AJ Kelshiker is petite, attractive and as tough as nails. She is a former Marine, lives in California and this elderly Englishman, thousands of miles away across the wide Atlantic, is proud to be her friend. I am not certain to what extent I would agree with her on the issue of DADT but I have an immense respect for the fire of her conviction which springs from her own personal experience. This is why I offered her this platform on my blog.

AJ is active in her own local GOP, she is a Tea Partier and has the same burning pride in the USA as I have in my own country. She is just one of many Americans I met in Chicago in November who see Sarah Palin as the embodiment of everything they value in America.  When I hear Palin’s detractors deride people like AJ as cultists and unthinking groupies I have to smile. AJ is fiercely independent with her own strongly held political and moral positions. She might not be particularly tall but I wouldn’t spill her beer.

When I read all the empty waffling spewed forth by lobbyists, strategists and consultants faithfully regurgitated by battalions of sycophantic, self serving media hacks I feel the weight of a black cloud of pessimism pressing down on my heart. But then I realise that there must be thousands of fine young people like AJ who are determined to fight back and reclaim the future for freedom and independence of spirit – and that makes me feel the glass is half full rather than half empty…..

I was a Marine for eight years. I spent those years fixing navigation systems, and teaching other Marines how to fix navigation systems. If we messed up, planes would crash, and people would die. When we joined the military, we took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, and we gave up many of our Constitutional rights.

Opinions that we might have expressed, might have also had the effect of landing us in the brig, facing court martial. In certain situations, we were not allowed to possess storage media, or other normally personal devices. We could not speak badly of our Commander-in-Chief. We could not do many things that the people we protected took for granted as rights. We protected the Constitution, but were not protected by many of the rights it provides to all other Americans.

I was honor graduate out of boot camp. Boot camp was HELL. After boot camp, I went to avionics/electronics school at the Naval Air Maintenance Detachment. It had a 50% fail rate. It was worse than boot camp. Marines use to break down in those conditions because they could not handle the pressure.

We got up at 5 am in the morning. My two Marine roomies and I helped each other cram as much stuff into our four closets as possible, so our room could pass inspection that day. Our shared room was about twelve-feet-by-eight-feet. We shared that room for almost two years.

We marched to school, and spent eight hours a day there studying electronics, and avionics. Our uniforms were inspected, and our boots had to shine. After school, about twelve of us used to go to Denny’s to study until about 11 pm. Studying in a crammed barracks was difficult. On weekends we sometimes had to stand duty for the whole weekend. If we didn’t have to stand duty, we would go out and get drunk.

Many of us had to endure this routine for two years. My friend who failed to make the naval school cut informed me that he was going to be sent to “grunt” land, tears streaming down his face. When we had time, we would PT (physically train) since we had to pass our Marine Corps running test.

There were a few gay girls who lived in the barracks. Some of them let everyone know they were gay, and some of them, like one of my best friends, didn’t let anyone except her dearest friends know. My friend did not act on her sexual impulses while in a military venue. The other gay girls had affairs with each other in the barracks, and “hit” on other girls in the barracks. This really freaked out some of the Marines. We were all very young, and inexperienced in these types of situations.

It was very disruptive, and very distracting. It hurt military cohesion. Since the girls who were trouble makers knew they could be thrown out of the military, they were somewhat careful not to over-step certain limits on their behavior.

If gay behavior in the military is permitted, there will not be any reprimand for this type of behavior. In situations of war, or other stressful situations our young men and women in uniform are subject to, this will only add more complexity to an already difficult situation.

When we join the military, we give up many of our Constitutional rights because we want to serve the nation. The mission of the military is to protect the nation and preserve the rule of Constitutional law. The mission of the military cannot be to provide fairness, or political correctness, in a civilian sense.

Many brave, gay personnel serve in the military without acting on their sexual impulses. They have no reason to broadcast that they are gay since they do not act on their impulses while being in a military venue. If gay behavior is legitimized in the military, the gay individuals who act on their impulses in military venues will not be reprimanded.

