The Road not Taken

A favorite poem of mine by:
Robert Frost (1874–1963).

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some more ideas for young people on life

There are a few more basic rules of life that young people seem to need to learn.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 7: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 8: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 9: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 10: The Government can not give you anything. Food, health care, or housing. Because the government doesn't produce anything, then the only way they can provide something for you is by taking it away from someone else. If they "give" one person money, they took that money from someone else.
Rule 11: Saving whales or protesting for world peace is very nice. But it won't pay the electric bill.
Rule 10: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Am I going to finish Strong?

Life is always challenging. But I have never been faced with challenges as hard as many others.
I try to watch this video every week to keep my feet planted firmly on the ground. (and fortunately I have two feet). I remember my mother telling me as a child when I complained about not having new shoes, that I should be grateful for the shoes that I had because some people had no feet to wear even old shoes.

The world is a very rapidly changing place

The momentum of the changes in the world is mind-staggering to me. I have sent this link to my children and told them to take this into consideration in raising my grandchildren. A majority of the jobs that children should be preparing for the future don't even exist today. China will soon be the largest English speaking population in the world. The status-quo is disappearing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY We will be eclipsed by the rest of the world in technology and achievement unless we learn to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Those who believe that they can just grow up and do what their parents did, and save and invest and that the world will reward them are mistaken. Success in the future and financial prosperity will go to those who have a keener sense of how to use the changes in the world-to-come, to their own benefit.

Free Markets are a joke?

In a speech to a trade union group, President Obama's manufacturing Czar was quoted as saying they (the administration) agree with Mao? Do you want a glimpse into where this administration is heading us as an economy? Click the link below and see a clip from his speech. It's frightening, to say the least. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27cXXirAIw4

This morning the administration also announced that companies which took bailout money last year will be forced to cut executive compensation up to 90%. What is happening here is a rapid dismantling of the American institution of free markets into a system driven by Washington (state-owned-and-controlled) authority.

I would be one of the first to say that there have been many failures during the past ten years in the free market system to regulate itself. And there have been abuses. Primarily caused by individual greed. But the miracle of the free market system itself is that eventually abuses are punished and penalized by the system itself when certain parts of the system die or disintegrate (via Bankruptcy). But the system itself is still good. No where else in the world, does a system allow a "no-body" to rise up from poverty and through individual self achievement accumulate wealth to their own limits and ability. This Obama administration seeks though, to overturn this system we have and give us a system of government owned and government control industry and manufacturing and health care. That system did not work in the Soviet Union or in Communist China. This philosophy does sound good to the "have-nots" because it promises to "take from the rich" and "give to the poor". But if you remove the potential of reward for individual self-achievement you remove the potential for greatness that this country has always given each working American. I want to eliminate poverty as much as the next person. But you do that by giving people an opportunity to rise above their economic circumstances and achieve their own future greatness. You do not do it by redistributing wealth and taking from those who have earned their money and give it to those who have not. What will happen . . . and in fact is already happening . . .is that those individuals who have accumulated wealth of any amount will begin to flee this country with their money and capital and seek to deposit it and store it in off-shore locations that are outside the reach of Washington. It is a financial disease that feeds on itself. As the capital begins to leave this country, then so does manufacturing and other economic opportunity. I . . .for one . . . have already begun a systematic relocation of my own financial assets to non-American depositories. And I'm really just a small fish in the sea. But I will not sit by and have Washington take away from me what I've worked my entire life to accumulate . . .starting with nothing . . . .and give it to the poor and homeless until we all have the same. When that day comes, we will all have nothing. That's my opinion.

Mao said . . .as the video quoted . . .that power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was . . ultimately . . proven wrong. Power comes from an individuals desire to overcome their own present situation and rise above the circumstances they find themselves in. All the gun barrel does is impede or advance that destiny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27cXXirAIw4

Grandparents can be so retarded

After Christmas, a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their holiday away from school. One child wrote the following:

We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live in a big brick house but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Florida ...Now they live in a tin box and have rocks painted green to look like grass.

They ride around on their bicycles and wear name tags because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wreck center, but they must have got it fixed because it is all okay now, they do exercises there, but they don't do them very well. There is a swimming pool too, but all they do is jump up and down in it...with hats on.

At their gate, there is a doll house with a little old man sitting in it. He watches all day so nobody can escape. Sometimes they sneak out, and go cruising in their golf carts.

Nobody there cooks, they just eat out. And, they eat the same thing every night -- early birds. Some of the people can't get out past the man in the doll house. The ones who do get out, bring food back to the wrecked center for pot luck.

My Grandma says that Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and says I should work hard so I can be retarded someday too. When I earn my retardment, I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out, so they can visit their grandchildren.

The Recession is causing a Cultural Shift

Sometimes, our economy . . . and employers are forced to adapt to the ever-changing financial environment surrounding us. In this time of extreme financial pull back and the higher and higher rates of unemployment, it is also becoming important for the individual to learn to market themselves "outside the box". This "can-do" attitude will be what determines who gets the jobs in today's market.

Gosh I miss this guy.

I had the rare priviledge in 1985 of meeting President Ronald Reagan face to face and having a portrait photographed with him. He stood like a giant in front of me when I approached him. And I will always remember stepping up to the platform where he was giving each of us Congressional candidates a short "photo op". When I stepped up he leaned over to me and took my hand in his as a handshake and to help me up on the platform with him. I looked up at him and said "hello Mr. President. I'm Bud McElhaney." And he smiled so big at me and said back "well of course you are Bud, and I'm Ronald Reagan". He made me feel just like I was an old friend that he hadn't seen for years. And then he pulled me over close to him and put his arm around me and smiled again and said "now let's give them something to talk about!". Wow! I'll never forget him. And I'll never forget the pride he gave me for being an American. And the inspiration he gave me for trying to make a difference. I miss him. And America misses him. We were better with him as a leader. And we have become worse for having lost him.

For those who don't remember him so well, his quotes will give a good insight into his personna and his belief that the best government is the government that governs least.

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose." - Ronald Reagan

"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect." - Ronald Reagan

"Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem." - Ronald Reagan

"There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder." - Ronald Reagan

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong." - Ronald Reagan

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress." - Ronald Reagan

"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination." - Ronald Reagan

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program."
- Ronald Reagan

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it.. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." - Ronald Reagan

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women." - Ronald Reagan

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." - Ronald Reagan

Mary Jo Kopechne Health Care Reform Act of 2009

Barack Ozymandias By J.R. Dunn
September 09, 2009
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.

OZYMANDIAS (Published by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.





"News is the first draft of history", or so we're told. In truth, the "news" reported by mass media seldom reflects the crucial events of the moment. News reports of the summer of 1914 treated the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as a trivial Balkan matter, of little interest to anyone in the more civilized areas of Europe. Similarly, you'd look long and hard in the late spring of 1950 for any mention of a place called "Korea" in U.S. papers. "News", as the major media describes it, is almost without exception trivia.

