Afghanistan South

by Patrick J Buchanan

Heeding the advice of Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and will keep 50,000 in Iraq after U.S. combat operations end in August 2010.

But are U.S. vital interests more threatened by what happens in Anbar or Helmand than in the war raging along our southern border?

Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming north from the Maghreb and Middle East, sub-Sahara and South Asia.

Last year, 6,000 Mexicans died in drug-related killings in a war where the tactics are massacre, murder, kidnapping and beheading.

President Felipe Calderon has ordered another 5,000 troops and 1,000 police to the border. Primary target: Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

Some 2,500 federal troops are already in Juarez, where in 2008 there were 1,600 drug-related murders. Gun battles occur every day. Nationally, 45,000 army troops and police are committed to this war that Mexico is not winning. For, according to the March 3 Washington Times, the Pentagon now estimates the cartels field more than 100,000 foot soldiers.

The chief of police of Juarez just resigned after a cartel threatened to kill an officer every 48 hours if he did not. To prove its seriousness, the cartel murdered four cops, including the chief's deputy. Last year, 50 police officers in Juarez were murdered.

"The decision I am taking is one of life over death," said Chief Roberto Oduna. The chief would seem to have a point. In January, his predecessor's head was found in an ice cooler outside a police station. The mayor keeps his family in El Paso, as they have been threatened with decapitation.

Friday, the State Department declared, "Corruption throughout Mexico's public institutions remains a key impediment to curtailing the power of the drug cartels." Calderon retorts that, while the murders may be committed in Mexico, the cash and guns come from the United States.

With oil revenue down since the price dropped $100 a barrel, and remittances down from Mexican workers in the United States as the U.S. economy tanks, tourism, too, has begun to die. Beheadings in and around Acapulco have not helped. Warnings have been issued to U.S. college kids to avoid Mexico on spring break, as kidnappings for ransom are rampant. Restaurants and bars in Juarez that catered to folks from El Paso and soldiers from Fort Bliss are shutting down.

In February, in the resort town of Cancun, a retired army general sent to create an elite anti-crime unit was kidnapped, tortured and shot. Mexican troops raided Cancun's police headquarters and arrested the chief and dozens of his officers in connection with the murder.

Add a collapsing global economy to a losing war with drug cartels, and Mexico is at grave risk of becoming a failed state, a narco-state, with a 2,000-mile border with the United States.

How does one win a drug war when millions of Americans who use recreational drugs are financing the cartels bribing, murdering and beheading to win the war and keep self-indulgent Americans supplied with drugs?

There are two sure ways to end this war swiftly: Milton's way and Mao's way. Mao Zedong's communists killed users and suppliers alike, as social parasites. Milton Friedman's way is to decriminalize drugs and call off the war.

When Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1972, Milton, writing in Newsweek, objected on ethical grounds: "On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs."

"Am I my brother's keeper?'" asked Milton, answering, "No.

" Americans are never going to adopt the Maoist solution. For the users of drugs are all too often classmates, colleagues, friends, even family. Indeed, our last three presidents did not deny using drugs.

Once, a Christian America outlawed and punished homosexuality, abortion, alcohol, loan-sharking and gambling, all as criminal vice. Now, homosexuality and abortion are constitutional rights. Gambling and booze are a rich source of government revenue. And loan-sharking is done by credit-card companies, and not just the Corleones.

Will we raise the white flag in the drug war, as well? Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America's young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border?

Some choice. Some country we've become.

FDR or Ronald Reagan - Which way will Obama go?

Commentary: From my perspective, it's already perfectly clear. BHO will do whatever his puppet masters - Kissinger, Rockefeller, Bryszinski, James A. Johnson (Perseus Capital)
( http://www.muckety.com/Perseus-LLC/5001487.muckety?big=true ) want him to do!
AB


By Patrick J. Buchanan.


Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here.

The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent.

By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been wiped out, the economy had shrunk by one-third, thousands of banks had closed, a third of the money supply had vanished, and unemployment had reached 25 percent — among heads of households. And in those days, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare.

FDR’s answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes — like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.

The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:

“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt, to boot.”
Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR’s landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.

Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the “stagflation” of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.

Reagan’s answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent.
While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.

From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. “The Seven Fat Years,” author Robert Bartley called them.
Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson’s wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in “The Roaring ’20s,” a time of unrivaled prosperity.

The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.

Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.

Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.

In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.

Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama intends to add a stimulus package of $700 billion to $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit would be twice as large as Reagan’s largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.

And how is this Niagara of money to be spent?

