The Crumbling Foundation

There’s a difference between Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. And it has more to do with the contrasting seasons of the year. There’s a different sensibility to the two commemorations. It’s a simple distinction when you stop and think about it. Veteran’s Day celebrates those who served. Memorial Day honors those who fell. One comes in advance of the much-anticipated Thanksgiving holiday; the other, part of the first three-day weekend of summer.

And so it was this year as the early-November curtain-raiser for the holiday season approached. This year’s commemoration distinguished itself from the others in that it was the first Veteran’s Day I’ve had off since I’ve been one. It’s one of the few perks that come with working for a school district. The private sector – in which I spent the lion’s share of my working years – bears no such inclination. They suit up and show up, ready for work, Veteran’s Day or not.

Still, a job is a job, wherever it may be found, and a day off is a day off, for whatever the reason. So, I took the opportunity to do something constructive with my newfound free time. I decided to take my aging Honda Accord in to the dealer for a long-overdue cooling system flush. With Thanksgiving coming up, it would be very bad form to find myself stranded halfway between Barstow and Baker, California in the middle of the bleak and barren great desert nowhere.

It was a fortunate choice as it turned out. Because half an hour into my vigil, the service attendant approached me as I lingered in the lounge with an engaging smile that could mean only one thing – bad news. Sure enough, after 180,000 miles, my radiator gave up the ghost. After a pressure test, it turned out my radiator block had a crack in it, and was just this side of busting loose. So . . . $800 later, my Accord had a new radiator, new hoses, new belts, new coolant and a new lease on life. My wallet was considerably lighter in the process, but out here in the golden west, nobody rides for free.

So, as I sat there, watching nothing in particular on the Sony 60-inch plasma big screen – nothing too good for us Honda owners, particularly when we’re spending big bucks on car repairs – I contemplated the upcoming holiday season, and just what I was going to do now that my plans had vanished down the black hole of a big repair bill.

While I don’t spend my time traveling over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house in the literal sense, I have been known to make my way over the mountains and across the desert to Las Vegas to spend time with what passes for family. I think I may have addressed this age-old maxim in a previous commentary. But it bears repeating. During the holidays, when you have nothing to do, no one to see, and nowhere to go, you go to Vegas. That’s been the plan the last few years, and I must admit, it’s worked out well. Not this year. My coach and four just turned into a pumpkin and a bunch of mice, and my glass slipper shattered on the floor of the maintenance bay of the service center.

Just at that moment, I noticed the program on the big screen, offered up for our viewing pleasure. It was CNN. I was astonished. I don’t get much CNN. Never have. Even during the dark, ominous days of George W. Bush, doing his best imitation of a free-spending liberal, all the while selling the country out to globalist, international mega-corporations, and pushing every open-border initiative that came down the pike, I couldn’t quite deal with CNN. Try as I might, while Fox News was busy drinking the Bush Kool-Aid ©, and ever hot, blonde infobabe on the Fox network harbored secret desires of being taken by force by the president, I simply could not go over to the dark side of the cable news world.

So the day was now complete. This repair bill broke me a day after payday, my holiday season vanished at the stroke of a pen, and a full month stretched before me until the school district I laughingly work for would cough up another monthly check. And what did I have on this state-of-the-art 21st century video marvel? CNN. As they told us during our first year home from Vietnam, “Happy Veteran’s Day, Asshole.”

Even the reporterette de jour – Kyra Phillips, who, on those rare occasions I deigned to partake of CNN didn’t seem too objectionable – was quoting the party line straight up and down this morning. It was Veteran’s Day, after all. And Kyra had one news piece after another related to the ceremonies of the day. Among them:

• Army Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan – What drove him to the Fort Hood tragedy? Was he the real victim? (It was a “tragedy”, not a “terrorist attack”, of course. The word was never mentioned.)
  
  
• Barack Hussein Obama at Arlington Cemetery – He shall beat our swords into plowshares and usher in a new era of international peace. (The play on words of Isaiah 2:4 was revolting, but what should I expect? It was CNN.)
  
  
• The War in Afghanistan – War on terror or genocide? (And, in a related story . . . )
  
  
• Soldiers of Afghanistan – Guardians of our freedom or war criminals?
  
  

OK. You get the idea. Trapped at the Honda dealership, soon to be relieved of every cent I had at the moment – or at least most of them – and held hostage by CNN.

Then I saw them.

They were an elderly couple. She was stoop-shouldered, white-haired, and frail. She tentatively ambled along with the assistance of a metal walker on wheels that doubled as a wheelchair. Her oxygen bottle was attached to the metal shaft of the chair, its gauges registering in time with her labored breathing. From the look of her, I gathered she suffered from an acute case of osteoporosis. Her husband was at her side all the way, as if he’d always been there and always would.

He helped her fold down the seat of the walker/wheelchair. And he patiently assisted her into the contraption, after which he poured her a cup of coffee from the courtesy window and sat down beside her. He was a slight man, gaunt, thin and short. He wore rimless spectacles, and bore the indelible mark of a man ravaged by the relentless onslaught of time. His skin was mottled, his flesh hung loose on his neck, his hands trembled slightly. On his head, he wore a simple, baseball-style cap with the logo WWII VETERAN on its crown, and as he took a seat next to his wife, I could see his oversized, gold-plated belt-buckle, which bore an unmistakable insignia – the eagle, globe and anchor of a United State Marine.

They sat opposite me, and I noticed – as Kyra Phillips rambled on about racial harassment of the oppressed army major who gunned down fifty of his fellow soldiers, a member of a subjugated ethnic minority, driven to unspeakable acts of brutality, no doubt, due to the inherent bigotry and hate of the military establishment – how they held hands, spoke softly, and the understated loving care they radiated to each other. A love, no doubt, grown deep and lasting with the passing of many years together, and countless joys and sorrows endured along the way.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Normally, I never miss an opportunity to thank this warrior of the last great crusade against evil for his service, particularly because there are so few of them and their numbers are dwindling daily. But there was something about this couple that spoke of the inherent privacy so typical of their generation. No doubt, they were here for the same reason I was – only for them it was perhaps something as simple as an oil change – and stopped by the lounge like the rest of us, to wait and watch and then go about the business of the day.

But it was Veteran’s Day. And he was a veteran. So was I. Nevertheless, I sat there, watching him tenderly care for the needs of his ailing wife, with whom, no doubt, he’d spent his entire adult life.

It was when Kyra was reporting about the shocking disparity of the racial breakdown among troops in Afghanistan, and how minority soldiers – particularly African Americans – bore an inordinate amount of combat operations that I got up, moved across the lounge, sat down next to him and introduced myself.

I told them I had been to Normandy in 2004 for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, briefly explained how that experience totally reoriented my priorities, thanked him for his service and welcomed him home. It didn’t matter that he’d received a lifetime of recognition for his service to king and country. He was a WWII Marine, and he’d earned my respect.

I was about to ask the specifics of where he served, what he saw, and how he coped, when he extended his hand and said in a raspy voice, “Thank you, son. Horace Gilmartin, 5th Marines, Peleliu.” His hand was bony, warm and dry. His grip was frail, but firm.

Somehow, I knew what a profound admission he’d just given me. And somehow I likewise knew it was all I was going to get. His wife, Emily, smiled weakly. She bore the strained demeanor of an old woman accustomed to living in a world of hurt. We chatted briefly about nothing in particular. Yes, they were in for an oil change. No, they didn’t get out much anymore. Yes, they lived in a local assisted living home. No, he wasn’t planning to attend any Veteran’s Day ceremonies. He didn’t like leaving Emily alone, you see. And she wasn’t up to the strain anymore.

Shortly thereafter, Kyra ran a piece about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s terror trial being moved to federal court in New York, and the possibility that all charges could be dismissed due to illegal evidentiary collection procedures and the failure of U.S. authorities to properly inform the alleged suspect of his Miranda rights. (She actually used those very words – “alleged suspect”.)

Sure enough, they were childhood sweethearts. They’d been married for 65 years, just before he enlisted in the Marine Corps in their hometown in rural Kansas. Like so many returning Marines who passed through California on their way overseas, Horace vowed that if he ever survived the carnage, this was where they would live. He was discharged in December 1945 and they lived in the golden state ever since.

I asked him about the changes he’d seen over the years, and how he dealt with them.

Well, there certainly had been quite a few. And if it wasn’t for Emily and the kids, the grandkids, and now the great-grandkids, it would have been a lot harder to take. But then, men get old, and they long for the familiar things of bygone times; recognizable artifacts they can hang their hat on and in which they can rest easy. The more times change, he explained, the fewer these treasures are, and the more precious they become.

Kyra’s last item on CNN came up just as Horace’s name was called and he helped Emily to her feet. It was about universal healthcare, and a massive rally held in a Chicago suburb to celebrate the medical coverage that would now be afforded to the oppressed peoples of color of the Chicago projects. She gave particular emphasis to how the rich would finally be compelled to pay their fair share after so many years of largesse due to the lobbying efforts of special interest groups.

Horace didn’t say goodbye. He simply steadied Emily as she rose from the fold-down chair of her wheelchair/walker. He wouldn’t allow me to assist him. He offered no acknowledgment of our exchange, no goodbyes. He wasn’t being gruff, just reserved and private. I watched as Kyra signed off with a final item of how President Obama – due to the profound change he was ushering in to the national consciousness – may ultimately go down in history as the greatest president this nation has ever produced.

So much for Veteran’s Day 2009. I picked up my car, licked my financial wounds, mourned the passing of the holiday season that won’t be, and was on my way. But I couldn’t help but reflect on my encounter with Horace Gilmartin, USMC.

He was the foundation upon which the postwar world was built. Horace, and men like him, came home from the distant battlefields of the world, and erected a monument of prosperity, stability, and wealth. They had the good timing to hit the ground running when an unprecedented period of opportunity was just beginning. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan spoke of “Morning in America.” It was never more real than for the returning veterans of the bloodiest conflict in history, steadfast patriots and survivors of the Great Depression.

They wasted no time, taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded them by a grateful nation. And those who did not follow the path to higher education and professional careers made their own breaks in the hardscrabble world of the free market. They had witnessed unprecedented destruction, unimaginable poverty and unthinkable uncertainty. And so, they set about the task of building a bright future, providing for the next generation and protecting a country worth defending. If there was a unifying theme or sense of purpose which all of them shared, it was encapsulated in the lament so often heard by their spouses and children in the 1950s – “My children will have all the opportunities I never had as a child.”

And they were remarkably successful. If there was an unprecedented golden age which their children enjoyed in the years to come, it was due to this singular sense of purpose they brought to all matters they encountered. That, and the grace of God.

It is a complex and difficult topic, tinged with frustration and often tragic in its outcome, that the children of this amazing group of Americans were so different from their fathers. The group of pampered, privileged progeny that followed in the wake of the greatest generation was everything their fathers were not. While their parents were painfully aware of the vagaries of life, their children entered the world with a gilt-edged sense of entitlement. Where their parents valued their country, their children had nothing but contempt for it. If their parents spent a lifetime building a world that meant something, their children tore it down in a decade.

The reasons are myriad, fraught with controversy, and way too involved to go into in this commentary. Suffice it to say, Horace Gilmartin lived through some of the most desperate times his country ever faced. He built a life of significance in the postwar years that stood for everything he believed in. His legacy was upstanding, positive, decent, and lasting. And he has lived to see it torn down.

As I watched them depart the service lounge, I wondered what Horace thought of Kyra Phillips’ report. He sat there and listened for the bulk of her report before I sought him out. True to the temper of his generation, he said nothing, betrayed no expression, offered no opinion. It could be that’s what happens to men who reach a point where the only thing to look forward to is the next world. After all, there is only so much any man can accomplish – individually or collectively – before being called home to his rest and reward.

But the groundwork he laid was strong. And a strong basis often comes under strong attack. For the brilliance of its luster, it is ironic indeed that the underpinning upon which our current culture was built lasted but one generation. Out of its crumbling foundation is emerging a land filled with resentment, laden with alienation, consumed with hatred.

We live in a country that has no sense of itself; rotted by the corruption of political correctness, denuded by the fraud of multiculturalism, weakened by the onset of globalism. It is a nation in which terror suspects are tried in civilian courts, possibly to be released on a technicality. It is a society in which an Islamic terrorist is not only permitted to rise through the ranks of the United States Army as an officer and a gentleman, but is lauded as a victim of hate by journalists who all but celebrate his acts of murder, and will not so much as own up to what he is – a terrorist. And it is a culture where evil men are hailed as visionaries, while those who stand to oppose them are condemned as extremists.

It is a land in which Kyra Phillips inherits the earth.

by Euro-American Scum
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
Euro-American Scum can be reached at euroamericanscum@gmail.com.

In Remembrance of The Six MillionWho Died At the Whim of a Mad Regime

Every year Israelis take a day to remember the Holocaust. At 10:00 AM sharp, they stop whatever they are doing ... driving, reading, living ... they stop and stand at attention. The sirens blast a remembrance of the six million who died at the whim of a mad regime.

I ask you to watch this breathtaking three-minute video and then reflect on two things:

(1) Our President has declared September 11th (the anniversary of another holocaust of its own kind) a ‘national day of service’, this year and every year to come.

(2) The interspersed visage, in the above video, of another madman who has declared as his, and his country’s, destiny the annihilation of the state of Israel.

I offer the following for your consideration, from a post on National Review Online:
______________________________
I am 34 years old, born in the U.S., raised as a (nominal) Muslim in Iran, and returned back to the U.S. in 1990 (thank Goodness). I converted to Catholicism in 2002, and became a reservist in the Navy (through the Direct Commission Officer program) in 2004. Growing up in Iran, religious instructions in schools started in 1st grade. Sixth grade is when our religious instructions began in earnest by the Basij goons (the true believers) and their fellow-travelers. My family and I left Iran after I finished 9th grade, but by that time I had had a steady ideological diet on Supremacy of Islam, the place for dhimmis, the primacy of Jihad and martyrdom for years. With this background, may I offer a few observations:

1) Islam is indeed the problem. Although I can, I will spare you recitation of chapter and verse in the Qur'an were Muslims are called to Jihad and establishing the global caliphate.

2) I agree with you that we should not "out loud" call Islam the problem. There are many muslims which are peaceful, because they actually are NOT either very devout or do not pay particularly close attention to pertinent violent passages. To the extent practical, we should refrain from poking them in the eye over the barbarity of the true form of their religion.

3) Having displayed my "sensitivity and inclusivity" bona fides in point #2, I don't think we should shrink from calling attention to the fact that our enemy is Violent Islam. This is for our own population's benefit. People in the West (and Americans particularly) in large majorities have fully internalize the fact that Violent Islam poses an existential threat to the long term survivability of Western Civilization, and therefore the future of their progeny. It is entirely irrelevant if Violent Islam is the true Islam, a fake one, or a fringe element. What is important is that it's followers be killed or disabled, one way or the other. There is no converting these people, trust me.

4) The long term solution to Violent Islam, I sincerely believe, is some form of mellow nationalism. In Iran, the teachings of the Basij people had relatively little impact on any of us. One of the chief reasons is because Iranians have a very strong sense of nationhood. They consider themselves Iranian first, Muslim second. Doctrine of Jihad has relatively shallow influence on someone with mooring in something other than Islam. Notice that you see very few Iranian suicide bombers. You don't see many Turks pulling the chord on their suicide belts either. The Iranian regime financing and support of terrorism is another matter entirely.

5) Having said that, inculcating and nurturing a sense of nationhood in Arab lands, Pakistan and Afghanistan is an exceedingly difficult task. There is a very nebulous sense of nationhood in these places as I am sure you know. What binds people is tribalism and Islam, which is as noxious of a combination as you can get. Whatever the mechanism, the West has to encourage the formation of as secular a notion of nationalism as it possibly can in these places. I instinctively cringe at the concept of secular nationalism (which is poisonous to the West), because you often end up with effete bunch of pantywaists like the French, or brutal aggressors like the Germans or Russians. But if somehow we could inculcate the French-pantywaistism in Muslim lands, maybe they would be too busy complaining about the cloudiness of the wine or runiness of the hummus to consider murderous Jihad. I am of course being flippant, but honestly, short of turning the whole place into glowing radioactive glass, I don't see any other cure which preserve the life of our own citizenry in the short- to medium-term.
______________________________
It’s time to stop the insanity by filling America’s positions of leadership with those who will call evil by its rightful name ... and those who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America’s allies rather than incessantly pandering to those who seek their, and our, destruction.

Get it all on record now ... get the films ... get the witnesses ... because somewhere down the road of history some b@$&^*d will get up and say that this never happened.

...General Dwight David Eisenhower,
Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Europe 1945

~ joanie

The Ant and the Grasshopper

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , ABC, CNN, and the rest of the MSM show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house while the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackled, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

Report on a North Carolina Tea Party

I served as the spokesperson for my area of North Carolina at a Tea Party that was held at our representative’s office (Heath Shuler) on Thursday afternoon.

A neighbor went with me, but nobody else from my neighborhood accompanied us. We got there early, and were admitted into to the Congressman's office to speak with his public relations guy. I explained that we intended to give him a bunch of letters to the Congressman, written by people in my area, and we agreed to have the 'ceremony' out on the back steps at 12:15. He told me he had received a 'statement' from the Congressman, which he would read, and I thanked him and asked if he would also tell the crowd what he intended to do with the letters, and would the Congressman ever read them since the vote was to be on Friday.

About 150 people showed up, which was more than I was expecting, and I continued going around gathering letters. A lot of folks didn't get the word to bring them, but one gentleman with foresight had brought a stack of note cards and envelopes so people took those and scribbled messages on them. One person even took a tiny page out of my pocket memo pad and wrote something on that. We stuffed it all in the 2" deep cardboard box I had made, which ended up bulging with over 80 letters in it. (I kept a tally on the back of the box because this reporterette who showed up wanted to know how many there were.)