Nothing has changed. In the summer of 2009 we're overwhelmed with stories about the death of the most notable trainee since Elagabalus, followed in short order by solemn meditations on the demise of a criminal politician, along with a few sidebars devoted to the imperial vacation at Martha's Vineyard. And oh yeah -- Michelle's shorts. How could I have overlooked them? But none of that, needless to say, will go into the books. The real story this summer, the one that the scholars will be pondering for decades to come, concerns the absolute collapse of the American messiah.

It looks as if Rush can rest easy -- the Big O has failed, and failed completely. You couldn't say the same about an ordinary president at this stage of his first term. At eight months after inauguration, the run-of-the-mill chief exec is still gearing up, getting a feel for things, beginning to put his plans into motion. But Obama, as we have been told time and again, is in no way ordinary. He is a man spoken of in religious terms -- the One, the Messiah, the Lightbringer. On the stage of history, we do not create our roles. We fill them as they have been previously established through repeated human activity across the millennia. Obama's role is one familiar to anyone versed in the history of the ancient world: he is the god-emperor. Obama was elected to do more than was possible for any ordinary president, and to do it more quickly than is possible for the merely human. His apotheosis was to be like nothing else in history, a redemption of promises so deeply pledged as to have become axiomatic. The age of Obama was to be a time of sweeping, an epoch of transformation. When he strode across our horizon, nothing would remain unchanged.

Now, unless I've been paying too much attention the New York Dolls reunion to notice, nothing of the sort has occurred. It's been a dull summer on the messiah front. In fact, Obama's performance so far has been dramatically below average even for the sorry run of mortal presidents. We have, in the past few months, witnessed one of the great anticlimaxes of political history. The god-emperor has failed, and no one can deny it.

Obama's template was the New Deal. The country was in a similar state of crisis, enduring the worst economic slump since the 30s (or the 70s, or the medieval depression, depending on who you talked to). Desperate voters were willing to accept measures that they would have found intolerable at any other time. As in 1933, there existed a brief window for dramatic transformation, one that might not reappear for generations.

The New Deal was intended, if not by FDR himself, then by the Brain Trust, specifically Adolf Berle and Rexford G. Tugwell, as a means of reworking American society from the ground up. Both men believed they could recast the U.S. in the mold of fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, but without such unappealing features as concentration camps, massacres, artificial famines, and the like.

Nothing actually came of this. Both major aspects of the New Deal, the National Recovery Act (NRA) and the Agricultural Assistance Administration (AAA), were already failing when they were shut down by the Supreme Court in 1935 and 1936 respectively (possibly the most effective exercise of separation of powers in American history). The New Deal continued as a kind of national workfare program, with various "alphabet agencies" such as the WPA and PWA providing make-work jobs for millions across the country. Even that failed in 1937 with the second market crash -- the one usually left out of casual histories of the Depression due to the fact that it can be blamed on no one other than Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Despite its failures, the New Deal remains liberalism's peak, one that they have been trying to retrieve for 75 years and more -- that golden moment in 1933 when they had the world in a vise and all things seemed possible. That's what Camelot was actually all about, and the Great Society as well. Every single Democratic president (with the exception of Harry Truman, too practical and cynical to buy into any such "horse manure") was held up as the great hope who would bring the dream to pass. Obama is simply the latest in a long line.

Obama was supposed to redeem the promises of the New Deal and then some. He could make it work. He had the mojo. He was the One. A god-emperor for the new millennium, the Yankee Augustus who would set down the new pattern for American society for centuries to come.

Well... maybe not this millennium. There's a list floating around the Net, comprised of Obama's achievements thus far, all the "major legislation" overseen by the messiah. It's intended to demonstrate that the new age is too coming to pass, that the Great Work is unfolding right on schedule. This list looks like this:
Cash for Clunkers Extension
Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act
Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009
Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act
Helping Families Save Their Homes Act
Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act
Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act
Omnibus Public Lands Management Act
Small Business Act Temporary Extension
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
DTV Delay Act
Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Now, the first thought that comes to mind is the word "boilerplate". Tobacco control? Public lands management? What other word is there? Throw in the standard Democratic "fair pay" effort, the customary spank-the-Pentagon bill, the "Serve America" bill (not, considering the name attached to it, one devoted to Washington, D.C. waitresses), and we're almost halfway through the list. Adding the "DTV Delay Act", which reset the date for introducing digital TV signals -- it took me a minute, too -- and the credit card act and we're there. This is the lamest, dumbest, most useless list of "major legislation" since the heyday of Warren G. Harding. World-changing political revolution, it is not.

The only two acts of any interest are Cash for Clunkers and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, AKA the "stimulus." Cash for Clunkers has been widely hailed as a success, with auto sales rising across the board (except, interestingly enough, for Obama trophies GM and Chrysler, which slid 20% and 15% respectively). But falling auto sales over the past week have revealed that the program merely "pulled ahead" sales that would have occurred later in the fall in any case. Clunkers will simply go on record as a novel application of that ancient Democratic doctrine of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

As for the stimulus... the revelation that it's going to cost somebody another 2 trillion ten years from now has smoothly dovetailed with news that national unemployment is edging the 10% mark, the very outcome the stimulus was supposed to prevent. As a payoff to Democratic supporters the stimulus is a grand success. As a national rescue effort, it is worse than useless, with the rescuees themselves being the ones left holding the bag. In this case, Peter is being robbed to pay Peter. Nicely done.

But where are all the blockbusters, the bills that were going to send the evil GOP, polluters, reactionaries, and AT writers running for high ground? Where is FOCA? The climate-change bill? Nationalization of health care?

We know where they are -- they're in limbo.

Obama's revolution was divided into three major parts -- government takeover of large industrial sectors, the imposition of a Green ideology to justify government intervention on any scale, and federal takeover of the health-care industry. Once these steps were taken, the result would be state control of American society on an unprecedented scale, along with a state-approved ideological superstructure (environmentalism) to act as the framework for the new system. All this was supposed to be carried out with military swiftness, within weeks or months of Obama's inauguration, before any questions could be asked or opposition mounted.

Thanks to the recession, the takeover of the auto and financial industries went relatively smoothly. The problem lay in the follow-through. GM, the jewel in the government's crown, has staked its fortunes on an economy model car that, since it is powered by battery, happens to cost $40,000, twice as much as any other economy car (it also requires a total battery replacement halfway through its operating lifespan amounting to at least another $16,000. So let's round it off to $60,000 -- three times what any other economy car costs.) Since the Volt can be marketed only to the extremely wealthy clinically insane -- not an enormous market -- it's obvious that GM can be kept afloat only by subsidies, which will end at the same time that Democratic hegemony does. (We'll skip over as irrelevant GM's $4,000 minicar that cannot be sold in the U.S. -- India has been marketing such a car for even less.)