It does not imply a judgment of anyone’s personal orientations to see that we must not burden our young men and women in uniform with any more than what they already have to deal with.

British historian Niall Ferguson, in a forthcoming book, thinks he has cracked one of the most intriguing of cultural conundrums – how it was that the West became the springboard for the explosion of knowledge, ideas and sheer energy that defines the modern world.

It is a conundrum because up to about 1400 the axis of civilisation was to be found towards the East where the Arabs and Chinese were well ahead of Europeans in the fields of mathematics, science, engineering and philosophy.

Ferguson identifies six key factors which unleashed the western dynamic.

“1. Competition: a decentralisation of political and economic life, which created the launch pad for both nation states and capitalism.
2. Science: a way of understanding and ultimately changing the natural world, which gave the West (among other things) a major military advantage over the Rest.
3. Property rights: the rule of law as a means of protecting private owners and peacefully resolving disputes between them, which formed the basis for the most stable form of representative government.
4. Medicine: a branch of science that allowed a major improvement in health and life expectancy, beginning in Western societies, but also in their colonies.
5. The consumer society: a mode of material living in which the production and purchase of clothing and other consumer goods play a central economic role, and without which the Industrial Revolution would have been unsustainable.
6. The work ethic: a moral framework and mode of activity derivable from (among other sources) Protestant Christianity, which provides the glue for the dynamic and potentially unstable society created by apps 1 to 5”

Looking to the future he identifies these factors as absolutely essential if any other society is to catch up or overtake the West. It would be interesting to see how many boxes could be ticked for modern China and India.

Exit question: How many of the above factors have the forces of the Western Left sought to undermine over the last fifty years?

h/t Coffee House

In March 2009 the 2^nd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment (“The Poachers”) returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and marched through the streets of Luton, one of their main recruiting towns, with bayonets fixed and colours flying.

The streets were crowded with families, friends and citizens, all giving them a proud welcome – except for one tiny group of local muslims who taunted them with banners and jeers, calling the soldiers rapists, murderers and baby killers.

Police protected them from angry locals but five of the protesters were later convicted of abusive conduct and harassment.

The five appealed to the High Court, claiming that they were merely exercising their right of free speech under the European Convention of Human Rights and, frankly, many expected their appeal to be accepted given the current record of our courts and judges.

But we were in for a surprise – not only did the High Court dismiss their plea but Lord Justices Gross and Davis laid down an important marker for this and future cases

The focus on minority rights “should not result in overlooking the rights of the majority” when it comes to freedom of speech

Lord Justice Gross

The High Court said the freedom to protest was an important right and protesters should be protected but it was not an unqualified right and, when it turned abusive it was a clear threat to public order and was therefore a breach of the law

These were not just generalised statements of views, vigorously expressed, on the morality of the war but were personally abusive and potentially defamatory of those soldiers.

That the soldiers themselves were, as it happened, broad shouldered enough not to care one jot does not matter

Common sense on “human rights” from a High Court Judge – I’ll drink to that….

Look at this video of Afghanistan 50 years ago,…..the bright young women depicted there (if they still live) are now 70/75. How could they have known then that by the time they were old their country would have gone back 1000 years….

At last – are we about to wield an axe against the grasping tentacles of the  European Octopus?

MPs have overwhelmingly voted to keep the ban on prisoners voting, in defiance of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

The House of Commons’ decision is not binding, but could put pressure on ministers to go against the Strasbourg court’s decision.

Tory MP David Davis summed up the view of the vast majority of British people (outside the upper reaches of the BBC and, of course, the Guardian reading chattering classes of North London)

He told MPs that while prisoners had rights – such as the right to be fed and protected from harm – and they should not enjoy the same rights as “free British citizens”.

When receiving a jail sentence, they “sacrificed” rights such as their liberty and freedom of association and the right to vote should be removed as well.

“The concept is simple. If you break the law, you cannot make the law,” he told MPs.

