Happy Fourth of July!

In celebration of our independence, I thought I would embed five great classic war movies, celebrating the fighting spirit that originated when our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, ensuring war with Great Britain.

Enjoy!

Von Ryan’s Express

Amazon.com
Forget Indiana Jones. This 1965 high adventure stars Frank Sinatra as the leader of a mass escape from a World War II POW camp in Italy. That mission accomplished, Old Blue Eyes has sundry adventures camouflaging the freed men as German soldiers, trying to fool the Gestapo, and finally doing battle with enemy planes and ground troops while trying to get a hijacked train through a blocked tunnel. Sinatra is in great form and director Mark Robson handles the endless chain of action set-pieces with panache. A great pulse-quickener. –Tom Keogh

Guadalcanal Diary

Amazon.com
One of the greatest war movies of all time, combining action-packed, high-caliber battle sequences with quintessential foxhole-buddy camaraderie. Released in 1943, its authenticity and power remain undiminished.

The story follows one squad of Marines through the bloody assaults on the Solomon Islands during the opening stages of the war in the South Pacific. There’s the tough sergeant (Lloyd Nolan), a cab driver from Brooklyn (William Bendix), a Mexican (Anthony Quinn) and a chaplain (Preston Foster). A battle-weary narrator reads from a diary, commenting on the typical grunt’s everyday life, and death. Battles and dates of engagement are named, putting the explosive action into a solid historical context.

Halls Of Montezuma

Amazon.com
Richard Widmark leads an all-star cast of leathernecks (Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Karl Malden, Richard Boone, and Jack Webb) into battle on a heavily-fortified enemy island. Their objective is a Japanese rocket sit in the island’s interior, and the combat-packed story follows the squad from beachhead to battle, as they pick their way trough enemy-infested jungles. Along the way, Widmark is transformed from a former school teacher into a combat-wizened leader, and his disparate squad of men is forged into a cohesive fighting unit.

The Sand Pebbles

Amazon.com
Following the success of The Sound of Music, director Robert Wise chose to film Robert McKenna’s prize-winning 1962 novel, The Sand Pebbles–an ambitious choice for a director at the peak of his career. Shot in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the film combines historical sweep and intimate human drama in several parallel stories, all revolving around U.S. Navy machinist’s mate Jake Holman (Steve McQueen). Holman is a skillful but fiercely independent sailor who joins the “sand pebble” crew of the U.S.S. San Pablo, a Navy gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River on the eve of the Chinese revolution in 1926. The San Pablo’s inexperienced captain (Richard Crenna) obsessively defends the Navy’s mission–however unnecessary or unwanted–to protect American missionaries and businessmen, blind to the more dangerous implications of American involvement with China’s opposing political factions.

The Longest Day

Amazon.com
The Longest Day is a vivid hour-by-hour recreation of this historic event. Featuring a stellar international cast and told from the perspectives of both sides it is a fascinating look at the massive preparations mistakes and random events that determined the outcome of one of the biggest battles in history. Winner of two 1962 Oscars® (Special Effects and Cinematography) The Longest Day ranks as one of Hollywood’s truly great war films.

Duane was interviewed by Michael Savage for The Savage Nation and it aired today. The reason for the interview was Duane’s Ten Big Accomplishments in Less Than Ten Years article from last week.

It was a pretty good article, and we were happy to catch the notice of Michael Savage. If you didn’t hear the interview, we have the audio of his segment right here.

 

 Duane On Savage Nation [8:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As a refresher, the ten items on Duane’s list are:

1. A group of colonists organized and defeated the British Empire.
2. Built the Transcontinental Railroad
3. Built Hoover Dam.
4. Put a man on the moon.
5. Learned to fly.
6. Built the Panama Canal.
7. Won World War II.
8. Built the Empire State Building.
9. Built the Golden Gate Bridge.
10. Built both towers of the World Trade Center.

Our thanks to Dr. Savage and his producers for letting us bring this to a bigger audience.

As one of the supposed anti-science conservatives liberals are always yammering on about, I was glad when President Bush vetoed the increase in federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. I wrote about the adult stem cell success stories, and since June of last year, there have been even more exciting treatments:

• A middle aged man in Colorado had his bone marrow cells harvested, multiplied in the lab and then injected into his back.
  

  “I think this is the beginning of a new era of surgery,” [Dr. Christopher Centeno] said. “We usually take out the offending piece but do nothing to repair the small damage we just created. This allows you to do both.”

• A study published in Canada shows how adult stem cells can help slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease:
  

  “We were able to measure a prominent effect on stem cell mobilization and found no adverse effects in the patients,” said [Dr. Neil] Cashman. “There have been many misgivings in using stem cell stimulators in ALS patients but now we know we can safely do this. This is an important first step in providing a new treatment for ALS.”

• Headline: Autologous Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation After Immunosuppressive Therapy Effective and Safe in Multiple Sclerosis
  
  What that means is that doctors in France took MS patients, suppressed their immune system, injected them with their own bone marrow cells and found:

  “All patients appeared to respond to treatment”, reported Dr. Ionova. Improvement was seen in 62.3%, and stabilisation occurred in 37.7% of patients. Progression after improvement occurred in 7.1% and progression after stabilisation in 11.8% of patients.

