FirstGen American

CRONY CAPITALISM UPDATE 3: Solyndra- the Goose that Laid the Coal Egg; Keep on Giving..

2011-10-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

Aim higher always.. except when shooting.
WELCOME to the Party!

*The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, err... Coal Egg, keeps on giving, as far as highlighting the follies of this administration is concerned. It is getting easier and easier to catalog these mistakes, or corruption really, albeit more and more tedious because there's so many. A new day, a new revelation: This article by New York Times (do I sense a rift, or finally the media is doing its job, or is it that once in a while they, the media must do a token story for credibility's sake?) can be dissected into so many parts; and each part interpreted independent of the others, and the meanings, readings and reasons (interpretations) give a clear picture of the nerve roots and branches that pulsate life into the Obama administration:

Take heed this part:

A seven-page report based on the new documents reveals that top White House officials recognized early that the company faced potentially crippling business problems and that the government’s generous investment could backfire on the Obama administration. And they knew this before the president paid the company a visit in May of 2010.

Readings:
A-- it was not business profitability and success that propelled Obama to loan out tax payer money.
B-- Obama will do as Obama pleases, whether it's his decision personally, or not, is irregardless.

This part is a personal favorite:

The new documents show a private investor in Solyndra questioning why the federal government, back in September 2009, agreed to put up so much money — $535 million — to help the company expand given the questions about its financial future. “One of our solar companies with revenues of less than $100 million (and not yet profitable) received a government loan of $580 million,” Brad Jones, an executive at Redpoint Ventures, wrote in December 2009 to Lawrence H. Summers, then an economic advisor to the president, referring to Solyndra. “While that is good for us, I can’t imagine it’s a good way for the government to use taxpayer money.” The investment, Mr. Jones said, demonstrated broad problems with the government loan program. “The allocation of spending to clean energy is haphazard; the government is just not well equipped to decide which companies should get the money and how much,” Mr. Jones wrote. Mr. Summers wrote back that he shared some of the same concerns, before offering a partial defense of the government effort. “I relate well to your view that gov is a crappy vc,” Mr. Summers wrote, using a shorthand for venture capitalist. “But suppose we think there are all kinds of externalities to renewable investments,” Mr. Summers continued. “What should we do?”

Interpretations:
A-- there is a conscientious private investor out there.
B-- when it's not your money, you can play with it, you can gamble with it, you can lose it, you can launder it to come out at the other end as payback for a campaign contributor.
C-- "clean energy", is a misnomer, it is not viable as a profitable business. It's called "green energy" because of the greenbacks we burned on it!
D-- when you take on a business adviser who has no business experience, what you do is; "cross your fingers, close your eyes, and jump off the cliff".
E-- “What should we do?” It's worth repeating: IT AIN'T YOUR MONEY, SIR!

Lastly, and bottomline:

The Democrats’ take on the documents, mostly e-mails, was that they showed a “vigorous internal debate,” that it involved senior members of the administration, and that the decisions were made “with no regard to the identity of the private investors.”

You can always argue any point, any side, wherever you may find yourself. Or, even to talk off the side of your mouth, or have a mouse in your pocket squeek, it does not mean you don't look like a duck!
Ok-- a Goose.

Entrepreneurism is the Road to True Freedom!

The Audacity of a Simple Mind: He Came, He Said; Will We Vote?

2011-09-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

Aim higher always.. except when shooting.
WELCOME to the Party!

"I WON." It's not, "We Won", it's "I" Won...

With those two short words, only four letters long, a newly elected United States president went back on his campaign promise of a "united" America, of ending partisan gridlock in government for the good of the country, and projected to the world the psychological make-up of what he is now known for- arrogance, divisiveness, pettiness, insecurity, dullness ( no new ideas, lead from behind ).

Of course he was very newly elected, and so people weren't paying no mind. Now, of course, hindsight is 20/20.

The reason I'm writing about this now, is not only that we're into the campaign season again, but foremost is that I had never, ever forgotten my impression when I heard him say those two short words; "this man is not president for all Americans". That impression never left me. To this minute I can "read" all his actions going home to roost on those two words.

Contrary to his uttered words-- this president has no inclination to govern for all Americans. It was not his intent all along. He seeks to divide. He is president ONLY to his constituents, not the man on the other side of the aisle. That man on the other side of the aisle is "enemy". That "enemy" is to be isolated, to be demonized, to be torn down, destroyed, however, in whatever manner... nothing too dirty for the Chicago Thug Machinery.

There is a video of his uttering those words. I saw it. If it is not available anymore, it does not mean there was never. Of course there was.

I was mildly surprised when on my first try at a google search of the simple keywords "I won", out came this article by Mary Lu Carnevale/ Jonathan Weisman, on WSJ even.

Here is the full article:

"I Won"

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.

Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

The statement was prompted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona , who challenged the president and the Democratic leaders over the balance between the package’s spending and tax cuts, bringing up the traditional Republican notion that a tax credit for people who do not earn enough to pay income taxes is not a tax cut but a government check.

Obama noted that such workers pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and sales taxes. The issue was widely debated during the presidential campaign, when Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, challenged Obama’s tax plan as “welfare.”

With those two words — “I won” — the Democratic president let the Republicans know that debate has been put to rest Nov. 4 .

Democratic and Republican aides confirmed the exchange. A White House spokesman said he wasn't immediately aware of the exchange. The aides who heard the remarks stressed that it wasn't as boldly partisan as it might sound.

Still, other Democrats echoed the sentiment. As he left the White House, House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina was asked about Republican complaints that Democrats aren't listening to what their GOP colleagues have to say. “We’re responding to the American people,” he said. “The American people didn't listen to them too well during the election.”

My question to my fellow Americans is this: Have we seen enough, heard enough, to never let this happen to us again?

My personal projections is that he bit off more than he could chew. There is more of us daily, weekly, who doesn't buy him anymore. Not that I did the first time anyway- I want that clear. How could a president be president only of the 50% of the citizenry, assuming he has that at all?

"Assume". Yeah. I know. There is doubt in the wisdom of much of us Americans. Sigh.

Entrepreneurism is the Road to True Freedom!

CRONY CAPITALISM UPDATE: MONEY LAUNDERING 101- The Solyndra-White House Green Energy Deal

2011-09-11T15:31:00.001-07:00

You are Invited!

More and more details of the Solyndra-White House-billionaire Kaiser money laundering scheme are coming out. This story is now catching more and more eyes. It's a surprise actually, to see ABC News on the lead on this story. Stung perhaps by the FAST and FURIOUS media debacle, where for a long while, only small bloggers were posting anything at all about it. It's a safe bet to venture out, that the LSM thought Fast and Furious "accusations" were a local story to Arizona. Nah- why would national media cover that story? Specially that it also touches on one of the holy grails of the left: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. And of course now its CBS' staple. WTG national media! If our defense of freedom in the Western World depended on you alone--we would all be either kissing the ground, or wearing red armbands.

In my first blog about this breaking story, I mentioned that if a person with some basic knowledge of finances looked at the Solyndra business plan and financial statements they would have known it was folly to throw good money, good tax payer money, after a poorly thought-out business plan. As it turned out-- some people in the know knew, objected, but umm.. who's going to say no to a president named Barak Hussein Obama?

If you're a concerned taxpayer, here is where your frustration reside; from my first blog about this topic:

"Now- the way I understood bankruptcy filings in the past, was that the government got their payment first, IF the government was on the hook for you, upon liquidation of your assets. Private investors like banks and department stores got in line, and they ONLY got paid their part in funds recovered, if there were excess funds to sufficiently pay the government. After all- the government's money appropriated WAS the taxpayer's money, and the government was to exercise due diligence in administering that taxpayer money."

Pay attention to this article from Townhall and Mr. Bob Beauprez: Obama's Pet Billionare at Solyndra Make Take White House Down-
The title is a bit grammatically challenged in one area- I'm sure the author meant "May" instead of "Make", and I stand corrected if I'm wrong- but THIS IS HOW MONEY LAUNDERING 101 IS DONE! Specially if you have "friends" in high places! Newbie crooks out there, test in one hour!
Us taxpayers? Shh- cog in the wheel of more money-making for election campaigns! Shut up, just shut up about it!

"That loan guarantee agreement negotiated on behalf of Solyndra was fast-tracked through approval by Obama Administration officials at the Department of Energy and "included the lowest interest of all the green projects" benefiting from DoE funding, according to ABC News. The guarantee also subordinated the taxpayer's credit position to private investors, like George Kaiser, should the company go bust. Republicans warned that the deal "put taxpayers at unnecessary risk" but their warning went unheeded. This means Kaiser will be at the front of the distribution line when Solyndra assets are liquidated. Chances of any recovery for the taxpayers is somewhere between slim and none."

Read my first blog here: "CRONY CAPITALISM: Pat mine, I'll pat yours". Some points to ponder; keywords, and phrases: -preferential, cuddling loan terms -funding "green" energy venture with oil profits -obama is for the little men, poor men, only he goes to bed with billionaires exclusively (those damn corporate jets!)

WE ALL LOVE YOU NOBAMA!!

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 WAS A BLACK EYE, THE REST OF YEARS ARE A RESOLVE..

2011-09-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

You are Invited!

As I first turned on my tv and saw what was on the screen that early morning, I thought I was watching a movie ad. As I stood there riveted to the scene of the towering inferno, the first tower burning, I started to doubt I was watching a movie. The scene if it was a movie stayed on, then I hear commentaries by who turned out to be the news anchors. Unbelieving, I turned on to other stations. Even the local ones deffered to their national headquarters..

It was customary for me to turn on the tv when I wake up. September 11, 2001 was not an exception. I was then a self-employed Mom of two kids ages 10 and 12. I worked at home and was always very busy so I went to bed at 2-3 in the morning, sometimes 4. When I get up, I want some kind of noise to keep me awake so I turn on the tv. That morning when I did, the world changed for me, and I had changed along with it.

My upbringing was to be very mindful of "sin". Don't hate in your heart. Don't have bad thoughts or words for others... My Catholicism forbade a lot of things. I didn't even cuss back then. As I watched my tv screen, not grasping what was going on, the first minutes not even knowing where this 'happening' was, I called my sister to the tv. We watched what was going on, transfixed.

Before this time, I was a political novice. I went to the poll to vote but that was it. I didn't know anything muslim, anything "terrorist". The closest to a terrorist I knew was McVeigh. During his trial, there was some mention of an "unidentified" man, possibly a Middle Eastern. That was all.

I had a rudimentary comprehension of what was going on before the hour was over. Finally as I got caught up with an understanding of what happened, my heart started to race. I felt hot to my neck, now I understand why they say "hot under the collar" when someone gets mad. I felt that. I felt a heaviness in my chest. We watched the tower fall. One then the other. The plume of smoke, the ghastly gray scene, the people who were caught in it...unforgettable.

What must they have felt- those people that jumped out of windows? I wondered what I would have done if I was one of them there... would I jump? Would I have the courage to, or would I burn immobilized by fear? How was reality for those people in that moment before death...? This was a question my sister and I asked, bounced off of each other. In the first moments of incomprehension, you ran on emotion. We felt we had to "try to" "understand" how they must have been, in hopes really, to be "in one with them", to "pay homage" to them. With me I felt at least- that just maybe, maybe, by repeating these questions to myself over and over, by trying to put myself in their shoes however futily all of that really was-- I had hoped that they would get my "vibe" to them that I was "there for them", "hurting with them". Explaining this is so bizarre now, and still so woefully inadequate, but back then it "substituted" for helplessness... My hairs were standing on ends. I was unbelieving of what I was seeing. It took me a while to be "back to reality". I lived in that haze of unbelief although I was unaware that I was in that "zone", for I know not how long...

After the "unbelief", the next thing that followed was the "admiration", perhaps in an obtuse way, nevertheless it was.. because of "how perfectly the bad guys executed their plan". It was unbelievably brilliant; to penetrate a formidably militarized country. A giant, a leader, a respected country whose citizens including myself lived in relative ease and security of thought that we would never have to experience how it must be to live like Israel for example. NEVER AMERICA. The terrorists, jihadists as we call them now, challenged the odds and won. Their dedication to their mission, their cause, was tunnel vision. Their plan was brilliantly executed. I couldn't get over that. I repeated it all day to myself, to others I got in contact with.

There is a time when, in war you slug it out with your enemy through endless time and ways of pulverizing each other with brute force, into submission. But there must also be a "recognition", some type of 'reckoning' about your enemy. Not who they are because that does not frankly matter, but the brilliancy of their masterstrokes in the execution of their tactics: the planning, the non-detection by the enemy, and most of all, the surprise element of the final day of deed. Altho "admire" is a crass word to use in this time, perhaps the wrong word to use altogether, but it gives a portrait of what I exactly felt at the time. That feeling, together with the admission of helplessness, of loss, of being lost, of pity for all the victims, the stories of the survivor families looking for loved ones, the cricket-chirping of all the fire fighter's detection devices chirping under that rubble, and the knowing within one's self that not all will be found alive, drained one's energy; that was the worst. "Helpless" was the worst.

One would be a hypocrite if they cannot admit that we, the USA was bested that day. Just like we were bested one other time in our history, that portion called Pearl Harbor. The thought of all these "unbelievable" emotions cursing though you at the same time--- it was indescribable. We were brought to our knees in that first few days...

Then the speech of President George W. Bush at the site with the twisted metal in the backdrop... THAT instance, that scene right there, made one snap from the 'dream' into reality. The reality of the twisted metals, the quiet of all those chirping devices, the rescue dogs that crawled the wreck, the FLAG--- THAT was an awakening. This time there was no confusion in the emotion-- it was hate, an "instant hate", fueled by anger, fused perhaps by the guilt and shame and the unbelievability of being bested by a "bad people". Now we know WHO the enemy was. Now we could bear down on them! We will pulverize them! The cry for vengeance and payback was liberating! How could we have been caught unawares again, is probably a black eye we will have to live with forever, and to this American, that is UNACCEPTABLE.

Being a businessperson, the happenings of that day I never thought to reach me. But it did. My work contracts with the stores I was serving dried up. For the same reason that New York and the whole country was affected financially, businesses big and small failing due to the fact that people stopped being "normal", and virtually stopped consumption but the basics, for fear of uncertainty.

Now ten years later, if there was a defining residue of that day it would be that I am now "awake", as some had called it. Awake politically. And now more than ever, the feeling of "responsibility" for my country, and the futures of my kids and millions perhaps of others of their age--weigh heavy. The funny thing is-- that heaviness is a challenge to do, instead of a burden. Let's call it RESOLVE.

DON'T TREAD ON US!

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

CRONY CAPITALISM: "Pat mine, I'll pat yours"!

2011-09-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

You are Invited!

If you are not sickened by the stench of corruption and money-laundering by the Obama administration, maybe you should check your pulse to see if you're still alive. The deceptions and scheming is not even hidden anymore. Last year a "green company", Solyndra, here in California was fast-tracked a loan, with the most preferential, cuddling terms ever, in loans and lending: Solyndra was loaned 535 million according to ABC News and iWatch, whoever, whatever iWatch is. Then the following year, Solyndra was re-qualified for another refinance loan. How much that refinance was, we don't know.
As a consumer with a home loan, let me say that it is not easy to re-qualify for a refinancing of ANY loan even if your collateral is worth more than the principal and refinanced loans together. That is Dodd-Frank, the architects of the breakage of the system, only this time they are the-- umm... I am at a loss for the correct words on this side of this sentence, any sugestions? "Safe-guarders"? "Fox as to the henhouse"?
From the article; http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-officials-sat-solyndra-meetings/story?id=14476848

"And as part of the deal, the Energy Department agreed that if the company went bust, private investors could recoup their losses before the government."

Now- the way I understood bankruptcy filings in the past, was that the government got their payment first, IF the government was on the hook for you, upon liquidation of your assets. Private investors like banks and department stores got in line, and they ONLY got paid their part in funds recovered, if there were excess funds to sufficiently pay the government. After all- the government's money appropriated WAS the taxpayer's money, and the government was to exercise due diligence in administering that taxpayer money.

In the case of this company Solyndra, it is the REVERSE! Private investors recoup theirs FIRST! And if we take into account as fact what is mentioned in this article, and I have no reason to think otherwise- THAT PRIVATE INVESTOR who doled out the biggest contribution IS an Obama bundler named KAISER.

"One of the private investors in Solyndra was George B. Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil billionaire. Kaiser was a bundler of campaign donations for Obama's 2008 race, and is a frequent visitor to the White House. Since 2009, he has made 16 visits to presidential aides, according to White House visitor logs."

Supposedly, Mr. Kaiser's company IS 39% owner of the failed Solyndra.

"Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures and its affiliates have been the single largest shareholder of Solyndra, according to SEC filings and other records. The company holds 39 percent of Solyndra's parent company, bankruptcy records filed Tuesday show."

Deduce from that what you will, but I have a few questions:
(1.) How bad of a money laundering set up is this scheme? Isn't this obvious, and the pay-off to Kaiser brazen or what? Why? Careful of your answer should you want to.
No wonder Mr. Kaiser wants no part of an interview.
(2.) Still part of #1 question, but needed to be asked: Why was the Department of Energy and the Feds- all the way to the President of the United States, so blind, so inept in its estimation of the possible success/ failure feasibility study of this venture? Did they ignore the balance sheet projections- possible expenses (losses) against possible income (receivables)? I will bet that if Solyndra's scheme (business plan) was ran through a person who knows how to look, where to look, that person would have said, "this is a no-go", at least for now, in this financial environment.
(3.) Why is the Department of Energy a partner in this raid of Solyndra, together with the FBI? Wasn't the DoE the sheep-herding mother hen to Solyndra? Is the DoE and the Energy Department not one and the same? (Of course they are but correct me if I'm wrong!). If they are one and the same, the next logical question is: WHY IS THE FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE?? Is not that funny- that the DoE sat in on this company's meetings, sheep-herded it like a mother hen and it failed miserably anyway? Then suddenly, the company decides to declare bankruptcy, and the decision for the recovery of monies were to go to a private company- Kaiser, than to the taxpayers? It's as if "somebody" said, "ok that's enough time already." The words "incest", "pat mine, I'll pat yours", and "backroom deals in smokey basements" come to mind.

A saying in my native tongue aptly applies as to taxpayers: "ginisa sa sariling mantika". Literal translation goes: "sauteed in own fat"!

BTW- Mr. Kaiser, I hope to God you are not related in anyway to Kaiser Medical HMO, my old health insurance company! I paid dearly for mine and kids over the years...I hope you are not wasting those higher premiums we paid, to ingratiate yourself to corrupt politicians like this whole administration. Getting screwed over from both ends start to really sting, and it's getting tiring!

PS: What's Barak Hussein Obama doing in bed with a billionnaire oil tycoon?
A green energy project funded by fossil fuel namely oil?
Huh? So many questions!

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

Ronald Reagan's words ring true and clear; An Immigrant Perspective - PRIDE, HONOR and the Great Bargain

2011-09-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

You are Invited!

To receive a letter such as the one I received from Ronald Reagan when I became a US citizen is truly an honor, and a source of great pride for me! Honor- to be bestowed American citizenship. Pride- in keeping the promise. America gives, and a lowly, small, undistinguished immigrant found a home, and a belonging. Thank you Mr. President. Your words resound clearly to today. It is a light in these troubled times. America truly is the Grand Bargain that it is, and I will keep true to the promise, I ascribe to you, spelled out clearly in this letter -- our bargain.

"Dear Fellow American:

It is a distinct privilege to congratulate you and to warmly welcome you as a new citizen of the United States of America.

Today, by choice, you formally embrace America as your new home. In so choosing, you are now a part of the greatest country in the world. A land of extraordinary natural beauty, a land of strength and pride, a land of God's precious grace and glory -- this is our America.

From this day forward, you will share in the blessings of liberty and freedom that we, as Americans have enjoyed for more than two centuries. With those cherished blessings come privilege, responsibility, and one of America's greatest gifts -- opportunity.

So I ask you to give America your hearts and all of your energies. Join in our efforts to defend and to keep her as the promise of our generation, tomorrow's generation and generations to come. Together, in common purpose and faith, we will keep America strong and free.

God bless you today and always -- welcome home!

Sincerely,

Ronald Reagan"

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

A Welcome From the White House and Ronald Reagan, my American Dream

2011-09-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

You are Invited!

How I wish the times we live in are different. How I wish we have a real president who presides over all Americans, not pit them against each other. How I wish that immigrants respect the country they have chosen , and how I wish they would love this country, and honor it as I do..

I remember a time when HOPE really was felt and not just a figure of someone's political speech-making. I am distressed as are so many of my countrymen and women at the treatment our present government do to this country. With melancholy I think of Ronald Reagan. How fortunate and lucky was a young immigrant, bright-eyed and full of hopes and expectations, to enter this country with him at the helm? To hear him speak of how opportunity was out there, yours for the taking, it filled your heart and made your steps lighter. THAT was Hope!

