July 20, 2013 · 12:16 am

Power to the people…. pssssst, that’s in the 10th Amendment, Mr. President

Everyone seems to want to add his/her two cents to the Zimmerman verdict, so here are mine for free, long-winded and a bit rambling – just like President Obama’s.  On the most basic level this tragedy occurred because both men distrusted each other’s intentions.  George Zimmerman felt Trayvon Martin was a thug up to no good and called the police to report him and based on Trayvon’s girlfriend’s testimony, Trayvon felt George was a “creepy ass cracker”, who was following him.  The physical altercation occurred because of these misconceptions each man held about the other one.  The fact that this case is being highlighted and played up as a symbol of racism has led to extreme characterizations about both men, where oddly enough the only way to describe it is folks who believe Trayvon was murdered have whitewashed his character and tried to turn him into a choirboy, instead of a young man who liked to fight.  On the other hand George Zimmerman has had his character darkened to be a racist, wanna-be cop, who wantonly murdered Trayvon Martin, instead of a young man trying to keep his neighborhood safe.

A jury decided the facts they heard in court didn’t add up to second-degree murder or manslaughter and since I didn’t watch the entire trial (because I hate sensationalized trials), I accept our jury system and the verdict, regardless whether I think the jury is right.  We are “a government of laws, not of men”, as our 2nd President, John Adams, put it.  For instance, in the OJ Simpson case, I believe, based on various juror statements that some jurors based their decision on jury nullification, where they felt their racial views should be the basis of their decision.  That pained me to hear that, because all cases should be decided on the evidence presented in the courtroom, but I accept our jury system and give wide berth to assuming a jury acted in good faith..  Nothing I have heard about George Zimmerman’s history has led me to believe that he was a raging racist, intent on murdering a black “child”, which seems to be the characterization the shameless race-hustlers in America have decided to run with.  This case is a sad testament to the true state of race relations in America – anger and distrust still simmer below the surface and despite President Obama’s happy talk about uniting America, he’s been a continual source of fostering racial tensions and inserting himself into local legal matters, where he perceives racism.  Distrust, which ignited the confrontation that led to this tragedy, sadly seems likely to be used to fuel a lot more mob mentality reaction, before it’s all said and done.

Facts matter and I’ll toss out a few – racism still exists in America, but often charges of racism come way too easily, which leads to actual racial tensions when false charges of racism get tossed about.  There is no evidence that George Zimmerman was a flaming racist, which is the characterization that has been made here.  President Obama gave a speech today validating this characterization and really just fanning more racial tensions and I marvel at how he takes great pride in his racial identity as a “black man in America”, but he never recognizes his white heritage at all.  He does make incorrect statements pertaining to local incidents where he perceives race played a part and he sure wanted to label rural Pennsylvanians as racist rednecks.  In regards to his own heritage, he threw his white grandmother under the bus and proclaimed her a typical racist white person too.  Among black Americans, black people who hold conservative political views get ostracized by the prominent, loud black liberal establishment and get racially tagged as “Uncle Toms” or ““house negroes” or other vile racist names.  Racism cuts both ways in America and that’s the sad truth.  We have a highly honed sense of equal opportunity and a high level of teaching every American to report and seek legal redress based on racial, ethnic or gender sensitivity – we are the most sue-happy people on earth.  Americans can’t just sit down and talk out little instances of  friction caused by misconceptions about each other or work to build trust.  In America we politicize just about everything.

The statistics on black crime in America show a disproportionate percentage of violence against black people is committed by black males.  Now, those in the business of racial grievance politics try to spin this into racist efforts to arrest and prosecute black men more than white men.  However to highlight the glorification of violence, disrespect for the law, women and yes, even human life, you need look no further than the thriving rap music industry and listen to the vile, hate-filled, violent lyrics.  Here’s one of those home truths again, who you become depends on how you are shaped, trained and molded as a child. The breakdown of American families, where black families have been hit hardest, leads to the rampant violence and most certainly is harming more black children than the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.  The race-hustlers, like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP and others latched onto this case to make money and to fuel more racial discord, not promote uniting Americans.  And in typical left-wing political fashion, the cause has morphed from being about “justice for Trayvon” to a full-throated effort to repeal “stand your ground laws” and more gun control efforts.  Sheer political opportunism – that’s what this is.  It’s a tragedy that this young man is dead, but demanding we overthrow the Constitution won’t be “justice for Trayvon” either and I would be willing to bet money that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton already plotted which governmental agencies and which people they want to shakedown in order for them to call off their protests and agitating – these two men are extortionists, who peddle in inciting anger and divisiveness.  That’s a fact.

Now, rather than marching, protesting, demanding we overthrow the Constitution and toss out the 5th Amendment: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.“, maybe what’s needed most is to use this case to educate young people on The Constitution and the long, intellectual legal history that underpins our legal system.  I’ll even go a step further and say, that Trayvon’s girlfriend, Rachel Jeantel, is exhibit A of our desperate need to educate children. She stated that she is “new school people” and if “new school” means you can’t read cursive handwriting and need to have your friend write letters for you, we’re in sad shape. If “new school” means we accept racist claptrap on the intricacies of acceptable racial language and when a racial slur is acceptable, then we have taken great strides backwards in our civil rights march. For talking heads to let this young woman spew this racist nonsense, unchallenged, shows how far we have sunk. Of course, she’s being used and while her handlers did a nice style makeover, listening to this young woman’s racist nonsense saddened me a great deal.

