Armed Citizen

BIN LADEN DEAD?!

2011-05-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

The news is all over the place now. It is front page news at the New York Times even. I for one am glad that he is finally dead. The Times story says that he has been killed and so I await the details as the rest of America does.

Forgive me if I hurl if our illustrious President attempts to somehow take any credit for his death. We all know better than that right? In fact, I am actually worried that Obama will tear up and announce funeral arrangements for a martyr. He wont condone his actions of course, just admire his convictions and lament his lack of opportunities to sit down with such a great individual. Hear that? Its me throwing up!

Anyway, I for one am not the least bit broken up about that scum kicking the bucket. In fact, I hope it was a long and drawn out death. I would relish the idea of him having actually being caught 5 years ago and just now succumbing to the torture. And that still would be too good for him.

GOD BLESS THE USA AND THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE GIVEN THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THEIR COUNTRY SO THAT THEIR FAMILIES, FRIENDS AND EVEN STRANGERS CAN ENJOY THE SAME FREEDOMS FOR GENERATIONS TO COME

IRS: Too much power enforcing tax codes that are reprehensible

2011-03-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent with the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. By 1916 that top rate had risen to 15 percent, on income in excess of $2,000,000. The top rate exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. The first 1040 form -- instructions and all -- took up only four pages. Today there are some 4,000 pages of tax forms and instructions. American workers and business are forced to spend more than 5.4 billion man-hours every year figuring out their taxes. Since those hours could be put to a more productive use, and almost surely would be in the absence of today’s incomprehensible tax code, the result is a large dead-weight output loss of some $200 billion each year. ... The IRS now has more enforcement personnel than the EPA, BATF, OSHA, FDA, and DEA combined. With its 115,000-man workforce, it has the power to search the property and financial documents of American citizens without a search warrant and to seize property from American citizens without a trial. It routinely does both. Economist James L. Payne has written a most revealing analysis of the IRS, a 1993 book entitled Costly Returns. He arrives at a stunning conclusion, the total cost to collect our federal taxes, including the effects on the economy as a whole adds up to an amazing 65 percent of all the tax dollars received annually. The U.S. tax system, says Payne, has produced hundreds of thousands of victims of erroneous IRS penalties, liens, levies, and tax advice. In answering taxpayer questions, for example, the IRS telephone information service has in previous years given about one-third of all callers -- as many as 8.5 million Americans -- the wrong answers to their questions. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that 47 percent of a random sample of IRS correspondence -- including demands for payments -- contained errors. Incredibly a GAO audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence at the agency. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation!
-- Dr. Lawrence W. Reed
(1953-) President of the Foundation for Economic Education
Source: Taxes and Tyranny, THE UNREPORTED NEWS, August 27, 1995.

Political Spin at its best!

2011-03-16T21:43:00.001-07:00

Political spin at its best.

No Matter What Side You Are On.....This IS Funny!

It just all depends on how you look at some things..

Judy Wallman, a professional genealogy researcher in southern California , was doing some personal work on her own family tree.. She discovered that Senator Harry Reid's great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. Both Judy and Harry Reid share this common ancestor.

The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana territory:

On the back of the picture Judy obtained during her research is this inscription: 'Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'

So Judy recently e-mailed Senator Harry Reid for information about their great-great uncle.

This is What Reid's Staff sent back as their research:
"Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory . His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montanarailroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."

NOW THAT's how it's done, Folks! That's real POLITICAL SPIN

Harry Reid

Obama, the Queen of England and a Riddle.

2010-09-20T01:15:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama met with the Queen of England. This may or may not be exactly as things unfolded. No names will be withheld as none are innocent.

After a tour of the palace, as they were having afternoon tea, Obama asked her, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give to me?"

"Well," said the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people."

Obama frowned, and then asked, "But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?"

The Queen took a sip of tea. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle." The Queen pushed a button on her intercom.
"Please send Tony Blair in here, would you?"

Tony Blair walked into the room and said, "Yes, my Queen?"

The Queen smiled and said, "Answer me this please, Tony, your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister.
Who is it?"

Without pausing for a moment, Tony Blair answered, "That would be me."

"Yes! Very good," said the Queen.

Obama went back home to ask Joe Biden, his vice president the same question.
"Joe, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," said Biden. "Let me get back to you on that one..." He went to his advisors and asked every one, but none could give him and answer. Finally, he ended up in the men's room and recognized Colin Powell's shoes in the next stall. Biden asked Powell, "Colin, can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister. Who is it"

Colin Powell yelled back, "That's easy, it's me!"

Biden smiled, and said, "Thanks!" Then, he went back to speak with Obama.
"Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle.

It's Colin Powell!"

Obama got up, stomped over to Biden, and angrily yelled into his face, "No!
you idiot! It's Tony Blair!"

AND THAT MY FRIENDS IS PRECISELY WHAT'S GOING ON WITH OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN WASHINGTON D.C.

A version of this was in my email in-box and I had to share.

Tea Party Ideals are not new....... or radical.......

2010-08-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

"They make a rout about universal liberty,
without considering that all that is to be valued,
or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty."
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson
(1709-1784)

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"As the organized Left gained cultural power, it turned into a monster that
found perpetual victimhood, combined with thought and speech control, the most
efficient way to hold on to that power. Suddenly it was the Left, the protector
of liberty, that was setting rules about what could and could not be said or
even thought."
-- Tammy Bruce
(1962-) American radio host, author, and political commentator
Source: The New Thought Police, 2001

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"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and
that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association -- the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
-- Thomas Jefferson

(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source: Note in Tracy's "Political Economy," 1816

"About all a Federal Reserve note can legally do is wipe out one debt and
replace it with itself another debt, a note that promises nothing. If
anything's been paid, the payment occurs only in the minds of the parties..."
-- Tupper Saucy
author
Source: " The Miracle On Main Street"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"One of the most insidious consequences of the present burden of personal
income tax is that it strips many middle class families of financial reserves &
seems to lend support to campaigns for socialized medicine, socialized housing,
socialized food, socialized every thing. The personal income tax has made the
individual vastly more dependent on the State & more avid for state hand-outs.
It has shifted the balance in America from an individual-centered to a
State-centered economic & social system."
-- W. H. Chamberlin

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"The people themselves, not their government, should be trusted
with spending their own money and making their own decisions."
-- Richard Armey
Source: THE FREEDOM REVOLUTION.

---------------------------------------------------------------
"Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system
of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central
bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are
determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not
capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding
mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price
controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of
trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts
to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by
corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal
mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare.
This is not capitalism!"
-- Ron Paul
(1935-) American physician, US Congressman (R-TX), US Presidential candidate
Source: Has Capitalism Failed?, July 9, 2002

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"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."
-- Booker T. Washington
(1856-1915) African American political leader, educator and author
1911

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Corruption, like a cancer … eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, floppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society."
-- John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Had the states been despoiled of their sovereignty by the generality of the preamble, and had the Federal Government been endowed with whatever they should judge to be instrumental towards the union, justice, tranquility, common defence, general welfare, and the preservation of liberty, nothing could have been more frivolous than an enumeration of powers."
-- Virginia’s General Assembly
Source: January 23, 1799

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"Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency."
-- Epicurus
(341-270 BCE) Greek philosopher, founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism

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"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit."
-- Grover Cleveland
(1837-1908) 22nd & 24th US President
Source: February 16, 1887, vetoing a bill to appropriate money to provide seeds to drought-stricken counties of Texas

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is very certain that [the commerce clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government."
-- James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Source: letter dated February 13, 1829

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"The man who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a
slave."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
[Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel, le Comte de Tocqueville] (1805-1859) French historian

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790) US Founding Father
Source: motto to Historical Review of Pennsylvania

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"The true danger is when liberty
is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."
-- Edmund Burke
(1729-1797) Irish-born British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker
Source: April 3, 1777, letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any
people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality,
and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
-- Patrick Henry
(1736-1799) US Founding Father

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"The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others. No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develope their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty."
-- Baruch Spinoza
(1632-1677)
Source: Baruch Spinoza, in Theological-Political Treatise (1670)

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"That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant."
-- John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
Source: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

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"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."
-- Frederick Douglass
[Frederick Baily] (1818-1895), escaped slave, Abolitionist, author, editor of the North Star and later the New National Era
Source: Frederick Douglass, in an address on West India Emancipation (4 August 1857)

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"Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute
that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable
of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of
it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and
choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of
morality, neither morally good nor morally evil."
-- John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor (15 April 1814)

Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero!

2010-07-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

Look at the size of the crowd - did it make the news? ALL the networks have
studios within spitting distance of the site.

NATIONAL NEWS MEDIA
SOMEHOW MISSED THIS GATHERING.

Stop
the Mosque at Ground Zero

Part II

June 16, 2010, New York , N.Y. , - by El Marco

Americans Stand Up Against Radical
Islam in New York - We Will Not Submit!

Not one major network sent a satellite
truck or camera crew to this event. Without bloggers this newsworthy event
would have remained unknown to the public and history

On Sunday, June 6th, a
    multi-ethnic, multi-racial coalition of Americans opposed to Islamic
    violence and intolerance rallied at the site of the World Trade Center in
    New York City .

9/11 families were joined
    by immigrants from India, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Africa, Iran and Europe to
    show opposition to the construction of a mega-mosque at Ground Zero. Others
    flew in from overseas to speak or just to share their particular ethnic
    communities' experiences at the hands of Muslims.

These are parents and
    spouses of firefighters killed on 9/11. The rally took place just a
    minute's walk from Ladder 10 Firehouse, where their loved ones were
    stationed for duty that terrible day. Ladder 10 lost seven firefighters.

Crowd estimates ranged from
    5,000 (NYPD) to 10,000. The crowd overflowed the police barrier enclosures
    that ran the full length of two city blocks. This photo shows the enclosure
    in front of the stage at the intersection of Liberty and Church Streets. The
    second enclosure ran the length of the next block and can be seen on the
    other side of the traffic lights.

Thousands of additional
participants filled the treed area of Zuccotti Park .

Robert Spencer
    and Pamela Geller are the founders of STOP ISLAMIZATION OF
    AMERICA, which sponsored the rally. Ms. Geller is a citizen journalist and
    blogger who runs the human rights web site Atlas Shrugs.
    Mr. Spencer is the author of several books on Islam and head of the
    influential web site Jihad watch. Pamela Geller:

"Ground Zero is a war
    memorial, Ground Zero is a burial ground. We are asking for sensitivity. It
    is unconscionable to build a shrine to the very ideology that inspired the
    jihadist attacks at Ground Zero, right there. We are asking the imam Rauf
    and Daisy Khan to be sensitive. For mutual respect and mutual understanding
    that is demanded of us every day.

There's a hair-trigger
    sensitivity in the Muslim world, you can't run the cartoons, you can't say
    Mohammed, this is offensive. This is an offensive mosque. To build a
    shrine, an Islamic flag of conquest on the sacred ground the cherished
    site, of a conquered land. This is historic, this is Islamic history. It's
    what they do. The St. Sofia in Turkey , the al-Quds, at the holiest Jewish
    site in Israel . Not here. This is where we take a stand. We must take
    a stand. We must say no."

I do not believe that the landmarks commission
    controlled by Mayor Bloomberg, is going to stop this mosque. It's not going
    to happen. Here's Omar Muhamedi, on his human rights council, a CAIR
    lawyer, who sued the airlines and the Jane and John Does that saw
    something and said something on those airplanes, if
    you remember. That's who's on his human rights commission. It ain't gonna
    happen with Bloomberg. We have to make it happen. You have
    to get involved." (Pamela Geller)

Police enclosure on left,
    with crowd flowing out of park on right. The new Tower 7 and World Trade
    Center site are in the background. The green tent, center, is located
    immediately behind the stage.

Port Authority and NYPD
    officers kept watch over the rally and were well aware of the need for
    heightened security at this event. One of their own Port Authority
    officers, WTC Sergeant Alan T. De Vona was on duty at the World Trade
    Center on 9/11, 2001, and was one of the first to help victims of the
    terrorist attack. He spoke these words to the SIOA rally:

"It's almost nine years.
    I'm hoping that America is watching. I'm hoping that America is
    remembering. Because, make no mistake. September 11 was an act of war. And
    thank the military that has lost almost 5,000 troops from that day,
    defending us. I don't know what to say to jar America 's memory. I want
    America to remember.

Port Authority Police and FDNY firefighters are seen
here gathered beneath this banner.

The issues at stake will
    certainly affect the heart of American freedom, democracy, cultural values
    and tolerance. America is a tolerant country that allows for the free
    worship of all its citizens. But our tolerance has limits. Do we have to
    tolerate intolerant Islamic ideology and Muslims who preach intolerant
    Islam?"

Hindu human rights
    activists Narain Kataria, Prasad Yalamanchi and unidentified friend
    came from Mississippi and Chicago with banners and flyers highlighting the
    radical statements of imam Rauf and his jihadist roots.

Stephen Dyer and Gary Jules
    journalism students at York College, with Pamela Geller. Not one major
    network sent a satellite truck or camera crew to this event. Without
    bloggers this newsworthy event would have remained unknown to the public
    and history.

Pamela Geller is greeted by
Hindu human rights activists Prasad Yalamanchi and Narain Kataria.

Bhupinder Singh
    Bhurji, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer. Singh Bhurji is the president of
    the NAMDHARI SIKH FOUNDATION. The foundation is a member of the
    Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI). HRCARI is a
    coalition of Hindus, Sikhs, Christians from Sudan, Egypt and Iraq, moderate
    Muslims and Jews - who are victims and targets of radical Islam around the
    globe. He said, at another rally:

"Radical Islamists are
    killing people in India , trying to dominate that nation. And here too they
    come with violence against "infidels." We are "infidels
    united," standing together, brown, black and white, against this
    epoch's fascist movement. Radical Islam wants to dominate entire
    world. They want everyone to surrender. Islam radical or otherwise. They want to put the Islamic flag on White House."

Because of Islamic
    terrorism, America and the world have seen massive new security measures
    become a way of life. Anyone openly critical of Islam, or terrorist
    ideology, must surround themselves with security, or live in hiding. Those
    courageous enough to confront Islamism are criticized by the cowards and
    appeasers of the left who seek safety by supporting the enemy. Moderate
    Muslims were silent when Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered in Amsterdam ,
    just as moderate Muslims in the United States are generally reluctant to
    speak out against violent Islam. Moderate Muslims also face great danger in
    speaking out.

