Bully pulpit

The power of the President is like a bully pulpit; too bad it’s being wasted. When the wrong message is routinely delivered to Americans, wrong behavior follows. Sarah Palin’s exhortation to the press to stop making things up could also apply to the signals sent by our leader. Into the informational ether, Obama preaches that debt is fine, racism is ingrained, problems are not of a personal nature; the list goes on and on. What waste! The rights we inherently possess as human beings come with duties which are never enumerated by the President or the press. What a waste! Cash for Clunkers is a perfect example. No one needs a new car unless he/she has more money then it will every be possible to spend. Even then, wouldn’t a worthy charity be more suitable than material ostentation? The new cars (mandated by Washington’s green agenda) do not reflect free choice. The new cars put the owner back into debt. The old cars ( again a term designated by government) are not reused but rather the engines are destroyed and the bodies (mostly fiberglass not metal and chrome) are recycled to ‘create’ jobs. Unless any of this sounds rational, remember that the major premise - that one needs a new car which diminishes one’s duty to live responsibly and save money for the future - is false. The right to pursue happiness behind the wheel of a necessary mode of transportation also includes the duty to pursue the American dream responsibly. What a waste that our President preaches racism from his bully pulpit rather than admitting only a renegade few are still racists. What a waste that our President worships the photo op rather than the opportunity to speak truth from the power of his office about America’s moral standards which suck. Black crime sucks. Respect for life sucks. We live in a country where an evil woman cuts a baby from a murdered woman’s womb. We live in a land where our government bails out bankrupt banks that then dole out billions in bonuses to select employees. We live in a place where a student at Columbine high school who admitted her Christianity was murdered by a wacko for her belief. The power and glory that reside in the White House today are forces of wrongdoing. What a waste!

Revolution of hope and change

Revolutions have always pushed hope for change, but carpe diem depended upon the ‘right’ day. "Audacity, always audacity and still more audacity!" was the slogan of Danton in the great French Revolution of 1790 and we know what that hope and change meant in France.

In 1905, Lenin hoped for change when he wrote: " At no other time are the mass of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order, as at a time of revolution.... At such times, the people are capable of performing miracles, ... It is essential that the leaders should advance their aims more comprehensively and boldly at such a time, so that their slogans shall always be in advance of the revolutionary initiative of the masses, serve as a beacon, reveal to them our democratic and socialist ideal."

Hope and change for Trotsky depended upon the ‘light cavalry’ that he described as the students and intelligentsia who make the first move in a revolution ( the Russian revolution of 1917). But "even the most heroic intelligentsia is nothing without the masses."

It was the proletariat ( in spite of experiencing a rise in living standards) which carried out the greatest general strike in history in France, May, 1968 hoping for change. It confirms the analysis of Marxism that the conditions for revolution are prepared not automatically by either an economic slump or an upswing, but by the ‘change’ from one epoch to another. An author of the this month of revolution said that when the strictures of life in capitalist society (the burning of cars in Paris, 1968) seem to be sundered, they (the rioters) have the scent of revolution in their nostrils and it smelt good.

Obama, Obama, Hope and change, the audacity to hope for change. The transformation of America, 2009 is being led by students, snobs, wealthy politicians, the media and the intelligentsia. Following Lenin’s method for revolution, ‘preparation, education and organization’ have been part of Obama’s community organization work, political campaign and Presidential agenda.

A writer in sync with the Communist ideology warns that "unless a systematic and unswerving plan for the conquest of power is prepared and carried out in good season, an ebb will inevitably set in." The government take-over of health care has lost momentum. Cap and trade has not been finalized. Protests rear their ugly head from companies that have already been nationalized. The Communists (and Shakespeare) know that when the moment for action comes it must be seized or revolutionary fervor will ebb. Is there hope for a change of direction in America?

A citizen doing her civic duty in July 2009, reported an apparent break-in and then received death threats from racists even though no skin color was mentioned in her 911 call. What kind of silent revolution is already taking place in America?

