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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

6/05/2009

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.

43 comments:

Brian Spear said...

Who would have thought, back in the 50's and 60's, that writers for Pravda (in the former Soviet Union) would have been issuing US a warning about Marxism?

And who would have thought, 5 months ago, that so much Marxism and fascism could have been foisted on us in so short a period of time?

It's dizzying and deadly.

lori_gmeiner said...

All true. All devastating, to America and to freedom around the world.

Anonymous said...

Слушайте этого автора!

Jim_Bob said...

An excellent short synopsis of the most tragic era in human history. Most Americans either don't care or don't understand. Good work, Joanie.

Max Shapiro said...

Your pessimism is warranted. A well presented argument for the fall of America. God forgive us.

DaveBurkett said...

Watching someone like Obama representing America at the D-Day commemoration today was surreal. I got the same eerie feeling that I did watching him lay the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

With Reagan it was a different story.

We've come a long way in the last 20 years. It's too bad it's been down the wrong road.

Anonymous said...

As a part of the remnant, what are you doing to try to turn things around?

Anonymous said...

I don't always agree with you about the extent of Reagan's greatness, but you have Obama's and Congress' numbers, Joanie.

You've told me in the past that you're tired of hearing people say, "Wait till the Republicans are back in power," so I won't say that. But have hope.

no_way_a_liberal said...

A few additional quotes to augment your already fantastic essay:

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson

"Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right!" --- Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez

"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." --- John Adams

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! --- Patrick Henry

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." --- Thomas Jefferson

rob_maroni said...

With all the crimes against the Constitution that have been committed over the past four months, it makes one wonder what this administration and Congress would have to do to get most Americans upset and outraged. I have no answer to that question.

Bless you, Joanie.

Anonymous said...

I was going along alright until I came to "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 pass�. 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."

Then I lost it. Sometimes the truth hurts. :(

Lou Barakos said...

The most telling thing about the Pravda article is his commenting on the power of UNELECTED officials in the U.S. now.

We have the Fed calling all the shots money-wise, and now Big O is appointing all kinds of "czars" to run everything from healthcare to dog catching.

We may as well suspend elections from now on.

I miss Reagan too.

Anonymous said...

Spot on!

God bless you for your clear thinking and great writing.

Alexi B. said...

Joanie, you are a treasure, a voice of reason in the wilderness.

Anonymous said...

http://bennieblount.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/obama.bmp

joanie said...

Who would have thought, back in the 50's and 60's, that writers for Pravda (in the former Soviet Union) would have been issuing US a warning about Marxism? ... And who would have thought, 5 months ago, that so much Marxism and fascism could have been foisted on us in so short a period of time? ... It's dizzying and deadly.

And who would have thought that the average American would greet such government overstepping of the Constitution with nothing more than a yawn?

joanie said...

Jim_Bob and Max Shapiro,

Thank you for the very kind words. :)

~ joanie

joanie said...

Dave Burkett:

I share your discomfort seeing Obama representing America anywhere, but especially at ceremonies that memorialize our veterans.

He spends half of his time apologizing for the 'sins' of America, and the other half undoing all that those patriots sacrificed so dearly to attain.

~ joanie

joanie said...

As a part of the remnant, what are you doing to try to turn things around?

Anonymous, your question is a good one.

I spent close to forty years of my life in political activism -- from marching on Washington, demonstrating, circulating petitions, writing speeches, delivering speeches, organizing rallies, wearing out countless pairs of shoes campaigning door-to-door for conservative candidates, writing letters to the editor, etc. And I haven't missed voting in an election (even off-year elections) since I first registered to vote back in 1968.

I would continue to do all of those things, if I thought they could make a difference.

They don't anymore. The power in this country has been removed from the hands of the people and placed into the hands of a relative handful of elitists -- many of them unelected and completely unaccountable to the people.

I spend my time now speaking with friends and neighbors, as the opportunities allow. I attempt to have them focus on the genuine definition and source of our liberties, ask them whether they feel theirs are being taken from them, and then suggest that they put some thought into how they can be reclaimed.