Geller and Spencer will
    press on despite the danger. They hope to inspire Americans to stand up and
    say enough of political correctness and work to stem the galloping
    islamization of America and Europe .

Friends,

Have you
seen anything about this story on the evening news?

Of course
you haven't! So please forward this email to all those

you know
who feel the way you and I do about this country . . .

Thank you!

Score a Victory for States Rights!

2010-07-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

County Sheriff Can Bust Big Brother: Wyoming Sheriffs Put Feds in Their Place

The duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county. He has law enforcement powers that exceed that of any other state or federal official.

This is settled law that most people are not aware of.

County sheriffs in Wyoming have scored a big one for the 10th Amendment
and states rights. The sheriffs slapped a federal intrusion upside the
head and are insisting that all federal law enforcement officers and
personnel from federal regulatory agencies must clear all their activity
in a Wyoming County with the Sheriff’s Office. Deja vu for those who
remember big Richard Mack in Arizona.

Bighorn County Sheriff Dave Mattis spoke at a press conference following
a recent U.S. District Court decision (Case No. 2:96-cv-099-J (2006))
and announced that all federal officials are forbidden to enter his
county without his prior approval ......

"If a sheriff doesn’t want the Feds in his county he has the
constitutional right and power to keep them out, or ask them to leave,
or retain them in custody."

The court decision was the result of a suit against both the BATF and
the IRS by Mattis and other members of the Wyoming Sheriff’s
Association. The suit in the Wyoming federal court district sought
restoration of the protections enshrined in the United States
Constitution and the Wyoming Constitution.

Guess what? The District Court ruled in favor of the sheriffs. In fact,
they stated, Wyoming is a sovereign state and the duly elected sheriff
of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and
has law enforcement powers exceeding that of any other state or
federal official." Go back and re-read this quote.

The court confirms and asserts that "the duly elected sheriff of a
county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and has
law enforcement powers EXCEEDING that of any other state OR federal
official." And you thought the 10th Amendment was dead and buried — not
in Wyoming, not yet.

But it gets even better. Since the judge stated that the sheriff "has
law enforcement powers EXCEEDING that of any other state OR federal
official," the Wyoming sheriffs are flexing their muscles. They are
demanding access to all BATF files. Why? So as to verify that the agency
is not violating provisions of Wyoming law that prohibits the
registration of firearms or the keeping of a registry of firearm owners.
This would be wrong.

The sheriffs are also demanding that federal agencies immediately cease
the seizure of private property and the impoundment of private bank
accounts without regard to due process in Wyoming state courts.

Gosh, it makes one wish that the sheriffs of the counties relative to
Waco, Texas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma regarding their jurisdictions
were drinking the same water these Wyoming sheriffs are.

Sheriff Mattis said, "I am reacting in response to the actions of
federal employees who have attempted to deprive citizens of my county of
their privacy, their liberty, and their property without regard to
constitutional safeguards. I hope that more sheriffs all across America
will join us in protecting their citizens from the illegal activities
of the IRS, EPA, BATF, FBI, or any other federal agency that is
operating outside the confines of constitutional law. Employees of the
IRS and the EPA are no longer welcome in Bighorn County unless they
intend to operate in conformance to constitutional law." [Amen].

However, the sad reality is that sheriffs are elected, and that means
they are required to be both law enforcement officials and politicians
as well. Unfortunately, Wyoming sheriffs are the exception rather than
the rule . . . but they shouldn’t be. Sheriffs have enormous power, if
or when they choose to use it. I share the hope of Sheriff Mattis that
"more sheriffs all across America will join us in protecting their
citizens."

If Wyoming Sheriffs can follow in the steps of former Arizona Sheriff
Richard Mack and recognize both their power and authority, they could
become champions for the memory of Thomas Jefferson who died thinking
that he had won those "states’ rights" debates with Alexander Hamilton.

This case is not just some amusing mountain melodrama. This is a BIG
deal. This case is yet further evidence that the 10th Amendment is not
yet totally dead, or in a complete decay in the United States. It is
also significant in that it can, may, and hopefully will be interpreted
to mean that "political subdivisions of a State are included within the
meaning of the amendment, or that the powers exercised by a sheriff
are an extension of those common law powers which the 10th Amendment
explicitly reserves to the People, if they are not granted to the
federal government or specifically prohibited to the States."

Winston Churchill observed, "If you will not fight for right when you
can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your
victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you
will have to fights with all the odds against you with only a
precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have
to fight when there is not hope of victory at all, because it is better
to perish than to live as slaves."

Dave Robinson,
Brunswick, Maine

Conspiracies or fact?

2010-07-22T00:04:00.000-07:00

How does one know if what they see, whether an advertisement or blog, is just propaganda or facts presented in dramatic fashion? In today's era of cut and paste, as well as photoshop and internet hoaxes, sometimes we wonder whether something we see is based in reality or conjured up to scare us into action. This is especially true in the political world.

With this in mind, I share the following without knowing with certainty whether ALL accusations are absolute truths. Some I know to be true however , so we must at least investigate. Even propaganda is based out of at least a glimmer of truth. One thing is certain, I am worried about my country. Not whether or not it can be restored to its former greatness, but at what the cost might entail.

So, what do YOU think?

How well do you know the U.S Presidents?

2010-07-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

I do not try and present myself as an expert on the Presidents of these United States. I am a student of History and enjoy particularly, the History of the United States of America. This blessed country has a history as rich, if not as long, as any European nation.

I was given the following trivia by one of my instructors. It is fun, interesting and some stuff many people do not know. See how many you may know. Find the answers you don't. It is NOT useless information, and who knows, you may just be able to win a trivia game one day. One thing is for sure; what you learn while looking up these answers will be invaluable, mark my word!

GOOD LUCK!

Who was the only President to hold a Phd?
When I died, though I had been an important Founding Father, even the Quakers refused to bury me.
I disowned my only son because he did not support the American Revolutionary cause.
Some have called me the “Martha Stewart” of my day because I loved decorating and furnishing my home.
My farewell speech warned Americans of the “military industrial complex.”
“The buck stops here.”
“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”
“No man ever listened himself out of a job.”
“The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President”.
Born in 1782, I was the first President born a U.S. citizen.
I was 5’4” tall, rarely weighed more than 100 lbs and had chronic arthritis.
I was the first President to speak over the newly invented radio.
I was over 300 lbs and the White House had a special bathtub installed for me.
Leon Czolgosz killed me on September 14th, 1901.
We were the only two Presidents who were Quakers.
I am the only President who was never married.
I am the President who the most children. Who was I and how many kids did I have?
I kept a pet alligator in the White House.
I was nicknamed the “Teflon President.”
I was the first President to live in the White House.
I was known as the “trust buster.”
“A chicken in very pot and a car in every garage.”
I appointed BOTH the first woman Cabinet member and the first woman as a U.S. Ambassador to a foreign country.
My salary as President was $25,000.
I was the first President that had been born in a hospital.
What religion can boast the highest number of American Presidents?
I was the only President with a Jehovah’s Witness upbringing although I shifted somewhat after 1915.
I was the first President to appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I was the first President to have a child born while in the White House.
These two Presidents both died and just hours apart on July 4, 1826.
I had no formal education and was a tailor prior to politics and the Presidency.
My wife was affectionately known as “Lemonade Lucy.”
I was the President to first put & have electricity in the White House.
In part influenced by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, I supported and got the Meat Inspection Act passed.
I hired Louis Comfort Tiffany to restore and do some redesigning of the White House.
Army General or not, I could get physically ill at the sight of blood and I deplored the sport of hunting.
I was the only President to serve two NON-consecutive terms in the White House.
I was the last Civil War veteran to serve as President.
I am the only President to also have served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Whether popular culture bunk, total nonsense or political allegory, Frank Baum’s 1900 classic The Wizard of Oz supposedly made political commentary on my Presidency and even portrayed me as the Wizard himself.
I was supposed to be assassinated also in 1865 but the assassin assigned to do me in lost their nerve.
I was a president that became famous for saying so little that a White House dinner guest made a bet that she could get the president to say more than two words. She told the president of her wager. His reply: "You lose."
I not only disagreed with the Supreme Court decision favoring the Cherokee claim, but I also openly defied it and removed the Cherokee from their land anyway.
First Lucy Mercer, then Missy LeHand, then Lucy Mercer again until my death.
My Presidency had many low points and misjudgments, but my unrelenting determination that resulted in the Camp David Accords was not one of them and remains a stunning achievement in Presidential history.
I was a President BUT in my entire career I was never elected to ANY office higher than that of Congress.
“Old Rough and Ready.”
Although it sounds scandalous at first, I married my school teacher….she was only a year older than me.
“The Little Magician.”
Sure, I made money and a living in several businesses before becoming President but one in particular that made me big money was my part ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, I flew 58 missions in WWII and was shot down by the Japanese but rescued by an American submarine.
Two months before taking office, my 11-year-old son was killed in a train accident.
I was inaugurated on March 4, 1841 and died on April 4, 1841. The first President to die in office.
While serving first as Vice President, I lamented, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."
Although my “Doctrine” did not have its formal name until 20 years after my death, my “Doctrine” warned European nations to stay out of Latin America.
It is I, and not Thomas Jefferson, who can be called the “Father of the Constitution.”
Although there was no Constitutionality that granted me the power or authority or to defend it, I went ahead with the Louisiana Purchase anyway.
After election but before taking office, my heart was broken by the death of a beloved stepson and the death of my wife who had been decimated by the media as being an adulteress, a whore and a divorcee.
I won the Nobel Prize for History with my 1955 book Profiles in Courage.
My Presidency will always be connected to and haunted by the Dred Scott decision.
My Presidency was fiercely expansionist and “my War” and the land obtained from that war also worsened the already deteriorating relations between the American North and South over slavery.
If you doubt the importance of a family dog, just check out the number of hits there are on YouTube of my famed “Checkers Speech.”
One my film “classics” was a WWII U. S. Army Air Corps training film called “Japanese Zero.”
I wasn’t a particularly wealthy guy but I became the wealthiest guy in Virginia when I married Martha.
My election to the Presidency has forever become tagged as the “corrupt bargain.”
I became known as “His Accidency.”
Afraid of losing the Southern vote, I chose not to support the Anti-Lynching Law when it was before Congress.
Alexander Graham Bell tried feverishly to save me with a device he had invented to find a bullet lodged in me. He failed and I died.
"that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
My birth name was William Jefferson Blythe III.
My ‘Good Neighbor Policy” gave more strength to the Monroe Doctrine and outlined a definitive response to European or any other country’s involvement in Latin America.
While I was Vice-President, I served a President who detested me and who kept secret from the plans called the Manhattan Project. I only learned of it when the President died.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist”.
I was never President but I was a pretty darn colorful Vice-President….during my term I killed a guy in a duel and I got to stay in office!
John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice-President in 1832 in order to run for office but I am the only VP to resign in complete disgrace.
Without the heroic efforts of this First Lady, the famed portrait of George Washington in the White House would have been lost to an advancing British Army.
I buried three sons and my husband and a fourth son had me committed to an insane asylum.
My idea, the League of Nations, failed to pass Congress and the U.S. did not join but after WWII, a similar idea bore witness to the foresight of my ideals………..it became known as the United Nations.
When the newspapers chanted “"Ma, ma, where's my pa? Off to the White House, ha ha ha!" – I admitted to fathering an illegitimate son and my sex scandal became Presidential history.
I was already accused of having an affair and children with one of my slaves while I was President but the DNA proof did not come out until 1998.
Until Nixon and then Clinton, my scandal was considered the worst, a story of bribes, land deals and big money being made. I died before anything could be absolutely proven…who am I and what was my scandal called?
“Four freedoms: The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of everyone to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.”
"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting."
“When the President does it, that means it's not illegal.”
"I want a kinder, gentler nation."
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
Can a U.S. President declare War?
What the only THREE requirements to run for President?
True or False: Congress can directly override an Executive Order of the President
True or False: The President can grant pardons and reprieves from any Federal offenses
True or False: The President can enter into a Treaty without the Senate approving
Can the Presidency be won with only the popular vote?
True or False: A House or Senate Bill can only become law if the President signs it.
True or False: Congress can override a President’s veto with a 2/3 vote.
I ran for President unopposed by any candidate….of course, I won, too!
In 1991, they exhumed my body to decide once and for all if I had murdered by arsenic poisoning.
I married my fifth cousin once removed but still we were cousins.
I am the only President to have donned a Nazi uniform.
At my funeral in 1845, they had to remove my pet parrot because it was colorfully cussing out the crowd.

100. I was the first President to be photographed at an Inauguration. My eventual assassin is also in that picture with me.

A Miracle that changed the world!

2010-07-10T01:27:00.000-07:00

Our Founding Fathers said that these 28 Principles of Freedom must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desire peace, prosperity, and freedom.

Adherence to these beliefs during the past 200 years has brought about more progress than was made in the previous 5,000 years.

1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law

2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong

3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally stable people is to elect virtuous leaders

4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained

5. All things were created by God, therefore upon Him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible

6. All men are created equal

7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, NOT PROVIDE EQUAL THINGS!

8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights

9. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people

10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people

11. The Majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical

12. The United States of America shall be a republic

13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers

14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure

15. The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations

16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial

17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power

18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution

19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained in the people

20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority

21. Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom

22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men

23. A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education

24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong

25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations: entangling alliances with none."

26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity

27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest

28. The United States has a (divine duty) to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

For more information on the 28 principles and how we return to them, read The 5000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen or Visit The National Center for Constitutional Studies.

Liberty or Death? That is the Question

2010-07-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

Many have heard or read the famous quote by Patrick Henry, ".......give me liberty of give me death!". But do we know anything about the rest of that speech? Patrick Henry, Sam Adams and the other founders of the Sons of Liberty were the ones who I believe made possible, the Revolution. At St. Johns Church, Patrick Henry called for Virginia and every other community to raise and have ready a militia, ready to respond to an invader, made up, not of soldiers but of citizens, united in the cause of freedom and liberty.

Please read his whole speech and see if your heart does not swell with the want to protect this liberty that came and has been defended at a steep price.

St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia
March 23, 1775.

