We all see the world and people in different ways.

We should Shoot Herman for bringing this up,

It is good it was bought up,

I am up for talking Politics, Sex, Drugs, Race, Religion, what ever you want.

The problems really starts when people do not talk to one another and start just whispering to a select few.

I agree. There's too many people just getting their news/information from biased sources and just being spoon fed what they want to hear instead of getting the facts.

This is a good series.
The Rise of Political Clickbait.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmv_j2CumRFWYcvIDlMnMhJjBvYeuLJyr

You can be Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Independent or Libertarian and I bet this will hit a nerve. Our country is in real trouble.

This gentleman is obviously a lot smarter than the two senators he sent it to. All I can say is amen to everything he said.

A very articulate letter sent to the two U.S. Senators from Washington State.
Senator Patty Murray
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington, DC , 20510

Dear Senators:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated $1.4 billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $ millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year!
And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America's answer to the Saudi royal family.
You have become the "perfumed princes and princesses" of our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. "Obamacare," a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one percenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know - (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safety net" has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps - pretty much all Democrat voters - and the program is absolutely rife with fraud and absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 - 1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares.

This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to read one person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $19 Trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy the country that I deeply love. You have put it so far in debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power.

For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.

Sincerely,

Bill Schoonover
3096 Angela Lane
Oak Harbor, WA

Amen.



.

So let's talk, my EU friends. Can we shift our focus for a bit to European politics, culture, and religion? Have you guys read Oriana Fallaci? She has said some interesting things:

“You have this respectability that is given to you, more or less. But you don’t give a damn. It is the ne plus ultra of freedom. And things that I didn’t used to say before—you know, there is in each of us a form of timidity, of cautiousness—now I open my big mouth. I say, ‘What are you going to do to me? You go fuck yourself—I say what I want.’ ”


And:

“If you speak your mind on the Vatican, on the Catholic Church, on the Pope, on the Virgin Mary or Jesus or the saints, nobody touches your ‘right of thought and expression.’ But if you do the same with Islam, the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad, some son of Allah, you are called a xenophobic blasphemer who has committed an act of racial discrimination. If you kick the ass of a Chinese or an Eskimo or a Norwegian who has hissed at you an obscenity, nothing happens. On the contrary, you get a ‘Well done, good for you.’ But if under the same circumstances you kick the ass of an Algerian or a Moroccan or a Nigerian or a Sudanese, you get lynched.”

From 2001 until her death in 2006, Fallaci wrote eloquently and passionately about the demise of Western culture--specifically the relentless encroachment of Islam. You can read her books, or at least get a taste of what she thought via the links below.

So, was she a right wing nutjob and completely full of shit? Or was she on the money? Please follow the links and render an opinion. I'd love to hear what EU folks think. I stand with Fallaci. Where do you stand?

--twk



The first link is to a pretty fair piece from The New Yorker. The rest are from frontpagemag.com, a generally conservative website--it's the only place I could find Fallaci without paying subscriptions.

"The Agitator" by Margaret Talbot:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/06/05/the-agitator

"I Stand with Israel: I Stand with the Jews" by Oriana Fallaci:
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20927

"A Sermon for the West" - Oriana Fallaci:
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20339

"Muslim Target" by Robert Spencer:
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=8334

There is an excellent interview with Fallaci, "Prophet of Decline" by Tunku Varadarajan, at The Wall Street Journal online, but it's not free. Send me a message if you want a copy.



.

"We're gonna be fighting against them."

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=54394

Shocking.

I was flabbergasted earlier today to read this Piers Morgan piece in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3504893/PIERS-MORGAN-comes-terror-isn-t-time-started-listening-seriously-Trump.html

I am shocked. Morgan is an Über liberal--or maybe I should say was. One definition of a conservative is: A liberal who has been mugged. Brussels was Morgan's mugging, I suppose.

The victims and the families of the victims of this latest Islamic abomination have my deepest sympathy. May their wounds heal quickly.

--twk



.

Today is'nt a good day for talk about european politics, culture and religion...



I read some Oriana Fallaci's books and I think she's right about many things but....

this is what Oriana Fallaci wrote after 9/11
http://italian.about.com/library/fallaci/blfallaci01.htm

and this is what Tiziano Terzani wrote to her after reading it

http://www.swans.com/library/art14/terzani4.html

"...the problem of terrorism will not be resolved by killing terrorists, but by eliminating the causes that make people become such." (Tiziano Terzani)

I dont stand for the hatred, I stand for resolve the problem...so back on topic... do you think Trump will be the president that can really resolve this kind of problem??

Thinking of a furure discussion between Trump and Kim Jong-Un scares me, do you really think Trump could handle it peacefully??

you Americans have a great responsibility in choosing your next president because your decision will affect the rest of the world

...

This is indeed quite true.