There are very dark days ahead, and the American patriot can do little or nothing to stave them off, because 90%+ of his countrymen don't have the ability or the desire to look beyond tomorrrow.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Thank you for the great quotes, no_way_a_liberal! We cannot say that our Founders didn't warn us that vigilance would be necessary if we are to retain our freedoms.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Thanks for the kind words, Rob and Alexi. :)

~ joanie

proudpodunknative said...

GM, Amtrak and an Increasingly Fascist America

Last week, General Motors finally declared bankruptcy. Many in government thought $20 billion in taxpayer dollars would save the company, but as predicted, it only postponed the inevitable. The government will dump another $30 billion into GM and take a 60 percent controlling interest for it. Public officials are now involving themselves in tactical business decisions such as where GM's headquarters should move and what kind of cars it will build.

The promise that this is temporary and will eventually be profitable is supposed to ease the American people into accepting this arrangement, but it is of little comfort to those who remember similar promises when the American taxpayers bought Amtrak. After three years, government was supposed to be out of the passenger rail business. 40 years and billions of dollars later, the government is still operating Amtrak at a loss, despite the fact that they have created a monopoly by making it illegal to compete with Amtrak. Imagine what they can now do to what is left of the great American auto industry!

In a truly free market, GM would get your money one way and one way only -- by selling you a car you want, at a price you are willing to pay. Instead, the government is giving public money to a private company in spite of the market signals it has been sending. Throwing money at GM does not stop it from being an engine of wealth destruction; on the contrary, it simply gives it more wealth to destroy.

Had it been allowed to fail naturally, the profitable pieces of GM would have been bought up and put to good use by now. The laid off employees would likely have found new jobs and all that capital would be in private hands, reinvested in companies that produce products demanded by consumers. Instead, we are all poorer now.

Political pressure, rather than the rule of law, is deciding how to divide up the remains of GM. The bondholders had billions in retirement savings invested in the company, and though they were entitled to nearly three times as much as the United Auto Workers, the bondholders were left with just a 10 percent stake compared to the union's 17.5 percent stake. For their 60 percent stake, taxpayers have a future of constant bailouts to look forward to.

Comingling public control of private business is known as fascism. While today's politicians may feel emboldened with all their new power, history will only repeat itself as all this collapses on itself. It is the height of hubris for bureaucrats and politicians to attempt to control the market and the freewill of the American people. In the end, the market always wins out. Maybe one day future generations will wise up and allow free markets to function and thrive without the albatross of government around its neck. For now, it looks like those in charge have not learned the lessons of the past, and have doomed us to repeat those mistakes once again.

by Ron Paul

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=104

Cal Brindisi said...

Joanie, you're gonna love this (watch the video) -- Newsweek's Evan Thomas compares Reagan and Obama, claiming that Reagan was "provincial, chauvanistic, parochial", but Obama is above all of that narrow structuring, and is "sort of a god". The media are literally worshipping him now.

Obama is 'Sort of God'

Anonymous said...

Thank you for all you have done these past 40 years. And your writing here means that you are continuing that good work.

God bless!

Stuart

2ndAmendmentDefender said...

Stanislav Mishin knows more about what ails America than 99% of Americans. They're too busy getting their nails done, and other such "necessities."

The sickening thing is that those of us who know what's going on are dying a painfully slow death and those who are getting their nails done will go quickly.

A pox on everyone in Washington. They are traitors of the worst kind.

Anonymous said...

Almost everything that this administration and congress are doing is reminiscent of 1930s Italy.

The creation of all of the czars, and the mandatory closings of automobile dealerships (even those that are still turning a nice profit) is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is fascism at its worst and you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Anonymous said...

It's not like any of this should come as a surprise. Obama was laying out his plans to rob from the "rich" and give to the poor, and his buddies, long before he took office:

Obama rips U.S. Constitution, Faults Supreme Court for not mandating 'redistribution of wealth'

KathyMlynczak said...

