With as many as 1000 active cases, Fox News has learned at least 48 ISIS suspects are considered so high risk that the FBI is using its elite tracking squads known as the mobile surveillance teams or MST to track them domestically.
“There is a very significant number of people that are on suspicious watch lists, under surveillance,” Republican Senator Dan Coats said.
Coats, who sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence, would not comment on specifics, but said the around the clock surveillance is a major commitment for the bureau. “The FBI together with law enforcement agencies across the country are engaged in this. It takes enormous amount of manpower to do this on a 24-7 basis. It takes enormous amount of money to do this,” Coats explained.
These elite FBI teams are reserved for espionage, mob violence and high priority terrorism cases, like a joint terrorism task force case last June, where a 26 year old suspect Usaama Rahim, was killed outside a Massachusetts CVS. When a police officer and FBI agent tried to question him, the Boston Police Commissioner said Rahim threatened them with a knife, and was shot dead.
With at least a dozen agents assigned to each case, providing 24/7 coverage, this high level of surveillance reflects the severe risk associated with suspects most likely to attempt copycat attacks after Paris. (Read more from “FBI Using Elite Surveillance Teams to Track at Least 48 High Risk ISIS Suspects” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-27 02:29:482016-04-11 10:55:43FBI Using Elite Surveillance Teams to Track at Least 48 High Risk ISIS Suspects
Our two greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, respectively thought Thanksgiving sufficiently important to initiate its national celebration and to later revive this tradition.
Our accepted convention is that Thanksgiving is about family togetherness and feasting. Surely this is part of it—but perhaps a more refined notion of what this nearly ancient holiday should mean for us today is helpful.
National days of reflection are required to unify the American public in common sentiment. Washington had this in mind in issuing his rightly famous Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1789.
First begun as a harvest holiday, Thanksgiving predates the founding of our republic. But in this first proclamation of the first year of his presidency, Washington gave a political direction to the holiday. As he said elsewhere, he wanted, through his example, “to establish a national character of our own.”
In doing his part to establish our national character, Washington was aware that we are a people capable of courage and assertion, able to win independence. He was likewise aware of our ability to choose, through representatives, a new constitutional order.
But this holiday is of a different character, as it calls us to develop a capacity for gratitude. The American public ought to be grateful not merely, however, for the immediate circumstance of their lives, but also for the greater blessings of liberty bestowed upon their nation. Our gratitude is directed toward a nonsectarian god—like the god of the Declaration of Independence—which all citizens can worship.
Importantly, gratitude also means acknowledgement of our frailty and the imperfection of our understanding; gratitude implores us to deepen our self-knowledge. Thanksgiving is, therefore, a holiday against self-satisfaction and pride.
At the end of the Proclamation, Washington implores Americans toward modesty regarding our own powers, reminding citizens that we live in an order that may be mysterious insofar as God possesses superior knowledge of what is “best.”
But are all peoples capable of gratitude? In the present time it has become fashionable to espouse if not open atheism, then at least antagonism toward religion. These opinions come forth in various, sometimes obfuscated, forms.
Part of the left’s recent fanaticism originates from the fact that progressivism’s quasi-religion lacks any understanding of gratitude and humility. Progressivism precludes belief in these since progress as an alleged cosmic force is neither merciful nor beneficent, but is merely abstract and all-powerful. As such, it does not encourage its believers toward either humility or gratitude.
Neither does belief in the abstract and inhuman forces of progress require humility on account of human frailty and ignorance. Rather, progress, claiming perfect knowledge of the laws of the universe, leads to fanaticism.
Is the individual, modeled on these assumptions, of the kind required for self-government? Rather, does not self-government require generosity between citizens, which can be the product only of a common recognition of an America inhabited by one people, united in a common cause, with common beliefs, grateful for what has come before us?
What happens to a people when they lose the ability for gratitude? Insolence and impudence rule, while the various factions devour each other, competing for the national stage. Alternatively, one might inquire whether a people is up to the task of ruling itself once gratitude is lost, since then it loses its ideals and the justification for its self-government.