  There were no deaths during the course of the study.

  Out of 26 patients included in the quality-of-life analysis, 24 exhibited a response and preserved a good quality of life during the follow-up. No unexpected treatment-related adverse events were observed.

  As Bioethics.com notes, “This confirms other studies.”

• Researchers in Australia have found that patients with Parkinson’s disease respond positively to the injection of adult stem cells:
  

  The Griffith University study published in the journal Stem Cells found that adult stem cells harvested from the noses of Parkinson’s patients gave rise to dopamine-producing brain cells when transplanted into the brain of a rat.

  The debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s such as loss of muscle control are caused by degeneration of cells that produce the essential chemical dopamine in the brain.

  It’s also important to note that they have tried the same experiment with embryonic stem cells, only it resulted in the “formation of tumours or teratomas in the host rats…”

• Two Canadians suffering from a rare form of lung disease were treated with their own “gene-modified stem cells” in an experimental procedure:
  

  “These enhanced stem cells are given in a heart catheterization suite, and lodge in the lung where it is hoped they will stimulate the repair and regeneration of blood vessels in the lung,” explained Dr. Galipeau, Associate Professor of Medicine and Oncology at McGill University.

  This procedure has cured laboratory rats with pulmonary hypertension, and this study in Canadian volunteers afflicted with pulmonary hypertension seeks to assess the safety of this type of stem cell treatment.

That is just five examples of many. There are articles showing that adult stem cells may “may force Crohn’s disease into retreat“, they can “improve healing of fractures,” and “are already giving some patients a new lease on life.”

But what of the embryonic stem cell? What about the issue that helped catapult Claire McCaskill into Jim Talent’s Senate Seat? You remember Michael J. Fox, don’t you? He helped Missouri liberals amend the state constitution with his commercial for Senator McCaskill. According to “the head of the UK National Stem Cell Network,” embryonic stem cell research is a flop:

Despite his own reservations that stem cell work may not live up to its hype, Lord Patel said he was hopeful of finding treatments for serious diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and even disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

“Are there any signs that this could happen? Yes there are, particularly in animal experiments that suggest this might be possible,” Lord Patel said.

“In terms of embryonic stem cell therapy, there is currently no such therapy that is available in a large number of patients.

A recent Journal of the American Medical Association study done by “Richard K. Burt, M.D., of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and colleagues” found, according to LifeNews.com, that adult stem cells are currently working with over 70 diseases.

Things are going so well on the adult stem cell side, that scientists are now able to manipulate stem cells still in the brain and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced recently that they would invest in adult stem cell research to help with “diabetes-induced retinal damage, a leading cause of blindness.”

When you look at the landslide of success found in adult stem cell research and compare it to the lack of success on the embryonic side, you really have to ask who is the anti-science party. The science is on our side.

Cross posted at Right Wing News.

Tell a liberal that you think there should be drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and you can expect to hear that it will take 10 years to get that oil out of the ground. TEN years! Which is far too long of course, because in ten years, crude oil will be useless to the world. Right?

That’s the mantra from the left, though. Ten years will pass before we see anything from ANWR. It’s hard to believe when you consider the following ten things were done in less than ten years:

1. A group of colonists organized and defeated the British Empire.

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence,[3] began as a civil war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies on the North American continent. Foreign nations allied with the American colonists and later declared war on Britain, making the conflict international. The war was the culmination of the political American Revolution, whereby the colonists overthrew British rule. In 1775, Revolutionaries seized control of each of the thirteen colonial governments, set up the Second Continental Congress, and formed a Continental Army. The following year, they formally declared their independence as a new nation, the United States of America.

Throughout the war, the British were able to use their naval superiority to capture and occupy coastal cities, but control of the countryside (where 90% of the population lived) largely eluded them due to their relatively small land army. In early 1778, shortly after an American victory at Saratoga resulting in the surrender of an entire British army, France signed treaties of alliance with the new nation, and declared war on Britain that summer; Spain and the Dutch Republic also went to war with Britain over the next two years. French involvement proved decisive, with a French naval victory in the Chesapeake leading to the surrender of a second British army at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded by what is now Canada to the north, Florida to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west.

2. Built the Transcontinental Railroad

Six years after the groundbreaking, laborers of the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east met at Promontory Summit, Utah. It was here on May 10, 1869 that Stanford drove the Golden Spike or The Last Spike, which is now located at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, that symbolized the completion of the transcontinental railroad. In perhaps the world’s first live mass-media event, the hammers and spike were wired to the telegraph line so that each hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwide—the hammer strokes were missed, so the clicks were sent by the telegraph operator. As soon as the ceremonial spike had been replaced by an ordinary iron spike, a message was transmitted to both the East Coast and West Coast that simply read, “DONE.” The country erupted in celebration upon receipt of this message. Complete travel from coast to coast was reduced from six or more months to just one week.

