Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Animals Left to Rot in Armenian Zoo
Inside the world's saddest zoo: Shocking pictures show starving bears and lions who are forced to live off slaughterhouse scraps after being abandoned by Armenian oligarch
- Lions, bears and guinea pigs display all the signs of creatures slowly being driven mad by their unnatural existence
- Animals were bought on a whim by a billionaire Armenian oligarch to parade for his friends at jungle-themed parties
- But they were left to rot after their owner vanished and now survive on scraps fed to them by an elderly couple
Banging
their heads against the wall in despair and peering forlornly through
the bars of their godforsaken cages, these are the inmates of the
world's saddest zoo.
The planet's worst animal park is probably also its smallest.
Just
three lions, two bears and two guinea pigs live out their boring,
hunger-filled days in tiny cages, displaying all the signs of creatures
slowly being driven mad by their unnatural existence.
They
are the residue of a billionaire's whim, bought as entertainment by an
Armenian oligarch to underwrite his ego and parade before his friends in
themed jungle parties.
Scroll down for video
Left to rot: One of the starving bears
who has been abandoned inside the world's worst zoo once owned by an
Armenian oligarch who bought them as entertainment to parade before his
friends in themed jungle parties before vanishing while reportedly
fleeing mobsters
One of the lions bangs his head
against his cage wall, displaying all the signs of a creature being
driven mad by their unnatural existence
Malnourished: The zoo is in the Armenian town of Gyumri – but it has been over two years since it saw a paying guest
But the parties, along with the cash to care for the poor beasts, vanished at the same time as their owner.
Now
the animals scrape along on a starvation diet of slaughterhouse scraps
and scavenged woodland plants brought to them by an elderly couple
fighting hard to keep them alive.
The zoo is
in the Armenian town of Gyumri – the place where the family of
Armenian-American reality stars the Kardashians hails from – but it has
been over two years since it saw a paying guest.
The
ragged, hungry and bewildered tenants – lioness Mary, seven, and her
cubs Geeta, four, and Zita, two, along with bears Masha, four, and
Grisha, nine – are cared for by an elderly couple who simply stumbled
upon them one day.
Sad sight: A bear stares forlornly through the bars of its tiny cage in the desperate hope food may eventually come its way
Forlorn: The ragged, hungry and
bewildered tenants – lioness Mary, seven, and her cubs Geeta, four, and
Zita, two, along with bears Masha, four, and Grisha, nine – are cared
for by an elderly couple who simply stumbled upon them one day
Starving: The animals scrape along on a
diet of slaughterhouse scraps brought to them by an elderly couple
fighting to keep them alive
In Limbo: The civic authorities refuse
to take on any responsibility for the animal and the whereabouts of
their former owner is unknown
Occasionally a vet may pop in to
examine the animals from outside the cages. But no-one has any money to
pay for a proper examination
Desperate for scraps: The animals are looked after by an elderly couple who barely have enough money for themselves
The civic authorities refuse to take on any responsibility for them and the whereabouts of their former owner is unknown.
It is left to a dirt-poor pair of pensioners named Hovhamnes and Alvina Madoyan to care for them.
Hovhamnes
said: 'I lost my job. I had nothing, my wife and I were walking by the
deserted zoo when we heard these terrible cries of animals in torment.
'We came in to see the lioness and her cub literally frothing at the mouths from lack of water.
'My
wife and I can't bear to see God's creatures in pain. We fetched water
from them and then organised some meat from a local slaughterman.
'That
is how we scrape by, feeding them what we can muster. It is the same
for the bears. We moved into an old shed near the lion enclosure to be
near to them five months ago.'
A bear reaches out to grab a fish held by two pensioners who have taken it upon themselves to feed the starving animals
'God's creatures in pain': Pensioners
Hovhamnes and Alvina Madoyan try their best to care for the animals
after they were abandoned
He
added: 'They are sad and lonely and, when they can be bothered, pace up
and down their cages, showing the signs of being driven mad by boredom
and inactivity.
'We
cannot get anyone to help them. The previous owner was stuck in some
kind of feud with local mobsters, the government doesn't want to get
involved and it is the animals who suffer.'
His wife Alvina went on: 'I get up every morning and go into the woods to find food for the bears, but it is never enough.