Our nation has produced hitherto-thought impossible prosperity on the broadest scale. “The civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed” has endured as an ideal for many generations. Indeed, many remarkable individuals have fought to secure these blessings for our benefit.
On Thanksgiving this year, perhaps raising our purview above the pleasures of family togetherness, we might think about our nation, the good fortune we have to be its citizens, and the task ahead in preserving it. (For more from the author of “Why George Washington Thought the Practice of Gratitude Was Essential for the American Character” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-27 02:28:382016-04-11 10:55:43Why George Washington Thought the Practice of Gratitude Was Essential for the American Character
The Republican National Committee keeps building its cash advantage over its Democratic rivals, strengthening the party’s position going into the election year – with the latest monthly reports showing the DNC with a major debt, while the RNC has accrued a $20M war chest.
The Republicans announced last week that they had raised $8.7 million in October, which they say broke a record for presidential off-year fundraising record.
“With just under a year until Election Day 2016 we’re seeing great enthusiasm for the GOP,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a press release.
Figures show the Republicans now have over $20 million cash on hand, with only $1.8 million in debts owed. The RNC has raised a total of $89.3 million to date in the current election cycle.
The figures stand in stark contrast to the DNC, that has only $4.7 million cash in hand, with $6.9 million in debts owed, putting the DNC in the red, according to FEC figures. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Democrats have so far raised $53.2 million this election cycle, significantly less than their Republican counterparts. (Read more from “DNC Deep in Debt as RNC Builds up $20 Million War Chest” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-27 02:28:052016-04-11 10:55:43DNC Deep in Debt as RNC Builds up $20 Million War Chest
Police were questioning a “flushed” and “out of breath” man who had answered the door to a flat in Wollstonecraft, a small harborside suburb of Sydney, Australia.
The booming sounds of a man shouting “I’m going to kill you” and a “woman screaming hysterically” had earlier echoed through the apartment block, sometime before 2.00am, Saturday November 21. The commotion disturbed neighbors, who were quick to alert the local police force.
The officers then told the man that neighbors had heard death threats, screams and the crash of furniture being flung around the apartment.
“It was a [really big] spider,” the man tentatively explained . . .
A new theory had emerged — the man was indeed alone in the apartment, he was responsible for both the “womanly” screams and the threats to kill. They were not aimed at a woman, but an eight-legged arachnid. (Read more from “‘Really Big’ Spider Causes Freakout” HERE)
Today I give thanks for my family, my friends, my colleagues and our great country, especially those who serve in our military, intelligence, law enforcement and first responder communities to protect us. I give thanks that I was fortunate enough to be born in this wonderful nation, the most magnificent society on the face of the Earth.
Today I also give thanks to the Republican Party, its leaders, and its media. I give thanks to the party’s agenda — in the wake of the Mississippi Senate primary and numerous derogatory remarks — as it made clear it sought to wage war against us. It is a fact that the Republican establishment seeks to expel conservatives from the party.
Did you drop your Republican registration to express your disgust? Awesome — you did exactly what the establishment wanted, so you couldn’t vote for an insurgent candidate like Donald Trump in your state primary.
Are you a ‘Cruz Birther’? Super, you’re burning calories on an issue that no legal expert — on the left or the right — believes has any validity.
Do you think a President Rubio would lift a finger to seal the border? Pretty cool; but may I suggest that you lay off the psychedelic mushrooms?
Do you believe a President Fiorina, Christie, Kasich or Paul would be any different than Jeb! when it comes to illegal immigration or reducing the size of government? Excellent: I have some land in Whitewater, Arkansas I’d like to sell you — it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
My friends, there are only three candidates left in the race who operate outside of the GOP establishment: they are Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump.
It’s important to understand one, simple fact: should one of these three outsiders become President, they will also become the de facto head of the Republican Party.
That’s right: in one fell swoop, an anti-establishment candidate could take over and control the GOP leadership structure, by dint of the bully pulpit and a massive fundraising capability.
