UNSILENCED CAL

What can be done?

2012-01-28T11:32:00.000-05:00

Slurping my cornflakes in artificial milk this morning, I realized I have no answer to the question, “What can be done?” I share the blame for the present condition of governance in America, having not noted until retirement either the political landscape or the politicians that enrich themselves in office. I thought about ‘our’ Barney Frank, a crooked gay, long-serving Representative now retiring not in disgrace, but in anticipation of marrying his long-time companion. What can be done?

Victor Davis Hanson penned the answers yesterday, but can they be implemented given the status quo? Americans with a great number of freedoms and rights ( we again fell a few notches on the Free Countries list in 2011), exercise few of our concomitant responsibilities. Victor worries that our country could be lost in a generation of these responsibilities cannot be reclaimed:

1. Respect for the law
2. A tough-minded education
3. Collective thrift
4. Private investment
5. Common codes of behavior and civility

No citizen should be exempted from these ‘rules’ but our Obama administration ( and previous administrations have been complicit) flouts these rules and encourages people to do so too.

1. Cold-blooded murderers rarely are executed even though given the death penalty.
2. The pouring of money into the ignorance pit, known as government schools, has not raised the level of or interest in learning for decades.
3. Virtually no one saves or sacrifices from their paychecks.
4. Virtually no one actively invests money for their retirement; instead they count on social security as their sole support when the time comes.
5. Name-calling and indecent dress partner with the never-ending search for insulted feelings which delight lawyers who reap financial benefits.

What can be done, for example, to overturn an illegal, judicial Roe v. Wade decision. If the major premise that human life begins at conception cannot be accepted, how can logical or common sense extrapolations follow?

The Road to Obama

2012-01-26T12:31:00.000-05:00

Alexis de Tocqueville praised and evaluated America in 1831. But he was most afraid of tyranny setting in. He said that once all outstanding classes had been eliminated, all disparities banished, the societies of the future would be defenseless against all forms of oppression.

Tocqueville was a convinced adherent of representative government, as distinguished from the choice by the whole populace. His belief in political dualism is a pertinent reminder today of the happy reconciliation of local self-rule while national government. Centralization certainly might mean efficiency, but it was not conducive to liberty.

His best advice: Let the laws continue to be national, but let the administration of those laws be decentralized. If citizens could be encouraged and locally trained, to take a larger share of their own communal government and its affairs, the results would be, not a loss of unity, but a tremendous increase in energy, satisfaction and stability. In fact, let everything be done to encourage and bolster the individual and the small local groups against the crushing weight, and the annihilating philosophy, of a superior State.

With his fears of the mob, however, poor Tocqueville did not allow for the ingenuity of the designing few and the potential indifference of the many. Obviously, the 1830’s are history. Reality is President Obama and his ‘superior State’ choosing sides - denouncing the Tea Party ( a majority? ) and praising Occupy Wall Street ( a minority?). Reality is Obama’s present, populist approach to political campaigning. Reality is Obama announcing that all students must remain in high school until 18 or graduation. The only way this system can ‘succeed’ is for teachers (and schools) to cheat, warehouse or tutor, meaning more taxpayer money poured down the pit of ignorance.

One hundred eighty years on, 2012 the tyranny of the left-wing, liberal, minority thrives. Always hibernating when not flourishing, its 20% never dies. An added twist, however, to the present ruling classes’ oppression and suppression of our liberties ( and share the wealth appeal of socialism), is its continuous propagandizing of class warfare and inequality, rich vs. poor. Obama’s tyranny is in itself a lie and betrayal of the principles upon which our great nation was founded. It’s a slap in poor Tocqueville’s thin, tubercular face, a genuine insult to truths he unearthed in his visit to America.

Nothing’s new

2012-01-24T10:14:00.000-05:00

The (1929) Depression proved to be the “…unhappy confirmation of the heartless verities of supply and demand.”

But the New Deal failed in its central aim of restoring economic prosperity nationally and in the states, especially Washington state, called the soviet state of America ( for its progressive and soviet sympathies).

Who is the blame? Washington D.C. political policies or the irrationality of the public? After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, fear-driven irrationality was abundant.

Between 1941 and 1946, the government expended $378 billion and the federal debt increased fivefold to $260 billion for war production and financing. These war actions effectively wiped out unemployment; virtually every able-bodied adult was at work – but at what expense to future generations?

Fast forward to 2012 and the state of our Union. Spending and debt have NEVER decreased even though government cannot literally create jobs ( WWII inspired them).

Our Alinsky President tonight will NOT talk about anything new. He will not acknowledge the truism of the free market, a neutral ( and sometimes cruel) exchange for the buying and selling of goods and services ( if not abused by immoral greed). Spreading the wealth through government intervention will be his mantra. The only self-interest evident tonight will be Obama’s own re-election.

America’s path to perdition has been paved with debt since FDR’s first metaphorical footprint ( life for him being confined to a wheelchair). Our leader, Obama will stride ( head up and away from reality) down our decline.

Destructive Populism

2012-01-23T13:16:00.000-05:00

Of whom was the writer below speaking? The Tea Party? Occupy Wall Street? Radicals, socialists, right-wing conservatives, libertarians who? Answer, any disliked minority or perceived, destructive minority.

In 1885, in Washington State, this comment appeared in the Tacoma Ledger asking if American citizens would allow “an army of leprous, prosperity-sucking, progress-blasting Asiatics to befoul our thoroughfares, degrade the city, repel immigration, drive out our people, break up our homes, take employment from our countrymen, corrupt the morals of our youth, establish opium joints, buy or steal the babe of poverty or slave, and taint with their brothers the lives of our young men?”

Therefore, in 1886, the Chinese encountered violence or expulsion. The legendary time when men and women worked together in frontier towns with a sense of community was disappearing. Labor and business – the lower element and the better element, began to view themselves and each other from different perspectives. Again, does any of this sound familiar today?

Forces responsible for the anti-Chinese movement created the People’s Party, the 1st reformist organization in the Northwest; even though dissociated from socialists, anarchists and other extremists, party members nevertheless fought the business men.
Change the names but not the animus, and surely there’s relevance to our current political and cultural climate.

Playing God?

2012-01-22T09:35:00.003-05:00

The path of conservatism is like an artery carrying the lifeblood of a country. The red line is a continuum of success. Yet liberals somehow create or allow a cause, a stoppage, a bubble if you will, to form in the line. Consequently, the patient ( our country) will ultimately die. Liberalism ( socialism,communism, progressivism ) never sustains the lifeblood of a nation on its path to greater prosperity. Why does this liberal behavior predictably and consistently repeat failure after failure over time? The perversity of human nature to usurp the role of personal freedom and play God?

Three Strike Outs

2012-01-21T16:05:00.003-05:00

Three strikes and I'm out of credulity. #1. A casino in Ohio supposedly will provide 2000 jobs at the cost of $400 million dollars. That's $200,000 per job. #2. I heard that a 'certain' non-profit cannot only survive with federal funding. #3. A representative of a major league sports team spoke about the "key components to what they're doing here." Yes, it's not worth my knowing the facts of life because my credulity is tested beyond endurance.

Six Greatest

2012-01-19T16:15:00.000-05:00

Six Greatest
Ataturk… 31
Mao Zedong … 30
FDR … 30
Stalin … 29
Lenin … 28
Ho Chi Minh … 27

The top six great rulers of the last century. So says, Arnold M. Ludwig concluding his 18 year study contained in his 2002 book, “King of the Mountain.”

Political genius, said Bismark, consisted of hearing the distant hoofbeat of the horse of history and then leaping to catch the passing horseman by the coattail.

Thomas Carlyle, was advocate of the great-man theory of history.

William James subscribed to the view that the “mutations of societies from generation to generation are in the main due directly or indirectly to the examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the “receptivities of the moment, or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments, initiators of movement, setters of precedent or fashion, centers of corruption, or destroyers of other persons whose gifts, had they had free play, would have led society in another direction.”

Hegel subscribed to the “world-historical” hero who “actualizes his age,” an expression of the “spirit” or “soul” of his times.

Sidney Hook advocated the “event-making” man, as opposed to the eventful man, who brings about momentous happenings not just by what he does but also by what he is.

Ludwig believes greatness belongs to the “political catalyst,” the “facilitator/inhibitor of historical events.” At the top of the page are his top 6 Political Greats. His determination was based upon the 7 pillars of political greatness: dominance, contrariness, presence, change agent, vanity, courage, and wary unease ( a variation on ADD personality).

What do you think? Personally, I don’t care – they are/were all successful nutcakes responsible for more sadness than glee in the human condition.

BUT Bismark had it right when it comes to President Obama; he’s riding high now.

Feast or Famine Under Obama

2012-01-18T14:37:00.000-05:00

Remember the ‘man who never was’, a deception practiced on the Germans by the British before the invasion of Sicily in WWII? Well, in 2012, one third of Americans are like a man ( or woman) who never was able to say no.
33% of adults and 17 % of children are obese. At the same time, more people receive food stamps ( designed to feed the needy ‘poor’) than any time in history. Obama’s administration blames this fact on their inheritance of a critical economic recession and its impact on Americans’ pocketbooks. The reality is rampant food stamp fraud ( the use of Debit cards) where in Ohio 17,000 cards were issued at least 10 times and then sold to merchants for pennies on the dollar; in one case re-issued 50 times.
Why didn’t our Big Brother’s spies ferret out this fraud? Why has this cheating finally come to light? Why are so many Americans obese ( the poor? ) if not because of either free food via food stamps or simply too much yummy food available for consumption? Feast or famine? Would a rational or irrational individual ever choose famine over a feast? Glaring contradiction is the hallmark of this Presidency. Obama and Michele live like African potentates; we their ignored subjects who have more than enough bread ( and circus entertainments) grow fat and surfeit.
History will record Obama our leader as the ‘man who never knew’ how to sacrifice; his typical subject also will be remembered as the man ( and woman) who never was able to say no. Why should he or she? Worse days might be ahead.

Why Rulers Rule

2012-01-17T09:40:00.002-05:00

Rulers rule because they are biologically hard-wired to mimic their ancestor, the mountain gorilla. This theory is expounded by Arnold M. Ludwig in his landmark 18 yrs.of research on 1900 leaders over the last century, culminating in his 2002 book, "King of the Mountain." 1. Naturally, all nations have rulers, need rulers. 2. Males predominately rule. 3. No special form of talent is necessary. 4. They need not be sane. 5. They do not learn from mistakes even if they come to power forcibly. 6. They risk their lives to hold on to their power and position. 7. AND, those rulers who attain legendary status ( good or evil) have conquered, warred, and forcibly transformed their societies. Will Barack Obama achieve Political Greatness Status (PGS ) or just -like a loser silver-backed male gorilla - beat his chest as a symbol of his rule, a sound and fury signifying nothing but his temporary position as top ape? -

Piss on the Taliban

2012-01-16T14:52:00.000-05:00

In 2 years during WWII, Firestone’s former tire plant in Akron rolled out 25,000 antiaircraft guns.

Henry Kaiser’s ship yards in WWII built a ship in 4 days from prefabricated sections.

Germany lost 350,000 men in the retreat toward Warsaw in WWII in 1944.

1,500,000 people were killed by Nazis at Majdanek extermination camp during WWII.

250,000 Poles died during the Polish uprising in WWII.

820,000 pairs of shoes were found at Majdanek’s German extermination camp after WWII.

11,448 Germans suspected in the plot to kill Hitler were executed in WWII.

The U.S. sunk more than 600 Japanese ships in WWII.

1,200,000 Japanese were rendered homeless by the firebombing of Tokyo in WWII.

!0,000 people a day were exterminated at Auschwitz in WWII.

More than 800 ships took part in landing in southern France for D-Day in WWII.

74 SS soldiers were tried for the massacre of American POW’s at Malmedy and sentenced to death in WWII. None, eventually, were executed.

On D-day of WWII, one GI told a surrendering German to start running, shot him and then signaled a tank to run over him.

4 American soldiers urinate on dead enemy Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in 2011.

Numbers don’t lie; rather they teach. All week, Jan., 2012, politicians and the media report that the last item, a silly prank, is comparable to any of the above wonders or atrocities. Are they nuts?

Keep the Dream Alive

2012-01-15T16:31:00.000-05:00

We must keep the dream of America under God alive. Martin Luther King along with writers and poets consistently expressed this idea: “God, give us (honorable) men!” in a sonnet by Josiah Gilbert Holland, America as “God’s Crucible, “ ( Israel Zangwill),
a place were a “just God … presides over the destinies of nations” ( Patrick Henry), where the 2nd of our two main characteristics according to John Buchan ( the first being that ordinary man believes in himself and his ability to govern his country), is the Christians’ fundamental belief in the worth of every human soul, where Francis Scott Key’s star- spangled banner flew over a “Heaven-rescued land,” where His “Power made us a nation,” and where Samuel Francis Smith” in America sang to thee, “Our Father’s God,” … “author of liberty,” where “God shed His grace” for Katherine Lee Bates, where Julia Ward Howe saw a country “link thy ways to those of God,” where James Russell Lowell saw Freedom “God’s express design,” “where God’s peace is shed,” for Katherine Janeway Conger, and where, regarding our Ship of State, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow confirmed, “We know what Master laid thy keel.”

