Slingshot Records Blog

My 10 yr old daughter made an amusing comment a few weeks ago. The family was sitting at our fav Japanese eatery and she says: “Why do people always portrait neanderthal’s with that wheel shaped accessory?”

Man, I’d really rather not wade into “political waters”… But, when the shoe fits…

Interesting info to be found on the web regarding Gov spending -

******************************
By Michelle Malkin • January 28, 2010 01:02 PM

Every Senate Democrat voted to raise the debt limit to $14.3 trillion. The vote was 60-40 on straight partisan lines.

Let me repeat that — and let it be repeated loudly and often:

Every Senate Democrat voted to raise the debt limit to $14.3 trillion.

That’s $45,000 per American.

Can’t say it enough: There is no such thing as a “moderate Democrat” in the Senate.
******************************

So I am really starting to wonder… do “moderate Dem’s” still exist? Oh… and I am very aware that Repub’s can be STUPID, EARMARK ADDING, PORK BARREL spendin’ bozo’s too…. that would explain why they got weeded out in ‘06 & ‘08.

It’s like when all politicians get to Washington they turn into the Jim Carrey character from The Mask and they begin yelling: “Somebody Stop Me!”

Not since I was a wee tyke listening to “Rockin’ Robin” by the Jackson 5 have I been engrossed by a song. Today I sit listening in amazement to “Killing The Blues” (Plant/Krauss).

Dang… what a tune. God, will you please bless my songwriting with a song so wonderful…

If I have to settle for a song like “Gone, Gone, Gone” I will humbly accept it, Lord.

Amen.

Revolution calling… Got no love for politicians, all that crazy scene in DC, it’s just a power-man town…. I used to trust the media to tell us the truth, tell us the truth. But now I see the payoffs, every where I look… Who do you trust when everyone’s a crook? (read: Louisiana purchase/Cornhusker Kickback) There’s a revolution calling - YOU.” Queensryche. I doubt that Mr. Tate and Co would like their lyrics used in this reference… but, hey… if the shoe fits…

“I no longer sing of Che, any more than I would of Stalin,” go the words of a poem by Romanian journalist Stefan Bacie. Stefan penned the poem shortly after meeting Che… while Che was watching executions from his office window.

Not that I ever sang of Che… But, after learning more about this brutal companion of Castro I’m stunned… or should I saddened at his cult status.

This exposé on Che Guevara first appeared in the June 2009 issue of Townhall Magazine.

In a famous speech in 1961, Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates,” commanded Guevara. “Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.” “Youth,” wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass.”

“Those who choose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to “Yankee-Imperialist” Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless “roqueros,” “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech, Che Guevara even vowed “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!”

Tens of thousands of Cuban youths learned that Che Guevara’s admonitions were more than idle bombast. In Guevara, the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 1960s found an extremely eager acolyte. By the mid ’60s, the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle (blue jeans, long hair, fondness for the Beatles and Stones) or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked out of Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” emblazoned in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were quite similar.

Today, the world’s largest image of the man that so many hipsters sport on their shirts adorns Cuba’s headquarters and torture chambers for its KGB-trained secret police. Nothing could be more fitting.

Ignorance, of course, accounts for much Che idolatry. But so does mendacity and wishful thinking, all of it boosted by reflexive anti-Americanism. The most popular version of the Che T-shirt, for instance, sports the slogan “fight oppression” under his famous countenance. This is the face of the second in command, chief executioner and chief KGB liaison for a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s and executed more people in its first three years in power than Hitler’s executed in its first six.

THE REAL OPPRESSOR

In 1959, Cuba had a population of 6.4 million people (with a higher per capita income than most Europeans, by the way). According to Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans have passed through Cuba’s prison systems, proportionally more than went through Stalin’s Gulag. And many of Che Guevara’s political prisoners qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Fidel and Che’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s.