3. Built Hoover Dam.

The dam, located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as Secretary of Commerce and then later as President of the United States. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1935, more than two years ahead of schedule. The dam and the power plant are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

4. Put a man on the moon.

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. A number of political factors affected Kennedy’s decision and the timing of it. In general, Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States “catch up to and overtake” the Soviet Union in the “space race.” Four years after the Sputnik shock of 1957, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human in space on April 12, 1961, greatly embarrassing the U.S. While Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, he only flew on a short suborbital flight instead of orbiting the Earth, as Gagarin had done. In addition, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in mid-April put unquantifiable pressure on Kennedy. He wanted to announce a program that the U.S. had a strong chance at achieving before the Soviet Union. After consulting with Vice President Johnson, NASA Administrator James Webb, and other officials, he concluded that landing an American on the Moon would be a very challenging technological feat, but an area of space exploration in which the U.S. actually had a potential lead. Thus the cold war is the primary contextual lens through which many historians now view Kennedy’s speech.

The decision involved much consideration before making it public, as well as enormous human efforts and expenditures to make what became Project Apollo a reality by 1969.

5. Learned to fly.

The Wright brothers, Orville (19 August 1871 – 30 January 1948) and Wilbur (16 April 1867 – 30 May 1912), were two Americans who are generally credited[1][2][3] with inventing and building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight on 17 December 1903. In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed wing flight possible.

6. Built the Panama Canal.

The United States formally took control of the French property relating to the canal on May 4, 1904, when Lieutenant Jatara Oneel of the United States Army was presented with the keys; there was a little ceremony.

…

On October 10, 1913, the dike at Gamboa, which had kept the Culebra Cut isolated from Gatun Lake, was demolished; the initial detonation was set off telegraphically by President Woodrow Wilson in Washington. On January 7, 1914, the Alexandre La Valley, an old French crane boat, became the first ship to make a complete transit of the Panama Canal under its own steam.

7. Won World War II.

The starting date of the war is generally held to be September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by the United Kingdom, France and the British Dominions;[7][8] some sources use other starting points, including the Mukden Incident (1931), the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (1937), and the Attack on Pearl Harbor (1941). The Allies were victorious, and, as a result, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world’s leading superpowers.

8. Built the Empire State Building.

Excavation of the site began on January 22, 1930, and construction on the building itself started symbolically on March 17—St.Patrick’s Day—per Al Smith’s influence as Empire State, Inc. president. The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk iron workers, mainly from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. According to official accounts, five workers died during the construction.[12] Governor Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon on May 1, 1931.

9. Built the Golden Gate Bridge.

Construction began on January 5, 1933.[4] The project cost over $26 million.[19]

Strauss remained head of the project, overseeing day-to-day construction and making some groundbreaking contributions. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he had placed a brick from his alma mater’s demolished McMicken Hall in the south anchorage before the concrete was poured. He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise unprotected steelworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed (when the bridge was near completion) when the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became proud members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club.[20]

The project was finished by April 1937, $1.3 million under budget.

10. Built both towers of the World Trade Center.

Groundbreaking for the construction of the World Trade Center was on August 5, 1966.[14] The construction was under the auspices of the semiautonomous Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Thirteen square blocks of low rise buildings in Radio Row, some of which predated the American Civil War, were razed to clear the site for construction.

…

In 1970, construction was completed on One World Trade Center, with its first tenants moving into the building in December 1970. Tenants first moved into Two World Trade Center in January 1972.[15] When the World Trade Center twin towers were completed, the total costs to the Port Authority had reached $900 million.[16] The ribbon cutting ceremony was on April 4, 1973.

Are we to believe that in the early 1900s, we could move “238,845,587 cubic yards of material” in Panama, creating the canal where the French failed, but we cannot get oil out of the ground in Alaska in the same time?

Are we to believe that we can build a railroad in the 1800s from Omaha to Sacramento in less than ten years, but it will take us longer to drill a hole in the ground and start pumping oil? ANWR is only 50 miles from Prudhoe Bay. Last I checked, Omaha was a little further than that from Sacramento.

It is hard to believe that with the infrastructure already in place, with the technology available to the oil companies allowing them to drill horizontally, that it would take ten years to start seeing any crude from ANWR. There are estimates that say it could take anywhere from 18 months to two years to see results.

We will need oil in two years and we will need oil in ten years. Why are we refusing to use the natural resources here in America while transferring billions and billions of dollars to nations that are our enemies? It defies logic.

Drill here. Drill now. Sign the petition.

UPDATE:

Linked up at Conservative Grapevine. Thanks, John. Welcome Grapeviners!

What is the chief threat to the American way of life? What is there that could possibly destroy over 200 years of history, could change the mindset of the American, could bring the strongest country in the world to its knees?

Is it Islamic terrorism? There are so many groups out there now, killing in the name of Islam. Chief among them is Al-Qaeda, who has succeeded in attacking the United States on many different occasions. Aside from Al-Qaeda, there is Hamas, Hezbollah and others almost too numerous to mention. Are these organizations the number one threat to America?

