A Country I No Longer Recognize

I mourn for my country.

It gives me no pleasure to write this essay. I just wanted to make that clear from the outset. However, in just the last decade, my country has transformed into an unrecognizable land so diverse from my childhood that I weep today. At times, I truly wonder if ISIS has taken hold here, eager to destroy every historical landmark of our heritage through the politically correct process.

A terrible tragedy befell the residents Charleston, South Carolina  last week, in which a man who was seen previously waving the Confederate flag sat in a Bible meeting for an hour and then murdered nine innocent people, including the pastor.

In the aftermath -- and I do not mean to brush aside the incredible grace of the families of those murdered by any means -- the debate  has shifted from the ridiculous to the outright absurd. Not only are politicians and activists around the country lobbying to have the Confederate flag removed from virtually everywhere, but now old monuments to our original Founders have come under attack.

There are already cries from so-called Americans to have the statues of generals from the Civil War removed from universities and government sites, and even calls by some to abolish the American flag itself. Some ponder the demolition of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. And I shake my head.

How did we get to a point in America where we so cavalierly consider destroying our own historical structure just to appease a few dissenters? More to the point, how did said dissenters gain such a powerful voice and opinion? The answer is shocking to anyone who has avoided politics most of their lives, while those who have remained engaged will understand perfectly.

Our entire educational system has been co-opted by radical left-wing elements who teach in our universities and churn out far more radicalized pupils than those who emerge unfazed by the indoctrination techniques employed therein. These former pupils then immerse themselves into every aspect of the American system, most notably our media, and the results are not very difficult to observe.

Borne of necessity, alternate news sites have emerged in the internet age, but are easily marginalized by the Progressive machine, and results have filtered down even to the consumers of these sources. We are losing America, folks, and I'm not sure if we can reverse course. As government continues to grow, and as all three branches continue to morph into a giant conglomerate of the same ideology, the sane among us continue to be cast aside as heretics, and we are losing ground.

We are legion across this nation, but we are disconnected. We must find a way to organize -- a phrase I am loathe to use -- into a network of people determined to save our country before it is too late.

We must put forth the message that our history, for all its warts, is an important reminder of how far we have come. Today, black and white Americans interact as though a chasm never existed between us, and yet, our first black president has succeed in driving a wedge between us large enough to nearly cause complete chaos. Our friends of the opposite color remain as before, but inner city kids have taken Obama's message a bit too far, and the main stream media has only stoked the flames. And supposedly well-meaning professors and celebrities have done far more harm in our collective relations.

I estimate we have but one more chance -- a last chance, if  you will -- to set this once great nation back on the course originally laid before us by the very men who are so cavalierly vilified on a daily basis. November 2016 is slightly more than a year away. We must hold on tightly to what we can and elect a Conservative president at that time or I fear it will be our swan song.

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Proof of the Slippery Slope and the Hypocrisy of the Left

The First Amendment is number one for a reason; it is the most fundamental right of American citizens under the Constitution.

Our Founding Fathers knew one thing most clearly, and that is that men are inherently drawn to power and are thence corrupted by it, resorting to the most base tactics to maintain it once it is in their grasp. These great men worked tirelessly to craft a document that would best protect their future children from the fates other nations had suffered under oppressive tyranny, and prevent future politicians from the same temptation.

It seems their efforts were in vain.

So deeply did George Washington hold those beliefs that after his second term was over, he left the Capitol and returned to his plantation over the objections of an adoring populace that begged him to stay on as President.

Today, there are no men of such principle, for they cling to power and refer to their relative positions in Congress as "their seats". And America is suffering as a result. The Founders never intended this nation to have career politicians, those who would reign over the people for thirty or forty years. We now have "representatives" who have known no other way of life. Their entire careers have been spent writing laws telling the rest of us how to live our lives. The sad thing is...we keep re-electing them.

Which brings me to the most disturbing news of the day. A city in Idaho has enacted an ordinance that basically forces Christian churches to perform gay weddings or risk fines or imprisonment. Yes, you read that correctly, this is not about a public bakery or florist, this is about churches. The town of Coeur d‘Alene, Idaho, is threatening pastors within their community with jail time and fines if the pastors defy the ordinance instructing them to violate their beliefs.