The figures for the Che/Castro murders and jailings do not come from any “biased” Cuban-exile source. They’re available from “The Black Book of Communism,” authored by French scholars and translated into English by Harvard University Press, not exactly headquarters for any vast right-wing conspiracy.

In 1956-7, this world-famous “Anti-Imperialist” who often signed his personal correspondence with the moniker “Stalin II,” appalled some of his fellow anti-Batista rebels by applauding the Soviet slaughter of Hungarian freedom fighters. All through the horrifying Soviet massacre, Che dutifully parroted the Soviet script that the workers, peasants and college kids battling Russian tanks in Budapest with small arms and Molotov cocktails were all “Fascists and CIA agents!” who all deserved prompt execution.

“Executions?” Che Guevara exclaimed while addressing the hallowed halls of the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 9, 1964. “Certainly we execute!” he declared, to the claps and cheers of that august body. “And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary! This is a war to the death against the revolution’s enemies!”

According to the “Black Book of Communism,” those firing-squad executions had reached 14,000 by the end of the ’60s, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of more than 3 million executions in the U.S. “I don’t need proof to execute a man,” snapped Che to a judicial toady in 1959. “I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him! … Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. We execute from revolutionary conviction.”

Upon arriving in Havana in January 1959 after an utterly bogus guerrilla war (The New York Times breathlessly reported of “thousands dead in single battles!” The official tally compiled by the U.S. embassy after two years of ferocious “civil war” was 184 dead on both sides, half New Orleans’ annual murder tally.), Che Guevara immediately recognized the moat around Havana’s old Spanish fortress La Cabana as a handy-dandy, ready-made execution pit. So he promptly put his firing squads to work in triple shifts.

Edwin Tetlow, Havana correspondent for London’s Daily Telegraph, reported on a mass “trial” orchestrated by Che Guevara in February 1959, where Tetlow noticed the death sentences posted on a board before the trial had started.

“When you saw the beaming look on Che’s face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad,” former Cuban political prisoner, Roberto Martin-Perez, told me, “you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara.”

“Castro ordered mass murder,” remembers Martin-Perez, “but for him it was a utilitarian slaughter, in order to consolidate his power. A classic psychopath, the butchery didn’t seem to affect him one way or the order. But Che Guevara, as his chief executioner, relished the slaughter.”

As commander of this prison/execution yard, Che often shattered the skull of the condemned man by firing the coup de grace himself. When other duties tore him away from his beloved execution yard, he consoled himself by viewing the slaughter. Che’s second-story office in La Cabana had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his darling firing squads at work.

A Romanian journalist named Stefan Bacie visited Cuba in early 1959 and was fortunate enough to get an audience with the already famous Che Guevara. Upon entering the chief executioner’s office, Bacie saw Che motioning him over to the office’s newly constructed window. Bacie got there just in time to hear the command of “Fuego!,” hear the blast from the firing squad and see a condemned prisoner man crumple and convulse. The stricken journalist immediately left and composed a poem, titled, “I No Longer Sing of Che.” (“I no longer sing of Che, any more than I would of Stalin,” go the first lines.)

WOMEN AND CHILDREN, TOO

Even as a youth, Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s writings revealed a serious mental illness. “My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any vencido that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!” This is from Guevara’s famous “Motorcycle Diaries,” though Robert Redford somehow “overlooked” it while directing his heartwarming movie of the same name.

The Spanish word vencido, by the way, translates into “defeated” or “surrendered.” And indeed, “the “acrid odor of gunpowder and blood” very rarely reached Guevara’s nostrils from actual combat. It came mostly from the close-range murders of unarmed and defenseless men (and boys). Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from the fi ring squad shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro’s and Che’s theft of their humble family farm.

