Category Archives: The Constitution

July 9, 2016 · 2:25 pm

Another afternoon in the doctor’s waiting room

“Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. It may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken the whole structure cracks and sinks. Any constructive effort and all human relations – personal, political, and commercial – depend on being able to depend on promises.”

– B.H. Liddell Hart, “Why We Don’t Learn From History”

The massacre of police officers in Dallas late Thursday night, that left 11 police officers shot, 5 fatally, continues to fuel politicians, pundits, political activists and assorted “experts” filling the airwaves and internet with analysis, insights, context, and plenty of SPIN (LIES).  All these public mouthpieces yammer on about how to fix “this problem”.  Politicians make a living  talking about “the problems”, but hardly ever fix any of them.  “This problem”, is not just black and white.

There are politicians fueling BLM, starting with President Obama and his minions at the White House.  There are black grievance industry activists, many whom have become rich off the backs of  “civil rights” activism in America.  There are politicians on the right drawing a red line on the 2nd Amendment.  There are two presidential campaigns trying to capitalize on looking “presidential” in this crisis.  There are police officers across America outraged, saddened and worrying about how to protect their fellow citizens, while feeling under attack and more and more like walking targets wearing their uniforms.   There are many angry black people being encouraged to take to the streets and demand “justice”.  There are many angry white people too…… some racists, some who feel their right to own guns is under attack, some who are outraged about the police being attacked, etc., etc., etc.  Again, “this problem” isn’t just black and white.

There is the Black Lives Matter movement, which at this point should be investigated by federal law enforcement, as to who is funding the movement, who is leading this movement, and determining if this group should be designated a terrorist group.  BLM sure looks like an anarchist organization, working to fuel racial discord, encourage attacks on civil law enforcement and to fuel a breakdown of American society.

Fueling racial tensions in America has been a staple tactic of communist, far-left factions, and it is part of the political playbook of people very close to the Obama administration.  Sorry, that’s the truth.  Van Jones was part of an anarchist movement, an avowed Marxist and an advocate of inciting race wars to advance political change in America.  President Obama follows the Cloward-Piven political strategy.

The mainstream press mentions President Obama’s background as a “community organizer” in Chicago often, but they never really explain the history of  “community organizing”.  Saul Alinksy, an American radical, dedicated to fueling racial tensions for political purposes, founded community organizing and whether you are a leftist who believes, you should never let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emmanuel once stated, or a right-winger,  like Rush Limbaugh, who has filled talk radio with warnings about Alinsky, Cloward-Piven and political race hustlers, the fact is community organizing is all about sensationalizing racially charged issues for political purposes.  That’s it in a nutshell.

Now, here’s a small snapshot of race interactions I saw last week.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in my primary care doctor’s waiting room.  I had a bad week with my blood sugar and despite several medication changes in the past year to get my Type 2 diabetes back under control, it’s still not.  Being put on insulin may be in my near future.  Bad week is waking up Monday morning feeling nauseated, with a really bad headache, and feeling like my head was in a fog.  Checked my blood sugar, 350.  It’s down now, but not down where it needs to be.  So, if some of my blog posts this past week were really bad, I’ll use the excuse that my head was in a fog from my diabetes, lol.

So, I was sitting there waiting to see my wonderful, Syrian-born doctor, whom I really think the world of, because beyond being a very good doctor, he always takes the time to talk to me like a person, not just a number.  Some doctors treat you like you’re just a list of symptoms on a page to examine, diagnose and prescribe a remedy.  My doctor looks me in the eye and listens to me.

While in his waiting room, CNN was playing on the TV, with more news on the Dallas massacre.

There were several other patients waiting, some white, some black.  The receptionists were two black ladies.  The receptionists know me as an established patient and they’re always smiling, helpful and wonderful.  The other patients all behaved courteously and as I waited this elderly white lady showed up, walking with a cane.

I don’t know this lady’s name and the next time I see her, I need to get her name, but we know each other from my doctor’s waiting room and my work in a local store, where she shops often.  She sat down next to me and we picked up talking about what’s been going on in our lives since the last time we chatted, without even a moment’s hesitation.

I wrote about this elderly white lady in  a 2013 blog post, “An afternoon in the doctor’s waiting room”, and I’m going to repost the first and last paragraph of that post:

“We’re approaching that American holiday that’s come to symbolize two diverse cultures,  American settlers and American Indians, oops Native Americans or whatever is the PC-approved term, sitting together to share a meal and offer thanks to God for a successful harvest.  Agrarian societies through the ages have held similar celebrations at the end of the harvest season.  The unique component of our Thanksgiving rests heavily on our national self-image of a melting pot of cultures living in harmony, where Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a place where we will “sit down at a table of brotherhood” evokes a national yearning for the America we hope we can someday be.”

And it ended:

“It’s not about making race the central theme at the dinner table, but to learn to make a seat at the table and feed as many people as possible that will lead us to the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream.  Only by taking the time to get to know people, can you ever find out who they are.  People will surprise you, if you let them.  She told me that she won a motorcycle in a raffle recently, but she traded it in for a new Harley-Davidson trike.  She ended our conversation by telling me, her husband doesn’t have to ask her twice if she wants to ride, because she has always loved to ride motorcycles.”

This lady’s son is a pastor working to build up a congregation for a non-denominational Protestant church and back in 2013 she invited me to her son’s church and yesterday she invited me again.  She wasn’t pushy, but sincere, just as a black lady, who came to my door this week, inviting me to her Jehovah’s Witness church was sincere and seemed to be a very nice lady.  Unlike many people, who get angry at Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to the door, I try always to be polite, because when I was young and newly married, a pair of them showed up at my door and I talked to them.  I wasn’t so much curious about their religion, but why they go door-to-door, despite getting doors slammed in their face often.  So, I asked them.

These two ladies pointed me to a Bible verse, Mark 6:7:

 “And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits”

They explained that they go by twos to spread the Gospel.  Now, I am not going to dissect their entire church doctrine, because I am not qualified, but just having a general understanding about why they do go door-to-door helped me to be more tolerant and respectful when they come to my door.

Last week, my friend, Gladius, a Southern Baptist, emailed me an audio link of a sermon, “The Faith of Our Founding Fathers”, which he gave at his local church last Sunday.  He discussed the Christian faith of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.  He laid out how much they put on the line by signing that declaration:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Gladius gave the statistics on how much many of the signers sacrificed, with many giving their very lives, during the Revolutionary War, to secure the freedoms most Americans take for granted today.  A goodly number of them died fighting in the Revolutionary War, and while Gladius didn’t go into the grim details, here are a couple examples of what the men and women of the American Revolution sacrificed, from an article by Dr. Harold Pease, “The price paid for your liberty”:

“Unable to capture Abraham Clark, another signatory, the British took their wrath out on his two sons, who were imprisoned on the notorious prison ship Jersey. “Word was sent to Clark that his boys would be freed if he would disown the revolutionary cause and praise the British Crown. At his refusal, his sons were singled out for cruel treatment. One was placed in a tiny cell and given no food. Fellow prisoners kept him alive by laboriously pushing tiny bits of food through a keyhole. Both sons somehow survived their ordeal.””