Hundreds of billions will go out in checks of $500 to $1,000 to wage-earners and individuals who do not even pay taxes. This is much like the George McGovern “demogrant” program of 1972, where every man, woman and child, if memory serves, was to get a $1,000 check from the U.S. government.

Other hundreds of billions will go to shore up state and municipal spending. Other hundreds of billions will go for “infrastructure” projects, another name for earmarks, which is a synonym for pork.
Now, as Obama does not intend to raise taxes, at least now, he is going to have to borrow this near $2 trillion from foreigners or U.S. taxpayers, or the Fed will have to create the money. Undeniably, this will have an impact upon the economy. But what will that impact be?

Where in history, other than World War II, is there evidence that such a mass infusion of spending restored prosperity?

Obama and the Democrats are taking a historic gamble, not only with their careers but with the country. If this monstrous stimulus package, plus the trillions in hot money, do not work; if the two ignite rampant inflation, rather than real growth, we are all out of options. The toolbox is empty.

And what will follow may truly resemble the 1930s.

Obama's War

by Patrick J Buchanan

Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled.

The triumph was total in the "splendid little war" that had cost one U.S. casualty. Or so it seemed. Yet, last month, the war against the Taliban entered its eighth year, the second longest war in our history, and America and NATO have never been nearer to strategic defeat.

So critical is the situation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates,in Kandahar last week, promised rapid deployment, before anyTaliban spring offensive, of two and perhaps three combat brigades of the 20,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan. The first 4,000, from the 10th Mountain, are expected in January.

With 34,000 U.S. soldiers already in country, half under NATO command, the 20,000 will increase U.S. forces there to 54,000, a 60 percent ratcheting up. Shades of LBJ, 1964-65. Afghanistan is going to be Obama's War. And upon its outcome will hang the fate of his presidency. Has he thought this through?

How do we win this war, if by winning we mean establishing a pro-Western democratic government in control of the country that has the support of the people and loyalty of an Afghan army strong enough to defend the nation from a resurgent Taliban?

We are further from that goal going into 2009 than we were fiveyears ago.

What are the long-term prospects for any such success?

Each year, the supply of opium out of Afghanistan, from which most of the world's heroin comes, sets a new record. Payoffs by narcotics traffickers are corrupting the government. The fanatically devout Taliban had eradicated the drug trade, but is now abetting the drug lords in return for money for weapons to kill the Americans.

Militarily, the Taliban forces are stronger than they have been since 2001, moving out of the south and east and infesting half the country. They have sanctuaries in Pakistan and virtually ring Kabul.

U.S. air strikes have killed so many Afghan civilians that President Karzai, who controls little more than Kabul, has begun to condemn the U.S. attacks. Predator attacks on Taliban and al-Qaidain Pakistan have inflamed the population there.

And can pinprick air strikes win a war of this magnitude?

The supply line for our troops in Afghanistan, which runs from Karachi up to Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, is now a perilous passage. Four times this month, U.S. transport depots in Pakistan have been attacked, with hundred of vehicles destroyed.

Before arriving in Kandahar, Gates spoke grimly of a "sustained commitment for some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops that is ... nobody knows."

Gen. McKiernan says it will be at least three or four years before the Afghan army and police can handle the Taliban

.But why does it take a dozen years to get an Afghan army up to where it can defend the people and regime against a Taliban return? Why do our Afghans seem less disposed to fight and die for democracy than the Taliban are to fight and die for theocracy? Does their God, Allah, command a deeper love and loyalty than our god,democracy?

McKiernan says the situation may get worse before it gets better.Gates compares Afghanistan to the Cold War. "(W)e are in many respects in an ideological conflict with violent extremists. ...The last ideological conflict we were in lasted about 45 years.

"That would truly be, in Donald Rumsfeld's phrase, "a long, hard slog."

America, without debate, is about to invest blood and treasure,indefinitely, in a war to which no end seems remotely in sight, if the commanding general is talking about four years at least and the now-and-future war minister is talking about four decades.

What is there to win in Afghanistan to justify doubling down our investment? If our vital interest is to deny a sanctuary there to al-Qaida, do we have to build a new Afghanistan to accomplish that? Did not al-Qaida depart years ago for a new sanctuary in Pakistan?

What hope is there of creating in this tribal land a democracy committed to freedom, equality and human rights that Afghans have never known? What is the expectation that 54,000 or 75,000 U.S.troops can crush an insurgency that enjoys a privileged sanctuary to which it can return, to rest, recuperate and recruit for next year's offensive?

