Personal Note From Christmas Past

CHRISTMAS

 

Since I was a little boy, Christmas has been my favorite holiday.  Perhaps it all started when I was two when my Father decided I wanted or needed a toy train set.  One of my earliest memories is playing happily inside the boxes the train set came in while my Dad put the set together and then played with it all day long.  Merry Christmas Dad!

 

Later after my two younger brothers came along, Christmas became a group conspiracy  with begging and pleading aimed at my sainted Mother who had to weather the annual assault of needs, desires and demands for various toys that held a heroin like hold on our imaginations. Merry Christmas guys!

 

 

I remember I always wanted a dog (this actually lasted well unto my adulthood) but we rented and the lease specifically stated "no pets".  If truth be told my Mother had a deathly fear of dogs, cats or any other creatures that she believed did not belong in a dwelling with people, so being a smart ass I would remind her that the baby Jesus was born in a manger with all sorts of animals.  This was called invoking the "big guy" and was clearly my version of the nuclear option.  My father then would say something profound like "The question is no!!!" followed by ..."and your not Jesus".  This from a man who started his working career as a Shepard while a boy in his native Sweden!  

The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

Obama's first 100 days in his second term: A largely unchecked genocide in Syria, an ever-escalating drone warfare program, a botched effort for gun control, fumbling implementation of the new health law, defeats on fiscal policy and the president’s seeming acceptance of business as usual in Washington are all causing alarm on the left. What is the use of having a crusading liberal president if he won’t crusade or can’t win when he does? The left have realized that their king has lost his zing, mojo, or whatever you want to call it. His personal influence has come under attack. People are noticing his laziness, his lack of motivation to do more. His speeches don't command the huge crowds. His lies and deflections of the truth about Bengazi and the Marathon bombing are starting to hit home. Soon, the lame stream media will have to start reporting, not idolizing. He is now a lame duck president, two years before time. The chickens have come home to roost.

How to win in 2016

[Foreword: Even though my oldest friend Larry left us in 2014 (a 9/11 victim}, he provided us with many of his futurist writings. This one is especially prescient.]

2016 

Both Republican and Democrat presidential candidates should understand that to win in 2016 will mean changing the dangerous trajectory that Obama and the "progressives" have inflicted on the nation.  In a bi-partisan manner, if possible, they should  demonstrate to an exhausted, skeptical, fearful and angry public that the country can be turned around and led to growth, strength, full time jobs with good wages, individual freedom and prosperity.

This will mean the return of "certainty" to our domestic and foreign affairs, reestablishing the rule of law and renewing national fidelity to the Constitution.  At a minimum these will require a sharp curtailment of the administrative state that the left so reveres.  It will also necessitate a well thought out  and long overdue shrinkage of a bloated and morbidly obese Federal government. 

  

Regulatory and other governmental agencies that have become power mad should be abolished and/or de-funded and only their most fundamental and essential legal functions should be preserved.  The IRS, EPA, CSB, NLRB, OSHA, NRC, BLM, NMB, FERC AND FEC have all violated their mandates and are no longer trusted.  Add to this, DoJ, DVA  and HHS which also act like imperious thugs and you begin to see a government out of control, behaving like criminals and contemptuous of the people who pay their salaries. 

The country must grow and become the most prosperous nation on the globe once again.  We must become energy independent in such a way that it results in us have the cheapest and most varied amount of power in the world causing investments and job creation to flow into the country.

We must fix what the Heritage Foundation calls our "confused, unfocused and dysfunctional"  immigration system by closing the southern border and then rethinking logically and systematically, what our immigration priorities will be.  For those here legally and illegally criminal behavior must result in immediate deportation after conviction and punishment.  Amnesty with a path to citizenship should be limited to those who were brought here as small children and those who serve honorably in the military.  Work visas should be available for those who have skills in areas experiencing difficulties in filling openings or capital to invest in legitimate job creating businesses.  Interior enforcement should be robust and unambiguous.  The primary goal of immigration should be patriotic assimilation into an equal opportunity society and not multicultural assimilation into a dependency society with open borders.

A SYMPHONY OF TREACHERY

Barack  Obama took a far worse "shellacking" on Tuesday November 4th 2014 than he had in 2010 but you would never know it to hear him talk about it a day later.

Repudiated by his own party for a year, the GOP wave rolled in and all he really had to say in effect was that none of it was about him.  Apparently in his imagination the two thirds of the electorate who stayed home were still his voters and there fore he was still master of the universe. 

The Republican drubbing was both wide and deep and included a majority in the U.S. Senate, a gain of 14 seats in the House, 60% of all the Governorships and an increase in control of state legislatures from 60 to 69.  The people were more than angry ...they have had enough!.

Charles Krauthammer sagely opined that Obama would not offer an olive branch to the GOP because that would weaken his intention and need to be relevant once again.  Thus he threw down the gauntlet of a unilateral fiat by executive decree for millions of illegal aliens to be given amnesty while open borders would in all probability remain open out of political need for a weakened party.

