America: Imagine the World Without Her - Film Review

America: Imagine the World Without Her

This documentary film by Dinesh D'Souza and Gerald Molen features, firstly, excellent cinematography. You'll see historical scenes and battles, grand American landscapes, monuments, and impressive (and stark) cityscapes. The musical soundtrack of the documentary is wonderful and adds to the majestic feel of the film. So America looks beautiful and it sounds beautiful - a good start.

But the content here is important as well since it's a documentary and it is the meat that the people are coming for. The producers spend the first part of the film presenting some of the left's most radical and die hard critics' distorted arguments which have been working their way into the mainstream consciousness due to distortions of truth taught by liberal historians and college professors since the 1960s. After the left's "Indictments" against the U.S. are presented, the producers go on to respond to all of these indictments on many levels and from different angles. What you end up with is a regrasping of American history and a cogent and well-argued case for the fact that the United States, overall, has been a force for Good in the world and not for Evil. It is a positive message, not delivered through rose-colored glasses, but with realism and fact.

The film also highlights the fact that great and successful Americans can be of any race or creed and that as a land populated by immigrants, legal immigrants have just as much chance at success as people who have been here for generations.

Unfortunately, the indoctrination of students practiced by the liberal left into America hating, capitalist hating, sometimes race bating, government expansionist, wealth redistributionists is begun in kindergarten and carried through to the last year of college and then beyond by a compliant mainstream media. Films like America are like buckets of sand thrown against a tide of lies, but the efforts are certainly appreciated by patriots and freedom lovers everywhere. Hopefully the tide can be turned in some small way by films like this and by people like Dinesh D'Souza.

I also want to give a big shoutout to AMC Theaters in Brick New Jersey for the choppy playback of this film as if it were playing on an underpowered 300 dollar HDTV with insufficient screen refresh. Hopefully you don't present all your movies this way.

Go see this film and get the DVD when it comes out. There is much to learn here and you may not be able to absorb it all in one viewing. D'Souza has a book which this film is based on which you can see here.

Elections in U.S. a Boon for Liberty

This is a good week with plenty of political sun shining in the USA. Tuesday's mid-term election has been called a "historical win", "a wave election", "a tsunami", "an earthquake", "a drubbing", “a repudiation”, and "a shellacking". While we don't have a new Captain for our ship, we do have a fine new crew, and they were put there by the restless people of this great land to keep the ship from hitting any more icebergs. Or, to use President Obama's (wrong) overused analogy, "to get us out of the ditch", that he and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have driven us into.

Republicans won 240 seats in the House of Representatives, gaining 60+ seats and taking the majority in that body. The GOP also gained 6 or more seats in the Senate, improving their number there to 46+ and leaving Democrats with a slimmer majority in that body. What this historical shift in power means is that there won't be one party rule any longer and there will be an actual check in the system of "checks and balances".

Some of the bright spots of the day include: Marco Rubio winning a U.S. senate seat from Florida against political chameleon Governor Charlie Crist. Pat Toomey grabbing a senate seat in blue Pennsylvania was also great. Michele Bachmann winning re-election to the House was excellent since she is a big Tea Party booster, and Nikki Haley winning the governorship of South Carolina is good news for that state. State legislatures were also greatly affected with Republicans gaining 680+ seats in all statehouses.

Being originally from Michigan I should also express happiness that the Democrat chokehold there has been relieved somewhat, which I hope will bring some fiscal economic relief to that downtrodden state. They have a new Republican governor, senator, and a state legislature firmly in Republican hands.

Unfortunately, in my district in New Jersey, the Tea Party backed candidate for the U.S. House, Anna Little, did not beat the entrenched Democrat Frank Pallone, who brags that the Health Care bill was "his bill". However, she did put up a hell of a fight. He is a hard-core liberal this Pallone and I am sad to see he won, but happy to know that now he will be in the minority party.

