Diary of an Underground Conservative...Fighting the Power

The Baby with the Bathwater

2010-07-26T10:41:00.039-04:00

Difficult times, like middle age, often cause one to reflect on their life. These are certainly difficult times, and I am, just as certainly, standing out on that damnable precipice of middle age. At this point, my reflections have less to do with warm nostalgia than wondering just what the hell I did with all my time. So far, the answer to that question has eluded me - but I do recall associating with a supposedly diverse crowd. There were lots of musicians, artists, an aspiring filmmaker or two, a few writers, maybe an occasional person with a ‘real’ job (and many more without).

When I consider what it was that we all had in common, certain values and attitudes come to mind. Most of my peers prided themselves on maintaining an 'outsider' status. I liked that. We also shared a passion for individualism. We were tolerant (although I’m learning that may have been a façade for many). We were disgusted with hypocrisy. We admired those who went ‘against the grain’ and had contempt for convention in both art and life.

While no one would have labeled themselves part of any cultural movement - we did have a kind of ‘punk rock’ ethos. I had always understood those values to be the belief in free self-expression and the perpetual questioning of authority. While the 'hippie' thing was centered on communality, this was based on individuality. In retrospect, there was actually a lot of good in our youthful ideology.

But then something happened. We got older. We may have had a child - or four… and we all had to make our separate peace with “Society”. I certainly stand accused of this, but few people are the same at 35 as they were at 25. The tragedy is, however, many of my peers have discarded what was actually good about the beliefs of our youth.

The current political and economic crisis in America has really made this tragedy all the more apparent. Many of my friends and associates, who should have been immune to manipulation ‘from above’, seem to have fallen for the Obama illusion. Forget the nitty gritty of politics – anything with the flash and glitz of the Obama campaign would have prompted profuse vomiting from all of them in the past.

The universal acceptance of Obama by the media should have been warning enough, let alone the slick demagoguery. Now, many support an establishment which is far more the polar opposite of our ‘punk rock’ ideology than any conservative politician like Rand Paul. Conscious of it or not, they have accepted new rules which mock diversity, individuality, and especially commonsense.

The rules seem to be like this:

1) Do not “kill” your television! The Mainstream Media, once suspect, is now to be trusted. The majority of the news and entertainment media openly supports the Obama Regime without question. Alternative news sources - one network news channel, a few satellite channels, and a couple of AM radio programs – should be avoided.

2) Protest and dissension is neither acceptable nor patriotic as of January 20, 2009. The establishment is the good guy. The anti - establishment should be deemed obstructionist, if not racist, or tools of phantom corporate interests. (Now, it would seem, invisible forces control the people and not the government!)

3) War is no longer immoral or evil. As long as the president in office is a liberal, war protesting should cease… until a Republican is back in office, of course.

4) Learning about, referring to, or discussing the Constitution are endeavors which should be mocked. If Bill Maher or Jon Stewart mocks it – so should we. The mass of Americans should be considered sheeple – however, they should also be criticized for trying to change this condition (especially if they draw conclusions which differ from liberal orthodoxy).

5) Civil libertarians should no longer be concerned with, nor argue against, the expansion of Executive Branch powers – so long as a Democrat is in office. The Patriot Act and other constitutionally sketchy laws are no longer relevant threats.
6) In regards to entertainment, the “bad guy” shall now be typecast as anti-government zealots as opposed to government groups such as the Department of Homeland Security. Remember how, during the Bush era, the Feds were constantly foiling justice in shows like Law and Order and CSI? Watch militia, survivalist, and other anti - fed stereotypes become the "bad guy". And Islamic terrorists are completely off limits - it upsets them.

7) Grassroots (regular people) political movements should be scorned - unless, of course, they have approval of the liberal Hollywood elite and other non-regular people. This is another example of how the invisible forces of evil, who, until Obama, supposedly controlled the government, are now supposedly controlling the anti - government movements! You know that old lady at the town-hall meeting concerned about her grandchild's future? She's clearly a tool of the corporate oppressors!

8) We will put our narrow interest above the good of the nation. Public school teachers, for instance, supports whomever puts more taxpayer money in their pocket, the aspiring bureaucrat supports whomever promises a cushy government job, and an African - American casts a vote for a candidate “just because he’s black”… and all is hunky dory.

9) Our politics are now thoroughly in agreement with people we previously despised as “sell-outs” or mainstream hacks such as Barbara Streisand or Madonna.

10) Although we decry consumption and large corporations, we gladly consume the best American enterprise has to offer: we buy computers, video game machines, use Blackberries, Droids, and all the latest in telecommunications; we enjoy plane trips, use fossil fuels, and petroleum products; we drive Japanese cars with “Save the Whales” bumper stickers.

Tax dollars at work buying Chuck Rangel a nice place to kick back and hide assets from the IRS

11) We don’t fear the redistribution of wealth (so long as it isn't ours). Our Vice President Biden even claimed that ‘paying taxes was patriotic’. Yet we use accountants to find tax loopholes, we hide income from the Government, and the wealthiest among us even shelter money offshore. Worst of all, we do not expect our own lawmakers and officials to redistribute their own income (ie. Tom Daschle, Charles Rangel, Tim Geitner).

12) Individuality is no longer sacrosanct. Rather than protecting the rights of individuals in society, we support laws based on racial identity and sexual orientation. The use of discrimination to end discrimination is acceptable. (Perceived) social justice now takes precedent over individual liberty. We feel the need for a "Nanny State" to help decide what is best for us.

So, there you have it – just a few of the rules to which many of my friends and peers have acquiesced in this Age of Obama. Perhaps if they had not professed such radically different values all those years ago, I would not be so utterly surprised. By discarding the reasonable and worthwhile beliefs we held in our younger days – it seems many have gotten older but not necessarily wiser…

Stay tuned. Get radical (again).

$13,058,334,558,132.43 and Counting

2010-06-03T13:29:00.015-04:00

An original Diary Cartoon.

To check in on another national disaster:
U.S. National Debt Clock

Sending Liberals to Their Happy Place

2010-05-27T15:11:00.068-04:00

I promised my readers I would cover this topic as part of my recent entries about American Liberalism and here it is:

I have learned that conversing with a liberal is a fairly predictable event. Though they rarely admit to being Socialists (the Marxist variety), the subtext of their argument is always the belief that socialism is the answer to America's problems. My argument against socialism is equally predictable: The laboratory of history has shown this experiment to have the same failed and tragic result - under a variety of circumstances. Even in our own country, is it not the socialistic programs which are perpetually broken and hemorrhaging tax money with little result?

At this point liberals will usually retort that it is America's 'lack of commitment to socio-economic justice (meaning socialism)' which is to blame for its less than desirable condition. They believe that 'if only taxpayers and industry were made to give more' or 'if the right person (like Obama) was allowed to lead the nation without impediment' then things would be different. To which I respond: It is in those very nations, whose leadership had total commitment to socialism and devoted all political energies towards those ends, where history's most gruesome atrocities occurred. Even with all of the means of the nation mobilized and effective opposition neutralized - Socialism still ultimately failed.

While there are still some examples of committed socialist nations, such as North Korea or Cuba, their oppressive governments and miserable standard of living do not make for an attractive model of something better than life in America. And a nation like China, which has survived by implementing reform in such a way as to create a type of 'vulgar' socialism and capitalism, is hardly an alternative either.

So what is a liberal to say?

They inevitably respond, "That is not our socialism. Our socialism is the successful one we see in Europe. I read a study by _______ that ________ is one of the best places to live in the world! They have Socialism."

This, my friends, is their proverbial ace-in-the hole. This is the one pillar on which rank and file liberals stand and behind which neo-marxists shield themselves.

And there could not be a weaker defense of Socialism than this.

Apples and Oranges

The conclusion that the people of Europe are "happier" or "better off" than we are - as a direct result of their incorporation of socialism - requires one to make multiple leaps of faith and logic. Furthermore, assuming we can accept the validity of dubious studies, which claim to measure often subjective things, to accept that European models can be applied to the United States is equally far fetched. Let me show you:

Consider Norway, a Scandinavian nation often lionized by American liberals. This constitutional monarchy (that's right - a monarchy) has a total population numbering little more than half of New York City. In fact, with a population of only 4,676,305 Norwegians, you could fit their population into the United States 66 times over! With what childlike simplicity do liberals think that the same bureaucracy that administers the heath care system in Norway could function in the same manner, or even remotely resemble itself, in our nation of over 310 million?

Consider that there are, according to some figures, three times the number of Illegal immigrants in the United States than the total number of people in Norway. The number of illegal immigrants entering into Norway is by comparison a statistical zero. Could this be a factor in the perceived happiness in that country? Could it be the reason social programs allegedly work there?

There are also extreme cultural differences between the United States and Norway. This country, like others liberals love, is striking in its utter lack of diversity. This is a country of 94% Norwegians... meaning white people. This is also a country where 85.7% of the population are members of the Church of Norway (Lutheranism). Catholics are 1% and Jews are statistically non-existent. I am not condemning Norway - there are reasons why they are this way - but that is not how America is, and it creates consequences for both nations.

Should I continue with other incongruities such as international financial and humanitarian commitments, we would be here all day...

So, this is the liberal Mecca? A country of nearly all one race and religion, the approximate population size of Alabama. Could it be proven that their socialism is anymore responsible for their supposed happiness than say cultural, traditional, or even genetic factors?

The sacred cow of liberals continues to implode when one considers general European history. American liberals cannot point to a long tradition of European socialism. The first half of the twentieth century was marked by chaos and destruction from two World Wars (the last involving two major socialist regimes). In 1945, devastated Europe had nowhere to go but up. Then, Europe had the benefit of the Marshall Plan (American money) and the Cold War (more American money). The key here is that any serious study of European style socialism is bound to be sharply skewed.

That is not to say that Socialism thus far is even worth the price that Europe's citizens pay. The fact remains that the people are taxed heavily to provide for priorities decided upon by a comparative few. Our example nation of Norway is the 5th most expensive country in which to live. It is interesting to note that as many European nations become increasingly diverse, there is growing dissatisfaction with socialist policies by citizens. France is an excellent example of this trend. Today, we are watching a growing economic crisis where many European nations are paying the price for their social entitlements. Greece being a prime example (unfortunately for us, the American taxpayer via the IMF will prop up their socialism).

And finally, the type of socialism that American liberals are so enamored with is in fact a type of National Socialism. The socialism in Europe is defined and confined by their respective nation-states; the elements of socialism in each country are subject to the unique characteristics of each country. There is no class solidarity across borders, brotherhood of the proletariat, or any such nonsense. This brings up all kinds of complications, not the least of which is the fact that liberals are supposedly against nationalism.

Ultimately, none of this matters. Most liberals won't listen to more than a few of these points before they get that glassy stare. It's a stare that says, "Don't confuse me with your facts. I am going to my happy place now..." The fact that liberals have been using this argument, weak as it may be, for so long is actually a good thing... it makes my job easy - if not predictable.

Note: You can find the statistics I use in several places. A user-friendly website is: The CIA World Factbook. My number of illegal immigrants in the US come from a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research organization. Let it be known, I love Norway and its people - horned Vikings hats, fjords, and all.

I was wrong?

2010-05-20T14:17:00.016-04:00

I am not above admitting when I am wrong- and I was wrong. Well, maybe more fooled than wrong...Okay, I was wrong to be fooled. Regardless, I usually try to avoid regional and local issues in my blogs, but in order to come clean, I must briefly stray from my modus operandi. So with out further ado... my "mea culpa":

I once supported Florida's Governor Charlie Crist.

Halfhearted as my support was, I thought I saw enough in Crist to give him a chance - and my vote. He seemed to be at least a young, sharp, and energetic Republican. He wasn't exactly conservative... he was the typical middle-of-the-road 'McCain-type' Republican... but mostly he was the lesser of two evils (running against Jim Davis, endorsed by then Illinois Senator Barack Obama).

There were warning signs which I won't recount here, but sufficed to say, they predictably ended with Crist switching to the Independent 'unparty' (you know, like an 'unbirthday') just weeks ago. His departure from the Republican party was seen by many as an act of political self-preservation... whatever. He received votes and money from Floridians by promising to uphold certain values and govern in a certain manner. Crist failed on both promises.

In my estimation, he is exactly what was wrong with the Republican politicians these past few years. He threw his conservative constituents enough bones to satisfy them and then promptly threw us under the bus on important issues. We - Conservatives - were used to that kind of measured disappointment, weren't we? We could at least take solace in the fact that the only thing worse than a "big government Republican" is a Democrat. The difference being the latter has compromised small government and free market ideals while the other one never had them at all.

The fact is that I... we... conservatives, had come to expect little from our own politicians. We tolerated far too much Progressiveness- and the election of Crist was just as much proof of this as the candidacy of John McCain.The 'lesser of two evils' theory may be pragmatic but it still is wrong. We allowed the party to make electability a priority over conservative values and paid in spades for it.

As the Obama Regime grinds on, it seems that Conservatism may be coming to terms with its own complacency, particularly in regards to the shenanigans of the Republican party. The end of 'big government' Republicans may hopefully be at hand and perhaps the party will be a home for conservatives again. And while America is quickly getting on board, the only sad thing about ship-jumpers like Specter and Crist is that we tolerated them for so long...

The Great Divide(r)

2010-05-19T15:58:00.066-04:00

It was not too long ago that candidate Obama spoke with great concern about the unnecessary partisanship and unproductive bickering in Washington. He used words like "healing", "unity", and "working together". The story was that George Bush had divided this country, and when elected, Obama would be charged with unifying this great nation... Remember?

In my thirty seven years of life, I have never before witnessed the kind of divisiveness we have in America today. I make it a point to get out and speak with as many people as I can from all walks of life. Quite simply, people are angry. They feel they are worse off today than they were prior to January, 20 2009. I have personally witnessed people who have never mentioned politics before in pitch battles with co-workers and neighbors. In my own life, there have been sad episodes where politics has gotten in the way of continuing friendships - something I have never experienced before.

History tells us the sixties were rough and maybe so... but to quote a wiseguy on the Sopranos, "We stand... on the precipice... of a crossroads" (Say it with a NY accent and it is double plus good).

Anyways, during my drive home this evening I started making a quick mental list of how president Obama and his Regime has, in a staggeringly short time, divided this nation. See if you can add a few I have missed...

Let's start with the first and most obvious folks alienated:

Libertarians, Republicans of all varieties (both conservative and centrist), Constitutionalists, conservative and religious blacks, people who believe in the right to bear arms (with or without bibles), and the millions of Limbaugh, Beck, and other talk radio fans.

Then we have:

The mentally challenged and their parents, policemen and women (did he ever have that beer over the Gates affair?), survivalists and homesteaders, white male construction workers (No Stimulus for you!), the military and veterans, the entire city of Las Vegas, and now the state of Arizona.