We all form our perceptions based on our own lives, so once again, this is what I learned growing up in a blue-collar, rural village.  My lineage is mostly PA Dutch and growing up, many of my relatives still spoke PA Dutch at home, but everyone learned to speak English in school.  English is the language of success in America – this cuts across all racial, ethnic, social strata.   Speaking proper English matters and placing a high value on quality education matters too.  The travesty of  justice Rachel highlights is the travesty of a multicultural education, where this young woman explains the nuances of applying racial epithets on various groups of people.  A common ground demand that all people deserve to be treated respectfully should be the starting point in educating all American children.  I learned that it’s hard for outsiders to understand speech heavily laced in a PA Dutch accent, but that was one struggle I avoided.  I couldn’t speak without stuttering, so when I finally learned to spit out a few sentences without stuttering, my speech patterns mimicked my speech teacher (who was not PA Dutch).  We never expected other Americans to learn our lingo, but learned we were part of America and needed to fit in.  It’s fine to embrace your own culture or language, but to succeed in America, you must speak English!  Rachel apparently has a part Creole background from what I’ve read, which was highlighted to explain her halting speech.  Okay, fine, I understand coming from a home where another language was present and I sure understand halting speech from years of stuttering, but we live in America and a common language keeps us unified – it’s a strong, building block of one America, not some nefarious intent to steal your culture from you.

Way too many children in America, of all races and ethnicities, live below the poverty line.  As someone who grew up in decidedly less than luxurious circumstances,  I do understand the difficulties of fitting in with people who have had more advantages, but rather than embracing animosity toward those who have more, our common goal has to be to help all American children become successful and to reach for the stars.  Rather than spend so much effort on dressing up Rachel, someone needs to sit her down and teach her about respecting other people and teach her about America – the land of opportunity.

My mother was the hardest working person I have ever met in my life.  She set such high cleanliness standards that when I joined the Army, I was perplexed by so many fellow soldiers opting to sleep on the floor rather than in their bunks.  Once they had their beds made to Army standards, they feared messing it up.  I had no problem making my bed to Army standards in a few minutes, because I had been doing that my entire life (my Mom was a stickler for perfect hospital corners).  I found many of the Army cleanliness standards less rigorous than my mother’s, who actually did use a white glove sometimes to show us where we missed dusting (oh my, don’t’ skip dusting the door frames).  My mother also learned how to do so many things and she emphasized the point that for most things in life – there’s a right way to do it.  Too many Americans wallow in envying what other people have and our culture is obsessed with acquiring stuff.  This emphasis on material wealth decimates many poor Americans, because so much effort is expended on acquiring things or on looking for self-worth in material objects.

We should be teaching our children that character and how you treat others is the gold standard.  My mother took care of everything she had and she never allowed us to whine about what we didn’t have.  She taught us to be thankful for the many blessings that living in America provides and I am still amazed at how my parents always worked hard to make the things they did have last as long as possible, yet they still managed to help others who had less.  There’s always someone worse off than you and so when my father passed away, my mother told me she took my Pop’s new winter coat and gave it to a young man who worked at the gas station, because she noticed he didn’t have a warm coat.  Very few young people pay any attention to the people around them, because most people, young and old alike, spend their lives distracted by electronic gadgets and on material stuff.  If there’s one thing we should glean from this case is that with a little open communication between these two young men, this tragedy could have been averted and we sure need more parents in America like mine – yes, I think my parents set an excellent example and they talked about stuff like responsibility and duty and they sure didn’t want to hear a bunch of boohooing about other people having more.  They would put you to work doing chores and tell you that this is America – you need to work hard and you can do anything.

I’ve noticed in many black homes there’s a copy of the MLK, “I Have A Dream” speech hanging in the living room.  In first grade, one of my white “cracker” sons got selected by his black teacher to play Martin Luther King Jr. in their black history month play (true story).   I heard many grumblings sitting in the audience from black parents and afterwards I mentioned this to the teacher and she told me matter-of-factly, that my son was the best at reading out loud in that class.  This teacher was living by the words within that speech and maybe we all need to move in that direction.  A fancy makeover isn’t going to help Rachel, once these race-baiters who are handling her get done with her.  Someone needs to teach her that all people matter and her silly racial semantics are hate-filled racism baring its ugly head.  I doubt anyone will tell her that though.  I sure wish we could clone my son’s dedicated first grade teacher, who was a DoDDS teacher working in Germany.   She exemplified excellence in teaching.  She spent so much time not only trying to make classroom time count, but she spent many hours putting together a monthly program where she invited the parents and all she asked of us was that we bring some food to eat to fit the occasion.  Growing up in an almost exclusively white community, no one in my school talked about Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights era.  Until my son had to practice that speech, I had never read the entire speech. Instead of looking for causes to divide America, leaders should read this speech and start living it.  And we all need to move in the direction of talking to each other rather than escalating the distrust and racial animosity.  As black activists, from the President on down, march us backwards, dividing America, it’s obvious we’ve got a ways to go before we will get people to “sit down together at a table of brotherhood”.  Watching this sad national spectacle, we sure don’t seem to be any closer to his dream and our long national nightmare of dealing with the racial discord seems a vast, widening chasm of dashed hopes and way too little real change.

I can excuse Rachel for her racist statements, she’s a kid who doesn’t know better, but really the smallness of President Obama’s racial pandering and disingenuous statements about “wringing as much bias out of me”, while moments earlier in this speech he regaled us with the rampant racial profiling he experienced in his very ethnically diverse home state of Hawaii disgust me.  Here’s a quote from him on growing up in Hawaii that he wrote long before this FL situation:  “The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.”  He never lived in the Jim Crow South, but he sure has borrowed that narrative as his own, and it’s about as realistic as his ridiculous statement that,  “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”…….. except for the pesky fact that unlike Trayvon, who was into ground and pound fighting,  Barry liked to hang out and get high as a teenager, then he went to college in CA, followed by NY and then he became a community organizer in Chicago and then on to Harvard.  Between the racial pandering at the beginning of this speech and the MLK rhetoric at the end lies the truth in this speech – he wants to expand the federal encroachment into local matters.  Yes, he may be the Constitutional scholar who went to Harvard, but he sure seems intentionally, willfully determined to ignore any of the parts that are inconvenient to his far left political visions – like the 10th Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

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Filed under Culture Wars, Politics, The Constitution

