What I think...
By Travelwise42
copyright 2008
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill
There is a misguided, evil plan to kick the legs out from under this country and we only have ourselves to blame for letting it manifest. This generation didn't learn from history because it's rarely taught before the first Moon landing. Why work hard when "No child left behind" is even the parents' and teachers' mantra?
Whatever "Joe-the-mediocre" knows, he's learned from TV and this "pop" culture (sic). This begets the mind-set of "something for nothing" and the constant dumbing down of our populace with attention spans so short as to be nearly non-existent. Thanks to Government education and TV, we've become a nation of cradle-to-grave non-thinkers. We've left our education to the vapid, fast-food ideology of American comedians and small-minded Hollywood hacks leading to this anything goes societal bog. This helped lead the country into a Presidential campaign run by advertising agencies and 'sound bite' speech writers. The selling of the seat in the oval office as if it were a new fish sandwich or "Sham-wow!"
Selling celebrity, charisma and straight teeth instead of substance.
We've lobotomized ourselves into celebrity-craving troglodytes. Pathetic cave-dwellers hoping to hear that some 20-year-old "star" is o.k. because he or she had been seen at a party looking quite disheveled...
We live with TV programming and films made for low IQs and video/computer games for passive involvement.
We are a population that in a recent poll, over 60% said they would rather watch a travel video of Yellowstone Park than to actually be there and see it in person.
The dumbing down of America as it were. We let the "Saturday Night Live"/"Mulligan's Sports Bar (Where Everybody Scores)" crowd choose the winner of the last election, because that's as close to the issues that many of the Obama worshipers ever got.
We've learned to accept dumbed-down food! Tastelessness has become the norm.
To some that can't handle making their own meals, scrambling an egg is a feat.
C'mon people, no one is asking you to peel a potato and carrot if you don't want to...But don't be so lazy, apathetic and uninterested to stand by while our country is given over and the Constitution is shredded.
We are the only country with "all-you-can-eat" buffets, families blankly watching "Dancing With the Stars" or "Survivor" re-runs and then we spend the next 2 mornings around the water cooler talking about it.
This past election and the adoration of Obama drives home just how low the IQ of this country has sunk...We've all been awash in numbness and blind group-think since television became our God.
I remember the attempted assassination of President Reagan by a deranged fan trying to impress Jodie Foster (...another Hollywood connection?).
The network switchboards lit up because thousands were angry when they cut away from regular programming, i.e. "the soaps", to cover the President being shot.
...and again a few years ago during the London subway bombing, I heard an announcer on "E" (Entertainment Television) say, "...terrorist bombing in London----dozens dead! Stay tuned and when we come back we'll tell you which 'stars' were in danger!"
Sound bites in interviews, and on the news, is all we get anymore... constant interruptions from moderators, when it's imperative to deepen the discussion. One or two sentences to clarify or explain the demise of our way of life before the interruption with "Sorry, we're out of time" and 30 minutes 6 times a day for weeks (and counting...) to explain the demise of Michael Jackson or Ted Kennedy!
Now this exploitive, "slight-of-hand" administration is using Ted Kennedy's death to pound their agenda through America's heart.
"Lets dismantle another American Freedom for Teddy!" via a Government health care bill.
To whom have we given the country?
Has anyone noticed that the Black Panthers standing threateningly with clubs and dressed in storm trooper uniforms and dark glasses in front of the polling place on election day had their cases dropped (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/29/career-lawyers-overruled-on-voting-case/)
but, on the other hand, the ACLU, evidently with this Administration's blessing, is trying to nail the Sheriff in Arizona for trying to uphold the immigration laws and treating criminals like the law breakers they are and NOT coddling them?
If we sweep ACORN, & the ACLU aside or better yet jail them for treason for undermining the under-pinnings of our country's Constitution, then we would have a good beginning toward keeping this country as what it was meant to be: A country that thinks the Constitution is a meaningful document and not to be changed depending on which way the wind blows or for some Utopian pipe dream from a Marxist university professor.
We've used the Dr. Spock method to get where we are. Punishment for evil deeds has gone the way of the childhood spanking under the guise of understanding that kids (adults) are going to be bad and punishment gives them a negative feeling; so let them behave as they like as long as they don't 'feel' constrained or electrocute themselves.
Then when a pedophile, drunk driver or terrorist gets a slap on the wrist for pleading out of his crime to a lesser charge, everybody loses.
Some writer, commentator or newspaper is always asking if the punishment is over the top. Which brings us to Gitmo!
Turn them loose in the USA? Where? They can't and won't be around women, Jews or Christians unless the female's subjugated and all 'hijabed' up.