MR. PRESIDENT: No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely, and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfil the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves, and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these war-like preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free² if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending²if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable²and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace²but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

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I wonder, where are vigilant, the active, and the brave today? Where are those willing to unite for the preservation of freedom?

Do we remember?

2010-07-04T01:59:00.000-07:00

Today is July 4th, a time when most people get a paid day off, trips to the lake are planned, and grills are fired up for delicious bbq's. Everyone waves a flag and we usually go watch fireworks. This day is more than that. Most of us know that, and most of the people I call friends recognize that what we celebrate on the 4th of July was an impossibility and was unfathomable at the time. That the upstart state representatives, that had formed the loose Continental Congress, would have the gall to declare that the people here on this continent had the right to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...".

Wave the Flag of our Nation, but know why it is important and teach your children why we respect the Flag and all it represents. Let them know what it represents. Let us honor those who have served or are serving in our military, as they are the first line of defense against foreign invaders. They risk their lives ensuring the freedoms we have remain intact, and they do it at great peril to themselves. My brother's death in the field of battle was part of the price that ensuring our freedoms has cost. This Nation, from the beginning has paid a steep price for that freedom and that price unfortunately, is not done being paid. Thank a Veteran, and then do your part. We cannot let our freedoms be traded away or simply taken for the "greater good". Hitler disarmed the German citizenry "for their own good", right before he started rounding up Jews and political or otherwise outspoken opponents to his Nazi party.

In Jefferson's list of grievances, part of what was put in the final document is as follows, and should make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. And yet we do nothing.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspendedin their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend them.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF FATIGUING THEM INTO COMPIANCE WITH HIS MEASURES.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat our substance.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation.

For imposing taxes upon us without our consent.

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valued Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.

For suspending our Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

We the People have let down our forefathers and all that they have died for if we continue to let our freedoms become eroded away, a little piece at a time, until we are but pawns once again, complaining of the chains that hold us down.

On this the 4th of July, let us remember why we celebrate. Let us take the time to read the Declaration of Independence together. Discuss as families, friends and acquaintances, the importance of this document and the rest of the fonding documents, then, now, and in our children's future. We have come a long way towards living up to the promise of the declaration. We need to turn back the federal leviathan and shrink its bite. This will take courageous men and women stepping up and doing their part, and then relinquishing the intoxicating power that has corrupted what seems to be at least a majority of our elected officials.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence - "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred honor."

Will you sign with the original signers?

Print and sign, and then print copies for your friends and family.
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I, as one of We, the People of the
United States, affirm that I have read
]or will read our U.S. Constitution and
Pledge to maintain and promote its
standard of liberty for myself and for
my posterity, and do hereby attest to
that by my signature

______________________
Pledger

George Washington

George Washington, Witness

The links to the Declaration and the Constitution of the United States are on the left of this post.

What 2nd Amendment rights?

2010-07-01T18:37:00.000-07:00

Just like in our Nations Capital, the fact that the Supreme Court deems the second amendment a right of ALL United States Citizens, Chicago says "up yours" to its citizenry! Look over these proposals carefully, they are exactly what Obama and the liberal thugs who are running our government want across all of these United States. This is why confirmation of judges is important and should not EVER by allowed to "walk right in", regardless of ability to block a nomination.

Please read:

By DON BABWIN, Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO – With the city's gun ban certain to be overturned, MayorRichard Daley on Thursday introduced what city officials say is the strictest handgun ordinance in the United States.

The measure, which draws from ordinances around the country, would ban gun shops in Chicago and prohibit gun owners from stepping outside their homes, even onto their porches or garages, with a handgun.

Daley announced his ordinance at a park on the city's South Side three days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live. The City Council is expected to vote on it Friday.

"As long as I'm mayor, we will never give up or give in to gun violence that continues to threaten every part of our nation, including Chicago," said Daley, who was flanked by activists, city officials and the parents of a teenager whose son was shot and killed on a city bus while shielding a friend.

The ordinance, which Daley urged the City Council to pass, also would :

• Limit the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibit residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.

• Require residents in homes with children to keep them in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.

• Require prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. They would have to leave the city for training because Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. Those restrictions were similar to those in an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C., after the high court struck down its ban two years ago.

• Prohibit people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.

• Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.

Those who already have handguns in the city — which has been illegal since the city's ban was approved 28 years ago — would have 90 days to register those weapons, according to the proposed ordinance.

Residents convicted of violating the city's ordinance can face a fine up to $5,000 and be locked up for as long as 90 days for a first offense and a fine of up to $10,000 and as long as six months behind bars for subsequent convictions.

"We've gone farther than anyone else ever has," said Corporation Counsel Mara Georges.

Still, the mayor, whose office is trying to craft an ordinance that will withstand legal challenges, had to back off some provisions he'd hoped to include, including requiring gun owners to insure their weapons and restricting each resident to one handgun.

Georges said it would be expensive for homeowners to include guns on their homeowners' and renters' insurance policies, so such a requirement could be seen as being discriminatory to the city's poorer residents. Limiting the number of handguns could be seen as discriminatory to people who owned weapons before the city's ban went into effect in 1982 or before they moved into the city.

"We can limit the place in which those handguns can be located," she said, before adding a not-so-veiled swipe at the court: "For instance, the Supreme court does not want them coming into the courthouse."

Still, Daley indicated that no matter what was included in the ordinance, he expects legal challenges.

"Everybody has a right to sue," he said.

How much will you endure?

2010-06-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."
-- Frederick Douglass

Who is or was Frederick Douglas? He was an escaped slave, who later became an Abolitionist, an author, and the editor of the North Star and later the New National Era
These penetrating words were spoken by him in an address on West India Emancipation (4 August 1857)

But these were not words taken out of context. Not did he only preach about freedom on one occasion. Frederick Douglas was outspoken and a fine orator. He had been a slave, who understood a thing or two about being just out of arms reach of freedom. Educating himself and arming himself with the Constitution of the United States of America, he set out to boldly proclaim the rights of all men, and women, regardless of color. I have read but a little of what he has written and he understands what freedom is much better than any man in Washington today, save a choice few whose voices are muzzled or ignored.

These are the words I want to hear out of my President and our elected leaders collective mouths. If they will not be heard uttered from those presently in office, let us replace them with those who really and truly want to be a voice "OF THE PEOPLE"!

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress." Frederick Douglas

-SO HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO ENDURE?!

Awakening

2010-06-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

I have not posted since I first found out about my brother being killed in action. I would be lying if I did not say that his death has not had a deep and devastating affect on me. Jake was my little brother, but he was also a friend. Aside from my wife, he knew me probably better than anyone. We grew up together, sharing a lot of the same experiences and being shaped by a lot of the same influences. It never mattered how long it had been between visits, a lot never had to be said. I treasure the personal and private conversations where he would share a lot of the buried and not so pretty moments that a soldier has to endure. And then we could laugh and poke fun at some of the lighter moments. I have never been a soldier, but through my brother came to understand what it takes to be both a good soldier and a good friend to a soldier.

One thing that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that Jake loved being a soldier, loved serving his country, believed in his Ranger Creed down to his bones and would do anything for his fellow soldiers or to defend his country. I said it at his funeral and know it to be true: If he had been told the mission, the day and the time of his death, he would not have stood down, because to do so would have put another soldiers life in danger. A great friend of his was hurt in the same IED explosion. You can understand the grief he has felt. I am sure there was even guilt that it was my brother and not him. That is how these heroes of our country think. The men and women who are serving this great land of ours are not politicians. They are not making foreign policy or signing treaties. But these heroes are what ensure the freedoms we enjoy. They make it possible for this great country to be as great as it is.

So, I will come out of hiding and start posting again. My brother died for something. We talked about politics and about the direction this country is headed. There are people in our government who would surrender our freedoms. There are those who would trade some of our freedoms for "security" or "common good". but they have forgotten those who have given their lives to ensure that future generations have the same freedoms our forefathers fought and died for.

We already do not have the same freedoms, but I for one will fight for these freedoms to be restored as well as for the freedoms we still have as Americans. We are not a European or South American Socialist country. If those in government positions want what these countries have, I will start a collection to send them there.
Let us stand up and be heard. Each one of us have a debt to those soldiers, that throughout the years have risked or given their lives so that we have that right.

Please get involved America! Please learn about our constitution. Learn about the founding fathers and how we formed this great United States of America. Our founders were not perfect, but they did create the nearest to perfect document and form of government that has ever existed on the face of this earth. I cannot stomach those who do not vote and abhor those who blindly vote based on a slogan or a media slant. I can accept any opposing vote when there is an educated voter on the other side of the lever who knows what or whom they are voting for and has listened to both sides. Is this such a hard concept?

When there is a problem in this country, we do not need to always turn to the Federal Government. Our Federal Government is already too big! Our country cannot continue at the rate it is going. The writing is on the walls. There is a potential for civilization as we have built it, to fall like a house of cards. We need to grab the steering wheel back from govt control. Unfortunately this means becoming more involved with government, taking power and then being willing to abdicate some of that power back to the States and to the people. PLEASE GET INVOLVED, even if it is just at the local level.

I am running for my fourth consecutive stint as Precinct Committeeman in my local precinct. This is the first time that there are more people on the ballot for this position than there are positions to fill. This excites me, as it is telling of the atmosphere of "the people". This is how we take back America. WE THE PEOPLE! I do not care what the media reports, people are waking up and realizing how far both parties, and especially the current powers that be, have taken us away from the freedoms we were originally ensured. November will be the beginning, and with enough support, we can be a nation OF THE PEOPLE once again.

Another soldier gives his everything for me!

2010-03-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got a call that I never wanted to get. My mother called to let me know that an Army chaplain and two Officers arrived with news of my brothers death. Words do no justice to the anguish and pain that I felt and still feel.

Glen Jacob Whetten loved what he did and was good at it. He had a desire to serve his country before he was even old enough to enlist. He joined right after turning 18 and left for boot camp at Fort Benning soon after High School graduation from South High School in Phoenix, AZ.

He was first assigned to the 24th Infantry Division(I think) out of Hawaii. There he became jump qualified and of course expert marksman. His goal was to become an Ranger, an Airborne Ranger! Those dreams were realized and he later was re-assigned to the 82nd, an Airborne Ranger Division.

He was part of the initial assult on Iraq and the March on Baghdad. His only regret was they came in so fast they did not need to parachute in at the airport ahead of groud troops. Jake received comendations for his role as squad leader of an elite scout team attached to HQ division.

After over a year he came home to the states and took a promotion and new position as DI(Drill Instructor) at the Ranger Academy. He qualified for Special Forces training but hurt his ankle and withdrew. As his new chance came up he was asked to become a part of a team deploying for Afghanistan. He took that oportunity and has now paid the ultimate tribute to the country he loved.

He was killed in action on March 12, 2010 as part of a convoy attacked in Afghanistan by terrorist insurgents bent on killing Americans.

My brother and friend died doing what he loved in order for us to all have the freedom to do what we love.

I love you brother, sure am gonna miss you. You are a true American Hero!

On John McCain

2010-02-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

I do not have the time that I would like to spend venting on this blog. I am working full time, for less than half the pay I used to. I am going to school again full time, taking a 180 degree turn from what I did to pursue what I want to do. I also have a large family, who I love to spend time with, although it is not very often, especially now. And yet......I am full of anger, and upset at those who would have my grandkids shoulder a debt, that I doubt at this point they will even be able pay.

So what democrat has me fired up now you ask?

No democrat my friend, but a republican. A few of them in fact.

Okay, where should I start? Well, first of all I am proud of the almost overwhelming solidarity against Obamacare from the republicans. That is to be applauded to be sure. But it if it was just partisan, then the Dems could have pushed this through before Scott Brown ever won his seat. So, if democrats can't even pass some crazy liberal pet bill through their own party, this is bigger than partisanship. And Washington knows it.

The people all across the United States are fed up. They were fed up when republicans took over congress under Clinton and after a short stint at conservative legislature, just went to growing government again. The only difference between republicans and democratrs became how much and how fast they would grow it.

George Bush took over after Clinton, and while he was better than either democrat put up against him, you would have to stretch things to label him a conservative. And yet, the majority of this country IS conservative. No matter how the left tries to label conservatism as an evil entity, most Americans believe in its core principles.

Obama rode to victory on a people fed up with those in Washington, democrat and republican. He said all the right things and because the media helped shield his true agenda, he won the presidency. This is done and there is nothing we can do about it. (not til 2012 that is)

The republican choice, even though I voted for him, was no better than a lesser evil. McCain is no conservative. He pulled Palin in as Vice president to bring conservatives into his camp. Then he muzzled her and let her take a beating from the media. (probably glad for it because she was more popular with his base than he was) McCain had no less than 100 chances to really "go after" Obama. Instead he chose to 'take the higher ground'.

Look, I am very glad McCain did not get elected President. In hind site, he probably would have passed the same stimulus bill and many of the other bills through, no matter how watered down, because he would want to 'reach across the aisle'(read: sacrifice conservative principles). Then, when we were in this mess we are in, the left and the media would say how everything is the fault of republicans and conservatives and then we would get an Obamaesque character in 2012 and we would really head to where we may have never recover from.

So, on to why I am funing. What is going on with all the support for McCain? Palin came out in support and I cringed, hoping she just felt obligated because she was his vice-presidential running mate. Then Romney came out in support. What the heck! I know he comes from Massachusetts, but he has been a voice of conservatism(albeit, moderate conservatism) since his failed bid for President. And today I heard an add for McCain from Senator Kyl from here in Arizona, lauding his achievements and what he is doing in his republican leadership role.

Oh, and McCain is waging the kind of viscious campaign we would have liked to see him wage against Obama. But it is against his chief republican primary opponent, J.D. Hayworth. J.D. was a news personality quite a ways back who then turned his passion for politics into a stint in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He lost after two terms to a democrat and licked his wounds and went to rediscover his conservative roots, which after straying from, is what got him axed. He found his niche in talk radio, attacking liberal and leftist agendas with fire and passion that I,for one, liked to hear.

He is by far, more conservative than McCain, and more willing to stand up for conservative values, not putting them aside to 'reach across the aisle'. So why would those at the head of the republican party support the rino? Is it because they are scared of what a pissed off McCain will do to those who did not support him if he loses? Are they worried he will take his large war chest and smear those who have ambition in the 2012 race if they do not support him now? Makes me wonder. Here is McCain, who NOW, says all the right conservative things with anger and pointedness. Where was this McCain during his run for President?

