Florida Straits to end the policies that led to the arrests of the Cubans and of Gross.

What the authors propose, essentially, is that the two highest ranking member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, religious leaders, and US media all clap liked trained seals to the tune of Cuba's propaganda machine. Perhaps they will also have to balance a red ball on their nose.

A Cuban humanitarian gesture towards the Gross family would add impetus to the advocates of a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba and recognize those many Americans who oppose the embargo. It might also create momentum for a substantial American gesture of détente, before the 2012 electoral season (for instance, removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, eliminating embargo elements that hinder Cuba's emerging private sector, or allowing food sales on credit).

The seals should clap, balance a red ball on their nose, and bring forth presents.....

The personal tragedy of Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen with an interest in international development assistance, has revealed once again the danger of allowing the values of US society to be hijacked by agendas unrelated to human rights and outside American strategic interests. The U.S. has no reason to apologize for its democratic values but the promotion of these principles should not be used to mask Cuban exiles' property claims, regime change aspirations or unilateral actions against the principles of international law.

Is the death of a hunger striker not a human rights issue? Is the denial of travel to thousands of Cubans not human rights? Either the authors aren't aware what human rights are, or they think of ordinary Cubans as no better than trained seals too.

Cuba, meanwhile, should not confuse enemies. Those who passed the Helms-Burton Act are precisely the ones who want to turn Alan Gross into an insurmountable obstacle for the advancement of better relations.

The Gross trial must expose the illegal, unilateralist and interventionist nature of the Helms-Burton Act and the USAID Cuba program. But after the trial, a humanitarian gesture towards Alan Gross and his family would be the best way to show the Cuban openness necessary to undermine the ban on travel to the island.

Argh!!!!!

So I'm sitting here finishing my 1040 and marveling at the fact that my FEDERAL tax liability for 2009 was $19,728. That's 19 grand to pay for phony stimulus. 19 grand to pay salaries of unaccountable loser bureaucrats. To add insult to injury, because of elections I made at the beginning of the year that I need to write a check to the U.S. Treasury in the amount of $2,516. And as I write that check I curse the day the our son of a bitch president (literally) was born. The fucking balls on the guy to name a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. And it would be one thing to do so, not knowing, and then withdraw the nomination. But Noooooooooooo. I'm sitting here doing my good citizen routine, writing a check from a credit card because I don't have the cash in the bank to pay it.

Ladies and gentlemen, up is down and down is up. Right is wrong and wrong is right in the age of Obamunism.

From Rasmussen Reports:

Support for Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s U.S. Senate bid has fallen this month to its lowest level yet. Just 28% of the state’s likely Republican voters support his candidacy now, down six points from March.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely GOP Primary voters in the Sunshine State shows former state House Speaker Marco Rubio edging up a point from last month to 57%, his highest level of support to date. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate in the race, and 12% are undecided.

Republican Primary voters see Rubio as a stronger candidate than Crist in the General Election. Eighty-one percent (81%) say Rubio would be at least Somewhat Likely to win if nominated while just 63% say the same of Crist. Those figures include 53% who say Rubio would be Very Likely to win and 30% who see Crist as Very Likely to win.

Nearly half of US households escape federal income tax.

Tax Day is a dreaded symbol of civic responsibility for millions of taxpayers, but for nearly half of all U.S. households, it's simply somebody else's problem. About 47 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009, either because their incomes were too low or because they qualified for enough credits and deductions to eliminate their tax liability, according to projections by a private research group.

An April Fools video we missed.

Derailed? We hope so.

It's a long interview, but well worth your time.

"A People’s History of Howard Zinn":

One of the unwritten laws of opinion journalism is to never kick a man when he’s dead, at least, not until an appreciable amount of time has passed. The question is whether this can or should hold true for those who make their living by doing precisely that. The death at the age of 87 of pseudo-historian Howard Zinn raises this issue all over again, since very few academics have made a better living defaming the dead, with everyone from Columbus to Ronald Reagan, and thousands in between, being accused by the jocular old harpy of any number of hideous crimes, not one of whom, needless to say, being alive to answer the charges. It is, of course, the job of the historian to examine the acts of the deceased; and some consider it an equal part of their profession to pass judgement upon them. In the case of Zinn, however, he passed judgment with such slothful ease, and such obvious sadistic pleasure in issuing his condemnations, that one cannot muster up much sympathy at the prospect of the man’s memory dying by his own sword.

