The escort arrives in Wickenburg, AZ

Hundreds, maybe thousands, lined Highway 60 through Wickenburg, Arizona to pay their respects as the hearses carrying the remains of the nineteen Granite Mountain Hotshots made their way to the Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s Office in Prescott, Arizona.

[from azcentral.com] The bodies of the 19 members of the hotshot crew are scheduled to leave downtown Phoenix at 11:15 a.m. today. The procession will start at Eighth Avenue and Madison Street, go north to Washington Street, then west on Washington as it curves toward the state Capitol and to the north of Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza, where the public is invited to gather and pay their respects.

The procession will proceed north on Arizona 89 to Prescott, pass by Fire Station 7 at 501 Sixth St. and end at the Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s Office in Prescott Valley.

The hearse carrying Granite Mountain Hotshot member Dustin Deford passes through Wickenburg, AZ

I didn’t see it first-hand, but I was told many more people lined the route through Wickenburg, with many bikers waiting at the route 89/Vulture Mine Rd. junction.

My wife, Valerie cried as the hearses drove past us. She later said, “I just couldn’t stop sobbing.”

We pray that peace will come to the families of these brave men and to the community of Yarnell.

Rest in peace, Granite Mountain Hotshots.

Photos ©2013 by Alan Gustin

It would seem that the unintended consequences of President Obama’s war on guns is backfiring on him.  Or is it?

We all know that Mr. Obama is a skilled craftsman when it comes to propaganda.  Perhaps his best skill is that of distracting the American public away from the important issues of the day — especially if the issues point to his administration in a negative way.

Remember this?

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste.  And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – Rahm Emanuel

The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary certainly ranks up there in the “crisis” category, yes?

Could it be that the president didn’t realize that his gesture of cracking down on gun ownership would cause people to start buying guns in record numbers?  I don’t think he is that dumb.  In fact, I don’t think he is dumb at all.  I believe everything he does has a hidden purpose, and this is yet another ploy from Obama’s “smoke and mirrors” administration.

Are the record purchases of guns across the country an unintended consequence?  You tell me.

[from usnews.com]  A day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to release Vice President Joe Biden’s recommendations to curb gun violence in the United States, the National Rifle Association told U.S. News and World Report that they have seen membership grow by 250,000 in the month since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Politico reported membership had grown by more than 100,000 five days ago. The NRA says that when Politico reported the story, membership was close to 200,000, but the number has drastically grown in just five days. The association now has over 4.25 million members, but the NRA says that number is always fluctuating as memberships expire and new members join.

“I would say that every time President Obama opens his mouth and Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein opens her mouth and they talk about gun bans and restricting the rights of law abiding Americans, people pay attention to that and sign up,” says Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA’s public affairs director.

The growing rate of membership comes as Obama is slated to announce both legislative proposals and executive orders related to Biden’s findings on how to stop the spread of gun violence. The vice president has said that his committee is mulling over stringent restrictions on high-capacity magazines, a national gun sale database and closing the gun show loophole, which allows unlicensed gun dealers to sell firearms to customers without background checks at gun shows. [view source]

At the start of research for an article which looks into the possible connection between moral decay and the advancement of the progressive agenda in America, an interesting document was discovered at the CDC website.  A few things stand out as points of interest. These points are in bold italics.

Providing Value through the Prevention Fund

The FY 2013 budget request invests in prevention and public health programs to improve health and restrain growth in health care costs.
The FY 2013 budget request includes an increase of $88.2 million for CDC from the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF), for a total of $903.2 million of the $1.3 billion available in the fund.
CDC uses the PPHF to help win the future in health by empowering communities to support longer, healthier, more productive lives by preventing heart attacks; strokes; cancer; and disabling, costly, deadly conditions.

Here’s an image of the original sidebar from the site (just in case you think I made this up):

From HealthCare.gov:“The Affordable Care Act, the health care law of 2010, created a Prevention and Public Health Fund. The fund is an unprecedented investment in promoting wellness, preventing disease, and protecting against public health emergencies.”

Regarding “providing value”, some research is in order to determine exactly what the value of the CDC is.  What is the “bang-for-the-buck” factor?  But more interesting is the assertion that the CDC intends to “restrain growth in health care costs” while at the same time increasing its budget by 88.2 million dollars.  Also interesting is the requested use of $903.2 million of a $1.3 billion available from the newly created PPHF.  Why not just use it all?  Perhaps it makes the federal bean counters feel better that there is a few million left in the fund.

The CDC is a federally-funded organization, which means they use our tax dollars to pay for all the wonderful work they do.  I have nothing against the CDC.  They are providing a valuable service, right?  But I say an increase in their spending is an indirect increase in the cost of health care, since we provide their funding.