CC, CC, CC or CC

Cash for Clunkers or Cause for Concern. To pull a phrase appropriate to the big O’s lifestyle, it’s a ‘slam dunk’ that Americans ought to be concerned over the waste of good engines and useable used vehicles while at the same time excluding the message that going into debt for a new car is neither necessary nor conducive to personal financial fiscal responsibility. Well I for one, hope to keep my engine-knocking 1998 Dodge Caravan for while before I make a change with a cash-purchase. I also reject the program’s major premise: Waste is good. The minor premise: Wasting serviceable machines that could help other needy drivers around the U.S. or the rest of the world is also good. Ergo: Conservation and common sense are not good. CC, CC, CC or CC? Cash for Clunkers is a Crock of C... It is Cause for Concern. Conservation and Common sense ironically have died with the hope and chance the big O promised.

A vacation?

A vacation? A vacation at the snobbish, exclusive Martha’s Vineyard? This from the One who has never had to work a day in his life since childhood except at recreation? This from the One who has never held a 9-5 ‘job’ in the conventional work force? This from the One who has been on a continuous holiday since the night of his inaugural bash? This from the One who has stripped ‘ordinary’ Americans of the ability and the desire to take vacations? I say this from one who never wastes money on a vacation because my money might be needed to pay for my future. I say this from one who looks for the truth behind the misdirections and lies of the One. When politicians, the media, the elites, youth and other besotted citizens abjure their responsibility to learn facts, we need someone like Sarah Palin to address truth to her power and popularity. As she recently said to the media, "Stop making things up." Her campaign slogan could be garnered from this truth. She could travel with the words, "Don’t listen to what ‘they’ make up; I’ll tell you the truth."

Strategy

Clausewitz defined strategy as "the art of the employment of battles as a means to gain the object of war." B.H, Liddell Hart shortens this a bit with "the art of distribution and applying military means to fulfil the ends of policy." This second definition reminds me of Obama’s metaphorical (but equally real) war on our traditional, Constitutional Republic. It was Lenin, B.H.Liddell Hart the military historian says, who "enunciated the axiom that ‘the soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.’ Is this not what the Obama version of governmental administration is now attempting to do in America? Wear down the people with lies and misdirections until they are ready and willing to accept any or all of the leader’s solutions, at which point Obama can ‘divide and conquer’ with his liberal takeover of a coup de grace? Hart also says that the key idea is ‘strategic operation’ rather than ‘battle.’ The "true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this." Why do you think Obama uses the atmosphere of a battle to win his socialist initiatives like the government takeover of businesses and banks, the call for ‘sympathetic’ judges and his agenda of cap and trade and universal health care? Lastly, Hart notes that the experience of history "brings ample evidence that the downfall of civilized States tends to come not from direct assaults of foes but from internal decay, combined with the consequences of exhaustion of war." Do not the liberals like Obama, the popular media, politicians and activists continually bombard us Americans with the need to war on something? At the same time, the moral fiber of our country is allowed to gradually rot away.

Dumb beasts

Progressive and liberal Americans have their heads screwed on backwards. No way can they be turned around to realistic, correct thinking. Also, many young and uneducated Americans are without enough turns of the screw to allow their brain cells to receive rational signals. But then there is Sarkozy, Preme Minister of France, who suffers a heart health alert, faintness and shortness of breath while exercising. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. He demonstrates that not just Americans but our European allies show no improvement in the number of turns a head requires to tighten its thinking, engage in common sense behavior and elevate the species above the level of dumb beast.

A or B

The choice is A or B referring to author Ernest Hemingway or President Barack Obama.
A. "Gifted in the non-said and in the wresting of emotions from the declarative." or B. master of phrases like "could have calibrated" and "teachable moment?" When an assumption is made of "hard feelings on both sides," when assertions are made that "these issues (racial) still are very sensitive," we know that two-timing the English language can only be the expertise of our leader Obama who is Saul Alinsky in disguise. Papa Hemingway was characteristically plain spoken and out in the open. A. Hemingway comes before B. Obama. Oh, for a simpler times with honesty not deception.