Do we pay $40,000 a year each to keep them in solitary confinement at a prison within the continental USA?
Let's let some of the smug, untouched-by-rational-thought appointees/czars take them, or the far Left members of the Democratic heavy Congress, since they all seem to have dipped their cloven hooves into the seamy side of the law and have trouble figuring out THEIR tax burden. Having 4 or 5 third-world criminals on the staff could mean big tax savings (not that they would actually pay their taxes again when the smoke clears and no one is looking). Or in Charlie Rangle's case, even when they ARE looking. Pelosi can always use a few extra minimum-wage grape pickers at her vineyard!
The Left is worried and trying to silence Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Boortz, Fox News and others from the radio/TV news for asking questions and pointing out the discrepancies and untruths. But it's the Democrat elite themselves that are driving their poll numbers down into the cellar. The Blue-dog Dems would be wise to disassociate themselves from this group of sanctimonious nitwits or be back with the commoners next election.
Hasn't anyone other than me noticed the similarities in the eyes of Pelosi & Charles Manson? Both have the insanely obsessed look of the seriously deranged.
Barney Frank?
Biden?
Harry Reid & Arlen Specter?
If not "seriously deranged" then at least in lock-step with the seriously deranged for political benefit!
...and the next time Obama's on the "News" stepping from his helicopter or Air Force One, check out the look of disdain with which he throws the return salute to his military guards.
This is a real life re-make of the "Manchurian Candidate" with Pelosi cast in the Angela Lansbury part.
The brain-washed dupe has already been triggered and he's now President.
A combination of P.T. Barnum, Ted Bundy and a teenager with a stolen credit card!
2008
The election of 2008 held historical significance in spite of the insipid outcome.
Of course the country was ready for a President that didn't fit the mold of bygone political eras... black, Oriental, female, Hispanic, or "other". It should have come into being long before 2008.
I was stunned, when in Oklahoma the first time in 1961, at the segregated drinking fountains, restaurants and sections of towns; and on being arrested when I was leaving a club on the "wrong" side of town after playing and told by the local police,
"We don't want your kind around here!"
I, too, was elated and inspired by Martin Luther King and others in the Civil Rights Era.
His "I Have A Dream" speech still moves me to tears.
His words were positive in a time of racial strife and misunderstanding in this country.
Black pride and progress are very positive things.
My problem with this election has nothing to do with ethnicity.
What bothers me the most is not the fact that, because of his associations and connections, Obama probably couldn't get a job as a night watchman at a Savings & Loan. I'm more concerned about the smug, disingenuous way this President has put people from America's enemy list on his payroll. Criminals, Marxists, domestic terrorists, tax cheats and more all in top positions in this government without an apology even to the cries of outrage.
Ethics and good character started going downhill quite awhile ago when we began electing presidents NOT by what they could bring to the table in domestic and foreign wisdom, but by whether they looked good on camera and had charisma. Without delving into all those elected after the advent of mass advertising of the candidates through televised debates and political commercials, Obama played that card to the hilt a la JFK.
Those phony "town hall debates" of 2008 with filtered, soft ball questions and flattering or unflattering camera angles were just more planned packaging aimed at the George Bush haters.
This, likewise, has gone down into "It's George's fault" on everything from Hurricane Katrina and the levees bursting to Iraq to bailouts to rain on Thursday. This group-think became adherence to "passing blame" as an excuse for all that happens, including what may happen tomorrow. Thus Obama's administration can do no wrong because it's "George's fault"!
"The mess we inherited" is still being used even though GWB has not been sitting in the White House for nine months now.
Obama's "transparent" government has magically changed to "invisible," as shown by their constantly berating the American public for not letting them ramrod a Health Care bill through that hasn't even been written yet!
Now, to throw the anti-Obama Care dissenters off track, they're going after the CIA.
This isn't just wrong-headed thinking by a political party, it's a thought-out plan by anti-capitalist, anti-American, over-throw-the-government anarchists.
We're on the verge of the 2nd Civil war!
Yet, most of us are just watching and listening with mouth agape...
For whatever reason, apathy, ACORN, or abhorrence of President Bush, we let the decision of who would be leader of the greatest country in the world be chosen by bottom feeders, college students and the lowest end of the economic scale (none of whom have ever had a tax burden) dreaming of a "$$-in-the-mail windfall" from the hands of the successful and into theirs, as soon as it can be confiscated! A lottery for the unproductive!
The Left doesn't want to discuss the possibility that Government is getting too, too controlling. They just want to get laughs by name calling or slurring the faith of the religious.