Of all the lands of the earth, Afghanistan has been among the least hospitable to foreigners who come to rule, or to teach them how they should rule themselves.

Would Dwight D. Eisenhower -- who settled for the status quo ante in Korea, an armistice at the line of scrimmage -- commit his country to such an open-ended war?

Would Richard Nixon? WouldRonald Reagan?

Hard to believe. George W. Bush would. But did not America vote against Bush? Why is America getting seamless continuity when it voted for significant change?

Source: www.buchanan.org

Liquidating the Empire

By Patrick J. Buchanan

October 14, 2008

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers."

So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover in theGreat Crash of '29.

Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him -- and the Republicans.]

In the Crash of 2008, 40 percent of stock value has vanished,almost $9 trillion. Some $5 trillion in real estate value has disappeared. A recession looms with sweeping layoffs, unemployment compensation surging, and social welfare benefits soaring.

America's first trillion-dollar deficit is at hand.

In Fiscal Year 2008 the deficit was $438 billion.

With tax revenue sinking, we will add to this year's deficit the$200 to $300 billion needed to wipe the rotten paper off the books of Fannie and Freddie, the $700 billion (plus the $100 billion inadd-ons and pork) for the Wall Street bailout, the $85 billion to bail out AIG, and $37 billion more now needed, the $25 billion for GM, Chrysler and Ford, and the hundreds of billions Hank Paulson will need to buy corporate paper and bail out banks to stop the panic.

As Americans save nothing, where are the feds going to get the money? Is the Fed going to print it and destroy the dollar and credit rating of the United States? Because the nations whose vaults are full of dollars and U.S. debt -- China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arabs -- are reluctant to lend us more. Sovereign wealth funds that plunged billions into U.S. banks have already been burned.

Uncle Sam's VISA card is about to be stamped "Canceled.

"The budget is going to have to go under the knife. But what gets cut?

Social Security and Medicare are surely exempt. Seniors have already taken a huge hit in their 401(k)s. And as the Democrats are crafting another $150 billion stimulus package for the working poor and middle class, Medicaid and food stamps are untouchable. Interest on the debt cannot be cut. It is going up. Will a Democratic Congress slash unemployment benefits, welfare,education, student loans, veterans benefits -- in a recession?

No way. Yet, that is almost the entire U.S. budget -- except for defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid. And this is where the axe will eventually fall.

It is the American Empire that is going to be liquidated.

Retrenchment has begun with Bush's backing away from confrontations with Axis-of-Evil charter members Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs, and will likely continue with a negotiated peace in Afghanistan. Gen. Petraeus and Secretary Gates are already talking "reconciliation" with the Taliban.

We no longer live in Eisenhower or Reagan's America. Even the post-Cold War world of George H. W. Bush, where America was a global hegemon, is history. In both relative and real terms, the U.S.A. is a diminished power.

Where Ike spent 9 percent of GDP on defense, Reagan 6 percent, we spend 4 percent. Yet we have two wars bleeding us and many more nations to defend, with commitments in the Baltic, Eastern Europe,and the Balkans we did not have in the Cold War. As U.S. weapons systems are many times more expensive today, we have fewer strategic aircraft and Navy ships than Ike or Reagan commanded. Our active-duty Army and Marine Corps consist of 700,000 troops, 15 percent women, and a far higher percentage of them support rather than combat troops.

With so few legions, we cannot police the world, and we cannot afford more. Yet, we have a host of newly hostile nations we did not have in 1989.

U.S. interests in Latin America are being challenged not only by Cuba, but Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Brazil, Argentina and Chile go their own way. Russia is reasserting hegemony in the Caucasus, testing new ICBMs, running bomber probes up to U.S. air space. China, growing at 10 percent as we head into recession, is bristling over U.S. military sales to Taiwan. Iran remains defiant. Pakistan is rife with anti-Americanism and al-Qaida sentiment.

The American Empire has become a vast extravagance.

With U.S. markets crashing and wealth vanishing, what are we doing with 750 bases and troops in over 100 countries?

With a recession of unknown depth and duration looming, why keep borrowing billions from rich Arabs to defend rich Europeans, or billions from China and Japan to hand out in Millennium Challenge Grants to Tanzania and Burkina Faso?

America needs a bottom-up review of all strategic commitments dating to a Cold War now over for 20 years.

Is it essential to keep 30,000 troops in a South Korea with twice the population and 40 times the wealth of the North? Why are McCain and Obama offering NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees against Russia, to a Georgia run by a hothead like Mikheil Saakashvili, and a Ukraine, millions of whose people prefer their kinship to Russia to an alliance with us?

