Allegiance and Duty Betrayed:

Sunset at Concord BridgeR.I.P. America1776 - 2010

2010-03-25T21:04:00.004-04:00

I spent last Sunday at a party at a friend’s house, so I missed the health care vote. Good thing too. I wasn’t in much of a mood for a funeral.

It was a Pearl Harbor moment, the healthcare vote. You know, one of those times when the world forever divides into what came before and what comes after. I doubt anybody noticed. Most of us partied on, myself included. It was as good a way as any to wring down the curtain on the great experiment in democracy. I much prefer an Irish wake to a grief-stricken funeral.

A great country, long ailing, finally expired on Sunday. And just as it has been for three generations now, the people hardly noticed. Some sat mesmerized before the collective TV, watching the inevitable collapse of a way of life without truly realizing it, wondering what comes next. How appropriate. We’ve long been a generation of watchers. What better way to celebrate the demise of a dream? Then some of us, like me, went through the chow line for seconds. Opportunity ambition, hard work, all hallmarks of a nation steeped in the nobler elements of the human spirit were snuffed out for all time by the expedient leadership of a corrupt Congress, and the stroke of a pen by an unscrupulous president. And not a shot was fired.

Then there’s freedom, let’s not forget that. With all its hazards and pitfalls, freedom also took a mortal blow on Sunday, sacrificed on the altar of self-indulgence for cradle to grave care at the hands of a benevolent dictatorship.
Here’s a clue – a benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship.

But . . . but . . . what’s the big deal. The Republicans are coming in November. They’ll repeal it.

Is that so? Let’s take a look at some of the recent, and not so recent, major pieces of societal-altering legislation.

Social Security was instituted to provide a baseline safety net for the indigent during the Great Depression. Of course it accomplished nothing of the sort. And Democratic lawmakers, including FDR assured conservative opponents in Congress that the administration would revisit the policy as soon as the economic emergency had passed. That worked out really well as we all know. Oh, and the payroll taxes that were never supposed to go higher than 1%, read ‘em and weep, folks. If you think those taxes have maxed out, hang on to your wallet. Then again, don’t bother. What good would it do now?

Then there’s Medicare. A comprehensive system of care for senior citizens designed to be cheap, efficient and all encompassing. Get a load of how well it accomplished those lofty goals. It’s still with us, but unlike the Eveready bunny, it’s bankrupt, restrictive and running on empty, just in time for that huge glut of baby boomers to start hitting the rolls. What fitting irony. The ultimate entitlement generation with a terminal case of Gimme-Get-Me-I-want” gets nothing when they need it most.

And, of course, there’s the law conservatives love to hate. Roe v. Wade. We were so certain the Supreme Court would strike down this abomination on moral grounds alone when it was signed into law in 1973. Thirty-seven years and 52 million butchered babies later, how’s that working out for us? And now we’ve got ObamaCare©, which will supplement the government-sanctioned practice of the wholesale murder of innocents by subsidizing it as well. So don’t kid yourself that this recent monstrosity isn’t the law of the land. It is. And it’s here to stay.

What’s the payoff for the radical left, you may wonder? There are a couple of things.

Chief among them, it puts a knife in the heart of the sputtering economy. Oh, that’s just hysterical hyperbole, you say. Someone who’s been listening to a little too much Glenn Beck. Excuse me, Herbert Hoover accomplished the exact same thing in 1931. Only he did it by accident rather than design. Hoover concluded that the solution to what then was a severe recession was to balance the federal budget. He attempted to do so by raising taxes. He pushed the economy off a cliff. What was a significant downturn became the Great Depression and it took another ten years and Japanese bombs falling on Pearl Harbor to put an end to it.

Sound familiar? It should. Because, if you think your taxes are through the roof now, just wait. Someone’s going to have to underwrite the greatest entitlement program in history, and it’s not the down and out indigent this abomination purports to assist. It’s you, Sylvester. So pay up. What better way to reduce an entire population to the status of paupers and place them right in the middle of dependency on government largesse?

Why would this be a good thing, you ask? Simple. Socialism requires a dependent population. And we’re well on our way to it with a multi-generational history of government reliance since 1965. It already is a way of life. Healthcare is the last nail in the coffin, simply because it’s the one service that everyone, everywhere ultimately needs. It is an inelastic service. We depend on the government for welfare, unemployment, child care, education. Now we’ll extend that dependence to our very survival. There will be no area of life in what passes for America that will not be government-influenced, if not controlled outright. And any entrepreneurs out there, who have the audacity, courage, ambition and vision to build something better . . . well, they can empty their wallets, because this latest form of tyranny is going to be built on the back of their necks.

And then there’s immigration reform. Anyone wonder why, all of a sudden, the scepter of border control rears its ugly head as the healthcare debate rages? It’s because the two are joined at the hip. If the current leadership is going to encourage hordes of uneducated laborers to once again come flooding across the border, they’ve got to offer them something to make it worth their while. Universal healthcare is just the ticket. And since American business isn’t going to be making much, considering the confiscatory tax rates soon to be imposed on them, they’ve got to keep the slaves healthy. After all, they have sixty years of cheap labor in front of them. And we’ve all got to invest in this little nugget of subjugation. Future generations of indentured servants demand it, insuring the cycle of tyranny continues in perpetuity.

Student loans come under a similar banner. With government control of all such loans – except banks in whose jurisdictions elected representatives have sold their soul to the devil – do you think higher education just might be restricted to the culturally and politically correct? Considering that practice has been going on for twenty years or so, I’d call it a lead pipe cinch.

And then there’s those pesky baby boomers now entering their golden years with the same sense of entitlement and self-absorption with which they’ve gone through their entire life. The biggest demographic bulge in American history now enters the most expensive season of life with its hand still out. How fitting this group of self-indulgent narcissists gets kicked to the curb at the very moment they’re convinced they’ve earned their season of rest.

There’s a certain symmetry to it. The group that tore down everything their WWII father built – the home, the church, the workplace, the university – gets tossed in the dumpster of history at their moment of maximum arrogance. They demand a level of respect they never offered to anyone let alone earned in their own right, insist upon values they never lived by, and get tossed aside like yesterday’s leftover garbage.

But they’re senior citizens, you say. We’ve always taken care of our senior citizens.

Is that so? Since when? In pre-WWII America, most seniors lived with extended family when they became too infirm to work. But then, that was during the days of the nuclear family. You remember? Mom, Dad, kids at home, and Grandma and Grandpa when they became too sick to take care of themselves. But then, that was during an age of respect, long before the baby boomers threw that practice on the cultural grenade with the supercilious conceit that marked their lives.

Well, here’s a news bulletin, Mr. and Mrs. Boomer – and I count myself among you, to my everlasting shame – a nation that has no respect for life in the womb will have no respect for you when you’ve outlived your usefulness. A group that had contempt for everyone and everything they encountered on the way up with get it in spades when they’re old, decrepit and dependent. And folks, that time has arrived. You’re dispensable, Derek. Get lost. Because you’re a lot more expensive than you’re worth.

Any questions? Just read Peter Singer, or check out the body count racked up under Roe v. Wade. The groundwork has been laid by you, just in time for you to reap the whirlwind. Who said there’s no reckoning for the wicked?

“But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” – Matthew 19:30.

As my friend’s party wore on into the evening last Sunday, I thought of where the great experiment began, with the shot heard round the world at Concord Bridge. Those men had a sense of what was at stake. They knew the long odds stacked against them. And they knew the cost. Long years of privation, hunger, disease, defeat and death lay before them. But in every revolution there is a hard core cadre of believers, with the singular vision of what awaits them if they succeed – a country. So it was with the American experiment. Their vision was simple, but sweet. A life of their own. The opportunity to make their mark based on their own effort. And yes, the possibility of failure. But beyond that lay the precious and priceless treasure to stand up, regroup, and rejoin the struggle of free people to start over, free from the oppression of an tyrannical government whose real intent is not to soften the inevitable hammer blows of life, but to dominate, discourage and destroy.

The singular zeal of the American revolutionaries defied their lack of numbers. The revolt was far from universally supported. But there was the underlying assumption that all freedom comes due in blood. And to their everlasting credit, they were willing to pay that price. It could explain why the spark lit at Concord Bridge set a match to the cultural keg of dynamite that fueled the engine which tamed a continent. And why, as John Kennedy so eloquently put it in his 1960 inaugural, “the glow of that fire can truly light the world.”

But the candle went out on Sunday. It was a noble experiment, but it’s over. Such is the fate of empires, particularly those who do not hold the lonely vigil of keeping their identity alive. So don’t look for such men again. They’ve long since disappeared in the fluffy folds of the nanny state. And now, what remains of a once great nation nestles comfortably in the arms of a system of pseudo-healthcare that is anything but. The time when respect for each and every individual American citizen is over. And the right for them to pursue their dreams is gone.

It’s a sea change moment, the day the last vestige of light went out of the country.

Remember where you were when it happened, who you were with, what you were doing. You lived to see your country disappear. And above all remember one thing.

Remember how nice it was while it lasted.

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

Evil By Any Other Name is Still Evil

2010-03-20T13:04:00.010-04:00

Since I am in the process of moving from what we term 'adulthood' into my 'senior' years, I am finding that, while my responsibilities are shifting, they are in many ways increasing -- and yet stamina, and the desire to 'make a difference' in the world, are not increasing concurrently. :) These days, I would much prefer taking a long fresh-air walk with Rick and Bert to writing political commentary. I suppose it's a resignation to the idea that I want to enjoy what is left of life rather than devote precious time and energy to an uphill battle whose 'hill' becomes higher and more precarious with each passing day.

For many weeks (maybe even months) I have been contemplating writing something of a 'swan song' here on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed, and yet the desire to cover everything that I would want to say, in specific, about the current state of our beloved republic, and the future that this weekend in particular portends, has become a task upon which I no longer want to embark. It's just too energy- and time-consuming, and its purpose is nebulous and undefined, at best.

So I've settled on authoring a 'swan song disconnect’, and will simply list a set of concerns and observations with which I would like to bow out of the fray. I leave it to the wonderful readers who have frequented this blog for nearly four years to pick up the slack. You ... especially the young adults on fire for liberty ... represent the hope of America ... the hope of mankind.

America is now infected with an apathy, self-indulgence and sloth that represent the core reason for our impending fall. Yes, there are courageous and vigilant pockets of citizens ... 'tea party' organizers and faithfuls among them ... who remember the vision and sacrifice of, and stern and heartfelt warnings issued by, our Founders ... and who revere the American Constitution as the most magnificent blueprint for governance ever conceived by the mind of man.

But such patriots find themselves in an ever-decreasing minority. America's 'leadership' in Washington, the mainstream media, institutions of 'higher learning', and the ever more powerful 'entertainment industry' now hold the reins of public opinion with an iron-fisted grip. All four of those powerful opinion-makers for more than six decades have been systematically infiltrated by left-leaning ideologues bent on 'transforming' our Founders' vision into something frighteningly grotesque and diabolical: the implementation of an ideology that considers individual human liberty ... and all of the belief in 'right' and 'wrong', progress, productivity and sense of personal responsibility that that precious commodity engenders ... to be its most threatening enemy.

It is a mass ignorance of our noble roots, combined with a laziness and unwillingness to consider them at all, that has allowed evil men to gain, and scheme to retain in perpetuity, the upper hand. And the U.S. Constitution, and the concept (and reality) of individual liberty, have found themselves premeditatedly murdered in the process.

The pockets of citizens who actually see the emperor without his clothes have now begun to feel a kinship with that courageous young Chinese student who attempted to face-down a military tank in Tiananmen Square. The tanks are indeed mobilizing. They have become arrogant with power and will no longer be denied the completion of their assignment ... and the majority of the citizenry is too busy watching reality TV to recognize and acknowledge their movement. President Obama's popularity remains consistently in the neighborhood of 50%, in spite of mountains of liberty-loathing, criminally unconstitutional pronouncements and policymaking.

For the first time in America's history, the mass 'ignorance is bliss' philosophy embraced by the American populace, as well as the massive, historically unprecedented unconstitutional power grab being perpetrated by Washington, can no longer be turned back. Educational indoctrination is irreversible; election results will increasingly find themselves dictated by groups such as ACORN and SEIU; as taxes and bureaucratic regulations on small businesses increase, more and more American jobs will be government jobs and fewer and fewer will be in the private sector; and as an increasing number of Americans find themselves standing in unemployment lines for much more than a year (while our 'altruistic leadership' increases the unemployment compensation timeline), America will become an entirely socialist state, with the citizenry completely dependent on government 'largesse' and bureaucratic dictate for their very existence. Not only has our current 'leaderhip' amassed massive unconstitutional power, but they intend to stack the deck so that that power is now omnipotent and irreversible.

I received an e-mail from a dear friend this morning stating, in part, regarding ‘healthcare reform’:
_____________________
I have read many of the parts from the bill, which are so obviously punitive, intending to force people who are already insured to either pay double what they pay now or quit their insurer and submit to the government plan, if their insurer does not pre-emptively dump them because their statistical coverage pool dried up from an inability to pay.

I think that inability to pay is what the government planners are attempting to take advantage of -- not the inability to pay by those who have a record of being unable to pay premiums, but the inability to pay by the people who have been paying.

The government plan -- the ‘healthcare bill’ -- intends to make Unable Payers out of Able Payers -- and it will use the power of law enforcement to force you to not be able to pay or go to jail.

The bill does not say ‘let us insure the people who cannot get insurance, and pay for that with increased taxes’.

The bill does say ‘let us force into ‘cannot pay’ status, a large portion of existing payers, so that the pool of the then un-insured is great, and great with desperation, such that the new pool submits to government control over their situation.’

... If the aim of the bill were to provide health care for the uninsured, by insuring them and socializing the cost -- taxing the citizens in order to fund the insurance -- then the aim, honestly stated, and the insurance coverage, and its funding could be written on one page.

Instead of that simple act, the bulk of the bill is a stepping stone path of discovering what patients and doctors may freely choose to do, and then using the coercion of federal law enforcement in order to stop the freedom to choose. It is possibly the most horrible and despicable act of Congress, other than pre-Civil War acts that kept some Americans in slavery.
_____________________
My friend is well-read and entirely capable of thinking outside the box. Not so with the majority of Americans these days.

Had the bone-deep government duplicity regarding 'healthcare reform' occurred decades ago, it would have caused mass outrage, and would have resulted in citizen outcries to hold back the leftist tide. Yet, because we have been 'educated' by both the American 'public education' system, the biased media's lack of interest in such topics, and the entertainment industry's insistent maligning of the conservative viewpoint, massively unconstitutional government actions have caused but a soon-to-be dispersed ripple.

Congress and the President continue to depict the 'healthcare reform' bill as an altruistic program aimed at increasing the quality of American healthcare and bringing healthcare insurance to those who cannot afford it ... and all of this altruism will be accomplished at a substantial savings over the current system.

Not one word of the above premise is true. In fact, the truth lies 180-degrees from the words our ‘leaders’ speak.

America's healthcare system, though flawed, is the most moral and successful system of caring for the sick, needy and dying in the history of mankind. And, although not all, the majority of the 'flaws' in that system can be traced back to long-term government interference in the system. Burdensome bureaucratic regulation of the entire healthcare, HMO and insurance industries has made a major contribution to skyrocketing costs. And the fact that trial lawyers represent one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington has led to a 'hands off' philosophy in response to any rational call for tort reform. Frivolous medical malpractice suits contribute mightily to healthcare costs in America, and they also contribute to the growing dearth of available doctors, especially in the field of obstetrics. Doctors are leaving many specialties in droves simply because they can no longer afford to pay the skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums.

Yet our 'leadership' in Washington, desperately in need of the hundreds of millions in campaign donations that the trial lawyer lobby provides, remains mute ... while at the same time crucifying the health insurance industry's 'blood-sucking, exorbitant' 5% annual profits as 'ungodly' and 'un-American'.

You see, the demonizing of that industry, as well as the maligning of the medical profession (the President himself has repeatedly accused American surgeons of performing unnecessary operations, simply to improve their bottom line) is a necessary tactic in the march toward government solutions to 'capitalist evils' ... and the full-fledged embracing of government-run universal, socialist healthcare.

The majority of the citizenry is at least informed enough to recognize that any such plan is not in their best interest, but two factors are working in our leadership's favor in their soon-to-be-successful effort to impose this abomination on America:

(1) The fact that, no matter what atrocity they commit this weekend, the outrage among the populace will not be sufficient to force them to roll back the egregious unconstitutional legislation.

(2) Two-thirds of the hundreds of billions in recently-approved 'stimulus money' has not yet been spent. That money will be spent as we near the November elections, resulting in a mirage 'improving economy' and 'improving jobs prospects'. The result will be that the average American voter, whose attention span can now be measured in nanoseconds, will forget whatever outrage he may have felt in March and will opt to re-elect the incumbents, simply because he believes that a healthy economy (even if that 'health' is dangerous, phony and fleeting) represents hope for America, and upsetting the apple cart would be unthinkable.