Against expectation, the Regime moving sharply leftward has alienated:

Reagan, Blue dog, and Southern Democrats (ie. fiscally and/or socially conservative Dems.) who are voting for non-Democrats and leaving the party en masse. Many of them echoing the classic Reagan line: "I didn't leave the Democratic party, the party left me!"

Humorously enough Obama has managed to upset:

Both the Anti-war camp and those who support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in case you forgot- there is still a war going on), people who are both for and against offshore oil drilling, and LEGAL immigrants who have to jump through hoops to do the right thing.

And under the Obama watch:

Los Angeles and San Francisco are threatening to boycott the State of Arizona... imagine cities bickering with states! Somehow, the Regime has made being Hispanic and being an illegal immigrant one-in-the-same thereby pitting general Hispanic groups against non-Hispanic Americans. Racial tensions between white and black have risen to new heights as criticism of Obama is labeled racism. The regime has done nothing to dispel those charges nor have they criticized the escalating use of the "Race Card" by surrogates.

As a direct result of Obama's actions:

We experienced the 'Town Hall' phenomenon where normally docile citizens voiced their frustrations and were labeled an "angry mob" by Obama's surrogates for their troubles. We saw the birth of the Birthers, heard oaths from the Oathkeepers, as well as the formation of the grassroots Tea Party movement - which is made up of a cross-section of Americans from different political parties. The lackey media has been alienating itself from these and other Americans by heaping abuse and humiliation on those who dare organize and speak up in opposition to the Obama Regime.

What has Obama done to ease any of these tensions or to address concerns?

Still pulling for Obama and his regime:

Socialists, Communists, the Hollywood A and B lists, illegal immigrants, black people who support Obama only because he says he is black, the mainstream media, the entire nation of Kenya, chronic welfare abusers, federal bureaucrats, Hugo Chavez, tax cheats, and most recently artist and musician types (who can now spend their extra cash on dope and quit their day jobs! See the clip below).

Now that I think about it, perhaps Obama is a force for unification. His presidency and Regime have caused groups, normally at odds with each other, to build bridges - albeit in opposition to him. He has energized average Americans to form grassroots movements and speak up - albeit against his policies. He has single-handedly done more to inspire folks to learn about the Constitution - albeit out of fear of the Regime's intentions.

Of all these unintended consequences, perhaps the most galling to the Democrats is the flight of moderate and conservative elements from their own party and a growing anti-incumbency sentiment - all at a time Democrats hold a majority and - all consequences of their handpicked golden boy in action. You have to love that!

Keep up the good work Obama... soon enough we will all be Libertarians and Conservatives.

American Liberals and Neo-Nazis: Intention is the Mother of Atrocity

2010-04-24T09:52:00.066-04:00

When society sees spectacles such as the recent Neo-Nazi protests on the city hall lawn in Los Angeles, they understandably recoil in horror. Society is shocked and appalled because this is a group who's values are repugnant to most Americans. Instantly people connect the imagery used by the Neo-Nazis... the swastika...the jackboots...with a very dark chapter in human history. Most importantly, people make the moral connection between these protesters core philosophy and the Third Reich. They invariably represent totalitarianism... they represent death.

Few people are willing to be a part of that kind of ideology. Sam the Skinhead has to carry around the "perception-burden" of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, and ultimately the Holocaust. Those associations are precisely what makes Neo-Nazis so threatening to Americans - more so than even their actual ideology - which from my research is undefined from group to group. The thinking is: We know what people like these are capable of; History is our guide.

Is it always?

Behold the American Liberal. Somehow, they have found a way to divorce themselves from the atrocities that their core philosophy has caused. It is a philosophy whose end result, has been totalitarianism and death on a scale that Adolph Hitler couldn't have believed possible with his Final Solution. That core philosophy -if you didn't know- which Bolsheviks, Maoists, American Liberals, Progressives, and others all have in common is: Marxism. The times and places may change - but Marxism is like the mitochondrial DNA.

In America, we openly have proud "Socialists" and "Liberals". They were no more present at the Killing Fields of Cambodia than these California Skinheads were present at Auschwitz - yet just as morally culpable. In many cases, some American Liberals are in fact more culpable than any rank and file Neo-Nazi in terms of collective guilt for the results of their chosen philosophy.

This philosophy has outlived Nazism by six decades and counting. It has a estimated body count of at least 80 million souls ( some estimates exceed 100 million - but we may never know). These victims were not men, women and children who died as casualties of war but were exterminated because of who they were (or thought to be). This is a number set against the calculated genocide of the Nazis Final Solution. In just two examples, the 1937-38 "Great Purge" which 'liquidated' 690,000 people and 1932-33 genocide which 'liquidated' 4 million Ukrainians and 2 million Southern Russians, we already have eclipsed the Nazi Holocaust before it was ever even conceived.

In one of history's sick jokes - the Soviets sit as judges at Nuremberg

There have been attempts to explain away a connection between the past Marxist-inspired horrors and American Liberals - but all have fallen flat. Their defense has been based on ethnocentrism (we would do it better), historical supposition (if only Trotsky had succeeded Lenin), or simple denial (isn't the Khmer Rouge a type of make-up?). Liberals have even attempted name changes like "The New Left", in an attempt to put distance between themselves and their brethren- the only problem being that Socialist atrocities continued post-Stalin and in Africa, Central America, and Asia had yet to reach their apex.

California Democrat Maxine Waters Proudly Sputters Out the Plan

So now we get to the crux of the issue. Why do we as a society openly scorn one evil system while tolerating another? Do we as a society have room in our moral consciousness for only one 'bad guy' no matter how evil and rotten others may be? What is the difference?

The answer is simple: Intention. Marxism sells equality and utopia for all. Nazism sells the superiority of a particular race and utopia for a selected group. One is inclusive and the other exclusive. Both believe in command economies and a subservient market. Both lead to death and destruction. One, however, was beaten and destroyed on May 8, 1945. The other continues to exist in some wretched form or another.

Liberals sell intentions which are easy for people to grasp and morally innocuous. Just like the song, "Imagine", they sell a vision for the world that is hard to argue with...except of course for the fact that the pursuit of it has caused more misery and death than any other system ever conceived- including Nazism. When one cloaks their actions in the mantle of equality and tolerance, people are afraid to question them - even if it is clearly a rouse to hide ones own thirst for power and other base desires. It is brilliantly evil.

Selling "intentions" is precisely what American Liberals do. They cannot sell "methods" because they have none which have ever worked. They cannot point to past success here in America because every Marxist-inspired program is considered unsustainable and "broken". They most certainly cannot point to past successes in the rest of the world lest people become aware of the horrific consequences which are the reality. (Some will inevitably point towards western European socialism as a model of success - but this is the easiest precept to debunk and I do so here: Sending Liberals to their happy place.)

Liberals have gotten a pass simply because of their supposed intentions...Hope...Change...all intangibles which cannot in themselves be argued against...Feed the Children...Health Care for All. If history has taught us anything it is that: Marxism and Socialism cannot attain these things. In fact, the history of Marxism in practice has taught us that: Intention is the mother of all atrocity.

Worldwide the Left have used their grand intentions to excuse every manner of barbarity, destruction, and genocide. They don't feel they should ever have to account for anything because they intend a better- more just and equitable world for all. American Liberals have the gall to claim some moral high ground and to be a foil to Neo-Nazis and other despotic movements. If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black...

So the next time you see a news report or article about Neo-Nazis protesting some place or another, ask yourself why there isn't a crowd shouting down the clown wearing a Che Guevara or hammer and sickle shirt in the counter-protest. The very fact that nobody does shout them down, or that we have politicians who proudly call themselves Liberals and Socialists, is a testament to just how insidious and successful the American Left has become. They are the ones who are in power - not some bald-headed kids with anger issues.

Stay Tuned, Friends!

Interesting Links:
Chavez's monument to Che destroyed in less than two weeks
Liberals' Dirty Little Secret: The ethnocentrism of the American Left

Sending Liberals to their 'Happy Place': The Truth about European Socialism

Stay tuned....

The Mayor's Gift of "Free"

2010-04-12T09:14:00.034-04:00

My first epic political poem about a kingdom and their new 'mayor of the palace'. Enjoy.

Not so long ago,
and not so very far
A kingdom unlike any other stood
and shone as if a star

Invention and innovation,
freedom from tyranny,
the mayors could only rule as long
as the sum of years: one plus three

No, things were not always good
but life was far from bad
though some had forgotten it,
they had more than others had

Now in this place there lived two groups
who held their sway at Court
elected to manage many things
and to the people they'd report

First there were the 'Pediwarts'
who thought that they knew best
Intentions were what mattered most
though they rarely found success

Next there were the 'Impotates'
prudent and profound,
but unable to communicate
their plans would run aground

Outside of Court lived all the rest,
people of all kinds
Once frugal and independent,
but growing lazy over time

So busy collecting pleasurable things,
they ignored the events at Court
In turn their children took little time
to understand management's report

One day a man with glowing eyes
from the ranks of Pediwarts
said, "Let me be your Mayor,
and I will change this useless Court!"

The people cheered, it sounded good
he seemed a special man
While the Impotates looked befuddled
sitting on their hands

Dazzled and nearly dizzy
the people crowned him like a King
hoping they could quickly return
to collecting their pleasurable things

But the Mayor had a plan
to make himself beloved
a plan that busy people thought
would come from Him above

He strutted out one lovely day
on the Courts broad balcony
And shouted to all the people below
"I will give you free electricity!"

The Pediwarts cried tears of joy
"Dear people, is He not grand?"
Again, the Impotates sat
firmly on their hands

Many folks were not so sure
some even were aghast
They had heard of schemes like this
destroying kingdoms in the past

One came up from the crowd
asking if it was true
and, "who will pay for such a thing?"
"Well...someone richer than you!"

"And what of those kingdoms,
destroyed in the past?"
"Fables, good people, fables!
Our kingdom will surely last!"

Poor folks were taxed but little
and indeed the lights seemed free
Others paid a little more
because they had the means

Day and night people used their lights
they had no bills to fear
they used as much as they saw fit
double from prior years

Electric plants could not keep up
demand had grown too large
So the Mayor said "To certain things,
we add a wee surcharge"

So plants were built called Kingdom Co.
and though they came on line
they only could keep up with things
for a certain time

But Pediwarts now quite pleased
asked, "If electricity is a right...
then why not water? clothes? or cars?
All basic things for life!"

The Mayor decreed, it came pass,
and dissenters were shouted down
"How dare you question free things for all!"
While Impotates made no sound

The money to get all these things
was difficult to acquire
so new taxes were created
with reasons quite inspired

So many things now called "free"
enough money could not come in
the ranks of those once 'of means'
now had grown quite thin

The poor would have to pay their share
and laws were put on walls:
six hours of light was now the max
and clothes- one size for all

A car would have to last ten years
and water - one litter per day
The best chance for the food you want-
is to be in line by eight

Of course the Mayor and his friends
lived by different rules,
the Pediwarts stood in no lines
and had the pick of food

In a kingdom once so shinning bright
on a course they had embarked
a once proud people sat wearing rags
for eighteen hours in the dark

The end.

...for lak,ajk,rp,kk, and lonestar

stay tuned....

Liberals' Dirty Little Secret

2010-04-08T12:16:00.014-04:00

Merriam-Webster defines ethnocentric as "characterized by or based on the attitude that one's own group is superior." I can find no better term to describe liberals in America today. But not in the way you might think...

That liberals wholeheartedly believe their own political group to be superior is no revelation - one could level the same charge at us centrists and conservatives. The dirty little secret of liberals is, however, that the group they deem superior is none other than - Americans! And not just Americans, but specifically the white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant variety!

I know...you are asking how it's possible that liberals, the very same group which equates even casual patriotism with nationalism, could actually believe Americans to be a superior people.How is it possible that liberals, who invented racial witch-hunting, are unrepentant WASPs? But if one looks closely at liberals in the age of Obama the answer is clear.

We all know that liberals fancy themselves intellectuals - although I am not sure how being a 'lit' or art major enables one to clearly assess political and economic theory. Then again, being clueless has never stopped actors, musicians, or other entertainment types from blabbering on about leftist theology. So let's give them the benefit of the doubt: Liberals are smart - much smarter than the rest of us.

(I will give you a moment for the nausea to subside.)

Now that we have that out of the way, let us see how our 'intellectual' progressive friends are harboring secret thoughts of American superiority.

Certainly American Liberals know that since "Communism" was never achieved, or achievable for that matter, what we have instead are examples of Socialist nations of varying races and cultures.

Stalin was the progressive's progressive

Certainly educated liberals know about the carnage and suffering caused by socialist regimes worldwide: Ceausescu in Romania, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, Kim Il Sung in Korea, Mengistu in Ethiopia, Neto in Angola, Najibullah in Afghanistan, Mao in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh in Viet Nam, and many others...

Over a decade before the "holocaust", untold millions died in search of Socialism.

Certainly they know that worldwide consensus puts the death toll of the quest for a socialist 'paradise' at nearly a 100 million people in less than a century - an unparalleled crime against humanity. Even if one was to combine every alleged abuse by the United States since its founding, it could not approach the atrocities wrought by the Left since 1918.

Certainly Liberals know that no matter what type of propaganda, cajoling, or force, was used that few of any elements of past socialist system were efficient, viable, or able to fulfill its intended purpose. They know, that in reality, the standard of living was miserable for the masses in the "Socialist Republics" and under no other system have "workers" suffered so much.

Liberals: Dead Cambodians mean nothing to us.

Certainly they know that Socialism was never a popular moment in any of the countries it existed in to any degree. It was, however, forced upon the people by comparatively small violent groups. They know that nearly all of the Eastern European nations, devastated by World War Two, had their socialist governments foisted upon them by the Soviet Union (with the complicity of Franklin Roosevelt and his immediate successors).

Certainly American Liberals know it was popular movements which helped free people from state socialism. In an ironic twist, it was often labor unions (ie. the workers) and students which were on the front lines against the socialist dictatorships. And none of the countries have reverted back to their former systems regardless of the difficulties they now face. They know that these people value their freedom far more than any of the supposed benefits of Socialism.

Certainly they know that life is miserable in the countries still living under Socialist regimes. One has only to compare their standard of living with ours, or ask a Cuban why he risks his life to cross the ocean on a raft, or study the fate of Tibetans and the destruction of their culture.

Socialism was a plague Africa wished had never come.

So how do American Liberals justify their eagerness for socialism with so much recent historical proof of its ineffectiveness and bloodshed? Since we assume they know all of these things, then one can only conclude that liberals think that somehow "Americans will do it differently...Americans will do it better!"

To American Liberals, all of those examples of failed state socialism are nations of Slavic peoples, Asians, black Africans, Magyars, Hispanics, and other 'inferior' peoples. We can only conclude that, since the vanguard of American liberalism is made of moderately wealthy, Anglo- Saxon descended whites, that they honestly believe that they can do what no others have been able to do - make Socialism work.