As for the financial industry, much as Treasury Department officials have amused themselves with the fantasy that they are "in control", the bankers have proceeded to do exactly what they please, including paying each other extravagant bonuses, refusing to release funds for the loan markets, and soaking up government subsidies to pay off past losses. Stalin would have had them shot, an alternative currently not open to the Obamiate. I think we can write off industrial centralization.

Cap & Trade, AKA the Waxman-Markey Act, was to be the Trojan horse for Green ideology, an attempt to make environmentalism the basis of most domestic government activity. It was considered an easy sell, with "global warming" having become as key an element of liberalism as gun control and abortion. But when the provisions of Waxman-Markey became known, particularly those implying the shutdown of most American industry to leave the populace living in holes dug in hillsides and chewing bark off trees, the bloom was suddenly off the Green rose. Rising in their mighty fury, the Blue Dogs forced the bill to be set aside. It'll be passed eventually though. Next year, maybe. Or after the glaciers recede. We'll see.

Scratch the new American ideology.

We now turn to health care. The Mary Jo Kopechne Health Care Reform Act of 2009 would have made Obama into a benevolent god-emperor on the most titanic scale. The bill appeared to be evolving into an Obama version of the NRA, with federal control extended into new areas on all levels of society and every Americans subject to some measure of bureaucratic interference from womb to tomb. It would be the closest that a third-millennial American leader could come to the absolute life-and-death rule of the pre-modern ruler, the act that would turn Barack Obama into an American Caesar. (Would all presidents coming after him have to add "Barack" to their names following their inauguration? Just wondering...)

Then came the town halls, and Sarah Palin's revelation that the bill as written would open the door to euthanasia, and the death of Ms. Kopechne's chauffeur, which together served to send the entire effort crashing. The other week none other than Russ Feingold, who yearns for such a bill the way that Gilgamesh yearned for immortality, announced to his constituents that it will not come up for a vote until the end of the year, if then. Delays involving such efforts usually mean that they're finished, at least as they stand. There may be a health-care bill passed somewhere down the line, but it won't be Obama's bill, and it will lack most of the provisions that a Caesar demands -- the euthanasia counseling provisions, the "public option", control of insurance rates, and so on. The Imperator will have to find another means of attaining demigodhood. I suggest an expedition to conquer the Picts.

(But what's this "FOCA", you ask? Well you may. FOCA, or the "Freedom of Choice Act" is a bill that would enshrine abortion as a basic civil right with even greater protection than those given the rights of free speech, worship, or assembly, while also overturning every previous court decision and law dealing with the subject. Obama enjoyed waving it around as a senator, and promised that signing it would be his "first act" in the oval office. That is, until the Catholic bishops threatened him with stern consequences, beginning with the closure of the Catholic hospital network, fully a third of the U.S. health-care system. So FOCA went by the board, along with the promise to overturn the "conscience clause" protecting medical personnel who refuse to assist in abortions. Obama intended to put an end to that by March. It's been a long time since then.)

To cap the redeemer's woes, we have a world-class case of buyer's remorse on the part of the voters, with presidential approval ratings dropping to 50% across the board. Rasmussen has Obama at 46%, a drop of some 30% in little more than six months. Zogby, among the most dependable of pollsters, reveals that Obama is losing support even among his core constituency.

So there it is -- a political agenda in ruins. Massive ruins, awe-inspiring ruins, ruins unprecedented in their size and majesty. For an epitaph we can turn to Shelley:
Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away

So what does he do now? Deliverers cannot simply fail. Jesus cannot shrug and become a Jerusalem rabbi. Moses cannot return to Egypt and open a travel agency for Sinai tours. A fallen messiah does not become half a messiah or a third of a messiah, his original power and influence shrinking to match. He becomes a joke.

Obama will not tolerate becoming a joke. Not with his personality, smug, self-involved, and egotistical as it is. Particularly after being exposed to adulation given to no man since the heyday of Rome (not even Louis XIVth, the Sun King, who embodied the divine right of monarchy, was ever hailed as a "god"). So what are his alternatives?

(And let's hear no more nonsense about "internment camps" or ACORN goofs being issued brown shirts and truncheons such as I've seen from people who really ought to know better. Obama simply doesn't have that in him -- neither the daring and dynamism of the tyrant, nor the brutality and cruelty. Like most Democrats, Obama will take advantage of violence; he will not instigate violence himself.

And besides, have you ever seen any ACORN twits?)

Obama could, and probably will, attempt to sneak aspects of his agenda through riders to unrelated bills and unfunded mandates. But this won't be enough. It would be politically unsatisfying, and would fail to match his bold image of himself. Obama is a man who needs a mission, who must believe he has been touched by fire, reaching for goals beyond those open to ordinary men. The squalid day in/day out of politics so appealing to an FDR or a Lyndon B. Johnson means little to him. So he will search for other possibilities, spectacular, historic tasks that match his self-image.

More Green involvement would be an obvious choice. Al Gore has clearly demonstrated what a salve it can be to the wounded political ego. What better way of offsetting a ruined agenda than by taking up the pose of world savior and servant of Gaia? It's also relatively risk-free. Of the hundreds -- if not thousands -- of public figures who have lied and manipulated on behalf of environmentalism, not a single one -- not Carson, not Ruckelshaus, not Ehrlich, not Streep -- have ever paid a price for it. On the contrary, most have done very well for themselves. Obama could do worse than to continue pushing the warming button -- or whatever may replace it after another couple of bad winters.

He could instead choose to push the race button. Elected as a conciliator, Obama has since demonstrated himself to be anything but. The questions aroused by his twenty-year adherence to Jeremiah Wright have been answered by the appointment of the compulsive Eric Holder and the thuggish Van Jones, now departed. Obama's inept handling of the Gates incident suggests that as a man born in Hawaii and raised in large part overseas, he lacks a truly visceral understanding of American racial matters, instead relying on the kind of empty-headed clichés often seen in European media stories regarding American race relations. Whatever the case, any president who manipulates race for political purposes is putting far more than his reputation on the line. As a liberal, Obama lacks the power to benefit American society. But he can do much to damage it.

No more so than as involves the failure not yet mentioned, that of national security. Here Obama appears to be serving two constituencies: foreign governments and his leftist base. The foreign states wanted a return to an America that doesn't bother them, and that's what they've got. The Move On/DU crowd wants a defeated and chastened country. The decision by Witchfinder General Eric Holder to investigate and prosecute CIA officers, the court-ordered release of terrorist Muhammed Jawad, and the administration's near-silence in response to Scotland's release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi are events that will create their own response. Nothing is easier to foresee, and nothing more need be said. In his willingness, if not eagerness, to acquiesce to the see-no-evil security policy of the Clinton administration, Obama is sliding inexorably toward the greatest presidential failure of all: the failure to protect the American people. Such a failure will be viewed as the act of pure negligence that it is.