The other interesting thing is the use of the catch phrase, “win the future” — the slogan that the Obama administration made popular during his first term as president.  The translation of “Win The Future” is: “Win the hearts and minds of future voters”.  I had never seen the slogan used in a government document before, but now I’m sure that I could find many more examples if I just look around the government web sites.

I don’t care about a silly catch phrase.  And neither do you.  Right?  What I care about is the duplicitous behavior of an administration that wants to pretend to be saving money while increasing spending at the same time.  An administration that cares much more about projecting an image of caring for the people while growing government on the backs of the very people they pretend to be “helping”.  When I see examples of this I think to myself, “WTF?”

And I don’t mean, “win the future”.

Some of us are coming out of our self-imposed exile and re-entering the blogosphere after the shock of the 2012 general election.

Shock, you say?

Yes, many people were shocked and dismayed by the fact that a crony like Barack Obama was able to garner enough favor among the rich, political class to get himself re-elected — especially in the light of the faltering economy and the revelations coming out of the Benghazi debacle.  And if you thought there was voter fraud, you had to sit back and wait for the facts to roll in before you realized that whatever fraud there was, it wouldn’t have made any difference one way or the other.

Obama won by a significant margin, and the GOP now sits in the corner, licking its wounds, trying to figure out what the hell went wrong.

The media show is even more disgusting than before the election, with pundits in the main-stream-media lecturing the losers on why they lost and what they must do to regain relevance among the American people.  It’s silly.  Like the enemy suggesting that you become more like them in order to defeat them.  The Liberal pundits are ten times more smug now that “they won”.

All that is predictable and perhaps even tolerable, considering the source.  But what has been brought to light recently is the lack of maturity regarding the leadership qualities of some of our elected representatives, and the way in which they seem to believe they can just merrily roll along with business as usual.

Clown-like behavior has become the norm in the House and Senate.  

Democrat leaders saying, “Now we have a mandate, neener, neener, neener!”

Republican leaders saying, “No you don’t!”

“Yes, we do!”

“No, you don’t!”

Sickening.

But what is even more sickening is the revelations coming out of the Peter Schweizer book titled, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.

If one reads this book, one quickly comes to the conclusion that the status-quo is something that politicians wish to protect at all costs.  Crony capitalists are rampant among our elected leaders, and Obama is one of the worst.

Imagine for a minute that you are a corporate executive and you start using your company’s assets to “invest” in projects that in turn benefit you directly. What would happen? You would be risking possible criminal charges for the misuse of those assets. But if it’s taxpayer money? Suddenly it becomes legal. Even acceptable. And for the billionaire who is looking to get a big return on his investment, there are few returns that can be higher than those resulting from campaign contributions. After all, how else can you turn half a million dollars from yourself and your friends into hundreds of millions of dollars after a single election? Not surprisingly, many of those named here are raising money again, for President Obama’s 2012 campaign. As a jobs program—the stated purpose—these billions in grants and loans were a failure. But as a method for transferring billions in taxpayer funds to friends, cronies, and supporters, they worked perfectly.

(Schweizer, Peter (2011-11-15). Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison (p. 104). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.)

I wish everyone would read this book.  It would make most other issues that the media portray as important seem like child’s play.  I think it should be very suspect that lawyers run this country.  They are very good at making laws that suit themselves, as evidenced by the ethical rules by which they are allowed to operate as Congressmen and Senators, men and women.

The real story is one of deception by the media and the politicians themselves, each keeping the American people distracted away from what is really going on behind closed doors.  The American people are being milked of their money and opportunity by selfish hypocrites who claim to be “fighting for the people”, while stealing their tax money to benefit themselves and their friends.  It’s third-world in its character, and unworthy of a great nation.

Politicians have become drug dealers, doling out the heroin of entitlements in order to make it seem as if they really care about us.  It is the worst of human nature exhibited by those that we are asked to trust.  That trust is broken.  And our contract with our government is voided by their behavior as they trample on the Constitution in order to enrich themselves.  Like greedy children in a candy store, many of these people are trying to grab all they can, while they can.  One desires maturity and responsibility from those who are making and enforcing the rules.

It is the desire of this blogger to bring to light the obscene greed of these people and to have them removed from office.  It is my thought that the Tea Party is on the right track.  I will pay closer attention to their movement in the coming weeks and months.  Let’s see if America can return to having a government by the people and for the people —with some grown-ups in charge for a change.

There is an atmosphere of frustration in America today.  It is evident in the way we communicate our opinions and feelings about the upcoming election.  Barak Obama tried to set the stage for a new “era of civility” in a speech he gave on January 12th, 2011 in response to the Jared Loughner shootings in Tucson, Arizona.