Here’s another patriot’s sacrifice:

” The British had a particular zeal for destroying the homes and property of the signers. Those suffering this fate included Benjamin Harrison, George Clymer, Dr. John Witherspoon, Philip Livingston, William Hooper and William Floyd. The sacrifices of John Hart and Francis Lewis are particularly noteworthy. “While his wife lay gravely ill, Redcoats destroyed Hart’s growing crops and ripped his many grist mills to pieces. Bent on taking him, they chased him for several days. They almost nabbed him in a wooded area, but he hid in a cave. When he returned home with his health broken, he found his wife dead and their 13 children scattered.””

Dr. Pease states:

“Probably John Quincy Adams, a son of one of the 55 patriots making the above pledge and later a president of the United States, said it best. “Posterity — You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” Let us never forget that liberty is not free. It was purchased and maintained by the blood of those before us.”

Gladius brought this same question to the forefront, “How much would you sacrifice for liberty?”  It is something all Americans need to think about.

America does need people willing to fight with all their might to preserve our liberty, but truthfully, as one who abhors violence and loves America, perhaps the best way to fight for The Constitution is to quit with the warring  political factions, quit with the endless partisan hot-headed rhetoric, quit with all the pointing fingers, but most of all:

“QUIT TREATING FELLOW AMERICANS AS YOUR ENEMY!”“

– Libertybelle, July 9, 2016

It’s time we all work as hard as we can to be Good Citizens.

It’s time for us to fight as hard as we can to unite as one nation dedicated to a common purpose – “Protecting and defending The Constitution”.

Perhaps, if we pledge “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to preserving our great nation, America can truly fulfill the dream expressed so eloquently by Martin Luther King, Jr. and at long last, “sit down at a  table of brotherhood”

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Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Gladius Maximus, Politics, The Constitution

July 7, 2016 · 5:10 pm

“Fundamental Transformation” defined

Words matter.

From Merriam-Webster:

Full Definition of fundamental

    1. 1a :  serving as an original or generating source :  primary <a discovery fundamental to modern computers>b :  serving as a basis supporting existence or determining essential structure or function : basic

    2. 2a :  of or relating to essential structure, function, or facts :  radical <fundamental change>;also :  of or dealing with general principles rather than practical application <fundamentalscience>b :  adhering to fundamentalism

    3. 3:  of, relating to, or produced by the lowest component of a complex vibration

    4. 4:  of central importance :  principal <fundamental purpose>

    5. 5:  belonging to one’s innate or ingrained characteristics :  deep-rooted <her fundamentalgood humor>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fundamental

And:

Full Definition of transformation
1
: an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed
2
: false hair worn especially by a woman to replace or supplement natural hair
3
a (1) : the operation of changing (as by rotation or mapping) one configuration or expression into another in accordance with a mathematical rule; especially : a change of variables or coordinates in which a function of new variables or coordinates is substituted for each original variable or coordinate (2) : the formula that effects a transformation
b : function 5a
c : an operation that converts (as by insertion, deletion, or permutation) one grammatical string (as a sentence) into another; also : a formal statement of such an operation
4
: genetic modification of a bacterium by incorporation of free DNA from another bacterial cell; also : genetic modification of a cell by the uptake and incorporation of exogenous DNA

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transformation

And:

Full Definition of transform

  1. transitive verb

  2. 1a:  to change in composition or structureb:  to change the outward form or appearance ofc:  to change in character or condition :convert

  3. 2:  to subject to mathematical transformation

  4. 3:  to cause (a cell) to undergo genetic transformation

  5. intransitive verb

  6. :  to become transformed:change

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transform

Americans need to wake-up to what President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” really means, very soon.  The Obama administration “fundamental transformation” continues at warp speed. He has hacked away at The Constitution,  while his administration openly and brazenly engages in corruption, then feeds the American public “narratives” (made up stories).

This FBI charade, giving Hillary Clinton a free pass, set a new legal standard – “extremely careless” (ABOVE THE LAW). Today’s Congressional testimony by FBI Director Comey pained me to watch – he admitted that Hillary’s interview to the FBI wasn’t even under oath. She allowed her IT people and her lawyers access to classified information, despite them not having the security clearance required to handle that information or having a need to know that information. Director Comey sacrificed his integrity in such an obvious manner, that his parsing rivaled former President Bill Clinton’s amazing linguistic feints. One off-hand comment of Comey’s says it all. He said he can argue both sides of any case…… indeed. He did a spectacular job defending Hillary Clinton today. Her entire home-brew email server was set up to hide her State Department emails from scrutiny (that’s her INTENT). She walked away from the State Department with all of the official State Department records she generated housed in her home. Her lawyers destroyed around 30,000 of those emails without any outside review and Comey insists there was no intention to obstruct justice or harm the United States… Director Comey sullied not only his reputation today, but he tarnished the FBI’s reputation today too.

The hearing today was the same old partisan kabuki theater – the Democrats will declare it a right-wing witch hunt, the liberal media will bury the story and focus on destroying Donald Trump. Some of the Republicans do act out of partisan motives too. So, once again we have the partisans engaged in this same old game, but the Clinton/Obama corruption has reached epic levels The entire system is not only rigged, this is wholesale public corruption.

Then there’s Donald J. Trump, pretending to be the “GOP Insurgent” working at redefining the Republican Party, all while keeping the GOP 2016 presidential campaign ensnared in endless controversies. He spouts a mishmash of mind-blowingly idiotic comments and rah-rah tough talk, with no core principles. He’s a total fraud.

President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” includes our military and includes a rapid and ruthless social engineering restructuring, downsizing, all while military readiness remains dangerously insufficient.

Every American should be very worried with our federal ship of state…

It’s heading toward an iceberg…

Impacting soon…

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Military, Politics, Public Corruption, The Constitution

July 7, 2016 · 1:48 am

The War about Words (Part 2)

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“Well,” said Maude, “there is nothing anyone can do to change human nature.  That is the one immutable, in spite of the idealists, and Rousseau.  For better or for worse, we are what we are.”

Charles thought for a while and when he spoke Maude did not consider his remark to be irrelevant: “In the old Roman religion — or was it Greek?–Justice was the last goddess to leave the world and left it to its own destruction.  She never returned.”

– Ceremony of the Innocent, written by Taylor Caldwell (p. 346)

Words matter.

A few posts back I wrote Part I of the “War about Words”, which those aligned with the political left will dismiss without any consideration, because it’s critical of President Obama and Hillary Clinton.  The same instant dismissal or obfuscations occur among the political right too, when the left attacks one of their political figures and then we have the Trump contingent too, who reject all criticisms of Trump, out of a belief that he is the last best hope for America.

Often my views draw fire from all sides, because I’m one of those annoying people who says what I think, regardless whether it agrees with a particular partisan or political agenda or whether it goes against all the “expert” opinion.  I prefer to think not only for myself, but of myself as an American, first, last, always.  I am free to think whatever the heck I want.  That’s the wonder of America!

