The holidays are approaching. Everyone is creating their naughty and nice lists. Next Friday, the day after we celebrate Thanksgiving, Americans will hit the malls and big box retailers to buy iPods and clothes, DVDs and stuffed animals, for loved ones and the Secret Santa exchanges and our children. Some see it as a secular holiday, others celebrate the holiday in a religious context.

We are a lucky people. By the accident of our birth in this great nation, hope of a better future is always on the horizon - even in the darkest circumstances.

Twenty-four years ago Bob Geldof and Midge Ure drafted Bono, Sting, and other music industry luminaries to come together as “Band-Aid” to raise awareness of the famine in Ethiopia. I was twelve. At the time, I had already spent many a Halloween with my little orange box from UNICEF - collecting the change of my neighbors and watching my mother roll it up, then turn it in to my teachers. I knew there were children without food, without water, without homes, without families to love and protect them.

I remember the first time I heard Geldof and Ure’s creation for the artists that combined forces to be Band-Aid. It was just after Thanksgiving - my family and I were in the car, on our way to a school holiday program, when it first rang through the airwaves: ”Do they know it’s Christmas?” I remember telling my mom to turn it up, we listened to the last half just sitting in the parking lot. Our beautiful school, in the suburbs of Atlanta, was so clean, so perfect so fortunate were all of us. Hearing that song fixed in my heart what the UNICEF box meant.

That as a human being - I had a responsibility to make the world around me a bit better place than it was when I arrived. The famine that inspired a news report, that moved Bob Geldof to write the song year in Ethiopia has passed… but since then, Africa has seen more tragedy. Genocide in Rwanda. Uganda’s child soldiers, the unknown children. Blood diamond mines, across the continent where women and children are beaten, tortured, enslaved and mutilated. Widespread preventable diseases like malaria kills thousands and thousands of children every year. Somalia faces a crisis, again - famine is creeping in and Islamists threaten to end what little life there is to sustain. Kenya has been ripped by violence. More than a million people have died at the hands of Islamist butchers, the Janjaweed - who use Rape and Genocide in the name of Allah.

In 1984, I was the same age my daughter is now. We do the same things I did with my mother. The little orange boxes on Halloween from UNICEF. And more: raising awareness and pointing kids to ONE. Encouraging folks to wear RED clothes from The GAP and buy RED products, like the awesome U2 filled iPod. Consuming info from DebtAidsTradeAfrica, Save Darfur, and especially The IRC.

I belive in the full funding of PEPFAR. Truthfully, it is far cheaper - and has a long term upside - compared to another Bailout for the Big 3 Automakers. I believe in the full funding of the Millennium Development Goals. Earlier this year, the Pentagon launched AfriCom - and looking at the increased activity of pirates off the coast of Somalia, and remembering my friends who served in The Mog - and others who served in Rwanda… I wonder if our generation, Gen X, will get the opportunity to set right the mistakes and catastrophic failures recognized by some who came before us. Not many.

Most dismissed “Do they know it’s Christmas?” as a self-indulgent, ego-satisfying step of some in the music industry. The truth is, I remember those voices. When the single hit the stores, it charted at Number One. It sold eight million copies world wide. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not want to waive the VAT (tax) because why should the government give up it’s share? Public outrage grew so quickly, Lady Thatcher acquiesced. And every cent of the three million copies sold in the UK went to famine relief in Ethiopia. Many of us in Generation X were affected. We remember the end of Apartheid too. We also know that many of the problems in Africa have worsened. The people neglected. We are old enough now to take up that charge anew. And we are, thanks to the leadership of folks like George W. Bush, whose legacy in Africa is unparalleled. And Bono, Geldof, and few others.

Geldof went on to organize Live Aid - which harnessed I remember as well. July 1985 - they raised roughly the equivalent of $245 million for famine relief. They held a similar event Live Aid 20, in 2005. There are so many avenues to help - there can be no more excuses. No more waiting out the clock. If we believe, as a people, that we should be our brother’s keeper - then we don’t have a moment to waste. The government can’t fix this. Real men and real women - in government, in public life, and all of us that are private citizens, must reject the Starvation of Hope for Africa and her people.

We must all works toward liberating Africa from its image, and reality, as the forgotten continent.

—Media Lizzy

Obama Presidency in the Eyes of the Muslims, and Israel; The Coming Fairness Doctrine

Tonight on Political Pistachio Radio after Founding Truth at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern: Walid Shoebat, former Palestinian Terrorist, joins us to explain why Muslims are happy about the Obama win, and why Israel is worried. Will we see vitriolic anti-Semitism in America?