As the leader of the party, an outsider President could eviscerate the leadership structure and reorganize the entire, defective mess that is the GOP establishment.
That is what they fear most — losing their cushy jobs and consultancies and actually having to work for a living. Oh, the humanity!
That’s why I’m staying a registered Republican and supporting Cruz, Trump or Carson — who ever I deem most likely to win at the time.
It’s not just to save the Republic from the fiscal and national security timebombs that Obama has bequeathed to us. It’s also to shred the entire GOP establishment and lay the foundation for a new Republican Party. A conservative Republican Party that can restore the rule of law, honor the Constitution, and begin flaying the lard off the federal leviathan.
I give thanks to the Republican establishment for declaring war on us. It makes our mission all the more clear; they must be removed from the halls of power.
President Carson, President Cruz, or President Trump could make that appealing vision a reality.
Make sure your Republican registration is up-to-date, so you can support an insurgent candidate. It’s the only way to stop these corrupt and feckless boobs who today falsely claim the mantle of “Republicans”.
All the best to you and yours on this wonderful holiday. Thank you for patronizing my humble journal and may this season be a blessed one for all of us. (For more from the author of “Giving Thanks for the Republican Establishment” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-26 15:56:592016-04-11 10:55:44Giving Thanks for the Republican Establishment
There was a time when Thanksgiving was about more than human stampedes in pursuit of cheap electronics.
There was even a time when it was about more than football and turkey.
Now, more than ever before, we are in need of a great awakening to bring us back to the roots of Thanksgiving and what it represented to the civil society.
At its core, Thanksgiving has always embodied faith, family, and country.
Long before Thanksgiving became associated with one particular event in history to be celebrated at the end of November, it was more of a concept – a call to fasting and prayer to beseech the Lord to continue protecting us, our families, and our nation from all calamities and to shower us with his blessings. Individual colonies and states observed floating days of thanksgiving, prayer and fasting for many years before it became an official national holiday.
THE FOUNDATION OF THANKSGIVING
The first national thanksgiving proclamation was declared by the Continental Congress in 1777 and drafted by Samuel Adams. On December 17, 1777, the colonists marked a day of thanksgiving “to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of.” They recognized God’s providence as the guiding force in establishing their independence and securing their unalienable rights. They further prayed that God may nurture the “Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety.”
On November 26, 1789, the nation marked its first Thanksgiving under the new Constitution following a proclamation issued by George Washington seven weeks earlier. Washington called for a day of public thanksgiving and prayer that, among other things, would beseech God “to pardon our national and other transgressions” and “to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue.”
Throughout the early years of our country, various presidents established public days of prayer, thanksgiving, and fasting on random days throughout the year. With the breakout of the “Quasi War” with France in 1798, John Adams called for a national day of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” Adams wrote in his proclamation that a “national acknowledgement” of God’s providence was not only an “indispensable duty” of the nation, “but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed.”
The following year, on April 25, Adams called for another “thanksgiving.” What did John Adams have in mind for such a day? “[T]hat the citizens on that day abstain as far as may be from their secular occupations, devote the time to the sacred duties of religion in public and in private; that they call to mind our numerous offenses against the Most High God, confess them before Him with the sincerest penitence.”
Indeed, the concept of Thanksgiving was always rooted in the notion that, as a nation, our entire prosperity, security, and liberty is completely dependent upon God’s providence. It also reflected the character of a nation that, far from banishing God from the public square, believed public service of God, and even the promotion of religious values thereof, so long as it was not compelled by the force of law, was indispensable to the survival of the nation.
It wasn’t until 1863 that Thanksgiving became a national holiday tied specifically to the end of November. At the persistent lobbying of Sarah Josepha Hale, “The Godmother of Thanksgiving,” President Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation on October 3, 1863 establishing the last Thursday in November as the fixed national date for thanksgiving. Hale had long advocated a national thanksgiving out of a sense of patriotism, religious observance, and appreciation of American history – but also for the purpose of unity and family time. Lincoln noted in the proclamation the purpose of a single day reflecting “one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.”