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

Wow.  If only we had heeded the call.  If only those words would have inspired Americans to treat each other with respect and dignity, even in the midst of disagreement.  If only Obama was the leader we had hoped he could be.  If only that speech had not had the flavor of a campaign rally.  If only he was a real leader.

Mr. Obama continued:

“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse,” Mr. Obama said, “let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

Make dead people proud! Yezah!

And later…

“We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us,” Mr. Obama said. “I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

He could have saved some breath by quoting six powerful words from the past…

“Can’t we all just get along?”

What happened?  Did the President’s words fall on deaf ears?  Or is it that Obama is so naïve as to think that in this age of comment threads on political web sites, people would lay down their snarkiness and all of a sudden engage in civil discussion about the issues that plague America today?
 As it turns out, Mr. Obama is in fact, naïve.  Especially if he truly believes the words he spoke in Tucson that day.  If the speech was “from the heart” (which it might have been except for the fact that Obama didn’t write it), maybe America could have believed it.

But they didn’t.

Why?

Two reasons come to mind…

1) Because it came from a politician taking advantage of a tragic situation just to make himself look good.

2) Pop-culture Americans today don’t want to be civil!

I’ll bet you a gazillion dollars that the Twittersphere was rife with the most un-civilized banter immediately following Obama’s Tucson speech.  I imagine there were those on the Left and on the Right who were wringing their hands, savoring the thought of getting their claws into the situation so as to exploit it for all it was worth.  I can see the Right-wing-nutjobs tearing into Obama’s speech with the fervor of a ravenous lion…  the Left-wing Libtards waiting for it – ready to counter the Right’s punches.

Freedom of speech has its drawbacks.  And one of those drawbacks is we must put up with it.

Many of us are simply following the example set by politicians.  Political campaigns have historically been among the hardest fought contests ever witnessed.  Some have been dirty.  In fact, some of the presidential contests of the 1800s make today’s jousting appear tame by comparison.

This doesn’t mean that somewhere, over the rainbow, there cannot exist a forum for civil discussion. But where is that place?

Most of us don’t really know enough history of the politics of the last ten years to present factual opinions.  We mostly just regurgitate the pabulum we consume from the despicable media clowns whose sole intent is to stir up shit in order to boost the ratings of their shows.  Sorry, did I use a bad word?  Want me to show you some examples of the vulgarity of the Left?  No?  I didn’t think so.

Information presented by the media has become so shaped by “reality show” pop culture, that there’s nowhere to turn for facts.  Even the Internet cannot be trusted.  Wikipedia has been exposed as a tool of the Left, and a myriad of “main-stream” Internet news sources are simply labeled as “biased” by the other side.

Things are so bad, that people may be simply “tuning out” and ignoring these so-called “sources of information”.  It’s sad, really.  The press was once considered the “fourth branch of government”.  An institution unfettered by corruption – existing to “keep politicians honest”.  What are they today?

Garbage.

McConnell warns of attempts by Obama, Media Matters to silence critics

By Vince Coglianese at the Daily Caller

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called out the White House Friday for maintaining a long-standing relationship with Media Matters for America, despite the liberal group’s attempts at “driving [conservative] voices clear out of the public square.”

“It’s hard to imagine a more broadly-accepted proposition than the fact that Americans are free, above all else, to speak their minds openly and freely without fear of punishment or reprisal from government authorities,” McConnell said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. “Human nature being what it is, however, I think we would all have to admit that there will always be a temptation, particularly among those in power, to muffle one’s critics.” [...]

[Read more]

It could be that Obama’s chances for re-election will rest in the hands of his failed policies.

GOP candidates are going to start ramping-up their references to the disappointing performance of the Obama administration just as soon as they figure out that they can do the country no good if they merely fight each other during the Republican primary campaign season.  If the GOP candidates are truly concerned about America’s fate, they must stop the infighting, mud-slinging, and negative ads.  They must start exposing the greatest threat to America — Barack Obama.

It’s funny how difficult it is to find real stories from real people about Obama’s Making Homes Affordable Program when you search on Google.  It seems that Obama’s federal webmasters have performed some genius SEO on their sites.  Either that, or some large federal money has found its way into the Google coffers.  Try it yourself.  You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything negative in the Google results when searching “Making Homes Affordable”.

If you go to the Barack Obama web site, you’ll find this garbage:

I especially like the nice touch at the end.  Yes, people… go out and prove to others how great I am by showing them these “facts”.  And be sure and tell them, “Obama, four more years!”