And in response to you Ted, politics in Europe is as corrupt and backwards as it is anywhere else sadly.

Some parts are working slightly better than they are in the States. Some not as well perhaps.


As for terrorism. UntExp makes the correct point here too, the source and cause need to be tackled, and it will take many many years.

The response to flatten a country in response to an attack and kill thousands of innocents as a knee jerk reaction will only make the entire situation worse, and build hatred of western culture and life as this will be all that is seen and felt by the people effected.

I have friends from all walks of life, and many religions. I myself am not religious in the slightest. But I can discuss what is happening freely. Like we are doing here.

The current action/reaction of waiting to be attacked then attacking whoever we think is to blame ten fold, will only escalate steadily to near total hatred from one culture to the next.

We can all find facts, and information, sound-bytes and sources all over the web, paste them here and say well look at this then hmmmmm.

I am much more interesting in talking to one another, our own thoughts, and why we think them. And trying to work out slowly what solution if any there is.


Now.... back to Trump everyone lol

Terzani is wrong an a number of points. His letter contains some of the views of Chalmers Johnson (an interesting fellow) who blamed 9/11 on America's bad behavior around the world. Terzani directly attributes Western interference in the Middle East to assure the flow of oil as a motivation for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. Both of these causes were minor, if Osama bin Laden is to be believed. If you haven't read it, please peruse his "Letter to America". It is a fascinating document:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

bin Laden harps on Israel, blaming the U. S. and Britain for her creation and subsequent "crimes". This and our culture's depravity seem to be the two main reasons for 9/11. bin Laden presents a litany of criticisms of American public and private life. Some of them laughable, but some damned close to the truth. His demands of the West are not in the least astonishing, because they are requirements of Islam. Read his letter and correct me if I am misreading.

I will not defend all or even many of my government's actions on the world stage over the past century. I will say, however, that the worst of the worst American administrations combined caused inconsequential mischief when compared to the acts of Communist/Socialist governments over the same period. These bad actors produced more than 100 million dead--mostly their own citizens.

The problem, in my view, is Islam. It is more than a religion. Call it a theopolitical cult. Or a cancer. Wherever its practitioners migrate in numbers, troubles abound. Troubles abound in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, and France, do they not? Had the Islamic adherents been refused admission, Europe would be a happier place, would it not? And what of Britain? Winston Churchill would be appalled to see what has become of his country. Read his observations of Islam in The River War.

Which brings us back to Trump. I think a majority of Americans think as I and Cartoon Contractor do--that our sovereignty and very existence are threatened. They can see what is happening in Europe and don't want anything like that to happen here. But someone does. Whether it is Democrats, the Uniparty, or some cabal of Bush-Soros New World Order advocates, does not matter. Americans of all political stripes see things going down the shitter, and Trump is the only one who comes close to addressing their fears.

If elected, will Trump consider the sensitivities of other nations before taking or advocating some action? If he does, I think it will be only in passing. I do think whatever he does will be viewed through the lens of American interest. I think Trump's ego is sufficiently monumental that he will want to be remembered as the greatest American president.

Having said all of that, I will hold my nose and vote for Trump if he is nominated. Anyone but Clinton.

As for Americans supposedly having a great responsibility in selecting a President because of potential effects on other countries, I say, "Bullshit!" We need to get our house in order before we think about anyone else. Hey. That sounds like Trump, doesn't it?

--twk




.

The cause is Islam. You didn't read your Fallaci.



.

Why is everyone so short sighted.You are getting all tangled up within the branches of a dense thicket of lies,strangling yourselves within the vines of deception and mind control... Step out of the trees and see the forest ! ALL politicians left,right and center are marionettes of the New World Order Agenda ! Hegelian dialectic as the method of global social engineering.All important world events are staged.Problem - reaction - solution ! They create the problem,knowing our reaction and giving us their pre-planned solution.They are manipulating us all down the yellow brick road to Oz,their One World System ! How can anyone truly believe that out of 320 Million people in America,this handful of manchurian candidates you are asked to choose between is really the best this country has to offer.And I am not just speaking of America,I am speaking of ALL countries of global importance.It is all rigged.There really is no choice.In the end the person THEY want to become president WILL become president.Although president is a deceptive name.Yes-man would be a better term.Someone to sign on the dotted line for them.Trump,Clinton,Obama,Bush...it`s all the same.There is no real choice,there is no real democracy.We have been collectively hypnotized into thinking we are free.That is their best weapon... deceiving us into believing we have a true choice.The world is fast becoming a totalitarian corporate neo-feudalist state system run by an elite selection of oligarchs and administered by their minions of technocrats.Whether you vote for Clinton or Trump is irrelevant.Regardless who wins,they will be told what to do and tow the line,or else end up like ol`Abe or JFK... Brave new world it is !!! So get angry and throw your TVs out the windows !

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkRDMil0bw[/youtube]

my two cents worth