Milwaukee County Sheriff - "Simply Calling 911 & Waiting Is No Longer Your Best Option"

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. has released a public safety announcement calling on citizens in his community to be armed, trained and responsible for their own safety until police arrive. You can hear the 30 second ad here. The text:

I am Sheriff David Clarke and I want to talk to you about something personal - your safety. It's no longer a spectator sport. I need you in the game. But are you ready?

With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you could fight back.

But are you prepared? Consider taking a Certified Safety Course in the handling of fire arms so that you could defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family.

We're partners now. Can I count on you.

The Sheriff is pretty clearly getting in a dig at budget cuts to his department. Regardless, he could be manned at 100% and his advice would still be wholly valid. Just remember, it took police 20 minutes to make it to Sandy Hook after they were first called about a shooting. They got there in time to clean up after the massacre.

Police will always respond minutes or more after an incident has occurred. During those first critical minutes, the only thing protecting you and your family is you.

And that is Clarke's justification for the ad:

"People are responsible to play a role in their own safety, with the help of law enforcement," Clarke said. "I'm here to do my part, but we have fewer and fewer resources. We're not omnipresent, and we have to stop giving people that impression."

"After sitting down and thinking about this, I'm thinking `Hey, I've got an untapped reserve over here, and it's the public,"' Clarke said.

It's a bit sad that Clarke only came to these obvious conclusions after budget cuts, but better late than never. Not surprisingly, the Sheriff's ad has generated howls from the left, with the most pointed criticism coming from Milwaukee's Democrat Mayor, Tom Barrett. "Apparently Sheriff David Clarke is auditioning for the next Dirty Harry movie."

Obviously Barrett's a horse's ass, but his response is telling. Is there any doubt that virtually everyone on the left who thinks of armed private citizens thinks of Dirty Harry or something in a similar vein? The left hates what they can't control - and there is little more out of their control than an armed citizen.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 4 August 2008

I am making an effort to provide a short daily link to some of the blogs around the web that hold my interest. Some of the linkfests will be themed – the anglosphere, milbloggers, jihad, psych and crime, history and culture. The rest will be just a review of some good blogs that I unfortunately only get a chance to hit about once every ten days. So, at any rate, here is today’s general linkfest.
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Art: The Lady of Shalott, John Waterhouse, circa 1900

In the Mel Brooks movie, Blazing Saddles, there is a hilarious scene where the black Sheriff, played perfectly by Cleavon Little, draws in a couple of hooded clansmen by jumping from behind a rock and asking them "Where ‘de white women at?" Baseball Crank has a similarly themed – and satirical - post in his Racist Campaign Ad Watch.

At American Digest, it’s Obama Panties and the Adoration of the Magi.

Blonde Sagacity, who just runs a great blog up in Philly, is having a caption contest for the following photo:


My own caption – ". . . and I hope that I can count on both your votes in November."

Simply Jews responds with appropriate sarcasm to a question in the Guardian from a British Parlimentarian, to wit: "Are the Israelis who demand an attack on Iran, which - repulsive though its government undoubtedly is - has never invaded another country and possesses no nuclear weapons, the same Israelis who have launched successive invasions of Lebanon, with much slaughter and huge damage, and possess 200 nuclear warheads?

Dave Freddoso’s book, The Case Against Barack Obama, has just been released. More on it here.

At Betsy’s Page, a very good post on Obama and his "rather condescending attitude towards average Americans. They're always getting fooled by some nefarious "they" who causes them to do or think things against their best interests." And at Blue Crab Boulevard, its Obama’s ego out of control.

A brilliant post from Confederate Yankee commenting upon the Pelosi interview that I blogged on here: "But then, Pelosi isn't trying to save the planet, she's trying to drive up prices. She and other liberal democrats are hoping to force us to concede to their desire for funding more R&D into alternative energy sources that do not yet exist. In effect, she wants us to put a substantial amount of our eggs in a basket that hasn't been built yet, and starve for years to come while it is being constructed, and hope that it works. And they say Democrats don't support faith-based initiatives."

In a similar vein of religion and oil, the Glittering Eye speaks to Obama about the idiocy of tapping the strategic petroleum reserves, urging him to "avoid the snares of the Demon Rum, Demagoguery! Put down that bottle! Get thee behind me, Satan!"