Many years had passed since that year when I came. I am once again on the move, this time going the opposite direction; back to where I originally came from. "Sweet" because I am going back a success. "Proud" I might even say. "Bitter" because looking back, I owe that young immigrant a lot. Her courage got me through. Her will, her desire, her passion to live free- to fashion a life all her own, to "make" a "something better" out of nothing, out of working hard, out of her very own endeavors... I don't think now that I can come up with the strength to do it over if it were mine to do over again.

Young Lady, my hats off to you!

Now I go back to where I came from to restart a life I never had. Perhaps to re-live, to recover, a childhood I never had. Who knows. Many years ago since I left "that" place, I confront my demons again. Only this time- wiser, a lot older, more confident, battle-scarred but not defeated, head held high...

*We had just purchased our tickets today to fly back to the Resort. We are leaving in October. Although I feel sorrow in my heart for many things and reasons, life has to go on.

I remember a time in 1983, September 23 it was when I landed in San Francisco, America. A suitcase in my hand rattled from the meager personal possessions I had brought with me. A few loose change, not even enough to buy a dinner I discovered later. I barely had two dollars. But oh-- when I landed, if you were to tell me I had to go back surely I'd rather take a fatal stab in the heart than go back- I was not 'turning back'. I- HAD- ARRIVED!

This was my American Dream! To come to America, with all its promise and all its beautiful people... surely, surely.. I WILL make it.

Too bad now we can't hear Ronald Reagan's speeches anymore. The Great Communicator had been quiet now-- he had been summoned by his Maker. "Rich" all our lives we should feel that he lived. Imagine if there was- NO Ronald Reagan.

When I got here I didn't know much about American Politics. I listened to Ronald Reagan intently when he spoke. He took my attention and frankly, my admiration. Why shouldn't he-- he had articulated for me my very own beliefs and I found out that my Dreams and Aspirations were called The American Dream here in America. I thought they were just mine! If somebody had fallen on my lap from the branches above this tree I sat under when I was six or seven years old and told me my daydreams were called the American Dream I would have kicked that someone off over the cliffs, down to the river where my Grandfather's water buffaloes cooled off for the hot summers of my youth. I wouldn't have believed it. How could that be-- I was not American.

I was told that the tree was not there anymore. The river that was so much a part of my life had redrawn the landscape and it is not anymore the solace from scorching heat that it used to be. I was sad to know that the swimming hole where we dilly-dallied at lunchtime until it was minutes from the start of our first subject in third grade was now a barren wasteland dug up by construction companies seeking cheap source for sand and gravel. Lunch break would never have been had we not had that swimming hole. We wouldn't have developed such running skills to match any top marathoner had we not had to make the two mile mad dash to Teacher A's classroom lest she marked us "tardy"...

How bittersweet to remember...

This Dream is still in the making. Mindoro Palms Beach Resort is yet another adventure, another try, another step HIGHER in that ever-extending ladder. "ALWAYS HIGHER".

I thank You Dear God for your Divine Guidance, without which I never would have found the way to here. It's been a long way I have come, and come I have! Thank You for the faculties You had given me. My mind to imagine and dream, and my heart to bear the necessities I must for those dreams and wishes. It's been a long ways, fraught with danger and starvation, with uncertainties that without You I would never had seen a way out. Tho' it might be tiring and desperate in so many a time, should I be asked today if I want to re-do it over I would say No. I wouldn't have the strength but with Your guidance I made it.
Dear Lord thank you for your watchful eyes. I know You had never left me. In my hour of darkness as I descended those steps on that fateful day and I called out for You to watch over me, I know you were there, always there. I felt you in my heart. I went without a doubt of Your Presence. When my arms grew weary of holding on, I prayed to You to take care of us, and you did. Thank You! My faith in You is unshakable, and please as I go through another step, going up this time, watch over me that I may not falter. The success of this venture I offer You. Please make it so that I may bring Hope to others. This Project I bring to Your altar and offer You. Please bless it.

*Thank you to Ronald Reagan who accepted this immigrant with open arms. America was indeed the land in where the "decrepits" of the world have a better chance, a better opportunity. Thanks to him for the Inspiration! What a great man to affect in such a way. A true Leader to everyone.

September 1983 was a busy month, so it turned out. A Korean airliner was shot down by the Russians a week or so before I landed in California's San Francisco International Airport. Sixty or so passengers who died were Americans.

This September 23 is my 28th anniversary of setting foot on American soil. This soil will always be my home. No matter where I am in the world-- I will come home to my America.

September 11 is another day to put a cross on this calendar.

Yet as I look at the desperate hours of agony of this month, I find the silver lining. If we are to endure, we have to find this silver lining. This is precisely why I admire the man of Ronald Reagan. In the darkest of hours, he found the will of that Shining City upon the Hill...
For our country's sake, we NEED our own Shining City within us!

Now I want to share the letter I got from the White House signed by Ronald Reagan. I want to share it because with the current political debate about immigration, and the fervor or non-fervor of Patriotism, his words had never been more timely or relevant.

The document above I received when I became a US citizen on June 26, 1986. I remember the dates
without consulting a reference. When something is important to you- you remember. This document is one of those. It is one of my most precious possessions. This is my passport to my American Dream.

I pray, my brothers and sisters in Christ and our Country, that YOU find your own American Dream!

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

2011-09-05T15:09:00.001-07:00

You are Invited!

Lord if I am to die- let me die for You and my Country Let me be a blunt instrument of your Grace, to cut down on the doers of evil who seek to remove Your Good bestowed upon this earth.

Please bless me with the opportunity to make my life useful before I depart this, Your green earth, to do the deeds that further freedoms in my country, that help its people rise above all evil, to do the deeds that will help my kids have a brighter future. Please I pray keep them safe and warm in your love. Please make it so that this country, America, never run out of Patriots willing to shed precious blood You anointed, for its defense against all evil, and please bless and shed your thoughtful glance at their endeavor and sacrifice, and keep a place for them in Heaven, in Your Kingdom should they perish in the struggle. We are Americans and we humbly seek your grace to guide us in strengthening our resolve to keep this mighty, blessed nation as one, always on the right of your teachings, and on the straight path so that we may incur Your forgiveness, and Your blessings, for us now, and in the future, Amen.

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

The Lord of Mount Olympus falls down his high and mighty tower...

2011-08-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

The following will be nothing but links to the MSM critique of Lord Voldemort!
It is fun reading them, to an extent. But if youre a Christian, you automatically feel pity for such a man so lost...

One can only ask "how difficult would it be to just surrender to God, ask for His forgiveness, and then ask for His guidance, then ask the American citizenry to forgive him, and ask them to "take this difficult journey to righting this listing ship of state..."
Ah-- but that is the heart talking. That is why there is also the mind to balance the heart's "irascible" nature... ;)

1- http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/9/fallen-off-olympus-obama-stammers/?page=all#pagebreak
According to this article it was difficult to watch him do this... WHY THE HELL IS HE SO ATTACHED TO THAT DAMN TELEPROMPTER?

2- http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/09/04/favoritesonsanddaughters
This critique from Salon.com, not exactly a Conservative's friend, is excruciatingly painful. It makes one wonder what the One must feel when he reads this. Obama is said to read anything and everything about him out there. It's a safe bet he reads Salon! Ouchhh...

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

SARAH PALIN SUPPORTERS; email frenzy BACKFIRING big time it's a media fiasco!

2011-06-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/37462
Great article to explain the nuttery that had taken the left. Dig dirt to silence Sarah Palin, but where's all of obama's emails? Papers? BC's? Hah!

"COOKIE CRUMBS" of President Obama: "We don't know our President"

2011-05-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

This opinion article was written in 2010 June 22. Why I am reproducing it here is because it is a good mirror of where we've been, and where we are now-- with President Obama. Consider this a "cookie trail" of his stay in the White House.

Funny what people said then, is still so today. It is time to conclude; HE IS WHO HE IS, and WHO HE IS WE DON'T REALLY KNOW!
We give it our best shot-- to guess!

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2010/06/22/zuckerman-vs-cohen-what-does-obama-intend/

"CONTENTIONS

Zuckerman vs. Cohen: What Does Obama Intend?
Jennifer Rubin 06.22.2010 - 7:09 AM

Even when critiquing, indeed indicting, Obama’s serial foreign-policy debacles, many critics feel compelled to attribute fine motives to the president. Mort Zuckerman recently wrote:

Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well. But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion, such that there is no person or country that you cannot, by means of logical and moral argument, bring around to your side. He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader. He urges that things “must be done” and “should be done” and that “it is time” to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is “the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy.” Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an “NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches.” In other words, he talks the talk but doesn’t know how to walk the walk. The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty.

Perhaps he’s just being polite or trying to draw into the debate those who are disposed to like Obama. Perhaps it is wishful thinking – we’d certainly like to believe our president is pursuing good. But we’ve now reached a point where not only conservatives are suggesting that it may be unwarranted to grant him the benefit of the doubt. Richard Cohen, not exactly a fiery conservative, writes:

[I]t’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much. …

Foreign policy is the realm where a president comes closest to ruling by diktat. By command decision, the war in Afghanistan has been escalated, yet it seems to lack an urgent moral component. It has an apparent end date even though girls may not yet be able to attend school and the Taliban may rule again. In some respects, I agree — the earlier out of Afghanistan, the better — but if we are to stay even for a while, it has to be for reasons that have to do with principle. Somewhat the same thing applies to China. It’s okay to trade with China. It’s okay to hate it, too.

Pragmatism is fine — as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn’t show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven’t a clue.

So for Cohen, at best the jury is out on Obama’s motives, and at worst the president seems to be hostile to human rights and democracy. Cohen has a lot of support for the latter assumption on the right, certainly.

As for Obama’s intentions, judging from his actions and public speeches, it certainly is more believable that he would prefer dealing with despots than messy popular uprisings, that he is not simpatico or even patient with Israel, and that he is more than willing to throw human rights and democracy under the bus for the sake of conflict avoidance. He intends, the evidence indicates, not to draw lines with Iran or Russia or the UN. He intends, from his public pronouncements we gather, not to risk war over a nuclear-armed Iran.

Is he then “well-intentioned”? It depends what ends you favor. At some point, one must conclude that it is not simply that Obama lacks the ability to express his passion for democracy, his fondness for the special relationship with the Brits, his devotion to human rights, and his commitment to a warm U.S.-Israel relationship; it is that these are not ends he intends to pursue. He intends to do other things — accommodate the UN, ingratiate himself with despotic Muslim rulers, and appease Russia, to name a few. To many of us, that certainly doesn’t qualify as wishing to “do good” or “meaning well.”

Thank you Jennifer Rubin, whoever you are.
Don't sue me I'm just a poor woman!

pt 1: The "CHRISTMAS MASSSACRE" Dec. 23, 1913

2011-04-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

Excerpts from the book Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by Eustace Mullins:
***

The CONSTITUTION was Effectively " Killed" on this Day.

"Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on Dec. 23, 1913.

History proved that on that day, the Constitution ceased to be the governing covenant of the American people, and our liberties were handed over to a small group of international bankers."

"The December 23, 1913 New York Times editorially commented, in contrast to Congressman Lindbergh's criticism of the bill, "The Banking and Currency Bill became better and sounder everytime it was sent from one end of the Capitol to the other. Congress worked under public supervision in making the bill."

By "public supervision", The New York Times apparently meant Paul Warburg, who for several days had maintained a small office in the Capitol building, where he directed the successful pre-Chirstmas campaign to pass the bill, and where Senators and Congressmen came hourly at his bidding to carry out his strategy."

The December 24, 1913 New York Times carried a front page headline "WILSON SIGNS THE BILL!" Below it also in capital letters were two further headlines, "PROSPERITY TO BE FREE" and "WILL HELP EVERY CLASS".

Who could object to any law which provided benifits to everyone?

The PLAYERS IN THE MASSACRE:

*Paul Warburg- the architect of the Federal Reserve

*Col. Edward Mandell House--"Huis" originally a Dutch family, whose father settled in TX where he made a fortune blockade-running during the Civil War, shipping cotton and other contraband to his British connections, including the Rothchilds. The senior House not trusting the volatile TX situation prudently deposited all his profits from blockade-running in gold with **Baring banking house in London."

**"Dope, Inc., identifies Barings as follows: "Barings Brothers, the premier merchant bank of the OPIUM TRADE (capitalization- mine) from 1783 to the present day, also maintained close contact with the Boston families.... The group's leading banker became at the close of the 19th century, The House of Morgan.... which also took it's cut in the Eastern opium traffic.... Morgan's Far Eastern operations were the officially conducted British opium traffic.... Morgan's case deserves special scrutiny from American police and regulatory agencies, for the intimate associations of Morgan Guarantee Trust with the identified leadership of the British dope banks."

*Col. Edward M. House was reffered to by Rabbi Stephen Wise--- as the "unofficial Secretary of State".

In 1911, prior to Wilson's taking office as President, House returned to his home in TX and completed a book called PHILIP DRU---- ADMINISTRATOR.

Ostensibly a "novel"- it was ACTUALLY A DETAILED PLAN FOR THE FUTURE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, "WHICH WOULD ESTABLISH SOCIALISM AS DREAMED BY KARL MARX", according to House.

This "novel" predicted the the enactment of the graduated income tax, excess profits tax, unemployment insurance, social security, and the flexible currency system. --------------- In short it was the blueprint which was later followed by the Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations."

If I were to Run for Something Office----

2011-04-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

Would you vote for me? Yes/ No, and why?

Ya.
Diplomacy: scorch-earth. Have nukes, use it.
My method: take no prisoners, close gitmo.
Motto: if you ain't w/ me get out of my way.
My guiding principles: 1) Ten Commandments, 2) US Constitution. 3) The Golden Rule. Anything else is irrelevant.

Immigration: SEAL the border. No anchor babies. Illegals have no rights. Illegals have no work, no welfare help.
From my bleeding heart:
If you are an illegal, been here for a minimum 5 years, no criminal records, no mooching of ANY kind off welfare, can show documentation of paychecks/residency albeit illegal- I have a pathway to citizenship for you; because I'm kind!
*16 to 28 year olds- men or women- enroll in the Military a minimum 6 (they upped it from 4 I think) years, be honorably discharged. IF you were called to a war front- you earn auto-citizenship before you come back from that deployment.
*28-150yrs. old-- show proof that you were here albeit illegally for a minimum 5 years, no convictions of any crime including misdemeanor, HAVE NOT mooched off social welfare IN ANY WAY, speak English, will embrace the Pledge of Allegiance 100%, have NOT participated at any time, any place, in any rally, huelgas, protests of ANY kind against the United States of America, it's flag, and its people.
*A citizenship test will be given. If you pass all- welcome to the greatest country in the world, and don't you forget it! Now you have a skin in the game of protecting it.
*All the rest- you have 3 months to get out. After which- you're a criminal, you will be hunted by Sheriff Arpaio and his men. You're caught a second time, jail for 20 years mandatory.

Crime/ criminals:
*Murderers get 1 appeal/ 3 years incarceration and you're toast.
*Sex crimes against minors: appropriate sentencing + 100% castration (removal of all protrusions).
*Politicians who violated the People's trust: stripped of job, pensions, free medicals, jail appropriate for the offense.

Abolish the Federal Reserve, strengthen US Central Bank. Back all monies w/ precious metal.

Social Security: learn to save for your old age:
*opt out @100% available for new entrants.
*Age 50 in 2011, you get what's comin' to yah baby. Don't worry.
*17-26: opt out 100% or go half/half. Once opt out- you have no rights to claim anything against the gov. If 50/50 in/out- gov is responsible for only 50%, you are responsible for your 50%.
*27-49: mandatory IRA- fund it no limits..
The phase-out to NO MORE will happen in your lifetime and your compensation is that 'no-limit' thingy.
*No new enrollees in 2031.
*All SS phased out in 2071. GONE.
*Medical/ Medicare- States- handle it.

Social welfare: financials available only for medically recognized 100% physical incapacity, mentally sick to the point of danger to self and others.
Conditions not covered:
-super weight
-alcoholism- it's not a disease
-drug addicts- you'll work as garbage cleaners while detoxing on our dime, strict supervision. No lapses- you do- cold turkey in jail for 9 months.

Military: Strength is Security. Raise pay 10% for all in 2011. 3.5% every 1 year of active duty + bonuses for re-enlistment, hazard pay.

Taxes:
*Individuals: flat tax 10% sales/ consumption tax across the board for consumer goods, excluding milk and bread of any kind. Everything else- if you don’t want to pay tax on it, don’t buy it.
*Businesses/ Corps: 16%. If 55% of workforce in US, tax @11%
*Abolish the IRS, There is no need for them.
*Central Bank will handle all collections/ disbursements.
*All employees of Central Bank: entry level position- 700,000.00/ yr.
*Maximum highest position of President of Central Bank- 6M.
Zero tolerance against the trust of your position and your compensation.
If violations found- loss of job, for every offense in what year- give back year's worth of pay. Jail as usual. Signed oath of adherence means no trial needed. Punishments automatic.
*All Boardmembers and President terms are 5 years.

Education: people have choices- public, or private vouchers.
Do away w/ tenure, go merit-based. Perform or you’re fired.

Unions: right to work.

Foreign Policy/ Wars: draw down in Iraq and Afghan. Bring men home in 5 years of any war w/ boots on the ground. Prop up the regime of that country by having a base a la Germany/ Japan.. and have them pay reparations to US, in any way they can, otherwise we sit.
*Get out of Libya. NOW.
*Prop up Israel, w/ arms to be able to defend itself- then free them to defend themselves. When Israel is engaged in a war- Anyone who wants to help enemies of Israel answers to US. Otherwise US is hands-off Israel wars.
*Strengthen current friendly alliances.
*Kick the UN out of NY. Switzerland will take the HQ.

C'mon argue with me!
xxxxxxx

*Not endorsed by any candidate, not even by the author! Vote at your peril.

CONSERVATIVES.. HOLD STEADY. WE ARE GLADIATORS, WE ARE IN THIS FIGHT TO WIN!

2010-07-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

You are invited!

CONSERVATIVES.. HOLD STEADY. WE ARE GLADIATORS, WE ARE IN THIS FIGHT TO WIN!

Join the debate here.

The latest leaked MEMO to grant amnesty to millions of illegals IS A FIRE OBAMA IS DELIBERATELY SETTING to stoke us (conservatives) into "all hell will break lose" mayhem actions so he can declare Martial Law.

This memo falls under the auspices of Homeland Security.
The week before- another sneaky bill was discovered; H.R. 5741 submitted by Rangel. It states in part: "To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service.." Take a look at the end wording, which I strongly dislike: "...and for other purposes." Really? For what other purposes would that be?

On-the-way-out Rangel is giving this president the tool he needs to "form a civilian national security force" equal to our Military. What is the need for a CIVILAN FORCE equivalent to our Military? The words "national security force" and "martial" are words to be paid attention to. Fear mongering? YOU be the judge.

The WIKILEAKS- how does a low ranking enlisted soldier get clearance to access classified information like these? And the commander-in-chief's reaction is perplexing at best: "...there is nothing in there that is not already out there and we (the admin) had not talked about". In short-- HE IS MINIMIZING THE DAMAGE DONE BY THIS SPY ASSANGE. Now-- comes Adm. Mullen with his terse statement about this spy- this leaked memo and the Assange spy may already have been responsible for soldiers and civilians being killed recently.

Watch closely what happens to Adm. Mullen, a la McChrystal. If he gets censored/ censured by the WH (any of the people who speak for this admin is considered the WH- including Gibbs, Media matters, etc.. a long list you guys already know this) as "fear-mongering" then we know we are on the right track on this: THERE IS AN ORCHESTRATED PLAYBOOK OF PUZZLES the puppet and his manipulators are putting together to GOAD US! One by one, those pieces are being put into place like a vise grip. THE MORE THEY CAN PROVOKE US INTO UNCIVIL ACTION- the closer they are to their end goal.

"**THEY" WILL SQUIZZE SO HARD TO PUSH US, AMERICANS INTO A REVOLT! Once that happens, the final piece of that game puzzle will come down. Under Homeland Security auspices, invoking the solemn duty of this president (all presidents have this duty, but he will say it and act as tho it is ONLY him) to get a hold of, and restore peace for the good of the Republic, that HE MUST TAKE CHARGE, IN FULL TOTAL CONTROL!

The morrow, we will wake up to the news that the Writ of Habeas Corpus had been suspended, and voila! We have Martial Law!

Ladies and gents! YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW EASY A MARTIAL LAW CAN BE DECLARED!
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_mlaw.html
"....in cases of REBELLION..."