July 11, 2013 · 12:01 am

Beyond the long arm of the law

When the Edward Snowden scandal broke I wrote a rather mealy-mouthed take on his theft of national secrets he was entrusted to safeguard.  Barack Obama and Edward Snowden might seem very different, but they’re two very similar men when it comes to their core characters.  Barack Obama  played his race for all its worth to end up attending some of America’s most prestigious universities and I have read speculations that he used his Kenyan ancestry to play games to receive consideration as a “foreign” student, akin to Elizabeth Warren dishonestly latching onto her Native American heritage to get special consideration in her teaching career.  He specializes in latching onto people who can advance his political aspirations and he ditches people just as adroitly once they have stopped being useful to him. Snowden appears to have honed his computer skills and used them to advance way beyond what his educational achievements would warrant and he seems to know how to latch onto the right people to advance his objectives too.  Snowden reached a level of political maneuvering way beyond his capabilities and thus we can see his glaring inadequacies in his silly rants about countries that refuse to give him asylum and while his communist handlers puffed up his importance to gain access to the information, they now want him to quietly disappear into the annals of duped American idiots.  Sadly, President Obama doesn’t know much more about the world or foreign policy than Edward Snowden and woe be it for us, he doesn’t realize that America’s adversaries aren’t done using him and playing him for a fool too.    It’s pretty pitiful to watch Putin orchestrate this Snowden situation and milk it for all its worth to make President Obama look like a helpless dupe.  And this is the man America chose to lead – the one who had a staffer thinking it was clever to say the President leads from behind.   I can assure you that no one working for Valdimir Putin would ever have thought to suggest such a milktoast sentiment as “leading from behind”.  I can picture Vladimir Putin,  sitting with his feet propped up, laughing big belly laughs as he reads American political news and reads the conflicted, disjointed, disorganized mess that passes for American foreign policy coming from this White House. This President really thinks it makes America look stronger to get all gung-ho to put women at the front in combat, while he simultaneously talks about slashing our military??? And I would imagine the President blabbering on about “Global Zero” and now the “zero option” for Afghanistan has most of  America’s adversaries laughing at us, thinking, “here he goes again, null, nada, nothing as usual”.

Now, I’ve spent most of my life baking cookies, taking care of kids, doing needlework, and  oh yeah, reading a lot about military history and military strategy, but here is what I would do. I would say hell no to women in infantry units and hell no to cutting our nuclear arsenal too.  I would say hell no to negotiating with the Taliban too.  And I sure would weed out every single one of President Obama’s Islamist sympathizers from our military and we would start naming our enemies and our adversaries, not hiding behind touchy-feely political correctness.  I would talk to other world leaders like adults and point out areas where we might be able to deal and I sure would talk about points of contention.  The worst mistake you can ever make as a parent is the same one a world leader should avoid – don’t make threats you don’t plan to follow through on.  If you tell your child, “Stop that or I will beat your butt!” and then your child continues to do that over and over and over again and all you do is repeat the same threat, well, even small children realize your threats ring pretty hollow.  The same goes for a President blabbering about “red lines” and telling Iran, “stop developing nuclear weapons or I’ll, ummmmmm, I’m not sure what I’ll do, just believe me I will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons!”  Pretty pathetic, right?     Here’s the difference between me and President Obama, I don’t say it unless I mean it.  And I do love reading about  military strategy, foreign affairs, military intelligence (both ours and lots of other folks).   Now I never intend to ever run for any political office, so you’re all safe from my strident, assertive American posture in the world, but really I wonder why Americans elect and fawn over so many people with weak characters.  The single most important trait our leaders should posses is a strong, honest character.   Failing that we end up with a government run amok, where respect for the rights of the people that should be of the utmost concern at all times, ends up trampled and discounted, in an ever widening cesspit of corruption.

Here’s where we end up when we bestow grave responsibilities and entrust unworthy people with power that they lack the character to wield fairly or wisely. The widespread corruption within the Obama administration, where privacy rights were violated cavalierly demonstrates that political  concerns matter most to this President, first, last, always.  His one claim to fame on leading – the bin Laden raid,  shows that puffing up Obama’s image mattered most and the egregious grandstanding by top administration officials after the Bin Laden raid led to the blowback attack by Taliban insurgents three months later that left 30 American warriors dead from their helicopter being shot out of the sky (here).  Yes, this President and his present-day CIA director didn’t have the sense to keep their mouths shut after the Bin Laden raid and named Seal Team 6 and wanted to regale the world with a minute by minute account of the raid, releasing way too much sensitive information on Seal Team 6.  In fact, everyone in this administration wanted to blab to the press about the Bin laden raid and I remember being struck by the insanity from the minute the news broke.  The Pentagon should have handled the release of any operational information and ALL questions regarding the raid should have been referred back to the Pentagon, where military professionals could control and make the decisions on what information could be released and what information needed to be safeguarded to protect our special force operators and their methods.   So, when this Snowden scandal hit, I found this administration’s lamentations about national security just a tad disingenuous.

This president isn’t fit to be a commander of any sort, especially not the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.  This president doesn’t understand any military issues, except the most superficial, divisive issues that  get used by left-wing activists to transform, remold, dismantle our military as the most highly trained fighting force in the world.  He truly thinks some big focus on “gay rights” will create a stronger military???  How about he study some real military issues and maybe read some real military history.  He has no respect for the US military and how people can conveniently forget that this man accused US servicemembers of being terrorists while he was a US senator leaves me baffled.  The truth is he never developed the character traits required of being a good military leader as a teenager getting high with this Choom Gang (ABC story here) or from his mentoring by his dear Uncle Frank Marshall Davis, an avowed communist.  He has immersed himself in far left grievance politics his entire life and has never done a single thing  that required personal sacrifice.  He doesn’t understand national security issues very well either and that is why he operates such a slipshod drone program using John Brennan to decide who lives and who dies as they secretly compile their kill lists and execute even American citizens with no oversight.

