Recently in History Category

Is the UK on the verge of abandoning the EU? It's looking more like a more attractive option as the monetary/finance crisis deepens and threatens to pull the UK irrevocably into a bankrupt and less democratic European superstate.

What options does it have to preclude this out come? Only two variations on a theme, that being withdrawal from the EU. That leave them with two possible options once they've done so: Go it alone or seek alliance elsewhere. Going it alone may seem attractive at first, but it does leave them open the vagaries of the world market with no one else backstopping them. So perhaps they should seek an alliance elsewhere. But with whom?

Well, how about NAFTA? After all, the UK has far more in common with Canada and the US than they do with France, Germany, or Belgium.

Britain does have other choices. To find the country's new role, British leaders should look to North America.

Alone among EEC members, Britain narrowed some of its major trade networks when it joined. It also traded ordinary Britons' right to virtually bureaucracy-free movement, temporary or permanent, between the U.K. and British Commonwealth nations.

--snip--

While much trust was lost between Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth because of this move, strong personal, cultural and economic ties remain and could be revived. Ask the average Briton where he'd feel more at home, Paris or Toronto.

Canada and Australia have well-managed, vibrant economies. Both countries sit on huge deposits of natural resources of ever-increasing value. Britain's top-tier financial sector and still-excellent technical capabilities already play a role in Canada's economy. These ties could be much strengthened.

Britons also feel at home south of the Canadian border. Contrary to an oft-repeated myth, links between Britain and the United States are not reducible to the personal relationships between presidents and prime ministers. The U.S. and the U.K. have always been each other's primary financial partners. A few simple measures could substantially deepen this relationship, especially once Britain no longer needs to adhere to EU rules.

The only thing the UK has in common with the rest of Europe these days is proximity and a centuries long history of armed conflict with a number of countries there. Perhaps it's time for Britain to remember the rest of the Anglosphere and to consider re-aligning itself it with it. I have no doubt it would help both the UK and the other nations of the Anglosphere.

And the UK's trade with the rest of the EU? I have reason to believe that while there would be some fall off in trade, in the end it won't be all that much. And increased trade and relations with the rest of the Anglosphere would certainly help make up any shortfall from the rest of Europe.

Frankly I see little if any downside to the UK withdrawing from the EU and realigning itself with its former colonies and Commonwealth members.

I saw this the other day but waited until I had a chance to show it to a friend who, like the fellow in this video, grew up in the old Soviet Union. His opinion of the people advocating the elimination of capitalism and replacing it with socialism: "Useful idiots, just as Lenin and Stalin labeled them!"


As my friend pointed out, these people are insane. Because they have allowed themselves to be brainwashed about the so-called "evils of capitalism" and are no longer capable of thinking for themselves, they should be put away into an asylum. When I asked why he thought them insane, he said this:

You would agree that Albert Einstein was a brilliant man, yes? He said that insanity is doing the same thing again and again, hoping the results would be different this time. What these folks want has been proven not to work, time and time again. It has killed millions upon millions of people. Yet these crazy people want to do it again. See? Insanity!

What these folks don't realize is many of those socialist paradises only lasted as long as they did because of capitalism, not in spite of it. Without funds from the capitalist countries and the thriving underground capitalist economies operating in those socialist worker's paradises, they would have collapsed far sooner than they did. Why do they think China has abandoned socialist economics and embraced capitalism? It's simple: socialism doesn't work, and the Chinese knew it.

If these useful idiots want to try living in a socialist society, there are still enough around for them to go to to give it a try. I suggest Venezuela or Cuba, two bastions of socialist paradises.

Venezuela, a country with the wealth of abundant oil, has devolved into a poverty-stricken socialist dictatorship where infrastructure has broken down. The only ones benefiting from Chavez's socialist ideologies are his cronies. Everyone else there has suffered, seeing their livelihoods destroyed all in the name of socialism.

Cuba is an economic basket case and has been since Castro took over. It became even worse once the Soviet Union collapsed because there were no more socialist subsidies flowing from the always almost empty socialist coffers (usually filled by way of aid from capitalist countries).