'If I am lucky, some people donate some oats and cereal which we can make into a kind of porridge for them.
'They
are deeply unhappy, spending hours swaying to and fro, to and fro,
because they have been slowly driven mad by their incarceration.
'Last
week, we were lucky to have been given the body of a baby foal to feed
to the lions. It is not often they get a feast that big.'
Ramshackle: Pensioners Hovhamnes and Alvina Madoyan outside the zoo in the Armenian town of Gyumri
Life in danger: There are fears that the harsh winter might prove lethal for the lion cubs at the zoo in Armenia
Once
in a while, a vet might pop in to examine the animals from outside the
cages. But no-one has any money to pay for a proper examination.
Sussex-based
animal welfare group International Animal Rescue are trying to raise
awareness of the zoo's plight in the hope action will be taken by the
authorities in Armenia, but the group is not raising funds themselves.
The
group, which has animal sanctuaries for endangered orangutans in
Borneo, is concerned that a harsh winter might prove lethal for the lion
cubs.
A
spokesman said: 'The fate of these animals should not be dependent on
the philanthropy of an elderly couple who barely have enough for
themselves.
'They
endure in terrible conditions. We need to try to get enough money for
them to be moved to a place where they can be better cared for.'
For more information on the rescue effort or to enquire about donating, please e-mail: ecocoalitionarmenia@gmail.com
Thursday, January 14, 2016
PETA Exposed (95% kill rate in VA)
EXPOSED! PETA Kills More Than 95 Percent Of Animals In Its Care
Original Post: http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=8927
Related Links: PETAkillsanimals.com
about.me/gideonsword
(People Exterminating Tiny Animals)
From Daily Caller: Documents published online this month show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization known for its uncompromising animal-rights positions, killed more than 95 percent of the #pets in its care in 2011.
The documents, obtained from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, were published online by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a non-profit organization that runs online campaigns targeting groups that antagonize food producers.
Fifteen years' worth of similar records show that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 27,000 animals at its headquarters in Norfolk, VA.
In a February 16 statement, the Center said PETA killed 1,911 cats and dogs last year, finding homes for only 24 pets.
"PETA hasn't slowed down its slaughterhouse operation," said Rick Berman, CCF's executive director. "It appears PETA is more concerned with funding its media and advertising antics than finding suitable homes for these dogs and cats."
In a statement, Berman added that PETA has a $37 million dollar annual budget.
His organization runs PETAkillsAnimals.com, which reports that in 2010 a resident of Virginia called PETA and asked if there was an animal shelter at the group's headquarters. PETA responded that there was not.
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/
The Virginian, the website reports, then called his state's agriculture department. Dr. Daniel Kovich investigated, and conducted an inspection of PETA's headquarters.
"The facility does not contain sufficient animal enclosures to routinely house the number of animals annually reported as taken into custody," Kovich concluded in his report.
Kovich also determined that PETA employees kill 84 percent of the animals in their custody within 24 hours of receiving them."[PETA's] primary purpose," Kovich wrote, "is not to find permanent adoptive homes for animals."
PETA media liaison Jane Dollinger told The Daily Caller in an email that "most of the animals we take in are society's rejects; aggressive, on death's door, or somehow unadoptable."
Dollinger did not dispute her organization's sky-high euthanasia rate, but insisted PETA only kills dogs and cats because of "injury, illness, age, aggression, or because no good homes exist for them."
PETA's own history, however, shows that this has not always been the case.
In 2005, two PETA employees described as "adorable" and "perfect" some of the dogs and cats they killed in the back of a PETA-owned van. The two were arrested after police witnessed them tossing the animals' dead bodies into a North Carolina dumpster.
PETA had no comment when the Daily Caller asked what sort of effort it routinely makes to find adoptive homes for animals in its care.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/24/documents-peta-kills-more-than-95-percent-of-pets-in-its-care/
Monday, November 16, 2015
Islam Is A Religion of War
Why Islam Is A Religion of War
"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9
Islamic violence is a religious problem.
Islam derives meaning from physical supremacy, so war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it will conquer the entire world. And to be a true Muslim, is to feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether by providing money to the Jihadists or to become a Jihadist.
The fulfillment of Islam depends on the subjugation of non-Muslims so that violence
against non-Muslims become the essence of religion.When Hamas states that, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah” or the ISIS rapists tell Yazidi girls that rape "draws them closer to Allah", they really do mean it.
