The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

D-Day

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For four years we’ve used this little platform to point out the errors and failures of our government.  That someone like Barack Hussein Obama could be so easily swept into the office of president of these United States based on nothing more than a deadly and deceitful stint as a senator in Illinois, later admitting to being merely a “composite” of memoirs suspected to have been written by someone else both infuriated and frightened us.  As time went by this man who believes in “partial birth abortions” because the intent of the mother was to kill her unborn child anyway proved his allegiance to nothing that remotely resembles America by sending our border patrol to fight with beanbags while secretly arming drug cartels with some half-baked idea it would push the American people into accepting their version of gun control, directly resulting in the deaths of Brian Terry and Jamie Zapata.  The man who sits down with unelected Chicago cronies each morning to decide who will die that day from a drone strike, with collateral civilian damage be damned, couldn’t be bothered to muster the same force when Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Brian Doherty and Tyrone Woods were fighting Al Queda in vain for their lives in a place that had been called out to the administration numerous times to be lacking adequate security on a day common sense alone would have given them more of it.

This administration and this president in particular have far too much innocent  and literal American blood on their hands.  And far, far too much blood has flowed figuratively from the entitlement-encouraging laws and policies that have trickled down over the last four years to crush both the spirits and the wealth of the middle class.  Not to mention making the poor even poorer and creating even more of them.

Mitt Romney asked the age-old question, “Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?”  Gas prices are double what they were in 2008, food and other commodity prices are higher; wages, if you are fortunate enough to be making them, are stagnant, homes that haven’t yet been foreclosed on carry underwater mortgages, banks are playing Wack-A-Mole with more and more insidious little fees on checking account while interest on savings accounts are essentially non-existent.  Almost half of the legal citizens in this country pay nothing in federal income taxes but a subset of them, pathetically and ironically goaded on by wealthy Democrats, demand more and more “entitlements” from those who do pay taxes.  We have watched spectacles like a 30-plus year old college student sit in the chambers of Congress and bemoan the fact that her Catholic college – a college she deliberately chose to attend – won’t cover her birth control.  We won’t even go into “Obamaphones” or people on food stamps buying everything but food with them.  Illegal immigration?  Let us count how many Democrat votes result from the administration’s refusal to follow the rule of law and thereby add more cost to the legal taxpayer’s already straining burden.

Simply put, this administration has exceeded even our cynical expections of disaster.  They are a dangerous, deadly lot that scuttles around in the shadows like so many fat rats; blinking senselessly when the light is cast upon them.  That is, when the complicit lamestream media even bothers to “report” anything resembling an objective fact.

They have to go.

All of them.

They blamed the elections of 2010 for creating more “obstructionism” to their enslaving communist manifesto.  Today we can not only obstruct them completely, we can obliterate them.  Send them back into the trash heap of a history that will only note that the last 4 years proved once and for all that socialism is forever a failed experiment.

Vote wisely, my fellow Americans.  Vote for Mitt Romney, vote for every conservative candidate on your ballot from local to state.  It is our last chance to save – to reclaim – what has proved to be the greatest country in the history of mankind.

God bless America.

Gun Butt Cover

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His Transparency is feeling the cold breeze sneaking in through the open back of his hospital gown and, besides the doubling-down cram-through brawls that await us during this lame-duck session, he’s finally decided to nominate Chicago brown-noser Andrew Traver to permanently lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

In the astute words of Bob Owens, President Walking Eagle has nominated a pedophile to run the local PTA.  While he’s allegedly a “nice enough guy”, he’s anti-gun and an incompetent middle-level leader.  Certainly not the type one would choose to clean up the corruption in any organization. 

But if the Senate is stupid enough to confirm his nomination, he’ll help close that flapping gown by taking the blame for pushing the progressive liberal anti-gun agenda.

The End Of Federal Money-Laundering?

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Taxes are a big theme in this year’s midterm election mudslinging contest.  It is not just a response to the current administration’s obvious attempts to crush the productive in order to maintain their personal wealth and delusions of power but rather quite a normal reflex.  Humans, being just another species of animal (regardless what self-perceived elitists like to think about themselves and others in their little herd), are normally self-protective, selfish, and therefore not really very generous until such time as they, themselves, feel their personal needs have been safely and securely met.