Rigoberto Hernandez was 17 when Che’s soldiers dragged him from his cell in La Cabana, jerked his head back to gag him and started dragging him to the stake. Little “Rigo” pleaded his innocence to the very bloody end. But his pleas were garbled and difficult to understand. His struggles while being gagged and bound to the stake were also awkward. The boy had been a janitor in a Havana high school and was mentally retarded. His single mother had pleaded his case with hysterical sobs. She had begged, beseeched and finally proven to his “prosecutors” that it was a case of mistaken identity. Her only son, a boy in such a condition, couldn’t possibly have been “a CIA agent planting bombs.”

“Fuego!” and the firing squad volley riddled Rigo’s little bent body as he moaned and struggled awkwardly against his bounds, blindfold and gag. Remember the gallant Che Guevara’s instructions to his revolutionary courts: “Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail.” And remember that Harvard Law School’s invitation to Fidel Castro to speak on campus, and rollicking ovation he received, happened in the very midst of this appalling and lawless bloodbath.

The victims of this Stalinist bloodbath were not exclusively men and boys. In fact, the Castroites were well ahead of the Taliban. On Christmas Eve 1961, a young Cuban woman named Juana Diaz spat in the face of the executioners who were binding and gagging her. They’d found her guilty of feeding and hiding “bandits” (Che’s term for Cuban rednecks who took up arms to fight his theft of their land to create Stalinist kolkhozes). When the blast from that firing squad demolished her face and torso, Juana was six months pregnant.

The term “hatred” was a constant in Guevara’s writings. Here’s a taste from this icon of flower children: “Hatred as an element of struggle”; “hatred that is intransigent”; “hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him a violent and cold-blooded killing machine.”

A RECORD OF FAILURE

The one genuine accomplishment in Che Guevara’s life was the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys. Under his own gun, dozens died. Under his orders, thousands crumpled. At everything else Che Guevara failed abysmally, even comically. In 1965, while planning a military campaign in the Congo against crack mercenaries commanded by a professional soldier who helped defeat Rommel in North Africa, Che confidently allied himself with “soldiers” who used chicken feathers for helmets and stood in the open waving at attacking aircraft because a muganga (witch doctor) had assured them that the magic water he sprinkled over them would make .50 caliber bullets bounce harmlessly off their bodies. Six months later, Che fled Africa, narrowly escaping with his life and with his tail tucked tightly between his legs.

Two years later, during his Bolivian “guerrilla” campaign, Che split his forces, whereupon they got hopelessly lost and bumbled around, half-starved, half-clothed and half-shod, without any contact with each other for six months before being wiped out. They didn’t even have World War II vintage walkie-talkies to communicate and seemed incapable of applying a compass reading to a map. They spent much of the time walking in circles and were usually within a mile of each other. During this blundering, they often engaged in ferocious firefights against each other.

“You hate to laugh at anything associated with Che, who murdered so many,” says Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban- American CIA officer who played a key role in tracking Guevara down in Bolivia. “But when it comes to Che as ‘guerrilla,’ you simply can’t help but guffaw.”

DREAMS OF DESTRUCTION

Che’s genocidal fantasies included a continental reign of Stalinism. And to achieve this ideal, he craved “millions of atomic victims”—most of them Americans. “The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!” raved Guevara in 1961. “Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination. We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies’ very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus, we’ll destroy him! We must keep our hatred against them [the U.S.] alive and fan it to paroxysms!”

This was Che’s prescription for America almost a half-century before Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Al- Zarqawi appeared on our radar screens. Compared to Che Guevara, Ahmadinejad sounds like the Dalai Lama.

On Nov. 17, 1962, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI discovered that Che Guevara’s bombast had substance. They infiltrated and cracked a plot by Cuban agents that targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set to go off the following week, the day after Thanksgiving. Che Guevara was the head of Cuba’s “Foreign Liberation Department” at the time.

A little perspective: For the March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of them that killed and maimed almost 2,000 people, al Qaeda used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro’s and Che’s agents planned to set off five times that explosive power in some of the biggest department stores on earth, all packed to suffocation and pulsing with holiday cheer on the year’s biggest shopping day. Thousands of New Yorkers, including women and children—actually, given the date and targets, probably mostly women and children—were to be incinerated and entombed.

