Two police officers were shot– execution style – as they sat in their patrol car, Saturday afternoon – 5 days before Christmas.
The gunman approached the passenger side of the patrol car and took a shooting stance, witnesses told police. He opened fire several times, striking both officers in the head, Bratton said.
They were “shot and killed with no warning, no provocation,” Bratton told reporters. “They were quite simply, assassinated.”
The gunman was found dead in a nearby subway station from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Saturday night on Fox News, Judge Jeanine Pirro covered the latest and interviewed former New York Police Department commissioner Bernard Kerik, who said the killings reminded him of the radical days of the ’60s and 70’s when NY cops faced executions (by radicals) and declared that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Al Sharpton both “have blood on their hands.”
Kerik accused de Blasio of “inciting” protesters who chanted “kill the cops” during a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday.
“I personally feel, that Mayor de Blasio, [Al] Sharpton and others like them, they actually have blood on their hands,” Kerik said on FOX News. “They encouraged this behavior. They encouraged protests. These so-called peaceful protests that, where people are standing out there saying ‘kill the cops,’ well, I hope they’re happy, because they got what they wanted.”
“I think back two weeks ago, when he was inciting these protesters, when he was calling the NYPD and other cops around the nation racist,” Kerik also said.
Former NYPD police detective Bo Dietl joined Kerik in the discussion, adding details about what cops like him faced in the early 70’s.
“We lost 13 cops, one year, 11 cops the next year – they were assassinated the same way. This was with the PLA,” he explained, referring to the Black Liberation Army.
Dietl told Pirro that gang members have been threatening to kill cops in social media for the past week and he excoriated Mayor De Blasio who he called “a disgrace” and “this punk Al Sharpton” who led the demonstration in NY, last week, where protesters chanted they wanted dead cops. “Well they got two dead cops!” Dietl exclaimed.
He threw in this shot at De Blasio; “you know what? This guy went to Cuba in 1994 – he should take his wife – De Blasio – and go back and live there.”
Dietl said the city should recall “the bum.” Asked by Pirro if he should resign, he said De Blasio should “resign tomorrow because he cannot do the job.”
“He should go,” Kerick agreed. “He can’t lead the city. The men and women in the NYPD don’t respect him. They’re never going to respect him.”
Here’s video of NYPD officers turning their backs on DeBlasio:
Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jesse Jackson, the Ferguson Action Coalition and even the family of Michael Brown issued statements Saturday on the horrific killings.
Obama finally weighed in at 12:00 am Eastern after he finished his golf game in Hawaii:
POTUS stmt: "I unconditionally condemn" murders of NYPD officers. "Ask people to reject violence." pic.twitter.com/4unAqwLFSf
It’s odd that the president of the United States felt it was necessary to qualify his condemnation as “unconditional.” Was there reason to believe his condemnation would be conditional? Would the killing of two cops ever be excusable? So why make a point of saying “unconditionally”?
The bodies of three boys, abducted three weeks ago – were found dead in the West Bank, in the city of Hebron, where two suspects in the case — Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha lived.
The families of Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, have been given the grim news, according to Israeli broadcast reports.
Their remains were reportedly found in Halhul, in an open field just a 15-minute drive from where they went missing in Hebron. Jerusalem immediately blamed Hamas for the kidnapping, though the terror group has yet to claim credit.
Israeli officials have convened an emergency security cabinet meeting at 9.30 pm local time, amid new details in the ongoing search for the three teens with a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected afterwards.
Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) sent in troops in the Hebron area and set up roadblocks around the city, following the new developments in the investigation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay.”
“[The teenagers] were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts,” Netanyahu said.
Senator Ted Cruz issued the following press release: Hamas is a Terrorist Organization with Blood on its Hands:
The world should condemn Hamas for murder of three Jewish teenagers
WASHINGTON, DC—U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding news that the three Jewish teenagers who had been kidnapped by Hamas have been found dead.