Progressives, in their contempt for the protections of  the fallibility of humans as written into the governing documents of the Republic by our Founding Fathers, have always known this.  And they have used it for their own equally selfish advantage by professing to offer something for nothing to those who have not fairly earned it.  The ideology of “distributing the wealth” plays on the inherently sympathetic nature of the inherently self-protective, using age-old exhortations to Man’s “higher nature” to press the guilt button and thereby gain acquiese to more and more of the fruits of their labors.

I see the rise of the Tea Party as a logical response to this theft.  And I have come to see the idiocy in believing there can be much (if any) good in what is essentially money laundering by the federal government.  The Enumerated Powers were quite clear yet today we pay thousands and thousands of bureaucrats two and three times the going rate to decide how we should be spending our money on things in which the federal government simply does not belong.  In the same way Jesus is reported to have overturned the tables of the money-changers in the temple, so now does the Tea Party stand to overturn the same thievery that has become the federal government.

What good does it to give money to what is essentially a charitable endeavor (food stamps, welfare, Social Security, even education) but allow a big bite to be taken out of it before it may be used as originally intended?  What most readily recognize as a charity gets double-dipped for they must give money to the federal government in order to be recognized as doing charitable work in the first place; then our tax dollars pay thousands of bureaucrats to monitor the flow of money from donor to recipient.  Would it not be better to be able to hand over some of your dollars directly to someone who is, say, stocking a food pantry and know that it is going to be spent on food, rather than going first to subsidize some bureaucrat’s above-average lifestyle?  Would you not be more willing to donate in the first place, and even to donate more?

I know I would.  And for anyone who thinks that this tax-loving bureaucratic micro-regulating of charities is a good idea, I would only point to organizations like ACORN and ask you just how well has that worked out?  In this age of free-flowing information, I would err on the thought that word of mouth about organizations pocketing more than reasonable expenses (United Way, anyone?) would spread quickly and they would soon find their donations dropping; the worst would have to close their doors and the userers in charge would have to go out and earn a real living.

The same can be said for unions, which have become little more than the worst kind of charities.  The truth is, teachers and teamsters, that your Viagra is not my problem and if you think your dues can make it so, just ask Jimmy Hoffa what happened to Michigan.  Even banks, when subject to the free-flow of information in a truly free market, would not stay in business very long when they force responsible customers to pay for their loans to customers who are less responsible.

The federal government has long overstepped its bounds and their demonstrations of entitlement to do so become more clear each day.  Why else is President Walking Eagle stumping around the country inciting violence towards those who disagree with his socialist policies – on our dime?  I don’t recall that calling those who don’t want to pay to support millions more people with entitlements the “enemy” was part of his job description.  But it is certainly in the job description of we, the people, to find and to root out the enemies both without and within.

And that is why November 2nd is so important.  There are lamestream media squeakings this morning about sending the “inexperienced” into our “complicated” contemporary federal government machine in Washington.  But at the end of the day and in the final analysis it is exactly such “inexperience” that is needed to cut the crap if we don’t want Americans to end up in Greece or France without need for a passport and plane ride.  They are needed to walk those Democrat-desecrated hallowed halls wielding the scalpel about which His Transparency lied during the 2008 election campaign and then use it to cut out the heart of progressive liberalism whether it comes in the guise of an ass or a RINO and restore the Republic; beholden to no one except those who sent them there to do that very job.

As the Justice Department would say, “Bring out your dead and vote early and often.”

Bad Bush Only Eavesdropped, Obama Assassinates?

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This is beyond the pale of the pale.  Anyone who continues to defend this administration needs to be institutionalized, for the hypocrisy shown by this activity is beyond staggering. 

And of course the lame-stream media doesn’t give a damn.

 

More from Glenn Greenwald:

Friday, Jun 25, 2010 08:26 ET
How many Americans are targeted for assassination?
By Glenn Greenwald

When The Washington Post’s Dana Priest first revealed (in passing) back in January that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens targeted for assassination, she wrote that “as of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens.” In April, both the Post and the NYT confirmed that the administration had specifically authorized the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. Today, The Washington Times’ Eli Lake has an interview with Obama’s top Terrorism adviser John Brennan in which Brennan strongly suggests that the number of U.S. citizens targeted for assassination could actually be “dozens”:

Dozens of Americans have joined terrorist groups and are posing a threat to the United States and its interests abroad, the president’s most senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security said Thursday. . . . “There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us,” said John O. Brennan, deputy White House national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism. . . .