Even in UK legal circles there is a growing resentment at what some see as a blatant attempt by the European Court of Human Rights which is based in Strasbourg. Many of the 47 judges are academics who have little or no experience actually running courts. They are also mainly grounded in a bureacratic and regulatory legal regime totally out of sync with the common sense approach of English Common Law.

A recent report summed up everything that is wrong with the ECHR

the UK has become “subservient” to the Strasbourg court………. it also ignores the traditional British freedom of the press.

The report claims the 47 Strasbourg judges have “virtually no democratic legitimacy” and are poorly qualified compared to Britain’s own senior judges.

Lord Hoffman, a former Law Lord, who wrote the foreword to the report, said Strasbourg has “taken upon itself an extraordinary power to micromanage the legal systems of the member states”.

In 1649 we cut off a king’s head as an assertion of the Sovereignty of Parliament – time, perhaps, to sharpen that axe again?

Polls are to the modern political media as chickens were to the Romans who would slice one up, throw it’s entrails onto the floor then predict the future from the colour of the liver and the crinkles on the heart.

Fortunately for our contemporary punditocracy opinion polls are far less messy – but are they more reliable?

Take Allahpundit at Hot Air – he caresses  the crosstabs and fondles the weightings then, just like a Roman seer, he divines the portents and pronounces the verdict of the gods. Other scribblers rush towards the forum and spread the word – X is down at 37%, Y is up at 41% while Z is only popular with bald headed bus drivers.

The strategists and consultants work their calculations in a frenzy and then panic or preen according to the positions of their clients in the pecking order. The political junkies give out whoops of joy or groans of discomfort as they see their favourites rise or fall..

And most of the population don’t even know it has happened because the nearest election is far in the future and they have other things on their mind

the vast majority of people polled will be those who pay attention to politics 2 weeks a year and all other information comes from soundbites and brief media reports, not by a regular interest in politics (non political junkies).

So it’s nice to know of someone else playing around with that idea in the matter of Sarah Palin. Her polling numbers are regularly produced as evidence of her unsuitability as a candidate for the Presidency in 2012. But Poll Insider is less interested in the entrails than the background of the chicken itself.

Sarah Palin is what I like to call “An Unknown Known.” While everyone knows who she is, opinions of her are mostly derived from media accounts of her, rather than by her own actions and words.

Moreover, oddly enough, until the campaigns begin in earnest, because she does not conform to the usual political stereotype she remains an unknown known.

The key thing to remember about polling is information changes minds quickly. Reality is, of all potential candidates for 2012, Palin has the greatest opportunity to greatly improve her standings, especially given that expectations for her have been set so low.

Since 2008 Palin has not been visible to the public in a major, unfiltered way. A campaign will change that especially if it is managed efficiently and effectively. Team McCain blew it. They had a Wayne Gretzsky who was kept well away from the ice.

In the few weeks between the conventions and the VP Debate between Palin and Joe Biden, Sarah Palin was heavily attacked by the media, and was constantly being questioned about her qualifications. Thus, when the debate actually happened, people were surprised she wasn’t an idiot. A CNN Poll after the VP Debate found that 84% of people thought Sarah Palin did better than they expected. (And who were expectations set by?)

Ed Koch has very little in common with Sarah Palin in terms of political belief. But as an experienced political operator he has never underestimated her.

It was McCain who lost the presidential election, not Palin.  Since that time she has established that she has enormous power to persuade people.  A self-made woman who rose from PTA mother to Governor of Alaska, she is one of the few speakers in public life who can fill a stadium.  

Unleashed in a campaign that marches to the beat of her own drum I would wager that only a fool would claim to predict that Fortune would never choose to bestow her smile on Sarah Palin……

The oh so brave Katie Couric, gushes Kathleen Parker

Watching Katie Couric being harassed and shoved by a crowd of angry men in Cairo was especially jarring. Our little Katie? Make no mistake. Perky Katie is also brave Katie.

