Bush on Terror and Neville Chamberlain

During his recent trip to Israel for the nation’s 60th anniversary, President Bush delivered what should be heralded as an incredible and insightful speech on, well, the nature of good vs. evil. As per its usual, the MSM seems to have missed the point, dismissing it as a cheap attack on Sen. Obama’s announcement that he would be willing to negotiate with extremists such as Iran. In so doing, they unfortunately have detracted attention from the actual speech, which pointed out the parallels between Israel’s situation and past fights against violent and evil men.

The President points out that we cannot give up on Israel, nor can we pretend that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the like are simply misunderstood. They are petty, evil men who kill innocents, and no amount of dialogue will change their nature as such. It would do us well to listen to the President in this, as some principles, no matter how long adhered to, never really get old.

Relevant part of the speech included below, just for giggles.

The fight against terror and extremism is the defining challenge of our time. It is more than a clash of arms. It is a clash of visions, a great ideological struggle. On the one side are those who defend the ideals of justice and dignity with the power of reason and truth. On the other side are those who pursue a narrow vision of cruelty and control by committing murder, inciting fear, and spreading lies.

This struggle is waged with the technology of the 21st century, but at its core it is an ancient battle between good and evil. The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men. No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers. In truth, the men who carry out these savage acts serve no higher goal than their own desire for power. They accept no God before themselves. And they reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis.

And that is why the founding charter of Hamas calls for the “elimination” of Israel. And that is why the followers of Hezbollah chant “Death to Israel, Death to America!” That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that “the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties.” And that is why the President of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it. Israel’s population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States of America stands with you.

The Pot calls out the Kettle…

The good “Reverend” just never ceases to amaze me with the hypocrisy that spews out of his mouth.

April 29, 2008 —

Barack Obama made a call for nonviolence in the aftermath of the Sean Bell verdict – infuriating the Rev. Al Sharpton, who accused the presidential candidate of trying to “grandstand in front of white people,” sources told The Post.

During what a source described as a “heated” phone call yesterday, Sharpton told Obama he was disappointed with the Illinois senator’s words on Friday, when Obama said “resorting to violence to express displeasure” was “completely unacceptable and counterproductive.”

“[Obama] issues this statement and not a single rock had been thrown,” said a source. “How does the candidate of change ask people to accept a verdict that is unjust?”

The source said Sharpton had hoped Obama would “side with the Bell family” and not use it as an “opportunity to grandstand in front of white people.”

An Obama spokesman described the conversation as a chance to “hear [Sharpton’s] views and to get his perspective.”

Grandstanding in front of white people? Really?!? So saying that violent protest is not in the best interest of either the law enforcement or the black community is not only siding against the family of Mr. Bell but is also a slap in the face of black Americans and selling out to white voters? As a “typical white person” I think I can answer emphatically that Baracks comments didnt appeal to me, but came across as standard political double speak. He managed to remain completely neutral in admonishing any side in this matter, while allowing that some form of protest could be acceptable as long as it was nonviolent. Well, kudos to him for not endorsing violence anyway. 

 Even more amazing is the fact that even if  the allegations were true, “Reverend” Al would accuse anyone of grandstanding. I guess that grandstanding only becomes grandstanding when its done for white people.  Just another day of life in the US of KKKA.

In response to Al Sharpton

Not shut it down… shut it up!

The amazing 4 page response to the “Reverend” Al Sharpton via the New York Post.

Most impressive!

April 26, 2008 — JUSTICE has been served in the Sean Bell case.

However horrific Bell’s slaying by police gunfire, Judge Arthur Cooperman yesterday resisted pressure to make the verdict an alleged test of civil rights – a test which, according to the city’s race agitators, had only one proper and predetermined outcome – and instead decided the case on the facts before him.

The New York Police Department has already begun scouring its training to try to drive down even further the chance that such a blood-curdling tragedy is repeated. Now it falls on Mayor Bloomberg to explain to the city how rare such tragedies are and to lay out the case that the NYPD is the greatest protector of civil rights in New York – given that the No. 1 civil right is freedom from fear and violence.

THE prosecution’s case began falling apart almost from the start. As Judge Cooperman noted, its witnesses contradicted their own prior statements and made claims on the stand that ballistics evidence clearly disproved.

In addition, many of the prosecutions’ witnesses corroborated the officers’ narrative of that night’s events:

* They confirmed that there’d been a tense exchange outside the Club Kalua (a crime-ridden strip joint in Queens) between an apparently armed man and Sean Bell and his companions (who had been celebrating Bell’s wedding the next day with a bachelor party at the club).