When the appointed time came, we all assembled on the back steps of the Congressman's office. One person gave a short speech, we all sang America the Beautiful and God Bless America, and then it was my turn. I introduced the PR guy to the crowd and then said in my best spokesperson voice:

‘On behalf of these citizens who have peaceably assembled to petition their government for redress of grievance, I present these 80 letters to be delivered to Congressman Heath Shuler, our elected representative.’
That was it. The PR guy then read Shuler's miserable statement which basically said, ‘I haven't made up my mind yet.’ Snort...what a miserable loser. Then he told us that the letters would be faxed to DC that afternoon (before shredding, no doubt).




We all then walked down the hill to the busy intersection below, and held up our protest signs for about 45 minutes. This corner is near the entrance to a main hospital, so there was a lot of traffic. It was my sense that we got a lot more 'thumbs up' this time than in August. I didn't even see any extended middle fingers!

My friend and I left a little early because he has a bad foot (car accident), and we're both old and tired. On the way home we stopped at a BBQ place and pigged out. While we were eating, I got a text message from Erika, the head of the Asheville Tea Party who was up with Michelle Bachmann in DC, asking how it went. I texted her back with "Great! 150 people and 85 letters".

After I got home, got furiously licked by our three dogs (they missed me), I settled in to watch Glenn Beck followed by Fox News to see how it went in DC. I was disgusted to see another ‘balloon boy’ media frenzy over the murders at Ft. Hood. Sure, that was a big story, but why not wait until you actually know something before blaring it all over the airwaves?

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that Muslim killer chose the time of his attacks specifically for the purpose of preempting all news coverage of the DC ‘House Call’. But maybe it was just the phase of the moon... Thank God for the Internet or we'd never know anything.

So what did Rep. Shuler do after getting all those letters from Asheville and a personal visit from twelve of his constituents who drove all the way to DC to meet with him? He and the other ‘Blue Dog Democrats’ ate dinner with Obama at the White House.

Remember the scene near the end of Braveheart where William Wallace was betrayed by William the Bruce? That's how I feel at the moment: Betrayed.

by John Cooper
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

The Greatest and Most SpontaneousOutpouring of American PoliticalActivism Since the Vietnam War ...

Below is a copy of a letter that a good friend of Rick’s and mine wrote today to his congressional representative in North Carolina. I am posting it here on AADB in the hopes that John’s activism will spur others to do the same.

It’s easy to claim that writing to our ‘leadership’ in D.C. won’t make a difference (and I suspect that that claim is correct more often than not). But if we sit back and do nothing more than complain, then, after the fall of America as we once knew it, we may ask ourselves ‘What if I had voiced my opinion more loudly and forcefully and often? Could I have made a difference?’

Regret is one of the most painful, and useless, emotions. Get up off your couches. Turn off your television sets. And do what you can, before the opportunity to do so evaporates before your very eyes.

Here is (one of) John’s valiant attempt(s) to make a difference:
___________________________
Dear Rep. Shuler --

Are you crazy?

On just about every issue of our time, you are working AGAINST the wishes of the people who elected you, and FOR the far left agenda of Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco.

We want jobs, and you give us tax increases and more regulation.

We want common-sense health care reform, and you intend to curse us with a Soviet-style medical bureaucracy loaded with massive taxes, free care for illegal aliens, death panels, and taxpayer-funded abortions. (Don’t tell me all that stuff isn’t in the bill because, unlike you, I’ve actually read it.) And then you have the gall to send us the tab for $1.3 trillion and tell us it’s "deficit neutral".

We want America to become energy independent and yet you and Pelosi block drilling for oil and natural gas here at home. You block the construction of nuclear power plants and hydroelectric projects. Your only instinct is to slap massive taxes on gasoline and electricity via the foolish Cap and Trade bill that YOU voted for. (Your vote and one other were responsible for the passage of Cap and Trade.)

In these tough times, we want the government to spend less and budget more like the rest of us have to do in our own lives. But instead you vote for more wasteful spending and massive deficits at every opportunity - debts that can never be repaid. And you have the nerve to put a “National Debt Clock” on your website.

We want tort reform but YOU want to tax states that enact tort reform. (That’s in Pelosi’s health care bill, too.)

We want less government intrusion into our lives, and you’re using your office to increase the power and influence of the federal government at every level.

You don’t even read the bills before you vote on them. (Apparently you just vote the way Ms. Pelosi tells you, which must make your job a lot simpler.)

You took an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, but your leader Nancy Pelosi says, “Are you serious?” when asked where in the Constitution is Congress granted the power to force citizens to buy health insurance.

You’ve seen the greatest and most spontaneous outpouring of American political activism since the Vietnam War, and your response is to run and hide from your constituents - you won’t even meet with us or listen to what we have to say.

All I can say is keep walking that plank. You’ll be reaching the end of it come next November.

-- John Cooper

GDP Numbers ... Sleight of Hand ... Rabbits and Hats ... Carnival Barkers ...

The GDP figures released yesterday, indicating a surprising 3.5% growth in the third quarter, are largely a combination of (1) adroit sleight of hand, and (2) non-free-market economic manipulation.

The American economy is primarily being fueled by enormous government deficit spending, which by nature cannot be sustained. It’s all part of an all-too-familiar pattern. When the left takes over an economy, growth usually moves in unnatural spurts as the government spends money it doesn't have. Then comes the hangover. It may take a while to set in, but once it does, it’s fierce.

In 1971, the first full year after Allende was elected in Chile, the Chilean GDP grew by nearly eight percent. Then the house of cards began teetering and the country slid into chaos, ultimately resulting in a military coup.

I'm not saying America is in for anything even remotely similar, but the important lesson to be learned from Chile’s myopia is that initial GDP figures following a dramatic leftward swing in leadership don't prove that socialism works. There is no avoiding the dark destination that will result from spending what we don’t have and funneling those funds into non-free-market ventures. That particular road is well-traveled, well-marked and littered with bodies. We will never return to anything even remotely resembling genuine prosperity as long as we abandon free market principles and focus instead on a well-oiled printing press intent on providing handouts to a long line of special interests.

Take a look at the current categorizations of unemployment:
______________________________________________________
U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.

U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.

U3: Official unemployment rate per ILO definition.

U4: U3 + ‘discouraged workers’, or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.

U5: U4 + other ‘marginally attached workers’, or ‘loosely attached workers’, or those who ‘would like’ and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.

U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time.
______________________________________________
The recently released figures show that unemployment continues its march -- yet another 520,000 Americans got pink slips last week. The government accountants are conveniently using the U3 numbers and ignoring all others.

Because of this unrealistic procedure, they are conveniently able to keep the unemployment rate at 9.8%, even though every week we have another half million new filers. If we include those who have dropped off the rolls, or who have taken part-time work (i.e., if we use the U6 numbers), unemployment sits at 17+%. Hardly a sign of economic recovery by anyone’s rational measure.

In this latest GDP quarterly report, Cash for Clunkers caused a temporary spike, but what we are witnessing is a lagging indicator. The same is true of the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers.

If we want to examine a real leading indicator, how about considering the fact that GM is looking for yet another (count ‘em ... that would make three) government bailout. Hmmmm ... could that be because Cash for Clunkers provided merely a temporary artificial boost, and, going forward, more and more taxpayer-funded auto-maker crutches (green ones sporting the bearded faces of old American leaders) are in the offing?

Retail outlets are already starting Black Friday door-buster sales … in October. For retail to be attempting to attract money that people plan to spend on the holidays before Black Friday is virtually unprecedented. How’s that for a leading indicator?

State and local governments are out of cash.

The housing market, while receiving a temporary boost from the first-time-buyer tax credit, has continued its decline.

Commercial paper is in the process of collapse.

Workers who thought their traditionally-safe jobs would continue to be so are finding themselves furloughed and laid off, and their former employers are not refilling those positions.

The container shipping industry has fallen off a cliff. Packaging sales are down significantly. Unless I am unaware of some kind of new ‘packaging technology’, one still needs boxes to pack and ship stuff.

Transportation (primarily shipping, railroad and trucking) are all down as well. Unless companies are hiring mules or hefty carrier pigeons on the sly, it looks as though very little in the way of nuts and bolts are moving anywhere these days.

All of the current ‘robust’ GDP data simply proves one thing (irrelevant, unless you’re into number tricks): that future demand has been successfully pulled into present figures. However, the success of this revolutionary kind of accounting has effectively evaporated any real hope for a genuinely improving economy in the near term.

~ joanie

Behold a White Horse

“Perfect freedom has no existence. A grown man knows the world he lives in. And for the present, the world is Rome.” – Pontius Pilate
This time around I wasn’t going to do it. For the past couple of years, it seems there has been an avalanche of articles about death, disease and dying. Even though I find myself in the season of decay – let’s face it, it’s that time of life – I wasn’t taking the bait.

Innocent young girls dying of brain tumors, children dying in car accidents, greatest generation veterans dying suddenly in their sleep, Rangers who came home and Marines who didn’t. It’s all the same, and I had reached a point where I was done with it. No more. Not one more commentary about how a funeral was the focal point of the demise of the country.

And then I was alerted to yet another tragic passing of yet another vibrant young person, once again in the defense of his country. And once more, my interest was piqued.

I didn’t know Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan, USMC. I knew nothing of his life and had no vested interest in his death. And except for the recently concluded gathering of the Class of ’69, of which I am a member in good standing, PFC Hogan’s passing would have escaped my attention entirely.

It seems the last opinion peace I submitted to this forum contrasting my 40-year high school reunion with a similar gathering of my Vietnam unit earlier this year touched a nerve with several members of the aforementioned Class of ’69. Following its introduction on this site, I was astonished that the article was so evocative as to generate such profound insights among my fellow survivors of the 60s. I received a series of substantive emails regarding a wide variety of issues all of us were dealing with during those early years. Most were complimentary. Some were not.

One such exchange was from a woman who was among the most gracious at the Class of ’69 reunion. She was someone I hardly knew in high school, but could hardly fail to notice, then or now. And it was during just such an exchange, a few days after my commentary was posted, that she mentioned the passing of Lance Cpl. Hogan. It seems this woman is a professor at a local Orange County (California) university, and Donald Hogan was her student.

That alone would not have been enough for me to get up early on Labor Day morning to attend a funeral. It likewise would not have motivated me to drive upwards of sixty miles on the last holiday weekend of the summer to pay my respects to someone I never knew. Then she mentioned that Lance Cpl. Hogan had been recommended for a posthumous Medal of Honor.

That got my attention.

And so it came to pass that I found myself on the last three-day holiday of the summer, winding my way through the once-legendary California canyons, on a crystal clear day of brilliant sunshine, contrasted by razor sharp shadows – the harbinger of what passes for fall in Southern California – to bid a bittersweet adieu to a Marine I never knew.

The ceremony was to be held at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Laguna Hills, right smack in the heart of South Orange County. This was something of a novelty. It was primarily a military service – or at least one based on a Marine who died in the service of his country – but would be held at a civilian church. This was not unheard of, but it was unprecedented for me. Up to now, all services of this type have been held on military reservations. At least the ones I’ve attended.

To adequately describe the setting, one must have a clear picture of what life in South Orange County, (Calif.) is like. As one who has lived on its fringes for what amounts to forever, and worked there for close to twenty years, I have a hard time knowing where to start. It’s like the blind man who grabs the elephant by the trunk and then proceeds to draw the wrong conclusions about the beast.

First off, the South OC is the place winners go when they have won. Doesn’t matter what they’ve won, it’s simply a place of triumph. They don’t set up shop on their way up the mountainside to wealth and prosperity. They go there when they’ve pitched their tent at the summit. We’re talking about the 1%ers here. Yes, there are working stiffs in the South OC, but the further south you go in the county, the fewer they become.

To cite an example, years ago when I was living in Las Vegas, my significant other and I took off the entire month of August and spent it in Newport Beach. One morning we went to Sunday brunch at a place called The Arches on Pacific Coast Highway. Our waitress – a forty-something woman with the distinct attitude that she didn’t have to wait tables for a living – lived in Laguna Beach, not far from the Labor Day memorial service I was soon to attend. As it turned out, we were on our way to that very destination on that long-ago afternoon.

It had never been a favorite destination of mine as a dorky teen in the 60s. My beach hangouts were typical – Huntington Beach to cruise chicks and pretend I was cool, Newport Beach for The Wedge, and San Clemente because, well . . . San Clemente, in close proximity to Camp Pendleton, had Marines. And, young as I was, I envied and admired them, even then. Laguna Beach, while picturesque, was an artist’s colony, as it remains today. It also had something of a gay community, although back then they were operating well under the radar, unlike now. And it was pricey. Not the place a California teen – dorky or otherwise – would choose to hang out.

So I asked our waitress what people do in Laguna Beach. Her answer was blunt and to the point – “Do? Nothing.”

My companion figured it out before I did. If you had to work, you didn’t live in Laguna Beach, or anywhere else in South Orange County for that matter. As an aside, our waitress was the wife of one of the major psycho-therapists to the rich and neurotic of the South OC. And even in the olden, golden daze of 1984, he was billing at $115 an hour and getting rich doing it. She worked, because, as she put it, she got tired of sitting home alone, staring at the ocean from their hilltop estate and drinking $200 bottles of Dom Perignon. Oh well, it’s a dirty job, as they say.

But, that’s life in the South OC. The few working stiffs there are can mostly be counted in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Seal Beach, Fountain Valley, Tustin and Irvine. For the environs of Newport Beach on south, it’s the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Mostly. Laguna Hills is smack dab in the middle of this culture of wealth and comfort. And I’d been there many times, so I didn’t expect many surprises on this day. Not many.

It used to be Reagan country. And when I pulled into the church parking lot, it seemed like those times never went away. The trappings of opulence were everywhere. The immaculately-tailored men of all ages looked like they stepped off a GQ cover. The women would have been right at home in Beverly Hills, Park Avenue, or . . . well . . . the South OC. It could have been a fund-raiser for the RNC, were it not for the real reason all of them gathered together on that sun-drenched morning.

It was a mixed crowd – and by that I mean, civilians and Marines. And the contrast was stark, particularly among the age group that knew Lance Cpl. Hogan and loved him. His fellow Marines were magnificent in their dress blues. If there are more superbly attired fighting men anywhere in the world, I don’t know where you would find them. The Marines were immaculate, ramrod straight and intimately acquainted with the price of defending the country. On this day, they came to count that cost and mourn the loss of a brother. The women – little more than high school girls really, many of whom appeared to be college coeds, and, I assumed, grew up with Cpl. Hogan – were young, fresh, beautiful and possessed of that look of total, complete, absolute devastation that bespoke of an insular life, into which no senseless tragedy had ever intruded. Until now. In the picture-perfect world of the fresh and beautiful of the South OC, even those few who chose to go in harm’s way and defend the country came home unscathed and intact. Only this young man didn’t.

There was even a contingent of veterans from the Veterans of Vietnam International Bikers on hand. They were seated in the back of the church, off in a corner, isolated by one entirely empty pew in front of them and another behind. That’s typical. Even though they were appropriately attired, and came with the best of motives – to honor a fallen warrior – they had too hard an edge to them, and they put people off, particularly among the landed gentry of the South OC. That always happens. But they know who they are and so do I. So I took my place by their side and was seated among them.

The service was a mix of the Episcopalian liturgy – which I found vaguely familiar, being similar to the Methodist variety – and Marine green. Perhaps the most poignant moment occurred when Cpl. Hogan’s platoon sergeant addressed the assembled congregation. He spoke of how all freedom comes due in blood, and just as the blood of Cpl. Hogan bought the lives of his fellow Marines, so the blood of the Savior secures eternal life for all who choose to embrace Him. That’s one Marine who gets it. But then most of them do.

After his remarks, the memorial message by the priest was bland indeed. And after the call to colors, presentation of the Purple Heart, folding of the flag and the playing of Taps, we were done. I didn’t stay for the reception, and didn’t linger with the Vietnam biker brigade. After all, I didn’t know Cpl. Hogan, and was a stranger to the assembled congregation. So, it was off to the parking lot, and on to enjoy what remained of Labor Day 2009.

Then I saw them.

He was the epitome of success. I’ll call him Mr. Magnificent, because he truly was. Tall, tanned, with a full head of salt and pepper gray hair, brilliant white teeth, and a radiant smile you just knew closed many a multi-million-dollar deal across the length and breadth of the South OC. His charcoal gray suit fit perfectly, and he carried himself with an assurance that spoke simply and clearly that the world was his oyster. His wife – a high-maintenance blonde, with an attitude to match and tasteful but expensive gold jewelry – was clearly irritated about something. Could be memorial services for fallen Marines on Labor Day didn’t fit into her plans. And their nubile, teenage daughters – undoubtedly the next generation of hot blonde trophy wives to be kept in a style to which they have become accustomed – were bored and annoyed. I mean, school was starting up the next day and they had better things to do than go to “some stupid funeral” as they put it.

I followed them out to the parking lot where they all piled into a brand new Lexus. Nothing noteworthy there, the South OC boasted of such vehicles by the thousands. It was the bumper sticker that caught my attention. Partly because new vehicles of this stripe usually didn’t trumpet such trailer-trashy decorations. But mostly because it was a blast from the past, particularly the gray and dismal Jimmy Carter 1970s. As they drove off, I could read it.

HANG IN THERE AMERICA! THE REPUBLICANS ARE COMING!

And before I could suppress the thought, it flashed into my head. Before I could smile in support, a grimace crossed my face. Before I could embrace this simplistic notion that all we had to do was put a man with an “R” after his name into this or that office, I remembered with a sigh that this is not the 70s, and Ronald Reagan was not waiting in the wings to save us from a fate worse than.

Let me put it another way: Ronald Reagan is not coming back.

I marvel at what creatures of habit we all are. Could be it’s because we’ve been doing it so long, we don’t know any other way. Or maybe it’s just that we can’t bear to realize the landscape of power has changed profoundly and irrevocably. All we have to do is elect the right candidate with the right letter after his or her name, and everything will be fine.

The only problem is, the moving paradigm shifts, and having shifted, moves on. And anyone who believes the alphabet soup approach to leadership and power still holds better think again.

Since the late 80s – since Reagan left office, when you get right down to it – both political parties held basically the same orientation. Power and control focused in the hands of a few, and enough scraps from the master’s table to keep the serfs in line and the electorate voting for them. They just approached this end from different extremes of the political spectrum.