Obama could easily prevail by setting aside his status as god-emperor, dropping the effort to leave his imprint on the age and ignoring the cries of his more fanatical followers. In other words, by acting as a president. But this is unlikely on any number of cultural, political, and personal grounds. He is on the descending escalator, and is doomed to take it all the way to the bottom. It is our business to see that he doesn't drag the country down with him. Fortunately, his failures have a flip side. The past few months have shown us that Obama is extremely vulnerable to public pressure, as clearly shown by the town halls. We will have plenty of opportunity to put those tactics into effect in the months and years to come. When would-be imperators appear, the people have to step in. But that's why they call it democracy.

Golden Power. Most incredible demonstration of Human Strength I have witnessed

I have had the privilege of coming to know these two Bulgarian brothers as pen pals. And this video is the greatest demonstration of human strength I have ever witnesses. It is incredible. They are performing in the Paris Circus Nationale at this time.

The Two Golden Men. Up on Four.

my grand daughter's 2 year old Birthday party.

The Saturday after her birthday.

NINE THINGS GOD WON'T ASK ON THAT DAY.

1..... God won't ask what kind of car you drove. He'll ask how many people you drove who didn't have transportation. 2... God won't ask the square footage of your house, He'll ask how many people you welcomed into your home. 3..... God won't ask about the clothes you had in your closet, He'll ask how many you helped to clothe. 4... God won't ask what your highest salary was. He'll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it. 5... God won't ask what your job title was. He'll ask if you performed your job to the best of your ability. 6..... God won't ask how many friends you had. He'll ask how many people to whom you were a friend. 7... God won't ask in what neighborhood you lived, He'll ask how you treated your neighbors. 8... God won't ask about the color of your skin, He'll ask about the content of your character. 9... God won't ask why it took you so long to seek Salvation. He'll lovingly take you to your mansion in heaven, and not to the gates of Hell.

Some life observations

GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.

GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:
1) Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don't hurt.
3) Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts
4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground...
5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD
1) Growing old is Compulsory; growing up is optional..
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from
a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age shows up all by itself.

SUCCESS:
At age 4 success is . . . . not piddling in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 17 success is . . having a driver's license.
At age 35 success is . . . .having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . .. . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not piddling in your pants.

Do, Re, Mi in Antwerp Belgium Rail Station

I've always been a fan of The Sound of Music and even the thought of it brings a smile on any sad or gloomy day. It's funny that I was just thinking of this movie last night while driving and thinking that I'd like to watch it again soon. And then today a friend sent me this link to a video that was made in the Antwerp Belgium railroad station on the 23rd of March 2009.
. . . with no warning to the passengers passing through the station.
At 08:00 am a recording of Julie Andrews singing 'Do, Re, Mi' begins to play on the public address system. As the bemused passengers watch in amazement, some 200 dancers begin to appear from the crowd and station entrances. They created this amazing stunt with just two rehearsals! I hope you smile as I have been. I actually had to stand up from my desk for a bit and do a few dance steps with them.

The Sound of Music in Antwerp

We need stricter standards for DNA testing

I am convinced as an employer that many of the problems employers encounter in the workplace with employees could be alliviated with stricter standards for DNA testing.

Don't know what that would prove?

Click this to find out more.

The Diamond Art of Self Defense

With all of the crime going on these days, it has become necessary for the average law abiding citizen to learn to protect themselves and their families.

You can either take shooting and gun classes or learn martial arts. The latter being something you can have with you all the time.

I've found a really good online course that is free and self paced. It's helped me a lot and I pass it on to you in the hopes of us all creating a safer and more crime free community.

Learning to overcome defeat

It took me years to realize that adversity and defeat were often times learning experiences for me to know how to overcome and conquer against indefinable and insurmountable odds. And today, forty eight years later, I can still remember the first time someone beat me up. But it’s funny that I don’t have many memories of the pain I felt at the time from having my lip swollen or my ribs hurting. I mainly remember the happiness and satisfaction of the day I stopped having those hurts anymore. I guess it’s like a lady delivering a baby, that . . . I’ve heard . . . hurts so much during labor but once the baby’s out, the joy replaces the memory of the pain.
At the end of the 4th grade, Mother and Daddy (the man I knew as my daddy, but who was really my step-dad) had just bought our first home. Until then, we’d lived in a duplex on the west side of Fort Worth. Since Mother had just had my baby sister Mary Lou, there were now five of us with me and my brother. And I guess they felt it was time to move on up and take the leap into home ownership.
They bought a nice little white frame, 3 bedroom and one bath home on the east side of town. 3108 Meadowbrook Drive. It had a one car garage that was about to fall down. Peach trees in the back yard and lots of cool hide-outs in the shrubs. Prices were cheaper there than the west side. Compared to where we’d come from I thought it was a giant leap forward. For me it was our castle. I later realized that it was simply a lower middle class working neighborhood. I can still clearly remember hearing Daddy complain day after day about having taken such an extravagant leap of faith. $9,600.00 to buy a house??? “Bettye, what on earth were we thinking?” he’d say to my mom. “I’m sure I’ll end up in the poor house someday over this”.
That was 1960, and the interest rate was a whopping 4.5% and with a 20 year mortgage, all Daddy could see in front of him was that he’d be obligated for the $95.00 a month house payment for the rest of his life.
Of course I wasn’t worried if he ended up in the poor house or not. I got my own bedroom out of the arrangement and my brother and baby sister got a bedroom to share. My mother even painted my room navy blue as I requested. I didn't know anyone with a navy blue room. It was . . .to me . . .my own personal mark of distinction. And what did I care if it caused us to end up in the poor house someday? For the time being at least . . .I had my own room. My own kingdom. My own escape.

I did wonder though, and often asked a few times . . .if we could drive by and see the poor house someday? Was it far from where we lived now? Would I have to change schools again if we lived in the poor house? Would I have my own bedroom there? I did . . .even at 10 years of age, have a mind that tended to think about the future more than the present. And if there was such a good chance our present home was temporary, I did want to know what I might look forward to at our future home in the poor house. Daddy would just say that I’d better hope and pray we never ended up there. But he’d never tell me why we couldn’t go see it.

