The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Change To Keep

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I was there.  Were you?

Perusing the news outlets this morning was a sadly enlightening confirmation of what I’ve seen happening the last few years.  The mainstream media either ignored or, finally and with disgustingly crude profanity, derided it outright, but unlike the progressive liberals, those who actually support the United States – and their fellow Americans – by working and paying their taxes booked time off from their jobs or used their lunch hour to attend the first of the American Tea Parties.  Undaunted by the latest humdinger label of “right-wing extremist”, average citizens (including even union members who see the same waste in paying more and more taxes as they see paying union dues) gathered together and marched on state capitals and city halls from sea to shining sea in a demonstration of their anger at the fact that, best described by a bumper sticker being handed out at the one I attended, “Taxation WITH representation is tyranny”.

It was a lovely sight, that of thousands of my fellow Americans exercising their rights to peacefully assemble and speak freely.   All told, the count of participants  headed up towards a million people.  On a workday.  In the middle of the week. 

 That’s the kind of change we can keep.

You Might Be A “Right-Wing Extremist” If….

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This is a truth:  they walk amongst us.  There are nut jobs wandering all over this world.  They hang out in the fringes of every political party; in fact, they hang out in the fringes of any organization.  (Ok, unless you send them to Congress, then they hang out in front of the cameras.)

This is another truth:  we surround them.  The actual number of dangerous nut jobs, though 15 minutes of fame is far more than they deserve, remains small.

With the administration’s steady efforts steering America into fascism, those who did not vote for President Obama and an increasing number of those who did vote for him, are now becoming genuinely concerned.  Promises made are being kept and those who remember that it is the right of every American citizen to speak up about the government’s ignoring of basic rights and freedoms are starting to do just that.

Conveniently then, the Department of Homeland Security has released another report about homeland terrorists.  Only this time, they are examining what they call “right-wing extremists”.  You know, those wack jobs like the KKK, paramilitary groups, and other uber-paranoid lone wolves like the late Timothy McVeigh.

The problem is that they are painting the picture with a brush several sizes too large for the job at hand.  The report is strikingly lacking in details and that does no one any good. 

While the liberals and left-wing nuts are using the mainstream media to castigate those who want less government spending and, indeed, less government in general, chafing at those who want to see the Constitution and Bill of Rights maintained, this report conveniently gives the right-wing nuts an opportunity to point at the left and claim it’s yet another of the left’s attempts to kill free speech and the right to peacefully assemble.

But is it?  Maybe it’s due to my professional background and willingness to dig beyond the surface of most things, but I don’t see the same cause for alarm.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t have serious concerns.

First concern is that the Department can’t seem to pull up any reports about “left-wing extremists”, though, of course, they are quick to claim such investigations are bipartisan and that they do have such reports…somewhere.

Second, the Department just can’t seem to tell anyone exactly when this particular investigation was started, though the report references the election campaign.

Third, the report quotes an FBI report when talking about concerns over extremist groups targeting returning veterans for recruitment.  However, the actual number of such recruitments provided by the FBI is all of 203 over the course of 6 1/2 years (that is about, oh…about .8%; yes, “point eight percent”).

Fourth, and what I consider the most important, is the timing of the release of this report.  While it is dated April 7, 2009 and allegedly sent to law enforcement officials around the country at that time, it only hit the media the day before thousands of Tea Party protests are scheduled to be held around the country.  The day before peaceful assemblies of average Americans who are no longer buying the story that spending more money that we don’t have is the way to get the country out of its enormous, crippling debt and want their “unrepresenting representatives” to know that the nonsense must stop now.

In the same vein as releasing old news about foreign spies looking around the power grid at the same time legislation is introduced to create another huge and far-reaching-into-the-lives-of-private-citizens government program for “cyber security”, this seems to me to be yet another deliberately-orchestrated “fear factor” attempt by the administration to influence public thinking.  The last thing the administration wants is for the majority of Americans to disagree with the dangerous policies being set in motion both home and abroad.  They don’t want anyone questioning their decisions to effectively create a fascist regime out of the Republic of the United States of America.  And what better way to get the average citizen to cower quietly at home than to release a report that plainly speaks about “right wing extremists” being concerned about the economy, about illegal immigration, and about gun control?  That plainly speaks about “right wing extremists” wanting the government to protect and defend the Constitution and the sovereignty of the United States?