Christine O'Donnell of Delaware and Sharon Angle of Nevada were two high profile Tea Party backed Senate candidates who put up good fights but lost mostly due to voluminous slander by their opponents and the mainstream press.

And in the greatest puzzle of the day, I will never understand how someone (Jerry Brown) who wrecked the economy of California in his previous eight years as governor there could be elected to do it all over again (at this critical time!), over a candidate (Meg Whitman) who ran many companies successfully and made billions of dollars doing it. But it’s not like she'd have the financial chops to run California compared to someone who already failed at the job, right? One has to question what the voters, even Democrats, were thinking in CA.

There were two other big winners in this election: The Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin. Mrs. Palin was a big winner because she took her star power, her political capital,  and conservative ideals into every nook and cranny of this country in support of conservative Republicans, many of whom were running for the first time in their lives for office. And in most every case it helped the candidate greatly. This increased Palin's visibility as well as her political savoir faire.

The Tea Party movement, which is basically the voice of the quiet majority, showed that it has the clout to get people elected, the ideals to attract a large membership, and the power to sway law makers. This despite slander from the media and politicians. But the Tea Party movement is just a frame for a large number of Americans who are dissatisfied with an out-of-control government.

In the end, it was just the American people who came out on Tuesday and demanded change with their votes. A fine example for a democratic republic like the United States of America.

Election Day 2010 -- A New Dawn for Liberty

November 2, 2010 is going to be a grand and ebullient day! The political party in power is going to be given a political spanking that, while it may not be unprecedented, is certainly one of the most memorable and necessary of recent history. There have not been many high points politically since the Democrats monopolized federal power in 2008, but the first Tuesday in November will be a pinnacle. (Actually the citizen activism of the past year or two has also been a heartening high point.)

November’s peaceful shift of power will be one of the beautiful strengths and wonders of our representative democracy. It shows that when most of the people don't like the way things are going they vote to get rid of "the bums".

Unfortunately, in most years the people who already hold the office, the incumbents, win elections hands down, almost by default, due mainly to voter apathy, but also to political machinery. Things are different now. In 2006 and 2008, there was general discontent with Republicans and, incumbents included, they were voted  out of the House of Representatives and the Senate, giving Democrats control of the Legislative branch in 2006 and the Executive branch in 2008.

However, in 2010, a huge swath of voters feels that Democrats in the Congress and the Obama White House have overreached, overspent, overlegislated, crippled the economic recovery and changed the country in other damaging ways.

The people who will be voted into office in November in many cases are not professional politicians, they are people who are fed up with the status quo, who will actually do things differently because they have a mandate and will be voted into office with many, many like-minded individuals. They and the Tea Party will hold the political establishment’s feet to the proverbial fire.

That's the good that the Tea Party process has brought to the political landscape --highlighting the bad stuff that's going on and supporting those who want to reverse it.

Of course you don't like the Tea Party and how it resonates with most Americans if you are for spending trillions of dollars, if you're against enforcing our border laws, if you're for weakening our defenses, if you're for higher taxes, and if you’re for redistribution of wealth.

Liberals can rail against the Tea Party, and Independents, Conservatives, and Republicans all they want to, and they can lie and make claims about how great things are and all the wonderful things the Democrat congress and the President have done, but in the end, the truth is plain in the economy, in the housing market and job market, in the promises that were made and not realized. On November 2, checks and balances will be restored to the government. Not as much will get done, and that's a damn good thing because in general Congress isn't doing much that's good anyway. On November 2, two party government will be restored to the United States government.

And speaking as a New Jerseyan, what would make November 2 even better would be if New Jersey's two liberal/socialist senators were standing for re-election because a Lautenburg and Menendez defeat would be the icing on the electoral cake.

But don’t take election day victories for either side for granted – get to your polling place and vote!

How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

There is an easy way for the concerned eco-citizens of our much-beleaguered world to reduce their carbon footprints.

