I wanted to offer my congratulations to the US Democrats, who have now won both House and Senate, and whose candidates have pulverised the Republican Party across the United States.

Yes, I know I was grumpy about it yesterday but hey – I’m made of flesh and blood and I react like everyone else does when confronted with what was…unwelcome news! But I have calmed down. Honest.

You see, on reflection, yesterday turned out to be a GOOD day to be a Conservative in the USA. I say that because as other commentators have also been putting on record, the GOP can now renew itself because it HAS to renew itself ….or face President Hillary Clinton in 2008. There is no option to do otherwise.

This is going to be a momentous task and it will need huge change.

Most importantly, Leadership is required. Bush has comprehensively failed in this regard. He has stuttered  but never really started in his second term to give that which the American people want – dynamic articulate and confident leadership.  And his Party has now paid the severest price. Not that Bush is alone in the blame – I believe this must be shared across the current highest echelon within the Party. They have become complacent, smug, unfocused, corrupt…and unworthy.

So the American people were RIGHT to send them the momentous message that hit home yesterday. The American people were RIGHT to reject Bush and his hesitancy on Iraq. The American electorate have done us a favour by stopping the stumbling that has characterised this shambolic second term of the Bush Presidency. And make no mistake about it – the Bush Presidency effectively came to an end last night.  Again, that is good news because he has been going NOWHERE for the past two years and I, like so many others, am sick of it.

So, what can we look forward to?

Well, if 2008 is see revived GOP fortunes, then a Presidential big win by a Republican candidate is key. I favour Rudy Giuliani at this point. I believe that he would trounce Hillary and whilst he is too liberal on some social fronts for my liking, he IS  a man who has shown leadership, and an ability to articulate this when necessary.  That’s what is lacking at the moment and voters sense it. We need the GOP to retain the essence of the Bush doctrine, but make it  MUCH more aggressive and unilaterist, and then sell this to the American people who YEARN to see our troops WIN in Iraq. It’s high time that an all out attack on Big Government was made, and illegal immigration tackled head on by enforcing Borders. It’s also time that the United Nations was taken on – how about having a policy calling for the bozos on the East River to "up shop" and go to France or somewhere that does not cost Americans money? How about supporting Israel when it tackles the Jihadists in Hezbollah? There is SO much that a reinvigorated GOP can do – but it means strengthening core conservative principles, putting forward clear moral values, giving Americans a reason once again to cast their votes FOR the Republican Party.

So, I think a big thank you to the Pelosicrats. And above all, to the US electorate. It’s time for a Republican rising…..cometh the hour…

Michelle Malkin calls it the Sheehanisation of America. Watch, listen and draw your own conclusions. This was taken yesterday – note the reaction to Rumsfeld’s resignation…good call, George.

I wonder what you make of the comments from the director of Ekklesia, Jonathan Bartley, who has claimed that although a symbol of hope, the red poppy was not a good Christian symbol because it implied redemption can come through war?  

"The Christian tradition, and specifically the crucifix, have a great deal in common with the poppy,"

He made this wild claim in an article for this week’s edition of the Anglican newspaper The Church Times.

Now then – let’s be kind and assume that poor Bartley is just plain daft. But one has to wonder why the Anglican Church itself gives this puerile nonsense such a platform at this time of the year? Are they just trying to boost declining readership by permitting liberal driven controversy into the headlines? Or, might it be that those at the top of the Anglican Church also share Bartley’s distaste for the Red Poppy?

Wearing the Red Poppy is an expression of remembrance, of solemnly honouring those in our Armed Forces who have given their lives that we may be free.  There is a section within the apostate Anglican Church that is unrelentingly pacifist, that opposes the idea that we might actually have to fight for our liberties. They would do better to wear white flags than white poppies.

The Northern Ireland Office – the propaganda wing of the UK Government here in Northern Ireland – just loves polls. Over the years it has been responsible for an endless series of polls that show..whatever it wishes to be shown. During the run-up to the Belfast Agreement – polls in rags such as the Belfast Telegraph were regularly used to try and influence public opinion.