As a child, my mother sent us off to vacation Bible school at our village church (yes, PA still has villages) and in fact, one of my direct ancestors donated the land for that church during the early settlement of that area of northeast PA in the late 1700s.  That church was a Lutheran church, but a Calvary Baptist church from another town ran a vacation Bible school in the summer too and they had a bus that picked up kids.  My mother let us go to that church’s vacation Bible school several summers.   They had all sorts of really interesting crafts and activities, but one summer, two women from that church took me aside and told me that girls are supposed to wear dresses and not cut their hair, which made me feel a deep sense of rebellion, as I sat there in shorts and with short hair.  These ladies also told me that I needed to say I wanted “to be saved” or I was going to hell.

Ordinarily, I am a crybaby, coward, but the more these two women lectured me, the more resentful and rebellious I became, because quite frankly, my church never used the words “being saved”, so I did not even understand the phrase.  I politely told these two ladies that I didn’t want “to be saved” .  They kept pushing and finally I rebelled and told them that no matter what they said, I wasn’t going to say that.  They told me I was going to hell.  When I got home, I sat at the kitchen table and bawled, because confrontations always upset me.  When I poured out my story, my mother told me I wasn’t going back there.

From where I stand, it sure looks like the partisan political factions’ endless fighting has America on the precipice that President George Washington warned about in his Farewell Address.  Yesterday, FBI Director, James Comey, laid out the entire list of crimes Hillary Clinton committed by grossly negligent handling of classified information, through the setting up of a home-brew email server in her home.  Director Comey decided not to recommend an indictment, citing that a “reasonable” prosecutor would not bring charges in this case.  Of course, once again this announcement threw the pundits into an exploding heads frenzy, because Director Comey  said Hillary Clinton’s actions were “extremely careless” rather than “grossly negligent”, but is there really a difference between the two?

Then Director Comey  added the excuse that he found no malicious intent or intent to harm America in her actions.  Of course, proving intent isn’t even required to indict under the statute, but here again, the words he carefully chose were meant to bury the email server scandal and smacked of being obviously for partisan political purposes.  Those church women meant well, but the words they wanted me to say, were words I didn’t understand or believe.  I believe Director James Comey decided to use words he fully understands, but didn’t really believe – I believe he caved to partisan political pressure from the White House.  I believe he wanted to avoid a “constitutional crisis”, because the corruption goes all the way to the White House.

Today, many liberal news outlets were already burying Hillary’s email server scandal and focusing on Trump’s antics.  To be fair, Trump hands them endless fodder with his imprudent, bizarre comments, like his latest praise of the late, brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein’s “no questions asked” internal policing policies against terrorists.   Saddam killed a lot of terrorists inside Iraq, heck, he murdered ethnic minorities too.  Trump likes strong-man leadership, but Saddam also gave safe haven to many terrorists leaders and funded terrorism abroad.

As, I’ve repeated, ad nauseum, since last Fall, Trump’s “GOP Insurgency”, waged with BILLIONS of dollars of free media, is a gift that continues giving to the Democrats, leaving the GOP in shambles, heading into a presidential election in November.  The Democrats though are uniting around Hillary, despite the Bernie Sanders insurgency campaign, paid for by private campaign donations and with far-less media attention.  The obvious, unfair and overt, media collusion by big media elites to facilitate the “GOP Insurgency”, found the media on the defensive with excuses for the obvious disparate media coverage… phrases like “earned media”, other candidates turn down interviews, etc., but make no mistake about the SPIN cycle form of INFORMATION WARFARE being waged by the political Left in America.

This SPIN is a totalitarian effort to control the ostensibly free mass media, through an orchestrated mass media saturation strategy,  using relentless repetition of messages (the mindless talking points messaging), media collusion to disseminate those messages and a constant reinforcement of the “will of people” expressed through manufactured opinion cascades, that keep stating what the majority of Americans believe…….based on a relentless repetition of polling data (an unscientific sampling of a few  people’s opinions extrapolated as reflecting the opinions of all Americans).  The combination of messaging control and manufactured opinion cascades speaks to overt mass brainwashing by political and mass media elites and an overt long-term effort to quell free speech, but this form of INFORMATION WARFARE also grossly tips the balance to one political party’s agenda.  This INFORMATION WARFARE strategy assures the Left’s political agenda dominates and becomes the “mainstream opinion”.  Just watch how the relentless repetition turned a terrorist attack into an attack on Christians who oppose gay marriage and more gun control.  The Left also mobilizes celebrity and big name “experts” to aid  their SPIN operations.

Oh, but look how they covered Trump?  Doesn’t that prove the media does give Republicans” ample coverage, well, that depends on how you define “Republican”…..  and the media told us Trump is the “GOP Insurgent intent on burning down the GOP establishment”.  Alas, here again, we come up against definitions.  What is the GOP establishment, if not the GOP?

With Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal, the liberal media will do damage control for Hillary, just like they aided leftist partisans to rewrite that Orlando “narrative” within two weeks.   In that Orlando case, a short-lived brouhaha ensued when the Justice Department tried to censor  the shooter’s 911 call and remove the shooter’s references to Islamic terrorism (the shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS and declared he was committing jihad).   Under a public backlash, Lynch released the 911 tape, but the shooter’s words even then were altered.

Words matter a great deal to those who use them to control public perception and manipulate the truth.  The Orlando shooting was usurped and turned into blaming Christian anti-gay people for the hate and promoting more gun control legislation.  Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, came out and declared we need more “love” to combat “hate”, thus advancing the left’s narrative to make it about right-wing haters and gun control rather than about radical Islamic terrorism.

In this email server scandal there’s a discernible series of actions by key players in the past week, that made it obvious that the Obama administration wanted this scandal to go away very quickly.

President Obama arranged last week to hit the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton yesterday.  Loretta Lynch had a clandestine 3o minute meeting with former president, Bill Clinton, at the airport in Phoenix last week.  Lynch described that meeting as just a chat about grandchildren, golf and BREXIT.  She played that meeting off with a news conference, proclaiming she would accept the recommendation of the FBI on the email server case.  Just like that the news broke that the FBI would interview Hillary Clinton on Saturday (a holiday weekend no less).  And on Tuesday, July 5, 2016 Director Comey came out and announced no reasonable prosecutor would indict.  Today, Loretta Lynch came out and said she accepted Director Comey’s recommendation.  Case closed.  Hillary Clinton’s minions are out in full force, saying  “it’s time to move on”.

Like rats stuck on a wheel, the Republicans in Congress, came out and announced they are going to have Director Comey testify before Congress tomorrow, to answer their questions about his decision not to recommend an indictment of Hillary Clinton.  The hearings that go nowhere again……. it’s like being trapped in a strategy that is doomed to fail and you’d think the Republicans would learn that they never win.  The Dems, with their liberal friends, control almost all the big media in America and their talking points messaging always controls who wins.