Others didn't even bother to go to the polls thinking/saying, "It doesn't matter who's elected, my life isn't affected either way."
Well, kiddies, "The times they are a-changin'" and with it, life as you know it.
Then we have the Utopian day-dreamers who think the world would be a garden if everybody just got along!
Add all those to the others who didn't want to be thought of as racist if they didn't vote for Obama. (Do you think they know that NOT voting for McCain because he's an older white man is racism plus age discrimination?)
With all the above and the guiltiest of all, the lemmings that only honed in on the word "CHANGE" (with nothing to back it up except endorsing some sort of comeuppance to "those that have"), we get all these unknowing, giddy followers banded together in adoration to follow this political avalanche over the cliff.
For what it's worth, they've given up something that works (and has, with it's ups and downs since 1776) to try something that sounds good, i.e. "CHANGE"!
Well, the USA becoming a 3rd-world country is a "change" isn't it?
There is something more sinister and behind the scene that reeks of a wealthy gargoyle calling the shots. Someone telling Obama what and how...someone who is more of a gargoyle than Nancy Pelosi or Barney Frank. It could be G. Soros or a dozen like Soros... (A $2 billion loan to an oil Company in Brazil that just happens to be G. Soros' largest stock holding gives folks another piece of the puzzle.)
Someone with an agenda and LOTS of money.
When the likes of Al Franken can get votes (ACORN), let alone win an election, and the proletariat get their political news from the jokes of Letterman, Bill Maher, Saturday Night Live and Keith Olberman, you know we're headed for the sewer.
Ditto political information and marching orders from Barbara Streisand, J. Garafalo and Sean Penn plus their collective vitriol for the country and the people that gave them the freedom to be artists and become multi-rich. I'm sure they were wetting their collective pants with glee while our "O-Bobble-head of state" went around on a Muslim world tour, fez in hand, shuffling, kowtowing and apologizing for how awful we've been.
These 'artists', with their kind of money can live in Paraguay or Switzerland or anywhere they want, but they would rather stay and ruin the USA for their Socialist wet-dream agenda.
So we can be more like Venezuela, China, Africa or Cuba.
Those Hollywood types get BIG press for adopting from those countries though... For pointing at one of millions of starving ethnic kids and saying, "I'll take THAT one." However you won't see any one of them adopting an ethnic orphan from the USA (No beneficial publicity in that!)
You will hear them tossing personal insults though... For lack of real ideas you'll more likely see them on TV talking about G. W. Bush's grammatical faux pas and/or saying who they think is stupid or who should be held accountable for getting information from an al Qaeda terrorist, hell bent on killing Christians! We're going to prosecute the CIA because they insulted the enemy religion? Because we made them think they were drowning or we hurt their sensitivities to pork? [Yes, these are the same people that sawed off Daniel Pearl's head while running a video tape recorder, so we'd get their message!]
Then these narcissistic, "entertainer" types scoot off to Cannes or their chalet just outside of Dijon, Aspen or to a photo op with Chavez in Venezuela.
The Liberal politicians, to get voters' agreement, use their rhetoric of guilt to make that same simple minded American public believe that Capitalism and people that rise to the top and are paid commensurate with their position and production within a company are evil and overpaid...the belief that because someone is compensated generously for their expertise and/or creative business acumen, THEY are the problem with the USA and need bringing down. That YOU have so little because they have so much.
Those that take contracted bonuses are ripping everyone off, whether they've saved the company, couldn't change it's demise, or invented Zip-lock bags.
What has happened in the playing of this card is that wheels have begun turning that will limit the amount of executive pay and bonuses that can be earned, paid out, and accepted. Never mind that major country music artists bring in over $150 million for about 12 or 14 weeks of concerts or Alex Rodriguez makes about $200,000 for 2 hours of playing third base for the Yankees or that Sean Penn gets $20,000,000 for about 6 weeks' work on a movie! This isn't even in question! It's those corrupt CEOs of companies that make our day-to-day lives easier that are being paid too much. Like that guy that started Home Depot. Think of all the trees he's had killed to get wealthy!
They've used the corrupt, immoral crimes of the few to affect the lives of all Americans and their future.
Setting aside the greed, corruption and thievery of the Bernie Madoff types and others, does anyone truly believe that someone who does all the traditional cliches of hard work to rise to the top of their field, should be a target and penalized by taking a higher percentage of their earnings through the IRS?
What about nose-to-the-grindstone types who start at an early age to study, find direction, give up late-night revelry for cracking the books, or working on difficult business dilemmas, or developing a business model that no one had ever conceived...then spend years away from family and friends to cement the working parts and suffer defeat after defeat BUT not quit! (You know, like the Home Depot creator...)