They are not perverting a great religion, as our politicians claim, they are living it.
Everything they do is based on the Koran, the body of Islamic law and the greater history of Islam.
What the Ten Commandments are for the Jew, or the resurrection of Jesus is for the Christian-- the physical dominance of Islam is to the Muslim. It is the basis and fulfillment of his faith.
Jihad is the force that gives Islam meaning. It is the deepest expression of faith.
To its followers the validity of Islam is directly connected to its physical supremacy. As followers of the purported "final revelation" to mankind, Muslims not only have the obligation to conquer and subjugate the rest of the world, their religion is meaningful to the extent that they can carry on the work begun by Mohammed. The Jihadis who massacre non-Muslims are missionaries of their faith.
Anything that suggests Islam is not absolutely superior becomes blasphemy. When Muslims explode into outbursts of violent rage over seemingly petty things like a cartoon or a video, it is because to them, any loss of face for Islam is the worst kind of blasphemy because it challenges its supremacy.
Truth and power in Islam are identical. It is not a religion of the oppressed, but of the oppressors.
Mohammed's prophecies are validated by his conquests. The truth of Islam is seen in the expansion of Islam. When Muslims succeed in killing non-Muslims, they prove the truth of their religion.
That is why Muslim terrorists shout, "Allahu Akbar", "Allah is greater." The old Mohammedan taunt aimed at Jews was then directed at Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and all the world's religions. By killing their non-Muslim victims, the Muslims proved that Allah was greater than their gods.
Islam is not only a tribal and materialistic religion, but it is closely linked to the honor-shame code of its Arab originators. Islam is not primarily an inward spiritual experience, but an outward expression of tribal honor. Its religious expression is the upholding of the honor of Islam and its expansion in the same exact ways as the honor and expansion of the tribe are upheld.
That
is why Islam suffers from the classically tribal obsession of
protecting "honor" by controlling women so that the blood of the tribe
is not polluted by outsiders. That is why it is obsessed with any
insult, real or imaginary to Mohammed, its theological tribal founder.
And why it must continually expand its territory through conflict so
that the tribe grows and so that the surplus sons don't stay behind to
fight each other over tribal territory. This is true of Syria on a much
larger scale. Forcing non-Muslims into a submissive position affirms the truth and power of Islam. By causing infidels to "lose face", the Muslim fulfills the Koranic verse which promises that Allah had sent Mohammed to make Islam supreme over all religions. By contrast when Islam "loses face", an act of blasphemy has been committed, which can only be righted religiously by killing the non-Muslims, thereby forcing them to lose face and once again affirming the physical superiority of Islam.
This creates the cycle of violence, which is not the result of Christian or Jewish oppression, but of the need for Muslims to validate the truth of their faith by oppressing non-Muslims. To co-exist with non-Muslims is blasphemous for a Muslim, when his Koran proclaims "Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends" (Koran 5:51). Mohammed's final command was to ethnically cleanse the Jews and Christians of the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS sees itself as completing the work that he began.
Islam does not co-exist, for its followers its truth can only be found in conquering non-Muslims.
Whereas most religions can accept being in the inferior position because their fundamental faith in spiritual, rather than material-- Islam has little to it but the material. Even its paradise exists in the form of the sort of physical pleasures that its followers crave, fancy robes, exquisite banquets, golden couches, and of course that famed appeal to the dedicated Jihadist, "curvaceous virgins... and an overflowing cup" (Koran 78:33-34). Islamic Heaven is a grossly exaggerated version of the kind of loot that Mohammed's followers expected to find by following him in the first place, gold, jewels, silk, spices and young girls.
The gang of throat slitters who accompanied Mohammed on his massacres across the region were given a religious incentive that would transcend death.
Even if they died in battle and would not live to enjoy all the jewels, overflowing cups and girls-- the Koran promised it to them in heaven anyway. The gang of robbers, escaped slaves and ambitious desert rats trailed after Mohammed across sand dunes, their minds filled with the promises of rich loot from the caravans they were raiding. And in the feverish heat, the idea that they would receive even better loot if they were to die in battle, making death preferable to life, would have seemed plausible.
