American Flag Blog

If you’ve never watched the Tour de France on TV (bicycle race for the uninitiated), you should. Like me, you don’t have to know much if anything about cycling to enjoy watching. The scenery is absolutely incredible, the fans that line the roads are at the very least colorful and often crazy and the finish at the end of each day can be a rush.

So whilst watching the Tour De France this year, I was at first intrigued by the fact that although riders compete for personal fame and glory, they race as part of a team and will subordinate personal ambition for the good of the team. But upon reflection, considering that the teams, and hence the riders, are subsidized by corporate sponsors, it’s not at all surprising - they’re smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds them.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.

According to the BBC, certain Welsh politicians have their knickers in knots over the insistence of the International Olympic Committee that athletes from Wales not wave the Welsh Dragon flag at the upcoming Olympic ceremonies. The IOC has banned any flags that could be perceived as a “political gesture.” In other words, any flags other than those from participating countries.

Shadow Sports Minister Paul Davies AM said: “This has serious implications for freedom of expression and the rights of supporters and athletes to celebrate their success.”

I’m not sure what “freedom of expression” has to do with this. If the athletes are there as members of the U.K. team and it’s the U.K. that’s footing the bill, it seems deceptive to use the venue to promote a separate agenda.

For more than two decades, the domination of talk radio by the conservative movement has completely confounded the best and brightest of the American Left. Attempts to compete in the free market have utterly failed despite Leftist hopes for Al Franken and Air America.

The Left has now apparently thrown in the towel, at least in terms of fair competition with conservatives, and plans are now underway to resort to the tried and true leftist technique of resorting to the courts and bureaucratic means to stifle ideas at odds with their own. The folks at Think Progress, for example, have outlined a plan to muzzle conservative talk radio through implementation of draconian regulation.

The nut of it is that they truly believe that the success of conservative talk radio has nothing to do with the free market and everything to do with a shadowy plot by station owners to shut out the lefties. They debunk “simple consumer demand” as a “common myth.” Here we have a text book example of how the Left fails to come to grips with the democratic nature of Capitalism. How can it be that more than 20 million people a week tune in to the likes of Rush Limbaugh? After all, Leftists dominate online media by a long shot, so why not talk radio?

In reality, the answer is simple and telling. The people who are listening to conservative radio are working while they listen. The people who can’t get through the day without a dose of The Daily Kos, on the other hand, spend most of their time between trips to the unemployment office, sitting in their jammies at the computer in a government-subsidized apartment.

Hillary Clinton spoke to an assembly of New Hampshire vocational school students today, telling them that we have an “on your own society” rather than an “ownership society” as President Bush suggests. Hinting at higher taxes, she said, “I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society. I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

From Whitewater to cattle futures to the lastest scandal involving InfoUSA, a nefarious outfit that has shoveled millions of dollars into the Clinton bank account, the Clintons have diligently used their considerable connections and influence to get wealthy with little or no effort on their part.

If Hillary is serious about sharing the prosperity, why don’t we start with her and her wealthy pals? The truth is that Clinton doesn’t believe the rules that apply to those she pretends to serve also apply to her and the rest of the ruling class.

Just yesterday, I wrote that if the darling of the American Left, Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez had his way, TV station RCTV would be off the air. Wasting no time, Chavez has indeed closed RCTV with the help of the military and replaced it with his own personal station, TVES.

According to Breitbart.com, Chavez justified the action by claiming that RCTV had been “poisoning” viewers by promoting Capitalism. I hope everyone is paying attention. The Left in this country sympathizes with Chavez, including 90% of the mainstream media, billionaire Leftists like George Soros, and the Hollywood elite.

To these folks, Capitalism is something that is better left to the experts (like Soros), but should not be tried at home by ordinary Americans. Capitalism and all that naturally flows from it (freedom for example) is the primary target of the Left.

According to TheBostonChannel.com, police in Natick, Massachusetts, discovered a number of small American flags burning in a trash cans around the town square late Thursday afternoon. Bob White, one of the area veterans who placed the flags in the Natick park, said, “We decorate this park every Memorial Day. We have never had anything like this happen.”

Whether the flag burning was politically motivated or not is not known since there are no suspects to put the question to. But local veterans, sensitive to the possible political nature of flag burning, were careful to lay the foundation for a future prosecution. Veteran John MacGillivray told a reporter, “I am aware that people have a right to protest, but they don’t have a right to take property that doesn’t belong to them and that’s here to honor the veterans. It is a disgrace.”