It is either stupidity...or ethnocentric bravado.

What else could it be? If you observed a line of a hundred people who, one by one went into a dark room, only to come out one by one, beaten and bloody, what could one concluded? One should think that whatever was happening in there was bad. Yet in this case, liberals think that there must be something wrong with all the people who have gone in! Or perhaps it was the way they went in that was wrong!

This logic would be acceptable if we had only a few isolated examples. Yet what is a better warning against adopting a philosophy that has failed in so many different cultures and circumstances? Would it not be wise to learn from the experience of others?

Will the these victims lost lives be in vain?

(And the worst part? The fact that each socialistic element which has been adopted by America, itself, has failed. So, not only are Liberals ethnocentric... they are blind to their own failures.)

Let me leave you with words from a Russian blogger (someone who knows a lot more about socialism than any Berkeley graduate) named Stanislav Mishin: "...the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple...Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama...not to follow the path to Marxism, it leads only to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride..."

Friends, I really hope it does not get to that.

***
stay tuned...I am just getting warmed up!

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

2010-03-16T08:17:00.051-04:00

Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in! After forcing myself to watch the Blair Bitch Project, where Obama was able to hone his favorite facial expressions of arrogance and condescension, I decided to take a little breather from politics. I even started outlining a idea for a story... fiction no less! But it was my six year old, bless her heart, who prompted this Diary entry.

My daughters concept of politics revolves almost entirely around the Chipettes and their interactions with the Chipmunks. Along with Littlest Pet Shop and ponies with rainbow hair, childhood's ignorant bliss is just fine with me - there is a whole lifetime of 'reality' ahead of her and there is no need to rush. Recently, I had one of those proud-parent moments: my daughter made the transition from training wheels to two wheels. She was able to catch on so quickly that I was able to avoid a major asthmatic-collapse and having her riding - two wheeled - around my corpse.

I should have quit smoking long ago

But I had an even prouder moment which nearly brought a tear to my eye and will not soon be forgotten. My daughter, who's world consists of fairies and angels, looked me in the eye the other day and with a perplexed look asked me: "Daddy...if skin color doesn't matter...why...um...is there a Black History month but no white history month?"

Even at six years of age, my daughter was able to recognize an event (if you want to call it one) which was counter to what she has always been taught at home and supposedly at school. From an early age, I was careful to instill in her the importance of character over anything else including race or ethnicity. I am careful to teach her respect for all cultures along with pride in her own - two concepts which are absolutely compatible - except in the mind of racists and those ignorant or ashamed of their own cultures.

Naturally, I wanted to give her an answer to her question. I wanted to tell her that there are those who, illogically and ironically, feel that they need to tear Black history out of the greater lexicon of American history. They seek inclusion by separation rather than understanding that the history of black, white, red and yellow, in America, is precisely what comprises American history. Their way is akin to holding a sign with one hand stating: End Segregation... while building an all-black school with the other.

not exactly the best neighbors...

All of that would probably be too complex for a child, so instead I answered her with a question: "Well, why do you think they have a Black history month?" She thought for a moment and said, "I don't know, Daddy... I will have to think about that." Good enough for me... Even asking this question shows she has a mind capable of critical and creative reasoning

That's not the end of the story. Over the seven or so months that my daughter has been going to kindergarten, another trend became evident not only to me but more importantly to my daughter. In the time allotted for general history there is an inordinate amount of subject material devoted to black historical figures and the subject of slavery.

With all of the fascinating characters (of all races) and events over the several hundred years in the history of this nation... these children are exposed first and foremost to a continuous loop of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, slavery, the underground railroad, etc. There was comparatively brief mention of George Washington (and the cherry tree myth), Abraham Lincoln (as part of the larger slavery drama), and Susan B. Anthony.

Friends, I wish I was exaggerating - but I keep every one of the booklets she brings home. No serious mention of the Constitution or any of the things which made America the country - unmatched in history- that was and is a magnate for immigrants of all colors, ethnicity, and religions. No serious mention of the people who designed a nation where thousands and thousands of people would come to live - often escaping under threat of death and coming from nations ruled by people of their own skin color and ethnicity - and to never return to their homeland.

I can only imagine what my grandfather thought looking up at this after 5390 miles.

No, slavery and discrimination is what they are constantly exposed to as they enter the school system.

I would defy anyone to say that Martin Luther King Jr. is not a part of American history...or George W. Carver...or Rosa Parks. But the key words are: part of American history. Subsets like "Black" history should be left to the specialist classes further down the educational grades.

When my six year old daughter can come back to me and ask, "Why, Daddy, if there is a Black History month, do we learn about the same people all year long!" - then things are clearly out of hand. The liberal activists at the educational boards are having their cake and force feeding it too.

I asked her if her class had ever heard of Thomas Jefferson.

"No."

I asked if she had heard how Jean Lafitte's rag tag pirates helped American soldiers, under Andrew Jackson, defeat a professional British army during the War of 1812.

"Really?"

I asked if she had ever heard of how Count Casimir Pulaski, one of her own people, lead a courageous cavalry charge which not only prevented an American defeat at the Battle of Brandywine, but saved the life George Washington himself.

"Cool!"

Count Pulaski

Perhaps those subjects, basic when I was a child, are becoming the domain of only specialty graduate classes. I wonder if those 'progressive' folks designing the curriculum for your children have ever considered what effect the courses have on the self-esteem of non-black children? I wonder if they ever considered the effect their choice of curriculum has on black children for that matter? What kinds of resentments and misunderstandings are these information 'selectors' helping to create amongst innocent children?

This is not teaching American history. This is not equality. Even a child can see that.

I suggest you all take a good look at what they are teaching your young children. (It is no surprise home-schooling is consistently producing smarter kids. For those of us who aren't in a position to home school, we may have to supplement our child's learning far beyond what our parents did).

As for my little girl? She is going to be just fine. I have started "Western Civilization Tuesdays" each week. I give her a choice of books and all she has to do is flip through and ask questions. This week was about medieval culture and myths. In the spirit of compromise, she insists that I play "Littlest Pet Shop" with her afterward. I think that is a fair enough deal:)

stay tuned...

All the Perfumes of Arabia...

2010-02-19T09:18:00.026-05:00

Have you ever had a really bad haircut... and you feel like people are burning holes through your head with their eyeballs every time you turn around? Many Americans know exactly how that feels. And they are doing something about it.

Imagine if you will, "Bob" the 30- something guy who thought supporting Obama made him 'pimp' in the eyes of "Trina" the 19 year old hostess at Applebees...Or "Marla" the well-meaning, yet gullible public schoolteacher who fantasized about computers for every one of her kids...

"Off damn sticker! Off!"...they cry like Lady Macbeth in act V as they hysterically peel and scrape Obama bumper stickers off of their cars.

Some were just caught up in the excitement of the elections. Some were under a spell of sorts. The promises...the soundbites! The next thing they knew - they were cleaning spots on their cars to place a slick Obama/Biden themed sticker. It was all whirlwind!

Now under the cover of darkness, and working in reflected streetlight, people across America deliver themselves from further embarrassment. They carefully roll back the corners of those symbols of betrayal. And with any luck, those horrible things will come off in one piece.

"Off damn 'hope'! Off damn 'change'!"

"Off damn 'women for Obama'! Off 'Vote Democrat'!"

Minutes later, they breath free. It would be as if "it" was never there.

But those are the lucky ones... For some poor souls, things will not go so well. For some, there are just too many stickers and they will drop to their knees... shaking their fist at the sky...screaming, "For the love of God...why didn't someone stop meeeee!"

Why, indeed...why, indeed.

Worse still, others will struggle against stickers that will shred when removed. These folks are doomed to peeling tiny slivers, for hours on end, until they succumb to exhaustion or even madness.

Then there are those whom, in their desire to remove their shame, go too far. You may see them on the road in front of you...cars with hideous scars on their rear. This... the result of frantic scrubbing which went clear past the sticker...beyond the paint...and into the actual body of the automobile...

Friends, we must not sneer or snicker! These people need to be welcomed back into reality. We have all made mistakes.

And there are far more tragic characters who deserves our sympathy. When you see them tell your children not to stare and perhaps mutter a quiet prayer for them. For these folks are beyond our mortal help. These are folks who still believe in this man - Barack Obama... Folks who believe he is more than a man.

They will keep their bumper stickers and their t-shirts. They will keep their posters and glossy magazines...perhaps until long after the last promise is broken...perhaps even after Obama has left office. Because for them, words and intentions are what matters.

And all the 'perfumes of Arabia' couldn't sweeten that foul reality...

stay tuned...

Stop This Train!

2010-02-11T11:54:00.053-05:00

Okay, this entry was a little late. I am still getting over bronchitis and sleeping 20 hours a day (that's actually an improvement). When this whole thing started with the flu - swine, no doubt - I thought I was going to die...then I felt better...then I felt so bad that I wanted to die. Now, I think I am getting better but who knows...

Does it feel like our nation is a runaway train headed for disaster and we are just terrified passengers? We all recognize that there are many who are very good at shouting out what our problems are and yet offer few solutions. Then there are those who talk of solutions like 'hope and change' which have proved to be quite elusive concepts.

Along with flights of fancy, we are getting solutions coming from the White House to problems which we aren't really interested in at the moment (I'm thinking of Obama's insistence on changing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy) or 'false dichotomy' solutions (ex. the Democrats plan is the only solution to fixing health care). Then there is the 'blame game', which is actually no solution at all... which is now developed into the 'partisan game' which is...Wait... SOMEBODY STOP THIS TRAIN, WE WANT TO GET OFF!

Sometimes it is easy to let the constant barrage of bad news and the maniacs in power get us down. Sometimes, even I become so disgusted that I want to give up the fight, give up staying informed, and go collect stamps or something.

But that is exactly what the elites would like Americans to do. After all, they know what's best for us and Americans are just too stupid to get it. According to this administration, the only reason America is not supporting Obama's progressive schemes is because we don't understand them - although Obama and Co. admitted that maybe they did not explain it well enough.

At the same time, our president has asked us to "turned off your CNN, your Fox, your blogs." Oh! You would like that, wouldn't you Mr.Obama? Okay... and from now on, we can all just count on your press secretary to tell us what is 'really' going on. Sure.

It seems that the mass media propaganda machine is not working adequately enough for the Leftist Elite - which caused Obama to throw CNN, along with his arch-enemy FOX, under the bus when he made his anti-news message. (Not to be out-done, Sen.Boxer added MSNBC.) This, of course, was a subtle message to the Media to come back into the fold since there have been some departures from the party line.

The truth has a way of coming to the surface doesn't it?

But we don't have to sit quietly and wait for a disaster or a miracle. Our first goal should be to continue to stay informed but resist the cynicism and apathy that sometimes goes with it. We can disobey the authorities by not only reading blogs - but starting new ones of our own.

We also need to stay sharp and pay attention to what the entertainment wing of the media is programming.

Here's an example: Our nation has experienced very severe winters recently and this year is in the middle of, what Obama himself (supposedly) dubbed, "Snowmagedon". Records are breaking and temperature averages are going DOWN - not up - as we were told by Al Gore, Obama, and all of the rest of the global warming mob. And now, several former pro-warming scientists have come out with the truth that there are huge problems with their research and temperatures have actually not gone up the past decade AT ALL. Considering the recent Climategate scandal with these events and the fat, greenhouse gas emitting, lady is howling.

Yet, the History Channel, interestingly enough, has been running back-to-back geology shows that proclaim global warming to be a fact (all of them appear to be produced several years ago).

A few Weather Channel anchors have been making comments -after blizzard reports- reassuring people that global warming still exists in spite of the recent events and data. There has even been comments made by hosts at the Olympics! (BTW, when they want you to ignore what common sense is telling you...it is a sign: They are on a defensive. But like a cornered or drowning animal, they can be very dangerous.)

Recognizing b.s. in journalism and entertainment media is a good skill to have. The media can't influence those who see through it's charade. But what about more direct actions we can take?

Well, let's start with the basic premise that an economically competitive America is a nation with jobs. And a competitive America with jobs is a good thing.

That being said, we can vote for candidates who will: 1) Cut taxes across the board, 2) Stop unions from strangling business and, 3) End this Cap-and-Trade type environmental madness which cripples American industry while other countries swallow up jobs and capital. Addressing these issues are crucial for America to become competitive and stimulate job growth. But there is something we can do... today.

Buy American.

I know it is a cliche. But until we start consuming less of this Chinese import garbage - the future will not be bright enough for those cheap Asian-made shades you got. The problem is we all want cheap. We all want a lot. And we are all guilty. But what has that gotten us? It has gotten us all a lot of cheap, disposable garbage.

We have confused buying cheaply with being spendthrift .

If we are concerned with the environment - then our garbage dumps being filled with continuous piles of crap labeled: 'Made in China' is a hazard far more real than supposed global temperature change.

Not to mention, these imports are literally poison. As I write this, there is yet another lead scare in Chinese import toys - teddy bears, for God's sakes, being pulled from Target shelves.

True, American goods are sometimes more expensive and this is a direct result of a hostile business environment. But there are two sides to the equation: As a nation of producers, we need to change that business environment in the political sphere. As a nation of consumers, we need to support our industry.

We need to give business a reason to stay here and fight to exist. And that starts with the every day choices we all make.

Every time you buy something you are casting a vote that tells the market what you want. It is the most democratic and beautifully efficient systems in existence. We don't need to wait for election days or march on Washington to make a difference (although both of those are good things). We can send a message - voting with our dollar - that we want business and industry here in America. And eventually, market forces will bring the price of domestic goods into line with imports!

We can also learn a lot from this recession by looking to the past- even if our politicians refuse to. The Obama Administration has used the same worthless Keynesian economics (print and spend) which failed to work during the Great Depression. However, what did work was the way our grandparents reacted to those difficult times. They became thrifty. They despised waste and came up with creative solutions. People helped one another. And....get ready for this....they learned to make do with less!

Would it be so bad if we did the same?

So there are things we can do while on this wild ride. We can stay informed. We can vote. When we go shopping, we can ask ourselves what we really need and if we could do with less of it. We can choose to buy American and even buy local. Most of all, we can change the attitudes that got us here in the first places.

Recent elections are indicating America is on the way to becoming wiser in a political sense. Let's work on becoming wiser in a "cents" sense. And we need to get to it because time may not be on our side.

Links:
Turn off your CNN and Other Obama Scoldings

Teddy Bear Recall at Target

Climate Scientist U-turn

Stay tuned....

O-O-Obama Saved The World!

2010-01-08T09:17:00.071-05:00

On occasion, I plan on adding to my diary 'profile sketches' of the folks I come across. I believe that people have more in common than they realize. Who knows... you might even recognize someone you know.