My mind drifted sometimes to wondering about things and ideas that never crossed other children’s minds. Would there be other children at the poor house? Would they allow dogs at the poor house? Would we have to eat stewed okra at the poor house? Or would we even be allowed to eat at all there? Was it air conditioned? Our house wasn’t. Maybe, I thought to myself, it might not be such a bad place after all if it was at least air conditioned. Fort Worth Texas could be very hot in the summer time when the temperature might rise to 110 degrees. And daddy’s advice when I’d complain about the heat . . . .or anything else for that matter . . . .was, “just don’t think about it”. I never understood that. How could you not think about something that was leading us to all be so uncomfortable. Maybe in the poor house I wouldn’t have to think about being hot?

Our next door neighbors . . the Baxters . . . had an air conditioner. And they ran it all the time. Mr. Baxter said it was because his wife was sick all the time and he had to keep her comfortable. My mother and dad said it was because his wife should be on a loony farm somewhere and he kept it running to keep from blowing his top at her craziness. That of course, made me wonder what was it like on a loony farm? Where was the nearest loony farm? Was it nice there? Cows? Horses? Chickens? Did they have air conditioning at a loony farm? Why, I asked could, someone belong there but be living in a house? For that matter, why on earth would anyone choose to live in a house, when they had an opportunity to live on a farm? I loved farms. And so on. My parents could always offer these explanations for the way things were, but instead of explaining it to me it just caused me to have a hundred more questions.

I remember when we finally did get one window unit air conditioner. We put it in the living room. We couldn’t turn it on all day while it was hot. But we only could turn it on at night when daddy got home and we had dinner and then watched his television shows. I really didn’t care about watching Dinah Shore or some of the other shows he wanted to see. But I’d watch anyway just for the pleasure of being able to lay on the living room floor and feel the coolness blowing on me. And instead of paying attention to the program I’d fantasize about being rich and think to myself that rich people probably lay on the floor all the time in front of continuously running air conditioners.

I’d try to think of rational and logical discussions that I could have with Mother and Daddy about why I felt we should run it more often. I never liked to study much and didn’t care about making good grades. I could when I wanted to, but usually I just didn’t care enough to try. But several times I would decide to make a great score on a test. And I’d take the paper home and show the family and tell Mother and Daddy that this was proof that we should run it more because I had studied specifically for that test on the evening while I was cool in front of the air conditioner. My mom’s answer was that it had nothing to do with the air conditioner but was just a sign of my own natural brilliance and I should take it as an opportunity to learn of my own great potential. And then I’d have to discuss with her the story that I’d read (which I hadn’t) about how difficult it was for children to do well in school when they had the distraction of perspiration dripping down their face and into their eyes. I tried to tell them that I’d heard that adults lived longer equal to the number of hours they had remained cool. That didn’t seem to phase either of them. Whenever I would be sick, I’d tell them that I felt it was heat induced. Mother assured me that even kids with air conditioning all the time got measles. I tried telling her that studies had shown babies had fewer dirty diapers when they lived in air conditioning but I guess mother didn't mind my sister's dirty diapers because she got coolness no more often than I did. If my brother was sick, I'd always tell Mother that I thought he looked like he was having a heat stroke.

In the end, Daddy would just say that it made no difference whether I got better grades or not. But that running the air conditioner all the time would just speed up the time in which he’d be in the poor house. Then of course, I’d ask him if it wasn’t leading him to the poor house for us to have it on while he was home in the evening. And he’d tell me his own justification that “well, if I have to go to the poor house someday, I guess I ought to be as cool now as I can be now while I can enjoy it.” And then he’d just tell me to go outside and play or something. “ Just don’t think about it" he'd say. But I would. And I'd be hot. And I'd go back to making bad grades again.

In the afternoons when I did come home from school, it just was too hot to go in the house and since our front yard was completely shaded, I’d usually just stay outside and play in the shrubs . . .my imaginary office, or fort, or castle, or whatever I was fantasizing about at the moment. Often times I’d climb up in one of the big, tall Sycamores that were in the front yard and sit and pretend that I was a spy and on assignment from President Eisenhower himself to watch for the communist cars that would be driving by each day. The communists all drove Fords (I told myself) and I made it my mission to determine each day if the number of Fords was more or less than the day before. And which direction were they heading? Were they going into town or away from town. And I’d do that for two or three hours until dark and then go to dinner with the firm conviction that I was making the world a safer place for us all to live in. I would pretend that I was calling in my report by calling a freind of mine and "reporting in". I also knew that all the capitalists drove Buicks and Pontiacs and the people who drove the Chevrolets were the fence straddlers, that any day could be swayed over to one side or the other. So much hung in the balance every day . . I felt. It was a big burden for a lad of 10 or 11. And I alone, Lt. Colonel Bud McElhaney of the 5th Intelligence Brigade was the last line of defense to tell Ike whether we were winning or loosing in the cold war right here on our own homeland.

I remember well in the 6th grade, that on some afternoons, Carlton Mason would come walking home from school. We went to the same school and were in the same class. But Carlton was two or maybe three years older than all of the others in my class. When I was 12 and in the sixth grade, Carlton was already 14 or so. There was something that just wasn’t right about him. He talked a bit funny. Like he had a jaw-breaker in his mouth all the time. And he’d usually be late coming home from school because he had to stay after school almost every day for talking back to the teacher or something. I can remember that Mr. Gailey, our teacher, would often take him to the boys restroom and make him suck on a towel with Ivory soap to wash his mouth out of filth. If he had been born a crayon, he wouldn’t have been the sharpest one in the box. I'd heard Mother telling someone one time that he’d been stuck in a canal too long. I wondered if it was the Panama or the Suez? And what did they do to him while he was stuck there? Beat him? Make him eat too much stewed okra? Force feed him liver? What would it be like? It must be terrible I thought, because no one would ever choose to be like Carlton.

Carlton was bigger and older, and felt like he was ridiculed sometimes. I imagine he was ridiculed a lot because he was the meanest person I knew personally. He did not like being ridiculed. Who would? And he took it out on the smaller classmates. Carlton weighed in at about 160 in the 6th grade. I was a puny 110. So he was also one of the first bullies I have had to encounter. I tried to be nice to him for one whole year. I never said a bad word to him in all of the 5th grade. I even tried to get him to tell me what the canal looked like and where was it and was he stuck there long? Anything to be friends with the school yard bully. But he'd have none of it. He was never nice to me and always pushed me around when he got the chance. I didn't really take it personal. I'd had several nice people not want to be my friend before so why should I care if he didn't want to be?