For the left, it was simple: Create a permanent underclass that is eternally oppressed, resentful, trapped and dependent on radical leftist policy-makers, not only for their well-being, but their very survival. As such, a global, borderless society of low-paid wage slaves, poorly educated, and bereft of any real skills is just what the doctor ordered. What better constituency to have? Eternally poverty-stricken paupers, frightened and hopeless, looking for whatever they can get from whoever will give it to them. It’s the perfect world for ultra-liberal office holders who gleefully confiscate the wealth they need (of all that remains) to distribute it to the peasants and keep them in line. Enough handouts and the voters will happily support the very politicos whose purpose in power is to keep them dependent and desperate.

But then this is old news. It’s been going on since the days of the Great Society. Liberal dogma is a slam dunk to figure out. However, the devil you know often beats the devil you don’t know.

Among the Republican faithful of the South OC – and for the rest of the country, for that matter – we’re all waiting for the next standard bearer. Failing that, we’ll settle for the next charismatic charmer who says all the right things about securing the borders, cutting taxes, fiscal responsibility, and growing American jobs.

My advice to all you GOPers out there – don’t hold your breath.

What you’ll get is some slick, fast talking hustler, who looks good on television, knows how to campaign to the right, hit all the appropriate talking points, and vote for every open-border amnesty, every offshoring measure, every unilateral free trade agreement, and in general every piece of legislation that concentrates power in the hands of a select few elitists while the very constituency who put him in power can go pound sand. Just like the left, only they approach the issues of power and control from the opposite direction.

Do any of you suppose Barack Obama would hold the unprecedented position of power he now commands without a betrayal of monumental proportions by the supposed conservative heart of the Republican Party? If not, it’s time to wake up and stop drinking the Kool-Aid ®.

It’s one thing to hit all the appropriate conservative talking points on the campaign trail. Republican politicos – as opposed to conservative, there is a difference, sad to say – have been doing that since the days of Barry Goldwater. The difference is, Goldwater had the courage of his convictions, unlike the current batch of so-called conservative Thespians who figure they can tap dance their way into office and throw their supporters on the grenade once they’ve gotten there. It’s called integrity, and it died with Ronald Reagan.

The electorate, while easily manipulated, isn’t that stupid. At least not yet. When they’ve been stabbed in the back by the latest version of Judas Iscariot masquerading as conservative officer holders, why should they vote for more of the same? Why shouldn’t they vote for a radical leftist like Obama? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as they say. If the conservative candidate they vote for is going to spend money like a drunken sailor, overtly destroy the currency, abolish the borders and our national sovereignty along with it, why bother voting for a political chameleon when you can have the genuine article? There’s a reason Reagan won two elections by massive landslides. He was a true ideological conservative, and people knew it. Sad to say he was the last of his kind.

The inevitable question remains, if the two-party system is irrevocably broken, what then? I can tell you what won’t work. Forget about grass-roots activism. Don’t bother with local support of municipal and state-wide candidates. You’ll just run into the latest smooth-talking up-and-coming RINO politicians. They’re smart enough to know political sweet talk will get them into office. They’re not smart enough to realize it won’t keep them there. What they’re banking on is enough dissatisfaction with the current regime to garner sufficient support to put them over the top. And they just might get it. Then the politics of power will cycle again. Only the names will change, and, of course, the letter after those names.

No, there is no resolution to the void of leadership by doing the same old thing the same old way. What remains is adapt and survive. And the realization that, once and for all, a once great nation is a mockery of its former self. Mr. Magnificent and his prosperous South OC family on their out of the parking lot in their new Lexus is the new standard bearer for what passes for the citizenry of a once-sovereign nation. No matter which way the wind is blowing, cut a deal, take care of business, make sure the check clears the bank, and above all, to hell with everybody else.

After all, it’s every man for himself, these days.

But, you may ask, if things are so bleak, what about a contemporary revolution? I think I covered this point in a previous commentary. Bottom line is, don’t expect one while NFL Prime Ticket is on Sunday afternoon. A revolution would require a visionary leader, committed to the cause, and a sufficiently dedicated core of followers numerous enough to make a difference and willing to pay the requisite cost in blood. Not when the game’s on, I can tell you.

So, the naïve, gullible, and eternally optimistic patiently wait for the man on the white horse. They recount Reaganesque tales of glory of the giddy 1980s when the shining city on the hill was a tangible entity, with definable features. They wax nostalgic for a time when wages were high, taxes were low, and conservatism was the standard bearer for individual human dignity and defined by opportunity for all – big and small alike. They revel in the memory of a leader who not only loved the country, but valued it, and realized a strong nation was an absolute moral imperative in a world consumed by darkness and evil. Contrast that with the globalist paradigm in Washington today.

But don’t expect that conservative leader to appear. If the man on a white horse does come riding over the seven hills to the rescue, he is more likely to be Napoleon Bonaparte than Ronald Reagan. More Judas Iscariot than Pontius Pilate. And we’ll probably be so fed up by that time, that we’ll be willing to make a deal with the devil if it comes to that.

It’s what we’re used to, after all. And it’s what we deserve.

As a postscript, I could not help but inquire about the Medal of Honor recommendation for Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan, USMC. According to the few remaining contacts I have at Camp Pendleton, Cpl. Hogan was not recommended for the Medal of Honor as of Labor Day 2009. He still has not.

“And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.” – Revelation 6:2.

by Euro-American Scum(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
Euro-American Scum can be reached at euroamericanscum@gmail.com

The Power of an Ember

Rick and I have season tickets to a local theater. Today we attended a performance of 'Hello Dolly!' One of the lines delivered by Dolly's betrothed reads, Ninety-nine percent of the people in this world are fools, and the rest of us are in danger of being contaminated.

It put me in mind of the way many conservatives have felt for a long time, with increasing unease. I suspect that his estimate of ninety-nine percent may be significantly exaggerated, but I occasionally understand where he is coming from.

We can no longer depend on Washington or the mainstream media to either disseminate the truth or work in our best interests. Obviously that state of affairs has been in existence for decades, but its insidious nature has ramped up exponentially over the past seven months.

The tools at our disposal to affect change in our leadership, our direction as a free republic, and our efforts to derail the Marxist 'American' train, are dwindling. What we still have within our grasp is the personal responsibility to attempt to awaken that portion of the citizenry that continues to prefer somnambulism to living an informed, vigilant life. It may not seem like much, but, as long as an ember remains, there exists the memory of fire.

Over the past few months I have discovered, as have many of you, the existence of a modern American Thomas Paine, in the person of Glenn Beck.

Rick and I watch his political commentary religiously. If we are not at home at 5 PM, we record it for future viewing ... every day.

We have attended his programs ‘The Christmas Sweater’ and ‘The Common Sense Comedy Tour’, both simulcast within the past year in theaters across the nation. Both experiences were incomparably uplifting and inspiring. From the audiences' collective reactions to both programs, rest assured that the inspiration we received was not unique to us.

If you have not watched Beck's program (the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment), I suggest that you do so.

Once.

If you do not come away from one viewing with the belief that this man is not simply a conservative complainer, as are most so-called conservative pundits, watch the program again. Everyone has an off day.

After a second watching, if you are an American conservative, a believer in the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution, and fearing that your beloved republic is being systematically dismantled by a coalition of radical leftist revolutionaries, I pretty much guarantee that you will realize that Mr. Beck is:

• a self-educated man with no agenda
  
  
• a man who believes in amassing exhaustive research from reputable sources and painting a comprehensive 'portrait of America'
  
  
• a modern American patriot
  
  
• passionate about the need to return America to her roots
  
  
• honest
  
  
• genuinely searching for solutions that will save our republic from ruin
  
  
• among the best teachers you have ever had the privilege to witness, whether or not you agree with every ‘lesson’ he presents

Tool #1: If you watch the Glenn Beck program and are in agreement with all of the above, tell as many people as you can about the program.

Advertisers -- GEICO, Procter and Gamble, Progressive Insurance, Men’s Wearhouse and Sargento among them -- are abandoning Glenn Beck because he is too ‘controversial’ (read: he refuses to march in lockstep with the Obama administration and the 111th congress, and those behind-the-scenes movers and shakers who are authoring many of the grotesque policies that Washington is shoving down our throats).

We need to provide an equal and opposite reaction. We need to grow his audience in order to (1) provide more incentive for businesses to advertise there, and (2) educate the American citizenry regarding the massive amount of behind-the-scenes maneuvering that is going on in (‘transparent’) Washington, and who the movers and shakers are –- making decisions that will effect your and my life far into the future, not to mention the futures of Americans for generations to come ... if indeed America as we know it manages to survive the current unprecedented, no-holds-barred assault on her noble underpinnings.

I cannot count the number of people who have said to me in utter confusion over the past year or so, when new legislation is introduced, ‘This program is supposed to help the American people?’ ... or words to that effect.

The next time someone says something similar to you, do the following (I have done so for several months now, with surprisingly positive results, many of which aren’t relayed to me until sometime later):

Tool #2: Tell him/her your own version of the following simplistic truths:

The elitists in our government did not merely allow the economic bubbles and industry disasters of the past few years to take shape ... they helped to create the conditions that made the crises almost inevitable. See the Community Reinvestement Act (only one among countless government programs that encouraged, and in some cases even required, the reckless massive loaning of money to people who could not afford to repay the loans). Consider the effects that major unions and 'community organizations' have had on the American economy/industrial base, and the role that the panderers posing as 'leaders' in Washington played in their rise to immense, entirely unconstitutional political power.

Whenever you hear of a new policy, or new legislation, coming out of Washington these days ... one that leaves you scratching your head and asking, ‘How, exactly, does this benefit Americans?’ ... take that head-scratching and put it to better use. Instead, ask yourself, ‘How will this eventually cause the American citizenry to be more dependent on government?’ ... and therefore inevitably render the U.S. Constitution obsolete, while simultaneously increasing the power of our elitist rulers, who appear to believe that they know what is best for us, far better than we do.

Think about that question when you ponder the so-called ‘stimulus bills’ (of which there will be many more, just over the horizon), the nationalization of private industry, the eventual government takeover of our healthcare system, the dramatic increase in oppressive and irrational 'climate change' legislation, the grotesque and increasing power of unions, 'community organizations', and other special interest groups, the government’s virtual eventual seizure of (what's left of) our energy sector ... and on and on, ad infinitum ...

For the first time in America's history, radical leftists -- including a significant number of avowed Communists -- have taken over control of a major political party, if not by their actual presence in the party, then by their close mentorship of those who are. American 'democrats' of a generation ago wouldn't be willing to sit in the same room with much of the 'new democrat' leadership. Their party has been rendered unrecognizable.

The goal of the 'new democrat' party is to overwhelm the system, create monumental problems -- meticulously following Rahm Emmanuel’s admonition to 'never let a serious crisis go to waste’ -- until the America we once knew is unrecognizable ... and then create a ‘new America’ from the ashes, and in their own images.

And how better to accomplish that dubious feat than to (1) destroy our republic’s largest corporations, send in the government to ‘revamp’ them, author bureaucratic rules by which they must do business, and bring some of the former corporate execs on board, (2) declare the state an enemy of genuine entrepreneurship and small businesses, (3) dramatically increase ‘environmental law’ so as to drive farmers and ranchers out of business, (4) pass draconian ‘climate change’ legislation that will severely handcuff any industry that dares to remain viable and profitable, (5) take over massive segments of society that were once left to private enterprise –- including healthcare –- and regulate that segment so that it affects virtually every aspect of every American’s life,(6) eliminate free speech and opposition rhetoric ... and on and on ...

Most Americans want nothing more than to strive for excellence, work hard, take care of their families, live by the golden rule, enjoy the fruits of their labor and leave something for their children. The realization of all of those simple dreams, founded on our God-given liberties, requires minimal government ... as does our Constitution.

Yet, for the past few decades (probably since George McGovern sought the White House back in '72), there has arisen a cadre of men who believe they are a kind of chosen elite, destined to lead a crusade, the results of which will render every American, other than the chosen elite, 'equal' -- a la Animal Farm -- and equally dependent on this elite leadership for their very existence.

Virtually every major move that occurs is Washington these days is focused on that end. And anyone who dares to attempt to stand in the way of the steamroller is viewed as an enemy of some sort: an angry, unruly mob -- as in tea party and town hall attendees -- a racist -- as in anyone who dares to disagree with the man in the White House -- and any number of other derogatory labels, a la Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals advice to 'isolate and demonize the opposition'.

The Constitution has been declared irrelevant and the transformation will occur, with or without our, or our representatives' (those few who still have their eyes focused on the Constitution), consent. Have a good look at at least the first twenty seconds, if not the entire tirade, of a recent house deliberation , which serves as one of the latest examples of unconstitutional congressional ‘decision-making’ -- and one of the many responses by conservative members of congress.

Our elected officials no longer have our best interests at heart, and haven’t for a long time. Our mainstream media no longer seek to inform, and haven’t for a long time.

America’s future is being determined by a leftist cadre of ‘leaders’ who claim to believe in a perverted kind of social justice. Engrave that term into your consciousness, because, under its guise, your country is being led into suicidal oblivion.

Our 'leadership' wraps every corrupt government policy in a cloak of social justice ‘compassion’ and masks itself as a champion of the downtrodden, the sick, the oppressed, children, the environment, the planet, flora, fauna, butterflies, ladybugs ... and anything else whose defense appears noble.

Because, in that way, our leadership can unabashedly label anyone who does not support their agenda as hateful, bigoted, small-minded, greedy, intolerant and self-absorbed.

Yet their agenda bears no resemblance to genuine social justice. Its primary goal is the amassing of power over others. They are, you see, a privileged elite – godlike in their wisdom, and willing and prepared to rule the planet. They are determined to convince you and your children that white people and capitalism are pure evil, that America's unprecedented prosperity and super power status were gained through a raping of the environment and centuries-long oppression of the rest of the world -- and that we, as a people and a nation, need to get down on our knees and beg the world's forgiveness for our sins.

The only thing standing in the way of a complete realization of their vision of America's utopian transformation is man’s love of liberty, and his recognition of the source of that liberty.

God will not blink. Nor will He forgive men who deprive other men of their divinely-bestowed free will.

Until now, America has stood as the bastion of that all-powerful, all-encompassing concept. If the citizens of America relinquish their reverence for individual liberty to those who worship the ability to wield unbridled power over other men, freedom will be dealt a blow from which it will never recover.

Do all that you can to simply and sincerely inform and educate everyone you meet. Doing so remains our most powerful tool. And its use is required of every freedom-loving American. Speaking out in the name of human freedom and dignity is of more importance now than ever before in the history of mankind.

Cherish being an ember.

~ joanie

A Storm is Brewing

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why? We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has ‘loaned’ two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms.

That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of ‘we the people,’ who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government.

Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) -- the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten.

And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of our children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it.)

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change.

Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the ‘savior’ was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative ‘losers’ read it right now.

And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his ‘brown shirts’ would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did -- regularly.

And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand -- the Great Depression. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course.

How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world. He did it with a compliant media -- did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and ... change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the history books.

So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.

Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.

I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong.

[This is an excerpted opinion piece being circulated as having been authored by historian David Kaiser. Mr. Kaiser says that they are not his words. I do not know who wrote it, but I applaud the author's insight and courage, whoever he may be.]

~ joanie

A Tale of Two Reunions

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way." – Charles Dickens

And it really was, when you get right down to it – a vibrant, energetic decade when all things seemed possible. A time of shining hope tempered with dark undercurrents of malice; an age filled with the energy of youth and fraught with the confusion of an older generation for whom the world was moving too fast and changing too radically; an era when the past collided with the future and tomorrow was written on the canvas of today; years of hope, days of rage, as Todd Gitlin put it. Yes, Charles Dickens would have been right at home in the 60s. And had he been able to peer through the lens of some temporal telescope, I doubt he would have been surprised with what he found.

It was a seminal decade, the 1960s – a cultural equivalent of the First World War in its disruptions and far-reaching effects. What happened during this turbulent ten-year span has echoed down the years from that time to this. We all live with its legacy and contend with its consequences.

Historians differ on where to draw the line of departure that marks this formative time. If you were to pin me down, I would say it began with the report of rifle fire from the Book Depository Building in Dallas (and possibly the grassy knoll, who knows . . .) and ended with the last chopper lifting off the embassy roof in Saigon. Yes, that fits nicely. Born in assassination, buried in defeat. Two very appropriate bookends, those two.

The 60s seemed both far away and uncomfortably close as this year began and I got the first emails concerning the two forty-year reunions that were rapidly approaching. Time is relentless and long memory a curse. I look at the calendar today and can hardly believe it’s 2009. When did it get so late in the game, and when did I become obsolete? At other times, it often seems 1969 was a dream that never quite faded with the dawn.

But this year, all the chickens were coming home to roost as I was soon to discover; for the gathering of disparate individuals was soon to commence in two seemingly unrelated, polar opposite groups. The first – scheduled for Memorial Day weekend (how fitting) – was the 40-year reunion of Bravo Company, Republic of Vietnam, 1969-70. Sadly, that’s as specific as I can get considering many of the wounds from that abortive struggle still fester after all these years. It’s one of the lasting legacies of a war seemingly conceived, planned, and executed from directives hastily scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin in some out-of-the-way DC bar.

Receiving word of this upcoming gathering of veterans, I was as conflicted as always when it came to meetings of this sort. Let’s face it, we’re not the greatest generation, and this was not the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. No adoring crowd of well-wishers was to be found at our get-togethers. No children honoring their fathers. No CNN, BBC or any other alphabet-soup news reporting agencies. Just a group of men well into middle-age, growing old, getting tired, and probably just as torn as I was about showing up in the first place. The very fact that the best news coming out of the Bravo company newsletter was that nobody committed suicide in the last twelve months gives you a feel for the mood of the group going into the 40-year get-together.

