Category — Features

Please take some time to read these Thanksgiving proclamations from our first and sixteenth Presidents. Their sentiments are alive and equally valid today.

George Washington’s proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 14, 1789:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us. [Read More...]

Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October, 3 1863:

…No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. [Read More...]

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shelby Steele joins Peter Robinson on “Uncommon Knowledge“:

From National Review Online – Uncommon Knowledge, Nov. 20, 2008

From Roger Stone:

With incumbent Minnesota GOP Senator Norm Coleman leading Democrat Al Franken by 206 votes as state election officials proceed to hand count each of the 2.9 million votes cast on Election Day, the very premise upon which the former comedian is basing his recount effort is worthy of a good laugh.

Having seen first-hand in Florida how claims of “under votes” can stir the passion of partisans, the one salient observation one can make about Franken’s claim there is a vast “under vote” that will catapult him into the lead against incumbent GOP Senator Norm Coleman is that it is illusory – and an objective look at public polling data corroborates this viewpoint.

Now that Franken is a two time loser – having now lost for a second time following the completion of the canvassing process – his campaign’s entire legal strategy and rationale is premised upon winning this mythical under vote.

Franken’s “under vote” argument suggests that if a voter cast a ballot for Barack Obama, but did not vote in Minnesota’s senate race, it was a mistake and that individual intended to vote for him. This is ludicrous, and Al Franken knows it is wrong. But he’s now using this ruse as a fundraising gimmick. Anyone getting a call from team Franken asking for a contribution to his “recount fund” are being taken for a ride. [Read more →]

Thomas Sowell from NRO:

Among the many new “rights” being conjured out of thin air, a new one seems to be a “right” to win.

Americans have long had the right to put their candidates and their ideas to a vote. Now there seems to be a sense that your rights have been trampled on if you don’t win.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters were not merely disappointed, but outraged, when she lost the Democrats’ nomination to Barack Obama. Some took it as a sign that, while racial barriers had come down, the “glass ceiling” holding down women was still in place.

Apparently, if you don’t win, somebody has put up a barrier or a ceiling. The more obvious explanation of the nomination outcome was that Obama ran a better campaign than Hillary. There is not the slightest reason to doubt that she would have been the nominee if the votes in the primaries had come out her way.

As the election approached, pundits warned that, if Obama lost, there would be riots in the ghetto. We will never know. But since when does any candidate have a right to win any office, much less the White House?

[Read more →]

From National Review:

Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact to keep U.S. troops in the country another three years. The agreement goes now to the parliament, where it seems likely to win approval.

The United Nations mandate under which American troops were operating lapses at the end of the year. If we hadn’t reached an agreement with the Iraqis, our troops no longer would have been able to operate in the country. The negotiations were long, complex, and highly controversial within Iraq. That they were successfully concluded is a blow to the schemers in Iran — and to their cat’s-paw, Moqtada al-Sadr — who did all they could to torpedo the pact. [Read more →]

This is a few days old, but I think Sir. Elton John has an interesting and insightful opinion on Prop 8.

From USA Today:

NEW YORK — Elton John, accompanied by his longtime partner, David Furnish, had some choice words about California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage that passed on Nov. 4.

In December 2005, John and Furnish tied the knot in a civil partnership ceremony in Windsor, England. But, clarified the singer, “We’re not married. Let’s get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage.”

John and Furnish, and their two cocker spaniels, Marilyn and Arthur, were in town for Tuesday’s annual benefit for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

“I don’t want to be married. I’m very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership,” John says. “The word ‘marriage,’ I think, puts a lot of people off.

“You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.” [Read More]

The LA Daily News reports on the “motley crew” of mayoral candidates for the March ‘09 election.

With Grove and Americana developer Rick Caruso out of the race (he wasn’t really in the race, but he was thinking about it), LA Mayor Antonio Villar is almost guaranteed reelection. The  race is about money, and Villar has enough to run his campaign and shrug-off debates with opponents. Villar said in a recent statement kicking off his reelection campaign,

“Whether you like me or don’t and think I’m in front of a camera or whatever it is, you have to look at what we’ve done these last three years.”

It’s true that he loves to be in front of the cameras (and behind the scenes, wink wink), but, he’s running Los Angeles into the ground. Our schools are failing, we’re throwing millions of dollars in the garbage with hokey mass-transit schemes (light rail and the “subway to the sea”), and under Villar there is no end in sight.