So guess what – out comes a NEW poll today telling us that …more than half of the people in a BBC survey for Hearts and Minds (natch) support the so-called St Andrew’s Agreement.

And the detail? Well, 46% of DUP members support it, 32% don’t. (Has someone told Bertie Ahern – he’s been boasting around 90% of the DUP rank and file endorse it?) Of the UUP, 51% support – 49% don’t.

So, Unionism is massively fractured over the plan to put into place the Belfast Agreement Part Two. Good.

With around a third of it’s own members opposing the plan, and that’s according to the strictly pro-Agreement BBC,  I wonder will Peter Robinson and his henchmen continue to push for its implementation? 

When is the right time to sit in power with terrorists?

I would say NEVER – I wonder will the DUP say March 2007.

I never thought I’d live to see the day!  Cameron’s Conservative Party is actually proposing something I agree with.  The Tories are to set out their plans to deal with mass immigration into the UK, arguing that strict quotas will be put on those who come here from outside the European Union.  Although I favour a twenty-year moratorium on all immigration coupled with rigorous measure to expel illegal aliens, those who come here with the intention of deliberately making this society their ideological enemy (and that includes descendants of the same), and people from first-generation immigrant communities convicted of serious crimes, there is at least some effort in finally paying attention to what has become one of the biggest causes of concern to British people over the last number of years.

In the UK we have a smaller immigrant community than several European countries.  France, the Irish Republic and Germany have larger ethnic populations in ratio; Italy has a similar number; whilst Spain and Portugal are expected to overtake the UK in the number of non-nationals in the next five-to-ten years.  However, what I think singles out this country from the rest is the pathetic way immigrant and ethnic issues and culture are shoved down the throats of the rest of us who live here.

Take the Irish Republic as an example.  10% (and growing) of the population is effectively ‘non-Irish’.  Yes, there are outlets in cities catering for, say, the nutritional culture of these communities.  What you don’t have is an RTE Asian Network; posters from public sector bodies with the (here in the UK it is almost obligatory) sprinkling of ethnic faces just to show how ‘wonderfully multi-racial’ society is; interminable broadcasts about ethnic culture and way of life, etc.

A similar situation exists in Italy.  Believe me, there is no shortage of immigrants there.  At the same time television news, culture and the printed media are not awash with stories indulging the same.  In the case of most European countries the norm is to promote the national indigenous ethos above all else.  In Britain, too many of both the Left and Right in UK politics have been apologising and eradicating the same for a long time now.

So it is all very well to cut down the numbers coming here.  What is of equal importance is to curtail the influence on public life and cultural values of immigrant communities.  The overwhelming majority of people here are still white and Christian.  There is nothing wrong in reflecting that in our political and cultural systems.

‘Following the ‘victory’ for the Democrats in the United States, this is how much of the radicalised Islamic world now views Uncle Sam.’  Discuss.

1837 – British philanthropist Moses Montefiore, becomes the first Jew to be awarded a knighthood in the UK.

1859 – The British Army abolishes flogging as a form of punishment.

1908 – Britain elects its first woman mayor when Mrs Garrett Anderson becomes Mayor of Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

1922 – Formation of the Schutzstaffel (SS), or ‘protection squad’ , in Germany.

1970 – President of France, Charles De Gaulle, dies.

1989 – The East German Government lifts the ‘Iron Curtain’  to allow free travel through the Berlin Wall – an offer immediately taken up by thousands of East Berliners.

There’s little to say that hasn’t been said many times before.  The case of a 13-year-old girl murdered by a serial offender, released early from jail, from a sentence that was too short in the first place, as if we needed another example of a Criminal Justice system that cares more about the Criminal than it does for Justice, but they never learn.

I thought it might be useful to point ATW readers to a quick summary of some of those who have WON today, as the Democrats seize power again.

• Let’s start with Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez. On hearing the news that the Democrats were back he enthused…

"All this fills us with optimism."

I bet it does.