The Japanese people have become as fierce an ally and friend as they were an enemy. As a young Marine I studied the campaigns of the Pacific War, where American Marines and Japanese Imperial soldiers threw themselves at each other in some of the most savage battles in the history of armed conflict. I saw a couple of those islands, actually walked some of the places where the battles were fought.

During a training cycle I had occasion to spend some weeks in Japan. I traveled the countryside when I could. I met many ordinary Japanese people in their day-to-day lives. I talked to an English teacher… a fisherman… a tank commander in the Japanese home defense forces… farmers, students and businessmen. Without exception they were sincere, friendly people. I was invited into complete strangers’ homes and treated like an honored guest… It occurred to me that perhaps it was because I made a sincere effort to learn the language and customs, and I exhibited a lively curiosity which they were only too happy to satisfy.

We are watching a people who have just suffered one of the great tragedies of the modern era… the death toll is going to be horrendous. Far higher than the figures we’ve seen up to now. What has been remarkable has been the response of the Japanese people to an event which would have prostrated many other countries outright. Grieve?… Hurt? Yes, they grieve and they hurt, but they immediately begin the long path to recovery. There are no bleating cries for others to do for them what they can do themselves.  read more »

It has taken us two days to catch up with the comments we received from our article, ‘To Primary Or Not To Primary.’ This, more than any argument anyone can come up with, has indicated to me that the mood out there is every bit as charged as I thought it was.

Reps. Jim Jordan and Tim Huelskamp said they would vote against the spending bill.

You’ve stood up and said in none too uncertain terms that you were not going to be fooled again, as we were during the Bush years… hoping that when the time came our side would step up and do the right thing. Well, they never did and the result was Barack Obama and the pillage of the American economy during the Marxists’ headlong rush for power.

We’re engaged in the most critical conflict since our Revolutionary War. Right here. And right now. Some of the criticisms we’re hearing are very pointed, and directed to and about specific members of the leadership. To be fair and balanced, which I’m not (that’s why I do opinion editorials), unlike our leadership, I am an outspoken partisan for my cause.

Watching the Republican leadership fumbling the damned ball again was mentioned by many readers. Not to say that the establishment leadership didn’t have their defenders, but it was unscientifically running at around 20-1. Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and the others are starting to feel the backlash created by their cupidity which, as you can see, neatly rhymes with stupidity.  read more »

It should be apparent to even the mildest-mannered, laid-back conservative that things just aren’t working the way they should if we had Congressional leadership.

John Boehner at CPAC, February 10th, 2011.

What do I mean? We have outstanding leadership, don’t we? Well, we thought we did anyway. I’ve been wary of John Boehner since he was on the campaign trail. He made all the right conservative noises, but he’s turning out to be a cap pistol instead of a cannon.

The cowardly bunch is literally afraid of its own shadow. If the Republican leadership can’t hack it, let the new young conservatives take over. They’ve already shown a willingness to buck the establishment leadership, a surprising but welcome indication that we, at least, had chosen well.

It’s our own fault. We’re being victimized by our own success. We swept our candidates into office wholesale… and re-established the power of the old guard leadership.

It’s no secret that the Tea Party conservatives we worked so hard to put in place are also frustrated and disappointed with the party leadership’s timidity on just about any matter you can think of… the latest and most egregious being the issue of the continuing resolutions. While we’re playing around with two and three week extensions, part of the monies being authorized are going to fund Obamacare.  read more »

The leftists have worked long and diligently to bring themselves, and us, to where we stand today in this country with regard to our national energy picture. I’ve been out of the news cycle for three days now, and in the new media that’s several lifetimes.

That includes Scott Walker’s stunning victory in Wisconsin, which has the public sector unions and the Democrats in the State Senate changing their depends frequently. It’s a template for states all over the country. The public sector unions and their bought-and-paid-for Democrat party are losing it all over the country. Because they are essentially Marxist ideologues first and foremost, they’re blind and deaf to the rising anger in this country towards people who live at the expense of us all, then make unremitting demands for ever more.