Remember when the whole issue of "gay rights" began heating up? Remember the assurances of Liberals that all they really wanted was "equality for homosexuals"? Well, like any other issue, the Left lied to you, and if you were sympathetic to their causes, you helped create this new nightmare.

Congratulations.

What will follow in the coming months and years, presumably, should be fairly entertaining to behold, for as the left has been quite adamant in their assertion that Thomas Jefferson built a "wall of separation" between church and state, they will no doubt rally around this new trend in governance whereby it is suddenly okay to breech that wall so long as it suits their agenda. The problem, however, is that the Left's position is in stark contrast to Jefferson's intent.

Jefferson intended to ensure that free men (that would be all of us) would not be compelled to subscribe to a particular religion but would rather be free to worship their own private God, or not worship at all if that was their prerogative. It was never intended that government could not embrace religion at all, such as Nativity scenes being banned from public spaces.

And despite the assurances given by the Left about the aims of the pro-gay crowd, in which they swore that "no one is going to force churches to abandon their beliefs", here we have a small municipal entity doing just that very thing.

Oh sure, the next argument from the Left will be that it's just an isolated incident, and that the behemoth that is the Federal Government would never  enact such laws...um, got some spare cash and a hankering for a paved river crossing?

So...here's the hypocrisy part. If you're a Conservative, you've already got it. If you're a Liberal -- and assuming you've made it this far in the article -- here is a recap. While the Left has long maintained that the "Separation Clause" is concrete evidence that Christmas decorations are banned from the lawn of Town Hall, they will argue vehemently that the government has every right to force Christian pastors to marry homosexuals because "it's discrimination" if they don't.

That bridge is still for sale. Cheap.

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The Time is Right

America, this is your rallying cry.

Ted Cruz announces that he will be running for President of the United States. 

My fellow Americans, now is the time to seize the opportunity to do what so many of you have wanted to do through these last six long, dreary years, but what so many of you have been too busy to do; change America back into the land you all so fondly remember.

It might also serve you all well to remember how you have been treated over the last six years. We've been relegated to the bowels of society, cast out as extremists, lunatics and terrorists. Think about that for a few minutes, let it sink in. Most of you remember a time when the wackos were the leftist hippies and communists. Well, they have taken over your country and have squashed you almost out of existence.

The TEA Party was a welcome breath of fresh air for us, and I applaud those of you who have joined the many rallies and sacrificed your time to stand up at events in D.C. For many of us, like me, we simply could not spare the time to attend any of these, merely cheering you all on from the sidelines. And for those among my ranks, we have one day where we can make a difference, and that will be on November 8th, 2016.

The last time the Republican Party put an extremist up as our presidential nominee, he won in a massive landslide, and even won a second term. If you're like me, you remember the groundswell of pride Ronald Reagan bestowed on America, the sense of renewal after four dismal years of the Carter administration. We can feel that again in January of 2017, if we seize this chance and don't allow the media to pick our nominee again like they did in the last two elections. Because I can tell you without a doubt that they will foist Jeb Bush upon you.

Ted Cruz is our kind of "extremist", a man who loves America and is extremely knowledgeable on her Constitution. I suggest that if we all come out on election day and embrace our alleged
"extremism" rather than hide from it or deny it, we can thwart the real extremists on the left and take back our country. And all we have to is spend an hour or so on one day and vote en masse to defeat whomever the left puts up to run against us.

Folks, this may be our last chance to defeat this wicked ideology that has infected this once great country. I pray that Ted Cruz sails all the way to the nomination, and if he does. Grab your ailing grandmother and get her to the polls. Make time to get there yourselves, and VOTE.

God bless America, may we rise and stand tall once again.

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Victorious Bibi and a Despondent Media

The look says it all.

On Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu won re-election in Israel, something which pleases me greatly, and something that has soured President Obama's mood obviously. As of Wednesday night in Jerusalem, Bibi still hadn't received a congratulatory call from Obama, despite the fact that Obama called Morsi -- of the infamous Muslim Brotherhood -- the day after he became president of Egypt. That speaks volumes of Obama's disdain for Netanyahu.

