Living in a Zero-Sum Game

As our “sort of like god” President raises himself above nations, earth and men, we the people are pawns in a zero-sum game with the administration, the czars and Congress. We are being played to keep us in a state of fear while they steal our money and our liberty. They tout international crisis, global warming disasters, healthcare crisis, economic crisis, housing crisis, and the end-of-life-as-we-know-it-if-we-don’t-have something-passed-by-the-end-of-the-week, weekly crisis - simply to keep us afraid.

Not only do they tout crises but they tell us they see “gold in them thar hills” and they plainly state that they plan to use these crises that come across their desk to their gain! Not our gain, not America’s gain - theirs!

I don’t know how many of you remember the days of the Cold War, but Russia always complained that they were in a zero-sum game – meaning America always won and they always lost. In fact, they still believe it as they just said as much yesterday about Obama and Lady Mi’s latest apology tour to Russia.

In an article in the news.scotsman.com they wrote “Russian news agency Pravda was less than subtle in an editorial summing up the Obama administration, headlined: "Obama: Deceiver, cheat, swindler, liar, fraudster, con-artist. [I think I am beginning to like Pravda these days!] The root cause of the antagonism is a belief in the Kremlin that relations with the West must inevitably be a "zero-sum" game – every gain for the West is a loss for Russia.”

But wait, didn’t President Clinton declare the inevitable end of ALL zero-sum games in a Wired interview? In 2000, he said “The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win–win solutions instead of win–lose solutions....”

It is possible to play a non-zero-sum game as Clinton, Obama and the progressives believe, but only under one of two circumstances, either you DON’T KEEP SCORE, or the only people you play with are people of equal power who have equal cards in an equally stacked deck!

Let’s think about this for a minute. Let’s take just one country and examine this worldwide non-zero-sum game. Let’s take Venezuela’s Chavez. What a great guy he is! He is taking over all the people’s money, all the oil, the banks (only Friday he took over Spanish-owned Banco de Venezuela giving HIM control over more than one-fifth of bank deposits in the country), demanding the end of the US dollar standard, befriending all good despots, and he took over the Presidency this February - forever.

What’s even more interesting is Venezuela’s history. The people suffered under turmoil until the 1958 overthrow of General Jiminez. The ensuing political calm ended again in 1989 when the people rioted and more than 200 of them were killed in Caracas. The Caracazo was a revolt against an economic austerity program launched by President Perez.

In February 1992, a group of army lieutenant colonels led by Chávez mounted an unsuccessful coup attempt, claiming that the events of 1989 showed that the political system no longer served the interests of the people. A second, unsuccessful coup attempt by other officers followed in November 1992. A year later, their Congress impeached Perez on corruption charges.

Now here is something that might sound familiar to us: deep popular dissatisfaction with the traditional political parties, income disparities, and economic difficulties were some of the major frustrations expressed by Venezuelans following Perez's impeachment. In December 1998, Hugo Chávez won the presidency on a campaign for broad reform, change and an end to corruption. Hmmmm.

Chávez platform called for writing a new constitution for Venezuela. He said the existing political system had become isolated from the people. Voters gave all but six seats to the candidates of Chávez’s movement that first election cycle. The new Constitution’s draft was accepted in a national referendum in 1999. One of the new rules was that a President could serve 2 terms of 6 years each.

As Chávez power and wealth grew, his supporters won the majority of the seats in the 2005 municipal elections, and all 167 seats in the National elections later that same year- after most opposition candidates withdrew one week before the elections over voter secrecy concerns.

The independent election observers from the EU (European Union) and OAS (Organization of American States) stated those elections were marked by record-high abstention and high levels of distrust in electoral institutions. That’s double-speak meaning that the voters were scared stiff to even vote. The reports made specific recommendations to increase transparency and help voters regain confidence in the system. The recommendations weren’t ever implemented.

Chávez proposed to reform his own REFORMED Constitution AGAIN in 2007, including measures that allowed indefinite presidential terms, geographic boundaries reorganization (redistricting), and a redefinition of private property (we get to take yours when we feel like it).
In late 2007, those reforms were narrowly defeated. Angered by his first loss, Chávez stated he might pass many of the changes defeated in the referendum by presidential decree, but instead played his power again (by scaring more people?) and won his referendum 14 months later in February. In the end, the people knew they had lost and just gave up. He took 10 years to take away their will, now he will finish taking their property, their money, and their lives.

Chávez can now be an official despot like Castro, Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il and his son Kim ll-Sung. He can remain in power. The people of these countries are poor and getting poorer, hungry and getting hungrier while their leaders are rich, fat and powerful and getting more so by the day.

We have to understand that despots rule because the people are afraid of them! The only people in those countries who are happy are those who are in power and their families and friends. How they square what happens to their fellow citizens is simply because it is a zero-sum win and they are winning! Where have we heard that nearly every day this year? That is where we are headed in our country, very quickly with all the legislation coming down the pike, with the czars, the business takeovers, the bank takeovers. It’s the same damn thing!

We really do NOT believe that a dictatorship can happen here in America. I don’t know why we think that because as we are witness, it happens all over the world. Never the less and for some strange reason, we still believe it just can’t happen in America. Our government would never move by force against we the people… Why wouldn’t they if it means they gain control, riches, and all the liberty?

Don’t doubt it. Obama is powerful enough, he is taking the same path as others before him, and like others before him, he is winning while we the people are going to be the ultimate losers in this game. We are in the being played in this zero-sum game, you, me and our kids, along with our culture and liberty will be on the losing end - unless we make winning our second job.