I am betting that there will be more outrageous deeds by this admin coming our way. We've all said all along- how many more stuff can we handle? Each and every day there is something new that this admin unleashes on us, we've asked the question so many, many times: how much more, what else?

Call me a cook- there's gotta be a first to everything, that will be. But so what? I do not care..

I see the pattern here, and I cannot remain silent and watch it all come to pass... I love my kids. I'd rather they not go through a thing like this...

Sooo.. I hope you give me feedback on this... tell me how cookie I am! LOL! I'm warning you-- I can take it.

**I was asked in a Facebook thread, "who" I was, and who are "they". Silly that I had to answer and explain the "they".

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Real Freedom!

An Open Letter; To Whom This May Concern: WHY I AM AN AMERICAN

2010-07-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

First part-

I am an American.
I stand proud on my own two feet.
By no sweat of others I pull myself up on my own bootstraps.
I need no coaxing, nor goading by any mob or any well named movie star, to express my thoughts.
I am an independent thinker.
I am an entrepreneur; when jobs are lost, including mine, I form my own company and give myself a job.
I need no racial quota, nor gender quota to further myself, no sir!
Affirmative Action is an insult to me-- because I motivate myself everyday.
I need no "depressed" sickness or disease to be my crutch, because my God is good to me to see to it that He does not disable all my faculties all at once. Maybe some but not all. I believe and rely and trust in Him because He knows best. If He takes my eyes, I will still have my ears. If He took my feet, I will have my arms. If He took my mouth, I will still have my brains to express for me.
Even if He took my life- I will still have my kids to speak for me as I live in them even now.
I fear no hardship, as I know all of them.
I fear no evil, as I have not REALLY seen them and experienced them but just now in my country!
If this is the great evil that will befall my country, I say bring it on, because I have seen myself, my family, my neighbors, my community, my country do their everyday, and no one evil had REALLY stopped them.

No amount of September 11, 2001 will befall this country and kill the American spirit, The American Dream, because those are woven into the founding of this country, and no amount of trying from a terrorist, from a marxist, even a president of this country whose social policies are so misguided, can unravel America- uproot this country from its founding, fundamentally change it to the reverse and erase its history, unless you go back in time, and no one is capable of that. No one, but Jesus Christ. And I have not seen Him come yet!

No one will extinguish the Red, White and Blue of my American Flag because it had been dyed with American Red Blood by Heroes long gone, by heroes who've just gone, and by heroes in the making...
NEVER WILL AMERICA DIE!
NEVER WILL AMERICANS SUCCUMB TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR WAY OF LIFE, THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR COUNTRY, by any tyrant, foreign or domestic.
America will never end. Because America will always have a single man or woman who will stand alone if need be, to proclaim that America lives.

I am fed up at the naysayers saying America is toast, America as we knew it, as founded by the Founding Fathers, is gone. Do not tell me, do not tell me you naysayers, you negative-thinking idiots! Why not speak of the positive so there is a ray of hope? Why not speak positive so there is a way to cure what ails us, why not?? Why the defeatist attitude? Instead, be angry. Anger well-placed is a positive, it is a blunt instrument that cuts. In the expert hands of a Patriot it is a potent weapon!
America will only die if WE surrender it. Speak for yourselves you naysayers, I cannot, will not join you!

From a liberal, a marxist, a communist nay-saying against Americanism is fine, that's what they do; but to hear "my side" yield and give in, and espouse defeatist expressions of "we're finished!", "we are not America anymore", "we're doomed", please stop it. Where the mind is- is your reality. We all live in our minds, we act, we do, according to the dictates in our minds. Feed that mind with positive nutrition and we will make it.

This is my America.
I may not born here, but am shameless in saying I live, I love, I like, I do, I inhale, America. No one will take that away from me.

In my second grade elementary days, my teacher praised me for doing my Arithmetic in English, I composed letters in English, I answered her questions in English. She told me I was good at it. And why not? At that age I told myself, if I want to go to America I must be able to speak in English. And so I learned...

No, I did not know at the time that my dream was called the American Dream, because I was not in America, I was not an American.

So I was the daughter of a carpenter father, and a farmer mother. So we didn't have enough to eat on certain nights which caused my younger brother to develop night blindness as the sun sat. So we didn't have but one dress to go to school with, or one shirt or pant for that matter. So all the 12 kids in the family- from 7 years of age on up- everyone who was present, planted rice on week-ends when not in school and for what it's worth, was able to eat a handful of rice at dinner time. So what that I experienced how it was to be starved to the point of comatose almost- for a blood sugar deficiency, your body shut down your extremities' functions to conserve energy, precious energy to keep your heart beating. So what all of that?
It made me mad that we had all these mouths in the family to feed, I was mad at my father for being inept as a father, a chain smoker who many times told me to go open a running tab at the local store for some cigarettes, a cockfight gambler who sometimes gambled our dinner away, or my bus fare to school, and lost it and I had to walk home 10 kilometers until night. I was mad and disappointed that my mother put up with it for the longest time until he finally died, but so what? Should I have let those stop me? Should I have broken down and cried, and became helpless? Effin NO!

Writing this I find I am still mad, to this day... but so what?

I opened my eyes one morning and that was all I was able to move. I wanted to get up but I couldn't. It was a school day, I was going to be late. I couldn't move my arms, my legs. I felt sick to my stomach, it felt like my innards were dissolving painfully. I felt nauseous but I couldn't even move let alone throw up. I wanted to cry but there were no tears, there was no voice that came out. All I heard myself do whine faintly.

My sister came and tried to help me up but I was a vegetable in her arm. She knew right away what was the matter. I missed dinner that night. I was so tired I felt asleep before dinner could be served, and they decided not to wake me. My family however left my portion for me. My sister boiled the handful of rice and gave me a warm soup of it. She had to pour it into my mouth because I couldn't do it myself. After what I thought was eternity, I began to feel I was going to be ok. After lying down for a few more minutes I tried to get up and was happy that I could. I made my way to the river to get cleaned up for school. It was already around 9:00 a.m. I was so late!

Being this late, I needed a note from my mother, an "excuse slip", an explanation as to why I was late. She hurriedly wrote a note and sent me to school. I gave the note to Mrs. Ayo, my second grade teacher. She read it and gave it back to me and told me to sit down in my desk and catch up with the class. I did.

On the way home for lunch, I took out the note, curious to read it and see what my mother wrote in it. She told my teacher that I felt sick that morning. She was right. It was a brief note and that was all she stated. But she was only half right...

I've thought many days since getting here to America, of that day, and wondered in my mind why she didn't mention why I was "sick". Was she ashamed of the "why?" I decided, "yes". Why I wanted that verified in my mind, to this day I do not know.

The above is but a snippet on my second grade elementary. And so what that the above is only but a snippet, I dared dream.
So what of the hardships, so what? I wouldn't, I couldn't let that defeat me. I looked around, and although young enough, I remembered asking myself, is this really all there is?" And I answered, "No. Because there's gotta be more. This cannot be the whole world."
"Beyond that horizon is another land. There's people there. I will go there someday. I do not like this. I do not like being hungry, I do not like planting rice in mud all day, I do not like...."

And so the plan was made, someday.... I will...

I don't know when my American Dream started, it felt like it had always been there. I dreamed, and I dreamed big, for it would take Heavenly intervention for me to figure out a way out. Where would I find the money I would need? I did not know what, when, where. All I knew was I was going to get out. I have had enough. The Impossible Dream, altho at the time I really did not know it was impossible.

Blessed be the child I guess. In its innocence, nothing is impossible.
Who would want to bother with details of execution?

During summers when the air got thick and hot, I had found myself a favorite spot by the river cliff, close to our tiny house. Under the Pili nut tree I sat for countless hours, thinking. Thinking. Daydreaming in the brights of summer sunlight, with open eyes... how one day, one day, I will find myself thinking of the day when I was just dreaming, when I was only dreaming, and there I will be, in reality. It is no longer a dream.

All of those negatives, so what? I was angry. I placed and used my anger well...

I still, and often, do go back in my mind to that day when I told myself, "someday, you would look back to this day..."

And here I find myself. I am. Here.

Yes!

Part 2 to be continued...

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

Welcome, Immigrant! to your Rights, and to your Responsibilities

2010-04-28T14:28:00.001-07:00

See me on Facebook

"...what would you do w/ 12M illegals..."
"Actually Stanley that is a very valid and reasonable question and it deserves an answer.."

IF you're an illegal and you want to stay here: observe:

THERE SHALL BE 3 LISTS IN WHICH TO CLASSIFY SUBJECTS FOR THE PURPOSES OF IMMIGRATION LAW ENFORCEMENT;

3. NO-ENTRY LIST:
-convicted criminals, of any crime higher than a misdemeanor

2. WAIT LIST:
-people who are of no criminal records who want to come in for the first time, or are already in, illegally, and want to stay in this country legally;

1. FAST TRACK CITIZENSHIP:
-people who go into the Military Service to serve at least 4 years, and who are slotted to be HONORABLY DISCHARGED after their Military Service.

________________

Class 1- Fast Track Citizenship

A- between the age of 17 and 28 man or woman, enroll in the Military for a least a 4-year term. In 2 years if you are deployed in the field of battle- you earn citizenship at that time. You finish your Military service a citizen.

-there were a few dozen soldiers from different countries who became US Citizens in the war zones of Iraq.

____________________

Class 2- Wait List

A- No anchor babies-- no automatic granting of citizenship to babies born here of illegals. If both parents are illegal- the man goes back to where he came from, file the necessary paperwork to get in line, as all others have to. The mother of the baby can stay until said baby is 1 year old. At 1 year of age- grant that baby a permanent residency, PROVIDED: the mother does not become a burden to the taxpayers, in other-speak-- does not go on the public dole within that 1 year. Said baby will be illegible for citizenship in 4 years, causing the mother to be eligible also, PROVIDED: the mother in those 4 years does not at any given time, go on the public dole, and is not guilty of a crime higher than a misdemeanor. If the father wishes also to come and join the family, he must marry the mother within 3 months of being in the country or he is deported without a chance at entry and citizenship until 10 years had passed. The father must stay married to the mother at least 10 years, and must provide for his family, not causing the child and the mother to be on the public dole. Prior to being citizens, the mother by virtue of the child's eligibility, and the father by virtue of marriage to the mother as a US citizen, must not be convicted of any crimes higher than a misdemeanor.

B- any ages in-between, and any circumstances- if you have been here illegally for 5 years, had shown not to be a burden, meaning had not partaken in any social welfare services courtesy of the tax payers of this country, you may:

***stay in-country while you process your paperwork

***get in line by submitting proofs of your presence here in the USA those 5 years, such as:

**paperwork required is a statement of creditworthiness commonly know as a credit report, from any one of the 3 credit bureaus,

**a list of verifiable addresses within those 5 years, of your residence/ whereabouts, etc. complete with addresses and phone numbers to people who can verify your presence. The State may ask that you submit this paperwork in notarized form,

**a sworn statement, with two US citizens as witnesses- they may include family members, or government officials, or clergy, or neighbor, that: you promise to abide by the constitution of this country, that you will not be a burden to society as a whole, and that you shall seek economic improvement of yourself, for yourself and your family- including learning a modicum English language. All 3 requirements must be submitted with no exceptions.

C- must pay the exact dues charged by authorities for these kinds of paperwork for each and every member of your family who qualify;

D- not be convicted of any crimes higher than a misdemeanor

E- an accounting of ALL your material possessions acquired in this country, including but not limited to: houses- which are defined as containing a lavatory, refrigerator, and a cooking stove; guns, motor vehicles/ bikes, lawn mowers of any kind, couches and other furniture costing more than $300.00, all jewelery with accumulated cost of more than $300.00;

F-present all pay stubs, or proof of employment for the last 5 years.

G- if you've been present in this country for less than 5 years, you will be REQUIRED BY LAW to get out of the US border, and submit your paperwork and wait outside of US borders.

H- you will not have participated, in any verifiable manner; demonstrations, sit-ins, "huelgas", protests, against the country of the United States, it's Flag, or it's People. Such actions are deemed subversive by any foreign national who is not subject to the rights accorded a US citizen, on US territory where an illegal entry constitutes "intent to harm" the United States, it's sovereign States, and it's People.

I- lastly- you must demonstrate, or if not, submit a paperwork of having taken courses in US citizenship, before a US citizenship be accorded you with full rights and honors befitting the sacrifices of the Founders of this Great Land.

*****end of requirements*****

BRING YOUR AMERICAN DREAM WITH YOU, AND WELCOME TO YOUR FUTURE!

Your future of rights and privileges, to work as hard as you can, to realize your own dream, to keep what you worked so hard for- to better yourself therefore your family and country. It is not a right, but a privilege to be accepted into a country who never colonized another country and subverted it's citizens to punishing dues, as in communism. Welcome to a country whose people's wishes and dreams are realized and granted by the Almighty Father- as He is our guide and tutor of what is right and what is wrong. Welcome to a neighborhood where you can sleep soundly at night knowing full well that the police are out there to protect you as citizens and not as instruments of government to oppress you. Welcome to a night of sleep where should there be any crimes committed against your household violating your sanctity of privacy, that the law is on your side. Welcome to a country whose officers and officials can be petitioned for you to redress your grievances, you the sole individual with full rights to petition your government through self-representation if you will, if not- a court-appointed officer will help you. Welcome to this country to where you can not, and should not, be afraid to speak out in fear that authorities might hear you and punish you. Welcome to the freedom to move about, to live in, to go anywhere, to do anything, as long as you do not violate any other's rights for your own self-interest. You're welcome to dream big for your sons and daughters to grow up and live a life better than yours. Welcome to the freedom to worship your God, as we all have the freedom to worship our God. Welcome to the limitless possibilities of technology, of the internet, to bring man to space, because people here in this God's United States are free to dream, dream big, and do big things, and do away with the word, "impossible".

WELCOME TO ALL YOUR POSSIBILITIES!

Oh yes, it is the possibilities, not the impossibility. For you must know- this country stayed free because freedom fighters ahead of you fought, fought bravely, and died, so that you- the immigrant, can come to this bright shining city, and hoist upon it your flag of possibilities, your flag of dreams realized.

Oh yes- should I ever forget to remind you- freedom is not free. Your freedom as an immigrant, now a proud citizen, of the greatest country on earth, is required to pay your dues. Dues in the form of care-taking of this country so that it does not fall to it's enemies, foreign and domestic, who are hell-bent on it's destruction. Destruction because this country sets forth the best, God-blessed example of how a country should be: WELCOMING OF THOSE IMMIGRANTS WHO ARE TIRED OF THE JOURNEY, and who finally have found a home.

Amen.

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Freedom!

The American Dream- What is "IT"?

2010-04-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

See me on Facebook

This piece is a recent posting I did on FB in reply to someone's post:

The American Dream is BOUGHT AND PAID FOR first BEFORE IT BECOMES REALITY!!!!

The American Dream is NEVER EVER going to be FREE. Those who think that, don't have an American Dream- they have an eye towards what others have and are devising a plan on how they can get their hands on a part of it.

It is an open secret to anyone who has THE true dream-- that to realize it you never look to anyone. You look inwards, you suck it up, you pray a lot for God's guidance to show you the right way-- then you plan-- then you execute that plan.

At times you don't have a firm plan, not even a firm grip on how to execute-but you MUST HAVE a FIRM RESOLVE based on God's guidance, to go forth and seek out your dream.The American Dream has to be nourished with fervor, sweat, tears, and a firm belief in the POSSIBLE. Do away with the word "impossible" from your mental dictionary.

The American Dream is nurtured and grown by inhaling it and living it, 24hours a day. You act it out, as if you already possess it.

The American Dream is nothing but your LIFE.

The American Dream is what picks you up when you fall and bloody your nose.

The American Dream is what you hold on to for strength when you tell your small children to go buy only a 1/2 gallon of milk and nothing else.

The American Dream is what keeps you awake at 4:00 a.m. working and listen to your kids sleep content and happy.

The American Dream is what keeps you up, and fighting for Life, not crumbling to the ground in self pity and crying. Instead your adversity makes you stronger.

The American Dream is what keeps you fighting to keep America FREE. There are other people, other kids, in other countries, who dream the American Dream. And if we are to keep strong, and keep freedom, and the diversity that kept this country strong- we must keep America Free. It is our solemn duty to the next generation ladies and gentlemen, to our kids, to this country remaining the free bastion and repository of all those dreams.....

WHAT WOULD I BE TODAY IF NOT DEAD OR IN THE GUTTER WITHOUT MY AMERICAN DREAM. <---THIS ladies and gentlemen is worth dying for to me.

Parents out there- norture in your kids The American Dream, because in the end IT IS what will save us all!!!!

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Real Freedom!

WHICH of these words do Facebook ban? WHY? Internet censorship on now?

2010-01-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

See me on Facebook

I tried to post this whole paragraph on my Wall on Facebook. I can't. The error messages said "this post contains blocked content"... so my question is: IS INTERNET CENSORSHIP HERE??? Do tell me what words you think are "blocked" or should be blocked?

"HOW THE MILITARY IS BEING USED, BY OBAMA IN A SHAMELESS PROP TO BOOST HIS SAGGING APPROVAL RATINGS!!!
1- do you know why the Defense WILL NOT BE FROZEN??? Ohh- you thought it was because we are at war--and soldiers need our financial support, eh? That's what you think!! Since when did this CIC think about his Troops??

2- the IRS is being used as a tool to keep track of YOU for obamacare purposes--- the taxpayer-- to evaluate whether a) you are to get subsidy, or not, or tax increase, or not, etc.

3- from Military.com- a soldier was special invitee at SOTU!!! Great, right???? But why do I think the Military is being used again as props??? Read the following article from IRS to see if I'm wrong in saying that the Military is being used, in every which way, IF and only when, the result is a net "good", or for the advancement of the obamagenda. What is the IRS to do with all of these?
****A clue: If you are POTUS, and you have an unpopular bill you want to pass- you piggy-back it on a Military Spending Bill. That'll do it.

"Military.com Troops up Front for State of the Union, Sgt. gets special invite to speech: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fow.ly%2F111vC&h=c4009317a046992d8be33440cefd5d12 ."

-------------*

Did anyone know about these subsidies??? Obamacare marches on! Inside parenthesis are my comments.

From the IRS:
Inside This Issue

COBRA Subsidy Eligibility Period Extended Through February; 15-Months Subsidy Now Available to Those Who Qualify

WASHINGTON — Workers who lose their jobs during January and February may qualify for a 65-percent subsidy on their COBRA health insurance premiums, and these newly-eligible individuals, along with those already receiving the subsidy, can now receive it for up to 15 months, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the COBRA subsidy eligibility period was originally scheduled to expire at the end of 2009, and eligible individuals only qualified for the subsidy for nine months. But the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, enacted on Dec. 19, extended the eligibility period and the maximum duration of COBRA premium assistance.

As a result, workers who are involuntarily terminated from employment between Sept. 1, 2008, and Feb. 28, 2010, may be eligible for a 65-percent subsidy of their COBRA premiums for a period of up to 15 months. Involuntarily terminated employees who meet certain other requirements, and certain family members of those individuals, are referred to as “assistance-eligible individuals.” (Go Barack, go! Health care for every one!)

Employers must provide COBRA coverage to assistance-eligible individuals who pay 35 percent of the COBRA premium. Employers are reimbursed for the other 65 percent by claiming a credit for the subsidy on their payroll tax returns: Form 941, Employers QUARTERLY Federal Tax Return, Form 944, Employer’s ANNUAL Federal Tax Return, or Form 943, Employer’s Annual Federal Tax Return for Agricultural Employees.(Code word for Illega Aliens!) Employers must maintain supporting documentation for the claimed credit.

The administrator of a group health plan or other entity must notify certain assistance-eligible individuals of the extension by Feb. 17, 2010. For assistance-eligible individuals whose nine months of subsidy had already ended, the new law also provides an extended period for the retroactive payment of their 35 percent share during a transition period.

There is much more information about the COBRA subsidy, including questions and answers for employers, and for employees or former employees, on the COBRA pages of IRS.gov.

WHAT HAS THE IRS, AND DEFENSE SPENDING, TO DO WITH BO HEALTHCARE??

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Real Freedom!

Court Date Jan. 26, Pray for Judge Carter (Obama Illigibility Trial)

2010-01-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

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I received this email from my daughter, forwarded to her by someone. I have no one in my email contact to forward this to, so I'm posting it for all of you here. Read the contents and you be the judge. What do you think?? The contents of the email is as follows:

"We need to send this to everyone we know, to pray for protection and wisdom for this Federal Judge, who is planning on January 26, 2010, to force obama to prove his birthplace, and eligibility to be the president.

I suspect that this judge will soon lose his federal judgeship before the 26th of Jan!! Or get hit by a bus!!! Watch and pray that he survives til then!!