God and God’s country have been inextricably intertwined throughout our history. Yet the present Obama administration and his supporters want to ‘totally transform’ America. What does this mean? Does it mean that we cannot as Harry Golden said, only in America go to a public library – and just for the asking – have made available “the sum total of all of human thought and experience; at no cost whatever?” Does it cease to mean that “America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses?” as expressed in a speech by Woodrow Wilson in Chicago? Does it mean that we live in a country where no longer the “President’s taking off his hat to them ( the common people) not they to him - ” according to Walt Whitman? Does it mean that we all are not Americans,, no Republican, no Democrat, “That their country is greater than party?” a view from James Gillespie Blaine on an Independence Day?

A full-fledged American ( according to Struthers Burt) practices “sober discussion, a deep contemplation.” “Circumstances are forcing him into deep, straight, independent form of thinking. “ “Pseudo-patriotism, Burt says, “may be the last refuge of a scoundrel.” “Real patriotism… will be… the last, and only possible, refuge of the intelligent and far-visioned citizen, but also his sword, his rallying cry, and the emblem of his advance.” America needs full-fledged citizens now.

America is still in the uplifting lines of Henry Van Dyke who called America home, “the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, / Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Better yet, let’s let Teddy Roosevelt offer his challenge to a “new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities. No other nation in the world has such resources. NO other nation has ever been so favored. If we dare to rise level to the opportunities offered us, our destiny will be vast beyond the power of imagination. We must master this destiny; and make it our own; and we can thus make it our own only if we, as a vigorous and separate nation, develop a great and wonderful nationality, distinctively different from any other nationality, of either the present or the past. For such a nation all of us can well afford to give up all other allegiances, and high of heart to stand, a mighty and united people, facing a future of glorious promise.”

American, beautiful under God, where Freedom rings with opportunity for all – penned about pledged to by optimists throughout our history. Until now. Can we let the dream die?

Keep the Dream Alive Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die For when dreams go
Life is a broken-winged bird Life is a barren field
That cannot fly. Frozen with snow.
Langston Hughes
“Dreams”

“I am Christmas carols, … the Golden Rule, … I am America as long ago as I can remember and as far ahead as I can dream.” ( George Mendoza).

NOT OBAMA

2012-01-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

God, Give us Men!

God, give us men! A time like this demands,
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
Josiah Gilbert Holland

When was the above sonnet composed you ask? (mid 19th century by an English poet). Does it matter when the perfect, appropriate sentiment still rings true as we being 2012? EXCEPT that a women also fight for Freedom. Myself, for example, secure in my wallow, unafraid of freak-accusations or fuddy-duddy dismissals. God has given us men and women, here and now never to be tainted by outside influences once their philosophical, cultural, moral, economic and political principles have been grounded. Justice means equality, Justice is founded in fact. Justice means merited reward and punishment. Justice thwarts the delusions of liberals.

Extravagance

2012-01-14T10:48:00.000-05:00

I am a cautious spender. What counts for conservative extravagance? Not just feeding the birds year round. When arctic cold descends and flurries fall, I feel compassion for our feathered friends. So, calling forth a rush of extravagance, I crumbled 2 tortillas into small pieces and flung them onto my two feeding stations for the welfare birds. Sparrows, juncos, blue jays, cardinals, house finches, not much elitism here. Cost? 10 cents a tortilla and the sacrifice of two luncheon meals. I like caring for those under the watchful eye of God. I hope I also am on his radar screen.

Great writing of yesteryear

2012-01-13T11:13:00.000-05:00

“Frost had turned the willow leaves to gold and sent them skittering and tacking like fairy boats upon the quiet stream. The aspens, which last week shone of hammered gold, stand naked and modest, their brilliant shrouds, flung carelessly at their feet,”

“Outside my fences, the hunters ( it’s deer season) are in a frenzy. One car impales the next with lurching headlights.”

“I have a flashlight whose beam saves walking. Beating the gloom with a club of light, I wake the killdeer from their sleep, send the starlings clattering from the limby pine tops. Heifers ring the pines, clustered beneath in groups for warmth and company, the kindly branches protecting their backs from the early morning frost. A few push blinking to their feet, stretching their sway-baked best as though their front feet are about to walk off and leave the rest of the body behind.”

Who writes with such artistry about the natural word as a cattleman in Oregon in the late 1960’s? How long did the author ‘stick it out’ on his 6000 acres of Yamsi.

Who tells the reader about a past world, when sirloin steak sold for $1.50 a lb. When it took 900 tons of hay , approximately 25,000 bales, costing $22,500 to feet 500 cattle over a winter. When 18,000 different brands marked Oregon herds. When great meals consisted of steak, baked beans, cherry pie and beer?

Thankfully, Dayton O. Hyde is still alive at 86. And in testament to his 17 books, his mastery of description and depth of feelings for the land, I add a few more sentences from his 1971 seminal work, “Yamsi.”

“First, a spotted skunk, a species which hasn’t been seen here for thirty years, then, wet and bedraggled, a big raccoon probes for snails along the march, stands on his hind legs to peer at me above the hummocks, eyes glowing like red coals. Heavy with fawn, a doe comes mincing down off the forested hillsides and across the meadow, headed for salt. …The quiet, windless ponds are rippled now with the spreading V of a swimming muskrat, now with a flock of cinnamon teal that came guiding in on a beam of floating moonlight, and are determined to spend the rest of the night. … It is not a very safe place, for already a great horned owl has floated out of nowhere to perch on a cathedral spire of a dead jackpine right above their heads, His hoots are answered from afar from another male.” … “Fearful of frightening her ( a calving heifer), I sit in the darkness, shivering, miserable, waiting for instincts to make a mother of her, trying to hear the low bawl of motherhood, the wet licking sounds above the froggy chorus”…. “The calf is rough-haired with her licking a cowlick standing in a whorl on his ribs and another on his shoulder. He stands trembling, trying to suck his mother’s shoulder. Stupid heifer!”

Want to read more? His book Yamsi is available at Amazon, Alibris and libraries.

Why isn’t Big Brother watching me?

2012-01-13T11:06:00.000-05:00

LETTER TO EDITOR

It has been revealed that the Department of Homeland Security has for 18 months been monitoring blogs, public forums and social networks on line through its “Social Networking/Media Capability” Program . I checked the five page list and I was not listed. Early in the Obama administration he asked citizens to report ‘fishy people’ who did not support him. I, along with million of other Americans, self reported myself to the government. In embarrassment they shut it down. Now they are back with the new program. So I wish to say I am still giving my shoutouts to liberty-loving American, up in arms to replace President Obama with a better friend of America in the White House. There. I’ve said it. Yet somehow I’ve escaped since last November having not appeared on their five page list of suspects. Are my fellow Americans aware of this invasion of privacy and free speech? No Jihad sites are on the list but several anti-jihad are. Do I smell ‘political correctness’? I wanted to be listed proudly with the anti-jihad and patriotic American who oppose the Obama administration road to socialism.

My advice, therefore to concerned citizens is ‘throw caution to the wind,’ by expressing your opinions wherever needed because as far as I know, it’s still a free country.

Ron Paul-Freedom Fighter

2012-01-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

Do the Math. The Dept. of Agriculture announced that in the interest of cost cutting measures ( ho, ho, ho), it will close 259 offices, labs or facilities to save $150 million. The budget, however, of the DofA is $145 billion. The math tells us that about $613 million dollars per operation will be saved. Wow! Was each each operation ever worth over a ½ million dollars? What fraction of $145 billion is $150 million? ( .10%?) You do the math and be scandalized that our Obama administration can hoodwink the public once again.

Romney may have won Iowa and New Hampshire, may win the nomination for President, but when Ron Paul says legalize prostitution and heroin, when his libertarian message resonates with young people and old people like me who figure the only learning curve for drunks, drug addicts and insane politicians should be the gutter – I’m ready to back a freedom fighter in the White House.

Ron Paul can confront foreign policy decisions on the job. Obama, however, has not and will never embrace conservative thinking.

Lenin and God

2012-01-10T18:59:00.001-05:00

Lenin wrote “Every religious idea, every idea of God-even flirting with the idea of God – is unutterable vileness of the most dangerous kind, contagion of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence, and physical contagion are far less dangerous than the subtle , spiritual idea of a God.”

Communists were Leninists; therefore, every means justified the end of Christians’ belief in God. What American could not hate this evil? Unfortunately, too many, past and present. And rather than stand against the Devil and his deceptions in the world, patrons of political correctness sit idly by and sponsor a silly ‘national stalking awareness month’, January, 2012.

Our Father, deliver us from evil, Amen.

Communists and Liberals

2012-01-09T10:24:00.003-05:00

Reading "Tortured for Christ," by Romanian Christian Richard Wurmbrand, published in 1967 after his survival at the hands of the Russian Communists, I wonder, were his torturers just part of a "herd of independent minds"? Recently, I heard this phrase from a conservative referring to elite liberals (especially from academia)who differ not a whit from each other in conformity to accepted doctrine. Ironically, they resemble the evil Communists for whom any inflicted suffering is justified in the name of the cause. Incidentally, Wurmbrand founded "The Voice of the Martyrs," to spread the message of the persecuted Christian church around the world.

So back to 'the herd' in search of truth. They do not pursue her. Each liberal (and sympathetic atheist, progressive, anti-Christian, etc,) simply spouts the monotonous party line, usually in elegant, erudite language and think they are being 'so independent'. In contrast to a reality check, I dipped into a few pages of E.L. Docterow. Prickly facts ignored or not sought out, do not impede the stampede of these liberal conformists who preach freedom of speech and thought but demand adherence to their ideas and ideals, always attempting to impose them through rules or regulations on those of us who appreciate truth.

So, sad and upsetting as it is to read about torture and death at the hands of the Devil called Communism, we cannot abandon hope. Only in Hell, then would we reside.

What?

2012-01-07T19:18:00.004-05:00

I almost long for the 18th century when beef was 8 cents a pound. 10,000 lbs. of flour represented only a 4 day food supply at a fort on the frontier. Then - fortunately or unfortunately - every American knew right from wrong but never considered blurring their boundaries.

What's 49 billion?

2012-01-06T18:46:00.002-05:00

What's 49 billion dollars a year over 10 years when it comes to cuts in the military budget? Virtually nothing. What's the meaning of "surgical not just weapons and manpower," words from our President about the reduction in military spending? Gobbledygook. What's 8% unemployment? In reality 10%. What's the use of knowing the terms: racism, national debt, recess appointments, Friday afternoon news, dumping, signing statements, revolving doors, lobbyists, earmarks, renditions, Guantanamo, tribunals, predator drones and the Patriot Act? Each fact decried by candidate Obama but embraced by President Obama even embraced and extended. Truly the two-faced polititian!

So what's the good of pursuing truth - political or moral - when the big 'O' in the White House rejects or abuses it? You tell me and my friendly conservative voices crying in the wilderness.

No hypocrisy, please

2012-01-05T10:28:00.004-05:00

HYPOCRISY derives from a Greek word meaning "to hide behind a mask." What better definition of a liberal? NOTHING they say or do reflects reality; NOTHING can be trusted to be the truth. Their alleged complaint against Christians, however, is that they are 'hypocrites' who do not follow the teachings of Christ in daily living. (Saying one thing and living another). OH REALLY? AU CONTRAIRE! Do Christians sometimes fall short of Christian teachings? Yes, if we define Christian teaching to start with the 10 commandments. But how should we apply the Decalogue to daily rights and duties?

Skeptics like Emerson, Nietzsche, and Shaw pointed out that Christians do not practice what they preach. Even a deep, meaningful declaration from Pascal that "only God Himself can fill" a ""God-shaped void," means little if we don't unmask our Christian beliefs into the light of daily living.

So what's my point? My complaint? My suggestion if I were running on an anti-hypocritical platform for saving America is a study of the practical applications of Christian teaching - the 10 commandments. For example we could begin with subsidies, grants and giveaways from the government as the solutions to problems and setbacks in life. Remember Job. Ask yourself who is responsible for your actions day by day, year by year as a way to fill the void until the end time. No I'm not an extreme Evangelical. No I'm not a Biblical literalist. No I'm not an unequivocal libertarian.

Yes, I believe no mask should separate ideology from living; no hypocrisy dictate politics and culture. Fellow Americans, we need personal re-examinations and the pursuit of truth.

My Red Bowl

2012-01-04T12:20:00.003-05:00

New Year 2012 is bowl time. Not football, but time to retire my red bowl. Quarterback to numerous breakfast cereals over the years, it is now not down and out but sent up and out to the 'pasture' of memories. To clarify, my red, plastic cereal bowl from the 1970's of child-raising and lowered income is finally consigned to its proper place (heaven forbid the dust bin) in an upper room of my home. There reside old, vintage, antique or now useless items of memorabilia. Past toys, a butter churn, a collage of favorite animals, pictures, auction acquisitions, a velvet cape, childhood photos and doll, dishes, clothes, a cow bell, dog license tags, aged books, etc.., you get the picture of a collection. My red bowl NOW joins the crowd. Clean and ever-ready after years of washing and microwaving, resting on an antique drop front desk ( minus the drop front), my red bowl rests, upstairs in our home on Heath Lane as history. No remorse or withdrawal symptoms will accompany my decision. Happy were the days of its usefulness.

