By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

Winston Churchill wrote: “The farther backward you can look the farther forward you will see.”

The character Madame De Farge in Dickens’ “Tale” was a rag woman who sat next to the guillotine and knitted as she mocked the poor men who were having their heads chopped off.

Victorian London was the setting. Its backdrop was a blur of smoke, soot, abject poverty, and death. Rampant crime infested the city. Pickpockets, hoodlums, drunkards, opium dens, prostitutes, gamblers and stranglers all had their way because of ineffective law enforcement. The greater blame lies with the upper-crust social elites. It was their reluctance to care enough and use whatever influence was within their power to force government and politicians to mend the fractured and treacherous mores running roughshod within their communities.

If we could place an x-ray image of that era’s London over any one of our liberal-dominated, high-crime American metropolises of 2008 ( e.g ., New York, Los Angeles, Detroit or Chicago), the images would match almost perfectly. In effect, we are doing a slow march backwards into the dense lawlessness and chaos that preceded what we have unfortunately come to regard as “a civilized way of life.”

An ever-growing divisiveness between the political right and left – affords us an opportunity to paint with words the model for what a Conservative City (the “CC”) and a Liberal City (the “LC”) might one day look like (and perhaps sooner rather than later). We present this black and white rendering (in a parallel universe without shades of gray) as a window into a future that likely lies ahead.

The good citizens of the CC, United States of America, rise and shine like everyone else, except they navigate their days with little to fear from their neighbors, or even strangers. The Constitution grants them the right to protect themselves and their property from harm. Likewise, there are no worrisome eminent domain laws because in the CC their home is truly their well-fortified castle. Neither outlanders crossing their borders, nor Sanctuary City policies — or even the remote possibility of tyranny, shall darken their door.

2019 - Into the 10^th Year of an Obama Presidency

Miles away in the LC, residents still yearn for One World Order so they can at last be liked and respected. Within the LC, registered gun owners, ( i.e ., the state police) watch impotently as criminals roam unbridled by a justice system (bolstered by the ACLU) which places their unlikely innocence above that of their victims. Gangbangers mark their territory with impunity painting graffiti by moonlight, and by day flaunt their undeterred lawlessness with unregistered guns. The LC Police, still hampered by Special Order 40, watch helplessly as the number of alien criminals grows and become more emboldened. Threat of imprisonment doesn’t deter them as criminality segues to and continues to operate from within their prison walls. Murderers will never be eradicated through execution, nor spared the opportunity to rot in jail.

In the CC, children of all creeds and colors read, write and calculate their bright futures. Education and patriotism are their priority. Every morning, with hand over heart, they recite the Pledge of Allegiance because they are proud to be Americans. They are allowed to pray, which has always served well as a moral foundation. And they thrive because parents and teachers guide them with a gentle yet firm hand, without fear of frivolous lawsuits or government interference. Students learn self-esteem through competition in school sports -- earning their place on the team.

In the LC, classrooms are packed to over-crowdedness with “undocumented immigrants.” It is not only politically incorrect, but against the law to refer to them as “illegal aliens.” In this situation, frustrated teachers from grade school to high school lag behind in their efforts to learn the languages and customs of all the cultures that still refuse to assimilate, or who have forced themselves on the LC society because they can. They give nothing and expect everything in return for free.

Teachers work in fear of students that call the shots in classrooms, playgrounds and the surrounding neighborhoods. These young people, the majority of whom will drop out before graduation, are the future employees of LC fast food restaurants and giant home-building stores. During the course of their tenuous employment, they will be unable to cope if computer systems crash, because they won’t be able to make change – in plain English, add or subtract, let alone factor in the exorbitant sales tax.

Their parents (if they’re lucky to have two at home) will be busy working overtime to pay those oppressive taxes while their children round out their educations playing violent videogames or hanging out at the mall.

In the CC, successful business owners, both large and small, are rewarded for their hard work with low-to-no taxes which they happily reinvest for growth. In turn, they keep the unemployment rate low… well, there is no unemployment rate. In the long run, the CC might need to begin advertising for the best and the brightest in the LC just to fill entry-level jobs.

LC businesses and factories are closing down and moving out of state because unions and taxes have eroded profits, incentive, and competition. Welfare lines are growing longer, as well as the queues at the Unemployment and Social Security offices. There aren’t enough young, legal Americans left to keep Social Security afloat. A contributing factor is that the number of state-funded abortions has grown exponentially.

The LC boils over with illegal immigrants sucking up its remaining resources. The last Emergency Clinic overflows into the streets with the uninsured. To meet the demand for police and fire department personnel, the city has lowered its recruitment standards and is accepting the high school dropouts. At the same time, all the best-trained doctors and dentists have fled to greener pastures in the CC.