One can only win a non-zero-sum game if you are the ones in power. IF we are the ones who stand to gain, IF we are the ones who are being bailed out because we are TOO BIG TO FAIL, and IF we are the ones who count one whit, we might have a fighting chance. But this particular game benefits no one but Obama and his minions. It is why they had thugs at the polls and didn’t limit the campaigning at the polls, why the White House took over the Census, why they are passing all these major bills and it is why they are on apology tours around the world to our enemies all the while he is thumbing his nose to our allies! We gave it all up, we did near exactly what Venezuela 10 years prior, we voted in a one party rule and none of our usual tactics are working for us to stop them.

Our government is the end all, be all right now to remove us from our rights in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and our Bill of Rights for the sake of progressive party power. They only want to stay in power, to do that they must control all major industry and all money. When they succeed the control of the people of the US will be complete. We are the losers in Cap and Trade, in stimulus and bailouts, we are the losers in Healthcare Reform and we are certainly the losers if he too can be “President forever”.

What does it take for us to see the similarities, to recognize a despot and to know that dictatorships do not work? It only takes knowledge and the will to use it every single day going forward.

Cartoon is the courtesy of my friend Robert Smith, Jr. To see more of his work, check out http://www.robsmithjr.com/! Thanks Rob!

Maybe in a Way, Holder Was Right

Whether or not you believe in God, you must admit there is good sound advice in the pages of the bible. The one that comes to mind in these terrible days is “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.”

I say terrible days because they are terrible. Just the short list of “terrible” is pretty astounding!

• Worldwide Economic “collapse”
• North Korea testing 9 missiles July 4th alone! (Guess they want in on the fireworks?)
• Freedom lovers like Neda slaughtered in the streets of Iran
• A mysterious Swine/Avian/Human Flu threatening to kill 40 a day by summer’s end in the UK
• A Honduran coup (because their President was shredding their Constitution) while our President supports the ousted despot
• Israel losing their country one slice at a time by mainly our President, but also International force
• Sharia Law suddenly becoming the law of the land in the common law based UK, making the Queen a puppet
• The swift loss of our freedoms here in our own country
• Staggering job losses
• More than staggering debt
• The massive loss of our homes
• A created “energy crisis” that will indebt us even further and ruin our ability to compete
• The probable loss of even our own private healthcare so we can insure millions of illegals while you and I get taxed and rationed on our insurance
• A President and Congress that almost seem hell bent on our demise by saddling us with astronomical debt to build overpass bridges for Microsoft and building “monuments to me” buildings for overinflated egos that we cannot possibly fathom nor afford
• Right down to our choice of light bulbs – forcing us to replace safe, cheap bulbs with expensive poisonous ones

Why is all of this happening? I think it is because we lack knowledge. Because knowledge is the only thing that has the potential to set us free. We bought the lies they sold us.

We want sound bites; we want the McDonald’s version of history, economics, and world order. We want to live our lives seeing the issues solved in less than one hour just like on TV and we want to trust the “good guys” will win. We mistakenly believe that the “good guys” just happen to be the ones WE elected to office, regardless of the evidence that is staring us in the face.

We try to tell ourselves it will work itself out. We question our concern. We actually want to believe whatever they tell us, even though our senses are screaming NOT, basically because we want stuff. We want an armchair life to being the quarterback. We want to sit in our easy chair, cloaked in expensive jersey, stuff our faces with pizza while we spit all over the screen as we shout our ‘shoulda, woulda coulda’ directions at the four inch Quarterback inside a tube. Why shouldn't we? After all, that's as American as apple pie, right?

Only problem is, this is not a game. This is not a drill. This is a “Go To Jail. Go Directly To Jail. Do Not Pass Go” card.

Eric Holder, our newest Attorney General called us a nation of cowards. Although he wrongly said those words in reference to race, in our heart of hearts I think we all know that he was half-right. He’s not right in the way he meant it, but through the opposite of what he said. As a whole we are coddled; we are comfortable on our couch and we are afraid to say much about the President because he is the first black President, even though he’s not black; at least not any more so than he is white. We want our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, yet we want it without a price to us personally - we want it in our armchair. (It's okay if the other guy pays a price though, after all, he chose it, right?)

We are afraid to criticize too much because they might call us a racist. No, no and Hell no! They are the racists for even entering that thought into the equation! This is our Administration we are talking about! This is our country! I don’t care whether the man is white, black, or freaking chartreuse! This is the guy who is running our country right into a deep dark hole with the help of a one party rule Congress and a passel of unelected “officials”. This is Bush dark, peddling the same crap on another day courtesy of Goldman Sachs and company! I am not a racist, but I am a patriot and I want my country back from whatever (party, person or president) is trying to take it away!

We have stopped trusting ourselves and our own brains. We hear statements like “I want to help you” from our politicians, and we want to believe them because we have lost so much trust in ourselves that we think we can’t possibly help ourselves.

Oh, we’ll be macho at our tailgate party, at the bar when we can barely remain seated on the stool and some jerk makes a pass at our wife, or while we sit in our living rooms screaming at the TV, but we aren’t really. We are just posturing. We aren’t macho. We are soft, we are scared, and we are cowering because we want what we want when we want it and we don’t like it when we can’t get it. We see what happened to people like Neda in Iran and we gawk as though we are driving by a gory accident. The real problem is that we don't think it can happen here! Not in America! We think it is sad, but that is all. We should be in front of that White House right now!

We think that maybe, just maybe, big brother is right. Maybe if I just keep my head down when they tell me to, not grumble too much as they indebt every household in America to (currently) a whopping $546,000 apiece in future taxes, if we just allow them to pick our pockets whenever they want – maybe then they can give us what we want. We can keep our job, we get “Free” healthcare, we make sure we have our TV to mesmerize us to doldrums, have ourselves a little vacation, a beer and an iPhone when we want one, and we tell ourselves it’ll be okay. After all, they "say" we made this mess, so we guess we just have to take our lumps.