Out of such such petty greed and lust did Islam initially expand. Its code was that of the tribesman, to lose face or engage in vendetta. Except Islam's face and vendetta did not involve a single man or a clan, it came to involve over a billion people, who found meaning in working toward the final conquest of Islam. The global triumph of a desert raider's clumsily hammered together mass of Jewish and Christian beliefs and tribal customs and legends, and his own biography, used as a tool of conquest, forging temporary unities out of quarreling tribes and clans.
And now Islam's vendetta is worldwide. Every insecurity translates into a provocation. Every jealous impulse never satisfied explodes into violent rage. Every conflict for thousands of years breeds a new vendetta. Did Muslims once live somewhere? They must reclaim it, for to fail to do so is blasphemous and a betrayal of Mohammed's mission. Did Muslims never live somewhere? Then they must go there now, and raise up minarets and proclaim the superiority of Islam, for to do otherwise is a failure to expand the borders of the Ummah, which is a betrayal of Allah's will.
The very existence of people living free from Islamic dominion, is blasphemy. Blasphemy that must be remedied by bringing them under the rule of Islamic law.
The intersection of Islam and Terrorism is the inevitable result of Islamic theology which is supremacist and materialist, which when combined with the honor-shame code of a tribal culture, drives it compulsively toward war and conquest.
The actions of non-Muslim nations serve only as variables to create a context within which the supremacism of Islam expresses itself. These contexts may vary as often as the justifications used in a ISIS video. But the context itself is irrelevant in the larger history and theology of Islam. Because in the end, the problem of Islamic violence is the problem of Islam.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
A Devious Plot for America
A Devious Plot for a Blinded Nation
Author: Berit Kjos
Source: crossroad.to
Link: about.me/gideonsword
"O our God... we have no power against this great multitude
that is coming against us;
nor do we know what to do,
but our eyes are upon You."
2 Chronicles
20:12
Remember Paul Harvey's 47-year-old warning to America! What he envisioned back in 1965 has become reality. Ponder these excerpts from his message titled "If I were the devil."
That warning was heard and read across America decades ago. But our nation ignored it! Now we face unthinkable consequences. It reminds me of an occult children's book used in public schools back in the nineties called The Dark is Rising. Indeed, it is! And the spreading darkness is clouding minds and blinding people -- both to the pressing evils and to God's saving love. Even before the social revolution of the sixties, our media establishment and transformational schools were steering the war on God's Word and ways. Soon mystical thrills replaced Truth and certainty, while strange beliefs and corrupting values fed the minds of the masses. Few of our youth would resist the depravity."If I were the prince of darkness I’d want to engulf the whole world in darkness.... I’d subvert the churches first. I’d begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve, “Do as you please.”"To the young I would whisper that the Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man created God, instead of the other way around. I would confide that what’s bad is good, and what’s good is square....”
"And then I’d get organized. I’d educate authors on how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I’d threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I’d peddle narcotics..."If I were the devil I’d soon have families that war with themselves, churches that war with themselves and nations that war with themselves; until each in its turn was consumed. And with promises of higher ratings I’d have mesmerizing media fanning the flame."If I were the devil I would encourage schools to refine young intellects and neglect to discipline emotions—just let those run wild..."Within a decade I’d have prisons overflowing, I’d have judges promoting pornography. Soon I could evict God from the courthouse, and then the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money...."If I were the devil I’d take from those who have, and give to those who wanted until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious.... In other words, if I were the devil I’d keep on doing on what he’s doing."Paul Harvey, good day. " [Here is his video: If I Were the Devil]
We may be shocked by the recent news reports about Colorado's latest mass killing spree. But it could happen anywhere. Remember, America's moral compass has been crumbling for a long time!
Matt Barber articulated what many of us felt as the news reports spread. His article, Our culture of death and the Batman shooting, summarized it well:
"...in the early morning hours of July 20, 2012, a deranged, fame-starved gunman shot dead at least 12 innocent people and wounded scores more at a midnight showing of 'The Dark Knight Rises,' a Batman sequel.... Please join me in the coming hours, days and weeks in, yes, praying for the victims, their families and the state of our lost union....One of the victims killed was a 3-month-old baby. Another was 6."
