May
15
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want
Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
This post was published by Zbigniew Maxurak and subsequently posted on ReaganGirl.com on May 15, 2012.
With less than 9 months remaining before January 2nd, 2013, when the sequester triggered by the failure of the Super Committee will kick in (absent amending Congressional legislation), some politicians have called on the Congress to retain this sequester unchanged and thus to cut defense by an additional $600 bn, thus cutting $1.087 TRILLION out of the defense budget over a decade in total BCA-mandated cuts, and they don’t care about the consequences for defense and thus for national security. Here is libertarian House member Tim Huelskamp (RINO-KS):
“Additionally, though I opposed the Budget Control Act (August 2011 debt deal), we should enforce, and hopefully exceed, the spending cuts agreed to in the mandated sequester.”
Another libertarian Congressman, Justin Amash of Michigan, claims that although he supports a strong defense, “There is much room to cut defense spending.” No, Congressman, there isn’t, and if you REALLY supported a strong defense, you wouldn’t be supporting massive cuts to defense. You can’t have it both ways. Either you support it without any qualifiers or you don’t and you support the massive cuts that you endorse.
Liberal Republican Congresscritter John Campbell (RINO-CA) also supports the sequester:
“A minority of Republicans including California Representative John Campbell say the automatic cuts should be allowed to take effect without any changes, including the defense cuts many of his colleagues and the Pentagon say would be devastating.
“There’s a lot of waste in defense and I think we should be cutting it out,” Campbell said.”
No, there isn’t a lot of waste in defense, and certainly not $100 bn per year. Not even close.
There is some waste, and it should be eliminated (and remember, I’m the author of the largest DOD reform proposals package ever devised), but there isn’t nearly as much as $100 bn per year (which is what the sequester and First Tier BCA-mandated reductions would cut out)!
The sequester, if allowed to proceed, would cut defense spending WAY too deeply (on top of all the defense cuts already implemented and scheduled, including the $487 bn in defense cuts unveiled by Panetta in January): by $600 bn. In total, the cuts would amount to $1.087 trillion over a decade, not counting the savings resulting from withdrawal from Afghanistan. Such deep cuts would gut the military. As a consequence of them, the DOD would have to, inter alia:
- Cancel the F-35 program completely without replacement, and thus betray foreign program partners
- Eliminate the ICBM leg of the nuclear triad completely while cutting the bomber fleet by 2/3 and cancelling the bomber replacement program
- Delay the SSBN replacement program
- Cancel all except the most basic upgrades for F-15s and F-16s while cutting the fighter fleet by 35%
- Cut the USN’s ship fleet to 230 vessels, the smallest size since 1915, and vastly inadequate (independent studies say the Navy needs 346 ships)
- Forego the deployment of any missile defense system abroad
- Cut the Army to its smallest size since 1940
- Cancel virtually all Army modernization programs
- Cut the Marines down to just 145,000 personnel
- Cut personnel benefits programs to such depth that it would break faith with them (e.g. massive cuts in DOD health programs and retirement benefits), thus discouraging people from joining the military or reenlisting
As testified by Obama’s own SECDEF, as well as all Joint Chiefs, lower-ranking generals, and other DOD officials, and as confirmed by many independent analysts and retired officers, sequestration would completely gut the military. For JCS Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, sequestration would produce “the definition of a hollow force”. For LTG Mills of the Marine Corps, “sequestration would break faith with those defending America.”
The HASC has come to similar conclusions and also warns that most of the damage that would be done to defense would be irreversible. For example, if you cancel a shipbuilding program that a shipyard relies on, the shipyard will have to close and be liquidated and will not be there to reopen when you’re finally ready to start buying ships again.
Moreover, first tier BCA-mandated budget cuts plus sequestration ($108.7 bn a year on average) plus zeroing out OCO spending (as a result of the inevitable US withdrawal from Afghanistan, $88.5 bn per year on average) means cutting the military budget by a total 32.11% – much deeper than the cuts made after the Vietnam War (26%) and almost as deep as the cuts that followed the Cold War (34%-35%). Now think about it, Dear Reader: we now know that the post-Vietnam and post-Cold-War defense cuts WRECKED the military. So how can we honest expect this round of defense cuts NOT to gut the military? We can’t. Simple math alone should tell you that, even if you don’t believe Obama’s own SECDEF, Deputy SECDEF, and Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as many lower-ranking generals, retired military officers, and independent analysts.
Speaking of the Joint Chiefs, there are only three possibilities:
1) That all of the Joint Chiefs are deliberately lying to scaremonger the Congress and the American people;
2) That all of the Joint Chiefs are ignorant guys who don’t know what they’re talking about; or
3) That Panetta, Carter, and the Joint Chiefs are right about sequestration.
I’ll leave it to you, Dear Readers, to judge for yourself which it is.
Furthermore, not only would sequestration gut defense, it would be extremely unjust. The DOD would be punished for CONGRESS’ FAILURE to design a fiscally responsible federal budget; and even though its entire budget accounts for just 19% of federal spending, and the core defense budget (which would be the portion hit with the sequester’s cuts) accounts for less than 15%. Yet, this 15% portion of the federal budget would bear a full 50% of sequestration’s cuts. This would be deeply unjust and disproportionate, in addition to gutting the military.
Huelskamp opposes entitlement reform and ridiculously claims that:
“Discretionary is the only thing we usually handle around here. To suggest we should undo discretionary cuts that are guaranteed in law in exchange for savings that may or may not occur” isn’t a solution to the spending issues facing Congress.”
But half of these “guaranteed” discretionary spending cuts would gut defense and thus imperil the country, and gutting defense with such deep cuts because this would cut spending somewhat and is “guaranteed” to happen is deeply irresponsible and downright treasonous.
The budget can be cut, and even balanced, without defense spending cuts, let alones ones as deep as this one, as the Republican Study Committee and the Heritage Foundation have shown. (Their plans would both deeply cut overall federal spending and balance the budget within a decade without cutting defense at all.)
Entitlement reform does not mean “savings that may or may occur”; it means real spending cuts, in the (by far) largest portion of the federal budget, 63% of the total, and as consequences, it means BIG spending cuts – far bigger savings than defense sequestration would ever produce. The Ryan Plan would enact real spending cuts in its first year and, over a decade, save taxpayers over 3 times more money through alternative cuts than the sequester would.
To sum up, defense spending sequestration would completely gut the military and thus imperil the country; would be deeply unjust (punishing the DOD for Congressional failure); would be disproportionate; is not necessary to reduce the deficit or balance the budget; and would save much less money than conservative plans that don’t cut defense spending (such as the RSC’s and the Heritage Foundation’s plans) would save.