Freedom in Choices

2012-01-02T14:17:00.003-05:00

Fourteen million of our school children receive free lunches - about 21%. In Tennessee it is 37%. Poverty in America or poor choices? If one were to act smart as opposed to stupid would he or she be a different person? If a man were not born a man, would he not have to have been born a woman? Just asking - because flashes of the self-evident seem to be lacking in today's culture. Also, wisdom often comes from those condemned to a early death. John Richard Jefferies an English writer and nature lover, dead at thirty eight from tuberculosis, said: "The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty, are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things, so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. This is the real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance."

Of course Jefferies referred to nature's wonders as the reason to live, not to Truth which the poet John Keats, another young victim of consumption, said exchanges with beauty as the only things one needs to know. How to relate these observations to our false epidemics of poverty and obesity? Truth is beautiful when we find it; beauty is living with the truth.

1. People are poor via poor choices. 2. People become fat by consuming too many calories. AND 3. (just to throw in a bit of impish perversity) personal responsibility is as lovely a poem as a tree.

No War Horse

2012-01-01T12:24:00.003-05:00

No, I won't view the new film, "War Horse." If lies from liberals who claim the tea party "occupies the fringe of American politics" (new Republic editor) and Obama is imposing "passive austerity", according to Paul Krugman, do not inflict enough pain to deter me, the truths about the "unspeakable bestiality of war and the nobility of wordless beasts" (movie critic Joe Morgenstern)certainly clinch my decision.

Time surely tells us that nobility of service evidenced by God's silent beasts (horses ridden, worked or starved to death) acts as a sad counterpoint to man's inhumanity to man and his inhumaneness to animals.

Happy New Year, 2012.

Stephane Hessel - Nincompoop

2011-12-30T17:14:00.000-05:00

Stephane Hessel is a 93 year old nincompoop. His little book, “Indignez-vous!”, actually a screed pamphlet, has been the Best Seller in France for 2 years. One loses all respect for the French when you see how much nonsense and how many errors and falsehoods crammed into 29 pages of text the gullible French suck up as truth. Have they no common sense? Now the pernicious pamphlet is invading the U.S. in an English translation entitled “Time for Outrage,” surely destined to be popular among elite faculty and mindless students. The core of the rant is hatred of capitalism as best expressed by the United States; the other lunacies in the screed are too innumerable to comment on. Hessel feels it is better to suck up to the Evil Empire than think the people of the world would be better off with a Wal-mart in every town. Hessel opines “...—and even as we had to lend a favorable ear to communism in order to counterbalance to American capitalism–.” He calls for “peaceful outrage” by the loony lefties of the world. Has he never heard of an oxymoron? Outrage by lefties throughout history is defined by deaths and followed by oppression.

What is it about lefties, socialists, liberals and academics that they justify the death and poverty caused by socialism as better than prosperity and growth under capitalism? In addition to the “favorable ear” to communism by Hessel, we have Neil Clark writing in the UK Guardian about Vaclav Havel’s good struggle for freedom:

“No one questions that Havel, who went to prison twice, was a brave man who had the courage to stand up for his views. Yet the question which needs to be asked is whether his political campaigning made his country, and the world, a better place. Havel’s anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgment of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women’s rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.” “Positive achievements” of communism - is this man insane?

And the morally blind Simon Winchester says of the evil North Korean dictator:

“The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please. India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.”

Is Simon Winchester justifying starvation in North Korea because the country was saved from Wal-Mart?

How quaint that Materialists can protest about too much materialism in society. Now that’s another oxymoron.

Three complaints not political

2011-12-29T19:06:00.003-05:00

Locally, two different businesses - a mattress company and a body shop - consistently utilize 'false advertising' to solicit business. The former hypoctirically bashes the competition and their products to profile the superiority of their own only to reverse direction, selling the very product they bashed in previous ads. The latter also demeans and accuses the competition of shady tactics only to use daddy's little girl to preach, preach and preach purity of motives and performance by his shop.
In an unrelated outrage, California now mandates car seats for children up to 8 years of age and 4 ft. 9 in. In only 3 or 4 more years, however, California girls can abort babies ( not human) and boys can fornicate ( either the gay way or straight) as a natural right.

Thirdly, I wish to complain about the elitist newspaper, the WSJ which routinely prints erudite letters to the editor because writers use phrases like 'inceptive conflagration,' rather than a Strunk and White word, fire.

So where do normal Americans like me go today? To an early 'auld lang syne' traditional sniff and sip of brandy, recalling the good old days.

Pelosi, Midnight Mass and Wal-Mart

2011-12-27T16:49:00.002-05:00

Is Nancy Pelosi more of a Catholic than I having attended midnight Mass in a distant land as opposed to a small,local late afternoon church service? Is Nancy more Christian in following Jesus' teaching about those who are 'poor in spirit?' Nancy's favorite word, remember, is 'the Word.' Is Nancy, the advocate of abortion on demand (having had her 5 children easily and early in married life, attached to a wealthy man) more moral than I who believes human life begins with conception? Well, while Nancy Pelosi vacations in Hawaii at our taxpayers' expense of $10,000 a night, I took my one day post-holiday discount trip to Wal-Mart. 50% off led me to splurge to the tune of $15.00. Is Nancy more equal than I in the eyes of the Lord or the world? Ridiculous impossibility. The same sun falls behind Ohio trees as over dark, tropical water. The devil wears Prada year round, not just at Christmas. I inhabit an anti-Pelosi world, rich in conservative choices, free from the financial support strings of my fellow Americans.

THE MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM

2011-12-26T18:38:00.000-05:00

Recently two men died. One promoted Liberty and the other Despotism. One was mourned by people of conscience and the other justly descended into Hades. Unfortunately many Liberals and Socialists, unable to distinguish between good and evil, attacked the light and justified the darkness.

Consider first Neil Clark writing in the UK Guardian, who informs us regarding Vaclav Havel’s good struggle for freedom:

“No one questions that Havel, who went to prison twice, was a brave man who had the courage to stand up for his views. Yet the question which needs to be asked is whether his political campaigning made his country, and the world, a better place. Havel’s anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgment of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women’s rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.”

These comments are, of course, repulsive beyond belief, in addition to being historically illiterate, but as far as Clark is concerned, no good will come of Havel’s death if people like Clark cannot use it to lie about history.

In praise of evil, Kim Jung Il, the morally blind Simon Winchester says of the evil North Korean dictator:

“The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please. India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.”

Let’s give the mike to Brian Micklethwait, for a reply. “No bad thing? Competition for commenters: concoct morally disgusting sentences which begin with ‘For all its faults …’. You’ll struggle to top that one.”

As I interpret, at least tyrant Kim saved the Korean people from Wal-Mart by starving them to death. As Liberalism and Socialism proudly proclaim, ‘Let us all be poor together.’

Obama Lies

2011-12-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

Shortly after hearing prevaricator in chief, Barack Obama, hold forth in the White House presenting evasions, half-truths and outright lies about the Social Security tax cut shell game, I happened to read Gorbachev’s comments on propaganda in the old Soviet Union:

“Propaganda of success - real or imagined - was gaining the upper hand. Eulogizing and servility were encouraged; the needs and opinions of ordinary working people, of the public at large, were ignored. In the social sciences scholastic theorization was encouraged and developed, but creative thinking was driven out...Similar negative tendencies also affected culture, the arts and journalism, as well as the teaching process and medicine...At some administrative levels there emerged a disrespect for the law and encouragement of eyewash and bribery, servility and glorification.“

When even a dedicated Communist can finally speak the truth about how government interference corrupts economics, morals and reason, is it too much to hope that the truth could come from Obama’s forked tongue?

“Perestroika” a book by Gorbachev contained an unsparing indictment of the socialist system over which Gorbachev presided. He said that Soviet society has suffered “a gradual erosion of...ideological and moral values.” If only liberals could also learn to speak the truth. We unfortunately hear daily about Green Jobs and Green Energy as the future and salvation of America. Obama hectors Americans with false pieties and outright lies about the cost of these Green Projects. Electric cars are an article of religion among Obama and lefties but what do they really cost us, the poor taxpayer? Does each Chevy Volt, a General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, cost taxpayers up to $250K? According to James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether. Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt including 18 government deals featuring loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

Government and politicians, especially Obama, lie!

Oh that war!

2011-12-22T12:22:00.004-05:00

Oh that Civil War that paid tribute to true courage whenever found, even in 48 lines from the poem "The Old Canteen," which concludes: "Then away in some garret the cobweb may screen/ My battered, old, cloth-covered,tin canteen."

Oh that Civil War after which no military service was forgotten. The Sons of Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Ladies Aid society, all felt that the glory of a nation was its young man and to perpetuate the memory of veterans, local organizations ( which became national) were formed to foster these 2 principles: 1. A firm belief and trust in Almighty God, and a recognition of His beneficent guidance in the preservation of the life and integrity of the Nation. 2. True allegiance to the Government of the United States of America, a respect for and fidelity to its Constitution and laws, and opposition to any system or power that in any manner tends to impair the efficiency and permanency of our National Union.

Oh,in that Civil War when 3 million, three hundred thousand patriots left home to defend the flag of Union. (300,000 from Ohio, my home state, 3rd largest contingent). Over 107 battle were fought, which did not include occupations, assaults, captures, sieges, repulsions, raids, invasions, attacks, bombardments, massacres or surrenders.

Oh that Civil War when a chronicler of camp-fire chats could wonderfully describe a normal spring when: "The man of brainwork and the man of business each again could brush back the ruffled locks from his forehead and, drawing a long breath, plainly see his blessed vacation in the distance of a short month or so; while the rested burly plowman could husk himself from his winter haunts, circulate in the fresh, free air of an American field, and bend to his labor in the full hope of a beautiful and abundant harvest."

Oh that Civil War and subsequent years when it was still possible to gather round a camp-fire and swell the chorus in
A HYMN OF PEACE
The echoes of war now have traveled
The valleys the last time for aye;
And the hills and the forests are silent,
As the Angel of Peace wanders by;-

While the unknown now sleep where they suffered-
In the land where brave charges they led;
Where the moss droops her tendrils in mourning,
And the mocking bird sings to the dead.

Unmarked are the mounds where they slumber,
Their names are unsung and unwept;
But their deeds are not lost nor forgotten,
For they're to eternity kept.

And while nature's monuments freshen,
In merry spring over each grave
Of the loyal sons of the nation,
May her emblem in gratitude wave.

And, too, while the bosom of ocean
Bears the harvests away on her tide,
May the olive branch bend in the sunshine,
And brotherhood ever abide.

Then let all the hearts that are heave,
Be cheered by the smile of the glad,
And every one who may be happy,
Make happy all those who are sad.

A Christmas Peace

2011-12-21T18:13:00.004-05:00

"The sad effects ( of war) are felt in, alas! too many American homes, even at the present time - now! ( 1887) twenty years since the war! Twenty summers have shed their glowing warmth over the old battlefields! twenty autumns have shifted their melancholy smoke and sunshine above the sacred cemeteries! twenty winters, with their chilling snows and rains, have iced the tree boughs that droop over far away graves! twenty springs, with their cheering bird-calls, have spread their smiling floral covering, like Charity's peaceful mantle, over all the wide country where the campaigning was; and yet the heart strings then broken will remain unstrung until the soothing hand of death shall softly entwine them for all time."

Our warriors have been home from Iraq only a few days but will these poignant words from a writer after the Civil War still ring true twenty years hence? Who will pen such eloquence a score into the future. Will we still be a divided America?

Echoes past?

2011-12-20T11:06:00.003-05:00

"The preservation of these...archives ... furnishes to youthful minds a far better class of reading that the mass of exciting and pernicious literature thrust upon them from all sides."

"When the signs upon the horizon of our beloved Republic indicated her dismemberment, men though not of toil, danger and privation; but sprang to her rescue with one consent, cheerfully giving all that life could afford as their individual offering upon a common altar s the price of her salvation."

"They might torture us with cruelty, they might kill us with starvation; but compel us to swear allegiance to a band of traitors whose purpose it was to destroy the best government God ever gave to man, they could not."

To what record and heroic patriots do these quotes refer? Camp-Fire Chats of the Civil War recorded in 1873 by veteran soldiers themselves. Let us sympathetically return to the 'days of yesteryear' before the upcoming election of 2012 and remember what we are fighting for, opposed to our country's death.

A good teacher

2011-12-16T10:15:00.003-05:00

A Professor of literature and humanities feels that many crops of university students fall short. Mark Edmundson feels "sorrow about their foreclosed possibilities." He believes a good teacher should inspire a student, drawing out(educating) each person's special interest, talent or quality. The teacher's first job is eliminate the cant to which young people are exposed. The second to pursue truth. Do you agree?

A good teacher

2011-12-16T10:15:00.002-05:00

Where's Waldo?

2011-12-15T09:25:00.002-05:00

In 1962, sister of a posthumous Medal of Honor winner reminded Americans "that no matter... how desperate our situation is, somehow, somewhere, in this great melting pot, there arises a great American to give life and hope to a tired and weary people, and to inspire and lead them from the bitter depths of despair to the heights of victory by his shining example of raw courage and dedicated devotion to his country."

Phyllis Basilone might have been referring to John, but her words echo today, immersed in the Obama presidency and preceding 2012, our next Presidential contest. Perhaps, Phyllis could not conceive of a man leading us out of darkness but the question is still valid, "where's our next Waldo?"