On their best day, they have killed thousands, only to unify the country against them. If they ever acquired a nuclear weapon, I do not doubt they would use it. They would happily destroy any major United States city in one fell blow. But that would not destroy America.

Every time they hit us, we hit them back, harder than they expected. And while they can kill thousands of our countrymen, they cannot kill our country. Islamic terrorism is a grave threat that needs addressed, but it is not the number one threat to America.

Is it China? The giant country is growing in military power and has so many spies working against the United States, some have claim it to be the biggest threat to America. But in a toe-to-toe, knock down drag out fight, the United States could soundly defeat China.

The left would have us believe that global warming is the issue of our generation. They have one doomsday scenario after another, describing the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are told that already the world’s most important crops are suffering because of the increased heat, and if we don’t stop belching tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the glaciers will melt and our coastlines will flood. Yet those who preach the life of sacrifice for Mother Earth live in ways that consume more energy than you and I do in years, and are making millions off of the greatest scam in history.

There are other threats brought up each day. The bird flu is going to kill us any day now, and SARS is without a doubt going to cause world wide chaos. Blowhard Hugo Chavez is clamoring about cutting off our oil supply from Venezuela and for some reason Russia keeps sending bombers over our air craft carriers. By themselves each is a threat, but they are not the biggest threat to America.

If it is none of the above, what is left?

Socialism.

Americans are finding it easier and easier to turn to the government for support. Home-owners who bought into loans bigger than they afford look to the government, and the government responds with a $300 billion bail out that “more than half of the Senate favors” and some are saying is already too small.

The Congress also passed a $300 billion dollar Farm Bill, which funded $200 billion worth of “domestic nutrition programs, aka food stamps, over ten years.

Meanwhile, Americans donated over $300 billion to charity. In one year.

The left, aka the socialists, continue to clamor for government run health care. The Canadians have have a program like this, which Michael Moore touted in his crockumentary “Sicko.” The architect of that program recently said it is a failure. Unaffected by the facts in Canada, and a worse situation in Great Britain, the liberals demand equality in heath care, i.e. equally poor treatment for everyone.

Both candidates for president this election are calling for a cap and trade plan, which is nothing less than socialism in action. The whole system depends on taxing the most industrious, most successful organizations and turning the money over to companies that are not as big. McCain and Obama both feel this income redistribution is a good solution for the climate crisis, leading one to believe that they would not hesitate to join the Kyoto Protocol.

From the baby steps taken by FDR, to the giant leaps made by LBJ, the population of American continues to march down the road to serfdom. Every day we spend more money that we do not have, teaching every generation more dependence on a government once limited, but now limitless. Every issue that Americans face is grounds for a new government program.

This country isn’t great because of government programs. It was built because of individual Americans who were free to achieve whatever they felt without the government limiting their success through fines, fees and taxes. It is great because people were not taught to feel guilt for their success, but to be admired because of them. It is great because of the government’s lack of presence in each American’s life. These ideas are being smothered today by a government that is more focused on preserving and expanding its power than it is in respecting the Constitution.

Americans can take care of themselves, and they will take care of each other. As noted above, we gave $300 billion in charity last year, on top of all the taxes we paid. Given the opportunity, the private sector would perform all the programs the government currently performs, just better.

However, we are not given that choice, and it is that willing surrender of property that foreshadows our demise. The continuing growth of the government, combined with the continuing dependence of the people is the one thing that could destroy America.

It is America’s greatest threat.

The number one question asked of homeschoolers by the curious, the nosy, and the disdainful is “But what about socialization?” They want to know, how can your kids learn how to get along with others if they aren’t tossed unthinkingly into a large group of unsupervised, ill-mannered hooligans? Case in point: Seven ninth-grade boys at Pascack Valley High School got suspended for distributing racy photos of more than 20 fellow students via cell phones and school-issued laptops.

This isn’t the only time this has happened in Bergen County in recent history, according to the county prosecutor, John L. Molinelli. He can recall six similar incidents since he was appointed six years ago. Schools in other locales are also dealing with these types of issues.

Cases of teens sending around lewd cell phone pictures of their bodies have been reported in New York, Connecticut, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas

Earlier this year, Davis County in Utah investigated a complaint from a parent of a junior high student, and ended up following the investigation into five junior high and three high schools.

The Davis County Attorney’s Office has come under criticism for pushing the issue, but Rawlings defended the actions, saying that had they done nothing it would have sent a message that it was acceptable behavior. In some cases, the photos were taken in a voyeuristic fashion or were used as exploitation. Some photos memorialized sex acts between teens.

Criticism from whom? Those parents who say “kids will be kids” with a little smirk while hiding the receipts from their latest affair? Those parents who believe that this type of behavior just shows that their teen is “more confident and assertive,” those parents who are so wrapped up in image that they believe this must be a sign that their child is popular?

One teenage girl from Pascack had an interesting point of view on why middle school girls would bare their bodies in this manner:

“There are some moms who want their kids to fit in,” she added. “So they pressure them to look their best, dress well, and they’re not teaching them the right kind of moral standards because they’re putting materialism above that.”