We must put "country first," says John McCain.

Right you are, Senator. Time to look out for America first.

Pat Buchanan's Message to Obama

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no government anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

Benz Speaks! - As we approach this Memorial Day Weekend...

... in a lot of the corporate boardrooms across America, there is no patriotism. Many of America's largest companies have rejected various requests to say the Pledge of Allegiance before the start of their annual stockholders' meetings. The pieces below, I think, show this quite. well.

Corporate Elites Reject Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S.

by Ralph Nader

Dozens of America's largest and most famous corporations have refused a modest request to recite the pledge of allegiance at their annual shareholders meetings. In response to a written request by left-leaning free trade opponent Ralph Nader, only one of 100 CEO's of America's biggest corporations said that reciting the pledge was a good idea. Most did not respond or rejected the idea outright.

In his letter, Nader asked the CEO's "to establish a regular practice at every annual shareholders meeting whereby you and the board of directors stand and, in the name of your domesti­cally chartered corporation, pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands.....

Carol Sanger, vice president of Ohio-based Federated De­partment Stores, Inc., gave the only positive response, saying "we...think it would be a positive statement on many levels." But the other tycoons ignored the request or denounced it as a bad idea.

Aetna Insurance CEO Richmond Huber told Nader, "I be­lieve that demanding recitations of allegiance -in language that may not reflect the beliefs of all persons present -is actu­ally contrary to the principles on which our democracy was founded."

August Busch of Anheuser-Busch said his company does not want to be linked to the U. S., saying "While our company headquarters remains in St. Louis, we are a global company."
He said that the company's shareholders meetings "include many international employees, shareholders, representatives, and visi­tors."

Other responses to the pledge request:

Allstate: AMOCO: Anheuser-Busch ARCO: Caterpillar: Citicorp: Delta Airlines: Ford: GM: Hewlett-Packard: Johnson & Johnson: J.P. Morgan: Kimberly-Clark: Kodak: 3M: MCI: Motorola: New York Life: Prudential: RJR Nabisco:

"inappropriate" "does not plan to include" "we see no reason to" "no plans to do so" "would not be productive" "not our practice" "will not implement" "inappropriate" "unnecessary" would "not be productive" "not appropriate" "we do not agree" "not. ..appropriate" "would not be productive" "unacceptable" "unacceptable" "will not be adopting" will "not consider" "do not plan on" it "not at this time"

Patriotism in the Boardroom

by Patrick J Buchanan

Not until two-thirds of the states ratified the Constitution did America become one nation under God. Yet some patriots still date the birth of the nation to Philadelphia, July 4, 1776.

And as we celebrated the 222nd anniversary of that glorious day, many feared we are losing our country. The new century, we are instructed, wilI see an end of nations, as each surrenders its sovereignty to immerse itself in the Global Economy.

Across the Atlantic, the nations of Europe are giving up control of currencies, economies and borders to the European Union. New power centers replace old capitals, and a mighty rival has risen up to chalIenge the nation-state -the transnational corporation.

"General Motors now has a bigger budget than the government of Denmark," writes the traditionalist newsletter Triumph of the Past, "Toyota surpasses Norway, WalMart tops Poland, and Ford exceeds South Africa. Mitsubishi and Unilever outsize Indonesia and Vietnam. In fact, the hundred biggest economies in the world are equally divided between businesses and governments." As America headquarters more of these behemoth businesses than any country, we are told the future belongs to us.

But are these transnationals completely loyal to America?

Corporate gadfly Ralph Nader decided to test the issue. He wrote to the 100 largest U.S. corporations, urging that, at their next shareholders meetings, their CEOs lead the company in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States. From the responses, one would have thought "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy had just demanded that the entire 1950 Harvard facl,llty take a loyalty oath.

"[D]emanding recitations of allegiance -in language that may not reflect the beliefs of all persons present -is actually contrary to the principles on which our democracy was founded," thundered Dick Huber of Aetna, of a pledge some of us took every school day.

Allstate said the pledge of allegiance would be "inappropriate at a business meeting." Why? Countless unions open their meetings with it. August Busch of Anheuser-Busch declared, "While our company headquarters remains in St. Louis, we are a global company." Our shareholders' meetings, he went on, "include many international employees, shareholders, representatives and visitors."

But if U.S. Olympic medal winners can stand in silence as the national anthems of other athletes are played, why cannot foreign visitors stand in respect as August A. Busch III booms out the pledge of allegiance to the flag and republic of the United States?