That is wrong on so many levels, but I truly do believe that every single one of us is guilty of thinking that big brother just might be right - at one moment in time or another - because it is just easier!

It’s isn’t easy starting a revolution, but whether it is easy and comes in a cardboard box and a side of fries within minutes of our order like Honduras', or we have to build another world stone by stone simply doesn’t matter. What matters is that we wake up and realize (finally) that they really only want the rest of our money so they can be hugely, obscenely rich and they can stay in power. We simply get to be the slaves that make it all possible for them.

To do this, they must break us of our wealth, our spirit, our liberty, and our will first. They started with our wealth; they are simultaneously working on our spirit and our liberty. Our will comes next. That means they start taking everything away from those who do not comply - including our armchairs, our electricity, our very ability to sleep in our own beds.

News flash - we already are their slaves; we just haven’t figured it out yet. Or if we have figured it out, we don't want to believe it! The only thing left for them to do is the privation.

If we perish for lack of knowledge, then obviously we survive with it: right? Isn’t that what it means? Perish means to die of violence or privation (death by neglect, denial, devoid of any stimuli), to pass away or disappear, to suffer destruction or ruin. The opposite then is to survive, which means to live after an occurrence, to get along and remain happy, healthy, and unaffected, to pull oneself out of a dangerous, life- threatening situation while others around you die. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that government can help me; they can’t help me to be successful, save myself or to live. In fact, I think government is a lot like TV. While it might on occasion be entertaining, it makes me dull, dimwitted, spoon-fed, unable to fend or think for myself and frankly lackadaisical.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to post a series of articles. We have to gain this knowledge. We have to realize that this is not a “McDonald’s fight”. This is the real thing. We have one of two choices, to perish or to survive. To put it another way, be slaves or free men.

We now have a new fight before us, Obamaminions are laying the groundwork for his third term. He is making his move on the 22nd amendment which is the one that limits a President to two terms. Jose Serrano, D- NY introduced legislation in the house to repeal the 22nd amendment, to take it away, to say it is no longer valid. A grass roots movement is underway (ACORN) to make Obama's third term possible. A beautiful big website is set up for donations to end the 22nd amendment, http://www.end22.com/. (BTW - does it ever concern you that there seems to be NO END to the money to build websites on the other side? Ya think maybe ACORN is spending their 8 frigging billion dollars they were awarded in stimulus to build these websites?)

So the moral of this story is this. The very thing that the Honduras President was ousted for in last week’s coup, is the very thing that Obama is trying to do right now! (Would explain the constant campaign mode.) If we allow this to continue, it does make Holder right and us simply cowards; quite unlike the people of Honduras who were able to peacefully dispose of a budding despot.

Ok. Order up?

Evan Thomas of Newsweek Gives US 1984 in Real Time

A few days ago Evan Thomas, editor of Newsweek magazine, in a stunning display of revisionist history and heretics stated that Obama “was sort of a god”. Now there is an interesting comparison. Wrong, heretical, revisionist, but never the less interesting. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.



As we see in this over the top interview where Chris Matthews surely felt the tingling up his leg (an oh-so-gross word picture that never fails to give me the heebie jeebies) as he was declaring "Yeah!", a new comparison was made to ‘the one’ - this time comparing him to God and to President Reagan, all in a 37 second time slot. In this grandstanding, Thomas says "that in 1984 America was ‘still the good guy’, Reagan’s message was different, it was all about America. Obama has a different task", he says, now we are the "bad guys" and he needs to make people love us again, to bring all sorts of people together, to be above America and above the world…"as sort of a god".

Oh man, Evan did you have to spoil my week that way? I might add, I'm not sure that the despots (who aren't Obama) in the world are liking that analogy much either!

Let’s break this down politically first, bit by bit to find out where all the ideas in this little world you imagine come from, Mr. Thomas.

President Reagan came into his own starting back in the late 40’s where the real threat to the Republic was the infiltration of the various forms of totalitarianism. A time when the Socialist, Communist, Progressive, Trotskyist, Labor, and Bolshevik Parties inserted themselves into the Celebrity crowd. Ronald Reagan was on the board of the Screen Actors Guild at the time. It was established as a union for Actors meant to protect them against abuse of the movie houses prior to the start of WWII. It has since turned into a platform for far left leaning socialism - at best - ever seeking the promised Utopia where they are assured of continuing status in the public eye and on the political scene regardless of how dead their career might now be (think Janeane Garafolo here).

Then Reagan, a Reservist from the US Calvary, was called to duty after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He developed (as Second Lieutenant on stateside duty) a new and important method of preparing the bombardiers and pilots for their mission by recreating the Tokyo and Japanese coastlines on a soundstage. By using a camera on a derrick, his team would film what the crew of the plane would see.

Additionally, there were classified films that were made by the troops on the frontlines for the Generals; these were “on location” films of our troops overtaking death camps. Ronald Reagan was one of the first people in the US (through his role as filmmaker) to view these early death camp films. It was through these films that he first experienced the visual and visceral horror of the death camps and it was that experience that horrified and haunted him, no end, until the end of his days. He never forgot those scenes, the sole arm reaching out in death throes from a sea of dead bodies, and it was that remembrance that drove much of what he did after the war. In fact, he kept that particular film and brought it out to show anyone who ever approached him with revisionist history concerning the death camps, giving them lessons on reality. A lesson from which you yourself might benefit, Mr. Thomas.