I have recently attempted to debate on an internet forum the merits of 'healthcare reform' with people who consider themselves intelligent and well-informed. I have alluded to the actual wording in the senate bill when making my points and observations. When asserting that rationing, under this bill, is all but inevitable, I have pointed to the fact that three independent amendments were proposed -- amendments that would simply make rationing illegal -- nothing more, nothing less … and yet all three amendments were voted down on party lines. I have asked those who claim that this bill will not result in rationing, 'How then can you explain congress' unwillingness to pass even one such amendment?' One response I received was, 'This is nothing but Glenn Beck drivel,' and most of the other responses were along the same vein.

Such closed-minded thought processes would not upset me, were it not for the fact that I believe that half or more of our countrymen are similarly afflicted. It is simply too much trouble to consider facts. After all, the swallowing of sound-bites, and the pleasures of bread-and-circus diversions, are far less demanding on our grey matter.

Who among us has read the entire 2,000+ page bill?

Who among our ‘leadership’ has read the entire 2,000+ page bill?

Will our President read the entire 2,000+ page bill before signing it into law?

Who authored the entire 2,000+ page bill?

Answer to (1): Very few

Answer to (2): None of them

Answer to (3): No

Answer to (4) A myriad of left-leaning special interest groups, over a period of several decades worth of social engineering ideology perfection

For specifics regarding a few of the abominations included within the 2,000+ pages, please read Dare We Hope That Massachusetts Will Inspire Us Again? and scroll to the list at the bottom of the essay (the list is taken from the original HR3200 bill, but the current senate bill is a fraternal twin).

What is more evil than men conspiring, in smoke-filled rooms, to serve as mini-gods, and couching in pious, altruistic words a gargantuan crusade to seat themselves as a ruling elite and render their countrymen subservient to their rulings?

Answer: A populace whose heritage and forebears were noble beyond anything ever before experienced by mankind, and yet who have chosen to passively allow the success of the above.

God bless all American patriots! Receive your peace of mind from the knowledge that there will indeed be a final judgment, and the Judge who sits in that seat of authority knows the real content of every man’s heart.

~ joanie

Where is John Galt?

2010-02-21T14:47:00.002-05:00

Not “Who is John Galt?” I think we all know the answer to that question. At least for those of us for whom Atlas Shrugged has become the conservative Holy of Holies. We all know who he is. But just where he has disappeared to in this age of commerce by government fiat is the more pertinent issue. The operative question then becomes “Where is John Galt?”

We all know the story. John Galt – Ayn Rand’s Olympian Übermensch of American business and industry – stops the engine of the world in her apocryphal novel, now more than half a century old. He does so by various means at his disposal – from friendly (or not so friendly) persuasion, to kidnapping, to outright sabotage. Galt is everywhere and nowhere, ethereal and concrete, mystical and empirical. He is all things to all people, truly a man for all seasons.

It is a tribute to Rand’s skill as a novelist that the lion’s share of the book takes place without his presence in any concrete fashion. It is only in the story’s final stages that we get a clear picture of this visionary leader, whose ruthlessness in his singular destruction of the threads that hold civilization together speaks powerfully of his single-mindedness and commitment. He is a man without flaws, devoid of the petty failings that plague mortal men. He is the god of Ayn Rand’s fictional utopia.

So what are we to make of the absence of such men, now, in the 21st century? In the age of business by government takeover, he is conspicuously missing in action at a time when just such a man could be most effectively utilized. What does his absence indicate? And what does that say about the time in which we live, and ultimately about ourselves?

Unlike many of my conservative brethren, I don’t wield my rubber stamp when it comes to Rand’s objectivist philosophy or her fictional masterpiece by which she makes it known. Not long ago, one of my USC lawyer friends sent me a quote – whose origins I do not know, which encapsulates at least his area of interest when it comes to this compelling novel:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves Orcs."

O.K. You’re either grinning, chuckling, consumed with laughter, or red faced with hysteria. And while I’m not sure where I fall in the continuum of criticism of the story, I do recognize there’s no middle ground when it comes to a position. People either love this book or hate it. But nobody comes away from this compelling tale of doom and regeneration without an opinion.

It begins with Eddie Willers – that eternal, ever-present everyman. Faithful, loyal, and reliable as a loaf of white bread, he chances upon a street derelict in some not-too-distant-future America suffering from a contemporary economic cataclysm. Recession? Depression? We don’t know. And in truth, it does not matter. Something has gone seriously off the rails. Eddie greets the bum in the vernacular of the day. Not “Hello, how are you,” but “Who is John Galt?” It isn’t so much a question as an acknowledgment. Things are bad, and there is no end in sight, all rosy claims to the contrary.

Eddie labors for Dagny Taggart – Vice President of Operations for Taggart Transcontinental Railroad – with whom, at least in this reader’s estimation, he is more than a little smitten. Give it up, Eddie. She’s out of your league. Any woman capable of running a national transportation company, carrying the dead weight of her deadbeat brother, slipping and dodging the strangulation of government edicts, is going to yearn for more than the likes of you. She’ll dream of Hank Rearden, the steel magnate, Francisco d’Anconia, the international playboy and mining executive, Ragnar Danneskjöld, the menacing privateer, or perhaps the predictably efficient Owen Kellogg. She will appreciate the operatic genius of Richard Halley. But she secretly yearns for her perpetual ideal, her unattainable dream – John Galt himself.

Forget it, Eddie. She’s not your type.

Note to anyone who doubts this little tidbit of truth and consequence: A woman of Dagny’s stripe – dynamic, multi-talented, striking in appearance and ability – will always look for a man who exceeds her own accomplishments. Time-card punching working stiffs need not apply for the favors of this gossamer goddess of American commerce.

It would appear that Hank Rearden fits the bill, and this certainly appears so in the early stages of the story. But Dagny quickly becomes enthralled by the overwhelming dynamism, vision, dare I say masculinity, of the driving force of a burgeoning underground society of entrepreneurs – John Galt himself.

Except he’s missing in action for the bulk of the novel. Ah, but his presence is felt everywhere. For all across the country, men like him – visionary men of power, talent, ambition and ability – are destroying what they’ve built by their own hand, and disappearing from the landscape. In the wake of government strangulation, confiscation, retribution, the men who built the modern industrial state are tearing it down. And Galt – elusive, ethereal, but ever-present – is the driving force behind this demolition.

John Galt stops the motor of the world, as the author so aptly puts it. As first among equals of that select group of farsighted men of superior ability, he recognizes that the country now plays a new game with a stacked deck of cards, and rather than play by the new rules, he overturns the card table and walks away, taking the bulk of similar men with him.

And so the bleak landscape of post-America America takes shape in Ayn Rand’s prophetic novel about the downfall of greatness in the country that nurtured it for so long. One by one, thriving enterprises are strangled by encroaching socialist policies of a tyrannical government. Incrementally, innovation and novelty are trampled underfoot by government bureaucrats. And when it’s over, we are faced with a country burdened by a dependent population, with a huge sense of entitlement, and no group of super-achievers left to support this modality of dependence.

Kind of like now.

This is not a review of the novel. If you are among the handful of conservatives who has not read it, I urge you to do so. Trust me, it will be worth the effort to wade through the 1100-or-so pages, whether you’re inspired at the end of it or horrified.

So where is he? Where is John Galt in the America of 2010? Could be he’s comfortably ensconced in Galt’s Gulch waiting for the end to come. Only in the real America he doesn’t have to go to great lengths to bring everything crashing down around his ears. All he has to do is sit back and wait.

At first glance, it would appear there’s no great cause for concern. In fact, what message does the current administration send to the titans of business and industry? Let’s see … We’ve had the Detroit bailout, the Wall Street bailout, the banking bailout, the (currently) abortive attempt to nationalize 1/6 of the nation’s GDP in the healthcare takeover. Gosh, and it all worked out so well. If you were a business executive, what would you conclude?

“Hmmm … I really don’t have to make savvy, hard-hitting, well-conceived business decisions. If my company is big enough, and my mistakes are sufficiently bad, I can make whatever stupid move I want. Big Daddy in Washington will bail me out every time.”

I ask you, who needs John Galt to stop the motor of the world? All he has to do is sit back with his feet up on the coffee table and watch it all collapse on the Fox Business Network. Because such policies – profligate spending, confiscatory taxes, punitive measures against the best and brightest among us – will guarantee a collapse of catastrophic proportions. It might not happen tomorrow. And we might not be able to wrap our intellect around it, considering the level of cognitive dissonance loose in the land – but rest assured, what cannot be maintained will not be maintained.

No, we don’t need John Galt to tear down the infrastructure of the world. That’s being done. What we need him for is to rebuild the ruins like the Phoenix rising from the ashes. And alas, Ayn Rand doesn’t take us there. It is at this point that the story ends.

Yes, conservatives love Atlas Shrugged. It means more to us than the Holy Bible. For many of us, perhaps even most of us, it is the Holy Bible of conservative ideology. Objectivism is our new religion, John Galt, the knight templar of our new evangel. And what’s not to like? A multi-talented, powerful, uncompromising man of means and ambition, single-handedly destroys a world dominated by chair-bound paper-pushers – personified by Wesley Mouch (aptly named, if I do say so myself) – the consummate government bureaucrat. Galt does so out of a driving force of enlightened (or maybe expedient) self-interest. He cares nothing for anything or anyone beyond his own pulsing, powerful ambition, fueled by his talents and abilities.

We love this kind of stuff. We internalize it. We live it, where feasible. Problem is, most of us are not industrial Übermenschen. We’re forty-hour-a-week working stiffs. That is, those of us who are still in a position that commands forty hours of activity. The further problem is, there’s a dark undercurrent to the Olympian utopia of Ayn Rand’s vision of men of capital and accomplishment.

“What’s that, you say? I thought you liked Atlas Shrugged?” I do, but only up to a point.

Ayn Rand was prescient in her view of the vapidity of business by government control. She correctly saw the petty jealousies, the arbitrary mediocrity, the trivial meanness that comes when massive government intervention intrudes in an area it has no business going. She identified the evil inherent in a system of controls for which arbitrary spitefulness was the order of the day. What she failed to recognize was the same characteristics were alive and well in her objectivist ideal – John Galt.

There is a very apt passage of the Bible that points a troubling figure at Rand’s idyllic hero –

“¹⁰ As it is written ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; ¹¹ There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. ¹² They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.’” – Romans 3:10-12

You think she was bothered by this? Not a bit. Ayn Rand was an avowed atheist. She was quick to see the corruption of massive government intervention because she lived through the Russian revolution and the earliest days of the communist regime. She suffered through the Soviet-sponsored famine of the early 1920s. She knew full well the evil that lived in the hearts of men drunk with government power and accountable to no one. Too bad that vision didn’t extend to John Galt.

It’s an all too common tale, this tunnel vision of the intellect. We do it all the time.

I worship with the prime movers of the local community, devout Christians all. And many of them have illegals in their employ (still). They pay them under the table, and throw them away like yesterday’s leftover garbage when they have no further need for them. And they’ve got more coming in every day, despite the hard times.

I have a good friend with whom I’ve shared season tickets to USC football for the past ten years. He’s a staunch conservative, voting exclusively for Republican candidates since he’s been eligible to. But he’s not giving up the union job that guarantees him $125,000 a year for working on an assembly line at an ice cream factory. And you can bet his union isn’t giving any wage concessions to management to keep the company afloat.

One of my dearest friends is a middle-aged woman who is a passionate supporter of the troops fighting overseas. She’s always quick to defend the cause for which they fight, and the men (and women) who do the fighting. But she’s never gone to the local airport to welcome them home, and never attended a Memorial Day service in her life.

So there’s plenty of inconsistency to go around out there. It’s no surprise that Bible-believing conservative Christians also worship on the altar of Ayn Rand’s objectivist model of perfection. Oh yes, and then there’s this troubling passage ...

“¹³ But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images ¹⁴ (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous GOD)” – Exodus 34:13-14

... well, that gets kicked to the curb in the process of deluding ourselves that we, too, have the Dionysian abilities of John Galt as well. We don’t. We just live vicariously through him.

It’s intoxicating when you think about it. To be above the fray is one of the most seductive fantasies of people caught in the maelstrom. To be possessed of such monumental abilities as to be held, not to a higher standard, but no standard at all, is exhilarating. We see it in John Galt’s now world-famous objectivist monologue.

On the surface, there’s nothing to take issue with. Indeed, it is, and should be, a way of life for all of us. We should pursue our dreams and rise as far as talent and ambition can take us. Except people (of all stripes, not just government bureaucrats) are weak, envious, hateful and cruel. And the most enlightened pursuit of prosperity for whatever motivation, ultimately descends into an amoral lust for power for its own sake. There’s no avoiding it. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Tell the truth. We loved Ken Lay (of Enron notoriety). Our only disappointment was that he got caught. And we admired Bernie Madoff. His only sin was he wasn’t slick, savvy or fast enough. Only we don’t have that savvy. Most of us, anyway. And we certainly don’t possess the requisite ruthlessness to grab all we can and throw the people we are purported to serve on the grenade.

So what would be the role of John Galt be in the America of 2010, precariously balanced on the precipice of falling into a global abyss? He’s essential. For all his flaws – and he did possess them, regardless of the author’s characterization of him – the country will need him when things fall apart, and the center does not hold. Only men of such talent have the requisite steel in their spine to rebuild a nation.

But what will that nation look like when the talents of John Galt have come to full fruition? To answer that question, let’s fast forward to the point at which Ayn Rand’s yellow brick road came to a screeching halt.

There stood John Galt overlooking a darkened, desolate landscape, tracing the dollar sign in the air, poised and ready to rebuild a nation in his own image. Dagny Taggart nestled in the crook of his arm, gazing up at his chiseled features in adoring admiration, eagerly willing to sacrifice her sweet, young body without a moment’s hesitation.

Galt Enterprises will contract Hank Rearden to produce unlimited supplies of Rearden Metal^© underwritten by a loan from Midas Mulligan to rebuild the nation. Rearden will do this at cost, with the clear understanding that he will receive royalties from Galt Enterprises when the country gets on its feet. Galt will breach that contract and, due to the new tort reform laws, Rearden will be driven into bankruptcy, his company to be taken over by none other than the man in which he held such blind faith, John Galt himself.

Dagney Taggart will rise to CEO of Taggart Transcontinental, all the while carrying on a torrid affair with John Galt. Unknown to her, Galt owns the exclusive rights to all air transportion services throughout the country. He undercuts Dagny’s shipping rates, driving her out of business. But she is so consumed with the constant stream of hot, steamy sex she enjoys with the god she worships that she realizes, too late, that her only future will be as Galt’s love slave, and to perform domestic chores around Galt’s Gulch.

Wesley Mouch will be executed by firing squad . . . without a trial.

And Eddie Willers, the ever-eternal everyman, the forty-hour-per-week loyal servant for whom dependability is the watchword of his faith, will be sent packing. His job will be offshored to India, thereby increasing Taggart Transcontinental’s bottom line without any actual increase in business efficiency. And Eddie will be consigned to die alone in the gutter, penniless and without hope. So much for a lifetime of faithful service, not to mention creating jobs in an era of double-digit unemployment. Not part of JG’s mantra.

Any future innovation will come from entrepreneurs in China, India and Russia, all under contract to John Galt. And the rest of us will be the slaves who serve him, worship him, and ultimately discarded upon the garbage dump of history by him. Because Galt is not an American. He owes no loyalty to this country. His loyalty is to his own bottom line, his own wealth. And he is a citizen of the world.

And the question ...

“²⁶ For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” – Matthew 16:26

... will be answered quite simply – It’s hugely profitable. And we’ll give everything toward its end.

Everything we have.

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

Government Flow Chart

2010-02-09T21:53:00.001-05:00

Maybe Cliff Does Know a Thing or Two After All ...

2010-01-31T21:47:00.003-05:00

This isn’t the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock – I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut-butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie ... actor John Ratzenberger

Am I the Only One Who Sees a Resemblance? :)

2010-01-27T11:24:00.005-05:00

Haskell-Geithner

Never Waste a Good Crisis

2010-01-25T14:00:00.007-05:00

The devious tenets contained in Saul Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals' have once again made an appearance in the strategies of the Obama administration. The administration has sunk to a new low -- a depth to which even I had not envisioned them capable of falling.

Early last week, after seeing the First Lady on television asking us all to donate to Haiti relief, I logged onto the White House website to investigate how the administration is handling fundraising for the earthquake victims.

In the upper righthand portion of the site is a big red-and-white 'Help for Haiti -- Learn What You Can Do' icon. You can't miss it. I followed the link and decided to make a small donation, not because I wanted to do so through the White House (we already made an early donation through the Salvation Army), but because I wanted to see whether there would be 'political (e-mail) ramifications' as a result of doing so. Would even this administration really be so crass as to take political advantage of the unprecedented tragedy in Haiti?