Sometimes he’d come over to the table at lunch and just pick up my dessert or anyone else’s and take it and eat it and tell us that if we told anyone that he’d hurt us bad. I would lay in bed at night sometimes and try to imagine how he'd hurt us. I could imagine the worst. I retaliated against him in my own subtle and devious ways. I’d sometimes pick up very fresh dog poop on the way to school and put it in a bag and during the winter go in and put it in the pockets of his jacket in the cloak room. I put Red Ants in his pockets too many times. And always smiled all day thinking about recess. One time I got to class early and scotch-taped some really moldy cheese to the underside of his chair in the class room. I had hid that cheese out in the garage for a week in preparation for this day. It took a few more days to become really rank, and he had the most terrible odor emanating from his seat . . .which of course only added to the insults every one gave to him anyway. The other students were begging to not have to sit next to him. I didn't care. I was completely across the room from him with a seat by the window. He finally discovered the source of the foul offense and swore that he’d find out who did it and hurt them bad. I wasn’t scared a bit though. Since I’d only done it for my own satisfaction, I’d told no one so no one could snitch on me. Whatever they did to him when he got stuck in that canal certainly didn’t destroy all his brain cells. Because Carlton was smart enough to figure that whoever put the dog poopie and Red Ants in his coat pocket all the time was probably the stinking-cheese planter too. I carried a box of Chicklets chewing gum in my pocket for over a month with four Feen-a-Mint laxative tablets in it hoping he’d steal it someday, but he never did. Carlton didn't have the sense to know it at the time. But the worst was still yet to come for him.

Maybe I did have to put up with his threats and harassment and bullying at school. But after school, my front yard was my domain and I was determined to not put up with it there. It was my fortress. It was my battlefield on which I often stood on personal directive from President of the United States (now John Kennedy) to protect our country from the rise and threat of a bunch of communist Ford-driving thugs, that were hell bent on taking away all our freedoms. Actually, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was probably communists themselves who stuck Carlton in the canal he’d been stuck in. And just look how he turned out. But here I was. Right there in my own front yard observatory. In my hands lay the fate of an entire nation. Would we . . in the end . . .be a nation of Carltons ? Or could perhaps, one young patriot such as myself turn back the assault of Krushchev and his cronies and save our country. Someone had to defend us. And I was called to the task.

And if I was having the mission of saving us from a bunch of communist thugs . . . just like Carlton, then he damn sure wasn’t going to infiltrate my intelligence base of operations. And when I’d be perched up in my tree and he’d coming walking down my side of the street I’d yell at him to get over on the other side of the street and walk over there, and not come through my yard. He of course would look up in the tree and yell bad things at me and tell me that I couldn’t make him. And I . . .being the soldier I was . . .would come down from the tree and tell him it was my territory and my fortress and my yard and I wanted him out of it. And then Carlton . . .would quickly punch me in the stomach a few times. And sometimes in the face too. But usually just a couple of fast ones to the stomach would be enough to make me curl over and have the breath knocked out of me and then he’d give me one good parting kick in a bad spot or in the side and go off laughing down the street. What could I do? I was a soldier. And sometimes soldiers were injured. I took it in stride. And waited for the next time when I'd defeat him.
I certainly never told anyone he’d done it. And I tried to tell myself that the reason that he left was because he was afraid when I got my second wind that I would become an instrument of killing and destruction and he was trying to get away quick. Mother would sometimes ask why my lip was swollen or I had a big bruise. She did think that I got hit in the face a lot with baseballs at school and often times suggested maybe I play another sport because I certainly got a lot of puffy lips from that. But I’d have much rather she thought I was a sportsclutz than to know . . . or even worse my daddy know . . . that her son was getting his 12 year old butt whipped once a week on a regular basis.

It was about a once-a-week assault. I’d give it just about enough time for the swelling and soreness to subside and then I’d work up the courage one more time to confront him. By this time of course, Carlton made it a point to intentionally walk down my side of the street just to show me that he could . . .and would. And so . . . a week or so after the last beating, I’d tell him again to not do it. He’d tell me to come down out of the tree. He'd yell the same foul words at me as before. My gosh. He knew bad words that I'd never even heard before. And I would come down again. And he’d beat me up again. From March through May of my 6th grade year. Week after week after week he'd beat me up and the next week I'd try again.

I remember the last week of school that I thought to myself that I’d not have to endure it anymore because the next year we’d be going to Junior High and he would be taking the bus to school then and I’d not have to encounter him again. The previous week had been especially brutal and I was still swollen on my cheek from his pounding. Mother was really trying hard to convince me to give up baseball before I got myself killed or all my teeth knocked out. If she only knew! There was a part of me that thought about leaving him alone that last week. But a bigger part of me knew that I had to settle this once and for all. And so on that last week of school, I had a plan. And when Carlton came walking by, I went into my regular . . but so far failed . . .speech about not coming through my yard. He then gave me his regular . . .always to-that-date successful reply to get-down-out-of-that-tree-and-make-me. But there was something different that day that Carlton did not know would be coming. And when I came down from the tree, I stepped over to the shrubs nearby and reached inside and pulled out my Louisville Slugger baseball bat and I began to swing like a wild man. And I hit him on the side. I hit him in the ribs. I hit him in the neck. I hit him in the stomach. And then I hit him a good one in that special boy-spot-between-the-legs that he had kicked me so many times. When he curled over I gave him one more hard swing against his butt and he took off running and yelling and I could still hear him when he was a block away. I had saved my country! And I had redeemed myself. I had finally won. And I didn’t have a mark or scratch or bruise on me. Looking back, it’s a wonder I didn’t kill him or break his neck or something. I guess it was just fate and that God had not let me hurt him mortally since I was fighting for the righteous cause of freedom and liberty. (I rationalized). I didn't care. I just knew that he would not beat me up anymore.

That night sitting at the dinner table with the front door open, I heard a knock on the door and looked and it was Carlton and his mother. My dad got up and went to the door and had a long talk with them. And then he summoned me and asked if I had indeed done this to Carlton. I’ll swear, it did not help matters at all that I saw him and broke out laughing because he was so swollen up and bruised. He looked terrible. Much worse that he ever did to me. I was so proud. And he was so embarrassed that he wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. I told my dad boastfully that that "yes I had". He asked why. I could not tell him that it was because he had beat me up so many times, because my dad would have been even madder then that I’d let him. So I just said that I did it for the cause of liberty and because Carlton’s family were Ford-driving communists and I didn’t want him walking through my yard again. And then I looked at Carlton and told my dad and him that I’d do it again, but it would be worse he ever came back for more. So there! (I thought) . My dad assured Mrs. Mason that he would deal with me for the offense and they left and after dinner my dad took me, by pinching me on my shoulders right at the base of my neck in what I had learned to call his “Eric von Streeter torture grip” (Eric was my favorite professional wrestler on Saturday night wrestling) and lead me to my bedroom and jerked off his belt . . .as he had done so many times before. He told me to lean over the bed and pull down my pants for my whipping . . . .as I had done so many times before. And then he began to swing that one inch leather belt-strap as wildly as I’d swung the bat that afternoon. I have used better diplomacy with people than I did with my dad that night. Because that night receiving my initial lashes, I did not exercise my most excellent judgment with him. After he’d whipped me a dozen times or so, I didn’t wince or shed a tear. But I did look up at him and say to him defiantly . . ."that really didn’t even hurt near as bad as I had hurt Carlton today". And then . . . he whipped me some more. But I didn’t care this time. I did try to fight back the tears that night as long as possible and in the end when I did start screaming and crying, the whipping stopped. And Daddy went back to the air conditioned comfort of an evening with Lawrence Welk and the Lennon Sisters. But my tears quickly stopped. And I laid face down on my bed and smiled. I was proud of myself and 2,000 lashes couldn’t take that away from me. The only bad part of the whipping that night was that I couldn't wear shorts for a week because of my lashes. But that was ok. Sometimes soldiers are tortured and have their battle scars. I bore my proudly.