“The brutal murder Hamas carried out of three innocent Jewish teenagers is a terrorist-led atrocity that demands justice,” said Sen. Cruz. “While we lift Gilad Shaer, Naftali Frankel, and Eyal Yifrach and their loving families up in prayer, we must also act. Hamas is, unequivocally, a terrorist organization with blood on its hands that must be condemned on the world stage. There should be no path forward for Hamas to have any role in any future government formed by the Palestinian Authority, and no nation should accommodate, legitimize, or negotiate with this group that engages in the killing of innocent civilians. The Palestinian Authority should immediately renounce Hamas and actively work to expel Hamas from civil society. The United States should stand unequivocally with the Nation of Israel as it responds to this brutal terrorism and acts forcefully to protect its people.”
Via The Daily Mail: Nazi: Cross, also known by the surname Miller, was leader of White Patriot Party and is pictured at a training camp in western North Carolina in 1985
On Palm Sunday 2014 and the eve of the beginning of Passover, a gunman opened fire outside the Jewish Community Center and a senior living facility in Overland Park Kansas, killing three people. Two of the victims have been named – Dr. William Lewis Corporan, and his 14 year old nephew, Reat Griffin Underwood, both Christians, were there to audition for a show that was being held at the center’s theater.
Via The Daily Mail: Dr. William Lewis Corporan, left, and his grandson Reat Griffin Underwood, right
Heartbreaking….there’s more at the Daily Mail. He was a Boy Scout with adorable dimples who loved to sing.
People gathered to mourn the victims of the shooting at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom during a vigil Sunday night at St. Thomas The Apostle Episcopal Church in Overland Park. Many of those in attendance were students from Blue Valley High School where Reat Underwood, one of the victims, was a student.
Police arrested Frazier Glenn Cross, a 73-year-old southwest Missouri man with a long history of anti-Semitic and racist statements, Sunday afternoon. He was booked into the Johnson County jail at 8:48 p.m. on suspicion of premediated first-degree murder but was not immediately charged.
Cross smiled and made an anti-Semitic statement when he was arrested outside Valley Park Elementary near the Jewish Community Center.
Police said the shooter used a shotgun in the slayings at the Jewish Community Center. He also had a handgun when he was arrested.
“We are investigating it as a hate crime,” said Overland Park Police Chief, but investigators are not sure of the motive.
Public records show that Cross, who lives in Aurora, Mo., a small town in Lawrence County, southwest of Springfield also uses the name Frazier Glenn Miller.
It is very safe to assume the “hate crime” angle given Miller’s White Supremacist background and the fact that he (according to witnesses) yelled, “heil Hitler” as he was being arrested. His website is http://www.whty.org/
Frazier Glenn Miller is the founder of the White patriot’s Party which was formerly the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and relocated to Aurora, MO in 2002 where he published racist newsletters.. He ran into trouble with the law in the ’80’s for threatening war against blacks, Jews, gays and the Federal government.
The former leader of the White Patriot Party, F. Glenn Miller Jr., was captured along with three other men, identified as Tony Wydra, Robert (Jack) Jackson and Douglas Sheets, said an agent of the Federal Bureau Investigation, Bob Davenport, and a United States Marshal, Lee Koury.
Mr. Miller, 46 years old, was convicted in North Carolina last year of operating a paramilitary training camp and was freed on bond pending appeal. He was charged in a warrant last week with violating the conditions of his bond and was wanted as a fugitive.
Last week the United States Attorney in Raleigh, N.C., Sam Currin, said that Mr. Miller had mailed 5,000 letters attacking Jews, blacks, homosexuals, Government officials and ”white race traitors.”
…the FCC’s Media Bureau responded with informal, oral advice that “on the facts and pleadings submitted by all parties, including Mr. Miller, it would not be unreasonable for Missouri broadcasting stations to determine that Miller is not a bona fide write-in candidate and therefore, Missouri broadcasters may deny him access to their stations.”
Here’s one of his ads.
Law enforcement officials say they have no evidence that the Sunday’s shooting at the Jewish center is related to the KC area highway shootings – but it’s something I imagine they are looking into.