I had a particular source of discomfort to deal with compounding my decision even further. We were an airborne unit – I realize that narrows it down some, but leaves plenty of room for anonymity – and when I rotated in-country, was assigned to an air assault platoon as a rifleman. That worked out well. I tapped into a wellspring of hostility during basic and airborne AIT; enmity that had been smoldering like a dormant volcano all through childhood. Put a weapon in my hands, take off the societal restraints, shake well and voilá! – instant grunt.

Ground pounding was one thing, command was something else. When I got shoved into that role – due to high attrition among junior officers – everything changed. It was a role I was not suited to –by temperament, training or rank. But, orders were orders. And when my tour was over, well, let’s just say there are many more names on The Wall who served under my leadership – of the lack thereof – than there should be and leave it at that.

So I’ve always had second thoughts about showing up at these meetings. I’d been to one other – the 20-year reunion in 1989 – and it was awkward and tense. I was planning to beg off when our company commander called me up. He’s a successful attorney, semi-retired now, renowned for his command presence in the courtroom and on the battlefield. He encouraged me to come, insisted really. And since he was hosting the event, and since his home sat on a forty-acre lot overlooking the Santa Barbara channel, and since it was over Memorial Day weekend – always a tough holiday for me, and one in which I should never be alone – what could I say but yes? I mean, if you’re going to be stranded over a holiday weekend, Santa Barbara is a great place to be stranded in.

As expected, nobody was particularly overjoyed to see me when I showed up Friday night. My greeting was cordial, but restrained. Thirty-eight of us joined the assembly during the course of the weekend. But the house was big enough to accommodate us all. We joked that this was the ritziest barracks we’d ever drawn a billet in. Quite a step up from the four-man hooches of bygone days. U2 on a state-of-the-art sound system instead of Jim Morrison on an eight-track.

We’d done well over the years. Most of us landed on the right side of the contemporary divide that separates those who are well off from those who never will be. There was a lot of grousing about Obama, corporate bailouts, and the taxes to pay for them. There were also lots of pictures of grown-up children, and toddler grandkids. It was ironic. We gathered to commemorate an event forty years gone by, and talked about nothing but the here and now. Who was retired? Who had what operation? How ‘bout them Steelers? That sort of thing. There was precious little reminiscing about the good ol’, bad ol’ days. And what there was amounted good-natured banter about the absurdity of the whole thing and the characteristic gallows humor typical of combat veterans, loosened up by liquor and worn down by the erosion of time. But there was nothing about our thinning ranks or who died by their own hand. Nobody wanted to go there.

Despite the subdued atmosphere, we spent much of the weekend relaxing. Our host chartered a boat, and a bunch of us spent that day deep sea fishing. Others walked the beach. Still others didn’t stray too far from the pool. A marathon Texas Hold ‘Em game developed in the den. Cigarettes, San Miguel beer and Wild Turkey 101 were poured out in abundance. And while most of us could still hold our liquor, we discovered we couldn’t keep the non-stop hours required for drawn-out sessions of this sort. I lost $20 – the last losing hand of which was eights and aces – and I took it as an omen to quit while I wasn’t too far behind. Mostly we paired off in twos and threes and spent the time catching up on the business of the last forty years. We talked about what happened since, not what went on before.

On Memorial Day, we attended a local service as a unit. Nobody showed up in camo fatigues. Nobody displayed any insignia. Some vets wear the colors with a kind of defiant pride. We didn’t. A contingent of bikers from Rolling Thunder put in an appearance. The keynote speaker talked about the commitment of the present-day defenders of freedom standing watch on far-flung battlefields. He also paid homage to the sacrifice and triumph of the WWII generation, a few of whom were still fit and able to fall out at parade rest. Vietnam was not mentioned.

During the course of the weekend, our host suggested I give my Normandy presentation, culled from my experience during the 60th anniversary commemoration in 2004. When he first brought this up, I really didn’t want to pursue it. We were not the greatest generation, I explained. In our war, there was no strategic objective seized, no triumphant homecoming, no honor, no respect that came with the years. Besides, the assembled group knew me, and all of them had long memories.

But, as always, I could not deny our host’s request. So I ramped up on Saturday night, and shared the experience of old men returning to the site of their greatest triumph, their middle-aged children seeking fathers who had been so reserved, so removed, so distant from them in childhood. I spoke of the many-faceted dynamic of what went on during those three delirious weeks in Europe – things like reconciliation and respect, forgiveness and understanding, absolution and admiration, grace and salvation.

When it was over, seventeen men came to faith in Jesus Christ or renewed their walk. And all this while I was in a spiritual desert of my own. Trust me, I’m not that good a speaker. And I’m certainly no evangelist. The material still has power. All these years later, it still captivates, mesmerizes, convicts and transforms, particularly among men who’ve stood their own trial by fire in desperate circumstances.

We spent four very intense days together and parted company on the Monday after Memorial Day. We all pledged to stay in touch, all the while knowing we wouldn’t. We’re not close. We don’t cross the line from brothers-in-arms to close friends. No great reconciliation occurred during those four days. But we all got a reminder that a man is the sum total of his experiences. And the events which forged our common experience would not be denied. Not altogether comforting, but not discouraging either. Call it a reaffirmation of our collective identity.

And then there was the Class of ’69 on a hot August night. My, oh my, where do I begin?

Ever end up on a website and completely forget how you got there? That’s how I stumbled upon the Class of ’69 reunion site. I knew it was in the offing – after all, it’s been forty years, and we make a point of celebrating these milestones – but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. Bravo Company was more front-and-center going into this year, for reasons which must now be clear to everyone. But, there it was in all its glory – the Class of ’69 – and there I was, clicking on my first alumni profile. And just like that, I was hooked . . . Again.

It was intoxicating, tripping down memory lane for the second time in a matter of months. You would think these particular reminiscences would be more appealing than the razor’s-edge reflections of Bravo Company. They were. And they weren’t. But for a frustrated historian like myself, it was impossible not to explore the exploits of the best and the brightest from the one town in Southern California that prosperity passed by.

Still, this time around I was going to pass. There were several reasons for my decision. Chief among them was I was worn out from the Bravo Company gathering. Four days in Santa Barbara left me pretty much wrecked for the entire month of June. I usually don’t dream in my old age. But when the war dreams come roaring back, live and in living color (never a good thing) it’s time to take a rain check, back off and bug out. So, while my curiosity was piqued, I was quite prepared to sit this next one out.

The other reason was hard times came early to me – long before the onset of this latest recession – and I was going to suffer by comparison. I did a quick head count of who was planning to attend and it worked out to roughly 10% of the total class. There were reasons for this as well – many of us simply could not be found. A few (like me) were just going to pass. And of course, we had our own casualty list. You don’t get forty years down the road without taking a few losses along the way. Still, that number stuck in my craw for some reason. 10% somehow held some significance. Then I remembered.

Years ago, during my tenure in Las Vegas, I bid a job to computerize the office of an up-and-coming investment broker/sales superstar. It was the wild-and-wooly, pre-crash 1980s when you bought stocks and got rich. My broker client was a tax accountant with a securities license and a radio program with 50,000 watts behind it. He hawked investments that could save his clients thousands of dollars in taxes if they would only show up, check in hand, ready and willing to take the plunge down the golden road to wealth and prosperity. It worked. He had so much business he had to totally renovate his office.

Enter yours truly.

I was installing some hardware in his office on a Saturday morning. My broker/client was conducting a financial planning seminar in his conference room. The door was open and I could hear his lead-in for what figured to be a riveting hour presentation. He said –

“You know, 10% of the population controls 95% of the nation’s wealth. If, somehow, you could evenly distribute this fortune so that ever man, woman and child had an equal dollar amount, within three years, 10% of the population would control 95% of the wealth again.”

Getting back to the Class of ’69, it was this 10% who was going to show up in August. So, I was definitely going to suffer by comparison. All the same, a similar state of affairs didn’t keep me from attending the 20-year reunion. The conditions were essentially the same, although the particulars were different. And that party was inspiring, amazing, uplifting, spectacular, in fact. Pick your adjective. It was one of those “hinge events” upon which life turns every so often. It was simply outstanding. So what was the difference this time around? I’ll tell you –

A failed life at 38 is very different than a failed life at 58. At 38, we have the second half in front of us, and the comfort of being able to indulge in the kind of delusion that suggests a miraculous turnaround is somewhere down the road. At 58, we’re in the fourth quarter of life, winding down to the two-minute warning, and no such luxury exists.

So, fresh from the Bravo Company commemoration, I really wasn’t up for another pause for reflection. Besides which, the 20-year gathering of the Class of ’69 paid dividends in other ways. It was so uplifting, so life-affirming, so therapeutic if you will, that I departed the assembly that night and considered myself discharged as cured. No need to revisit the same venue anymore.

So, what happened to change my direction this time around? It was an email exchange with one of the prime movers on the reunion committee. Her response was so gracious, so thoughtful, so well-crafted, not to mention so subtly persuasive that I began to think the Class of ’69 might provide a suitable bookend to the Bravo Company gathering of a few months before.

Gracious. Hmmmm. That’s a word I would never have used to describe us when we were first thrown together during the turbulent and tumultuous 60s. In fact, I remember remarking at the 20-year gathering that I doubted any group of kids could be meaner to each other than we were. But, that was ten years before Columbine, so what did I know? So, after a few days to mull it over, I sent in my check, and the die was cast. Once more into the breach . . .

There was no official theme on that hot August night. But the unofficial one was Celebrating Forty Years of Triumph. Sure enough, this group grabbed the brass ring and never gave it up. Indeed, they were the 10%ers. They went out into the world, and good things happened. Through the years, the men walked into a room and other men wrote them checks, while women they met along the way wanted to bear their children. And the women of the Class of ‘69? Well, let’s just say all the boys wanted to play with them back in the old days and still do. I should look that good at 58. Wait a minute. I am 58.

My welcome was warm and inviting. Dare I say it again? It was gracious. It never ceases to amaze me how this group never ceases to amaze me. The radiance of the Class of ’69 – which shone forth at the 20-year reunion – had not diminished in its brilliance at the 40-year party. Even the most stunning high school hottie – you know, the one who had that glow around her; eternally out of reach and the one you were certain was going to slide through life without so much as a scratch or breaking a sweat – was accommodating, warm, cordial and . . . gracious. There’s that word again. She turned heads at eighteen. And she still does. And guess what? She’s had her tragedies and she’s had her failures. She also carries herself with grace and dignity that in many ways projects a greater appeal than all that teenage hotness so many years ago. Elegant, striking, beautiful.

I only got snubbed by four people. But I expected as much from this particular quartet. So, no harm no foul. We caught each other’s gaze across the room from time to time. And their expressions said it all. I’m sure their experience would have been greatly enhanced if I had a third-class reservation on the first gulag-bound train. But then, I’m sure my expression betrayed my sincere desire to walk them into a minefield. That aside, it was a gathering of old acquaintances bound by a common experience. A reflection on lives well lived and milestones achieved; a break from the routine; a season of rest. Once more I got a reminder – there’s power in a shared experience.

We could still get down and party hardy. But, with a shortage of that fine, white powder that put in appearances at previous gatherings, and a dearth of Viagra, I suspected the customary pelvic bump-and-grind we engaged in during bygone festivities was reduced to a minimum. Or maybe there were more important priorities to attend to that night.

So, if I was to sum up our transitions over the years, based on these snapshot gatherings, it would be thus:

• As high school kids we were brash and irreverent.


• At midlife we were confident and competent.


• In middle age we are serene and gracious.

And as seniors (senior citizens, that is), who knows? In all likelihood, we’ll be dignified and content. I grant you, this is a freeze frame view, and I can’t paint with too broad a brush. We didn’t hear from the spiritually crippled, psychologically broken, emotionally stunted among us. They stayed home. And in truth, why would they show up? What would they have to celebrate? A miserable high school experience that was merely a curtain-raiser on a more miserable life to come?

But, we can hope they’ll find their way, and make peace with their demons. Maybe we’ll see them the next time around, whenever it comes up. I genuinely believe this group is excellent therapy for anyone who’s been beat down by life and beat up by circumstances. It has always been for me. Twice now.

Our emcee went through a litany of the grand accomplishments we lived through, and some of us participated in. And for all the distractions going round the room by then, I still couldn’t help but notice that the list was incomplete.

It’s true, we’ve seen some dramatic changes along the way. We were in the vanguard of the civil rights movement. But we also now deal with a politically correct tyranny that infects every aspect of our lives. We saw the introduction of genuine equality for women in American society. But we currently live with the wreckage of Roe v. Wade. We’ve just elected our first African American president. But we also endured Rodney King and all the alienation and animosity that came in its wake. And, of course, we raged against an immoral war in Southeast Asia. But we gave no thought to the ruined lives that came home from the carnage. So, while I’m perfectly willing to embrace the fellowship of the Class of ’69, I’ve got my doubts about the triumph of the baby boom generation that appears to go along with it.

This is not a group I would expect to show up on Memorial Day for a veteran’s service. It’s not that we’re disrespectful. It’s just that we can’t be bothered on the first holiday weekend of summer with a downer on a Monday morning. We work too hard, accomplish too much, have too many plans. It’s all a matter of priorities and ours are well . . . different than . . . say . . . Bravo Company.

For all that, it was a tremendously uplifting experience. Never thought we could capture lightning in a bottle. Twice, no less. So, what is there to conclude from these two diverse, yet related gatherings?

The Class of ‘69 celebrated 40 years of triumph. And rightly so. We worked hard, doors opened for us (most of us, anyway), and everything came our way. Now we’re enjoying the hard-earned fruits of our labors. We’ve known success and failure, and everything in between. But we took it all in stride, and our confidence in the foundation upon which they built our monuments never wavered. There was always solidarity in the midst of a slide area in which we could place our trust.

On the flip side, Bravo Company knows betrayal. We came to terms with alienation, mistrust, resignation and isolation. It comes with the territory when the rug gets pulled out from under. The Class of ’69 may have trumpeted “Never trust anyone over 30.” Bravo Company lived it out. The vibrancy of that hot August night was nowhere to be seen during the sedate gathering of veterans over Memorial Day.

It could be Bravo Company will find its way home. That’s still within the realm of possibility. It’s an ongoing journey, made all the more difficult by decades of living with an uncommon wariness not found in the culture at large. We don’t broadcast it. You won’t find us screaming into a camera “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” We don’t live out the Chicago convention in 1968. But we are cautious. We keep our own counsel. And we always watch our own backs now that there’s no one to do it for us. Oh, we get along well enough. We function at a level that has generated many a healthy fortune. But for all that, we’re set apart. And we learned early on that happy endings are often illusory. Nightmares, depression, suicide, Agent Orange. We live with them all, but we manage to keep on keepin’ on. Most of us do, anyway.

And when Bravo Company arrives at its destination on its long day’s journey into night, I hope the Class of ’69 will be there waiting to welcome us home. We can all throw a log on the fire, break out the good whiskey, cozy up to a comfortable easy chair (or even a good, warm woman, that’s even better) and swap stories about the 60s, the divergent paths we all took, and how all roads ultimately led home. As a member in good standing of both groups, that’ll be a party worth waiting for.

The Class of ‘69 adjourned from our 40-year celebration just after midnight. Any after-party activity that lingered into the morning was something I was not privy to. I’m old. I get tired easily. And it was time for my coach and four to turn into a pumpkin and a bunch of mice. But I got a much needed boost to my flagging batteries at a time when I needed it. Just like the last time I partied with this group.

There’s power in a shared experience. I think I already mentioned that. And down the long road of years, the pull is particularly strong when the experience is early and formative. For the Class of ’69, the early days in which we were thrown together was a time we were struggling to find out who we were, what our abilities were, how we would navigate our way through life. For Bravo Company, the experience was more basic. It concerned confronting the dark side of our nature without getting consumed by it; covering each other’s back regardless of what we thought of one another; coming to terms with a sense of community forged in dire circumstances that nobody wanted, but everybody embraced.

In each case, a sense of identity was forged. We were the same. We belonged to each other. We were part of the same tribe. And that’s important. Everybody needs to belong to something. And I embrace both divergent groups. I’m grateful for the grudging acceptance of Bravo Company, and I revel in the camaraderie of the Class of ’69. To do anything less would be a denial of the most basic sense of community we all need. Besides which . . .

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

You know something? Charles Dickens really was on to something, after all.

by Euro-American Scum
(Contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
Euro-American Scum can be reached at eascum@yahoo.com

'Healthcare Reform':Lies, Corruption and Hunger for Power

One of the loudest, and most oft-repeated, reasons given by our elitists in Washington for the need to dramatically overhaul the most effective and efficient healthcare system in the history of mankind is that healthcare in America is too expensive.

I have read countless analyses of the bill by those who have at least attempted to read it. And nowhere in H.R. 3200 -- at least to my knowledge -- is tort reform addressed. Tort reform should sit on the top of the list of remedies for our high healthcare costs. Reducing jury awards would reduce malpractice insurance premiums. Reducing malpractice insurance premiums would reduce physician and hospital costs. And reducing physician and hospital costs would have a dramatic effect on the overall cost of healthcare in America.


Why, then, is tort reform a non-issue? Put simply: Congress is in the pocket of the trial lawyers. They can demonize the insurance industry. They can demonize drug companies. They can insinuate that physicians perform unnecessary surgeries in order to inflate their bottom line. But where are their rants against the mountains of frivolous malpractice lawsuits that are not only adding dramatically to the overall cost of healthcare, but are also driving thousands upon thousands of good doctors out of business?

(*crickets*)

Trial lawyers are a sacred cow. The anti-capitalist elites pick and choose their self-created enemies of the people with power-based skill.

I have determined to read in its entirety H.R. 3200, not so that I can join the crusade to derail the abomination popularly known as the healthcare reform bill – although I certainly will do my best in that regard – but simply because I believe that it may be among the most important (this time in an infamous sense) piece of legislation ever deliberated upon in the history of our republic. I want to know what it contains before my family and I become unwilling, but inevitable, victims of its toxins.

I say ‘inevitable’ since the limitations this bill places on citizen choices for private health insurers (i.e., the ability to change from one private insurer to another, or the ability to alter an existing policy) are virtually non-existent. Combining that infringement on our liberties with the fact that government-care premiums will undercut private health insurers, it is just a matter of time before the American people, and American business, have no choice but to submit completely to a government healthcare monopoly in which bureaucrats ... many of them unelected and unaccountable to the electorate ... will be making life and death decisions for us all.