Let me be clear: there is some waste in the defense budget, and I am not defending it; I support rooting it out. But there is far less of it than defense’s opponents claim, and certainly not as much as $100 bn per year. Moreover, any wasteful DOD programs need to be eliminated carefully in a targeted manner, specifically, one by one, and not used as excuses for deep, crippling defense budget cuts.
And anyone who claims there is as much as $100 bn per year worth of waste in defense spending needs to be forced to say what exact programs he claims are waste, list them all, prove that they cost $100 bn per year, and say why he thinks they are “wasteful” and how would he defend the Nation without them. The burden of proof is on the claimant.
And, as Ronald Reagan said, anyone who proposes to cut defense spending must be forced to say which defense programs the Nation can do without, why, and how it would protect itself without them.
In short, the Congress MUST protect defense from sequestration by stopping it completely.
The opinions expressed on Ziggy’s Defense Blog do not necessarily reflect those of ReaganGirl.com.
May
14
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want
Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
May 14. 2012
The Giving Tree is evil because this is its alleged model for human happiness. The truth is, this is the model for human hell.
Shel Silverstein, the author of children’s book who was part-beatnik, part-scary uncle, and part-lovable pedagogue, wrote some funny stuff. His poems and stories were often whimsical and warped, sometimes innocent and sometimes sardonic and mocking. But this enigmatic guy is responsible for one of the most loathsome and vile pieces of literature ever written in modern times, The Giving Tree.
Let me give you just a little context. The Giving Tree is absolutely loved by the educational community. Teachers swoon when they hear the words “The Giving Tree” uttered, as if some mystical power has transported them into a higher state of warm fuzziness. The book is read to children to illustrate high and noble things like motherhood and friendship. The real, and very dark philosophy at the roots of The Giving Tree, is one of utter nihilism; the sacrifice of oneself for another who lacks the capacity to reciprocate, and the subordination of self-interest to a child’s self-absorbed and malcontent quest for sustenance through the destruction of the life of the one entity that loves him.
I really hate this book.
The heroine of this story was a lovely apple tree, sturdy with thick branches and heavy with fruit. The little boy whom she loved climbed up her trunk, shook her branches, and played with her leaves when they fell to the ground. He ate her apples, all of them. He would play in her shade, and in the beginning, he returned the value of her foliage, fruit, and shelter with his loyal company.
The boy went away, and one can only assume that he was indoctrinated by leftist philosophers like Camus and Sartre in Paris while sitting in a sidewalk cafe and marveling about his ability to alter reality with his thoughts. He returned to the tree a little older, feeling entitled, because of his various needs, to the life and substance of the tree.
In a surly mood the boy stood at the foot of the tree and demanded money. The tree answered that she had no money to give him, but that he could take her apples, all of them, and sell them for money, all of which he could keep. The tree supposed that if she pleased the boy by giving him something of value, that he would return the value with his company and love. And this made her very happy. Stupid tree.
The boy went away again, and one can only assume that he became a professor of Political Science at some leftist university where he spent his days marveling about his ability to alter the minds of young people through his manipulation of rhetoric. He returned to the tree after a long time, embittered, angry, and feeling entitled to the the life and substance of the tree because, after all, he had needs, and he was a poly-sci professor at a prestigious university.
With his angry rhetoric he demanded that the tree give him a house. The tree answered that she had no house to give him, but that he could cut off her branches and use the wood to build a house for himself, his stringy feminista wife, and his depressed, drug-addled children. The tree supposed that if she gave him something of value, that he would return the value with his company and love. This made the idiot freakin’ tree very happy. She obviously didn’t understand that the little boy had grown up to be an evil man.
So the bitter evil man went away again, for a very long time, and he came back an aging, black-hearted, leftist troll. One can only assume that he wrote books about despair, the meaninglessness of life, and the evil incantations of his career as a destroyer of the minds of young people. Shriveled with self-loathing he stood at the foot of the limbless, fruitless, demoralized tree and demanded that she provide for him a boat so he could sail far away. One can only assume that his self-loathing drove him to seek refuge from the realization in his old age that he was an irredeemable monster. The tree answered that she had no boat to give him, but that he could cut down her trunk and make a boat for himself. The evil man cut down the trunk of his tree and made himself a boat. The tree, with no sense of self, no sense of pride, and nothing left of herself to proud of, tried to convince herself that her ethos of total sacrifice to the demands of a parasitic man had made her happy. One can only assume that the tree had a flicker of reasoning when she determined, for a brief moment, that she really was not happy at all.
The embittered old man went away in his boat to Perdition. One can only assume that while on the cruise to escape his self-loathing, that he marveled how his life had been cheated by those who loved him, and how the tree was the source of his unhappiness because, despite the fact that she stupidly sacrificed her very existence for his comfort and pleasure from the time he was a boy, it simply was not enough. He returned after a very long time, shrunken, toothless, and dejected. He asked feebly for a place to sit, and the tree; nothing more than a sterile stump, its life used by a man who gave no value for its value, its substance exploited in servitude to his claims, its very existence sacrificed to his needs, acquiesced to this last demand. And guess what, the freakin’ enabler, victimized, pathetic tree was very happy.
I really, really hate this book.
The Giving Tree perpetuates two great evils: This first evil is the brazen little boy who lays claim on the very life and substance of an entity that loves him. He demands that the tree give everything to him. He produces nothing for himself, but takes the property of the tree for his own. He does not reciprocate and he cannot love. But because the tree enables his mooching lifestyle, and feels guilt at the very thought of him going without, she delivers all she has into his hands to be squandered.
The second, and greater evil, is the tree itself. The tree, a marvel of creation with differentiated cells and structures that perform the miraculous process of turning sunlight into food, with her strong limbs, pretty leaves, and fruit, perfect in both form and composition, disregards herself as a thing of value. She submits her past, present, and future potential to the demands of an indolent man-boy. She allows her substance to be abused, ignoring the fact that her ability to produce shade, leaves, and fruit, and her own achievement is sacrificed and utterly wasted by an exploiter who will likely do the same to every other tree he meets.
The Giving Tree is evil because this is its alleged model for human happiness. The truth is, this is the model for human hell.
I really, really, really hate this book. And if you love your children, take this book, dig a deep hole in the back yard, place the book at the bottom of the hole, and plant an apple tree on top of it.
By Marjorie Haun 5/14/12
May
11
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want
Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
***********
This article was published by Zbigniew Mazurak on April 9, 2012, and subsequently posted on ReaganGirl.com.
After Obama made his promise to the Russians that he would sell America out on missile defense and other issues after the November election, which he’s arrogantly confident of winning, Mitt Romney criticized him for that, saying, quite rightly, that Obama should not be offering concessions to America’s “Number One geopolitical foe”.
