FUSING ADOLESCENCE AND DECADENCE

After WWI, a pundit said that America was the only nation on record to jump from adolescence to decadence without taking the intervening steps. An example was fox-trotting, a contemporary rage, which was branded as “impure, polluting, corrupting, debasing, spiritually ruinous, an invitation to carnality.” So what’s new? In the 60's we not only skipped the intervening step but also just fused perpetual adolescence with lifelong decadence and reaped the fruits of such indulgence in the persona of the Clintons. The 20's flappers eventually morphed into feminists as time marched on. We elected Warren G. Harding during the roaring 20's promising to return this country to “normalcy, ” even though he personified just the opposite as did our culture. The stock market crash represented price levels too high, a bull market. A 93% increase in consumer goods from 1920-1929 certainly helped add fuel to the fires of unreasonable expectations. Fast forward to 2008 for deja vu and our recession. History repeats itself but just in different ways. Hope and change from Obama did NOT mean hope and change in the way the public perceived it; when socialism unwrapped itself, who knew what it would entail?

Obama and Wilson

1915 or 2012? Froth on top, tragedy below. 1910 - 1915 was a period of change, change, change, change. Everywhere. Who better to encapsulate this change and contrast between facade and undercurrent than Woodrow Wilson himself: “I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.” Yes, this is how he characterizes himself. He was a liberal and idealist who could exactly fit the splendid new times. But, fast forward to 2008. What Presidential candidate could likewise be described? More egotistical than eloquent Barack Obama told Se. Reid "I am a blank slate and people projected onto that blank slate their hopes for the future”, . Life at the turn of the last century in many ways mimics the insanity of the transformation of America under Obama issuing in the 21st century. Hope and change. Froth on top, tragedy below.

REGULATING FREEDOM

Are we witnessing the consequences of truth? Let’s just present a few cases and let you decide. Punishments and regulations typically characterize the culture of Washington politics in this administration. Wild animal owners in Ohio must be punished so a new exotic animal law goes into effect to punish and regulate them. Child labor on farms must be forbidden so a new law restricts children of farm families, excluding friends and relatives. Gas stations must not make a profit in this time of rising oil prices, so concerned citizens take the lead from Occupy Wall Street protesters and boycott local stations. Environmentalists decided that the oryx is endangered so when areas become over-populated, none can be killed, not even a dying, deformed young animal. Burger King sees the hammer descending, so it volunteered to buy eggs and pork only from un-caged and un-penned hens and hogs. A deadly auto pileup from an error in judgment when opening an obscured highway is blamed on the individual’s lack of “formal road re-opening training.” Laugh if you must. Lastly, if truth bears consequences, what could happen if we called Obama by his proper genetic name, a mulatto? One fact is obvious, the shadow of punishment and regulation is just as alarming as the object that casts it - big, brother government.

Tea Party and Liberal Illusions

Truth or Consequences? What do you get when liberals with an agenda ‘investigate’ the Tea Party? A book on the Tea Party that does not mention our 3 founding principles. Two women academics visited many Tea Party meetings and concluded ‘personal dislikes’ were the basis of the Tea Party and not philosophy of government or adherence to the Constitution. They saw close up and personal the truth of Americans concerned with the direction of this country under the liberal, Obama agenda ( granted older and white) but concluded that the Tea Party hates four things: youth, Obama personally, professors and freeloaders. Don’t these four fit the bill? Tea Partiers favored programs, such as social security and medicare, that they already benefitted from, but wanted to deny any benefits to others lower on the social scale, called freeloaders. Anyway, they admired and respected Tea Party members personally, but concluded their animus was strange because it threatened the status quo. Truth has no chance when it confronts the consequences of the pre-conceptions of liberals. Too bad. Too sad. Have you ever noticed that middle-aged and older men with hair tend to be lotharios? Have you ever thought that sponsoring a ‘hot mom’ contest in Columbus misses the point that a wife ( if a mother) should not set the example of immodesty in motherhood? Truth or consequences describes America’s present cultural decadence.

The Answer is Four

Math government style. QUESTION? Does $549B minus $260.8B = 4 more years? The American Action Forum reports: “In 2011, Medicare spent $549.1 billion on medical services for America’s seniors but only collected $260.8 billion in payroll taxes and monthly premiums. Trustees have now issued a funding warning for 7 straight years.” The bottom line is “....the cash shortfall is responsible for over one-fourth of the federal debt accumulated since 2001.” Your answer probably was: WE LOST $288.2 BILLION DOLLARS! But the Obama administrations sees it as only a chance to manipulate, fudge and obscure the numbers to get FOUR MORE YEARS OF OBAMA. Simply put, one Ponzi scheme to hide another Ponzi scheme is the normal mode of a too big government.

THE SWALLOW by Charlotte Smith

The gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
Th oaks are budding; and beneath,
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath of May.

The welcome guest of settled spring,
The swallow too is come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hailed her as she passed.