I have been reading for about a week now and am up to page 200 (of 1,017). I wish there were 100 hours in a day ... or that the bill were significantly more straightforward and didn’t require six readings of each paragraph. Reading this monstrosity is slightly more uncomfortable than repeatedly sticking oneself in the eye with a hot poker. The verbiage is an acute example of overkill, and yet the intent of most of it is still nebulous.

I have spent hours on some of the sections – reading certain paragraphs over half a dozen times because their intent is so unclear – and I often come up with more questions than answers.

For instance, one example (of countless):

Upon the urging of a friend (thank you, John Cooper), I temporarily skipped ahead to page 424 which tackles ‘Advanced Care Planning Consultation’. I did that because so many conservative bloggers are claiming that the ‘end of life planning’ in that section is euthanasia-related.

I found that the section apparently amends the Social Security Act, in that it offers a Medicare-covered ‘advanced care planning consultation’ every five years. Yet I cannot find anywhere in the section a reference to whether this ‘consultation’ is voluntary or mandatory (as some are reporting). It would seem to me that that stipulation is of some importance.

Such grey areas are extraordinarily dangerous because the bill is so convoluted and complicated that, were it to become law, I can envision many instances where interpretations would wind up in court (and it is rife with interpretation-inviting wording), and the results would depend on which activist judges were to render the decisions – with alarming precedents begin set all along the way, of course.

I actually concur with John Conyers’ opinion that it is a gargantuan task to read this bill – but it would require significantly longer than his 'two days' to do (I would estimate, conservatively, a good week, at eight solid hours a day). And even then a conscientious reader would have a mile-long list of let-me-get-this-straight questions to set before an attorney.

The difference between me (and you, dear reader) and Congressman Conyers, though, is that the dishonorable Mr. Conyers is paid to read and understand the legislation on which he votes. His Michigan constituents expect him to have a working knowledge of bills that he supports and votes to include in the law of the land.

I truly doubt that any of the 535 people who dare to call themselves our ‘leaders’ in the House and Senate will expend the time and effort to read through this entire bill. So, in a truly representative republic, in which those representatives take their ‘public servant’ role seriously, it seems to me there are two alternatives:

(1) Simplify the bill so that you can vote on something understandable, that can be read in a reasonable amount of time, and understood by someone without a juris doctorate, or

(2) Wait to vote on the bill until you have read, and understood, everything it contains

Or, better yet, our ‘leadership’ might want to re-read (or perhaps read for the first time?) the United States Constitution, whose over-riding emphasis is on limited government and individual liberty -- and which clearly specifies the minimal role of the federal government.

Our Founders were very specific in the parameters they defined as the powers of the federal government. Its powers consisted of those powers that the individual citizen, or the states, could not efficiently perform themselves, such as providing for the common defense of the nation (i.e., securing the borders perhaps?), ensuring unhindered, safe trade on the high seas, crafting treaties with foreign governments on behalf of the republic, regulating interstate commerce ...

Our Constitution states that the American citizen has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Healthcare ... or many of the other ‘rights’ that our government has convinced us were bestowed upon us by God (and they have convinced us of this simply in order to incrementally become godlike themselves, in order to ensure a kind of perverted ‘equality’ in achieving theses faux-‘rights’) ... is not enumerated, either literally or by insinuation, in the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness vision.

Healthcare is a good, and a service, not a right. It is something a citizen is expected to earn. And, if a citizen is incapable of earning that good/service, then, in a moral society, private entities will work to pick up the slack. Genuine liberty always results in an increase in human charity, which in turn promotes self-reliance. Government programs for those in need destroy charitable organizations and foster dependency. Trouble is, in America 2009, goods and services are gradually morphing into rights. And with each successive addition to the list of 'rights' comes an increase in the dictatorial power of the federal bureaucracy.

Many a power that should have remained in the hands of the people and/or the states (see the Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people) has been usurped by the elitists in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Not only have they taken our liberties from us, but they are now dictating, extra-Constitutionally, tyrannical boundaries on those liberties that remain, and they intend to enforce their illegal laws with a fascist ferocity that would have rendered Mussolini green with envy.

As far as I am aware there has not been a Constitutional amendment that permits the federal government to:

(1) limit a citizen’s choice regarding his selection of healthcare providers, with all ‘options’ inevitably ending at the door of government-care

(2) force an employer to provide a specific kind of healthcare for his employees (let alone micro-manage that policy down to the last dotted i and crossed t).

(3) designate a federal bureaucrat, or committee, to determine accessibility of healthcare options to various segments of the citizenry

(4) force private healthcare plans (read: free market businesses) to enroll certain clients

(5) use public money to pay for insurance for some, citizens and non-citizens

(6) require government access to personal health records

(7) dictate payment limits for healthcare services

(8) require the citizenry to purchase insurance

(9) place ‘employment obligations’, dictating fields of study, on the states

and on and on, ad infinitum ...

Mark my word: It won't be long before our 'right' to healthcare morphs into the government's power to dictate how we must live in order to receive that healthcare.

Here is the document:


United States Constitution
I defy anyone to find anything in that precious document that permits the federal government to limit our freedoms, and impose the draconian requirements and penalties on the separate and sovereign states, individuals and businesses, as outlined in this legislation. The Tenth Amendment strictly prohibits all of the above.

Here is the President’s oath of office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Here is the House and Senate’s oath of office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

America has been betrayed by her leadership. Our ‘public servants’ are introducing blatantly unconstitutional legislation that will have toxic, liberty-robbing, quality-of-life-altering ramifications far into the future. The legislation is so filled with draconian usurpations of power that even those ‘representatives’ who will eventually vote on the finalized bill are freely admitting that they cannot reasonably be expected to familiarized themselves with its contents.

And they claim to be our ‘public servants’.

With every stroke of the pen, and every refusal to hold fast to their oath of office, they are declaring themselves enemies of the principles upon which this republic was founded. It is increasingly falling to the people to resurrect the Constitution and see that it is returned to its former pre-eminence. Ignorance of our roots and apathy that has kept us from holding our elected representatives accountable have led us to this place.

It’s time for outrage.

Rick and I are having houseguests for three weeks this month – a British woman with whom I have been corresponding for fifty-two years (we became ‘pen pals’ when we were both ten years old), her husband, and their adopted seventeen-year-old son.

During their stay with us, if our schedule permits, we plan to attend the August 11th townhall meeting at which Senator Arlen Specter will be the main speaker. We hope to be able to speak, and we also hope my friend will be able to ask Senator Specter why he intends to force American healthcare to mirror the British system, by which she and her family have been handcuffed for decades. But, even if we are not able to do so, I strongly suspect that others will voice the questions we are prepared to ask – and they will be equally unwilling to accept talking-points pablum as an acceptable answer.

I urge every reader here to do something similar. Attend a townhall meeting; write to your representatives and tell them how outraged you are, and that you intend to work night and day to see to it that they are not returned to Washington if they support this abomination.

August of 2009, during this congressional break, may well prove to be among the most watershed times in the history of our republic. As I see it, upon returning to Washington, our ‘representatives’ will be prepared to do one of two things:

(1) Tell their colleagues how outraged their constituents are, and that they can no longer support this travesty, or

(2) Roll up their sleeves in agenda-driven arrogance, determined to railroad this bill into law, in spite of the wishes of those who put them in office.

There is no room for compromise on this legislation. The only acceptable vote is a resounding ‘No!’ – and then a resolve to start from scratch to author minimal legislation that will allow the free market, and individual liberty, their rightful place in the healthcare process --- legislation that will stop placing a redistribution of wealth, the realization of a leftist agenda, and the accumulation of obscene power in the hands of a ruling elite, at the top of the objectives of all 'leadership' that enamates from Washington.

The American Republic required strict limitation of government power. Those powers permitted would be precisely defined and delegated by the people, with all public officials being bound by their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. The democratic process would be limited to the election of our leaders and not used for granting special privileges to any group or individual nor for defining rights ... from A Republic, If You Can Keep It

~ joanie

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

Ever notice how things slow down in the summer? Even for the most harried, hard-driving professional, the pace seems to slacken during the summer months. Like it or not, even the most ambitious of us out there tend to stop and smell the roses even during the most grim, ruthless drive to claw our way to the top, no matter what.

It’s a childhood thing, I think. Even the most brilliant of us – you know, the ones who made it through medical school by age eight, and won a Nobel prize before puberty set in – have some experience with the lazy, hazy, crazy daze of summer. It’s a time of diversion, after all, when the child in all of us (or most of us) has occasion to indulge his or her whimsical nature. And there comes a time when even the most responsible, sober-minded grown-up engages in an occasional summertime flight of fancy.

Unaccustomed as I am to being a literary critic, I feel compelled to offer a few words of commentary, regarding just such a summertime indulgence. And, to tell you the truth, I’m a little embarrassed to admit the exact nature of this excursion. For I am a recent survivor – yes, I think survivor is exactly the term I want to use – of that all-encompassing global phenomenon that is sweeping the entire planet: Stephenie Meyer’s recently concluded literary epic, the Twilight saga.

There, I said it. I’m out of the closet. Color me six shades of red, why don’t you. Maybe there will be a 12-step program to cope with this malady, because it is as addictive as the most potent strain of nicotine. “Hi. My same is E.A. Scum, and I’m a Twilight addict.” Something like that. Hope for a new day, and all that.

How did a hard-bitten aging old fud like yours truly get seduced by the dark side of the force, you ask? And thereby hangs a tale. . .

Last summer, I was delivering buses across the country. I may have fallen through the cracks in the sidewalk in this brave new world of global commerce and offshoring of every job worth having, but that doesn’t make me a slacker. And so, to fill my abundant free time, I signed on with a local transport company and headed out on the golden road to fame and fortune.

On one of these runs – ultimately terminating in Ithaca, NY – I was routed up through Las Vegas on I-15 and up through Salt Lake City before heading east on I-80 for the great heartland of flyover country. The only problem was the entire intermountain west was slow-roasting in a blast furnace of midsummer heat that was baking a twenty-state area beginning in California and running all the way to Illinois.

I made a night run to Vegas and got there just as that murderous mid-summer sun was coming up over the yardarm, so to speak. Being a fifteen-year veteran of that community, I knew better than to make the run to Utah in daylight, in what figured to be a scorcher even by Nevada standards. So, I holed up for the day, just like the proverbial desert packrat – you get used to living this way in the gambling capital of the known universe, trust me – and set out on the second leg of the journey in the dead of night again. I figured once I cleared St. George, Utah, it would be all downhill from there. And so the best laid plans went awry.

First of all, I learned something about Utah. Everything is uphill. In both directions. Second, there was no relief from the heat, all the way up the length of I-15. In fact, I didn’t get a break from that furnace until I almost got to Chicago. But, I digress.

It was a brutal journey, that drive through Utah. The sun was vicious. But, as I approached Provo, and due to the lateness of the hour, the brutal heat seemed to be easing off. I was just getting ready to find a truck stop – or better yet a Motel 6 or something like it – when, without warning, my open door to deliverance from these fires of hell slammed shut. I found myself in the mother of all traffic jams, northbound on I-15 with my temperature gauge heading in the same direction.

Something didn’t quite connect with all this. As a veteran of many a southern California commute, I knew full well that traffic jams at this hour should be flowing OUT of Salt Lake City, that is, southbound, not northbound into the city. Wondering what might be causing this, as I envisioned my big, honking diesel being blown clear over the Wasatch Mountains straight to the land of Oz, I saw it.

Off to my right, within sight of the Interstate was a shopping mall parking lot. I later learned that this was the Provo Towne Center. What caught my eye was that it was packed on a weekday afternoon (in the middle of a burgeoning recession) and the lot contained the unmistakable presence of armed troops, replete with Kevlar vests/helmets, M16s at the ready, Humvees and APCs.

As I crawled past this panorama, I wondered if Utah had been invaded.

Soon after, I found the proverbial cheap motel. As I tucked my bus in for the night, I asked the desk clerk – a bored young woman in her early 20s, reading a book as I approached her – if she knew about the presence of what appeared to be army troops at this shopping mall. She did. I stood there. She ignored me. I still stood there.

Heaving a heavy sigh, she put down her book, slid off her stool and said, “Don’t you know? The last volume in the Twilight series is coming out today, and Stephenie Meyer is down at the mall to autograph the first 500 copies sold.”

Now I finally got the picture. The state of Utah called out the National Guard to quell a potential riot. Of what? I asked my distaff companion. Teenage girls, she patiently explained to me. Made perfect sense to me. Nubile young girls running wild in the streets. National Guard called out to quell an insurrection. Happens all the time in California.

And so began the epiphany that led me down the garden path to seduction by the Twilight saga. Eve probably gave no more mind to the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden than I did to this weary desk clerk’s explanation of what held me up on the golden road to nowhere.

My head was spinning. What is Twilight? And who is Stephenie Meyer? I’m an avid reader. I read all the time. And all this was news to me.

She sighed again, picked up her book and handed it to me. Twilight. The series had been a mega-hit, and an expanding work-in-progress for four years and I had never heard of it. All of a sudden the strains of a golden oldie started running through my head:

“Heavenly shades of night are falling. . . It’s twilight time.” Never knew that’s what this song was about.

As an aside, the young lady who enlightened me about the literary world of the 21st century was soon to embark on her senior year at BYU. She planned on going to law school after graduation. And she was reading Twilight. What does that indicate? Another bitter, angry, lady lawyer soon to be suing the wealth (or what remains of it) right out of the country, engrossed in . . . at this point, I didn’t quite know what.

There are moments when you know you’ve become an artifact of a bygone era. This was one of them.

My ignorance was remedied once I got home. After my experience on the golden road, I saw these books everywhere. Massive displays in the most prominent locations in every bookstore you could think of. Twilight books (of course). Twilight action figures. Twilight videos (that came later). Twilight calendars. How did I miss all this?

On a few occasions, I would linger over an outrageously overpriced decaf mocha latte at Borders Books and sit and watch the traffic come and go at these displays. And I observed two things: All the potential patrons were teenage girls, and most were either enormously pierced, enormously tattooed, or enormously fat.

O.K. So I figured it out. Teenage girls were obsessed with this series. It was the literary equivalent of the British invasion in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. But, it didn’t exactly appear to be mainstream. It looked like girls who didn’t quite connect with the rest of the world liked it best. And from what I was hearing, there were girls who lost touch with reality, they were so over-the-top on the subject. Call it a fair sex version of Dungeons and Dragons.

I’ll admit I was curious about all this. But not sufficiently motivated to plunk down upwards of $30 a pop to satisfy the itch. Then one Saturday, at a local library, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to satisfy my curiosity. So, I placed a hold on the first book. A week later it came in. And there began my sojourn into the heart of darkness of the Twilightuniverse.

Now, I’ve always enjoyed a good vampire story. And I’ll offer up two, as examples of just how good it can get when it’s done right. The first is the golden oldie, the mother of all Nosferatu tales. The one and only, the original: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

There’s a reason it has endured for over a century. Once you get past the epistolary style of writing, the whole thing gets under your skin. Actually, the construct Stoker used – a series of journal entries by the various characters involved – works very well as the story progresses.

Dracula was a product of its time. Stoker wrote and published his masterpiece at the end of the 19th century, in the full bloom of the European liberal tradition. And I don’t mean liberalism as we define it today. The European version – in force throughout most of the 19th century – held that man was in control of his destiny, and could, through reason, negotiation and cooperation bring about whatever result he wanted.

In this context, Stoker’s novel was a sensation. And while its outcome was in keeping with the European liberal tradition, there were some decidedly dark overtones along the way. True, his plucky band of fearless vampire hunters destroyed the foul fiend by use of the newfangled contraptions of the day – dictaphones, typewriters, blood transfusions, and such. Against such technological marvels, what chance did the prince of darkness stand? Sure enough, our intrepid band drives the blood-sucking count back to his eastern European lair where they finish him off with a stake through the heart. Not without some casualties along the way, it’s true. But there was more to this dark quest than the tools of the trade, and how effective they were against an ancient manifestation of evil.

On another level, Stoker’s story is a Christian allegory. He may have been a secular humanist, but Bram Stoker knew the value of faith. Dracula was loaded with Christian symbology. The crucifix, the host wafer, holy water – all of them are prominently featured as what they were in the context of the quest, holy weapons enlisted in the destruction of unholy evil. The monster was destroyed, not by these instruments of righteousness, but by God’s grace, empowered by the faith of these latter-day knights templar warring against the forces of darkness.

And the Count himself, while seductive, was undeniably evil. Stoker examines this phenomenon along the way. Just what is it about the unconscionable that is so damned attractive? Lucy Westerna was seduced (and ultimately destroyed) by this magnetic sinister presence. Mina Harker was drawn to him. And Abraham Van Helsing actually admired him. For all that, our courageous band of crusaders knew full well that there was no mistaking he was evil, satanic, and must be destroyed.

My second favorite such novel, which I rate just as high, is ‘Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King. I’m an unrepentant King fan, despite his overt liberalism. I’ve read everything of his that’s made it into print. Some more than once. He’s been the poet laureate of the baby boom generation in my estimation, and a gifted storyteller whatever you may think of his politics.

‘Salem’s Lot is Dracula inverted. Written in 1975, the local residents of this sleepy Maine backwater have all the modern conveniences. Electric lights, indoor plumbing, even cable television and VCRs were getting their start back then. In King’s world, such creature comforts render belief in the demon all but impossible. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the novel is watching the principle characters wrestle with their unbelief, until, when confronted with the undeniable truth of what’s before them, they must abandon the very rationalism that made Bram Stoker’s vampire hunters such a potent force, and deal with the menace before them with an incipient faith that gains strength and power as the story progresses.

Call it liberalism come full circle, if you like. However, when King mixes this struggle with the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate angst of that time with small town corruption, it makes for a powerhouse of a story, and clearly one of his best. Told you I was a fan.

And then there’s Twilight. My goodness, where can I begin?