So without further ado, my first character sketch is one from way out in left field....the man called:

Ricky "Google"

Ricky "google" was certainly one strange individual. Which, if you know me, is saying quite a bit. He wasn't the hammered-and-jumping-off-the-roof-into-the-kiddie-pool strange I've known over the years. Ricky was more of an odd combination of personality quirks, desperate insecurity, and out of context politics. Regardless, I met this late middle-age character when he was sent as a carpenter to a large remodeling project I was also working on (for a famous athletic couple whose identity I am sworn to secrecy).

Bald and frumpy, with a heaping dose of that creepy 'child molester look', Ricky had been nicknamed "google". He earned his nickname by his very annoying habit of pulling out his I-phone (or whatever it was) and consulting Google on any topic, regardless of how trivial, that came within his earshot. Be it the weather or the price of tea in China, when his squinting eyes saw something he thought relevant, he would blurt out his discovery with satisfaction. Unfortunately (for us), not only was his information either dubious or irrelevant, he was usually interrupting a conversation not at all involving him.

Ricky "google" also had a moderate stutter which became worse the more excited he became. Not that there was anything wrong with his stutter - if he had anything exciting things to say - but his personal stories and anecdotes were exceedingly boring. The stutter then made what would have been a dull, but bearable, five minutes into a mind numbing fifteen.

Interestingly, Ricky was a self-proclaimed genius and took every chance he could to let his co-workers know it. You know the type...those people who can somehow segue from just about any subject into mentioning their extraordinary IQ. If that wasn't enough, he somehow found openings in any conversation to relate nuggets like how in college he could calculate the square roots of extremely complex numbers (a feat he somehow could no longer perform) . To me, it was very amusing to hear him wax poetic over his brilliance - while he simultaneously sat on the dirty floor of a construction site, eating his sloppy lunch. It was just the kind of irony in life I enjoy witnessing.

Up to this point, like everyone else, I just considered him annoying but harmless. We all patiently let him have his say when he stuttered and sputtered his way through a sentence. I gathered he wasn't a very happy person though and I even found myself feeling sorry for him for no real reason.

I often thought to myself, however, how odd that such a genius would be here - among us regular folks - pounding nails for a living and not off curing disease or unleashing his genius on Wall Street. But it turned out he had actually done the latter, "I played the stock market for years," he mentioned to me one day, probably sensing my growing suspicion. In fact, I came to learn that he even would have been rich if, "Bush had not collapsed the economy."

Okay...

Such an absurd and sweeping statement instantly threw up red flags. Our frumpy genius, as it turned out, was a committed Liberal of the pathologically Bush-hating variety. He accepted the mainstream media's viewpoint as Gospel. And to say that he loved Obama - well... read on friends...

Now... disappointment in, and even disapproval of, George Bush is not uncommon in the rough and tumble world of the construction site. However, most folks are either annoyingly ambivalent or deeply cynical of politics. But an openly liberal Democrat - now that was a rare occurrence.

And with good reason too. Most guys on the job site fall into that segment of the working class who pay their taxes - but are unlikely to receive any kind of government entitlements. Many are small contractors and subcontractors who have to deal with bureaucracy in order to actually work for a living. With none of the same protection (or sympathy) afforded to the minimum wage crowd and stiffening regulations, it is hard to get ahead in even the good times.

The attitude is best summed up by the bumper sticker I have seen on several construction sites: "If only a building permit was as easy to get as welfare!" Which could be further qualified in the following way: "If only a building permit was as easy for us to get as welfare is for them." Rough and simplistic as these sentiments are, they contain a certain truth.

But cynicism or the grudging populist/conservative hybrid of the working man was not for Ricky "google". No, he knew where he stood. And alas, this made Ricky intriguing to me. So, I listened carefully when he spoke about his political views. I generally avoided conflict and really wanted to understand his devotion to Liberalism.

Our first exchange occurred one warm October day when he said with personal pride, "Obama's stimulus plan is really working and without inflation!"

"Is that so?" I said with the bait proving irresistible. "Even his own people won't admit to that. There is nothing new in what he is doing. It was tried by FDR and failed. You can't print your way out of a recession without consequence."

"But th-things were different then," he said surprised by confrontation, "people l-lived different (sic). They lived more independent."

I assumed he was explaining the failure of the New Deal - with its social programs and the Government taking up the slack of private sector consumption- was a result of people being more independent in the 1930's. I was confused...

"So are you saying that Obama's version of the New Deal will work today, because people are more dependent on the Federal Government?"

"y-y-yes!" he said frustrated at my inability to catch on to his brilliant assertions.

"Rick, you are telling me that we should use the same medicine to cure a sickness - that didn't work the first time - because the patient is now addicted to the medicine?!"

"Wh-what does th-this have to do with health care?"

"Nothing, Rick. Nothing."

Thus, our first political engagement came to a close with both of us scratching our heads. I can only assume that he was operating on a much higher plane of thought than I could grasp. He was, after all, a genius.

But without a doubt, the hands-down, most astounding thing he told me were four simple words in October. Rick was annoyed at some critical remarks he had overheard me make about Obama and he turned to me, as if he could barely contain his anger and said, "O-O-Obama saved the world!"

I was stunned.

"Obama saved the world?" I asked in disbelief, "That is quite an accomplishment for an American president - for any nations leader - especially one who has been in office for such a short time." I was really beginning to think either I am unable to understand such genius or this guy is a few clowns short of a circus....

Yet, in an even more astounding declaration he said, "But the recession is o-o-over already!"

"Over?" I answered in astonishment. I desperately search his face for some sign that he was joking with me. I saw only determination.

"It was over y-y-yesterday," he replied while his face grew red, "The O-O-Obama stimulus plan w-worked. Didn't you know?"

Wow! Not even my most liberal of associates would say something like that. Here was a delirium on par with that lady, who on NBC, pronounced that Obama would pay her mortgage and gas as president!

In the least likely of places, I had come face to face with Obamania in all of its irrational glory. This, of course, is the condition where people lose all connection with reality when they think about Obama. And with Ricky “google” - a perfect storm of personality traits, events, and exposure to the Media collided to create the kind of liberal the Democrats have been building for years.

The intellectual superiority Ricky felt was a major factor in his condition. Liberalism is based on the premise that there are “those who know what is good for the rest”. So, the elitism of the Left fit well with him. What he didn’t understand was that he was being manipulated. Would it not be easier to keep the 'sheep' (whose vote was not already bought by hand-outs) on their side by telling them "they are smarter than the rest"? It makes sense how this aspect of Liberalism would appeal to someone like Ricky "google" who was unhappy, awkward, and yet so convinced of his intellectual superiority.

And even with all his internet searching and headlines, it seems impossible that he could evaluate information with any objectivity. How many of you know people who confuse being well-read (or well-watched) with being well-informed? It would seem his ego, passion for Obama, and devotion to Liberalism had become so inextricably intertwined that none could exist without the other. The success of Obama was Ricky's success - and the failure of Obama...well that just couldn't happen.

Shortly after our conversation, I thought I would ask him just one more thing: “Hey Rick, can you really expect to get reliable information from say, someone like Chris Matthews - who claimed that when Obama spoke he got a ‘thrill up his leg’?”

Ricky looked at me with complete confidence and replied, “Absolutely...because I feel the same way.”

There’s not much more I can say after hearing that, friends.

Stay tuned...

Going Green?

2009-12-14T12:55:00.053-05:00

It’s official...yours truly is ‘going green’...well, at least green from nausea over yet another example of how the elitist Left insults the intelligence of the American people. Sure this Leninist style spin-doctoring has been going on since...well...Lenin - but good God, they are not even being creative anymore!

You know the routine. Whenever the Left is faced with an 'inconvenient truth' (sorry)... they will either destroy the messenger or just shift the focus of an issue all together. This is nothing new. The liberal Media has been using the same tactics since the early American labor movements and throughout the Viet Nam/Civil Rights era. They denied genocide and excess during the Stalin regime - then later applauded the Khrushchev denouncement of genocide and excess during the Stalin regime. They magnified every unfortunate incident that the Contras were involved in - while ignoring the Sandinista caused bloodbaths.

The only gun-toting mobs Liberals like are the violent Marxist rebel variety

There was, however, a difference between Liberal spin in the past versus today. They used a bit more imagination in those days, and tried to not blatantly insult the intelligence of the average American. They were very careful to not let people see who they really were so that they could still present radicalism as progressiveness.

But that was then.

In the age of Obama, the Media doesn’t even bother to hide who they are. Their man is in the White House...they helped put him there. So I suppose boldness is to be expected - but along with that boldness is either sloppiness in Liberal spin-doctoring or carelessness in concealing Liberal contempt for America.

The media treatment of Climategate is precisely the patronizing foolishness the American people are growing weary of. I am not going to get into the Global Warming debate here, other than to say it is the most preposterous example of politicizing scientific theory. But, even if you do believe in global warming, it is easy to see the foul play regarding the handling of Climategate.

( Defining terms : I use the phrase "pro-global warming" to indicate those who believe that global warming is a man-made disaster which threatens to doom the planet, etc. I use the phrase "anti-warming" to indicate skeptics of the human element in global warming, the undecided, etc. Semantically imprecise -maybe - but much easier for me.)

In November, hacked emails are brought to light which, as the London Telegraph writer James Delingpole summarized, revealed pro-global warming scientists, "manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause." Worse still, the emails showed an effort to discredit and silence scientists who doubted the man-made warming theory or were skeptical of the data.

U of East Anglia: the science bad- the parties worse!

Where did these emails originate? That would be from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit- one of the key global warming research centers- who’s research and data is used as source material for organizations all over the world.

Since the birth of the global warming story, which was just after the "Ice Age" scare of the 1970's, the very unscientific practices exposed by the emails are not surprising. Now we had proof in black and white of what is believed to be the tip of the melting iceberg :). To Conservatives and Libertarians alike, the emails were proof that there needs to be more research and a fair debate before instituting all types of new government regulations, restrictions, and crippling taxes.

This should have been HUGE mainstream news considering that the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was kicking off. The United States and other developed nations would be pledging billions and billions of their citizens tax dollars - to stop the temperature of the Earth from changing. One would think that if there was any chance that the data - being used to justify such extreme measures and ambitious goals - was corrupted or compromised, our benevolent leaders would at least consider the implications of the emails and the conduct of these scientist.

They didn’t.

Copenhagen: hey, spending your money is hard work sometimes!

What they did consider was political careers, and most importantly, the money. With such a revolutionary way to control the private sector and a new source of tax dollars, they surely weren’t going to let any revelations stop them - let alone these emails. And what our benevolent leaders did do was count on their liberal allies in the mainstream media to put things into "perspective" for us.

They did, sort of.

Copenhagen would dominate the headlines and nearly all of the analysis and reporting of the Climategate emails - if critical of global warming - was relegated to the editorial pages or the non-mainstream press. Why would the media not at least cover the ‘point of fact’ story here- bad scientific practices and dishonesty - and then let people make up their own minds about the larger debate and Copenhagen? Because letting people make up there own minds is the last thing the liberal media or politicians want.

Here is how the mainstream media put Climategate into perspective for us:

* Acquiring and publishing the emails was just a "smear campaign", according to Reuters, when they published an article by a pro-global warming spokesperson. The smear defense, though weak, started popping up every where. Well, I am sorry this makes you look bad - but it does not change what the emails said.This is the equivalent to calling the evidence against Bernard Madoff a "smear campaign". Other than that, it is difficult to even give this smoke screen much thought.

* One absurd bait and switch job was a Guardian story via the Huffington Post about the Climategate scientists allegedly receiving death threats....of course they could offer no further proof or information because it was "under investigation". Then why print the death threat story at all? Why not wait until there is actually a verifiable story here? I suppose they think that we will feel sorry enough for these scientists to forget the whole little "data deception-thingy".

The media seems to like this tactic because, like the "smear" stories, there are several articles floating around now about pro -global warming scientists being verbally "assaulted" and "abused". Poor babies:( Calling pro-global warming scientists "names" is news worthy I suppose. (I don’t recall any news stories about the many incidents of abuse suffered by skeptical scientists over the years...)

* Since the Left has never had any qualms about destroying peoples lives, their favorite weapon is to "kill the messenger". Although still unidentified, news stories demanded to know just who these "earth-hating", evil hackers were and what their motivation was(hm..the truth perhaps?) Honestly, why should it matter? It won't change the facts! This is reminiscent of the Joe the Plumber nonsense: Ask a good question and the Liberal media will make you pay for it. When the ACORN videos came out: Expose us and we will make you pay for it. (Blatant corruption is not supposed to be wrong anymore - when they told you that the investigators were "right-wingers"). Do they really think we are so stupid as to ignore the truth because of who exposed the scientists?

* To the Media, the timing of the emails release was supposed to be more important to you than their content or implications. Because the emails surfaced just prior to Copenhagen, this was clear proof of a plot to "derail the conference". Okay. Maybe. But does it make what these scientist did acceptable? Do they really think that we are all so stupid as to ignore the truth because of when the emails were surfaced?

Perhaps the Copenhagen summit should have been 'derailed'. And the fact that the emails did nothing to affect the conference is poetic in itself. It demonstrates how, even when faced with a serious challenge to their information, the Obama administration doesn’t give a damn about anything except its own agenda.

* Adding insult to absurdity, the media did it’s best to personify pro-global warming in the person of Al Gore, and to some extent Obama, and anti-warming in the person of Sarah Palin. So Climategate was somehow boiled down to GORE v.PALIN. Okay, a bit more creative...but still transparent. Yes, the advantage to this tactic is that the liberal character assassination wheels have already been grinding Palin down for two years. But, this may end up being a miscalculation on the part of the Left.

For one, the American people just don’t hate Palin as much as the Liberal media does, regardless of what they might want folks to believe. Two, the public is getting tired of the incessant bashing of this woman and her all-too-normal family (by the supposedly non-judgmental Left). As Obama’s reign is turning out to be more and more of a dud, even once critical people are starting to reconsider Sarah Palin altogether. And thirdly, do they really think that we are so stupid that we will ignore the truth regardless of who’s faces they attach to the global warming issue?!

Perhaps something needs to be done about "pit warming"?

Incidentally, Al Gore’s* rebuttal to Climategate was, "Well what do they think is causing global warming then?" If I may answer Al...according to these emails, global warming is caused by the imagination of your scientists and the delete key on their computers...but I digress.

I could continue with more insulting examples of how the media is handling the Climategate scandal. But really, it boils down to the question I asked over and over: Do they really think we are this stupid? Well, the answer is yes...yes they do.

The mainstream media, smug with their domination of both medium and content, think that average America is comprised of nothing but a slew of uncultured, simpletons who cling to their "guns" and "bibles". And I have news for you middle-of-the-road Democrats... they include you in this slew. This is also exactly what the Liberal political elite think too. If not, then how else can you explain the media treatment of Climategate and its disregard by the Obama Administration?