"If I were 10 years old, would I be badgering my parents to take me to see the [2008 version] Batman film, The Dark Knight? You bet I would. It's the latest and biggest release in the superhero genre ...Are we facing the end of civil discourse in America? Could factual debates soon fade from the public square? Will irrational rage and spreading violence quench our voices and destroy our freedom?
"If I were the parent who relented and took a 10-year-old child to see The Dark Knight, would I be sorry? Once again, you bet I would. It's different from other superhero films.... But the greatest surprise of all ...has been the sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film.
"...the film begins with a heist carried out by men in sinister clown masks. As each clown completes a task, another shoots him point-blank in the head.... A man's face is filleted by a knife, and another's is burned half off. A man's eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man's stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes.
"A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic. Oh but don't worry, folks: there isn't any nudity....
"It's all a comic-book fantasy, and comic books are well known for their surreal, cartoonish bursts of violence. But the director, Christopher Nolan... has tried instead to make the violence and fear as believable as possible, and in this he has succeeded.
"The Dark Knight, however, has been rated 12A by the British Board of Film Classification, which means that although the BBFC believes it is best suited to children aged 12 and over, any under-12 can see it provided he or she is accompanied by an adult....
"Casino Royale (2006), the most recent James Bond film, was also given a 12A certificate: young boys in particular are attracted to Bond.... But Casino Royale... was in fact a new kind of Bond film, shot like a realistic action thriller. Parents and their open-mouthed children found themselves watching a scene in which a bloodied Bond, stripped naked and tied to a chair, is tortured by having his genitals beaten with a length of rope.
"A friend of mine was somewhat dismayed afterwards to witness his two young boys, aged nine and seven, diligently re-enacting the torture scene with an outsize teddy bear strapped to a chair and a flail constructed from a knotted dressing-gown cord....
"... there is some distinction between violence which is clearly fantastical in origin, such as that in Harry Potter, and that which is realistic and sadistic in tone, such as that in The Dark Knight. The former might well bother younger children afterwards... but the latter is more likely to taint their fundamental vision of the world and adult norms of behaviour. The intensity of violence in The Dark Knight is a grimly logical progression from the sort of distilled brutality that has rapidly become the norm in films rated 15 and 18: the only difference is that now small children are permitted to watch it, too.
"...Quentin Tarantino was the edgy enfant terrible of Hollywood. Now he is a member of its establishment, encouraging younger, mainstream 'torture porn' directors ...to push the boundaries of explicit, ingenious cruelty ever further....
"'... in the US, where any film critic who expresses measured dislike of The Dark Knight faces hundreds of intensely hostile online responses. The more violent the source of entertainment, the more vitriolic its fans grow in defence of it: there is a whiff of the enraged mob at Tyburn, furious at anyone who attacks its right to thrilling, primal pleasures....'
I'm tempted to say yes, but I don't really know the answers. Yet, I am confident that we can trust my sovereign Shepherd and King to lead us. No matter what happens in coming years, He will surely guard His sheep and care for His people! What a joy to be part of His family!
"Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword?...
Yet in all these things
we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. "
Romans 8:35, 37
Our Spiritual Warfare Series:
Part 10: A Devious Plot for a Blinded Nation
Part 11: Marching toward Global Solidarity
Monday, September 7, 2015
Dear Corporate America
Dear Corporate America
I haven't written to you in a while. At least not since my television broke down, my toaster developed a taste for human flesh and my phone company ran away with my phone number to Mexico.
Rachel Maddow says we're both on the right and are really close together. But then again Rachel Maddow also says the Republican Party drinks the blood of small children. So she can be a little factually challenged on occasion.
Still I'm on the right and you're occasionally sort of, but not really, on the right. I support lower taxes. So do you. At least for yourself. I support deregulation. You only support deregulation when it suits your narrow interests, but not when it lets smaller businesses and freelancers compete against you.
What you seem to want is a country with low taxes, your preferred forms of deregulation and the population of Mexico.
These things are not compatible. Mexico is currently governed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party; a member of the Socialist International. It has a multi-generational teachers' union whose members pass on their jobs to their children and whose riots have to be put down by armed force.
When it comes to ease of doing business, the United States is ranked 4th, Mexico is ranked 48th, coming in ahead of Kazakhstan. A Comparmex report showed that companies spend 10% of their revenue on bribes.
Is this what you really want for America?
Your lobbies and associations keep pushing for amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens even while your companies keep fleeing California.