This is like constantly repeating a script that always ends the same way or that Einstein quote about people who do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.  The media and the Clinton team will opine, using their perennially tired, but always successful talking point….  “this is another right-wing witch hunt”.  The Republicans will pontificate, the media will declare Hillary won, and she will continue her march to the White House, because here’s the truth – she really is ABOVE THE LAW.

Today, I clicked on some news sites that are liberal-leaning and Hillary’s email server wasn’t a top news story, but Donald Trump’s Saddam Hussein comment was.  The liberal media was “moving on”.  Within a few more days, the email server scandal will be old news and besides FOX News talking to Trump supporters and right-wing online sites, the Clinton propaganda squad can add another media messaging coup feather to their cap.

Having personally experienced what happens if you get in the way of the Clinton propaganda efforts, during the impeachment scandal, I feel compelled to keep speaking out and to keep trying to find a way to expose their criminal abuse of power.  The details of my experience are under the Messages of mhere tab on my home page, but what I want to talk about here is what made me so determined to fight them then and what makes me determined to fight to expose their corruption now.  America can’t survive if political machines can control the media and blatantly subvert the law.  A common thread, that the pollsters and pundits keep telling us drove the Trump and Sanders “insurgent” campaigns, is American discontent with powerful elites playing by a different set of rules and that the system is rigged.

America is a unique experiment in the history of world government.  Americans believe in individual liberty:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

In the post right before this one, I linked to a piece at the Legal Insurrection blog, where  William A Jacobson relates a Twitter exchange with Karol Marcowicz that precisely captures the perilous point America is at.  Jacobson writes:

The best truly big picture view I saw was from Karol Markowicz, a columnist for the NY Post and an ex-Soviet who moved the the United States as a child.

In response to the Comey verdict, Markowicz tweeted out a statement as to how others who came from the USSR expected no other result:

.“Guys, the ex-president’s wife was never going to get indicted.”-all my USSR-born friends”

Jacobson goes on to say:

“She linked in the tweet to a post of hers on her personal website from 2013, which has this sentence in it referring to Americans who complained about their government:

“They weren’t born in a country where hundreds of years of backward government had led to this kind of cynicism that gets passed on from parents to children.”

I understood what she meant. While I wasn’t born in and didn’t grow up in the USSR, I studied there and vicariously came to know the cynicism of the system, particularly through refusenikfriends.

It wasn’t just that the powerful were above the law or there was no rule of law. It was in another dimension.

I tweeted back:

“Those who lived under communism understand exactly what just happened.”

http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/07/those-who-lived-under-communism-understand-exactly-what-just-happened/

I have been thinking a great deal about what I consider cultural DNA, with how peoples the world over develop patterns of behavior ( culture) that endure, despite the changes in government.  In fact, the people’s behavior determines how long and how much control they will tolerate from their government, to maintain the status quo and social order.

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Above: My copy of “Letters from Russia.  To the right is a folk-art wooden container my son brought back from Russia, painted in a Russian folk art style called Khohkloma.

Thinking about what to write in this Part 2 post, I ordered a book, which I had read about a long while back, that explains the Russian cultural DNA, a few years after Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America.  That cultural DNA still persists in Russia today.  The book is “Letters from Russia” and like de Tocqueville’s, “Democracy in America”, the book on Russia was written by another French nobleman, Astolphe de Custine.  Although his trip to Russia in 1839 was only three months long,  he captured life in Russia under the despot, Czar Nicholas I, in such prescient, stark detail, that historians still study his letters.  His book was banned by both, Czar Nicholas I and the Bolsheviks, who didn’t much like Custine’s letters.  I can relate, heck, my posts on the Excite message boards in 1998 evoked quite a response too and there I was fighting hordes of new posters who showed up to take over the boards with the Clinton talking points……… hummm, I likened them to being like Genghis Khan.

In their own words these two French noblemen present their opinions on the cultural DNA differences between a people who accept rulers and a people who don’t.  In 1996, renowned journalist, Steven Erlanger, wrote a NY Times piece on Custine’s book, that gives you Custine in his own words.  Here’s a short excerpt:

“In Russia, everything you notice, and everything that happens around you, has a terrifying uniformity; and the first thought that comes into the traveler’s mind, as he contemplates this symmetry, is that such entire consistency and regularity, so contrary to the natural inclination of mankind, cannot have been achieved and could not survive without violence. . . . Officially, such brutal tyranny is called respect for unity and love of order; and this bitter fruit of despotism appears so precious to the methodical mind that you are told it cannot be purchased at too high a price.

Faced with the pervasiveness of the secret police and the immensity of the bureaucracy, Custine at first is shocked. He sees the dead weight that these hordes of state employees place on Russia, and their own dehumanization.

Among Russian officials, attention to detail is quite compatible with disorganization. They go to a great deal of trouble to achieve some petty end, never satisfed that they have done enough to demonstrate their zeal. Consequently, in this rivalry between employees, one formality does not guarantee the foreigner against another. It is like a pillaging army: because the traveler has passed through the hands of one regiment, this does not prevent him from meeting another, or a third, and each of these bands spaced out along his route vies with the last in harassing him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/16/weekinreview/word-for-word-marquis-de-custine-long-ago-look-russia-so-what-else-new.html?pagewanted=all

Interestingly, in the introduction to “Letters from Russia”, editor, Anka Muhlstein,  presents the bulls-eye de Tocqueville quote on the difference between America and Russia:

“There are on earth today two great peoples who, having started from different points, seem to be advancing towards the same end: they are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.  They both grew up in darkness and whilst Europeans were busy elsewhere, they suddenly placed themselves in the forefront of nations, and the world learned at almost the same time of their births and their greatness

All other nations seem, more or less, to have reached the limits nature has assigned to them and within which they now need only to remain, but those two are still growing…. America is struggling against obstacles of nature,; Russia against men…. The principal means of action for the one is liberty, for the other servitude.”

Letters from Russia, by Astolphe de Custine, edited and with an introduction by Anka Muhlstein, page ix of the introduction.

America is the only place on earth that broke that mold completely and set up a government meant for the people to have control over the government and for the individual’s rights to be paramount.

We are a nation built by free-thinking and free-acting citizens.

Central to our culture is the belief that all men are equal before the law and that the rule of law applies to EVERYONE.  This week’s disgraceful display of open corruption and obvious undue political influence from the White House, all for partisan purposes, made me wonder if we are now a banana republic.

For a long while, years in fact, I have been studying the Clinton SPIN and then the Obama NARRATIVE and now we have Trump borrowing the Clinton SPIN too and here’s truth – SPIN is the American people allowing their elected leaders to bold-faced LIE to them.

Every politician who engages in the talking points messaging is using a totalitarian messaging tactic to CONTROL the NEWS the American people receive. That relentless repetition is a form of mass media brainwashing of the people.

Allowing this attack on American FREE speech principles to advance without even a recognition of how pernicious and corrupting it is, will lead to not only a surrender of our free speech, but will allow those with power to dictate the “facts” and which words we MUST use.  They will have the power to impose what “truths” we must believe and which “truths” we can speak.