Even in California, that great outdoor lunatic experiment headed up by Mr Moonbeam himself, Jerry (union made) Brown, is beginning to get the message that Californians, at long last, are getting the picture. At least, the Republicans in the State Senate are… they’ve refused to sign on to Brown’s tax grab planned for California’s special election this coming June.

Among other things, Brown was hoping to continue a ‘temporary’ sales tax that’s due to sunset. Jerry Brown will have to face his union bosses alone. The people of California have had it with taxes, fees and regulations which are destroying the state.  read more »

A rifle shot rings out across the desert, a voice yells “Rider coming in!”. The location – somewhere in the Arizona Territory, the time – sometime in the 1870s. Pedro, as vigilant as ever in the guard tower, warns the occupants of The High Chaparral of a possible threat to their safety.

This was a work of 1960s television fiction, of course. The tale of a rancher who, in this lawless west, takes a stand against any and all who would destroy his vision of the future. Having lost his first wife to an Apache arrow shortly after moving to their new home, he steels himself for the task ahead when many would give up.

With Apache raids from the north and Mexican cattle rustlers from the south, vigilance is the keyword in the survival of his family and loyal ranch hands. As a side note, I always felt sorry for Pedro. Maybe he was unlucky in drawing straws for guard tower duty.

Fast forward about 140 years to modern day Arizona. No longer a ‘territory’ but a fully-fledged state, with laws and agencies in place to protect the citizens against incursion by hostile forces. There is only one problem…

Big John Cannon would have welcomed the creation of the Border Patrol. So would Pedro, not having to spend so many hours up in that tower under the blazing sun. I don’t think they would be so impressed by a federal government that takes the teeth away from an agency designed to protect them. Or the fact that those gunless wonders in Washington are willing to sue their elected state officials for attempting to help them.  read more »

The DeMarxists are fumbling all over themselves to cover for Obama’s growing exposure to the energy disaster that his party and his politics have brought to fruition. Fair enough, he didn’t start it. He has been, and is, the ultra-left radical environmentalists’ poster-boy for advancing their death grip on America, Americans and the American economy.

Good gravy, we all saw this stuff happening… at least I did. I was fortunate enough to see through the environut thing in the beginning, which made for some lively and heated discussions on my college campus. I wasn’t very popular with the liberals because I kept writing rebuttals, shredding their pet nutcake theories in the college paper which, to their credit, they published… although they leaned left in much of their other content.

Perhaps it was this early disbelief that has kept me paying attention to the way the ‘environmental movements’ et al have fostered the slow but steady degradation of our ability to be energy independent. No matter which energy ‘front’ you care to examine… nuclear, natural gas, coal, oil, oil shale, oil sands or hydroelectric energy… they are against it. That is, they’re against us using our own energy resources. It’s just dandy with the radical environmentalists if we’re held in thrall for our energy requirements by foreign governments, who definitely don’t have our best interests at heart.  read more »

If you have purchased fuel in the last week or so, you’ve seen prices steadily climbing with apparently no ceiling in sight. You’re experiencing that not-so-slow boil, as you pay more and more while making less or nothing at all. The jobs report being bleated about by the DeMarxists just ain’t that hot, brother.

If all the government’s magic math is taken into account, figuring in the huge number of people who ‘have stopped looking’ and those who are living in the new ‘underground cash’ economy, then unemployment is at 20% or more. Any progress towards an improving economy and job growth is going to be sucked out of the air by out of control energy prices.

It’s just what he wants… It’s what he’s wanted all along… No one can say that he didn’t tell us exactly what he intended. We have it on tape, Obama, and we’re not forgetting.

This is one of the prime assaults on America. This attack goes all the way back to the emergence of the environmental movements and their campaigns of misinformation. Rachel Carson produces a work of virtual fiction, based on poor and incorrect research, and millions of African people die unnecessarily from malaria.