Ouch.

Mark Steyn is on the case of TSA's response to the Christmas Day terrorist attempt:

On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?

But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.

Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.

Um, the Pantybomber didn’t have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren’t part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap — not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. I can’t wait for the first lawsuit after an infidel flight attendant confiscates a litigious imam’s Koran as they’re coming into LAX.

You’re still free to read a paperback if you’re flying from Paris to Sydney, or Stockholm to Beijing, or Kuala Lumpur to Heathrow. But not to LAX or JFK. The TSA were responding as bonehead bureaucracies do: Don’t just stand there, do something. And every time the TSA does something, you’ll have to stand there, longer and longer, suffering ever more pointless indignities. Last week, guest-hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show, I took a call from a lady who said that, if it helps keep her safe, she’s happy to get to the airport “four, five, whatever hours” before the flight. Try to put a figure on “whatever” and you’ll get a sense of where America’s transportation system is headed. Ten years ago, you got to the airport 45 minutes, an hour before the flight. Now, thanks to the ever more demanding choreographers of the homeland-security kabuki, it’s two, three, four, whatever. Look at O’Hare and imagine the size of airport we’ll need. And by then the Pantybomber won’t even need to get on the plane; he can kill more people blowing up the check-in line.

And remember, this was a bombing mission that “failed.” With failures like this, who needs victories?

"SafeLink Wireless is a government supported program that provides a free cell phone and airtime each month for income-eligible customers."

Are you outraged yet? Or is it only conservatives that feel we are being scammed?

Time to pay the piper.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist probably wasn't worried that literally embracing President Barack Obama back in February and strongly supporting the $787 billion federal stimulus package would hurt his U.S. Senate campaign.

Sure, the hardcore party base wasn't happy, but the appearance was an opportunity to win over Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans who voted for Obama. The president's approval ratings were high, and any Republican thinking about running for an open seat in 2010 stopped thinking about it when Crist signaled interest.

All except former House Speaker Marco Rubio. Political insiders said it wasn't logical to challenge an incumbent governor who had high approval ratings and could raise gobs of money. However, Rubio said it didn't make sense for the highest-profile Republican in Florida to embrace a Democratic president and a plan that would raise the federal deficit.

Now Rubio is gaining momentum as he reminds Republican voters of Crist's hug. And the same political insiders who downplayed Rubio are starting to think the unthinkable: Crist's campaign might be threatened by another Republican.

"I just knew that if we were true to ourselves and what we stand for, and we went out and told enough people about it, that we would begin to make progress and that's what's happening," Rubio said.

From YouTube:

This is a video of Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood asking questions at Arabfest, Dearborn. The date is June 21st, 2009. There was a booth at the festival which had a banner titled "Islam: Got Questions? Get Answers." From their table, we picked up a pamphlet claiming that Islam promotes peace. We noticed that it was full of poor logic and errors, so we decided to make a video refuting it. We went to the booth that gave us the pamphlet to give them the opportunity to defend their claims. Security, however, stepped in and forced us to turn off our camera.

We left the booth, received advice from police, and found out that the actions of the security guards were illegal. We went back to the booth to record a potential answer again. Realizing that the Muslims present had no answer, we left.

When we came outside, we were asked some questions by two young men, who had been sent by security to entrap us. While we responded to them, festival security started assaulting us, as you will see in this video. The conclusion of this video is a mob of festival security attacking our cameras, pushing us back, kicking our legs, and lying to the police.

We ask you, is it a coincidence that the city with the highest percentage of Muslims in the United States is the city where Christianity is not allowed to be represented (let alone preached) on a public sidewalk? Is it coincidence that in this city, people will say "No way!" when we say "This is the United States of America"?

Is this what will happen when Islam takes over the United States?

"How do you like your change now? Obama Nation. They are coming for you! The Taxpayer. First and Second Amendments are in jeopardy. Live free or Die."