And yet some people insist that homeschooled children are “missing out” on an integral part of childhood by having their parents help to select their playmates and supervise their interactions.

Homeschooled children are not kept from other children. Rather, they are taught how to behave and interact in respectful, appropriate ways with people of all ages. Through field trips, homeschool groups, clubs such as 4-H, Girl/Boy Scouts, music lessons, dance lessons, sports, church activities, volunteering, neighborhood playmates- the list goes on and on- homeschooled children learn to interact with real people in real settings. They aren’t under peer pressure to behave a certain way, or to only be friends with a certain type of person. These students are free to think for themselves, and develop their own ideas and beliefs.

In a public school, children are segregated by age. They have only minimal contact with adults throughout the day; although they are frequently in the company of their teacher, little one-on-one conversation can take place when there are so many children with whom to contend. In what setting in the “real world” are adults segregated by age in this manner?

There is pressure to fit in, to be popular, to participate in “group-think” rather than being independent, forming your own beliefs and standing on them. Try walking through a public school in between classes, and observing the activity around you, and then ask yourself- which of these behaviors do I want my children to be learning? Chances are, you won’t find many.

Homeschooled children, who have learned how to interact positively with all ages of people, may be “out of the loop” when it comes to sending other children nudie photos, but when it comes to living in the “real world,” their varied social life puts them at an advantage.

KFYI Radio in Phoenix is reporting an incident that took place this past Monday morning in a Phoenix residential neighborhood. Former Congressman turned talk radio host, JD Hayworth, reports that three suspects were captured in an attempted ambush on Phoenix Police which may have turned deadly. The three suspects were captured with two AR-15 assault weapons, full body armor and dressed in black assault gear impersonating a Phoenix Police Tactical Team.

 

 JD Hayworth on KFYI Radio [10:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From the police report (pdf):

Information from one of the suspects on McDowell indicated all the suspects are Mexican Military coming into the United States with full tactical gear and police raid shirts to conduct home invasions. According to the same suspect, they were planning on ambushing the officers following them but, didn’t only because they didn’t have any ammunition left

So Mexican drug cartels are hiring members of the Mexican military to come across the border with full tactical gear and kill Phoenix police officers in their own homes.

Somebody please tell me how securing our borders against this type of completely unacceptable activity is about race. Because I haven’t called anyone an ignorant jackass in a few days and I’m getting that itch.

When things the military from a neighboring country comes across your border and kills people, it’s an act of aggression. At the very least we should be building a fence. Keep in mind that our military has been securing the border between North and South Korea for the last fifty years. We ought to be able to do the same here at home.

With things like this going on, a border fence might not be enough. I think we need to let Mexico know there are going to be consequences for allowing it to continue.

UPDATE:

Police are now saying these three are not active military:

None of the men accused in a deadly west Phoenix home invasion this week is an active member of the Mexican military, according to Phoenix police.

Daniel Garcia-Saenz, 24; Manual Garcia-Trejom, 25; and Rodolfo Madrigal Lopez, 19, were arrested Sunday night in connection with the slaying of Andrew Williams, 30, who was gunned down in his home in the 8300 block of West Cypress Avenue.

The assailants wore body armor, had assault-style rifles and used more than 100 rounds of ammunition.

After the arrests, one of the men - whom police have not identified - told a police officer that he had received some military training, said Sgt. Joel Tranter, a police spokesman.

That statement launched speculation that members of the Mexican army invaded the home.

Something stinks. I think there is more to this story. What about you? - Duane

Now, They Aren’t Sure:

Via KTAR.com:

Phoenix Police said they haven’t been able to confirm whether members of the Mexican military shot people at a West Valley home earlier this week in a deadly home invasion.

Police Union President Mark Spencer told News/Talk 92.3 KTAR’s Darrell Ankarlo he has written reports from command level officers claiming the suspects said they were from the Mexican military.

“One suspect said he was Mexican military,” Spencer said. “The other report from another supervisor said that all the suspects are Mexican military, that they’re coming into the country in full tactical gear to conduct home invasion.”

Officials did say that the shooting did not appear to be random.

It was astonishing to hear Maxine Waters openly discuss nationalizing the oil industry. She was talking to the heads of America’s oil companies, and she was a little worked up, so it was also possible to say that it was just one person, speaking impulsively in a moment of anger, and easily dismissed.

What left most conservatives and libertarians staring in slack jawed wonder was when Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) stood before the press and advocated nationalizing the oil refineries. While most have known about the socialist beliefs of the left, what surprised them was the matter of fact manner in which they were suggesting socialist controls over the oil industry.

Finally, the socialist trifecta was complete with Obama supporter Malai Lazu, of the non-profit group Oil Change International calling for “price controls” on Neal Cavuto’s “Your World.” As she simply put it, “When Congress can set prices, Congress can set prices.”

This is, at best, ignorance of history.