As soon as he said that, pro-appeasement figures in DC, in and out of government, went furious and accused Romney of clinging to Cold War stereotypes and trying to start another Cold War. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also reacted sharply, making the same claims. (Russia has officially endorsed Obama, knowing that he’s a softie whom the Russians can push around and force to make unilateral concessions.) State Secretary Hillary Clinton claimed that Romney had “dated information” and that he doesn’t know what the US and Russia agree on and what they disagree on.
But Romney is right. While Russia is not strictly America’s #1 geopolitical foe (that dubious distinction belongs to China, whose rise is the biggest challenge to America), Russia is indeed a hostile state, based on it actions, not Medvedev’s pretty words.
Russia supplies anti-American regimes around the world with weapons, a shield from sanctions at the UN Security Council, and oftentimes, nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel. It supports the Communist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela (and supplies the latter with tons of modern weapons, including SAMs, fighters, and rifles). It shields North Korea and Iran from serious sanctions at the UNSC and supplies the latter with nuclear reactors and fuel (which Iran is using to produce nuclear weapons). Indeed, if Russia hadn’t done that, there would’ve been NO Iranian nuclear crisis today. It also sells weapons to Tehran, as it does to Syria (where those weapons are used to slaughter civilians), whom it also shields at the UNSC from accountability with its veto.
Russia, which has perpetrated aggression against one of its neighbors (Georgia) in recent years, still maintains troops on its territory (as defined by its internationally-recognized borders) is now waging an arms race against the US, fueled by very high oil and gas prices ($110/bbl, higher than ever since the 1970s). It plans to acquire, among other things, 400 new ICBMs, 8 new SSBNs, and hundreds of modern fighterplanes and 200 Su-34 fighter-bombers in the next decade, and will spend $770 bn in total on new weapons for its military (which it can afford due to high oil prices). Vladimir Putin says explicitly that this buildup is aimed at catching up with the US. Russia already possesses strategic nuclear parity with the US and a huge lead in tactical nuclear weapons. It is threatening to withdraw from the New START treaty and to deploy nuclear weapons on its western and southern borders if the US deploys any missile defense system in Europe. It has threatened to nuke Poland “as a first priority” if it allows the US to deploy missile defense systems on its soil, and in 2007 threatened to aim its nuclear-armed missiles at all European countries if any American BMD systems were deployed in Europe.
And contrary to Russia’s lies that these systems would undermine its nuclear deterrent, 10 interceptors would hardly be a threat to Russia’s arsenal of hundreds of ICBMs, SLBMs, bombers, and bomber-launched cruise missiles. What Russia really opposes is an alliance between Central European countries (such as Poland and the Czech Republic), which were freed from Moscow’s yoke only 2 decades ago, with Washington. As LTG Henry “Trey” Obering, a former Director of the MDA said in 2008, Russia did not actually raise any objections to missile defense in Europe in talks with the US until Washington revealed plans to deploy them specifically in Poland and the CR. It did not object at the time to placing a radar in Britain. Russia knows that missile defense poses no threat to its nuclear deterrent and is lying through its teeth; it merely opposes Poland’s and CR’s free choices, as sovereign countries, to ally themselves with whomever they choose. (In the 1990s, Moscow tried its best to keep these countries out of NATO.) Before these countries came under Moscow’s yoke in 1945, half of Poland was overrun by the Soviets in 1939 (and the USSR never gave back the territory it occupied) and 50 thousand of its officers were murdered in Katyn, and before that, Poland was attacked by them in 1920 but defended itself. Before that, for 123 years from 1795 to 1918, there wasn’t even a Polish state because of the partitions of Poland that occurred in the late 18th century, with Tsarist Russia being the principal partitionary power. So Warsaw and Prague have good reasons to be afraid of Russia.
Threats, subjugation, blackmail, and in Georgia’s case, aggression are the methods Russia uses to conduct is foreign policy.
And don’t get me started on its human rights record. Just ask the families of Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya or Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant for opinion on that.
Or, as Russian affairs expert Kim Zigfeld writes:
“To his great credit, Republican challenger Mitt Romney confronted Obama directly over his outrageous policy of appeasement towards Russia. He expressed alarm that Obama was “looking for greater flexibility where he doesn’t have to answer to the American people in his relations with Russia” and reminded Obama that Russia is “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight every cause for the world’s worst actor. The idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed.”
That’s dead right. Russia has deluged Syria with powerful weaponry that has been used to carry out mass murder against women and children, and it has stood by Syria in all this against a tide of world opinion. Russia supported Egyptian dictatorship; it supports Iran; it supports Cuba and Venezuela. It supports American enemies wherever it finds them around the world, and that should surprise nobody.
Russia is ruled by a proud KGB spy who spent his entire life learning how to hate and destroy America and her values. To suggest that Putin would somehow magically decide to throw away his life’s work just because the USSR collapsed is fanciful nonsense.”
It’s fanciful, indeed. It’s a delusion, but for many people, their delusions are “truths”. Medvedev himself has accused Romney of 70s’-style talk and a “Cold War mentality”, but it is Russia that actually uses Cold War language about the US, and judged by its behavior, Russia is indeed behaving like the Soviet Union – aggressively, unfriendly, and unhelpfully – towards the US. Romney is merely stating the facts. (But, as usual, stating the facts can get you into trouble.)
Even Afghanistan and the Northern Distribution Network is no proof of Russian “cooperation” or friendliness. Defeating Islamists in Afghanistan (and more broadly, Central Asia) is in Russia’s interests moreso than in America’s, because Russia is in close proximity to it and has troops in countries that neighbor Afghanistan. Islamic terrorism is even more of a threat to Russia than to the US, which is thousands of miles away (although still in danger). Russia did it out of its own selfish interest, not to help the US. And that one action hardly disproves the thesis that Moscow is a foe, or at least a dangerous rival, of America.
So, judged by its actions, Russia IS a geopolitical foe of the US, although not the biggest one – that dubious distinction belongs to China.
Those of us like me and Mitt Romney who are sounding the alarm bells about Russia are the true realists. We base our assessment of Russia based on the real world, on Russia’s ACTIONS.
Those who defend Obama’s failed “reset policy” and continue to advocate appeasement towards Moscow are the ignorant hacks here. They are unrealistic, naive children, dreaming of a pro-American Russia that ceased to exist when Yeltsin left office and will not arise again for decades, if ever.
Mitt Romney is absolutely right to point that Russia is a foe and to criticize Obama. I wish he’d go even further and call Obama’s “reset policy” what it is: a dismal failure that must be ended immediately.
The opinions expressed on Ziggy’s Defense Blog do not necessarily reflect those of ReaganGirl.com.
May
10
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want
Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
May 10, 2012
American churches are not threatened by the intrusion of principles which they oppose. Their moral authority and future integrity is threatened by the vices they adopt as virtues and the immoral practices they espouse as moral imperatives.