Walter Moore, a business trial lawyer, is the only candidate that has significant support and funding. But Moore’s $160,000 doesn’t compare to Villar’s $2.3 million. Moore’s most important issue is over-turning Special Order 40, the “sanctuary city” law. It’s an important issue, but it may not be enough to carry him to a win in March. Especially if he continues to be completely ignored by the mainstream media.

Mr. Moore is a regular guest on many local conservative radio shows.

From Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch.org:

Dhimmis getting out of line are put back in their place. Will university administrators stand idle? “Arab Students at UC Berkeley Disrupt Israel Event, Attack Jews” by David Shamma for Israel National News, November 16 (thanks to Paul):

Arab students disrupted a pro-Israel event at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley Thursday night, unfurling a large Palestinian flag in front of a crowd of hundreds of supporters of Israel who were enjoying a pro-Israel hip-hop concert. The event was sponsored by the Zionist Freedom Alliance student group.

The Arab students unfurled the large flag on a balcony above the outdoor site where the concert was taking place, inciting a provocation right in front of the concert-goers, who were enjoying the event as part of the campus’ Israel Liberation Week. Several Jewish concertgoers went into the building to ask the Arabs to remove the flag – but were viciously attacked, with one male concertgoer knocked down from a blow on the back of his head, witnesses said.

College alumnus Gabe Weiner, who was helping run the concert, was assaulted by the leader of the anti-Israel group, Husam Zakharia, who also attacked one of the performers, Yehuda De Sa. The fight was finally broken up by John Moghtader, a senator in the UC Berkelely student organization. Police were called in and arrested Zakharia along with others from his group, charging them with battery. Witnesses said that the Arab students shouted anti-Semitic curses and epithets throughout the incident, calling the Jews “Nazis” and “dogs,” and threatening to kill them. According to one witness, as many as 20 anti-Israel students participated in the attacks. [Read More]

More on this story from American Thinker: “Berkeley’s Idea of Tolerance“

A lemon of a bailout:

Finally, the outlines of a coherent debate on the federal bailout. This comes as welcome relief from a campaign season that gave us the House Republicans’ know-nothing rejectionism, John McCain’s mindless railing against “greed and corruption,” and Barack Obama’s detached enunciation of vacuous bailout “principles” that allowed him to be all things to all people.

Now clarity is emerging. The fault line is the auto industry bailout. The Democrats are pushing hard for it. The White House is resisting.

Underlying the policy differences is a philosophical divide. The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is willing to stretch the meaning of “bank” by extending protection to such entities as American Express. But fundamentally, he sees government as saving institutions that deal in money, not other stuff.

Democrats have a larger canvas, with government intervening in other sectors of the economy to prevent the cascade effect of mass unemployment leading to more mortgage defaults and business failures (as consumer spending plummets), in turn dragging down more businesses and financial institutions, producing more unemployment, etc. — the death spiral of the 1930s.

President Bush is trying to move the Libor or the TED spread, which measure credit flows. The Democrats’ index is the unemployment rate.

[Read more →]

From James Lewis at the American Thinker:

Suppose you’ve been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you’ve used that big half century to take off on an endless vacation — spending all your tax money to buy votes for the socialist Ruling Class. It’s been one long, grand, drug-infested, sex-drenched, self-indulgent, tabloid party scene. Any time danger threatens you look to Washington for protection. The rest of the time you noisily abuse those Yankee imperialists, merely to boost your fragile ego.  Corruption has become pervasive.
That’s Europe today.
What a sweet deal.
But now you see your guardian superpower electing a guy who wants to follow your example. Whooops! Time to sober up. Fast. Yes, you went hoarse cheering Obama’s ego trip at the Berlin Victory Monument, because you love the idea that O will teach America to love Eurosocialism forever and ever. But shivers are running up and down your spine — because if he is what you think he is, America won’t be there any more to save you. It will just slide into vegetarian nihilism and leave Europe to the New Soviet Empire.
Europe would crumble like a soggy crouton without America’s commitment to its defense. We saw that happen three times in the 20th century, and the bad news is that it’s starting again. Real danger is at the gates; Europe’s Ruling Class is in denial; and half of it is preparing to surrender to the Russians or the Muslim fascists, whichever gets there first.

[Read More...]