I received my answer this morning, less than a week after I made my donation to Haiti relief.
___________________________

Rick and Joan --

On Wednesday evening, President Obama will deliver his first State of the Union address. It comes at a critical moment.

We must regroup, refocus, and re-engage on the vital work ahead. So let's watch it together at a State of the Union Watch Party in your neighborhood.

We've hit some serious bumps in the road recently in our march toward change. We always knew it would be difficult, but this past week has definitely been a hard one, for all of us.

But this movement didn't come so far without making it through some challenging times. It's at moments like these when we need you most. People are hurting. Our country is at a crossroads, and in communities like yours all across America we must all fight for the progress our families and businesses need to thrive.

The President's resolve has never been stronger to keep fighting for health insurance reform, for lasting job creation, and to rein in the big banks and fight the undue influence of lobbyists. Wednesday's speech will be a pivotal moment for us all to get on the same page and continue the fight together.

In just two days, OFA supporters like you will be gathering at State of the Union Watch Parties in living rooms and community centers across the country. You can share ideas and experiences -- and I'll be joining on the phone for a special strategy huddle before the speech.

Find and RSVP for a State of the Union Watch Party near you:

http://my.barackobama.com/AttendSOTU

I hope you can join us,

David Plouffe

P.S. -- Volunteers have set up hundreds of Watch Parties over the last few days. But if there isn't one yet near you, just sign up to host one yourself. It's easy and fun, local OFA organizers will help you with any questions you have, and it's an incredibly important way to let supporters near you be part of the action:

http://my.barackobama.com/HostSOTUM

~ joanie

Dare We Hope That MassachusettsWill Inspire Us Again?

2010-01-19T12:42:00.010-05:00

Today, January 19, 2010, has the potential to be a watershed event in the history of our republic. The Massachusetts senate seat that has been occupied, with an iron-fisted grip, by ultra-leftist Ted Kennedy for nearly a half century is now presenting the very real possibility of being occupied by a Republican. And the government-controlled healthcare system for which Ted Kennedy crusaded for decades is in real danger of extinction as a result.

Don’t allow the mainstream media pundits to tell you that this election is anything short of a national referendum, in mocrocosm, on the first 365 days of the Obama administration – and the concept of nationalized healthcare, in particular.

Despite the voter fraud and corruption surely being perpetrated in the Bay State today by the likes of ACORN et al, if Scott Brown succeeds in winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, we all need to prepare for unconstitutional machinations the likes of which we have not yet witnessed. And, considering the recent manner in which the Consitution has been declared increasingly irrelevant (even a nuisance), that’s saying a lot.

Perhaps Brown’s certification of election will be delayed until a vote on ‘healthcare reform’ can be streamrolled through the Senate. Perhaps his swearing in will be delayed on a technicality. Perhaps a bill in which the House and Senate versions of the bill are successfully merged will be deemed unnecessary, and a vote on one or the other will be declared urgent and of immediate importance. Whatever the corrupt machinations involved, the push for immediate government healthcare will not die.

Should Brown lose this election, we all need to ask ourselves whether voter fraud was the cause of his loss. Should he win, we need to buckle our seat belts. The Marxists who are seeking to exercise tyrannical power over 1/6 of our nation’s GDP, and who want to declare meaningless the most personal individual liberites guaranteed us by our Founders -- choices regarding how we determine our health and wellness, and life and death -- will not allow Scott Brown’s crucial vote to make a difference in their evil march toward the destruction of the finest healthcare system in the history of mankind.

They have not finished villifying American physicans and healthcare/insurance providers. They have not finished demonizing the free market nature of America’s healthcare system. They have not finished their attempts to pit one American against another. They have not finished pandering to the special interest groups that promise to keep them in power until the next millennium. They have not finished portraying themselves as super-human humanitarians whose agenda seeks only to make life better for us all, and whose intellect and altruism destines them to make our decisions for us, for our own betterment. They have not finished designing the gargantuan, irrevocable bureaucracy that will render all of our freedoms null and void. And they will not rest until they do. Roadblocks will not be tolerated.

Below is a brief synopsis of the most egregious portions of the original House healthcare bill (HR 3200). It is all but impossible to analyze the House and Senate bills that have emerged since, because they have been both authored and ‘debated’ (loose use of the term) behind closed doors. But rest assured: Most of what was in HR 3200 is either still intact, or there exists sufficient wiggle room in the more recent bills to allow the re-insertion of what may have been (temporarily) deleted.

If you believe that some or most of the conclusions drawn below, in the excerpts from HR 3200, are a stretch, then simply consider this:

Our Founders spent an enormous amount of their precious time drafting the most magnificent blueprint for governance ever devised by the mind of man. They sought, above all else, to dot every i and cross every t, and to envision any future circumstance that would misinterpret, or mis-use, their words in order to erode their original intent – the most crucial of which was to limit the power of government, and thus maximize the individual freedom of every American citizen to live life as he sees fit.

Yet, despite our Founders’ unprecedented brilliance and foresight, the U.S. Constitution has been blatantly violated, time and again, over the past 365 days (not to mention during previous administrations, although to a lesser concentrated degree), through the government takeover of the auto industry, the banking industry, etc. ... and generalized government intrusion into American business, the free-market system, and virtually every individual liberty that the American citizen has been ensured by our founding documents.

When original-intent aspects of the Constitution (such as the much-maligned and deformed general welfare and commerce clauses) can be re-shaped so as to use them as an unwitting tool in a blatantly corrupt effort to increase government power, how much more will this ‘healthcare reform’ legislation open the door to such unconstitutional abuse of power? The contents of the most recent House and Senate bills have been kept under wraps. And the wording of the original bill (summarized in part below) is so vague as to allow for countless interpretations. To call the passage of anything resembling what now passes for a ‘healthcare reform’ bill a Pandora’s box would be the understatement of the century.

Below is a brief re-visit to some of the contents of HR 3200 (thanks to our friend, 'Barry Up The Road', for the steer to the video). Should Congress succeed in passing any form of ‘healthcare reform’, we can count on most, or all, of this eventually becoming law. The left will settle for nothing less.

Government will audit the books of all employers who self insure. (p.22)

We can only receive so much ‘care’ per year: $5,000 per individual, $10,000 per family. (p. 29, lines 4-16)

A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits we receive. (p. 30, sec. 123)

The Healthcare Commissioner will choose our healthcare benefits for us. (p. 42)

Healthcare will be provided to all non-U.S. citizens, illegal or otherwise. (p.50, sec. 152)

Government will have real-time access to our finances, and a National Health I.D. card will be issued. (p. 58)

Government will have direct access to our bank accounts for elective funds transfers. (p. 59, lines 21-24)

There is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in unions and community organizations such as ACORN. (p. 65, sec. 164)

Government will create a healthcare exchange to bring private healthcare plans under government control. (p. 72, lines 8-14)

Government will mandate all benefits packages for private healthcare plans in the exchange. (p. 84, sec. 203)

Government will mandate linguistic appropriate services – translations for illegal aliens. (p. 91, lines 4-7)

Government will use groups, such as ACORN and Americorps, to sign up individuals for government healthcare plan. (p. 95, lines 8-18)

Medicaid eligible individuals will automatically be enrolled in Medicaid. We will have no choice. (p. 102, lines 12-18)

No company will be able to sue the government for price fixing, and there will be no judicial review against a government healthcare monopoly. (p. 124, lines 24-25)

Employers must pay for healthcare for part time employees and their families. (p. 126, lines 22-25)

Government will tell doctors and the AMA how much money physicians can make. (p. 127, lines 1-16)

All employers must automatically enroll all new employees into the government plan. (p. 145, lines 15-17)

An employer with a payroll of $400,000 and above who does not provide the government option will pay an 8% tax on all payroll. (p. 149, lines 16-24)

An employer with a payroll of $250,000 to $400,000 who does not provide the government option will pay a 2% to 6% tax on all payroll. (p. 150, lines 9-13)

Any individual who does not have acceptable healthcare coverage, as defined by the government, will be taxed 2.5%. (p. 167)

The abovementioned tax will not be levied on non-resident aliens. (p. 170, lines 1-3)

Officers and employees of the Government Healthcare Administration will have access to all Americans’ personal and financial records. (p. 195)

This section reads ‘The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as a tax.’ (p. 203, lines 14-15)

Government will reduce physician services for Medicaid. (p. 239, lines 14-24)

All doctors, no matter what specialty, will be paid the same. (p. 241, lines 6-8)

Government will set the value of doctors’ time and professional judgments. (p. 253, lines 10-18)

Government will mandate and control productivity for private healthcare industries. (p. 265, sec 1131)

Government will regulate rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs. (p. 268, sec 1141)

This section regards treatment of certain cancer hospitals, and would result in cancer treatment rationing. (p. 272, sec. 1145)

Government will penalize hospitals for what it deems ‘preventable re-admissions’. (p. 280, sec. 1151)

Government will tell doctors what and how much they can own. (p. 317, lines 13-20)

Government will mandate whether hospitals can or cannot expand. (p. 317-318, lines 21-25, 1-3)

Hospitals will have the opportunity to apply for an exception to the above, but community input is required. (p. 321, lines 2-13)

Government will mandate establishment of ‘outcome-based’ measures. (p. 335, lines 15-25; and p. 336-339)

Government will have the authority to disqualify medical plans, HMOs, etc., forcing all into the government plan. (p. 341, lines 3-9)

Government will restrict enrollment of ‘special needs’ individuals. (p. 354, sec. 1177)

Mandates the creation of a government Tele-Health Advisory Committee. (p. 379, sec. 1191)

Government will mandate ‘advanced care planning consultation’. Seniors will be interviewed every year and decisions will be made as to what care they can and cannot receive. (p. 425, lines 4-12)

Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills and durable powers of attorney. This instruction and consultation will be mandatory. (p. 425, lines 17-19)

Government will provide an approved list of ‘end-of-life resources’. (p. 425, lines 22-25; and p. 426, lines 1-3)

Government will mandate orders for end of life, giving the government a say in how your life ends. (p. 427, lines 15-24)

An ‘advanced care planning consultation’ will be used frequently as a patient’s health deteriorates. (p. 429, lines 1-9)

‘Advanced care consultation’ may include an order for end-of-life plans. (p. 429, lines 10-12)

Government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order. (p. 429, lines 13-25)

Government will decide what level of treatment we will have at end-of-life. (p. 430, lines 11-15)

There will be community-based home medical services, run by organizations such as ACORN. (p. 469)

There will be one monthly payment to such community-based organizations. (p. 472, lines 14-17)

Government will cover marriage and family therapy. (p. 489, section 1308)

Government will cover mental health services including defining, creating and rationing those services. (p. 494-498)

God bless Scott Brown. May he win a decisive victory in today's Massachusetts senate race. And may the days that lie ahead prove to be a turning point in America’s sad journey toward complete government tyranny, and her inevitable tragic devolution into a third-world status. Should Scott Brown not be victorious, may his defeat have occurred fairly, and may his opponent's victory be a genuine reflection of the will of the voters of Massachusetts.

~ joanie

Rome n' Republic

2010-01-16T21:36:00.003-05:00

The fault, dear Americans, is not in our stars but in ourselves!
OK, I’ll admit it. I didn't pay much attention in high school English class. Julius Caesar? Yawn! To be honest, didn't really get it. I thought that Caesar was the good guy and Cassius and Brutus, the two men who led the plot to kill him, were the bad guys. But it was the '90s, the Cold War was over and I had prom to think about. To snap up a line from Shakespeare's play, it was all Greek to me!

Flash forward several years to our new post-9/1 1 America. We are fighting two wars, a global battle against terrorism, low interest rates and cheap money have caused a credit crisis of gargantuan proportions, the Treasury has become a free-for-all, the welfare state is growing quicker than you can say Nancy Pelosi, the government is becoming more powerful and corrupt, rampant inflation is imminent, and corporate-cronyism has replaced the free markets.

Maybe it's time for us all to re-read history.

You see, many, many years before there was the United States of America, there was a Republic called Rome. Actually, I never realized that "Ancient Rome" as we've come to know it existed in three phases that spanned the course of almost a thousand years. It was founded sometime between 758 and 728 B.C. and existed as a monarchy for over two centuries. It then became a democratic Republic, which lasted for 460 years, and finally transitioned to an empire for the final 200 or so years.

The heroic beginnings of the Roman Republic were actually very similar to those of America. In 509 B.C., a rebellious group of rugged individuals, tired of abuses of the monarchy, over-threw King Tarquin and put into place a new system of government. In order to safeguard personal liberties and prevent another monarchy from emerging, these founding fathers replaced the monarchy with two elected magistrates who would each serve a maximum of one year Each magistrate would check the ambition of the other and never again would one man be allowed to rule supreme over the Roman citizens.

The Roman "constitution," known as the Twelve Tables, was completed in 449 B.C. with an emphasis on individual liberty. The legislation would come from an elected body of officials, also known as the Senate. Under this new system of government, Rome flourished as a fledgling, agrarian republic where citizens were able to vote, hold public office, engage in trade and commerce and own property. Although Roman citizenship, or civitas, was limited to adult males, it was incredibly revolutionary at the time and, therefore, became a source of great pride for the Romans. It meant you were free!

And what does freedom bring? Prosperity!

Rome became the most rockin' place around. Toga parties, drinking, wrestling, sporting games, bathhouses, you get the idea. Everyone who was anyone wanted to be Roman.

Life was pretty good for a few centuries. Rome grew and prospered. The Romans built roads, bridges, aqueducts, buildings, apartments, stadiums and had the most powerful military in the world. And we all know it wasn't built in a day! The Roman Republic even had a booming financial sector, with early forms of futures and equities markets. But in 49 B.C., the party finally came to an end as Julius Caesar stood at the bank of a small river in Northern Italy known as the Rubicon.

Roman law stated that no General could cross the Rubicon and enter Italy with a standing army. If Caesar crossed, he would be declared an Enemy of the State, plunge Rome into a civil war and turn the once shining democratic republic into an empire and himself into Emperor. The Senate was terrified of such an outcome. Even Caesar, himself, hesitated. But he was too ambitious to turn around and give up all that he had worked to achieve. He wanted power, even if it meant ending the Republic. He marched forward and, in his own words, the "die was cast." He had crossed the point of no return and became Emperor of Rome.

Brutus and Cassius did eventually assassinate Caesar in an attempt to restore the Republic, but it was too late. By then, the problems were greater than one man and had been developing under the surface for many years. In fact, many Roman citizens were happy to have Caesar take the reigns as dictator of Rome to get things under control.

Only a few prefer liberty – the majority seek nothing more than fair masters.

So, what exactly led to the moment at the Rubicon? Why did Rome fall?

Perhaps the malaise began 150 years earlier when Rome's biggest external threat, Carthage, was defeated in the Second Punic War. While most Roman citizens were ecstatic, many were concerned that, without a common enemy holding the Republic together, a sense of apathy would set in. They were right. Over time, by the consent of the masses, Rome began to destroy itself from within. The citizens ceased to care what the Senate was doing, so long as their needs were being taken care of. The Senate began a policy of expansion, conquering new lands and looting gold and silver for the Treasury. In the early days of the Republic, the tax rate was about 1-3 percent. By 167 B.C., Romans were no longer obliged to pay taxes, as the burden could be carried by others.

There was enough revenue coming in from conquered lands to pay for everyone. As a result, a new brand of crony-corporatist, known as the pubilcani, emerged. The publicani were also known as tax farmers, who were in the business of collecting taxes abroad for a profit. The tax rate was progressive, with the publicani deciding who would pay what taxes. Corruption ran rampant.

To make matters worse, in the middle of the second century B.C., two brothers with great political ambition came to power. The Gracci broth-ers emerged from the Populares Party. They understood that they could gain enormous amounts of political power by making grand promises and using propaganda and charisma to woo the Roman citizens. They promised grain at prices below market and, eventually, for free. They promised to redistribute land, and they put into place sweeping 'New Deal" like social reforms, which increased the welfare state. Essentially, you name it, they probably promised it. As a result of these progressive reforms, farmers rushed to live in the cities for their free grain and slaves were freed in order to qualify for the dole.

It didn't help that there was also lots of money floating around the Roman economy from the conquests abroad. Since money was cheap and interest rates were kept very low (and, at one point, even forbidden), individual Roman citizens racked up considerable amounts of debt. The pubIicani were also in the money lending business but eventually cracked down on borrowers so they could invest their money into new markets opening up in Asia. This led to a huge credit crisis in 88 B.C.

The economy continued to crumble as debt increased and more and more hands grasped at the treasury. By the time Caesar came along, more than 300,000 Roman citizens were on the dole and an increasing number were making greater demands on the government. In fact, more legislation was passed during the end of first century B.C. than any other time in the Republic's history. Politicians were becoming increasingly corrupt and self-interested. By the time Rome became an empire, there were so many obligations that taxes began to rise to crippling levels and emperors began to adopt a policy of devaluing the currency. Rampant inflation ensued. In fact, during the 200 years of the Roman Empire, the Denarius (Rome's coinage at the time) went from containing 95% silver to containing .02% silver It became virtually value-less!