From just the things President Obama bragged about in his own autobiography, well, he would not be suitable to receive a security clearance – truly he wouldn’t.  Yet this is the man who is entrusted with enforcing his own “Insider Threat Program” (here), to stop the Edward Snowden types from betraying our country.  We’ve got a man who sees everything through his own personal political advancement.  He does not care about national security or the military  – he cares about his own big ego and everything that he can control, use, abuse, to advance his big ideas or make himself look good, as he and his staff of amoral political hacks charge recklessly ahead with no thought to the moral high ground or doing what’s right for the country.  This lack of character keeps the scandals churning and surely many more will follow.  Edward Snowden most assuredly damaged our national security a great deal, but then again I wonder if the damage is as great as that inflicted by this inept President and his band of  far-left loons, who waiver, waffle, weasel and wimp out of making tough decisions or following through on much of anything.  So, therein lies why I reacted in such a muffled manner, when I should have realized that just because one person is corrupt that doesn’t absolve another person of violating the law to highlight that corruption.  Sadly, neither one will ever be held to account for their actions, unreachable beyond the long arm of the  law.

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Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, Politics

July 9, 2013 · 10:28 pm

The “zero option”

President Obama, in keeping with his big O plans, is reported to be mulling over a “zero option” for Afghanistan post 2014.  His entire presidency will be remembered for it’s big, fat zero ideas, so this idea is to leave zero troops in Afghanistan, assuring that our efforts and sacrifices there were really for naught (hint: that means nothing).  Here’s a USA Today story on this “zero option”.  There’s not even a whiff of a strategy or mention of US interests, it’s merely reacting based on personal animosity toward  Hamid Karzai, which this White House thinks justifies using US troops as a personal tool to get even with Karzai.  Don’t expect any big strategic plans from this crowd.  In Iraq his minions failed to get a status of forces agreement ironed out, leading to a precipitous American military abandonment, so this “zero option” continues the Obama leading from behind motif – nowhere to be found.  We sacrificed thousands of American lives so that President Obama can pave the way for the Taliban to return to power.  Hooray, for American leadership, right…..  I am so embarrassed to have these clueless fools representing our great country.  That often used to say, that while America plays checkers,  the Russians play chess comes to mind, except with this administration checkers seems to be way beyond their strategic-planning capabilities.

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The Dunlap Broadside Copy

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July 3, 2013 · 10:21 am
July 3, 2013 · 9:52 am

Pledge to read the Declaration of Independence

Hillsdale College started a pledge drive to encourage Americans to read the Declaration aloud with their family and friends this 4th of July (announcement here).  Hillsdale College offers many interesting free online history courses to build on your understanding of our American heritage.  I’ve been working my way through the History 101 series (Western Heritage- From the Book of Genesis to John Locke) and each lecture is an hour or so and definitely worth your time.  It put the advances of western civilization in a logical timeline, so you can begin to see that our American ideological underpinnings come from a lengthy history of man’s, sometimes faltering, but relentless nonetheless, steps forward in the  quest for individual freedom. (Info here).

Here’s a copy of the Declaration of Independence from the Our Documents website (here):

*IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.* *The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,* When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 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. ———————————————————————— /The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:/ *Column 1* *Georgia:* Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton *Column 2* *North Carolina:* William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn *South Carolina:* Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton *Column 3* *Massachusetts:* John Hancock *Maryland:* Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton *Virginia:* George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton *Column 4* *Pennsylvania:* Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross *Delaware:* Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean *Column 5* *New York:* William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris *New Jersey:* Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark *Column 6* *New Hampshire:* Josiah Bartlett William Whipple *Massachusetts:* Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry *Rhode Island:* Stephen Hopkins William Ellery *Connecticut:* Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott *New Hampshire:* Matthew Thornton * Page URL: * http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=2&page=transcript *U.S. National Archives & Records Administration* 700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20408 • 1-86-NARA-NARA • 1-866-272-6272

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June 30, 2013 · 12:07 pm

The Pretty in Pink American Foreign Policy

Ran across two more pieces on why we need to maintain our nuclear arsenal, so I’m not a lone wolf  howling in the wilderness.  “Obama’s Nuclear-Zero Dream”  (National Review piece here) written by Jack David (Hudson Institute bio here) explains why President Obama’s “nuclear zero” world exists only in fantasy and  he explains the suicidal nature of  the president’s proposals.  Mr. David lays out the history of our nuclear weapons capability and the nuclear disarmament efforts since the advent of the nuclear age clearly and he speaks with the weight of someone who has spent many years studying our nuclear capabilities, both offensive and defensive.  Also worth reading is Mr. David’s 2010 spirited argument against the nuclear-zero voices that keep pushing the United States to unilaterally disarm and rail against maintaining our nuclear capabilities, in a Wall Street Journal piece ( located on the Hudson Institute website), “The Dangerous Fantasy of a Nuclear-Free World” .

David Lawrence posted a short blog piece at the American Thinker website, titled, “Don’t Slash Our Nuclear Weapons” with this perfect President Obama policy description:

“We need peace through strength, not surrender through clichés.”  Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/dont_slash_our_nuclear_weapons.html#ixzz2XhmuK5Eu   Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Granted, many very smart people would like to see a nuclear-free world, just as many people (myself included) would like to see a world where peaceful interactions became the gold standard of international relations.  However, we live in the world as it is, not as we wish it were and our national defense demands facing the tough choices and employing the most careful consideration to maintaining our military might, for not only our own security, but for the security of the free world,  that depends on our strength to keep them safe too.  President Obama immersed himself in left-wing grievance politics in college and throughout his adult life.  He does not know much of anything about history and more glaringly his views on military matters demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of military history.

From rogue jihadi bands of fighters to world leaders around the globe, they smell American weakness emanating from this President and the sycophantic nincompoops he surrounds himself with.  He now has a dole of far-left doves fluttering about him, Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice with peacenik quacker, John Kerry, to pontificate out of both sides of his mouth.  He picked the yes-sir, yes-sir, three bags full champion, Chuck Hagel, to turn the military into one big group therapy session, where the focus is on personal sexual relations and  GI Jane’s feminist aspirations.  And to figure out our Mid-East mirages he picked the “gone native” Arabist , John Brennan, who is so enamored of everything Arab and reminds me of the British Lawrence of Arabia crowd, who drew the modern-day Mid-East map, ignoring the shifting sands of ethnic and religious hatred.  They studied the Arab world, they lived among Arabs, they spoke Arabic, but they became tools for Arab interests rather than their own and this is the exact problem with Brennan.