Progress

When Melvin Udall was asked how he writes about women so well, he said: "I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability." With this insight in mind, please dear reader, catagorize our dear leader, Obama, after his comments about the Cambridge policeman and his handling of the Henry Louis Gates ‘affair.’ No reason or accountability for reasonable re-action characterized Gates’ or his friend the President’s response to the break-in situation. The woman who called the police acted like a helpful, responsible man, the man she was trying to help (Gates) acted like an hysterical, irrational woman and the President who should have remained a unisex bystander turns out to be a miscegenetic racist. America has gone mad.

Sheep and wolf

The answer to most problems is to return to fundamentals. Get back to basics. This is the suggestion of the author of The 5000 Year Leap. I took his advice, leaving Chicago in 1976 the bi-centennial anniversary of the Declaration of independence, fittingly declaring my independence. Here are some further thoughts from the great book on the founding fathers and our Constitution. David Ramsey suggests that if Americans had not revolted, our frugality, industry and simplicity of manners would have been lost in an imitation of British elegance, luxury and effeminacy. Today America is in thrall to Obama and his ‘spoiled’ elitists. Virtuous people are truly free, but when we are vicious and debauched in our manners, we shall be the most abject slaves. This is noted by Samuel Adams who could not have foreseen the extreme liberal, leftist, uncivil, boorish behavior and speech of supporters of our current President. Of course, this is what happens when religion and freedom travel in opposite directions according to Samuel Adams. As far as we stray from the good, that far we stray from being a great country. Another warning comes from Benjamin Franklin, that when half of America becomes discontented with the oppression of taxes, the greater need the President and his Congressional sycophants will have of money to distribute among their partisans and pay the troops ( Obama’s cadres, ‘community organizers’? ) to suppress all resistance and enable them to plunder in pleasure. Conditions could not be more bifurcated in politics and ideology today. Local self-government is the keystone to the preservation of our freedoms, yet judges and minority advocates often overrule the majority’s will. They recently did so in California with the marriage issue limited to a man and a woman. We are allowing Obama to literally sign away our inalienable freedoms. James Madison continually warned of gradual encroachments that abridge freedoms. Ben Franklin also warns those who make themselves sheep because they will be eaten by wolves. Picture yourself as a sheep, a follower and you must admit that what you will walk through will not be clover.

I, Boobus Americanus

I, Boobus Americans, think therefore, I am. To a dear ‘anonymous’ reader of my blog yesterday, I am blessed with ‘uncommon sense,’ because common sense, according to you, means abandoning natural law and nature’s God. Our founding fathers posited certain principles in our Constitution, which accounted for America’s 5000 year leap in the civilized world. Their first principle acknowledged the existence of right reason, natural laws. These laws were observed by Cicero and incorporated into the People’s Law of the Anglo-Saxons. They acknowledged Christ with his primary commandment to love the one God and your neighbor as yourself. Our founders followed the conviction of their beliefs and imposed the discipline to carry their convictions in America’s Constitution. We need to proceed no further than right reason, not wrong emotion, to know that homosexuality is unnatural, the right to freedom basic but limited, the right to life is intrinsic and every right has a corresponding duty attached to it. Dear ‘anonymous’ check out page 135 in the popular book The 5000 Year Leap. If I love my ‘anonymous’ neighbor as myself, I want him/her to find truth as much as I want myself to pursue it. Feelings must be an aside.