Down for the struggle

2011-12-14T09:56:00.002-05:00

..."But before I would see it dishonored I would tear it from its place, to be set on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign around which her bravest and best shall meet the harvest home of death."

WHO knows that this was Jefferson Davis speaking about the star of Mississippi on the day before Lincoln's election, 1861. Did Davis as President of the Confederacy get down for the 4 year struggle? Yes,indeed. His life,liberty and ideals were on the line even though they included the evil preservation of the institution of slavery.

Davis uses a Biblical allusion to the 'harvest home' proving we were a Christian nation before the Civil War even though he ignored the tenants of Christianity regarding human rights. But are we still? Black politicians and activists who claim to be Christian including our President, use the historical fact of slavery to distort and pervert present conditions in America. Victories are ignored; grievances constitute their agenda. Why? What struggle are they down for other than the fight to re-create a racist country again? This is not politically correct. This is anti-Christian. Victimization is not a reality. Their alienation is just a state of mind. Liberalism and socialism will not improve our beloved land. The chip on Obama's shoulder metastasizes at an alarming rate.

We fought the Civil War for this?

Obama's Mythical "Dreams of My Father"

2011-12-13T12:44:00.003-05:00

I just finished a great read, Bill Ayers' poetic memoir of 1995, called "Dreams from my Father." The ostensible 1/2 black man behind this ghost-written production believes the future will be a "combination of advancement and collective decline," if we do not fix America. His relative Auma says: "Without the white man, we might be able to make better use of our (black) history." How many words were penned by the subject of this lyrical and well-written myth? Pages 406 - 425 contain a straight narrative recording of Obama's Old Man and Grandfather by Granny. Probably a research assignment by Harvard student Barack Obama, these recollections are his only dry, boring and unsophisticated contribution.

" Dusk washing blue over the city, ... "moon-washed streets empty," ..."grimy mock-shutters." ... "floorboards beneath bucked and dipped like welts in a meadow," ...
"a creaky conveyor belt slowly disgorged luggage," ..."their faces broken into smiles," ..."shadows of moths fluttered," ... "a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality," ... "wilting, widely space corn,' ... "a solitary mountain rose like an island in a silent sea," ... "with mournful heads and humped shoulders," ... "their hoofs beating against the earth like a wave against the shore," ... "massive walls peeling like papier-mache in strips of pale orange and green and rose, its dormant cannons pointing out to a tranquil sea where a lone fisherman cast out his net," ... "his big, wrinkled face like a carving of stone," ..." two manila-hued daughters," ... "beached in a world she knew little of," ... etc., etc., etc. Paragraph after paragraph of figure-of-speech ridden descriptions, unique turns of phrase, philosophical musings, literary and historical references - could any of this have poured forth from Barack Hussein Obama?

Obama's father had no 'dreams' and the story of race and inheritance is just that, a fictional history. In conclusion, one word used in the book, "sh.." pretty much summarizes the truth to power from now President Obama who carries a large white chip on his shoulder and a lifetime of hypocrisy in word and deed to back up his liberal, socialist animus.

Thanks Bill Ayers' for superb command of the English language; no thanks, Obama for shameless dishonesty.

Hickstead, forever shining star

2011-12-10T13:51:00.003-05:00

He burned brightly for 5 years. Bright stars B.C. and A.D. have lit the world - great people, great animals destined to share their special gifts with appreciative and understanding audiences. In 1996, Hickstead the star was born. It was not until mid life that he crossed paths with and was purchased in 2004 by a hopeful and patient rider, Eric Lamaze. Man combined discoveries and intense training with a horse’s fiery disposition and natural talent. Man and horse proved that greatness is earned. Eric Lamaze rode into the history books with Hickstead, a 16 hand, Dutch dark bay stallion. Eventually, their victories circled the globe. Ultimately, of course, triumph belongs to the horse. Numerous Grand Prix wins. The Rolex Grand Prix. World Cups. Stunning repeat conquests at the CN in Calgary, Canada. ( Eric happy, smiling and thumping the air with his arm in testament to the exciting accomplishment of his horse). Hickstead and Eric won the individual gold medal at the 2008 Bejing Olympics. They blazed with equestrian, athletic glory in Rome, Aachen and LaBoule. Hickstead earned the reputation for clear rounds above high, challenging fences. He attained a rare, four clear rounds in competition true to his habit of avoiding knock-downs. His star shone on the turf of show jumping until both rider and horse justly earned the ranking of number one. Both the best.

Then God said: It’s time, Hickstead, to come home. Why? At age 15, on top of the world? Who asks God why? Why when a favorite son is doing what he was born to do, loves to do with all his heart? At a competition in Italy, Nov. 6th, 2011, God extended his arm, pointed His finger and Hickstead answered the call. After a clear round, Hickstead unexpectedly halted and silently, slowly, fell to earth. His great heart burst. In less than a minute and sputtering like a spent flame, Hickstead left our world. The saddest minute. The saddest end. Forever be tears to his memory from fans, rightly wracked with sorrow, who knew him, admired him, acknowledged his status, his place.

His passing reminds me of the death of de Saint-Exupery’s “ little prince.” I quote. “He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound.” Look at the horizon. When you look up at the sky, see a star, ... “it is the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world,” a great mystery. “It is here that the “little prince” appeared on Earth, and disappeared.”

Somebody up there loves you, Hickstead, enough to have shared you with us, but only until He missed you. But your star still blazes, your rider in the saddle intense, your legs tucked, your muscular torso soaring, your eye on the prize, your heart still pumping.

Can't work again

2011-12-09T12:16:00.003-05:00

Like Gompers, labor leaders Meany and Lovestone were in the "vanguard of the proletariat"- not in the mendacious sense that Lenin had used that term, but in an opposite sense. They took the lead in fighting communism because it repressed workers, and in defending their country because it gave workers the chance for a decent life even though Marxism denied that this was possible under capitalism."

Even Chinese communist leader Deng Xiaoping admitted that "we can hardly convince the masses of the advantages of socialism if its productivity is always lower than that of capitalism."

Our leader, the big 'O' (Obama), disagrees with Gompers, Meany, Lovestone and Deng Xiaoping in his 21st century plan to "totally transform" America. Of course, it( his progressivism, socialism, communism ) again can't work.

Benign Socialism?

2011-12-08T15:04:00.003-05:00

History has familiarized us with Hitler's serious socialism. In 1920 in addition to his violent antipathy to Jews his 'reign' called for: "aboliton of incomes unearned by work, ruthless confiscation of all war gains, nationalization of all trusts, profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out, extensive provision for old age, immediate communalization of department stores, confiscation without compensation of land for common purposes, abolition of interest on land loans, prevention of all speculation in land, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race, opening to every capable and industrious German the possibility of higher education, development of the gifted children of poor parents at the expense of the state and the state must see to raising the standard of health in the nation by protecting mothers and infants, prohibiting child labor, by obligatory gymnastics and sports and by expensive support of clubs engaged in bodily development of the young."

TOO MUCH? Clement Atlee, Prime Minister of Great Britain after WWII instituted his 'reign' of social justice by 1. nationalization of many industries and 2. by a system of social welfare.

STILL TOO MUCH socialism? Our reigning President Obama's recent speech in Kansas called for a new era of fairness, the devil being in his administration's details.

Woe is me!

Into the Ashheap

2011-12-07T10:01:00.003-05:00

From the earliest days, the kibbutz was a compromise between communist ideals and the germ of egoism which could never by conquered. The shoots of individual identity and self-interest managed to come through the crevices of the kibbutz's selfless collectivism. A member said: " ...I think the system is a mistake because not all people will give their best if they can get things free." Another old member said: "...they tried to change human nature and create a new man. To my regret, the kibbutz did not succeed at this task." SOOO? Socialism NEVER works, but the dream never dies - and adherents cannot be trusted; even Marx called one of his devoted mentors a piece "of party excrement."

Socialism is a religion, a substitute for Christianity, Judaism or spiritual need. Because it is a religion, communists ( socialists, progressives) tell their tale of redemption in Biblical terms consisting of 3 epochs: a past of primitive contentment, a present of suffering and struggle, and a future of harmony and bliss. President Obama and First Lady Michele just yesterday spoke to us Americans about living in the present, suffering and struggling, a need for shared sacrifice. Theirs is a Utopian dream of a fair, shared world.

DON'T BE FOOLED.

Socialism will again fail

2011-12-06T10:47:00.003-05:00

Robert Owen, a seminal British socialist, in his Declaration of Mental Independence, names the three evils of the human race: private property, religion and marriage. With this perspective on humanity, what can you expect from socialism? What can you conclude when the same Robert Owen also declared a Dogs' Doomsday at his socialist Utopian community called New Harmony. There a "general dog killing" took place and "all citizens of the canine brood where to be shot."

Friedrich Engels, another socialist, succeeded in clarifying his friend Marx's basic ideas of "scientific socialism": historical materialism, class struggle, surplus value, the contradictions of capitalism, the dynamic of the business cycle, the economic impoverishment and concomitant political rise of the proletariat, the inevitable revolution, the subsequent dying out of the state, and the ultimate fulfillment of mankind as it ascends from "the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.' Again what can you expect from this perverted Utopian view of goal of man?

Tea Party conservatives stand in direct contrast to Marxism, socialism. Our big three principles are the free market, limited government and individual responsibility. Our definition of freedom is not a perversion. Who do you think will prevail in this age of Obama when his hope for the change to socialism is based on the distorted definition of FAIRNESS which will be his 2012 campaign slogan?

RUN ON FOOD BANKS

2011-12-05T13:06:00.002-05:00

Is there a run on food banks? Our capitol's food bank says the need is greater than ever ( a quote constantly used, not just statewide but locally). It serves about 1000 families a month. Wow!. That compares with 250 - 300 families just 30 years ago. Just? 30 yrs? All trying times considered, all increases in wages and population tabulated, all liberal media spin and distortion of the need for charity unabated - I say there's no run on food banks, just business from do-gooders as usual. But the 'moral hazard' has greatly increased as many are now encouraged to use Food Banks as a substitute for buying their food. The food budget becomes available to pay for cellphones or sneakers. Are we really to believe there are more hungry people now than in the Great Depression?

Insurance & medicaid

2011-12-04T12:18:00.003-05:00

When somebody else pays, anything is possible. Pediatric therapy advertised by my local hospital specializes in "the compassionate, patient-focused care your family deserves" by treating: cerebral palsy, autism and down syndrome (what's to treat about the untreatable?), coordination deficits, balance deficits, core strength deficits and developmental delay(is not each child in some way born deficient?), behavorial concerns, eating issues, play and socialization, organizing and motor skills, environmental adaptions, self-help and hygiene and sensory integration (parental jobs anyone?), fine motor/handwriting, toe walking,stuttering and adaptive equipment( maybe this last offering is what they use. Our society has no shame over THERAPY FOR EVERY POLITICALLY-CORRECT MALADY, BIOLOGICAL OR IMAGINED AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS VIA EMPLOYERS' INSURANCE AND GOVERNMENTAL PROGRAMS. God help parents to wake up; our children already have more help than they will ever need because they need NOT help themselves.

Without us

2011-12-01T14:31:00.003-05:00

The Obama administration plans to win in 2012 WITHOUT the white working class. Why not? Blacks, Hispanics, welfare recipients, union members, academics, college students, politicians, journalists, the media and Washington elites ( not one fitting the definition of a working stiff), constitute enough of a voting block to win the White House. 9 to 5, 5 or 6 day workers, mostly conservative as opposed to liberal in philosophy, only have time to occupt their respective workplaces, not Wall Street. As Lenin said, What is to be done when the media's job is to protect Obama and sever any connection to the truth?

Ignore the 20th century

2011-11-30T18:59:00.003-05:00

An egghead intellectual(i.e.an academic who never held a real job)reminded me recently that the canon of political theory in colleges and universities today consists of 6 thinkers - Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche and Machiavelli. Well, 5 of the 6 are not conservative, capitalist philosophers. No, they are socialists, radicals, atheists, pragmatists, typical dictatorial thinkers detached from reality. Another liberal intellectual recently said, "if your ignore the 20th century," Marx is a great guiding, intellectual light. Duh! Egghead elitists like to feel your pain but not actually acknowledge or feel pain.

Strike three

2011-11-28T16:16:00.004-05:00

A human rights lawyer and reformer in 1914 considered the acceptable limits of the suffragettes' civil disobedience, which involved defacing the penny as part of their campaign for the women's vote:

"Defacing coinage is against the law, so there is that issue of whether it's ethical to break the law in certain circumstances. My argument would be that there are some times when in pursuit of human rights it is the only thing that people can do. As a lawyer I'm not supposed to say that, but I think there are occasions when the general public would agree, that somehow one has to stand up to be counted. Obviously there have to be limits of what we consider to be acceptable in terms of civil disobedience. There are some political acts which one would never condone, and grappling with the ethics of where it is appropriate and what is appropriate is difficult. The courage of these women was extraordinary, in that they were prepared to sacrifice their lives. Now of course today we have people who are also prepared to sacrifice their lives and one has to consider when and where that is appropriate. And I think most of us would say anything that involved harm to others has to be unacceptable."