Roman Emperors, such as Diocletian, began grasping at straws: regulating industry and trade, nationalizing businesses and fixing prices and wages. However, despite all the concerns from the more rational members of the Senate, Rome continued to collapse. Cicero had even warned, "The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome becomes bankrupt."

So there you have it, the breakdown of the Roman Republic (and maybe the breakdown of the American Republic) in a nutshell. We've modeled our government after Rome, we looked at the writings of Roman philosophers like Cicero and Cato to create our Constitution, we got terms like "senate" and "citizen" from Latin. We even designed our nation's capital after Roman architecture. And, in a way, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and others gave us the ultimate "mulligan" when they founded America. But they also warned us of what happened to Rome and urged us not to go in the same direction. And what did we do? Like sheep and cowards, we didn't listen, didn't learn from past mistakes and, eager for security and temporary quick fixes, have been voting ourselves back into bondage ever since.

American, wake up! We don't want to be Rome! Let's not forget that this shining city on a hill ultimately burned down with Nero fiddling away!
As our leaders in Washington stand at the bank of the Rubicon, ready to cross, we must remember Cassius's wise words in Julius Caesar when he said, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings."

I hope my high school English teacher is impressed.

By Pia Varma

This is No Time for Apathy

2010-01-10T10:40:00.008-05:00

First, the Democrats in Congress wanted 'Single Payer' – a totally government-run health care bureaucracy under whose thumb it would be illegal for an individual to contract directly for the services of a doctor, a laboratory, a hospital, or to purchase health insurance from a private company. Last summer when the outright nationalization of the American medical system didn't fly, the Reid/Pelosi/Obama/Immanuel axis decided to try to sneak it in by stealth instead. To do that, they came up with a new construct they called 'The Public Option' – a system whereby the government would 'compete' with private insurance companies to 'lower the cost of insurance'.

No matter that any such 'competition' would be rigged from the start. Government 'insurance' could be sold for a fraction of the cost of private insurance because it wouldn't have to meet the mandates and the capital and underwriting requirements that private companies must meet. Within a few short years (if not months), a 'public option' would undercut the private insurance industry and put it out of business leaving only the 'government option' (which is their ultimate goal anyway).

What does it matter if the true believers have to wait a few more years to achieve full socialized medicine in America? Socialists are nothing if not patient. They knew back in 1965 that if they could just get their foot in the door with Medicare, it would eventually lead to a total government takeover (See: Past is Prologue – Medicare, 1965). So it has become with this latest health care bill. When the true believers couldn't achieve the total takeover of 1/6th of the American economy all at once, they 'compromised' by putting in place a system that is guaranteed to achieve that same goal in a few more years. This explains why one 'deal-breaker' after another has been ignored and 'lines-in-the-sand' that have been drawn over one issue after another keep getting crossed. Like the sleight-of-hand artists that they are, the people pushing this bill know that bickering over side issues like 'exchanges', 'single payer', 'public options', abortions, 'death panels', etc. will serve quite nicely to distract the attention of the America public from the real issues.

Let’s recap: Sounding for all the world like Gandalf planting his staff on the bridge in The Lord of the Rings, last September Nancy Pelosi announced firmly that "any health care bill without a strong public option will not pass the House!" In the middle of the night on November 7th, she made good on her promise. She passed the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" – H.R.3962 – which creates a 'health insurance exchange' with a 'public option':

SEC. 301. ESTABLISHMENT OF HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGE; OUTLINE OF DUTIES; DEFINITIONS.

including a public health insurance option

But since the midnight passage of H.R.3962, the Senate passed a totally different bill which does not contain the magic 'public option' words. So now Pelosi is backpedaling. Asked on Dec. 16 whether she could support legislation without a 'public option', she said, "It depends what else is in the bill." One line in the sand crossed. More recently, she has just stopped mentioning the 'public option' altogether, even though 57 House Democrats signed a letter in which they stated: "Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates -- not negotiated rates -- is unacceptable."

However, over the past few months we've all been witness to the fact that the word 'unacceptable' is entirely situational. How long before these 57 come out and say, "Well, we really didn’t mean it." We’ve seen one group after another abandon their 'demands' and 'firm beliefs' in order to get this bill passed: The Catholics who wouldn't vote for a bill that used taxpayer funds for abortion; The 'public option' hard-liners who promised not to vote for a bill without one; The 'blue-dog' Democrats who promised not to vote for a bill that raised the deficit; Those who promised not to raid Medicare to pay for 'universal health care'; Those who demanded that everyone be covered; Those who wouldn't support a bill that covered illegal aliens ... and so on.

So what's going to happen when the House meets tomorrow? I believe that first, Ayatollah Pelosi will be button-holing those 57 Congressmen and telling them something like, "Let's not waste this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity over mere semantics. What does it matter if the words 'public option' are not in the final bill if it results in what you all favor: government-run health care." That, and of course she'll be threatening to punish any Congressmen who cross her by cutting their staff, their campaign funds, and taking away their committee assignments ...

John Hinderacker at Powerline sums up the situation nicely in No Public Option:

But those "private" institutions -- the health insurance companies -- will be subjected to top-down regulation that turns them into agents of state power. No meaningful competition will be permitted. The federal government will run health care, but will do so behind a facade of private enterprise. Mussolini would be proud of Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid.

President Obama has said that under his proposal, private insurance companies would be driven out of business over a period of ten to twenty years.

Will America then be a free country? That's debatable, but I would say, No.

I know everyone is weary of bombarding their legislators with phone calls, faxes, and letters, but now is not the time for freedom lovers to go wobbly. Your congressman will be back in his D.C. office on Tuesday. You know what to do.

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

It's Time to Take Back Our Government

2009-12-28T16:08:00.005-05:00

... we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
...from Plumb Bob Blog:

The outcome of the Senate vote regarding the Democrats’ health care monstrosity is actually moot. The fate of the dollar is already sealed; even without the new, dead weight of yet another unfunded and unfundable ball on the end of our fiscal chain, the collapse will come sooner rather than later. The massive debt accumulations, the rising mandatory spending, the inability of the government to find lenders, the unwillingness of government to even begin to address the easily recognizable fiscal disaster, and the abandonment of free enterprise and the rule of law, have all worked their corrosion; it seems unlikely to me that the nation will even be able to provide even the first dollar of the new health care regime. The outcome of this “debate” does not matter.

What matters is what the incident says about the Democratic party.

We’ve just witnessed a massive assault on individual liberty. Every word produced by the Democratic party during the “debate” was a lie; not a single claim from the party was true. At no time did they participate in the system in good faith; at every point they made every effort to hide their intentions, to bury the true effect of the bill under mountains of opaque verbiage. They passed their measures hurriedly, in the dead of night, knowing that they lacked the support of the nation, knowing that their own Senatorial support would evaporate if permitted exposure to the folks back home. Even the few who supported the measure are misled. None of the alleged goals of the new system have been met in the new bill. It is not cheaper. It does not increase access. It does not reduce claim assessments from unfriendly adjusters. It does not improve health care in any way; it simply adds power to the Democratic control machine. That was the goal: power to the Democratic party. And less liberty for you.

They used a technique I’m calling the Kamikaze Ratchet. They know perfectly well that there will be a voter reaction in 2010, and that many who supported this measure will face opposition that might not have had any force except for anger over the health bill. Some will lose their seats. They know this; that’s the Kamikaze part. The Ratchet part is that they’re betting that the new Congress in 2010 will not have the numbers, or the guts, to substantially change the new health regime. They may lose their seats, but the new Masters in Washington will have acquired their authority permanently.

The point is that the Democratic party is not a participant in the American experiment in liberty. It has not been, in fact, at any time since the beginning of the 20th century. At all points in time, the Democratic party has represented the element in American culture that wants to throw off the cumbersome engine of compromise required to keep the nation free, and replace it with a sleek, streamlined autocracy run by experts, an oligarchy of the scientifically-minded elite. They believe that they, and they alone, know how to make the trains run on time, how to usher in the Age of Aquarius, how to build a new and more perfect world. They’ve been hankering after the power to do what they have in their minds, unmolested. Their every move, from 1914 onward, has been to acquire that power in order to end Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

Patriot American citizens support freedom-lovers and oppose tyrants no mater what their party affiliation. But the fact remains that this latest tyrannical obscenity of a health care bill was crafted in secret meetings and rammed through in the middle of the night by Democrats alone, with no Republican participation.

We may be non-partisan, but we're not blind.

Certainly the Republican party bears some of the blame, since during the last decades they too have initiated many government power grabs. But let's be clear: Never has such a massive amount of freedom been taken from the people by the majority party without a single vote from the opposition. The Democrats own this latest tyranny.

If you read the rest of Phil's excellent essay, he recommends that the States "where it appears that the majority of the citizens retain belief in citizen government" get together and secede from the Union. Phil is not alone in wanting to separate ourselves from the looters and thugs. In a recent (Nov. 2nd) guest column in the Transylvania Times, reader Meriam Matthews of Lake Toxaway wrote:

It has become clear that the ideological differences between the two main political world views - liberalism and conservatism - have become irreconcilable...

I find myself being forcibly married to half the country whose ideology I find morally and politically repugnant...and I want a divorce.

Here are my settlement terms: I want all the red counties...[and] the liberals can have the blue counties...We'll split North Carolina and take the Western half...

Give me back my Constitution. I want my taxes reduced, my incandescent light bulbs, my health car plan, my car, my church and my Bible. Hands off my Internet, the free market, my small business profits, my free speech...

I want my schools free of sexual and political indoctrination, the founding documents and history books free of historical revisionism...

While the idea of leaving the left to lie in the bed they have made is appealing, and with all due respect to Phil and Mr. Matthews, unilateral succession has been tried before with disastrous results. Not only did 260,000 Americans give their lives during the American Civil War, but the drastic measures President Lincoln used to prosecute the war fractured the U.S. Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to the world:

...Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Sure, it's theoretically possible for the U.S. Congress to call a Constitutional Convention with the intent of abolishing the current federal government and replacing it with another. But that will never happen, of course; Congress likes having unlimited power over us. Thankfully, there is another way out of this mess.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides the mechanism to peacefully change the government without the consent of Congress.

Congress...on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof...

I believe that the time has come to work toward that end. The last few weeks have made it abundantly clear that our so-called 'representatives' no longer represent the people, and instead, represent only their insatiable lust for power. We've petitioned them until we're blue in the face, and frankly, they just don't care any more.

There's an old Sicilian saying, "Don't ask for what you can't take," and I say it's time we stopped asking our U.S. legislators to respect the U.S. Constitution and instead, take back our government.

I believe we need to do that from the bottom up, starting at the County level, then the State.

The Asheville, NC Tea Party, of which I am a member, has been ahead of the game in supporting the Sovereignty of the States under the Tenth Amendment with its support of HB 849 - The North Carolina Sovereignty Act.

Unfortunately, that bill is being blocked by eight-term Assemblyman Bill Owens [D-Elizabeth City]. Last April, various Tea Party groups (including ours) presented Owens with a petition containing over 1,000 signatures, urging him to move this bill forward. But like our U.S. Representatives, he didn't hear us either. After repeated calls to his office pressing for a response, any response, to our petition, Assemblyman Owens issued this worthless statement though a voicemail message left by his assistant:

Representative Owens did see [the petition,] and he said that House Bill 849 probably would not be heard because it's the Senate's policy that they do not consider State legislation dealing with Federal policy, and that even if it passed in the House, the Senate wouldn't do anything with it.
-- Assemblyman Owen's assistant Linda, 6/2/2009

"Destructive of the ends of liberty..."

massive debt accumulations, unretirable in multiple lifetimes

rising mandatory spending, with no end in sight

inability of the government to find lenders to fund its appetite for debt

abandonment of free enterprise in favor of nationalized industry

casting aside of the rule of law in favor of the rule of men

full embrace of socialist government programs designed to keep an increasing number of Americans dependent upon the government

Those who stood aside as mute observers as this agenda came to fruition; those who assisted feebly in the effort by refusing to do their sworn duty (i.e. Assemblyman Owens). In the end, they share equally in the blame with those who put their full weight into the effort to push these agenda items through. All played critical roles in despoiling Liberty as given by the Creator and once guaranteed by the US Constitution.

The U.S. Constitution is a peace treaty which allows men to live together freely in peace and prosperity. We should all seriously consider the ramifications if we allow the government to trample this precious document upon which our very lives depend.

by John Cooper
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
- with contributions by JaneQ Republican -

Christmas Reflections

2009-12-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

For the past nearly fifty years, there has been a small mom and pop grocery store in our neighborhood – a clapboard place that humbly occupied about 5,000 square feet when it first opened in 1962. Above the store is a small (perhaps 1,200 sq. ft.), but cozy, apartment.

The man who built the original store – I’ll call him Dave Martin (I’ll not use his real name, simply because I believe he wouldn’t have wanted me to) – was a man of Mennonite ancestry who combined his lifelong desire to own his own small business with the desire to provide a convenient, homey, affordable place for his neighbors to purchase their groceries, fresh meat and produce.

Though not very large or impressive, Martin’s Store has thrived for decades. It was the place to shop for groceries back in the sixties and seventies. Since its original foundation was laid, it has expanded four times, and now occupies about 12,000 square feet.

In 1984, Dave Martin decided to open another facility. Despite warnings from many business ‘experts’, both local and from other areas of the country, that he was biting off much more than he could chew, and overestimating the need for such an establishment, he built another substantially larger facility about ten miles down the road from his original clapboard store.

The new facility, which has now been in business for twenty-five years, offers 95,000 square feet and twenty-three aisles of grocery shopping, and includes a banquet facility that can seat up to four hundred people.

Shoppers come from all over south-central PA to patronize Martin’s store and it has earned a sterling reputation as a business of quality and integrity. During business hours, one cannot drive by the store without witnessing a parking lot overflowing with cars. In addition to the store itself, the Martin complex now houses a florist, a drug store, a medical lab and an insurance company.

Both of Dave Martin’s stores – the small clapboard grocery that opened the year before John Kennedy was assassinated, and the large, and expanding, business that followed twenty-two years later – are closed on Sundays. While the rest of the area is bustling with tourists, or antiquers, or locals out for a Sunday drive, the two Martin parking lots sit empty and motionless, as a visible reminder of Dave Martin's belief in the sanctity of the sabbath.

I knew Dave Martin for about twenty-five years before he passed away about ten years ago. As I have mentioned here on the forum before, I serve as an elected official in our small township. He used to come into my office at the municipal building to transact business now and then. He would always come toward the end of the day, and we would chat for an hour or so, after my office hours ended, and before each of us headed home for dinner.

He was a humble man of unquestionable integrity. He and his wife lived in the small apartment above the original grocery store. After the enormous success of his new and much larger enterprise, did he expand his ‘needs’ and increase his personal living requirements? No. Until the day he died, he continued to live in that modest little apartment. As far as I know, his wife is living there still.

His lack of desire to live more lavishly, when he could certainly have afforded to do so, had absolutely nothing to do with a miserly nature, or an inordinate desire to pinch pennies. It had much more to do with a realization of the relative value of material vs. spiritual things. The fact that what you have is not an accurate measure of who you are.

One particularly severe winter, the roof blew off the Catholic school in a nearby town. The church was having difficulty coming up with the $20,000 needed to replace that roof. Dave Martin, hearing of the church’s plight, wrote a $20,000 check to the roofing company, with the agreement that no one would ever know from where the funds came. You see, Dave was a Mennonite, and there may have been a handful of people who would have criticized his meeting another religion’s needs. And yet Dave saw all needs in the community as his own, and responded quite often, and quite anonymously, to more of those needs than we may ever know. It was only after Dave passed away, that the source of the funds for the school roof was revealed, and I am certain he would still have preferred otherwise. I am also certain that many other community needs were met as a result of Dave Martin’s quietly-opened, well-worn wallet.

When the blizzard of ’96 hit our area, leaving 36” inches of snowfall in its wake, Rick and I thought it would be memorable to see how far we could walk after the snow had stopped falling. Martin’s newer market was a mere two blocks from our home at the time, and it took us well over an hour to walk to the vicinity of the store. Upon setting foot onto the vast parking lot, more than waist-deep in fallen snow, we were astounded to see lights on in the store itself a few hundred feet away. Walking through the doors, we came upon the courtesy counter and saw none other than Dave Martin and his wife manning the store. There were no other employees to be seen. We asked them how on earth they managed to travel the ten miles from their apartment to this, the larger market, and they replied, ‘We slept here last night, knowing that we probably wouldn’t have been able to make it in this morning, and we couldn’t ask our employees to venture out in such a storm.’ The 95,000 square foot store was empty but for the Martins, a couple of state policemen, two other neighbors who lived across the street, and us. But the store was open, in case anyone was in need of anything.