I refuse to ever submit to tyranny and instead of accepting that it’s the “old news, let’s move on”, Americans need to think long and hard if they want to be passive sheep fed what to believe or if they want to be FREE.  Being FREE isn’t just about “rights”, it requires people willing to do their duty as good citizens too.

Despite Director Comey’s attempt to kick the can down the road, a constitutional crisis is already upon us, because it’s now out in the open that Hillary Clinton did egregiously and knowingly break the law. Both the Director of the FBI and the Attorney General of the United States did nothing to hold her accountable.  This isn’t just about Hillary’s corruption though, it’s the Clinton political machine, a vast, network at work.  I  got burned by that machine during impeachment, where a retired general was fed false information about me and sent to silence me.  That general became a FOB and continues to be a hack to sell the Clinton and Democrat agenda.  Lacking any way to prove  what happened to me has kept me from naming names.  I already tried contacting several journalists a long time ago and offered them the real names of everyone in my Messages of mhere story.  None of them even responded and despite the escalating exposure of the Clinton corruption, her own private email server to conduct all of her official State Department business, her off-the-books private team of intelligence operatives, Sidney Blumenthal and Tyler Drumheller, does it sound so far-fetched that she would hunt down an annoying poster on a popular message boards, whose comments were being borrowed and used by GOP pundits to break through their SPIN?  I believe in their investigation into who I am, they came across this retired general who hates my guts and who jumped at the chance to get even with me.   I believe the Clinton machine set the attack on me in motion as a part of their vast network of operations,  to make sure Bill Clinton survived impeachment.  I believe they sank to corrupting the military chain of command in the attack on me.  Would anyone even care, even if I could prove it?

Do Americans still have the true grit necessary to save our republic?  I have my doubts.   Everyone is looking for either corrupt Hillary and con man Trump to save our republic, but really this is going to take all of us to put in our oars and help row.

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July 6, 2016 · 8:46 pm

“Those who lived under communism understand exactly what just happened”

Comey-Hillary verdict reflects our own “culture of cynicism and hopelessness”

Source: “Those who lived under communism understand exactly what just happened”

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May 17, 2016 · 1:14 pm

Another blast from LB’s past

The following is repost of my LB post, “Seeking Justice” from January 4, 2015

Seeking Justice
The internet provides an opportunity for any wanna-be writers/journalists to get their scribblings, the good, the bad and the putrid, before the public eye. When I first started writing my blog, I worried endlessly over the myriad of typos and grammatical errors missed in proofreading and my greatest fear was of writing posts that sound stupid. After two years of blogging, there remain plenty of typos and grammatical errors and more often than I would wish, I write stupid stuff. But, I love writing, researching topics that catch my attention and most of all I am so thankful and grateful to have some regular readers and commenters to keep me humble and on my toes. This one’s a personal, lengthy, speaking my thoughts aloud post and it may prove to be very stupid too – so you’re duly warned.

In the past month, I’ve been engrossed in following the Jessica Lane Chambers murder in Panola County, Mississippi. The Last Refuge blog (The Conservative Treehouse), along with several other blogs, twitter folks and facebook pages, has been relentlessly covering this murder case. Jessica’s family and friends hit twitter and facebook pleading for help in solving her murder too – along with asking for donations for reward money for information leading to the arrest of Jessica’s murderer(s) and also money for the medical bills from her brief hospital stay the night she died. Why the family is getting the bills, I don’t know, since Jessica was an adult, but that’s what the family facebook page states. The online journalists also ask for donations to continue their work.

Between the competing online journalists engrossed in this case and Jessica’s family, plus a multitude of locals in Panola County who, likewise, have hit the internet to make their views known, offer their insights into everything from the racial dynamics, the gang situation, decoding regional vernacular, and even climbing out on limbs to paste leaves on the ever-expanding family trees in this colorful forest of characters, whose names parade across the world wide-open field of online “journalism”, the only truth revealed is nature abhors a vacuum! In this vacuum of officialdom (the law-enforcement community), offering no new facts to gnaw on, this case serves as the ebola strain of internet sleuthing.

On December 21, 2014, a commenter, TexasRanger, posted a comment on my blog, warning me to be careful of accepting The Conservative Treehouse’s facts, laying out a methodical listing of open source material belying a stated fact from that blog. I like a lot of the blogging at The Conservative Treehouse, as it quite often fits my conservative political viewpoint, but after watching what can only be described as an unseemly pissing contest, between some online journalist, Charles Johnson, at a news site called Got News (which I used as a source once, God forbid), The Conservative Treehouse and a few other bloggers trying to trash not only the merits of their respective investigative journalism, but now it’s down to trashing each other personally, tread warily.

So, this journalist, Charles Johnson, ran with a scoop yesterday, a phone interview with Jessica Chambers old boyfriend, Bryan Rudd, formerly from Panola County, now residing in Iowa, (criminal record available online). Johnson asked few questions and Rudd rambled on for an half-hour, listing several men, to include Jessica’s father, Ben Chambers (criminal record available online), as potential suspects. Then, Johnson ran the piece trashing the journalistic integrity of the CTH blogger, sundance. CTH followed with a rebuttal.

The flaming went back and forth in comments on twitter, between CTH supporters and Johnson, in the comments on the CTH blog, but then a commenter, carterzest, on the CTH blog did a screenshot of Rudd’s twitter feed (Folk Deundra Nation is the moniker – Folk Nation being a gang, but Rudd claims he’s not affiliated with any gang, moving on…), accusing Charles Johnson of recording their phone conversation without permission (comment posted January 4, 2015 at 3:26am). Rudd has this tweet on his twitter feed dated 11:03 pm, January 3, 2015.

You have to become a screenshot professional to keep up with this mess, and being technologically-challenged, I haven’t mastered screenshots and struggle even trying to upload photos to this blog. Sorry, I can’t post the screenshot photo. Information comes and goes on social media sites very quickly, tweets flutter away, facebook conversations get removed, pages get reinvented under new names, blogs get reworked, reality shifts as the narrative gets revised.

I hope there is justice for Jessica Chambers, but likewise I hope there is justice for the young man, Deandre Joshua, who was killed in Ferguson, MO in a similar brutal fashion. Justice should be for everyone in America.

I know how it feels to want to cry out for justice, having felt that way since 1999. My blog is not investigative journalism – it’s my thoughts, views, opinions and most importantly the one place where I feel like I have a voice. I’ve felt drawn to Jessica’s story, because this young woman was betrayed and brutalized by so many people in her young life. The shroud of lies, trying to bury her case, made me think of my own situation. I wrote about what happened to me in my Messages of mhere story, and yes, that’s the truth, to the best of my recollection and each person mentioned exists – they have real life identities. I’m happy many people are fighting for justice for Jessica, because such a heinous crime calls out for action.

So, for the record, regarding my own situation related in Messages of mhere, tabbed on my home page, I contacted professional reporters and amateurs last year, in hopes of getting someone to help me drag thatwitch2016 to justice (expose how far she went to silence me over my Excite message board postings, under the user name mhere, in 1998).