The point is whether a president, charged with faithfully executing the laws that Congress enacts, may create, ignore, suspend and/or amend the law at will. Presidents are arguably permitted to refuse to enforce laws they consider unconstitutional (the basis for so many of George W. Bush’s so-called signing statements). But presidents are forbidden from doing so for reasons of mere policy — the reason for every Obama violation listed above.
Such gross executive usurpation disdains the Constitution. It mocks the separation of powers. And most consequentially, it introduces a fatal instability into law itself. If the law is not what is plainly written, but is whatever the president and his agents decide, what’s left of the law?
The problem is not just uncertain enforcement but the undermining of the very creation of new law. What’s the point of the whole legislative process — of crafting various provisions through give-and-take negotiation — if you cannot rely on the fixity of the final product, on the assurance that the provisions bargained for by both sides will be carried out?
Consider immigration reform, now in gestation. The essence of any deal would be legalization in return for strict border enforcement. If some such legislative compromise is struck, what confidence can anyone have in it — if the president can unilaterally alter whatever (enforcement) provisions he never liked in the first place?
Yet this president is not only untroubled by what he’s doing, but open and rather proud. As he tells cheering crowds on his never-ending campaign-style tours: I am going to do X — and I’m not going to wait for Congress.
That’s caudillo talk. That’s banana republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.
At stake is not some constitutional curlicue. At stake is whether the laws are the law. And whether presidents get to write their own.
Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act, he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.” He continued:
“In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law … it looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”
Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: Brevity. Because there is no such authority.
Obama’s explanation began with an irrelevancy: He consulted with businesses before disregarding his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That duty does not lapse when a president decides Washington’s “political environment” is not “normal.”
Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama’s expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.
The media will not examine Obama’s imperialist manner because they do not want to. They agree with it. The courts are literally unable to enforce their rulings contra this administration; Obama ignores them at will and without consequence. The Republicans are dominated by the Political Class and lack the numbers, influence, collective will and ideological conviction to rein in the administration even if they had the ability to do so, which they don’t.
…after Congress had unequivocally rejected another piece of immigration reform, the so-called DREAM Act, that the president had supported, he simply instituted it unilaterally, as though he had the authority to declare an amnesty himself. He then did away with criminal-background checks for those to be amnestied, also on his own authority.
This is a president who knows that he does not need to make anyone “happy,” that there in fact is no political base that must be appeased or pleased – where else will the base go? The president of the United States is now quite literally a dictate-er: he orders what he wishes and implements what he chooses.
According to an internal audit, the National Security Agency has violated privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of time each year. The Washington Post obtained the internal audit documents from NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
“Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.”
The documents also indicated that employees are instructed to tone down or “remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”
The Post was able to interview John Delong, NSA director of compliance for the article and they were initially informed “DeLong and members of the NSA communications staff said he could be quoted ‘by name and title’ on some of his answers after an unspecified internal review.” However, the WH subsequently changed their minds.
The White House gave the the Washington Post a statement – (basically a press release) to run in lieu of the interview. WaPo said no dice. (This time). Why would the White House even think such a thing would be kosher?
Vitter, Issa: Former EPA Administrator Jackson Violated Email Policy, Circumventing Transparency Laws
Emails show possible violation of federal transparency laws from Lisa Jackson, immediate past Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in a letter questioned former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson, on her private email accounts that were used to conduct official business during her tenure at the agency.
“As the EPA Administrator, we expect you would have knowledge of EPA’s policy that explicitly prohibits use of non-EPA.gov e-mail for business purposes.…We are concerned that your use of a non-official e-mail account was a deliberate attempt to circumvent federal transparency laws and Congressional oversight,” Vitter and Issa wrote. “The use of a non-official account raises concerns that during your tenure as EPA Administrator, you attempted to insulate communications with Taylor and possibly other e-mail correspondence from Congressional inquiries and Freedom of Information Act requests.”