On one occasion, when he was getting up in years, Dave Martin said to me in a moment of deep reflection, ‘I won’t be around forever, and I’ve asked my sons to honor my wishes not to do business at our markets on Sunday. I hope and pray that they will keep that promise after I am gone.’ There was a perceptible sadness in his voice, and an almost desperate longing for this particular wish to be honored.

Dave left us about ten years ago and his sons have thus far been true to their promise.

There are countless other examples I could cite of Dave Martin’s goodness. But I’ll simply end with this abbreviated list. My purpose in sharing at least a small part of Dave’s story with you is to express the belief that so often the people who most affect our lives, and who leave an indelible mark on our own personal view of the world, are those who do not seek to do so. They simply live their lives in quiet humility, seeking to put the needs of others above their own, and simply hoping, in some small way, to leave the world a better place than it was when they arrived.

If we, as a nation, once again begin to envision such character-laden people as role models ... even heroes ... and begin to question the genuine value of those among us who place wealth, fame, power and notoriety highest on their list of priorities, we will have placed ourselves back onto a pathway that leads to genuine and lasting prosperity.

At this most holy time of year, no matter our faith, or our walk in life, I hope we (myself certainly included) will all take the time to look around us for our own Dave Martins. Ask ourselves what we can do to be more like them. And tell them how much we appreciate their example. Choosing role models who place humility before notoriety, and others before self, will surely go far in helping us to become a better people, striving to serve as a reflection of His goodness and grace.

~ joanie

Reflections of a Digusted North Carolinian

2009-12-23T11:11:00.002-05:00

North Carolina’s state budget is already at the breaking point. This year, lawmakers – desperate to raise revenue - hit us with $1 billion in state tax hikes including a 1% sales tax increase, and 30% increases in the excise taxes on beer, wine, and liquor. Even with all that, they only managed to delay the inevitable train wreck for another year by using $1.4 billion in federal “stimulus” funds and nearly $100 million from various state “trust funds”. Marianne Suarez of the Civitas Institute writes in Federal Health Care “Reform” Proposal Would Add $600 Million to N.C.’s Already Strained Budget:

Yet even as states such as North Carolina are struggling to cover their spending commitments, a central part of the federal health care “reform” effort is to further expand the second-largest state-funded program: Medicaid.

…the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” further expands Medicaid eligibility up to 150% of the federal poverty level – adding more than 17 million people to the system nation wide. By some estimates, this move is expected to cost North Carolina taxpayers another $599 million.

In the few months since state budget was passed, the state has already overspent on Medicaid by $160 million, and that number is expected to climb beyond $200 million before the close of the fiscal year. Due mostly to high unemployment, Medicaid expenditures are approaching 9 percent higher than in 2008-2009. Not only that, but this year North Carolina has spent 4 percent more on the average enrollee than was forecast.

If DemCare becomes law, North Carolina is facing a $2 billion budget shortfall - over ten percent of the budget - each year as far as the eye can see. Guess who is going to pay for that? Ms. Suarez continues:

The move to expand government health care programs already in place – Medicaid and Medicare - was pushed through by Democrats as a positive alternative for the public option. In reality, forcing such a dramatic expansion of programs such as Medicaid will do nothing more than make health care more costly and less accessible to the same people it aims to protect. Because Medicaid reimburses providers at a lower rate than private insurance companies, fewer doctors are accepting Medicaid patients. Piling millions more people into the Medicaid program reduces their access to care, as more Medicaid patients attempt to compete for the attention of fewer providers. Moreover, those providers still accepting Medicaid patients will attempt to compensate for the low Medicaid reimbursements by charging the private insurance companies higher rates – thus driving up premiums.

Senator Reid’s proposal to expand Medicaid will not only make medical care less accessible to our nation’s most needy citizens, it will impose an unaffordable burden upon already cash-strapped state budgets. North Carolina’s state budget is already in a multi-billion dollar hole. Where does Sen. Reid think we will come up with another $599 million?

Not only will North Carolinians be taxed to pay for the expanded Medicaid program in North Carolina, but thanks to Democrat bribery in the Senate, they’ll be paying for Medicaid Recipients in Nebraska and Nevada as well. From Kate Obenshain at Human Events, Obamacare Bankrupting States:

“Sen. Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback” for Nebraska may have given Harry Reid his coveted sixtieth vote, but it comes at a price for the other states, states that are already feeling the hammer of rising Medicaid costs.

Just coming to light is a concern that has been giving governors heartburn for months: the fact that states are going to be hit with a monstrous financial burden with the passage of Obamacare, and none are in a position to handle it.

…Ohio spends 39 percent of its state budget a year on Medicaid. Massachusetts spends 27 percent. [The HHS budget in NC accounts for 22% of the total.] On average, states fork over 20 percent of their annual spending on this joint state-federal program that originally began to assist women and children in poverty and the disabled.

…Who is going to get stuck with half the price tag? The states. Well, the states minus Nebraska. And probably Nevada…

…Dealing with the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, 48 states are already in the red -- in many cases due to their own profligacy -- and they expect to be facing even larger deficits next year.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasted that the expansion of Medicaid would add about $37 billion to states’ expenses. How would states pay for the increased costs? Cut services, including education, and yes, increase tax.

Those tax increases would be piled on top of several hundred million in federal tax hikes currently being bandied about to pay for the government’s power grab on health care. All this coming from a president who promised not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000.

Legislators have been getting an earful from the states on the devastating consequences of expanding Medicaid, but they aren’t letting that stop them. Or even slow them down.

Sen.Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has been outspoken in his advocacy for the states, but he has garnered little attention. He didn’t hold back when he said, “Any senator who votes to expand Medicaid and transfer the costs on to the states ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as governor for a few years and try to implement the Medicaid program which is bankrupting states and forcing funding cuts that will ruin public higher education…Unlike the federal government, states can't print money."

Sen. Kay Hagan absolutely doesn't care about any of this, but our Rep. Heath Shuler at least claims that he won't support any health care bill that will drive up the deficit. His offices are closed until Monday, January 5th, but you can contact him then (if it's not too late).

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

Carol For A Different Kind of Christmas

2009-12-21T14:57:00.003-05:00

Yes, it’s that time of year at last; a time of peace on earth, goodwill toward men, and a momentary hiatus when the rats take a break from the rat race to actually be civil to each other. For the time being, at least.

What follows is not going to challenge anybody’s idea of a Christmas story. It’s a Wonderful Life will still emerge intact as the holiday tale of choice, as it should. This commentary will not emerge as a pretender to that throne. But it will, I hope, provide a snapshot of the year-end goings on of yours truly, and capture the tenor of the times, if not the spirit of the season. Sound good? O.K. Let’s get to it.

It’s been a threadbare year, but a good one, despite the hardships. I attended two benchmark 40-year reunions this year – that of my old Vietnam unit over Memorial Day, and my high school class of 1969 in August.

They were important events, because both – in different ways – served as a benchmark for how far we’ve come, both as respective groups and as a nation. But, as we forged into the holiday season, several seemingly unrelated events served to bring focus to a sea-change event soon to take shape inside the beltway.

As the holidays approached, I was all set and ready to make my annual pilgrimage over the river and across the desert from my Southern California enclave to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Problem was, this was the season my car chose to fall apart. And, on the meager living I eek out from the local school district, I found myself unable to make the journey – for either holiday.

“O.K.,” you may observe, “what’s the big deal? Happens to everyone sooner or later.”

True enough. But since the death of my daughter in a traffic accident six years ago – along with her three kids – I’ve taken to spending the holidays with Andy and Helena (once again) in the desert city where I spent fifteen years in my younger days. How do I describe my relationship with this couple?

They were the kind of people, who, if you had no place to go during the holidays, were welcome to spend it with them. That’s how it started. I was working at a local hotel at the time – Vegas observes no holiday season for its hotel workers – and Andy and Helena set up a rotating buffet, available to anyone coming off shift who wanted to partake of the feast. I came that year for Thanksgiving, came again for Christmas, and a tradition was born. I didn’t always make the trip – for many years, I spent the holiday with my daughter and grandkids in Atlanta – but that situation changed dramatically a few years ago as I’ve already mentioned.

Andy and Helena provided the only genuinely unconditional love I’ve ever received. There’s no better way to put it. And I was grateful that the door was still open after my daughter’s death when the holidays became, shall we say, less joyous than they should have been. I was still welcome, as was anyone who had nowhere to go, and wanted to partake of the fellowship and the feast. They never checked anyone’s pedigree at the door.

Since that time, and since all of us were getting older, and since I was uncomfortably close to the phenomenon, I often wondered – aloud at times, and to both of them – if the particular holiday we were then enjoying at the time was going to be our last. They were philosophical about it, as many elderly people often become as they grow closer to the end of the run. But last December – or more accurately last January – we crapped out.

Andy died.

He suffered from complications of COPD and emphysema. Andy loved his pipe and smoked it right up to the day he went into the hospital. He went in for treatment of a back injury, picked up a kidney infection, developed trouble breathing, and died. It happens when you’re 78.

But at least Andy had the best medical care available. At least he wasn’t confronted with some government bureaucrat, wringing his hands, shaking his head, and painfully informing his family that, due to fiscal constraints, his coverage under ObamaCare © would not permit the most efficacious treatment available. At least he was spared that. I mean, the man was 78 and retired. What useful purpose did he serve? What possible justification could merit spending tens of thousands of dollars to prolong his life? And for how long? But, I’m sure he would have had available a compassionate program of humane euthanasia to ease his suffering and thereby alleviate the burdens on an already fiscally strained public health care system.

At least he managed to escape before he had to confront that monstrosity.

Locally, Pastor Phil at my church, is the father of four adorable, precocious quadruplets. By all accounts, they are not the result of fertility treatments, but as natural as natural can be. The kids are four years old this year – slightly beyond the toddler years, but not quite ready for school.

Phil’s son, Chad, contracted childhood leukemia.

So, for Pastor Phil and his family, this holiday season is beyond bittersweet. It’s indescribable. It’s times like these that we find out what we’re made of. My church is noted for its vast productions and its congregation that has a hunger for the spotlight. We’re the lords of the manor, after all. We own the local valley – most of us anyway – and while hard times have hit us, they haven’t crushed us either.

But, at these times, you find out very quickly who’s grabbing for the microphone, and elbowing everybody else out of the spotlight with bold claims of miraculous healing as a result of their righteous prayers. Then you discover who among the flock has four-in-the-morning courage. I never knew I had it, but it looks like I do. I’m on the late-night hospital watch.

You see, Pastor Phil stands poised at the threshold of the fraternity of death in a most ghastly way. He stares into the face of losing a child. Trust me, that’s a fraternity nobody wants to be part of. And it’s growing at an alarming rate.

But, for all his anguish, at a time when he and Chad should be walking the Alta Loma nights, not holding vigil at a local hospital, Pastor Phil has private health insurance. And for all his concerns, well, one of them is not dealing with some federal officer who, with a pained expression on his face, patiently explains to this afflicted father that his son is only three years old, and far from a contributing member of society. In fact, it will be years before he can shoulder the burden of earning a living, thereby supporting the massive fiscal engine that fuels ObamaCare © and makes all this cutting edge medical care possible. Then again, just what could young Chad possibly do, even if he did reach the age of maturity? Every good job worth having has long since gone to India. Just what livelihood will he pursue in a nation that lives to consume? And not even goods we produce ourselves, but products manufactured for us by others.

I mean, didn’t Peter Singer, the award winning ethicist from Princeton University state in his defining position paper that humane euthanasia of infants was not only ethical but a moral imperative for defective children up to a month old? It was a matter of self-awareness, was it not? Or the lack thereof. And wasn’t that window of opportunity then extended to three months? And then six? Surely we could apply a compassionate program of humane euthanasia to this suffering child, now couldn’t we? Surely the death panel assembled to review this tragic case would approve it, would they not? Surely it would be covered. And it would spare the government countless thousands of dollars in needlessly prolonging the suffering of an innocent child. Without question, an enlightened populace could find its way to relieve this family of its painful financial burdens.

But, we can rejoice. Young Chad has only to concentrate on beating the disease, not beating the government.

And then there’s Holly. She cut quite a figure on the dance floor when her husband Rudy met her in 1975. Now she’s pushing 300 lbs., is plagued with a bad case of diabetes, fibromyalgia, and MS, with which she is confined to a wheelchair. Rudy takes care of her.

I also know them from church. I met Rudy in a small group. He’s a good friend, and a fellow Christian He’s also a Marine Corps veteran – I do keep running into them, now don’t I? – with twenty-twomonths service in-country in Vietnam behind him. A good man to know and a bad man to cross.

Rudy was a point man in a rifle platoon – nine months into a voluntary second tour – when he popped red smoke in a hot LZ and tangled with an RPG at close range. The blast blew his helmet to bits and peppered his skull with steel fragments. He spent twenty months in and out of naval hospitals when he came home, and when it was over, he came out with a steel plate in his head and a monkey on his back, as the John Prine song goes. A latter day Sam Stone if ever there was one. He got hooked on pain killers, and from there to hallucinogens. For all that, and after years of fighting the devil, he managed to get clean and stay clean. He retired with a pension from the U.S. Postal Service and a partial disability from the Marine Corps.

But he beat the odds. He did accomplish that much. Rudy came out the other side. There wasn’t much left of him when he did. A lot of him was gone. But he did emerge into the light.

He doesn’t say much anymore. It’s an effort for him to talk. But when he’s got something to say, well, he’s got something to say. And people listen to him. Right now, he’s retired, suffering from intermittent seizures, and takes care of Holly.

Holly has a problem controlling her blood sugar. Always has. Right now, she’s in a diabetic coma at the same hospital at which Pastor Phil’s son is undergoing chemotherapy. Holly is one sick woman. But Rudy has private health insurance as part of his government pension. He wonders how long it will last under ObamaCare ©. But right now, he doesn’t have to deal with an understanding health care official who patiently explains to him that his wife is a fifty-nine year old woman whose best years are behind her. He doesn’t have to hear about the massive financial burden she poses to a fiscally strapped system of medical care. And he certainly does not have to contend with a compassionate program of humane euthanasia, which could mercifully put her out of her misery and ease the pressures on a public system of health care that is strained to the breaking point.

So, I’m running Rudy down to the hospital since he cannot drive due to the seizures. But, Rudy is a brother veteran, so I’m happy to lend a hand. Like Helena and Andy, Rudy doesn’t care about anyone’s pedigree. He only cares who’s got his back. He had mine once.Now, I’ve got his. It’s only right.

So, this holiday season is one filled with burdens. And they’re coming with the power of an avalanche. It’s never a good thing to get buried under a spiritual snowfall, but even worse at Christmas time.

Then there’s my little predicament.

Since September, I’ve landed on the couch of one of my fellow Class of ’69 alumni. She was quite taken with my Normandy experience, and since I had to vacate my residence on the very day of the reunion, and since she took it upon herself to assist in my efforts to get this monumental saga of what went on during that delirious month of June 2004 in Europe, I have landed on her couch and have been there ever since. Rest assured, she’s tucked into her warm little bed every night, and I am awkwardly ensconced on the couch. No problem there. No desire to be anywhere else.

This isn’t charity, by a long shot. Every month, she gets a portion of the firstfruits of my meager little paycheck. It’s not much. And it’s certainly not enough for being rescued from these California winter nights, no matter how mild. But, she gets something every month. My idea, not hers.

Problem is, we’re as different as night and day.

Unlike Rudy, unlike Helena and Andy, unlike Pastor Phil, she is very much concerned with the pedigree of the peopleshe encounters. Compounding this, she has just been grafted in with the movers and shakers of the select group of insiders of the Class of ‘69, after forty years of being a beggar at the feast.

It’s a highly first-rate fraternity. All of them have private health insurance. All of them are completely unconcerned about what goes on in Washington. You see, they’re the 10%ers. Like the Washington elite, they will never have to contend with the limitations of ObamaCare ©. They are enormously competent, magnetically charismatic, and have made a lifetime practice of landing on their feet, on the top of the heap.

Well, you can’t bring a mutt to a gathering of purebreds. That’s a basic line of departure when dealing with the In Crowd. So, I’m expecting the We’ve-got-to-have-a-talk talk. Because you can’t move in those circles if you’ve got one of the great unwashed scum splashing mud on your nice, clean Gucci high heels, now can you?

As for me, I’m expecting my walking papers soon. If it was me who wanted to impress this elite group of sophisticated insiders of which she is now the newest member in good standing, I’d give me my walking papers on Christmas Eve. As a rite of initiation, it’s quite a gasser. No better way to impress the right kind of people than to shed your excess baggage on that night above all others. So, I’m packing and getting ready to hit the road.

But I’ll still be around for Pastor Phil, and Rudy, and Helena, if she survives. As long as they want or need the support, I’ll be around to lend a hand.

So, a hearty Merry Christmas, this joyous holiday season to all the movers and shakers who shape our world.