Stop the ACLU blogs on Obama’s "tire gauge" energy policy: "Barry is suggesting that properly inflated tires will almost completely solve our automobile energy crisis. Now THAT is funny. The delusional "WTF are you talking about?" type. The kind of laugh you get when your bud knocks the cooler over into the pond, or barfs onto the floorboard of your classic Corvette."

Deleware Curmudgeon looks back to Nixon’s plan for energy independence and asks, what the hell happened?

At Discriminations, a jaundiced view of Obama as anything but a "post-racial" candidate.

Conservative Beach Girl makes the argument for an end to 44 years of reverse discrimination in affirmative action plans.

A real laugher at the Daily Kos – a video comparing Reagan to Obama, making the mindless argument that Reagan was an "inexperienced celebrity" who challenged a person – Jimmy Carter – with military experience. Just as a reminder, Reagan’s experience before becoming President was two terms as California governor and he had enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1937 but was prevented from overseas deployment in WWII because of his vision. That is a bit more experience than "The One."

At Vocal Minority, a post on how homelessness has declined under Bush and how the MSM is at pains to limit his credit.

Callimachus at Done With Mirrors runs a good post on the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. More on his passing from a personal acquaintance at the Brussels Journal. And Ron Coleman writes on how Solzhenitsyn impacted on him personally.

Colleen at Facing The Sharks waxes poetic on her pro se law suit.

At the Gay Patriot, Obama is living truth of Lincoln’s adage that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Some very sage thoughts on guns and self defense from Rough Diamond.

At Grandpa John’s, a review of a handful of Americans in the 1930’s "who understood the evils of American culture and capitalism to follow their ideals of hope and change by emigrating to the Soviet Union during the depression." There’s that hope and change theme again.

Dutch Concerns has the latest Pat Condell video – topic, Islam is not a victim.

At Pirates, Man Your Women, the candidate for change changes his mind yet again, this time on the separation between church and state.

If your tastes run to the Libertarian, the Whited Sepulchre a list up of the top Libertarian sites and blogs.

Red Alerts asks whether Britain can survive multiculturalism? I do believe that the answer is no, with the only question being whether Britain will put an end to the socialist madness or whether it will end Britain.

Robert at Seraphic Secret has some advice for would-be writers. But apparently, I had best reverse my plans to send him my screen play for collaboration.

I am amazed and utterly disgusted at the tolerance that the West shows for what is occurring in Gaza, particularly as to how the cult of death and hatred is being taught to children. It is fundamentally intolerable. Yet it passes by without condemnation. Soccer Dad has the story of Hamas summer camp.

One of the themes you will see discussed at my blog is the failure of our government to be forthcoming with our nation as to what exactly it is we are fighting in the "War On Terror." Faultline has their own take on that issue this week. I do not agree with the conclusion, because what we are at war with are some very specific strains of Islam, but the post itself is very thoughtful.

Political Insecurity has the latest video on the new First Lady of France. In support of international relations, I highly recommend it.

A sage question from Soob: Was George Orwell writing fiction or phrophecy?

At the American Jingoist, a very good post on the Axis of Idiots.

Villagers With Torches is one of the most intelligent blogs on the net. The most recent post looks at Pakistan’s snakepit of an intelligence service, the ISI, and our alternatives in dealing with Pakistan.

Woman Honor Thyself has a very good tribute to two of our fallen, Army Spec. Alex Jimenez and Pvt. Byron Fouty. Do visit this one.

The Common Room posts a list of books read in July along with short blurbs on each. It is an interesting mix.

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A Window Into The Inner Marx

Obama's paradigm is fundamentally marxian. He views economics along with the greater and more even distribution of social programs as being the solutions to the world's problems, even with radical Islamist organizations and nations. It is a fundamentally flawed and dangerous paradigm.






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When Obama made his off the record "guns and religion" are opiates of the masses remarks at a private meeting in San Francisco several weeks ago, he reasoned that if only there were more economic opportunities, people would not cling to their religious values or their constitutional rights. He repeated that thought a few days later in a debate. As it turns out, that is the basic paradigm through which he views the world - including apparently Iran and radical Islamists. It is truly a marxian world view - and because it is fundamentally flawed, it is a dangerous one indeed.