Today’s letter requests “all emails sent or received from any private email account from January 23, 2009 through February 19, 2013 that refer or relate to [Ms. Jackson’s] responsibilities as an EPA official.” Text of the letter is below. Click here to see the PDF version.
EPA chief Gina McCarthy said Wednesday that the Obama administration is finished waiting for Congress to act on climate change and plans to bypass the legislative branch in developing a federal response.
“The failure to check applicants’ eligibility might be one of the reasons the Lifeline program has more than doubled in recent years—from $822 million in 2008 to over $2 billion in the latest annual report… [A recent] news article suggests serious flaws in this program. These public concerns must be addressed.”
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, sent a letter today to Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn regarding the Lifeline phone program, which provides discounted, subsidized cell phones to individuals who are supposed to be either living in poverty or relying on a means-tested federal benefit program. Lax oversight has resulted in those who are ineligible receiving multiple free phones through the program.
The full text of Sessions’ letter is below, and a PDF version may be found here:
A spinoff of the scandal-ridden community organizer group ACORN received more than $200,000 in federal housing grants despite a ban on money going to ACORN affiliates, watchdog organization Judicial Watch announced Thursday.
ACORN, which officially folded in 2009 after a string of scandals, rebranded into more than 100 spinoff groups, including Affordable Housing Centers of America — also now defunct — and Mission of Peace, an affordable housing nonprofit.
In February, the Department of Housing and Urban Development transferred $201,222.07 from AHCOA to Mission of Peace “specifically to pay for the activities of former AHCOA affiliates,” according to a memo obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request.
A Republican congressman is charging Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew with stonewalling him on questions pertaining to the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.
On June 7, New Jersey Republican Rep. Scott Garrett sent a letter to Lew inquiring when he first became aware of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, even if only in rumors, and if he was at any of the numerous meetings former IRS chief Douglas Shulman had at the White House when Lew served as chief of staff for President Obama in 2012.
“Two days after this attack we were in a briefing with Hillary Clinton and she screamed at a member of Congress who’d dare suggest that this was a terrorist attack,” Kinzinger told constituents in Rochelle, Ill., on Wednesday. ”Now we find out that while it was happening they knew it was a terrorist attack. These are answers, we are going to get to the bottom of this.”
Kinzinger went on to call the Obama administration’s handling of the terror attack “inexcusable” and “un-American.” No other members of Congress had confirmed the Illinois Republican’s claims as of Thursday evening; however, we will update this story if his charge is refuted or backed up.
A group dedicated to finding out the truth of what transpired at America’s consulate during the fatal Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack says concerned citizens should bombard their congressional members with requests to create a special committee — and videotape the lawmakers’ responses to post online as additional pressure.
Special Operations Speaks, a Washington, D.C.-based group, calls the approach a la “paparazzi,” and promises to give a lapel pin to anyone who submits a video of the exchange.
The group recommends those who want to see a special committee created in Congress to investigate the attack that left four Americans dead should attend this summer’s legislative town hall sessions in their respective districts and demand answer to this one question: “Will you sign the Stockman Discharge Petition to force a floor vote on House Resolution 36 to hold a Watergate-style select committee investigation?”
Rep. Steve Stockman on July 23 introduced his resolution to force a vote on the House floor for the creation of a special committee to investigate the events of Benghazi, Libya.
BELLEVUE, WA – -(Ammoland.com)- You heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Jay Carney said Obama will sign the UN Arms Trade Treaty “before the end of August…We believe it’s in the interest of the United States.”
This is very strategic timing considering Congress is on a 5 week vacation lasting thru the month of August!
These back door tactics are nothing new for the Obama Administration, which is why we are using tactics of our own to stop his anti-gun agenda. We have the home fax numbers of every Senator so while they are absent from the Capitol we can demand they must not ratify the UN Gun Treaty once Obama signs it.
We CAN stop this international treaty from reaching American soil by killing it the United States Senate. The U.S Senate must ratify an international treaty for it to be effective. They would need 67 votes to ratify the treaty. Reach every U.S. Senator at their home office; tell them you do not want this treaty in OUR United States!