Illegal immigrants are a class which imposes their sad state upon themselves. By way of their illegality they consign themselves to lives as outcasts. They will congregate within communities where anchor immigrants and other illegals who have mastered a corrupt and permissive social welfare system have settled. But because of the criminal nature of their presence in the country they are insecure, always seeking more substance from the earners for their support, and more absolution from moral authorities for their crimes.
American churches of all denominations, especially those churches which openly offer sanctuary to criminal aliens, but those as well whose charitable works benefit communities where illegals dwell, have done this. Not all churches per se, but all denominations in select locations have congregations who have identified illegal aliens as worthy recipients of their charitable contributions.
In a discussion of morality one has to consider the rationale of the “poor” illegal immigrant. The theory is that illegals are simply good people escaping an oppressive and corrupt system within their own countries, and that it is a virtue for them to break the laws of another country to escape the corruption in their own. This is where the moral authority of churches and other agencies that support and harbor criminal aliens is endangered; the church–regardless of its creed–has removed a moral absolute and replaced it with a system of purported “rights” based upon the negation of laws by a specific class of people. These rights, or virtues, of the criminal alien are not earned by a sincere endeavor to assimilate into civil society. The criminal alien does not obey the laws and statues of the land, or even hold membership in and loyalty to a given church. These rights, or virtues, are ascribed due to a state of illegality and poverty caused by the geographical movement from their country of origin into a country which they are entering illegally and surreptitiously.
The “rights” of criminal aliens are nothing more than the imposition of their needs as claim upon the lives and property of others who live in the country legally. In simpler terms: It is virtuous to be a poor illegal alien with no property and many children and by that virtue you are given the right to take what one man earns as your own to support you and your many kids in your self-imposed state of illegality and poverty. Is this moral? Is this a credible argument for a church, any church, who by their definition as the resource for moral direction, is expected to function within a moral framework? The answer of course is no, but it goes even deeper.
People of faith who are law-abiding citizens and who contribute and tithe to their churches are often expected to subsidize people whose lives are lived in opposition to all of the doctrines to which they try faithfully to conform. With their money, time, contributions of food, clothing, furniture, etc, and with an outreach of their hearts, they are asked to suborn their moral virtues to the vices of an entire class of people whose behavior and identity is that of criminals.
People of faith are made to feel guilty if they take umbrage at their church’s extension of charitable effort to communities where criminal aliens are harbored. People who live lawfully are scolded by their leaders if they question the efficacy of supporting and sustaining families who will never benefit from the contributions of others because they have chosen a state of perpetual dependence, enjoying a parasitic attachment to a system which is already supported by the property of the lawful congregant through taxation.
People of virtue have been taught through the activities of their churches which extend succor to support a criminal lifestyle, that there are no moral absolutes, that law does not matter inasmuch as one has a certain racial or socioeconomic identity, and that morality is fluid and relative according to the politically correct dictates of demographic trends and liberal social policy.
Our churches are in trouble. This is not simply the Judeo-Christian principle of extending help to people struggling against suffering or injustice. This is not the Christ-like charity of the good Samaritan who sees a man in need and because the man is helpless and pleads for his succor the Samaritan acts on the high imperative of human compassion. The extension of support and alms to a criminal class who eschew morality themselves to openly defy the laws of the land, and lay claim upon the property of earners while they refuse to earn, is to squander the moral acts of the faithful in a sacrificial ritual that honors the criminal and regards as no worth the life and substance of the lawful man of faith.
Many people of faith have been deceived by the acts within their own churches which throw moral absolutism out the door in favor of political correctness. As churches become sanctuaries and resources of support for criminal aliens and the communities that harbor them, they are losing their moral authority to direct their congregations in principles of virtue and truth.
I am personally disheartened when I see individuals in my own church who focus the charitable works of women’s organizations upon a community populated largely by illegal alien families. In my own community there are hundreds of children and parents who are not by definition criminals, and who by no fault of their own have fallen into a state of need; children who need foster parents, families who have lost their incomes, individuals suffering against disease and disability, and earners victimized in an economic downturn that in certain sectors of Western Colorado, have not recovered. These are those to whom we can give our substance and care without nullifying the moral principles of our churches. They are those who do not lay claim upon the substance of others because of a self-imposed state of covert criminality, but who need temporary help, and the kindness of friends and strangers to survive the hard conditions of mortality to which we are all subject by no fault of our own.
Churches lose their moral authority when the substance and love of people of faith and charity is extended to those who regard it as a right, who waste it because they have invested nothing in earning it, and who are supported by a corrupt and permissive judicial system that rewards criminal aliens with a network of social services that often elevates their standard of living far above those of the lawful, working American. This is a perversion of faith. This is an abdication of moral authority.
By Marjorie Haun 5/10/12
May
8
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
May 7, 2012
Poor Occupiers–they are not held down by some superior class of oppressors. They are not exploited by some corporate entity in an unnamed process where their money and opportunity is sucked into the vaults of the super rich. They are not the orphans of Capitalism (unless they show up to an interview full of body piercings, tattoos, and a tattered Che Guevara T-shirt, thus failing to get a job from the local rich guy). The Occupy Movement is in bondage only to the despotism of its own fallacies.
These are actual excerpts from the remarks of a local Occupy spokesman. I’ve take the key talking points in his remarks and responded in the only way I know how, with a little common sense and humor.
Our countries [sic] politics are almost irretrievable [sic] corrupt. I’m sure you are familiar with the Supreme Courts [sic] ”Citizens United ” case; Multi-national corporations can donate to WHOEVER they wish, in any amount to any candidate or cause,Republican or Democratic.
I agree on the first point, that national politics are almost irretrievably corrupt. This corruption comes not from 1st Amendment protections that grant individuals and businesses alike the freedom to donate to candidates they favor. The problem is not that corporations can donate to whoever they wish, since it is their 1st Amendment prerogative to give their own money to whomever they please. The problem lies largely with the incestuous relationship between government and public-sector unions. For example; unions that formed by Federal workers are nothing more than a vascular system that pumps tax money (earned primarily by middle class Americans and small businesses) into the inflated paychecks of the union workers (Federal employees earn roughly twice that of a comparable private-sector employee), into the coffers of the unions in the form of involuntary dues, and back into the campaign war chests of the party in power who negotiates with the union bosses. This is not an equitable form of corruption however, since well over 90% of campaign donations from public-sector unions–think NEA– go to Democrat candidates.