The connection between a national day of thanksgiving and the original thanksgiving of the pilgrims was popularized by Hale in the mid-19th century. She spoke of a fixed date at the end of November because, among other reasons, “harvests of all kinds are gathered in” and the blessings of God are most evident.
Sadly, as this nation became less attuned to the agriculture seasons and annual harvests, Thanksgiving had already become increasingly less focused on the original intent of the holiday, even before the modern era of pagan hedonism and Black Friday. Calvin Coolidge observed the changes in technology (1923 proclamation) but noted that the purpose of thanksgiving was everlasting. “It is altogether a good custom,” he wrote in his 1924 proclamation. “It has the sanction of antiquity and the approbation of our religious convictions. In acknowledging the receipt of divine favor, in contemplating the blessings which have been bestowed upon us, we shall reveal the spiritual strength of the nation.”
However, as we step back and examine the character of this nation at present, it is truly breathtaking how we now celebrate Thanksgiving with a national character that is antithetical to the values championed by those who initiated such a day of prayer, fasting, and repentance.
MODERN-AMERICA: “THE ANTI-THANKSGIVING”
Thanksgiving 2015 is particularly marred by grim milestones we have incurred this year.
We now have a Supreme Court that can countermand the laws of the Supreme God our Founders beseeched on Thanksgiving, and redefine the institution of marriage – the core of civilization and family itself – from the federal bench.
We’ve gone from promoting the virtues of public and private devotion of religion to eradicating God from the public square entirely. Just this year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered a replica of the Ten Commandments to be removed from the State Capitol.
Whereas our Founders viewed the promotion of religious virtue as the indispensable means of securing liberty and prosperity, our existing state and federal governments are embarking on a pagan inquisition and harness secularism as a means of violating the most sacred liberties – freedom of conscience and private property.
This was the year when a Christian was thrown in jail for peacefully abstaining from signing a marriage license for something that has never been regarded as a marriage until this generation and is an anathema to the God we once beseeched on Thanksgiving.
This was a year when individuals were fined and had their livelihood confiscated for declining to violate their religious principles with their own private property. As we commemorate the pilgrims who became pioneers for a new country founded upon religious freedom, that same nation has been transformed, at an elite level, into a society that is intolerant of religion – except Sharia law, which ironically, encourages religious intolerance towards others.
It was the year where we have seen the breakdown of the family, of civil order, of borders, and the culmination of years’ worth of growing dependency on government, instead of God.
At its heart, the breakdown of family and faith has led to all the other social and fiscal problems we are witnessing. This is why Sarah Hale felt Thanksgiving should be on par with Independence Day in terms of a foundational national holiday.
The recognition of God’s providence, the importance of religious observance, and the vitality of family always stood as the pillars of this American civil society through which we’ve been able to secure the most liberty and prosperity of any other civilization over the past two centuries. The liberties secured by our Independence could only be preserved by a virtuous civil society rooted in faith and family, a society we once celebrated on Thanksgiving.
As Robert Winthrop, former Speaker of the House, warned in 1849, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”
Now that we have repudiated the Bible and defiled the Constitution, we have embraced the bayonet. We have embraced the bayonet of a large and overbearing government that is now the steward of liberty rather than its protector. In addition, we have embraced the bayonet of radical Islam. Europe’s impending conquest at the hands of the Islamists was rooted in its own rotting social and moral values that has weakened the core of its civilization and made it susceptible to outside invaders who are all too eager to fill that religious vacuum. America has held onto its core values for longer than Europe, but predictably, the rise of Islamic influence in America is occurring commensurately to the erosion of its own Judeo-Christian values.
The decline of faith and family in this country has led to the decline of American values and that lack of appreciation for our own history and virtue. The misunderstanding of what is so great about America, or indeed if it is great or exceptional at all, is what is driving the elites to fundamentally transform America through a pagan inquisition and through unbridled and imprudent immigration. The misunderstanding of what George Washington desired – a nation united behind a “common cause” encountering “common dangers, sufferings, and successes” – has been supplanted by the religion of multiculturalism.