Thanks to a South Carolina state bill that passed the house but failed in the Senate we learn of something very, very ugly coming packaged with Obamacare. As Ben Swann reports:
“Clearly, any family may be visited by federally paid agents for almost any reason.”
According to an Obamacare provision millions of Americans will be targeted.
The Health and Human Services’ website states that your family will be targeted if you fall under the “high-risk” categories below:
Families where mom is not yet 21. Families where someone is a tobacco user. Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities. Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.
There is no reference to Medicaid being the determinant for a family to be “eligible.”
It gets worse. The home visits won’t be just about Obamacare eligibility. It will be about killing off private life in every way, shape or form. Take homeschooling, for example.
Constitutional attorney and author Kent Masterson Brown states,
“This is not a “voluntary” program. The eligible entity receiving the grant for performing the home visits is to identify the individuals to be visited and intervene so as to meet the improvement benchmarks. A homeschooling family, for instance, may be subject to “intervention” in “school readiness” and “social-emotional developmental indicators.” A farm family may be subject to “intervention” in order to “prevent child injuries.” The sky is the limit.
At a forum hosted last month hosted by the Artists & Athletes Alliance in Los Angeles, Love jovially recalled the moment when Obama “finally found” his birth certificate.
The moderator chimed in mischievously: “It took a little too long, by the way.” Said Love in response, “Hey, when you come from . . . ” before catching his thought and cutting himself off.
Love then went on to explain the delay, saying that when “your parents don’t live together (and) you travel all over the world, documents get lost.” Although the Artists & Athletes Alliance has pulled the video, the highlights are available here.
This conversation presumes that the birth certificate was lost and then found, but that was never the issue during the protracted hunt for the elusive birth certificate. The issue, the media assured us, was that the president should not have had to bother himself with the demands of some fringe Obama-haters.
Here is how the Washington Post trumpeted the birth certificate’s release in April 2011, “After refusing for more than two years to indulge the most corrosive of conspiracy theories questioning his legitimacy, President Obama finally decided he’d had enough.”
According to the Post, Obama ordered White House counsel Robert Bauer to work with Hawaiian state authorities to produce a longer and more detailed version of the birth certificate than the one Obama floated during the 2008 campaign. After several days of “intense, secret maneuvering” Obama secured the long form certificate and appeared in the White House briefing room to herald its arrival.
pjtv.com AFTERBURNER w/ BILL WHITTLE: World Gone Mad:
President Obama took yet another vacation. This time, Obama used combat aircraft to fly his dog to his luxurious Martha’s Vineyard holiday rental, all while his government, including Attorney General Eric Holder, continues to flout the law. While Obama plays golf, the NSA continues to abuse power. Will Obama’s world gone mad collapse?
In an industry where telling the first 9/11 joke was a badge of honor, low level scabs who took the jokes that truly couldn’t be told had to be punished. Previous enemies of comedy had included fairway operators who hung photos of Obama at the Jersey Shore and a Greenwich Village bakery that was driven out of business for making offensive cookies.
There’s plenty of room for jokes about rape and the Holocaust, you can even toss in a few of the right racial slurs in your act, as long as you’re doing it in good ironic fun, but you can’t touch Obama. The calculated outrageousness conceals an inner repression. Behind all the shock value comedy are tame liberals who entertain their audiences with things that those liberal yuppies think will offend Middle America, but that they pride themselves on not being offended by. The truly offensive is out.
What can’t be seen on the stage of Saturday Night Live must go underground to the Missouri State Fair. In every totalitarian country, the jokes that can’t be told are told anyway in secret places, between friends and to rural and working class audiences. The Soviet anecdote was born out of such restrictions.
“Premier Andropov,” one anecdote went, “I heard you collect political anecdotes. How many do you have so far?”
“A whole Gulag,” was the answer. An eagle-eyed Daily Kossack with a camera has added one rodeo clown and one cowboy president to the Obama gulag.