“If a person is a U.S. citizen, and he is on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to attack our troops, he will face the full brunt of the U.S. military response,” Mr. Brennan said. “If an American person or citizen is in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place, and they are trying to carry out attacks against U.S. interests, they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response. And it can take many forms.”

Nobody — or at least not me — disputes the right of the U.S. or any other country to kill someone on an actual battlefield during war without due process. That’s just obvious, but that’s not remotely what Brennan is talking about, and it’s not remotely what this assassination program is about. Indeed, Brennan explicitly identified two indistinguishable groups of American citizens who “will face the full brunt of a U.S. response”: (1) those “on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq”; and (2) those “in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place.” In other words, the entire world is a “battlefield” — countries where there is a war and countries where there isn’t — and the President’s “battlefield” powers, which are unlimited, extend everywhere. That theory — the whole world is a battlefield, even the U.S. — was the core premise that spawned 8 years of Bush/Cheney radicalism, and it has been adopted in full by the Obama administration (indeed, it was that “whole-world-is-a-battlefield” theory which Elena Kagan explicitly endorsed during her confirmation hearing for Solicitor General).

Anyone who doubts that the Obama administration has adopted the core Terrorism policies of Bush/Cheney should listen to the concession — or boast — which Brennan himself made in his interview with Lake:

Mr. Brennan toward the end of the interview acknowledged that, despite some differences, there is considerable continuity between the counterterrorism policies of President Bush and President Obama.

“There has been a lot of continuity of effort here from the previous administration to this one,” he said. “There are some important distinctions, but sometimes there is too much made of those distinctions. We are building upon some of the good foundational work that has been done.”

I would really like never to hear again the complaint that comparing Bush and Obama’s Terrorism and civil liberties policies is unfair, invalid or hyperbolic given that Obama’s top Terrorism adviser himself touts that comparison. And that’s anything but a surprise, given that Brennan was a Bush-era CIA official who defended many of the most controversial Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies.

I’ve written at length about the reasons why targeting American citizens for assassination who are far away from a “battlefield” is so odious and tyrannical, and I won’t repeat those arguments here. Suffice to say — and I’m asking this literally — if you’re someone who believes, or are at least willing to acquiesce to the claim, that the U.S. President has the power to target your fellow citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process, what unchecked presidential powers wouldn’t you support or acquiesce to? I’d really like to hear an answer to that. That’s the question Al Gore asked about George Bush in a 2006 speech condemning Bush’s claimed powers merely to eavesdrop on and imprison American citizens without charges, let alone assassinate them: “If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? . . . If the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can’t he do?” Can anyone defending this Obama policy answer that question?

One other thing that is truly amazing: the U.S. tried to import this same due-process-free policy to Afghanistan. There, the U.S. last year compiled a “hit list” of 50 Afghan citizens whose assassination it authorized on the alleged ground (never charged or convicted) that they were drug “kingpins” or funding the Talbian. You know what happened? This:

A U.S. military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops. . . .

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts . . . said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial . . . “They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes,” Daud . “We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own” . . . .

The U.S. military and NATO officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of NATO’s new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban.. . . . “There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty,” [Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister] said. “If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?”

In other words, Afghans — the people we’re occupying in order to teach about Freedom and Democracy — are far more protective of due process and the rule of law for their own citizens than Americans are who meekly submit to Obama’s identical policy of assassination for their fellow citizens. It might make more sense for Afghanistan to invade and occupy the U.S. in order to spread the rule of law and constitutional values here.