What's a carbon footprint you ask? For those of you who may not know it, a carbon footprint is how much carbon you unwittingly spew back into Mother Earth's bosom by virtue of your everyday existence. It is measured for individuals, industries, and countries in tons of carbon emitted to the atmosphere each year. Natural sources are of course not considered.

As you may know, the European Union has a carbon trading program for industry and now the Democrats in the United States congress and the Democrat President want the same for the United States.

Carbon trading, Cap and Trade, or Cap and Tax, is a scheme where if a business produces less carbon dioxide emissions than it is allowed, it can sell what remains to some company that knows it is going to produce too much carbon dioxide. These carbon credits will be traded on Wall Street, which will give them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new business, so they are literally salivating at the prospect that The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 will pass. It has in fact passed the House of Representatives but is idle in the Senate.

Beyond the higher prices everyone will pay for energy as a result of the Carbon Tax, we the little people need to get in on carbon trading too. And I know how to do it, without a broker, without fees, without license, and for free too. Yes, you too can acquire carbon credits and thereby control the size and impact of your odious carbon footprint.

The process is a little involved and requires some work, but you're doing this for Mother Earth so a little work ain't gonna slow you down from doing right, is it? This Personal Carbon Footprint Reduction Plan (PCFRiP as I call it) is also built on fairness, honor, and respect.

The plan goes like this. Choose a newspaper, a local one in your area would be best for this. If there aren't any newspapers left in your area then choose on online newspaper, but whichever paper you choose it should have an obituary section. Open said newspaper or website and go to the obituary section and look for a recently deceased person with the same last name that you have. If you have a common name like Smith or Patel you may find many. If you have a less common name like Frankenstein you may have a harder time. It may take days or weeks of hard work but you are doing this for all the right reasons people (to prop up failing newspapers and reduce that carbon thingy).

Once you find someone whose last name matches your last name (and assuming it is not you!), clip the obit, save it somewhere and acquire that person's Carbon Credit History. Unless you know the person, how much you actually receive can be based upon national averages (19 metric tons per year in the U.S.). Once you have acquired this person's Carbon Credit History, you can add it to your Carbon Credit History and add 38 tons of carbon to the Earth's atmosphere without increasing the net total carbon load on the Earth's atmosphere by a single extra pound.

Brilliant right? There's no downside. I have acquired the Carbon Credit History of seven decedents with my last name and now have the ability to add 152 tons of carbon to the atmosphere guilt-free, without increasing the total atmospheric load by one net pound.

I haven't been able to take advantage of all this extra emissions capability yet, but it's there when I need it and if anyone has an unusual last name or is in a hurry to offset their carbon usage, they are free to contact me to purchase some of my excess Carbon Credit History. So now the average guy or gal won't be left out of the Carbon Trading boon that is now upon us. We can all be green and expend a little energy too.

(P.S. A look at neogreen British Petroleum's [BP] carbon calculator website shows that even one of the world's LARGEST providers of carbon products can repeat the oft-repeated liberal complaint that "the U.S. despite having just 5 percent of the world's population uses 26 percent of the world's energy." Really! I would think liberals would just get tired of saying the same things over and over. But for British Petroleum to have anything to do with the phrase is laughably hypocritical.

And to address the point ever so briefly, would you expect the world's largest and most productive economy to use less energy than say, Indonesia and remain a strong and productive country? I think perhaps a personal boycott of BP is the order of the day. We can use 26 percent of ExxonMobil's energy just as well.)

Next week find out how to acquire property on the moon without paying a radio shill!

The Real Party of No

Welcome the "real" party of NO in American politics.
As a party, these "changers" in the Democrat Party consistently say no to nuclear power, no to storing nuclear waste, no to a strong defense, no to TORT reform, no to Clean Coal, no to drilling for American oil, no to enforcing the border, no to windmills in their towns or off their coasts, no to solar panels in the desert, no to the freedom to drive what we like, no to choosing our own light bulbs, no to guns, no to school choice, no to Fiscal Restraint, no to less taxes, no to Capitalism, and no to Liberty. "Yes, we can't."