Climategate stories are withering away but Americans are tired of getting jerked around and, although slow to react, they are not going to take it forever...When you consider recent polls show half of Americans don't believe in global warming, resentment over Copenhagen is building. I’m just curious to see if any rank and file liberals have the courage to stand up and call out the elites on their insults. Will they sit quite and watch more character assassination, issue shifting, and ridicule? Will they sit quite because the ends justify the means? If history is any guide, we unfortunately know the answer to that one...

*Read more about climategate and Al Gores reaction here: Al Gore falsifies the record

#Read more about climategate from the brilliant James Delingpole here.

stay tuned....

Jumping to Conclusions

2009-11-18T14:57:00.041-05:00

I don’t recall ever hearing the charge of racism directed towards those who have profiled serial killers (in this instance not “mass murders”) as typically being middle aged white males. That may be because it is true – they most often are. There have been, of course, black serial killers and women serial killers in the past but they of course are the exception which proves the rule. The entire science of criminological profiling is based on patterns and commonalities. The best part is that, as time goes on, new information makes the profiles become more accurate and more useful.

Son of Sam David Berkowitz

Okay, so we can all accept the generalization that serial killers are usually middle aged white guys. But now let me tell you another piece of information and I don’t care who you are… you will be uncomfortable with it:

Using published Justice Department statistics*, blacks are more likely to commit crimes against whites than the reverse; and a white woman is far more likely to be raped by a black man than a black woman being raped by a white man. These are generalizations based on statistical fact and just as legitimate as any others commonly accepted from a mathematical point of view.

Whoooa! Suddenly, you feel a little strange? Why is that? Even when we boil it down to statistics - that there were 1.54 million violent crimes committed by blacks against whites versus the 187,000 crimes of whites against blacks in 1993*- a whole host of social, political, and psycho-social factors come into play. These factors will too often cause people to over-look the truth for the sake of political correctness.

How many 48 Hours, CNBC, or 60 minute shows have you seen on these guys?

In effect, American society has no problem with some generalizations like ‘white men can’t jump’ or ‘white people can’t dance’. And certainly we have no problem with useful, more scientific data such as serial killer profiles which tell us to look for a middle-aged white loner. Yet, to our own detriment, society chooses to ignore other equally useful data for the sake of propriety.

Not only do we ignore these ‘inconvenient truths” but we pass ludicrous laws, such as Hate Crime laws, which are contrary to their implications. Out of the already comparatively smaller number of white on black crime, how many of those violent incidents are committed by “skin-heads”, hood- wearing Clansmen, or rouge racists? We all can agree that even one crime of hate is too many -but I assure you they are statistically a tiny fraction.

Yet somehow, the Media and the political Left have white racists hiding behind every bush and the southern countryside teeming with moronic KKK men. From fictional prime-time shows to the History Channel (when they take a break from their all Hitler-all the time format) it would seem we have been in a perpetual epidemic. The implication being that most crimes against blacks (or other minorities) are racially motivated and therefore ‘worse’ than what we statistically know to be the more common crime. It is not even close to the reality of the situation where one could infer that, if anything, whites are a consciously selected target because of their race. This is the "intent" associated with hate crimes. The Left doesn't want to deal with that and the Media sure as hell won't either. (Btw, did you ever notice that these exposé shows on inevitably white racist groups have been using the same footage for the past 20 years?)

Even on their 'hate' list for being a Catholic, this clown doesn't really scare me...

If you think about it, aren't Hate Crime Laws- in practice almost always used to prosecute whites- and over-blown media attention on these crimes racist in itself? If we know that statistically white on minority crime is far less than the reverse, and actual racially motivated violent crime an even smaller subset, it almost as if society is saying: Whites are held to a higher standard. We are appalled by racially motivated crimes and give them extra legal and media attention. You minorities are hopeless criminals anyways and incapable of a higher standard.

So Liberal culture will ignore the uncomfortable math and thereby miss an opportunity to solve much larger problems and that is ultimately a disservice to people of all colors and ethnicity.

Okay! Pop quiz! Look at the photo below and decide which of the two people in the photo is more likely to be a terrorist in this day and age...

...If you said the lady on the right you would be....WRONG! But you get the Politically Correct award and a kiss from Michael Moore (Yuck)! If you said the fellow on the right then you either read the caption or you just have common sense.

There are other ways our society handicaps itself. After 911 when we were attacked by Muslim men from Middle Eastern extraction, our nation was so worried about appearing unprejudiced, our policy against "racial profiling" trumped even national security concerns. I remember one occasion when my 70 year old grandmother, frail and hair so white it is almost blue, was pulled aside for a detailed search on an airplane trip. This was ironic when you consider the clearly Middle Eastern men immediately behind her walked right through the normal security check without a second look! Unfortunately, this was and is an all too common occurrence. We are so desperate as a nation to not appear racist that we will risk innocent lives. I suppose ‘Muslim Terrorist’ is another profile we Americans are just too polite to pay attention to.

When the Fort Hood tragedy was just revealing itself, Obama was quick to warn that people shouldn’t ‘jump to conclusions’. Well, I for one admit I did. The moment I saw his name: Nidal Malik Hasan - I thought this could at the very least be an informal radical Muslim attack. Then we found out that he had plenty of opportunity to come into contact with radical Muslims and other highly suspicious information. It isn’t racism, it is just common sense. No one should be blamed for suspecting the most probable even if it should turn out that he was simply a coward who took advantage of the tax-funded military for years- until the day he was asked to fulfill his duty overseas.

As I said, some conclusions are apparently socially acceptable to jump to…even for Obama. His administration has supported any directives which claim that the biggest threat to our nation is “Right-Wing Extremists”.The whole thing is like shaking down my poor old grandma while more likely candidates waltz past airport security. The White House will probably be so busy ferreting out nonexistent Right-Wing Extremists that they will a miss the more realistic threats from Islamo-fascists and even folks long associated with radical Left-Wing causes. A recent example would be increasingly militant homosexuals, who suggested on popular gay blogs that gays “form a militia and get our gay rights by raiding the whitehouse(sic) and possibly burning it down or something. … We've got to shoot out a few Govenors (sic) knee caps, kill a few cops, burn down a few churches. We could get it done this year." and "Maybe a bit of well organized terrorism is just what we need, er, I mean 'civil disobedience.'" I suppose everyone is content to accept the generalization that gays are fun-loving people with a knack for interior decoration...

Curt. Bob Unruh

(As far as I know,although the FBI was informed on each occasion there has been no serious investigation into the individuals who made those comments or of the blogs - which I refuse to publicize other than to reprint a screen shot from one of them.But let me jump to this conclusion… Should yours truly, or other ‘Oba-ministration’ critics, ever suggest something similar to was posted on those blogs, it would be a far more serious matter.)

The other 'Angry Mob' you don't hear about

And that is only one of countless examples.

We need to demand that our legislators accept and act upon statistical truths when dealing with crime and 'equality' issues. But before we can do that we need to be able to handle the truth ourselves. We need to be able to ask and answer questions without fear of what the math might ultimately be saying. The Democrats have had a long love affair with Hate Crime and Anti-racial profiling legislation. They can get away with this nonsense because you are too afraid to deal with uncomfortable issues and too willing to accept certain generalizations while ignoring others. At the end of the day, the Left can pat themselves on the back for solving problems - when in truth they haven't done any thing at all.

*Interestingly, many Afro-American liberal scholars most often do NOT dispute the methodology or conclusions here - but blame violent crime by blacks on a "racist white dominated society/power structure". According to them the more the disparity between minority and white crime, the more it proves their point...To others, the crimes themselves are a strike against this power structure. As Eldridge Cleaver the famous Black Panther explained, rape of a white woman has political motivation and intentions.

P.S. Let's see when Bill Curtis will do an investigative report on this Hate Group: http://bangout.ning.com/

Stay tuned...

Sadly Beautiful

2009-10-26T19:41:00.048-04:00

I have had a few letters from my reader friends asking me where I've been lately and why I missed my usual postings. My absence was due in large part to the recent passing of a dear friend who tragically took his own life and the whole affair really knocked the wind out of my sails.

Over the past weeks, I alternated between anger at him for choosing such a path, and a mixture of sadness with panic at the realization that he was gone forever...I would never be able to call, write or see him again. I also could not shake questions such as: Could I have been a better friend? Were there signs or clues I missed? If I had been more observant could I have changed anything?

Who was Brian to me?

Brian was a fantastic musician and guitar player. We had a mutual admiration in regards to our different talents - he was a technically brilliant guitarist while my strength was in arrangement. Whenever we got together to play, I always walked away having learned something. We also connected over our common musical interests, both having a secret love for old country music and other Americana long before it was retro-hip. I remember learning pieces that only he would appreciate when he heard them. Impressing him meant something to me. He was one of the only people I know, besides myself, who would just as likely listen to Sonic Youth as Hank Williams.

The guy loved to fish and approached it from a Zen-like perspective. Fishing was a way for him to achieve a temporary sense of peace. Some of my favorite memories are the times we went fishing together - although we probably said less than a dozen words to each other once we got to the water.

He was not really political, yet he was one of my most supportive friends when I decided to direct my attention towards things political. That might surprise people - as it surprised me. Perhaps he just saw a friend who was pursuing a passion and could appreciate that. I really treasure his encouragement now and probably should have thanked him more for it. I often complained to him about his cynicism and his typical "artist's disconnect" from the world. His response was to ask me to go fishing sometime with him... I wish I had taken him up on that more often.

Brian was always soft-spoken and I can't recall a time I ever heard him really raise his voice. He could be very funny in a quiet, dry way. His prank phone calls were legendary and he had actual jokes with punchlines. But even with the joking there was a perpetual aura of melancholy around him. Sometimes it seemed as though the time he spent with you was a short break from his real occupation of carrying around some invisible burden. It was as if he was setting down an psychic sack of heavy rocks to make you smile with a joke or a song, share a cigarette, and then he'd move on.

There are those who would probably not want me to write about the troubles in life Brian had. The people left behind want to put a halo on their loved ones. But if anyone knew him at all, they would know he didn't really hide his struggles. He was as complex as anyone else in his situation. There was the good, the bad and the tragic in Brian's life.

Too often I was a partner in crime in what was both of our more self-destructive periods. For better or worse we bonded over this too. All I wish to say about this is that Brian understood that he was probably self-medicating. He wanted to just feel alright for a short time. I doubt it worked.

Brian was a diagnosed manic-depressive. That in itself was nothing shocking. I would run out of fingers (and toes) if I tried to count the people I know with Bi-polar disorder. He liked to refer to himself as simply being "crazy". In truth there are other people who know his "mental" history better than I do. I had only heard second hand about suicide attempts in his past.

Brian liked to act - in front of me at least - as though he had it under control and carrying that invisible burden was all part of being "Brian" (I wish he hadn't). So the plain truth is that I never took it that serious (I wish I had). I know it was not an easy disorder to have but that's how it is for millions of people. And certainly the last thing I would have imagined was that at his age he had not come to some kind of terms with it and could actually do what he did on that awful day. But as an old friend reminded me after the fact, I was not looking at things through the bi-polar mind's eye.

I had noticed that this last year he looked very tired. When he smiled, his expression had to compete with deep cut worry lines on his face. The worry seemed to be winning out. He appeared to be aging faster than the rest of us. When he sang, I noticed his voice had developed a certain shaky authenticity as if he had really been digging deep in his soul. I thought that he had finally figured out how to be comfortable in his own skin. I could not have been more wrong it would seem.

I can only speculate, but now I think he was just plain tired of life. He was tired of carrying that heavy load. He was tired of being on a roller coaster and not friends or fishing or music or loved ones could offer a real respite from the crushing weight.

Still, I could not reconcile one thing: his total loss of hope. Hope was the life raft (with faith) that pulled me back from the edge so many times. It is the conviction that there is an equal chance that something good will happen as something bad happening ...It is my conviction that things will turn around and without hope it is quite possible I would not be here today.

Brian himself had always given me hope in a way...If he could make it through this world with what he had been through and dealt with - then we all could make it.

I could only think of one thing that could ever make me lose hope... that God forbid something happened to my child. I have to wonder what could have been Brian's equivalent to this?

Where did his hope go?

I will never know the answer to this question and I pray I never experience the death of Hope.

Now, my hope for Brian is that at least his soul can finally shed that weight he carried around for so many years. Perhaps now he can really find the peace this world would not give him...

Goodbye Brian.

ANOTHER KIND OF 'COMING OUT'

2009-08-17T11:51:00.047-04:00

"I never heard you bashing Clinton or praising Reagan, and if I had, I imagine our friendship would have changed."
-A (former) friend

From what I have heard, coming out to friends and family about being gay is exceedingly difficult. I am inclined to believe that this is the truth. Telling your loved ones that you are part of a biological minority can't be easy- although these days it does not necessarily mean shocked parents won't have grandchildren. These days, there are support groups for parents with gay children, children with gay parents, and 'alliance' groups of all kinds. The media is more than friendly and they are an open majority in some places. So perhaps coming out is not quite as difficult as it once was.

But I will tell you about another sort of 'coming out' that is still quite difficult. This is my tale of a 'political coming out' and the surprising consequences. For many people in America, being right-of-center is no big deal - but when your circle of friends and associates is comprised of various musicians, artists, and non-conformists of all kinds - it's complicated.

I grew up in a house that was proud of its Central/Eastern European heritage and as a result, I was very aware of the the shear terror and genocide caused by the quest for Communist utopias. The oral history passed down through many Polish and Russian immigrant families is filled with the realities of what the 'progressives' in the West are so enamored with- pure death and destruction in the pursuit of social and economic equality. By the age of five, I knew who Stalin and Lenin were and grew up watching the white wash of history regarding the application of socialism. Many of my grandparents generation, who were lucky enough to come here, just couldn't fathom why some folks in America were in such a hurry to emulate such a catastrophe. From this wisdom, I acquired my first maxim which would guide my political thinking for the rest of my life:

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

As relatively recent immigrants, there was the desire to gain acceptance through serving America ( in contrast to being served by America- a mentality rampant today). To my fathers generation this meant joining the military and risking one's life so that there was no doubts about to whom they owed their allegiance. My father took this seriously enough to make every career choice one that served our country throughout his life and this would also leave an impression on me.

Because of my fathers career, my family had the opportunity to have house guests from the FBI, INTERPOL, various generals and other officers in the military, and men who only referred to their employer as "The Company". It was absolutely thrilling for me to listen quietly in the corner of our dim lit, cigar smoke-filled living room, like a fly on the wall, to their brilliant conversations over cognac and my mother's appetizers. They were not spiteful journalists from The Village or Berkeley who would have wet their pants when a car back-fired. These men were political insiders and men who devoted their lives to our nation - and everyone of them knew many who had sacrificed their lives in the line of this duty. Naturally, I could not comprehend everything they discussed. In fact, it took me years to fully understand the significance of many issues they covered. Unfortunately, many of their most dire predictions about the future of our nation has come to pass or are happening right now...