His movie career was diminished immediately after the war, but public policy and politics had taken root in his heart because of the films he witnessed. He was still a Democrat at that time, but an old school Democrat. He hated Fascism in all its forms because of the very thing he saw that it caused, which led soon to his hating other "isms" in all of their forms just as deeply. He joined many different groups in Hollywood and he became a speaker. His did so out of a deeply held conviction, not for fame or fortune, for surely it hurt his career as an actor.

In a speech to one of the groups, he spoke eloquently against fascism to roaring applause, then as he ended his speech, he said,

“There is another ‘ism’ and if I ever find evidence that communism represents a threat to all we believe in and stand for, I’ll speak out just as harshly against communism as I have fascism.”

He was met with utter silence as he exited the stage. Soon after that moment was when he realized that communism was deeply entrenched into the heart and soul of Hollywood. He began then resigning many groups which he had joined, started his own crusade against those party lines along with several other big screen names. Eventually his passion helped him become our President, one of the greatest President’s in modern history.

Reagan believed in freedom and in liberty. He believed everyone should join in to declare freedom and liberty including anarchist, monarchists, Wobblies, and whomever. He despised Secretism in all its forms, believing that if you refuse to come forward publicly with your ideals and your goals, then you are pursuing power by guile and deception, silently overtaking institutions, companies, and organizations to move for power through force. In his mind, that is what Nazi Germany did and that is what Fascists and those who support Dictators do. It was simply un-American! He was not anti-union, he was anti-fascism, anti-socialism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, and anti anything that takes away life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He came out hard against organized labor because he saw that secretism take away the will of the people in many ways, including the electoral process through strong-arm tactics.

In the early days after the war, as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, he was asked as a part of a group to research the strikes to ensure they were really about wage or working conditions abuse. He and others in this group found that they were not at all about abuse, they were about who actually was hired to do the work. This led to not honoring the strikes and it placed Reagan roundly in the crosshairs of fascism, literally and figuratively. It was found that Moscow had in fact orchestrated the unrest and this began the Reagan Revolution that was nearly another 30 years in the making. I say all this out of historical fact, not out of a sense of deification of the man Ronald Reagan. He was a great man, a far sight better orator than Obama (he didn't require the POTUS II Teleprompter in order not to um and ah)and he made our country strong and proud again in spite of mistakes. That is all we the people really require from a President, to keep us strong and safe and to use the Constitution as it stands, as he swore to uphold, as his guideline.

Enter Norman Thomas

Although the differing far left parties were weakened by FDR’s policies of the New Deal, they were regrouping under the tutelage of none other than Norman Thomas, six times Socialist Party of America Presidential candidate loser, and the one who declared,

"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without ever knowing how it happened."

Norman Thomas was the ipso facto leader of the new Socialist Party of America. His leadership goal in this new party was to attempt to bring all these various labor and fascist groups together under one set of common platforms. He quit running for President after the new deal, and rumor says that he stated it was because he no longer needed to run for office as the Democratic Party was carrying forward his agenda just fine.

Norman Thomas studied under Woodrow Wilson at Princeton before Wilson was President. He continued schooling at Union Theological Seminary after a stint traveling and he became a Presbyterian Minister. He was Editor of the “The World Tomorrow” publication, the leading voice in the Christian Socialist movement, he was also a member of the Marxist Party, the Assistant Editor of “The Nation” magazine, and was Grandfather to none other than Evan Thomas of Newsweek fame - the comparer of Obama to God and the rewriter of 1984 history, not to mention quite possibly the book! Are we really surprised?

Remember, Reagan began to get his footing as a political leader in those same days. He saw the likes of Norman Thomas, he watched these groups get funding from Leninist's and Stalinist's. He watched as they gained footing in the youth movement to gobble up our youth in great gulps, promising dreams of a utopia where there would be no war, only equality and fraternity with State-owned everything, freely handing it out like candy. He supported birth control, saying essentially that to not would be to support the white man's way of populating the earth with little mini-me's. Reagan listened to radio addresses by Thomas where he talked about things like; the Socialist Party has the desirability of unions, not to live with a rigid creed, but like good Marxists.

Was that simply to encourage the youth to join? This promise of, even though we know the State owns everything, we promise to provide you equality in your personhood, in all your material desires and a fraternity in all your whims and beliefs without creed? As if to make them believe that absolute power does not corrupt absolutely and Freedom from Want is all they need?

Ronald Reagan spoke out against all of that and Norman Thomas personally as it relates to another issue that is bigger today than it was even then, and that is the issue of socialized medicine.



Thomas stated in a 1958 radio address in Chicago,

“I think that the socialism of the future has to be increasingly a socialism that is based on the common interest of all of us as consumers. The common interest of all of us in liberty, equality, fraternity and a decent material life, a common interest of all of us in owning the diminishing supply of natural resources. Now this isn’t to deny the existence of class conflicts and this isn’t to deny the tremendous importance of the organized workers, but it is to affirm that the socialism that is going to win in an age in which increasingly the job has to think in consumer’s terms. It has to think in terms well, as the abundance of housing and the equality of what women and men are made of. Of course I am for the largest possible unity of democratic socialists and not on a sectarian basis, but very frankly, I do not think we would accomplish very much, we democratic socialists, in unity unless we get a whole lot more with us pretty soon. They are terms of meeting our problems now in the language of press. They are terms of dialogue to use a now popular term “a dialogue with the realities of the press”. This is what concerns us and we shall, I think, have to work out partly because of our political institutions being presidential rather than parliamentary. We shall have to work out difficult techniques because we can’t get as far as we used to by nominating candidates for almost all offices. You younger people, of whom I am glad to see so many, will have to work this out with vigor, with imagination and with determination.”