McCain is not the answer and I am ashamed of any republican who says they are supporting conservative principles and then give McCain their support.

John McCain has served America and her people long enough. Please John, have the decency to know you no longer have our support and do not reflect our desires and interests. I applaud your service and cannot imagine what you went through as a prisoner of war. Up until your first un-successful bid for President you even represented conservatism. But the time has come to step aside and let the true conservatives take control. We cannot trrust you any longer.

Washington D.C. and every state in this Union is now officially 'ON ALERT', we will not be kept silent, we will take back this country. It will start by re-claiming the republican party.

Rino season is now open, no limit!

On Obama

2010-01-27T23:37:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note on what I heard in Obama's state of the union speech: A whole lot of what the American people want to hear and nothing about what his real plans are, unless you are talking about his strict "sanctions" on Iran. Heck, maybe he'll just give them the evil eye. Maybe I am just sick of politics. I did hear the words he said and noticed that there was spin. Yes, even in the state of the union. So much politicking, trying to force republicans to vote for his agenda, "because you can't just vote against everything". It is as bad as when he claimed that the reason Massachussetts voted in a Republican on a platform of conservatism and smaller government was because the voters there were angry with the Bush Administration and wanted to send a message. Is anyone even buying this anymore? He is starting to believe he really is the second coming of Christ. He really must. I cannot figure him out. I really don't want to believe that he hates this country, but what his policies are doing to it just defy understanding. Unless it is an understanding of communism and socialism. He said some real whoppers tonight also. I was listening to it on the radio, and I could hear the laughter and some of the crap he was trying to sell, by some of his democrat representatives no less I'm sure. I think it took them off gaurd just as much.

So, after two weeks of back to back republican meetings(County and state committe meetings) I at least have a sense of where at least the majority of republicanism has moved. And it is to the right, toward a more conservative base and a proponant of smaller government. I am energized by the platforms adopted by both committees. I will post some of the platforms in posts to come, but what was refreshing was the adoption of verbage which reads more or less as, a platform based on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the united States. And then of course supporting the National republican platform but this is where I like the precedent being set: If the Republican National Commitee endorses a candidate that does not represent the platfor of the Declaration and Constitution, then our committee cannot and will not endorse that candidate. As in Massachussetts, tea party organizations full of independents and democrats as well as republicans are coming out in force and voting conservative. Some things are not about just party. If you are a RINO, WATCH OUT!

That being shared, LETS CLEAN HOUSE! (and senate, lol)

Supreme Court upholds First Amendment

2010-01-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment and appropriately struck down government prohibitions on many sorts of privately-funded political advertising. In doing so, Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky argues, the court "upheld some of the most important principles: the right to engage in free speech, particularly political speech, and the right to freely associate."
The case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, originated as a question about campaign finance laws and whether they apply to an unflattering film about then-Senator Hillary Clinton. After the government argued that campaign finance laws could even lead to bans on books, the Court ordered a rare re-argument to address the broader constitutionality of limiting corporations' independent spending during federal election campaigns.
It was a question of "ancient First Amendment principles," the Court stated in its majority opinion. It is no coincidence that the rights to free speech and assembly are among the first mentioned in our Bill of Rights -- our Founders recognized that these rights are essential to the preservation of a free government.

"Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy and the means to hold officials accountable to the people," Spakovsky argues. But the right to free speech is not limited to individual persons, he argues. For-profit and non-profit organizations are greatly "affected, damaged, or even lost" by the laws Congress passes, so there is "no rational reason why they should not be able to engage in independent political activity."
Those who criticize the Court's 5-4 decision fail to recognize a key component about this critical First Principle: free speech "is written in terms of 'speech,' not speakers," as Justice Scalia explained in a concurring opinion. It is a right that applies to all. To deny it to would be an obfuscation of the written law and a violation of a fundamental right.

By Amanda J. Reinecker

Obama's Secret Vault

2010-01-15T23:16:00.000-08:00

On Glenn Beck's Jan. 7 show, he was rightly puzzled regarding the exact purpose of President Barack Obama's Dec. 16 signing of an executive order "DESIGNATING INTERPOL AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES."

Beck spoke for a host of other government watchdogs when he said on the air: "We've been asking ever since it was signed: Why? Who can tell me what special interest group asked for this? If it were about terror, why not tell us that when he signed it? This Congress attacks our CIA and FBI, but Interpol gets immunity? Why? It makes no sense."

Glenn, I agree. But I think I recently have seen behind the veil on the White House's covert mission and mystery with Interpol.

The rest of Obama's executive order reads: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words 'except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act' and the semicolon that immediately precedes them."

Critical here is Obama's deletion of Section 2C exceptions, which come from the United States International Organizations Immunities Act: "Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable." (As ThreatsWatch noted, "Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens' Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery.")

But why, at this point in U.S. history, would the White House want Interpol to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and the regulations of search and seizure? White House and Interpol officials contend that the only reason for Obama's executive order was to update Ronald Reagan's 1983 executive order to accommodate Interpol's permanent residency and bring equity to its standing among other international organizations.

Many in the conservative world have accused Obama of extending Interpol's legal exemptions for the purpose of empowering a global police force, but I believe there's a much closer goal and strategic reason he gave this presidential edict. And it dawned on me when I read seven words said by Interpol spokeswoman Rachel Billington, who explained to The New York Times the applicable location of the president's executive order: "It's only for the New York office."

"Only for the New York office"? Mm.

Is it possible the Obama administration specifically and soon plans to use Interpol's New York office for some covert purpose that would require Interpol's exemption from having its property or records subject to search and seizure?

Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive order and that New York is the feds' city of choice in which to place 9/11 terrorists on trial in federal court?

Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive order and that the feds now have the close proximity of Interpol archives that are exempt from American legal and investigative discovery and the Freedom of Information Act requests by the media and U.S. citizens?

Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive order and that Interpol's U.S. central operations office is under the umbrella of and within our own Justice Department's offices? (Interpol -- which was started in 1923 and is made up of 188 country members, including the U.S. and Yemen -- has its bureau in the Department of Justice.)

Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive order and that an Interpol spokeswoman explained that "it's only for the New York office," whose five staff members now have access to law enforcement information submitted by other countries that no U.S. authority, official, agency or citizen can view for any reason (without Interpol's waiver)?

Again, ThreatsWatch hit the nail on the head: Immunity from search and seizure "cannot be understated, because this immunity and protection -- and elevation above the US Constitution -- afforded INTERPOL is likely a precursor to the White House subjecting the United States under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). INTERPOL provides a significant enforcement function for the ICC, just as our FBI provides a significant function for our Department of Justice."

If international terrorists' criminal records are allowed to pass through or be housed temporarily in New York's Interpol storage bin, they will be as safe as the gold at Fort Knox. Al Capone's vault had nothing on Obama's new Interpol repository!

Of course, it's not too late for the White House to be transparent and confess exactly why Obama granted Interpol's exemption from search and seizure laws at this critical point in the war on terror. What we do know now, however, is why the wisdom of President Reagan limited Interpol's immunities and why Obama's deletions of Reagan's executive order should have stayed intact for this international law enforcement agency.

written by Chuck Norris

A CAPITALIST MANIFESTO

2009-12-30T21:01:00.000-08:00

A CAPITALIST MANIFESTO

On the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, Merrill Matthews Jr. and Morgan O. Reynolds of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis have drafted a similarly patterned Capitalist Manifesto -- defining the ramifications of private property rights and the right to contract.

Here are the highlights of their program to end the welfare state and restore individual liberties:

•Reaffirmation of the right of individuals to rent, sell or use their property however they peaceably choose, so long as they do not impinge on the rights of others.

•A flat income tax set at the lowest rate compatible with fiscal restraint, and abolition of all inheritance taxes and restrictions.

•A guarantee of the property rights of all immigrants and dissidents.

•Withdrawal from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank -- and abolition of all credit monopolies.

Their manifesto also calls for restoration of market prerogatives by divestiture and decentralization of a number of current government functions.

•Elimination of funding for the Federal Communications Commission and the Transportation Department.

•Divestiture of state-owned factories or other means of production, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, Amtrak, the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Aviation Administration -- as well as the Department of Agriculture.

•Invigoration of labor through the repeal of unemployment subsidies and minimum wage laws.

•Repeal of laws that restrict the mobility of capital and labor.

Finally, they would abolish direct funding of public school systems and replace it with tax-supported education vouchers -- to establish competition and restore parents' rights to choose how their children are schooled.

The authors point out that capitalists make their aims explicit, rather than using the stealth techniques common to anti-capitalists.

A Capitalist Manifesto

Note: In February 1848, exactly 150 years ago, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels laid the foundation for modern socialism and communism by publishing the "Communist Manifesto." Their call for overthrowing the capitalists and redistributing their wealth to the working classes eventually became the guiding principle behind most public policy and economic theory. How successful was the Manifesto? Reversing Marx's 10 stated principles, as we do here, will sound radical to many people. Even today, as former communist countries rush to embrace capitalism in the hope of ending generations of tyranny and poverty, many U.S. politicians still cling to the Manifesto's goals. In order to rally those who refuse to stand in the shadow of Marx's legacy of war, murder, class envy and poverty, we offer:

A CAPITALIST MANIFESTO

A specter is haunting Washington - the specter of Capitalism. All the powers of the Welfare State have entered into a holy alliance to exercise this specter: President and Cabinet, Daschle and Gephardt, bureaucrats and lobbyists, intellectuals and media.

Where is the champion of free markets who has not been decried as a right-wing extremist or worse by his opponents in power? Where are the defenders of the Welfare State who have not hurled the branding reproaches of being greedy, insensitive and uncompassionate against those of us who oppose ever-increasing taxes, transfers and government programs?

Two things result from this fact.

I. Capitalism is already acknowledged by all socialist powers to be itself a power
II. It is high time that Capitalists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish our views, our aims, our tendencies, and meet this nursery tale about the specter of Capitalism with a Manifesto announcing its goals.

The theory of the Capitalist may be summed in a single sentence: Protection of private property.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! The restoration of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. By freedom is meant free trade, free selling and buying.

You reproach us with intending to reassert property rights. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. The bourgeois family will flourish as a matter of course when its complement flourishes.

And what of your education! Capitalists have not invented the intervention of government in education; but we do seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the bureaucratic ruling class.

To these ends, Capitalists of various persuasions have acted in concert to sketch the following Manifesto.

1. Reaffirmation of the right of private property and contract, including the right to rent, sell or use the property however the owner peaceably chooses as long as such use does not impinge on the equal rights of others.

2. A flat income tax set at the lowest rate compatible with fiscal restraint.

3. Abolition of all inheritance taxes and restrictions.

4. Guarantee of the property rights of all emigrants and dissidents.

5. Decentralization of credit in the hands of the State by withdrawing from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and abolition of all credit monopoly.

6. Decentralization of the means of communication and transportation by eliminating funding for the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Transportation.

7. Divestiture of State-owned factories or other instruments of production such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, Amtrak, U.S. Postal Service, and the Federal Aviation Administration; Abolition of the U.S. Department of Agriculture so that the soil may be improved in accord with decentralized, individual plans.

8. Invigoration of all labor through repeal of subsidies rewarding unemployment, and abolition of obstacles to freely made labor contracts such as the minimum wage, that attempt to establish an egalitarian labor force.

9. Freedom for the population to relocate throughout the country by repeal of all laws that restrict the mobility of capital and labor.

10. Abolition of direct funding for school systems, and permitting competition between government schools and private schools for parents' education dollars, which may be in the form of tax-supported vouchers.

A Capitalist revolution that follows these principles would create the most radical rupture in government control; no wonder that its development involves a slap in the face to modern liberalism.

In short, the Capitalists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing collectivist order of things.

In all these movements we bring to the fore, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, we labor everywhere for the cooperation and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Capitalists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the peaceable overthrow of all existing principles of the Welfare State. Let the ruling elites tremble at a Capitalist revolution. The people who love free markets have nothing to lose but their chains. We have a world to win.

Capitalists and Workers of all Countries, Compete!

Prepared by Morgan O. Reynolds, Ph.D., and Merrill Matthews Jr., Ph.D., of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute based in Dallas, TX.

On The Frontier of Freedom(again)

2009-12-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

February 11, 1988

Thank you very much. It's great to be here tonight, and I'm delighted to see so many old friends. And now let's get right to it. First, there's the INF treaty. How do you think I felt when Gorbachev called a week and a half ago and asked me if our first group of on-site inspectors could be the Denver Broncos' pass defense? (Laughter.) And then along came the House vote on Contra aid -- I felt so terrible, I nearly called Dan Reeves and John Elway to tell them what a rough week I'd had.

But seriously, while the Denver Broncos are all terrific athletes and people, each one of us has to congratulate the Washington Redskins. Believe me, the House action on the Contra vote was a missed chance at a victory for peace in Central America. It's great to know there are some people in Washington who play to win. And believe me, I'll be getting back to that topic in a few minutes.

By the way, something odd happened just before I got here tonight that I think you should know about. I got a message from Dave Keene reminding me that this was the eve of Lincoln's birthday -- and suggesting I go upstairs and check on the ghost in Lincoln's bedroom. I did. And what do you know, there was Stan Evans dressed as Abe Lincoln. And he kept saying, "Listen to Jesse Helms."

Actually, I do want to thank you for that warm welcome, but I hope tonight isn't going to be like what happened to that fellow I knew back in Hollywood in those movie days -- and, oh, how I hope I haven't told you this one before.

We had an actor that was in Hollywood, and he was only there long enough to get enough money to go to Italy, because he aspired to an operatic career. And then after some time there, in Milan, Italy, where he was studying, he was invited to sing at La Scala, the very spiritual fountainhead of opera. They were doing Pagliacci, and he sang the beautiful aria, Vesti La Giuba. And he received such thunderous and sustained applause from the balconies and the orchestra seats that he had to repeat the aria as an encore. And again the same sustained, thunderous applause. And again he sang Vesti La Giuba. And this went on until finally he motioned for quiet, and he tried to tell them how full his heart was at that reception -- his first time out. But he said, "I have sung Vesti La Giuba nine times now. My voice is gone. I cannot do it again." And a voice from the balcony said, "You'll do it till you get it right." Well, let's get it right tonight. And let's start where we should start.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the state of our Union, and tonight I'd like to talk about something that I think in many ways is synonymous: the state of our movement. During the past year, plenty of questions have been asked about the conservative movement by some people who were surprised to find out back in 1980 that there was such a thing. I mean a powerful new political movement capable of running a victorious national campaign based on an unabashed appeal to the American people for conservative ideas and principles.