Socialism is an ideology of envy and greed, as history has proven more than once. Many claim it is an egalitarian ideal, but the only thing shared equally in those egalitarian socialist societies is misery and terror. Some of the more radical socialists say that unless everyone can have X, Y, or Z, then no one should have X, Y, or Z. The problem with that is that it is an unrealistic vision because no one will ever have anything new, except misery and terror. (Actually, I must correct myself. Only the ruling elite will be able to have X, Y, and Z. Everyone else is screwed.)

If nothing else the Occupy Wall Street protests are showcasing the radical beliefs of these fringe lunatics and showing them to be the insane purveyors of unrealistic and totalitarian ideologies.

Over the years I wrote about George W. Bush that he wasn't to be taken lightly. His "aww, shucks" persona hid a sharp mind, constantly leading people to underestimate him.

As Walt Harrington mentions in his piece, Dubya and Me:

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me.

As I've written more than once that Dubya's like that good ol' boy who will invite you into his home for a couple of cold ones and some poker, and you'll leave some time later a little drunk and lot lighter in the wallet.

As time has gone by and Obama has been put his stamp on the presidency, George W. Bush's image has been rehabilitated. Those highway billboards picturing a smiling and waving Bush and the tag line "Miss me yet?" may have been a bit of satire, but somehow I think more than a few people, including some Democrats, do indeed miss him.

Though Harrison had known Bush for a number of years, he didn't really understand him until he had the opportunity to have dinner with him at the White House one evening, an informal meal with just Bush, Harrison, and Mark McKinnon, Bush's campaign media adviser. As Harrison described it:

I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn't answer.

"I've never known you to be speechless," she said, genuinely surprised.

I finally said, "It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets."

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find others have found themselves feeling exactly the same thing after spending time with Bush, even now, despite the fact that he's been out of office for over two-and-a-half years.

One of the things that surprised Harrison: Bush is a voracious reader. Most of what he read was historical non-fiction. As Harrison tells us, his understanding of history, particularly those parts made by his predecessors, helped him understand the broader context of what he had to deal with as President. It's a shame the present occupant of the White House lacks even a modicum of that understanding.

Is it any wonder George W. Bush is looking better every day as we look back upon his presidency?

(H/T Instapundit)

Like many of you, I've been watching some of the various TV shows commemorating That Awful Day. I've recorded more than a few, being unable to watch more than a couple of minutes before feeling the pain and the rage I felt back then.

As more than one person has told me it feels like it was only yesterday, not ten years ago. It was only yesterday America found itself at war with an intractable, brutal enemy that recognizes no innocents, sees murder as a way to some vaguely pornographic glory, and holds life cheap.

The words that follow I wrote a few years ago and they still are fitting, expressing what needs to be said about That Awful Day.

It's hard to believe it's been years.

It still hurts, that heartache that never really goes away.

Remembering That Awful Day still brings tears to my eyes.

So many gone.

So many died.

So many hearts broken.

So many families torn asunder.

So many heroes that never thought twice about their own safety working hard to save the lives of so many others.

Other heroes whose last words were "Let's roll."

Let us never forget that day of thunder, fire, smoke, heroic deeds, tearful goodbyes, and at the end, mournful silence.

Let us never forget.

Listening to the plans President Obama has made to address the jobs problem, it is no surprise to anyone that he really doesn't have a plan, or at least not a new one.

If his $878 billion stimulus program had been used to actually address a number of problems within the country, those primarily being our crumbling infrastructure, rather than using it for political patronage, we might not have as much of an economic problem as we presently face. But far too many of us knew very little of that money would be used to stimulate anything but the growth of the federal government.

Will Obama's September 8^th speech try to make a case for spending even more money we don't have to pay for more political patronage? If history is any indication, then the answer is likely yes.

What the president really needs to do (but won't) is to rein in his renegade agency heads (NLRB or EPA, anyone?) who are making sure it's damn difficult for anyone to create jobs...except for government jobs.