* Several acknowledged that Bell and his friends had referred to getting a gun.

* Some prosecution witnesses also verified what forensics evidence unambiguously demonstrated: that Sean Bell’s car had sped twice into Detective Gerald Isnora and an unmarked police van as Detective Isnora was trying to signal the car to stop.

Please read the full article in the link to the post above but the final page tells the real story that the race hustlers don’t want you to hear.

ANTI-COP agitators and politicians are fond of claiming that the police are a threat to black lives. In fact, no single private or public agency has saved more minority lives than the NYPD.

Had murders stayed at their early 1990s levels, before the NYPD got smart about policing, 13,000-plus more New Yorkers – the overwhelming majority of them black and Hispanic – would be dead today.

In fact, even as the NYPD brought down homicide a remarkable 70 percent, it was driving down its own use of force. In 1973, there were 1.82 fatal police shootings per 1,000 New York officers; in 2006, there were .36 such shootings per 1,000 officers. And the vast majority of those police shootings are against criminals who are threatening the officer with force.

The department is one of the more restrained big-city police outfits in the country. Its fatal shooting rate is a tenth those of the Phoenix and Philadelphia departments, for example. While every mistaken shooting of an unarmed innocent civilian is an unmitigated disaster, the number of such NYPD shootings over the last two decades can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

ABOVE all else, remember this: The risk posed to New Yorkers by the police is negligible compared to the risk posed by criminals – and NYPD New York officers work their hearts out every day to try to protect law-abiding residents from crime.

If Al Sharpton and Charles Barron really cared as much about law-abiding minorities as they say they do, they would join the police in that mission -they’d stigmatize criminals, not the cops. They’d protest outside the jail cells of rapists and robbers who terrorize the elderly and frail; they’d call on crime witnesses to cooperate with investigators.

The sad fact is, had Sean Bell been killed by a fellow club-goer, Al Sharpton and Charles Barron wouldn’t have taken the slightest interest in him. The world knows about him only because he was killed by police officers.

Need proof? A week after Bell’s death, another groom-to-be was fatally gunned down by some robbers in Brooklyn who had just pistol-whipped three other victims.

His name was Earl Williams – and no one ever protested his death. But New York’s police force worked to find his killer – and continue today to risk their own lives to safeguard ours.

Democrats delay Veterans Bill

According to Roll Call:

After days of castigating Republicans for allegedly stalling a veterans benefits package, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) himself decided to postpone the start of the debate — and, indeed the start of Wednesday’s session — until 5 p.m. in order to accommodate the schedules of his party’s presidential hopefuls, Democratic sources said.

Reid was joined by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) in criticizing Republicans for any potential delays.  And then who actually causes the delays?  Politics…you gotta be disgusted by it.

Charlton Hestons Legacy

Almost a week after the death of a truely great american, I ran across a speech that the late Mr. Heston gave at Harvard in 1999. I feel compelled to share it now.

The speech with partial audio can be found here.

“I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. “My Daddy,” he said, “pretends to be people.”

      There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo. If you want the ceiling re-painted I’ll do my best. There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I’m never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I’m the guy.

      As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty … your own freedom of thought … your own compass for what is right.

      Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, “We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

      Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that’s about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you … the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.

      Let me back up. About a year ago I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve … I serve as a moving target for the media who’ve called me everything from “ridiculous” and “duped” to a “brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.” I know … I’m pretty old…but I sure Lord ain’t senile.

      As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I’ve realized that firearms are not the only issues. No, it’s much, much bigger than that. I’ve come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our Land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.

      For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 — Long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else’s pride, they called me a racist. I’ve worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe. I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

      Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

      From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they’re essentially saying, “Chuck, how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not authorized for public consumption!”

      But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we’d still be King George’s boys-subjects bound to the British crown.

      In his book, “The End of Sanity,” Martin Gross writes that “Blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, and new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don’t like it.”

      Let me read a few examples.

      At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing to petting to final copulation … all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive.

      In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide Who had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs — the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not… need not … tell their patients that they are infected.

      At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team “The Tribe” because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs truly like the name.

      In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

      In New York City, kids who don’t speak a word of Spanish have been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R’s in Spanish solely because their last names sound Hispanic.

      At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students.