Arco and Amoco said no. AT&T said it would consider it. Defense contractor Hewlitt-Packard said a pledge of allegiance to the flag would "not be a productive use of time." Said Boeing, "It is the opinion of the board that it is not necessary to institute the practice you propose." Boeing's CEO Phil Condit two years ago expressed his hope that the world, 20 years hence, would no longer see Boeing as an American company but a global one.

,Bristol-Myers found the suggestion of a pledge of allegiance "an interesting one which we have not considered before.... We will have to carefully consider whether the proposal advances the best interests of the company, its shareholders and employees."

Caterpillar "concluded that a symbolic once-a-year gesture would not be a productive use of our time at our stockholders' meeting." But a recital of the flag pledge takes 15 seconds!

Calling itself an "international company," Coca-Cola said, "If a share owner were to propose that we pledge allegiance, we would certainly consider it in the context of our global business." Dayton-Hudson called the pledge not "consistent with the goal of running an efficient annual meeting."

Delta said no.

Kodak said a pledge of allegiance to the flag "would not be a productive use of our shareholders' time." Kodak must "maintain a global perspective to compete effectively in a global economy."

Ford Motor does "not believe that the concept of 'corporate allegiance' is possible." 3M said it would be "disrespectful" to other countries where it operates "to ask them to be bound by a pledge of allegiance to a country not their own." But in what country does 3M belong?

American taxpayers guarantee the Export-Import Bank loans of these companies; we bailout their investments via the International Monetary Fund; U.S. Marines have been sent to protect their property; and U.S. consular officials and presidents have promoted their sales. If they cannot pledge loyalty to America, why should Americans be loyal to them?

Consider the response of Federated Stores: Good idea; we will take it up!

Happy Independence Day! And may Americans never stop celebrating it, our global corporate elite notwithstanding.

Will the Right Sit It Out?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

April 29, 2008

If John McCain wins the presidency, his comeback -- after the bankrupt debacle his campaign had become in the summer of 2007 with his backing of the amnesty bill -- will be the stuff of legend.

And as nominee, he is entitled to conduct his own campaign and be cut slack by a party whose brand name is now Enron.

That said, McCain seems to have decided to win by love-bombing the Big Media and putting miles between himself and the base.

Consider his "Forgotten Places" tour of last week.

It began in Selma, Ala., where McCain went to Edmund Pettis Bridge to hail John Lewis and the marchers night-sticked and hosed down by the Alabama State Troopers on the Montgomery march for voting rights.

Now that was a seminal movement in the fight for civil rights.

But this is not 1965. Today, John Lewis is a big dog in the "No-Whites-Need-Apply!" Black Caucus. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is sermonizing White America. The Rev. Al Sharpton is trying to shut down the Big Apple. And the fight for equal rights is being led by Ward Connerly.

With no help from McCain, Connerly is trying to put on five state ballots a Civil Rights Initiative that declares white men are also equal and not to be denied their civil rights because of the color of their skin.

And where does McCain stand?

From Selma, McCain went to the Gee's Bend Quilters Collective, where black ladies make the famous blankets. The stop could not but call to mind the hundreds of thousands of textile and apparel jobs in the Carolinas and Georgia lost after NAFTA and Most-Favored Nation for China, both of which McCain enthusiastically supported.

McCain's next stop was Inez, Ky., where LBJ declared war on poverty. But LBJ's war was a politically motivated scheme to shift wealth and power to government, which led to a pathological dependency among America's poor, his own abdication and Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign against Big Government that ushered in the Conservative Decade.

McCain then went to New Orleans to backhand Bush for failing to act swiftly to rescue the victims of Katrina.

But the real failure of New Orleans was of the corrupt and incompetent regime of Mayor Ray Nagin and the men of New Orleans, who left 30,000 women and children stranded in a sea of stagnant water.

No doubt Bush hit the snooze button, but why the piling on?

Then McCain headed up to Youngstown, Ohio, to tell the folks their jobs are never coming back and NAFTA was a sweet deal.

But why, when America's mini-mills and steel mills are among the most efficient on earth -- in terms of man hours needed to produce a ton of steel -- aren't those jobs coming back?

Answer: It is due to the free-trade policies of Bush and McCain, which permit trade rivals to impose value-added taxes of 15 percent to 20 percent on steel imports from the United States while rebating those taxes on steel exports to the United States. We are getting it in the neck coming and going.

An America First trade and tax policy could have U.S. steel mills rising again, while those in Japan, China, Russia and Brazil would be shutting down as uncompetitive in the U.S. market.

But we no longer put America first.