What the president needs to do is to get the government out of the way of free enterprise to let it do what it does best - create jobs.

What the president needs to do is fire all his czars and advisers because, quite frankly, they have no idea what they're doing. Most of them are academics with little, if any, real world experience doing things like running businesses or meeting payrolls or dealing with an ever increasing avalanche of government regulations and paperwork that does nothing but cost time and money to deal with yet add little of benefit to anyone except bureaucrats.

What the president needs to do is realize that one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, was right when he said to America "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem."

What the president needs to understand that no one in government, and I mean no one is either smart enough or wise enough to run the American peoples' lives. After all, everyone in government is having a hard enough time running their own lives, let alone those of 300,000,000 other people in this country. Every government that has tried to do so has ultimately failed, resulting in widespread misery. Quite often those governments end with fatal results for members of those governments.

What the president needs to understand that no one in government, and I mean no one, is either smart enough or wise enough to run the American economy. History is littered with plenty of examples to show this is true. Unfortunately the president and many in Congress have ignored this truth, figuring that this time they'll get it right. (They won't.)

All I expect from the president during his speech is more of the same old crap he's taken from the FDR, LBJ, and Karl Marx playbooks, just put in new wrappings and hyped by the Lame Stream Media.

In other words, "There's nothing to see here, folks. Move along!"

When I read this quote in an article about phone technology, television, and how much the Internet has changed everything, I realized I fell well within the age range of the fellow saying this:

"I'm so old, I can remember when phone calls came on wires and television came over the air."

And to add to that, phones had dials rather than buttons. (How many kids even know how to use a dial phone these days?)

It used to be pay phones were on just about every street corner, convenience store, restaurant, most gas stations, hospitals, and hotels. Now you see them rarely, if at all, and then mostly in films and television shows set in the 20^th century. The cell phone has supplanted them. (That's not necessarily progress when people are oblivious to the annoyance they create when they use their cell phones in inappropriate places, disturbing everyone else around them because they can not put them away and pay attention to their surroundings and the people they're with.)

Not that I am lamenting the fact that all these things have changed. I am not. Instead I am merely engaging in a bit of nostalgia, significant of nothing.

Sort of.

Gee, I wish I could be this eloquent!

Allen West's response to CAIR's demands that he cut all ties with such conservative "anti-Muslim" pundits like Pam Gellar was classic, right out of history. Too bad the Think Progress folks (or at least those commenting at their blog), did not understand either the reference or the meaning of his one-word response.

But then the Left's understanding (or even acknowledgment) of history has always been poor, and too much of what they do know is heavily revisionist, so the fact they couldn't figure out West's response wasn't all that surprising.

Reading the comments to Ann Althouse's post about this shows that more people support his response, particularly to the pro-Islamist group that has, on more than one occasion, given tacit support for Muslim charities in the US who have funneled their funds to Islamic terrorist groups.

Says one commenter at Althouse:

This is just another example of the political media game in which a simple declaration of a position is "bizarre". What is expected of the modern politician is an insidious hedging of opinion in a fog of sophistry. One of the ways in which the media thinks it protects Obama is in ignoring his simple declarations while celebrating his opaque meanderings. The latter, while useless in negotiation, leadership, or self-understanding, seem smart to the smart set.

Of course, as the commenters at the Think Progress make clear, those on the left are happy to express blunt opinions. West is a "Scumbag. Ignoramus. Idiot. Fool. Tool. Clown. Psucho. (sic) Nutjob. Whacko." But their mealy-mouthed leaders keep letting them down. How demoralizing!

And here's this West guy, and Perry, and Palin, and Bachmann, who keep saying blunt, disagreeable things.

Oh, the horror!

(H/T Instapundit)

The following is a post from sometime WP contributor Bill Johnson, followed by a bleg/ad/announcement for a benefit hosted by a local establishment on behalf of a local New Hampshire veteran's organization. Normally we here at WP don't post such things, but for this cause I am more than willing to make an exception.