And those journalists – we can learn so much from their courage and dedication to bringing us the truth

For journalists, there’s no adrenaline rush like Being There. There’s something in the constitution of those who sign up for Journalism 101 that makes them want to be part of the action but also to do something of value. The bias so many recognize in the media is, among other things, a bias toward the underdog, whether that’s an unwed mother or an oppressed people.

The BBCs Jeremy Bowen, of course, is another of those fearless journalists. He went straight up to one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders and asked him if the MB wanted to establish a full scale Iran style woman stoning, gay hanging theocracy…and the guy said no.

Bowen was happy – this proved beyond doubt that the Brotherhood was now the party of unicorns and rainbows, said he….

Of course one or two cynical souls like Butterfly Dragon at Hot Air (or, as Parker would call them “posers, pundits…..along with klanners, clowns and clambering ninnies “) might have a different view about Brave Katie

They’re trying to make people believe they’re as important as the military and take just as many risks.

In other words, they think very highly of themselves.

Yes, some put themselves at risk, but the vast majority (like Katie Couric) think protesters trying to get in her camera shot is equivalent to taking sniper fire while on patrol.

Oh dear, how unkind….next thing he will say that if you want to find a really brave woman you might prefer to meet another Katie who, I suspect, earns considerably less than $14m a year…

Within the cloud girdled towers of The Daily Telegraph Janet Daley and Damian Thompson have now broken their chains and feel free at last to shout out something that recently they had been only willing to whisper to trusted friends.

Palin must not be the GOP candidate for President in 2012.

Daley says she has many friends who are “senior Republicans” and “highly regarded commentators” who feel the same as her.

She is not another Thatcher – nor is she another Reagan. She does not have the experience and substance of a Romney or the genuine warmth and charm of a Huckabee

Yes – Huckabee is warm and charming so eat your heart out, Tammy Bruce….

But, says Daley, she can make the coffee and play the cheerleader “for some more credible candidate”

Thompson, being very religious is a little more nuanced and intellectual in his critique of Palin…..she’s “nuts” and her supporters are “burger-chomping rednecks” (which is news to me who spent a weekend with 100 Palinistas in Chicago – but who the heck am I, after all I never wrote a thesis on the management of apocalyptic belief in a London Pentecostal church, I only spent 40 years teaching adolescents in tough London schools)

Americans might say – so what? What do we care if a couple of limey hacks diss the ‘Cuda?

The answer is, according to Daley and Thompson, because at last one of the most influential Republican websites in America has finally had the courage do go where no other has dared.

We live in serious times……………For these reasons, we need a strong, serious, decisive leader on the Republican ticket in 2012. 

Let’s face it. Sarah Palin is clearly not that leader. 

She’s fun. She’s attractive. She’s appealing. She’s down-home. She’s got a populist vibe. She shoots animals. But she’s not presidential timber. Not in times like these.

Thus speaks conservativehomeUSA – “Our goal is to cover the ongoing debate about the future of the Republican party and conservatism in America. And to help spur it along.”

ConhomeUSA likes to give the impression of being held in high regard by the American right – though I must confess that although I have, for many years, haunted the mean streets of the US right blogosphere searching for my regular political fix I have never seen it mentioned anywhere else – but then I probably lurk in the seedier precincts…..

It is edited by former Bush staffer Ryan Streeter – a towering figure in American conservatism, a giant of the Beltway who clearly has his finger on the pulse of Mr and Mrs Average Republican and a hotline to GOP activists in every state of the union. So when Ryan decides it is time to remove Palin from the equation you Palinistas and Tea Partiers need to wise up and listen to a man who knows what you want better than you do.