And despite Obama's attempts to derail the campaign of Netanyahu -- an act now under Senate investigation -- he won anyway, which must really stick in Obama's craw.  But the region and, indeed the world, is now going to remain secure because of this victory. Obama and the media and the Palestinians can go cry in their beer.

What's stunning, however, is how unable our allegedly objective press seems to be in concealing their dismay, bemoaning the alleged "peace deals" supposedly in the works for years. Perhaps the media concentrate on only the moment and are incapable of remembering past events, even if they reported on them personally. Case in point, the Palestinian peace deals with  Yassir Arafat.

In the 1990's, President Bill Clinton was working on his legacy and believed that obtaining a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord would get him there. He worked closely with Arafat and tried to broker a deal in which Arafat got virtually everything he wanted and more. Netanyahu, who was also Israeli Premier in 1996, would not negotiate with Arafat if his so called Revolving Door Policy continued.

Yet, with everything Clinton promised to Arafat -- which included a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and nearly all of the West Bank, and a capitol in East Jerusalem --he ultimately walked away from any deal that could reached. Why? Because Arafat was the Arab version of Al Sharpton who wanted no solutions because it would end the "struggle".

Let's face it, folks. If the Palestinians get a deal they want and end up happy and content, what would the Arabs have left for which to be angry? How would they justify their hatred for Israel?

So all this media talk about "Netanyahu winning and Israel losing" is pure, unadulterated hogwash. If Palestine has a state to call it's own, Iran will still turn Israel to glass if they get nuclear weapons, along with any such new Palestinian state. So let's all thank God that Netanyahu won, and will at least be in charge beyond the disaster we currently suffer here in America.

There is still a grown up in charge somewhere.

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The Definition of Insanity

One Smart Cookie

There's an old axiom that states that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Attributed to Albert Einstein, it is a saying that holds very true today, and one that will make my new foray into trying to educate liberals on economics betray the title of this blog. But if I reach even one liberal today, I will consider the effort worthy. So kick back with a cup of coffee and let's take another stab at this, shall we?

For starters, let's look at President Reagan's "trickle down economics". Reagan's idea was a simple one, and one that John F. Kennedy agreed with; a rising tide lifts all boats. Sea tides do not care about a person's societal status. It lifts the yachts along with the dingys.

Nor do Republicans care about a person's societal status. The idea is to build a robust economy through free trade and unfettered opportunities for success. Life is not fair, that is another old axiom, and one no less true than that of Einstein. Opportunity is fair, but not everyone gets the brass ring, whether through poor decisions or lack of motivation. But Democrats believe that those who do excel economically have somehow cheated, and therefore deserve some punitive action from government. What they fail to take into account, however, are the glaring and numerous failures throughout history of their alleged solutions.

President Lyndon Johnson began the so called "War on Poverty" back in the 60's, yet look where that has gotten us. Subsidies for individuals who provide no return on the investment merely lead to an entire new crop of the very same people. And they keep growing annually.

Taxation does nothing to reward "the little guy" and yet certainly harms the big guy and, therefore, the little guy as well. When the big guy has less expendable capitol, he naturally tightens his belt. As such, he hires less people -- or in the case of the current crop of tax thirsty Democrats, actually lets some go -- and so the little guy is now out of work. But if the big guy has more expendable capitol, he buys products, hires more people (the little guy) and everyone's lives are improved.

Milton Friedman the
Godfather of economics.

Winston Churchill once said, "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle".  

If that doesn't adequately explain the futility of over taxation, I defy anyone to do a better job. Of course, Milton Friedman was fearless in his quest to make the layman understand the same principles, and he is sorely missed today as the liberals have successfully created a chasm between rich and poor that has spawned an irrational hatred of the rich.

Through a curriculum of envy and class warfare, the left in America has employed the tactics of Lucifer himself in sowing a generation of people who think that the rich have been stealing from them their whole lives, spanning generations to include the ridiculous notion that their parents and grandparents have also been held down by the rich. Keep in mind, there are indeed some evil rich people in the world, but for the most part, they are just hard working Americans who have had the will to reach beyond what most of us have achieved.