Please Pray For Him

Federal Judge Carter sets Trial Date for Obama ' s Eligibility!

The expedited trial has been set for Jan. 26, 2010!

Many concerned veterans and citizens attended the hearing in Federal Court in Santa Ana in the lawsuit against Barack Obama to determine his eligibility to be President and Commander in Chief. About 150 people showed up, almost all in support of the lawsuit to demand that Obama release his birth certificate and other records that he has hidden from the American people.

Judge David Carter refused to hear Obama ' s request for dismissal. He indicated there was almost no chance that this case would be dismissed. Obama is arguing this lawsuit was filed in the wrong court if you can believe that. Obama would prefer a "kangaroo court" instead of a Federal court! Assuming Judge Carter denies Obama ' s motion for dismissal, he will likely then order expedited discovery which will force Obama to release his birth certificate in a timely manner (if he has one).

The judge, WHO IS A FORMER U.S. MARINE, repeated several times that this is A VERY SERIOUS CASE which must be resolved quickly so that the troops know that their Commander in Chief is eligible to hold that position and issue lawful orders to our military in this time of war. He basically said OBAMA MUST PROVE HIS ELIGIBILITY to the court! He said Americans deserve to know the truth about their President!

The two U.S. Attorneys representing Barack Obama tried everything they could to sway the judge that this case was frivolous, but Carter would have none of it and cut them off several times. Obama ' s attorneys left the courtroom after about the 90 minute hearing looking defeated and nervous.

Great day in America for the U.S. Constitution! The truth about Barack Obama ' s eligibility will be known fairly soon - Judge Carter practically guaranteed it!

Video from the press conference after the hearing coming soon. Congratulations to plaintiffs attorney Dr. Orly Taitz! She did a great job and won some huge victories. She was fearless!

This needs to be forwarded to everyone you know...."
***end of email.

***Update on this case: now filed in the District of Columbia. Judge Carter did not decide to dismiss Taitz' suit- instead ruled it be filed in the correct jurisdiction which is WA DC.

See: http://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/taitz-v-obama-update-january-28-2010-us-district-court-washington-dc-summons-issued-case-110-cv-00151-rcl/

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Real Freedom!

An Argument FOR Sarah Palin

2010-01-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

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A reply to a Romney troll from the blog C4P, this comment also published on FB:

Here is my dilemma- I see your point Steven Rxxxx, about "wide appeals aka Romney", or about a national seat FIRST aka VP to a winning Pres. candidate, to put meat behind "experience, and again, appeal"...

On the other hand- she launched a nation-wide tour for her book, and needless to say she needs to stay on that trail to keep it hot, and not squander the momentum generated by her book. By 2016 all of these will be cold, forgotten. She will need to do or say a something very special, like the book, or like the 'death panel', all the while from here until 2016 to keep that interest and momentum going, and in politics that is a long long time...

THAT momentum is happening now- add to it the overriding dislike of the current boy prez. and you could say, (or I say) this IS Sarah's time! and I disagree that she will take another VP position. Once burned-- ok, but twice? That would be beyond stupid for me.

The Tea Party is clamoring for something to be done now- 2010 is way too long for them, 2012 is way out there, and 2016 is excruciating. I am one of those thinking 2012 is way out there- we need to do something now, and these coalition of Tea Party groups are looking at her, she won't answer that call by being a VP to anyone. It's her at the top of the ticket or she's better off passing on it.

Your view of Romney as "the electable one" is skewed to me- WHERE IN THE HELL IS ROMNEY RIGHT NOW?? Cat bit his tongue? Is this the time to be silent? To keep your thoughts to yourself because it might haunt you later on? Or that, like McCain, you are staying above it all, being presidential? No no no.

Sarah Palin voters will want a fight. A "bloody" fight in the sense of rough and tumble, no more holding back. We got a glimpse of Obama and the Terrorist but there was no follow-up on it in the campaign. That was frustrating. Holding back = 2008. Romney is such "pretty boy floyd" politics as usual: political calculations. You know darn well, that political calculations = politics as usual. He is not "one of us". Perception is almost everything right now.

THESE TIMES is not the time for that. Sorry Steven, I don't like your man. Simply because I don't see a "dirty" fighter in him. A dirty fighter is one who is not afraid to go out there sweat blood and tears, and slug it out toe to toe, in every street corner, argue point by point, tit for tat. A true leader is born in this way, baptism by fire, mettle mean something. Supporters respect a fighter who can go out there with them rather than a pretty boy who employs his henchmen to do the dirty.

And yes, Sarah Palin can be elected because she has the "fight" in her. That's why I like her, she's got more cajones than any Repub I see out there! That's why it's necessary that she do it this time, not 2016. Also, don't forget, she can stack up favors by helping win the Senate and House a few months from now.

Run on convictions not political calculations. Just in case you don't know yet- we do not want Wash DC insiders, we want to write our own ways and our own rules. GO ROGUE!

Entrepreneurism is the Road to Real Freedom!

I Thank God for my Blessings This Christmas Day..

2009-12-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

-Son is home for Christmas from Navy Corps School
-got to do Christmas and New Year Tradition all at the same time
-Daughter's well and healthy, remains her brother's best friend and confidant, she knows more than I do because her brother tells her all-- which is fantastic!
-both kids have no boyfriend/girlfriend, no problems
-I can observe my son grow from boy to man, and right now at 18, when he's with me he is happy to be my boy. Daughter's happy to be my girl.

THAT is all I want for Christmas. Everything else is secondary.

As part of the tradition I started with them, we went to San Diego for our New Year Traditional Trip.

The Tradition:
Go somewhere drivable, someplace we've never been to where there's fireworks to greet the New Year.
Needless to say, the place is visited only once in our lifetime, on New Year's Eve.

The Origins:
Growing up dirt poor, my Mother had this "superstition" that if you greeted the New Year with "plenty" you will have adequate sustenance the whole year. If you wore a new dress, throughout the new year you will/might buy a new dress or two or just the possibility of having a new one (!) You had to be good the whole day and you'll be good boys and girls all year.
On New Year's Eve we cooked and ate food the amounts of which we'd never eaten at anytime in the year. It's like a feast of plenty for one day. This was the time we got to eat fried chicken or any meat at all. That chicken was fattened up all year. If we're lucky we will have 2 of them. Lucky too if we will have enough coconut oil to fry them in. Between 12 kids that's a lot of mouths for two chicken if we can muster two. For sweets we had rice cakes and cassava cakes. We might also have a full loaf of white bread, and hot cocoa! Oh my! The ever-present, constant, everyday breakfast item of boiled sweet potato was dissed at this time. THAT was also a blessing! We looked forward to this part of the year. Of course, the remaining 364 days were a famine. And that is not exaggeration either.

As I raised my kids I had found a good fit in our lives for this "tradition" in the way our lives had evolved.

The History:
Their father and I divorced in 1998. Prior to the divorce, I was the caretaker of the kids. "Caretaker" means that 100% of the kids' needs, from day of conception to when I lost them in a court decision when they were 11 3/4 and 13 3/4 years old, was mine.
Medical insurance was under my job. When I lost the job I had to hustle to self-employment so I could provide; the Kaiser medical premium, the formula and later- food, clothing, school lunch, the car to transport them, the insurance for that car, half of the mortgage payment, even the yearly birthday cake, even the carpet cleaning before the birthdays were all my expense. We were not allowed to invite anyone in the house unless the carpets were cleaned.

No problem. I just needed to work extra hard.

As the caretaker of the kids, I mustered a living and being home everyday for them. I worked from home to be able to greet them at the door, to know right away if there were any problems at school, getting the hugs and kisses when they came in on a good day. Being "there" when they came home was and is my most treasured accomplishment. There is no amount of money I can equate it with. In that regard, I thought myself a millionaire many times over!

For THAT alone, I thanked God everyday for constantly watching over me and providing me with the opportunities even when times looked bleak. You just really have to sharpen your homing skills to recognize when an opportunity was being presented to you. I prayed everyday that I don't get sick and that He see me through to at least a point when the kids would be grown and able to fend for themselves.

After the divorce I went into overdrive on "making it up to the kids". I could never accept the thought that because my kids' parents had messed up, the kids would have to do without. The kids should never suffer the results of grown ups' stupidity and loss of control over their adult lives. The hell with the adults, the kids need to be taken cared of. They need to be protected, and saved from austerity if at all possible, at all costs. "At all costs", and that was what I did.

Being self-employed, "at all costs" was very costly! You can't get sick because your customers to whom you're reliant on income, doesn't care. You have a timetable to meet and that's that. When you're in business for yourself you better know all these, and your gut better be made of steel. No time for crying, no time for dramatics, no breaking apart-- just hard steely resolve to take whatever comes. When you hit a snag you can't dillydally, you can't linger and feel sorry for yourself. Feeling sorry for yourself is a luxury you can't afford therefore shouldn't even be considered. You put one foot forward and you plug on. Business is hard cold logic and reality. If you don't know this- you don't belong.

Thank God I didn't get sick. I did however, got into a car accident. Ten days I had to stay in Los Angeles, unable to drive myself home to the kids two hours away. After the 10 days of trying to recuperate as fast to be able to drive home, came the order from good ole Doc to keep off using my arms and shoulders to lift heavy items for a month, and basically stay off the wheels. No driving if at all possible. Surely the good Doc was kidding!

My job called for delivering the massive amounts of men's suits tailoring I did for JC Penney, and bridal dresses, formals and bridesmaids dresses from Gottschalks. I picked up and delivered three times a week, at 5:00 pm. No fail. If I was late, customers bitched, and management bitched at me. I was determined to never let that happen after once or twice of experience, so I had to be on the ball. I slept 1-2 hours a day. I recovered on week-ends when I can sleep a bit longer. I made it my schedule to not work on week-ends so the kids and I can go out and do something.

I made pretty money so I scheduled for us to go on one-week increments of vacation twice or thrice a year.
One week had to be during the Summer, as close to the kids' birthdays as possible; one in July, one in August. They didn't mind their birthdays being celebrated together, and more times than not- on off days, NOT on their exact birth dates. This was our annual Summer Trip. One of those one-week vacations was on my birth date which is in March. So then we had our Spring vacation. This part by the way was not observed religiously as we did our Summer Trip! (;(

For Christmas- the kids' father and his family celebrated on the exact dates because everyone lived close by. In this way the kids had the experience of a "traditional Christmas". That was fine by me. In fact, I was thankful that the kids had the experience of being around 'family' on this date. I didn't have family here in America.
For sure, part-time father was better than no father at all. So it went, it became then that on Christmas the kids were/are with their father's family. They are there at this moment.

When the kids came home, they were already all Christmas'd out- so what else "festivity" can I have with them?

On several occasions in the past, I found myself spending New Year's Eve and day alone. This did not change when the kids came. There was always some golf tournament to play out of town on New Year's day, some fishing with buddies out of state, or just plain partying because... just because... it's New year's day.

On one of these "just the kids and Mom" on New Year's Eve, I finally realized I didn't want to see the kids cooped up at home, waiting, maybe wondering, although they never said it, where their father was. I almost choked on the sparkling cider the kids and I toasted the New Year with one time, realizing how sad our situation was: at any given time I appear at the door leaving for somewhere, it's always just the kids and me. I took pictures of the kids for the holidays to mark the passing of time, and it's always just the three of us. Official Christmas portraits or birthdays never had a Dad in it, nor a Mom for that matter, until I bought a camera with a timer, set the timer up and scurried in front of it to join the kids already in place. Of course we had some very interesting pictures that way, and the kids thought that was fun! I guess that's all that mattered.

I swore quietly while choking back a lump in my throat, that the next New Year, the kids and I will be someplace where there's a throng of people; where all these people were happy, carousing, partying, making noise, enjoying the sights, the lights, the food, the festive atmosphere, each other, all together, where even the strangers smiled at you and said Merry Christmas, or Happy New Year.

And so it began. Some place to go. This part was probably more for me, to "escape" the sadness I felt for my kids; more than to take them somewhere special. Nevertheless, it all melted down into one single purpose: to have our own merrymaking- Kids and Mom.

Driving those long roads all those years, sometimes in the blackness of night starting off late after I've satisfied my job obligations, knowing the kids were/are with me, seeing them huddled in their warm blankets asleep, even now, gave me some peace, some proprietary feeling that yes, I am their Mom, I will take care of them. Nothing and no one will deny them anything because I'm there. I was in control of our lives. I've learned to drive really good and safe, because I have the kids on board. I did good considering I didn't know how to drive when I got to this country. I promised them in my quiet--that I will always deliver them, I will get them there safely no matter what-- wherever it was we were going. There were some harrowing moments, like the thick fog on early mornings around the mountains of Hwy 41. As you descend from the mountains into the coast and met by this thick fog monster, you didn't see an inch in front of you. I turned cold allover and panicky inside realizing that one foot off the road and we plunge into the abyss of deep mountain or sea, along the ridges of the Hearst properties. It was around 11:00 a.m. and I had thought that the fog would have dissipated by then. It surprised the heck out of me. I couldn't stop in fear of someone ramming me, I couldn't pull over because I knew we were on a cliff road, so I crept inch by inch listening and very accutely tuned to the feel of wheels on solid pavement instead of gravel. When you can't see, you develop a secret heightened sense. But I've passed it, kids remained asleep. When we get to our destination we will have our "plenty", we will have a blast. These are all thoughts that ran in my head as I drove.

I felt empowered, by the freedom to do as I please, by the fact that I can drive to anywhere, that I am no longer bound by a fear of driving on the freeway. By force of necessity, I conquered that fear. I told myself that if I want to be independent I had to learn and I had to brave. "Brave" I did. That I had a vehicle (an SUV always because it was safer for the kids just in case..) was a license to freedom, I felt.

Our first choice- Las Vegas.
Then the rumored threat of a terrorist attack on the Strip elevated to "high" the safety warning in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve 2001...

P.S.
Today, Christmas 2009, I made a sweet potato pecan caramel bake!

On this Pearl Harbor Day...a THANK YOU to All WW11 Veterans

2009-12-07T10:53:00.000-08:00

The transfer of Guardianship from the WW11 generation to the New Generation of Warriors..

I have posted this Note on Facebook. One of the respondents who have a family member who was in WW11. That sparked an idea to post it here.

"Hello everybody in this thread.
I just joined this minute and saw this thread right away..

To you and your family members who are WW11 Vets- I express my never-ending thanks to them for their sacrifice. I am an immigrant who came to this country because I have the American Dream. And your family members provided me with that opportunity of a Free America so that I may flourish and realize my Dream, and raise my kids in the land of the free.

The Vietnam War (I didn't know what it was then- we didn't have radios or newspapers) awoke me to America... as a little girl in elem. school we used to have our classes interrupted by the sound of jets flying. We would run outside and look up. I saw awesome sights of jets flying in a diamond formation, three at a time, while one group was directly overhead, one group would appear on the ascent on the horizon, while the first group went on the descent on the opposite side. And this would go for hours.

As a child I never thought what this was all about- we just 'knew' there was a war going on somewhere, that these are war planes, but what stuck in my mind was the beauty, the grace of the formations and the contrails! I thought- what kinds of people can do this perfection? Who can fly like this? Who can do this? I knew it was America... What people, I thought. And I wanted to go there one day- to meet these people.

Well, yes I did. Now of course as a grown up... I cannot express in words my love for the Greatest Generation, and the sadness in the thought that they are diminishing in number. I see this when I go to the Post for their Friday dinners-- I wish I could do something for them, I owe them so much. I wish they could live forever- to guide us on our journeys as a country and a people.

Immigrants like me owe your families a lot! We owe them our freedom, our way of life here in the US, our opportunities in business, EVERYTHING THAT IS OUR LIFE! Because they kept America the land we dreamed about. Please say thank you for me and my kids to your family members!

In return- I worked hard to support my kids. Even when things are tight we've managed to never go on the public dole. I paid my student loan in full without being late a single time. Now my daughter is in college, steeped in conservatism, my son is in Navy Corps School and he is my hero. It is bittersweet as a Mother to see your son go to war- but it must be done. Although he is still in school, him and I talk about being called on this latest troop deployment. Son knows what he is doing- and I as the Mom knows why, and altho worried sick, I put myself in the shoes of the Mothers of those young people who liberated Europe, who fought the Japanese in Bataan and Corregidor, then it steels me...

PLEASE TAKE CARE OF THEM FOR US. THEY ARE A PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS GEM, A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH THAT HAS NO EQUAL.
THANK YOU FROM THE DEEPEST PARTS OF OUR HEARTS!"

If you could, please read this note to them. Thank you.

Myrna

There are Things I like to Read, There are Things That Scare Me...

2009-12-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

...when I read stuff like this article. How far would he take his ambitions?? The thought of what might the answer be to that question is one of those things that scare the living daylights out of me!!

Obama's Nobel Prize will Exacerbate His Narcissistic Tendencies

Credit to Global Politician- http://www.globalpolitician.com/25937-obama-nobel-narcissism-hubris
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 10/9/2009

Within a single year, Barrack Obama had been elected to the Presidency of the United States and had won the Nobel Peace Prize. While the merits of the first achievement are debatable, there is a consensus, even among his most ardent supporters, fans, and acolytes that he absolutely does not deserve the second honor.

What happens to a narcissist (Obama) whose grandiose delusions suddenly come true? What are the psychological effects on a narcissist when his fantasies of success and perfection materialize, even though his real-life accomplishments do not warrant such a turn of events and are wildly incommensurate with the adulatory feedback he keeps getting?

I. The Narcissist's Delusions of Grandeur

A delusion is "a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary". Delusion is, therefore, a belief, idea, or conviction firmly held despite abundant information to the contrary. The partial or complete loss of reality test is the first indication of a psychotic state or episode. Beliefs, ideas, or convictions shared by other people, members of the same collective, are not, strictly speaking, delusions, although they may be hallmarks of shared psychosis.

There are many types of delusions. The narcissist typically holds grandiose-magical convictions that he is important, omnipotent, omniscient, irresistibly charming, brilliant, perfect, possessed of occult powers, deserving of special treatment (entitlement), or a historic figure of cosmic-messianic significance.

II. The Narcissist's Reaction to Success: The Grandiosity Bubble

A Grandiosity Bubble is an imagined, self-aggrandizing narrative involving the narcissist and elements from his real life: people around him, places he frequents, or conversations he is having. The narcissist weaves a story incorporating these facts, inflating them in the process and endowing them with bogus internal meaning and consistency. In other words: he confabulates - but, this time, his confabulation is loosely based on reality.

In the process, the narcissist re-invents himself and his life to fit the new-fangled tale. He re-casts himself in newly adopted roles. He suddenly fancies himself an actor, a guru, a political activist, an entrepreneur, or an irresistible hunk. He modifies his behaviour to conform to these new functions. He gradually morphs into the fabricated character and "becomes" the fictitious protagonist he has created.

All the mechanisms of pathological narcissism are at work during the bubble phase. The narcissist idealizes the situation, the other "actors", and the environment. He tries to control and manipulate his milieu into buttressing his false notions and perceptions. Faced with an inevitable Grandiosity Gap (the abyss between his fantasies and reality), he becomes disillusioned and bitter and devalues and discards the people, places, and circumstances involved in the bubble.

III. When Reality Intrudes: The Grandiosity Gap and the Grandiosity Hangover

The grandiose fantasies of the narcissist inevitably and invariably clash with his drab, routine, and mundane reality. We call this constant dissonance the Grandiosity Gap. Sometimes the gap is so yawning that even the narcissist - however dimly - recognizes its existence. Still, this insight into his real situation fails to alter his behaviour. The narcissist knows that his grandiose fantasies are incommensurate with his accomplishments, knowledge, status, actual wealth (or lack thereof), physical constitution, or sex appeal - yet, he keeps behaving as though this were untrue (i.e., keeps denying reality's intrusions).

The situation is further exacerbated by periods of relative success in the narcissist's past. Has-been and also-ran narcissists suffer from a Grandiosity Hangover. They may have once been rich, famous, powerful, brilliant, or sexually irresistible - but they no longer are. Still, they continue to behave as though little has changed.

The Grandiosity Hangover and the Grandiosity Gap are the two major vulnerabilities of the narcissist. By exploiting them, the narcissist can be effortlessly manipulated. This is especially true when the narcissist is confronted with authority, finds himself in an inferior position, or when his Narcissistic Supply (admiration, adulation, affirmation, or any form of attention) is deficient or uncertain.

IV. The Roller-Coaster Narcissist

The narcissist cathexes (emotionally invests) with grandiosity everything he owns or does: his nearest and dearest, his work, his environment. But, as time passes, this pathologically intense aura fades. The narcissist finds fault with things and people he had first thought impeccable. He energetically berates and denigrates that which he equally zealously exulted and praised only a short while before.