For thousands of years, governments have attempted to set the price of different products with disastrous results. As Thomas J. DiLorenzo, author of “How Capitalism Saved America“, notes:

In 284 A.D. the Roman emperor Diocletian created inflation by placing too much money in circulation, and then “fixed the maximum prices at which beef, grain, eggs, clothing and other articles could be sold, and prescribed the penalty of death for anyone who disposed of his wares at a higher figure.” The results, as Schuettinger and Butler explain, quoting an ancient historian, were that “the people brought provisions no more to markets, since they could not get a reasonable price for them and this increased the dearth so much, that at last after many had died by it, the law itself was set aside.”

Inflexible price controls led to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution:

On 9 September the Convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages. The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Marie-Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité, Madame Roland and many others lost their lives under its blade.[5] The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Most of the victims received an unceremonious trip to the guillotine in an open wooden cart (the tumbrel). Loaded onto these carts, the victims would proceed through throngs of jeering men and women.

The victims of the Reign of Terror totaled approximately 40,000.

This was all done for the “salvation of the people.”

The failure of this economic idea is evident today. As I noted in my article “I Bought a Gallon of Milk Today,” the price control policies of Hugo Chavez have led to massive food shortages in Venezuela. Chavez is following in the same footsteps as France. When he set the prices for food, shortages were created and Chavez threatened to jail store owners for violating the government set prices. He even called for “groups of his political supporters whose purpose would be to report on farmers, ranchers, supermarket owners and street vendors who circumvent the state’s effort to control food prices.” As of yet, there have been no public beheadings by guillotine.

Throughout history, it has been shown that price controls are good for creating three things:

Shortages

In the free market, a producer knows what it takes to create a product. He sets the price for the product and the consumer has the choice to buy the product at said price or refuse. Producers who are more efficient at creating products can sell their’s for less, those who use higher quality material can sell for more. The cost is determined between the buyer and the seller, thus creating a fair price.

When government enters the picture, they don’t consider the creation cost. They simply set a price and go home to feel good about helping the little guy. A couple different things happen next. Some producers will sell at that price, lose money and go out of business. Others realize they can’t make a profit at that price, and stop selling. Either way, a shortage is created because producers can’t maintain a living by hemorrhaging money, so they stop producing, stop selling, go underground or go belly up.

You can see the evidence of this in Venezuela:

Meat cuts vanished from many Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.

…

Major private supermarkets suspended sales of beef earlier this week after one chain was shut down for 48 hours for pricing meat above government-set levels, but an agreement reached with the government on Wednesday night promises to return meat to empty refrigerator shelves.

Shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chavez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.

How are the poor protected when there is nothing on the shelf to buy?

Rationing

The government now enters the scene again and tells people how much of a product they are allowed in a specific time. So, if the Democrats nationalize the refineries and shortages follow, it is likely to see them tell you how many gallons of gas you can have per month.

The communists in China are doing that right now:

Frustrated truck drivers lined up to buy as little as a quarter-tank of diesel Tuesday due to shortages that one Chinese oil company blamed on price controls that it said discouraged new investment to expand refining capacity.

The shortages disrupted trucking in Shanghai and the export-driven provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian in the southeast, but the possible economic impact was unclear.

The Zhengda Transportation Co. in Guangzhou, China’s southern business capital, now needs a week to get goods to Beijing instead of the usual three days as drivers hunt for fuel, said a manager who would give only his surname, Liu.

“We have to drive further to find another filling station,” Liu said. “Many goods are delayed in delivery.“’

Why is rationing necessary:

Oil refiners are losing money because of price controls that block them from passing on soaring crude costs to consumers, and they have refrained from investing in expanding refining capacity.

If the government’s allotment isn’t enough, there is only one place to turn.

Black Markets

The black market is created as a result of the state. Always.

The Soviet Union had a great system of black markets. (Eric Wolfram has some photos of one here.) These were a result of the extensive price controls in the Soviet Union.

In America during the 70s, the government rationed gasoline. The biggest beneficiary of this action were those who produced gas cap locks and those who sold gas on the black market.

Because of New York state’s nanny state meddling (controlling the price of cigarettes via taxation) it is now very profitable to sell cigarettes on the black market:

On April 23, less than two weeks after Mr. Nablisi’s arrest was made public, Gov. David Paterson signed into law a $1.25 per-pack tax hike on top of the state’s $1.50 per-pack tax. That’s in addition to New York City’s own $1.50 per-pack tax. Come July 1, New York City’s smokers will be paying on average $9 a pack for legal cigarettes.

But if history is any guide, most cigarettes sold will actually be trucked up from Virginia, or shipped in from China, by “butt-leggers” who can make over $1 million on each tractor-trailer load of smuggled smokes. The blunt fact, which politicians of both political parties are determined to ignore, is that high cigarette taxes in New York have led to a bloody, decades-long smuggling epidemic.

Setting prices on gasoline and oil will not do what the socialists in Congress claim it will do. History shows it never has, and never will. Where you find price controls, you see shortages and rationing, not surpluses and lower prices. Remember this when you hear a Democrat talking about making something “affordable.” As Thomas Sowell asks, “What are they talking about other than price controls?”