Ho Chi Minh

In the 50 year People’s War in Viet Nam, from 1925 to 1975, three efforts were paramount for David, the Communists, to conquer Goliath, the invader from France, China, Japan or the United States: propaganda, organization and struggle. The struggle could only end with victory; the use of cadres was paramount to propagandize and organize the struggle. Cadres are like ‘community organizers’ in Obama’s war against capitalistic America. The Vietnam Communists led by Ho Chi Minh, believed that when workers and peasants acquire national and class consciousness, the match will be won between the stronger and weaker combatant. Obama shamelessly fans the fires of classism and racism, pitting rich against poor, white against black, CEO’s against the ‘middle class,’ greed against self-interest, etc. For the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, organized class violence would be necessary after studying the mind and capacity of the masses; then the party could choose who to assassinate. As I said yesterday in this blog, the radical Obama and his cadre of followers have yet not literally resorted to violence’ they now settle for threats, protests and marches against private citizens and businesses. The United States military did not learn the lesson that before attempting to ‘liberate’ South Viet Nam, time was and would be on the side of the Communist peasant revolutionaries under their dynamic leader Ho Chi Minh. When their leader preached patience, preached that water would eventually put out an enemy’s fire, he was taken at his word. Today, Obama’s words, even as compound sentences of contradiction, should be heard and feared.

False major premise

In logic, the major premise must be true and exclusive or what follows in the minor premise and ergo will be false. A lawyer for a gay coalition contends that there is an "increase in human happiness and social stability that comes from permitting people to marry for love." This statement would be true if not for the ‘fact’ that the marriage in this premise ‘is’ not a marriage when it involves the wrong, unnatural and ergo, sinful combination of two members of the same sex. Love has nothing but everything perverse to do with it. What sounds good, as usual, to non-thinkers, is usually bad logic and morality. I am reminded of H.L. Mencken’s phrase, Boobus Americanus for emotional followers and advocates of stupid or illegitimate causes. An example might be the careless use of the word icon today. Virtually any person, usually recently deceased, becomes an icon. To posit that some person is an icon, the term must not be narrowly defined as an image or likeness, but re-defined to apply to any famous person one chooses to venerate. A writer, Joe Queenan, makes the point cleverly with words: " This is just another case of hyperventilating journalists hijacking an otherwise admirable language because they are desperate to insert an infectious banality into their work and don’t care if it belongs there. ... The English language (is) flexible, but it’s not stupid."

Boobus Americanus away they go!

Keep in mind

Keep in mind our dear leader Obama and what he stands for as I refresh memory about another leader and his endless war.

I quote from the Vietnamese Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, who wrote a treatise, ROAD TO REVOLUTION. "I gradually came up with the fact that only Socialism and Communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery. ... We call upon you! Comrades, save us! ... Terrorism is not a means of revolution ... The only effective way to ‘organize the masses’ would have to be propaganda and organization...." In spite of what he says, however, the Vietnam Communists’ Manifesto refers to "armed violence, the most elevated form of class struggle."

I quote from an author, James Pinckney Harrison, sympathetic to Minh’s cause. "Up to 90% of the first activists were students and intellectuals." [think who were the Obama supporters in his election].... Radicals (Communists) began the organization of militant labor unions and peasant associations as well as other popular groups, such as youth, women’s, mutual assistance associations [ think community organizers and ACORN] and sports clubs, wherever possible [think campaigning on the Internet] in order to recruit activists form all levels of society.... Only the Communists in this century have seemed consistently able to organize effectively enough to turn terrible situations to their advantage." [ think of what Obama’s administration has accomplished in this TET, tough economic time]. ...The two-stage revolution therefore holds that Communist revolutionaries must somehow work with the capitalist revolution against feudalism [think economic crises too big to waste according to Obama’s chief of staff]. ... All societies mass from primitive to slave to feudal to capitalism to Socialist societies according to the development of successive modes of production as forced by economic change and class struggle" [think about Obama’s campaign hope and change message].

I ask you dear reader to compare Obama’s swift socialistic success to the Communists’ 50 year struggle in Vietnam. No physical violence has so far accompanied Obama’s revolution, but it has taken our dear leader only 7 months to take America down the road to serfdom.

