THE COMING PALACE COUP IN IRAN
It has become obvious that US action against Iran has dramatically sped up recently. The US Navy has a second carrier group now in the Persian Gulf, overwhelmingly intimidating military power on Iran's doorstep. At last, Bush has authorized US forces to hunt down and kill or capture Iranian operatives in Iraq. The White House is targeting Iranian financial assets throughout the world. So, finally we are going faster - but towards what? Is the US goal a democratic revolution effecting genuine regime change, with all the mullah terror masters out of power? No - not if the State Department has its wish. Our Foggy Bottom Pinstripes are doing everything they can to prevent genuine regime change in Iran. What they want instead is a palace coup, the seizure of the government by different forces within the government, not outside it. Here's how it's going to come down.
OBAMATRUTH, HILLARYTRUTH
The fun of watching The Obamarama being dismantled by the Clintonista attack machine continues. It may, or may not, surprise you to learn that certain members of the PIAPS's "Oppo" team (opposition research) read To The Point. When they saw The Audacity of Apostasy earlier this month, they promptly zeroed in on the meanest and stupidest way to attack Obama's Moslem upbringing. How his campaign is about to respond will totally blow you away. You better be sitting down. But rather than let her campaign be blown away by him, she has already come out with an even more vicious assault. Here are the entertaining details....
SHUT YOUR MOUTH: The Democrat Fascist Assault on the First Amendment
The conservative "activist" community here in Washington got itself into a foaming lather last week over the attempt by Senate Democrats to subject their activities to criminal penalties. Section 220 of the S.1 "lobbying reform" bill required all activists - even bloggers on the internet - who communicate in any way with 500 or more members of "the public" to register and file reports with the government as lobbyists, and face criminal penalties including heavy fines and one year in jail if they fail to do so. It was a straightforward and outrageous assault on the First Amendment, true blue fascism embedded right in the very first Senate bill in our new Democrat-controlled Congress. The New York Times had nary a word of complaint, nor did the rest of the major media. Yet it was simply the latest example of the assault Democrats are making on our 1st Amendment free speech rights across the board. For their "lobbying reform" is part of a growing comprehensive effort to silence and criminalize speech liberals don't like.
HATING HORATIO
Ancient Rome's greatest historian was Titus Livius, known to us as Livy (59 BC-17 AD). In the Second Book of his monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), he tells the famous story of Horatio at the Bridge. In 510 BC, Rome was threatened with destruction from an invading army of Etruscans. All Romans living in the countryside had abandoned their homes and fled for protection inside the city. The city walls were heavily garrisoned, but the most vulnerable point was a wooden bridge, the Pons Sublicius, across the river Tiber and into Rome. When Etruscan forces focused their attack on the bridge, the Roman troops guarding it fled in fear - save for one man, a soldier named Horatius, whom we call Horatio. Watching the President's State of the Union speech last night, I thought of Horatio at the bridge. When I talked to Tony Snow, the president's spokesman today, I understood why.
CLEANING YOUR REGISTRY AND HARD DISK WISELY
I've discussed playing with the Windows Registry in the past. Tweaking the registry is risky but necessary. As a constant reader of what's new on the net, I found a new safe registry cleaner that's easy to use and is free. For Windows users, there's usually nothing riskier than playing with the all-powerful and awe-inspiring Registry. One wrong move - one incorrect click of the mouse, one letter, number or hash mark out of place - and you can kiss productivity good-bye, as you will be stuck for hours, if not days, reinstalling, recovering and retreading your computer's operating system and hard drive, seeking what once was, but has been lost. And yet, the Registry needs treatment, once in awhile. A gunked-up Registry can seriously slow down your computer, if not paralyze it altogether. Windows fix-it sites will all give you instructions on what to look for and how to clean things, but you have to be careful - one wrong move, and you know what happens. It takes guts, wisdom and expertise to work the Registry. It's no place to fool around if you don't know what you're doing. That's why I was so happy to get my hands on a new, easy to use, very safe, very wise and very free Registry cleaner...
THE SURGE IS ALREADY SUCCEEDING
Three interesting things have happened since President Bush announced plans to "surge" U.S. troops. First, al Qaeda appears to be retreating from Baghdad. Second, the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr is retreating. Third, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is retreating from his support of al Sadr. And the surge has barely begun. Yet the Democrats say it has to fail.
THE COMING COLLAPSE OF VENEZUELA
If Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez deliberately intended to sabotage his nation's economy, he would be hard-pressed to do anything different from what he is now doing to his country. It has been widely reported that Mr. Chavez has been increasingly taking control of the oil, telecommunications and energy sectors, as well as the media. What has not been reported is the full extent of the corruption in Venezuela and how this ultimately will destroy the economy. The financial scandal taking place there is far bigger than Enron, and may ultimately even exceed the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the biggest financial disgrace of all time. Venezuela has had a rapidly growing economy for the last few years, due to high oil prices, but the house of cards is about to collapse.
DEMOCRAT VULTURES
David Ignatius, the highly esteemed journalist at The Washington Post, wrote a revealing column last week based on an extensive interview with Democratic congressional leader Rahm Emanuel. Here is the last paragraph:
The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change. The country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen. Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces.This is vulture politics. Rahm Emanuel's Democrat Party is so bereft of a sense of national responsibility, that he apparently feels comfortable brazenly telling The Post that his plans for his Democrat Party is to not even try to stop things from getting worse in Iraq - so they can pick up the political pieces afterward. His is a party of vultures.
EATING THE FBI’S LUNCH
The FBI's bumbling in the war on terror, and the tendency of the FBI to promote the bumblers, has made it one of our weakest links in the chain of agencies tasked with protecting America's security. Foreign spies have been eating the FBI's lunch for years. Katrina Leung, for example, was permitted to pass along critical national secrets for years after she'd confessed to being a spy for Red China because the two FBI agents who were supposed to be monitoring her were sleeping with her. Neither of those agents was punished. The ghastly reality is that, for many senior people in the FBI, their careers come first, the reputation of the FBI second. The security of the United States is a distant third.
ISLAMOCOMMUNISM
This past week, the chief proponent of Jihadi Islam and the use of terror to force people to believe in his religion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, traveled to Latin America to create an alliance with three atheistic Communists: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. This emerging "Marxist-Islamist entente," as it has been described, has caught a lot of folks by surprise. How in the world, they ask, could Chavez toast Ahmadinutjob by hailing him as the leader of "a revolution kindred to the Venezuelan revolution: the Islamic revolution." What could the imposition of atheistic Marxism upon a society, Chavez's goal, have in common with the imposition of a theocracy? The answer must be, can only be for these puzzled folks, the bond of anti-Americanism. As an editorial in the conservative New York Sun expresses it:
That the left makes common cause with the Islamists is one of the bizarre facts of modern geopolitics. The only thing Marxists like Messrs. Chavez, Ortega, and Correa have in common today with the likes of Mr. Ahmadinejad is a hatred of America. That is the foundation on which the Marxist-Islamist scheme is formed and the motivation behind any actions it carries out.
The New York Sun is almost infinitely superior to the New York Times in its understanding of the world. It is well aware of the dangers of the alliance of Marxists and Islamists to America's national security. Yet the common bond between the two is far, far deeper than a simple emotion of hate. The bond is as deep as you get. It is metaphysical. That is because Marx and Mohammed share the same view on the nature of reality.