A month earlier (during what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis), Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had salivated over the prospect of a much more satisfying holocaust. “If the nuclear missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S., including New York City,” boasted Guevara in November 1962. “The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” Che thought he was speaking “off-the-record” to Sam Russell of Britain’s Daily Worker at the time.

But for the prudence of Nikita Khrushchev, the Butcher of Budapest, those “millions of atomic victims” might have come about. Despite the diligent work of Kennedy Camelot court scribes and their ever-eager acolytes in the mainstream media, publishing and Hollywood, many serious analysts conclude that Fidel’s and Che’s genocidal fantasy was a much bigger factor in Khrushchev’s decision to yank the missiles from Cuba than President Kennedy’s utterly bogus bluster, threats and “blockade.”

One day before his death in Bolivia, Che Guevara—for the first time in his life—finally faced something properly describable as combat. So he ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to their last breaths and to their last bullet. With his men doing exactly what he ordered (fighting and dying to the last bullet), a slightly wounded Che snuck away from the firefight and surrendered with fully loaded weapons while whimpering to his captors: “Don’t Shoot! I’m Che. I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” His Bolivian captors viewed the matter differently. In fact, they adopted a policy that has since become a favorite among Americans who encounter (so-called) endangered species threatening their families or livestock on their property: “Shoot, shovel and shut-up.”

Justice has never been better served.

By Stephen Lowe
About 15 years ago, I read the book 7 Men Who Rule The World From The Grave, by Dave Reese. It was one of those books that really stuck with me, but I hadn’t read it since. I finally bought a copy this fall, and read it again this week.

Though the 20th century has seen the greatest advance in all human endeavors (for good and for ill), the intellectual advances of the 18th, and especially the 19th century, are the true culprits that have shaped and informed the world that we know today.
I hear preachers blame it on the Beatles and Rock-n-Roll; video games; sexual liberation; the removal of prayer in public schools; urbanization; etc. But these are all symptoms of the modern humanistic worldview that permeates science, government, academics, media, and even, to some degree, the institutionalized Church.

The seven men who rule the world from the grave?
1. Charles Darwin Science
2. Karl Marx Government
3. Julius Wellhausen Christianity
4. Sigmund Freud Sexuality
5. John Dewey Education
6. John Maynard Keynes Economics (Keynesian Economics)
7. Sóren Kierkegaard Philosophy

These men came out of the same time period, roughly, and were encouraged by the Enlightenment. These men came onto the scene at one of the most pivotal points in history; a time when revelation gave way to reason. A time when men evolved from creatures of faith to men of scientific proof.

Their influence on the modern world is profound. So profound, that it almost seems to be a satanic conspiracy. Ironically, we are fortunate enough to observe the utter catastrophe that their collective influence has wrought on the world in the 20th century. In their enlightened minds, they promised a world of peace and prosperity based on the superior evolution of man, and of a world without the encumbering burdens of religion.

Though it is blaringly obvious to the Believer that man is utterly corrupt, the world seems to have missed the message. It seems that this new century – this post-modern era – has people looking for different answers. Sadly, they are still trying their damndest to keep God out of the equation.

What men will come out of this generation? How will they affect the coming generation(s)? As Christians, do we just turn this world over to Satan and hope for Christ’s imminent return, or is God waiting for his remnant to turn this world on its head with the Good News that Christ has defeated the world? What does the Spirit say to you?

Looks like they’ve had enough gov spending and the gov’t take over of private businesses…. Ain’t we all?

By Michelle Malkin • December 18, 2009 12:48 PM

On the Senate floor a few minutes ago, GOP Sen. Tom Coburn gave a rousing defense of the “Party of No.”