As early as 1989, at the end of his farewell address, Ronald Reagan warned about the ill effects of the loss of American patriotism and appreciation for our heritage on the future generation – the one that is today leading our society. He noted that our history, such as the reason “why the pilgrims came here” had been distorted based on what is in fashion, not what’s important. Contrasting the growing movement of moral relativism, multiculturalism, and post-Americanism to the America he grew up in, Reagan observed the following:
Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.
What better time to return to our roots and recommit to transmitting our history and values to our children than on Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving was intended to serve as the epitome of the common cause are Founders longed for. The coalescences of faith, family, patriotism, and appreciation for America’s history and values – all in a universal day of prayer and thanksgiving – embodied the Founding vision, the vision that has been so corrupted in our generation.
In his 1986 thanksgiving proclamation, Reagan wrote that “no custom reveals our character as a Nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day,” as it is “Rooted deeply in our Judeo-Christian heritage” and “underscores our unshakeable belief in God as the foundation of our Nation.”
As constitutional conservatives, we must lead by example and live by our founding principles in a way that will be emulated by others. That is why it behooves all of us who still appreciate America’s founding, history, religious virtue, and political values to reflect upon this time and recommit to spreading these values far and wide in the hopes of restoring what Thanksgiving represents and reflects upon our nation.
It is a time for all of us to first look inward and return to God so that we will be worthy of his blessings and divine providence. Although our social, fiscal, and security ails appear insurmountable, nothing is insurmountable for God and it’s never too late to turn to him for his providence. That we have a supreme leader we can turn to in a time of great peril is, at its foundation, why we are so thankful and why our forefathers were as well.
“Give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.” [Psalms, 107:1]
(For more from the author of “The True Meaning of Thanksgiving” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-26 12:13:532016-04-11 10:55:44The True Meaning of Thanksgiving
Each year at this time, schoolchildren all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the Pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America, and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620–21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hard-working or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his History of Plymouth Plantation, the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years because they refused to work in the field. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened? After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that were most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of the famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609–10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty. Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614 Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”
Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863 Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus, the real meaning of Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them. (For more from the author of “The Great Thanksgiving Hoax” please click HERE)
Happens every Thanksgiving, doesn’t? Some bleeding heart liberal you’re “related to” gets on their moral high Crazy Horse and lectures about how horribly rotten the white man was to the Native Americans. Which is why this year we’re throwing in the tomahawk. Time to scalp the facts about the Indians. Feathers not dots.
It’s Thanksgiving! You know what that means. As you try and enjoy your downtime with your family, you’ll undoubtedly find a social justice warrior around your Thanksgiving table trying to force-feed you white guilt. Afterall, your ancestors commited genocide against the Indians. Sorry native Americans. Indigenous? Let’s just go with redskins.
Only one problem, most of it pure, unadulterated buffalo-feces.
Alright to preface this, yes, some of the settlers committed some heinous crimes that were inexcusable, and I’ve benefited from the privelege thereof, yada yada yada… but sooooome of the propoganda out there needs to be called out. Civilizations clash, that’s happened since the beginning of time. War sucks, but that doesn’t give teachers, leftists and social justice warriors the right to LIE about non-existent peaceful Native Americans who rode horses, never experienced war, painted with colors of the wind and were taken out by smallbox blankets. So before you dumbasses hang that dreamcatcher from your rearview mirror, hold your mouth because this tin can I’m about to kick just might hit you in the teeth. Let’s debunk some common PC thanksgiving myths.
MYTH: THE NATIVE AMERICANS WERE A PEACEFUL CULTURE TO WHOM THE CONCEPT OF WAR WAS FOREIGN
FACT: MANY WERE BRUTAL, CONQUERING ***HOLES
Native Americans warred with each other since, forever. Sometimes it was over hunting or farming grounds, sometimes revenge, sometimes to steal, sometimes to kill. I don’t say this to demonize them, they were no different than any other regressive, Neolithic cultures on other continents.