Yes, my upbringing definitely colored my viewpoint. I don't feel any reason to apologize for that. The wisdom of parents is a valuable primary resource - if they care enough to instill values and we are smart enough to listen (too often I didn't). My viewpoint was colored in the same way children of parents and grandparents who survived the Nazi Holocaust have their perceptions colored. (Although my grandfather, father, and I could never understand why the massacre of ten's of millions of people in "class" exterminations was somehow less important than "racial" extermination). See the horrible pictures here after you have finished reading

I was far too busy smoking pot and surfing to join the military or anything like that and
like many people growing up, I assumed that there had to be something flawed in the established values of my parents, society, and religion. I did not reject them outright, but I did set them aside. I decided that they would have to prove their worth and validity. In this way, one could not say I was indoctrinated - my viewpoint would have to be "recolored" by my own experience. As it turned out, there were many incidents that would reinforce the views I had inherited and set aside.

Throughout much of my late teens and twenties I was a absolute train wreck - there is no getting around that. I thought that playing in punk and indie bands was a license to intoxicate myself to near-death. I thought that creativity implied self-destruction. Yet, anyone who really knew me knew I was certainly not a fan of liberal politics regardless of my 'wicked ways'. There was just too many things being said which I knew to be at least historically counter-factual.My attitude at that time could easily have been passed off as the cynicism so popular with my generation and I may have used it as a way out of confrontations. I found it easier to avoid issues when I recognized inconsistencies in my peers politics. I also knew that I was in a very small minority, at least openly, regarding the issues I took a conservative position on. I instituted a personal 'Don't ask- Don't tell' policy.

But what I did do was listen. I listened for years. I noticed that my friends and associates began to define themselves as Democrats by default and many as liberals. I listened to their opinions. I read every tract and zine: from leaflets passed around in Gainesville to Maximum Rock and Roll opinion columns to the New York Times. It was clear to me then that the Democratic party was becoming more openly the party of Socialism. Also, I noticed, among other things, that in spite of the counter-culture's more crass and radical rhetoric, it was just another version and ally of mainstream liberal politics - designed to appeal to the 'angst' of my generation. It was similar to how the KKK utilized skinheads to attract an element they would not usually attract. I was not impressed.

And as I mentioned, there were incidents. Some subtle...some dramatic...

There were little things like a cartoon I saw in High Times magazine of all places...where the illustrator had a drawing of John Lennon singing, "...Imagine no possessions" in his epic song "Imagine". The author then pointed out that by the time of his death Lennon had accumulated tens of millions of dollars worth of possessions - none of which he was willing to part with during his life time. John Lennon was one of my all time idols - but wasn't that typical of the liberal elite! It is about selling a dream. It's about lying down rules for everyone else. It is like Al Gore with his massive carbon footprint telling you to drive a certain car and not to fly so much.

Another incident occurred during an early morning walk on the beach when I came upon a washed up raft constructed by Cubans desperate to escape their socialist 'paradise'. As I inspected the craft, which was no more than plastic storage drums lashed together, I thought about how these people were so desperate to come to America that they crossed the open ocean with a 50% chance of perishing at sea. I found out later that the group included several women and children and that they had lost their meager provisions early on in the trip. Yet why would they come to America? Why would they risk their lives to come to this allegedly racist and callous country? Why would they come to a place where the "rich" exploited the "poor" and only a narrow segment of white oligarchs lived at everyone else's expense. Unless of course none of that was true...

The next day after my walk on the beach, I was recording at a studio away from home. Somehow the conversation turned political and someone mentioned socialism and how Castro was 'making it work'. With the raft fresh in my mind, I was a little confused at that type of thinking. I looked around at all the flashing lights and knobs, the guitars and other instruments, and I felt a little ashamed. People didn't have 'stuff' like this in Cuba (except of course for the political elite). Most twenty-somethings didn't have time to write songs about how miserable they were or how broken their hearts were. They were either trying to survive each day or constructing shoddy rafts to escape. When they did write songs which spoke out against the government they went to jail like the typical case of punk rocker Gorki Aguila.

And here I was, in a town so liberal that no one would question a comment about Castro 'making socialism work', and inhabited by many kids enjoying college on either the government's or mom and dad's dime. Here we were, being 'bohemian', enjoying the fruits of capitalism - the luxury of free time and the luxury to complain. It was as surreal and poignant as seeing the raft itself. Some of us had money, some of us didn't but as kids in America - we were all spoiled.

Still, I was far from being outspoken or even considering myself part of any discernible political platform. I did notice that these fringe crowds I bounced around in, the ones who gleamed with pride over their supposed tolerance and open-mindedness, were actually confined by a fierce orthodoxy of their own. They never had a problem generalizing about "squares", "jocks", or "rednecks" - all of whom they asserted were "bigots" and "prejudiced". The irony in all of this seemed to escape my friends and I quietly called it the "tyranny of the tolerant".

I also recognized that it would be absolute career suicide for someone like myself, who was courting the collage radio and Indie rock circuit, to have an opinion other than what was the prevailing liberal dogma. I held my tongue- yes- but I would never forgot the hypocrisy. And this observation did more to reassure me that I was on the right path.

While I was listening to the people around me, and those who were supposedly our philosophical idols, I got into the habit of reading a lot- but not materials from the people on the side I was heading towards. In fact, I made it a habit to read just the opposite types of books. I went out and bought the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. I bought books by Chomsky and similar cranks. I took out the highlighters and pens and made notes in the margins. I knew that I would have to direct my collage energies towards economics so I could see if any of this added up. It didn't.

At that point in my life I had concluded that I was finished pretending that my silence was some type of general cynicism. I decided that, If asked or directly confronted with an issue, I would give my honest opinion even if it was (gasp) a conservative one. This was a far cry from being on the offensive - true. But I had the suspicion that friendships would be lost should the truth about my persuasion be known. As amazing as it was that I even cared, we were in the doldrums of the Bush years so there was little need to press the issue.

But times...they were a changin'

Stay tuned for part two...

A Few Things To Consider

2009-08-11T01:06:00.024-04:00

Because I have been busy working on a project, I have to be brief this week. I do have a few things for you to consider. Also, I thank everyone for visiting this blog as much as you all do. I enjoy your words of support and thoughts. I wish the opposition (I know you Liberals are reading...) would answer some of the questions I pose. As for my fellow members of the "conspiracy" - We have only begun to fight!

1) If a business man came up to you and asked you to invest money from your check, would you do it? What if that business man had failed in every single venture? What if you, your children, and future grandchildren already had to pay just to keep these past failed ventures barely afloat? That answer would certainly be: NO Way! Yet, if you swap 'business man' for the United States Government and investment capital for obligatory tax dollars - this is what the Obama administration is telling you they will do with your tax dollars to fund schemes including a health care plan. How much of a return has the average hardworking citizen ever gotten from entitlement programs?

2) These are turning out to be exciting days in politics! Americans can only be pushed so far and lied to before they start to get angry. "We the People" are actually pushing back. I love that they are calling us an "angry mob"...it makes me feel young again. Americans are smart enough to realize that the health care system needs reform but we actually want to fix it - not make it worse! You don't tear down a house just because it has rotten wood in some places- and you certainly do not replace it with a rickety shack!

3) It is true that the White House has asked it's supporters to inform on those of us who are speaking out. They have asked for devout people to forward emails to them concerning opposition to the Obama's health care scheme. Can you imagine if Bush had done something similar? No, liberal friends, asking citizens to be aware of and report possible terrorism is not any where close to this! There is an outrage.

4) We now have a government in power that hates its nation and hates the ideals which have made us the greatest country in history. Those little, sniveling, liberal elites who consider the Founding Fathers irrelevant, dead white men, are in charge... So, what are you willing to do about it?

5) What the hell is up with all my old 'punk rocker'/'alternative' friends who have turned their backs on our commitment to individualism and now actually trust in the government to 'provide' for society? They have sold out and become 'Tools of State Oppression" (or just tools)! This is truly a sickness and I will explain how it happened soon...

6) I was way ahead of events when I wrote about "Dissension in the age of Obama" some time ago. Please go back and read my blog piece. Dissension is no longer patriotic according to the Left now that their man is in charge. I suppose that would make sense - if they actually believed that their own dissension was ever really patriotic. The age old Marxist trick of classifying any opposition as 'Nazis', 'fascist', right-wing extremist' - is being employed against anyone who disagrees with this administration. That means they cannot meet us on equal terms in the arena of logic so they resort to name calling. Ironically, Hitler's National Socialism would actually envy many of Obama's socialistic ideals.

7) Remember a critical step towards fascism is single party rule which precedes a dictatorship. The democrats are close to controlling all three branches of our government. The political opposition is impotent. The situation is not helped by some wishy-washy Republicans as demonstrated during the Sotomayor confirmation. What will help are "grass roots" movements which the Obama Administration and their Media lapdogs cannot deny or suppress.

8) There is another name for "Racial Profiling"...it's called good police work! If you see a scrawny white boy in a mostly black neighborhood (it could have been me six or seven years ago) then he is probably up to no good. Likewise, a black guy in a mostly white neighborhood should expect to look out of place. It is not racism - just reality. Consider this: I know of many all black neighborhoods but not one all white neighborhood. I also know that a black man can survive a midnight stroll through a mostly white neighborhood. Yes, maybe some one will call him the "n" word when the peep out their window. Yes, the cops might ask him what he is doing. However, there are many neighborhoods where a white person will not survive more than a few blocks without being assaulted or killed. This is the cold truth. If you don't believe me, then I will drop you off at the Liberty City exit in Miami, or some place in the Bronx and you can call me if you survive until daylight.

Stay tuned....

My Facebook Quiz Experiment

2009-07-21T20:46:00.039-04:00

I admit that boredom will sometimes drive me to taking those silly little quizzes on Facebook. I think everyone does, no matter how much we try to avoid them, and we have all wasted 5 minutes in worse ways! If there is even the slightest chance we can learn a little more ourselves than it is worth the time…am I right?

I have made it a point on this blog to stress the importance of people learning about conservatism from actual conservatives. It is simple - the left has an amoral culture in which ends justify means. This in turn makes any kind of lie, character assassination, or contextual distortion permissible.

In spite of the liberal media's smoke screen, when I personally approach a political issue with someone from the inside out – they actually express support for the conservative viewpoint more often than not (although they may not even know it is a conservative viewpoint). What I mean by the ‘inside out” is to begin by identifying our common goal (ie. make health care affordable for everyone). Next, I offer solutions to achieve this common goal and then identify it as a 'Conservative' solution. The key is to disarm the Left's noisily constructed stigma it has attached to conservatism.

The Experiment: I decided to design a quiz which was issue rather than stereotype oriented, and see what results I would get. The quiz would indicate whether people had a conservative or liberal standpoint, on at least the issues it mentions. Understandably, a 10 or 15 question quiz has to rely on generalizations to a certain degree but I avoided the typical ones I have seen in similar quizzes.

In truth, this quiz was primarily geared towards liberals and those who are undecided. If I could get them to recognize for even a moment that they might not really be all that liberal or maybe what they thought we conservatives believed all this time was not quite accurate...this was my ultimate intent.

The Quiz: "Find out where your beliefs put you on the political spectrum! You might be surprised..."

1) Hard-working taxpayer money should be used to pay for health care, food stamps, and other social services for illegal immigrants.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

2) Skin color should be a factor in hiring, university admissions, and government contracts.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

3) Standards and qualifications should be raised or lowered depending on skin color.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

4) The government knows best how to spend the money I earn.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

5) Some groups of people deserve special protection under the law - more than me and my family.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

6) Dictators and terrorists are actually reasonable and just misunderstood.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

7) The federal government has (its own) money to spend on programs for people.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

8) I should be forced to subsidize art regardless of how sexist, pornographic, or offensive.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

9) The government is capable of deciding what an "acceptable" standard of living is for everyone.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

10) Everyone should be forced to pay for government funding of 'medical procedures' and scientific research even if they are morally against it.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

Scoring: I am not sure what formula Facebook used to score people but I imagine it is something similar to this: 1) 6 or more "no's" is a conservative response 2) 6 or more "yes's" is a liberal response and likewise with "don't knows" being an undecided response.

Conservative:

You are individualistic and independent! You trust yourself to know what is best for you and your family. You don't believe that some politicians in Washington should take your hard earned money to spend on what they believe to be moral or workable!

Liberal:

You are a dreamer who thinks that that the government can be trusted to make life fair for all. You think in terms of society rather than the individual. You trust that the government will do the 'right' thing with your tax dollars...once they figure out what the 'right' thing actually is!

Don’t know/Undecided:

You either: really don't care about the world around you or can't comprehend simple political issues. In both cases you are perfect fodder for flashy campaigns and sound byte politics. In other words just the kind of sheep the politicians love!

My User Results: At the time of writing I had 46 users. Of that group less than 12 were friends which I knew to be politically conservative. There were at least 7 friends which I knew to generally consider themselves liberal. Of the remainder, I did not know what their political leanings were but we can at least assume 50% liberal and 50% conservative.

The results of this quiz showed that every single user scored as a conservative! Even those people I knew to consider themselves liberal and voted as such in the past scored as conservatives!

Could you be an unwitting member of the right-wing conspiracy?!

Final Thoughts:

Clearly, the results were interesting but they are not surprising. Why? Because our Conservative ideals make the most sense; they make moral and practical sense. When people, even liberal leaning people, actually take a moment a look at what we want and what our solutions are - they have no choice but to agree with what we have been saying all along. I sincerely hope that a few of those folks who took this quiz, and were surprised to have themselves labeled "conservative", might dig a little deeper next time into an issue. Perhaps they might open their minds and not listen to what Liberals say Conservatives stand for. Perhaps they will listen to what common sense tells them...

The actual quiz on Facebook

Jim Cramer: The Boo-yah Marxist

2009-07-10T13:15:00.021-04:00

Once in awhile something comes up which really blows my mind. Usually it is something that slips under the radar- on the outer edges of some well covered main event. One of these well covered events was the verbal slap-down by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart of CNBC's Jim Cramer back in March 12, 2009. Jim Cramer, the host of 'Mad Money', is the loud-mouthed stock analyst who barks out his opinion to people calling into his fast-paced show. Personally, I could never get into the guy’s whole presentation. The last thing I need to see more of is a sweaty, bald headed freak screaming "Boo-yah!" and any serious investor, who buys individual stocks, is not going to rely on this guys advice. Mad Money is 'irrational exuberance' defined and symptomatic of the carnival atmosphere endemic in our financial markets.

That being said, if you followed this clown’s advice and got burned - It's really hard to feel sorry for you. Sound investing is about making unemotional decisions based on long boring research.

I recommend watching Jim Cramer's appearance on 'The Daily Show' here. It is a great example of the Left eating itself and it is hard to argue when Jon Stewart explains how he is at least a more honest ‘snake oil’ salesman than Cramer. When Stewart tells Cramer that investing is not a game -the crap really hits the fan.