In an ever-increasingly dangerous world, when we should be seriously looking at upgrading our military capabilities, to include keeping our front-line combat units trained and focused on these threats, we’ve got  this clueless bunch wailing about social issues in the military.  We should be vigilantly keeping our nuclear arsenal (both defensive and offensive) upgraded and potent.  This administration’s answer is more politicization within the ranks, rather than giving our military leaders the tools to build a stronger fighting force.  As my friend, Gladius, said, “I learned a long time ago, while still a 2LT, that the best welfare and care of troops is good leadership and good training. We went through a lot of feel-good crap on race relations back in the 70’s. Did no good. Then in the 80’s we went through a lot of feel-good crap about how to deal with women in the military. Did no good. People are people. They respond to good leadership and having a worthwhile mission. These people volunteered. They want to do something meaningful. The couple of hundred folks in the entire 4 million person military (counting Guard and Reserve) are causing all the trouble and causing the entire structure to topple.”  His blunt words speak the plain truth about the situation and he added, “They want good leaders and meaningful work. When I saw weak units, there was racial and sexual tension, poor mission performance and poor performance. When I saw strong units, there was none of that. And that applies whether the budget is bountiful or non-existent. The gutless bastards running the military these days have totally forgotten the basics of soldiering and unit cohesion.”

Amidst the looming gigantic defense budget cuts, this president traveled to the Brandenburg Gate, June 19, 2013, where Reagan threw down the gauntlet to the USSR, to blubber on about a nuclear free world and nuclear arms reductions (full speech here).  He lacks any clue as to how to project American resolve or strength, but he certainly excels at highlighting dangerously provocative weakness.  His “red-line rhetoric” and rose-colored proscriptions on the international stage mixed with his “white flag” waving entourage present a very “pretty in pink” American foreign policy – to include wanting the girls to lead from the front, while the President continues to lead from behind.  What an American image we present to the world……….wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.  I keep hoping we’ll get some national leadership with the strength and determination of a Vladimir Putin, yes, I admire his bold stroke moves to advance Russian interests.  We’ve got President Obama with his Gumby soul – he’ll bend any which way, to include tying our hands behind our back in the face of overt threats.   Just don’t expect him to do more than hide behind the skirts of his top female advisers.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, Gladius Maximus, Military, Politics

June 28, 2013 · 7:53 am

Little scraps worth keeping

On facebook the other day I saw one of those prevalent political signs posted by a “friend”, who is really a friend of  a friend of mine, who is a fantastic quilter.  This “friend” I thought was a quilter too, so I friended her. This “friend” appeared quite animated over the Texas abortion bill, leading to quite a flurry of “pro-choice” postings lambasting the “pro-life” stance.   Now, I have posted conservative comments many times online and in fact, back when I first started using the internet I became a frequent poster to the Excite message boards and someday (not today) I hope to elaborate on just how that experience ended up (bad beyond belief).  Today, however, I want to make a few comments or pose a serious concern I have about people jumping on hot button political issues without a moment’s hesitation.  Being a woman, a mother and a grandmother and growing up in the midst of the feminist movement, I feel justified in offering a few thoughts.  This “friend” posts a relentless stream of liberal and far-left lunatic slogans and I did comment on one about stereotyping conservatives and I posted a comment on a pro-abortion banner, but after a little thought, I decided not to engage in a back and forth and removed my comment.  This “friend” doesn’t want to discuss any political issue anyway and I doubt anything I could say would influence her opinions.  She appears to be locked down tight into the talking points political insanity – the us vs. them mindset.

Whenever the liberal left runs into a brick wall, like in the case of abortion, where advances in medicine lay lie to their central argument of viability of the fetus, that formed the pillar of their argument in the 70s and 80s, they repackage their messaging to deflect from the real issue.  The political slogan that caught my attention proclaimed in loud, large red letters: “WANT ABORTION OUTLAWED?  HOW MANY UNWANTED CHILDREN WILL YOU ADOPT?” and it brought to mind this long-abandoned viability argument.  There’s a complete lapse of logic in this argument this banner proclaims that needs to be addressed.  So, let’s start with the obvious main issue.  What exactly is abortion?  If this banner is to believed outlawing abortion produces “unwanted children”, so it’s saying abortion eliminates “unwanted children”.  Back when the push for legalized abortion gained force in America, the abortion argument centered on this very question of aborting “children”.  The pro-abortion faction pushed their cause by centering their argument on the” when does life begin” question and made the case that a baby wasn’t a baby until it was outside the womb and viable, meaning could sustain life on it’s own.  Medical advancement in the intervening decades pushed that ”viability” argument back into the second trimester of pregnancy and to adjust for this, the pro-abortion activists altered their talking points to a “pro-choice” messaging platform.  Now, if a baby born at let’s say 23 weeks of gestation could survive outside the womb, then that is a viable human life, right?  Of course it is, that’s why the pro-abortion crowd switched all their political dogma to a “pro-choice” message filled with endless repetitions of the phrase, “we want abortion to be legal, safe and rare”, to deflect from the central issue of just what is being aborted.  The science makes it clear that there’s no definitive point when they can declare viability and thus the “human life” question is a hot potato abortion proponents decided to sidestep.  Each pregnancy is different and the viability of each baby varies, which makes it risky business to engage in a scientific debate on viability or to try to set a viability timeline.

The abortion activists  conveniently switched gears and changed their focus to declaring legal abortion a “right” and by convincing young women that this is their “right”  to have sex with whomever they want and that the results are something that other taxpayers must pay for, because of course, it’s wrong to infringe on other people’s “rights”.  If I don’t want my tax dollars used to fund ridding America of “unwanted children”, then I am at fault for these “unwanted children existing, not the man and women/or boy and girl, which ever the case may be, who brought this child into the world???  This banner screams for someone to point out an obvious fact.  A pregnancy results from a man and a woman making a choice, in all but a few rare cases of rape.  Okay, in a tiny percentage of cases we can assume that both parties were responsible sexual partners and used birth control to try and prevent an “unwanted child” from happening.  And in another rare scenario couples face the choice of a child being detected with a serious birth defect or the mother’s life is imperiled by the pregnancy.. This leaves us with a glaring statistic that  in 2009 the abortion rate had decreased, but was 227 per 1,000 live births, so that’s almost a quarter of pregnancies ended in abortion (CDC figures here).  That neatly closes the “rare” argument.  And yes, I am “pro-choice” too, that means you have the right to whatever “choices” you make and you are responsible for the results of your choices, not me.  This is how “responsible”  citizenship works – we must be willing to take responsibility for our choices.