Picture a woman who never missed an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (which I liked, actually), read every Ann Rice novel ever published, then decided she could make a killing writing boring, predictable prose all the while placing a marketing bulls-eye over the heart of every 14-year-old girl in the country, and you’ve got a thumbnail sketch of Stephenie Meyer. Mix this all together with a generous helping of ponderous, tedious storytelling and voila! – say hello to the Twilight saga.

In the traditional world of serious vampire fiction, the bloodsucker was always a vile, loathsome, foul creature of the outer darkness. They suck the blood of their victims, consigning them to an existence beyond the grace of God, condemned to an everlasting hunger for human flesh and thirst for blood. They even smell bad. Altogether, they are thoroughly bad guys.

In Twilight, they’re . . . well . . . hot!

How often can Stephenie Meyer relate to us the chiseled features of Edward Cullen? His marble-smooth chest? His beautiful amber eyes? His lithe, graceful form? Goodness, if that’s all it takes to generate a mega-hit, I can milk any number of stories into a four-book epic.

And then there’s Meyer’s favorite verb – to hiss. He hissed. She hissed. They hissed. Everybody hissed. He will hiss. He had hissed. He has hissed. He will have hissed. Every tense and conjugative form of this overused verb was covered in this epic. Of the more than 2000 pages of text, all this hissing must have covered about 400 of them.

And then, of course, we have the unique happenstance in the Twilight world, that vampires really aren’t evil. Truth be told, they’re addicts, wrestling with their addiction. How’s that for contemporary liberalism? They may be undead. They may yearn for human blood. They may be godless, soulless creatures, living for all time in eternal damnation, but we sure don’t get any sense of this in the Meyer universe. They’re basically good guys when all is said and done. And they’re hot. Did I mention that? Stop being such an intolerant bigot and start embracing this bold and creative alternative lifestyle.

Which is just what our intrepid heroine, Bella Swan does. At first glance, this girl is very nearly perfect. Good grades, shows up on time, never misses school, cooks for her father. Why, I’ll bet she even cleans her room every day and does the dishes. She’s the classic good girl/virgin goddess. Early on, she cuts to the chase – “First thing, Edward is a vampire,” she declares. “Second, I am madly in love with him.” And what was her goal? To eagerly sacrifice her sweet, young body, not to mention her immortal soul, to spend all eternity as one with her creature of the night. Simple, huh? Just what every girl always dreams of, to be taken by force by some ruggedly handsome, magnetically attractive card-carrying member of the Undead.

So, what we have here is a gothic romance. Only we really don’t. Mixed in to this little twosome is a third member of a burgeoning love triangle. Jacob Black – who is secretly a werewolf, whose tribe not so secretly despise vampires, but they form a truce with this particular coven of vampires, who aren’t really all that bad because they drink animal blood, not human . . . They’re vegetarians, you see. Romeo and Juliet meets Rebecca. Sort of. Uh, got all that? Good.

And so, the high drama then commences. Who will the luscious Bella choose? Her bloodsucking prince and love of her life? Of her best-friend, and eternal sidekick werewolf good buddy? That is the question that consumes about 1000 pages of this endless tome.

And then there’s the little matter of what exactly kills these creatures of the night (or late afternoon, whatever). Sunlight doesn’t seem to bother them. They don’t burn in the purifying rays of the sun, they kind of . . . sparkle. No stakes through the heart. Their smooth, polished, marble-like skin is as tough as solid steel. Nothing gets through it. And the crucifix? Host wafer? Holy water? Forget it. They are conveniently forgotten in the fantasy world of Stephenie Meyer. No power of God is necessary to destroy them. Besides which, why would anyone want to? They’re not sinister, they’re seductive. And they’re oh, so hot. If you forget this little tidbit of information during your journey through the Twilightverse, Stephenie Meyer will be glad to remind you. She does so with amazing frequency.

(As an aside, these dark lords also play baseball. That’s right. In the afternoon, no less. While they’re busy sparkling in the sunlight. Could you imagine what the Yankees could do with a pitcher who never has arm trouble, throws a 150-mph fastball and never gets old? Say goodnight, Boston Red Sox! Forever!)

The question invariably comes up: Why all the hysteria (not to mention massive financial success) of a tale so worn-out, predictable and essentially trite? What do we have here that has caused such a stir in the world of contemporary fiction? It’s really very simple. What this amounts to is your classic good girl/bad guy mini-drama. It is successful for one reason and one reason alone: Women like bad guys. Teenage girls even more so. Case closed.

This is not a new phenomenon. We can’t even relate it to the recent collapse of the country, or its bleak future. The good girl/bad guy scenario has been with us from time immemorial. It begins when Daddy doesn’t show up for his baby girl’s childhood. Let’s face it, he’s the first man she will ever love. And if he’s abusive, or worse yet, missing in action, baby girl will conclude that it’s her fault – often confirmed by Mommy and Daddy both – and conclude if only she could love Daddy better, he will love her back.

Spin it any way you want. That’s it in a nutshell. If Daddy is MIA, baby girl will go out and find her own wandering terror to close the circle and make her life complete. The abuse she suffers certainly won’t be enjoyable, but it will be familiar. And the inevitable mindset persists that no matter how abusive he gets, she can love him back to sanity. Taming the wild beast is an extremely seductive prospect in the minds of emotionally stunted young girls. Sadly, the rabid success of the Twilight saga merely confirms this condition is alive and well in what passes for 21st century America.

As for me, 2000 pages of the literary equivalent of the First World War was quite enough. Literary carnage to no purpose with no end in sight is about as far as I can go. I’m not indulging in any videos, or pay-per-views, or anything else that contributes to the financial success of this abomination. When the film series comes to TNT at 4:00 in the morning, I may tune in to see if the on-screen version is as hideous as the literary one. Beyond that, I’m grateful to have survived my journey into the world of literary tedium and escaped reasonably unscathed.

But it was instructive. How else would I ever have been able to gaze into the nerve pulse of today’s youth? Particularly the female variety. Who knows? Most of these girls will graduate high school, get married, settle down and have kids of their own. Some of them will be girls. And what floats their boat in another thirty years is something I’m grateful I won’t be around to see.

I mean, how much worse can it get?

by Euro-American Scum
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
Euro-American Scum can be reached at eascum@yahoo.com

America's Goldman Sachs Legacy

Goldman Sachs just posted higher than expected quarterly earnings of $3.33 billion – up 65%, year over year – even though they were the recipients of over $10 billion in TARP money (which they were finally ‘allowed’ to pay back).

Goldman Sachs boasts approximately 29,400 employees, and they have announced plans to give $11.4 billion in bonuses to their employees, which averages out to approximately $770,000 per employee – with top executives set to garner millions each. That bonus figure amounts to approximately the kinds of bonuses that Sachs was handing out to its people at the height of the prosperity bubble.

President Obama, shortly after the passage of TARP legislation (brackets are mine):

When I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves twenty billion dollars [only a little more than half of what Goldman Sachs alone is now intending to give its employees] worth of bonuses, the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004, at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse, and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them … that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful. And part of what we’re going to need is for folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline and sense of responsibility.

Goldman Sachs ‘graduates’ held extremely powerful positions in the American government before the economy began to visibly unwind, with Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury during both Clinton administrations, and Joshua Bolton, President Bush’s chief of staff, leaping to mind immediately. Goldman graduates also serve as the heads of the New York Stock Exchange, the Canadian World Bank, the Italian World Bank, the New York Fed, etc. They hold prominent positions in much of the world of international finance.

Shortly before the economy began to visibly head south, Goldman Sachs got its foot in the door again when President Bush appointed as Treasury Secretary former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Once the economic crisis began to rear its ugly head, Paulson sat back passively in his secretary's chair and allowed two of America's largest investment banks/brokerage firms to fail: Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

The Treasury Department, under Paulson, did not lift a finger to help either Bear or Lehman keep its head above water. (Footnote: Bear and Lehman were both competitors of Goldman Sachs – with Lehman posing its biggest competitive threat).

Fewer than twenty-four hours after Lehman Brothers bit the dust, Paulson made the decision to bail out AIG, the largest insurance conglomerate in the world, to the tune of $85 billion, for the sake of the American economy, which ‘would suffer irreparable damage’, should AIG fail. (Footnote: Goldman Sachs represented the biggest AIG payout -- $12.9 billion -- when AIG received its federal bailout billions.)

Hank Paulson then proceeded to appoint another Goldman Sachs crony, Neil Kashkari, to oversee the distribution of TARP money.

One of Kashkari’s first decisions was to change the status of Goldman Sachs to a bank holding company – a new status which would allow it to become the direct recipient of TARP money, in addition to FDIC funds, and money from the Fed discount window. Since Goldman Sachs was now registered as a bank holding company, they were no longer under SEC regulation, but Fed regulation. And who sat at the head of the Fed regulators to whom Sachs must answer? A man named Stephen Friedman, a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Despite the fact that Mr. Friedman was now sitting in the overseer/regulator position at the Fed, responsible to monitor Goldman Sach’s dealings, he was not only a former chairman of GS, but also a current member of Goldman’s board of directors, and a major stockholder in the firm.

When complaints were issued about this blatant conflict of interest, current Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner, issued a temporary one-year waiver of the conflict-of-interest rule, allowing Friedman to continue to decide regulatory matters in GS’s behalf.

Mr. Friedman shortly thereafter purchased an additional 52,000 shares of Goldman Sachs.

Neil Kashkari was then replaced as overseer of TARP distributions by Gary Gensler, a former partner at Goldman Sachs. Gensler is now serving as the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with his main charge being to regulate derivatives. When he was working for Goldman Sachs several years ago, Gensler worked tirelessly to deregulate derivatives.

Goldman Sachs has hired a new lobbyist, Michael Pease, who also serves as a Director of Government Affairs. Pease is replacing another Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, who has received a promotion to serve as the Chief of Staff of our Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner.

(Footnote: During his campaign, our president promised that he would never have a registered lobbyist serve in his administration. Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist whose assignment was to lobby in order to prevent pay restrictions for Wall Street moneymakers, is now the number two man in the treasury department.)

Goldman Sachs recently spent $23 billion to purchase ten percent of the Chicago Climate Exchange, and $1 billion in carbon assets (including alternative energy projects), while their current and former employees (only some of whom are mentioned above) – now major government decision-makers – are endorsing mandatory limits on carbon emissions included in Cap and Trade legislation.

Think about the fact that Goldman Sachs was a recipient of bailout funds (read: your and my tax dollars), and that they are about to bestow upon their employees bonuses that average $770,000 per employee. Now think about the fact that most Americans’ nest eggs consist of retirement accounts directly linked to the American stock market. Then take a good look at the performance of the general markets (Dow and NASDAQ) as compared to the performance of Goldman Sachs, since our president took office (red=Goldman, green=NAS, Blue=Dow):


Man, these Goldman Sachs people are indescribably brilliant. Their company appears to know how to turn dirt into gold. Indeed, Goldman Sachs employees appear to outshine all other financial wizards in that they achieve, at an incredible proportion as compared to other financial wizards, major government positions, with indescribable autocratic decision-making powers.

Or could there be a kind of affirmative action hiring process going on here, in that these Sachs fellows affirm the leftist agenda currently being pushed down our throats, and they, in turn, invariably garner significant increased wealth and political power?

That leftist agenda currently being railroaded through Congress? It includes all manner of liberty-destroying, healthcare quality destroying, capitalism (especially small business) destroying, elitist power-grabbing initiatives … not to mention the fact that it is annihilating the carefully-accumulated nest eggs of tens of millions of hard-working Americans, and saddling their children and grandchildren with a monumentally burdensome debt that they can never hope to repay.

The inevitable result? We are fast allowing our republic to be transformed into a caste system made up of a political and financial elite, the working masses, and the parasites and benefactors who will keep the elite in office. This generation of working Americans, and those who follow, will find themselves slaves to the state – allowed to keep only that which the state allows them to retain, and forced to share the remainder with those the state wants to see prosper.

[Coming soon: (1) How Goldman Sachs manipulates the markets, and (2) the major role that Goldman Sachs played in the American economic debacle … of which we have yet to see the worst.]

~ joanie

Time is Ruthless

Shifty Powers died last month. There’s no better way to put it. No, strike that. There’s no easier way to put it.

I was on the road last week. It was a particularly difficult trip, fraught with bad weather from Chicago going east, something this Californian is not equipped to deal with on a regular basis. The return flight was peppered with mechanical problems, missed connections, and other frustrations. I was hoping to make it back, and bask in all this glorious California sunshine that makes life with the imminent collapse of the entire state infrastructure tolerable.

Instead, I came home to an email that’s been making its way around the Internet. Some of you may already have seen it. I believe it was written by Joe Galloway – he, of We Were Soldiers, 1st Cav/Ia Drang notoriety – and very eloquently done.

It was Shifty Powers’ memoriam.

For the first time in a long time, I’m hard pressed to come up with something to add to the volumes of testimonials that are currently making their way through cyberspace. You see, Shifty Powers was caught up in the tidal wave of history. He was also a soldier in a crusade against evil when the entire world was in danger of falling into another dark age. He was a brother paratrooper, and since the Airborne community is a close-knit one, I knew him by reputation long before I ever made his acquaintance. But more than that, the one designation I hold most dear is that Shifty Powers was my friend.

I finally met him face-to-face in Normandy in June 2004 for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. An account of that experience is related in detail in Saving Private Weinmann. This commentary is not an advertisement for that one, merely to familiarize those who do not know the details of that momentous event, and to explain my passion for the greatest generation.

So, how do I eulogize the passing of a friend? Where do I begin?

If there was one thing I had to pick from the many outstanding qualities of Shifty Powers, it would be his humility. For all his wartime accomplishments, he was the epitome of the salt of the earth. Were any of us to meet him without his connection to the Band of Brothers paratroopers – a virtual impossibility since the release of the mini-series in 2001 – we would be hard-pressed to connect him to any of those events.

It’s a fading distinction in 21st century America, where an army of exhibitionists, all grimly determined to elbow each other out of the way to gain their fifteen minutes of fame, will stop at nothing in its pursuit. We live in a country where he who shouts the loudest and the longest gets the attention. And whoever wins the endurance race of vulgarity and verbosity is often the one taken seriously.

Shifty Powers sat in the back of the room – often smoking a cigarette, usually with a smile on his face – and took it all in. He didn’t miss a thing. And he didn’t have to pound his chest.

Shifty Powers stared into the black hole of human destruction. He witnessed the worst humanity could muster with the full force of 20th century industrialized warfare at its disposal, and was not poisoned by it. He emerged from his wartime experience with his soul, his character and his integrity intact. He never lost his faith. This is not to say he came home unaffected. But whatever scars he carried with him he kept to himself. In that, he was typical of his generation.

By most accounts, Shifty was diagnosed with cancer – I know not which variety – last June (2008). He died last month, June 17, 2009 if memory serves. Was it lung cancer? Possibly. I remember his singular delight during our excursion into history, when we all discovered that the smoking Nazis had not yet invaded Europe. You could smoke everywhere. And Shifty did. I never saw him without a cigarette at the ready. Did it finally take its toll? Who knows? And what does it matter now?

There is a fallacy, I think, when it comes to the death of the elderly. Just because they’ve lived to a ripe old age, somehow we believe they are somehow more reconciled to death than the rest of us. I’ve fallen into this mindset myself. I think perhaps we’re wrong to see death in such a light.

Let’s face it, our outlook on life doesn’t change much as we age. We don’t really think that differently as we grow older. Oh, we don’t move quite as fast as before. And we get more impatient with the frustrations of life, possibly because we’ve been dealing with them for so long that we’re looking forward to a little relief. But, except for a few aches and pains, do we somehow become resigned to leaving this life just because we’ve lived out allotted three score and ten and then some? Somehow, I don’t think so.

Maybe we get up one morning with creaking bones, tired from the broken sleep that comes to us when we age. We look at the calendar and wonder where the years went. When did it get to be 2009, we wonder? We interact with the 40-somethings of the world and marvel at how young they are, at the same time remembering with a chuckle how old we thought we were at that age.

But mostly this shift in perception comes from my recollection of Shifty Powers and what a grand time he had living life. No, I’m not suggesting he was some ageing, rompin’, stompin’, foul-mouthed airborne hellraiser. But he had a really good time of it from what I could see. He enjoyed life, the utter and total joy of it. I doubt he went easily. I don’t think he was finished with it, if he had a say-so in the matter. Sadly, he didn’t. It’s not our call when it comes to closing time.

As for the significance of his passing, I think that would be obvious. His was the last generation that uniformly believed in the goodness of America. Right or wrong, he loved this country, warts and all. There was no question that it was worth defending. And there was no thought to abandoning his responsibility to bear that burden, even it meant never coming home.

There are those among us who would celebrate his passing, but for all the wrong reasons. They would claim that the ethnocentricity of Americans is a tradition that the years have passed by. They would further assert that men like Shifty Powers have become archaic – antiquated holdovers whose singular vision of the nobility of America in spite of its flaws has long-since outlived its value and is well-disposed of in the new global utopia of an America not so primus inter pares.

I would suggest to these brave new visionaries to count the cost of what was lost and get back to me on that. Either that, or walk the grounds of Auschwitz or Dachau and then opine at length about the inherent nobility of man.

So, here’s to Shifty Powers – a man who made a difference when it counted the most. God’s speed, my friend. I’ve no doubt that we’ll meet up again when we’ve “all crossed over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees,” to quote Stonewall Jackson. Shifty Powers has made his last jump. I’m certain that he didn’t freeze in the door. And I’m sure he landed on his feet.

“Well done, my good and faithful servant . . . Enter into the joy of your lord.” – Matthew 25:21.

by Euro-American Scum
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

Letting it Be in Post-America America

It’s hard to gauge the depth of another person’s suffering. Even if we ourselves have walked through the valley of the shadow, so to speak, the pain of catastrophic loss is not transferrable. We can empathize. We can speculate. We can even shudder in horror, but only when it happens to us can we truly know the searing devastation of personal calamity firsthand.