She had all that power and I was just a nobody homemaker, yet she felt compelled to silence me. I was attacked in my own home. This girl Jessica wanted to turn her life around, she got a job in a store, but she was struggling. I feel thankful that I survived, unlike poor Jessica. I got a job in a store too, I finished raising my kids, but that attack damaged every relationship in my life. Her attack screams out though; she lost her life in a horrific manner.

Tenaciousness is one of my best and worst character traits – I dig for information relentlessly, I fight against injustice relentlessly and I’ve been fighting bullies long before it became trendy. All these years, I’ve felt personally violated by the attack on me, but a burning anger goes much deeper that the Army I love was egregiously used and abused too. She, thatwitch2016, through her husband, used Army assets to attack a private citizen on American soil. My husband was still on active duty in the US Army then, so they used a retired general to attack an enlisted family based on lies she conjured up. They corrupted the chain of command,  using the Army for personal political reasons. I believe this to be the TRUTH and yet, I can’t prove it on my own.

A few years back, I posted some comments on Ralph Peters’ (thepottsvillepundit) column at the New York Post. At that time, I was also writing on my computer about my plan to expose thatwitch2016. Comments on Peters’ column disappeared. my email and facebook accounts were hacked, then back to square one. For me, the very thought that she might become the next Commander-In-Chief of the US Armed Forces, not only disgusts me, it terrifies me.

Jessica’s case highlights small town corruption, where it’s hard to find a hairbreadth’s distance between the integrity of the officials and the criminals. My case goes all the way to the top in America. And just like mentioned above, that online postings can vanish in the blink of an eye – my blog could vanish too.

Last year, I decided to seek help in my fight for justice and I contacted The Washington Free Beacon twice, Bill O’Reilly twice, PJmedia once, That Last Refuge blog twice and Sharyl Attkisson once. I offered them the key to the real identities of every person mentioned in Messages of mhere, except for marfark, because I only knew his user name. I hoped my blog would demonstrate that I write rational, researched stuff, not wild conspiracy theories.

I lay claim to being a homemaker for 18 years and I’ve worked in a store since 1999. I served in the Army shy of two years, getting out when I was pregnant with my first child. I was trained to be an Army journalist, but I make no claims to being a journalist. I’ve tried to be an honest person and a good citizen my entire life. Here’s a message for Jeff (if you’re reading this) I would like my Good Citizen booklet (mentioned in Messages of mhere btw) back, please.

I received only one response – from The Last Refuge blog:

“We receive hundreds of emails each week. Since we operate with only volunteer staff we are unable to respond to all of them..
Unfortunately, we cannot conduct investigations on every matter brought to our attention, no matter how valid and well documented.
Thank you for understanding.
Warm regards,
Admin”

That simple courtesy of responding to me made me respect the folks at The Last Refuge blog. I’m not asking them or anyone for help, but I wanted to say my piece today. Yep, posting this is stupid. My personal quest for justice continues alone, in military terms, a Forlorn Hope, a lost cause from a long ago scandal. Jessica’s case is still fresh, with the trail not yet cold. I continue hoping their blog will be a force for seeking justice for Jessica. Let’s hope that with an alphabet soup of federal law enforcement in Panola County, MS and so much online effort, sunlight can vanquish the forces of Darkness in this small town American case crying out for justice.

We need every small step toward upholding The Constitution of the United States of America, where corruption pervades at every level, especially at the top.

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May 17, 2016 · 12:13 pm

Confessions of mhere

Just added a new tab, Confessions of mhere, at the top of my home page. This will be an ongoing page of “revelations” from my life. I’ll be adding information to both my Messages of mhere and Confessions of mhere pages to help keep the information somewhat organized. Due to their being many threads to follow, this is my small attempt to help the reader make sense out of the events in my life since the Clinton impeachment and my stepping foot onto the Excite politics message boards.

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May 15, 2016 · 8:35 am

A “revolutionary” idea for America

The following is a repost of a LB blog post from February 5, 2013. When a government is corrupt at the top, it permeates all levels of the government. No area, not even the police and US Armed Forces, that serve on the front lines of preserving the rule of law, is immune. So, if there’s Wholesale Public Corruption at the highest levels of our government, it assuredly permeates down through the other levels.

I’ve expended a great deal of ink to writing about what happened to me in the Fall of 1998 during the Clinton impeachment. The events I related, while sounding impossible, are the TRUTH.

It’s not just personal justice I have been seeking, it’s exposure of the grave danger this corrupting of the chain of command in the US Armed Forces poses to the national security of the United States of America.  If the US military can be used as a partisan-political tool, to silence one citizen who spoke out, it can be illegally used to crush other citizens too. Even more ominous, a corrupted chain of command leaves a military that cannot unite and fight effectively. Corruption demolishes military effectiveness.

A great deal of effort has gone into setting me up, but also to set-up the few people who have listened to me.  I believe that family and friends have been approached by law enforcement or government officials and told I am some sort of “radical” or mentally-ill.  This happened in 1998, when my husband was being manipulated into agreeing to having me committed to a state mental hospital permanently too.  Well, since so much effort has been exerted to silence me and this blog, we shall see who is telling the truth.

Do not judge people by their looks, judge them by whether they are telling the TRUTH.  Do not place your trust in fancy titles or high rank – at least two of the “generals” they have recruited have dishonored their oaths.

Trust in the TRUTH:-)

#DefendTheConstitutionAlways

Getting To Know You

How well do you know anyone else or even yourself?  Most people automatically assume they know themselves perfectly and from that little self-conceit they believe they know most of the people around them extremely well too.  I’ve decided to challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and really think about what things you believe to be true about yourself and what things really are true based on how you conduct your life.  All it takes is a short list of the things you say you believe and a quick honest appraisal of  how in practice you live up to your own value system to see that you, like just about everyone else (since we’re none of us saints) , falls short on just about every metric we deem as a worthy value to uphold.  This can be a humbling experience when you first start doing it, but after time it can help you learn to work on your areas of particular weakness and also help you build on your areas of strength.

Long ago, these types of character-building exercises permeated society from religious institutions all the way through our political institutions and down through our civic organizations and educational system.  Teaching “good citizenship” rested upon teaching the building of a good character.  These days “good character” got kicked to the curb, replaced by being green, being a diversity advocate, being non-judgmental, and being value neutral.  In other words nothing is right or wrong and if you believe there are moral absolutes, well, you need to be re-indoctrinated to get with the new regime.   The only institution that still  pays lip service to values constantly is in the military and that leadership has been hijacked by political sycophants for the most part.

To avoid making this too deep of a theological exercise, let’s just focus on the difference between actually  “knowing people” and “knowing about people”.  The first one takes more personal effort, because it involves actually making a personal connection with individual people and listening to them.  It takes time to get to “know people”.  To “know about people” ranks as a shallow second and third hand exercise where what you know usually comes from other people, in other words, much of it is little more than gossip that you accept as fact.  In our personal, everyday life this distinction might not have a huge impact other than to create unnecessary conflicts with neighbors, co-workers and within our own families.  And believe me, it’s hard to resolve some of these deep-seated misunderstandings based on not  knowing what’s truly in the hearts of others.  It’s hard work listening to others and really trying to understand what other people think, believe, dream.