CC retirees plan vacations and other leisure activities made possible by early privatization of Social Security. The CC ended taxation of personal retirement accounts years ago. In fact, the CC ended capital gains and death taxes too. Rest in Peace has taken on new meaning.

The CC’s borders are well protected by a highly trained and educated volunteer militia. Potential terror threats are dealt with in a clean and efficient manner. There’s no messing around in the CC. Its borders are sealed tight and that’s the way its citizens sleep – tight.

Over in the LC, citizens are always looking over their shoulders -- for a stray gang bullet, perhaps? Identity checks at airports have been eliminated for fear of insulting anyone’s ethnicity. The few foreign terrorists that have been arrested are wreaking havoc on an already shaky economy where taxpayers bear the cost of legal representation and the endless appeals of jihadists entitled to the same rights as legally-born and naturalized citizens. They have no idea when – not if, but when – the next terrorist attack will occur, because there are so many restrictions on the intelligence agencies.

The LC will, should terrorists attack again, proceed to hunt them down like other criminals. When caught, they will be read Miranda rights via an Islamic interpreter. The already poor citizens of LC will be forced to house foreign terrorists locally the rest of their natural lives. This will be accomplished by -- you guessed it, more taxes.

In the CC, the atmosphere is generally festive throughout the year as they celebrate their freedom and the significance of each and every tradition and holiday without fear of recrimination.

In the LC, Christmas, like Independence Day or Memorial Day, is treated as just another day off from work to watch a ball game, get drunk, or hang at the mall. Yes, there are twinkling lights and the smell of plastic holiday trees, but angel tree toppers and Christmas carols are symbols of a bygone era thanks to vocal atheists and weak civic leaders. Public religious displays have also been outlawed or condemned. “In God We Trust” was removed from their currency, and churches and synagogues have been converted into homeless shelters and shoe outlets.

At home, a turkey and all the trimmings are served around the dinner table, but no one raises their voice to heaven to give thanks for the provender. The only thanks are for the cook or the caterer. Amen.

by Lance Thompson

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave Barack Obama a boost last week by meeting with the Democrat presidential nominee and endorsing Obama’s plan for a troop pullout in the German magazine Der Spiegel. Such profound gratitude has not been shown since the Brits voted out Winston Churchill after leading his nation safely through World War II.

Now that President Bush and General Petraeus have done the heavy lifting of knocking off Saddam Hussein, putting down insurrection, and fighting al-Qaeda and Iraqi Quds Force terrorists, al-Maliki is evidently anxious to get rid of his country’s saviors. "Here’s your hat–what’s your hurry?" is a phrase that comes to mind.

Maybe President Bush deserves no thanks for freeing the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator, despite intense political pressure to cut and run and the abject defeatism embodied by the Democrats. Maybe our armed forces deserve no appreciation for defending Iraqis from their enemies, both foreign and domestic, and rebuilding the country from electrical grids to schools and hospitals. Maybe John McCain deserves no credit for backing a vastly unpopular troop surge last year that resulted in the relatively safe and thriving Iraq that Obama breezed through on his very tardy visit to the central front on terror. But at least al-Maliki could have remained neutral in the American presidential election, rather than hosting and endorsing the plans of the candidate who fought against the Iraq war from the very beginning (until Obama realized we were winning).

Maybe al-Maliki thinks Obama has the election clinched, and wants to buddy up with the new Commander-in-Chief. But the slight was no accident–it was a deliberate slap in the face of the people who made it possible for al-Maliki to rise to his position of leadership of an emerging democracy.

In a similar exhibition of inexcusable ingratitude, the American people seem anxious to see the end of the Bush administration. With approval polls below 30%, Bush is one of the least popular presidents in recent history. Certainly, Bush has made many mistakes. He’s soft on illegal immigration, he championed the immensely expensive prescription drug bill, and he kept his veto pen in the drawer while the Republican congress spent like drunken Democrats.

But in the war against the Islamic jihadists that hit our shores on 11 September 2001, President Bush has been resolute and steadfast. Previously, terrorist attacks were treated as crimes. Bush rightly recognized that it was a war, and set the course of our nation to wage that war and win it. The political will was behind him only briefly, but the Democrats soon turned to opposition as they realized it was going to be a long, hard struggle. Typically, they cast their lot with the other side. As George Bush struggled mightily to bar the door against the terrorists, the Democrats castigated him for using an illegal lock.

Bush paid a heavy political price to prosecute the war, and was almost alone in insisting upon the surge (John McCain was one of a very few who supported it.) Now, we have the upper hand in Iraq, we have an oil-producing democracy in the Middle East for the first time since Carter pulled the rug out on the Shah, and we have not had another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11/01. On the most urgent issue of our time, George Bush has been a stalwart champion. Yet less than 30% of Americans approve.

Gerald Ford was portrayed as a bumbler compared to Jimmy Carter, who served in the nuclear navy. Ronald Reagan was consistently branded simplistic, uninformed, senile and always just "an actor reading lines." Walter Mondale ran on a platform of superior competence against Reagan.