What say you about today's OWS, the Occupy Wall Street movement of civil disobedience? Does it do harm? It is respected and excused in Los Angeles and other cities around our country. Liberals in acadedemia always preach protest and revolution from their ivory towers where they can 'feel other people's pain but never have to do the pain.' But is getting down and dirty in the trenches any less dishonorable? If harm to others is unacceptable, then all three groups ( I include the suffragettes) are guilty of dishonorable transgressions. We have moved from women defacing a penny to the OWS defecating in the public square.

Thanksgiving tale

2011-11-24T13:05:00.003-05:00

My tale of Thanksgiving begins about 1976 when a 45 year old. single mother of 9 has a terrible and unfortunate automobile accident which eventually leaves her with one leg, replaced by a prosthesis. Over the years her times toughened. Fast forward to this Thanksgiving when she is happy to be able to continue to live in her home inspite of a heart condition and diabetes an almost homeless condition. Why? 1. The Homeless Prevention program, 2. the Rapid Re-housing Program and 3. the Family H.O.P.E. center stepped in to help. Soooo, her 'spend down' commenced to alleviate her financial woes. 'Spend down'? A government program called Title 19 which says medical bills from income must exceed medicaid for a 6 mo. period in order to receive assistance. (6 month renewals are possible). In addition, this nice lady (whom I knew for a few years to be personally nice to me), received benefits of:
1. rental assistance
2. landlord mediation
3. referrals to the Percentage of Income Payment Program for utilities
4. local food pantry
5. community meals
6. H.E.A.P.
7. Salvation Army
8. health department
9. Medicare RX Extra help
10. lower rates negotiation
11. budget trimming counseling

Impossible to believe? Remember that Perry Como song. "It's impossible?" No, it's possible that so much government and community welfare can survive through 2011. No comment... just have a happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T14:54:00.004-05:00

Never trust a man too fit or too fat. I concluded this after watching former President/author Bill Clinton and writer/producer Michael Moore on Book TV. I will witness a balanced approach in a man (again) tomorrow on Thanksgiving when I look across the table at my lifetime partner. Also, I heard an ad on local radio from United Way about the importance of 'we' which manifests itself in their attempts to improve 'education, health and income' because we are all connected. Actually we not all joined at the communal hip. Each person is responsible for his own knowledge, well-being and finances. Staring at that familiar face during a great meal on a day of gratitude, just confirms for me that NO, we are not all connected. Only loving, committed couples are connected and rightly so.

Give Thanks

2011-11-22T18:30:00.003-05:00

A familiar saying that "you can't have your cake and eat it too," was problably created by a rational pundit. Many aphorisms were ( are ) rooted in reason and clever analysis of the human condition. Not so today. Liberals who control the media and popular thinking, say that you 'can have your turkey but can't eat it too,' because it is unhealthy and will kill you in the long run. So much of the killjoy pervades our current culture because of the death of common sense.

This Thanksgiving, I'm remembering the true meaning of freedom and Republican living. We Americans have never been patient. I'm sick of hearing from the Obama administration that we must be patient with the economy, with the slow rate of growth, with the return of the housing market, with the return of our money. Balderdash! Americans have traditionally been impatient with naysayers and their do-good punishments of progress. This Thanksgiving, let's eat hardy, drink deeply, think positively and dream foolishly for the day when liberals have been consigned to the compost heap ( a bin being too elistist for me) after a great and satisfying feast.

Good old days

2011-11-18T14:21:00.005-05:00

How is it possible that nutrition and health care, which 'stink'according to liberal, agenda-driven activists, are supposedly responsible for the 1.9 million Americans now over 90 - a number that has tripled since 1980? How is it possible that the S&P Index has fallen 2000 points from its peak on 10/9/2007 of 14,164 to its present average of 12,000, so that I am forced to hope that my glorious nineties will finally find the stock back to(or above )its bygone all time high?

Exactly

2011-11-17T10:09:00.003-05:00

Throw in exactly, 3,300 hours of additional sheriffs' road work this Holiday season to prevent and catch drunk drivers. Stir in 1,200 saturation patrols. Add numerous sobriety checkpoints. Tie a red ribbon for MADD, on the handle of the pot. Stir in a great American smokeout day ( for the heck of it). What to you get? Exactly? A brew of insanity. A liberal witches' cauldron of stupid, ineffective, needless, costly and politically correct quack alchemy.

Que cera cera

2011-11-15T16:24:00.004-05:00

"The point is that for all of America's leaders' sincere concern for the fate of the Indians, they had a higher loyalty. The men who made national policy, from the eighteenth century onward, supported by a broad consensus among the white population, have had as their first loyalty the doctrine of material progress. They have believed in that doctrine more than in their Constitution or their treaties or their religion. America's leaders and America's white population have allowed nothing to stand in the path of progress. Not a tree, not a desert, not a river, nothing. Most certainly not Indians, regrettable as it may have been to have to destroy such a noble and romantic people.

Well, it was regrettable, but who is to say they were wrong? Who can possibly judge? Who would be willing to tell the European immigrant that he can't go to the Montana mines or to the Kansas prairie because Indians need the land, so he had best go back to Prague or Dublin? Who wants to tell a hungry world that the United States, cannot export wheat because the Cheyennes hold half of Kansas, the Sioux hold the Dakotas, and so on? Despite hundreds of whites ashamed of their ancestors, and despite the equally prolific literary effort on the part of the defenders of the Army, here if anywhere is a case where it is impossible to tell right from wrong.

The United States did not follow a policy of genocide; it did try to find a just solution to the Indian problem. The consistent idea was to civilize the Indians, incorporate them into the community, make them a part of the melting pot. That it did not work, that it was foolish, conceited, even criminal, may be true, but that doesn't turn a well-meant program into genocide..."

The words of Stephen A. Ambrose call to the mind, the true dilemma of America's Manifest Destiny vs. the question of legitimate ownership of this land. What will historically be, will be, when superior forces meet less civilized peoples... kinda like us vs. them OWS ( Occupy Wall Street) protestors.

Words to remember

2011-11-13T12:25:00.004-05:00

"The trees were dripping quietly, monotonously, as if weeping for the death of the world." A comment by a soldier after World War I during a night rain.

"Never surrender your liberties to a foregn invader or an aspiring demagogue." A comment by soldier who fought in our Revolutionary War before his death.

What do these two sentiments have in common? Perhaps nothing but to allow me to evaluate current America. Common sense has died; political correctness has raised its ugly head. Moral leaders championing the free market have atrophied; selflish demogogues exercise a healthy control over their subjects.

Reaching out

2011-11-12T14:02:00.003-05:00

He wrote like a dream, Cecil Lewis of "Sagittarius Rising," (1936) fame, but did his gift admit him to Heaven? Cecil wrote: "I knew a vivid conscience could be worse hell than any priest or poet could devise." Consequently, Cecil forswore Divine Justice and Personal Immortality. God, however, gave Cecil enough time to change his mind, not calling him home until age 98. Did Cecil's conscience tell him to choose Hell or to take God's hand?

Public screwtiny

2011-11-11T16:10:00.002-05:00

I heard about "similar scrutiny" being applied to college athletic programs after the recent Penn State screwtiny. My play on words is inevitable. Ironically, the pervert coach involved in this scandal wrote an autobiography entitled "Touched." Isn't a dictionary lesson needed now because the words hypocrisy, sodomy and homosexuality have all been perverted and ignored? Liberals celebrate the natural callings to lesbianism and homosexuality (virtually codifying them), yet the sodomy of young men is an outrage and a news story? Why no notice of this blatant hypocrisy? Oh well, who cares, if like me, popular sports holds zero interest. A mind is a terrible thing to waste and I have no intention of letting mine be 'screwtinized or corrupted by the insane hypocrisies of liberals. ,,, and their corrupt morals.

To protect and to sever

2011-11-10T18:29:00.002-05:00

Have you noticed (who could not?) that the mainstream media's job is to protect a liberal's a.. and to sever any truthful information about conservatives from the public's lifeline? To protect and to sever, not to protect and to serve as in the job description of a defender of the law, is the goal of liberal media. A paucity of truth and an overflow of deceptions and outright lies due to their perverted view of reality define the liberals' dominion over journalism and news coverage in what's left of 2011 and in what's to be 2012. No probing questions of Obama or his administration's ministrations and back door dealings. No investigations of Obama's background or his wealthy backers. No, just an agenda to tear down any opponent; no, merely obfuscation of his goal of transforming America into a socialistic European state and a 2nd (or 3rd tier?) world power.

It's so disheartening to be constantly bombarded by the liberals' perverted 'take' on our society. I saw an ad for a Military Pathways program which offers a website, www.SteptoHealing.org for veterans sufffering from depression, alcoholism or ADHD - a triple, non-existent threat to healthy, common sense questioning of realities. The liberal media might protect and sever other citizens from facts and liberal insanities- not me.

"YOU'LL SPOIL YOUR DINNER"

2011-11-09T14:25:00.002-05:00

Remember the phrase, "you'll spoil your dinner," preceded by a no after your request for a cookie following your walk home from grammar school down several city streets? Tennessee (and already Maryland) has forgotten this 'don't eat between meals' rule. But then Tennessee also chooses to not remember how children were raised by two parents with shared philosophies of meal offerings - 3 squares a day, perhaps an occasional evening or holiday treat. The score card read healthy enjoyment of foods and drinks 1; obesity 0.

Speaking of fat, my beautiful Ohioans just approved $66 billion in additional spending on pensions for about 350,000 public service workers by downing Issue 2. The score card here now reads Unions 1; taxpayers other than privileged public 'servants', 0.

Again speaking of pork, the Obama administration has doubled the national debt accumulated from the founding of this great nation from $5 trillion dollars to $10 trillion in just 2 years.

Liberals see hunger everywhere when none should or does exist but they act like greedy pigs.

Imps of the perverse

2011-11-07T12:30:00.004-05:00

A program to help kids get away from sugar? Yep! They can take sugar out of the schools, a nutritionist said, but they "can't take it out of the students minds." Well, in 2012, America's re-creation of 1984, liberals certainly will try to brainwash our children. It's their last, best hope for change. It reminds me of another local program to counsel "generational criminals in order to reduce recidivism". The mind is a terrible thing to waste but that's the objective of all liberal, communistic do-gooders bent upon re-fashioning society to their utopian vision. It's evil; it's a perversion of nature and nature's realities.

Color blind hope

2011-11-04T16:05:00.003-05:00

Bike shelters in Columbus, Ohio costing $300,000. Who pays for this liberal 'walkability' agenda? Taxpayers. A 7.5 mile road costing $76.8 million in Wilmington,Ohio ($10.25 million per mile) Again who pays? Federal and state money from taxpayers was used with the 'hope of stimulating the economy' and with the hope of an 'effort to redeveloop the Air Park.'

Taxpayers always pay for hopes that spring eternal in liberal breasts. We pay for changes too, if we consider the never-ending string of rules and regulations unwound by liberals that punish taxpayers' freedoms (again at their own expense).

Herman Cain's might not be our 'great white hope,'( no person is perfect), but he represents hope, nevertheless. We conservatives know that any change in the White House would be a change for the better. Now we have only dread of further waste of money and unnecessary spending other people's money from liberal governance.

Warning, warning!

2011-10-31T09:24:00.003-05:00

Like a robot, the media shouts out the dangers of Halloween. Don't let the kids trip over their costumes. Paint their faces (except for those allergic to certain cosmetics) instead of masks which could obscure their vision. Parents, check online to find the streets on which registered sex offenders live so your children can avoid them. Feed your kids before trick ( no way ) or treat so they won't be hungry for candy. Better yet, give out healthy treats instead of candy. Approach only houses with lights. After the collection, throw out ( my conservative soul recoils) or give away what is excess or rejected. Make sure an adult accompanies the children. Since it's the 'deadliest day of the year' as a driver, look out for beggars. If your community has a buyback program, turn in the candy for $1.00 a lb. which can then be sent to the troops ( and kill them instead, with obesity-prone kindness). Warning, warning! Halloween is not worth the effort anymore.

Forget the fact that 45% of costumes are worn by adults who party hearty on this 2nd most popular consumer holiday of the year. Forget the fun of yesteryear when the spooky nights were for waxing windows, running amok, sorting through a sugary hoard and hiding it from your siblings for future consumption. Childhood has died a horrible ghostly death. As dead as the goblins haunting our politically-correct Halloween.

Warning, warning!

2011-10-31T09:24:00.000-05:00

No rubber room

2011-10-30T13:39:00.002-05:00

What has replaced the rubber room? A pediatric swing secured to a steel beam above the ceiling. Pediatric therapy for childlren with autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder ( or other diagnoses) now can utilize the swing to redirect their energy to focus on listening and learning skills. It has many attachments to hold and secure children of various ages and weights. Rocking is the body's natural way to calm nerves. Don't I know. I shake my head hard enough to rock my whole body at such politically correct nonsense. It certainly calms my nerves but not long enough because the next best therapy is a stiff drink of sherry. The rubber room's been replaced by a swinging cage. Disregarding the truly few unreachable autistic children, what can one say when therapists are paid to 'help' children who have had no proper, prior parenting?