The U.S. government burns its incense at the altar of the Global Economy. The losers are those guys in Youngstown McCain was lecturing on the beauty of NAFTA. And the winners are the CEOs who pull down seven-, eight- and even nine-figure annual packages selling out their country for the corporation.

Does McCain think $6 trillion in trade deficits since NAFTA, a dollar rotting away and 3.5 million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush was all inevitable? Does he think we can do nothing to stop the deindustrialization of a country that used to produce 96 percent of all it consumed?

Why should those guys in Youngstown vote for McCain?

So the feds can teach them how to shovel snow?

Even Hillary, whose husband did NAFTA with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole's help, now gets it.

Then McCain took a time out to denounce the North Carolina GOP for ads tying the Rev. Wright to Obama, and the pair to two Democratic congressional candidates. To their credit, the North Carolinians told McCain where to get off and are running the ads.

What does a McCain victory mean for conservatives?

Probably a veto on tax hikes and perhaps a fifth justice like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito or John Roberts, to turn two pair into a full house. Fifty years after Warren, it could be game, set, match for the right.

But McCain may also mean more Middle East wars, more bellicosity, more manufacturing jobs lost, malingering in the culture wars, and more illegal aliens and amnesty.

In Pennsylvania, thousands of Republicans re-registered to vote Democratic, and 27 percent of the GOP votes went to Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. McCain may just stretch this rubber band so far it snaps back in his face.

Why McCain Would be Worse Than Bush

by Patrick J Buchanan
January 25, 2008

In 2004, the voters of Arizona, by 56 percent to 44 percent, enacted Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship before an individual may vote or receive state benefits. Forty-six percent of Hispanics voted for Prop. 200, giving the lie to those who say Hispanics support the illegal invasion of their country.

Over 190,000 Arizonans petitioned to put Prop. 200 on the ballot. As it simply required proof of citizenship before receiving the benefits and privileges of citizenship, who could oppose it? Answer: the entire GOP congressional delegation, led by Sen. John McCain.

This is the same John McCain who battled the border fence and colluded with Teddy Kennedy on the amnesty bill rejected by Congress last year after a national uproar.

Bottom line: If the presidential race is between Hillary and Amnesty John, the border security battle is over and lost. As Laura Ingraham asks, “If Congress passes McCain-Kennedy in 2009, would President McCain sign it?”

For conservatives, the stakes could not be higher.

For on the great controversies, McCain has sided as often with the Democrats and the Big Media that pay him court as with conservatives.

Where President Bush has been bravest, on taxes and judges, McCain has been his nemesis. Not only did McCain vote against the Bush tax cuts twice, he colluded to sell out the most conservative of the Bush nominees to the courts.

In 1993, McCain voted to confirm ACLU liberal and pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But when Bush set out to restore constitutionalism, McCain colluded with Democrats who wanted to retain power to kill Bush’s most conservative nominees.

McCain helped form the Gang of 14, including seven Democrats, who agreed to block a GOP Senate from using the “nuclear option” – allowing a simple GOP majority to break a Democrat filibuster of judicial nominees – unless the seven Democrats approved. McCain thus conspired with liberals to put at risk the most courageous conservatives nominees of President Bush.

With his record of voting for liberal justices Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and of colluding with Democrats in their campaign to kill the most conservative Bush nominees, what guarantee is there a President McCain will nominate and fight for the fifth jurist who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?

In the battle over campaign finance reform, McCain colluded again. The McCain-Feingold law denies to gun folks and right-to-lifers their basic First Amendment right to name friends and foes in ads run before elections.

As for the policies that have transparently failed Bush and the nation, McCain remains an obdurate advocate.

After America has run five straight record trade deficits that have denuded the nation of thousands of factories and 3 million manufacturing jobs, McCain is still babbling on about Smoot-Hawley.

“When you study history, every time we’ve adopted protectionism, we’ve paid a very heavy price,” McCain told a Detroit paper after informing Michiganders their auto jobs are never coming back.

But what history is John McCain talking about?

Was the Tariff of 1816, which saved infant U.S. industries from the malicious dumping by British merchants after the War of 1812, a failure? Were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Calhoun and Henry Clay fools to support President Madison’s tariff?

From Abraham Lincoln through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party – the Party of Protection – put 12 presidents in the White House to two for the Democrats, and the United States became the mightiest industrial power in history, producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.
This is failure – while Bush free trade is a success? Tell it to Ohio.

Even Hillary Clinton, whose husband enacted NAFTA with McCain’s support, has begun to question the NAFTA paradigm. Not McCain.