Michael Dukakis proclaimed himself architect of the Massachusetts miracle, while George H. W. Bush was chided for lacking "vision." Bill Clinton, the Rhodes scholar, and Gore were the smartest guys in the room, ready to save the country from recession. Their battle cry, "It’s the economy, stupid," left no doubt who the stupid one was supposed to be. Clinton made Bob Dole look tired and out of touch.

Al Gore and George W. Bush were both Ivy Leaguers, but Bush was portrayed as a dumb, lucky son of privilege compared to the Ivy League-educated Gore (Both were average students, Bush at Yale and Gore at Harvard. Interestingly, Gore’s lowest grade in college was a D in a natural sciences course. This is the man who won the Nobel Prize for his warnings on global warming.)  Finally, John Kerry tried to blame the war, the economy and the weather, on Bush’s stupidity, but the country didn’t buy it.

Consistently, Democrats elevate education and intellect as a vital attribute to a presidential candidate, always pointing out that their choice is smarter than the Republican. But that particular argument isn’t being employed this time around.

Yes, the Obama campaign has sullied John McCain with the "too old, too out of touch" pitch, but none of that seems to stick. People already know John McCain is old, and he seems mostly out of touch to conservatives, and at least partially sympathetic to liberals.

Surprisingly, few Democrats have been making the argument that Obama is the intellectual superior in this race. Perhaps this is because when Republicans, early in the contest, complimented Obama as erudite or intelligent, Democrats quickly claimed that such compliments were thinly veiled racism, damning the black candidate with faint praise. They ridiculed Republicans for being surprised that a black candidate could speak coherently. Actually, we were surprised that any Democrat could speak coherently.

Or maybe the Democrats are saving the "Obama is smarter" argument for later in the race, when they need to bring out the big guns. But usually the intelligence argument has already been made at this stage.

The most likely reason that Democrats haven’t portrayed Obama as smart is because he is so very adept at proving he’s not.

Obama claims his uncle or great uncle (the story changed almost as soon as it hit the internet) was one of the American troops who liberated Auschwitz, when in fact the Nazi concentration camp was liberated by Russians. Obama said he was inspired by seeing civil rights marches in Selma four years before he was born. He credits a Kennedy-Kruschev meeting in 1961 as "helping to end the Cold War," when in fact it emboldened Kruschev to establish missile bases in Cuba. He’s confused about the conflicting political claims on Jerusalem. He believes the physical size of terrorist sponsor states like Iraq, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba make their nuclear ambitions insignificant. His explanations about his associations with Reverend Wright and the terrorist Bill Ayres were inconsistent and dishonest. Obama would be a great motivational speaker, but you wouldn’t want to bet on him in the Jeopardy finals.

If Democrats had a candidate who had demonstrated intelligence or profound insight in any concrete fashion, they would be extolling those virtues constantly, as they have in previous campaigns with other candidates. But this is not the case with Obama. Democrats know their candidate can’t compete in one of their favorite arenas.

In short, Obama can’t claim to be the intellectual candidate because he’s not convincing in the role. He has energized his supporters with promises of change, but he has not backed those promises up with policy. He is young, inexperienced, and easily confounded by unanticipated questions and challenges.

It’s possible that this aspect of Obama doesn’t bother his supporters, who are excited by his youth, freshness and electrifying personality. But you can bet the Democrat campaign managers are thinking about it. They, at least, are demonstrating intelligence by staying silent on the subject.

 

By RosePedenko and TanyaSimon

GeorgeArmstrongCuster lost his luster and got whacked at the Little Big Horn.

Senator JohnMcCain spent five years of his life inside a Viet Nam death camp, was beaten and tortured, and survived to tell about it. He too has lost his luster (with conservatives) and is getting whacked by a previously fawning media.

Custer was vain, arrogant, ambitious, reckless and a risk-taker.

McCain is also vain, arrogant, ambitious, reckless and a risk-taker. But is McCain riding the trail rejecting conservative core principles along the way to become our latter-dayGeneral Custer? We’ll call our pork barrel fighter “Lt. Custard.”

General Custer designed his own extravagant uniforms: polished jackboots, tight-fitting corduroy trousers, his trademark wide-brim hat, a black velveteen hussar jacket with silver piping, and a red cravat on his sailor shirt with silver stars on the collar. He was a natural blond, and wore his hair in long ringlets which he dusted with cinnamon-scented hair oil.

Lt. Custard could use a makeover and some hair but we won’t go there. We’ll leave that up to the media as they break all the rules of propriety and point out every freckle, age spot, bump or suspicious wound on his vast forehead.

General Custer lost his Division’s train as well as his personal luggage to a band of Confederates at the Battle of Trevilian Station.