Give me a gilded, medieval altar

In a metaphorical arrondissement where snobs and elitists live, the useless and ugly seem important, even ‘beautiful.’ Here are two examples. Moon dust has been called a national treasure by a NASA manager. So much importance is attached to it and so many people want to collect it - she says - that "high fidelity" lunar simulants must be created. In other words, fake, useless moon dust is in production. A square glass house in France, Art Deco inspired and aluminum, steel, rubber, glass bricks and glass in execution, seems beautiful to its owners. Its "architectural conservation," is necessary because of its mechanical sleekness of modernism in spite of its eyesore unattractiveness. Snobbery and elitism, usually accompanied by a live- in servant, make a mockery of common sense and the meaning of what’s truly valuable.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is defined as feigning, as the false profession of desirable or publically qualities, beliefs or feelings, or as extreme insincerity. Each of these will do when it comes to liberals. Their hypocrisy is especially relevant when it involves an issue of life and death. It defines itself as the false pretense of moral excellence either as cover for actual wrong or for the sake of the credit and advantage attaching to virtue. As hypocrites, they know they dissemble and deliberately mislead. My point is made because they attempt to ban smoking in the military. The soldier who voluntarily puts his life on the line in a combat zone or in unpredictable and dangerous situations, must be prevented from endangering his life by indulging in relaxing, pleasurable - probably compelling - puffs of nicotine? He (she) who volunteers to ‘test’ death in wartime, cannot ‘test’ life in peacetime? So say hypocritical liberals who attempt to legislate away free choice. This galls me. Liberals practice dictatorship under the guise of health concerns. Duplicitous, yes. Pecksniffian, most definitely yes. I wish all liberal do-gooders would be seen as canting, unctuous hypocrites, like Seth Pecksniff in Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit.

Chicken or egg?

Here’s a question for you similar to the unanswerable, ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ The liberal, yuppie name for a child that discards tradition, common sense and saintly protection or the adult who becomes what her name represents as she grows up? Advocates for mandatory sprinkler systems in new homes are typical government-can-solve-all-problems nannies. They belong to groups like the Home Safety Council often working as non-profits. They want to help people who ‘deny risk’ and the possibility that something bad will happen to their families unless regulations are imposed by wiser souls. Inevitably they are feminists. They care not for the expense, cost effectiveness or financial hardship to persons or businesses by their protectionist agenda. They think and advocate in a vacuum, a Utopian bubble. They repulse me. Finally, they always sport names like the president of such a council, who probably spends more time in the gym and at whole foods than at home or in the real world. Meri-K Appy definitely is in the minority, a special, insane minority, but the damage she gladly does cannot be underestimated. Whichever came first, the child or adult Meri-K, it’s scary to consider.

Run for your life

Shakespeare penned wise words about man’s dreams always exceeding his grasp. This observation appropriately relates to the dream of universal health care. Health care foremost should be a personal endeavor, but a liberal ( i.e. progressive, socialist, Utopian or Obama supporter) envisions a system that helps everyone regardless of individual input. When a calamity occurs, whether unforeseen or predictable, common sense should prevail. A strained muscle in my leg has resulted from pushing on a decayed stump to dislodge it from the turf - a action I foreswore the last time it was attempted. Yet a government bailout is not necessary to tide me over for a few days of recuperation. On the other hand, could my clean living and God-fearing neighbor have prevented her diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and the conditions which now necessitate special medical care? So far, her family has been the source of assistance, but it’s obvious that some type of external agent might be needed through her personal insurance, something she never has been lacking. Common sense, however, does not allow for me to pay her medical bills. Obama care aims to make the individual who has accumulated wealth and savings and anticipated the future’s uncertainties, also his and her brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. I remember the author Henry David Thoreau’s sentiments about charity leaving home. "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." My guaranteed freedoms to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are at risk when government, ‘chooses’ to make decisions for me.