What makes all this most remarkable is the level of screeching protests Democrats engaged in when Bush merely wanted to eavesdrop on and detain Americans without any judicial oversight or due process. Remember all that? Click here and here for a quick refresher. Yet here is Barack Obama doing far worse to them than that without any due process or judicial oversight — he’s targeting them for assassination — and there is barely a peep of protest from the same Party that spent years depicting “mere” warrantless eavesdropping and due-process-free detention to be the acts of a savage, lawless tyrant. And, of course, Obama himself back then joined in those orgies of condemnation, as reflected by this December, 2008, answer he gave to Charlie Savage, then of The Boston Globe, regarding his views of executive power:

5. Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

[Obama]: No. I reject the Bush Administration’s claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

So back then, Obama said the President lacks the power merely to detain U.S. citizens without charges; indeed, when asked if “the Constitution permit[s]” that, he responded: “no.” Yet now, as President, he claims the power to assassinate them without charges. Could even his hardest-core loyalists try to reconcile that with a straight face? As Spencer Ackerman documented in April, not even John Yoo claimed that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming here. Given Brennan’s strong suggestion that there are not merely three but “dozens” of Americans who are being targeted or at least could be (“they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response”) — and given the huge number of times the Government has falsely accused individuals of Terrorism and its demonstrated willingness to imprison knowingly innocent detainees — is it time yet to have a debate about whether we think the President should be able to exercise a power like this?

It begs the question of exactly how one defines a “terrorist group”, doesn’t it?

Dems DISCLOSE More Free-Speech Clamp-Downs

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As expected, the Democrats response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was to try and hurry up a way to shut down the free speech of those who are vigorously opposing their ramrod, socialist tactics; opposition they fearfully know will only increase as the November mid-term elections draw near.

On April 29, 2010, Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced H.R. 5175, 180-degree-from-intention-titled, the “Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections” (DISCLOSE) Act.  Essentially, what this bill does is put back all sorts of campaign finance reporting requirements, including putting the names of top donors into television ads.  It’s yet another descent into that special hell known as federal government bureacracy for organizations both large and small but what is even more disconcerting than this end-run around free speech is that in order to buy enough votes to pass it, the bill has been altered so as to exempt some of the Democrats’ largest opponents of it.  Like the NRA.

 By calculatingly setting criteria for exemption from their stringent disclosure requirements to outside groups with no less than 500,000 with members in 50 states, that have existed for at least 10 years and  accept no more than 15 percent of their funding from corporate or union sources, the running-scared progressive liberals are clearly seeking to shut down the ability of newer, smaller conservative groups like the Tea Parties to exercise their right to free speech during the mid-term elections.

Another vote on this hits the floor of the House tomorrow.  The following are key House members who should be contacted and encouraged to vote NO:

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Administration 202-225-2801 or 202-225-5823
Rep. Baron Hill (IN-09), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy 202-225-5315 or 202-226-6866
Rep. Jim Matheson (UT-02), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications 202-225-3011 or 202-225-5638
Altmire, Jason (PA-04) 202-225-2565 or 202-226-2274
Baca, Joe (CA-43) 202-225-6161 or 202-225-8671
Barrow, John (GA-12) 202-225-2823 or 202-225-3377
Berry, Marion (AR-01) 202-225-4076 or 202-225-5602
Bishop, Sanford (GA-02) 202-225-3631 or 202-225-2203
Boren, Dan (OK-02) 202-225-2701 or 202-225-3038
Boyd, Allen (FL-02) 202-225-5235 or 202-225-5615
Bright, Bobby (AL-02) 202-225-2901 or 202-225-8913
Cardoza, Dennis (CA-18) 202-225-6131
Carney, Christopher (PA-10) 202-225-3731
Childers, Travis (MS-01) 202-225-4306 or 202-225-3549
Cooper, Jim (TN-05) 202-225-4311 or 202-226-1035
Costa, Jim (CA-20) 202-225-3341 or 202-225-9308
Cuellar, Henry (TX-28) 202-225-1640 or 202-225-1641
Dahlkemper, Kathy (PA-03) 202-225-5406 or 202-225-3103
Davis, Lincoln (TN-04) 202-225-6831 or 202-226-5172
Donnelly, Joe (IN-02) 202-225-3915 or 202-225-6798
Gordon, Bart (TN-06) 202-225-4231
Holden, Tim (PA-17) 202-225-5546 or 202-226-0996
Kratovil, Jr., Frank (MD-01) 202-225-5311 or 202-225-0254
McIntyre, Mike (NC-07) 202-225-2731 or 202-225-5773
Markey, Betsy (CO-04) 202-225-4676 or 202-225-5870
Marshall, Jim (GA-08) 202-225-6531 or 202-225-3013
Matheson, Jim (UT-02) 202-225-3011 or 202-225-5638
Melancon, Charlie (LA-03) 202-225-4031 or 202-226-3944
Michaud, Mike (ME-02) 202-225-6306 or 202-225-2943
Minnick, Walt (ID-01) 202-225-6611 or 202-225-3029
Mitchell, Harry (AZ-05) 202-225-2190
Moore, Dennis (KS-03) 202-225-2865 or 202-225-2807
Murphy, Scott (NY-20) 202-225-5614 or 202-225-1168
Nye, Glenn (VA-02) 202-225-4215 or 202-225-4218
Peterson, Collin (MN-07) 202-225-2165 or 202-225-1593
Salazar, John (CO-03) 202-225-4761 or 202-226-9669
Scott, David (GA-13) 202-225-2939 or 202-225-4628
Space, Zack (OH-18) 202-225-6265 or 202-225-3394
Tanner, John (TN-08) 202-225-4714 or 202-225-1765
Taylor, Gene (MS-04) 202-225-5772 or 202-225-7074