Would YOU want to be lumped in with the real right-wingnut wackos because you are concerned about the economy, about illegal immigration, about gun control or the loss of our basic rights and freedoms?  Of course not.  And when you read the report carefully, I don’t believe that is the intent.  It outlines valid concerns that the currently bad, getting-worse-every-day situation in this country could possibly cause some who aren’t wrapped too tight to burst and decide that the real right-wing extremist wack jobs are correct and join up with them.

A valid concern.  But clever in its timing.  Oh, so very clever. 

I say don’t bother with the liberal left’s blatherings about this, and take what the right has to say about it with a grain of salt.  It remains our right to peacefully assemble and to make our voices heard by our government.  But if you don’t like being handed even a hint of a threat, then by all means I would encourage you to do whatever you need to do to attend a Tea Party tomorrow.  Go with head held high and focus on the issues, all of which cross the lines of political party affiliation.  (Like that President Obama just committed the United States to providing an additional $140 billion to the International Monetary Fund without any input from Congress, who has refused doubling the U.S.’s contribution for the last 12 years due to the costs to the American taxpayer and the risk of the loans made from the fund).

It is your right, and I dare say it is your duty, to be concerned and to voice that concern.  But that, my fellow Americans, makes you a patriot.  Not an extremist.

Think About This

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Everyone can’t help but think about money these days.  We’re seeing less of it in our paychecks, we’re spending more of it for goods and services, we’re paying more of it in taxes (yes, Virginia, this year’s stimulus credit will be next year’s tax liability), and it continues to be news every day as Wall Street continues to wobble like a Weeble and Pater Obama and the Family take over more and more of private enterprise.

As it has been noted here and elsewhere in the non-Democrat-dependent media, the government got us into this mess in the first place and, throughout modern history, when the government makes a financial mess, they’ve never yet been able to clean it up.  Since this administration is using previously-failed tactics, there’s no reason to think we’re going to come out of the current crisis with anything that resembles the original United States of America.

There have been rumblings for some time that the “average person” isn’t really savvy enough when it comes to investing, and various proposals hit the table time and again about how the government should step in and save them from themselves.  If you believe that, folks, I have another bridge to nowhere for sale.

Here is a good piece that helps put remove the liberal’s hocus-pocus and puts the reality of the government’s deep dive into the private sector  into better focus.

Destined to Repeat?

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It’s been said that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.  And so it is that the Obama administration has ushered in not an era of hope and change but, frighteningly, is instead now putting the seal onto the very worst that humans have devised in terms of government.

Consider the two great motivators:  fear and hunger.  They have always been, and are now, how the calculating turn a temporary crisis into a permanent one.  As we look back to the stock market collapse in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed to find a clue about how to solve the problems on Wall Street and with our banks today, it becomes more clear that the roots of both those and today’s ills first took hold earlier in the early 20th century.  Self-proclaimed “Il Duce”, aka “His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire”, was a high-profile “progressive” (like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR; and now Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) and before things went south was admired by the likes of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, uber-pundit Will Rogers, and praised by the eternally-liberal New York Times:  “Mussolini is a Latin Teddy Roosevelt, who first acts and then inquires if it is legal.  He’s been a great service to Italy at home.”  In the beginning, even Winston Churchill called Mussolini “the greatest living lawmaker.”

Yet for all the fawning admiration of the American “intellectual elite”, Benito Mussolini set Italy on the side of Germany to became part of the Axis during WWII.  Eventually, at the urging of his own son-in-law, the Italian parliment ousted Il Duce and restored full constitutional powers to the king.  It was Marshal Pietro Badoglio who then secretly dissolved the Italian Fascist Party and negotiated an armistice with the Allies, signed on September 3, 1943.  Despite the resulting turmoil, Italy finally declared war against Nazi Germany and the rest, as I shall call it, is common history.