Well, we conservatives have been in Washington now for a while and we occasionally need to remind ourselves what brought us here in the first place: our unshakable, root-deep, all-encompassing skepticism about the capital city's answer to the UFO, that bizarre, ever-tottering but ever-flickering saucer in the sky called "The Prevailing Washington Wisdom."

And, right now, some of the Potomac seers are saying we conservatives are tired; or they're saying we don't have a candidate, some of those candidates in the other party saying how easy it's going to be to win the presidency for their liberal agenda because they can run on, of all things, this administration's economic record. Boy, have I got news for them. They're seeing flying saucers again. I've even got a quote for them. It's from Napoleon -- the morning of Waterloo -- at breakfast with his generals. This is true. He said, "I tell you what -- Wellington is a bad general. The English are bad troops. We'll settle the matter by lunchtime."

Well, my fellow conservatives, I think that's exactly what this year is about -- settling the matter by lunchtime. Letting the liberals in Washington discover once again the lesson they refuse to learn. Letting them know just how big our election year will be because of booming economic growth and individual opportunity; and how big an election year ball and chain they've given themselves with a seven-year record of opposition to the real record. But, most of all, letting them know that the real friends of the conservative movement aren't those entrenched in the capital city for 50 years; the real friends of the conservative movement are an entity that gets heard from in a big way every four years and who, I promise you, are going to be heard from this year. I'm talking about those who, if the case is aggressively put before them, will vote for limited government, family values, and a tough, strong foreign policy every single time. I'm talking about those believers in common sense and sound values, your friends and mine, the American people.

You see, those who underestimate the conservative movement are the same people who always underestimate the American people. Take the latest instance. As I mentioned, in recent months some people -- and I'm not mentioning any names because I don't want to build up any candidacies before New Hampshire, but you know who they are -- have actually taken it upon themselves to prove to the American people that they've been worse off under this administration than they were back in the Carter years of the '70s.

Now I agree with you, this takes some doing. How do they manage it? Well, you see, any statistical comparison of the two recent administrations would start with 1977 to 1981 as the budget years of the last administration, and 1981 to 1987 as the pertinent years for this one. Now, that sounds reasonable enough. But our opponents have a new approach, one that would have embarrassed even the emperor's tailors. They take the years 1977, to up to 1983 -- and then they stop. So you see, not only do 1984 and 1985 not get counted in their data base, but they include in this administration's economic record four years of the last Democratic administration. As columnist Warren Brookes pointed out in an article published in the Washington Times, "all of the foreshortened Reagan gains are nullified by the Carter losses, so they look like no gains at all, or, worse, losses." Our successes, in short, are buried under the last administration's failures.

But the truth is otherwise. Because under the last administration real per capita disposable income rose at only one percent annual rate, only half the two percent rate of increase under this administration's gain that has totaled 12.4 percent in six years. Under the last administration, median family income declined 6.8 percent, while under this administration it went up 9.1 percent. Or take the real after-tax labor income per hour: If you use the approach adopted by our liberal critics, you see a 4.5 percent decline. But the truth is that that figure fell 8.5 percent under the last administration and we turned this around and accounted for an 8.9 percent increase.

Under the last administration, the average weekly wage went down an incredible 10 percent in real terms, which accounted for the worst drop in postwar history. Here again, we've stopped the decline. And that's not to mention what all this has meant in terms of opportunity for women, for blacks, and minorities, the very groups our opponents say they most want to help.

Well, since the recovery began, 70 percent of the new jobs have been translated into opportunities for women; and black and other minority employment has risen twice as fast as all other groups. Minority family income has also increased at a rate over 40 percent faster than other groups. In addition, since 1983, 2.9 million people have climbed out of poverty, and the poverty rate has declined at the fastest rate in more than 10 years.

So, think for a moment on what these statistics mean and the kind of political nerve and desperation it takes to try to sell the American people on the idea that in the 1980s they never had it so bad. The truth is, we're in the 63rd month of this non-stop expansion. Real Gross National Product growth for 1987 was 3.8 percent, defying the pessimists and even exceeding our own forecast -- which was criticized as being too rosy at the time -- by more than one half percent. Inflation is down from 13.5 per cent in 1980 to only around 4 percent or less this year. And there's over 15 million new jobs.

So, believe me, I welcome this approach by the opposition. And I promise you, every time they use it, I'll just tell the story of a friend of mine who was asked to a costume ball a short time ago -- he slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist. Now the reason I spell out these statistics and stress this economic issue should be very clear. You know that some cynics like to say that the people vote their pocketbook. But that's not quite the point. Economic issues are important to the people not simply for reasons of self-interest. They know the whole body politic depends on economic stability; the great crises have come for democracies when taxes and inflation ran out of control and undermined social relations and basic institutions. The American people know what limited government, tax cuts, deregulation, and the move towards privatization have meant. It's meant the largest peacetime expansion in our history, and I can guarantee you they won't want to throw that away for a return to budgets beholden to the liberal special interests.

No, I think the economic record of conservatives in power is going to speak for itself. But now let's turn to another area. For two decades we've been talking about getting justices on the Supreme Court who cared less about criminals and more about the victims of crime, justices who knew that the words "original intent" referred to something more than New Year's resolutions and fad diets. And then, seven months ago a seat opened on the Supreme Court. And even before our first nominee was announced, a campaign was planned unlike any that has ever been waged for or against a judicial nominee in the history of our country. And let me acknowledge once again my admiration for one of the courageous defenders, not only in our time but in all time, of the principles of our Constitution, yes, of its original intent -- Judge Robert Bork.

One of America's most cherished principles -- the independence and integrity of our judiciary -- was under siege. And the American people, who have always been with the ultimate guarantors of the Constitution, began to say with clarity and finality, it must never happen again. So when I nominated a judge who could as easily have been my first nominee, there was hardly a peep of protest. And Judge Kennedy is now going to be Justice Kennedy. And since our opponents won't, I'll let you in on a secret -- Judge Kennedy will be just the kind of justice that you and I've been determined to put on the Court, Anyway, any man who teaches law school in a tri-corner hat and a powdered wig is okay by me on original intent.

Let's look at how far and how successfully we've carried the battle into the lower courts. Just look at the statistics on criminal sentencing. In few places can you see more clearly the collapse of the liberal stranglehold on our courts. The most recent statistics show federal judges imposed prison sentences that averaged 32 percent longer than those handed down during 1979. Robbery sentences were 10 percent longer; drug offenses, 38 percent longer; and weapons offenses, 41 percent longer.

The great legal debates of the past two decades over criminal justice have, at their root, been debates over a strict versus expansive construction of the Constitution. The Constitution, as originally intended by the framers, is itself tough on crime, and protective of the victims of crime. For so long the liberal message to our national culture was tune in, turn on, let it all hang out. And now they see conservatives taking the lead as our nation says "no" to drugs, and "yes" to family, and "absolutely" to schools that teach basic skills, basic values, and basic discipline. And it's no wonder that our nation admires a man who believes in teaching values in education, and talks turkey to teachers, parents, and educators, such as our Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett.

And so I say to you tonight that the vision and record that we will take aggressively to the American people this November is a vision that all Americans, except a few on the left, share. A vision of a nation that believes in the heroism of ordinary people living ordinary lives; of tough courts and safe streets, of a drug-free America where schools teach honesty, respect, love of learning and, yes, love of country; a vision of a land where families can grow in love and safety and where dreams are made with opportunity. This is the vision; this is the record; this is the agenda for victory this year. Well, that's the record then on the economy and the social issues. Now, let's turn to foreign policy.

I want to be clear tonight about the vote on Contra aid. It was a setback to the national security interests of the United States, and a sad moment for the cause of peace and freedom in Central America. Until now the carrot-and-stick approach has worked in forcing a Communist regime to relax some of its repression. But now, the action by the House of Representatives removes one part of that formula and goes only with the carrot. The effect of this vote then was to trust the promises of democracy of the Sandinista Communists -- the kind of promises that no Communist regime in history has ever carried out, and that this regime was likely to carry out only under continued pressure. The effect of this vote was to rest the hopes for peace and democracy in Central America purely and simply on the word of the Communist regime in Managua. This course is, and I repeat, a risk to America's national security.

But you know, I read something the other day and it's worth a note here. One of those opposing aid to the freedom fighters said it was important to get a 20-vote margin. Well, as you know, it was nothing like that -- if we could have turned around four or five votes, we would have won. Last week's vote was not the final word, only a pause. Last week, the bad news was the lost vote in the House. But the good news was our support in the Senate and the overwhelming number of House Republicans who voted with us and those 47 Democrats who braved the threats of reprisals to vote for Contra aid.

So, let me make this pledge to you tonight: we're not giving up on those who are fighting for their freedom -- and they aren't giving up either. I'll have more to say on this in a few weeks. For now, I'll leave it at this: get ready -- the curtain hasn't fallen, the drama continues.

While we're on foreign policy, let me turn for just a moment to what I said in that December interview while Mr. Gorbachev was here. You know, Ben Wattenberg was one of the journalists there, and he brought up a speech I made back in 1982 to the British Parliament. And he asked me if what I really was saying was what I said in England: that if the West remained resolute, the Soviets would have to, at some point, deal with their own internal problems and crises, that the tides of history are shifting in favor of the cause of freedom. Well, I believed then, and I believe now, that we must consider what we're seeing -- or the steps in that direction. This hardly means accepting the Soviets at face value. Few of us can forget what that has led to in the past. FDR was quoted as saying during his dealings with Stalin -- with the Soviets in '44: "Stalin doesn't want anything but security for his country and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world democracy and peace."

Well, no, there is no room for illusion. Our guard is up, our watch is careful. We shall not be led by -- or misled by -- atmospherics. We came to Washington with a common-sense message that the world is a dangerous place where the only sure route to peace and the protection of freedom is through American strength. In no place has this thesis of peace through strength been tested more than on the matter of intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF). In deploying over 400 SS-20s, with over 1,200 warheads, against our friends and allies in Europe and Asia over the past decade, the Soviets were playing a high-stakes game of geopolitical blackjack. The prize was Europe -- the strategy, discredit America's deterrence and undermine the NATO alliance. But we and our allies turned over a winning hand, deploying in Europe Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles that provided an effective counter to the new Soviet missiles, and Moscow finally stopped upping the stakes.

What I would like to see is for some of those who've been praising our INF treaty to show they've learned its true lesson and vote to maintain an adequate defense budget, our work on a strategic defense against ballistic missiles, and, yes, aid to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua.

And while we're on the subject of our nation's defense -- you know, there's a man I want to talk about tonight who said once that "the definition of happiness was service to a noble cause." No one has done that better, and tonight I salute Cap Weinberger for all he's done for America.

But at the same time we must not look at any single step alone -- we must see not just the INF treaty but also the advance of SDI and, most important, the growing democratic revolution around the globe against totalitarian regimes. We should engage the Soviets in negotiations to deter war and keep the peace. But at the same time, we must make clear our own position, as I have throughout these negotiations. In sitting down to these negotiations, we accept no moral equivalency between the cause of freedom and the rule of totalitarianism.

And we understand that the most important change of all is this: that containment is no longer enough, that we no longer can be satisfied with an endless stalemate between liberty and repression. That arms reduction negotiations, development and testing of SDI, and our help for freedom fighters around the globe must express the clear goal of American foreign policy. To deter war, yes. To further world peace, yes. But, most of all, to advance and protect the cause of world freedom so that some day every man, woman, and child on this Earth has as a birthright the full blessings of liberty.

We've seen dramatic change in these seven years. Who would have guessed seven years ago that we would see tax rates drop from 70 percent to 28 percent, the longest peacetime economic boom in our history, or a massive shift in world opinion toward the ideas of free enterprise and political freedom?

I know some of you are impatient with the pace of this change. But if I might repeat a story I told when I addressed you for the first time as President -- I had the pleasure in appearing before a Senate committee once while I was still Governor. And I was challenged there because there was a Republican president in the White House at the time, who'd been there for some time and why hadn't we corrected everything that had gone wrong. And the only way I could think to answer him is, I told him about a ranch many years ago that Nancy and I acquired. It had a barn with eight stalls in it, in which they kept cattle-cows. We wanted to keep horses. Well, the accumulation within the stalls had built up the floor to the place that it wasn't even tall enough for horses in there. And so there I was, day after day, with a pick and shovel, lowering the level of those stalls, which had accumulated over the years. And I told this Senator who'd asked that question that I discovered that you didn't undo in a relatively short time what it had taken some 15 years to accumulate.

We have not only been undoing the damage of the past; we've put this nation on the upward road again. And, in the process, the differences between the liberals and conservatives have become clear to the American people. We want to keep taxes low, they want to raise them; we send in budgets with spending cuts and they want to ignore them; we want the balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto and they oppose them; we want tough judges and tough anti-crime legislation, they hold them both up in the Congress.

You'd be surprised how many judges are waiting out there before they -- so that they have to pass on them before they can take their office, and they've been waiting for months. We want a prayer amendment, they won't let it come to a vote in the House; we stress firmness with the Soviets, they try to pass legislation that would tie our hands in arms negotiations and endanger our defenses. But I say, we have a program and a plan for the American people -- a program to protect American jobs by fighting the menace of protectionism, to move forward at flank speed with SDI, to call America to conscience on the issue of abortion on demand, to mention, as I did in my State of the Union Address, the overwhelming importance of family life and family values.

That's a case to take to the American people. That's a fighting agenda. I intend to campaign vigorously for whoever our nominee is, and tonight I ask each of you to join me in this important crusade. Let's ask the American people to replenish our mandate. Let's tell them if they want four more years of economic progress and the march of world freedom, they must help us this year. Help us settle the matter before lunchtime. Help make 1988 the year of the Waterloo liberal.

I just have to add here, when you look at the figures overall -- that they have the nerve even to still be out there and campaigning. (Laughter)

We mustn't just think that electing the president is enough. We've been doing that for more than half-a-century. We have -- in the 50 years between 1931 and 1980, only four years in that period was there a Republican majority in both houses of the Congress -- two years in Eisenhower's regime, two years in Truman's. But for 46 of those 50 years, they controlled the Congress. Every Democratic president, except for those two years, had a Democratic Congress. Every Republican president had a Democratic Congress, except for those two years in Eisenhower's regime. And now, in the last seven years added to that -- yes, for six of those years we had one House. But except for the four years, for 58 years it will be our opponents holding the House of Representatives, where so much legislation and authorization for spending and so forth comes in. And in all those 58 years, there have only been eight single years in which there was a balanced budget. So, who's at fault for the deficit today?