***************************************

We live in a Republic.

Those that are educated in, or self-educated about what this Republic entails genuinely support it and those who genuinely serve its function.

When an American citizen swears the oath of loyalty to serve in the armed forces, there is most assuredly a pact between themselves and the government whose sole purpose is to Stand for the American people. Each agrees to take responsibility for the other in both the short and long term. At the same time and at every moment it should be understood that a government is made of people and it is inherently inferior to fulfill the exact fullness of the virtues to which it sets itself. Virtues that are goodly inspired will always be wanting of human ability to achieve them in their totality. We are imperfect when measured against ourselves, and we are far from perfect when measured against goodly, and yes, Godly virtues, particularly when tied to any bureaucracy. Holding each of these three separate ideas as their own truth, a person who does believe in them faces a challenge. We have spoke for a brief time, and though this language is "lofty", the nature and ramifications of all these thoughts, feelings, and internal forces lead an American of simple good conscience to think that perhaps those who go to the battlefield in our name are not singularly the responsibility of the government to help when help is needed. "Take care of those who take care of you."

The Thirsty Crows Pub is excited to host the Liberty House for a spaghetti benefit dinner. On Thursday July the 21st there will be an all you can eat spaghetti (and meatballs and meat sauce and garlic bread) dinner for $8.99, of which $5 for every plate goes toward the endeavors of Liberty House. Liberty House is a program dedicated to help homeless veterans of any age or war with temporary shelter and one on one personal aide. The Thirsty Crows encourages them to take any additional donations beyond our dinner proceeds. The benefit dinner runs from 5 pm to 8pm, those that have bought the special dinner previous to 8 pm can continue to receive more portions as long as The Thirsty Crows is open (within reason). The spaghetti benefit dinner is basically a portion of spaghetti and garlic bread either by itself or with marinara sauce, meatballs and sauce, meat marinara sauce, or both.

By way of Maggie's Farm comes this announcement that Katherine Hepburn's home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut is for sale. The asking price is $28 million.

I know the place as we used to drive near it on occasion on our way to or from Lenny and Joe's Fish Tale, one of our favorite restaurants on the Connecticut seacoast.

Normally I wouldn't even post anything about this as I have little real interest. But a recent viewing of The Aviator (the story of Howard Hughes) reminded me of something I had almost forgotten. (I cannot say for sure this actually happened, but it certainly made for interesting cinema.)

There was a scene that took place at the Hepburn house (and I believe it may have even been shot there, comparing scenes from the movie to photos seen in the listing), where Howard accompanied Katherine to dine with her family one summer weekend. During the meal Katherine's mother, a rather outspoken woman in her own right, blathered on about being socialists and that she didn't care who knew it, and anyone who disagreed would never step into her house.

Howard sat there quietly fuming until he couldn't stand it anymore. He replied to her, saying that she and her family could afford to be socialists because they had money, while the average working man could not. He basically lambasted her for her ignorance about how business and the economy actually worked, then got up from his seat and left.

Howard Hughes may have been eccentric, but he knew his stuff when it came to business, economics, and the working man. He also spoke a truth (or at least the Howard Hughes in the movie did).

Those with money can afford to be socialists. The rest of us can't.

Socialism rarely effects the limousine liberals. After all, they've already got theirs. Living with the effects of socialism is only for the little people. (That means you and me, folks.) It also means that it's the little people who, in the end, pay for it all, be it with confiscatory taxes, crappy social services, poor educational and health care systems, substandard housing, or dead end it's-for-the-public-good 'jobs' of the "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" variety.

If we need any more proof of the axiom "Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results this time", then here it is:

Democrats want to go back to the bad old days of dozens of income tax rates, with the highest being 49% (though some are suggesting 70%), figuring they'll collect billions more in tax revenues. However, history shows the won't collect all that much more and in fact will collect even less than they do now.

The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich." After all, he noted, "between the late 1940s and 1980 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent."