Tattle tale

2011-10-27T10:07:00.002-05:00

From 1709-1711, Addison and Steele in "The Tatler," tried "to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation." Luckily, 300 years later, some writers and thinkers still try to expose current examples of these 3 disguises in the Obama administration. The followers of Obama exhibit typical passionate behavior which tends to forget what's wrong with their passion and to blind themselves to how much is the right amount of passion in their cause. They trade the big view for one focused and contracted which, of course, distorts the shape of reality. Call them Obamaites, socialists, Communists, liberals, progressives, whatever - they always self-identify when they try to disguise themselves. Yes, they are deceptive, vain( with a narcissistic leader in the White House) and filled with airs of superiority.
OWS is a microcosm of their type of targeted and irrational activity. Keep up the good work, satirists, analysists, bloggers and commentators, keep tattling on them (as opposed to us and yes, us vs. them) by pulling off their disguises.

Strongheart lead the way

2011-10-25T10:29:00.002-05:00

Move over "Seabiscuit". I am pleasantly into a great read, "Rin Tin Tin." To continue yesterday's post,(Balto is correct spelling), I wish to point out that Strongheart (a silent film star of the 1920's ) led the way for anthropromorphism of the dog. ( Many canine stars preceded him and Peter the Great, another German shepherd followed him but he died tragically.) A caretaker of Strongheart developed a unified theory about humans and animals called Totality which allowed for a dog like Strongheart to teach human beings new meanings of "happiness, devotion, honor, individuality, loyalty, sincerity, love, life and God." Strongheart lives on. What people were doing, said J. Allen Boone of Strongheart, "was looking through a moving transparency on four legs, and seeing a much better universe than the one they had been living in." Doesn't this uplifting message starkly contrast with a phoney transformational pitch of 'hope and change' not long ago internalized by 21st century Americans? Man's best friend (not government)is still the dog.

every dog must have his day

2011-10-24T14:33:00.002-05:00

There is no such animal as just a dog. Recently mine died. To my 100 (greatly appreciated) readers, I offer a testament, devoutly given, to 'man's best friend'. You and I have, and every other he and she has, had occasion to own or admire a special canine. I note Old Yeller, Sprite, Bullet, Baldo, Marley, Lassie, Stickeen, Bobby, my neighbor's newly acquired mastiff from the city pound, Sasha, and, of course, my recently departed Savannha. Let's each pray privately for a moment to the specially selected one for intercession in a happy passage to our greatly anticipated reunion beyond. Incidentally, I look forward to reading the popular, new biography, "Rin Tin Tin by Susan Orlean.

COMPLEX AND SIMPLE VIEWS

2011-10-23T13:49:00.001-05:00

Complex intellectual view by F.A. Hayek:
It is characteristic of much of recent economics that by ever new arguments it has tried to vindicate those very prejudices which are so attractive because the maxims that follow from them are so pleasant or convenient: spending is a good thing, and saving is bad; waste benefits and economy harms the mass of the people; money will do more good in the hands of the government than in those of the people; it is the duty of government to see that everybody gets what he deserves; and so on.

Simple view by blogger:
The social contract exists so that everyone doesn’t have to squat in the dust holding a spear to protect his woman and his meat all day every day. It does not exist so that the government can take your spear, your meat, and your woman because it knows better what to do with them

God help us

2011-10-21T09:11:00.003-05:00

Great eagle, knower of the skies,
Of windy portents, eclipses and the dust-blown mantracks
Crossing and recrossing in quicksands and stone.
Under his scrutiny the revealed bones
And girth of the past; the string-led figures; the gods in the
machine.
The great spirit flies, sifting the air, translating earth shapes against
the moving screen.
Tame prounouncers, parrots, gulls and shamans utter cries,
Communicate their shrill distress; declare him less than the familiar
apes.
But the shadow of the spirit enfolds them all.
And here and there with shielded eyes
People have seen the steady wings and far light striking them,
And here and there recall how long ago the fire was brought,
The vultures and the rock, and will remember him.

This poem by Eugene Davidson pays tribute to revisionist historian and author, Charles Austin Beard. What is to be done? Whether I know the author's intended meaning of 'great spirit' is irrelevant. Just put capital letters onto this phrase and truth flies free. God help us now and forever.

The killing field

2011-10-20T16:32:00.002-05:00

Jack Hanna ( from Columbus Zoo's past) echoed my sentiment when on Tues. and Wed. Oct. 18th and 19th in Zanesville, Ohio he spoke of the "unspeakable tragedy" that unfolded on that killing field. 50 beautiful captive, gifts of God - bears, lions, tigers, wolves - massacred because an evil madman opened their cages to 'freedom' and death. Yes, the devil proudly flapped his wings for another triumph over reason. I guess I don't really care to dwell too long upon the sadness of man's inhumaneness to animals but rather reflect briefly on the wisdom of the little prince of St. Exupery who said: "We are responsible forever for what we have tamed." The man who released his 'charges' to their fate and then killed himself, will pay for his crime forever. He opened for himself the Gates of Hell on that day of "unspeakable tragedy."

the brave new world

2011-10-19T14:31:00.002-05:00

In our brave new world, I heard an ad for OSU's ( Ohio State University) "Endeavor Center." Beats me, what this means but then today catchy phrases override everything. Capture the language and you enter 1984. In the old world, however, in the early to mid 1800's, words held specific meanings. A translated, native canoe song from the Pacific says: "Good above all is the part before; bad above all is the part behind." The seat of honor in a native canoe was the forward deck and obviously, secondary or inferior was the place at the back of the boat. Looking out, therefore, meant a higher place than looking back.

Translate the message metaphorically to 2011 and we find that only be looking ahead to 2012 can we put an honored, conservative Presidental guest onto his (her) proper seat on the forward deck of our ship of State. Or else? We'll again find a radical re-organizer seated at the back of an over-loaded aquatic bus.

The Bible told them to...

2011-10-17T14:11:00.004-05:00

Around the middle of the 19th century, a sailor who circumnavigated the globe on an American ship of discovery wrote: "I confess myself anxious to inspire you, my dear friend, with some little enthusiasm in the cause of geographical science. As you peruse these pages, I trust that they will awaken in your heart an endearing love for the sublime and beautiful in God's wonderful creation, and that they will bring you to earnest sympathy with those fearless pioneers of civilization who go forth in contempt of danger and death to add to the sum of man's knowledge of the world,to widen the boundaries of civilized existence, and to obey the first and last command of Almighty God, who has decreed that this earth shall be subdued and the Gospel preached to every creature."

Unbelievable that they be called murderers - all those men who explored and conquered unknown worlds. More unbelievable the wordy crap that flows out of my radio waves each and every morning. The phrase, "corrected exercises," was used to define an offering from a chiropractic and wellness center. Another phrase," Ohio intimate partner collaborative," was used to define an initiative during October's domestic violence awareness month.

Let's hope that the explorers of outer space in the future, do not carry with them our prevalent "political correctness" of mushy speech or they will probably suffer the same fate as those pesky, uncooperative natives of times past.

Guess who?

2011-10-16T13:30:00.002-05:00

Guess who?
"All space is filled with wondrous things,
Unseen by human eye.
Before us hover queens and kings,
With realms that float and fly.
It was wise of them to make a choice,
And decide to remain invisible,
For early in the game they found,
To be seen is to be divisible.
Finding the world is full of hate,
Afflicting alike the small, the great,
Knowing no bounds or social stations,
Enveloping towns, destroying nations,
Refusing all manner of Christian teaching,
Laughing aloud at the earnest beseeching
Of thoughtful men in thankless jobs;
Cynically calling them deluded slobs,
For presuming to hold that The Christ is living,
And all that's good is of God's own giving."

Does this have the ring of conservative thinking? A few more hints:
"I believe in my bones that my going from the liberal stance to the conservative was a totally natural reaction once I began to see the undisciplined elments in our country stimulating a breakdown of our system. From what I've seen of the liberal attitudes toward the young and permissive attitudes in the schools, and everybody pulling every which way from center,I consider these all inimical to the health of our nation. Those functionless creatures, the hippies, for example, just don't appear out of a vacuum. A few words came to me one day about their curious lethargy:
'Disturb not their fixed, eternal placidity,
Don't delay their rambling rush to nowhere,
Their need for nothing, non-requires validity,
Their boat is void demanding they go where
Nothin's a must and nothing's a rule,
Just to live and breathe and stare and stool.'
Finally, my mystery writer says: "To repeat, people like this just don't happen. I blame much of our problems with today's youth on the liberal boys, the gang with no fixed views of things, no absolutes."

James Cagney then writes: " I can now consider myself an archconservative."
Amen, I say, and may a sense of wonder Cagney treasured, rub off on some lucky, living souls.

Too small to be noticed

2011-10-14T09:50:00.002-05:00

If nobody is too big to fail, why then is nobody too small not to be noticed? Enter the tea party, feared and demonized by lies as a radical, racist and unimportant segment of society in America. We are not too small to be feared. We will not be assimilated and co-opted into the Republican establishment or else. No, Al(Gore) we are not violent; your left is violent. No, William(Crystal) we are not an "infantile form" too small to be ignored. We tea party conservatives may be too big to fail. A big, diverse, great country needs us.

1,2,3,4,5,

2011-10-13T11:55:00.003-05:00

Slovakia is the 17th & last sign-on to the EU bailouts of bankrupt EU nations.
Raj, the billion dollar crook got 10yrs. prison sentence & $11 million fine.
Voters flip-flopped to put H. Cain in lead over Pres. candidate M. Romney.
New Hamphshire announced its intention to be 1st in primaries on Dec. 1st.
Cash poor Chillicothe,OH. approved $1.5 million for 2 fire trucks & armored vehicle.

What next? What's new? Nothing from my perspective. The tea party is the target of non-conservative Republicans because we won't be co-opted and/or corrupted by Washington politics. Flattery will get us everywhere we need to go to save our beloved country.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

2011-10-12T17:20:00.002-05:00

In a local newpaper, a headline reminds me, "You are what you eat." Or don't. No way. Not if you have no choice of entrees. Thanks to the Federal government's meddling, it is "mandated that all schools must serve healthier lunches." Thanks too to the perverted nature of all things Michele and Barack Obama, the devil hides in the details. Yes, a salad bar has been added resulting in the lunch line costing 10% more. Yes, fried is out and baked in for chips. Yes, all milk will be fat free. No, no longer will candy, ice cream or the enormous 2,000 calorie chocolate muffins be sold. But because no is never no and nothing has an expiration date for liberals, breakfast pizza is still IN. What's the point of such nonsense and contradiction other than more waste of taxpayers' monies for the sake of saving the children from obestity? If freedom still rang the bell of our nation's schools, each parent would be expected to exhibit personal responsibility and pack his or her own child's lunch. At least obesity agenda would not be at taxpayers' expense.

And still some worship Obama

2011-10-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

From H.L Mencken's Crestomathy
After damning politicians up hill and down dale for many years, as rogues and vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, I sometimes suspect that, like everyone else, I often expect too much of them. Though faith and confidence are surely more or less foreign to my nature, I not infrequently find myself looking to them to be able, diligent, candid and even honest. Plainly enough, that is too large a order, as anyone must realize who reflects upon the manner in which they reach public office. They seldom if ever get there by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged. It is a talent like any other, and when it is exercised by a radio crooner, a movie actor or a bishop, it even takes on a certain austere and sorry respectability. But it is obviously not identical with a capacity for the intricate problems of statecraft.

2011-10-10T14:54:00.002-05:00

What do these 3 co-incidentals have in common? 26 contestants vie for prestigeous positions in a local fall festival of leaves. Scott's lawn seed company's stock is down but I heard an ad which mentioned their "no quibble guarantee." A drunken old man fought with his wife and threatend to burn his house down so the sheriff called in 2 armored vehicles from the 'big city,' to subdue him.

Nothing, nothing nothing. But gosh, 26 contestants for king and queen of a festival? Gosh, a silly and impossible tactic to attract business? Gosh, a local stand-off of 3 hours which justified armour and statewide media coverage?

Nothing, nothing, nothing makes sense anymore.

YES, YES for Fairness

2011-10-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

YES, YES, vote for fairness on November 8th. A Yes on Issue 3 will stop Obamacare and a Yes on Issue 2 , SB5, will give fairness to taxpayers over government unions.

Yes on Issue 3, the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment will protect Ohioans’ freedom to make individual healthcare and health insurance decisions. Yes will prevent government from forcing you to buy health insurance and charging you anything it wants in the future without your consent. Yes will reduce government intervention which always increases regulations, drives up costs and unfairly selects winners and losers. Why should some people be more equal than others? Yes will stop the ‘death panels’ called Independent Payment Advisory Boards included in Obamacare.

Vote yes on this proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution to prevent government from imposing a fine on you for not purchasing health insurance. Is it fair for the government to fine you because you choose to take personal responsibility for your health care? You should be outraged that you must pay a fine for exercising liberty.

One argument put forth in favor of Obamacare says that the sick who are not insured will overburden the health care industry. But we all know that costs never diminish when bureaucracy is involved. Even now, the government constantly raises the cost estimates for Obamacare. Have you looked at a medical bill lately or carried home the papers from a visitation to a hospital? Paperwork can easily reach the depth of an inch. Multiple pages are even necessary for simple emergency procedures. Government meddling in what should be a free market health care system has resulted in unbelievable waste. Soon to be implemented are 140,000 new medical codes that your doctor must use; many are absurd like the code for being injured in a chicken coop. Do you really believe that costs will go down or freedoms expanded if Obamacare survives? Vote YES on 3.