Then he doubled and tripled down by the disclosure of a new secret letter to the Ayatollah Khamenei for military support against ISIS in return for alleviating sanctions  and guarantees  that Iran could continue to enrich as long as they would "promise" not to become a nuclear military power.  Next he decided to try a Russian born Taliban POW in a U.S. Federal Court as a trial balloon designed  to finally shut down Gitmo and transfer all remaining POWs to Super Max facilities in the U.S..

THE ALBATROSS AROUND OBAMA'S NECK

"Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks

Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge  "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Barack Obama may have been too cute for words with his Executive Action on Immigration timed to be in sync with the Latin Grammy's.  His pandering like his lying simply knows no bounds.  Even if you believe that he had some uber prosecutorial discretion for not deporting millions of illegal foreign nationals, he did not have any constitutional authority to grant them Work Authorization Permits and Social Security Cards which despite his protestations to the contrary are the gateway to almost every Federal benefit.  Besides if you are still one of the dwindling few who still believe this man please buy one of my bridges in NYC!

This was a callous and ultimately cruel act of political trickery disguised as compassion to avoid the ripping apart of the families of the "Dreamers"  he created  in 2012 through DACA.  His prosecutorial discretion or amnesty or whatever you may want to call it however is not tied to any Immigration Law passed by Congress.

It is ironic that and disingenuous that Obama and his supporters of his illegal overreach want to justify it by saying the Senate passed a bi-partisan comprehensive bill in 2013 that the House refused to pass and thus the President now gets to make law on his own.

According to a detailed Heritage Foundation analysis, the so called "Gang of 8" bill was a seriously flawed bill that granted amnesty and path to citizenship to 11.5 million illegal foreign nationals and authorized billions of dollars of spending without the guarantee of a secure border.  The cost to the taxpayers would have been trillions of dollars which would have increased both spending and the debt enormously because of the huge dependency on government it would have engendered.  The already bloated Federal bureaucracy would have become morbidly obese.  Hidden in the bill was also tons of pork and sweeping new powers for DHS which is turning  into this administration's  version of a secret police.

 On a moral basis more than 4 million people are waiting in line to come here legally.  They are paying outrageous fees for forms and verification documents and doing everything by the book yet Washington just doesn't seem to give a damn about them.  Last but not least the bill disregarded federalism by not bringing the States into the process.  

The fact that supporters of amnesty keep harping on this bill is supposed to make the public forget that the House passed over 370 bills many with bi-partisan support or even Democratic sponsorship, that Harry Reid refused to let see the light of day as per his instructions from Obama.  What Chutzpa!

As he tugged at the heartstrings of America  which even included the invocation of scripture, he even lied about the "record" number of deportations his administration had performed which is a fiction since he has included people caught at the border and sent back immediately.  No other administration has done this because of the obvious fraud it creates statistically.

THE CURSE OF MODERN CULTURE

“Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?

― Terry Tempest Williams

The new alternative culture is in reality the old traditional culture.  The Progressives who were once  Fascists and Communists, have taken what once was commonly shared and historic morality, values, rights and common sense and made them political .  Once they have been repositioned as such, they have been attacked, compromised, made immoral and then destroyed. 

Mark Steyn makes perhaps the most salient point of the of our current political situation when he states "you can't have conservative government in a liberal culture".  Steyn is not alone in understanding that culture drives politics and not the other way around.  That's why the hard left has invested so much time and effort in the subjugation of the arts, the media and the academy. 

These are the gaps in the lines where the progressive invasion have attacked and laid waste to  traditional  America even as the census numbers still reflect a center-right majority.  The thrust of the progressive cultural putsch has been to dismiss and demean the traditional  values of "old" America such as patriotism, free speech, a free press,  religious rights, the nuclear family, the melting pot, the sanctity of unalienable individual rights, rugged individualism, American  exceptionalism, a free market system, respect for the law, the military and the flag, sobriety, chastity, the second amendment,  equal opportunity not equal outcomes, and national unity when foreign affairs and national defense takes us to the waters edge.

A state of diminishing expectations. (republished ERLANDSSON)

The day after the President of the United States gave his first wartime speech, 13 years into America's long march against Islamic extremism, his Secretary of State declared we were not at war with ISIS but “What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counter-terrorism operation, and it's going to go on for some period of time". 

This confusion was echoed by Susan Rice and Marie Harf and contradicted by Josh Ernest at the White House and at the Pentagon.  It seemed lost on some that Obama was basing his authority to go to war without Congressional authority on the 2001 and 2003 resolutions against al-Qaeda.  The 2001 resolution mentioned "war" four times and the 2003 mentioned it nine times.