Finally after decades of mind-numbing hard work and sacrifice, along comes the Obama Administration to tell you, your company or the company that recognizes your worth, that you are being paid an obscene amount of money. Not only can you not make that kind of salary but we are going to take more in the form of the already high taxes you've been obligated to pay in the past. You can't have that because others didn't have the wit and wisdom YOU did to prepare. If you can have a home at the beach, everyone should have a home at the beach! ...a jet-ski too!
Since they don't have the money to get one, we'll have to take some more of your money and get it for them. (Can't you just hear the opposite, the lower rungs of the economic ladder probably sitting at a bar drinking tequila at 11 a.m. shouting, "Hell, yeah!")
Meanwhile, those opposites, those that took the path "of least resistance"------
that didn't give their all or much of anything, that went to the sports bar instead of studying to pass the bar, that copied word for word out of their "Cliff Notes", blew off learning for TV or partying or even worse, left high school because it was boring. Now they are laid off from the seat belt plant with 2 kids at home and a spouse who is leaving if something doesn't change FAST!
THEY want a 2nd home at the beach too! ...AND A JET-SKI!
Credit? Shmedit!
The ones who succeeded are now being told that they've got to share. To give it back!
The Government is going to take from those that have and give to those that DON'T have.
Take money from the successful citizens so the unsuccessful will be able to buy a home without a viable credit history? To pay for the emphysema-ridden because they just couldn't or wouldn't stop smoking. Is this that absolving of fault again? You know it is!
Is everyone entitled to the government as their personal piggy bank?
Everybody who has a good job pays extra in case a kid in the next county breaks his leg in a skateboard accident? Or for the obese mother that needs knee surgery because all she eats is pre-packaged, precooked frozen "tater tots"?
Never mind the basic tenets of Democracy and Capitalism. "The cream rises to the top"...That you can rise and succeed from humble beginnings...and conversely you can remain at whatever level you want by not helping your own cause, to let circumstance dictate your path or take the path of self-destruction through whatever is in favor at the time. Possibly you've been shackled by your parents being 3rd generation welfare recipients... (another Democratic mess they've gotten us into!)
... O.K. who amongst us thinks that $250,000 is really wealthy?
Let's take the working wealthy...those developers of businesses and jobs.
They're the creative, productive thousands of self-made American millionaires. They already pay a terrifically high tax burden; but in the words of Barney Frank, when asked where the money will be coming from for this massive spending on entitlements and political handouts, "From the rich, they've got plenty of money!"
This Washington bunch, these inept, salaried-for-lifers that vote to raise their own pay, also vote to raise the tax burden on everybody, not only on the 8% that already pay over 60% of the money going in these entitlements, but also coming to a wallet near you are higher taxes across the board!
IT IS INEVITABLE!
And not just payroll taxes. Higher taxes on everything from soft drinks to fish hooks.
Money to be used for things like entitlements for the single mother with 3 kids from 3 different fathers who can't keep their collective "jobs" because they left school at 16.
They couldn't wait to quit school at 16, leave home, start having kids...To try and get that job at the local plant or working on cars or loading goods on trucks for shipping; and yet my new burden is to help them get health care?
No child left behind? No, not until graduation... back then you were content to remain ignorant because you were going to be passed anyway. Now you're still being passed, but it's more like "passed by" for employment, raises and upward momentum. Luckily you can get on the dole for being lackluster in your thinking.
"The trouble with Socialism is that you will eventually run out of other people's money."
MargAret Thatcher
CONTROLLING GOVERNMENT AT WORK:
(Bear with me here--I have a point.)
I live in a rural part of East Tennessee on a nice corner piece of land on a road that is used daily by people going to work from further in the country to their jobs in town.
This road to and from another more direct road to town makes a 45-degree turn at our corner. Inevitably, those going to work or home drive too fast, and about once per 6 weeks, someone goes off the corner, hitting the caution signs or one time a utility pole, or maybe just sliding into a ditch etc. But I dare not complain to the local authorities or pols, because instead of slowing the drivers down, they'll want to take 1/3 of our property to make the corner less difficult to maneuver!
Instead of slowing down the speeders by penalizing them, they would penalize my family by taking our land.
"The easiest way to solve the problem is straighten the bend in the road that's been here and used for 150 years."
This is the thinking that this present administration is welcoming to the USA.