MacGillivray has inadvertently hit on one of the core issues in the flag burning debate. When do any of the dregs of society (i.e. delinquents and/or Leftists) who burn American flags, regardless of motivation, ever actually buy the flags themselves?

Reuters reported yesterday that “tens of thousands of Venezuelan protesters” hit the streets in Caracas to protest the impending demise of a popular television station. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been reshuffling the deck to better position himself as Socialist Dictator Chavez, has apparently had enough of the political opposition from RCTV and is attempting to yank the plug.

Leftists Americans like Cindy Sheehan have praised the Chavez regime, preferring it to the American version of democracy where leftists are forced to contend with conservative views that occasionally slip past the main stream media censors on stations such as The Fox News Channel. In fact, look for Sheehan and other leftists to take a cue from Chavez and call for the shuttering of Fox News.
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What’s so shocking about a vandalized Rush Limbaugh billboard? Yesterday, a smug and gleefull Baltimore city employee called the Baltimore Sun newspaper offices at 8:00 AM to report a vandalized billboard and by evening, everyone in America with a TV, computer or radio had heard of it. The city employee approved of the vandalism and wanted to let people know it, while city officials and conservative commentators were outraged.

But why the sudden outrage? There’s nothing new here. The Left, in every instance since the twisted social order set forth by Marx and Engels was put into play by the vicious brutality of Vladimir Lenin, answers opposition with threats, violence and property destruction.

City employee Robert Murrow told the Sun, “It looks great! It did my heart good.” In the eyes of Murrow and every other Leftist, destruction of property to the tune of $10,000 is OK as long as they don’t like the message. Instead of feigning shock at the violent nature of Leftism, conservatives (i.e. people with jobs) should call them out at every turn. Sooner or later, the threats, from the seemingly innocuous burning of American flags to the call for the murder of Henry Hyde by Alec Baldwin, will turn into action.

The American Family Association is a powerful grassroots conservative activist organization. Besides the AFA’s tremendously effective ability to rally predominantly conservative Christians, they also serve the noble cause of aggravating leftists of every stripe, such as lesbian Pam Spaulding, who’s hatred of conservative Americans in general and conservative American Christians in particular is more than she can bear.

Though the AFA’s track record is impressive, the ongoing boycott of Ford Motor Company to stop the funding of various Gay-rights causes seems to have had little effect on Ford CEO William Clay Ford Jr.’s support of the Gay agenda. Maybe there’s more to the picture than meets the eye.

Disgraced New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy appeared to be a happily married (to a woman) man before an aid and lover (a man) ratted him out. Just conjecture, but judging by Bill Ford Jr.’s insistance on Gay activism in the face of a dire financial situation seems to signal the possibility that Bill Ford Jr. is in the same closet as McGreevy was.

Only the left is surprised by the outcome of the French Presidential election. The Associated Press reported yesterday that support for French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy came from unexpected segments of the population - namely women and workers. The left finds the news perplexing since Sarkozy’s opponent, Segolene Royal, is both a woman and a socialist.

Evidently, the left is at a loss to understand what motivates people, that is, people with jobs, in western society. Over the past several decades, France has lured hordes of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries to her shores with the promise of all a Socialist welfare state can offer in exchange for the hope that the immigrants would help to pay for the pensions of the native French.

Now they have discovered that the Muslims are more interested in the welfare benefits part of the equation than the work part. And to make matters worse, the Muslims have taken to rioting in an effort to extort even more welfare benefits from an already overtaxed system.

Enter Sarkozy with a promise to solve both problems - stem the tide of immigrants, get tough on the Muslim rioters and fix the economy. The women vote comes from fear of the Muslim criminals and the worker vote from a weariness of footing the bills for a parasitic Muslim population.

If there was ever a great example of why the framers of the Bill of Rights thought gun ownership was so important (it made the number two spot on the list of amendments), this is it. French Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, watching as her support further erodes, warned that France will face violence and brutality if her oponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is elected. In a bizarre statement, Royal announced, “It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won).”

Get it? If that scary right-wing nutjob, Sarkozy, wins the election (as he almost certainly will), France will face violence and brutality at the hands of right w…, no, wait a minute… start over, left wing nut jobs! That’s right, Royal is threatening that her own base will lash out with violence and brutality if she is not elected!

Private gun ownership, aside from driving leftists into involuntary convulsions, is protected by the Second Amendment precisely so that ordinary citizens have some measure of defense against political tyranny. And when a politician such as, say, Royal, threatens violence from her followers if they don’t get the results they want, people who wish to play by the rules of the democratic process need to defend themselves against that tyranny.