I say bravo for them, but more importantly, I say thank you to them for providing a job for me throughout my entire life, in one form or another. The Democrats (i.e. liberals, progressives, etc.) have not provided anything to the American people but scraps and morsels to barely sustain their insatiable jealousy of the very people they should join me in thanking.

When government taxes the rich, that does nothing at all to help the poor  beyond a government check and a furthering of their dependence of the next government check. They lose their drive to succeed and become more and more dependent on government for their sustenance. One more old axiom for your consideration: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime". The first guy will show up at your door day every day looking for another fish.

The danger of the liberal philosophy is -- just as a drug pusher depends on his "customers" becoming addicted -- that the more people who become hooked on government cheese, the more taxes need to be raised on the "rich". And if there are tax cuts in the future, the rich will once again be vilified.  Many of you may be familiar with this story, but remember kids, we're insanely trying -- yet again -- to reach a few liberals. I won't share the story in its entirety here, but here is a link where you can read the whole thing.

Caution to my readers...please do not hold your collective breath in waiting for any form of confirmation that this article succeeded, for we may never know. But we can all hold out hope that somewhere, someone gets it. Hopefully it will be a whole gaggle of millennials.

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Idiocy Does Not Come Cheap

Here's a guy with a job.
He looks delighted, doesn't he?

Seemingly striving to shatter the boundaries of utter stupidity, Obama's State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf  spoke to Chris Matthews of MSNBC's  Hardball on February 16th regarding the problems of ISIS (yes, not "ISIL") and the motivations of that ruthless band of heathens. Aside from the insanity of the things she said, there is also a rich irony buried within them, as well.

By now many of you have already heard that the basis of her premise is that we "can't kill our way out of this war. We need to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's lack of opportunity for jobs...". Now I don't know if that is official Administration policy or not, but judging by Obama's stance on radical Islam, I tend to believe it is.

So ostensibly, Ms. Harf thinks that as long as we get ISIS "good paying" jobs, we won't have to worry about them and, ergo, we won't have to kill them anymore. (Note: rich irony to follow below).

So we have an administration in place that doesn't believe that ISIS or Hamas or al Qaeda are "Islamic", and that the only radicals in town are TEA Party members. We must be wary of radical extremists on the right side of the aisle, and coddle the actual terrorists who cause, um...terror and murder. Probably because the Muslim call to prayer is "the most beautiful sound" Obama has ever heard.

But that's not even the reason that Ms. Harf's words are so disturbing -- and they'd be hysterically funny if not so sad and terrifying. No, this is a statement from a member of the Obama administration that is so inept that jobs under their reign have become so scarce that millions of Americans have given up looking for work altogether. (Hint: this is why the unemployment rate is so low). But those millions of Americans permanently out of work have not joined ISIS. In fact, most haven't killed a soul. What a curious thing.

Poverty does not a terrorist make. Osama bin Laden was a millionaire, and yet our Twin Towers in New York are gone. In 1932 the unemployment rate in Germany was 30%, and by 1938 is was 5%. And Germany was at war with the world. Poor people are not angry, they're just miserable, and even that is not always true. Some are just fine with it as long as they have the Lord. They do not feel the need to remove the heads of innocent people who bear no responsibility for their condition.

So here comes the irony part...we have an Obama administration that hemorrhages more jobs then it can ever create, reason being is that its policies inherently deter job growth. So how in God's name will they defeat ISIS by creating jobs??

No, what America needs now -- and especially before it's too late -- is to kill every last ISIS member willing to die for their cause, and get Americans back to work. I seem to remember from my history books that during World War II, we couldn't put enough people to work.

So here's my solution. Kill terrorists, make the world safe again (this involves all the nations of the world), build prosperity and revive the space program when peace is at hand. WWII and the Apollo projects of the 1960's saw bold new strides in technology that made most of the success of the 1990s possible. We can do it again.

But we can't start until the insanity stops, and that begins by ridding ourselves of the insanity in our government.

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When We Were Too Busy to Be Kept Busy

Once Our Minds Were Challenged

"Billy? Dinner time!" There was a one-time built-in "ignore" function on this particular command, but it was not worth much since the follow up command would come almost immediately on the heels of the first, and with more emphasis.

