For Whom the Bell Tolls, Nancy . . . It Tolls for Thee

So Nancy Pelosi, aka "Cruella deVille", has reneged on her promise to post the 2000-plus page Health Care Bill online for 72hrs. and will try to ram it through this Saturday. Seems to me like a little act of spite on her part since we racist hatemongers dared to show up in D.C.--on a weekday--at our oh-so-enlightened betters' offices to spew our ignorant, racist rantings in person.

And all the while we're concentrating on der Fraulein Fuhrer's Health Care monstrosity, the Senate committee just passed the "Level the Playing Field and Turn the U.S. into a Third World Country" Global Warming Hoax Bill, already touted as beneficial to Obama's up-coming trip to Copenhagen to sign away our sovereignty.

While Tuesday's elections in NJ and VA are positive signs for 2010, I don't think we can afford to wait, folks. By the time the 2010 elections roll around, we may very likely won't be having elections at this rate. Or if we do, they'll resemble Sadam Hussein 99% landslide victory-type elections. We gotta act, and we gotta act fast. Phone calls, emails, letters, "pink slips", personal visits and mass demonstrations just ain't cuttin' it.

Time to start thinking about a mass recall movement.

Granted, the Constitution never did have "recall" provision (except where State Legislatures could recall a Senator if he wasn't acting in the state's best interest prior to the 17th Amendment). It was an invention of the Woodrow Wilson Progressive movement. But it's a useful tool. And there is some satisfaction in using a Progressive weapon against them.

But outside of re-enacting the final scene from the movie "V for Vendetta", I don't see any other way open to us ignorant "tea baggers".

If we start a massive recall process in every single state that allows for it, that might wake 'em up. In the meantime, we would actually be taking positive steps toward removing these arrogant politicians from office before they do anymore irreparable damage.

Whaddya say?

Don't Cry For Me Nancy Pelosi

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she feared the anger over healthcare reform debate in the United States could culminate in an act of violence. Speaking at her weekly news conference in Washington, Pelosi showed what Politico said was uncharacteristic emotion when she speculated that the bitter political rhetoric over healthcare could drive some unstable character to hurt someone. "I wish we would all curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements and understand that some of the ears that it is falling on are not as balanced as the person making the statements may assume," Pelosi said.


She's right, ya know . . .

"You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them. Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school." --Van Jones.

From St. Louis Today stltoday.com:
School bus beating http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybAxtwf6CXI

" astroturf . . . carrying swastikas . . ." http://www.thefoxnation.com/town-hall-meetings/2009/08/05/pelosi-town-hall-protesters-carrying-swastikas

Members of SEIU beat a black man at Russ Carnahan Town Hall Meeting
for passing out "Don't Tread on Me" flags:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXBOgPCh9w&feature=player_embedded

From The Hill's Blog Briefing Room:
Town hall protesters are "evil-mongers," says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)Reid coined the term in a speech to an energy conference in Las Vegas this week and repeated it in an interview with Politics Daily.

From the AP:
　
Finger bitten off during California health protest
(AP) – Sep 3, 2009
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man's finger.

Ventura County Sheriff's Capt. Frank O'Hanlon says about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms rallied Wednesday night on a street corner. One protester walked across the street to confront about 25 counter-demonstrators.

O'Hanlon says the man got into an argument and fist fight, during which he bit off the left pinky of a 65-year-old man who opposed health care reform.

From ABC:
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" in an exclusive appearance that reports a group of U.S. Marines may have killed 24 Iraqi civilians following an IED explosion in Haditha, Iraq, was "worse than Abu Ghraib," calling their actions war crimes committed "in cold blood."

From the NY Times:
　
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 23-year-old man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire from his truck at two soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station here on Monday morning, killing one private and wounding another, the police said.

The gunman, identified by the police as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Little
Rock, fled the scene and was arrested minutes later a short distance from the recruiting station, in a bustling suburban shopping center. The police confiscated a Russian-made SKS semiautomatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun from his black pickup truck.

In a lengthy interview with the police, Mr. Muhammad said he was angry about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chief Thomas said. Previously known as Carlos Bledsoe, Mr. Muhammad told investigators that he had converted to Islam as a teenager, Chief Thomas said.

Male Pro-Choice artist displays his artwork depicting a female crucified in front of our Nation's Capitol building. http://www.dcpages.com/gallery/Abortion-Rights-March/DSC03205.jpg.html

(CNN) -- Authorities have charged an Owosso, Michigan, man with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder in the Friday shooting deaths of an anti-abortion activist and another man, a prosecutor's office said.