The other form of dirty-money political funding comes in the form of government investment of your money into private-sector businesses that are extremely high risk, such as Solyndra. (Funny how government doesn’t want you to invest your own Social Security funds, but they invest your money with reckless abandon when a pet project wags its happy tail) Solyndra and its failed sister entities have taken billions of dollars in government subsidies. In the case of Solyndra, a chief Obama bundler (fundraiser) was a major investor in the defunct company. This is a case of tax payer dollars going through the alimentary canal of the Democrat campaign finance machine, to be eaten by government subsidized “green energy” companies, digested through a complex and corrupt gut of hand-picked cronies, and ultimately pooped out into the pockets of Democrats candidates, namely the Campaigner In Chief, B. Hussein Obama. Think again Occupy, the 1st Amendment right to express oneself through supporting a particular candidate is not the problem.
Multi-national corporations are not people. You are not immune, they will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat. President Obama has already raised one Billion dollars for re-election, a figure Multi-Millionaire Mitt Romney is expected to easily match.
This is not just flawed reasoning, it is filleted reasoning, but let me give it a try. Corporations are people. They’re companies of all sizes, from the incorporated pest control business, to Apple. Corporations, or whatever you want to call them, are a collection of individuals participating in a voluntary system wherein they use their ingenuity, muscle, and where they risk their own money, in an effort to make more money. Apple consists of investors, inventors, retailers, marketers, and assembly line workers. Apple indirectly employees thousands upon thousand of people who work for the companies who supply the components of Apple products, the miners who pull the ore, or the silicon, out of the earth to make the components, and the prospectors and geologists who find the ore that makes the components that go into the products that comprise the gadgets that Steve Jobs built. Yes, corporations are people.
Obama is welcome to raise as much legal campaign cash as he wants. The problem is that the Campaigner In Chief uses tax-payer money to fund his endless junkets, fundraisers, parties, and anything else he can turn into a campaign appearance (virtually everything he does is a campaign event). His advantage comes from your money, not the money freely-given by donors in privately-funded events. This is a case of the President using the power of his presidency to ensure that he stays President. This is immoral.
Mitt Romney is a self-made super-wealthy dude. He holds no public office and so has no advantage in using tax-payer money to finance his campaign efforts. Donors give to him freely because want to see him beat Obama. His donors may be super-duper rich, or of modest means. But they choose to do with their property (money) something that they hope will bring a net gain in the form of beating Democrat arse in November.
We are not against the rich. We are against using wealth to gain an unfair advantage.
Whoa, this one is waaay off the logic scale, but bear with me. Wealth is nothing more than the inanimate expression of human effort. Wealth in itself has no power to assert an advantage over anyone or anything. Wealth cannot be used as a club, but the wealth accumulated by the thought and effort men can be used to the advantage of all through the creation of products that fill a need in a free market. Wealth can be invested in the idea of a single man and revolutionize the way we communicate, share information, and perceive the world. Wealth is the tangible manifestation of effort and risk and time and the application of creative genius. Wealth, when in the hands of private citizens to be used in a free-market Capitalist system, is a fair and liberating force. Wealth is the fuel of job creation. Wealth is the substance of the economy. Wealth by its nature cannot be used to an unfair advantage, because then it would contradict its own meaning. You will never get a job from a man who lacks some form of wealth. There is no unfair advantage when wealth lifts all free-market participants to a better way of living.
We are not against democracy. We are against the sale of influence by our elected representatives.
The United States of America is not a direct Democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic whose highest ruler is the Law of the Land. The Constitution gives us the separation of powers that a Democracy does not. Because the powers of government are dispersed between the three branches of the Federal Government and diffused throughout similar structures in each of 50 states, the mob-rule of direct Democracy is proscribed. According to the Constitution the states give permission to the Federal Government to exist. It exists in its limited powers to govern commerce, defense, and to protect the rights of individuals. The states have a responsibility to take most of their concerns to the people of the given state, and determine on the state and local level, what laws and statutes best fit the needs of that region.
The problem with “influence peddaling” is the growth of the Federal Government where nearly all laws and statutes that affect states and cities are mandated through the centralized controlling body in Washington, D.C. The United States Congress overreaches its authority, as does the Executive branch, as does an activist Supreme Court, in a power grab that removes influence from local governments and individuals at the grassroots level. This is Constitutional government gone topsy-turvy. If Obama would follow through on his promise to get lobbyists out of the White House, the “sell of influence” would greatly diminish. The chances of that happening are about the same as Michelle Obama not licking the plate after the baby-back ribs are gone.
This military industrial complex gobbles up over half of our entire national budget. Instead of building more and more stealth aircraft and flying fresh lobster into rear guard generals, we can show more respect to our military.
Lie. BIG LIE. The current budget of the entire United States Military is currently less than 25% of the entire Federal Budget. Most federal spending is on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.
As for respect, I agree with the Occupy spokesman. The Obama Administration has failed our men and women in uniform and their families with emasculated rules of engagement, out-date hardware and weaponry, and a nebulous military policy that always leaves America at a strategic disadvantage.
It is most certain that most of you are 99% ers. You’ve heard that, but what does it mean? Picture a roomful of 10 people. A pizza sliced into ten slices arrives. One person takes out a slice, and hands it to the other nine to share. Then the one walks away with the remaining nine slices for themselves. This isn’t just unfair, it’s obscene, naked greed. The Occupy movement is calling them out.
Actually, you’re talking about a pizza cut into 100 pieces, but let’s disregard the object lessons and get down to principle. The “99% vs. the 1% is a lie. Americans who participate in the free market are not consigned to a percentile rank. The market is much more like a three dimensional fluid space where one, according to his force and direction, can move up and down, from side to side, and in any way he wants. The engine of Capitalism is simply human ingenuity. There is no system in the United States of America which consigns a class of people into a permanent state of poverty, save one; the big government welfare monstrosity.
The Occupy Movement has put forth a buttload of fallacious arguments about “corporations,” and the warring percentiles, and the lack of largess given to education, un-wed moms, contraceptives, and every victimized piece of flotsam that washes up in the gutters of city parks across America. There is one principle that blows apart their fallacies. That is the principle of industry.
The government welfare state cannot offer up industry. It’s only product is poverty. It creates nothing, but takes that which is created by others to meet the needs of those who also do not create. The government lays claim upon the property of one man because another man in some distant location says he needs it. Government does not create wealth, it only destroys it. And along with the destruction of wealth comes the destruction of the human spirit; man’s identity as a creator, a creature of mind and industry. The Occupy Movement rejects the industry of the individual, yet demands that the government provide for him something it did not create, and which through its confiscation has punished and ruined the only creator of wealth, the man of industry.
If you must occupy something, occupy your mind with a plan. Occupy your hands with work. Occupy your time with creative problem-solving, networking, and education. Occupy your heart with a remembrance that America is still the last best hope of men on earth. If you reach your goal of turning this country into a European-style socialist hell, there will be nowhere left worth occupying.