The Newest Enemy Of Liberals: Best Friends

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One thing that stands out about progressive liberals is their fear.  Perhaps their greatest fear is that they aren’t good enough to make the cut, so instead of working on themselves, gaining knowledge, building skills, they take the wasteful tack of tearing down others to their level of incompetence.  It is the root cause of entitlement mentality derangement syndrome and why His Transparency was able to successfully cloak a skimpy resume accompanied with the false message of “hope and change”.

But the truth is that there is no such thing as a free lunch.  To get ahead you have to work hard, and you often have more failures than successes.  What we see in our schools today, however, is a rigid “no failure” posture.  Johnny didn’t study for Friday’s test as hard as Janey and therefore can’t properly answer all the questions?  That’s ok.  It’s not really Johnny’s fault (or even his parents’ fault) so we’ll give him a pass.  As the years roll on, Johnny continues to be coddled like some hot house flower and is eventually graduated with a serious lack of knowledge and skills but a strong sense he can do no wrong and that he’ll be taken care of regardless his effort or outcome.  Janey, too, is left with a sense that effort doesn’t really matter; both are left lacking the skills required to push ahead when the going gets tough or any understanding of accomplishment or the pride that comes with it.

In the real world, Johnny would be deemed incompetant and passed over for his lack of knowledge.  Indeed, this is the reality now faced by the current generation of our coddled graduates; is it any wonder that young people voted for President Walking Eagle in record numbers?  He is a walking, talking poster child for this twist on the Peter Principle (the theory that a person will rise to the level of their incompetance).  And it is this reality that the progressive liberals fight with tooth and nail in their fear-filled howls of protest against “big business”, “oligarchies”, and “greedy corporations”.

Now, if attempting to equalize outcomes isn’t bad enough, progressive liberals are dangerously taking this idea even farther.  Marc Thiessen points to an article in The New York Times that has outed their latest “we, the sheeple” ideology:  best friends are a bad thing.

…the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

To be sure, bullying has as much place in the schoolyard as it does at the dinner table or in the board room, but to use the fear of bullying in our schools to deny children the means of learning how and when to trust others by deliberately stripping away their opportunity to form close bonds with one another is both absurd and dangerous.  Not receiving an invitation to your best friend’s birthday party does not have the same ramifications as not receiving an offer for a much-needed job.  Yet it is through dealing with such tough denials by others from within the safety of the family that we learn the skills needed to survive and, indeed, to thrive.

“No one can teach you what a great friend is, what a fair-weather friend is, what a treacherous and betraying friend is except to have a great friend, a fair-weather friend or a treacherous and betraying friend,” said Michael Thompson, a psychologist who is an author of the book “Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children.”

While in can be argued that schools are one of the most important environments in which our children learn social skills, it is not the school’s responsibility to control a child’s relationships unless it directly interferes with the school’s primary directive:  the teaching of information.  The responsibility for managing a child’s relationships properly belongs to their parents; a responsibility American society continues to abdicate to others with dangerous agendas at greater and greater risk.