I learned that day, that any obstacle, or adversity can be overcome even in the face of insurmountable odds. All one needed was a little equalizing force. Just some small device or advantage to level the playing field. And all of that summer, and in the years to come, whenever Carlton Mason came walking down my street, he always passed over to the other side rather than coming in my yard again. And he never again stole my dessert. And today .. look where we are as a nation? Free from communism and living stuck in canals somewhere being tortured and fed stewed okra for being capitalists. Perhaps it’s because of my efforts in teaching one of the Carltons of this world that there are some people that you just can’t push around.

I’ve encountered other Carltons as my life has gone on. But I don’t sit there anymore and just keep taking the whipping. I look for an equalizer right away. But I’ve also learned that sometimes the first bat you grab isn’t big enough to do the job. So, you just have to find a bigger bat. And today 48 years later, I'm still having to find a good bat to use as an equalizer. Thank goodness though I don't get a belt whipping anymore.

open for debate. Is President Obama fact or myth?

I can honestly say that I have no preformed conclusions about the capacity of our current president to rule over the United States. His recent quest for a nationalized health care program does leave a few doubts in my mind though. I did not vote for him, but I was not saddened when he was elected. I decided on election night that it is God Himself who allows rulers to be placed in positions of prominence and leadership and that if he was the man chosen to lead this country that I would give him the benefit of the doubt and pray for him and hope he could lead us out of the quagmire that the previous president had taken us into. But I received an article several months ago and have wondered about many questions it posed. Many of the issues I'd heard of before and just decided they were the ramblings of conservative conspiratists. But many of these points keep coming up and yet, I don't hear anything from anyone except to just ignore the questions and give the man the benefit of the doubt. And I hear from others that most of the objections and questions are myths themselves. So I filed the article away and have spent time trying to research myself to find answers to many of the questions asked. The fact is that I can't find any. I can only find where his critics say these things, and his supporters say they are lies. I can't find any proof that either is right. It's almost like trying to prove that the light goes off in the refrigerator when you close the door. How can you know? So, after months of thought, I'm going to go ahead and post this article as an illumination for others to perhaps ponder these things. If the thesis of this journalist is right, we're not headed down a good road for America. If this journalist is wrong, then I'm hoping that someone will read this and feel perfectly free to comment and offer some firm and concrete example of proof that a statement or all the statements are false. I do know that one of the best defenses for a sound democracy is an electorate that is free to ask questions. Right now I still can question the motives of even those in the highest office in the country. If this journalist is correct, and the present administration has some agenda toward a leftist, and marxist oriented government and massive redistribution of wealth, I know that someday that right to question leaders would be taken away. I would not want that day to come and have to tell my children and grand children that I wondered but said nothing. The article is reprinted below. I have intentionally taken the liberty of deleting some comments that I felt were pure conjecture and noted the omissions when made. The authors name and contact information is at the end of the article. You can write her, or post a comment here. I will print rebuttal or substantiation if presented in a clear and evidentiary manner. I suppose I'm saying here that it looks to me . . . from what I can see . . . that the refrigerator light stays on all the time. If you can prove to me it doesn't please say so. But don't just tell me you know it goes off, unless you can tell me how you know. I hope the writer is wrong.

God is Great!

Obama's Revenge
Posted by: Joan Swirsky 02/15/2009
Once upon a time, a white teenager from Kansas got pregnant by her black Kenyan boyfriend, Barack Obama Sr., or was it her husband? Whatever. (I say whatever because we've never seen either marriage or divorce certificates). Some say the couple was in Kenya visiting relatives when the birth of their son, Barack Obama Jr., occurred. No matter. (I say no matter because we've never seen an authentic birth certificate). By the time the baby was two years old his father abandoned him for his other wife and child in Kenya. I wonder how toddler Barry felt when his father left him, and never reappeared until a single time when the boy was 10. Bewildered? Sad? Lonely? Angry? What do two-year-olds do with those feelings? It didn't take long for Barry's mother to meet and marry an Indonesian native named Lolo Soetoro. They moved to Indonesia , where her child became Barry Soetoro, took on Indonesian citizenship, and was presumably schooled in public, Christian, and Muslim schools. (I say presumably because we've never seen those school records). But when Barry was 10 years old, his mother sent him back to the U.S. to be raised by her parents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, although she kept her baby daughter Maya Soetoro with her. I wonder how the by-now fully-sentient young Barry felt when his mother sent him packing. Sad? Jealous of the baby who remained behind with mommy? Confused and dizzy by the disparate cultures - languages, customs, foods, sights, sounds, schooling - he had experienced? Resentful? What did Barry do with those feelings? By the time he was 10, the boy had been abandoned three times - by his father, stepfather, and mother. And although he was raised by his white grandparents in Hawaii - where "people of color" were not his color - he found out soon enough that his mixed-race background rendered him, in effect, an outsider. Did that make him feel self-conscious, indignant, victimized? But he wasn't altogether an outsider. In Hawaii , young Barry met Frank Marshall Thomas, his first and perhaps most influential mentor. The infamous Marshall, a Communist activist (and self-confessed pedophile) taught Barry – was it Obama, Soetero, Dunham? - that white people were the devil incarnate and that blacks were the most "victimized" people on earth. Yet the abandoned and rejected child was lucky. His white-devil grandparents gave him a comfortable life in Hawaii , and an education that apparently qualified him to attend several prestigious schools - Occidental College in CA, Columbia Univ. in NY City, and Harvard Law School in Cambridge , MA . (I say apparently qualified because we've never seen any of his college transcripts).