Back when the great society -- when the war on poverty began, which poverty won -- from 1965 to 1980 -- in those 15 years, the federal budget increased to five times what it had been in '65. And the deficit increased to 38 times what it had been just 15 years before. It's built-in, it's structural. And you and I need to get representatives not only in the Executive Branch, but out there in the legislature, so that we can change that structure that is so built-in, and that threatens us with so much harm.

Well, I've gone on too long for all of you here, but I just wanted to -- I couldn't resist, because you're the troops. You're out there on the frontier of freedom. One young soldier over there in Korea -- one of our men -- saluted me when I visited there, and very proudly said, "Mr. President, we're on the frontier of freedom." Well, so are you.

Thank you. God bless you all.

President Reagan's Second Inaugural Address

2009-12-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 21st, 1985

Senator Mathias, Chief Justice Burger, Vice President Bush, Speaker O'Neill, Senator Dole, Reverend Clergy, members of my family and friends, and my fellow citizens:

This day has been made brighter with the presence here of one who, for a time, has been absent--Senator John Stennis.

God bless you and welcome back.

There is, however, one who is not with us today: Representative Gillis Long of Louisiana left us last night. I wonder if we could all join in a moment of silent prayer. (Moment of silent prayer.) Amen.

There are no words adequate to express my thanks for the great honor that you have bestowed on me. I will do my utmost to be deserving of your trust.

This is, as Senator Mathias told us, the 50th time that we, the people, have celebrated this historic occasion. When the first President, George Washington, placed his hand upon the Bible, he stood less than a single day's journey by horseback from raw, untamed wilderness. There were 4 million Americans in a union of 13 states. Today we are 60 times as many in a union of 50 states. We have lighted the world with our inventions, gone to the aid of mankind wherever in the world there was a cry for help, journeyed to the moon and safely returned. So much has changed. And yet we stand together as we did two centuries ago.

When I took this oath four years ago, I did so in a time of economic stress. Voices were raised saying we had to look to our past for the greatness and glory. But we, the present-day Americans, are not given to looking backward. In this blessed land, there is always a better tomorrow.

Four years ago, I spoke to you of a new beginning and we have accomplished that. But in another sense, our new beginning is a continuation of that beginning created two centuries ago when, for the first time in history, government, the people said, was not our master, it is our servant; its only power that which we, the people, allow it to have.

That system has never failed us, but, for a time, we failed the system. We asked things of government that government was not equipped to give. We yielded authority to the national government that properly belonged to states or to local governments or to the people themselves. We allowed taxes and inflation to rob us of our earnings and savings and watched the great industrial machine that had made us the most productive people on Earth slow down and the number of unemployed increase.

By 1980, we knew it was time to renew our faith, to strive with all our strength toward the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.

We believed then and now there are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.

And we were right to believe that. Tax rates have been reduced, inflation cut dramatically, and more people are employed than ever before in our history.

We are creating a nation once again vibrant, robust, and alive. But there are many mountains yet to climb. We will not rest until every American enjoys the fullness of freedom, dignity, and opportunity as our birthright. It is our birthright as citizens of this great Republic, and we'll meet this challenge.

These will be years when Americans have restored their confidence and tradition of progress; when our values of faith, family, work, and neighborhood were restated for a modern age; when our economy was finally freed from government's grip; when we made sincere efforts at meaningful arms reduction, rebuilding our defenses, our economy, and developing new technologies, and helped preserve peace in a troubled world; when Americans courageously supported the struggle for liberty, self-government, and free enterprise throughout the world, and turned the tide of history away from totalitarian darkness and into the warm sunlight of human freedom.

My fellow citizens, our nation is poised for greatness. We must do what we know is right and do it with all our might. Let history say of us, "These were golden years--when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, when America reached for her best."

Our two-party system has served us well over the years, but never better than in those times of great challenge when we came together not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans united in a common cause.

Two of our Founding Fathers, a Boston lawyer named Adams and a Virginia planter named Jefferson, members of that remarkable group who met in Independence Hall and dared to think they could start the world over again, left us an important lesson. They had become political rivals in the Presidential election of 1800. Then, years later, when both were retired, and age had softened their anger, they began to speak to each other again through letters. A bond was reestablished between those two who had helped create this government of ours.

In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they both died. They died on the same day, within a few hours of each other, and that day was the Fourth of July.

In one of those letters exchanged in the sunset of their lives, Jefferson wrote: "It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing harmless ... we rode through the storm with heart and hand."

Well, with heart and hand, let us stand as one today: One people under God determined that our future shall be worthy of our past. As we do, we must not repeat the well-intentioned errors of our past. We must never again abuse the trust of working men and women, by sending their earnings on a futile chase after the spiraling demands of a bloated federal establishment. You elected us in 1980 to end this prescription for disaster, and I don't believe you reelected us in 1984 to reverse course.

At the heart of our efforts is one idea vindicated by 25 straight months of economic growth: Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress. We have begun to increase the rewards for work, savings, and investment; reduce the increase in the cost and size of government and its interference in people's lives.

We must simplify our tax system, make it more fair, and bring the rates down for all who work and earn. We must think anew and move with a new boldness, so every American who seeks work can find work; so the least among us shall have an equal chance to achieve the greatest things--to be heroes who heal our sick, feed the hungry, protect peace among nations, and leave this world a better place.

The time has come for a new American emancipation--a great national drive to tear down economic barriers and liberate the spirit of enterprise in the most distressed areas of our country. My friends, together we can do this, and do it we must, so help me God.

From new freedom will spring new opportunities for growth, a more productive, fulfilled and united people, and a stronger America--an America that will lead the technological revolution, and also open its mind and heart and soul to the treasures of literature, music, and poetry, and the values of faith, courage, and love.

A dynamic economy, with more citizens working and paying taxes, will be our strongest tool to bring down budget deficits. But an almost unbroken 50 years of deficit spending has finally brought us to a time of reckoning. We have come to a turning point, a moment for hard decisions. I have asked the Cabinet and my staff a question, and now I put the same question to all of you: If not us, who? And if not now, when? It must be done by all of us going forward with a program aimed at reaching a balanced budget. We can then begin reducing the national debt.

I will shortly submit a budget to the Congress aimed at freezing government program spending for the next year. Beyond that, we must take further steps to permanently control government's power to tax and spend. We must act now to protect future generations from government's desire to spend its citizens' money and tax them into servitude when the bills come due. Let us make it unconstitutional for the federal government to spend more than the federal government takes in.

We have already started returning to the people and to state and local governments responsibilities better handled by them. Now, there is a place for the federal government in matters of social compassion. But our fundamental goals must be to reduce dependency and upgrade the dignity of those who are infirm or disadvantaged. And here a growing economy and support from family and community offer our best chance for a society where compassion is a way of life, where the old and infirm are cared for, the young and, yes, the unborn protected, and the unfortunate looked after and made self-sufficient.

And there is another area where the federal government can play a part. As an older American, I remember a time when people of different race, creed, or ethnic origin in our land found hatred and prejudice installed in social custom and, yes, in law. There is no story more heartening in our history than the progress that we have made toward the "brotherhood of man" that God intended for us. Let us resolve there will be no turning back or hesitation on the road to an America rich in dignity and abundant with opportunity for all our citizens.

Let us resolve that we, the people, will build an American opportunity society in which all of us--white and black, rich and poor, young and old--will go forward together arm in arm. Again, let us remember that though our heritage is one of blood lines from every corner of the Earth, we are all Americans pledged to carry on this last, best hope of man on Earth.

I have spoken of our domestic goals and the limitations which we should put on our national government. Now let me turn to a task which is the primary responsibility of national government -- the safety and security of our people.

Today, we utter no prayer more fervently than the ancient prayer for peace on Earth. Yet history has shown that peace will not come, nor will our freedom be preserved, by good will alone. There are those in the world who scorn our vision of human dignity and freedom. One nation, the Soviet Union, has conducted the greatest military buildup in the history of man, building arsenals of awesome offensive weapons.

We have made progress in restoring our defense capability. But much remains to be done. There must be no wavering by us, nor any doubts by others, that America will meet her responsibilities to remain free, secure, and at peace.

There is only one way safely and legitimately to reduce the cost of national security, and that is to reduce the need for it. And this we are trying to do in negotiations with the Soviet Union. We are not just discussing limits on a further increase of nuclear weapons. We seek, instead, to reduce their number. We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

Now, for decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target. It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth. It would render nuclear weapons obsolete. We will meet with the Soviets, hoping that we can agree on a way to rid the world of the threat of nuclear destruction.

We strive for peace and security, heartened by the changes all around us. Since the turn of the century, the number of democracies in the world has grown fourfold. Human freedom is on the march, and nowhere more so than our own hemisphere. Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. People, worldwide, hunger for the right of self-determination, for those inalienable rights that make for human dignity and progress.

America must remain freedom's staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally.

And it is the world's only hope, to conquer poverty and preserve peace. Every blow we inflict against poverty will be a blow against its dark allies of oppression and war. Every victory for human freedom will be a victory for world peace.

So we go forward today, a nation still mighty in its youth and powerful in its purpose. With our alliances strengthened, with our economy leading the world to a new age of economic expansion, we look forward to a world rich in possibilities. And all this because we have worked and acted together, not as members of political parties, but as Americans.

My friends, we live in a world that is lit by lightning. So much is changing and will change, but so much endures, and transcends time.

History is a ribbon, always unfurling; history is a journey. And as we continue our journey, we think of those who traveled before us. We stand together again at the steps of this symbol of our democracy--or we would have been standing at the steps if it hadn't gotten so cold. Now we are standing inside this symbol of our democracy. Now we hear again the echoes of our past: a general falls to his knees in the hard snow of Valley Forge; a lonely President paces the darkened halls, and ponders his struggle to preserve the Union; the men of the Alamo call out encouragement to each other; a settler pushes west and sings a song, and the song echoes out forever and fills the unknowing air.

It is the American sound. It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair. That's our heritage; that is our song. We sing it still. For all our problems, our differences, we are together as of old, as we raise our voices to the God who is the Author of this most tender music. And may He continue to hold us close as we fill the world with our sound--sound in unity, affection, and love--one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world.

God bless you and may God bless America.

Ronald Reagan: A great example!

2009-12-27T20:40:00.000-08:00

This was a real American who understood the responsibility of his office and the real role of government. Things wer not perfect under him but it was 180 degrees from where we are now! We need another Ronald Reagan! This may be long, but it is worth watching again or for the first time if you never have seen it before.

Ronald Reagan for President!

President Reagan's First Inaugural Address

2009-12-26T20:43:00.000-08:00

January 20, 1981

Senator Hatfield, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. President, Vice President Bush, Vice President Mondale, Senator Baker, Speaker O'Neill, Reverend Moomaw, and my fellow citizens: To a few of us here today, this is a solemn and most momentous occasion; and yet, in the history of our nation, it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place as it has for almost two centuries and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Mr. President, I want our fellow citizens to know how much you did to carry on this tradition. By your gracious cooperation in the transition process, you have shown a watching world that we are a united people pledged to maintaining a political system which guarantees individual liberty to a greater degree than any other, and I thank you and your people for all your help in maintaining the continuity which is the bulwark of our Republic.

The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, causing human misery and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding--we are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.

From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick--professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans.

Well, this administration's objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunity for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this "new beginning" and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy. With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America at peace with itself and the world.

So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work--work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here, in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.

It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope.

We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don't know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter--and they are on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They are individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education. Their patriotism is quiet but deep. Their values sustain our national life.

I have used the words "they" and "their" in speaking of these heroes. I could say "you" and "your" because I am addressing the heroes of whom I speak--you, the citizens of this blessed land. Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration, so help me God.

We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they are sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?

Can we solve the problems confronting us? Well, the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic "yes." To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy.

In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity. Steps will be taken aimed at restoring the balance between the various levels of government. Progress may be slow--measured in inches and feet, not miles--but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden. And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles, there will be no compromise.

On the eve of our struggle for independence a man who might have been one of the greatest among the Founding Fathers, Dr. Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his fellow Americans, "Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of.... On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions upon which rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves."

Well, I believe we, the Americans of today, are ready to act worthy of ourselves, ready to do what must be done to ensure happiness and liberty for ourselves, our children and our children's children.

And as we renew ourselves here in our own land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.

To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale.

As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it--now or ever.

Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

I am told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day, and for that I am deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inauguration Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.

This is the first time in history that this ceremony has been held, as you have been told, on this West Front of the Capitol. Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city's special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man: George Washington, father of our country. A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence.

And then beyond the Reflecting Pool the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Beyond those monuments to heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery with its row on row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom.

Each one of those markers is a monument to the kinds of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.

Under one such marker lies a young man--Martin Treptow--who left his job in a small town barbershop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.

We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."

The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And, after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans. God bless you, and thank you.

A Christmas Message: America, the last best hope!-from the Gipper

2009-12-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

We Will Be A City Upon A Hill

January 25, 1974

First Conservative Political Action Conference

There are three men here tonight I am very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many years. This happened when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines, bringing back men who had lived with honor for many miserable years in North Vietnam prisons. Three of those men are here tonight, John McCain, Bill Lawrence and Ed Martin. It is an honor to be here tonight. I am proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company.

There are men here tonight who, through their wisdom, their foresight and their courage, have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our times. In years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts, they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since Barry Goldwater walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all of the great ideas and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded it, but louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches.

Cartoonists with acid-tipped pens portray some of the reminders of our heritage and our destiny as old-fashioned. They say that we are trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed by them as "taking the country back to McKinley." Of course, I never found that was so bad -- under McKinley we freed Cuba. On the span of history, we are still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we are the oldest continuing republic in the world.

I thought that tonight, rather than talking on the subjects you are discussing, or trying to find something new to say, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage.