--snip--

All this nostalgia about the good old days of 70% tax rates makes it sound as though only the highest incomes would face higher tax rates. In reality, there were a dozen tax rates between 48% and 70% during the 1970s. Moreover--and this is what Mr. Reich and his friends always fail to mention--the individual income tax actually brought in less revenue when the highest tax rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest tax rate was 28%.

All this will do is narrow the tax base even farther than it already has been, placing an even greater burden on upper income Americans. The so-called Fairness in Taxation Act will be anything but. The Democrats seem to worry the rich aren't paying their "fair" share. Never mind that they already pay a very large majority of income taxes. Never mind that just under half of American wage earners already pay no income tax at all. How is that not fair? Oh, yeah, I forgot. To tax-and-spend Democrats, a fair share is always defined as "more than they pay now."

They've chosen to ignore the effects such tax rates will have on the economy, that being that it will kill off any recovery there may have been as investment capital flees the country, meaning businesses won't be able to expand and jobs these businesses might have been able to provide won't be created. All they have to do to see what the effects of a return to those draconian tax rates is look at what the US economy was like back in the 1970's.

For those of you who have forgotten (or weren't born yet), the economy sucked. Unemployment skyrocketed. Inflation reached staggering rates, as did interest rates. Now these know-nothings want to take our already shaky economy and create an even bigger recession when they kill off any incentive to invest, to expand, to do better. Haven't they learned that if you punish people for succeeding all they will get is failure and a shrinking economy, along with plummeting tax revenues? Obviously not.

Need another example? How about the UK during the same time? They greatly increased income taxes across the board, with the top tax rate reaching 98%. As soon as the government imposed those taxes, the British economy collapsed as wealth and investment capital fled for more friendly environments. It wasn't until the 80's when Maggie Thatcher became Prime Minister and drove Parliament to end such insanity that the British economy recovered.

Yet here we have another bunch of economic morons within Congress who want to do the same thing, figuring it will have little if any effect on the economy. They have chosen to ignore history, and are thereby doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately it will be We The People who will pay the price for such stupidity and arrogance.

From the rubble rises a new beginning.

The new Freedom Tower rises next to the 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan, at 58 stories and climbing. At 680 feet it's just a little over one-third its planned height of 1776 feet.

An average of one floor is being added every week and construction continues around the clock. While it will still be a few years before the building is complete, it already provides a view of the 9/11 Memorial, which is scheduled to open on September 11, 2011, exactly 10 years after The Terrible Day.

Bill Whittle addresses American Exceptionalism, something we know our present President doesn't like and has been working hard to destroy. But I think Obama will find that while he may dent it a bit, he doesn't have the wherewithal to overcome the sheer inertia of American Exceptionalism. American know-how and those providing it will always find a way around those in this country working hard to bring about its downfall.

One thing I found interesting: With only 5% of the world's population, American produces 24% of the world's GDP, which is 3 times more than China produces even though it has over 4 times as many people.

I could have gone with my traditional Thanksgiving Day post, a repost of one of Andrew Sullivan's Thanksgiving Day posts from long ago, but this year I felt I needed to take a different tack and remind you of the forgotten lesson of the first Thanksgiving.

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

Is this Thanksgiving Day message a politically motivated one? Of course it is. After all, the history of the first Thanksgiving gives us much to ponder about present day conditions and those wishing to repeat the failed social experiment tried by the first English settlers in New England.

One of the reasons the Pilgrims nearly starved to death was because unlike today, they had no one else's largess to 'appropriate' in order to survive. It wasn't like they had the means to take what Indians had from them. (Yes, I wrote 'Indians'. I refuse to use politically correct terms just to not offend those who would gladly be offended on behalf of the original indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.)

This experiment in socialism/communalism proved the innate falsehood of "From each according his ability, to each according his needs," as well as hard proof of the tragedy of the commons. The first illustrates the shortsightedness of Marx and his followers who, either by chance or choice, ignored the one thing that made Marx's theories totally unworkable - human nature. The second defines that shortsightedness. If nothing else, the Pilgrims were the first society to try living under what would later become part of Marx's theory. Because they were an insular society at the time (there were no real neighbors to go to for aid as there are today), the falsity of the theory was there for everyone who survived the famine to see.