Right there in that 1958 Radio address, Norman Thomas got it all started. A mixture of State owned everything except certain services left open for competition, but as he also stated in that very same speech,

“an ability to control everything through taxation and labor legislation”.

Here in the America I know: Reagan saw this movement was afoot, a movement to socialism in the extreme, just as it is today. We had just come off the Carter years when Reagan came to power and by 1984 he had begun the great turnaround in this nation, a turnaround that lasted nearly 30 years. A turnaround that caused the socialists to slink back to whatever rock they crawled out from under, after another failed attempt at socialism.

Americans ushered in a man who got it, who understood that free markets and low taxes were what brought the people liberty, that the right to choose for them even included the right not to work, but it meant they would then remain poor. He understood that the Constitutional Culture is one of strong independence and personal accountability, not one of Freedom from Want. He screamed it from the rooftops, “If you want it, go get it, I'll even help you. But don’t you dare take mine without asking me first!” He was not parochial, he was not provincial, and he was certainly not chauvinistic, nor are we Americans. Is that really what you believe being a true Constitutionalist means, Evan?

Norman Thomas' ideas, with the persistent help of his grandson no doubt, has become the true direction of the progressive party we see today, from land grabs at the federal level, to UN initiatives like Agenda 21, the Global Warming mantra, to total control of the masses through taxation and labor in a planned not very Utopian utopia, to the very recent ownership by the Union majority shareholders of Chrysler and soon GM.

You are digging being "openly socialist" like your grandfather taught you, aren't you Evan? Those tingles are just rocking and rolling up your legs as you see your 'sort of god' using our taxes and our wealth to control us. To steal entire century old companies right out from under the true public's nose - you know, the true 'we the people' who have worked and saved and bought our shares as an investment - and which is now entirely worthless through the nationalization of these businesses? Are you quite happy to see these companies just handed over to organized labor after your 'sort of god' traded in all the preferred for common stock so that it could be done. I'll bet that just makes those tingles roll for you, doesn't it?

Obama apparently studied the message well, which is why Thomas Jr. is so happily sharing the tinglies with Matthews. They think they are winning this long awaited battle, and they are - for now - but once the people see that the utopia will never materialize, their pocketbooks are shrinking and the job market dries up, look out Mr. Apologist in Chief, because you will be kicked to the curb. But hey, while you are on your way out, would you do us one favor please? Would you take Mr. We Are All Socialists Now and Mr. Tingly Jeans with you?

To you Mr. Evan Thomas, grandson of the great social engineer Norman Thomas, that is exactly the reason that President Ronald Reagan spoke mainly about America. That is exactly why he gave back our tax dollars, put the world on notice, sought out panels for small business and local government to advice him, brought our country out of a near miss with 1930’s history, and made us “the shining city on the hill” again. Your revisionist history, while slightly entertaining, is not quite so true. Or do you so soon forget the difficulties Reagan faced with Iran kidnapping American hostages, Hezbollah, the Achille Lauro, the Sandinista, the Libyans, the West Berlin disco, and the Soviets to name a few?

You say Reagan’s was a time when America was well liked among the nations?

Hardly, sir!

Was it a time when we were well respected for our strength?

You bet your bottom dollar, sir!

Now today we have a man who has been dubbed “sort of like god” going on these perpetual self-aggrandizing campaign tours where he is obviously campaigning for Leader of the world, and who is systematically tearing down every special relationship and ally we have on this planet to do what exactly? Apologize? For WHAT?! Is it really for the thrill of quarter dipping before the King in Saudi Arabia? Or maybe Obama was just gauging his popularity with the King, you know, checking to see if he got the leg tingles too....

This president with a little p is out making nice with the people who drive planes into our building, who behead people at whim (as he weakly compares our women rights issues with theirs), and who are, as I write, busy building nuclear weapons. He supports a nation that has 1500 centrifuges churning this stuff out and who have declared their wish for the annihilation of Israel! We have European nations leaning considerably to the right in this past weekend’s election cycle, signally something quite loudly to the inexperienced one we now call our president with a little p. That should make you nervous all in itself, there, little mini-Norm.

And you dare to compare him to God?!

I find I can't even make an argument to this statement for that would be lending it the credence it does not deserve. But I will say this, thank God Obama is not "sort of like a god". The real God has it all over him every day of the week.

I'll bet that's what your grandaddy taught you starting “a dialogue with the realities of the press” meant, huh?

Well, Mr. Grandson of Socialism, I would be keeping an eye on the sky if I were you and I might be considering donning something myself for a while - like a rubber suit complete with booties? Otherwise those tinglies you share with Chris Matthews might just intensify for you with that big lightning strike that is heading your way from the real God, ya know? Yow! Wouldn't want to be you!

We Are All Founding Fathers Now

By: Michael S. Yashko

The cover of Newsweek Magazine recently proclaimed, “We Are All Socialists Now”. Maybe we are. Maybe it’s time to stop kidding ourselves. Let’s quit pretending that we’re a country of rugged individualists, like in the movies. John Wayne doesn’t live here anymore. Perhaps we should stop the charade and just get it over with, admit that we just don’t have it in us. Americans like the federal nanny-state. They need the federal nanny-state.

To resolve all doubt, we could gather in Philadelphia, draft a Declaration of Dependence and submit these facts to a candid World: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident in our Society: that without Federal Government intervention, we cannot take care of ourselves, our families or our neighbors; that we are endowed by the benevolent good graces of a ubiquitous Federal Government with certain unalienable Rights and that chief among these are taxpayer-funded programs to ensure our happiness and well-being. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on our own inadequacy, we pledge to the Federal Government our blind loyalty, our incomes and our sacred liberty.”