The New York Times has something a little more like reality:

Many economists and mortgage experts have concluded that banks must ultimately forgive loan balances to restore equity to underwater borrowers. Otherwise, growing numbers will walk away from their homes and accept foreclosure rather than make payments on properties in which they no longer own a stake.

This is the real situation millions of Americans find themselves in now.  And the unavailing Making Homes Affordable Program, which has probably cost more in marketing than the amount homeowners have been helped, is but another one of Obama’s many failures.

I post this article because I am one of the millions of Americans who wound up in a serious financial bind after losing my job to corporate downsizing.  The failing economy and resulting “Great Recession” has my family in a position where we cannot afford our mortgage payments.  Actually, that’s not quite accurate.  We could afford our mortgage payments if we didn’t also need to pay our electric bill, phone bill, grocery bill, health insurance premiums, car loan payments, car insurance, day care costs, etc.

We applied for the MHA program.  It was soon after Bank of America sold our mortgage to Seterus, which is the mortgage servicing branch of IBM. To make a long story short, we qualified for the program, but when we received the papers, we discovered that the terms of the temporary mortgage payments were such that we would actually be paying more than our current payment!  And to add insult to injury, the agreement stated that the permanent payment may be more or less than the temporary ones.  So we were faced with getting locked into a new agreement that could possibly result in a much higher monthly payment.  This is what Obama considers relief?

It’s a joke!

It’s as if the banks and mortgage service companies are literally thumbing their noses at Obama, and the MHA program literally has no teeth.

I don’t have time to research the actual facts pertaining to the number of homeowners actually helped by the MHA program.  So I am asking my readers to point me to a source of information that may provide the real numbers.  Anyone reading this article who can help, please leave a comment, or email:alan@alangustin.com

I will use the information to post further articles concerning the reality of Obama’s False Hope and Change.

…and please don’t come back to haunt us!

I say “good riddance” to one of the worst years ever. 2011 saw the passing away of my Dad just before Thanksgiving.  Though sick for some time with cancer, the treatment Dad had received gave us hope that he had two or three years of life ahead of him, and we are very disappointed in the care he received at the end.  However unrelated it might be, I still can’t help wondering if Dad’s case was in any way affected by the new laws brought about by Obamacare.  I know nothing will bring my Dad back, but I think the disappointing presidential (if you can call it that) performance by the Obama administration has fueled my distrust in the medical industry in general.  But I’ll leave that for another post.

We also witnessed many friends losing their jobs and their homes.  Our family also experienced one of the worst years ever — looking at it from a financial perspective, and we’re still possibly looking at losing our home to foreclosure in 2012.

“How did we get here?” is the question we ask ourselves often, and just as often, the answers point to the current and past presidential administrations, along with an incompetent and corrupt Congress.  But I also realize that we contributed to our own plight through our complacency and laziness.

But I believe that we, along with millions of fellow Americans, were lulled into a false sense of security concerning the health of the economy here in America and abroad.  In 2008, the end of the Bush administration saw the start of “The Bailouts”, which were signed into law by Bush, opening the “door to hell” which Obama gladly and recklessly cake-walked through at the beginning of his first (and hopefully only) term as president.  If the public had been properly warned, many of us could have prepared better.  We couldn’t have prevented the “great recession” (as it’s now being called), but as I said, many of us could have prepared better.

I (and others like myself) find it inexcusable that many of our elected representatives personally benefited financially from a foreknowledge of the impending financial doom, while allowing the rest of us to be destroyed.  The Tea Party, and more recently, the Occupy Wall Street movements are in response to the actions by members of Congress who should be found guilty of malfeasance.

“…malfeasance is the doing of an act which an officer had no legal right to do at all and that when an officer, through ignorance, inattention, or malice, does that which they have no legal right to do at all, or acts without any authority whatsoever, or exceeds, ignores, or abuses their powers, they are guilty of malfeasance.” —Daugherty v. Ellis

Speaking of Occupy Wall Street, this is another major disappointment of 2011.  I was excited to see another, younger group of citizens protesting about the state of the economy.  But the immature actions and misguided focus (or lack thereof) immediately turned me against these people.   The timing of OWS was perfect, but the execution was inept.  OWS could have driven a nail in the coffin of the Obama re-election, but their adoption of, and association with the same type of radical, Leftist rhetoric as used by Obama, prevented them from “turning against one of their own”.  Only recently have many of the OWS supporters finally turned against this president.

Fortunately for me, OWS has provided a welcomed distraction, and I’ve been gleefully poking fun at the movement via my blog, Occupy Stupidity.  I sincerely hope that Occupy Stupidity will provide an alternate opinion source for young people who have been seduced by the movement which is reminiscent of the “Summer of Love” hippie era of the late sixties and early seventies.