But do the modern day socialists/communalists/communists take a lesson from that failure? Of course not. Over the past 100 years or so they have tried to run the experiment again and again, which always ends with the same tragic results, but at the cost of millions of lives. Members of our own government seem to think they can make it work when history proves otherwise. They have refused to learn from lesson of the first Thanksgiving. I have no doubt they will continue to ignore it.

Bill Whittle tackles yet another myth about the Tea party, specifically immigration and racism. As Bill tells us, far too many Tea party detractors have labeled us "stupid uneducated Neanderthals. We're white trash rednecks, knuckle-dragging proto-Nazis, KKK-loving violent extremists ready to execute anyone who won't bend their knee to the upcoming Christian theocracy...Oh, and we're domestic terrorists." We've also been accused of being anti-immigration. We're not. We're anti-illegal immigration. There's a big difference.

I'll let Bill explain it as he does so far better than I can.


I must admit I like his suggestion about going to Jessica Alba's or Lady Gaga's house and showing them up for the hypocrites they are.

Far too many people really have little understanding of the Second Amendment and why the Framers of the Constitution included it. And many of those same people have the mistaken belief that disarming a law abiding citizenry will somehow lead to less crime and violence despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

In the next is his series, Bill Whittle explains why 'they' are mistaken and why so many of the rest of us own and carry guns.


As the old saying goes when it comes to dealing with violent criminal miscreants, "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six."

John Derbyshire, reviewing a book (scroll down to Math Corner) written by a mathematician many decades ago, comes across this beautiful line about the outbreak of World War I:

All the sensible and enlightened people said one thing, and all the damned fools said the other; and the damned fools were right.

In this rather timely WSJ opinion piece, Peter Berkowitz delves into more reasons why liberals don't (or can't) understand the Tea party movement.

What's worse, they don't even understand the basis or the basics of our form of government, nor do they want to.

Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. Vast numbers of other highly educated people read and hear these dubious pronouncements, smile knowingly, and nod their heads in agreement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.

In their ignorance they see the bliss of a totalitarian state, where they make the decisions for the rest of us poor benighted souls incapable of understanding their superiority.

Yeah. Right.

Unfortunately it is these very same liberals who are the benighted souls incapable of understanding their inferiority to a incredibly large majority of Americans, a majority that understand what can make or break a business, who see the direct effects of poor government and ever more onerous taxes and regulations. In other words, they cannot understand why the Tea parties have been garnering so much support. It comes down a simple concept:

The Tea parties understand the inferiority of the liberal mind set and their inability to see that which is right in front of them - the country can't keep spending money it doesn't have on government programs that don't work run by people who are barely competent enough to run their own lives, let alone anyone else's.

It's easy for liberals to disparage Tea partiers as a resurrection of the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850's, but they have shown themselves to be the modern day Know-Nothings, particularly when it comes to the origin of the Tea party moniker.

That lack was shown quite publicly when the liberals tore into Tea party favorite Sarah Palin for her comment "Party like it's 1773."

When Sarah Palin told a Tea Party crowd last Monday that it wasn't time yet to "party like it's 1773," segments of the left such as Kos's founder Markos Moulitsas chortled at her supposed stupidity. Their kneejerk assumption was that Palin was so ignorant that she didn't even know the date of early events in the American Revolution. But since it was actually the Boston Tea Party (1773) to which she was referring, it was Sarah who had the last laugh.

Commenters and lefty bloggers galore echoed Markos Moulitsas's post. Of course if they'd spent about 30 seconds Googling "Tea Party" and "1773" they would have come across the Boston Tea Party - which took place on December 16, 1773 - they wouldn't have sounded like the smug idiots they proved themselves to be.

So who is it who's misinformed about the modern day Tea parties and spreading myths about its motivations, beliefs, and origins?

You only get one guess....