But maybe Newsweek was wrong - a modern-day “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment. I sense a growing awareness on the part of average citizens. Previously too busy bettering themselves and doing right by their neighbors to be “activist” about anything, they are awakening to the realization that their country is being changed. America is not changing in the sense of a benign, political drift, but it is being relentlessly, purposefully changed in a real, fundamental and irreversible way. People now sense that we’ve reached a tipping point, a moment in the history of our Nation when the core philosophy of our country is being re-set for good. And, the gravity of this realization is spurring them to “get into the game.”

Let’s face facts. We are presently engaged in the “Third Founding” of the United States. Only the Revolution and the Civil War rival the coming four years in philosophical importance. If we are intellectually honest and aware, we should recognize that we are being forced to choose: become full-blown socialists or turn back to our historical roots as a constitutional republic. Time is short. This “re-founding” is going to be complete within the next four years, not some time in the obscure future. In these next four years, we will decide if we’re capable of taking back the power we’ve ceded to Washington or if we really are all socialists now. Did Newsweek get it wrong? We’ll know soon enough. We’ll have an idea of what road we’re on after the 2010 midterm elections. The morning after the next Presidential Election, we’ll know for sure.

It’s late in the game, but the battle of ideas has finally been joined in earnest. I say “in earnest” because we finally realize that both political parties are speeding us down F.A. Hayek’s Road To Serfdom. People finally grasp that the choice is not between Republicans or Democrats, but between an intrusive federal nanny-state run by both parties or a movement by the people to take back the power originally reserved for them by the Constitution’s Framers.

The Founders gave us a constitutional republic and made individual liberty paramount. They designed a decentralized government to ensure that the people could govern themselves – those most directly affected had the most say. We now have a centralized, mass democracy where the concept of federalism is but a footnote in history. Professor Claes Ryn calls the social and political philosophy which enabled the Federal Government to invade every nook and cranny of our lives a “moral hoax” because it allows the proponents of big-government to “ooze benevolence for people in the abstract.” Because they don’t have to do something concrete for specific people it is checkbook morality - “moralism made easy”.

The Supreme Court aided and abetted this transformation of the Constitution by ignoring or re-writing clause after clause limiting government power. In his book, Restoring the Lost Constitution, Professor Randy Barnett vividly describes the result, “The Constitution that was actually enacted and formally adopted creates islands of government powers in a sea of liberty. The judicially redacted constitution creates islands of liberty rights in a sea of governmental power.”

So, what to do? Professor Barnett has a concrete answer is in his Forbes.com article, A Bill of Federalism (May, 20, 2009). We must demand that the Federal Government return the power it has usurped. We must restore the original balance of power between the Federal Government and people and the States. But legally and politically, we cannot simply erase the Supreme Court cases that brought us to this point. We must amend the Constitution to formally reinstate the clauses eliminated from the Founders’ Constitution. In this way, we can assume control over our own lives again, just as the Framers intended.

We are but months away from the culmination of Socialism’s one hundred year assault on the Founders’ core philosophies and their Constitution. We must face squarely the question, “What is the proper role of Government in our lives?” Either we will re-affirm the philosophy and virtues of our Founders and re-invigorate the Constitutional Republic they created, or we will take the final step to European-style Socialism. I see ahead the last off-ramp on Hayek’sRoad To Serfdom. Let’s take that exit marked “Individual Liberty, Limited Government and Free Enterprise.” Fight for what you believe in. Join the debate. We Are All Founding Fathers Now.

© 2009. All Rights Reserved.

The So Not Cool Bill Cram du jour - How Do You Go About Proving a Negative?

Obama is making a proposal announcement to Congress later this morning that if passed, will have two very negative and far-reaching effects on this country. He will propose Congress write a bill to raise taxes on corporations and literally change the way the courts view the presumption of innocence by going after US Citizens who put their money into off-shore, non reporting country banks. This tiny little sideline will seek to prosecute people who keep monies offshore through tax avoidance/cheat laws. He will also ask for provisions for 800 new IRS agents to fulfill this law. 800! I just love these one, two, three you’re out “bill cram du jour” punches, don’t you?

We will make it look good while we change the entire way our system works in the country and no one will be the wiser!

I am going to focus on that bigger point that will be hidden in this bill cram de jour, that little known bit of information wwwaaaaayyyyy at the bottom of the article that we won’t really catch in his spectacularly orated announcement. The second half of that bill I will call the “You are so screwed” amendment. To do that, I still have to attack the first premise of the bill in the hopes that enough of the right people get a hold of this to stop the train before it gets rolling.

Under the guise of “making the rich corporations pay” what will end up being a measly $210 Billion over 10 years (vs. the very real $787 Billion Stimulus Package slated to be spent over the next two years), Obama is going to use this bill cram du jour to “do an AIG” on the American people once again. He’s going to highlight the terrible nature of a company trying to make enough money to survive our country’s outrageous tax consequences to be able to employ folks. Then he is going to make a big to do about those terrible rich people who use non-reporting country’s banking systems to “circumvent” tax laws, “cheat” the poor people. What he won’t say is that while he is at it, he is going to slip in the teeny-tiny little change to our presumption of innocence clause, namely changing it to a presumption of guilt clause that says we will have to prove our innocence!

Are you hearing me? You Mr. “Charged with Theft” or Mrs. “Didn’t Pay My Taxes on Time”. You will, if this bill passes, be presumed guilty, and have to find a way to prove your innocence.

If you think this will only affect tax law, you are sorely mistaken. Once that door is open, once a case is upheld, that CASE LAW will be what permeates every other smart prosecutor’s case building efforts, in all courtrooms, at all levels - tax, civil and criminal.