But the truth is that the only way settlers were able to conquer this land was through the help of Native Americans who teamed up with them to settle the score with the other, more assholish tribes. You think Cortes was able to conquer with only 500 Conquisadors. Course not, it took 50,000 ANGRY allied Native Americans who’d had it up to here with being enslaved and forced to carry gold for the other, Native Aztecs.
Some of of the Indian tribes were the most brutal in existence.
They practiced enslavement, rape, cannibalism, would sometimes target women and children, tribes like the Commanchees would butcher babies and roast people alive… and by the way, where do you think we LEARNED scalping?
MYTH: NATIVE AMERICANS WERE AN ADVANCED SOCIETY
TRUTH: NOT EVEN CLOSE
Smell that? It’s your sacred cow being torched. After I scalped her, of course. Unlike Rome, Greece, China, or pretty much any great empire which had already existed at that time, the Native Americans didn’t have advanced plumbing, transportation, mathematics or really… anything that led to the iphone on which you’re currently watching this. That whole beautiful “horseback Indian” culture you read about? It’s a lie because they hadn’t even domesticated horses. Not only that, but they didn’t even use the WHEEL. No really. 1400 AD… no wheel.
Even more reason that, when you’re that far behind, the clash of civilizations is going to be THAT much more drastic when the new wheel-using world catches up to you.
MYTH: THE SETTLERS DELIBERATELY INFECTED NATIVES WITH SMALLPOX BLANKETS TO WHIPE THEM OUT
TRUTH: ONLY IDIOTS COULD POSSIBLY BELIEVE THIS
Think about it. You really believe Europeans waged microbial, biological warfare… long before discovery, mass acceptance or even close to an understanding of advanced germ theory?
So it’s not true. You can look forever for historical accounts of mass smallpox blankets being pajamagrammed to the peaceful Indians, but you won’t find them. But there is SOME truth to the myth, which brings us to our final point.
MYTH: EUROPEANS COMMITTED MASS GENOCIDE. KILLING EVERY NATIVE AMERICAN FOR SPORT
TRUTH: NOT EVEN CLOSE
However, it is estimated that at high as 95% of pre-Columbian Native Americans were in fact killed off by disease, WHY? Because Europeans introduced new diseases to which the Native Americans hadn’t developed an immunity not only with THEMSELVES but now contact with animals like again HORSES which Native Americans hadn’t domesticated. Again, because they were such an archaic, unadvanced society.
Sure there were plenty of bloody, horrendous, unimaginable battles that occurred, and generally when it comes to neoloithic tribes and more advances settlers, the guys with the boom-boom sticks win. This isn’t exclusive to America or all that uncommon.
But Europeans were not hellbent on wiping out Native Americans, they were actually encouraged to bring the people into European culture and convert them to Christianity. Plus, inter-marrying was incredibly common. How else do you explain Johnny Depp, Angalina Jolie, Kid Cudi and even imaginary Elizabeth Warren claiming to be 1/16th Cherokee?
Killing people is bad. But so is milking, misleading and guilting all future generations for crimes they didn’t commit. Yep, Europeans conquered the Native Americans, created a Constitutional Republic, and advanced in mere centuries what Natives couldn’t do for thousands of years here on the plot of land that is America. So close this smartphone window, go enjoy your turkey and tell your social justice warrior cousin at the table to shut that mustached, single-origin-coffee drinking-hole. Or just… hand him a smallpox napkin.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-26 00:35:342016-04-11 10:55:44Thanksgiving TRUTH About ‘Native Americans’
Stephen Colbert is occasionally funny. Sometimes he stands up for the truth, as when he demolished professional ex-Catholic gasbag Garry Wills. Sometimes Colbert is simply clueless, as when the Catholic Sunday school teacher welcomed a Satanist band on his show. But last week Colbert disgraced himself by comparing millions of persecuted Middle Eastern Christians, refugees from the death-squads and rape gangs of ISIS, to the bigots and killers of the Ku Klux Klan. Until and unless he apologizes, Colbert should be boycotted by every person of good will.