Arizona Slowly Being Ceded To Mexican Criminals

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Our Nancy-boy-in-Chief has said he wants to “kick some ass” but if it wasn’t clear before it will be very clear now that he means to kick only the asses of Americans.  Rather than stand up to Constitutional responsibilities to secure and protect America’s borders, the federal government has, in effect, gotten down on bended knee to Mexico by posting signs 80 miles inside the Arizona border with Mexico warning U.S. citizens to not enter the park area because it isn’t safe due to the high volume of heavily-armed drug smugglers and human traffickers pouring in on a daily basis.

This is decidedly a “WTF?” moment.  But it isn’t new.  Two-thirds of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is off-limits to Americans.  The area has become so dangerous “the Park Services uses it as a training ground for tactical operations” and National Geographic Adventure Magazine wrote:  “Welcome to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where backpackers carry bales of marijuana and park rangers carry assault rifles – and where ranger Kris Eggle paid the ultimate price.”  The 28-year old ranger was shot and killed by a drug runner in 2002 but things have continued to go downhill ever since.  It is estimated that over $2 million worth of drugs come through Organ Pipe every single day.

For almost 4 years, 3,500 acres of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge has been closed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service because “public use of the area is not prudent“. 

It’s common knowledge that President Pantywaist inhaled, but regardless his views of illegal drug use, that’s no excuse for tactitly allowing this escalation of drug smuggling and violence.  It’s way past time for our southern border to be secured, not to be considering granting yet more amnesty to criminals.

Memorial Day 2010

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As today dawns, I remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that all Americans may continue to enjoy our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On this day I bless each one of you; may God hold you close and shield you from the pain of seeing those who would now trade those rights for little more than promises of the unearned fruits of another’s labors and so again become the slaves of tyranny. By your example and in your names I pray that we may find the strength to say no to all that threatens America’s freedoms and to continue the fight for liberty and justice for all.

Today we look back and embrace again the original meaning given to this day: the spirit of redemptive sacrifice. We must renew our pledge to American ideals and remember American exceptionalism and our duty to uphold freedom in the world.

For it is rivers of red blood that once ran across American soil and those same sacrifices made by Americans all over the world that allow us to take today off from work, host a barbeque, and watch the Indianapolis 500. Those rivers of red American blood are what allow some to get drunk and make a fool out of themselves in public and some to just make fools out of themselves in public – today or any other day.

For this, though some of us never forget, today we honor you.

May 5th Is Not An American Holiday

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While the American military deserves a great deal of credit for their support of the fight that culminated in Mexico’s independence from Spain on May 5, 1862, Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday.  And like Americans on the Fourth of July, Mexicans should fly their flag proudly.

But when those of Mexican heritage celebrate here in the United States, the fact is that it remains the celebration of another country and the Mexican flag may never take precedence over Old Glory.  Yet that is exactly what happened on May 5th when teens attending Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California were sent home from school for wearing t-shirts and bandanas with an American flag on them.

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts “incendiary” that would lead to fights on campus.

“They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended,” Dominic Maciel, Galli’s friend, said.

…to many Mexican-American students at Live Oak, this was a big deal. They say they were offended by the five boys and others for wearing American colors on a Mexican holiday.

“I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,” Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, said. “We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”

Some Mexicans living in the United States, we’ll presume for the sake of argument they are living here as legal American citizens, are offended by people displaying the American flag because today is a celebration day in another country?  They are offended because they chose to become a citizen of a country where they are free to celebrate their heritage without fear of retribution and find it offensive other citizens are proud of that fact?

¿Jose, puede decir usted, “loco”?

As for Mexican students not “disrespecting” America, please don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.  Just the fact a Mexican student would dare to complain about someone displaying the American flag is disrespectful.  And as a reminder of this same disrepect, these photos were taken at Montebello High School in California on March 28, 2006, the last time illegal immigration was addressed:

 

3/28/06 Montebello High School, California

3/28/06 Montebello High School, California

3/28/06 Montebello High School, California

3/28/06 Montebello High School, California

 

Frankly, I find this attitude and these kinds of actions not only gut-wrenchingly offensive but also very disturbing and think that in the case of the students at Live Oak the district ought to discipline the school’s administration .  As I dare say does every honest and patriotic American of any ethnic heritage.