Progressive poster boy Benito was summarily executed in April 1945 by Communist Italian partisans, then his body was hung upside-down in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan for public viewing, to assure people the monster was really and truly dead.  Along with his lover and 13 other high-ranking Fascist officials, and some other Fascist hanger-ons.

The “progressive movement”, then, that darling of the Ivy League “intellectual elite”, is the answer to the question, “How did America get here?”

Glenn Beck put together a recent show that explores the parallels.  Please watch.  Please learn.  Then, please, stand up and help us return America to her foundation.  For as will become obvious, the progressive movement and narcissistic siblings socialism and fascism, didn’t work then and, as Americans know first-hand,  it is not working now.

Introduction:

 

The happy side of fascism:

 

Progressives Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

 

Some words of wisdom:

Greed As The Roots of Fear

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An article caught my eye last night.  It talked about the fears creeping into the upper ranks and the board rooms of big companies.   Apparently Americans’ dissatisfaction with the enormous greed of some of these people has them wondering if someone will sooner than later take out their frustration on them in the same manner workers in Europe are kidnapping executives in ransom for labor demands.  (A practice noted in the article as being considered quite acceptable by most folks in France, thanks to the entitlement mentality of labor unions that pervades the EU.)

Can’t say as I blame them.  You lay in your bed, it gets wrinkled, kiddo.  When you pay individuals multi-million dollar salaries to be nothing more than the spewer of weasel words to “analysts”, when you cut workers or their pay but still pay bonuses to your good old boys and girls at the top, you are behaving unethically.  And somewhere deep inside your twisted, selfish little minds, you know this.  I don’t condone violence, but you know that if something doesn’t change, it’s just a matter of time before someone else whose little balls aren’t in all the little holes decides to take you out with them.

The article quoted Kelly Klatt, CEO of Center for Security Solutions, an Orlando, Fla.-based consulting firm.  “They are doing ‘what if’ planning. ‘What if it gets worse? What do we need to do to protect our management?’”

The answer is so simple even a 5th grader could answer it.  Change your ways.  One small move would change the climate and perceptions of big business forever:  the executives of any company that has to lay off employees or cuts salaries in order to stay viable should automatically forfeit any and all bonuses for the year.  I know of some companies where smart, honest, and fair-minded owners have chosen to tie everyone’s compensation to the performance of the company and everyone, from worker to owner, is quite happy.  Their productivity is solid and loyalty is high.  Because both owners and workers know their relationship is a symbiotic one – if one side thrives, they all thrive.

Just think of all the money that companies would save.  In light of the mainstream media’s coverage of the AIG bonus outrage, I’m surprised shareholders from sea to shining sea haven’t already demanded this.  Particularly when this fear of retribution swelling in the bosoms of CEOs and other executives is now costing the shareholders real money in the form of paying for physical security.  But I suppose the boards and executives are counting on shareholder ignorance, the same way Congress counts on the ignorance of its constituents.

Where Will You Be April 15th?

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The mainstream media is trying very hard to ignore it.  Some self-proclaimed pundits are calling it a fad without a cause.  Democrats are calling it a vain attempt by the Republican party to gain support.  Congress is, in a most rare demonstration of restraint, remaining most unusually silent.

Well, no matter what you want to call it and no matter if you choose to not see it, American disgust with our government is brewing like a kettle on a hot stove and April 15th is scheduled to be the first showing that tempers having reached the boiling point.

Unlike the first tea party, this one will be – by intention – bloodless.  And perhaps it is that seeming quietness that causes those who prefer raucous excitement, those armchair warriors who like to watch man’s inhumanity to man from the safety of their living rooms, to dismiss it as not being somehow “newsworthy”.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

This country is in serious trouble.  For almost 100 years we have been shepherded by those who use that tantalizing little word “progressive” to coerce ever-innovative and inventive, dreaming Americans to accept one loss of freedom after another.  To slyly encourage a collective disregard for the basic foundation of this country – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – in favor of some false handout of a chicken in every pot, always hiding the fact that they have quietly been killing off the chicken farmers.