BARRY MORPHS INTO BARACK

After his undergraduate days at Columbia , Obama chose not to go to graduate school, but instead held various jobs in the Big Apple and then moved to Chicago to become a community organizer.. Although he had been exposed to American exceptionalism through his life in the United States and his privileged education, it is clear that his experiences in impoverished Kenya and totalitarian Indonesia , as well as his exposure to Marshall and the other radicals he had met during his years in New York - among them the unrepentant domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn of Weather Underground infamy - made the deepest and most lasting impressions. Their messages of American imperialism and its white-devil culture clearly resonated in the thrice-abandoned boy. In his young-adult and adult years, free to choose his friends and pursuits, he opted exclusively for far-left socialists and Marxists, and activities aimed at relieving the suffering of people he perceived to be as victimized as apparently he felt he had been. He understood their feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and impotent rage, as well as the pain of fatherlessness. After all, his Harvard-educated father consciously chose to leave him. And his mother gave him away. Was that depressing to Barry? Infuriating? When given the opportunity to join one of dozens of churches in Chicago, Barry - who had morphed into Barack - opted for the Trinity United Church of Christ , which was led by the fire-breathing Rev.Jeremiah Wright, whose decades-long anti-American and anti-Semitic rants apparently resonated in Obama's rejected and abandoned heart and soul. (I say apparently resonated because in over 20 years of regular attendance, Obama said he heard nothing inflammatory or anti-American, and we've never seen the videotapes of any sermon, although each one was unfailingly recorded). "God damn America ," Wright raged. "The chickens have come home to roost," he "preached" to his whooping and hollering congregation after 9/11. Obama heard nothing. But it wasn't only Wright who Obama was attracted to in Chicago . He was also drawn to another hate-spewing radical, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, as well as to the raving Father Michael Phleger, the radical Islamist Khalid Rashidi, his friends and neighbors the Ayers, and to equally-close friends "Tony" and Rita Rezko - Tony being the notorious "fixer" and now-convicted-and-imprisoned felon for fraud, bribery, and money laundering. What did the seemingly mild-mannered Obama find so irresistible in these angry and/or crooked people and others like them? Was it the same thing that a shy man finds in his attraction to a flamboyant girlfriend - and alter-ego, a person who expresses what he really feels but is unable to give voice to? In these relationships and in community organizing - which offers inner-city mostly-black residents job training, tutoring, and methods to organize tenants'-rights groups and voter-registration drives, etc. - the twenty-something Obama apparently found his calling, and also a renewed and burning ambition.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

While his community-organizing job paid a paltry $12,000 or so per year, Obama somehow managed to pay his way through one of the priciest graduate schools in the world, Harvard Law School. (I say somehow managed because we have no record of his tuition payments). Even more amazing, he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review without ever producing a written paper - or at least a paper that the public has ever read. There is a good deal of evidence that Obama's acceptance at Harvard Law - and his tuition - were facilitated by friends who had a vested interest in the community organizer. Among them was Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and ardent leftist, who was also Malcolm X's lawyer. In an interview last year, the octogenarian Sutton stated: "I was introduced to [Obama] by a friend. The friend's name was Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and the introduction took place about 20 years ago." Sutton described al-Mansour as "the principle adviser to one of the world's richest men" and suggested that al-Mansour was raising money for Obama. Knowing that Sutton had friends at Harvard, al-Mansour asked him if he would write a letter to Harvard recommending Obama, which Sutton did most agreeably. This took place about 1988 when 27-year-old Obama was applying Harvard Law. Two years [after he was admitted to law school], Cashill writes, "while still a law student, Obama improbably received an advance to write a memoir that would be called `Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,' which was published in 1995." His second memoir, published in 2006, was "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." (I suspect Cashill said "improbably received an advance "because, as stated earlier, Obama had not produced even one paper or distinguished himself in any way to have inspired a major publishing company to approach him). All this begs the question: Who writes two memoirs about himself before the age of 45?

(text omitted here by Bud as speculation)


(text omitted here by Bud as speculation)

In the less-than four weeks of his presidency, the new president has taken volumes from the Marxian handbook, which dictates that the stupid masses be blitzed with an overload of information, hollow press conferences, appointments, dismantling of formerly effective national-security programs, et al., in order to set the stage for a massive, Soviet-style takeover of our government, including a civilian national security force that Obama has said should be "just as powerful, strong and well-funded as the U.S. military."

(text omitted by Bud as speculation)

He is closing Gitmo within one year, has suspended trials there, and dismissed the charges against the U.S.S. Cole plotter. [He] has just put our money where his mouth is and is using $20.3 million to bring in Palestinian refugees from Gaza ... [he] had the gall to pronounce the so-called economic stimulus bill absolutely free of `earmarks' and `make-do work'...but according to the Congressional Budget Office [this bill] will do worse to our overall economy than no government action whatsoever." And Obama has done all this with the predictable double-speak that characterizes malevolent intention, i.e., touting transparency while concealing everything, speaking of integrity while appointing crooks and incompetents riddled with conflicts-of-interest, supporting energy independence while killing off-shore and domestic oil-drilling and nuclear power, and feigning optimism while he speaks of impending "catastrophe" in order to push through a pork-laden, trillion-dollar-plus Stimulus plan that rewards the corrupt voter-fraud organization Acorn with billions and unions with discriminatory union-only labor agreements, paves the way for socialized medicine, and threatens to take away the most cherished rights of We The People. As blogger Eric Gurr has said: "We still talk about the health care crisis, the environmental crisis, the oil crisis, the banking crisis. Let me tell you my friends you are about to learn the meaning of the only crisis that matters, the survival crisis.. "You can be sure that the sad-lonely-angry two-year-old, the jealous-confused-resentful 10-year-old, the self-conscious-cheated-victimized adolescent, and the man who found solace in and identified with his hate-America mentors is now determined to redeem all of his demons. Unfortunately, he is acting out his rage on free-market capitalism, a free press, property and gun rights, a limited constitutional government, protection of the unborn, and everything else that is good and great about our country.This is Obama's revenge!

Joan Swirsky (http://www.joanswirsky.com/) is a New York-based author and journalist who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.

Tough times call for tough strategies in the Job Market

With the current recession and higher and higher unemployment rates, it's time for networking and flexbility in finding a job. Employers too are trying to be adaptable and find new ways of recruiting. The jobs will go to those individuals who are willing to think outside-the-box.

Climbing Mt. Fuji in Japan 1972

I was sending out some random emails tonight and came across some pictures of me in the army in 1972. I'm going to go ahead and post it today even though it was 37 years ago. No one will probably ever read my blog back to the beginning and I doubt they'd go back that far.

These are a couple of pictures of us stopping on the way up and resting. I'd gone to Japan while I was stationed in Korea on the demilitarized zone. My best friend John Bradley and I had decided to make the climb of the 14,000 foot peak.

And then after we had climbed all day long, we stopped and spent the night at the 13,000 foot level and got up early to finish the climb to the top of the crater and watch the sunrise. By the time the sun did come up, the clouds had moved in off the ocean and we were so high that we were above the clouds. When John took the picture of me we didn't realize that it would come back looking like I was standing on top of the clouds. I guess for a moment I was super man!