It was in just such a frame of mind that I happened to be killing time at the Chino Hills, California Barnes & Noble and picked up a book prominently displayed at the entrance to the store. It was positioned, as is always the case, to garner maximum exposure. And whoever tapped this particular publication for such a prime setting knew what they were doing. It was impossible to miss. Strange that such a coveted position wasn’t reserved for the latest Stephen King, Dean Koontz or John Grisham mega-bestseller. Not even Stephenie Meyer’s latest Twilight clone managed to snare such a choice location. Of course, such prime movers of the pop culture world have no need of such conspicuous exposure. Their disciples will find their works if they have to move heaven and earth to do so.

So, on this particular occasion, the catbird seat was reserved for a book penned by a local author, Ruthe Rosen, a former flight attendant and current stay-at-home soccer mom residing locally in Chino Hills. The book, a self-published volume entitled Let It Be: My Daughter’s Legacy, featured yet another innocent-young-girl-dying- tragically-from-an-incurable-disease. And while such tales can often be compelling, if for no other reason than most of us recoil in horror with a kind of I’m-glad-it-wasn’t-my-daughter mentality, I was wondering what it was about this sad tale of heartbreak that merited such favored status. Out of curiosity, I picked up the book and leafed through it.

I hate to say it, but there wasn’t much remarkable material from which to choose, at least not from what I could see on a cursory examination. And at $22.95 for a thin-sliced hardcover edition, I had to think twice before tucking a copy under my arm and heading for the cashier. Nevertheless, I did just that.

Sure enough, there was nothing unique about the story. But then, how could there be? Such tragedies following an all-too familiar pattern. A young, beautiful, vibrant young girl – Karla Asch-Rosen – with an extremely positive outlook on life contracts a malignant brain tumor. The family is devastated. The treatment buys her time and nothing else. During the course of her death struggle, neither the girl nor her family loses their optimism, their courage, or their faith in spite of the inevitable outcome. It’s the stuff of which inspiration is made.

Last Saturday, the author was signing books at the very same Barnes & Noble. And since the schools just got out, and, due to the imminent collapse of the California public education system, I am unlikely to be called back next fall, I figured I better show up and get an autograph while I still could. You see, Ruthe Rosen and I have a couple of things in common. Perhaps the most notable is that we both lost a daughter – hers to cancer, mine to a traffic accident. And maybe the common factors should stop there, since that’s the prime motivator that got me in the store on that gloomy Saturday afternoon last weekend.

The gathering was small, in one of the far corners of the mammoth store. There were nine chairs set up for a reading for which I didn’t stay. And the obligatory table was piled high with books, behind which, signing them as fast as her fingers could fly, was the author de jour, and grieving parent, Ruthe Rosen. Only she didn’t look like the grief was exacting too heavy a toll on that day. Her dazzling smile could light up the surface of the sun. Good thing, too, considering an army of local paparazzi was in attendance. Never saw so many flashbulbs going off since Barack Obama made his one and only appearance in the Inland Empire last October.

I got off to a rough start, I must admit. I’d been doing some work at the house, and I wasn’t exactly at my best when I hurried through the door. I also made the bad mistake of forgetting my book, which, when I got up to the front of the short line, I explained with a good deal of chagrin. The super-model-like smile faded momentarily as she no doubt pondered what the local derelict was doing, unkempt, unshaven and bookless, spoiling her coming out party. Then I explained our common bond. Then the smile came back. It was a sad smile just the same.

“I’m not going to answer the common question,” she patiently explained to me.

“That’s good,” I responded, “since I wasn’t going to ask it. I already know the answer.”

We understood each other, at least thus far. Those of us who’ve lost children inevitably come to grips with the age-old question – Is it ever going to get any better? The short answer: No. The more extended one: We get so we handle the loss better. Think about it. They’re two different coping sets, really.

So, we talked for a while. She asked me about the accident. Where did it happen? Athens, Georgia. When? Six years ago June 19. How did it happen? Her car was broadsided on the driver’s side in a driving rainstorm. She got to a T-intersection just ahead of the pickup truck that hit her. The power to the traffic signals was out, and both vehicles were going too fast. No one walked away from that one. The driver of the truck was paralyzed from the neck down, so everyone paid a price, some heavier than others.

I’m not sure what I expected when I told my version of the sad tale of woe. The empathy that springs from a shared experience, perhaps? The knowing glance of a parent that has sustained a similar loss? Something like that. What I got was an undeniable moment of definitive discomfort. She seemed at a loss for words. Suddenly, the all-American smile was nowhere to be seen. The dazzling, white teeth were uncomfortably concealed. She didn’t know what to say. Her eyes drifted to the floor. And then one of her neighbors elbowed me out of the way, and the two girlfriends dissolved into a bevy of squeals, shrieks, giggles and gossip.

Since I’d been summarily dismissed at this point, I didn’t know quite what to do. There was a reading scheduled for the afternoon. And since the turnout for autographs didn’t amount to much more than the local neighborhood acquaintances and myself, I expected it to get started in short order. That was not to be. What followed was an endless flurry of posed photographs by local reporters and eternal interviews with husband Michael, who appeared to be the choreographer of this production.

He was a genial man, somewhere in his late 30s or early 40s from the looks of things. Like his wife, he bore an irrepressible smile that never wavered through all his clipped orders to photographers, print media beat writers, and television reporters. During a lull, we got a chance to talk. Yes, he was the executive vice-president and manager of operations for the Let It Be Foundation – an organization he and his wife founded after the tragic death of his step-daughter. And would I like to make a contribution? Yes, there was worldwide interest in this life-affirming new book, and would I like to buy a copy? Yes, they’ve reached a cultural tipping point where the value system of the entire world will inevitably be changed for the better on a global scale. Never had any girl lived a more meaningful life or died a death that touched so many people.

Call me crazy, but the names Rachel Joy Scott and Cassie Bernal – both of whom perished at Columbine – come to mind as potential competitors for this dubious crown.

And yes, they’ve received offers from Good Morning America, The Today Show, ABC News, NBC Nightly News, Katie Couric, Sky News London, the BBC, CNN and Fox News begging Ruthe for interviews. The only problem is none of these networks will pony up the required fee for a fifteen minute interview. And of course, there have been movie deals in the offing. But the asking price begins at a level much higher than the major studios are willing to consider and goes up from there.

No wonder husband Michael quit his job as a multi-million dollar corporate executive to manage his wife’s career. Gold mines are where you find them. No recession in Chino Hills. Happy days.

Just before I departed, husband Michael introduced me to the couple’s two surviving sons, Brandon and Cole. I’m not sure which was which, but they were both pre-adolescent youngsters of about 12 and 10. Like their parents, they bore the unwavering, indomitable smiles that appear to be a family trait. They were so polite, so well-behaved, and so measured in everything they said and did, they impressed me as little adults. No doubt these two boys will go far in life, possibly as executive managers of the Let It Be Foundation: The Next Generation.

I departed with my Let It Be (autographed) bookmark, not quite sure what to make of this carefully directed encounter. I say that, because I am hardly an objective observer of such happenings. And I am, as previously noted, a member in good standing of a fraternity which is growing much too big, much too fast. In the past four years at my church, six families have lost teenage children – five to traffic accidents, and one to a fatal disease. And since the congregation is composed of the prosperous leaders who make things happen in the local community, many have gone on to establish foundations of their own in the names of their cherished and lost children.

But none have ever made out of it the carefully staged production that I witnessed last Saturday. Its intent was inspiration. In truth, it creeped me out.

I have to be careful about what follows. Because commenting on another person’s grief is an explosive, often incendiary topic. A topic that could easily blow up in the face of the commentator. Add to the mix that I’ve dealt with my own version of pain and loss, and the problem becomes even more elusive. Being on the receiving end of that kind of agony does not provide any kind of perspective, sad to say.

So, let’s set a couple of ground rules, shall we? Call them a series of baseline assumptions which, I hope, we can all agree on.

All catastrophic loss is just that – the end of the world. There’s no mincing words when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of it. Because coming out the other side, the world is significantly different than before the loss.

Different people deal with loss differently. Viktor Frankl wrote a remarkable book following his experience in the holocaust at Auschwitz – Man’s Search For Meaning. Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist and protégé of Sigmund Freud, differed with his mentor on several crucial points. Frankl believed that it was not sex, but the search for meaning which was the driving force in the lives of human beings. Frankl spent the rest of his post-holocaust life making a conscious effort to find meaning in everything. I will not debate the merits of his existential approach to life, or its pitfalls. The point is, people will go to great lengths to find significance in the wake of personal devastation. It brings meaning to the loss and somehow makes the agony less agonizing. And that includes establishing charitable foundations and going on the interview circuit.
No one heals on a schedule, or in quite the same way someone else does. It’s that simple. There is no timetable, and there is no operating manual for coping. Some people find God. Others blame Him. I’ve encountered both since my brush with tragedy. And I’ve been both too.

Having said that, I will share my gut reaction. And it’s very simple. People who smile all the time make me shudder. Right or wrong, I always wonder what’s cooking behind that all-American smile. Children who act like mini-grown-ups make my skin crawl. Do they ever wrestle and fight over some small thing, as brothers do from time to time, or do they resort to more subtle, devious ways of stabbing each other in the back. Are they healthy kids on their way to being functional young men? Or are they politicians in the making? And, in the wake of such a loss, a mother who turns into a bubbling fountain of effervescence the instant the red light comes on makes me wonder if there isn’t a darker form of denial operating not far below the surface.

Still, the Bible tells us that such enthusiasm is not only proof positive of saving faith, but clear evidence of the fruit of the Spirit.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” – Galatians 5:22-23

For all that, I’ve discovered that people in a perpetual state of joy are often on medication. I guess that leaves the rest of us – who grieve the loss for years, see nothing good coming from it, and are coping with the devastation of shattered lives and bleak futures – in danger of hell fire. Oh well. It’s a tough old world out there.

This book was written ostensibly to provide inspiration for families enduring various kinds of catastrophic loss. From death to divorce, it was intended to provide comfort, solace and encouragement to those people who find themselves in the valley of the shadow with no way out. And it may very well succeed in that capacity. So, was I comforted? Inspired? Encouraged?

In a word, no. And my encounter with the architects of this recent exercise in sentimentality did nothing to mitigate that experience.

I find that in the post-America America, one of the symptoms of its demise has been a penchant to flounder in a pool of sentiment and sentimentality. We love a sad tale of woe. Always have. It takes many expressions. And it has been our undoing. Were it not so, there would be no Lifetime Channel. Neither would there be a citizenry that goes so blissfully about its daily business happily unaware that the country that nurtured it has vanished in the fires of political correctness, globalist values and an international citizen of the world as its leader.

The path to destruction has been littered with the bones of such a seduction throughout the recent history of western culture.

In 19th century Europe, it was an overly sentimentalized belief in the sublime nature of humanity and how man was in control of his environment and could, by reason and negotiation, accomplish anything that collapsed in the flames of the First World War.

It was an overly romanticized article of faith in the 1990s, of the inherent goodness of man in general and the Islamic world in particular that reached its terrible climax on that crystal clear Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001 in New York City.

And it is a quixotic, exceedingly nostalgic view of the country that purports that no matter what abominations are perpetrated against its people or its Constitution that America will endure for all time, simply because it always has.

Let’s face it, we love a good schmaltzy, sentimental story. And they don’t get any juicier than an innocent, young girl who dies tragically of a fatal disease.

Have you ever attended a funeral of such a child? Invariably, she is idolized in death in ways she never was in life. The girl may have been an unashamed gossip, a back-stabbing cutthroat, or a pushing slut, but in death she becomes “. . . so kind, so good, so full of life; everybody loved her. . . ”. I don’t know if either extreme applied to Karla Asch-Rosen. I never knew her. But she is certainly represented as being nothing less than a picture-perfect ideal, an angel on earth. And sadly, none of us who did not know her will ever know the truth. She has passed into the realm of the honored dead, whether she deserves to be there or not.

As for the media blitz, I can easily see why. They’ve got a hot commodity here. But there’s no novelty to it, and its shelf life is both perishable and short. It will last precisely until the next pristine youthful lass dies tragically of some fatal disease or some grad night traffic mishap. And so ends the fifteen minutes of fame of Karla Asch-Rosen and the Let It Be Foundation. The queen is dead (literally). Long live the queen.

And when it comes to marketing, there’s a very simple axiom that holds true – it’s very easy to love the hot blonde. I can see why Fox News is turning cartwheels to get Ruthe Rosen in front of their cameras. Another gorgeous blonde is just what they need. I’ll bet Megyn Kendall is shaking in her stylish stiletto heels as we speak. Maybe Ruthe Rosen and Carrie Prejean can fight it out in a celebrity death match for the next Fox News commentary spot that comes open. I just wonder if this tragedy had happened to some 300-lb. trailer trash mom living in a single-wide outside Boone, North Carolina, if she would get the same air play this group is getting. Somehow I think not.

And so, the parade marches on. But during the midst of it, I was reminded of a similar tragedy that happened during my tenure in Las Vegas. Her name was Valerie Pida, and she was a UNLV cheerleader. She also fought a losing battle with lymphoma for thirteen years and succumbed in 1992. Her attitude was nothing less than heroic. Immensely positive, she was tempered with the cold certainty of what proved to be a life cut short. Her life slowly, but surely ebbed away, one heart-wrenching tumor at a time. Yet, the girl had steel in her spine, and endured with quiet dignity, youthful enthusiasm, and defiant courage that touched everyone around her. Her passing left a void in the life of her family, particularly her father, whom I met toward the end of the ordeal. There was no inspiration to be found, just the soul-numbing loss of a beloved child, cherished and adored.

And what remains in the wake of so profound a loss is the nether world of “what if?”

You always wonder what might have been if she was still with you. How would your life be different? What would her life have become? You agonize over what you could have done while she was alive, even if it made no difference at all. You always wonder if somehow you could have done something to affect the outcome. And, during those deep, endless nights, when sleep was just out of reach, you inevitably come to terms with the non-negotiable fact that you will never see her again this side of heaven. And at times like that, no amount of inspiring stories, or charitable foundations takes away the black hole in your soul. Maybe you find God. Maybe you don’t. But you definitely live with the loss. And that never goes away.

So, I look forward to the interviews, the book promos, maybe even a paperback volume. I’ll even cough up $9.00 to see a matinee airing of the feature film. In the day of satellite television, Internet streaming video and digital movie productions, it’s all about show biz anyway.

And it’s always easier to love the hot blonde.

by Euro-American Scum
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
Euro-American Scum can be reached at eascum@yahoo.com

The End of Reagan's America

... a lament of incalculable magnitude,not only for America but for all of humankind.

As I typed the words above, I had to backspace several times because, twice before I got it right, I had typed 'america' with a lower-case 'a'. Funny what the subconscious (or the fingers, possessing a keenness of which we are unaware?), do when we find ourselves in a less-than-optimum frame of mind.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's death. He is now in the company of the great founding patriots who laid down the magnificent vision that he revived and revered.

About ten years before he was taken from us, President Reagan observed:

... whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way.

My fondest hope for each one of you -- and especially for young people -- is that you will love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will make the world a little better for your having been here. May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance, and never lose your natural, God-given optimism. And finally, my fellow Americans, may every dawn be a great new beginning for America and every evening bring us closer to that shining city upon a hill.

The personal foundation that allowed President Reagan to lead us from darkness to light in eight short years rested upon his reverence for the United States Constitution – the most magnificent blueprint for governance ever devised by the mind of man.

In our national leadership, that reverence had been tossed aside for the better part of the twentieth century: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson, especially, ignored its cautions with impunity, and placed their own political agendas above its brilliant dictates, resulting in a gradual erosion of our Founders’ vision ... until Ronald Reagan successfully led us back onto the path the Founders had cleared for us.

Just two years before he left office, President Reagan issued an executive order (number 12612) on federalism in which he underlined the pressing need to limit government power, lest we lose our way again. Part of that eloquent order reads:

Federalism is rooted in the knowledge that our political liberties are best assured by limiting the size and scope of the national government ... The people of the States created the national government when they delegated to it those enumerated governmental powers relating to matters beyond the competence of the individual States ... All other sovereign powers, save those expressly prohibited the States by the Constitution, are reserved to the States or to the people.


The seed for that executive order was planted decades before, in his 'Rendezvous with Destiny/A Time for Choosing' speech, in which he cautioned:

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people, and they knew that when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

Reagan’s legacy is so powerful, and so widespread, that his countrymen have tended to take it for granted as something that always existed. And yet his simple reliance on our founding principles, as delineated in our Constitution, was the catalyst that turned an ailing economy into a robust one, that re-ignited the spirit of allegiance and duty into the hearts of his countrymen, and that ushered communism – in both the Soviet Union and East Germany – down the dark road toward resounding defeat.


Under Ronald Reagan, individual freedom, limited government, and the free market system, were proved to be the cornerstone of honest wealth, widespread prosperity, and national safety and security. He reminded us all that 'socialists ignore the side of man that is of the spirit. They can provide shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you’re ill – all the things that are guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don’t understand that we also dream'.

Despite media assertions otherwise, in eight short years, Ronald Reagan reversed dangerous economic trends, much worse than those that were in place when Barack Obama took office, by implementing four simple practices:

• government deregulation of the economy



• across-the-board reductions in tax rates



• anti-inflationary monetary policy, and



• non-defense budget restraint

Despite the fact that all four policies succeeded in performing a virtual economic miracle, the Obama administration is intent on implementing ‘economic policy’ that embraces none of the above.

The difference between the two ‘leaders’? The former loved America and embraced as his primary goal her security and prosperity. The latter is devoted to a political ideology in which genuine security and prosperity (the kind enjoyed by a free people) are viewed as enemies of the state.


President Reagan often echoed the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who visited America in the early 1800s and wrote extensively about what he observed, with great fascination and prescience. In an address then-Governor Reagan delivered at Hillsdale college a few years before his first election to the presidency, he observed:

... he [de Tocqueville] came here and he looked at everything he could see in our country, trying to find the secret of our success and then went back and wrote a book about it. But even then, 130 years ago, he saw signs that prompted him to warn us, that if we weren’t constantly on guard we would find ourselves covered by a network of regulations controlling every activity. And he said, if that came to pass we would one day find ourselves a nation of timid animals, with government the shepherd ... and if you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom ... all freedom.