This inexorable and (to the outside world) disconcerting roller-coaster is known as the "Idealization-Devaluation Cycle". It involves serious cognitive and emotional deficits and a formidable series of triggered defence mechanisms.

The Cycle starts with the narcissist's hunger for Narcissistic Supply: the panoply of reactions to the narcissist's False Self (his feigned facade of omnipotence and omniscience). The narcissist uses these inputs to regulate his fluctuating sense of self-worth.

It is important to distinguish between the various components of the process of Narcissistic Supply:

1.. The Trigger of Supply is the person or object that provokes the source into yielding Narcissistic Supply by confronting the source with information about the narcissist's False Self;

2.. The Source of Narcissistic Supply is the person that provides the Narcissistic Supply;

3.. Narcissistic Supply is the reaction of the source to the trigger.

The narcissist homes in on Triggers and Sources of Narcissistic Supply - people, possessions, creative works, money - and imbues these sources and triggers with attributed uniqueness, perfection, brilliance, and grandiose qualities (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience). He filters out any data that contradict these fantastic misperceptions. He rationalizes, intellectualizes, denies, represses, projects - and, in general, defends against - contrarian information.

The narcissist realizes and resents his dependence on Narcissistic Supply. Moreover, deep inside, he is aware of the fact that his False Self is an untenable sham. Still, omnipotent as he holds himself to be, the narcissist believes in his ability to make it all come true, to asymptotically approximate his grandiose fantasies. He is firmly convinced that, given enough time and practice, he can and will become his lofty False Self.

Hence the narcissist's idea of progress: the frustrating and masochistic pursuit of an ever-receding mirage of perfection, brilliance, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. The narcissist dumps old sources and triggers of supply because he is convinced that he is perpetually improving and that he deserves better and that "better" is just around the corner. He is driven by his own impossible Ego Ideal.

V. Some Successful Narcissists Develop Paranoia

Paranoid ideation - the narcissist's deep-rooted conviction that he is being persecuted by his inferiors, detractors, or powerful ill-wishers - serves two psychodynamic purposes. It upholds the narcissist's grandiosity and it fends off intimacy.

Grandiosity Enhancing Paranoia

Being the target of relentless, ubiquitous, and unjust persecution proves to the paranoid narcissist how important and feared he is. Being hounded by the mighty and the privileged validates his pivotal role in the scheme of things. Only vital, weighty, crucial, essential principals are thus bullied and intimidated, followed and harassed, stalked and intruded upon, goes his unconscious inner dialog. The narcissist consistently baits authority figures into punishing him and thus into upholding his delusional self-image as worthy of their attention. This provocative behaviour is called Projective Identification.

The paranoid delusions of the narcissist are always grandiose, "cosmic", or "historical". His pursuers are influential and formidable. They are after his unique possessions, out to exploit his expertise and special traits, or to force him to abstain and refrain from certain actions. The narcissist feels that he is at the centre of intrigues and conspiracies of colossal magnitudes.

Alternatively, the narcissist feels victimized by mediocre bureaucrats and intellectual dwarves who consistently fail to appreciate his outstanding - really, unparalleled - talents, skills, and accomplishments. Being haunted by his challenged inferiors substantiates the narcissist's comparative superiority. Driven by pathological envy, these pygmies collude to defraud him, badger him, deny him his due, denigrate, isolate, and ignore him.

The narcissist projects onto this second class of lesser persecutors his own deleterious emotions and transformed aggression: hatred, rage, and seething jealousy.

The narcissist's paranoid streak is likeliest to erupt when he lacks Narcissistic Supply. The regulation of his labile sense of self-worth is dependent upon external stimuli - adoration, adulation, affirmation, applause, notoriety, fame, infamy, and, in general, attention of any kind.

When such attention is deficient, the narcissist compensates by confabulating. He constructs ungrounded narratives in which he is the protagonist and uses them to force his human environment into complicity.

Put simply, he provokes people to pay attention to him by misbehaving or behaving oddly.

Intimacy Retarding Paranoia

Paranoia is use by the narcissist to ward off or reverse intimacy. The narcissist is threatened by intimacy because it reduces him to ordinariness by exposing his weaknesses and shortcomings and by causing him to act "normally". The narcissist also dreads the encounter with his deep buried emotions - hurt, envy, anger, aggression - likely to be foisted on him in an intimate relationship.

The paranoid narrative legitimizes intimacy repelling behaviors such as keeping one's distance, secrecy, aloofness, reclusion, aggression, intrusion on privacy, lying, desultoriness, itinerancy, unpredictability, and idiosyncratic or eccentric reactions. Gradually, the narcissist succeeds to alienate and wear down all his friends, colleagues, well-wishers, and mates.

As time passes, even the narcissist's closest, nearest, and dearest, his family come to feel emotionally detached and "burnt out".

The paranoid narcissist ends life as an oddball recluse: derided, feared, and loathed in equal measures. His paranoia, exacerbated by repeated rejections and ageing, pervades his entire life and diminishes his creativity, adaptability, and functioning. The narcissist personality, buffeted by paranoia, turns ossified and brittle. Finally, atomized and useless, it succumbs and gives way to a great void. The narcissist is consumed.

VI. Narcissistic Coping Methods with Failure

When the successful narcissist fails - which inevitably happens from time to time - he resorts to self-delusion. Unable to completely ignore contrarian opinion and data, he transmutes them. Unable to face the dismal failure that he is, the narcissist partially withdraws from reality. To soothe and salve the pain of disillusionment, he administers to his aching soul a mixture of lies, distortions, half-truths and outlandish interpretations of events around him. These solutions can be classified thus:

The Delusional Narrative Solutions

The narcissist constructs a narrative in which he figures as the hero - brilliant, perfect, irresistibly handsome, destined for great things, entitled, powerful, wealthy, the centre of attention, etc. The bigger the strain on this delusional charade - the greater the gap between fantasy and reality - the more the delusion coalesces and solidifies.

Finally, if it is sufficiently protracted, it replaces reality and the narcissist's reality test deteriorates. He withdraws his bridges and may become Schizotypal, catatonic, or schizoid.

The Reality Renouncing Solutions

The narcissist renounces reality. To his mind, those who pusillanimously fail to recognize his unbound talents, innate superiority, overarching brilliance, benevolent nature, entitlement, cosmically important mission, perfection, etc. - do not deserve consideration. The narcissist's natural affinity with the criminal - his lack of empathy and compassion, his deficient social skills, his disregard for social laws and morals - now erupts and blossoms. He becomes a full fledged antisocial (sociopath or psychopath). He ignores the wishes and needs of others, he breaks the law, he violates all rights - natural and legal, he hold people in contempt and disdain, he derides society and its codes, he punishes the ignorant ingrates - that, to his mind, drove him to this state - by acting criminally and by jeopardizing their safety, lives, or property.

The Paranoid Schizoid Solution

The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He perceives slights and insults where none were intended. He becomes subject to ideas of reference (people are gossiping about him, mocking him, prying into his affairs, cracking his e-mail, etc.). He is convinced that he is the centre of malign and mal-intentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate him, punish him, abscond with his property, delude him, impoverish him, confine him physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on his time, force him to action (or to inaction), frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him, change his mind, part with his values, even murder him, and so on.

Some narcissists withdraw completely from a world populated with such minacious and ominous objects (really projections of internal objects and processes). They avoid all social contact, except the most necessary.

They refrain from meeting people, falling in love, having sex, talking to others, or even corresponding with them. In short: they become schizoids - not out of social shyness, but out of what they feel to be their choice.

'The world does not deserve me' - goes the inner refrain - 'and I shall waste none of my time and resources on it.'

The Paranoid Aggressive (Explosive) Solution

Other narcissists who develop persecutory delusions, resort to an aggressive stance, a more violent resolution of their internal conflict. They become verbally, psychologically, situationally (and, very rarely, physically) abusive. They insult, castigate, chastise, berate, demean, and deride their nearest and dearest (often well wishers and loved ones). They explode in unprovoked displays of indignation, righteousness, condemnation, and blame.

Theirs is an exegetic Bedlam. They interpret everything - even the most innocuous, inadvertent, and innocent - as designed to provoke and humiliate them. They sow fear, revulsion, hate, and malignant envy. They flail against the windmills of reality - a pathetic, forlorn, sight. But often they cause real and lasting damage - fortunately, mainly to themselves."

The Masochistic Avoidant Solution

The narcissist is angered by the lack of narcissistic supply. He directs some of this fury inwards, punishing himself for his "failure". This masochistic behavior has the added "benefit" of forcing the narcissist's closest to assume the roles of dismayed spectators or of persecutors and thus, either way, to pay him the attention that he craves.

Self-administered punishment often manifests as self-handicapping masochism - a narcissistic cop-out. By undermining his work, his relationships, and his efforts, the increasingly fragile narcissist avoids additional criticism and censure (negative supply). Self-inflicted failure is the narcissist's doing and thus proves that he is the master of his own fate.

Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances which render success impossible - and "an objective assessment of their performance improbable" (Millon, 2000). They act carelessly, withdraw in mid-effort, are constantly fatigued, bored, or disaffected and thus passive-aggressively sabotage their lives. Their suffering is defiant and by "deciding to abort" they reassert their omnipotence.

The narcissist's pronounced and public misery and self-pity are compensatory and "reinforce self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness" (Millon, 2000). His tribulations and anguish render him, in his eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous, righteous, resilient, and significant. They are, in other words, self-generated narcissistic supply.

VII. Narcissists Lie and Confabulate to Preserve the Appearance of Invincibility and Success

It is healthy to daydream and fantasize. It is the antechamber of life and its circumstances. It is a process of preparing for eventualities, embellished and decorated. Grandiosity is different, though.

Delusional grandiosity - especially when supported by unwarranted and unjustified success - has four components.

Omnipotence

The narcissist believes in his omnipotence. "Believe" in this context is a weak word. He knows. It is a cellular certainty, almost biological, it flows in his blood and permeates every niche of his being. The narcissist "knows" that he can do anything he chooses to do and excel in it. What the narcissist does, what he excels at, what he achieves, depends only on his volition. To his mind, there is no other determinant.

Hence his rage when confronted with disagreement or opposition - not only because of the audacity of his, evidently inferior, adversaries. But because it threatens his world view, it endangers his feeling of omnipotence. The narcissist is often fatuously daring, adventurous, experimentative and curious precisely due to this hidden assumption of "can-do". He is genuinely surprised and devastated when he fails, when the "universe" does not arrange itself, magically, to accommodate his unbounded fantasies, when it (and people in it) does not comply with his whims and wishes.

He often denies away such discrepancies, deletes them from his memory. As a result, he remembers his life as a patchy quilt of unrelated events and people.

Omniscience

The narcissist often pretends to know everything, in every field of human knowledge and endeavour. He lies and prevaricates to avoid the exposure of his ignorance. He resorts to numerous subterfuges to support his God-like omniscience.

Where his knowledge fails him - he feigns authority, fakes superiority, quotes from non-existent sources, embeds threads of truth in a canvass of falsehoods. He transforms himself into an artist of intellectual prestidigitation. As he gets older, this invidious quality may recede, or, rather, metamorphose. He may now claim more confined expertise.

He may no longer be ashamed to admit his ignorance and his need to learn things outside the fields of his real or self-proclaimed expertise. But this "improvement" is merely optical. Within his "territory", the narcissist is still as fiercely defensive and possessive as ever.

Many narcissists are avowed autodidacts, unwilling to subject their knowledge and insights to peer scrutiny, or, for that matter, to any scrutiny. The narcissist keeps re-inventing himself, adding new fields of knowledge as he goes. This creeping intellectual annexation is a round about way of reverting to his erstwhile image as the erudite "Renaissance man".

Omnipresence

Even the narcissist cannot pretend to actually be everywhere at once in the PHYSICAL sense. Instead, he feels that he is the centre and the axis of his "universe", that all things and happenstances revolve around him and that cosmic disintegration would ensue if he were to disappear or to lose interest in someone or in something.

He is convinced, for instance, that he is the main, if not the only, topic of discussion in his absence. He is often surprised and offended to learn that he was not even mentioned. When invited to a meeting with many participants, he assumes the position of the sage, the guru, or the teacher/guide whose words carry a special weight. His creations (books, articles, works of art) are extensions of his presence and, in this restricted sense, he does seem to exist everywhere. In other words, he "stamps" his environment. He "leaves his mark" upon it. He "stigmatises" it.

Narcissist the Omnivore (Perfectionism and Completeness)

There is another "omni" component in grandiosity. The narcissist is an omnivore. He devours and digests experiences and people, sights and smells, bodies and words, books and films, sounds and achievements, his work and his leisure, his pleasure and his possessions. The narcissist is incapable of ENJOYING anything because he is in constant pursuit of perfection and completeness.

Classic narcissists interact with the world as predators do with their prey. They want to own it all, be everywhere, experience everything. They cannot delay gratification. They do not take "no" for an answer. And they settle for nothing less than the ideal, the sublime, the perfect, the all-inclusive, the all-encompassing, the engulfing, the all-pervasive, the most beautiful, the cleverest, the richest, and the most brilliant.

The narcissist is shattered when he discovers that a collection he possesses is incomplete, that his colleague's wife is more glamorous, that his son is better than he is in math, that his neighbour has a new, flashy car, that his roommate got promoted, that the "love of his life" signed a recording contract. It is not plain old jealousy, not even pathological envy (though it is definitely a part of the psychological make-up of the narcissist). It is the discovery that the narcissist is NOT perfect, or ideal, or complete that does him in.

VIII. Fantasizing as Action-Substitute

What happens to a narcissist who lacks even the basic potential and skills to realise some of his grandiose fantasies?

Such a narcissist resorts to deferred Narcissistic Supply which generates an effect of deferred grandiosity. He forgoes his grandiose schemes and gives up on the present. He defers the fulfilment of his fantasies - which support his inflated Ego - to the (indefinite) future.

Such narcissists engage in activities (or in daydreaming), which they fervently believe, will make them famous, powerful, influential, or superior in some unspecified future time. They keep their minds occupied and off their failures.

Such frustrated and bitter narcissist's hold themselves answerable only to History, God, Eternity, Future Generations, Art, science, the Church, the Country, the Nation and so on. They entertain notions of grandeur which are dependent upon the judgement or assessment of a fuzzily defined collective in an ambiguous time frame. Thus, these narcissists find solace in the embrace of Chronos.

Deferred grandiosity is an adaptive mechanism which ameliorates dysphorias and grandiosity gaps.

IX. Narcissism as a Waste

Ask anyone who shared a life with a narcissist, or knew one and they are likely to sigh: "What a waste". Waste of potential, waste of opportunities, waste of emotions, a wasteland of arid addiction and futile pursuit.

Narcissists are as gifted as they come. The problem is to disentangle their tales of fantastic grandiosity from the reality of their talents and skills. They always either over-estimate or devalue their potency. They often emphasise the wrong traits and invest in their mediocre or less than average capacities at the expense of their true and promising potential. Thus, they squander their advantages and under-rate their natural gifts.

The narcissist decides which aspects of his self to nurture and which to neglect. He gravitates towards activities commensurate with his pompous auto-portrait. He suppresses these tendencies and aptitudes in him which don't conform to his inflated view of his uniqueness, brilliance, might, sexual prowess, or standing in society. He cultivates these flairs and predilections which he regards as befitting his overweening self-image and ultimate grandeur.

But, the narcissist, no matter how self-aware and well-meaning, is accursed. His grandiosity, his fantasies, the compelling, overriding urge to feel unique, invested with some cosmic significance, unprecedentedly bestowed - these thwart his best intentions. These structures of obsession and compulsion, these deposits of insecurity and pain, the stalactites and stalagmites of years of abuse and then abandonment - they all conspire to frustrate the gratification, however circumspect, of the narcissist's true nature.

An utter lack of self-awareness is typical of the narcissist. He is intimate only with his False Self, constructed meticulously from years of lying and deceit. The narcissist's True Self is stashed, dilapidated and dysfunctional, in the furthest recesses of his mind. The False Self is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, creative, ingenious, irresistible, and glowing. The narcissist often isn't.

Add combustible paranoia to the narcissist's divorce from himself - and his constant and recurrent failure to assess reality fairly is more understandable. The narcissist overpowering sense of entitlement is rarely commensurate with his accomplishments in his real life or with his traits. When the world fails to comply with his demands and to support his grandiose fantasies, the narcissist suspects a plot against him by his inferiors.

The narcissist rarely admits to a weakness, ignorance, or deficiency. He filters out information to the contrary - a cognitive impairment with serious consequences. Narcissistic are likely to unflinchingly make inflated and inane claims about their sexual prowess, wealth, connections, history, or achievements.

All this is mighty embarrassing to the narcissist's nearest, dearest, colleagues, friends, neighbours, or even mere on-lookers. The narcissist's tales are so patently absurd that he often catches people off-guard. Behind his back, the narcissist is derided and mockingly imitated. He fast makes a nuisance and an imposition of himself in every company.

But the narcissist's failure of the reality test can have more serious and irreversible consequences. Narcissists, unqualified to make life-and-death decisions often insist on rendering them. Narcissists pretend to be economists, engineers, or medical doctors - when they are not. But they are not con-artists in the classic, premeditated sense. They firmly believe that, though self-taught at best, they are more qualified than even the properly accredited sort. Narcissists believe in magic and in fantasy. They are no longer with us.

The narcissist often strikes people are "laid back" - or, less charitably: lazy, parasitic, spoiled, and self-indulgent. But, as usual with narcissists, appearances deceive. Narcissists are either compulsively driven over-achievers - or chronic under-achieving wastrels. Most of them fail to make full and productive use of their potential and capacities. Many avoid even the now standard path of an academic degree, a career, or family life.

The disparity between the accomplishments of the narcissist and his grandiose fantasies and inflated self-image - the Grandiosity Gap - is staggering and, in the long run, insupportable. It imposes onerous exigencies on the narcissist's grasp of reality and social skills. It pushes him either to seclusion or to a frenzy of "acquisitions" - cars, women, wealth, power.

Yet, no matter how successful the narcissist is - many of them end up being abject failures - the Grandiosity Gap can never be bridged. The narcissist's False Self is so unrealistic and his Superego so sadistic that there is nothing the narcissist can do to extricate himself from the Kafkaesque trial that is his life.

The narcissist is a slave to his own inertia. Some narcissists are forever accelerating on the way to ever higher peaks and ever greener pastures. Others succumb to numbing routines, the expenditure of minimal energy, and to preying on the vulnerable. But either way, the narcissist's life is out of control, at the mercy of merciless inner voices and internal forces.

Narcissists are one-state machines, programmed to extract Narcissistic Supply from others. To do so, they develop early on a set of immutable routines. This propensity for repetition, this inability to change and rigidity confine the narcissist, stunt his development, and limit his horizons. Add to this his overpowering sense of entitlement, his visceral fear of failure, and his invariable need to both feel unique and be perceived as such - and one often ends up with a recipe for inaction.

The under-achieving narcissist dodges challenges, eludes tests, shirks competition, sidesteps expectations, ducks responsibilities, evades authority - because he is afraid to fail and because doing something everyone else does endangers his sense of uniqueness. Hence the narcissist's apparent 'laziness" and "parasitism". His sense of entitlement - with no commensurate accomplishments or investment - aggravates his milieu. People tend to regard such narcissists as "spoiled brats".

In specious contrast, the over-achieving narcissist seeks challenges and risks, provokes competition, embellishes expectations, aggressively bids for responsibilities and authority and seems to be possessed with an eerie self-confidence. People tend to regard such specimen as "entrepreneurial", "daring", "visionary", or "tyrannical". Yet, these narcissists too are mortified by potential failure, driven by a strong conviction of entitlement, and strive to be unique and be perceived as such.

Their hyperactivity is merely the flip side of the under-achiever's inactivity: it is as fallacious and as empty and as doomed to miscarriage and disgrace. It is often sterile or illusory, all smoke and mirrors rather than substance. The precarious "achievements" of such narcissists invariably unravel. They often act outside the law or social norms. Their industriousness, workaholism, ambition, and commitment are intended to disguise their essential inability to produce and build. Theirs is a whistle in the dark, a pretension, a Potemkin life, all make-belief and thunder.

X. The Narcissist's False Modesty

The "modesty" displayed by narcissists is false. It is mostly and merely verbal. It is couched in flourishing phrases, emphasised to absurdity, repeated unnecessarily - usually to the point of causing gross inconvenience to the listener. The real aim of such behaviour and its subtext are exactly the opposite of common modesty.

It is intended to either aggrandise the narcissist or to protect his grandiosity from scrutiny and possible erosion. Such modest outbursts precede inflated, grandiosity-laden statements made by the narcissist and pertaining to fields of human knowledge and activity in which he is sorely lacking.