And, also tonight, in the second hour of the show: Is the Fairness Doctrine coming? Will we see the sudden rise of an Orwellian America? Truth Squads? Thought Police? Political Censorship? Dr. Kenneth Hill will explain the real threats on the horizon, and how the Fairness Doctrine will open the door for all of them!

Catch it all tonight on the Political Pistachio Revolution - Conservative Commentary

Founding Truth Examines The Constitutional Questions Surrounding the Obama Birth Certificate Debate

Last Sunday on Political Pistachio Radio an explosive episode that has attracted thousands of listeners regarding Obama’s Birth Certificate aired. During that episode, a number of Constitutional questions arose from the relationship of the 14th amendment with Article 2 to who becomes president should Barack Obama be found to be ineligible.

Philip J. Berg’s case is heading to the Supreme Court, and the Obama Camp claims they have a Constitutional argument out of it. Do they? Did the 14th amendment change the meaning of Article 2? If Obama is in fact ineligible, who becomes president? Will there be a special election? What if the decision comes down before January 20th? What if the decision comes down after January 20th?

Tune in to Founding Truth tonight at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern to find out!

After the episode you may also go to Blog Talk Radio for the archive of the show.

As in “Eurasian Treaty Organization”. That sure sounds like what Czar Vladimir is “proposing”:

The President of Russia has called on Europe’s leaders to create a new world order that would minimise the role of the United States.

Confident that a row with Europe prompted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was over, Dmitry Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian on Wednesday determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front. …

In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the US was at the root of all the world’s problems. He blamed Washington’s “economic egotism” for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush Administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy.

He also maintained that the US was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

Somebody needs to tell Medvedev and his superior Putin that Barack Obama already locked up the Democrat presidential nomination a month and a half ago. Just as somebody needs to remind the EUnuchs that we didn’t exactly “contain” the Russians in Georgia and aren’t any better poised to do so anywhere else given how tied up we are with finishing the job in Iraq, keeping al Qaeda from conquering Pakistan, and preventing a nuclear Iran. All of which will go out the window starting next January 20th anyway. Perhaps we should call this typically crass Russian attempt to bully Europe into submission their “anti-McCain hedge”.

I’m actually of two minds as to which hypothesis this “EATO” proposal better substantiates. On the one hand, it could be indicative of Kremlin arrogance borne of the more or less blanket totality of their humiliation of the West in general and the U.S. in particular in their unopposed invasion of Georgia (though it should be noted that they have not YET taken the remainder of that country and finally retreated to South Ossetia and Abkhazia just recently). In essence, “Look at the lesson we taught the upstart Georgians: You’re at our mercy, we can take you any time we want, and your American friends can’t do a damn thing about it. The same is true of all of you, so we ‘advise’ you to take stock of where your true national interests lie - to say nothing of where you get most of your energy supplies - and come to terms with us. Or else.” Contrariwise, it might be a tacit admission of weakness in that they’re floating the flipping of Europe’s century-old alliegance as a trial balloon rather than simply handing the EU an ultimatum.

The middle ground between the two is probably closest to the pin: Moscow really can’t muscle the Euros into their orbit, particularly with the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb having impacted the Russians even harder than either the U.S. or E.U., but they’re banking on the intimidation factor from their Georgian adventure coupled with that famed European pacifist, post-modernist, leftophilic gullibility to dupe them into submission.

It sure would be interesting to see Bob Schiefer ask Barack Hoover Obama what he thinks of the Russian “EATO” proposal in the final debate, wouldn’t it? Somehow, I don’t think he’d really have a problem with it, other than Putin and Medvedev having beaten him to it.

[cross-posted at ]

I would like people to know the type of impact this election could have. I agree that on domestic policies “how much damage could be done in 4 years”? People would see how bad Obama is and oust him. HOWEVER, it is much harder to re-invent the wheel and correct mistakes abroad. “Mistakes abroad” is esentially Obama’s only chance at winning. That is why you hear the “Bush 3rd term” garbage so much.More is to come later on this topic, with details (listen I sound like a politician mom!). lol

My question is why would Israel be allowing FBX-T radar along with 100-120 US personnel on their soil… if they did not believe that missile defense CAN, DOES, and may HAVE to work against Iran. Right now the US is lucky, we are fairly safe with the exception of being hit by the USSR… Israel is the one looking down the barrel on a daily basis. They think it can work and have faith in the THAAD system. Why doesn’t Obama and the left?

(Can’t seem to publish the Youtube here…so: Conservative Intelligence Report.)