A different stimulus packaged

"All literature, all philosophy, all history bounds with incentives to noble action, incentives which would be buried in black darkness were the light of the written word not flashed upon them...I am a votary of literature, and make the confession unashamed; shame belongs rather to the bookish recluse, who knows not how to apply his reading to the good of his fellows, or to manifest its fruits to the eyes of all... (Reading) gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. In the home it delights, in the world it hampers not. Through the night- watches, on all our journeying, and in our hours of country ease, it is our unfailing companion." Roman orator and statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

Books - read and appreciated as a source of knowledge directed to the good - are indeed a precious stimulus package.

Ironically, Francesco di Petracco ( Petrarch), poet, around 1333, traveled extensively searching for the lost writings of Cicero so that he could collect and preserve them. Around 1346, he said:

"Maybe I have more (books) than I need, ... but it is the same with books as with everything else - success finding them spurs one on to greed for more. There is moreover something special about books; gold and silver, jewels and purple raiment, marble halls and well-tended fields, pictures and horses in all their trappings, and everything else of that kind can afford only passing pleasure with nothing to say, whereas books can worm the heart with friendly worlds and counsel, entering into a close relation ship with us which is articulate and alive."

Moral disarmmament

Obama is immersing America in a new arms race - the race to moral and military disarmament. He aims to simultaneously cut our weapons systems and defense capabilities and engage in multilateral, international agreements. His words and action aim to deprive Americans of their ability to distinguish between a good and an evil or a truth and a deception. The method Obama uses to accomplish his new order is draws upon ½ lies, ½ truths and double speak. But half of America isn’t able to decoding his messages. Obama’s counselor David Axelrod has said that the response to Obama’s soaring "speeches of such weight is less consequential than reverberations from his message." Do I hear equivocation? Obama has said that we are "ultimately better off without the tyranny of Sadaam Hussein" but he adds that the Iraq war had shown why diplomacy and international consensus were preferable. Do I hear more equivocation? If I hear contradiction and misdirection, why cannot other Americans? They have fallen under his sway. When citizens have been morally disarmed, shorn of truth and straight talk, rendered devoid of person reflection, we are in deep doodoo.

HAIL TO THE HORSE

"The horse was to Comanches what ships, guns, and gold were to European imperial powers - a transportation device that compressed spatial units into conquerable size, an instrument of war that allowed them to wield much more power than their numbers would have suggested, and a coveted commodity around which a trading empire could be built." This from a professor of history of that period. The Comanches empire’s ascendancy and dominance covered the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It utilized enormous numbers of horses. Comanches owned nearly four horses per capita. Since some 12 million feral horses roamed within and near their borders, a bottomless pool of exploitable animal wealth was available to them. But how did Comanches fare as stewards of their lands? The fame of their commercial hegemony founded upon theft (raids), threats,death and destruction was fleeting. The complicated world of the wild west has only re-invented and re-installed itself in the 21st century where some pockets of daily living are no less dangerous than in savage times while others are splendiferous. Hail to the horse who has prevailed through it all.

SARAH PALIN

Poor Peggy Noonan! How long has it been since she wandered off the conservative reservation? Riding the range outside of rationality, whatever she now says ( as a closet elitist ), the opposite must be true. In "a Farewell to Harms" on July 11, she thinks Sarah Palin made the Republican Party look "stupid’ and "not thoughtful," and from her highbrow, sophisticated, New York-based elitist pedestal, any common rube ( like Sarah and myself) won’t do to represent America to the world. Sarah reminds me of Harry Truman, a man with populist intuitions and safe instincts, patriotic to the core. According to Peggy, however, neither Sarah nor Harry would qualify to "go national" because each is not "self-reflective" enough. It’s not what’s wrong, but what’s right with an education from a small college (mine having been in Chicago in the early 60's) that we should applaud. Such schools produce doers instead of glory seekers. Noonan says we can teach Sarah to "memorize" but "she is not going to be able to know how to think..." She fails to recognize that common sense, the virtue of the Heartland, beats sophistication as a qualification for President. Peggy’s call for conservative leaders that "know how to think," ignores the ironic fact that our current President doesn’t need to think; he already has internalized his devotion to a clear agenda of wealth redistribution from achievers to non-achievers. Obama’s high brow, double-speak prose masks his message, his agenda of surrender of our freedoms. The appeal of socialism’s euphemism, fairness, has gripped half of this nation. Its message is wrong. News flash to Peggy. A candidate for President need not "learn how the other sides think, or why." I say "Give ‘em Hell, Sarah." I would.