The end has come.  Those who would destroy America for their own nefarious purposes have finally been exposed for the hypocritical, dangerous traitors that they are.  Americans can clearly see those who, contrary to their mothers’  warnings, have gone out in public wearing dirty underwear.  And it ain’t a pretty sight.

So on April 15th Americans will gather together under the symbolism of the original Tea Party.  They will gather in protest of government grown beyond recognition, grown far, far beyond original intent.  They will gather to send a message that what we are for is the cessation of spending for entitlement and for a return of our basic rights.  They will gather whether or not the media chooses to report on it because the message is not for the media, it is for the behemoth that is become our government.

Where will you be on April 15th?  I would hope that you will spend an hour with those who share your anger and your fears for both your future and that of your children, that you will do the one thing that will get the attention of our myopic “unrepresenting representatives” – assemble peacefully in a great number.  They are not used to seeing our faces; we have become little more than numbers to be pursued for reelection to a cushy job.  But the truth is that they work for us and when they work against us – as is now the case – we must stand up and tell them NO. 

We, the people, have no more excuses.  It is time to take back control of OUR government.

See you at the party.

First The Banks, Then The Automakers, Now The Internet

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Count yourself fortunate to be reading these words.  If certain members of Congress and President Obama have their way, there is a good chance that you will find yourself hitting that frustrating “404 Page not found” error more often than not.  That is, if your internet connection even works.

Two bills have just been introduced in the Senate: 

S. 778:  A bill to establish, within the Executive Office of the President, the Office of National Cybersecurity Advisor.

Sponsor:  Senator John Rockefeller [D, WV]
Co-Sponsors:
Sen. Bill Nelson [D, FL]
Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME]

Apr 01, 2009: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

S.773:  A bill to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption, and for other purposes.

Sponsor:  Senator John Rockefeller [D, WV]
Co-Sponsors:
Sen. Bill Nelson [D, FL]
Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME]

Introduced on Apr 01, 2009.  Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

 Here we go again.  Pater Obama and the Family think that we need more protection.  Their fears aren’t entirely unfounded, though I find it ironic that, even though it’s not new news, it’s all over the media that the footprints of Chinese and Russian spies have been found inside the networks that control the country’s power systems, indications that someone is wondering if they can wreak havoc by cutting off electricity, or water, or other critical communications between the regional groups that control them.  It’s already happened in other countries and was discussed here in the United States – and certain measures implemented – after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But as in most businesses (and probably even the case with the computer by which you read these words), computer security is at the bottom of the to-do list.  The power industry’s own standards-setting organization, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is only now getting serious about the far-reaching impact of malicious intrusions to the power grids’ networks.  And since we’ve all read about the compromises of personal information brought about by thoughtless financial employees, this late-coming assessment from those who oversee we have power and water oughtta scare the bejesus out of you.

 So you’re thinking it’s a good thing that we, the people, start to take this “security stuff” more seriously, right?  I have two words for you:  fear factor.  Unfortunately, if you take the time to read S.773 in its entirety, what you will find is the government reproducing what, for all intents and purposes, already exists in the private sector.  Security standards.  Educational programs.  Accrediting organizations.

But when you live in the Obamanation, it’s “better” if it’s run by the government.  The same government that giveth the bonuses and then taketh them away, all the while claiming they never gaveth them out in the first place.  The same government that will, through this nefarious legislation, allow the President to determine what is considered “critical infrastructure information systems and networks” and shut them down, should he deem it necessary.  This includes state, local, and nongovernmental information systems and networks.  Yes, nongovernmental – private – information systems and networks.

And here’s a fun one – the President “shall notify the Congress within 48 hours after providing a cyber-related certification of legality to a United States person.”  Okey-dokey….

How about funding a study of “the feasibility of an identity management and authentication program, with the appropriate civil liberties and privacy protections, for government and critical infrastructure information systems and networks”?