This list started out as a Top 10 list, but the more I researched, the more songs I remembered from the 90s. There were some great songs out there from bands that really only had one big hit. They may have had some other minor hits, but one song really hit big.

What’s interesting, and sad really, is that in researching and compiling this list, I found the same list (not this one, a different one) printed word for word one several different websites. Plagiarism is an ugly habit folks. Write your own stuff.

Now, here are my top ten twenty-five favorites, in no particular order:

25. “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” by Baz Lurhman

24. “Lullabye” by Shawn Mullins

(more…)

One of the leading arguments from the Educational Industrial Complex is that people who homeschool just aren’t qualified to teach. They have not had the training, the education, the whatever to handle a job as important as indoctrinating educating a child in America. Never mind the fact that homeschoolers outperform government schoolers in nearly every category, parents just are not qualified.

It seems there is another side to this story. According to the Wall Street Journal, Teach for America is giving educators another track to helping teach in America’s school.

It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of “education” courses to be certified.

The American Federation of Teachers commonly derides Teach for America as a “band-aid.” One of its arguments is that the program only lasts two years, barely enough time, they say, to get a handle on managing a classroom.

So, according to this group of “professional educators,” TFA members do not have the training and education necessary to manage a classroom. Before we look at this next quote, I want to make it clear that these teachers are not going to upscale schools. These folks do “two-year stints at the nation’s worst public schools.” So how are they doing?

“On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers’ effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience.”

The people the unions say are not capable of educating are educating better than the sanctioned educators. How can that be?

Jane Hannaway, one of the study’s co-authors, says Teach for America participants may be more motivated than their traditional teacher peers. Second, they may receive better support during their experience. But, above all, Teach for America volunteers tend to have much better academic qualifications. They come from more competitive schools and they know more about the subjects they teach. Ms. Hannaway notes, “Students are better off being exposed to teachers with a high level of skill.”

The strong performance in math and science seems to confirm that the more specialized the knowledge, the more important it is that teachers be well versed in it. (Imagine that.)

What sticks out to me in that quote is “participants may be more motivated than their traditional teacher peers.” Replace “participants” with “homeschool parents” and it is just as, if not more, true. Who is more motivated than a parent who makes the effort to educate their child?

Another point that rings true for homeschoolers is “they may receive better support during their experience.” I continue to be amazed at the homeschool community’s support of each other. There are community, regional and national organizations, all dedicated to helping homeschool parents do the best they can for their child.

Regardless of what the teachers unions tell you, the Educational Industrial Complex is not the best way for your child to be educated. Private schools and homeschools routinely outperform the government schools, for far less money. It comes down to motivation. Whether it is a bottom line, or a love for your child, the government just can’t keep up.

Via the New York Post:

Tim Russert, NBC journalist and political heavyweight host of “Meet the Press,” has died after collapsing at NBC’s Washington news bureau, a source said. He was 58 years old.

Russert, who rose from the inside world of politics where he was former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s press secretary and one-time chief of staff to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was able to successfully cross over to political journalism and rise to become one of its leading lights.

In his role as host of the seminal Sunday morning political program “Meet the Press” - which he took over in 1991 - he became renowned for his hard-nosed interviews where he frequently cornered some of Washington’s cagiest political figures with tough questions.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. Sad news.

Despite the fact that “during the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of the news for network TV news,” and “in 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent during that period,” there is still news coming out of Iraq, and it is good news. We are winning the war in Iraq, along side new battled hardened soldiers in the Iraqi Army:

The latest proof came last month, as the Iraqi army - just a few months ago the target of scorn and abuse from Democratic politicians and journalists - forcefully reoccupied three cities that had served as key insurgency bases (Basra, Sadr City and Mosul).

Sunnis and Shias alike applauded as their nation’s army compelled insurgent militias to lay down their arms. The country’s leading opposition newspaper, Azzaman, led the applause for the move into Mosul - a sign that national reconciliation in Iraq is under way and probably irreversible.

The Democrats have told us over and over again that “The Surge” failed.

• Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq has failed (Source.)
• Our military has performed their duties excellently, but the purpose of the escalation in Iraq was to create a secure environment in which political change could occur, and it is clear that the Iraqi leaders have failed to make progress.

  We need a New Direction to bring our troops home from Iraq so that America can refocus its efforts against terrorism worldwide.
  (Source.)

• Today’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq confirms what most Americans already know: Our troops are mired in an Iraqi civil war and the President’s escalation strategy has failed to produce the political results he promised to our troops and the American people.
  (Source.)

Whatever happened to that civil war, anyway?

Her Speakerness, Nancy Pelosi went one step further, claiming that not only has “The Surge” failed, but Iran is the reason the level of violence is down.

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Tell me again the Left supports the troops.

The fact remains that al Qaeda is taking a beating on every front they dare to fight on. They are even losing in Saudi Arabia. The terrorists are finding similar results elsewhere, and this is an excellent development, one worthy of review.

In short, the larger War on Terror may be reaching a tipping point similar to that of the Iraq war.