Double-talk

With phrases like "post acquittal detention power," referring to Guantanamo prisoners, being used by our Obama administration, it’s no wonder that a local MRDD board has decided to jump onto the euphemistic band wagon and change its name eliminating ‘retarded’ from the acronym, leaving just the ‘developing disabilities’ phrase in tact. Retardation being a ‘derogatory’ word. Would George Orwell be proud to know that doublespeak rules America? Long ago the garbage man became a sanitary engineer. Double speak plus double standards means a a bi-partisan, bi-polar America. Moral schizophrenia. Steve McNair, of the recent mistress murder/suicide fame, is a disgrace to his race, but a memorial to his greatness has not been canceled. A message should ring loud and clear about a father’s betrayal of his wife and 4 sons, his abandonment of decency, responsibility and family values (could fleeting fame and guaranteed fortune have had anything to with it? ). Shame, shame, shame. But no, in today’s culture there’s no sermon preached on the need for shame. No means yes; too often evil’s overlooked or dismissed. Instead, America repeatedly relives its Princess Di moments whenever a shameful, sinful icon dies.

To King of the Plains

From Walt Whitman I quote a tribute to the wild mustang. "Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions, is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, over-scorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies...The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more resplendent than gold-and silver-beaters could have furnished him."

From Buffalo Bill Cody I quote a farewell to his favorite mount Charlie. "Old fellow, your journeys are over...Obedient to my call, gladly you have bore your burden on, little knowing, little reckoning what the day might bring, shared sorrows and pleasures alike. Willing speed, tireless courage...you have never failed me. Ah Charlie, old fellow, I have had many friends, but few of whom I can say that... I loved you as you loved me. Men tell me you have no soul; but if there is a heaven and scouts can enter here, I’ll wait at the gate for you, old friend.

Either/or

As either New York or California goes, so goes America to hell in a handbasket. The New York Health Dept. claims that by labeling the calorie content of fast foods, the city will reduce by 150,000 the number of obese individuals over 5 years and prevent 30,000 cases of diabetes. Numbers plucked from thin air. What price tag hangs on this inefficient method of saving taxpayer dollars which forfeits the God- given principle of free will. Do the math. How many people live in the environs of New York? Millions? What’s the ratio of slim downs or shorts cuts to diabetes to the population of a major metropolis? California is bankrupt; New York is bankrupt of common sense.

Requiescat in ferno

May he rest in Hell - an oxymoron befitting the perverted, disturbed entertainment moron memorialized and laid to rest today by fans equally afflicted by an unnatural need to remember a flawed soul best quickly forgotten. So, while Michael Jackson beats it off the world stage, ethanol enters left. Alternative energy sources should also be quickly forgotten, because they pervert the natural order of things energetic. Wood pellet plants would not exist if "they didn’t have to do it" due to government subsidies. The U.S. gets about 98 times as much energy from natural gas and oil as it does from ethanol and biofuels. Measured on a per-unit-of energy basis, Congress lavishes ethanol and biofuels with subsidies that are 190 times as large as those given to oil and gas. Nature has blessed us with her bounty of oil, coal and natural gas but liberals dismiss them for politically correct alternatives because they spell personal profit and power.