The more interesting moral leap that hit me in this banner is how are people who are opposed to abortion responsible for the sexual choices that other people make?  Here’s the absurdity of the whole “it’s my body and it’s my right” mantra – they’ve got a whining poster girl, Sandra Fluke, who attended prestigious universities, to attain a law degree, and is supposedly one of America’s brightest young women on the horizon.  Yet, she bemoans that the government is responsible for providing her contraception.  One should wonder why this smart young woman and her sexual partner(s), as America’s brightest young people (I am assuming she picks smart sexual partners) must turn to the government to subsidize their sexual activity. No, the pro-life folks are responsible for the “unwanted children” born to pro-choice women, which leaves me wondering, just what personal choices are these pro-choice women and their sexual partners responsible for?

This same “friend” had another blaring banner with an idiotic quote from Texas senator, Wendy Davis, proclaiming, “Lawmakers, either get out of the vagina business or go to medical school!”  Well, yes, I would prefer to only have to worry about my own vagina, thank you very much and by the same token I preferred to take care of my own reproductive choices and my husband and I footed the cost of providing for our four children.   When you are demanding other taxpayers foot the bill for your “rights” and then have the audacity to blame other people for the results of your choices, somewhere along the line there’s a huge gap in that reasoning.  This lack of logic permeates our political landscape on both the left and right, but sometimes the total lunacy strikes when you hear a heartfelt speech like the one Chelsea Clinton delivered lamenting the lack of services that Planned Parenthood provides that her great-grandmother didn’t have access to (story here).  Her great-grandmother was “forced” to give birth to Chelsea’s beloved maternal grandmother.  Chelsea misses how her political indoctrination precludes any logical corollary that if her great-grandmother had opted for an abortion, then she wouldn’t exist today.  She should be thankful her great-grandmother chose to bring her beloved grandmother into this world.  It’s rather sad in a way to see so many politically brainwashed young people, who just jump on the virulent partisan political train and never sit and dissect the rhetoric or think about issues broken down into their essence.  All I can say is that I have never known a pregnant woman who talked about her condition as it being a “fetus” and then as the pregnancy progressed to some imprecise “viable” point declared, “oh, it’s a baby now!’  It’s a baby from the moment you find out about it and that’s really why the deceptive language and subterfuge uses such loud, inflammatory rhetoric to get as many women throwing hissyfits as possible.  Who wants to deal with a lot of high-pitched caterwauling by angry women screaming about their vaginas?’  Not me, I like to keep mine private.

My paternal grandmother ended up pregnant by a young man who had two young women pregnant at the same time.  He married the other young woman and my grandmother gave birth to a truly “unwanted child”, my father.  She married and left my father with her parents – my great-grandparents, who raised my Dad.   My grandmother had only daughters with her husband, but she never wanted anything to do with my father or his children.  My grandmother never once spoke to me in my entire life, even when I was in the same room with her.  Many times my great-grandmother would tell my grandmother, “That’s one of Billy’s girls.” and my grandmother wouldn’t say a word.  My great-grandmother insisted on making it a point to make her daughter aware of my existence and she later would say reassuring things that my father,me and my siblings were her grandchildren and as important as all the rest of her grandchildren.   Despite my grandmother’s rejection,  I sure am thankful she gave birth to my Pop and can’t imagine wishing she had opted for an abortion….. how bizarre is that idea really, wishing that you didn’t exist?   Family situations are like the patchwork quilts my great-grandmother taught me to piece together – made up of varied pieces of scraps in lots of patterns and colors, when looked at individually can seem not worth keeping, but when you add them all together – it creates an amazing end product.  I learned from my great-grandmother, who loved my father probably more than she loved all of her nine children, that no matter how ugly or worthless you think a scrap of fabric is, don’t discard it.  Later on, those scraps might be just what’s needed in another quilt to create a beautiful design.  People are like that too – even the ones who start out as unwanted scraps might mean the whole world to other people later on.  In my book, everyone should be a keeper.

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June 28, 2013 · 6:26 am

Excellent opinion piece on our nuclear arsenal

In some recent posts I discussed our nuclear arsenal and the importance of maintaining and modernizing our nuclear capabilities.  The drumbeat that beats loudest since the 1980s taps out the nuclear disarmament tune, whereby suggesting our nuclear force plays a critical role in our national defense strategy hits a sour note among most of our national leadership. Here’s a well-written opinion piece from the heartland by Republican senator, Deb Fisher (junior senator from Nebraska), titled “Modernize, don’t abandon our nuclear arsenal”  in Politico, which bolsters my position on our nuclear force.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, Military

June 22, 2013 · 10:07 am

Sweet land of liberty….. (or land of the gullible?)

Glenn Beck had guests on his show who talked about a new gated community they’re putting together called The Citadel.  Through a careful, highly selective application process they hope to find people united by their belief in patriotism, liberty, pride in American exceptionalism and preparedness.   This community will require everyone to be self-supporting and these organizers, about as efficiently as the central planners in the old USSR, decided to start a firearms manufacturing factory as a means for the first wave of it’s “pioneers” to support themselves.  Guess, they miss the humor in a community touting “liberty” as it’s keystone, building a community with central planners setting up all the rules to become part of the neighborhood, to include what you must believe.