      Yeah, I know … that’s out of bounds now. Dr. King said “Negroes.” Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said, “black.” But it’s a no-no now. For me, hyphenated identities are awkward … particularly “Native-American.” I’m a Native American, for God’s sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife’s side, my grandson is a thirteenth generation native American … with a capital letter on “American.”

      Finally, just last month … David Howard, head of the Washington D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word “niggardly” while talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, “niggardly” means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly apologize and resign.

      As columnist Tony Snow wrote: “David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who (a) didn’t know the meaning of niggardly,’ (b) didn’t know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and (c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance.”

      What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let’s be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

      You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that … and abide it … you are – by your grandfathers’ standards – cowards.

      Here’s another example. Right now at more than one major university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their findings or they’ll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor’s pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers. I don’t care what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, “Don’t shoot me.”?

      If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don’t celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don’t let America’s universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.

      But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer’s been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.

      You simply … disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don’t. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr.King … who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

      Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that Disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in VietNam. In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom.

      But be careful … it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be humiliated … to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. I’m not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have taken their toll on me.

      Let me tell you a story. A few years back I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called “Cop Killer” celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police across the country were outraged. Rightfully so – at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was A cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black.

      I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of “Cop Killer” – every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

“I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF
 I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF
 I’M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF
 I’M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF…”

      It got worse, a lot worse. I won’t read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that.

      Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore.

“SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY … .”

      Well, I won’t do to you here what I did to them. Let’s just say I left the room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said “We can’t print that.” “I know,” I replied,”but Time/Warner’s selling it.” Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T’s contract. I’ll never be offered another film by Warners, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk.

      When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself … jam the switchboard of the district attorney’s office.

      When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80% of the students graduate with honors … choke the halls of the board of regents.

      When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl’s cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment … march on that school and block its doorways.

      When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you…petition them, oust them, banish them.

      When Time magazine’s cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, Crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month … boycott their magazine and the products it advertises.

      So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God’s grace, built this country.

      If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree. Thank you. “

You represented the best of what this nation is and we owe you a debt of gratitude for your courage.

Rest in peace sir.

Democrats and diplomacy

Some people never learn the lessons that have cost us so dearly. In yet another example of Democrats efforts for peace at any price, Jimmy Carter has decided to meet with Hamas in Syria.

NEW YORK CITY —  Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world.

The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Tuesday that Carter was planning a trip to Syria for mid-April, during which he would meet with Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, on April 18.

Deanna Congileo, Carter’s press secretary, confirmed in an e-mail to FOXNews.com that Carter will be in the Mideast in April. Pressed for comment, Congileo did not deny that the former president is considering visiting Meshal.

“President Carter is planning a trip to the Mideast next week; however, we are still confirming details of the trip and will issue a press release by the end of this week,” wrote Congileo. “I cannot confirm any specific meetings at this point in time.”

Meshal, who lives in Syria to avoid being arrested by the Israeli government, leads Hamas from his seat in Damascus, where he is a guest of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The State Department has designated Hamas a “foreign terrorist organization,” and some groups hold Meshal personally responsible for ordering the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack once said of the prospect of meeting with Meshal, “That’s not something that we could possibly conceive of.”

Some Carter critics called the latest reports typical of the ex-president.

“It’s about par for the course from President Carter, demonstrating a lack of judgment typical of what he does,” said John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. “To go to Syria to visit Hamas at this point is just an ill-timed, ill-advised decision on his part.”

“I’m not surprised that Carter would do this, as he has been supporting Palestinian extremism for many years,” said Steve Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a watchdog group.

Carter would be the first Western leader of his stature to meet with the Hamas chief. Though Meshal met with Clinton officials in the 1990s, the Bush administration has sought to isolate Hamas, enforcing rigid sanctions on its government in Gaza and refusing to meet with its leaders unless it recognizes Israel and abandons terror.

“I think this [visit] undermines the U.S. policy of isolating Hamas,” said Emerson. “I think this encourages Europeans to further dilute their sanctions against the Hamas government.”

“When you put the prestige of a former president of the United States in a meeting with one of its terrorist leaders, you’re giving it a legitimacy and currency it never had,” said Bolton.

But Ibrahim Hooper, communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a non-profit advocacy group, said Carter’s efforts demonstrate he’s a true partner in peace.

“I think if true, this report would indicate that President Carter is willing to travel any road in search of peace,” he said. “I think President Carter would only undertake such a mission if he believed that something could be achieved in terms of peace and reconciliation in the region.”