It's bad enough the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate are trying to make a bad situation worse with their poor handling (intentional or otherwise) of the economy. Now they want to bring back a horrible idea that helped turn a moderately severe recession into the Great Depression with their version of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

...[W]e're close to repeating the mother of all policy errors, the one made not in 1937 but in 1930--the one that started the Great Depression. We're on track to resurrect the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

--snip--

Last week the House passed the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act. It's an amendment that gives dangerous new protectionist powers to the notorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, the proximate cause of the global Great Depression, which after all these years is still on the books. Democrats--all but five of whom voted in favor of the bill last week--would do well to remember that in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran as a free-trader, pledging to lower Smoot-Hawley's tariff walls. The 99 Republicans who voted aye should know that Herbert Hoover's name lives in infamy for erecting them. Instead, Wednesday's vote was a bipartisan move to build those walls higher using currencies as the bricks and mortar.

The bill, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, would mandate that the Department of Commerce take a foreign country's currency interventions into account in determining whether its trading practices are unfair. In the case of China--the target at which this bill is aimed--Commerce would determine that the amount by which the yuan is allegedly undervalued.

When Smoot-Hawley took effect, world trade ground to a halt overnight. Between the tariffs the US now placed upon all kinds of foreign goods and the retaliatory tariffs placed on American goods shipped overseas, all goods became too expensive and the workers and consumers around the world paid the price as economies around the collapsed.

Now the idiots in Congress want to do it all over again! Have these morons learned nothing from history? Wait, of course they haven't. In fact, they're recycling ideas from the FDR era and doing it just as poorly as it was done back then, not bothering to even understand why they were a bad idea than and are an even worse idea now.

If the aim of the Democrats is to devastate the American economy and the world economy, then they're on the right track with this really really dangerous bill.

They are doing just what I expected them to do. I warned you folks about it starting back in January 2009, again in April 2009, then again in September 2009, and once more in June of this year.

It seems they are bound and determined to take us back to the bad old days of the 1930's in America.

This day always seems to sneak up on me. I don't know if it's a conscious decision of mine or whether I'm just too busy living life. But every year over the previous eight years the eleventh day of the ninth month arrives and almost takes me unaware.

That Awful Day was nine years ago today.

Many of our children aren't old enough to know about or remember what happened. In their lives the World Trade Center towers never existed. There never was a scorched and burning scar on the side of the Pentagon. There never was that deep hole hammered into the ground by Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

For some it's just another day that also happens to be the anniversary of the attacks, something that happened long ago. But to me and many others, it was just yesterday. The sights and sounds are as fresh as if That Awful Day were happening right now.

It. Still. Hurts.

And we are the lucky ones.

Almost 3000 people died on That Awful Day. For some, the end came quickly. For others, they knew they were doomed and that there was no hope of being saved. It was only a matter of time before their time on Earth would end. And as they waited they called family and friends, giving them their last words of love, hope, and prayer.

Some waited in the growing smoke and flames until they could stand it no more and launched themselves into eternity and plummeted along the walls of steel, glass, and concrete to a certain but quick end. Others had no choice but to wait until their world collapsed around them, making them part of all that which once was the substance of the towers.

When the echoes of the rumbling and thunder of That Awful Day faded away, the dust settled, and the smoke drifted away, the world gasped at what had been wrought.

From the skies came death and then from the skies came...silence.

Slowly the skies emptied and then were empty. No contrails could be seen. No distant rumble or drone of flying aircraft could be heard. Nothing made by man moved in the air. All was still, as if to move would somehow deepen the grief and shatter our tenuous control over our emotions.

All over the world, American flags flew where perhaps they had been rarely seen before. And in a place that had helped give birth to America, red coated soldiers stopped in the midst of performing their duties, raised their instruments, and played the Star Spangled Banner. The crowds surrounding Buckingham Palace were stunned, for such a thing had never been done before. The Americans in the crowd sang the anthem as it played, even as tears filled their eyes and blurred their vision.

And we grieved.

Some of us still do.