So far, this new community exists only on a webpage and the developers don’t even own the real land to build this oasis of liberty.  Not to worry about this being a ponzi scheme, they assure you this beacon of liberty will be located somewhere in Idaho, where they’ve thus far acquired  land for the weapons factory.  Don’t worry that one of the developers has a criminal record for extortion, which he explained away as his being naive about speaking out.  Not to worry that if you fill out the application (with it’s $33 application fee) and if you  make it through the Skype interview as a worthy new neighbor for the Citadel community, you must begin paying $50 per month to help secure enough money for these developers  to actually buy real property to build this proposed community.

What would living be, where liberty reigns supreme, without the central planners specifying, “All homes will be built of poured concrete for exceptional strength and durability” (even the Three Little Pigs had more freedom).  Rest assured, you will be free to build your home to whatever specifications you choose.  You’ve also got to be part of the community militia and own a firearm to be able to defend the community.  So, you’ll be providing business for the community factory, as well as the work force for it.

I’m going to talk about neighbors and the neighborhood I love best, being part of the United States Army neighborhood.  We, as all Army families do, moved frequently and lived overseas as well as all over the US.  From my very first days around the Army decades ago, one of the most amazing opportunities to me was to actually be able to meet people, up close and personal, from all over the United States. Due to the traveling and also soldiers’ propensity to marry women in far-flung locales, I even met many people from all over the globe.  My husband retired from the Army more than a decade ago and we live in a typical southern town next to a large US Army installation with a population like an international smorgasbord.  Just a few days ago, my primary care doctor, who is Syrian, was talking about the situation in Syria and he pulled out his cell phone to show me pictures of his parents home, where the next-door neighbor’s house had recently been bombed.  His parents are here living with him, so thankfully they are safe.

From a post I wrote in January titled, “Multiculturism My Way”, you can glean that I consider the world “my neighborhood”  too and even growing up in the backwoods of rural PA, I longed to meet people from all over the world.  Luck definitely lit my way in life, because it’s been a privilege to have a retired solider hand me a slip of paper that opened the door to first meeting people all over the globe and then to spend decades as part of the US Army neighborhood, where patriotism shines bright. It’s been an opportunity to meet wonderful neighbors and hopefully to be a good neighbor too.  So, I want to talk about my neighborhood, where all the values this proposed phony Citadel scheme purports to value is part of the very fabric of the US Army community.

Soldiers believe in a strong national defense, almost down to the last man and woman.  Soldiers believe in patriotism too and a cloak of values shields our neighborhood: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service , honor, integrity, personal courage (Army values here)  As the standard-bearers of General George Washington’s army, we certainly take very seriously the trust invested in us to bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.  Unlike these, hummm, I’m searching for a word that isn’t a cuss word, because ‘jackasses” came to mind.  Here, I’ll settle on calling them deluded people, unlike them, the Army community is strong enough to welcome people from all over the US and the world and still be a place where our values flourish.  In basic training at Fort Dix, NJ, I learned about how a foreigner seeking citizenship, could acquire it by serving in the US Army.  So, we’re strong enough to welcome diverse people into our ranks and still stay true to our values.

I had all kinds of neighbors living in the barracks as a young private and once I married we found wonderful neighbors everywhere we lived – on Army posts, in German villages and in civilian communities in America.  I’ve managed to make friends and learn a heck of a lot by embracing people who are different than me.  I’ve learned to make some darned good egg rolls from an Army wife from Thailand, who came to my home and spent the afternoon showing me.  I’ve acquired recipes galore and much more.  I had an Army wife from Korea (who married a Cuban guy) show me how to make sushi (yes, I know Japanese, right) in her kitchen.  She was trying to learn how to make Cuban dishes.  I learned to prepare many German dishes from numerous German friends.  I had a Cuban neighbor in one neighborhood, who loved to cook and she was constantly bringing food to me and telling me, “here try this, you’ll love it!” and I did.   That Cuban lady was friends with my next-door neighbor who was Puerto-Rican, so I often got a combination of foods to try. When my oldest daughter was in kindergarten, I met a Lebanese neighbor down the street and she asked me to bring my kids down to her house to play with her son, who was my daughter’s classmate. We became friends and I learned about Lebanese food, because this family ran a Lebanese restaurant.  Lebanese food ranks as some of the best food in the world.

In my food from around the world saga, I can’t leave out this wonderful Southern lady, who was married to a retired Special Forces soldier, who lived down the street from me when we lived off-post at Fort Bragg.  This wonderful lady and her husband had adopted two special needs children and this lady struck up a friendship with me, because her little daughter was the same age as my oldest daughter.  This lady taught me about Southern cooking and boy, she loved to cook.  She often would call in the morning and tell me to bring my daughter down to her house and she’d list the lunch menu and many times she’d say, “come early and we can chat and I’ll show you how to cook”….- fill-in-the-blank with a Southern dish.

Now, some of my forays into international cooking do go awry and I provided a good laugh for my youngest daughter’s  friend several years ago when she was in my kitchen watching me roll up burritos.  This neighbor has a Mexican mother and she had this dismayed look on her face and said, “What are you doing!”  She told me how to properly roll up burritos and I am sure her mother got a good laugh out of her story about my pathetic burrito-rolling skills, but hey, this girl loves my potato salad, so we all have our strong suits:-)

I must confess that my favorite cuisine is authentic Chinese.  Unfortunately, I never met a Chinese woman to come teach me how to cook Chinese food.  I do have a friend who is half-Japanese who offered lots of advice on Japanese cooking, but I’ve been winging it on Chinese cooking with cookbooks and experimenting over the years.  When I did volunteer work at the American Red Cross doing Red Cross messages, a lovely Puerto-Rican friend frequently brought in food.  I learned that the Caribbean is sort of an international mishmash of cultures and thus I still use this handwritten recipe from this friend called , “Puertorican Chinese Arroz”, where she helpfully put “rice” in parentheses.