There are many aspects to Marx's philosophy, all of which in essence derive from or answer to the basic premises Marx states in the Communist Manifesto, that all religion is false, that Western civilization is oppressive, and that all events can be viewed through the paradigm of struggles between classes, the oppressed and the oppressor. Marx of course saw the resolution to societal ills within the strata of economics - i.e., the redistribution of wealth. It is a broken clock paradigm of history, society and economics. Its accurate enough to be right two times a day, yet too simplistic and narrow to be right during all of the rest of the time.

Obama's marxian view of how "rural" Americans view religion and their constitutional rights - that they will fade given enough economic opportunity - puts him out of touch with the typical American and suggests that he will not lead America in a direction that most would want to follow. But where Obama's views become dangerous are when applied to the outside world and particularly when applied to the enemies of America. For example, this from David Brooks writing in the NYT:

Hezbollah is one of the world’s most radical terrorist organizations. Over the last week or so, it has staged an armed assault on the democratic government of Lebanon.

Barack Obama issued a statement in response. He called on “all those who have influence with Hezbollah” to “press them to stand down.” Then he declared, “It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.”

That sentence has the whiff of what President Bush described yesterday as appeasement. Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform? Does he really believe that Hezbollah is a normal social welfare agency seeking more government services for its followers? Does Obama believe that even the most intractable enemies can be pacified with diplomacy? What “Lebanese consensus” can Hezbollah possibly be a part of?

If Obama believes all this, he’s not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He’s off in Noam Chomskyland.

That didn’t strike me as right, so I spoke with Obama Tuesday to ask him what he meant by all this.

Right off the bat he reaffirmed that Hezbollah is “not a legitimate political party.” Instead, “It’s a destabilizing organization by any common-sense standard. This wouldn’t happen without the support of Iran and Syria.”

I asked him what he meant with all this emphasis on electoral and patronage reform. He said the U.S. should help the Lebanese government deliver better services to the Shiites “to peel support away from Hezbollah” and encourage the local populace to “view them as an oppressive force.” The U.S. should “find a mechanism whereby the disaffected have an effective outlet for their grievances, which assures them they are getting social services.”

The U.S. needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.” He knows these movements aren’t going away anytime soon (“Those missiles aren’t going to dissolve”), but “if they decide to shift, we’re going to recognize that. That’s an evolution that should be recognized.”

This is very much a Marxian viewpoint, seeing economics at the heart of intractactable problems involving religion and political power that deal only tangentially, if at all, with economic problems. Indeed, your average terrorist is more likely to be educated and economically well off than poor and in need of social services. Look at what Hamas did when Israel turned over a series of green houses that could have been employed by Palestinians to produce a significant amount of agriculture. Rather then use them, the Palestinians destroyed them. Because Obama mispercieves the problem, the choices he will make cannot effect a solution and, indeed, may well worsen the problems. Further, one wonders just what Obama views as the "legitimate claims" of Hezbollah or Hamas? I cannot think of one, but then again, I do not view the world through a marxist paradigm.

To continue from the article:

“The debate we’re going to be having with John McCain is how do we understand the blend of military action to diplomatic action that we are going to undertake,” he said. “I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism. Those are the terms of debate that have led to blunder after blunder.” . . .

I asked him if negotiating with a theocratic/ideological power like Iran is different from negotiating with a nation that’s primarily pursuing material interests. He acknowledged that “If your opponents are looking for your destruction it’s hard to sit across the table from them,” but, he continued: “There are rarely purely ideological movements out there. We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms. We can strengthen those elements that are making practical calculations.” . . .

Obama is projecting his beliefs and his marxian paradigm onto Iran. Iran is a theocracy and at the heart of their medieval world view is complete rejection of American culture. There is a reason Khomeini named America the Great Satan. There is a reason, despite numerous overtures from America over the past three decades, Iran has repeatedly rejected any attempt to normalize relations with the U.S. And the EU3 has spent the last three years offering carrot after carrot to Iran in order to get them to stop their march towards a nuclear weapon, even as Obama voted against every bill that he thought might allow the President to threaten use of forces against Iran. There is nothing in the theocracy's history to suggest that they will respond to anything other than the threat or use of force. Yet those will not enter into Obama's utopian marxist paradigm.

Obama was a tabula rosa at the start of the campaign. Today, that slate has been filled in. Just about everything about Obama's history conflicts in utter discordance with the public persona he has painted in order to run for President. And it is fairly clear that Obama is a socialist who views the world through a marxist paradigm. That makes him a dangerous and delusional man indeed.

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