First of all, a joyous holiday season to MaryLandrieu (D-LA). Hope she enjoys snuggling up to her cash register on Christmas Eve. She’s been described as a $300 million whore, and I hear Elliot Spitzer is looking for her phone number. Hope it was worth it to sign her generation’s death warrant.

Then there’s Ben Nelson (D-NE). May he have a Merry Christmas that defies description. Hope he has no problem looking in the mirror considering he sold his country – or what’s left of it – into bankruptcy for 30 pieces of silver. Even Judas Iscariot had remorse after betraying the Lord. That speaks more highly of him than it does for Ben Nelson.

As for me, aside from my impending offer to hit the road, Jack, I’ve just been turned down (again) for VA medical coverage. My correspondence patiently explained to me that the VA has been called upon to extend its area of responsibility to service the needs of more diverse elements of our community (illegals) and, as such, cannot provide coverage to yours truly at this time. But I am welcome to reapply once the current health care legislation has been voted upon.

And that’s a wrap, this Christmas. Hope everyone has a good one. I intend to, wherever I end up. And, as Tiny Tim so eloquently put it, “May God bless us, everyone.” It’s a cinch bet ObamaCare © never will.

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

Is Our President the Enemy in this Final Battle?

2009-12-15T22:22:00.005-05:00

Below is a letter that was forwarded to me by a friend last month. Before posting it as authentic, I did some research to determine whether it is. To my delight it was indeed written by the man to whom it is attributed (his photo is above, taken with a group of the soldiers he so reveres).

This venerable and much honored ninety-five year old WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now. He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13th of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II, retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a ‘rest home’ located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

So here goes.

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

I can't figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

‘We’re no longer a Christian nation.’

‘America is arrogant’ -- (Your wife even announced to the world, ‘America is mean-spirited.’ Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of out war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.) I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said, ‘America hasn't lived up to her ideals.’

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, those 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom. I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.

Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue. You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more? You mean you don't want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts, who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are: terrorists.

One more thing: I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.

You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

Sincerely,
Harold B. Estes

Two Exemplary Letters

2009-12-08T14:40:00.013-05:00

Yesterday I received from two friends copies of letters they had written. One of them had written to his (and my) congressman, and the other had written a letter to the editor of his local newspaper. With their permission, I am posting both letters here, in the hopes that the writers’ activism and the letters’ contents might spur the rest of us to do the same.

December 8, 2009

The Honorable Joseph R. Pitts
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Mr. Pitts:

I received your latest newsletter several days ago. The last line of the message on the front page asks recipients to let you know what they think. I shall do so now.

I think you have done Yeoman’s work on the Abortion issue for many years and for that I thank you.

I think many of the problems with health care today stem from government interference in the free market.

I think the current attempt by the government to take over health care is a ruse to destroy Capitalism and our free society in favor of a Socialist/Marxist society where government is the supreme authority in our lives, supplanting even my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I think the President of the United States is a Marxist who wishes to destroy (fundamentally transform) American society in favor of the aforementioned Marxist style government.

I think it is an outrage that you and your colleagues are not fighting this transformation every day on the floor of the House of Representatives and naming this administration for what it is; a Marxist/Socialist cabal of evil which will destroy freedom and our way of life if they are not stopped.

I think Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd should have been frog walked out of their offices when the financial meltdown occurred. Instead, they continue to work with our Marxist President in their attempt to take over every aspect of our way of life. And you and your colleagues say nothing and nothing and nothing. Absolutely outrageous!

I think John Murtha is probably the single most corrupt politician in Congress today, but he is a member of that very special “Old Boys Club” and so you and your colleagues say nothing. Shameful!

I think most of what is happening in Washington today is unconstitutional. The “General Welfare “ clause was never meant to grant government the kind of power which it has usurped from “the People” and you and your colleagues know that full well. And that includes your ideas for responsible health care reform.

I think you and your colleagues should read and study Congressman David Crockett’s speech to the House of Representatives in which he tells of a constituent who reminded him that money the government takes from the people by way of taxes was not his (Crockett’s) to give to another, no matter how righteous the cause may seem.

Finally, I think that Congress should be ashamed of the fact that they have spent my grandchildren into debt from which they will never recover. Add to that the fact that they are willing to allow a military defeat in order to pay for social reform which will ensure their power and wealth and you have a recipe for disaster for our freedom. And for reasons previously stated, I believe that you are complicit in the loss of that freedom.

Barry Up the Road

Editor—

Fifteen years ago during the Congressional debate over the future of Medicare, the Democratic Party was screaming “Republicans want to toss Grandma out into the street” after “making her eat cat food”. Remember "The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas"? Remember "Republicans Want Medicare to Wither on the Vine"?

None of that was true, of course, but now the Democrats are actually voting to cut Grandma’s home health care, hospital care, and even hospice care. For those who aren’t following the debate going on in the Senate right now, the Democrat plan raids the Medicare Trust Fund to the tune of almost half a trillion dollars - $436 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office - in order to provide for a new entitlement program for the uninsured.

These cuts include $137.5 billion from hospitals that treat seniors; $120 billion from Medicare Advantage, which is the insurance program that provides benefits to seniors which will be cut more than in half as a result of this $120 billion reduction; $14.6 billion from nursing homes that treat seniors; $42.1 billion from home health care for seniors; and $7.7 billion from hospice care, one of the most cruel cuts of all.

In the last two days, the Republicans have introduced amendments intended to protect our seniors, but they’ve been voted down by the Democrats every single time. On December 5th, the Senate Democrats made a grand show of “protecting home health care”, by passing a toothless amendment reading: “Nothing in the provisions of, or amendments made by, this Act shall result in the reduction of guaranteed home health benefits.” Then those very same Democrats – including Senator Kay Hagan – turned around and voted to leave the $42 billion in cuts to home health care intact. Senator Burr, on the other hand, voted to fully fund home health care for our seniors.

Yesterday the “Gregg Amendment” was voted on. This amendment was “to prevent Medicare from being raided for new entitlements and to use Medicare savings to save Medicare.” Once again the Democrats – including Senator Hagan – voted to raid Grandma’s Medicare Trust Fund to provide a new “universal health insurance” program (which still covers illegal aliens).

The Medicare Trust Fund is already forecast to become insolvent in 2017, and now the Democrats want to use it as a piggy bank for a host of new welfare programs. Where are the headlines reading “Democrats Want to Toss Grandma Out in the Street” or "Democrats Make Grandma Pay for Illegals' Health Care'?

John Cooper

by Barry Up the Road and John Cooper
(contributing Team Members of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

The Crumbling Foundation

2009-11-20T10:18:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-16T01:28:00.005-05:00

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

2009-11-10T08:52:00.004-05:00

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

2009-11-07T21:27:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2009-11-03T00:26:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2009-10-31T12:24:00.005-04:00

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

2009-10-14T00:18:00.002-04:00

“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

2009-09-06T22:41:00.011-04:00

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

2009-09-04T23:33:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-31T13:29:00.002-04:00

"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

2009-08-03T00:12:00.028-04:00

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:

Simplify

and understood by someone without a juris doctorate

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:

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:

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

2009-07-30T03:21:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-20T00:27:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-16T00:40:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-01T23:19:00.006-04:00

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

2009-06-05T14:52:00.048-04:00

... 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

2009-05-24T23:44:00.005-04:00

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 ...

2009-05-20T14:05:00.005-04:00

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

2009-05-01T09:40:00.024-04:00

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)

2009-04-25T15:39:00.004-04:00

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

Another One Bites the Dust

2009-04-19T22:39:00.016-04:00

Rick and I watch very little television. What programs we do watch (perhaps a half dozen) we watch faithfully. And among the small handful of programs on our ‘must see’ list has been ‘24’ -- a well-directed, well-acted thriller that has us sitting on the edge of our seats during virtually every episode.

The series began, seven seasons ago, with a surprisingly conservative viewpoint – portraying both our government and other governments/terrorist organizations (‘fictionalized’ depictions that often bear a striking resemblance to actual groups) in a very accurate light. The main characters always confronted major national security crises with a boundless sense of duty, courage and integrity. And, despite the best efforts of those who would bring down our republic, the ‘good guys’ always won out, after overcoming a riveting and indescribably suspenseful series of dangerous obstacles.

At the beginning of this year’s episodes we began to notice a marked difference in the subliminal messages that were being delivered – the most marked of which had to do with the viability and positive results of stem cell research, and the fact that this year’s most notorious character appears to be a staunch American conservative who has gone over the edge and become a renegade domestic terrorist.

In a commercial which frequently airs during the program this season, Cherry Jones, the actor who portrays President Allison Taylor, is also the spokesperson for ‘climate change’, passionately urging viewers to accept the [bogus] theory and adjust their lives accordingly.

One of the newer actors who entered the series in 2008 is Janeane Garofalo, playing Janis Gold, a high-level FBI analyst. I had heard bits and pieces about Garofalo’s leftist tendencies -- including the fact that she refused to meet, or have her picture taken with, Vice President Cheney when he visited the set of ‘24’ -- but I did not allow those bits and pieces to deter me from continuing to watch the program, since the suspense and intrigue that this year’s episodes create is superb.

I allowed myself to overlook Garofalo’s political views ... until today.

After having been urged by countless friends to do so, today I witnessed Janeane Garofalo’s bitter, vile, vitriolic characterization of all modern American patriots who have attended, and will attend, the tea parties that are springing up around the country.

I have not attended any of these tea parties, and probably will not attend any future ones, having sadly reconciled myself to the fact that I can no longer waste my time and energy attempting to win a battle whose outcome, barring Divine intervention, is now a foregone conclusion. But I do have many friends and family members who have participated in tea parties, and who will continue to do so. These people are the salt of the earth. Each one of them is well acquainted with the genuine definition and source of our liberties. Each one of them is well-versed in the history and noble foundations of our republic. And each one of them believes that we are running out of options to reclaim our republic from those in ‘leadership’ positions in Washington who place wealth, power and adherence to a political agenda above the sovereignty of our country and the safety, security and prosperity of its people.

If you haven’t already seen Janeane Garofalo’s portrayal of the modern American patriot, have a look. Warning: you may want to cover your keyboard with a waterproof covering, because you’re going to be spitting all over it momentarily:

Arrogant Leftwing Vitriol at its Worst
Highlights of Ms. Garofalo’s commentary:
_______________________________
There is nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry about a speech where they’re not quite certain what he’s saying.

... Let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks.

... You can tell these type of right-wingers anything and they’ll believe it – except the truth. You tell them the truth and it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused and angry and highly volatile.
_______________________________
Ms. Garofalo then goes on to describe the actual systemic ‘neurological problem’ (resulting in a kind of ‘pathology’) with which most conservatives are cursed, and the ‘anti-intellectualism’ that conservative news outlets foment (they seek to ‘disinform, coerce and dumb down’ the electorate). She also arrogantly describes the American conservative movement as based on ‘ignorance, apathy, hate and fear’.

I had a great deal of difficulty maneuvering through the 2000 presidential election, in large part because I deeply resented an agenda-driven schemer, with an IQ most likely lower than most men on the street in the town in which I live, talking down to me in a perpetually arrogant, condescending manner. I also truly believe that Al Gore’s knowledge (as opposed to rote-memorized leftwing propaganda, and conveniently manufactured ‘statistics’) of the science behind climate aberrations could fit in a thimble, with significant room to spare.

Yet, nine years later, observing Janeane Garofalo’s nearly identical patronizing, arrogant pontificating somehow cut even deeper. She is, after all, simply an actor – and a mediocre one at that. An actor with the audacity to condescendingly characterize with a broad black brush that last remnant of the American citizenry that still gets it.

I suspect that anyone reading my words here knows light years more about the foundations of our republic than she. I suspect that the reader has also sacrificed significantly more than she in order to see to it that the magnificent vision of our Founders is not betrayed. I suspect that he is more capable of independent, critical thought; more concerned with his fellow man; more acutely aware of the threats to his nation’s safety and sovereignty; and more capable of at least entertaining opinions that are in conflict with his own.

There are surely hundreds of actors in Hollywood who could play the role that Janeane Garofalo plays on '24' -- and many of them could render it better than she. So I suspect that Ms. Garofalo was hired for a reason other than her acting ability. Just as I suspect that the viability of stem cell research did not have to be a critical aspect of this year's story line; nor was it necessary for one of the series' major actors to regularly insert into the programming a commercial glorifying the 'science' of climate change.

Because the above list represents one too many 'coincidences', tomorrow will represent the first (of many) Monday(s) since this season began that I will no longer be watching ‘24’. No one but me (and now you) will be aware of that fact. Yet, during this sad, watershed era in the history of mankind, we have to learn to find joy in the little things. I will be finding new joy in discovering a more uplifting, productive way to spend 9-10 o'clock on Monday nights. I may just learn to knit. :)

When patience has begotten false estimates of its motives, and when wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality ... Thomas Jefferson, letter to Madame de Stael, 1807
~ joanie

Barack Obama: Pied Piper of the Plethos

2009-03-31T17:20:00.002-04:00

Ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity always have been relevant social factors. This has been the case in any historical human social organization one cares to name — from clan to nation-state.

In every civilization, there is a very thin upper stratum of the people who are concerned with questions of truth, justice, the good — in other words, with the life of reason, or of the human spirit if you prefer. Historically, such people have tended to believe these ultimate values have a claim on every man in terms of the constitution of the good order of his soul, and on the direction of his actions as they translate into the social sphere.

Such people are surrounded by a vastly larger mass of “stupid people” who simply do not see the world that way, generally because they are ignorant, thus personally disordered/disorderly, thus irresponsible — and (thus) ever needy. This mass of “stupid people” has been called: “slaves by nature.”

In Aristotle, we find the distinction between the mass of the people, the plethos — who basically function on the “stupid level” — and the spoudaioi — the prudent, virtuous, public-minded “mature men.” It is the latter class that actually maintains the civilization.

Nowadays, however, progressive educrats like Barack Obama’s old friend, Bill Ayers, teaches teachers to teach their pupils that these spoudaios characters are really nothing but a reactionary, usually male, usually white gang of fascist thugs who are selfishly trying to preserve their own interests against the just claims of disadvantaged people, who are usually either women or “people of color.” The spoudaioi are oppressors you see.

Regarding our present era, Eric Voëgelin had a warning for us:

If the establishment of the spoudaioi is disrupted by external events, then the civilization breaks down very rapidly within a generation. And that is the problem we have to deal with…. When certain disruptive events occur, civilization breaks down, and the plethos in the classical sense — the mass of passionately directed people who are more or less illiterate and who do not know what they are doing — come to predominate. (1)

In the American experience, an excellent example of the spoudaioi class would be the Founders and Framers themselves. The foundation of our rule of law was laid by these brilliant, classically-educated Christian men. Their magnificent legacy, especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, has been conveyed to us over the generations by other spoudaioi, including certain great presidents, jurists, and representatives of the people, as well as public-minded private people. That legacy is what created and sustained the freest, most just and prosperous nation in the history of mankind. The problem is, that line of genius is obviously running out.

For the fact is, America has become “a government of the plethos, by the plethos, and for the plethos.” Certainly, this was not what the great spoudaios Abraham Lincoln had in mind.

Case in point: Barack Obama is President of the Plethos of the United States, not of the whole People of the United States. For there is still a substantial majority of the people who, while not necessarily spoudaioi themselves, are well content to live by rules that promote liberty, personal autonomy, initiative, self-reliance, thrift, production, creativity, risk-taking — provided they aren’t being systematically looted by the State. We’ll just call this group “the middle class.”

The State’s interest in the matter, however, is to claim as much of the fruits of the labor and genius of the productive members of society as it can get away with, and then to transfer the loot to the unproductive, ever expanding politically-dependable (and dependent) plethos — to grease political “friends” that help it (1) gain power; (2) stay in power; and (3) expand its powers.

The Framers were very clear about this: Individual liberty (the person’s power over himself) vs. State power is truly a zero-sum game, in which one side can increase its power only by decreasing the power of the other. The very people who demand an increase in government benefits (i.e., expansion of the State) of one kind or another seem blissfully unaware of these dynamics. They do not realize they are “on the road to serfdom.”

It is quite clear that Barack Obama on his record is a socialist of the most progressive stripe. I gather he believes his great presidential mission is to “organize” the American “community.” But then, what would you expect of a man, whose résumé lists “community organizer” as his main professional experience?

Now, to organize the American community the way Obama wants it organized is going to cost a whole lot of money — so much that, if the entire U.S. productive economy were put up for sale tomorrow, the proceeds likely would not cover the projected costs of “organizing” America into the type and scale of healthcare, energy, education, cradle-to-grave income-maintenance, and God-knows-what-else policies that Obama says we Americans “deserve.”