Wait, did I say, “…a great example of the Left eating its self”?

Indeed, I did! If you think that a populist (Stewart) was standing up for the 'little guy' against a typical example of an evil capitalist (Cramer)...you would be dead wrong.

The truth is, Jim Cramer was not the target Stewart and others thought him to be. In one of those ‘under the radar’ things, we found out exactly who this big mouth stock picker really is.

Two months after Jon Stewart humiliated him in front of the world, Cramer appeared in the '10 Questions' feature in Time magazine (read/listen here). Question four asked if posterity would look back on the “financial innovations of the last several decades with regret". Do you know what this supposed arch-capitalist said? He said, "the only guy who really called this right was Karl Marx. Marx understood what would happen if you let the market run amok."

Flabbergasting! This is worse than any horrible stock call Cramer ever made! Karl Marx, who not only lived during a time when the markets, as we know them, either didn't exist or were barely developing, called 'this' right? Karl Marx, who lived during a time when the Hapsburg's and Romanov's ruled, called 'this' right?

Cramer completely drops sail for kook-land when he continues, "Of, course, it was done by right-wing Republicans. They brought our nations to our knees..."

RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS?! Well, Jon Stewart thinks it was people like YOU, Jim Cramer - Which is kind of funny because normally Jon Stewart is saying stuff like that about Republicans. (Is your head spinning yet?)

The ’10 questions’ article gets even better. When asked about inflation in question five(as a result of the Obama deficit), Cramer defends Obamanomics and says, "...perhaps we learn from history and worry about inflation after we worry about taking a Great Depression off the table." Have you ever read a history book Jim? If you did, you would know that Hoover’s concern over inflation was not the cause of the depression (and this man was giving financial advice on CNBC)!

Another jewel of insanity was Cramer's response to a question six about whether or not young people will be afraid to enter the stock market. His reply is, 'Yeah...Unless we bring back the regulations that we had pre-Bush, unless we prosecute the bad actors..." You mean the bad actors like market-hating Marxists who made a living off of short selling, hedge funds, and stock picking? Hey, that’s Jim Cramer!

Who is this train wreck? We know now, from his own words, that Jim Cramer is not a capitalist - he just played one on TV. I am not sure he is really a Marxist - because that would require an ethos however misguided. What Jim Cramer is in reality, is a greedy worm who is just as likely to make money selling stock tips as he would be informing on a neighbor if he lived in the Soviet Union. He is an opportunist.

There was a calculated purpose on Cramer’s part for saying what he did in the Time article. He does, after all, work for a liberal news outlet and after his slamming on 'The Daily Show' he had to do some damage control. He has a career to think about. In order to please the 'powers that be' in the Drive-by Media, he used the article to 1) protect his network, 2) profess Marxism, 3) blame a right-wing conspiracy 4) support Obama and 5) blame Bush…Ah, the ‘Formula of Celebrity Redemption”. True, it is usually done with more finesse but “Boo-yah” Cramer wasn’t known for being subtle. All he has to do now is lay low, hope this whole "Stewart-thing" continues to blow over and his career should be safe.

Such is life in the media playground of the Left. You never know when it will turn on you to serve its own purpose. Jim Cramer appeared to be an arch-capitalist villain who left The Daily Show with his tail between his legs, but maybe he was always just a delusional Liberal or just delusional. Maybe when he saw how quick a big dog like Stewart could crush him, the Time article was a way to beg for his career back and declare his allegiance to the powerful Left. Who knows? One thing is certain - for God’s sake don’t get stock tips from a Marxist. What's next, a mediocre comedian becoming a senator? Oops, too late...

What's on a Dead Punkers T-Shirt?

2009-06-30T13:22:00.006-04:00

Indeed, there are lots of interesting things happening lately; there was the New Haven Firefighter decision (score one for the good guys), the withdrawal of troops from Iraqi cities, support for the burgeoning Honduran dictator, Manuel Zelaya, by our current administration, and a couple celebrity deaths.

I definitely don't feel like writing about Michael Jackson, although I can't resist pointing out how hilarious it is that Al Sharpton is the Jackson Family spokesman. In fact, I don't even feel like writing about Obama this week. I am already sick of him and it is only Tuesday. Sometimes I find it refreshing to take a step back revisit little moments from the past…Moments of significance which really cemented my political views. So let's take a break from the big "O" (and all the noise of the week) and allow me to share a thought or two.

Obviously, if there was ever an early punk rock icon who deserved a movie it was Sid Vicious. I know this kind of thing is a subjective mine field; Johnny Thunders or Iggy Pop both deserve votes. But when it comes to '77 punk, and one individual who would influence punk rock style in a huge way: Sid is it. The hair, the stance, and my favorite - his bass guitar slung way down to his knees, were all elements which would launch a thousand bands and sell a million jars of hair gel.

One of Sid’s t-shirts that made many appearances was his totally giant swastika shirt. The shirt was so much one of his 'trademarks' that it made it onto cartoon versions of him, was printed for posterity on records sleeves, and was seen being worn on documentary footage. Personally, I did not enjoy that shirt as much as Johnny Rotten’s, "I hate Pink Floyd" shirt, but I got the point never the less. While Rotten chose to irritate the tired rock and roll counter-culture of the previous generation, Sid took a jab at the older folks who had only a few decades before fought to rid Europe of the menace which marched under the swastika. Maybe I am giving Sid too much credit...maybe he just thought it looked cool. Who knows?

What is interesting about the swastika shirt is that in the 1986 film "Sid and Nancy", the swastika conspicuously became a hammer and sickle. It is more than a little significant that the producers decided to exchange one murderous totalitarian regime's symbol for another. It is at heart, a clear example of the long standing, double-standard our culture has had concerning these two similar systems.

If we ignore the similarities of these two political systems and judge them separately, calculating sheer genocidal body count, then the Soviet’s hammer and sickle is the clear winner. That symbol presided over a social system which had been executing, purging, and torturing many years before the Nazis even came to power. Lenin instituted terror as a state policy by late 1918 (Hitler was merely an upstart in those days). Later, Hitler openly admired his Communist contemporary, Stalin, for his skill in mass murder and the technical methods of extermination, such as specially designed railway cars. The Soviet Holocaust in Southern Russia and Ukraine in the 1930's was an effective, albeit sloppy precursor (killing between 7-10 million “class enemies”), to the Nazi extermination of the Jews years later.

Yet, somehow Communism and its symbols get 'lesser evil' status in the West. Far beyond some late 80's punk film, we still see this status today. For example, it is an eBay policy that nothing resembling Third Reich paraphernalia can be sold with the exception of items dating from the WWII years. So you can't buy that Hitler statue you always wanted, but you can buy a Lenin or Stalin bust to worship to your hearts content. T-shirt websites have any number of communist inspired shirts and hats. And how many movies have you seen about college kids where the dorm room has a Che Guevara poster in the background? I suppose Nazi Field Marshal Walter Model just doesn't look as cool sporting the monocle as a leftist murder in a beret.

It is far worse than a conspiracy - it is an entire culture which is responsible for this farce. The Left has worked hard to keep the hundred million or so skeletons in its closet. It is the very same culture that made rats out of people in Hollywood who 'named names' when asked to expose known Communists years ago. Certainly they would have been heroes if they named members of a Nazi party. Instead they circled the wagons to protect each other and made martyrs out of those who were guilty. (Today, they are ‘survivors of witch hunts’ while openly admitting to affiliations with Moscow!) Most of all, they minimized the atrocities of one system and obsessed on another - as if Nazism was the one and only personification of evil in a political system - year after year, decade after decade.

As someone who has had relatives killed by both Nazis and Soviets, I can tell you dead is dead. I don't know exactly what the producers of Sid and Nancy were thinking when they swapped out Sid's shirt back in 1986. Maybe they just thought the hammer and sickle looked cooler - but I doubt it. I think they knew exactly what they were doing. It is the acceptable symbol of mass murder. After all these years of a totalitarian double-standard, maybe eBay and other outlets just don’t know any better. It does seem like it has paved the way for Socialism to actually be considered viable in America by many people - and we know what the next train stop after Socialism is…It reminds me of the infamous Khrushchev quote: We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.

stay tuned, friends....

The Great Black Hype?

2009-06-19T22:58:00.007-04:00

Few things in life are as excruciatingly boring for me as shoe shopping. I am a guy, after all; I really don't understand needing more than a pair of flip flops and one pair of dress shoes. So when a few weeks ago I was informed that we were going on a shoe shopping expedition, I fought to stay home like a drowning man fights for the waters surface. Okay, that might be over-dramatic, but those of you who know me would attest to the fact that taking me somewhere I don't want to go is like trying to bathe a cat. As usual and despite my protests, I find myself driving into a store parking lot thirty minutes later. It could have been worse. It could have been strictly a shoe store, but this time it was the department store with the big red circle logo and that’s not too awful.

My typical modus operandi in a situation like this is to head straight for the book and magazine section and hunker down until it's time to go. With that in mind, the following blog piece is a typical example of what is going on in my head during times like these. So the next time you see some poor soul with his eyes glazed over in the book section your local department store… it could be me just killing time…

These days it is impossible to escape the avalanche of Barack and Michelle Obama in the print media. From the checkout lines to the book stands, their faces glower from the cover of all kinds of paperbacks, hard covers, special collector’s edition books and magazines, print media of any kind. Not even JFK could have reached this level of (over)exposure but I am not certain they had Black Biker and Needlepoint magazine back then.

Okay...okay...we all get it. He is a our new black… well half- black president and the First Lady has very competent stylists working for her. Because really, if you think about it, when most of these books and magazines came out of the oven, what had Obama really achieved besides being elected and being of multi-racial parents?

I decided to see just what exactly was in these Obama books, and specifically in the half dozen children's books on sale. What better place to see Obama's progressive message without all the smoke and mirrors of 'grown up' politics? Friends, I was utterly amazed.

For my readers familiar with early Soviet propaganda – I will tell you that the similarities were uncanny. If you are not familiar with Soviet propaganda and the "Socialist Realism" style, then you need to go no further then examine the landslide of children's Obama books. All the elements of Socialist Realism are present in terms of its treatment of political leaders. The art form, in this case illustrated books, is created to support the political ideology of Socialism. Naturally, reality and historical facts are always subordinate to the advancement of ideology, and it is important that the work is digestible to the masses. Check and check. In other words, Soviet Socialist Realism and all the Obama books I saw were both very shallow and unashamedly partisan.

While the parallels between the Socialist Realism of the collapsed Soviet State and recent children's books about Obama are stunning (and deserve further examination), I began to see a common theme. Perhaps more than a theme, I noticed a reoccurring presentation of Obama.

The Democrats and the Obama administration have worked hard to give Obama a larger than life image. The Democratic Convention, for instance, was just one of the high points for Obama’s very talented handlers and multi-media wizards to really create the political rock star that Bill Clinton could never have been. For more sober folks, Obama seemed to be coming off ever more like a political demigod. But these children’s books had not so much of a political as a racial demigod.

The presentation of Obama the 'Great Black Hope’ is no secret. It is a combination of his messiah image and the fact that he identifies himself as primarily black. In many of the books I read, the message of Obama as the ultimate expression of the entire Civil Rights Movement is crystal clear. From the Buffalo Soldiers to the Tuskegee Airmen to Martin Luther King, the culmination of the civil rights struggle was Obama’s election. He is the fulfillment of the prophecy - Or so they want our children and us to believe.

(Let us not forget that America’s first black president has a very white mother. It is interesting that he didn’t choose to sell himself by his true racially identity of being of mixed race. To me, that would have made him be the ‘unification of black and white’- but I guess I am just a dreamer... Anyhoo, I think that Obama identifying himself (or allowing himself to be identified) as black says quite a bit about the political landscape of our nation, but I digress.)

What really fascinates me is how the Congressional Black Caucus and their allies - the liberal and solidly Democratic segment of the black community, which claims to speak for all black people, has so firmly hitched their wagon to Obama’s star. It is not surprising, but it is also not without some degree of risk.
Say for instance, Obama turns out to be at worst the harbinger of American Socialism - bankrupting our once great country, and at best an inept boob of a president... Does the entire black community want to share in his disgrace and the responsibility for the disaster left behind by the “Great Black Hope”?

In some ways, American blacks have no choice but to float or sink with the ship. After all, the truth is that most blacks voted for him and most significantly, they were very honest about the fact that they voted for Obama simply because he is black. Polls indicated that ideology was a very distant second. I don't recall any outrage from the Left over voting for someone solely based on race- something that until Obama was considered a serious thought crime. I am not sure that this is exactly what Martin Luther King had in mind all those years ago.

Many of my conservative black friends deeply resent the entire black community being shackled to Obama and his platform. These courageous people are quite used to being told what they should believe by the Congressional Black Caucus and white liberals. They are also quite used to being (mis)spoken for by self-appointed black ‘leaders’. I can’t imagine the guts it takes to speak out against Obama and be black today, however, it does seem to have some benefits: the confused look on a fellow African Americans face when they admit the don’t support Obama – amusing; the shocked look on a white liberals face when they admit they don’t support Obama- PRICELESS!

If the past months of Obama’s presidency are any indication of the next four years, and the Great Black Hope turns out to be the Great Black Hype, there will be a lot of disappointed children, particularly non-white, who are being victimized by the New Socialist Realism in the books they are reading. And a whole lot of disappointed adults, of all races, who are being victimized by political rock stardom. (The Congressional Black Caucus will suddenly remember Obama is only half black and scramble to find a ‘truly’ black candidate to ‘really’ make history) At that point, the black conservative opposition will have an opportunity to offer a real alternative and a huge role to play in the Republican Party we rebuild together. And maybe, just maybe, my daughter will be reading books about black heroes like Thomas Sowell and Ward Connerly. Well, I did mention I was a dreamer…one who hates shoe shopping.

Post script! My friend Mary over on Myspace sent me a link to some actual Obama shoes! You must see this to believe it:
http://www.zazzle.com/obama+shoes

CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEWEST DIARY POST!

A Bishop, Rush Limbaugh, and Mr. Howell walk into a bar...

2009-06-02T16:19:00.005-04:00

The Bishop Fulton Sheen said, “There are not a hundred people in the world who hate the Catholic Church, but there are thousands who hate what they mistakenly believe the Catholic Church to be”. Naturally, as a ‘statue worshiping, Mary-loving, papist’ myself, I agree with Bishop Sheen’s statements directed at anti-Catholics, but the general idea about ignorance can also be applied to the political realm.

If we substitute Conservatism for the Catholic Church we arrive at one of the larger hurdles we face today: There are thousands who hate what they mistakenly believe Conservatism (and conservatives) to be.