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

This was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, as it is also true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic, but our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, who happened to be an avid student of history, told me a story about that day in the little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men, hard-pressed by a King who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey, debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess, I never researched or made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. But story, or legend, he described the atmosphere, the strain, the debate, and that as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act, the walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price -- the gallows and the headman's axe. As the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then, according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He was not a young man and was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment, he said, "Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines -- freedom." And he added, "If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever." And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, as I say, whether story or legend, the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty-six men, a little band so unique -- we have never seen their like since -- pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart -- but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships -- they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home--he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep -- all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed that American-melting-pot blood in every corner of the world, usually in defense of someone's freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men's dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contain many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, "Government grants you these rights," and ours says, "You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you."

Lord Acton of England, who once said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," would say of that document, "They had solved with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom." Never in any society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority.

In less than twenty years we would go to war because the God-given rights of the American sailors, as defined in the Constitution, were being violated by a foreign power. We served notice then on the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. But still, in an older, cynical world, they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up.

In the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, Koscha by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day, business took him to a Mediterranean port. There was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. This man's servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor, suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he had heard. It was a small American war sloop. He went aboard and told Captain Ingraham, of that war sloop, his story. Captain Ingraham went to the American Consul. When the American Consul learned that Koscha had only taken out his first citizenship papers, the consul washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, "I am the senior officer in this port and I believe, under my oath of my office, that I owe this man the protection of our flag."

He went aboard the Austrian warship and demanded to see their prisoner, our citizen. The Admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck. He was in chains and had been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, "I can hear him better without those chains," and the chains were removed. He walked over and said to Koscha, "I will ask you one question; consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?" Koscha nodded dumbly, "Yes," and the Captain said, "You shall have it." He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day three more Austrian ships sailed into harbor. It looked as though the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flag ship to tell the Admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force. He said that he would expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock that afternoon. As the hour neared they looked at each other through the glasses. As it struck four he had them roll the cannons into the ports and had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons -- one little sloop. Suddenly the lookout tower called out and said, "They are lowering a boat," and they rowed Koscha over to the little American ship.

Captain Ingraham then went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. In it he said, "I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country in any way, I resign." His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words: "This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our Nation's history." Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.

I did not tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility.

In recent years we have been treated to a rash of noble-sounding phrases. Some of them sound good, but they don't hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts, "The greatest good for the greatest number." Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority.

We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly be laying one open to the charge of warmongering -- but that would also be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder for freedom than any generation that had ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of John Stuart Mill when he said that "war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things."

The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. The man who has nothing which he cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have recently, or presently are still receiving an education, I am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this century, capitalism and the free enterprise are under assault. Privately owned business is blamed for spoiling the environment, exploiting the worker and seducing, if not outright raping, the customer. Those who make the charge have the solution, of course -- government regulation and control. We may never get around to explaining how citizens who are so gullible that they can be suckered into buying cereal or soap that they don't need and would not be good for them, can at the same time be astute enough to choose representatives in government to which they would entrust the running of their lives.

Not too long ago, a poll was taken on 2,500 college campuses in this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained. Overwhelmingly, 65, 70, and 75 percent of the students found business responsible, as I have said before, for the things that were wrong in this country. That same number said that government was the solution and should take over the management and the control of private business. Eighty percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep its paws out of their private lives.

We are told every day that the assembly-line worker is becoming a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization. Well, there isn't a socialist country in the world that would not give its copy of Karl Marx for our standardization.

Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line means more leisure for the worker -- freedom from backbreaking and mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx did not abolish child labor or free the women from working in the coal mines in England – the steam engine and modern machinery did that.

Unfortunately, the disciples of the new order have had a hand in determining too much policy in recent decades. Government has grown in size and power and cost through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. It costs more for government today than a family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. Not even the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions, bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government, but the federal registry, listing their regulations, is just a few pages short of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government. There were eight cabinet departments and 12 independent agencies to administer the federal health program. There were 35 housing programs and 20 transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with 27 different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations and nine departments with 1,000 projects having to do with the field of pollution.

One Congressman found the federal government was spending 4 billion dollars on research in its own laboratories but did not know where they were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One of the research projects was "The Demography of Happiness," and for 249,000 dollars we found that "people who make more money are happier than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick." For 15 cents they could have bought an Almanac and read the old bromide, "It's better to be rich, young and healthy, than poor, old and sick."

The course that you have chosen is far more in tune with the hopes and aspirations of our people than are those who would sacrifice freedom for some fancied security.

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, "We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.

When I was born my life expectancy was 10 years less than I have already lived – that’s a cause of regret for some people in California, I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is considered the poverty line today, three-quarters lived in what is considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than 10 percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. I doubt if the young people here tonight know the names of some of the diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals than any nation in the world.

When I was your age, believe it or not, none of us knew that we even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sport announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn’t have a Hank Aaron or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spaulding Guide said baseball was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned against all those other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We have not finished the job. We still have a long way to go, but we have made more progress in a few years than we have made in more than a century.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are doing so in the United States. The percentage of our young Negro community that is going to college is greater than the percentage of whites in any other country in the world.

One-half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic. We have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. Ninety-five percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients -- and a part of the five percent that don't are trying to lose weight! Ninety-nine percent have gas or electric refrigeration, 92 percent have televisions, and an equal number have telephones. There are 120 million cars on our streets and highways -- and all of them are on the street at once when you are trying to get home at night. But isn't this just proof of our materialism -- the very thing that we are charged with? Well, we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras, and opera companies, non-profit theaters, and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together.

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through those years of torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind."

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

Whats in a bill?

2009-12-01T04:42:00.000-08:00

From Michael Connelly - Retired attorney, Constitutional Law

Instructor, Carrollton , Texas

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill
3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with
particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was
frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being
discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than
what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its
implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media
are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care,
particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are
involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion
services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of
the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of
business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions
about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal
bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals.
Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of
necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In
fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of
providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient
cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of
government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this
law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of
the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power
between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S.

Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama
Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives
of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that
the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those
areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S.
Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress
to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama
administration of all of your personal health care information, your
personal financial information, and the information of your employer,
physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the
specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting
against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about
the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion
regardless of what the

3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have health care insurance or if you have private
insurance that is not deemed "acceptable" to the "Health Choices
Administrator" appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It
is called a "tax" instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid
application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However,
that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows
you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely
depriving someone of property without the "due process of law.

So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so
much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively
nullified by this law. It doesn't stop there though. The 9th Amendment
that provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
people;" The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the

United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,
are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Under the
provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people
nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many
areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you
get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power
and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members
of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation" to
support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be
able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I
was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway
I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they
consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

And another to the Bill of Rights:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly
Retired attorney, Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton , Texas

What they said.........

2009-11-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

I wonder what our forefathers thought about gun control......oh wait, i don't have to wonder, THEY TOLD US!

"The right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the law of society."
-Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England.

"Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense."
-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions (1787-88).

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
-Samuel Adams, during Massachusetts' U.S. Constitution Ratification Convention (1788).

"The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
-James Madison, The Federalist #46.

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence."
-George Washington.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
-Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution (1776), Jefferson Papers 344 (J. Boyd, ed. 1950).

"The great object is, that every man be armed...Everyone who is able may have a gun..."
-Patrick Henry, 3 Elliott Debates 386.

"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."
-Thomas Paine, Thoughts on Defensive War (1775).

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."
-Patrick Henry, during Virginia's ratification convention (1788).

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America can not enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
-Noah Webster, An Examination Into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution (1787).

"To disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them..."
-George Mason, 3 Elliott Debates (on the Constitution) 380.

Yeah, what they said........As true today as ever!

Enemies Within!

2009-11-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

Enemies Within

by Chuck Norris (more by this author)

Last Thursday, Nov. 5, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and devout Muslim, fatally shot 13 American citizens (12 service members) and wounded an additional 29 people at the largest U.S. military base, Fort Hood, Texas.

For six months, authorities had been tracking the extremist thinking of Hasan. Internet postings like this one go back to May 20, 2009: "Scholars have paralleled (a U.S. soldier's falling on a grenade to save surrounding troops) to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers."

Hasan vehemently opposed the U.S. missions in the Middle East, arguing with co-workers, senior officers and even patients. He quarreled with Col. Terry Lee, who testified that Hasan said, "Maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor." Dr. Val Finnell, a former classmate of Hasan's, said that Hasan was "very vocal" about equating the war on terror with a war on Islam. He said Hasan even gave a PowerPoint presentation once justifying Islamic suicide bombing.

A few days before the killing spree at Fort Hood, Hasan proved his premeditated intentions by giving away all his belongings (including his Qurans) to his neighbors, saying he no longer would need them and adding, "I'm ready."

Just hours before the shooting spree, he attended prayer services at a local mosque, where he normally wore street clothes but that morning wore white Muslim attire.
Firsthand witnesses at the Fort Hood murder scene say they heard Hasan yelling "Allahu akbar" (meaning "God is great") before he opened fire.
And authorities just revealed that Hasan has made contact with other al-Qaida operatives. In 2001, authorities say, Hasan attended a mosque whose leadership was associated with two of the 9/11 hijackers. He even apparently stirred up anti-American sentiment within other Muslim soldiers at Fort Hood.
Yet despite all of this U.S. adversity in his background, Hasan was promoted this past May to the rank of major.
And the questions that keep coming to my mind are: Have we become so tolerant and politically correct that we can't see or confront a rotten apple when it's right in front of our eyes? When our fear of discrimination enables our enemies, can't we see something is grimly amiss?
To those roughly 3,500 Muslims who faithfully serve in the U.S. military, God bless you. We appreciate what you do and pray for you along with all of our dedicated service members. I fully realize Muslim extremists don't represent mainstream Islam. We must not quarantine all Islamic theology and practice as un-American.
At the same time, we must not stick our heads in the religious sands and call all these fatal acts "isolated incidents." We should not ignore the systemic nature and embryonic potential of fanaticism inherent within many. And we must not allow our cultural infatuation with passivity and tolerance to restrain us from searching for and stopping such militant rudimentary resistance, especially on our military posts.
Even our president warned Americans not to "jump to conclusions" about the motives of Maj. Hasan. But to what "conclusions" is he referring? It fascinates me that our president travels the world blaming America for everything under the sun but cautions Americans not to "jump to conclusions" about a fanatical Muslim military officer who just took the lives of 13 patriots and wounded many others who have honored their oath to defend this country. Why would the commander in chief even take up his precious media time immediately after this brutal rampage to encourage tolerance and political correctness concerning this psychotic killer? As a veteran of the Air Force and honorary Marine, I am appalled.
It's time our federal government woke up and realized that jihadists are not done planning and plotting against the U.S. and that a terrorist is not only defined by being a card-carrying member of al-Qaida. It's time our federal government better assured the protection of our valiant service members, not only in the Middle East but also right here on American soil.
Extremists still are infiltrating our military ranks, and we must be more diligent about exposing and stopping them. If Washington worked with just one-tenth the passion in corralling the enemies of the U.S. as it has in ramrodding the Obama-Pelosi health care system down our throats and pocketbooks, we'd reduce military acts of terrorism down to zero, inside and outside our borders.
As another Veterans Day passes, we owe our renewed allegiance and support to our service members. And we owe, in particular, the families of those who fell at the Fort Hood massacre our continued reassurance that their loved ones did not die in vain. They were real people, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers -- American patriots who each sacrificed everything in a war we wage even domestically to save our sacred land.
Let us pause again and salute all the victims and valiant soldiers at Fort Hood, including the heroes who kept the death toll from escalating. Let us honor the wounded and, in particular, the fallen, who (like those who fell on 9/11) serve as catalysts for our patriotism and vivid reminders that there are still enemies within.

"Gun Free Zone" = Dead Americans

2009-11-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

Another "Gun Free Zone" Tragedy.

Apparently it’s not enough for our government that the heroes in America’s armed forces risk their lives overseas defending our freedom.

These days, our soldiers aren't even safe here at home stationed on secure military bases.

On November 5th, a lone gunman murdered 13 fully-trained, ready to deploy soldiers, and wounded 29 more, in the most shocking terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

How was Nidal Hasan, a psychologist, able to take down so many trained soldiers? Because the government thinks its better to keep it’s armed service members unarmed . . .

That’s right. Our military men and woman are banned from carrying the weapons they are trained and trusted to use in the heat of combat.

President Clinton authored this asinine policy back in 1993 when he declared all military bases “Gun Free Zones.”

As you know, “Gun Free Zones” do nothing but assure criminals, and now terrorists, that they will find unarmed victims defenseless against a homicidal rampage.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I’d rather the soldiers delivered a barrage of bullets to end Hasan’s attack the second he opened fire.

I’d rather Hasan was dead and the heroes he murdered were still alive.

But because of Clinton’s ingenious policy of an unarmed armed forces, this psychopath methodically executed soldier after soldier before a local traffic cop could arrive on the scene.

If we didn't have “Gun Free Zones” and our armed forces were . . . I don't know . . . ARMED, Nadir Hasan would have met bullets instead of bodies.

On this Veteran’s Day, remember that the safety of our armed forces is of paramount importance whether it’s on the battlefield or here at home.

Please join the National Association of Gun Rights in our battle against "Gun Free Zones."

In Liberty,

Dudley Brown

Executive Director

National Association for Gun Rights

P.S. The National Association for Gun Rights is entirely supported by individual gun rights advocates.

How much does your public education systen cost you?

2009-11-05T17:51:00.000-08:00

So, do you have any idea just how much your public education system costs you? You may be surprised.

Yesterday, in elections across the state of Arizona, voters approved additional funding for the various school districts. Why did they do this? Because liberal press and teachers have been crying that without additional funding the kids are not going to have school lunch and teachers are gong to be fired and the fear mongering goes on and on.

I want to share some facts with you. In Arizona the average take per student for a school is a little over $10,000. That is not a misprint. A little over a third of that comes from the state budget and the rest from the federal tax money. This is why so many professional educators are so anti-homeschooling. If the student is not enrolled they do not get full money. But they do not give it to home schooled children either.

Do some basic math. If there are 25 children per classroom average, then that class is allotted $250,000 for that class. If a school has grades k - 6 and three classes per grade, then that equals $5.2 million given to that school.

What is your money buying? It is not paying teachers great salaries. Lets say every teacher makes an average of $65,000(pretty good). That's only 1.37 million. Add a staff of ten administrators, janitors etc for another $650,000. That is a $3.18 million left over for books paper, pencils, instruments, equipment, facilities etc. PER YEAR! PER AVERAGE SMALL SCHOOL!