Now Obama’s not going to hold a fire-sale of U.S. productive assets any time soon, for a very simple reason: He wants the entire productive base of the economy to be “nationalized” — that is transferred to State ownership — so he and his cronies can run the whole shebang as they see fit. So the strategy is to expropriate the wealth held in the hands of productive people. To do this, you have to hide the expropriation behind a screen of well-sounding words, which conceals the enormity of the extraordinarily opaque financial restructuring of the national economy, using the banking system as leverage, being transacted behind it. Yet smooth words of reassurance — or alternatively, the frequent calls to hit the panic button — cannot disguise the fact that a good deal of the net worth of many Americans — mainly the middle class — has melted away since Obama was elected.

One thing that community organizers get the hang of pretty quickly is how to mobilize the plethos as shake-down artists. ACORN specializes in this sort of thing, and Obama is an expert at it. He’s out there ginning up demand for government programs, which your average plethos person believes will come to him at little or no personal cost. Meanwhile, he’s being relieved of his personal responsibilities; increasingly it is the State that looks after his needs. He’s been “educated” that this is a proper function of the State; indeed, that it is his right to have all his needs and wants supplied without any trouble to himself. And not only that, but to think as he is told to think, to have no opinions that have not been blessed by his political “benefactors.” In thus rejecting his own humanity — which he probably doesn’t miss too much — he reveals he is “a slave by nature.”

And just plain dumb as a box of rocks, ignorant of American history and heritage — about which he evidently cares not a fig:

José: What a crazy world! The rich, who could pay cash, buy on credit. The poor, who have no money, must pay cash. Wouldn’t Marx say it should be the other way around? The poor should be allowed to buy on credit, and the rich should pay cash.

Manuel: But the storeowners who give credit to the poor would soon become poor themselves!

José: All the better! Then they could buy on credit too! (2)Lest anyone claim the above dialog is “racist,” may I point out that, while “José” is obviously a card-carrying member of the Plethos Union, “Manuel” is not. Possibly “Manuel” is a storeowner himself. If so, regardless of his apparent Hispanic heritage, as a small businessman, Obama would fleece him just as badly as any White or Black or Asian proprietor.

It appears that President Obama is no friend of small business, the backbone of the economy and the engine of the middle class — which is the strength and genius of the American system.

Wealth has a tendency to accumulate in an even smaller number of hands of the ruling class; the number of independent proprietors, the mainstay of liberty, will decrease; and the end is an economic despotism of a small minority that rules the people for its private interest. (3)

“Manuel” has the common sense to understand how the world actually works. Unless someone is creating wealth through productive activities, there is no basis for credit formation. Wealth usually sits in banks, forming the bank reserves that must be there to back up the issuance of credit. When storeowners and other people who create value in the economy become poor themselves, there is no wealth generation, no bank reserves, and lending dries up. Not to mention that wealth-creating productive activity dries up as credit becomes unavailable. It’s a vicious cycle.

Marxism assumes that one can still get golden eggs from a dead goose. It just never explains how this is actually to be done in the real world.

But Obama and Geithner have got it all figured out: The government issues more taxpayer-obligated debt and gives it to the banks to secure their capital base/reserves. But now we are issuing public debt that taxpayers must repay as the basis for private (so far) bank lending. Considering that taxpayers are not only responsible for financing the bank bailout-out, but are also responsible for financing the trillion-dollar-a-year deficits in Obama’s federal budget, plus the trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities in the Social Security/Medicare system, in what way is the “Geithner plan” effectively different from a Ponzi scheme? One that’s likely to come crashing down on our children and grandchildren? After having impoverished this generation, the Obama policies will impoverish our progeny as well, and for generations to come.

Meanwhile, Obama plays Pied Piper to the growing mass of the plethos. They see no danger in following him, thinking only to receive “free” goodies from the State. They rarely pay income taxes themselves these days. They think all the other taxpayers are going to be “good for it.” Always. Forever. Even while the Obama administration seems to be doing everything in its power to ensure that they won’t be: You can’t get blood out of a stone.

In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, whatever or whoever followed the Pied Piper met with doom — whether it was the rats, which he drowned in the river, or the children that were forever lost to their families when the Piper “disappeared” them after they followed him out of town. The point is, both the rats and the children were utterly unsuspecting that the Pied Piper deliberately meant to harm them. After all, he wore “a coat of many-colored, bright cloth,” and played delightfully on a small fife. He was there to impress, delight, and to charm….

After absconding with the children of Hameln, the Pied Piper was never seen again. Alas, but the same cannot be said of Obama who is still very much with us, evidently doing everything in his power to transform the greatest nation on earth into a Third-World banana republic, with himself as its Dear Leader, by any means fair or foul.

And on the record so far, it appears he prefers the foul.

Citations:

(1) Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes, New York: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 162f.

(2) Eric Voëgelin, “Autobiographical Statement at Age 82,” in The Drama of Humanity, Vol. 33 of The Collected Works of Eric Voëgelin, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004, p. 437.

(3) Eric Voëgelin, History of Political Ideas, Volume 26 of The Collected Works of Eric Voëgelin, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999, p. 78.

by Jean F. Drew
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)
©2009 Jean F. Drew

Strangers in a Strange Land

2009-03-04T07:49:00.012-05:00

Thanks to many faithful readers for e-mailing and asking about the dearth of essays here on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. I have no answer as to why the scarcity, other than the fact that I have had no desire to write about the state of our republic.

The main reasons being ...

(1) A sense of hopelessness and futility, even as regards the pen and the ballot box, to make a difference in the direction in which our republic is being steamrolled. Rampant ignorance and apathy brought us to the brink, and evil men in leadership positions are gleefully providing the final push.

(2) Where to begin even attempting to bring about activist solutions anymore? We daily awaken to new and incomprehensible affronts to our intellect and our sense of belonging. We are beginning to feel like strangers in a strange land. I have no use for my fellow Americans who voted for ‘change’ that was beautifully gift wrapped, but about whose contents they knew nothing. Nor do I anymore grant credence to those well-meaning but delusional patriots who are chanting ‘Sarah in 2012!’ and the like. They are living in a dream world in which they believe they can still work within a system whose foundations have putrefied, and whose rule-makers are corrupt to the bone

Not only those two segments of our society, but also the remnant of rational American patriots, are being led down the road to oblivion by a man whose qualifications to lead at all, and whose genuine accomplishments, are no more impressive than those we might read on the resumé of someone applying for a job as a junior executive. This junior executive wannabe, in office for fewer than six weeks, is ruling with an iron hand, steamrolling over, and demonizing, anyone who attempts to stand in his way.

Talk about surreal. The Cheshire Cat would envy our predicament.

And what are this junior executive’s qualifications for doing this to a nation that has prospered unlike any other in the history of mankind? A complete disregard for the United States Constitution and the American people, a puppet/puppet master relationship with the mainstream media, the support of powerful international moneymen and special interest groups, and a terrifying anti-American background that evolved through intimate association with mentors who despise the foundations of our republic.

This junior executive wannabe has allied himself with movers and shakers in Chicago, D.C., and God only knows what other anti-American enemies of liberty outside of America’s borders. He has implemented as his ultimate goals: (1) the destruction of (what remains of) America’s capitalist system, (2) the implementation of Marxist rule whereby (3) incrementally more ‘Americans’ (in name only) will seek and accept dependence on a nanny state for the necessities of life, and (4) the bastardizing of the concept of what it means to be an American.

In what now claims to be ‘leadership’ in Washington, all of what passes for governing in the best interest of the people of America now boils down to a carefully-studied mastering of the art of deceit, courtesy of the likes of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky.

Our ‘leadership’ claims to be concerned about the average American’s pocketbook, the average American’s peace of mind and economic well-being, the average American’s quality of life, and the average American’s ability to wake up in a country in which he feels secure and free.

Yet virtually everything that our ‘leadership’ is doing – and at record speed since January 20th – not only flies in the face of that pseudo-concern, but bespeaks quite the opposite.

Spending our republic into literal oblivion, on the pretext that not doing so, and not doing so immediately, would result in instant economic/societal catastrophe for us all … is a LIE.

We are spending ourselves into literal oblivion simply because the majority of the requisite spending is focused on the implementation of a Marxist agenda, and that the realization of that agenda will simply serve to accelerate our demise as a world economic power is of no concern to those at the helm. Not coincidentally, our current course will result in an enormous increase in the number of American citizens who must rely on the government for their very existence. And so enormous will that increase be that the opportunity to turn back the tide will vanish forever.

An American president and congress that are sincerely determined to cure what ails us would be hyper-focusing on those fiscal and monetary cancers that are eating away at our economic foundation, to the exclusion of other politically correct issues. The fact that they are not doing so, while still feigning concern about the economic cataclysm lurking over the horizon, renders their concern about America’s future a convenient masquerade.

Rather than muster all of their resources to confront the problem of our ailing economy, they are instead using that illness as an excuse to impose all manner of Marxist dictates – most of which will simply hasten our demise, and none of which will derail it. Their concern is bogus. Their duplicity is frighteningly real. They are like an adult child, having administered small doses of arsenic to his mother over a period of time, sitting by her bedside in the hospital, shoving a myriad of papers at her as she lay dying, and demanding that she sign over everything she owns to him, so that he can find her a better doctor.

There is no rational connection between environmental extremism (i.e., ‘global warming/climate change’), the ‘need’ for universal healthcare, or the ‘need’ to nationalize private industry, and a cure for what ails us economically – other than the fact that the shackles that will unavoidably be placed on every American’s liberties as a result of the implementation of all three agendas will create additional and completely unnecessary economic hardship that will make today’s nightmare seem like a walk in the park. At the core of fascist doctrine is an economic model in which the state shackles what is left of private enterprise with monstrous bureaucratic handcuffs, and orders the utilization of privately held assets to realize public policy agendas.

Voilà!

Precisely when our president and his minions in congress should be spending every waking hour attempting to solve the looming economic catastrophe, they are instead choosing to arbitrarily throw money at it, so as to appear to be doing something, while simultaneously crafting all manner of tyrannical legislation aimed at suppressing our freedoms, redistributing wealth, destroying our economy, erasing our borders, and amassing unprecedented power for themselves.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in one of those smoke-filled rooms.

There are many things about the demise of America that speak to an evil so insidious as to be incomprehensible to most of us.

(1) The spark for the economic, and soon to be societal, destruction of America began decades ago, but it was purposefully fanned into a flame by the American left (see the Community Reinvestment Act and the Cloward Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis). The bursting of the home mortgage bubble, which served as the major catalyst for what we are enduring today, and which will eventually prove to have tentacles far beyond anything we imagine, is simply a carefully-manufactured crisis. It is a manufactured crisis that scoffs at and derides America’s work ethic and America’s concept of personal responsibility, and has succeeded in confiscating a good portion of the life savings of every hard-working American, as well as condemning the quality of life of his children and grandchildren to third world status.

None of those three considerations (work ethic, personal responsibility, thrift) are of any significance to our current leadership in Washington. And the value of all three is being premeditatedly eradicated in order to increase the power of the state and foster dependence on state largesse.

Yet our president, and his minions in congress, daily wring their hands and claim to feel our pain – while, behind the scenes, they are authoring all manner of Marxist legislation that will further trample on our liberties, increasingly rob us of the fruits of our labor, and incrementally install a brand of government tyranny that will have our children and grandchildren gratefully accepting the fact that they must ask government permission, and pay a tax, in order to breathe in and out, and put one foot in front of the other.

(2) The people who are purposefully crafting the demise of the most moral and most prosperous civilization in the history of mankind are actually the most base among us. They are bottom feeders.

I, and I believe most conservatives, believe that the measure of a man is his character, and that yardstick is especially important in our leadership.

Picture yourself in a foxhole somewhere in a war zone, or stranded on a deserted island. Who would you rather have in that foxhole, or on that island, with you in order to ensure your survival and obtain some peace of mind in a harrowing situation -- your neighbor across the street, or Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid?

One of the things that so maddens me about the through-the-looking-glass nature of this travesty is the fact that the people whom the Marxists in the highest positions in our government choose to demonize, demoralize, and criminalize are the same people who are willing and able to do the kinds of work that these Marxists are truly incapable of doing. Our 'leadership' is meticulously following Saul Alinsky's credo that, in order to seize increasing power, one must 'frame a villain'. In the eyes of our 'leadership' in Washington, the 'villain' of their creation is anyone who seeks to make a profit, anyone who seeks to benefit from the sweat of his own brow, anyone who believes that one is responsible for one's own actions, and anyone who wants to be free to determine the focus of his own charitable giving rather than sharing his wealth with those who choose not to create their own.

Faith, duty, honesty, industry, personal responsibility, and ingenuity made America what she was in her finest hour. Most real Americans still possess those traits. Our 'leadership' possesses none of them. They are simply schemers with connections – unqualified to shine the shoes of those they demean and degrade, and yet somehow delusional enough to believe that they are a part of a chosen elite whose destiny it is to dictate how, and whether, the rest of us should live -- and powerful enough to make that delusion a reality.

(3) Hundreds of thousands of Americans, from the last part of the eighteenth century through the first part of the twenty-first, have voluntarily laid down their lives in the name of liberty. I daresay that all of those hundreds of thousands of Americans placed more value on allegiance and duty than any of those now in leadership in Washington.

We know almost none of their names, and yet they purchased with their lives the freedoms that ensured that we transform, with a sense of historically unprecedented conviction, thirteen beleaguered colonies into Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

And now, fewer than six hundred self-serving scoundrels, incapable of comprehending the powerful measure of love and devotion that wells up within the heart of an American patriot, have succeeded in stealing that precious, hard-won inheritance and turning it into something black, dimensionless, and without a soul. And they are seeing to it that there will be no turning back. Expanding their base. Answering mightily to their special interests. Demonizing, even silencing, their opposition.

And we have no one but the American citizen to blame. His apathy. Ignorance. Self-centeredness. Ingratitude. Hedonism. The fewer than six hundred were placed into power by a band of adoring mental adolescents, who simply want to be allowed to go to the mall, download music/noise, and worship celebrity.

Mark my word: The mall/noise/celebrity fountain will continue to pour forth, while the nuts and bolts of a free society, the sanctity of individual liberty, the concept of personal responsibility, and the belief in reward for thrift, ingenuity and hard work, are breathing their last breaths.

So who is to blame for our current crisis, scheduled to transform into a full-blown global cataclysm?

(1) leftist politicians who bullied/extorted banks into making loans that the banks knew full well were bad business,

(2) Fannie and Freddie criminals who contributed mightily to those same leftist politicians and then cavalierly sucked tens of millions from the engine before the wreck occurred, and

(3) bankers who were too lazy to take a close enough look at the sub-prime-backed securities they bought up.

The above three groups, perhaps the most powerful forces in the history of our republic, combined greed, incompetence and ignorance all into one neat package that has destroyed the savings of tens of millions of the people they claim to represent, and that threatens to bring America to her knees, as our ideological enemies wait in the wings to wrest the ‘super power’ banner from our hands. When that final insult occurs, this planet will prove uninhabitable for moral, honest people.

Avarice and ambition would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other ... A Constitution of government, once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever ... John Adams

The Patriotic Resistance
God bless you all. It has been a genuine privilege to cross paths with so many modern American patriots!

~ joanie

Merry Christmas

2008-12-10T12:29:00.022-05:00

⁸And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby,
keeping watch over their flocks at night.
⁹An angel of the Lord appeared to them,
and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were terrified.
¹⁰But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
¹¹Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you;
He is Christ the Lord.
¹²This will be a sign to you:
You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.'
¹³Suddenly a great company of hosts appeared with the angel,
praising God and saying,
¹⁴'Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests!'
... Luke 2:8-14
This Christmas, many American patriots look forward to the New Year with fear and uncertainty, believing that, for the first time in our lifetimes – for the first time in the history of our beloved republic – America’s future holds little, if any, promise of a return to the foundations that made our nation the most moral and prosperous in the history of mankind. I share that austere and unsettling view of what lies ahead for us all.

Yet we tend to lose sight of the fact that there is a bigger picture ... that man on earth enjoys free will; and that many among us have used that precious gift for evil. Yet God is here among us, and ever watching. His presence is not defined by man in man's words, or in man's artistic renderings. Nor can His presence be forbidden by law or edict. He is here among us ... now and forever.

He abhors lies and oppression. He reveres truth and justice. He knows a man's heart. He is unimpressed with false words ... or counterfeit motives ... or disingenuous façades. He will not be mocked. He cannot be fooled. And those who believe otherwise would do well to revisit, and revise, such beliefs.

Last weekend, Rick and I attended a Christmas concert performed by the Booth Brothers, a young southern gospel group whose concerts never fail to provide incredibly beautiful music, Christian witness, and spiritual uplift. The concert was held in a local mega-church; there was not an empty seat, with probably a thousand people in attendance.

About halfway through the beautiful musical program, in the middle of an especially meaningful Christmas piece, many in the audience, entirely spontaneously, began singing along with the performers, and, at that point, something stirring gradually began to happen in the sanctuary.