An example of mistaken perceptions is a typical episode from my not-so distant past…

The Image of an "open-minded" liberal

Setting: a beat-up hatchback with the obsequious "Fight Racism" and "Mean People Suck" bumper stickers across the back window. A conversation between the driver and passenger is turning political while the Smiths "Louder than Bombs" jangles in the background...It is here we find our hero sitting in the back seat, slightly buzzed, when some words catch his attention...

Driver (twenty-something female, vegetarian, dressed in black skirt, with black eyeliner): "...(inaudible)...closed-minded bigots like Rush Limbaugh."

Passenger (twenty-something female, very short and dyed hair, nose ring): “ oh Gawd…he’s terrible!”

Me (twenty-something male, cigarette ash-stained jeans, scraggly hair): “Did you say Rush Limbaugh?”

Passenger: “…ya…you know…loudmouth, racist or something…”

Me: “so you guys listened to his talk show?”

Passenger offended: “Are you serious?”

Driver laughing: “I wouldn’t listen to assholes like that!”

Me: “So neither of you have ever actually listened to him, but you are calling him terrible and a racist? Ok…that seems kind of prejudiced if you ask me…”

Both women look at each other as the track “William, It Was Really Nothing” ends.

Driver slightly annoyed: “Everyone knows what he’s about!”

Me smiling: “ Everyone but you two…you said yourself you wouldn’t listen to someone like that…but you’ll take someone else’s word for it…hm…sounds…”

Driver: “sounds what?”

Me sarcastically: “…really open-minded to me…”

I light a cigarette and slump back in my seat.

Me quietly: “My work here is done.”

Obviously, the question is how does this happen? How is the Left able to so effectively control people’s perceptions about conservatives and Conservatism? Certainly, there are the long and complex answers…the root historical causes like the Soviet infiltration of and influence on: the American labor movements, the Roosevelt administration, and the various ‘60’s peace and liberation movements – all of which we know to be true thanks to the recent access of Soviet archives.

Soviet Archive Logo

Combine all of this with the entrenchment of liberalism in university faculties, multi-culturalism, historical revisionists…and the election of Obama starts to makes sense – not to mention who the culprits are in skewering perceptions of Conservatism. Unfortunately, a Republican party drifting away from Conservatism has been ill-suited to counter this cradle to grave indoctrination.

But there is also a simple answer to the negative perceptions about Conservatism. The liberal viewpoint is readily accessible. There is an effective liberal activist element which, evolving with the news and entertainment industries, created a ‘Leftist Orthodoxy’ for popular culture (called counter-culture when convenient). Considering that the news media is predominately left of center, one can be assured that the proper liberal viewpoint will always accompany any news event. One can also be assured that a conservative viewpoint will either be misrepresented or silenced all together.

The liberal viewpoint continues to bombard people from the entertainment side of the media – sometimes in creative ways, sometimes subtly, but most of the time not. Fiction and comedy-news shows all work well to reinforce the party line. Often characters we are supposed to identify with are liberals and it is the ‘Default Viewpoint’ of America as reflected by Hollywood (but most often not by reality).

Hold on... Mr.Howell never drove a pick-up with a gun rack!

Not content to preaching their own message, the Left has always made shaping perceptions about Conservatism a priority. They go back and forth between portraying us as bitter rednecks, clinging to our ‘bibles and guns”, or country club trust-fund babies, like Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island, and my favorite, the fat-cat industrialists polluting their way to profits while running over baby seals in their SUV. Naturally, the stereotype changes to fit whatever issue or circumstance may arise.

Marching off to work at a State-run Auto Factory

Indeed, our liberal friends learn about us from other liberals. Sound bites, stereotypes, and top-down directives from the Democrat Party HQ - such is the ‘ideologically incestuous’ nature of the Left. I am not making any novel revelations when I say most die-hard liberals have a political viewpoint based on misconception, emotion, and intention – it is a tough nut to crack. Luckily, most conservatives I know are bright enough to discern the inherent liberal bias in the barrage of information we all see and hear.

What should concern us, however, are the average people - the mass of folks caught in the middle - who might be apolitical most of the time, who consider themselves moderate, who love their family and country and (this is the scary part) are getting their perception of Conservatism from the Left!

It is certainly true that these people helped Obama become president. They also happen to be the best hope Conservatism has to take back the Republican Party and the country. Disillusion with Obama is already growing, but as long as people continue to learn about Conservatism from Liberals it will amount to nada in the worst case and cynicism in the best. (*Cynicism is not much better. The older I get the more I see cynicism as creative cowardice).

Hope-nosis is beginning to wear off

So the Obama gang simply harvested a crop of votes that they have been cultivating for decades and fertilized with a slick multi-media campaign controlling both sides of the debate. In a sense, the actions of average folks trying to survive tough times are understandable. But now the war for hearts and minds is critical. Taking control of our message and shaping perceptions should be our central priority. After all, it is one thing to have the Left lie to the average citizen about who they are…but when will we stop letting the liberals tell the folks who we as conservatives are?

Stay tuned and subscribe...

Is Dissension Still Patriotic in the Age of Obama?

2009-04-28T16:02:00.005-04:00

When I posted my "Burning Questions for Liberals", I should have included a follow up question to "Where are all the war protesters?". Recent events have me considering a related question: Whatever happened to 'dissension is patriotic'?
Liberals defended their anti-war and anti-administration protests as being 'patriotic'. For their part, the media defended their one-sided criticisms and character assassinations also as 'patriotic'. As if they were fulfilling their duty as good citizens, we watched 8 years of endless rallies, 'news' reports, and documentaries.
Most of us, however, were not so naive to think that the majority of the Bush-era "dissenters" were true patriots with the best interests of the United States at heart. And certainly we were not going to buy the notion that folks like Michael Moore were patriotic in the way say, most of America, or the dictionary defines patriotism.

clearly 'patriotic' kids at a Bush-era protest:

But assuming there was an element of the Left which honestly believed that dissension is patriotic, why does that no longer hold true now that Obama is in power?

Recently, we have seen several organized protests called "Tea Parties", which, in the tradition of the Boston Tea Party, are folks exercising their right as American citizens to speak out against increasingly excessive taxation. Is it peaceful dissension? Absolutely. Yet suddenly, dissension is no longer considered patriotic by the Mainstream Media, who covered the events with contempt and ridicule.
The little coverage that NPR gave the April 15th rallies, for instance, characterized them as rained-out failures. (Had it been an anti-war or pro-abortion protest, they would have spoke of "the brave souls who withstood treacherous weather conditions").

The entertainment segment of the media either ignored the grass-roots movement or made jokes of a high school locker-room nature...Somehow, the humor in oppressive taxation and a historically unprecedented deficit escapes me, and I don't remember similar jokes about the liberal protest circus.

Obama himself, could hardly disguise his contempt for these peaceful protests. When he spoke about the Tea Parties recently, his tone was paternalistic condescension and he blabbered something irrelevant about Healthcare. My, my how power changes those who condemned it.

When prepping for this blog piece, I reviewed dozens and dozens of Bush administration protests images. I was struck by the signs and costuming that was simply disrespectful to anyone who held the office of President, Vice President, or Secretary of State. They burned in effigy, they mocked with foul language, all the while treated seriously by the media. Yet, I had a difficult time finding anything similar in the Tea Party events. There was no hatred, just serious concern about where we are headed and our children's future... evidently that kind of thing is not patriotic according to the Left.

another 'unsuccessful' Tea Party protest:

The Tea Parties are very inclusive, but generally speaking it is a middle class phenomena. They are made up of working people and small business owners, who unlike the typical Liberal activist, are usually too busy working and taking care of their families to protest at the drop of a hat or text message. Cutting class is much easier than skipping a day of work.
There was even a predictable attempt by the left to tarnish the tax protesters as a racist group, to which one angry black man and Tea Party organizer said on a talk radio show, if they wanted to know where the black people are "...Here I am! Right Here!"

The best I can figure is that to the Liberals, and in the best tradition of Stalinist "double-speak", dissension is patriotic when it is convenient to say so. According to them, their dissension is patriotic and the opposition's dissension is merely obstructive. At the very least protest is not "cool" anymore.
The left demands that we protect their right to assemble and protect their freedom of speech, even though we disagree, but we cannot expect the same from them. (Since the Left controls congress and the White House, they can even take measures Bush would never have dared to attempt to silence criticism). The Liberal activists have always cloaked themselves with 'patriotism' and the protection of our Constitution, yet they work tirelessly to undermine our nation. Yet, when we march to protect our liberty, we are the fly in the ointment of their vision...Well I will accept that, and I hope it continues. Perhaps it is time that us conservatives got radical...

(don't) save the whales:

READ THE LATEST DIARY ENTRY HERE!

Burning Questions For Liberals

2009-04-22T09:28:00.005-04:00

Can one of you Liberals please help me out here? I don't want to freak you out, so I have a lot of 'feeling' questions. So anyways,... maybe it's me, but I can not for the life of me figure out things like...

1) Where are all the war protesters? Is the war, which you heaped such scorn on, suddenly acceptable because your man Barack is president? When Bush was president you chanted "END THE WAR NOW!" - because war is immoral and we are killing innocent people. But I am starting to believe that it wasn't about morality or people. Who am I kidding? I never thought it was about anything other than protesting George Bush...oh and maybe impressing that chick who stays in the dorm across campus. There is still a war going on and unfortunately, innocent people are still getting hurt -but since that no longer concerns you - why not protest something worthwhile? Like the crushing taxation or the catastrophic deficit spending our new president is planning?

BONUS: When Barack recently spoke about his plan for conducting the war in Afghanistan, he actually used the Bush phrase - "Make No Mistake...". If it sounded cliche when "W" said it, it sounded absolutely trite coming from Obama. My bonus question to liberals is: How does it make you feel when Obama mimics George Bush in syntax?

Dude, that was so last administration...

2)How do you feel about Obama lying to the American people? He promised to prohibit lobbyists from high office...he quickly signed a waiver to appoint William Lynn as Deputy Defense Secretary. In case you missed this, Lynn was senior vice president at Raytheon, the company responsible for the Patriot and Tomahawk missile systems. As far as players in a military-industrial complex go...this would be the guy. Obama said, "We need earmark reform and when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure we're not spending money unwisely”, and 9000 earmarks showed up in his very unwise omnibus spending package.

Obama also promised to post all important legislation five days before signing them to give the "American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website" in order to "...(introduce) more sunlight into the lawmaking process." He signed at least three major bills without doing what he promised...legislation that will have consequences for generations to come. These are just a few of many campaign lies that went out the window. I am a little confused here because I thought he was the candidate of change...unless that means a change from the Washington practice of at least waiting a little while before breaking promises or at least being ashamed of it!

CAVEAT: The question is in regards to Obama specifically. Answers saying that 'politicians always lie' or this or that president 'also lied' will NOT be accepted!

3)After decades of cultivating an image of being the vanguard of the counterculture and 'unfairly' persecuted by the 'MAN", how does it feel to have the mass media, Hollywood, and other pop culture outlets openly on your side? When I was younger, any punk-rocker worth his salt had a "Kill Your TV" sticker on their hatchback. Now, with the exception of Fox News, all the major networks are solidly in the Obama camp and most are openly liberal. In college, I remember taking a class where we went line by line through fictional news pieces with the object of underlining sentences and phrases of bias - which (I assumed)was considered a bad thing. The 'hard' news channels have given up on even attempting to appear objective. Outside of the news, shows from Law and Order to The Family Guy operate with a left of center bias. With a few generations of kids raised on media like this, society will be totally inculcated. I wonder how it feels for these old counter-culture types to share their belief system with corporate rockers, artists, and blockbuster movie stars.

OBSERVATION: The Prime Time TV show boogieman was often the expansion of executive branch powers and subjects like the Patriot Act. Since Obama came into office, these subjects seem to have gone away. Apparently we have no reason to fear our government anymore...ya!

Imagine waking up to this face everyday...

Stay tuned....

What I Believe (part one)

2009-04-20T12:47:00.007-04:00

These are a few of my beliefs as a Conservative. We are a diverse group - you might see some of your own beliefs listed here or in the next posting. You may not even realize you had conservative ideals! Naturally, these beliefs are the result of constructs which far exceed the few sentences I put down. Some are the culmination of personal experience, historical and economic research, or just plain common sense.

* I believe in God – the Judeo-Christian God you may have heard about in the Bible. I don’t care if you don’t believe in Him – that is your business. But be thankful that the Founding Fathers of our nation did believe in Him. It was their belief that we all have certain unalienable rights which are God given. The state exists to protect those rights of which we are naturally endowed and has no legal basis to take away what it did not give.

* I believe in the Free Market. Considering the imperfect nature of humans Capitalism is the most democratic, efficient, and successful economic system. History is all the proof that is needed. Command economies, by contrast, have produced nothing but unparalleled genocide, corruption, and stagnation. The key is to balance Capitalism with Judea-Christian values to safe guard against excess, greed, and callousness potentially present in any human endeavor. Unfortunately, and particularly in the last 60 years, America has operated under a mixed system which has handicapped our progress. The people who claim that our recent economic troubles are proof that capitalism is a failure are incorrect. It is in fact our socialistic elements that have been a failure. And recent events prove that even elements of a command economy are harmful.

* I believe in legal immigration. Our country should continue to accept and assimilate people from all over the world. However, with resources influenced by supply and demand, perhaps it is time we accepted the best and brightest the world has to offer. There was a time when the poor, huddled masses were an important factor in this nation’s growth. But then again, those ‘huddled masses’ worked incessantly hard. They accepted that English was the official language. They asked for no handouts – only for the opportunity to live in relative safety and peace. They appreciated the freedom this country offered. They ignored prejudice. They were the quintessential ‘bootstrappers’. Many of the immigrants today don’t bother becoming legal or naturalized. They often pay no taxes yet receive food stamps and health care. They have little use for the English language as they are accommodated in their own. They want drivers’ licenses and entitlements with no thought of assimilation. They are like a nation within our nation with American citizens and legal immigrants paying the bill.

* The “Drug War”, as has been conducted the last 80 years or so, has been an unmitigated disaster. From a fiscally conservative viewpoint, the Drug War has been a horrendous waste of taxpayer funds – a black hole where good money is sucked in to yield negligible results. The criminalization of Marijuana is the superstar of this folly. Releasing rapists and murderers to make room, in already overcrowded prisons, for those convicted of marijuana possession defies reason.

* I am against abortion. Our constitution protects the right to life. The pro-abortion lobby claims to be concerned with the rights of women, yet female babies do not factor into their platform. Taxpayers should not be forced to fund any organization associated with this tragic practice. On a personal level, I have never known a woman, who has had an abortion to not deeply regret her decision and carry a painful emotional burden. None of them had parents who would not have supported their decision to pursue other options, or parents who would have thrown them out on the street as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. None of them had been raped. All of them were victims of a culture which deceived them into believing that termination was a just another birth control option and then left them to suffer the emotional consequences alone.

Stay tuned....