And let’s not forget the indoctrination part, “a national cybersecurity awareness campaign”, using “public and private sector means of providing information to the public, including public service announcements”.  Like we need more government-sponsored advertising?  How about government-sponsored competitions, complete with prize money given to students or academic or research institutions?  In lip-service to “public-private partnership”, some of the money will come from the private sector since the governing organizations will be non-profits that receive government funding.  And more non-profit, government-supported centers will focus on the cybersecurity of small and medium-sized businesses.  (See the snake eating its own tail?)

Of course, we must attend to the children.  This bill will use a “a Federal Cyber Scholarship-for-Service program ” to:

  • provide a procedure for identifying promising K-12 students for participation in summer work and internship programs that would lead to certification of Federal information technology workforce standards and possible future employment; and
  • examine and develop, if appropriate, programs to promote computer security awareness in secondary and high school classrooms.

All of which is intended to get them into the government-sponsored “Federal Cyber Scholarship-for-Service program” (the bill actually states there will be preference given to undergraduate or graduate program applicants who participated in the government-sponsored competitions).  Can you smell the socialistic bent of this?  Just like the professional vs. blue collar educational tracks in countries like Germany, where the government determines your career for you.  How will you tell your child they can’t go to school to study art because they are too good at math or playing video games?

Like so many good intentions, this is bad and it’s scary.

Does the United States need to step up its computer security?  You bet.  Do we need the government to define computer security and K-PhD train individuals to design and implement it?  No.  This is yet another area where the private sector and the rewards system of the free market will always to a better job than a bureaucracy.  The dot-com boom and bust was driven by ingenuity and smarts; computers and the internet is a 20th century phenomenon that government sponsorship couldn’t have created in ten times the number of years.  Success in any area requires innovation and risk-taking, they are the key components of the many small, private business ventures birthed from ideas of bright people who had the freedom to pursue their dreams that allow you to read my thoughts right here, right now.

This country has more important things to do than spend millions and millions of dollars recreating what we already know needs to be done just to disguise one more government takeover of the private sector.  It is yet another audacious idea whose time must not come.

A Word To The Rich

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The tender nurturing of the entitlement mentality that occupies this Congress and so causes it to take deeper root throughout this great country is incredibly disheartening to those of us who still believe in the American dream. 

I could go on a tear about it, however, at this moment I defer to this excellent piece posted at Pajamas Media that addresses the government’s attacks on those who try to honestly run their businesses and so create jobs for others; even – Obama forbid! – getting “wealthy” in the process.

The Important Question

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Republicans and certain pro-life contingencies have their panties in a wad over President Obama’s nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

My question is:  has she paid all of her taxes?

Meanness Is Not A Leadership Quality

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President Obama is a mean man.  One can almost understand giddy election-elation arrogence and so forgive his infamous and snarky, “I won” comment.  But now it’s been reported that, in the infamous style of his Chicago mentors, he warned Representative Peter DeFazio, “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.”  Why?  Because DeFazio voted against the administration’s stimulus bill.  And during a recent meeting about compensation he warned bankers, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”  (An interesting perspective on the roots of this mean example can be, should be, read here.)

How’s that for working without a teleprompter?  It’s obvious he thinks he holds all the aces and so, as was demonstrated by his chiding Congress to not listen to Rush Limbaugh, he becomes a churlish little schoolyard bully when faced with something that doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear.  It’s like some bad, late-night B version of “The Godfather” with German subtitles.

But the problem here is that President Obama is as much to blame for what happened to our economy as Wall Street and Congress.  Perhaps if he’d been doing his job serving as Senator of Illinois and not spent his electorate’s time and the taxpayers’ money on the campaign trail he would know this.  Instead he continues down some “Do as I say, not as I do” yellow-brick road towards total American economic devastation, then puts on his community organizer hat and goes pandering for European applause by apologizing to them for America’s refusal to play along in their socialistic sandbox. 

I’ll tell you what – the American people are keeping score, too, and the American people are, indeed, sitting on a pile of figurative pitchforks but they have the names of Senators and Representatives and members of the administration engraved on them.  Not willing to use them unless absolutely necessary, and hoping things never reach that point.

Don’t tread on me.