Colbert was attacking political leaders such as Ted Cruz, who argue that Middle Eastern Christians deserve our special welcome as refugees, since they are the primary target of religious persecution in the world. More than a million Christians were driven out of Iraq on our watch, while our brave troops followed their orders to guard embassies and oil ministries. These Christians have no nearby refuge. No Christians in the region (not even in Lebanon) are safe from Islamic terror. In some Sunni Muslim countries, such as Iraq and Syria, organized killing squads blow up churches during Sunday services and capture Christian women to sell as sex slaves. In Sunni Muslim Turkey the state represses Christian speech and encourages Islamists, while in the Sunni Muslim “Vatican,” Saudi Arabia, Bibles are banned, and oppressed foreign workers cannot even worship in embassies.
In these large and prosperous countries, Sunni Islam isn’t persecuted; it’s mandatory. The Sunni Muslims displaced by Syria’s civil war — where Sunnis are fighting for power over the Alawites, Shiites, and Christians — could resettle safely in any of these lands. The Christians can’t. But the post-Christian countries in most of Europe are ignoring the plight of the Christians, while welcoming Sunni Muslims, who throng to join the same mosques that teach the same intolerant Sunni Islam that fuels the persecution of Christians, and every year generates hundreds of terrorist attacks, like the slaughter in Paris, and the next atrocity that police are scrambling to prevent even now in Belgium.
Ted Cruz speaks for millions of Americans who want to bring in the persecuted Christians instead of those who share the faith of their persecutors, Sunni Muslims whose own religious texts tell them to “kill the infidel.” You won’t read news reports of Assyrian or Chaldean Christians persecuting anyone. They have been disarmed, harmless minority groups under the rule of foreign regimes for the past 2,000 years. The number of Assyrian and Chaldean Christian terrorist incidents has been zero, every year. That means that unlike Sunni Muslims, they are no security threat to America. We could “welcome the stranger,” the truly needy and desperate victim of persecution, instead of those who pray alongside their persecutors.
For a fuller view of the case for resettling emigrants in the closest safe country to their homelands, see Iraqi exile Luma Simms’s luminous essay at The Federalist. Thanks to the presence in so many European cities of Muslim extremists, who view Middle Eastern Christians with special hatred, the first safe country for many of these real refugees might be the United States.
In the face of such perfectly logical, truly compassionate arguments, Colbert was clearly flummoxed. He wanted to chime in along with his fellow media one-percenters by mocking the “rubes” and “rednecks” who fear Islamic terrorism (Imagine that!) — who feel a connection to persecuted Christians that they don’t to intolerant Sunnis. But where could he reach for material? He couldn’t find Chaldean killing squads, or Assyrian suicide bombers. They don’t exist. So Colbert dug up a decades-old photo of Klansmen, who flouted their own Christian faith by persecuting their black fellow-Christians. You see, he said, Here are Christian terrorists! The unheated metal storage containers where Middle Eastern Christians are huddling for shelter from intolerant Sunni Muslims don’t have televisions, so the hunted Christian refugees didn’t get to see Colbert smirking as he compared them and their families to the Klan. Perhaps that’s a minor mercy.
When a Comedian Uses His Bully Pulpit for Bullying
When comedians succeed, they are told backstage, “You killed them.” People used to say “You slay me,” in a nod to the aggression built in to comedy’s DNA. We are rendered “helpless” with laughter, “reduced to tears,” sometimes even “convulsed.” By contrast, most jokes told from the pulpit fall completely flat because they aren’t edgy enough. The teller stirs up a tepid, impatient chuckle, because he fears to offend.
Aggression is morally neutral. A gun can be used to defend the helpless, provide the hungry with food, or slaughter the innocent. Saying that you are “against” either guns or aggression is like taking a stand against gravity or entropy. That sentiment belongs in a song which stoners sing each other in dorm rooms, but in a fallen world, nowhere else.