The US public and policymakers need to recognize how this happened - and draw lessons from this success.

1) We need to acknowledge that the Iraq war wasn’t a “distraction” from the War on Terror, as critics still complain, but its centerpiece.

It’s not mere coincidence that our success against al Qaeda globally comes along with success in Iraq. For all its setbacks and frustrations, the Iraq war drew jihadists into a battle they thought they could win, because it would be fought on their home turf - but which they’re now losing disastrously.

2) The US decision to “stay the course” in the Iraq war, which was also widely mocked and criticized, served to thoroughly demoralize the jihadist movement.

From its start in spring 2003, the Iraqi insurgency has been entirely built on the premise that it could use suicide and roadside bombings, sectarian slaughter and the torture and murder of hostages to force America out of the Middle East.

If Democrats had won the White House in 2004, the jihadists might have succeeded.

Instead, America doggedly refused to give in to terror, despite 4,000 combat deaths and massive antiwar sentiment, and unwaveringly supported an Iraqi government that was at times feeble and confused - and proceeded to break the jihadist movement’s back.

In that interview, the CIA’s Hayden also that al Qaeda is no longer able to use the Iraq war as a way to draw in new recruits. The reason is clear: If you go to Iraq to fight the American infidel you will die, and die for nothing.

3) Finally, the Bush administration’s success in Iraq, and growing success in the War on Terror, offers a powerful object lesson in how to deal with the continuing threat from Iran.

Iran remains the most lethal state sponsor of terrorism, fomenting proxy wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and in Iraq itself. Its nuclear-weapons program proceeds despite minor sanctions and endless international efforts at engagement.

Note that the author does not write that America should deal with Iran, but that we have shown that it can be done. I sincerely hope and pray we can avoid conflict with Iran. I would much rather that Iranians fixed the issue themselves. They are about as frustrated with it as we are.

Regardless of what happens in Iran, understand that our military has all but secured victory in Iraq, despite the predictions of failure by the liberals worldwide. If you are looking for people who need a serving of crow, simply Google “surge failed.”

The line for the buffet starts there.

UPDATE:

My friend Humbled Infidel sent me this video today via Stumble Upon. It is the video of a soldier’s call to the Neal Boortz show, asking that he be allowed to finish his job in Iraq. The caller’s name is Vic, but his real name is Mike.

Mike was later killed by a roadside bomb, probably built by Iran, the country Speaker Pelosi promotes as a peacemaker in Iraq.

As I have done in each of the previous installments of this series, I have to give credit to a Free Republic user named Entrepreneur for compiling all of these. He was asked by Freepers to compile these and it inspired me to then take what he found and embed it on my site. Well done, Entrepreneur.

The first of today’s videos is on the scare tactics the Goracle used in An Inconvenient Truth.

Scare Tactics in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth

This BBC clip shows us how we can cut our CO₂ emissions. First get rid of the car…and your television…your coffee maker…your central air and heat…

BBC News - How to cut emissions

Remember when RFK, Jr. called us corporate toadies and traitors at Live Earth? Senator Inhofe responds on Neal Cavuto.

Senator Inhofe Responds to RFK Jrs “TRAITOR” Comments on FOX

Inhofe again of Fox, this time on Fox & Friends talking about the hypocrisy of environmentalists who tell us to do one thing when they do another. He also discusses buying your way to being “carbon neutral.”

Inhofe Discusses “Gore Pledge” on Fox and Friends

Props. That is what polar bears have become for the Church of Global Warming. Al Gore used a photo to show how the polar bears habitat is being destroyed. But, it was just propaganda. THis video shows us what the Goracle did to sell this hoax.

“Global Warming” Polar Bear Photo

Michael Crichton is another outspoken opponent of the global warming hysteria. In this video, he describes environmentalism as a religion.

Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion

Entrepreneur discribed this next video as “thoroughly depressing.” It details the results of the SCOTUS declaring CO₂ as a pollutant.

Global Warming - Every Breath You Take

We have discussed the environmentalist disdain for humans. This video shows us how they see people as the problem.

There are already several global warming lawsuits in the court system. This video explores how the SCOTUS decesion to declare CO2 as a pollutant opens the whole thing up to more and more lawsuits.

Global Warming Lawsuits

A British judge says Al Gore’s movie is a piece of propaganda. CNN’s Rob Marciano agrees.

CNN’s Rob Marciano Tells Us What He Thinks of Global Warming

This is the first part of a Fox News special on global warming. Senator Inhofe makes another appearance in this one.

Global Warming: The Debate Continues

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. “Big Meat” in America is a large contributor to methane in the atmosphere. So, if Al Gore is serious, shouldn’t he advocate a vegan diet? PETA thinks so.

Al Gore ignores methane’s effect on global warming

Glenn Beck again, this time talking with meteorologist James Spann. It seems The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen thinks that anyone who is a heretic to the Church should “be stripped of all metrological credentials.”

James Spann on Glenn Beck

Finally, the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, calls global warming “the greatest scam in history.” Once again, I give you