What’s magical about Chinese cuisine, as well as their culture, is how they take what little they have and through a long, long history, as one of the oldest cultures on earth, developed  ways to adjust and thrive, through good times and bad.  Chinese people demonstrate amazing resilience.  Their cooking encapsulates this, how with a few varied cooking techniques or a few spices,  they can take a few simple ingredients and turn it into something unique and flavorful.  The Chinese spirit to adapt and persevere always amazes me.  Of course, they offer Sun Tzu too, which I just love- all that ancient wisdom on military strategy that still resonates today;-)

This is a true story about a neighbor I had one time – a lovely, good neighbor with a very kind heart and the kind of trusting soul – like the type of people who will start sending money to some schemers like these Citadel planners (yes, this liberty-based community is a “scheme” – it exists only on their webpage).  We were living in military quarters in Germany at the time and my neighbor (a lovely German lady) was preparing to move back to the States with her soldier husband.  My neighbor had an extensive David Winter cottage collection, which she decided to sell.  She sold them to a soldier who didn’t have the money up front, so she accepted a stack of postdated checks, which she agreed to deposit each month and he assured her that  he would have money in this checking account to cover them.  I urged her to hold on to her collection until she found a buyer with cash in hand.

That same neighbor was planning to buy some lovely lakefront property in the US, dirt cheap and sight unseen, but she needed  to send money fast before someone else snatched up this almost too good to be true deal.  I forget where she heard about this property, but I begged her to hold on to her money until she got back to the US and could actually walk around this property and see what she was buying.  When I thought her naive trust had reached its limit, she told me about this puppy her dog had.   Her close friend down the street headed back to the States and my neighbor said her friend was going to send money to her to fly that puppy back to the States as soon as they were settled at their next duty station. The friend had said she wanted the puppy, but then had endless excuses why she couldn’t take the puppy with them.  I gently tried to tell my neighbor that if her friend had really wanted that puppy, she would have taken it with them when they left.  Naturally, my neighbor was stuck keeping that puppy.

My neighbor would help anyone and she had a wonderful sense of humor.  She was the type of neighbor I loved having and you know I couldn’t tell you exactly what her politics were, nor did I ever think about her patriotism.  What I did value was that if I needed a helping hand or help in an emergency, I knew she would do whatever she could to help me.  I judged her on her character and she had a sterling character, albeit a bit too trusting of a soul.  It might be better to teach your kids to respect and value people with differing views rather than enclosing your family behind a fortress to shield them from people with different views.

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June 20, 2013 · 11:20 am

Paving the path to Peace

Here’s a quick news story, “Egypt sees Ethiopian dam as risk to water supply” in the Guardian,  to illustrate the importance of access to water.   I stated in my last blog piece that access to water may prove to be one of the gravest friction points in decades to come.  In this report, Ethiopia, sensing Egyptian weakness, appears intent to move on a dam project.  This dam project will provide much needed energy for Ethiopia and development opportunity.  On the other side, this dam might spell looming crop failures and a crisis for Egypt.  Egypt, already in a precarious situation from the much-hyped Arab Spring, could collapse even more, because the Arab Spring was a big lie.   President Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood – the group that spawned radical Islamism.  President Obama keeps trying to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as a mostly secular organization, but there again is another one of those big lies he told.  Egypt’s economy has gotten much worse since the ouster of Mubarak and the prospect of a diminished water supply or an impediment to the primary water source for Egypt portends a potential for more conflicts, both internal and external.

This little example illuminates just one factor that might ignite another war or another internal revolt inside Egypt and we see these regional friction points all over the globe. It would be lovely if some naive notion like Global Zero could resolve the world’s problems and make us all safe.  The truth is we need to maintain our military might, restore our economic equilibrium and start working to be a shining example for democratic ideals.  The United States should be upgrading our aging nuclear arsenal, not dismantling it or allowing it to decay.  We need to be able to protect ourselves and the many countries that rely on our nuclear umbrella for security. The Wall Street journal ran an interview with former Defense Secretary, James Schlesinger, in 2009 that I came across yesterday mentioned in another article (I forgot which article or I’d put a link to that too).  Mr.Schlesinger provides the most insightful, detailed, clear reasons why we need to remain a nuclear power for the foreseeable future in this piece titled,“Why We Don’t Want a Nuclear-Free World”.  (WSJ interview here).

We should take a leadership role with other world powers to strike a path toward resolving the third world hot spots by forging consensus, instead of playing out our high stakes strategic gambits on the backs of these much poorer countries.  Constantly upping the ante and fueling these conflicts with more and more weapons just prolongs the carnage.  Recovering from war takes decades, sometimes longer.  The American South remained trapped in poverty for almost a century after the US Civil War and even today remnants of the effect of that war can easily be found.  Some of these third world countries remain trapped in almost endless strife, where the people face a daily struggle for just the vestiges of survival.

To confidently support arming some lunatic rebel bands in Syria, where a video hit the airwaves and online, with one such “commander” slicing up his fallen foe and yanking out his heart and liver – and eating it, well, obviously it’s reprehensible to arm these types of barbarians in our name.  Assad is a monster too, so I’m not supporting him either.  The solution would be to try to limit the arms flowing in, instead of trying to find ways to fan the flames.  I watched Vladimir Putin talk about this video and I agree with him, but I think his trying to prop up Assad won’t work either.   If Russia, China and the US decided to end this Syrian tragedy, they could do it.  All it would take is deciding the carnage has dragged on long enough, end the senseless slaughter and work toward some sort of political arrangement.  President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s arrogant presumptions about redrawing the map of the Mid-East  to fit their political agenda has led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of civilians and will end up costing even more.  To use US might, directly or through arming others, imposes responsibility for the end result.  Supporting the Arab Spring has destabilized the entire region and their cavalier bravado looks likely to end in the region spiraling out of control and likely will lead to a larger regional war.

The last century’s collapse of colonialism, world wars and cold war era need to become historical stepping stones on a path to more constructive cooperation among the world’s leaders.  Assuredly there will be many twists and turns along the path and maybe even a few obstacles that seem insurmountable.  We might even come upon some obstacles that seem like a Sisyphean boulder that will keep rolling downhill to crush our hopes for peace. If we believe it is possible, the only thing standing in our way is the will to chip away at that boulder until it becomes just gravel to pave our path.  Being the daughter of a man who built roads for a living, I watched Pop blast away entire mountains, so I know it can be done;-)

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