Lt. Custard carried his own suitcases between planes in airports before, during and after the Primaries. Is this a sign of confidence — or of being lost in the political wilderness?

General Custer loved publicity and often invited journalists to go along with him on his campaigns so that they could report his battlefield panache.

Lt. Custard is a media darling so long as he speaks liberally about Liberals’ pet issues, which he does with disconcerting ease aboard the Straight Talk Express.

General Custer jeopardized his military career when he testified against the abuses and severe ill treatment of Native Americans barricaded inside government reservations.

Lt. Custard jeopardizes our national security and economic stability when he promotes unlocking America’s borders to millions of illegal immigrants and promises to close GITMO if elected.

In 1867, Custer went AWOL to see his wife and was court-martialed. The army suspended his duty for one year.

In 2007, Lt. Custard went AWOL on conservatives. This boosted his chummy relationship with Democrats in Congress and (dramatic organ music) the PRESS.

It could have been the 1860s, but more likely the 1960s when once proud journalists, honor bound to tell the truth, launched an expedition towards the conquest of young American braves.

It continues to this day as they propel their so-called crowning achievement, BarackObama, into the fractured leadership of the Free World. We will call these so-called journalists the “Sue.” Why? Because it’s damn near impossible to instigate legal action against them when they cower behind the stone walls of Fort First Amendment.

Former Sue (and Viet Nam war correspondent), “Sitting Bull-Gore,” has made a stand against the alleged warming of the earth. He has turned this fantasy into a rallying point for the disaffected of every blue state (and raked in millions of dollars with this scam, affording him and Tipper Canoe to live lavishly – and hypocritically – on their energy-hogging Tennessee estate).

In comparison, Lt. Custard’s half-hearted attempt at environmentalism consists of trying to save 1% of the pristine Alaskan tundra. This has been met with mockery by the Sue and their ignoble carbon credit-eating -- Sitting Bull-Gore.

With Democrats on both sides of the continent, and Republicans stuffed like turkey dressing in the middle, the Sue wage a relentless and merciless war with their poison pens on conservative candidates. Every endeavor to keep the Sue in check during the Iraq War has only served to consume precious military resources. Instead, the Sue immediately made a slap-dash prediction that the war would be a rout (naturally not in our favor) even before the first 50-caliber shot was fired.

They then followed up with a relentless volley of “Recession! Recession!!” until they have nearly made it so. They have since become even more aggressive, arming themselves with one-sided fiction delivered at warp-speed via the Internet (which was invented of course by Sitting Bull-Gore). The Sue has become a fierce foe more dreaded and deadly than any past or present European press corps.

Republican candidates, when confronted by members of the Sue tribe should just ask for a blindfold, a cigarette and a quick scalping to spare their family, religious beliefs and personal integrity from being publicly torn to shreds and tossed into the Little Big Horn River.

This is the formidable and unrelenting fighting force that Lt. Custard and the GOP are forced to contend with. The Sue’s bellicose behavior offers no white flags, no treaties or time-outs. In spite of attempts to bribe or mollify them, they remain uncompromising.

The Sue and the Left Wings fear that Lt. Custard might be impetuous with Persia’s…uh...Iran’s leader and plunge us head-on into yet another Great War. Crazy Horse, on the other hand, plans to Pow and Wow known-terrorist leaders. This “Brave’s” naïve effort to smoke the peace pipe has the same fishy tang as the abject ramblings (and catastrophic failures) of demented Ex-Chief “Head-in-the-Clouds” Carter.

Although Lt. Custard courted the Sue over the years, they remain stubbornly single-minded in their support of Crazy Horse. Lt. Custard has been warned by his base to keep watch well out toward his Left as he navigates the campaign trail. He has let us conservative warriors down in so many unexpected ways, such as clamoring for oil drilling while simultaneously shutting down prospecting in the tundra – this in spite of hard assurances the caribou will not be harmed. At the same time, Lt. Custard has yet to notice the abundance of free-range buffalo in Yellowstone.

The heap-big question for Lt. Custard is: Will he make the right choice for his Vice President? If he uses his noggin and chooses a man with the flint to step into the Chief’s shoes at a moment’s notice and with the economic horse sense to prevent our country from sliding into a real recession, the two could soundly whip Crazy Horse and the Sue.

Lt. Custard has sent smoke signals that he wants Townhall-style battles with Crazy Horse, but Just Plain Crazy’s campaign braves know that is an arena in which he will surely be stampeded and trampled, and it will end his attempted siege of The White House.

Like General Custer, Lt. Custard has never fully understood the overwhelming odds against him without his base of support. During this long and tedious campaign he has not fully appreciated the sheer magnitude of Crazy Horse’s Left Wing Sheeple or the audacity of the Sue he once courted. Custard knows how to fight fiercely, but he may lose this battle due to the momentum of the Left Wings’ superior campaign strategy.