If you don't like doing business in California, which is turning into the American version of Mexico, why do you want to turn the rest of America into California?
You keep talking about how we need "immigration reform" to be more globally competitive. Are there superpower rivals desperately trying to import 12 million people whose great dream is to put their entire families on social welfare? Are there Chinese recruiting agents showing up at the border to urge the DREAMERS clambering over the fence to try Shanghai instead?
I understand why you would rather pay a Pakistani or Chinese programmer on an H-1B visa half of what you would pay a talented American programmer. And that's your choice. And paying fifty bucks for the full version of that programmer's work, instead of ten times as much on your licensed edition based on a program once created by American programmers but reassembled into an update by H-1B employees until it has more bugs than features, is mine.
That's how the free market works.
But while those H1-B employees will forward all your confidential information back to Chinese intelligence and occasionally set off bombs while shouting Allah Akbar, they don't threaten your ability to do business.
Sure one of your execs might be flying on the plane that goes down in a burst of exploding underwear and next month a bunch of programs that look suspiciously like yours will come flying out of Zhong Guan Cun undercutting your international market share. And the next time you're negotiating with a Chinese company, they'll just happen to have access to all of your corporation's emails.
But you can live with that. Can you really live with full amnesty and the consequences of destroying the Republican Party as little more than a protest vote in a Socialist International America?
You spent the last election whining about how hard it is to do business in America under the Democratic Party. You hate ObamaCare, despite promoting it, and then you do everything in your power to make Democratic Party rule permanent through amnesty.
I'm not a psychiatrist and it would be hard for me to get all of Corporate America onto a couch for a session, but it seems to me that you're suffering from a severe bout of schizophrenia.
You want workers who will take low pay without complaining about working conditions. And you can get that with illegal aliens who don't speak the language and don't know their rights, until they hook up with community organizations backed by the entire Democratic Party and then you're up to your neck in lawsuits and minimum wage bills.
At which point you'll threaten to move to Mexico or China... to escape a problem that you caused.
Maybe I'm misjudging you, but I don't think you really want an open economy where deregulation cuts out the government bureaucracy and makes it possible for both workers and corporations to do business on better terms.
I think that Mexico is exactly what you want. Sometimes in business you have to take yes for an answer. And I think that in this case yes is the answer.
You want a closed system where there is no competition and cronyism is the only way things get done, where the corporate taxes are a bit lower, but the difference is more than made up by bribes, a society sharply divided between the vast armies of the unprotesting poor who are resigned to their fate and a small wealthy elite that enjoys its superiority in ways that it can't on this side of the border.
You don't really want to build things. You want to keep other people from building them while you enjoy a monopoly on the things that someone innovative built twenty years ago before he was forced to leave the country.
Paul Ryan is your boy and few other politicians represent the complete disconnect between the economic and immigration policies of your kind better than him. Ryan wants to cut social benefits and legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. He wants to cut money for the "takers" and add million more takers to the voting rolls to ensure that any legislative changes he makes will vanish in a wink.
So what does Paul Ryan really want? Does he want to cut spending more or does he want amnesty more? He's willing to sacrifice his budgets for amnesty, but not amnesty for his budgets.
Ryan may spout nonsense about how this generation of "family-oriented" illegal aliens will start lots of business and keep social security afloat, and how they, in a complete reversal of history, will be all for cutting social spending and voting Republican. But I doubt that he or McCain or anyone else is stupid enough to believe that nonsense.
Given a choice between America, the Republican Party and Amnesty, they're willing to sacrifice America and the Republican Party, not to mention Conservatism, on the altar of Amnesty.
The real question is why. Not why Ryan is choosing such a course, but why his backers who claim to want legislative reforms and economic freedom are pursuing an aggressive and well-funded course that will ensure that America will never have any more economic freedom than can be bought by a bribe or a family connection? Why are the people who claim to be concerned about our debt and our unsustainable spending determined to take both up to eleven?
Maybe we're all part of the problem. Maybe as a society we're no longer capable of producing leaders capable of thinking in terms of long term consequences. We want what we want and we want it now.
Corporate America has decided that it needs cheap labor now and the tens of millions of unemployed and unskilled Americans don't do. In the long run, amnesty will make America all but impossible to do business in for any company that doesn't have General Electric, Duke Energy or Tesla in its name. But in the long run, the sun may go nova. That's how people like that think.