Authorities say the suspect, Harlan James Drake, was offended by anti-abortion material that the activist had displayed across from the school all week.

Yeah, Madam Speaker, maybe ya'll should "curb your enthusiasm".

This Really Ain't About Obama

　
What the Zombie media stubbornly refuses to understand about the Tea Party/Town Hall protest movement is it really ain't about Obama. Sure, while in their world the sun rises and sets on their chosen messiah, most of us who are "mad as hell and ain't gonna take it anymore!" have our sites focused much closer to home . . .

It's that branch of the government we hired to represent us.


Last summer during the whole "Hope and Change!" euphoria, I tried to explain to anyone who would listen, "If you really want change, forget who's running for president! Look at our Senators and Reps!"

An under-reported story from last summer was how the American people shut down the phone lines to the Capitol over something called TARP. What the politicians, candidates and Zombie media failed to realize during the whole TARP fiasco was the only thing bipartisan about it was that nobody wanted it! Left, right, in the middle . . . it didn't matter. We. Did. Not. Want. It!

McCain announced he'd suspend his campaign to rush back to D.C. to be seemingly the voice of reason in that madness. His poll numbers went up. I can't help but think it was because there was a slight glimmer of hope that finally somebody'd heard us . . .


But when he emerged from the stinking backrooms of the Senate chambers to tell us that he, too--the so-called "fiscal conservative"--had fallen under the Paulsen spell, that was it. 'Cause see, regardless if Hillary, McCain or Obama won, things were going to go on business as usual. While the Zombie media gave us daily Bush's approval ratings in the teens and 20s, little was said about how Congress could only dream of getting numbers that high. At one point, Pelosi, Reid and friends ranked a whopping 9%. 9%!

A Rasmussin poll during this time period said that 70% of people polled said names picked randomly from the phone book could do a better job. Accompanying this poll was a little factoid:
Prior to 1968, the House and Senate saw about a 50% turn-over at election time. After 1968, that turn-over rate dropped to roughly 20%.

Yes, you can say gerrymandering districts and such abominations as "McCain Feingold" went a long way toward insuring incumbents life-terms, much of it was our own damned fault. How often we said, " That Senator (or Rep) So-and-So from Such-and-Such State has got to GO!" but then looked at our own Senators and Reps and thought, "But our guy's (or gal's) pretty good!" Yeah, it was always somebody else's politicians who were the problem. When all along, everybody was thinking the same thing and voting appropriately.

Is it any wonder why we kept feeling the old cliche--the more things change, the more they stay the same?

TARP was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for me. While I'd long grumbled about my local Reps and Senators, this time I made a point of looking up exactly how each voted, determining to vote OUT of office the ones who'd supported that destructive mess. And I strongly urged everyone I came in contact with to do the same. While many like me were beginning to wake up, it was sadly too late. We'd been so caught up in the presidential race and the circus of the DNC primaries, we'd paid little attention to our local candidate offerings. So we chose to vote for the other guy (or gal) out of frustration, or fell back to following the Party lines.

But we were awake nonetheless! So the guy or the gal we voted for may not have been anything other than the lesser of two evils, but we decided we were going to start holding them to the jobs we'd hired them to do.

I don't think I'm alone in saying most of us celebrated Obama's historical election and were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But not so our Senators and Reps. Because regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, the U.S. governmental system according to the Constitution gave us an important check on disagreeable policies--the Legislative branch.

So we wrote. We emailed. We called. We petitioned. We showed up at their offices.

And we were dismissed with an arrogant flippancy of "We won! We can do whatever we damned-well feel like!"

NO!

Our Constitution guarantees us the right to petition our government for redress of grievances. But the more our Senators and Congressional Representatives poke us in the eye and tell us to "Sit down, shut up, and sign the check!" the angrier we become.

I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Jeff Bingamen, Chris Dodd, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham, John Murtha (and the list goes on and on) ain't African-American. Seems to me, the vast majority of those butts sitting on Capitol Hill are as white as a fish's belly. So while former Dixie-crat (and lilly white-butt) Jimmy Carter can claim it's all about race--well, then . . . maybe he's right.

If Arrogant Politician can be considered a "race".

Then maybe we can consider clueless, elitist Zombie media a "religion".

Then we'll really be bigots!

"Angry Mobs"?