Enertia (a play on the word inertia)

Sarah! Sarah! Go, go Sarah! If you can have a family meeting and by unanimous vote give up the job of Governor of Alaska ( due no doubt to liberal harassment and litigations) why can’t Americans come together to vote the ‘One’ who governs our country out of office? Sure, we are a free nation that allows a company to produce Satin Soft fabric softener sheets with the delicious fragrance of lavender and vanilla. But we are also a country that has allowed itself to be blackmailed and lied to by this liberal administration into producing a product marketed as the Enertia, an electric bicycle with a price tag of $11,995. For sure, no person can afford that sticker price or a ride 10 miles to town to fill up a huge grocery cart and then ...? We live in Obamaland, where the location of a new compact car production plant will not be based on the economic feasibility of production but on a political process that equates "community impact" (i.e. unemployment rates) and "carbon footprint." (carbon-dioxide emissions) with economic viability. This is not longer the land of the free and the home of the brave except in the Alaskan household of Sarah Palin.

Three more ...

In the spring of 1940, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Education, Bernard Rust, said that " God created the world as a place for work and battle. All the good things on this earth are trophy cups." War and domination formed the foundation for Germany’s greatness and destiny. The German people fell for this ruse which drove them to fight determinedly in World War II believing in hope and change. The American people have fallen for President Obama’s ruse of hope and change, for his version of ‘work and battle’ not to preserve our homeland, but to undo it and transform into a socialist country Hitler could have only dreamt of creating. Oh well! Obama’s off again on a good will tour of Moscow, Italy and Ghana, three more parts of the world stage on which to strut at the American taxpayers’ expense.

Happy dependents day!

"It will give people tremendous confidence and allow people to go out and do what they are doing more openly." What pray tell are we celebrating with this statement? Homosexuality and lesbianism - which are no longer a crimes in India. The words of a gay Mumbai lawyer celebrate gay independence. Just like America’s inability to recognize a good song, the ability to recognize common sense has virtually disappeared from the face of the earth. Independent thinking no longer prevails; dependence upon insanity has replaced it. From mindless (though spectacular) fireworks displays to an emotional spectacle of grief for Michael Jackson - the show goes on.

The big 'D'

Another depressing trend in America will be capstoned at this Tuesday’s idle idol worship festival commemorating Michael Jackson. The ratio of simpletons to followers of Thoreau’s simpler life remains at 80% to 20%. Of course, I fall in with the minority who march to a different drummer. The big "D" of my day, however, must be a local school district’s attempt to combat domestic violence by instituting a program of intervention beginning with the 3rd grade students. That, my fellow travelers in the land of insanity, represents 8 yr. olds - who probably already experience parental violence and have no ‘power’ to do anything about it. When politically correct liberals get their hands on a cultural fix, prosaic is the drug of choice.

Depressants

"The man is truly a superb orator." ... His skill is " in presenting his fait accompli in the most favourable light to his own people while at the same time impressing outside world opinion not only that he is justified in doing what he has done, but that he is a man of peace." Ring any bells? These words of journalist William Shirer echo from Berlin in 1935 about Adolph Hitler. Shirer in 1934 also observed that what "Roosevelt is doing at home seems to smack almost of social and economic revolution."

My one small potato is a giant leap for me this garden season results of planting usually very depressing. But Obama’s giddy resemblance to a dictator like Roosevelt or Hitler is doubly dis-spiriting. I cannot contemplate a triple play in depression by adding to the mix the thought that Michael Jackson, pity his wandering soul, abused prescription drugs.

Tensile weakness

Question. Can America have ‘her cake and eat it too?’ Can we embrace laissez-faire capitalism along with interventionist economics? Apparently. How? True conservatism has virtually died in the public and political spheres and the radical progressivism of Obama has won over as the new "morning (mourning, pun intended) in America." "What is to be done?" Lenin asked? Answer. Capture the language, capture the hearts over the minds of the people, capture the culture, lie and cheat - with grace. Mission accomplished by Obama. The tension being maintained, however, is tearing our country apart.