Come, summer visitant, attach
To my reed-roof your nest of clay,
And let my ear your music cath,
Low twittering underneath the thatch,
As the gray dawn of day.

As fables tell, an Indian sage,
The Hindustani woods among,
Could in his desert hermitage,
As if’t were marked in written page,
Translate the wild bird’s song.

I wish I did his power possess,
That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee,
What our vain systems only guess,
And know from what wild wilderness
You came across the sea.

Yes, our barn swallows also have returned to our country residence as of Mother’s Day, May 10th, swooping and signaling with squeaky twitters. Vultures, however, enjoy a year round stay. They cruise the thermals above our home reminding me of our Big Brother government, ever vigilant to strip away another ounce of free flesh from its citizens. Whatever we can eat, drink, smoke, wear, drive, buy, watch, hear, see, caress or smell is already regulated and restricted. Whatever government subsidizes, supports, excuses or fosters in this ‘bailout era’, on the other hand, is out of our control. smokeandmirrors.con, ( my version) should be the new Website for a government sponsored program for residential portfolio holders that will "monetize your residential mortgage." Need any further proof of the need to rid ourselves of the irresponsible Big O and his Washington liberal elites - a clan of vultures flying over our heads?

THE CROSS OF SNOW a sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in memory of his wife

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face - the face of one long dead -
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in book be read
The legend of a life more bedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravine
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

14 lines of iambic pentameter (5 short/ long beats per line ), rhyme scheme, abba cddc efg efg
in a poetic formula with pent up passion for a lost beloved.

Will we some years hence need a poetic memoriam to the United States of America as we once knew and loved her?

Fixing the Media

A head’s up to the media from Stockton, CA. who reported on a bee “infestation.” Bees swarm in the spring; they do not create an “infestation.” Once surrounding a queen they are relatively calm and can be transplanted to a new hive (or super) by even an educated layman, not even a beekeeper. A woman does not have to be ‘locked’ into her home because she cannot walk by them if they accidentally fall on the ground from a broken branch on which they landed. They will within 24 hours fly away to their newly, scouted home. This recent news ‘story’ from Stockton, CA. inspires me to tell the media how to fix their endemic problem. Report events positively. Educate the public on the wonderful facts of life that fruits and flowers all around the world are dependent upon bees for pollination. Huge swarms denote healthy hives, a fact lost to the viewer of the video and news story. Do NOT PANIC the public as usual with wordplay and meaningless personal interviews and erroneous information. STOP presenting all your “news” as bad, sensationalistic or scary. Even removed from politics, the liberal media’s view of the world buzzes through the spring sunlight of another season of re-growth and transformation in the natural world. Who learns anything listening to the news? Why is it that a Tea Party person, presented by the media as old, ignorant, backward and extremely ill-informed, can penetrate this simple truth?

Still Paying the Price

It’s still up to the Tea Party to stand its ground in the upcoming election. When Henry Wallace managed the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act ( through Congress) in 1933 in the first 100 days of FDR’s Presidency during the Depression (as part of the New Deal), it was called “the greatest single experiment in economic planning under capitalist conditions ever attempted by a democracy in times of peace.” Do you note any contradiction here? “Economic planning vs. capitalist democracy?” Well, contradiction prevailed and became quite popular. Wallace was proud of it, because he said we must “clear the wreckage before we can build, “ ... “Rub their noses in the facts.” What were these facts? 22,000 workers into 955 counties paid cotton farmers $100 million to plow under 10 million acres ( 1/3 of their crop). Dept of Ag. Employees worker around the clock to send out 88,000 checks a day to participating farmers. Was that enough of a controlling and dictating government? No, the slaughtering of pigs was not far behind... We are living with another New (Raw?) Deal under Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats that is transforming America.

SWINE IN MICHIGAN DESTROYED

First they came for the pigs, but I was not a swine. Then they came for the chicken, but I was not a cluck. Then they came for the sheep, but I was not going to be sheared. Then they came for the cattle, but I had no beef. When they came for the horses, I laughed. Then they came for me, and the barnyard was empty. So picture a smiling dog wearing a hoodie musing: “If I had a dog, it would look like the dog Obama ate.”

Both sides now

A coin is usually Janus-faced, one representation opposing another. But more lurks behind the surfaces. The face of a ‘rich’ man who does not pay his “fair share” contrasts with an image of a poor person from the 50% of the citizens who do not pay income taxes. Actually, only 84 million out of 310 million people in the U.S. actually pay income taxes ( I grant 310 million includes all Americans). The image of a small electric car which sells for about $22,000 reveals on the reverse side of the coin, a cost to the auto company of $13,000 to $15,000. Actually, the battery weighs 700 lbs. and lasts only 23 hours and profit is impossible even with subsidies. Two-faced does not even begin to define the world we now inhabit. Should a silver spoon oppose a hand out on a coin? Actually, behind a success story is hard work; behind a hand-out is usually a government subsidy. Romney calling Obama a “nice guy” just proves that we in the Tea Party must continue to be totally, engaged, determined and steadfast in our principles.