But Ryan is a modest guy – he realises that maybe his words on their own might not be enough to convince you so he turns to hard man Ross Douthat (private school, Harvard, The Atlantic, NYT)

Palin … officially despises the “lamestream” media. But press coverage – good, bad, whatever – is clearly the oxygen she craves. She supposedly hates having her privacy invaded, yet her family keeps showing up on reality TV. She thinks the political class is clueless and out-of-touch, but she can’t resist responding to its every provocation. Her public rhetoric, from “death panels” to “blood libel,” is obviously crafted to maximize coverage and controversy, and generate more heat than light. And her Twitter account reads like a constant plea for the most superficial sort of media attention … To Palin: You were an actual politician once (remember that?), but you’re becoming the kind of caricature that your enemies have always tried to make of you.

Ah yes, that horny handed blue collar 32 year old Douthat. He has had real life experiences, unlike Mrs Palin. He has pounded streets, glad handed voters, been a mayor and governor, been accused of faking his own pregnancy, inciting murder, betraying his wife, inflating expenses – and he has stood tall and not whined like you…and he has written real books which have been bought by really important people….

But, says Ryan, Douthat is not the only voice from the street.

Because of her popularity, many have been afraid to say openly about her what they whisper in private. But a few brave souls have stepped out and said about Sarah Palin what others think but are unwilling to say. 

We call this group the Truth Tellers – it’s hard to argue with their statements about Sarah Palin

Now gather round, guys and gals, because these are serious people who, like Ryan, have a feel for ordinary folk that Palin, isolated in her Facebook ivory tower just cannot hope to emulate – here are Streeter’s Truth Tellers…

Newt Gingrich, Ari Feischer, Charles Krauthammer, Jonathan Tobin, Pete Wehner, John Feehery, George Will, Joe Scarborough, David Frum, Mona Charen, Mark McKinnon, Peggy Noonan, Barbara Bush, Karl Rove, Daniel Larison…..and, of course, the staunchest defender of frugality and conservative principles – Lisa Murkowski!!!!

OMG what a galaxy of gods and goddesses. They were right by your side during the townhall debates and at the Tea Party rallies, every single one of them. They were solid during  NY23 and stepped right up to the plate microseconds after the left began hurling accusations at the Tea Party after Tucson.

Like you they were against any compromise over Obamacare or bailouts. None of them has any links with the legacy of George W Bush. They all dedicated themselves to highlighting Obama’s questionable Chicago antecedents and lack of executive experience during the 2008 campaign. They have no contacts with lobbyists, earmarks or pork. Nobody in that list has had any alleged links with corruption, dead bodies or infidelity

The Truth Tellers have spoken. If Sarah Palin wanted to be presidential, she might take the critiques to heart and begin to fashion arguments and a strategy that give voters the confidence she can lead the country. If she cannot do that, she should stay on the sidelines.

Ryan Streeter (who has said this all with the straightest of faces) pulls no punches – he and all these key figures want her off the bus even before the primaries (which some misguided people still believe is a competitive process where ordinary citizens can make up their own mind – the fools) otherwise she might seduce them with her fearlessness, integrity, common sense and straight talking – and nobody would ever want a leader like that – would they?

When I first read all this I thought for one moment that Ryan Streeter was doing an Allahpundit and snarking Palin for traffic (since his site appears to need some traction in the US) but then I looked at it’s poorly designed, messy appearance and  realised that “cunning” was not on their agenda. Essentially it is a site for political wonks which should come as no great surprise because Streeter himself is a wonk, a typical representative of the political class, an academic who “worked” in think tanks then got a job in the Bush administration and, presumably, would like to get a post in a future GOP administration under President Anybody But Palin.

So read the rest here and weep….

Or alternatively just, like me, stay upright in your seat in sheer astonishment that someone like Streeter can actually be paid a six figure sum to scribble such an ill thought out rodomontade based solely on the squeaks and squawks from a motley mixture of has beens, windbags and ponificating pundits who still imagine that the GOP needs to be directed by people who attend DC dinner parties and NYT editorial conferences.

Therefore, in the cause of fairness, in another post, I’ll take a closer look at Ryan Streeters team of all the talents by giving each of the Truth Tellers a Truth Test….should be interesting….Mau-Mauing the Truth Tellers..