Moved by the Spirit, Michael Booth began extemporaneously talking, in a very tactful, but impassioned manner, about the way in which America has abandoned her Christian, and foundational, principals. It was most definitely a personal accounting of his own heartache, as he sees his country wandering so far from its original noble path.

After which the remainder of the program became completely impromptu, with the lead-in group returning to the stage and performing together with the Booth Brothers numbers that were not rehearsed. The audience also joined in on those numbers that they knew. Much was said, and sung, with all thousand-plus people participating in the communal sharing of faith and concern for our country.

At one point, more than a thousand voices joined in an impromptu four-part harmony rendition of 'Amazing Grace'. It was an experience unlike any I have ever known.

Much laughter, and many tears, were shared. And the words and music that caused such an outpouring of emotion were completely unrehearsed, unplanned. It was an act of Providence.

The concert lasted more than an hour longer than scheduled, simply because no one wanted the evening to end -- least of all the performers themselves. We left the church at nearly 11:00, a full five hours after having arrived there -- feeling renewed and revived, with the knowledge that God's promises will be kept, despite man's foolishness.

The Lord was definitely present in that church last weekend. His presence was palpable. And, when it was time to go home, a thousand people exited through those doors in virtual silence. I would be doing the experience an injustice to say that words are insufficient, and I am still experiencing the residual joy to this day.

The Lord is good. And His promises are eternal. All we need do is look to Him for the strength, wisdom and comfort to face what lies ahead, and He will provide ... if we but isolate ourselves from man's cacophony, and listen for His whispers.

He expects His followers to hold fast to His teachings, but He does not always promise us earthly victories. More importantly, He prepares a place for His believers, where joy and glory are eternal, and the heartache and pain that the evil of this world creates will become nothing more than a faded memory of a time when men believed they reigned supreme.

⁴Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
⁵You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies ...
... Ps 23:4-5
As our celebration of our Savior’s birth approaches, we are called to focus on His love. On His sacrifices. To set aside the cares and concerns of the world, and remember that His promises, alone, are eternal.

In wishing all of you a blessed Christmas –- filled with the warmth and love of family and friends -- I offer the following beautiful rendition, performed by Bronn and Katherine Journey, of what I believe to be among the most meaningful of man’s Christmas creations, in the hopes that, as it has for me, it will help you to release your burdens (cast them on Him), and spend some quiet time reflecting on His goodness, grace and love.

Although put to paper more than 160 years ago, the words are a timeless source of encouragement, strength and solace in times of trouble – even unprecedented times such as these. They are as relevant and meaningful today as they were back in 1847; it is as if they were written this very morning.

Simply close your eyes in peace, listen, and reflect:

O Holy Night

O holy night! the stars are brightly shining.
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born!
O night divine! O night, O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
with glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
here came the wise men from the Orient land.
The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger,
in all our trials born to be our friend!

He knows our need, to our weakness no stranger.
Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King! Your king, before Him bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another.
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother.
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we.
Let all within us praise His holy Name!

Christ is the Lord! Sing praise to Him forever!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
Heartfelt wishes to all for a blessed Christmas, and a New Year filled with personal peace, joy and contentment!

~ joanie

Return of the Prodigal Warriors

2008-12-08T00:41:00.001-05:00

Author’s Note: In previous commentaries, I’ve never considered the need to fudge the facts, stretch the truth, or resort to any other means of manipulation to capture the interest of an audience. And so it is with this offering. However, as you read along, I’m sure you will agree that the subject material is extremely sensitive and requires a certain level of discretion to protect the privacy of all concerned. Hence, the names have been altered, with this purpose in mind. – E. A. Scum

“And when they get to heaven, they will know each other with the nod of the head. The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac will greet each other as kindred brothers in arms . . . The veterans of the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam and all fighting men who came before and have come since will occupy a special place of honor reserved exclusively for the brotherhood of the warrior.” – Captain Ron Drez, U.S.M.C. (Ret.), London, England, May 31, 2004.

He went to war fifteen months ago. He returned a week before Thanksgiving to a subdued, yet poignant family reunion on a chilly night in Ontario, California. Those of us who watched him grow up were astonished by the change. It was more than simply watching a boy become a man. That process was finalized when he completed Ranger training in advance of his deployment to Iraq. No, there was more to this transformation than the passage from childhood to the adult world. There was something much more profound at work.

Sgt. Sean Andrew Christopher stiffly greeted his father, tentatively embraced his mother, and quietly reached out to his younger siblings, astonished at how they had grown in his absence. As it was for those of us who walked a similar path coming home from past wars, he was, for an instant, overwhelmed by the surreal nature of the moment.

A Ranger’s homecoming 2008.

Sgt. Christopher’s father has always been a powerful, magnetic presence. An enormously successful businessman, he is the type of alpha male who draws the attention of everyone when he enters a room. He has been my friend for many years, and it never fails to amaze me how the conversation will quiet down and heads will turn at offices parties, conventions, family gatherings, or any other get-together where large groups of people congregate. He’s just that kind of man; supremely confident, highly compelling, and undeniably self-assured. On this night, he looked tired, old, and intimidated.

His mother is a striking woman, even in her late 40s. A former cheerleader at Auburn University, she can still garner glances, attract wolf whistles, and cause traffic jams in the local mall parking lot. On this night, she looked her age and then some. The streaks of gray hair were all too visible among her long, chestnut tresses. The worry lines were prominently displayed on her features. The tension permeating her persona was strained to the point of contorting her normally lovely face into an angst-ridden caricature. The release of a burden carried far too long, and the limits of a mother’s endurance were clearly visible in how she carried herself on this momentous evening. When she embraced her son, she became what she was – a middle-aged matron whose child had come home safe from distant battlefields.

I invited myself along to the airport. It may have been an intrusion, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be there to see it. And I would have been content to stay where I was – off to one side and behind the family, content to be an observer. Except Sgt. Christopher noticed me standing there alone, disengaged himself from the frenetic embrace of his mother and sisters, and approached me with his hand out.

“Good to see you, sir. Glad you could come,” he told me, shaking my hand. His grip was like iron, and the eight-year-old boy I remembered from years gone by is now a 23-year-old combat veteran who stands an inch taller than I do.

Like the prodigal warrior, I too was a sergeant. And like him (I’m sure) I hated being called “sir.” But, the returning veteran has a lot of latitude in my book. So I accepted the designation in dignified, albeit uncomfortable silence.

Normally, I have a generic greeting for returning servicemen – “Thank you for your service. And welcome home.” It’s a popular salutation, expressing the proper sentiment simply, and with appropriate pathos. It’s a greeting that many of us who served in Vietnam would have given our hearts and souls to hear just once. And so, it has become something of a battle cry, especially from those of us who came before and returned only to fight a different war at home – a conflict of hostility, apathy and scorn.

On this night, I couldn’t bring myself to say it. This man . . . this soldier . . . somehow deserved something more, something significant. Before I could think better of it, the words were out of my mouth:

“Welcome to the brotherhood,” I said in return.

Sgt. Sean Andrew Christopher and I are joined. We’re connected. And we both know it. His hard, intense blue eyes, met my tired, old brown ones and we understood each other. We are brother paratroopers, brother infantrymen, brother combat veterans. We’re the same. We know each other, with the nod of a head. As a child, young Sean was a quiet, awkward boy who grew into an introverted, teenage slacker. As a man, he keeps his own counsel, which is good. But we both realize we now walk common ground, without so much as a word passing between us.

For all his stoicism, the young man is remarkably perceptive. In his silence, he notices things. He knows that his service puts him in a select group of men who have been tested in ways most of us are not. But I wonder if he realizes that many of his civilian compatriots will look upon him with envy as the years go by. Combat veterans often take a certain level of satisfaction in their service as they grow older. They’ve stood the test of fire, and survived, after all. Those who didn’t often look back and wish they had. For both groups, they’ve each crossed their own Rubicon, and once traversed, there is no going back.

The due bill for such confidence comes high. I don’t know if Sgt. Christopher will be overwhelmed by the horror of what he saw during his tour. It may take time to surface, but if there are any demons lurking within, more than likely they will gain expression in the fullness of years. He survived when others didn’t. That does something to a man. It’s called survivor’s guilt. How he processes that will come in time. He may have blood on his hands. And if so, that burden has a way of coming home to roost no matter how he may want to push it away.

Or he may have come home without a scratch. Psyche intact. There’s nothing written anywhere that mandates all combat vets must be scarred for life. But they will be different men, going forward.

While he is connected to that elite corps of men who’ve trod the killing ground of distant war zones, Sgt. Christopher is also separated from the remainder of his countrymen who did not. And that includes family, friends and even his closest loved ones. How he chooses to bridge this gap, if he so chooses, also remains to be seen. What he saw, what he did, what he experienced, are questions I would never presume to ask him. But I would be at his disposal if he chose to confide them.

How does he view his country, coming home, I wonder? It’s the one question I would want to pose to him. Does he see it as a great nation? Does he view his service as defending a cherished way of life against a determined enemy? Does he expect a nobler America, a country of promise, whose young people value what came before, are committed to what comes ahead, and a generation of leaders who share the vision, the promise and the hope of the last, best nation of fallen man? Is he disappointed with what he sees? Do the Christmas lights comfort him, or alienate him? Is he connected to the country he went so far from home to serve, or does he walk its streets a different kind of soldier on just a different variety of combat tour?

It’s unlikely I’ll ever get an answer to any of these questions. I have a simple policy when it comes to the treatment of returning servicemen – the veteran gets whatever he wants. Period. That includes the comfort of solitude if he so desires.

But for the moment, it is a joyous holiday season indeed. At least for one family. The prodigal warrior has returned. A very thankful Thanksgiving ensued, and a very Merry Christmas is in the offing. But it may be a short celebration for this family after all. Sgt. Christopher’s younger brother reports for induction into the Marine Corps in San Diego the day after Christmas.

I did not share in their celebration. About the time of the joyous homecoming, I got an email from one of the Marines who came to saving faith in Jesus Christ when I spoke at Camp Pendleton a few years ago. In the interest of brevity – something I’ve been accused of, but deny with all the fervency of an evangelist – I won’t go into the specifics of that speech or how it came into being. Those who are interested can peruse Saving Private Weinmann which Joanie may still have floating around in the archives, for more details.

To put it succinctly, I spoke to a large group of Marines a little over two years ago, after which some one hundred fifty accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Now, the message was not evangelistic. Yet it carried an intrinsically powerful Gospel message. I didn’t do an altar call – because the speech was more historical and cultural than faith-based. Yet faith was a huge part of it. Finally, I may not be shy about getting up in front of a crowd, but that does not a great speaker make. The Holy Spirit was moving mountains that day. And of course, the message would (and did) resonate with a group of combat veterans, of which virtually all the Marines in attendance were on that day.

So Gunnery Sgt. Eric Fiore, U.S.M.C., came up to me with tears in his eyes and thanked me for my presentation. Unlike Sgt. Christopher, Gunny Fiore was a career Marine, with ten years service behind him. He had one tour in Iraq under his belt, and another one ahead of him in the not too distant future. He was a hard man, but also a man of great compassion, and deep commitment.

He emailed me shortly after the presentation to tell me he had found God. We exchanged something of a correspondence for a few weeks after that, and then the emails just stopped coming. But Gunny Fiore was a man anyone would remember. And when I saw his email address listed in my inbox before Thanksgiving, I anticipated getting an update on what was going on in his life, and with his walk with God during the last two years.

The email was not from Gunny Fiore. It was sent on his account, by his wife Kimberly, to inform me that he had been killed in action in Afghanistan. She went on to tell me how much it meant to her – a committed Christian all her life – to see the dramatic change in her husband’s life after he came to Christ. And she thanked me for my part in that process.

I liked how she put it. No one of us brings anyone to the Lord. The Holy Spirit does that. But we can be His instruments. I’ll accept that role in the process. I’m not an evangelist. Never have been.

She concluded the email by informing me that this was her family’s first holiday season without Eric, and would I like to join them for Thanksgiving?

That’s where I went for the holiday. And that’s why I didn’t join in the joyous celebration of a Ranger homecoming. When we play a part in leading people to Jesus Christ, we have a responsibility to stand by their loved ones in times of tragedy. Besides which, there’s a simple rule of thumb when it comes to such requests.

1. Never turn down a Marine (or a Marine’s widow).
2. Any questions? See rule 1.

They live in a suburb of San Diego about equal distance from M.C.R.D. and Camp Pendleton. When I finally met her, Kimberly Fiore looked like she sounded over the phone. Usually, my mental image based on a telephone conversation is not even close. This one was dead on. She was tall, blonde, in her late twenties. But the years had taken their toll. In the prematurely old woman she had become, I could see the high school homecoming queen who fell in love with the tall, dynamic Marine not that long ago.

But Marine wives have steel in the spines. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s there. This woman was no exception. In her grief, there was strength. It came at great cost, but there was no mistaking it. She was burdened, but coping. And in the midst of a loss so devastating, she gave strength and comfort to all around her – her children, her family coming from Texas, even yours truly.

I handled things pretty well on Thanksgiving Day. If the 24-lb. turkey fried in peanut oil is typical of the holiday in the Lone Star state, I’m moving to Dallas on the next available flight. For a taste sensation, there’s nothing like it.

Watching the children was something else again. I almost lost it watching nine-year-old Michelle alternating between moods of animated fun and deep grieving that sprung from the cellar of her soul. Five-year-old Jeffrey didn’t quite get it. He couldn’t quite digest that his daddy wasn’t coming home. And eighteen-month-old Danielle will grow up never knowing her father at all. Watching this heart-rending scene sent me into a tailspin that has lasted to this day.

After dinner, Kimberly asked me to teach from the Bible. Now, I could have used a little advance warning to prepare something, particularly in a room full of Southern Baptists who knew The Word better than I did. But, there was no turning them down.

So I came up with Chapter 6 of John’s gospel – the bread of life sermon. It’s not typically offered at funerals, or memorial gatherings. But I’ve always liked it, because it cuts to the heart of the matter of who we are and how we define ourselves. And considering the state of the nation, and the profound nature of the loss this family was enduring, it seemed an appropriate offering at the time.

I’ll leave it to all of you to review the text. Basically, Jesus was preaching to a Jewish congregation in the synagogue about how He (Jesus) was the bread of life, and if they ate His flesh and drank His blood, they would never hunger or thirst. He managed to lose the entire room.

Now, I’ve laid a few eggs during my abortive speaking career. But I’ve never cleared the entire gallery. Jesus managed to do this. Then he turned to the twelve and addressed them, with the crucial question. And it was for this reason that I chose the passage:

⁶⁷ Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” ⁶⁸ But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.⁶⁹ Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” – John 6:67-69

It’s a simple question, really – “Do you want to go away?” In the burnt-out shell that used to be America, maybe we should all take a step back and examine how we define who we are. If what used to be a country is just another stop on the roadmap of the global village, then where does that leave us? What does that make us? How can we view ourselves as Americans if . . . there is no America?

A loss as overwhelming as the one that befell the Fiore family is often a time when faith puts down deep roots. Except she already has that faith. It served her well in the months since her husband’s death. But it will not ease the pain in her heart, the longing in the night for the way things used to be, or provide the loving father for three children who will grow up without him.

So the question of “Do you want to go away?” was moot for the extended Fiore family. They know who they are. And they know their fallen Marine is at home with the Lord because he took Christ into his heart on a gray day in a drafty auditorium after hearing how one Jewish veteran of the Second World War found absolution after sixty years of torment in the very same way.

But for the rest of us, the question stands – “Do we want to go away?” Now that America is practically an afterthought, what do we hold on to, if not God’s only begotten Son? And if our commitment to Him is tenuous, then we better decide right now just who we are and where our priorities lie.

Maybe, for the consummation of God’s plan for human history, America must be swept away. Not in some dramatic fashion involving fire, thunder, weapons and death. But simply by the erosion of America’s identity that by now is all but complete. In fact, there’s no maybe about it. Count it as a virtual certainty. I can think of no person better suited to complete the fait accompli of delivering this nation’s coup de grace than America’s first global president, who now stands poised to assume office next year.

However we choose to define ourselves in this global realignment that is currently underway, we better be quick about it. Because good men, committed men, strong men like Gunnery Sgt. Eric Fiore, U.S.M.C. won’t be here to lead us. They will have paid for their commitment in blood and passed on to something better that awaits all of us if we have the good sense to claim it while there is still time to do so.

And so it goes. A tale of two cities, if you will. Certainly a tale of two families. One celebrates the return of a beloved son. One mourns the loss of a loving husband and father. In what passes for a once great nation, we forge into the Christmas season, blissfully unaware of the Ranger who came home and the Marine who didn’t.

And that’s not merely a tragedy. It’s contemptible.

¹⁵ “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” – Joshua 24:15

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

The Stranger

2008-12-06T14:53:00.006-05:00

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was in town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger ... he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.

If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to our first major league ballgame. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home ... not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished.

He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked ... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?

We just call him ‘T.V.’.

submitted by B4Ranch
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)