Devoid of systematic and methodical education, the narcissist tries to make do with pompous, or aggressive mannerisms, bombastic announcements, and the unnecessary and wrong usage of professional jargon. He attempts to dazzle his surroundings with apparent "brilliance" and to put possible critics on the defence.

Beneath all this he is shallow, ignorant, improvising, and fearful of being exposed as deceitful. The narcissist is a conjurer of verbosity, using sleight of mouth rather than sleight of hand. He is ever possessed by the fear that he is really a petty crook about to be unearthed and reviled by society.

This is a horrible feeling to endure and a taxing, onerous way to live. The narcissist has to protect himself from his own premonitions, from his internal semipternal trial, his guilt, shame, and anxiety. One of the more efficacious defence mechanisms is false modesty.

The narcissist publicly chastises himself for being unfit, unworthy, lacking, not trained and not (formally) schooled, not objective, cognisant of his own shortcomings and vain. This way, if (or, rather, when) exposed he could always say: "But I told you so in the first place, haven't I?" False modesty is, thus an insurance policy. The narcissist "hedges his bets" by placing a side bet on his own fallibility, weakness, deficiencies and proneness to err.

Yet another function is to extract Narcissistic Supply from the listener. By contrasting his own self-deprecation with a brilliant, dazzling display of ingenuity, wit, intellect, knowledge, or beauty - the narcissist aims to secure an adoring, admiring, approving, or applauding protestation from the listener.

The person to whom the falsely modest statement is addressed is expected to vehemently deny the narcissist's claims: "But, really, you are more of an expert than you say!", or "Why did you tell me that you are unable to do (this or that)? Truly, you are very gifted!" "Don't put yourself down so much - you are a generous man!"

The narcissist then shrugs, smirks, blushes and moves uncomfortably from side to side. This was not his intention, he assures his interlocutor. He did not mean to fish for compliments (exactly what he did mean to do). He really does not deserve the praise. But the aim has, thus, been achieved: the Narcissistic Supply has been doled out and avidly consumed. Despite the narcissist's protestations, he feels much better now.

The narcissist is a dilettante and a charlatan. He glosses over complicated subjects and situations in life. He sails through them powered by shallow acquaintance with rapidly acquired verbal and behavioural vocabularies (which he then promptly proceeds to forget).

False modesty is only one of a series of feigned behaviours. The narcissist is a pathological liar, either implicitly or explicitly. His whole existence is a derivative of a False Self, his deceitful invention and its reflections. With false modesty he seeks to involve others in his mind games, to co-opt them, to force them to collaborate while making ultimate use of social conventions of conduct.

The narcissist, above all, is a shrewd manipulator, well-acquainted with human nature and its fault lines. No narcissist will ever admit to it. In this sense, narcissists are really modest.

XI. Obama's Inner World

Pathological narcissism is a defence mechanism intended to isolate the narcissist from his environment and to shield him from hurt and injury, both real and imagined. Hence the False Self - an all-pervasive psychological construct which gradually displaces the narcissist's True Self. It is a work of fiction intended to elicit praise and deflect criticism.

The unintended consequence of this fictitious existence is a diminishing ability to grasp reality correctly and to cope with it effectively. Narcissistic Supply replaces genuine, veritable, and tested feedback. Analysis, disagreement, and uncomfortable facts are screened out. Layers of bias and prejudice distort the narcissist's experience.

Yet, deep inside, the narcissist is aware that his life is an artefact, a confabulated sham, a vulnerable cocoon. The world inexorably and repeatedly intrudes upon these ramshackle battlements, reminding the narcissist of the fantastic and feeble nature of his grandiosity. This is the much-dreaded Grandiosity Gap.

To avoid the agonizing realization of his failed, defeat-strewn, biography, the narcissist resorts to reality-substitutes. The dynamics are simple: as the narcissist grows older, his Sources of Supply become scarcer, and his Grandiosity Gap yawns wider. Mortified by the prospect of facing his actuality, the narcissist withdraws ever deeper into a dreamland of concocted accomplishments, feigned omnipotence and omniscience, and brattish entitlement.

The narcissist's reality substitutes fulfil two functions. They help him "rationally" ignore painful realities with impunity - and they proffer an alternative universe in which he reigns supreme and emerges triumphant.

The most common form of denial involves persecutory delusions. I described these elsewhere:

"(The narcissist) perceives slights and insults where none were intended. He becomes subject to ideas of reference (people are gossiping about him, mocking him, prying into his affairs, cracking his e-mail, etc.). He is convinced that he is the centre of malign and mal-intentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate him, punish him, abscond with his property, delude him, impoverish him, confine him physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on his time, force him to action (or to inaction), frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him, change his mind, part with his values, even murder him, and so on."

The narcissist's paranoid narrative serves as an organizing principle. It structures his here and now and gives meaning to his life. It aggrandizes him as worthy of being persecuted. The mere battle with his demons is an achievement not to be sniggered at. By overcoming his "enemies", the narcissist emerges victorious and powerful.

The narcissist's self-inflicted paranoia - projections of threatening internal objects and processes - legitimizes, justifies, and "explains" his abrupt, comprehensive, and rude withdrawal from an ominous and unappreciative world . The narcissist's pronounced misanthropy - fortified by these oppressive thoughts - renders him a schizoid, devoid of all social contact, except the most necessary.

But even as the narcissist divorces his environment, he remains aggressive, or even violent. The final phase of narcissism involves verbal, psychological, situational (and, mercifully, more rarely, physical) abuse directed at his "foes" and "inferiors". It is the culmination of a creeping mode of psychosis, the sad and unavoidable outcome of a choice made long ago to forego the real in favour of the surreal.

Confabulations are an important part of life. They serve to heal emotional wounds or to prevent ones from being inflicted in the first place. They prop-up the confabulator's self-esteem, regulate his (or her) sense of self-worth, and buttress his (or her) self-image. They serve as organizing principles in social interactions.

Father's wartime heroism, mother's youthful good looks, one's oft-recounted exploits, erstwhile alleged brilliance, and past purported sexual irresistibility - are typical examples of white, fuzzy, heart-warming lies wrapped around a shrivelled kernel of truth.

But the distinction between reality and fantasy is rarely completely lost. Deep inside, the healthy confabulator knows where facts end and wishful thinking takes over. Father acknowledges he was no war hero, though he did his share of fighting. Mother understands she was no ravishing beauty, though she may have been attractive. The confabulator realizes that his recounted exploits are overblown, his brilliance exaggerated, and his sexual irresistibility a myth.

Such distinctions never rise to the surface because everyone - the confabulator and his audience alike - have a common interest to maintain the confabulation. To challenge the integrity of the confabulator or the veracity of his confabulations is to threaten the very fabric of family and society. Human intercourse is built around such entertaining deviations from the truth.

This is where the narcissist differs from others (from "normal" people).

His very self is a piece of fiction concocted to fend off hurt and to nurture the narcissist's grandiosity. He fails in his "reality test" - the ability to distinguish the actual from the imagined. The narcissist fervently believes in his own infallibility, brilliance, omnipotence, heroism, and perfection. He doesn't dare confront the truth and admit it even to himself.

Moreover, he imposes his personal mythology on his nearest and dearest. Spouse, children, colleagues, friends, neighbours - sometimes even perfect strangers - must abide by the narcissist's narrative or face his wrath. The narcissist countenances no disagreement, alternative points of view, or criticism. To him, confabulation IS reality.

The coherence of the narcissist's dysfunctional and precariously-balanced personality depends on the plausibility of his stories and on their acceptance by his Sources of Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist invests an inordinate time in substantiating his tales, collecting "evidence", defending his version of events, and in re-interpreting reality to fit his scenario. As a result, most narcissists are self-delusional, obstinate, opinionated, and argumentative.

The narcissist's lies are not goal-orientated. This is what makes his constant dishonesty both disconcerting and incomprehensible. The narcissist lies at the drop of a hat, needlessly, and almost ceaselessly. He lies in order to avoid the Grandiosity Gap - when the abyss between fact and (narcissistic) fiction becomes too gaping to ignore.

The narcissist lies in order to preserve appearances, uphold fantasies, support the tall (and impossible) tales of his False Self and extract Narcissistic Supply from unsuspecting sources, who are not yet on to him. To the narcissist, confabulation is not merely a way of life - but life itself.

We are all conditioned to let other indulge in pet delusions and get away with white, not too egregious, lies. The narcissist makes use of our socialization. We dare not confront or expose him, despite the outlandishness of his claims, the improbability of his stories, the implausibility of his alleged accomplishments and conquests. We simply turn the other cheek, or meekly avert our eyes, often embarrassed.

Moreover, the narcissist makes clear, from the very beginning, that it is his way or the highway. His aggression - even violent streak - are close to the surface. He may be charming in a first encounter - but even then there are telltale signs of pent-up abuse. His interlocutors sense this impending threat and avoid conflict by acquiescing with the narcissist's fairy tales. Thus he imposes his private universe and virtual reality on his milieu - sometimes with disastrous consequences.

XII. Why Obama is Dangerously Gullible?

"Such a one (the narcissist - SV) is encased, is he not, in an armour - such an armour! The armour of the crusaders was nothing to it - an armour of arrogance, of pride, of complete self-esteem. This armour, it is in some ways a protection, the arrows, the everyday arrows of life glance off it. But there is this danger; Sometimes a man in armour might not even know he was being attacked. He will be slow to see, slow to hear - slower still to feel."

["Dead Man's Mirror" by Agatha Christie in "Hercule Poirot - The Complete Short Stories", Great Britain, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999]

The irony is that narcissists, who consider themselves worldly, discerning, knowledgeable, shrewd, erudite, and astute - are actually more gullible than the average person. This is because they are fake. Their self is false, their life a confabulation, their reality test gone. They live in a fantasy land all their own in which they are the centre of the universe, admired, feared, held in awe, and respected for their omnipotence and omniscience.

Narcissists are prone to magical thinking. They hold themselves immune to the consequences of their actions (or inaction) and, therefore, beyond punishment and the laws of Man. Narcissists are easily persuaded to assume unreasonable risks and expect miracles to happen. They often find themselves on the receiving end of investment scams, for instance.

Narcissists feel entitled to money, power, and honours incommensurate with their accomplishments or toil. The world, or God, or the nation, or society, or their families, co-workers, employers, even neighbours owe them a trouble-free, exalted, and luxurious existence. They are rudely shocked when they are penalized for their misconduct or when their fantasies remain just that.

The narcissist believes that he is destined to greatness - or at least the easy life. He wakes up every morning fully ready for a fortuitous stroke of luck. That explains the narcissist's reckless behaviors and his lazed lack of self-discipline. It also explains why is so easily duped.

By playing on the narcissist's grandiosity and paranoia, it is possible to deceive and manipulate him effortlessly. Just offer him Narcissistic Supply - admiration, affirmation, adulation - and he is yours. Harp on his insecurities and his persecutory delusions - and he is likely to trust only you and cling to you for dear life.

Narcissists attract abuse. Haughty, exploitative, demanding, insensitive, and quarrelsome, they tend to draw opprobrium and provoke anger and even hatred. Sorely lacking in interpersonal skills, devoid of empathy, and steeped in irksome grandiose fantasies - they invariably fail to mitigate the irritation and revolt that they induce in others.

Successful narcissists are frequently targeted by stalkers and erotomaniacs - usually mentally ill people who develop a fixation of a sexual and emotional nature on the narcissist. When inevitably rebuffed, they become vindictive and even violent.

Less prominent narcissists end up sharing life with co-dependents and inverted narcissists.

The narcissist's situation is exacerbated by the fact that, often, the narcissist himself is an abuser. Like the boy who cried "wolf", people do not believe that the perpetrator of egregious deeds can himself fall prey to maltreatment. They tend to ignore and discard the narcissist's cries for help and disbelieve his protestations.

The narcissist reacts to abuse as would any other victim. Traumatized, he goes through the phases of denial, helplessness, rage, depression, and acceptance. But, the narcissist's reactions are amplified by his shattered sense of omnipotence. Abuse breeds humiliation. To the narcissist, helplessness is a novel experience.

The narcissistic defence mechanisms and their behavioural manifestations - diffuse rage, idealization and devaluation, exploitation - are useless when confronted with a determined, vindictive, or delusional stalker. That the narcissist is flattered by the attention he receives from the abuser, renders him more vulnerable to the former's manipulation.

Nor can the narcissist come to terms with his need for help or acknowledge that wrongful behaviour on his part may have contributed somehow to the situation. His self-image as an infallible, mighty, all-knowing person, far superior to others, won't let him admit to shortfalls or mistakes.

As the abuse progresses, the narcissist feels increasingly cornered. His conflicting emotional needs - to preserve the integrity of his grandiose False Self even as he seeks much needed support - place an unbearable strain on the precarious balance of his immature personality. Decompensation (the disintegration of the narcissist's defence mechanisms) leads to acting out and, if the abuse is protracted, to withdrawal and even to psychotic micro-episodes.

Abusive acts in themselves are rarely dangerous. Not so the reactions to abuse - above all, the overwhelming sense of violation and humiliation. When asked how is the narcissist likely to react to continued mistreatment, I wrote this in one of my Pathological Narcissism FAQs:

"The initial reaction of the narcissist to a perceived humiliation is a conscious rejection of the humiliating input. The narcissist tries to ignore it, talk it out of existence, or belittle its importance. If this crude mechanism of cognitive dissonance fails, the narcissist resorts to denial and repression of the humiliating material. He "forgets" all about it, gets it out of his mind and, when reminded of it, denies it.

But these are usually merely stopgap measures. The disturbing data is bound to impinge on the narcissist's tormented consciousness. Once aware of its re-emergence, the narcissist uses fantasy to counteract and counterbalance it. He imagines all the horrible things that he would have done (or will do) to the sources of his frustration.

It is through fantasy that the narcissist seeks to redeem his pride and dignity and to re-establish his damaged sense of uniqueness and grandiosity. Paradoxically, the narcissist does not mind being humiliated if this were to make him more unique or to draw more attention to his person.

For instance: if the injustice involved in the process of humiliation is unprecedented, or if the humiliating acts or words place the narcissist in a unique position, or if they transform him into a public figure - the narcissist tries to encourage such behaviours and to elicit them from others.

In this case, he fantasises how he defiantly demeans and debases his opponents by forcing them to behave even more barbarously than before, so that their unjust conduct is universally recognised as such and condemned and the narcissist is publicly vindicated and his self-respect restored. In short: martyrdom is as good a method of obtaining Narcissist Supply as any.

Fantasy, though, has its limits and once reached, the narcissist is likely to experience waves of self-hatred and self-loathing, the outcomes of helplessness and of realising the depths of his dependence on Narcissistic Supply. These feelings culminate in severe self-directed aggression: depression, destructive, self-defeating behaviours or suicidal ideation.

These self-negating reactions, inevitably and naturally, terrify the narcissist. He tries to project them on to his environment. He may decompensate by developing obsessive-compulsive traits or by going through a psychotic microepisode.

At this stage, the narcissist is suddenly besieged by disturbing, uncontrollable violent thoughts. He develops ritualistic reactions to them: a sequence of motions, an act, or obsessive counter-thoughts. Or he might visualise his aggression, or experience auditory hallucinations. Humiliation affects the narcissist this deeply.

Luckily, the process is entirely reversible once Narcissistic Supply is resumed. Almost immediately, the narcissist swings from one pole to another, from being humiliated to being elated, from being put down to being reinstated, from being at the bottom of his own, imagined, pit to occupying the top of his own, imagined, hill."

DISCLAIMER

I am not a mental health professional. Still, I have dedicated the last 12 years to the study of personality disorders in general and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) in particular. I have authored nine (9) books about these topics, one of which is a Barnes and Noble best-seller ("Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"). My work is widely cited in scholarly tomes and publications and in the media. My books and the content of my Web site are based on correspondence since 1996 with hundreds of people suffering from the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (narcissists) and with thousands of their family members, friends, therapists, and colleagues.

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com You can download 22 of his free ebooks in our bookstore

"Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer"

2009-11-30T10:52:00.000-08:00

America, Wake Up! You just Elected a Narcissist! No, of course that's not NEWS to some of us..!!

http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html
Be patient when clicking this link- it takes several tries before you actually connect wth the author's own page and writing.

Do you know your president? Those of you who have voted for Obama- how did you decide he IS the right one to vote for? Did you use your logical mind, or your knee, for a jerky reaction??

Read this whole article and check the facts linked in it. How's that HOPE AND CHANGE WORKING FOR YOU?
How is it to put your "HOPE" on a mentally deranged personality? Are you ashamed yet??

The following is the full article, with full credit to its author, Ali Sina.

Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer

By Ali Sina

2008/09/22

"This article has been published in more than 1000 sites, erroneously attributing it to Dr. Vaknin. One person even wrote to me accusing me of plagiarism (double whammy?). Those sites are in error. If you find this article attributed to anyone else but me please write to them and correct them. You are welcome to reproduce this article, or any of my articles on Obama, listed at the buttom, in part or in their entirety, but you must provide a link to the source in this site. Thank you."

"I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama after the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident – a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was soon put off, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.

It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, “I love you.” Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It’s only his words, not his achievements that is causing this much uproar.

When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change. During 1979, when the Iranians were tired of the dictatorial regime of the late Shah, they embraced Khomeini, not because they wanted Islam, but because he promised them change. The word in the street was, “anything is better than the Shah.” They found their error when it was too late.

Khomeini promised there would be separation between religion and state. He lied and they did not care to look into his past to see whether he actually meant what he said. Had they done that they would have seen that he always believed in caliphate and the rule of Islam. People gobbled everything he told them uncritically. They wanted to believe and therefore closed their eyes so they did not see what they did not want to see. Eyes welled when he spoke. Masses poured into the streets by the millions, screamed and shouted to greet him. People kissed his pictures. Some saw his portrait reflected on the Moon.

Listening to Obama ... it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch Khomeini, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell.

I was amused to hear a listener calling Fox News Radio's Tom Sullivan Show, (Feb 11) and saying: "Listening to Obama ... it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell." ( Videos of Hitler’s speeches are available on Youtube. They are worth a look.)

Equating anyone to Hitler by highlighting the similarities between the two is a logical fallacy. This fallacy, known as reductio ad Hitlerum is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy. I believe it is wrong to trivialize the holocaust and the horrors of Nazism by comparing our opponents to Hitler.

However, Hitler, prior to coming to power had not killed anyone. He was insane, but few could see that. Far from it, he was seen as a gifted man and hailed as the savior of Germany. He was admired throughout the world. He appealed to the masses of people – the working class and particularly to women, and did not just inspire them, he “elevated” them. Thousands rallied to listen to his passionate speeches. They shed tears when he spoke. Women fainted during his speeches. To Germans, he was not a politician, but a demigod, a messiah. They envisioned him as truly a magical figure of majestic wisdom and glory. They worshiped him. They surrendered their wills to him. He restored their national pride. He projected himself as their savior. He ran on the platform of change and hope. Change he delivered all right, but hopes he shattered.

I think it is fair to say that the Illinois senator puts the same passion in his speeches that Hitler used to put in his, and he evokes similar raw emotions in his audience. This much we can agree. Okay, we can also agree that both Hitler and Charlie Chaplin wore square moustaches. So what?

The Cult of Personality

There are other disturbing similarities. Like Hitler and Khomeini, Obama also likes to create a cult of personality around himself. As stated above, when a large number of a population is discontent, a charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and present himself as the agent of change. He can create a cult of Personality by associating himself with the idea of change. He convinces everyone that things are terrible and a drastic change is needed. He then casts himself as the only person who can deliver this revolutionary transformation that everyone is waiting for. He portrays himself as a benevolent guide; the only one who cares about people and their needs and can pull them out of their alleged misery. In reality, they have no clue about how to address the problem - have no experience, no track record. But they are convincing because they are self assured.

These revolutionary leaders need foes. They exaggerate the problems. They make everything look gloomy. They lie, cheat and slander their opponents while casting themselves as the saviors of the nation. Hitler chose the Jews to blame for everything that was wrong in Germany. Khomeini made the Shah and his westernization plans his scapegoats. Obama has chosen President George W. Bush to smear. He can rally people around himself, as long as he can instill in them the dislike of Bush and equate his rival, McCain to him. Sigmund Freud wrote, "It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness" (Civilization and Its Discontents).

A cult of personality is excessive adulation, admiration and exaltation of a charismatic leader, often with unproven merits or achievements. It is similar to hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders.

An unequivocal expression of delusional grandiosity

Let us read a few of the comments Obama’s fans have made about him. Their unbounded adulation of this totally unknown figure is proof of my claim.

Jon Robin Baitz is the creator of the ABC series "Brothers & Sisters." He writes:

Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones, those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor.