While believing incorrect or absolute lies about other people isn’t usually too earth-shattering in our everyday lives, having our media and political institutions  reduced to consumers of “knowing about” people rather than taking the time to “know people” leads to many very unsettling results.  For instance reporters often zoom in on neighbors when seeking to add context to stories, yet do they ever bother to think that perhaps the neighbor hated the  person whom the story is about?  Do they bother to seek a broader understanding of the situation?    In this Newtown massacre within the first 48 hours, the press reported so many false stories that by the time they started coming up with a few facts, their credibility was nil and the damage had already been done.

Long ago, most news organizations prided themselves of being reporters of the facts (true pieces of information), with reporters trained to seek out who, what, when,where,  why and how.  Now we have live “reporting” where reporters fill the long segments with rambling gossip, innuendo, pop psychology detours, and plain emotional outbursts that should have no place in real journalism.

When this trend of accepting lies without question captures our political system, our Republic may be doomed.

Our founding fathers told us that the system they devised will only stand for a moral people.  Our electorate now falls mainly on shallow emotional hot-button issues, which both political parties shamelessly play.  The key factor in every election should be the character of the individual running for office, but we know that standard fell to the wayside long, long ago.  In the past 20 years, our moral compass as a nation died and we now have a media that helps promulgate lies for political advantage.  This mostly benefits the left, because the vast majority of journalists fall to the left politically.

During the Clinton years this dangerous threat to our Republic came to be known by the rather innocuous term “spin”.

SPIN is the deliberate, concerted effort of your elected officials to lie and deceive you.

If you accept “spin” as truth or excuse it as just part of politics, then seriously there is little hope of rescuing our society from the moral sewer where these Clinton spinmeisters left us decaying.   George Bush did spin some facts on the “war on terror” (a term that is in and of  itself a fallacy), but they avoided the cheap character assassinations that the Clinton crowd excelled at.

Now we have reached a new level of lying where cheap race-baiting tactics get used at every turn to keep the most shallow, intellectually vapid person ever to reach the Oval Office in power.  For rational people to accept flimsy “composite” white people as representative of the white mentality and to listen to his constant vile stereotyping of  white people, conservatives, rural Pennsylvanians (having grown up as one – well I took offense), well we are on a dangerous course here.  Now, the left is embracing junk science to promote the idea that conservatives are “genetically’  intellectually inferior beings compared to the liberals.

These dangerous paths always lead to governments running way off course to extremes, where an idiot like Roseanne Barr, seriously suggested re-education camps for conservatives.   Where was the outrage from the left about that insanity???

Americans need to wake up and realize, that before they side up against other Americans, they had better take the time to walk up to those who hold different views and sit down and talk first. Perhaps, by actually getting “to know” other people, we might be able to bridge the gaps and build a stronger nation, where all views from all people get heard at our political kitchen table.  And just maybe communities might get back to holding potluck dinners where everyone comes and shares a meal and gets to know his/her neighbors.

What an amazing concept that is – getting to know other people, up close and personal.

It just might revolutionize America;-)

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May 12, 2016 · 1:12 pm

Time to rebuild the American Team

Our American principles are enshrined in The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. We are only strong when we are a nation committed to these firm American principles.

In the Army, they build a strong team by fostering Core Values, and it’s these beliefs that unite us into a cohesive team dedicated to one simple mission:

“To defend The Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”

The founding fathers knew that slavery would be a looming question, that would need to be addressed at some point in the future. They put it off, in order to get southern states on board with ratification. George Washington even left it in his will to free his own slaves.

America is not falling apart because of illegal immigration, which is just one symptom of a dedication to “worship of diversity” over dedication to common civic values and a society complacent with Wholesale Public Corruption, where the collapse of civil order and rule of law attack the very pillars of our Republic.

America sits a divided nation – where every public institution lumbers under the weight of highly-charged factionalized-fighting. One can only wonder what event or chain reaction will set the final collapse in motion. If our Republic is going to survive, the last thing to believe is that “diversity makes us stronger”.

What made America great was not “diversity”, it was diverse people UNITED by a belief in a set of common civic values.

Having common civic values and a common belief in The Constitution would help gird up our once great nation’s crumbling pillars.

Allowing our educational system to be hijacked by those promoting  the diversity doctrine, in my opinion, is more of a threat than even illegal immigration. Just look at the craziness going on in American colleges and these are America’s future leaders. Frankly, many of the millions of illegals, who really like living here can be taught American values, as can people anywhere and that’s been what has drawn immigrants to our shores for centuries.

The US military has taken immigrants, who aren’t American citizens, and successfully integrated them into loyal American fighting men, who embrace our values. Obama of course, has busily been destroying the military, because it’s the last bastion in America where American values still ring loud and true – because the military insists on teaching core values and dedication to our mission every day. Every soldier knows what he is fighting for and it isn’t “diversity”.

The thing that should alarm Americans even more than illegal immigration, is that Americans have stopped insisting their own children become American citizens…..

American children are citizens of leftist nostrums and ideas promoted by anarchists and intellectuals dedicated to “fundamental transformation” of America. American children are indoctrinated from K-12 in the diversity doctrine, along with a whole host of other programs geared to destroy children’s  TRUST in their parents, traditional values and The Constitution.

This is a decades long endeavor to erode American society.

So, Trump might seem like a quick fix, yet in reality he’s a mercurial huckster, without the firm principles to guide a nation torn asunder with factional divides. And at best, he would serve 8 years and judging by his “divide and conquer” mentality, he will just further fuel the partisan divides, that weaken us.  At worst, “The Trump Unpredictable Doctrine” could lead to dangerous and rash actions at home and abroad, leading America into a rapid tailspin, that we can’t recover from.  Of course, Hillary offers the same flaming crash.

We need a “revolution” dedicated to promoting Good Citizenship, where we dedicate ourselves to inspiring  every American to embrace American ideals and principles.

And we desperately need good leaders, dedicated to uniting us and to rebuilding the American team…

#DefendTheConstitutionAlways

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March 14, 2016 · 9:15 pm

Aquamarine vs. turquoise [repost from May 2015]

With too much going on in the news to keep adequate track of,  I’m waiting to filter it into a coherent blog post.  So, with all the anger and hate swirling, until I have something original composed, here’s a repost of an old LB blog post from May 15, 2015:

Aquamarine vs. turquoise

Finally, here is a post on factions, that’s so simple even a 5 year-old can understand the problem. Adults might get stuck in their rigid ideological beliefs. All beliefs are not morally equal – some when carried to extremes have horrific consequences for millions of innocent people, while others can do remarkable good for the entire world. That is the TRUTH.

Let’s say you believe very strongly that a color is aquamarine and I believe equally as strongly that that color is turquoise. Being that we both believe a different thing, many avenues are there for us to choose. We could argue and get so angry that we end up hating each other and never speak to each other again. I could feel so strongly about my belief that I kill you. We might even kill each other fighting over who is right. I could even decide that it’s not enough to just kill you, but because you’ve convinced your whole town that the color is aquamarine, it’s necessary to kill all of them too.