The latest revelations about the Chrysler "bankruptcy", which is hard to call a bakruptcy at all since it doesn't follow any of the bankruptcy laws, are enough to make us wonder what country we're living in.

I think "anonymous" above's analogy to 1930's Italy is about as close as we can come to describing it.

I'm tired of always being angry and watching my neighbors walk around with an ignorant smile on their faces.

joanie said...

proudpodunknative,

I've taken issue with Ron Paul's isolationist views, but he's spot on in most of his other beliefs. The column you copied here is brilliant.

Political pressure, rather than the rule of law, is deciding how to divide up the remains of GM. The bondholders had billions in retirement savings invested in the company, and though they were entitled to nearly three times as much as the United Auto Workers, the bondholders were left with just a 10 percent stake compared to the union's 17.5 percent stake. For their 60 percent stake, taxpayers have a future of constant bailouts to look forward to.

If that doesn't make a person want to spit nails, that person shouldn't be allowed to call himself an American.

Thanks for the excellent contribution.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Cal Brindisi,

The sad truth is that Newsweek's Evan Thomas is the rule, rather than the exception, in the mainstream media. Their lovefest regarding this administration is historically unprecedented. The god of the universe and his chattering minions can do no wrong, and anyone who voices disagreement is somehow portrayed as 'racist'.

By the MSM's definition (only) I am indeed a 'racist', and proud of it. Our Founders would have demanded no less of us.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Kathy Mlynczak said:

I'm tired of always being angry and watching my neighbors walk around with an ignorant smile on their faces.


I understand your frustration ... on a daily basis!

~ joanie

Marvin Sheehan said...

Listening to the way the GM dealers are being treated is unbelievable. The dealers that are being forced to close are being strong armed into relinquishing their inventories to the dealerships that are being "allow" to stay open, with NO COMPENSATION for the inventory turned over. WHAT COUNTRY IS THIS??????

Anonymous said...

Today's Rasmussen polls shows Obama's approval rating at 62%, up 2% since last month.

Stick a fork in us! We're done!

Anonymous said...

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.


You can say that again.

Gary Burgess said...

I heard today that the new proposed healthcare budget is in the neighborhood of $600 million (which means that it will really top a couple trillion). Also, Congress and the White House want to circumvent the Congressional Budget Office (which has been a watchdog forever) and instead let the White House OMB (Office of Management and Budget) run the figures on healthcare from here on.

Is everyone familiar with the concept of "cooking the books"? If not, you soon will be.

Ed Whealand said...

Gary Burgess, I heard the same thing. And the MSM is keeping all this spending and fudging the numbers completely under wraps.

This administration has a green light to do whatever it wants, as far as implementing universal healthcare or anything else, and the media are always looking the other way.

What little they do report, most of the people just yawn and get back to "life as usual."

Well, believe me, "life as usual" is going to become pretty "unusual" quick enough, and then it will be too late to do anything about it.

Thanks for the excellent commentary, Joanie! You are a national treasure.

Anonymous said...

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.

Nietzsche had a powerful and accurate crystal ball.

We need to replace a dozen or so liberal columnists with conservative ones of your caliber and this country would be a different place.

Anonymous said...

You are an awesome writer with awesome thoughts and conclusions. Thank you!!!!!!

I will be back.

Rumela said...

Particularly in Central America, the military as an institution became a material force, sometimes independent of the economic ruling class. From the early 1930s until the end of World War II military dictatorships ruled each of the five Central ... Fourth, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan brought the struggle against “international communism” to Central America.

Anonymous said...

http://www.deepcapture.com/michael-milken-60000-deaths-and-the-story-of-dendreon-chapter-8-of-15/

Cal Brindisi said...

I think Joanie and a few other posters on the InvestorVillage message board may have contributed to the Deep Capture Dendreon research, but don't quote me. I know they recently advised on one but not sure it's this one.

Cal Brindisi said...

Joanie, you said you'd be gone from here a month. Just a reminder: it's a month! ;)

Anonymous said...

http://citizenwells.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/kerchner090713washtimes.jpg?w=500&h=642