On a lighter note, I have found yet another disappointment just as 2011 comes to a close.  I went to see a movie at the local theater just a few days ago.  The experience was tainted right out of the gate by the obscene amount of television-style commercial advertisements that were shown prior to the main feature.  It had been quite a while since I had been to a theater to see a movie, and it will be a very long time before I return to a movie theater if this is going to be the new trend.  For me, the theater experience has been spoiled.  Perhaps forever.

Neither one of my football teams did any good this year, although the Arizona Cardinals started looking pretty good toward the end of the season with John Skelton as QB.  We can only hope that the Cards make a couple good draft picks in the off-season.  I’m officially dumping the Philadelphia Eagles as my second-favorite team.  They simply disappoint too often (i.e., year after year).

On the other hand… I have plenty to be grateful for.  My wife and kids are reasonably healthy.  Evan is still on Trileptal, which he has been taking for over a year now due to seizure activity detected over a year ago.  We pray that he will be able to go off the medication soon, as it is contributing to our financial stress.

I’ve got a full-time job with benefits, which is another blessing in these times.  I’ve got God in my life and I’ve got serenity in sobriety.  All-in-all, I guess my balance sheet isn’t so bad.

I am already praying that 2012 brings a peace and prosperity that will send 2011 into the realm of the forgotten.  But for now, I say, “good riddance, 2011″.

Somebody who goes by the name, Yves Smith posted an article at a site called Naked Capitalism titled: Alan Grayson Shreds P.J. O’Rourke on #OccupyWallStreet.

I just had to offer a rebuttal to this piece, mainly because it is typical of many on the left who go gaga over anybody who (seemingly) adds credibility to the Occupy Wall Street cause.  And rather than open with a ridiculous statement like Smith does, I am going straight to the video, then to excerpts from the article and my comments.  So please watch the video, then read on.

First of all… shredded?  …really?  When I read the title of the post, I expected to experience some über-intellectual deposition by Grayson, resulting in blood and tears all over the set of Real Time With Bill Maher.  But as you can see for yourself, Grayson’s response to O’Rourke’s infantile question is far from compelling to anyone outside of Maher’s audience.  And another thing… P.J. O’Rourke is to Bill Maher what Juan Williams was to Sean Hannity… just someone on the set the host can kick around, which means there’s nothing valid about any question that comes from this dolt in the first place.

Grayson’s little mini-speech answer, has no more substance than any of the pabulum coming out of the mouths of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Most of us already know the state of the economy is in a mess.  Most of us would agree that Wall Street being in bed with politicians is a bad thing.  Most of us want to change the way the economic system in America functions.  But When Grayson says, "…we all know Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago…", doesn’t that seem a bit simple from someone who claims to have been an economist for three years?

I would agree if Grayson had said that Wall Street was yet another victim of failed economic policies put in place by the Federal government.  I might agree if he had said that crony-capitalism is one of the biggest reasons (if not the main reason) that these failed policies were passed into law in the first place.  I would agree if Grayson had said that the practice of selling–off large bundles of mortgages which were sliced and diced into tiny pieces and then sold again to investment funds and pension plans was a bad idea if not regulated properly.

Instead, Grayson simply regurgitates the same, tired mantra that we’ve been hearing for weeks from the Occupy Wall Street protesters… "Wall Street wrecked the economy…"

People who make fun of the OWS movement do so because of people like Grayson who, instead of articulating some valid ideas about how to improve the economic system in America (and consequently – the world), simply spout shallow, leftist rhetoric.  And thus it has been since the beginning of the OWS movement.  And as much as I can’t stand O’Rourke’s bubblegum question (and bongo reference) on this particular edition of Maher’s show, I have to agree that most of the higher–profile personalities (such as Grayson, Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin) are just beating the drum of revolution, continually pointing out problems without offering any solutions.

And since this is all that seems to be coming from the OWS "representatives", it likewise seems that there isn’t much in the way of economically–educated people within the movement. I certainly don’t notice denigration of OWS protesters by any serious news reporters.  I especially haven’t seen or heard of anyone making the protesters out to be poor, homeless, destitute, or "slovenly unproductive losers".  On the contrary, I’ve reported myself, and have read other reports that observe that these protesters are relatively well–dressed, carrying iPhones and cameras along with their protest signs.

I believe most observers of the OWS movement are waiting for the movement to take on a more appropriate target — namely the politicians who make laws that serve themselves, and who fail to make policy that protects the American people instead of ripping them off.  These politicians don’t reside on Wall Street… they occupy the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House.