I am Spartacus* because for all too long I stayed quiet. I stayed quiet because baby needed shoes (often literally) and I needed work in a biased field that would blacklist me as soon as they knew my true self.
I allowed my loyalties and beliefs to be assumed from external appearances and origins – I allowed them to believe I must be extreme left because I’m female, of Latin origin, and have somewhat more than a Master’s degree in Modern Languages and Literature. (I would go back for the doctorate, I would, but I’m not willing to stay quiet anymore.) Those years of festering silence weigh within me, and in the scales of eternal justice I’m afraid I’ll get counted with the enemies of Liberty, because I was quiet, I consented.
I am no longer quiet.
I am Spartacus writ small. I am Spartacus praying that I never need to stand physically facing the might of the largest power the world has ever known. I can tell who would lose. Because of that I am battling in the mind, to avoid the evil hour as long as I can yet. Maybe, if a miracle occurs, to avoid it altogether.
I’m fully aware that even in this battle of the mind the consequences can be death or worse. I’m fully aware that once you identify as an enemy of the utopia to come – or even if you just fall in a category they don’t like – there are a million ways for death to come: in the dark of night, with a bullet to the back of the head, like the Polish officers in the Katyn forest; in public trials like the people who thought “if only Stalin knew”; in the despair of an engineered famine like the victims of the holomodor. No, we haven’t got there yet, but there are ways for a living death too: anyone know where Nakoula B. Nakoula is? And we won’t talk of the unjustified hounding of the lady who runs True the Vote. There are ways to drive you to darkness and despair, even now. And if they can get away with it, it will only get worse.
I am Spartacus because they think a hellish mix of Brave New World and 1984 is a consummation devoutly to be hoped for.
Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment has a simple goal.. The removal of the corrupt and criminal President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama.
His actions go unimpeded, our pleas through petitions unanswered. Our calls and letters to Congress are left ignored and unopened.
Our only peaceful recourse is to take to the streets and overpasses of America and DEMAND that our nation be returned to We the People, and that Barack Hussein Obama be Impeached, removed from office, and held accountable for his actions while serving as President.
America is in its greatest time of peril in since the Founding Fathers bravely fought in the Revolutionary War. Lady Liberty is calling YOU to stand up, to speak out, to take to the streets and DEMAND that the corrupt tyrant be removed from the White House, and all of those who colluded with him in his crimes against the United States be held accountable to the full extent of the law, with the maximum sentences handed down upon them.
When you grow old, would you rather tell your grandchildren that you stood up for Freedom, or would you rather tell them you did nothing as America fell to the iron fisted grip of tyranny?
NOW is your chance to honor the sacrifices of the Founding Fathers, and do your part to preserve their dream of truth, justice and liberty for ALL!
One of the great political figures of our time passed away, this morning after suffering a stroke. Margaret Thatcher, dubbed “the Iron Lady” by the Soviet media for her personal and political toughness, was 87. Her spokesman, Lord Bell said, “a further statement will be made later.”
Baroness Thatcher, Britain’s first and only woman prime minister, had become increasingly frail and was suffering ill health in recent years.
She was admitted to hospital shortly before Christmas where she underwent an operation to remove a growth from her bladder but was allowed to return home before new year.
For many of us, Thatcher’s absence on the world stage has been felt for many years.
The Heritage Foundationproduced this video about Thatcher back in January, as a less flattering movie about her life was hitting the theaters.
Via Katie Pavlich,here video featuring one of Thatcher’s finest moments:
These brief exchanges took place during Margaret Thatcher’s last speech in the House of Commons on 22 November 1990: Margaret Thatcher on Socialism:
Via AoSHQ: Margaret Thatcher Arrives At Downing Street (1979):
Mrs Thatcher quotes St Francis of Assisi in her first speech as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Thatcher was the last of the dynamic trio who brought down the Iron Curtain, to die.
John O’Sullivan, author of The President, The Pope, and The Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World was interviewed by the Catholic Register in january of this year.