"BILLY, NOW!" would soon follow, which was acceptably countered with one simple and plaintive objection; "Five more minutes, PLEASE?", which was then met with a more emphatic overruling.

This was the era of my childhood, the time of innocence and equal mischief. The time when kids were left to explore the recesses of their own minds and to use their imaginations to entertain themselves, rather than being pre-programmed by the State and their parents so as not to become "bored". It was a time when we learned what worked and what didn't, what succeeded and what hurt.

It was the 1960's, and we who rarely went to university still managed to get jobs and become somewhat critical thinkers without the alleged benefit of advanced professors. In short, we who didn't require rigid structure, but rather the freedom of becoming acquainted with our own possibilities, and who "miraculously" found success despite the absence of the societal prescription of strict guidance and channeling, made it relatively unscathed.

Intellectuals today would sniff dismissively at the notion that we were busy, insisting that we were merely wasting our time, but the truth cannot be denied that the children of the time prior to 1970 were better equipped to deal with the world than their contemporary counterparts. The adults referred to our activities -- when not in school -- as playtime, and while it's true we were playing, we were very busy doing it. And we learned volumes of invaluable lessons.

So what is the primal need today for parents to plan every move their kids make?

Well, much of it is due to the pressures of the new society we've permitted our so-called public servants -- politicians -- to inflict upon us "for our own good". We're now told how we should raise our own children by people who have neglected theirs in the quest for their careers, and at the risk of losing them to the State. Didn't see that one coming, did you kids? My parents never imagined that by simply letting us walk home, alone, from anywhere would one day lead to them losing custody of us. The very notion of it was too ludicrous to ever consider.

Never mind that we walked home -- or rode our bicycles -- to and from anywhere. In summer time we were away from home all day, only knowing it was time to come home by the sun or, if we were in close proximity to home, by the sound of our mothers calling or our fathers whistling for us. Our days were filled with endless and ever new adventures created by our own imaginations, and we reveled in them. For instance, the photo at the top looks like a simple shipping container, but it used to be so much more after the contents were unpacked.

That box was a palace, it was a simple cabin, it was a locomotive, a plane or a submarine, to mention a few of the possibilities. And hold your hearts, people, because this next part is going to shock you...sometimes we cut ourselves on the edges we had cut. And we bled! Can you imagine the horror?

Give most eight-year-old's a large cardboard box today and they're liable to look at you incredulously as if to say, "What am I supposed to do with this"? There is no Xbox in there, no Netflix, and no internet service. Completely useless to a child today. (And besides, you're late for a dance recital or soccer practice).

We played baseball in any field we could get to and played football in the street. Yes! The street, made of hard asphalt and traversed by fast automobiles. We occasionally broke neighbors' windows, and got spanked by them first and then by our parents. But no one died and no one sued.

We did have little league baseball, but -- wait for it -- not everyone made the tryouts! We were the ones playing sandlot, and we probably had more fun doing it. And when a parent swung by where ever a game was being played to take one of us to an actual appointment, there was wailing at having to leave on such a beautiful day.

We actually performed work around the house on certain days too, so we could earn an allowance, which we learned how to spend wisely when we were out on an adventure and worked up an appetite. And when we ran out of money toward the end of the week, we'd make a pact with our friends to meet back at a designated spot after the dreaded trip home for lunch. And the only thing more excruciating than those moments was the inevitable one happened only hours later...the "call to dinner". That meant that if you were lucky, you had perhaps one more hour afterward to complete the days activities.

No, in the 60's, we were not bored, not by a long shot. We were way too busy to have our parents find something for us to do, and much too busy for something organized by adults who could barely remember what it was like to be us. We learned problem solving, how to deal with pain and adversity, and compassion.

Today, kids only learn to go where they are told next. Everything is laid out and scheduled for them, and they are shocked by the realities of life after school. Which is probably just the way the government, the Department of Education, and our new society designed it.

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Losing Paradise: From Land of the Free to the Home of the Besieged

"You call someplace Paradise,
kiss it goodbye". -- Eagles, The Last Resort.