Where Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon came to office determined to extricate the nation with honor from a war whose costs had begun to outweigh any benefit, McCain is talking about spending 50 or 100 years in Iraq.

Where Bush, by moving NATO onto Russia’s doorstep, planting bases in Central Asia and intervening in the affairs of Russia’s neighbors, has undone the work of Reagan in making Russia a friend, he sounds like George McGovern alongside the braying McCain, who can’t wait to get into Vladimir Putin’s face.

Where Bush finally cleansed his administration of neocons, if not of their legacy, a McCain candidacy is the last, best hope of a neocon restoration and new military adventures in the Middle East.

If Rudy Giuliani founders in Florida, neocons will be chanting, “Mac is back!”

The three issues that ruined the Bush presidency are this misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America’s borders from invasion and a mindless trade policy that has destroyed the dollar and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America at fire-sale prices.

McCain remains an unthinking advocate of all three.

But where Bush was at his best, on taxes and judges, McCain was collaborating with Hillary. The question conservatives may face if McCain is nominated is not whom should I vote for, but should I vote.

Is He One of Us?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Friday, April 25, 2008

As one looks at the polls, the issues and the candidates, the election of 2008 resembles what poker players call a "lay-down hand.

"Two-thirds of the nation believes the Iraq war a blunder. Sixty-nine percent disapproves of President Bush. Eighty-one percent thinks America is on the wrong course.

Inflation is at 4 percent and rising. Unemployment is 5 percent and rising. Gasoline, heating oil and food prices are soaring. The dollar has lost half its values against the euro. Homes are being foreclosed upon at Depression rates. The stock market is in a swoon. And 3.5 million manufacturing jobs have vanished under Bush.

Hillary and Obama have both raised far more than John McCain.

Democratic turnout in the primaries and caucuses is two and three times what it was for the GOP. The youth, energy and enthusiasm are on the Democratic side. Voter registration is rising dramatically, and the new registrants are almost all Democrats or independents.

Thirty Republican House members are retiring. In the Senate, the big question is whether Democrats will achieve a 60-40 margin to enable them to kill Republican filibusters.

By all odds, Republican retention of the White House should be as imperiled as it was in 1932, when the hapless Herbert Hoover faced FDR.

Yet John McCain, who presides over a disconsolate party many of whose leading lights not only do not love him, they do not like him, is even money to be the next president of the United States.

What explains this?

Answer: Barack Obama, the probable nominee of the Democratic Party -- his cool and pleasant demeanor aside, and his oratorical skills notwithstanding -- is being steadily pushed by his own mistakes, and rivals Hillary Clinton and McCain, outside the social, cultural and ideological mainstream of American politics.

Hillary's victory in Pennsylvania confirmed what Texas, Ohio and Florida hinted at. Barack has not closed the sale with Middle America. Moreover, he may never close the sale.

What is Barack's problem?

Though he has stitched together the McGovern wing of the party -- the anti-war crowd, the cause people, the professoriat -- with the Jesse Jackson wing -- 90 percent of the African-American vote -- he is being systematically pushed out of the heartland of the party, the white working and middle class. And reinforcing the impression in Middle America that Barack is "not one of us" is the core of both the Clinton and Republican strategies. And they are working.I

In Ohio and Pennsylvania, resistance to the probable nominee hardened and calcified among Catholics, ethnics, union and blue-collar voters, even as Barack outspent Hillary two and three to one.

Racism is the reason, wail the pundits. But this is not a reason, it is an excuse. Barack, after all, ran up record totals in virtually all-white Iowa and is favored to win in virtually all-white Oregon.

Moreover, all politics are tribal. There was resistance in rural Pennsylvania to voting for an African-American, but there was also wild enthusiasm for voting for an African-American in Philly, where Hillary -- spouse of "our first black president" -- was getting about the same share of the black vote as Barry Goldwater.

On balance, as Joe Biden undiplomatically blurted out, the fact that Obama is a black man is an extraordinary asset in 2008. It is the reason a junior senator, three years out of the Illinois legislature, is running first for the nomination, and has become the favorite of a national media intoxicated with the idea of a black president.

Barack's problem is social, cultural and ideological.

Increasingly, he is seen not as a man of the middle, but as radical chic, a man of the liberal and leftist elite who confides to closed-door meetings in San Francisco that folks in Pennsylvania cling to guns, Bibles and bigotries as crutches, because they cannot cope in the Global Economy and government has failed them.