It’s incredible how the left consistently makes judgments based on emotion. They perceive only the prevailing political wind and how it can be ideologically manipulated. Invariably, such thinking has disastrous results.  read more »

The farther I try to stay from conspiracy theories, the more they seem to present themselves to me. Or perhaps I’m a little more curious than the average… Lord knows I used to drive my grandparents, and any available adult, crazy with questions. It’s led to a lifetime study of history and the traditions that have made America the shining beacon of freedom to the world that it is.

Not a bad avocation this, proclaiming the truth of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and our Bill of Rights. It’s just that sometimes the urgency of it all, amongst all the purposeful misinformation out there, makes things difficult to discern and put into place with any certainty. Yet we persist. We stand for liberty and freedom, and unequivocally state the truths to be found there to be self-evident. This is the standard we flock to. This is the American Patriot Movement.

That our country has been under assault is not up for question. And here’s where I start tangling with my dislike for conspiracy theories. A recent report by financial analyst Kevin Freeman, funded by the Pentagon, stated his belief that America is, and has been, under a carefully planned and executed three-phase economic assault.

It’s a report that’s easy to ignore. After all, Mr Freeman does not cite a single fact or figure in his report except in relation to dates. His initial premise is that the 2008 crash was the result of outside players ‘tipping the cow’, with a horrendously upside-down mortgage market driven by greedy loan merchants looking to take advantage of the little guy. No! It was your US government and its symbiont, the DeMarxist party.  read more »

In Skip’s article of February 28th., he wrote about the abuse of the powers granted to the TSA. Skip credited me with the idea for the article, which in turn was inspired by a ‘Back to Basics’ piece by Gonzalo Lira, which depicted the search of a totally innocent looking family after traveling by train.

I guess the title was down to me. After reading Mr Lira’s article I said to Skip, “What the heck is up with the TSA?” My actual thoughts were slightly more Bidenesque, along the lines of “This is a big ******* deal!” However, call me old-fashioned if you wish, but I leave those expletives to the opposition.

You can imagine our delight yesterday, when we read about the New Hampshire bill which was read to a house committee in Concord. If passed, invasive pat-downs where private areas are touched, or images of such areas are viewed, would be regarded as sexual assault. Anyone found guilty of such acts, without probable cause, would be added to the State Sexual Offenders Registry.

The new act would essentially be the addition of Subparagraph (d), which states:
“When the person, acting in his or her role as a security agent of the federal, state, or local government, touches the genitals or breasts of any other person or touches or views with any technological device the genitals or breasts of any other person without probable cause for such touching or viewing. For purposes of this subparagraph, the following shall not constitute probable cause: discussing or possessing a copy of the Constitution, discussing the security apparatus of an airport, being on the premises of an airport, possessing an airplane ticket or any other type of ticket for access to mass transportation, driving a motor vehicle on a public way, or ownership of firearms.”  read more »

I can’t take credit for this article as it was totally inspired by my editor, Dee. During one of our frequent discussions regarding which forest fire to write about first, she emailed me a picture from an article in ‘Back to Basics’ (http://island-adv.com/), a really excellent conservative website with which we are proud to be affiliated.

A posting by Gonzalo Lira, dated February 26th, with an accompanying video, shows more TSA thugs searching for dangerous terrorists and WMDs in the form of a middle-class blonde lady and her equally tow-headed kids. They are being wanded, patted down and their belongings pawed through by three thugs, with two doing the wanding and pat-down. The goofy looking trio behind the table look less like supposed federal agents and more like shoppers at a garage sale or flea market.

At what international port of entry did this important harassment of US citizens take place? Was it at our newly secure (the world according to Napolitano) southern border where this stringent observance of our country’s security was observed? Or perhaps a great international transportation hub, such as LAX or SFO? Yeah, right. This video was taken at the train station at Savannah, Georgia. These folks were subjected to this ridiculous procedure as they exited the train. More brilliant and creative security measures by the TSA.  read more »