Comedy is a blade that cuts in all sorts of ways. At its noblest, comedy slices away the lies we tell ourselves, and the cover stories of bullies. Grim humor helped the people of the Eastern Bloc endure the daily absurdities of life under Communism. A good joke can tell a vital truth in a few words with lasting power. Here is a classic anti-Nazi quip (via Hannah Arendt) that Jews repeated in concentration camps:
An anti-Semite claimed that the Jews had caused the war;
The reply was: “Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists.”
“Why the bicyclists?” asks the one.
“Why the Jews?” asks the other.
But humor can also serve evil, when it’s employed against the weak. Our culture still remembers how minstrel shows reinforced the logic of segregation. That’s why people are rightly condemned for dressing up in blackface. Spike Lee’s great satire Bamboozled reminds us how damnably funny the humor of cruelty can be. We both grew up hearing Anne Frank and Helen Keller jokes — and no, we won’t repeat them here.
In a culture still fitfully haunted by the ghost of Christian sentiments, when someone points out that we are picking on the helpless, we might feel guilty. If others notice, we might be ashamed. If everyone notices, we will be shunned — which isn’t good for your career. That’s why we don’t hear racist jokes from (white) comedians anymore, thank heavens.
So if you are a comedian who for political reasons wants to suck up to the strong and pick on the weak, without earning opprobrium, what are your options? The best one is the old switcheroo — make the strong (on whom you are fawning) seem weak, and the weak (for whom you are gunning) seem strong. Then you can kiss up while kicking down and be applauded for your courage. Win-win!
Sunni Muslims in the Middle East are strong. Saudi Arabia spends hundreds of millions of dollars funding intolerant Sunni mosques in every corner of the world, while forbidding a single Christian chapel on its soil. Saudi cash sloshes into academic departments at schools such as Georgetown University, to ensure that their Middle Eastern studies programs are Islamically correct. Well-funded Islamic pressure groups, such as the terrorist-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) target any public figure who speaks truthfully about Islam. Academic and media elites regard concern over Muslim intolerance as contemptible, dismissing it as “Islamophobia,” a prejudice akin to the (career-ending) charge of racism. And criticizing Islam can also be deadly — as the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo found out, and the makers of South Park chose not to, fearfully canceling their episode that skewered Muhammad. A dozen Americans were nearly killed in Garland, Texas, at the “Draw Muhammad” attack. It takes no courage at all for a New York-based TV comedian to make nice to Islam, and Muslims.
Nor does it cost Stephen Colbert a thing to sneer at the most abandoned people on earth, Middle Eastern Christians — to compare these dark-skinned refugees living in tents, who rely on underfunded foreign charities for cooking oil and space heaters, to the ex-slaveowning aristocrats who led the Ku Klux Klan. Such quips might win Colbert an invitation to write for The New Yorker, might help him to snag a TED talk. But they’re not jokes he will want to hear repeated back on Judgment Day, when “killer” humor might take on a different meaning entirely. (For more from the author of “Stephen Colbert Sides With Bullies and Mocks the Weak, Syrian Christians Deserve Better” please click HERE)
The New York Times is angry that Donald Trump mocked one of its reporters who has a physical disability.
Trump waved his arms in an awkward manner to lampoon Serge Kovaleski at a rally in South Carolina Tuesday night. Kovaleski has a chronic condition called arthrogryposis, which limits the movement of his arms.
The New York Times was offended. “We find it’s outrageous that he would ridicule the appearance of one of our reporters,” a spokesperson told CNNMoney.
Trump’s performance was prompted by a story Kovaleski had written in 2001 that refuted claims that thousands of Muslims in Jersey City cheered the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Trump is insisting that he saw “thousands” of Muslims celebrating in Jersey City, N.J., as the twin towers burned fell on the other side of the Hudson River. (Read more from “Trump Mocks Reporter’s Disability” HERE)