He is seen as a man comfortable with friends still proud of the radical role they played planting bombs in the 1960s, a man who feels relaxed about sending his daughters on Sunday to hear the racist rants of an anti-American berserker.

And if your wife, beneficiary of a Princeton-Harvard Law education denied to 99.9 percent of the people, says she cannot recall ever being proud of America before now, folks are naturally going to be suspicious about why you dumped the American flag pin.

On the big issues of 2008 -- amnesty, the hemorrhaging of American jobs, Iraq -- McCain is on the same side as George Bush, whose approval rating is 28 percent. McCain can be defeated on those issues.

But if, with a little help from Hillary, McCain can paint Barack indelibly as a man of the trendy and radical left, he can win. America will have nowhere else to go.

Journalists disagree on whether immigration, Iraq or the economy will be the major issue in 2008. The real issue may be -- and this is what is causing heart palpitations among Democrats -- is Barack Obama one of us, or is he one of them?

Mexamerica, Here We Come

by Patrick J Buchanan


Have Americans, one wonders, fully reflected on what the Bush amnesty portends for the country their children will grow up in?

Consider what Bush is saying with this amnesty for 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens and his “guest workers” program to allow employers to go overseas and hire people anywhere in the world for jobs Americans will not, or cannot take at the wages offered.


He is saying: I cannot defend our border. I will not enforce the laws. I will not send illegal aliens back. And as I cannot stop this invasion of the United States, I intend to legalize it.


Bush is not only rewarding millions of law-breakers and gate-crashers, he is erasing the border with Mexico. Mexamerica is our future. The United States is going to become a giant Brazil. Bush is saying there is no way to stop it ,therefore, we must embrace it.


Ethnically and racially, this means an America that is no longer a First World country. Third World people of color will be the majority in two decades. Americans whose forefathers came from Europe, 90 percent of the population in 1960, will be a shrinking minority by 2040. For not only are the birth rates of white Americans lower than those of immigrants, the new immigrants will be from the Third World.


Economically, Bush is throwing American workers ,white, black, Asian, Hispanic, into a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle for jobs with foreigners willing to do sweat-shop labor for wages that cannot sustain an American family.


Winners will be the economic elites who will benefit from low prices produced by cheap labor and from having a vast proletariat to do the chores at their homes, country clubs, ski lodges, restaurants, parking garages, vacation spas and yacht basins.


Losers will be American workers who have to compete for jobs with folks for whom $5.15 an hour is pay undreamed of back home in the Caribbean, Nigeria or Mexico.


Politically, our welfare state will explode. The Bush plan will convert America from the middle-class country we grew up in into a nation with a huge proletariat with a rising claim on our tax dollars for more schools, courts, cops, hospitals, parks, roads and prisons.

If you would know America’s future, look at California. In the 1990s, for the first time since the Spanish arrived, California saw an out-migration of native-born Americans, white and black, along with a huge influx of immigrants, legal and illegal.

We are endlessly reminded how wonderful the new America will be as she becomes more diverse. Californians, who already live in that new America, apparently don’t think so. Every chance they get, they vote to chop welfare and deny drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Now, they are deserting the new California beloved of our elites. If assimilation is working, why are Californians voting with their feet and fleeing to Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and Idaho?


“Who cares where people come from?” comes the retort. “The Melting Pot will make them all Americans, as it did the 18 million who came from Eastern and Southern Europe from 1890 to 1920.”


But those were European peoples coming to a country run by descendants of Europeans. They came to a land that enforced assimilation in its schools. They learned and were taught in the same language, read the same books and magazines, went to the same movies, listened to the same radio, went through the Great Depression together and served in the same Army in World War II.
And after the great wave ended in 1920, we had 45 years of low immigration to assimilate and Americanize the children of the immigrants who had come here.

But America’s population has doubled since 1945. Instead of the 16 million people of color we had in 1960 almost all of whom were black Americans immersed for centuries in American culture – there are 80 million people of color here now, from 100 nations.


Instead of assimilation, we live in an age of racial and ethnic resentments and entitlements, where “multiculturalism” is in vogue and it is “racist” to demand immigrants learn the English language.
But if we no longer worship the same God, honor the same heroes, speak the same language, study the same history, love the same literature or even agree about what is right and wrong, how do we remain one nation and one people?


What do we have in common anymore? If Bush’s ally-ally-in-free immigration policy is embraced, the old America we knew will be nothing more than a global hiring hall and what Teddy Roosevelt called a “polyglot boarding house for the world.”


And if it doesn’t work, there is no going back. It is the end of the America we all loved. Why is President Bush taking this risk with our country?