Is it too difficult a task to police and adjudicate the law breakers? The signs clearly say "SLOW" "20 MPH"...with yellow caution signs showing the curve coming up and signs that say "SLOW DOWN"...Never mind the fact that it's the center of our small community with a post office just off the corner where locals are turning in or leaving, and from fall through late spring school children wait for the buses on the opposite side, near the busy entrance to a small college.
Of course someone has to watch, then stop those driving too fast, give them a ticket and show up in court to help convict.
A heavy fine? For hurrying to work? Knocking over a few signs?
"Hell, the corner's too oblique! Lets just straighten out the road some..."
Too many drug addicts?
Lets make drugs legal!
Didn't mean to get pregnant that torrid weekend in Daytona?
Just pluck it out like a splinter!
Don't want people and families homeless, starving, without jobs, health insurance, money?
Nobody wants that. Are you your lazy, good for nothin' neighbor's keeper? Well, is it their fault they had bad circumstances or didn't have any ambition or fore-thought? ... Had parents that gambled away the farm?
Evidently not, so you ARE your lazy, good for nothin' neighbor's keeper, we're gonna have to take more from you!
Two men want to marry and adopt children?
Sure why not? What are you a homophobe?
Why not 3 men? How about 2 women and a goat? Or 2 transsexuals, a transvestite and a hermaphrodite?
Nothing illegal there...Just have to figure out who is the 'head' of household for the census!
Just give it all over to whoever/whatever wants to "be married"...let 'em adopt, too, so they can warp a future generation!
Too many people with no visible means of support?
We've got plenty of people who work and make a damned good amount of money. Let THEM pay for the high school drop-outs and millions of out-of-work people this Administration has left in the ditches!
Kids wired and crazy? Can't seem to get them reeled in to behave or follow the norm or follow directives from teachers?
Hell, that's why we have downers and powerful meds for kids.
To keep them reeled in and to stop questioning authority!
You don't have to be successful! In fact don't even try. We have others that already are. We'll use them to foot your bills and cover your non-productivity, so we can all be equal/average.
Forget George W. Bush, that was last year!
The joke is on us, whether we choose to buy into it or not, with few exceptions those 535 in Washington will vote whatever garners accolades for themselves, i.e. re-election, deals with lobbyists, $$$ to powerful constituents or for political favors as yet unnamed. 68% of us can be against something and "for our own good and the good of the proletariat" they will sneak it past us and vote against the wishes of the people.
Apparently the watch dogs were giving Barney Frank and Chris Dodd a free rein when they were pushing for more loans via Government back-up money for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (meanwhile "B. Frank" and "Dodds the issue" were pocketing gift-money/loans/contributions into their own coffers!) If you think GM and AIG bonuses were too much, look into what the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie made off with and who they're working for now!
Forget the Social Security, Medicaid, IRS wrecks and $250 toilet seats.
How can any of you in your wildest imagination, believe that this Government, with it's track record of bamboozling, self-aggrandizing, lying politicians, and bureaucratic snafus...
(over $450,000 of the stimulus bucks sent to incarcerated criminals...
"Whoops, our mistake.")
A Government that can't even run the "Cash for Clunkers" debacle for it's 2-week life without problems, will be able to handle the myriad intricacies of health care for 300 million people?
There is not a government-run health care system in the world that does not have rationing of care.
I don't "really" believe we'll end up with death panels of several bureaucrats sitting in an office giving a thumbs down to an elderly parent. Probably not this decade. At least the convicted Dr. Kevorkian was working with those who wanted to die, and they sent him to prison for murder. Were Dr. Kevorkian and the movie "Soylent Green" ahead of their time? Will Dr. Kevorkian have to be given restitution and a full pardon? Will there be a "Kevorkian Clause" in the Obama final decree rammed through?
Although I don't feel good about it for the children's sake, I think the feds should start small to check their work. Maybe put them in charge of the Ronald McDonald house for 2 years.
Then we do a review. How did the kids fare? How many survived the Government?
Did we lose any to ineptness? If they can be trusted we'll move them up a notch or two to maybe a whole state's nursing home system (A real small state like Rhode Island). Then check with the residents and their families after a few years to see how they fared.
Ahh, people.
Gone are the days when a handful of meagerly shod farmers and villagers armed with rocks, pitchforks and a few muskets ran to the wall to defend their freedom from "Taxation Without Representation" against the crack, better armed, better supplied Army of King George. The Patriots traveled on foot, in the middle of winter, half-starved, fought and sent them back across the pond soundly beaten!
Did they give their all for THIS?
Will the people ever have the courage to stand up against the ill winds that are blowing now?
America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.
Dinesh D'Souza
Let the 'American Idle' watch "American Idol"!
The rest of us need to take our country back!
"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."
Jonathan Swift