Hooper added that because of Carter’s reputation among Palestinians he might be able to bring some pressure to bear.

“Obviously President Carter has a great amount of credibility in the region because of his past efforts seeking peace internationally,” Hooper said.

The Al-Hayat report stated that Carter would be traveling in his capacity as head of the Carter Center, and not in his capacity as a former president.

“That’s a distinction that’s absurd,” said Emerson.

“Maybe he’ll give up his pension, but he’s always a former president,” said Bolton.

Unfortunately, this is just the latest in the trend of diplomatic efforts by Democratic party leaders.  Nancy Pelosi, Jim McDermont, both had smashingly successful talks in the middle east (yes thats called sarcasm). Even leading presidential candidate Barack H. Obama wants to start a new dialog with Iran. Maybe Jimmy is on to something here though. No matter that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, removal of infidels from muslim lands and even states that peace conferences are “ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Muslims as arbitraters.” Yes no matter how useless and wasteful negotiating with this group is Mr. Peanut may one day yet be able to say we again have “Peace for our time.”

“The civil rights struggle is over and won”

Kudos to Walter Williams for speaking the truth.

Obama’s success is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of Americans and how far we’ve come in resolving matters of race. I’m 72 years old. For almost all of my life, a black having a real chance at becoming the president of the United States was at best a pipe dream. Obama has convincingly won primaries in states with insignificant black populations. As such, it further confirms what I’ve often said: The civil rights struggle in America is over and it’s won. At one time black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.

VA charges $2.6 billion to credit cards

And yet another example of how the third party payment system is inefficient and fraudulent. When will we learn that the buyer-seller model is so much more desirable than the buyer-seller-receiver model? Today’s AP report on the VA is just the latest example of the failures of this bureaucratic model.

Veterans Affairs employees last year racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government credit-card bills at casino and luxury hotels, movie theaters and high-end retailers such as Sharper Image and Franklin Covey — and government auditors are investigating, citing past spending abuses.

All told, VA staff charged $2.6 billion to their government credit cards.

The Associated Press, through a Freedom of Information request, obtained the VA list of 3.1 million purchases made in the 2007 budget year. The list offers a detailed look into the everyday spending at the government’s second largest department.

And,

At least 13 purchases totaling $8,471 were charged at Sharper Image, a specialty store featuring high-tech electronics and gizmos such as robotic barking dogs. In addition, 19 charges worth $1,999.56 were made at Franklin Covey, which sells leather totes and planners geared toward corporate executives.

On at least six occasions, employees based at VA headquarters made credit card charges at Las Vegas casino hotels totaling $26,198.

 When the buyer gets no direct value from the purchase and an unlimited supply of funds are available by which to make the purchases, corruption and fraud are soon to follow.

The Clintons tax returns are in.

Here you go America!

text from the article at Politico.com

The Clinton’s joint returns show them earning more than $109 million over a period of seven years.

The biggest source of income is Bill Clinton’s speeches — source of $51 million. He made another $30 million from books; Hillary made about $10 million from her book.

Spokesman Jay Carson says, in a statement:

The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service. None of Hillary Clinton’s presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.

What the Clintons’ tax returns show is that they paid more than $33,000,000 in federal taxes and donated more than $10,000,000 to charities over the past eight years. They paid taxes and made charitable contributions at a higher rate than taxpayers at their income level.

You can download them, and see a summary, here. They include detailed returns for 2000 through 2006, and the request for an extension for last year.

If you’re poring over them, let me know what you find.

ALSO: The returns went early to Drudge — who has been extremely hard on Hillary for months — as good proof as any since the time of Machiavelli that it’s better to be feared than loved.

UPDATE: The interesting part, of course, is the roughly $18 million that the summary doesn’t account for.

18 million you say? You mean the Clinton’s have $18 million that no one know’s where it could have come from? Ok… Ill be that guy. Here’s an idea where all that money could have come from.  In all fairness though, we have never seen illegal funds finding its way into the Clintons pockets in the past or even recently. Thats right people… move along! Nothing to see here!

Hillary’s on Leno…

right now and her opening joke was about sniper fire. (Also, Leno just referred to the media as “us.”) Leno of course isn’t asking hard questions about the Bosnian sniper lie or other issues, and he probably shouldn’t, that’s not his job. But in his usual brilliance, Christopher Hitchens has asked some hard questions and deduced some worrisomely inexhorable conclusions. It’s worth a read.