For twenty years Obama was part of Jeremiah Wright’s racist church and listened to all the hate which that man spewed against the Jews and the “rich White America.” Obama did not object to any of those hateful comments and even donated $20,000 dollars to his Trinity United Church of Christ. Baitz is willing to overlook all that and, mesmerized by Obama’s speeches, he embraces a man who up until yesterday supported the racist views of his spiritual mentor. He calls Obama’s speech "glorious," and concludes he is honest and moral. How did he come to that hasty conclusion? There is no evidence of that except his "gut feeling." That observation is subjective. We have not seen any evidence of Obama's honesty yet. On the contrary, he has been caught with a litany of lies.

Clearly Sen. Obama has a charming effect on his audience, who after listening to him are so moved that they willingly give up their reason and follow their hearts. Let’s see how Baitz adulates Obama to the point of worship.

Barack Obama's speech, perhaps one of the most important in modern political history pushed us as a people to move beyond race and gender, beyond Democrat and Republican, beyond politics and into reviving the spirit of the nation itself. To talk, to talk at home, at work, at the dinner table. To really finally talk. What a great day, and where else in the world but in the United States? Today I am very proud to be an American.

Remembering the reaction of Iranians to Khomeini’s speeches, this is all deja vu for me.

There is an old adage that says, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell who you are.” Don’t the quality of Obama’s friends and associates tell us about the man? Shouldn't we look at the history of this man to ascertain his truthfulness? One characteristic of cult of personality is that people become ready to close their eyes. They find excuses and rationalize the sins of their leader.

Another Obama worshipper is Ezra Klein. He is an associate editor at The American Prospect. Klein wrote:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

Obama is not seen by his admirers as a politician but as something holy. Klein says “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh.” The truth is that Obama is nothing but words! What is scary is that so many smart people are willing to fall for his empty words. Interestingly the same Ezra Klein had earlier said:

Obama is a cipher, an easy repository for the hopes and dreams of liberals everywhere...But if Obama avoided being battle-tested in 2004 by the grace of God, it's his own timidity that has kept his name clean since. Given his national profile and formidable political talents, he could have been a potent spokesman for Democratic causes in the Senate. Instead, he has refused to expend his political or personal capital on a single controversial issue, preferring to offer anodyne pieces of legislation and sign on to the popular efforts of others... Indeed, Obama is that oddest of all creatures: a leader who's never led. There are no courageous, lonely crusades to his name, or supremely unlikely electoral battles beneath his belt. He won election running basically unopposed, and then refused to open himself to attack by making a controversial but correct issue his own."

Quite a shift I would say. What did exactly Obama do, for Klein to change his views so drastically? Nothing! Obama has won this man’s heart only by the power of his mesmerizing words. He is making his conquests, through the sheer power of his oratory. That is how Hitler won the hearts of the Germans. As Obama’s life story shows, his words don’t have any bearing on reality. Words are powerful, but when they are not backed by any substance they are empty rhetoric.

Todd Gitlin, is professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. He is another worshipper of Obama. This is what he says about his leader.

This speech was a triumph on so many levels, does one dare hope it will turn the trick for hordes of parsing skeptics and listeners whose eyes did not water? First, Obama took the high road, which is also the long and demanding road. He refused to "move on" with a cursory acknowledgment that "mistakes were made." He did not acknowledge. He preached and he reasoned.”

Let us pause here and examine what this professor of journalism and sociology says. Obama was a close friend of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and listened to his racist sermons for twenty years. Wright is a man who has intense hatred for the Jews, for whites and for America. This clip shows some of his remarks made from the pulpit. Here is a gleaning from his sermons:

•We [The White controlled America] have supported state terrorism against Palestinians and Black South Africans … Because of the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own home front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

•No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America. That is in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America.

•Government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew that Japanese are going to attack.

•They [Government] purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!

•What is going on in White America, U.S. of KKK?

•Black men turning on Black men? That is fighting the wrong enemy. You both are primary targets in an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat.

•What we [America] is doing is the same thing Al Qaida is doing, under a different flag.

•Oh I am so glad, that I got a God who knows what it is to be a poor Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by and run by rich White people.

•Yes, 911 happened to us, and so did slavery happen to us. Yes the World Trade Center happened to us, and so did White supremacy happen to us.

•“Barack knows what it means to be a Black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich White people.”

When all these came to light, at first the Illinois senator denied having heard them. That excuse was not believable. Wright was Obama's spiritual mentor and the most influential man in his life. And yet he expects us to believe he listened to his sermons for 20 years but did not pay attention to what he was saying? So he changed his position and admitted to having heard them, but he categorically condemned them. Obama went one step further. He did not just condemn the racist remarks of his Pastor, but he preached and he sermonized how bad are they are. Now, this requires some audacity that only a narcissist can muster. Instead of apologizing and recognizing his error, Obama turned the table and preached to others.

How can we understand this? The man himself is the sinner but instead of acknowledging his sins, he preaches to others about the vices of those sins. The answer can be found in the description of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists will never admit being wrong. They are always one step ahead of you.

Those who remember Rev. Jimmy Swaggart know that he was one of the most popular and successful televangelists of all times. During the 1980s, he had millions of fans all over the world. He mesmerized his audience. He was more than a rock star, he was a phenomenon. Swaggart was a preacher of "morality." He was so against promiscuity and unlawful sex that he went after two other televangelist magnates, Marvin Gorman and Jimmy Baker, exposed their adultery and brought their empires down.

However, what narcissists preach and what they do are two different things. Soon after exposing Gorman’s adultery, Swaggart himself was photographed with a prostitute in a motel room. He was banned from giving sermons for three months. But he could not stay away from the church that provided him with adulation and the people who fed his narcissistic need. He said, "If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell." So he returned to the pulpit and after shedding a few crocodile tears of repentance, he went right on preaching morality, chastising adultery and sermoning to others, how THEY should live a chaste life.

This requires audacity. How one who has been caught with a prostitute, literally with his pants down, could have the cheek to preach to others about the very thing he is guilty of? NPD provides the answer to both Swaggart and Obama’s responses, when caught red handed. The narcissist will not apologize for his own sins; he will go on preaching to you about the evilness of those sins. If Professor Gitlin had read a book or two on narcissism, he would have not been hoodwinked by Obama’s preaching about racial harmony after being caught with his proverbial pants down in his racist church. Giltin is not alone; millions of Americans have fallen for this narcissist’s mind games.

Prof. Gitlin continues:

“The Reverend Jeremiah Wright,” he [Obama]said, “had spoken in an ‘incendiary’ manner,” but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don't think I'm especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.

It is amazing to see to what extent people are willing to go to eulogize another human being. It is this excess that constitutes the cult of personality. The difference between admiration and cult of personality is in the degree of adulation. Is it not fair to say that Obama has the same effect on his fans that Hitler, Khomeini or other famous demagogues such as Joseph Stalin or Mao Ze Dong had? I am not equating Obama to those mass murderers. Obama has not killed anyone (at least not yet). I am only comparing their effects on their audience, particularly prior to their rise to power.

Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such a quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming.

Obama’s speeches are grandiose. They are other worldly. He may talk about the war in Iraq, taxes or social security. It does not matter how mundane is the subject, he makes them sound transcendental and his audience is moved to tears. His worshippers do not go to listen to his plans. He has yet to offer any that is workable and different. They go to bask in his glory, to get high. Obama presents himself as someone with a unique vision and grasp of the entire problems affecting, not just the nation but the world, a pretense that is incomensurate with his track record. When in a meeting with House Democrats waxing lyrical about his trip to Europe, he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.” The world is waiting for Obama, according to Obama. In one of his rallies he reiterated this delusion of grandiosity and said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for." This sentence is logically absurd. What actually Obama wanted to say, which he masked with fake modesty is “I am the one the world has been waiting for.”

When you fall for someone to the extent that Obama’s followers have fallen for him, you surrender your reason and individuality to him willingly. When millions of people surrender their hearts and their minds to one person the result can be catastrophic. This is what happened in Germany with Hitler, in China with Mao, in the Soviet Union with Stalin, in Cuba with Castro, in Iran with Khomeini, and so on and so forth. Today, we think these men were monsters, but that was not what millions of their worshipers thought. Those people loved them. Dictators can’t dictate, unless peole are willing to be dictated.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Cult of Personality:
"A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies.

"A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders."

Who is Obama?

Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love, also believes, “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”

Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Vaknin explains: “Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious. They are subtle, refined, socially-adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. Both types [cerebral and somatic] equally lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless or driven.” These were the very traits that distinguished Hitler and Khomeini. Many of these traits can be seen in Obama. As for his ruthlessness, perhaps his support of legislation to let babies die if they survive abortion, gives a glimps into his soul, that he may lacks empathy, does not value life, and if in the position of power can be ruthless. Narcissists need power to show their ruthlessness. Considering the fact that Obama neglected his own half brother, George Hussein Obama, who lives on one dollar per month in Kenya, we can’t vouch for Obama’s empathy or say he is a caring person.

What is Narcissism?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes narcissism as a personality disorder that “revolve around a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and sense of entitlement. Often individuals feel overly important and will exaggerate achievements and will accept, and often demand, praise and admiration despite worthy achievements.”

The third and fourth editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of 1980 and 1994 and the European ICD-10 describe NPD in similar language:

An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met:

•Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
•Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion
•Is firmly convinced that he is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special, unique, or high-status people (or institutions)
•Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation, or failing that, wishes to be feared and notorious (narcissistic supply)
•Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his expectations
•Is “interpersonally exploitative” i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends
•Is devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others
•Is constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her
•Is arrogant, has haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted

Obama inebriated with the fantasy of unlimited success.

Pathological narcissism, is not akin to typical narcissism—someone with a hedonistic or self-centered sense of self —but rather someone with a very weak sense of self. Obama’s narcissism is pathological.

Narcissists seek power. That is the whole purpose of their existence. Power for them is the elixir of life. Those who know about NPD can’t help but notice it in Obama’s posture, the tone of his voice, his demeanor and particularly his grandiose claims and unscripted adlibs.

Narcissim has degrees. When it is extreme it shows in the posture and the way the narcissist walks and talks. Obama's posture, exudes haughtiness. He is all puffery. Compare his posture to those of Hitler, Stalin and Saddam.

According to Vaknin, Obama displays the following behaviors, which are among the hallmarks of pathological narcissism:

- Subtly misrepresents facts and expediently and opportunistically shifts positions, views, opinions, and "ideals" (e.g., about campaign finance, re-districting). These flip-flops do not cause him overt distress and are ego-syntonic (he feels justified in acting this way). Alternatively, refuses to commit to a standpoint and, in the process, evidences a lack of empathy.

- Ignores data that conflict with his fantasy world, or with his inflated and grandiose self-image. This has to do with magical thinking. Obama already sees himself as president because he is firmly convinced that his dreams, thoughts, and wishes affect reality. Additionally, he denies the gap between his fantasies and his modest or limited real-life achievements (for instance, in 12 years of academic career, he didn't publish a single scholarly paper or book).

- Feels that he is above the law.

- Talks about himself in the 3rd person singluar or uses the regal "we" and craves to be the exclusive center of attention, even adulation

- Has a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life and his "mission".

- Sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon)

- Displays false modesty and unctuous "folksiness" but is unable to sustain these behaviors (the persona, or mask) for long. It slips and the true Obama is revealed: haughty, aloof, distant, and disdainful of simple folk and their lives.

- Sublimates aggression and holds grudges.
- Behaves as an eternal adolescent (e.g., his choice of language, youthful image he projects, demands indulgence and feels entitled to special treatment, even though his objective accomplishments do not justify it).

Can Obama be trusted as the leader of the free world?

Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao, Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers’ souls, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it it too late.

One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then, his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia: a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995.”

In Vaknin’s words, “Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers.”

The pathological narcissist has a very weak sense of self. He compensates his devalued and injured self with pomposity and by projecting a false image of majesty and authority. He retreats into a bubble universe of fantasy, in which he is loved, respected and omnipotent. All children create such a world. Narcissists simply don’t leave it. They carry this world of pretence into their adulthood. With the passage of time, this world becomes to them as real as the real world, to the point that they can’t tell the difference. When Obama acts presidential, he is simply acting out his childhood fantasy of omnipotence and grandeur. Emotionally, he is still a little hurt boy, neglected and unloved in the body and mind of a grown up man. Such people can be dangerous. Narcissists have the emotional maturity of a child, or even an animal, but the intellect of a man. They feel like a beast, but think like a human.

If we look into the childhood of all narcissists, we can see that invariably they were abused. Saddam was born to a widow who after losing her husband and her 12 year old son was so distressed that she attempted suicide. Before his birth, she would pull out clumps of her hair and pummel her pregnant abdomen with her fists. Saddam Hussein in his own official biography recounts his unhappy childhood. Hitler was the son of a very abusive man who would beat him regularly. From Saddam to Osama, to Hitler, to Stalin, to Khomeini, to Mao and to Kim Jong Ill, it is wounded childhood that causes NPD. Obama’s chaotic childhood and his continuous struggle to find his identity make him a prime candidate for NPD.

Hitler was confused about his identity. His father was an illegitimate son of a Jew. He chose to be in denial of that part of himself and his response was the genocide of the Jews. Obama’s search for his identity led him to a racist church that preached “Black Power.” He changed his given name Barry to Barack, in an atempt to rid himself of the only vestige he had with his white heritage.

Narcissists have only one issue. They want power and will do and say anything to get it. Their words mean nothing to them. They do not intend to keep them. They look into your eyes and swear on a stack of Bibles that they are not going to do something when that is exactly what they intend to do. They break their promises when it suits them and annul their treaties when they can get away with it. They lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie.

Narcissists are pathological liars. They lie even to themselves. Ironically, they are the first to believe their own lies. When normal people lie, they show signs of distress. Narcissists don’t. They can pass any polygraph test with flying colors. It is this conviction that fools people around them making them believe in their truthfulness and sincerity. In a twisted way they are sincere because, although they are conscience that they are not truthful, they believe in their own lies. This is difficult to understand and even more difficult to explain, but for a narcissist fantasy and reality are intertwined. The narcissist’s delusional thoughts of grandiosity are real to him.

Obama absorbed in reveries of omnipotence

Narcissistic Society

Germans are not particularly an evil race. They are no better or worse than any other nation. And yet, despite their advanced culture and civility they committed the most hideous crime in modern history. They murdered up to ten million people, because those unfortunate souls did not meet their "Master Race standards of ethnic purity.” Hitler did not kill anyone; the Germans did.

So the question is: What made these smart and highly civilized people commit such horrendous acts of savagery?

According to Vaknin, “The narcissistic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies.”

Is America a narcissistic society? Vaknin believes “Pathological narcissism is a ubiquitous phenomenon because every human being - regardless of the nature of his society and culture - develops healthy self esteem early in life [which he calls healthy narcissism]. Healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by abuse - and abuse, alas, is a universal human behavior. By 'abuse, we mean any refusal to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of the individual - smothering, doting, and excessive expectations - are as abusive as beating and incest.”

The emergence of so many cults in America is proof that America is not an exception to the norm. If demagogue narcissists, like Jim Jones, David Koresh or Jimmy Swaggart can find a fertile ground in America, why not one with a political message?

The Power of Manipulation

Narcissists are manipulative and extremely resourceful. They know how to the play their game, and how to get what they want, by using others. Obama is the least experienced senator among the Democrats. His political views are the most foolish of them all. He opposed the surge in Iraq saying it will make the situation worse and he was wrong. He thinks the solution to terrorism is to sit with terrorist states without precondition and negotiate with them. When Russia invaded Georgia, all this genius did was to urge both sides to "exert restraint". Everything this man has said so far reveals his ignorance in economical, political and military matters. Despite that, this junior senator has managed to rally the seasoned senators of the Democratic Party around himself and, not withstanding his ineptitude, he has emerged as the leader de facto of his party and their presidential candidate.

This is a remarkable feat. One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.

Anyone can be fooled by narcissists. Just as experienced and smart senators of the Democratic Party have surrendered to the charisma of Obama, a man who is inferior to them all in every sense; many members of the media also have fallen for his charm hook, line and sinker. The American media is soft on Obama, but extremely harsh and deceitfully unfair on Governor Palin. The “rich White Americans,” the very people he despised for twenty years are swooning for him. The Jews whom he opposed all his life are backing him. They are opening their wallets and supporting his campaign in an unprecedented way. He has managed to charm even the Kennedys. Ted Kennedy, the lion in Winter, passed the Kennedy mantle unto Obama. That was hugely symbolic. As for the great Clintons, he made them submissive, and for whatever reason, incomprehensible to me, they are playing his game. Think about it. Obama is a cipher. In reality, he is nobody. And yet, thanks to his overbearing display of authority, the very mask that he is wearing to hide his devalued and injured self, he has overwhelmed all the giants of the Democratic party. Cults are full of smart people who have been hoodwinked by mentally sick needy people.

Could all this phenomenal support and unbounded adulation erupt into violence? All the abuses and killings in Nazi Germany were done by the Germans, ordinary people who loved Hitler and believed in the glorious tomorrow that he was promising them. Hitler was insane, but those who did his bidding were not. Despite being smart, they did not hesitate to fulfill their fuehrer’s wishes and commit the most heinous crimes. The same thing happened in Iran. Ordinary people, once under the spell of Khomeini, acted like beasts. This is what happens when sane people follow insane people.

Could the same happen in America? Why not? Look how millions of people literally worship Obama. With some people I cannot even talk about Obama. They cannot tolerate any criticism of him. They get angry and, not only they want to end the conversation but threaten to end the friendship. I am familiar with this kind of religious devotion to a person. The reaction that I get from Obama worshippers is similar to that of Muslims when their prophet is criticized. They are even prone to insult you. See how they overlook Obama's blatant lies and are willing to forgive his major sins such as racism. Note how the mainstream media bends the rules, twists the facts, exaggerates Obama’s little virtues, absolves his sins, and even lies to sell him to the public. Compare the royal treatment that the liberal press has given to Obama to how unfairly they treat Governor Palin; how they smear her character and belittle her experience and achievement. ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Governor Palin was a stain on journalistic integrity. Is it more important that Palin has not traveled the world and has not shaken hands with heads of states, or the fact that Obama has lied so many times? Under what pretext should an ordinary citizen visit heads of foreign states? The question itself is preposterous.

While not shaking hands with foreign heads of states does not disqualify one to run for any office, The Logan Act (est. 1799) makes it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.

That is exactly what Obama did during his trip to Iraq, a charge that Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi confirmed, while trying to deny it. She said, “In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’ governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.”

This is high treason. Ordinary citizens have no right to enter into negotiations with foreign countries and make deals against the interest of their Government. Obama tells the Iraqis not to let the American soldiers go, so he can call them in January, supposedly when he is the president and claim victory for himself. Will Mr. Gibson or anyone in the liberal media question Obama for this crime?

Gibson’s questions were tricky. He asked the Governor, “what do you think of Bush’s doctrine,” and then, instead of explaining himself, he insisted that his interviewee define what he meant. After letting the Governor look puzzled, Gibson explained what he understands of "Bush Doctrine," which according to him is preemptive strike.

Assuming this is a “Bush doctrine,” is it his only doctrine? Isn’t being pro life also a Bush doctrine? Isn’t Christianity or creationism a Bush doctrine? Bush believes in a multitude of things and they change as his thinking evolves over time. How can one know what Gibson has in mind? Do you see the trickery?.

Many members of the media have been hoodwinked by the charm of the rising fuehrer. They have become his extensions, act deceitfully and dishonestly to make their beloved leader’s rise to power a reality.

How can smart people let themselves be manipulated by a psychopath to such an extent that they become quasi zombies? Recall what the smart Germans did under the spell of Hitler. Bear in mind what the Soviets did under the influence of Stalin. Consider what the Japanese did during WWII when they believed in the divinity of their emperor. Evoke how the Chinese Red Guard massacred millions of their own countrymen when they were blinded by their love for Mao and his faux notion of equality. Look at the Islamic terrorists. Can’t we say the same about them? Isn’t Islamic savagery the result of Muslims’ uncritical devotion to a long deceased narcissist? If you don't know what I am talking about, I invite you to read my book, Understanding Muhammad. When sane people fall for the lies of an insane man, they act insanely.

No one is born a terrorist. Terrorists are ordinary people who do the bidding of a pathological narcissist whom they love and worship as their liberator. They are so enamored with him that they stop thinking and act like automatons. To prove their love and devotion they can commit murder and even suicide. They can kill their own children, as the followers of Jim Jones did in Guyana. The narcissist encourages all of this behavior because it validates his delusion of omnipotence. It reassures him that he is loved, respected, counted, taken seriously. Did you hear the song played during the Democratic convention? It said, “This is the church.” And who do you think is the head of that church? Americans are as fallible and as gullible as everyone else. It is foolhardy to say "it won't happen to us." Just as today, Obama’s supporters happily engage in intellectual dishonesty, deceitful reporting, and even hooliganism, I predict they will soon, merrily commit the same crimes other nations committed under the spell of their narcissistic leaders.