It must be obvious to everyone by now that not all of us have thought of America as Paradise. I would disagree, but I am but one man. Certainly I have many allies across this great land, but we have been defeated by an insidious enemy that has captured the minds of our youth. When the young fall prey to these cretins, we lose all leverage. And yes, we have let it happen.

We have actually aided in our own demise, I might add. With all of our kvetching about how hard we work, how we are taken advantage of by our "evil" employers, and how we need more vacation time, we have fed the beast which would eventually devour us. And the real irony lies in the fact that we are never overworked. We, as Americans, thrive on work, and we always have. And yet we willingly gave our children over to the Jimmy Carter Federal Department of Education, and from there it was all downhill.

We gave our kids to the government, and we now wonder how our society has been turned on its ear. And just wait until the current crop of school kids reaches adulthood...let's see how Common Core reacts to the real world. That's just the latest travesty to affect our youth, but the damage goes back several decades.

It is natural for kids to rebel at a certain point in their lives. It is a rite of passage as we begin to mature and develop thoughts independent of our parents'; that we question the wisdom which for the first ten years of our lives we viewed as unassailable. But in the 1960's, the Progressive left found a way to keep the trajectory away from the love and wisdom of our parents going, and many of us ended up alienating those precious ties forever at the behest of evil individuals who cared nothing for us, but rather coveted our young minds. Then, with the passage of the Department of Education Organization Act, the move was on to indoctrinate our young at ever earlier ages.

This is the attack the left has long envisioned and cultivated, and it is almost a complete coup of the American way of life. We Baby Boomers can well remember our way of life as children, and many of us cling to that very notion, where we eventually realize the wisdom of our elders and form our lives and bonds from there.  But we are being marginalized by a society we never intended, and being overcome by children we no longer recognize. This may sound a bit like a "Stepford Wives" conspiracy, but there is more to this than mere fantasy.

In the 80's, my oldest daughter came to me seeking help with her math homework. I was delighted because math was my second strongest suit in school. What she presented to me was completely foreign, and devoid of any numbers whatsoever. The problems were something to the effect of, "If this is this, and that is that, and this is that, but that is not always this, what is the correct answer?"

I was stunned and demanded to know what this "math" was called. She told me it was called logic. I didn't complain to the school because it seemed like a new subject I was not aware of, but nothing sinister. Unlike Common Core today.

One must wonder what is behind the thought processes of Common Core? Why would our Federal schools want to make math so deliberately confusing? My theory is that while the schools teach our children all about climate dangers, tolerance for the intolerable, and the evils of their parents, they can pretend to be teaching math, too. Of course, this math will never help the kids balance a checkbook or make change at a cash register, but the schools don't plan on any of these kids working anyway. The schools claim to be preparing our kids for the world beyond formal education, claim to be trying to keep up with the rest of the world, but our kids will be hopelessly lost when they get out of school if "educators" have their way.

And so they will almost all of them be forced to rely on the government to care for them. We're not producing the future of America, we're facilitating her demise.

Now, couple all of this with current events, in which we see a President who refuses to protect our borders, our very sovereignty, and we do indeed risk losing the paradise our fore fathers bestowed upon us and for we have fought valiantly as one for centuries. There was a time in my youth when the very idea of losing America was anathema to everything I believed. Yet now, in the course of a few short decades, and in the immediate sense, the course of only 6 years, I have seen the end draw near at an accelerated pace.

The Left in this country is patient, so patient as to closely resemble the current scourge of radical Islam which now threatens us beyond my every imagination. And it seems that but for a minuscule portion of today's youth, only the Baby Boomers are left to understand this threat. And only we can plan for our defense, if only the young and able are prepared to listen to us. But with a Commander in Chief and a phalanx of maoist advisors decimating our military, the best of our young soldiers will be fighting in the trenches alongside the aging citizens when the time finally arrives.

Folks, it is time to start praying: praying for guidance, praying for strength, and praying for awakening among those who have facilitated this pending tragedy through a misguided attempt to make the world a better place. The world is not ours for which to care.

Our domain is the United States of America, and it is time we started believing in her again before she is gone.

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