Believing, as de Tocqueville did, in the absolute necessity of vigilance against the over-encroachment of government, President Reagan restored a nation to former greatness. He closed the curtain on an era of national weakness, diffidence, and division, and eased fears and repressions that had gripped the world for decades.

His countrymen respected him because of his faithfulness to America’s roots; they loved him because of his goodness. He had the strength that emanates from character, the stalwartness that flows from conviction, the grace and gentleness that flow from humility, and the humor that flows from being comfortable with who he is.

What more can a free society ask of a leader?

I have a picture of President Reagan on the bulletin board above my desk at my office. Each day before I turn out the lights and close the door behind me, I look at his likeness, silently thank him for the gift of ‘rebirth’ that he so faithfully provided us all, and assure him that, in spite of the fact that his beloved republic has abandoned his lofty ideals, and forgotten the noble sacrifices that made us the most moral and prosperous people in the history of mankind, there is still a faithful remnant among his countrymen that will continue to cling to the vision that he held so dear. No matter the cost.


Yet, a mere twenty years since he left office, most Americans have forgotten their heroic origins and have declared that divine guidance is dispensable. They have allowed a cadre of elitist scoundrels in Washington to muddy, beyond recognition, the phrase 'of, by and for the people', and they have vicariously written its epitaph by virtue of their eyes-diverted apathy and indifference to its brutal murder.

The majority of our countrymen no longer value:

• instilling in their children a knowledge of, and reverence for, their proud heritage

• encouraging personal responsibility as opposed to careless, parasitic dependence on others for sustenance

• respecting the rule of law and seeking genuine justice as opposed to a perverted, entitlement-oriented sense of 'equality'

• the striving for, and rewarding of, excellence

• the responsibilities, both civic and personal, incumbent with citizenship in a free society

Mankind has been struggling for more than two millenia to comprehend and retain Plato's admonition. If Americans ever successfully heeded his warnings, we have since decided that such wisdom is sadly passé. In carelessly relaxing our grip on those citizen-characterisitics essential to preserving and defending a free society, the last best hope of man on earth has sentenced its children to a thousand years of darkness.

If I could call every American's attention to one paragraph of 'literature' in these toubling times, it would be this excerpt from Paul Johnson, in Modern Times, regarding the decline, and ultimately the collapse, of the 'religious impulse' in the modern world, and the filling of the hideous vacuum that it will create:

Nietzsche rightly perceived that the most likely candidate would be what he called the 'Will to Power,' which offered a far more comprehensive and in the end more plausible explanation of human behavior than Marx or Freud. In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology. Those who had once filled the ranks of the totalitarian clergy would become totalitarian politicians. And above all the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatsoever, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.

Our messiah is now among us. But he is not the one foretold by Scripture.

Beware.

Below is a column that recently appeared in Pravda. A resident of what President Reagan once called the ‘evil empire’ sums up fairly well America’s impending demise. How tragically ironic that the enemy that Ronald Reagan brought to its knees should, a mere twenty years later, be capable of foretelling the death of the beloved country he served so faithfully and so well.

Μολὼν λάβε ...

~ joanie

America's Descent into Marxism
by Stanislav Mishin
(as published in Pravda)

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then [sic] the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind [sic] the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then [sic] Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then [sic] happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a [sic] record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then [sic] another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar [sic] Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then [sic] a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then [sic] two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored [sic] horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks [sic], a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Memorial Day Reflections

On his recent trip to France, of all places, the president of the United States declared that America has ‘failed to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world’ and has ‘shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive’ towards its allies.

On a campaign stint in early 2008, the soon-to-be first lady of the United States declared that ‘for the first time in her adult life’ she is now proud of her country.

These two statements were not slips of the tongue. They were not aberrational statements of opinion from the leader of the western world and his spouse. The anti-American sentiment expressed in their words are borne out everyday in their actions which are seeking (and, sadly, succeeding) in bringing the real America to her knees, and replacing it with a socialist utopia where a ruling elite reigns supreme.

Take a good look at the picture below. How does it make you feel?


I am sickened by it.

The consistency of his words and actions indicate that the leader of the free world has either little or no understanding of American heritage and history, or unbridled contempt for it, presumably because it does not combine well with his elitist-rule vision of the future of America. Neither condition renders him qualified to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Obama spoke his derisive words about America and her relationship with our ‘allies’ fewer than five hundred miles from Normandy, where, sixty-five years ago, on both Omaha and Utah Beaches close to seven thousand ‘arrogant’ Americans willingly offered themselves up as casualties of war.

Two of our current president’s most trailblazing accomplishments have been (1) abandoning the time-honored tradition of respecting the legacy of his predecessors and (2) consistently showing irreverence for those duty-bound, courageous patriots who sacrificed – sometimes with their lives – to create the most moral and prosperous nation in the history of mankind, and to stand in the crosshairs of tyrants when the liberties of others were threatened.

Such is the proud legacy that ten generations of Americans have crafted out of blood and sacrifice that spans more than two centuries, the extent of which the world had never before known.

Below is a picture of a section of the Meuse-Argonne American cemetery in France. The cemetery covers more than 130 acres, and beneath each of those little white specks/crosses lies the body of an ‘arrogant’ American – husbands, fathers, sweethearts, sons, brothers who left home and loved ones to travel to foreign soil in the name of freedom. More than fourteen thousand American World War I dead are buried at Meuse-Argonne. Look intently at the picture and think about that. Focus on those little white specks. Do you have a lump in your throat? If not, continue looking until you do.


France (remember the place where our current president spoke of America’s ‘arrogance’ and ‘derisive’ nature?) is home to eleven large American military cemeteries. Meuse-Argonne is only one of them. There are also hundreds of thousands of American bodies lying beneath headstones at Arlington National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Flanders Field, Ardennes, Normandy, Florence, Lorraine, Aisne Marne – in cemeteries throughout Europe (the allies that we ‘dismiss’ and treat with ‘derision’) ... and in countless unmarked graves in unknown places. All of those bodies embraced the vision of freedom, law and justice that defines the real America – a vision that they wanted the rest of the world to have the freedom to choose as well.

Remember our heroes, in spite of your president’s agenda-driven desire that you forget them. They are watching us now from afar, quietly but insistently reminding us of the source and precious value of our liberties, and challenging us to hold those hard-won liberties dear, standing firm against all who would remove them from our grasp.

Remember them – both those who have left us and those who are now serving on battlefields far from home, facing the prospect of death with each new dawn. Seek out a Memorial Day service in your neighborhood tomorrow morning. There will be plenty of time for barbecues in the remaining hours of the day. And, after the service, continue to honor our fallen countrymen through a determination to follow in their courageous, duty-bound, liberty-loving footsteps. There could be no finer role model for us all.

~ joanie

Dear Mr. President ...

Dear President Obama,

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

* You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

* You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

* You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

* You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

* You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

* You scare me because you lack humility and "class", always blaming others.

* You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals that wish to see America fail.

* You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the "blame America" crowd and deliver this message abroad.

* You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

* You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

* You scare me because you prefer windmills to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal, and shale reserves.

* You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

* You scare me because you have begun to use "extortion" tactics against certain banks and corporations.

* You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

* You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

* You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

* You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

* You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Reillys, and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

* You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

* Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term, I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

-- Lou Pritchett, author of:

Anatomy of an Ambush

About five years ago I began following a small biotech company called Dendreon. I did a great deal of research on the company and began corresponding with people -- urologists, oncologists, researchers and clinicians -- who knew much more than I about the products in their pipeline, the process through which one must move in order to obtain FDA approval, and the conceivable potential of the vaccines that Dendreon was developing.

I became convinced that this company had several blockbuster products in its pipeline, so I purchased shares of the stock, continued to read experts’ opinions, and kept my ear open for developments, both positive and negative.

At the time, Dendreon’s most promising product, which appeared closest to FDA approval, was an anti-prostate cancer vaccine called Provenge. But following closely behind was a second vaccine -- this one for breast cancer -- called Neuvenge. Both vaccines concentrate on one antigen and a revolutionary cassette technology that has the potential to be a powerful tool in confronting many types of cancer. The development of the second vaccine had been sidelined for years due to financial concerns. A small fledgling biotech company is not awash in cash.

The current most common treatment for advanced stage prostate cancer is a chemotherapy treatment called Taxotere, whose side-effects can be torturous – some of which include: low levels of white blood cells, anemia, hair loss, mouth sores, severe fluid retention, nerve pain, weakness, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, breathing difficulties, joint pain ... and death. And Taxotere’s life-prolonging promise is minimal, at best.

Unlike Taxotere, which is essentially a poison targeted to kill cancer cells before they interfere with regular cells, Provenge attempts to re-engage the body's own immune system, encouraging it to more readily recognize cancer and defend against it … naturally. And its main possible side-effects include mild fever and chills, lasting only a few days (end of list).

Take a good look at the comparable side effects of Taxotere, the only prevalent treatment for late-stage prostate cancer, vs. Provenge. Apologies for the inconvenient fact that I had to break the chart in two and place the right side of it under the left -- it was simply too wide to fit in the space alotted here. You simply have to read the side-effect category and then scroll down to the second image to see how the two treatments compare:



Shortly after I became interested in Dendreon the FDA was advised by its own appointed panel of seventeen experts (oncologists, urologists, and immunologists) that Provenge is unequivocally safe. The vote was unanimous, 17-0. The panel also agreed, 13 to 4, that that there was ‘substantial evidence’ of the drug’s effectiveness, as per FDA parameters.

Three of the panel members who voted on Provenge’s effectiveness had admitted conflicts of interest (which would most likely have rendered them unable to serve on the panel, had the newer FDA rules on conflicts been in effect then). Had they been barred from the decision-making process, the effectiveness vote would then have been a whopping 13 to 1.

Approximately 30,000 men die in the U.S. every year from late stage Androgen Independent Prostate Cancer (AIPC). Once a man has reached this stage, his survival expectancy is approximately nineteen months. And one analysis, performed by the principal investigator of Taxotere, suggested that the combined use of Provenge with Taxotere increased survival by an incredible fourteen additional months, as opposed to survival rates in patients receiving Taxotere alone.

Despite the fact that the FDA follows the recommendations of its advisory panels ninety-eight percent of the time, in May of 2007, the FDA declined to approve Provenge, demanding more evidence of its effectiveness, and requiring further study.

There has been widespread speculation regarding the reason the FDA did not follow its historical record of approving such a safe, effective and revolutionary ‘drug’. Those explanations in which I place credence fall into two categories: (1) the power of Wall Street big money, and (2) the power of the chemotherapy cabal.

(1) There is an historically enormous ‘short interest’ in the stock of Dendreon – big money investors who bet big that this company would fail. At any given time, the short interest in Dendreon’s stock (DNDN) has been as high as 35%. Much ‘naked shorting’ has occurred in this stock – i.e., the selling of ‘phantom shares’, presumably (at least in this case) to artificially drive down the price of the stock in order to (a) prevent those who bet against the company from losing their shirts, or (b) destroy the company itself.

The problems for fledgling biotech companies are many. They are not only required to conduct financially prohibitive research, but, perhaps even more prohibitive, they must battle Wall Street corruption. Hedge funds, naked shorting, and stock analysts with an axe to grind represent a cancer of their own kind.

(2) The deeply entrenched chemotherapy dynasty is a multi-billion dollar business, and the big pharmaceutical giants are not about to relinquish that cash cow without a fight. They have powerful connections in high places.

This past Tuesday, Dendreon announced the results of the extended trial that the FDA demanded when approval was refused two years ago. To simplify those results: the numbers released were astounding – considered by most in the medical community to be a ‘home run’. Urologists and oncologists – some of whom had been sitting on the fence – are now clamoring to be able to use this new tool, and the medical world is describing the expected approval of Provenge as the dawn of a new era in the treatment of prostate cancer. Skeptics have been won over. Numbers don’t lie.

The trial results were announced on Tuesday afternoon. Shortly before those results were made public, a criminal manipulation of DNDN stock occurred on Wall Street. Many are calling it ‘The unexplained DNDN Crash’. Take a look at the chart for DNDN stock that day:


Trading in DNDN was halted by the SEC at 1:27 PM. Just minutes before, the stock fell from $24.60/share to $7.50/share in just over one minute’s time. There were over 4,000 trades placed during that one minute, with about 3 million shares -- about half of an entire day's volume ‘changing hands’ in one minute's time. Keep in mind: this all occurred shortly before blockbuster results of Provenge’s clinical trial were announced.

This is nothing short of Wall Street terrorism.

Many honest retail investors lost a great deal of money in this criminal bear attack -- especially, but not exclusively, those retail investors who were trading in options, and those who had stop loss orders in place. And many back stage Wall Street big-money people covered potential losses. That 'unexplained DNDN crash' decimated the stock's short to mid-term rally.

Had the crash not occurred, once the trial results were announced new buyers and short positions needing to cover would have easily put the stock close to $30 a share and sheer momentum would have taken it higher over the next few days.

The optimism in the stock over the previous few weeks, pending the trial results announcement -- especially on announcement day -- was akin to a balloon being gradually filled with air, and the pressure was at a point where the balloon was about to burst. The 'crash' instantaneously let the air out of the balloon, affecting the stock price not only that day but for weeks to come. Ask yourself how this chart might have looked, had the 'powers that be' not interfered. I suggest that the broken line to the right of the precipice would have had a positive slope, and there would have been no breaks in the ascent. The dotted red line is my speculation as to how the stock price would have trended, post 4/28/09, without the manipulators' interference.


The ‘regulators’ at NASDAQ ‘examined’ -- for all of ten minutes -- the precipitous, unexplained drop in share price and allowed the trades to stand.

I was heartsick when I witnessed the latest blatant attempt to ambush this company and its products – but I, personally, have little to lose but money. Men (husbands, fathers, brothers, sons) worldwide are enduring indescribable physical and mental agony, and are losing their lives to a horrific disease, at the rate of more than eighty of them every day, while this company and its life-enriching product are being played with, as if they were nothing more than plastic disks in a game of tiddly winks.

Is there anything more vile and repugnant in this world than injustice? And is there anything more evil than injustice brought about by human greed and corruption ... and resulting in agony and death for thousands upon thousands of innocent others?

I remember, decades ago, a time when the American people possessed an innate assurance that, no matter what kind of tragedy occurred or what brand of unfairness we had to weather, there was always the promise that someone in power was out there to at least listen to our grievances – and there was a justice system that would, more than likely, see to it that those grievances would be addressed, resulting in ultimate ‘fairness’.

That was a time in which those in power – in the three branches of government, and in the higher echelons of the free market system – had the good of the country, and its citizens, at the top of their list of priorities.

Such is no longer the case. Justice, and the concept of ‘fairness’, have been co-opted by self absorbed men, posing as ‘leaders’, with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power.

... which is the reason those of us who believe in good science – and, more importantly, good science that appears to have the capability of improving the lot of humankind by alleviating suffering – are having difficulty believing that that science will be allowed to achieve its promise in this unsettled, uncertain era.

Two years ago we witnessed the triumph of greed and corruption over scientific innovation and success. And, in the two years that have elapsed since that infamous ‘triumph’, we have mourned the deaths, and lamented the torment, of nearly sixty thousand men who might have benefited from the science that remains in a greed-and-corruption-authored log jam.

Over the past two years, enemies of Provenge have continued to make end runs around the approval process by lighting brush fires outside of the normal channels -- by using the print medium to stir up controversy. Financial ‘analysts’ and ‘journalists’ continue to quote incorrect facts and make bogus future projections in an effort to stymie approval as well. Conflicts of interest on the part of medical professionals, and huge potential dollar losses on the part of hedge funds and short sellers, appear to represent the stuff of which an alliance continues to me made. And that malevolent alliance appears bound and determined to see to it that reasonable doubt is manufactured as to the credibility of the completed trials, and the future promise, of Provenge.

Now we sit here … having read the amazing numbers that were revealed on Tuesday … numbers that offer continuing proof of this revolutionary technology and its promise in the battle against one of history’s most dreaded diseases.

Dendreon has announced that it intends to file its amended BLA (Biologic License Application) for Provenge to the FDA in the last quarter of the year. They intend to be meticulous -- to cross every T and dot every I, so that nothing can be found amiss in their data or its presentation.

Between now and then there will no doubt be additional sniper fire, and outright ambushes, by those, both on Wall Street, and in the chemotheraphy cabal, who intend to continue to place roadblocks in front of a revolutionary medical breakthrough.

We need to pray that those who know the truth, and whose motives are to alleviate human suffering, are armed to the teeth with the facts – and that the new FDA decision-makers see it as their duty to use those facts to the benefit of the people whose very lives depend on their integrity.

~ joanie

Al Gore vs. Marsha Blackburn(Lying Arrogance vs. Honest Humility)

Take a good look at/listen to this brief Youtube clip of Al Gore being questioned yesterday by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, representing Tennessee’s 7th district (and keep your eyes and ears open for mention of her whenever the conservative wing of the republican party gets serious about seeking out new leadership). Congresswoman Blackburn simply seeks to have Al Gore clarify his association with a company that benefits from Cap and Trade legislation.

Gore’s behavior toward Blackburn, and her behavior toward him, serve as a microcosm of the struggle occurring between the ‘climate change’ cabal vs. Americans who simply want to know the truth about the ‘science’ of global warming, and those who stand to profit, both financially and by amassing substantial political power, through its acceptance.

Congresswoman Blackburn is courteous, sincere and honest in her questioning. Mr. Gore is rude (even to the point of sneering and laughing at her heartfelt concern), derisive, condescending, and angrily defensive in his answers.

Yet another example of the monumental attempt to quell any kind of dissention (even from an elected American representative who simply wants to ferret out the truth) as regards leftist propaganda/demagoguery.

Al Gore is a stupid, pompous megalomaniac to whom free speech represents an insidious threat to rampant leftist indoctrination. And he is simply one of a growing power-hungry group of ‘leaders’ in Washington that has the suppression of free speech near the top of their list of essential political priorities.

~ joanie