In Rome in December for the launch of the Italian version of his book, O’Sullivan, a former Downing Street adviser to Thatcher and currently executive editor of Radio Free Europe, explained how these three leaders accelerated the end of the Cold War, how Reagan was instrumental in bringing John Paul II and Thatcher together, and whether leaders of similar caliber exist in the world today.
You mention in your book that John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had interesting aspects in common: They changed the course of history, yet they were three “middle managers” no one imagined could reach the top. How much did your research reveal the role of Providence in what they achieved?
I try to explain in the book the great difficulties of discussing the role of Providence in history, because, of course, Providence works through natural and human agencies. So, in a sense, probably the best way to do it is to describe what happened as best we know how and let the reader draw the inferences from extraordinary coincidences and so on.
In fact, I quote John Paul II at one point: that in the workings of Providence there are no coincidences. It did strike me as fascinating that these three people emerged at a time of great peril for Western civilization, Christianity and other things. All of them had a struggle to get there; they had to struggle to make an impact; almost immediately they entered their high positions, and all of them became the victims of attempted assassinations. Those assassinations came very close to success — with the Pope, the bullet passed just a short distance from his heart; the same was true of Reagan and maybe Thatcher — had she remained in the bathroom for another five or six minutes, she would have been killed.
***
Some critics of your book argue that the economic situation of the Soviet Union was such that the U.S.S.R. was always going to collapse and that these three leaders were inconsequential to that happening. Do you agree with any of this argument?
No, and history is on my side here. The economy of the Soviet Union had been about to collapse really since 1917. There had never been a successful period of economics, and that’s because the system itself had been incapable of producing the goods. It was incapable of motivating people and incapable of giving them a decent standard of living, of encouraging their human qualities and so on. So I think it was always doomed.
How had it, therefore, survived and, apparently, in some cases, prospered? Well, the West came to its assistance time and time again, and it was doing so in the ’70s. So, although the Soviet Union was always potentially on the verge of collapse, it needed something external, and that something was provided by these three leaders. In different ways, they undermined the Soviet Union, and, of course, in the case of Reagan, he straightforwardly set out to bankrupt them.
For example, he kept a careful watch on the price of gold because he knew that was a useful source for them. His military buildup was designed to say to them: “If you do what you want, you can’t match what we can do.” And they reached that conclusion themselves.
Gorbachev complains to the Politburo soon after he becomes a major figure that Singapore exports more in value every year than the entire Soviet Union. Everyone knew the system was being pushed to the breaking point by Reagan in that way, by the Pope spiritually, and by Mrs. Thatcher in a very interesting way: She demonstrated the recuperative powers of a free society and a free economy. She took over an economy in very desperate circumstances, and, in a sense, by offering it the benefits of liberty, and I think a sensible monetary policy, she saw the British economy get up off its deathbed. By the time she left office, it was the fourth-largest economy in the world.
So, all these ways undermined the system. To sum up: It was a system that had lots of internal weaknesses, but it required the application of strong external pressures to exploit those external weaknesses to bring it down and to bring it down peacefully rather than violently.
WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) today released the following statement regarding the passing of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:
Today the world mourns the loss of an extraordinary leader, the great Margaret Thatcher.
Utterly fearless, she never once went wobbly. Rejecting the failures of socialism, she won the argument for liberty, and her name is synonymous with the policies that restored peace, prosperity, growth, and stability at a time when it seemed like the United Kingdom had none.
It was truly a Providential blessing that she served alongside President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II — together the three of them stood unshakable, defended humanity, and won the Cold War without firing a shot. Her magnificent intellect and unwavering work ethic helped her become Britain’s first and only female prime minister — an ascent that wasn’t a matter of breaking through the glass ceiling, but simply refusing to acknowledge its existence.
The world will forever be in her debt; Lady Thatcher was one of kind. Long live the memory of our dearly departed Iron Lady.
There is a void in today’s news cycle where his enthusiasm and resilience once lived. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and supporters as we honor the passion and conviction that followed him in his life and his career.
Nice Deb 