“We’re accused of being the party of no,” he said. But “no is a wonderful word. When your child is misbehaving, you say no. When someone’s stealing liberty, you say no…Saying no at the right time saves lives. Saying no at the right time saves money…Saying no at the right time saves liberty.”

It’s the best rejoinder to the empty charge of “obstructionism” I’ve seen and heard. I’ll post the video as soon as it’s up.

Proud to be a member of the Party of HELL NO!

***

Americans are saying no:

Just Like Last Week, This Week Every Poll Shows Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose The Democrats’ Health Care Bill

NBC NEWS-WALL STREET JOURNAL POLL: “Just 32 Percent Say It’s A Good Idea, Versus 47 Percent Who Say It’s A Bad Idea.” “As the Senate sprints to pass a health-care bill by Christmas, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that those believing President Obama’s health-reform plan is a good idea has sunk to its lowest level. Just 32 percent say it’s a good idea, versus 47 percent who say it’s a bad idea.” (“NBC Poll: Public Sours On Health Reform,” MSNBC’s “First Read,”, 12/16/09)

WASHINGTON POST-ABC NEWS POLL: “In The Poll Conducted This Month, 51 Percent Say They Oppose The Proposed Changes To The System; 44 Percent Approve Of Them. Two-thirds say the health-care reforms would add to the federal deficit, with two-thirds of those people calling such an increase ‘not worth it.’” (“Public Cooling To Health-Care Reform As Debate Drags On, Poll Finds,” The Washington Post, 12/16/09)

GALLUP: “Political Independents Are More Inclined To Oppose (49%) Than To Favor (44%) A New Healthcare Bill.” (“Majority Of Americans Still Not Backing Healthcare Bill,” Gallup, 12/16/09)

AP-GFK POLL: “Although The National Debate Over Health Care Has Been Heated, There Was Little To No Change From November In The Public’s Attitudes On The Proposals Being Discussed — 44 Percent Oppose Them While 36 Percent Support Them. And only half the country approves of Obama’s handling of the issue.” (“AP-GfK Poll: Gains For Obama, Not His Afghan Plans,” The Associated Press, 12/17/09)

RASMUSSEN: “Fifty-Six Percent (56%) Of U.S. Voters Now Oppose The Health Care Plan Proposed By President Obama And Congressional Democrats. That’s the highest level of opposition found – reached three times before – in six months of polling. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 40% of voters favor the health care plan. Perhaps more significantly, 46% now Strongly Oppose the plan, compared to 19% who Strongly Favor it.” (“Health Care Reform,” Rasmussen Reports, 12/14/09)

TJ’s Wisdom. This was forwarded to me via e-mail. (I have vetted some but not all of these Jefferson quotes).

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered..’

And one from Twain for fun:
‘If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.’ -Mark Twain

My 10 year old was intrigued to hear that the office I work at has a problem with mice. She asked, “Are they white mice?” When I told they were brown mice and that the ladies in my office were very unhappy about them she asked “why would they hate wild mice?”

I explained that the mice carry deseases that can be dangerous. To that she responded, “But mice are so cute… can’t I play with them if I wear a gas mask and gloves?”

I can’t win.

This may not be a realistic fix for stopping our spend-drunk government from bankrupting the nation, but I sure like this idea on the surface.

What if we went to a national flat tax and allowed people to choose the areas of concern where they want their tax funds allocated - (ie: infrastructure, defense, Medicare, etc). I bet we’d get an amazing view of just how out of step our elected officials really are when it comes to taking from us and spending on their pet projects, boondoggles, etc.

An excerpt from Austin Hill’s 9/06/09 column:

Those of us who know, respect, and care about the unique history of this country, understand what makes America unique. In no small part, we are distinct within the broader context of world history, because there are no kings or queens in the United States; our President is one of us, chosen by us, and entrusted with authority for a limited period of time. We pledge allegiance to “our flag,” and we are united by a set of important principles, but we do not bow to any one individual or “leader.”