It only takes one case.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
- Robert F. Kennedy

This announcement will be to try to get the American Public spun up once again about the “rich” getting “richer”, even as it applies to businesses who are the ones who do the employing. I’m not going to belabor this point mainly because there is nothing to labor over. It is a proven fact: businesses that are forced to pay higher taxes in America do three things - move more jobs or their entire company overseas, raise the price of goods to Americans (pass through), and lay off those Americans who are the ones doing the jobs that provide the businesses a loophole to begin with. You can argue those points, but you’ll sound rather dense because you can’t hide from those facts.

If you are a corporation, or you are a defense, business, tax lawyer, or judge, we are counting on you. Somehow, you must get to the media who tingles up their legs every time the orator utters an “uh”, you must promise no campaign contributions to anyone on the left if this bill goes through and you must let the money you have amassed work for you on this one. Frame the argument in a way everyone can understand. You aren’t big business people, rich, or attorneys for nothing, and I would say this is more important to be on the side of right rather than on the side of populous and shut Obama down on this one. You have good brains. Use them! They aren’t listening to the masses anymore, we will back you and fight like hell, but you are the ones on the front lines on this one.

Will someone please be big enough to stand up to set this control freak President down! And Jack Kemp, if you can hear me, please mention this one to Jesus while you are making introductions!

Taking Back Hope

I was asked last night, "What else can we do?". I was told today through the grapevine by someone else that maybe we were trying to do too much. The latter statement is something I strongly disagree with even though I can see that to some it may look that way. It is not upsetting, actually it is galvanizing to me. To be successful, you have to think big, right?

I believe it is up to the people to change the way we do things. Like a marriage takes hard work to repair, so does a country. If we, as a whole, go about our own personal duties, lose touch with our loved one, and perhaps took for granted our relationship would always remain the same, we now know one thing. Being in any relationship is kind of like a marriage, whether it be to a single individual, a group or even an entire country - if we take something for granted, it can turn away, even when it is a while before we know it turned away. That is where I see us now, as conservatives, our country turned away from us.

So what can we do to stop this out of control world, to take it back to what we can live with and further? Here are just a few of my thoughts...

First, we must stop re-electing the same old, same old. If we want change that demands a smaller, more responsive government, lower taxes, etc., we start first with our party chairperson. We tell them what it is we expect from those they back and fund. Then we go to talk to the State chairperson, saying much the same.

We take a contingent from each State’s 912project and we go make a visit to our respective parties, each person along their party lines, but we go together as a State group. We list our grievances with them. When we do not see a change there (and they won't believe us at first), we write a group letter, we sign the letter individually to say that we are all dropping out of their party to join another. We tear up our party card and place the bits in the envelope with the letter. Then we, as county groups go together to our respective voter registrar for our lunch hour one day and we proceed to change our parties - that very day. We invite the media when we do so.

We write letters to the editor often, we blog the truth daily, we go to the county conservative meetings, our own and other groups. As a group, our State 912 is doing a lot to organize to help us find our voices. We make sure we attend and participate, as well as invite our friends or people we meet to join us. We start book clubs, hold seminars, sponsor Tea Parties, watch and fight the bills and appointments that are dangerous to our freedoms, and we attend the functions and events as often as possible realizing that there is just not a more important role we can play at this time in our history. We help other groups with their functions and most importantly, we help one another Live and Give in freedom.

We understand that it is not only our military whose duty it is to sacrifice and to put their lives on hold, possibly even laying them on the line, to protect our country; it is each and every citizen’s duty to be active in our government.

We stop expecting the people we elect, during this time anyway, to represent us. Instead, we cause them to shudder at the sight of us. We want them feeling nauseous every day as they face going into the office. We want to take away their toys. They will not like that very much. We stay in their face with letters, calls, faxes, visits, petitions, marches and we focus on staying in their face for at least an hour out of every day. We remember, this is our freedom, our Constitution and our way of life they are tearing down, and we have a DUTY to not allow them to do that.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty. - Thomas Jefferson

The moment we see that a representative is not voting in the Constitution's best interest, we should recall our elected representatives (for the States that have that option in their constitution), we start those petitions and we carry them through. If we are in a State that does not have the recall option, when their terms are up, they are voted out. No excuses. No apologies. We work just as hard on getting them booted out as others did getting them elected. We find that grassroots politician and we help that hopeful, we give of our money and our time. I could really care less if we ended up with an entire freshman congress and senate at once; we have to make sure the government and financial elite know we will not stand for this. And we do not elect MORE lawyers!

For those who are so inclined, we set up prayer schedules with our friends. We spend every day praying that God would move in a miraculous way to halt this crazy train we find ourselves on. We set a schedule, take 10 minutes and sit in prayer, every day specifically for this country, its people and our leaders.

We realize that it took them 30 years to get here, longer actually, but the train sped up over the last 30 and now here is where we find ourselves, ridiculed as teabaggers, veterans in danger of blowing a gasket when they get home, rightwing extremists in danger of who knows what because we use the word "Constitution, God, ProLife", or any number of other conservative terms. They believe we have unhealthy disaffection because we are not sitting down anymore in silent discouragement for what we can't tolerate. Wow! We realize that we are enlisted to the duties of our citizenship for as long as we are American citizens.

We work to petition our respective States to reaffirm the 10th Amendment. We visit, talk to, call and fax our representatives in the State. We petition our counties, our towns and our States to return the stimulus money, to stop spending, to be careful with the money we entrust to them. We petition them to join with other States to force the government to stop the spending and to lower taxes. It takes 2/3rds of our States. If it means we grind this economy to a halt for a minute, with the exception of the small business, the local grocer, that is what it means.