The truth is a lie

Truth nowadays is a lie; reality for one sector of our society is a lie spread as truth to the opposition. Both words and deeds qualify. The head of GM asserts “electrification of the mobile sector” should be an agenda of the future. Lie. “Electric cars,” translation of a glittering generality for the non-elitist, cannot power industry, progress, sustainability or the economy of America. The rich should pay more in taxes. Lie. Will baseball ‘stars’ who are awarded 6,8 or 10 year contracts for 51, 127, 160, 225 or 250 million dollars pay more in taxes after their ‘agents’ secure for them various loopholes? The war on drugs does society a service. Lie. The only youth in this country wanting or having children ( not aborting them for selfish motives) are the same youth who spoil them, overfeed them, experiment with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. So what will be the result of protecting them from their children? What’s the common denominator of the three lies? Government and the media’s lies and intrusion into liberty and free choice. So says a Tea Party person.

Feckless Leader

He wants government to punish the rich, but not his rich crones who support his Presidency. He ridicules the poor who support true charities not the arts, entertainment and the environment. He’s our fearless leader who did not pay his fair share of his taxes, only 20%, although he IS rich. More middle and higher income Americans DO pay 30% or more in taxes. Just for disclosure, I grant that rich Romney only paid 14% income taxes but let’s be honest, any really rich entertainer, sports hero, President, D-com billionaire or idiot will ‘cheat’ on his (or her) taxes, minimizing the contribution. The Tea Party knows that limited interference from government promotes self-reliance and freedom to achieve financial success, not be punished because punishment is not the government’s reward.

Same heroine

Yesterday's heroine is still today's subject. A brave and generous Arthur Ashe was quoted in my local paper as saying: "True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." The mark of unselfish heroism fell on the young woman who recently rescued 26 horses from the McHenry, Ill. barn fire. When her time came to serve. she answered the call. Glory slept as she worked to rescue as many horses as she could.

Heroine

What makes a heroine? Bravery above and beyond the call of duty. A 15 yr. old girl recently rescued her horse from a barn fire in McHenry, Ill. - not heroic but an action borne of dedication to her dependent friend. This same young horse lover rescued 26 other horses from the death, risking her life but not to the point of futility. This is heroism. Would that more Americans knew the meaning of heroine, not the practice of maudlin sentimentality for actions not above and beyond the call of duty. I salute this this young woman. For any fellow equine admirer, her behavior should make us both humble and proud.

Salute to 101st

I feel it’s appropriate to give a shout out to history’s heroes of the 101st airborne, the ‘screaming eagles.” In June 1944 at Utah beach, during “Overlord,” in Sept. 1944 at Arnhem during “Market Garden,” and in Dec. 1944 at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, the 101st Airborne proved their mettle. Three times over they proved that silly superstitions of bad luck are inappropriate because hard work and dedication win the day. This Tea Party patriot hails inheritors of the American tradition of self-reliance, duty and service to country.

When will it end

This small selection is from the most popular song of the Civil War, North and South. “Suit of blue” was simply changed to “suit of gray” for the Confederate version. Dearest Love, do you remember, when we last did meet, How you told me that you loved me, kneeling at my feet? Oh! How proud you stood before me, in your suit of blue, When you vow’d to me and country, ever to be true. CHORUS: Weeping, sad and lovely, hopes and fears how vain! When this cruel war is over, praying that we meet again.” Reality behind a romantic poem, was not pretty during the Civil War. In May of 1861, the 1st confiscation act was passed by the Union in which disloyal owners ( Southern) could be divested of their slaves used to aid in the war effort. In July of 1862, the 2nd confiscation act said disloyal Southerners could be divested of all property including slaves whether or not used for the war effort. These two realities preceded the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 which freed slaves in the seceded States. On January 31, 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment banning slavery in our nation. White Southerners did not react gracefully to Emancipation. In April of 1864, they massacred blacks at Fort Pillow, Tenn. In April 1864 they again slaughtered black Union soldiers at Plymouth, So. Carolina. In July of 1864, they murdered many of them (atrociously) at the Crater near Petersburg, VA. Furthermore, black Union soldiers often faced enslavement or death if captured by Confederate troops. Unfortunately, the flames of reverse bigotry burn today. Travyon Martin’s death ( justified or not) has become the cause celebre of blacks ( this time around) who falsely want to make racism the central issue to promote another war.

EVOLVING LANGUAGE

What does “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,”mean when Belshazzar read this handwriting on the wall at his lavish feast? “Numbered, numbered, weighed, division,” which Daniel in the Old Testament interpreted to mean “God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it; thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting.” To supplement my previous blog comparing Belshazzar to Obama and the end of his reign, isn’t this message timely? 3% of blacks commit 30% of crimes. Foster homes are now called kinship homes. A meeting room is now called an integrity room. Yes, I heard all of this on the local news. I feel as depressed as a Tea Party person can feel when the government reports that 60 million Americans (I must be one) are disabled.