Yes on Issue 2 is also about fairness to the taxpayers. Government employees’ union contracts are involved. Public workers have many and varied occupations, a minority of them being the highly profiled teachers, police and firefighters. They all have more job security, better health care plans and better retirement benefits than private sector employees. A web site, www.BetterOhio.org highlights a few reasons to vote yes on SB5. It would ask public employees to pay at least 15% of the cost of their health insurance; taxpayers would still pay the rest. Unfortunately, that is only half of what private sector workers currently pay. At least it stops the bleeding from municipal budgets. Cities across Ohio are finding it hard to raise enough funds to cover government’s union workers. In this difficult time of 9.2% unemployment, is it fair for union employees to ask private sector Ohioans to pay for their gold-plated health insurance? As the mayor of Toledo, Ohio said, “it’s not about taking away contractual rights from union employees, it’s about stabilizing our system.”

Yes on Issue 2 ties job performance to rewarding or firing workers. It also puts an end to automatic pay increases something most of us do not enjoying at our workplaces. Teachers, for example, automatically advance through seniority not effective service and SB5 would attempt to correct this problem.

Issue 2 asks government employees to pay at least 10% to their publically funded retirement plans rather than pay nothing and force taxpayers to pay the rest. Private sector workers and self-employed workers, on the other hand, must fund their own retirement plans. Again, is this fair? Why are private workers personally responsible for their retirement investments as public workers’ pensions are supported by them? Some Ohio cities now pay out half of their budgets as retirement benefits to retired government employees.

An ad running on radio for Issue 2 claims that SB5 will make it harder to negotiate for enough firefighters to do the job thus causing slower response times and more deaths. It asserts that only firefighters know the proper staffing level. Really? Can you think of any business or industry that lets employees determine proper staffing, assignments or goals of the organization? Scare tactics will work only if the public does not question details.

Contrary to advertised claims, Issue 2 will continue to allow public employees to negotiate wages and working conditions. But they cannot strike. Strikes, of course, are and have always been great ways for unions to demand more benefits from their employers. Is it fair that unionized workers set the terms for hiring and pay? Why should some workers be more equal than others? Should not the employers determine the level of cost to the taxpayers? Yet unions always demand a bigger cut of tax revenue. Even when tough times prevail, they demand concessions. Has a strike every resulted in workers demanding less?

Vote YES, YES on Issues 2 and 3. It’s all about fairness to Ohioans.

His believers

2011-10-06T07:48:00.005-05:00

"The 'gutter-elite' surrounding ... were united by the ties which normally unite revolutionaries, gangsters and place-seekers whose conjoint or converging efforts have been crowned with success, and these ties, like ropes which have been tarred, were rendered more durable by a rich, ... integument of perverted idealism and a profound faith - half-treacly, half-shrewd - in the genius of ..."

British historian Peter Fleming describes Hitler. Can you fill in the dotted spaces with the name of the charismatic leader today, similar to another in the past?

In Memoriam Savannah 1999-2011

2011-10-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

You loved me
With your special soul.
Your last day
We took a stroll
Before the seizures
Took their toll
And Death was written.

No more berry picking,
Biscuits or ball.
Or experiences.
When we next meet,
You’ll run,
Bathe in the sun,
Be my only friend
Again - except for
One, true human.

More than a decade
Plus two with you
Counts for joyful troth.
Today, however,
Essence of ‘good dog,’
Becomes my quintessence of grief.

Lunch Police

2011-10-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

After reading an article in the Record-Herald claiming, “you are what you eat,” I wondered when the enhanced, better nutrition police will arrive at our local schools? Our government has already stepped in and mandated that all schools must serve healthier lunches. The SS (safe selectors), of course, will wear armbands with a smiley face. Their inspiration will come from a slogan from our First Lady, “let’s move. ” They will direct student traffic into one of two lanes, with directives, “feist,” “hunger, “feist, “ ”hunger,” based on the morphology of students as either obese or hungry. Salad without dressing, watery milk and restricted sweets await the chosen; cheese sticks, pizza and ice cream, the lucky few. Now ask your self, if food makes the man (or woman) will our future contain no basketball, football, soccer players or Olympians and just revert to type as skinny monkeys inhabiting trees?

Gridlock

2011-09-30T09:29:00.003-05:00

Peter Orszag: "...We need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic." VS. General James Doolittle who said that "...competition is the stimulus to improvement."

Bev Perdue: "...we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make to just let them help this country recover." VS. Andy Kessler who says that entrepreneurs "create wealth for society by inventing and being in business and investing their profits into even more productive produces and services. That's 'giving back.'"

Socialism, government dictat and less democracy VS. free enterprise, indicidual initiative and wealth creation. Where do we go from here when two sides are ideologically polarized?

Forget Multiculturalism: Restore The Anglo-Saxon Philosophy Of Liberty

2011-09-30T09:26:00.001-05:00

By: BILL FLAX in FORBES

A history professor once postulated that the most pivotal battle shaping America’s destiny was not Yorktown or Gettysburg, but Quebec in 1759. There General Wolfe demolished French claims to Canada, which confirmed that America would develop decisively within the Anglo-protestant mold.
The latest Economic Freedom of the World rankings (for 2009) highlight the good fortune that resulted from Wolfe’s win. Many commentators will rightly deplore America’s precipitous descent over the past decade – down to tenth, yet another startling detail leaps from the page. Eight of the ten freest lands were once owned by Britain.
The nations enjoying limited government, property rights, sound currency, free trade, ease of regulation, low taxes and restrained public spending include: Hong Kong, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, Mauritius and the United States.
The study reveals a potent correlation linking freedom to economic progress. Nations following market principles propel past their government laden counterparts. They earn more, grow faster and “the poorest people in the most economically free countries are nearly twice as rich as the average people in the least free countries.”
The USA has likely fallen further since 2009 as abrasive government expansion continued. Obamacare and Dodd-Frank both passed in 2010. The EPA and NLRB wage regulatory crusades against businesses. Spending remains elevated. Liberty perishes underneath government’s persistent pursuit of power.
In this time of economic stagnation, perhaps prosperity can be retracted from America’s past. As the U.S. declared independence, the Industrial Revolution launched in England. History had heretofore exhibited minimal progress from antiquity. Most remained mired in subsistence level agriculture until suddenly advances in the Anglosphere catapulted living standards forward.
Capitalism offers both abstract liberties as well as freedom from want. Thanks to free markets, common laborers can access more comfort, superior sanitation and even entertainment than nobles experienced before the stirrings of modern industry. The advent of superior medicine and better nutrition even extended life. It’s estimated that prior to the aforementioned advances, three-fourths of everyone ever born died by age 35.
America’s diminished freedom is thus alarming. Historically, America’s unparalleled liberty shone hope across the seas. Our independence was essentially a counter-revolution. America, as Mark Steyn writes, “derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.”
The colonists reasserted their “ancient rights as Englishmen,” then threatened by London’s encroachments after a long span of benign neglect. Previously, enforcement of the Navigation Acts and other laws had been lackluster and easily skirted. But suddenly parliament began interceding to “extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction.”
Jefferson and company believed London violated the laws of nature and saw independence in keeping with British tradition’s historic trajectory towards liberty. Independence climaxed a long quest which commenced on the fields of Runnymede in 1215 when the Magna Carta curtailed the crown’s reach.
The Declaration meant “not to find out new principles, or new arguments” but to appeal to “ common sense.” Thomas Jefferson was particularly enamored with Anglo-Saxon culture; seeing the American Revolution as an historical step to restore liberties lost under Norman rule. He reminded King George, “America was not conquered by William the Norman, nor its lands surrendered to him.”
Like many American settlers, the Anglo-Saxons developed tribal mores around commonwealths of sovereign individuals claiming inherent, inviolable rights. Even the local king was subject to laws and custom. Property was respected and common law superseded civil statutes. Modern rights to juries and public hearings emanated from Saxon councils.

The Anglo-Saxons fashioned society on individuals, families, communities and later churches. Problems were resolved locally and only if necessary, by the broader nation. Little interference from without was tolerated. People adjoined, not as spokes on a wheel oriented toward a mystical state, but as webs of interlocking dependencies where neighbors bolstered others by shouldering their share of the load.
Modern historians dismiss this as mere lore, but many colonists, Jefferson foremost, believed Anglo-Saxon culture striking similar to theirs and reminiscent of ancient Israel. Jefferson even proposed a national seal emblazoned with Israel wandering toward the Promised Land and the flip side showing Anglo-Saxon heroes. America’s settlement harkened both. Adams credited the Anglo-Saxons “whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.”
Anglo-Saxon customs had eroded and the historicity is murky, but England suffered far less feudal paralysis than Continental Europe with a relatively fluid class system. The colonists bent British culture towards still greater liberties, forging a uniquely American perspective. Governments were established indigenously by small, often isolated groups dealing practically with local exigencies.
America shared the mother country’s language, culture and common law legal systems, without her predisposition for hereditary nobility or top down suzerainty. Republican principles prevailed. Government was instituted to protect life, liberty and property, further defined to incorporate propriety over conscience as the “pursuit of happiness.”
These free market platforms so prospered America that she soon eclipsed England’s vast prosperity. Jefferson boasted that you could travel the entire Eastern seaboard and see nary an American begging. Today, even our poor are wealthy by any material measure. So too have non-British immigrants fared well by adopting Anglo-American norms.
The USA’s two most affluent segments are Jews and Asians. Those who assimilate flourish, but every ethnicity does better economically in America than from whence their ancestors came. Likewise, the top beneficiaries of an English legacy are Asian – Hong Kong and Singapore.
It is the Left’s sacred cow that the Third World suffers from Western hegemony. Yet, the greatest happening to befall many peoples was seemingly being colonized by Britain or conquered by America. Until China’s recent epiphany, Germany and Japan were the world’s next largest economies.
China and India began their ascents by arcing toward the Anglo-American model. Beijing abandoned communism after seeing her Chinese cousins thrive in Asia’s capitalist outposts. India, as reflected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has begun to recognize certain benefits from British rule.
When His Britannic Majesty’s forces vanquished India’s Muslim overloads (who invaded India themselves), they did more than establish British preeminence. They also bequeathed the rule of law, functioning courts, property rights and the language of international commerce: English.
While Britain’s empire wasn’t built on altruism, many former colonies profit immensely from her rule. This extends beyond economics. For all of President Obama’s anti-colonialism, remember Britain entered Kenya to abolish the Muslim slave trade, already banished to the interior by the Royal Navy.
Political correctness has so infected American thought that we recoil reflexively at the mere hint of Western brilliance. To the multiculturalists, the only culture that can’t be unequivocally praised is the very Anglo-protestant heritage which spurred America’s greatness. Ironically, it is often guilt laden WASPs, heirs of their wealth, leading the slanderous denunciations of their forbears.
“E Pluribus Unum” – from many, one – gives way to Balkanization where multiculturalists hitch grievance wagons to government’s gravy train. Attracting venturesome immigrants has long boosted America’s fortunes, but success no longer entails mimicking Anglo-American culture. Instead of assimilation, we now espouse bilingual education to abstain from “cultural imperialism.
A quasi-Marxism supplements class warfare with identity politics under the mantle of diversity. Obama’s reelection strategy advocates taxing the affluent to finance public favoritism for others he deems mistreated by what has historically been a libertarian American experiment. Identity politics transform elections into feudal patronage schemes sacrificing property and liberty on the altar of political correctness.
Vigilant Americans must restore the founders’ vision before multiculturalism forever eclipses our last vestiges of liberty.

General of the Armies

2011-09-29T11:20:00.002-05:00

We need another General of the Armies, not Army. We have not had one since Pershing in World War I and have had only one other, Washington, the Father of our country.

We have had 7 five-star Generals of the Army (singular): Eisenhower, McArthur and Bradley and Marshall, Arnold, General of the Air Force, the equivalent, and Dewey, King and Leahy, Fleet Admirals, also equivalents to General of the Army.

The title traditionally has been awarded in war time. Are we not now again at war with the liberal left, an enemy combatant aiming at a destructive transformation of America?

Tidbits about 5 star generals from an internet search just inspire me to ask a relevant question. A General of the Army is not the same as a General of the Armies. I want a civilian conservative leader to be like a General of the Armies, with a 6th star emblazoned on his/her crusading coat of arms.

WHO KNEW?

2011-09-28T15:49:00.002-05:00

Who knew that taking away the drive's license of a dead beat dad meant that he could not drive to work to earn money to pay the child support he chose not to pay? Whoever ignored this reality now rules that the dead beat need only pay 1/2 of the support and be given 30 days to comply before receiving a notification...

Who knew that investments in infrastructure, renewable energy, job training and quality education would never result in jobs? Whoever believes that more spending means more employment also ignores the reality that lower taxes, reduction of government regulations and less government will inspire job creation.

Whoever never learned how to fix things in the past will not learn how to fix them now.

5th Horseman

2011-09-26T14:30:00.002-05:00

One in 5 warriors has PTS, post traumatic stress syndrome. So I hear today. Another misrepresentation (or lie). Actually, few 'warriors' are warriors and are wounded and the military's supply forces greatly exceed soldiers fighting in combat. Also,a politically-correct agenda calls for an ever increasing diagnosis of PTS. Why?