I ask again, WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?

You think there is a lot of waste and corruption? You have no idea how bad it is. But my kids teacher tells him to come home and tell his parents to vote for the schools to get more money or there wont be any books in the library and no kick balls on the playground. This is getting ridiculous. More and more so every day. We keep adding programs and giving away more and more to more and more people. Which, in case you sheep out there didn't know, costs you more and more money.

Yes, even you lower income earners who are benefiting from all the free programs and such. The money comes from additional sales taxes on the goods and services you use. It comes from just one more tax hike on a gallon of gas. (evil oil companies....right!) And when one company incurs a new tax, it has no choice but to incorporate that added cost into the price of the product or service.

I am sick to death of even those who claim to be conservatives yammering for certain programs.
You know what, someone I admire asked me if it wouldn't be fairer to give the parents the money, all of it, and let them teach their kids. Heaven knows most of us could use it better. Trips to the nations capital for example. Problem is, it is not our money. Everyone pays into the system for education but only those with children benefit. (or do they)

Public education is a privilege and is not a right. All in all the education systems are failing us and are not cost effective. We are blessed to have what we have but we are negligent with the money we take for it. There is no realaccountability.

If we are going to have public education in this country then lets be accountable. The first thing that needs to be done is doing away with the federal department of education. It is useless and takes even more tax money with little to show for it. Let the states tax, provide and be accountable for the education in thier own states. Heck this goes for road construction as well,. what gives anyone the right to tax someone in Rhode Island to build a road in Oregon? But this is a topic for another post. As a people we need to take back the education and what is being taught. The LA Raza Studies program in Tucson is just one example of the corruption and misinformation being allowed to be taught.

The new funds approved in my district are going to cost the average family $155 more a year. For what I ask? To save our schools I am told. What a load of hogwash. My state under Janet Napalitano increased funding to education at twice the rate of economic growth and now that revenues are down drastically they do not want to make any cuts. Come the heck on! Nobody is asking for teachers to be fired left and right and books to be unavailable. Why does a school need a budget of 10,000 for a new copier every two years? Do we need to have all day kindergarten when the main reason is to help with day care costs for parents. Sorry not a good enough reason. I know my kids already have to bring most of their supplies from home now anyway. Government is out of control with spending. So too are the school systems. At the very least it is time to tighten the belts and pinch the pennies, not ask for more money.

Maybe they should make things last a little longer in these tough times, just like the rest of us are.

Obama Deception

2009-10-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

You be the judge............

The Government Can!

2009-10-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

This was great!

So if there is a tree in the forest with nobody within 2 miles of it, will the government tax it?

Tea Party Haters

2009-10-24T22:59:00.000-07:00

Janeane Garofalo and Keith Olbermann spewing nonsense about those who attend the tea parties are nothing but racists. What is scary is that I think they really believe themselves! Scarier still, there are people who listen to them.

Here is a great video response to them:

>

I was at the Arizona Tea Party and first of all, it was not a racist clan rally. It also was not just for republicans. It was, as all the tea parties were, an expression of outrage over the straw that broke the camels back. It is time to clean house and get rid of all who will not vote to get rid of the outrageous spending, no matter the heartfelt cause.

I know this was awhile back but it needs to be revisited. Stay motivated America, do not give up!

The Biggest Threat Since the Soviets

2009-10-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

Iran: Biggest Threat Since Soviets
by Mitt Romney

The Iranian leadership is the greatest immediate threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gone well beyond the boundary of outrage -- beginning with his calculated desecration of history.

When he denies the Holocaust, he could care less about history. His point is about the present and the future. His purpose is not merely to deny the Holocaust, but also to deny Israel. He is testing the waters. He wants to know who will object. And how they will register their objection.

That’s why it was so shocking last month when the United Nations gave a platform to a Holocaust-denier who has pledged over and over again that he will wipe out Israel. It was a grotesque moment and another stain on the reputation of the U.N. And congratulations to Prime Minister Netanyahu for having the moral courage to say what needed to be said to those members of the United Nations who stayed to listen to Ahmadinejad -- "Have you no shame!”

I will happily agree that the U.N. has done some good in its history. But I will also insist that it has also done terrible damage to the causes it claims to uphold. And on no issue has it been more irresponsible and morally reckless than when considering the fate of Israel. The Iranian regime threatens not only Israel, but also every other nation in the region, and ultimately the world. It is a repressive regime… an intractable enemy of liberty and human rights… the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and subversive war. The threat it poses to the world would take on an entirely new dimension if Iran were allowed to become a nuclear power.

Earlier this month, senior staff members of the U.N. nuclear agency concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb. We also learned of a previously secret, illegal uranium enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. A nuclear Iran would be a tipping point in the proliferation of nuclear regimes, and yet America still has not taken critical steps to immediately dissuade Iran from its nuclear folly. At this late stage, I would simply say that it is long past time for America to recognize the nature of the regime we are dealing with.

The Iranian regime is unalloyed evil, run by people who are at once ruthless and fanatical. We should stop thinking that a charm offensive will talk the Iranians out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It will not. And agreements, unenforceable and unverifiable, will have no greater impact here than they did in North Korea. Once an outstretched hand is met with a clenched fist, it becomes a symbol of weakness and impotence.

President Eisenhower said it well: “The care of freedom is not long entrusted to the weak and timid.” The President of the United States can employ his admiration and good will to actually accomplish something meaningful and real in Iran -- comprehensive, withering sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and international support for the forces of freedom within Iran.

The people of Iran represent a major source of strength. By and large, they have not been radicalized by their government and clerics; in fact, the regime’s effort to crush the uprising against it has only alienated the people of Iran. They fear economic stagnation and they hate political repression. Most are not seeking a military confrontation with the West. Indeed, most want greater engagement with the West.

And the military option must remain on the table -- and that threat needs to be credible. Unfortunately -- for reasons that are unfathomable to me -- our government has signaled that the military option is effectively off the table. How can that be countenanced when an ally of the United States faces an existential threat?

I don’t pretend for a moment that the course of action to take with Iran is easy or obvious; there are costs to anything we do, but there are even greater costs if we do nothing at all. If we allow Iran under the rule of the mullahs to get a nuclear weapon, it will make the problems America faces today look like a walk in the park.

The clock is ticking, with no real progress to show for the precious time that has already lapsed.

Eject President Obama, Eject!

2009-10-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

When the going gets tough, the weak and unprincipled "eject"! Perfect for the leader of this great nation!

What are they running from?

2009-10-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

Watch as Sean Hannity expose some of YOUR elected representatives in action!

Some great WWII Posters.

2009-10-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

One thing is for sure, We wont see posters like these around today.

What has happened to us America?

Time to do OUR part fellow Americans! Do not sit idly by why our freedoms are sold.

2009-10-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

Know the Facts, Read the Bill, Vote
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)

As of Wednesday, October 14, there are some things we know, and some things we don’t know.

We know that the most recent economic projections forecast 10.3 percent unemployment as of next June and 8.5 percent unemployment through 2013. And we know that cost increases to businesses and families could make these numbers even worse. They will slow down the recovery and kill job creation.

Now for what we don’t know: As of Monday, we can no longer have confidence that we know what the true cost of the Left’s health reform will be. A late-breaking report said that the bill passed yesterday by the Senate Finance Committee will increase the health care costs of the average American family by $4,000. This specific figure may or may not prove to be the case. The point is, we don’t know.

And we can’t pass a law that remakes our economy and directly impacts the health of all Americans until we do. $4,000 More in Cost to Families, $1,500 More in Costs to IndividualsThe new report, prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers and paid for by the insurance industry, contains some disturbing estimates of how much the Senate Finance Committee bill will cost Americans. For the average family of four, health insurance costs about $12,300 today. The report found that, if we do nothing, that cost will rise to $21,900 in 2019. But under the Finance Committee bill, the average family will see its health care costs rise to $25,900 in 2019 -- a full $4,000 more than if we do nothing.

For the average single American, the cost of health care insurance today is about $4,600. The report found that this cost will rise to $8,200 in 2019 without the bill just passed by the Senate committee, but to $9,700 with it -- creating an additional cost to single Americans of $1,500.This report comes on the heels of a CBO estimate last month that said the Senate Finance Committee bill will increase premium costs for both employers and individuals who purchase insurance on their own: “Premiums in the new insurance exchanges would tend to be higher than the average premiums in the current-law individual market…”

Some Analysts Believe the Study Underestimates the Cost of Liberal Health ReformsThis new report may or may not be an accurate estimate of the costs Americans will bear under liberal health care reform. Some, including Ron Bachman, a health care analyst at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and the Center for Health Transformation, believe the PwC study underestimates the cost of liberal reforms. Bachman believes that when the Finance Committee bill is merged with the legislation passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the costs of private health insurance will be even higher than under the Finance bill.

Right now, three senators -- the chairmen of the Finance and HELP committees and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) -- are meeting in secret to produce a bill for the full Senate to vote on. According to Bachman, the HELP bill is so loaded with pork barrel spending (he calls it the “Mother of all Slush Funds”) that the final Senate bill will cost even more than the Finance Committee legislation alone.Consumers Bear the Cost of New Health Care Taxes Through Higher PremiumsAlthough we can’t yet know if the PwC numbers will reflect the exact costs of the Senate’s health plan, we can make some logical inferences that liberal health care reform will increase prices to American families and businesses.

The Senate Finance Committee bill, for instance, raises taxes on employers and insurers by more than $200,000,000,000. The bill also taxes drug companies and medical device manufacturers, which will raise the cost of these items. And because insurers cover drugs and devices through insurance policies, consumers will ultimately bear the cost of these taxes through higher premiums. Furthermore, the Senate Finance bill would destroy the very nature of “insurance,” which is for everyone -- young and old, sick and healthy -- to pay into the same system so that the medical care for those who need it is paid for by the insurance premiums of those who do not. The Finance bill may end up leaving mainly the sick in the system by requiring health plans to cover everyone, but allowing people to wait until they are sick to purchase a policy.

Sure, individuals would be fined as little as $200 a year if they don’t buy insurance, but why would someone want to buy a product today, knowing that they can buy it later at the same price when they actually need it? John Lott has a good column that compares this to buying auto insurance after you crash your car. At the end of the day, health insurance premiums are a reflection of the health care delivery system. Because the Finance Committee bill will directly raise premiums through higher taxes but does little to actually reform delivery, it’s the worst of both worlds.For ideas on how we can reform our health care delivery system and truly bring down costs to families and businesses, visit healthtransformation.net.

Congress Should Insist on Three Independent Studies Before it VotesAmericans can be forgiven for not knowing who to believe right now. And the Obama Administration’s response to the new study -- to demonize the messenger rather than engage on the facts -- doesn’t help clarify things.Before it votes to transform one-sixth of our economy and every American’s health care, Congress should know the facts.Congress should commission three independent studies of the cost of proposed health care reform by three professionally respected analytical firms.Then Congress should post these studies online, so that all members and the American people can read them.And then -- and only then -- Congress should vote.

As I mentioned in a column last week, some members of Congress are getting careless about reading legislation before they vote on it.So for those members and others who need a refresher course on American democracy, here’s how it should go:
First: Know the Facts
Second: Read the Bill.
Third: Vote.

Time for a Revolution!

2009-10-05T22:48:00.001-07:00

It IS time for a revolution in America! Thomas Jefferson, a true patriot, once stated in a letter, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

I do not sense that it is yet the time to take up arms and storm the capital. But I have never been so outraged by the acts of MY government. There is a shell game of epic proportions going on and there WILL be disastrous results.

We may not be too late to right this ship. But the ship IS sinking. If we do not plug the holes, no matter how much water we bail out, the final outcome is eminent.
Read , The Third Conservative Revolution for ideas on how we can once again force the conservative to be heard. But I say lets go one better. It is not only time for the politicians to work for the conservatives, it is time for them to BE conservatives.

I call for a vetting. There needs to be no quarter for any politician who would sell his/her/our principles for any price. There are those who say to work with Washington elite one has to learn to compromise. I then say we can compromise on how much to cut the tax burden on America each year. I say lets compromise how much to reign in an out of control federal system that systematically goes against the very nature of the constitution.

Jim DeMint may be one of those who can lead this charge, but we must choose our leaders carefully so as to not end up with what we have, Wolves in sheep's clothing. Read here what Sen. DeMint has to say about wasteful spending.

It starts with us. It always has. But we have all grown to busy with our important lives. We must now sacrifice our time and our voice and sometimes our friends in order to have our voice heard. We can no longer be silent, afraid to offend those who are too simple minded to see what is happening. We must stop the emotional shell game that pulls at the heart strings.

Liberals claim they want what is fair for all. That is a lie. They want to take from person A and give to person B. Never mind why person A has more than person B. There is always a sad story to make us feel bad. That then equals about 100 million tax dollars worth of welfare. Before welfare there was not nearly the amount of unemployment there is today. Why? Because the reward for not working is sometimes incentive enough to sit idle and let someone else foot the bill.

I lost my job in march. I took a job at a significant(60%) cut in income. But it was a steady job in a not so job rich environment. I have looked for something steady to take its place but keep working. I have had to get rid of the truck I loved. We as a family have given up many things we wish we did not have to. For the first time in my children's lives they are experiencing what it really means to do without. Now, I could have sat at home and collected unemployment, and many in my situation have. It is not that much less after all. But we have an obligation to go to work. We must find gainful employment and provide an honest days work for an honest wage. I will work hard and try to make my current situation better. And I do "hope for change" in my future. But not the change we are seeing now.

I do not want my government to take away from someone else who has not experienced what I have been going through and then give it to me.

I WANT THEM TO GET OUT OF THE WAY! Do you hear me? We are heading towards civil unrest because they, the political elite, have painted America into a class envious society instead of a nation of the hard working people we are. WE AMERICANS CAN DO ANYTHING! It is our govt which keeps us down.

I used to hear talk of a crumbling America and dared not believe it. But I see the signs. They are all around us. If we do not take political action now, while we can, what choices will be left. They will take and take and take until what we have to fight with will no longer be our votes.

WAKE UP AMERICA! WE MUST GATHER AGAIN AS PATRIOTS. THE TREE OF LIBERTY MUST BE REFRESHED BY THE BLOOD OF PATRIOTS AND TYRANTS!

Will it be our blood, or our children's?