Of course, on the less extreme side we might agree to consult an outside expert on color to settle the matter, perhaps, we could call the Crayola Company, after all they’ve been naming colors since 1885 in Easton, PA, near where I grew up.

We might argue, passionately and often, clinging to our beliefs (as President Obama accused those rural people in PA), but in the American tradition, we could agree to disagree and at some point, shake hands and say, “Let’s go have pizza!” Presented to most 5 year-olds, the vast majority will agree that it’s stupid to kill other people just because we disagree, on the other hand most adults refuse to even listen to differing opinions. Maya Angleou, renowned poet, expressed it exactly right:

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” –
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26244-hate-it-has-caused-a-lot-of-problems-in-the

So, in America, being a country forged together by a people committed to INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, we have The Declaration of Independence to ensure our God-given, unalienable rights are not infringed upon:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Sadly, in America our political partisanship swirls dangerously to extremes – where hate has swelled to such a level that many Americans choose to receive all of their news from sources that align with their political views. The hate and extremism goes so far that even the President of the United States works to divide Americans into hostile camps. Distrust turns Americans into furtive enemies, partisans avoiding those who hold an opposing view, with ideological walls being girded to lock out all who dare to disagree. Even codes are enacted in our universities to silence opposition.

We must tear down these partisan walls!  We must work to find common ground, or we can not face the threats beyond our borders.  President George Washington warned about the dangers of extreme partisanship in his Farewell Address:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

So, beyond my stating it is a parental duty in a civil society to train your children to respect the rule of law.  George Washington tells you that it’s a duty to discourage extremist politics – the duties are required to be a good citizen.  I wrote a post in 2013 titled, “The duty of a wise people”. on this subject.

There was a time, not so long ago, when American school children were routinely taught about this speech and  American principles.  Sadly, today I suspect many school children don’t even know who George Washington was. And mentioning The Constitution, too often and too loudly, will get your name on a Homeland Security watch list as a right-wing extremist…

 

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March 5, 2016 · 9:08 am

Trump “war crime” policy heard around the world

Andrew McCarthy at NRO penned an excellent, must-read piece:

“Culture Rot: Donald Trump Is the Effect, Not the Cause”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432380/donald-trump-culture-rot

McCarthy writes:

Before our very eyes, the corruption of cultural standards begets the corruption of law and politics. The coarsest part of the debate was Trump’s boorish boast (for which I’m willing to take him at his word, lest the next debate sink to a new low). The most egregious part, though, was Trump’s vow that, as commander-in-chief, he would compel the finest, best-trained armed forces in the history of the planet to commit war crimes — because there are evil people doing unspeakable things, as if that never happened before.

For a number of years in the mid-aughts, we debated the merits vel non of waterboarding. I defended the legality of this interrogation method — in the restrained practice of the CIA, not as cruelly administered historically — mostly based on a strict interpretation of the federal torture statute. It was not an endorsement of the tactic in any particular case. The opposition’s point was well taken that the existence of a legal justification (which they did not concede) would not necessarily make the use of waterboarding good policy. We volleyed ticking-bomb scenarios and slippery slopes back and forth.

As a lawyer, I instinctively believed we should be able to write rules clarifying the extremely rare circumstances in which aggressive tactics could be used. Critics forcefully countered that the very writing of rules was an authorization that would be stretched to cover non-dire circumstances. Jonah Goldberg reminded us about the “hidden law,” which as applied here, counsels forbidding across the board that which should be forbidden in almost all situations, in the belief that if a dire emergency did arise, good people would act outside the law, do what had to be done, and hope that others would understand and forgive.

Since I have already vented in the comments on Mr. McCarthy’s piece, let me just paste it here and be done for today:

susanholly Lamprey Wrangler • 27 minutes ago

Please, if the choices are Hillary or Trump – America is doomed, PERIOD! Trump is not some lifesaver of the Republic, he’s an insurgent intent on burning the system down! You reap what you sow when you enable sociopaths and those two are extreme sociopaths, who don’t believe rules apply to them.

I am keeping a list, for future reference, of every Republican mouthpiece, who uses the phrase, “that’s just Donald Trump being Donald Trump,” to excuse his excesses. Duncan Hunter, yesterday morning, a vet, no less was interviewed on FOX news in the morning about Trump’s Thursday night doubling done on his killing ISIS family members policy. Hunter said he hadn’t seen the debate, deflected, then tried to excuse Trump by asserting Trump was “just a little bit inarticulate”. I am disgusted that a former Marine Corps officer could excuse Trump’s assertion that he would ORDER U.S. troops to commit war crimes. There’s another Trump mouthpiece, a former Navy seal, who was on FOX doing the same thing. They are a disgrace to the US Armed Service and have dishonored themselves and are unfit spokespeople for we, the heirs of General George Washington’s Continental Army!

All this to promote an obvious sociopath, out of venal political motives. Rudy Guiliani, a man I respected, did the same “that’s Donald Trump being Donald Trump” excuse last weekend on FOX News and I lost all respect for him. He has been an “unofficial” Trump adviser for months and was well aware of Trump’s war crimes spiel, because Trump has repeated it several times. NRO should do a heading at the top of their page, to click on, and chronicle, names, dates and statements of all these Trump enablers – they deserve to be remembered for this.

As a vet myself, and the spouse of a Grenada and Desert Storm vet, I am disgusted that these people are excusing Trump and the murmurs of he’s trying to be tough – well, here’s the rub – the strategic challenges to defeat Islamic terror, which Mr. McCarthy has written very informatively about in his books, are complicated and very challenging, as it is, but for some fool like Trump uttering those words, he just added to the problem exponentially and he is UNFIT to ever command the US Armed Forces. It’s not just that Trump’s “strategy” is a war crime, it’s also that anyone with a brain knows that a military strategy based on killing innocent civilians in hopes it hurts the morale of enemy combatants is IDIOTIC and unhinged. YUGE blowback, in kind, would be the result of Trump’s policy.

His words were heard by every world leader and our enemies.

Trump walking that back should not be forgotten – remember it and remind all Trump enablers, because his foolish and idiotic utterance put US Armed Forces, operating in an already dangerous area of the world, in more danger! Anyone aspiring to be commander in chief, who would say he will order our military to commit war crimes, is a threat to The Constitution and to the troops he aspires to command!!! Wake up, this is no longer just the Trump reality TV show -Mr. Draft Deferment, just put US troops in danger with his careless and idiotic blustering – all to “sound” tough.

Let me add that, yes, I am aware that the Trump campaign issued a statement late yesterday, avowing that Trump would obey the law as President, but NEVER forget what his first policy was and that he only backtracked for political expediency, not because he conceded his war crimes policy was immoral and illegal.  He is Hillary’s twin brother when it comes to saying or doing whatever it takes to get what he wants – they are both corrupt to the core and they will corrupt all who follow them!!!

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