Speaking metaphorically, Republican candidates for President are like warriors fighting to take back America. Talk of a Mr. or Mrs. Wonderful still undiscovered is silly. No such white knight exists. But a dark highwayman rides the campaign trail. Unfortunately, deluded Americans elected the 5th horseman of the apocalypse.

3 revolutions

2011-09-25T17:40:00.002-05:00

I quote from S. T. Possony in 1959. "The French revolution cost much and achieved little. The American revolution cost little and achieved much; it was a successful liberating revolution. The Russian revolution cost enormously and proved to be the most thoroughly enslaving revolution of history. It became the greatest disaster of modern times. To paraphrase Lenin, the American revolution was one step forward, the Russian revolution was many steps backward. 'By their fruits, ye shall know them.'"

How did Marx or Lenin or Trotsky or Stalin sound calling for the transformation of Russia by Communist means? Just listen to some of the big O's revolutionary rhetoric now loud and strident and uncompromising on his campaign trail.

One ominous

2011-09-24T11:52:00.003-05:00

"ANALYSIS: The resolution of phenomena into elements and factors more fundamental than those readily perceived; esp. with a view toward prediction or intervention." Such describes analysis for a portfolio-investment firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A NEW SOCIALIST REPUBLIC IN NORTH AMERICA: A world without oppression and exploitation in which manual laborers can explore a life of the mind and the legal penal system will nevermore put 1 in 9 young black men in prison." Such describes the goal of the revolution called for by a political economist writing in the Harvard Crimson.

What do the above have in common? No sense. But which definition is more ominous?

BACK TO 14,000

2011-09-23T14:32:00.002-05:00

If I say it's true, it must be true because when I heard that Ohio is in its worst shape since 2000 and remembered that the DOW too is in its worst shape since it fell from its 14,000 high, I realized the confluence of the two situations merely makes a fact self-evident - that until the stock market returns to its pre-crash high, you, me, Ohio and America are simply living in a dark time hoping for legitimate change.

United Way advertises itself as supporting the 4 most important things in life: educaton, income, health and home. What do you think? Wouldn't the DOW back to 14,000 do the 4-part trick?

Anonymized

2011-09-22T08:57:00.002-05:00

GM, now an arm of our Big Brother in Washingnton, is installing OnStar systems in vehicles to collect data even if the car owner is not a subscriber of OnStar. Why? Information collected can be shared with law enforcement and credit card collectors and "others" according to GM. Invasion of privacy? Meaning of "others"? Gm claims no problem because this 'program' will be on an "anonymized basis." Give me a break - oh no, the arm of government plans to give drivers broken arms(symbolically disabling their freedoms) whether they are guilty of a 'crime' or not. Sounds like life somewhere else in a past uncivilized has just been updated to the present.

2011-09-21T11:21:00.002-05:00

Having succeeded the 'eagle' Lenin, Stalin said he and his men were driven by 'holy fear' of not justifying the trust of the masses. His was truly a 'holy terror' that stemmed from Bolshevism's Messianic nature. A British biographer of Stalin, S.S. Montefiore comments ( in 2003) with these memorable words: "The squalidity of this sacred thuggery beggars belief." Read your history and weep. Stalin spoke without "slovenliness of language" which H.G. Wells said makes it "easier to have foolish thoughts." Stalin practiced what he preached.

Our modern Messianic President learned politics from another master of mass solutions, Saul Olinsky. Obama uses slovenly language sprinkled with glittering, misleading genralities. And Americans who elected him definitely had foolish thoughts. His goal, however, remains the same as Stalin's - power to implement a complete transformation of his country. Unlike Stalin, however, our big O always looks up and away With a pose of unworldliness ( note photos), but what transpires behind the scenes will eventually out.

By the way, I would like you to know that watching a few minutes of real time TV last night, I counted 11 commercials during ONE break.

MATH MY WAY

2011-09-20T14:16:00.002-05:00

Wm F. Buckley Jr. suggested that the responsibility of thinking man is to make distinctions. Math my way suggests that only by noting distinctions do we reach truth or expose lies.

14,000 gay soldiers over 18 years supposedly have been 'kicked out' of the military. That's approx. 800 a year. The math, however, does not tell you that many of these men and women chose to opt out by 'revealing' their sexual orientation in order to avoid serving in a war zone or for some other cause.

An Illinois wind turbine farm costs 200 million and will create 12 permanent jobs and 100 temporary construction jobs. You do the math and weep.

My kind of math centers around creating wealth and a better life. Antitrust does nothing but give the government the legal authority to punish success. So-called robber barons of the last century like Rockefeller and Carnegie reduced the prices of oil and steel each year and ushered in the industrial revolution with more and better products - hardly a monopoly. A higher standard of living is irrelevant to socialists and bashers of big business. Competition in a capitalistic society usually sorts itself out in the market place. Government just gums up the works with antitrust regulations and punishments. Listen to our big O if you want to hear how negativity and fuzzy math sound.

uncommon sense

2011-09-19T11:45:00.002-05:00

Prior to 'unsilenced cal,' my blog used the name 'uncommmon sense' for 4 years. Nothing's changed, however, in my perspective of reality. Please note that we now have 2000 mosques in the U.S. in 2011 as opposed to 1200 in 2001. Obviously, accusations of racism against Muslims must be pushed aside when reality intrudes. 1% of Americans pay 40% of taxes; 5% pay 70%. Again accusations that the rich do not pay their 'fair' share, fade in the light of reason. Yet our leader in the White House, lies and lies and lies.

1 & 1 & 1 = insanity

2011-09-17T12:43:00.002-05:00

Sentenced to 50 years at age 49 for Medicare fraud, Mr. Duran must pay $87 million in restitution ( how in prison? ) and be supervised for 3 years after his release from prison ( at age 99? ).

Our government unveiled an initiative called "Study in the States" which will examine regulatory changes, expand public engagement between the government and academia and provide an online information hub for the Dept. of Homeland Security and its agency partners to provide current and prospective students ( bright immigrants) with updated and relevant visa requirements. (How is this for DOING SOMETHING?)

In 10 years, these special education disabilities have increased: Autism, 306%, Developmental delay, 72%, Health impairments including chronic fatigue, 127%. ( I hope you don't think others such as emotional disturbance, mental retardation, specific learning disability, speech or language imnpairment and 'others' have gone away?)

1 & 1 & 1 example of insanity equals 3 examples of insanity. God bless the U.S.A.

Do the math

2011-09-16T16:00:00.002-05:00

38 billion to create 65,000 jobs of which only 3500 were actually created. 528 million to create 1100 jobs. Do the math of Obama stimulus spending, read waste and weep. Government represents pork projects for each Congress person's district, subsidies at infinitum, systems scammed, lobbyists' campaign contribution, overspending - all enough waste to drive a conservative like me to drink. At least the Obama administration has not allowed for a third gender on a passport application - neither male nor female or a selection different from one's birth certificate. Where? Transgender people need to be respected in Australia. Yea, Obama!

On the Moon or on Earth

2011-09-15T11:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry, James ( Carville), what we need in the White House is not a creationism-undoing, global-warming-accepting, immigration amnesty-providing, social security Ponzi scheming, clean air regulating, mortality denying, Wall Street bashing, America-hating liberal running my country.
What we do need is a conservative, tried and true like me. We live in 2 Americas, James, yours and mine. Never the twain planets shall meet.

On the Road

2011-09-14T17:29:00.000-05:00

A man’s ( or woman’s) car is his dream machine. Ever since the internal combustion engine overrode the manpower of the bicycle, men and women have been seduced by the automobile. My 1st love was no different. But today, chrome and metal have been replaced by plastic, padding and air bags. And rules, rules, rules have completely transformed the marvelous, driving machine and the auto industry.

We recently celebrated Labor Day. What better way to evaluate it than to note that the power of unions and government regulations have crippled a great auto industry. The Obama administration just implemented new CAFÉ rules. No one likes a new rule, another layer of freedom stripped away, but apparently these automakers do: GM, Toyota Motor, General Motors, Chrysler Group, Ford Motor, Honda Motor, Nissan Motor, and BMW.

New rules will require truck manufacturers to meet fuel-efficiency standards for lowering carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as 20% by 2018. 18 wheelers, buses, garbage trucks and delivery trucks are included. This rule follows a preceding rule for autos. It requires a corporate average of 54.5 mpg between 2017 and 2025. Since 9 million gallons of oil fill up our cars and trucks every day, these rules will 1. reduce our addiction to oil, 2. curb carbon pollution, 3. create jobs, and 4. save consumers money. Really? How can one administration tell such a quadruple whopper of a lie? Big Brother’s real agenda is not only the destruction of the free market system in energy consumption and car choice but also the push for alternative fuels, the swans of the EPA. Oil is the ugly duckling.

More rules mean more problems, less profit and fewer jobs. Union victories of high labor costs and unsustainable retirement benefits as well as government regulations, eventually brought our big 3 car makers to their knees. As we know, Chrysler and GM were in fiscal crises for years. GM was restructured by the government after a $50 billion bailout having been $40 billion in debt. How can a unionized company fall $50 billion into debt for retiree health-care obligations? Chrysler, having already been bailed out in the 80's, received another bailout and partial buyout by the government. In restructuring, Chrysler reduced its UAW hourly wages and benefits from $76.00 to $49.00. Volkswagen and Hyundai Motors, by the way, pay $25.00 an hour. It is appropriate to discuss the ‘benefits’ of unionization close to the holiday, Labor Day.

Fortunately the auto industry knows that ‘no’ from our administration never means ‘no.’ In negotiating their deal, auto makers engineered an escape route of a review by 2018, when, if targets are judged too ambitious, targets could get lowered or rules changed. Halfway through the cycle, a review will determine if rules are overly harsh or lenient given fuel prices, consumer behavior and technological advancements. The new requirements - known as CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) can be thus fudged. Credits can be earned to make it easier for manufacturers to reach higher mpg’s.

Perhaps as you read the rules above for mpg you missed the phrase ‘ corporate average.’ This allows for loopholes. Credits for technologies exist for solar-panels in the roof to power a cooling system, front grille louvers that automatically close to reduce drag when the car’s driving at higher speeds, air conditioning systems that use climate-friendly refrigerants and battery-powered vehicles that allow auto makers to comply without reaching the 54.5 mpg. Credits can be won for hybrid trucks, alternative fuels and other ways of improving fuel economy. An electric car counts as two zero emission cars when calculating efficiency and CO2 emissions of the total fleet. Large pickups called ‘strong hybrids,’ that run for a time on battery power can get a credit on every truck sold for 1.5 to 2 mpg. ‘Mild hybrids’ that give an electric boost to acceleration from a stop get a credit for 1 mpg. A credit for engines shutting down at stop lights. Yes. Beefier batteries, energy recycling brakes. Yes. Yes. Smaller and lighter cars? Yes. Even a turbo-charged 4-cylinder engine that acts as a fuel economy feature.

Will the regulations save drivers more in gas costs than they add to the price of cars and trucks? Will citizens diet to drops the pounds needed to fit into mini cars? Will tax credits be necessary like rebates in the Cash for Clunkers program?

Auto makers apparently will simply play the credit game, allowing them to avoid dramatically shrinking the size and power of some vehicles yet continue to offer an array of models ranging from small electric cars to beefy pickups. Obviously, selection and free choice power the auto industry.

Government gives with one hand and takes with the other. This is the lesson to be learned from such nonsense and over- regulation. If it is all too depressing and confusing to you, flash with me back to the time of my 1st love, a ‘51 Ford. I can recall the thrills of yesteryear in my lime green, pop-eyed beast with white walls and Overdrive. Poor indeed is the chance for a 21st century, regulated American to feel the passion I felt behind that ivory wheel.

How much more?

2011-09-14T14:33:00.002-05:00

How much more can we Americans- awake to and aware of the big O's destructive and punishing ways - take?

California, New York and Illinois are the 3 least friendly states to business; Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina are the 3 most friendly states. Left vs. right. Liberal vs. conservative.

The obvious cries out to be acknowledged. As George Orwell wrote in 1939: "We have sunk to such a depth that the restatement of the obvious has become the first duty of intelligent men."

So sad, there are still too many foolish men (and women).

Speak clearly

2011-09-13T11:57:00.002-05:00

A French bank talks about its "dollar denominated debt."
A study mentions "partnered men living with a girlfriend."
GE refers to its "country-focused structure."
Duh, duh, duh. Speaking clearly went out truth. Student loans have increased from $100 billion in '08 to $386 billion in '11. This statistic just follows the lie and each preceding lie that every person needs to attend college. And that's the truth.

GE also spoke vaguely when it said it needs to "beef up discussion making capabilities ... to respond more quckly to business prospects." The devil is, of course, in the details.

I simply say: 'Vote out our present, President Dracula before he drains more blood from the jugulars of my fellow Americans.'

America grieves, reflects...

2011-09-12T16:10:00.002-05:00

The heading of a picture of George W. Bush next to Barack Obama at a 9/11/11commemorative ceremony reads, "America Grieves, Reflects." Obama's head is up; Bush's head is down. Bush represents humility; Obama arrogance. Question? Whom does America grieve? On whom do we reflect? Answeer - Obama, Bush. Perfect picture speaking a 1000 ( actually 3000 victims) words. Perfect symbolism. Pure reality. It reminds me of my 9/11 framed commemorative photo. In the darkened backgroud are the twin towers; in the forground, a large, weeping American eagle.