Maybe it's as simple as pumping and dumping America, cashing in on a few years of cheap labor and then heading somewhere else and profiting from selling the last remnants of the collapsing economy to Qatar or Saudi Arabia. It appears to be happening in Europe. Why not America?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for capitalism in the same way that I'm for democracy. As Churchill said, it's the worst possible system except for all the alternatives.
Capitalism, like Democracy or Wikipedia, isn't innately good, it's just better because it's decentralized and that allows people to pursue their own dreams, agendas and anything else they like. The sum total of this crowdsourced wonderland is sometimes good, sometimes bad, often in-between, but on average better than any tyranny of politics, economics or articles on breeds of armadillo would be.
Democracy gave us Barack Obama. Capitalism gave us GE. Wikipedia lists a blue armadillo that doesn't exist in nature. All these flaws remind us that crowdsourcing is imperfect. It doesn't give us good results. It gives us better results.
But dear Corporate America, despite what Rachel Maddow says, I kind of like you. You make decent toasters. Or at least you design decent toasters that China makes. And if you ever decided to dump the Green energy labels, the abstract art and the million dollar donations to gay rights groups and turn into the monstrous cryptofascist conspiracy that liberals claim you are, we might get somewhere.
But we both know that's not going to happen.
You're not conservative. You're certainly not right-wing. There are exceptions, but they're not the rule. Like most of our elites, you're liberal. At best you're occasionally libertarian, but in a limited way. You're all for opening up the borders, but you're all for requiring businesses to get permits if they're in a competing line of work. And you feel guilty, about ice caps, black kids in the inner city and all the other stuff that comes in your mail.
But don't feel too bad, Corporate America. You're not uniquely awful. You're just part of a society whose best and brightest have lost their way and whose proud and prosperous have spent too much time listening to them.
In a decaying society, you have learned to grab what you can without believing that the society and the nation are worth protecting as more than sources of loot. In your comfort zone, the transnational idea has come to seem plausible and the world and its many nations seem infinitely redundant to you. If America doesn't work out, try China or Mexico or Qatar or Singapore.
That comfort zone in which you can thrive on transnational fantasies while still vacationing on Martha's Vineyard is brought to you by a Pax Americana. The peace of the American mercantile empire that your forebears put into place with sailing ships and armed men enables you to sell and buy across the globe, to jump in a jet plane and pop from airport to airport and from luxury hotel to luxury hotel.
All this is not the fulfillment of some Tom Friedmanesque fantasy about the inevitablity of globalism and the flattening of the world. It's not a new era of history. It's the last days of a peaceful empire that made your wealth and power possible. And that you are destroying the same way that the Romans destroyed theirs.
Yes, for a time you will have your estates in Gaul and compliant barbarians who will clean your floors and look after your kids at cut rate prices. The wine will be plentiful and the circuses shocking. And one day you will wake up and discover that your grandchildren have become barbarians, that the civilization you knew is gone and the virtues that made your way of life possible are gone with it.
I won't preach to you about sacrifice.I'll leave that to Elizabeth Warren and her ilk who will bleed you for every cent you have unless you pay her off first. I will tell you that actions have consequences and not just of the class action lawsuit kind. Power is not the same thing as control. That's not only a lesson that Obama must learn. It's a lesson that you must learn as well.
To build a thing, you must know what it is you are building, you must test the structure, practice with the tools and make it real. Destroying a thing is easier. All you have to do is tear down what works and replace it with a slipshod structure made out of poor materials and tools you don't know how to use as cheaply as possible.
That's what your amnesty push will do to America. And when it's done, when America is California and California is Mexico and organized crime is indistinguishable from government and the only way to do business is with a handful of bribes, then you really will have built that.
On that day, there will be no Tea Party to save you and no Republican Party left to defend you.
You will flee to Singapore or China or Africa, only to realize that you are no longer a wealthy American, but the citizen of a fallen empire without protection in a world where the old rules made by the Pax Americana no longer apply. When the last bribes have been squeezed out of you and your company has been taken over and looted by the son of some government official, perhaps you will finally come to know the worth of the civilization you so foolishly destroyed.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure my DVD player no longer works.
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Daniel
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