We boycott the Main Stream Media and their advertisers. We do so in an organized way. We turn off our expansive channel choices and move back to basic cable, as much as possible, all at once, simply pick a day to bring down their phone lines with cancellations until all service but basic is cancelled.

We tell them it is because we cannot support Main Stream Media outlets that they suffer. We stop buying those things that are advertised on the stations whose commentators get tingly up their legs. We insist they represent us fairly, or plugs are pulled. We cancel papers and subscriptions that do not serve the truth, we write letters to every single advertiser who supports those that would unfairly report the news.

We save our money, we learn to garden, and we lead a simpler life of hearth and home. We fight the laws they are making at warp speed, we set up 20 blogs and 50 different websites, if we must, so they cannot take our communication down with a cybersecurity czar. We refuse to allow our children to be enlisted into the Civilian Military as designed by the Give Act, even if it means we homeschool or send to them to a private school. Grandparents, help your grandchildren. We go to church. We reach out and help our neighbors.

We write letters to the leaders of other governments and we tell them we ARE a Christian Nation, that we love our country and we will not go quietly into the night of one world government. We systematically undo or disable every step the current and last Administration has done, as much as is possible.

We refuse to buy vehicles from a government owned auto company, we buy used. We refuse to bank at a bank that accepted TARP wherever possible.

Moreover, we stop arguing with the left and we start doing positive things for this country and for each other. This country is not owned by the government, the government is owned by us. We need to act like it. Are we heir’s of this nation or aren’t we?

We have no need to be worried about what they have done. We have no need to apologize or whimper or to even be overwhelmed. WE are the heirs of this nation and we have a right to ensure we stand up for her and we understand that WE SURROUND THEM.

They do have need to be worried about what we are doing. Our pens are mightier than any sword. We must remember this one thing - That which we tolerate, IS what we stand for!

This administration does not own hope, they do not own change, and they certainly do not own "Yes we can". We simply need to reclaim those words, reclaim our hope and, hold our values dear to live them out as our own. For we do own them, each of us own them, individually. No government machine can corporately own words, for then they are only slogans.

Liberty is not something that can be taken, it can only be given up by our inaction.

You are not alone.

America - The Beacon of Hope to the World

Written By Greg

George Washington wrote, “I am sure that never was a people, who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States; and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.” - The writing of George Washington, by John C. Fitzpatrick, GPO, 1931 – 44. Vol 32:2

By this statement, we know that George Washington understood a truth; that God allowed a group of militias to unite to overthrow the mighty British army, whose job it was to uphold the tyrannical rule of the British Empire over the colonies.

When I read his writings, I believe that George Washington sensed the reason for God’s favor on those patriots included an important point – one that I see us moving farther away from as a nation. Namely that God had given a vision to these believing patriots to ensure that our country would be a model, a "Beacon of Hope" to the world. These patriots knew from where their strength came. They knew they were operating under the blessings and by the direction of the One who could lead them from tyranny to liberty. The Constitution of the United States of America is, among other things, a testimony to this reality.

George Washington knew that it would take the American people working together to uphold the principles of our country that are manifested by the United States Constitution. The principles are the reason that he and so many others had sacrificed their comfort, security, health, and ultimately for many, their lives. He knew that winning our independence was nothing short of a miracle, and that our “experiment” as a republic with a distributed form of government led by the people would fail if we failed to remember what would make it succeed – to continue to be the Beacon of Hope – One Nation, Under God.

Our Statue of Liberty declares to the world, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Lady Liberty is a symbol of our own freedom from tyranny and is a symbol of hope the rest of the world. However, a statue with words, or a government making new laws will not endow the American People or the immigrants who have entered her shores with the strength to uphold such lofty ideals. We are a free people, endowed by our Creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and we are given a heady responsibility to care for our fellow man while ensuring the continuation of the Republic. Without God, freedom becomes impossible to maintain. It is when the American people remember that those words etched on Lady Liberty by human hands, has a deeper meaning when we believe in our God and His offer - “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest”.

How far have we strayed from these truths? Our elected leaders apologize to the Leaders of these "huddled masses" for what our country has done. Our leaders, elected and unelected are taking significant steps to give up our hard fought sovereignty to be part of a global central government, a one world order, whose goal it is to usurp the moniker "beacon of hope". Our President is trying to convince other nations who have watched the true Beacon of Hope become the leader of the free world through these 200 years that we are no longer a Christian nation.

Of course, these leaders are not the first Americans who deny that it was and continues to be the blessings of our Creator that has allowed the miracle of our nation to occur. These are simply the first leaders to be in a position of power, and to the have benefit of a global stage, enabled by technology and own the media to such an extent that they can get away with making these proclamations. These are the first leaders of the free world to have the ability to take advantage of the momentum and traction of an emerging, powerful global central government whose viability has been enhanced by a global financial crisis not seen since the Great Depression.

It is up to the American people to remember what has allowed us to be the leader of the free world. We need to remember why we are the nation with more immigrants every year than any other nation – it is because we are the Beacon of Hope.

Those of us that understand these truths need to remind our family, friends and neighbors that are old enough to remember the time when we prayed the Lord’s Prayer and pledged our allegiance to our flag every morning at school. We need to take the time to explain to the under 40 set that we did this every morning of every school day so the American people would never forget why we are blessed to live in the greatest nation the earth has ever known.

If we know the truth, the truth shall make us free. If we speak the truth in love, our numbers will increase. If the numbers increase a grass roots force will exist who know these truths, remember them every day, and share them whenever possible. Then and only then will we have listened to the advice given by the father of our great nation and we will be obedient to our Heavenly Father. Then and only then will we prevail and be able to stop the momentum being caused by those who are making sure they "do not allow a serious crisis go to waste".