Immigration--they labeled us "racists".

TARP--they deceived us.

Stimulus--they injured us.

Omnibus--they dismissed us.

DHS Memo--they tried to marginalized us.

Tea Parties--they ridiculed us.

Airforce One Photo-op--they frightened us.

Cap and Trade--they will destroy us.

Cash for Clunkers--they confound us.

Health Care--they slander, they libel, and they try to intimidate us.

$5Million for private jets--they insult us.

I am half-watching "Red Eye" on FNC as I write this, and they are showing clips of the latest DNC attack ad. Only part I actually caught was something along the lines of "methods taken straight from the playbooks of the heads of the conservatives . . ."

Damn straight, we did! The playbooks of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin . . .

"Swastikas", Madam Speaker? Perhaps you should feel lucky we aren't coming armed with torches and pitchforks, with some bearing buckets of tar and feathers. Oh! And a nice, long rail to run y'all out of town on.

The anger is real. It is genuine. It is the rattle snake coiled on the Gladsden flag, rattle hissing in warning:

Don't tread on us!

Oh! And to the RNC: Take a hike! One of the problems with the awakening of the American People is our eyes are now wide open, and don't think y'all are immune from our outrage. We see right through your jumping onto the bandwagon here. You're just angling for votes, claiming to be "one of us".

You ain't.

Introduction

Recently started reading Alex de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America", and was struck by two ideas specifically mentioned in the Introduction by the abridged edition's editor, Richard Heffner. de Tocqueville saw the potential for democracy to become the tyranny of the majority. But he offered "tools which free men might in their artestry create to strengthen their ancient freedoms."

One of these "tools" was: an idependent press, in which de Tocqueville argued that only as such does the individual have a voice against oppression.

However, the whole concept of a free, independent press is virtually non-existant today. With huge corporations owning newspapers, television and radio news (and increasingly tied directly to government), and "news wire" journalism, in which entities such as AP or Reuters constitutes the vast majority of news stories in even local newspapers, the "individual" voice is muffled. Except on the internet. It remains the last true outlet for the individual.

The second "tool" de Tocquville offers according to Heffner is "groups of citizens to guard always the rights and interests of their individual fellows, constantly aware that their own freedom depends upon the extent to which they will defend that of every other citizen".

Many years ago, I never hesistated to use my individual "voice". In high school, I had my own opinion column in the school newspaper, which earned an award for editorial writing from the New Mexico Press Women's Association. I continued to be a news-junkie, but as I grew older, I guess I began to believe that surpression my opinionated self was a sign of wisdom. After all, "opinions are like a**holes, everybody has one", and would actually tell people, "Don't ask my opinion. Because then I'll have to give it to you, and you probably won't like it." Instead, it'd come out in the occasional rant to whatever poor sucker happened to be standing next to me--co-workers, neighbors, friends, family.

Starting in the spring of '08, though, these rants were becoming more and more frequent, and more and more intense because I sensed something just wasn't right. It hadn't been right for a long while, but I was seeing signs of extremely alarming trends. Based on my addiction to books and history, Mark Twain's quote, "History might not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme" took on even more importance. It wasn't enough for me to simply vent to co-workers and family, or the hapless politician who dared knock on my door. Increasingly I felt as though this country was on an express train speeding through the mountains, and I was a lone voice screaming "THE BRIDGE IS OUT AHEAD!" against the roar of the locomotive. Trying to get the train to slow down, proceed cautiously. To get people to STOP AND THINK! Still, I hesitated using my voice publicly. Who am I, after all, but yet another schlub with an opinion? So just stay quiet. Vote. But otherwise, keep those opinions to myself.

Except a very vivid memory popped into my head. When I was nine, my mother took me to see the Bicentenial Train when it came through town. Among the many displays was a glass-encased copy of the Declaration of Independence. My mother made a point of drawing my attention to two signatures on the bottom of the document:
Richard Henry Lee, and Francis Lightfoot Lee.

"Those are your ancestors," she told me.

Though I wasn't old enough to quite understand the significance of this, it still impressed me. Now that I was old enough to comprehend, I began to feel guilty. Through my veins flows the blood of two men who had mutally pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. And was not my remaining silent dishonoring them?

I began seeking out avenues on the internet, but I found the various established venues frustrating or restricting.

Thus the purpose behind this blog. Here I can add my individual voice and my bark to the packs of guard dogs defending the individual rights of my fellow Americans.