By Marjorie Haun 5/7/12
May
7
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
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May 6, 2012
Mark 14:3-9
A woman, surely a sinner, but one who knew that Jesus was the promised Messiah, wanted to express her effulgent gratitude and admiration with a gift.
The Woman with the Ointment
And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box and poured it on his head.
She had probably worked very hard to save the money it took for her to purchase such precious ointment. She was singular in her purpose as she broke open the container and tenderly anointed the head of the Man whom she knew was her Savior and Redeemer.
And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?
Now we don’t know exactly who were the “some,” but we do know that Judas Iscariot held the purse strings among the Apostles. Perhaps it was he, and others, who protested the Lord’s anointing as a waste. As apostles and exemplars of the Word, they were charged with caring for the poor. Many of these men came from poverty themselves, and all were well acquainted with privation during their travels.
For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.
Those in the Lord’s company, men of God, were angry that a woman had used something dear, which belonged to her, to perform a loving and selfless act. They were angry because, in being stuck in their role as providers to paupers, they forgot that it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that has the power to save, not the physical sustenance of the needy, upon which they had fixated. They had the impulse to confiscate the woman’s expensive ointment to do that which they thought would be for the greater good. They, like so many well-intentioned people, wanted to take something that didn’t belong to them and redistribute it for their ends.
And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me.
God the Eternal Father and Jesus Christ are the authors of the Plan of Salvation. They are also the authors of agency. Only through having complete liberty to choose between good and evil could God’s children qualify for the blessings of Salvation. This means that men and women cannot be compelled to do what others, even the Apostles, even Jesus Christ Himself, think is the right thing to do. Jesus was telling the relatively inexperienced Apostles, that there are works greater than providing for the physical sustenance of another. The spiritual needs of the individual are eternally more important. The woman had been endowed by her Creator with the unalienable right to do whatsoever she wanted with the pricey spikenard inasmuch as her actions did not interfere with the life of another.
For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good:but me ye have not always.
And here Jesus extends his teaching into a principle more valuable than money, comfort, or an alabaster box with expensive ointment: Those acts, rituals, ceremonies, which tie us symbolically-literally, in the case of the woman-to Diety, have the power to change and improve the worshiper in ways that are indelible. The increased spiritual understanding and enlightenment that the woman enjoyed as she tenderly poured ointment on Jesus’ head, the feeling of being in the presence of God, and the sanctification of of body and heart, goes further to promote eternal progression and happiness than any amount of alms or charitable giving to the poor. The Apostles would always have the poor to care for. Gifts which fill the appetites of the impoverished are fleeting, and in constant need of replenishment. But to act upon the testimony of Jesus Christ can fill the coffers of the heart for a lifetime.
She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.
Jesus prophesies of His death and burial. But He also emphasizes that the gift of the woman was acceptable unto Him. She did the best she could with what she had. And it was hers with which to do.
Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.
The example of the woman with the ointment is a memorial to a tender act of worship; an offering of the heart. It is also a memorial to the gentle assertion of Jesus Christ, the author of liberty, that we may worship how we see fit, and do what we will with that which belongs to us. The woman chose, with her broken heart and contrite spirit, a token of love. It was her ointment, and it was her unalienable right to do so.
By Marjorie Haun 5/6/12
May
6
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want
Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
******************
This article was originally published by Zibigniew Mazurak and subsequently posted on Reagangirl.com.
Recently, House Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, decided to stop Obama’s process of gutting America’s defense, reject his pseudo-strategy, and pass a budget that adequately funds defense – adequately according to their and their advisors’ judgment, not that of Obama and his penny-pinchers in the Pentagon.
When asked by defense cuts’ supporters why he wants to provide more funding to the DOD than the DOD itself and the Joint Chiefs request, he replied, “I don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice.”
When he said that, the Democrats, other defense cuts’ supporters, and the media went ballistic, claiming that Ryan had called the generals “liars” and had insulted them, and calling on him to apologize. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey himself took umbrage at those words, while still claiming that the DOD developed a strategy first and a budget second when everyone knows it’s not true:
“[Ryan was] calling us, collectively, liars. (…) I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”
But Paul Ryan and other pro-defense Republicans are right, and their critics are dead wrong, for the following reasons.
Firstly, we know that Obama has a habit of pressuring senior generals to change their testimonies to suit their agenda. Just ask 4-star General William Shelton, the commander of USAF’s Space Command, who says Obama pressured him to do just that.
It is quite conceivable that the Joint Chiefs were also pressured to testify, wrongly, that the $487 bn in defense cuts ordered by Obama is survivable.
General Dempsey himself, before he was confirmed, testified that deep defense cuts would weaken defense, that “national security” spending did not cause the deficit problem and that cutting it will not solve it.
More recently, he said, quite correctly, that sequestration of defense spending (the second round of BCA-ordered cuts, totalling another $600 bn) would mean “we would no longer be a global power”. Today, under obvious pressure from the White House and other defense cuts supporters, he claims he was misunderstood and that he only meant that “we wouldn’t be the global power that we know ourselves to be today.”
No, General, that’s not what you originally said. That’s what the White House now tells you to say. I’m sure that if the White House told you “say that the sequester would be harmless”, you would be saying exactly that.
While I wouldn’t call the generals liars or fools, this is not the first time that someone has coached witnesses to deliver a favorable testimony.
Secondly, no matter how hard the generals and civilian DOD bureaucrats may insist to the contrary, the FACT is that Obama’s defense budget cuts mandate drove the pseudo-strategy the DOD issued in January, not the other way around. Obama demanded deep defense cuts, and the DOD had to produce a “strategy” to fit these cuts. That’s what happened, despite the generals’ and civilian bureaucrats’ pretensions to the contrary.
Obama demanded $400 bn in defense cuts on April 13th, 2011, during a budget issues speech at the GWU – long before there even was any talk of a debt ceiling deal. At the time, even his own SECDEF, Robert Gates, was surprised of the defense cuts mandate, and the DOD had to start working out how to implement them. Then, on August 1st, Obama negotiated a debt ceiling deal that mandated $487 bn in cuts from “security spending”, which Obama slapped exclusively on the DOD.
Only later was there any talk of a “strategy” to fit these cuts. Before April 2011, the DOD was not working on any “strategy” and was hoping that the cuts of January 2011 would be the last. Indeed, Gates himself cautioned against any further, let alone deep, additional defense cuts repeatedly, both in DOD briefings and Congressional testimonies. Yet, in April 2011, Obama slapped a $400 bn defense cuts mandate on him and the DOD.
Even if someone claims “the DOD knew for a long time that more budget cuts would be coming”, that doesn’t help them. In fact, it only proves my point. Budget cut mandates came first; the strategy came only later. Thus, the National Journal lied when it claimed
“Ryan’s frank rebuke of the generals came as he repeated an oft-heard Republican complaint: that the fiscal 2013 defense request (…) was not “strategy-driven,” but rather was based on an artificial spending cap imposed by the White House.”