His majesty condescendingly looks down at his scullions

The Sick Symbiosis

Narcissists need their narcissistic supply to fuel their narcissism. They get it through adulation from people around them. These people are often also needy people. They are known as co-dependants. The narcissist and his co-dependent therefore, form a sick symbiosis in which both benefit. Let me give you one example to explain this mechanism.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. In December 2006, in an article entitled “The Ridiculousness & Danger That Is Obama '08” Sirota lambasted the Democrats who wanted Obama, an incognito junior senator, to run for presidency.

Sometimes, you really just have to sit back and laugh at the ridiculousness of the celebrity-obsessed political culture we now live in.” wrote Sirota in his column. “Take this Chicago Sun-Times article by Lynn Sweet in which she predicts Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) will run for president. She goes through what he has to do to prepare for his run, and this is the one that just makes you chuckle: “Develop signature legislative initiatives: Once the Democrats control Congress come January, there's a chance to pass legislation. Watch for Obama to focus on alternative energy measures, health care and ethics reform legislation that stalled earlier this year."

Think about it. The national media is swooning over Obama, begging him to run for president. Yet, at the same time, they are implicitly acknowledging that he has actually not "developed significant legislative initiatives." In other words, we are to simply accept that the Obama for President wave has absolutely nothing to do with anything that the man HAS DONE and further, that whenever he does decide to use his enormous political capital to do something, it is all in pursuit of the White House - not any actual sense of DOING SOMETHING for the people who elected him to the Senate.

I don't blame Obama for not having accomplished much - he's been in the Senate for two years. As I wrote in the Nation, the main concern about him is that he doesn't actually seem to ASPIRE to anything outside of the Washington power structure (other than maybe running for another higher office), and doesn't seem to be interested in challenging the status quo in any fundamental way. Using his senate career as a guide, it suggests that any presidential run by him is about him, his speaking ability and his fawned over talent for "connecting" (whatever the hell that means).” (Read the rest of Sirota’s comment in his own blog.)

I could not say it better. Sirota understood the problem with Obama. He realized that not only this man has zero experience; he is actually a power hungry charlatan that aspires to nothing other than running for another higher office. He then expressed his outrage at the fellow Democrats who tried to make a leader out of this quack.

These Democrats laid all their hopes on Obama. They were captivated by his charm. They could not see that this man is wearing a mask of authority to cover his inner feeling of insecurity; that he is a fraud, a narcissist. When approached, Obama at first confessed to his inexperience, but the sycophants in the Democratic Party, were so desperate to find a charismatic leader that they could not let go of their prize. It does not take much to persuade a narcissist that he can do anything. He is already convinced that he is smarter and better than everyone else. So, despite his own confession of lack of experience, Obama could not resist the temptation.

To nurture his narcissism, the narcissist needs narcissistic supply. It is always people around him who provide that supply and encourage him in his psychosis. If it were not for Khadijah who reassured her husband that his hallucinations were not demonic, as he had thought, but divine revelations, Muhammad may never have started his prophetic career. It was she who encouraged him to launch a new religion, instead of calling an exorcist.

This is called co-dependency. The co-dependent, who also suffers from low self esteem, seeks his or her grandeur and narcissistic supply in the greatness of a narcissist of whom she seeks to become a part.

According to Wikipedia, “a ‘codependent’ is loosely defined as someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for persons who depend on him or her. A ‘codependent’ is one side of a relationship between mutually needy people. The dependent, or obviously needy party(s) may have al, physical, financial difficulties, or addictions they seemingly are unable to surmount. The "codependent" party exhibits behavior which controls, makes excuses for, pities, and takes other actions to perpetuate the obviously needy party's condition, because of their desire to be needed and fear of doing anything that would change the relationship.”

The Democrats were desperately in need of a charismatic leader. They saw their hope in a needy man, a narcissist who portrayed himself as self assured, eloquent and authoritative and had sex appeal. It was love at first sight and they set on to polish him as their candidate. In this relationship the Democratic Party became the co-dependant of the narcissist Obama. They needed someone to shine so they can bask in his splendor. And Obama needed them to fulfill his delusions of grandiosity. This is how codependency works. It is a sick symbiosis of two needy parties. Behind every successful narcissist, there is always a co-dependent.

When the co-dependent and the narcissist team-up the result can be catastrophic. Now we have folie à deux. The delusional belief of the narcissist about himself is transmitted and shared by another needy, but ostensibly smart person. The codependent validates and encourages the narcissist's delusion. As the result, the narcissist becomes bolder, more assertive, more authoritative and more confident. The partnership of the narcissist and the codependent dons their delusion with the mantle of credibility. The codependent will then do everything to persuade others as well. The narcissist's cause is himself. The codependent will champion that cause. By recruiting others, they find validation for their own belief about the narcissist. Soon the folie à deux becomes folie à trois, then folie à quatre, and when you are a presidential candidate and are followed by a hoard of journalists and cameramen, before you blink there will be folie à plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder.

The masses of people have no first hand knowledge of the narcissist, but they jump on the bandwagon thanks to a very human trait, misnomered as “herd mentality.” They reason, how can so many people be wrong and satisfied by this fallacy blindly join the cult of personality worship.

Like gasoline being poured on a fire, the sycophants around the narcissist provide him with an abundance of narcissistic fuel to feed upon. The unbounded adulations poured at his feet further reinforce and escalate the unique and divine self-image of the narcissist. The larger the narcissistic fuel supply becomes, the more inflated becomes his ego, and the more firmly set in his own mind becomes the conviction of his own invincibility and superiority. The narcissist reaches a stage that he will claim to be a revolutionary leader, an agent of change, a renascence man, the hand of God, even a messenger or prophet of God. Just as a fire can grow infinitely large as long as it receives its fuel, there is no limit to the delusional belief of a narcissist. When millions of people yell and scream and shout “I love you,” an ordinary narcissist is prone to believe that he is God. If the narcissist happens to be a person with power and authority, in a position of high leadership commanding armies and weapons of mass destruction, the result too often leads to the horrific slaughter of millions of innocent souls in the gulag, gas chambers, or killing fields.

Unbounded adulation reconfirms the narcissist that he is right and that anyone who disagrees with him is evil and therefore it is just to punish him. Narcissists do not understand the concept of the Golden Rule. Right is what benefits them and wrong is what harms them. They fight for their own interest and are convinced that this is justice. Human rights and human lives are important only to the extent that they meet their narcissistic needs. They are worthless, and can be disposed of, if they don’t.

Ayatollah Montazeri, the man who was originally chosen to succeed Khomeini, recalled when Khomeini ordered the execution of 3000 youths who were captured during a demonstration against him. Montazeri protested and Khomeini angrily told him, “I will respond for my actions in the Day of Judgment.” Khomeini was a man of God. However, as a narcissist, he was convinced that because he was a superior being and a chosen one, a delusional belief that was reconfirmed by millions of people when they cheered for him, anyone who opposed him was opposing God and therefore by killing them he was doing the maker of the universe a favor.

There is no cure for narcissism. However, deprived of adulation, the disorder will remain dormant. The narcissist, without the narcissistic supply, may become grumpy and complain that the world does not understand them or appreciate their importance. They will continue to cheat and lie when they can get away with it, but the damage that they can cause is not earth shattering. However, when a narcissist becomes the focus of unlimited narcissistic supply, where millions of people scream at his feet, he goes insane.

As narcissism maturates, the narcissist becomes more demanding for respect and compliance and more intolerant of criticism. He becomes paranoid, and divides the world into “us” vs. “them”. He casts himself and his minions as victims and instills in them the distrust of the “others”.

When criticized, Obama's soul can be seen in his eyes.

The narcissist’s anger and intolerance is projected on his servile followers who also become angry and intolerant of criticism of their leader. Remember the sick symbiosis between the narcissist and his codependents? The followers get their narcissistic supply by elevating the status of their leader. The greater he looks, the better they feel. They see their glory is his glory. Conversely, when the narcissist is criticized, his followers become offended. They take those criticisms personally and their instinct of self defense is triggered. They will become vigilantes and will silence their critics through intimidation, bullying, mocking, threats and violence (like calling those who disagree with Obama, racists).

This paragraph is a later addition. About a week after I wrote the above, Missouri sheriffs and top prosecutors formed Obama "Truth Squads" and threatened libel charges against Obama critics. I am no prophet, but see how my predictions are coming to pass. This is only the beginning. Narcissists are intolerant of criticism and create a reign of terror to silence their critics.

Sirota was no fool. He saw what is wrong with Obama and was right on the money when he described him. But, as I have repeated many times, narcissists are gifted manipulators. Sirota is an influential man. Obama needed his support and called him.

It's not every day that God calls your cell phone,” wrote Sirota, sarcastically speaking of Obama, ‘This is Barack Obama.’ Thinking it was a good friend playing a joke, I said I didn't believe him. But no, the voice insisted with a laugh, it was Illinois Senator Barack Obama, otherwise known in cult-of-personality political circles as a deity, a rising Democratic star or, as George W. Bush recently called him, "the pope."

Where does David Sirota stand today? Errr!... Amm!… Why do you want to know? Emm!... How can I put it? Mr. Sirota…, Errr!…, Ah! Yes! Mr. Sirota has had an epiphany - a Pauline sort of experience. As he neared Damas... I mean Denver, on his journey to the Democratic Convention, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice on his cell phone say to him, "David, David, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" David asked. "I am Barack, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." That is how David Sirota became a believer of Obama. He stopped blaspheming his Lord by calling him inept and opportunist. Guess what? He has even defended Jeremiah Wright. Hallelujah! Surely “God” (the emerging one) can transform the hearts of his enemies.

Narcissists have an almost surreal power to manipulate others. They can literally charm their adversaries and turn them into cheerful scullion, who will even thank them for giving them the privilege to slave for them.

You see! The narcissist and the codependent need each other. Many members of the Democratic Party may know what Sirota knows, but they need Obama. They have to keep up appearances (think Hillary, who once said "shame on you, Barack Obama" because of his flip flopping and lies and now supports him).

Narcissists are amoral. They consider themselves to be above the law. Once in power, they will try to strengthen their hold by surrounding themselves with equally amoral people. A good example of what we should expect in Obama’s administration is the infamous NAFTA gate scandal. This is what happened:

A senior member of the Obama campaign called the Canadian government to say that “when Sen. Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t be worried; that it is just campaign rhetoric and shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

Isn't it amazing? Obama tells the Ohio voters, who are unhappy with NAFTA that he is going to kill it, when actually he does not mean to do any such thing. For a narcissist, ends justify means. He feels warranted to lie and deceive in order to accomplish what he has to accomplish.

This story was denied by Obama, but confirmed twice by sources at the highest level of the Canadian government. This is how a narcissist operates. Obama will lie to Americans and he will surround himself with equally unethical people. With a Congress and Senate controlled by Democrats, and his ability as president to replace retiring Supreme Court judges, nothing will stop him from abusing his power.

The Cause of the Narcissist

The cause of the narcissist is himself. Everything else is a tool, a stepping stone for the narcissist to ascend to power. Narcissists don’t have any ideology. They champion the cause that has a better chance of making their ascent to power easier.

Vaknin writes: “Narcissists use anything they can lay their hands on in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. If God, creed, church, faith, and institutionalized religion can provide them with narcissistic supply, they will become devout. They will abandon religion if it can't.”

Therefore, the question whether Obama is a Muslim or a Christian, whether he is pro Palestine, as he has been all his life or whether he is pro Israel, whether he is a black supremacist or an agent of racial harmony, are moot. Obama is anything you want him to be and situation dictates. He takes the side that is more expedient to his cause. To communists he is a comrade, to Islamists he is their man, to Palestinian fighters he is their hope and to the Jews he is a staunch Zionist. The narcissist’s creed is himself. Everything else is negotiable.

The best description of Obama comes from himself. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in The Audacity of Hope, “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” This is the key to Obama’s personality. He will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama voted “present” in the Senate most of the time, (130 times to be precise) not because they were too difficult decisions, as Rudy Giuliani said at the GOP convention, but because those issues were not relevant to his cause.

Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “present” vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.

Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into…, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which, he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father.

Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?

Narcissists are magical thinkers. They live in a world of fantasy; fantasies of grandiosity and unlimited power. But they are convinced that those fantasies will become reality because they are special and destined for greatness. That is why Obama already sees himself as president and acts presidential. The very fact that he travelled abroad and visited with several heads of states is another sign of this man's delusions of grandiosity. He is not representing the government. Under what pretext he visited those heads of states and entered into negotiations with them?

Vaknin explains, “Bragging and false autobiography – The narcissist brags incessantly. His speech is peppered with ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘myself’, and ‘mine’. He describes himself as intelligent, or rich, or modest, or intuitive, or creative – but always excessively, implausibly, and extraordinarily so.”

Narcissists Are Dangerous.

Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama’s lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power. A narcissist cares for no one but himself.

Compare this to what the McCains did. They brought a child from Bangladesh with facial deformities - a little girl with no chance for a normal life – and with plastic surgery restored her beauty and adopted her as their daughter. Millions of ordinary people, who are not even wealthy, have fostered children of total strangers in third world countries and give about a dollar a day for their education and upbringing.

Narcissists can be very generous, but never without an ulterior motive. They are generous when their display of generosity is noticed and elevates them in the eyes of others. Obama donated $20,000 to his racist and anti-Semitic church, but neglected his brother who could get some education and live a lot better if only he had one dollar per day.

Narcissism is all about image. Vaknin says, “The narcissist is shallow, a pond pretending to be an ocean. He likes to think of himself as a Renaissance man, a Jack of all trades. The narcissist never admits to ignorance in any field – yet, typically, he is ignorant of them all. It is surprisingly easy to penetrate the gloss and the veneer of the narcissist's self-proclaimed omniscience.”

Obama’s gaffes in history and world affairs are proof of that. This man does not even know the number of states in the USA, or that Canada does not have a president.` That is why Vaknin says a narcissist is a shallow pond that pretends to be an ocean. Obama's ignorance about what should be common knowledge is mind boggling.

Narcissists have a profound sense of call, as they believe they have a “special purpose” or a “high calling.” In his autobiography Hitler wrote, “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” Politics and religion offer irresistible lure for the narcissist.

And this is what Obama said about his “calling:” "Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me," he said of his walk down the aisle of the Trinity United Church of Christ. "I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth."

At least one mental health professional believes that about 6% of Americans are pathological narcissists. The percentage in countries where child abuse is more prevalent is a lot higher. Although all narcissists are cunning, and bereft of conscience, not all of them have the wits to rise to power. A narcissist with smarts can be dangerous.

Hitler was smart, and so is Obama. Hitler would not have become the monster he became had he not risen to power and had he not received so much narcissistic fodder to feed on. One man who saw Khomeini prior to rising to power recalled he would gently push flies out of his window, but would not kill them. The same man massacred tens of thousands of Iranians. It is power that brings madness out of the narcissist.

America is at a crucial moment in its history. I cannot think of any disaster greater than putting a pathological narcissist in control of the world’s most powerful military machine.

Narcissists are empty in substance but full on promises. Obama has not proposed a single concrete workable plan, but he has raised the hopes and expectations of millions of people with his promises. The glorious tomorrow that he offers is no more real than the Styrofoam Greek columns that adorned his image during his acceptance speech.

Vaknin says, “The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments, His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.”

The narcissist who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first.”

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc.

When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail - the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred.

This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?

I hate to sound alarmist, but one must be a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others. They are simply self serving and selfish. Obama evinces symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton, for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them trecherous.

Vaknin says, “When the narcissist reveals his true colors, it is usually far too late. His victims are unable to separate from him. They are frustrated by this acquired helplessness and angry at themselves for having failed to see through the narcissist earlier on.”

Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. Brendan Farrington, reported, evidence indicates that some black Republicans are switching parties to vote for Obama. He wrote, “Florida has 81,512 more black Democrats compared to a loss of 784 black Republicans; Louisiana has 34,325 more black Democrats, while the number of black Republicans dropped by 907; North Carolina has 92,356 more black Democrats and 2,850 fewer black Republicans. The only three states that track voting registration by party and race show black Republican registration dropping slightly since the beginning of the year."

Let us call a spade a spade. This is racism, pure and simple. The truth is that while everyone carries a misconceived collective guilt towards the blacks for wrongs done centuries ago by a bygone people to a bygone people, the blacks carry a collective rancor, enmity or vendetta towards non-blacks and to this day want to "stand up" to the Whiteman. They seem to be stuck in 19th century.

Geraldine A. Ferraro was right when she said that Senator Barack Obama had received preferential treatment because he is a black man. I can testify to that myself. Despite not favoring the Democrats political views, my very first inclination was to like Senator Obama. At that moment I had no knowledge of this man’s political views or his character. All I could see was the color of his skin and that gave me enough emotional incentive to favor him. I got over that kneejerk reaction soon, after discovering that Obama is nothing but an empty suit full of hubris. A good indication that ex-vice presidential candidate is right is the fact that when in 1979, Ahmadinejad and his fellow Islamist militants took the American embassy workers as hostage, they released the blacks and the women, but kept the white men for 444 days.

The majority of people base the most important decisions on emotions, rather than on rationality. The first impression is often the lasting one. First impressions can be wrong. When I prove to Obama devotees that all their arguments to support him are logical fallacies, they tell me that they know Obama is the right man, because that is what their intuition tells them and they trust their intuition. That is yet another fallacy. If a belief is not backed by logic, it is not intuition but blind faith. The followers of Jim Jones cheerfully committed suicide because they relied on their blind faith that they mistook as intuition.

The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. They are in a state of trance. They truly believe Obama is their messiah. He is the fruition of their long quest for black power. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. It is unlikely that Whites would ever devolve to racism, but all it takes is a substantial number of disaffected people to fuel the flames of racial tension. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions in America will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades. Despite his campaign rhetoric he has been a racist all his life. He will interpret any dissent as a rejection of his racial identity. As resentment towards him increases, so will his paranoia. He will grow distrustful of the whites and will surround himself with the blacks and other yesmen with whom he identifies himself. America’s near future is bleak.

America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Castroists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.

Psychiatric Test

When a narcissist is running for the highest office in the world, the stakes cannot be higher. Did it matter what were Hitler’s views on abortion, economy, environment, education, old age pension, gay rights, social security, jobs or housing? With Hitler, the only thing that really mattered was his mental sanity.

I urge all Americans to make this a pivotal issue in this electoral campaign. Time is running out. Please spread the word. Talk about it with your coworkers, friends and relatives. Invite everyone in your address book to sign this petition. Publish it in your blog. Write about it. This is the most vital issue. If a presidential candidate is mentally unfit, nothing else matters. If you are an Obama fan, please sign too, so you can vote with confidence that the man you are putting in the White House is not going to be your nightmare.

I have started the petition, below linked to this article. I ask everyone to demand that all presidential and vice-presidential candidates in this election submit to mental health examinations prior to Election Day. Please sign the petition and ask others to do the same."

Please Sign the Petition

Ali Sina is the author of Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah’s Prophet and the founder of Faith Freedom International, the movement of ex-Muslims created to eliminate hate through knowledge and foster amity among all mankind.

What is WRONG with US nowadays with Obama at the helm...

2009-11-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

MORE CLIMATEGATE!!! IT'S GETTING BETTER FOLKS!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

THE DANISH TEXT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-change

The Ever- Absent President who was never responsible for anything in this government! His supporters say Obama had done much. Oh really?? Like what? Ruin this country? But that's a negative acomplishment. How about a positive one? Well- there is nothing. Obama the Absentee President is just like Obama the Absentee Legislator. You disagree? Read on!
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/29/time-to-pass-the-buck-and-start-pointing-fingers-obama-living-up-to-his-absentee-legislator-past/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigGovernment+%28Big+Government%29&utm_content=Twitter

CLIMATEGATE: In cahoots with Al Gore, Obama-picked way out fringe Science Czar is not the least bit perturbed... and why should he? When you have Obama at your side, you're invincible!
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/climategate_holdren_email/2009/11/27/291545.html?s=al&promo_code=9234-1

As far as the Health Care bill- what does Public Option really mean?
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/03/morning-bell-the-public-option-is-neither-public-nor-an-option/

Are we still a sovereign country, or just an arm of the UN? How can we KO Barbara Boxer?
http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/11/03/boxers-reckless-pace/

ACORN=OBAMA- SOOO MY BIG QUESTION: Are we going to investigate all these shenanigans after he leaves office, a la Bush officials being investigated by this DOJ?
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/13/obamas-acorn-connection-cant-survive-inspection/

Who are the real Socialists Find out on PBS show NOW with Elizabeth Warren. I'll give you a hint: lots of people in this administration!
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/546/index.html