That is not a mere “oft-heard Republican complaint”, that is a FACT. The FY2013 defense budget proposal was NOT strategy driven. It was based on an artificial spending cap that Obama instituted as early as April 2011 – long before there was any “strategy”!
And the DOD’s genuine strategy from just 2 years ago (when budget circumstances were even worse), the 2010 QDR, is quite different from this pseudostrategy. It called for a much larger and more capable military than this pseudostrategy calls for. Did the world become much safer in the last 2 years? No. Obama decided to cut defense even more deeply.
Thirdly, can’t we see it for ourselves that Obama’s new defense cuts would severely weaken the military? They include, inter alia, scrapping one third of the cruiser fleet (the 7 youngest cruisers), retiring 2 amphibious ships and many other vessels, eliminating 7 fighter squadrons, cutting funding for bombers by 40%, eliminating many crucial weapon development programs (including lasers, other directed energy weapons, and railguns), delaying many other crucial weapon programs (including the next-gen cruise missile) and procurements (including SSNs and SSBNs), cutting the shipbuilding plan by 16 vessels, cutting the already-underfunded nuclear-weapon-modernization program by 15%, and cutting 27 strategic and 65 tactical airlifters when the USAF already has too few of them. Anyone with half a brain should understand that this will weaken the military.
Fourthly, the generals are humans, not gods. They are not infallible – no more than I am or you are. As mere humans, they are just as prone to grave error – including a severe error of judgment – as everyone else. It’s time to stop fetishizing generals.
Lastly and most importantly, determining what’s necessary to defend America, and providing the necessary resources, is NOT the generals or the DOD’s job. It’s Congress’ job. The Congress is supposed to make America’s defense policy, and the generals, along with DOD civilians, are supposed to merely execute it. In other words, the Congress makes policy, and the generals are to obey.
The US Constitution vests the prerogatives to “provide for the common defense (…) of the United States”, “to raise and support Armies”, “to provide and maintain a Navy”, to make laws for governing the Armed Forces, to summon and discipline the Militia, to declare war, to punish piracies and felonies on the high seas, and to make appropriations SOLELY in the Congress. The Constitution gives Congress, and ONLY the Congress, the prerogative to make America’s defense policy – to determine both defense budgets AND programs and the force structure (along with bases, deployments, wars, and the UCMJ).
Of course, to make informed decisions, it needs the advice from many sources – and that includes not only serving generals, but also former military officers, independent analysts and study panels (such as the Hadley-Perry Panel), Congressional advisors/analysts, the CRS, and others.
But Congress is supposed to rely, above all, on its own knowledge and sound judgment (if it’s capable of rendering any – and it’s supposed to be). It should NOT fetishize generals and DOD bureaucrats, nor is it supposed to defer to them, let alone to President Obama. It must rely primarily on its own judgment and knowledge, for it, not the generals, is to make defense policy decisions (and take responsibility for them).
This entire argument has four root causes. One is the understandable, but wrong deference to generals on defense policy caused by the fetish of generals. The second one is the overall worship of supposed “experts” (generals on defense policy, the SCOTUS on the Constitution, the IPCC on “global warming” – remember how skeptics like Jim Inhofe were treated when they questioned the saintly IPCC?) that Americans have been forced to perform since their primary school days. People are taught to blindly listen to “experts” and never question them; if you do, you’re condemned universally. Thirdly, decades ago, the Congress ceded its Constitutional prerogatives on defense policy to the Executive Branch long ago.
And fourthly, as schoolchildren and adults, members of Congress, like all Americans, were constantly taught and told NOT to think for themselves, to rely on others for judgment, and to defer on others on various issues. Such indoctrination not to think independently has caused most of them to be unable, or afraid, to render independent judgment.
And this needs to be corrected. Members of Congress are supposed to think for themselves, not defer to others.
Paul Ryan and HASC Republicans have shown they are capable of doing that. For that, they should be praised, not pilloried.
http://nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/paul-ryan-accuses-generals-of-budget-dishonesty-20120329
The opinions of Ziggy’s Defense Blog do not necessarily reflect those of ReaganGirl.com.
May
3
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
May 3, 2012
The Tea Party owns no one, claims no voting bloc or special interest, and conversely, is owned by no one. It is simply the contraction of patriotic muscle when and where it needs to be exerted. THE TEA PARTY IS RISING!
Don't tread on well-armed, free people!
Questions about where the Tea Party has gone can cease. It is rising again as a popular movement among free Americans whose purpose is to force an overreaching and unconstitutional government into its proper and very limited role. The Tea Party is the force behind the words, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The Tea Party is not definable by any demographic measure. It is a state of mind, a human condition. It has is no structure to compare to the machinations of the political parties. The Tea Party owns no one, claims no voting bloc or special interest, and conversely, is owned by no one. It is simply the contraction of patriotic muscle when and where it needs to be exerted.
I have a theory about the Tea Party, as well as some advice for those anxious to bolt into the electoral arena. First the theory: Since the Tea Party is both a populist movement and a philosophical framework, it responds to its own principled impulses and not to the directions of individuals. The timing of the 2012 elections has a palpable ebb and flow to which the Tea Party is keenly sensitive. It would be a mistake for the Tea Party to apply its strength too early, in behalf of a candidate untried by the fullness of the primary process. Like the emerging butterflies struggling from their rigid chrysalises, the GOP candidates are not fully developed, nor sufficiently strong to survive on their own. The Tea Party, by flexing its muscle and helping a particular candidate along, may weaken and kill the butterflies that needs to prove themselves through their initiatory challenges upon entering the world. The candidates must be proven, with the one most fit to weather the harsh environment of politics, emerging by his own power.
The Tea Party is about unifying Americans in the peaceful 21st Century Revolution. To use its muscle to unify one faction of the Conservative Movement against another during the presidential primaries, would lead to disunion and rancor in the general election. The Tea Party knows and understands this dynamic, and teeming with patriots who know how critical 2012 is to the survival of America as we know it, they’re not going to incite division.
Now for some advice: The Tea Party is a populist movement with a spiritual undercurrent. I’ve felt the spirit of Americanism and ardor at every Tea Party event I have ever attended. There is not a perfect consensus of political isms, or homogeneity of ideas, but there is a unity of hearts, with the one goal being to save the country beloved by every and headstrong and independent patriot in attendance. My advice is to stay unified in, above all, the love of country. It is not necessary, as yet, for the Tea Party to throw its considerable weight behind any one GOP candidate. The Tea Party is about unifying the entire Conservative universe. Stay focused on deposing Barack Hussein Obama, winning the Senate and increasing our majority in the House of Representatives. Work hard in local races to effect change at home. Bust your butts to bring a more conservative character to your states. Teach your non-affiliated and undecided friends about the Founding Documents, and about what makes The United States of America unique and indispensable to the rest of of the world. Persuade your friends to reason out our terrible predicament. We have a Socialist demagogue in the White House, and far too many people in power who reap that which the hands of the rest of us sow, to further their political power and big government ends.
Prove the pundits wrong who proclaim that the Tea Party is weakened and fading into obscurity. Awaken, and at the correct time, when a candidate is chosen and the country is prepared to decide whether it becomes a pathetic socialist shadow of its former self, or whether Socialism and corruption, and the politicians and bureaucrats who perpetuate failure, are defeated and swept out of power in a cleansing of the Republic and a restoration of our Constitutional First Principles.
The Tea Party will enter stage right with the muscle they’ve been quietly working out for the last year in their local gyms. They will maneuver a divided and wounded party into position to whoop anti-American arse. The role of the Tea Party is not to spin one galaxy of the Conservative universe, but pull the disparate bodies and systems within that universe into a smooth, harmonious orbit around the big ideas of the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States. Most of all, the Tea Party is the muscle, the enforcer of Liberty, and will emerge in a big way exactly when it is most needed.
By Marjorie Haun 2/6/12
May
1
2012
Let’s Turn Colorado RED in 2012!
Show everyone that you want Colorado to be a RED state in 2012!
Buy you copy today of "Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One" The Heroes of the Vietnam War books for children
On sale now at Amazon.com. and Barnes and Nobel.com, Little Bird Dog and the Big Ship: Book One in the children’s series, Heroes of the Vietnam War. Buy this amazing, one of a kind piece of children’s literature today.
May 1, 2012
You are not animals living under the tyranny of a zookeeper. You are people. Act like people. Think like people. Before you destroy your own lives in your attempt to destroy the people you envy, remember who you are and what your were born to be.
Good morning everyone. I’m honored to speak to you this day. It is a beautiful day at the park, and I am privileged to have this opportunity. Let me give you a little background about myself. When I was born my family lived in an eight by forty foot trailer near the banks of a river in a very small town. We were always quite poor. The great thing about being poor and growing up among other poor people was that there was nothing to envy and no measuring stick of materialism to which I compared myself. But my parents worked hard to create with their hands a living. My mother raised and nurtured children. My father worked in the uranium mines, raised food and animals, and hunted and fished with my brothers. By some standards it may not seem like much. But my parents owned their living. They made it for themselves. It belonged to them.
Not unlike you I have struggled through life. I’ve survived divorce and raising children on my own. I’ve toiled to get through college and graduate school. I’ve budgeted and skimped and done without. But what I possess, I have created with my own hands. All that I own, I have obtained or created through the use of my mind, my ingenuity and persistence. It may not seem like much but it is mine. It belongs to me. It is the expression of my life.
Speaking of material possessions–Do any of you in the crowd today identify yourselves according to how much stuff you have? Is your identity fixed by your accumulation of wealth or lack thereof? I see very few hands. So I have to ask; is the 1% versus the 99% real? Or is it a device that forces people into a category that is determined by something other than their humanity?
Are there any homeless people here today? You over there–the man sitting on the bench– would you say that you are homeless? Would you say that your identity, the quality of your character, the value of your life, are defined by your status as homeless? No? You’re right. You have an identity and a value that is far too great to be defined or expressed by circumstance. Are you a good person? Yes. That is the worth of your soul; your identity as a good man, free to create with his own mind and his own hands his own shining destiny, or his own dismal collapse.
So I ask you; who are we? What is our nature as humans? I challenge you in this crowd of unique and fascinating people, to tell me, are you a movement, or are you individuals with the capacity to think for yourselves and choose according to your own thoughts, affections, and faculties which impel you? You see, you are not the “ninety-nine percent.” You cannot be defined as a percentage, or a class, or by the quality of your clothes or the square footage of your home. Here, in the United States of America, you are defined by the way you exercise your mind to create a unique identity. You are not formed or acted upon and shaped from the outside. You are actualized through the volitional arts of your hands.
I never defined myself as a “poor” person. Such a designation would serve only to pit me against others of “middle” or “upper” classes. I defy class identifications. I am not a mote in a mass, as one might think of members of a “class.” Are you? I think, act, and make for myself. I am not owned by this or that class. I am not consigned to a percentile which defines my happiness or dictates my worth. I am free to master my passions, and focus their force into works, and a life that for me is my opus.
You are not “occupiers.” You are free Americans, thinkers, doers, rebels, poets, and inventors who have shamefully allowed yourself to be acted upon by outside forces, to be typecast as prostrate and insentient. But you are not. You are actors. You can choose to act for yourselves, and interact within the civil society. With freedom comes responsibility. You choose action or inaction. But either choice will have a consequence. And because you own your mind and your mind chooses how to act, you bear the responsibility for that consequence. If you act industriously, with cleverness and creativity, then you own the rewards for that industry. If you act slothfully, looting the wealth that others have earned, living on substance that you have not produced, the you will bear the suffering that comes from abdicating your identity as a producer.
What makes us free? Nothing. We are born free. We are given by our very nature the ability to think and act, not to be acted upon. Even in your passivity you are choosing. And if you sit in this park and continue to allow invisible forces and invented classes to act upon you and define your happiness, you will have forfeited your freedom for a pitiful identity not so different from an animal.
America has a lodestar that helps us to remember that we are free. The Constitution of the United States is that lodestar. Do our rights come from the Constitution? No. Our rights are not given by the hand of man. They are, because we are. The great document whose words have been inculcated into the hearts of patriots throughout the American Centuries, gives us a scaffold for government which protects those rights. The Constitution lays out a system of governance which separates and limits its diverse powers. And government is not, in of itself, an authority. It is given power and authority only by the consent of the governed, those for whom it is designed as a protector of individual liberties and the administrator for the civil society.
The Constitution reminds us that the government does not grant rights. And if government attempts, through force, to remove our rights, its abrogates its duly assigned role as the protector of freedom, effectually nullifying its authority. If the governing bodies assert authority without the consent of the government, then the democratic form of government becomes a tyranny. You are not animals living under the tyranny of a zookeeper. You are people. Act like people. Think like people.
Before you destroy your own lives in your attempt to destroy the people you envy. Remember who you are and that you have control over the chains of your own bondage.
Go home this May 1st, and save your energy to gather and remember of May 28th, Memorial Day. Do not destroy your city, but build up an appreciation for the men and women who died for your right to be here today, and to choose whether or not you live in freedom, or suffocate under the tyranny of your self-negation.
Thank you, and God Bless America.
By Marjorie Haun 5/1/12