This was followed by the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond telling reporters at a news conference in Berlin: Let me be clear; Britain will not be taking part in any air strikes in Syria."  He said London won't be "revisiting" the issue after Parliament decided last year against participating in air strikes.  Number 10 Downing Street then had to walk that back by saying that P.M. David Cameron had not yet decided on air strikes.  (However after the Saturday release of a You Tube video of the decapitation of British aid worker, David Cawthorne Haines,  that could change dramatically.)

It all went down hill after that with Germany stating that they were not yet in the coalition followed by Turkey and then Saudi Arabia announcing that their contribution would be only the training of the Syrian Free Army on Saudi territory.

Friday it got worse with the CIA in a surprise release stating that ISIS had grown by as much as 300% since June and now numbered between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in the terror army.  This would make ISIS the 76th largest army out of 106 forces in the world.  It should be remembered that when they took Fallujah in the beginning of 2014 they were estimated to be around 4000 strong.

Mandatory Military Service for Black Thugs?

As a military retiree and having once been a drill sergeant years ago. I can see that your pretty well set in your opinion about this making military duty mandatory again! I can tell you though that the quality of the individual who passes through the induction centers for indoctrination into the military way of life. Well, if what is coming out of Baltimore these days is any example of what the cadre of the basic training units will have to work with, you are trying to put society's problems in the hands of the Drill Sergeant's as well as putting the country at risk for wasting the time, money and effort needed to mold these people into quality basically trained new servicemen. Some percentage will conform and do well, possibly even work towards a career, but another percentage will be processed back out as unfit for military service. But that's only if they meet the set standards for induction.

 

Soldiers, sailors and airmen are all volunteers with a desire to be where they are in the service of their country! The military has prerequisites that inductees must meet before they are excepted into the services for training. These levels of aptitude and abilities are tested for, so they can be properly placed where they fit in the best for the services. This is why we have the best military in the world and trying to push someone into this service because society has failed in their initial education and upbringing will only be a waste of time and resources in a time where both are in short supply. The only time in history when the standards are lowered for inductees, is when the need for manpower is increased due to the combat losses of those others trained before them. Would you really want to put the lives of your family, friends and neighbors into the hands of this caliber of servicemen and or women in the future? To trust these socially damaged individuals for the protection of the American way of life?

 

If you truly want to give these "damaged" people some help, to better them, to give them a step up from where they are in life. You must address the social issues and education in the communities from which they come from. Pushing them toward the military is just another way that the "left" just kicks the problem down the road for someone else to deal with. Nothing could of made me more proud as a Drill Sergeant than to march ahead of my platoon for graduation from basic training, for I had personally monitored their progress throughout their training and knew they were ready for the military way of life. Trying to deal with society's problems at that same time is not the answer for the welfare of our country!

Sensible Policy #1

Saw a female Professor today talk about giving women a couple days off from work for her period...said women do society a favor by having children, so employers should make allowances for it. In this same discussion they wondered why women don't make as much money as men.

 

So, they want days off for their period, but not to stay home with their kids....and how are women doing society a favor if the village is raising them and not her? Think kids being raised as latch key kids... is hurting or helping society? Yes, this view is unpopular, but it's mine. Cut up your credit cards and go without and you won't need a job that pays less and doesn't give you period days. 

And stop having kids you can't afford.
And stop having kids out of marriage.
And stop kicking men to the curb.
And let your kids see you pray.
And let them see you doing random acts of kindness.

And quality time with your kids will come out of quantity.
Who remembers "quality" time with your mom? I don't. I remember helping her do chores, her taking me to every practice under the sun. Watching her sew. I was just glad she was around. When she started working full time, I don't remember quantity or quality because as a teen, I had my own life and seeing her was checking in before curfew and eating breakfast. 

Yes, I'm a narrow-minded Neanderthal bigot who thinks moms shouldn't work full time if at all possible. Having 300 channels, iPhones, and brand new cars to pay for doesn't count.

There, I said it.

Will We Aid In the Murders of These Little Girls



Photo by Hossein Fatemi

Pictures sometimes speak a thousand words. In viewing this photo of beautifully dressed little girls playing outside their Afghanistan school, what we don't see is what's important. We don't see the Taleban lurking around the corner waiting for their opportunity to take over the country again. The only thing that is stopping this is the presence of western troups and aid associations. When the coalition troups start to leave in the summer of 2011, the aid association workers and teachers will be the first to be slaughtered, quickly followed by the renewed oppression of women and girls. Schools for little girls will be blown up, women will not be allowed to work, and the Taleban will revert to "protecting" the women by isolating them within their homes or underneath rediculous burkas. Breaking their perfidious rules may mean death or rape. Actually, this is happening now in parts of the country. The "honor" rapes and killings of women and girls still happens, although behind the scenes. Unfortunately, the only thing Obama is considering when he decides to withdraw from the country is whether Al Queda has been destroyed. As soon as he is satisfied or the US political environment changes to what the hollywood liberals want, Afghanistan will be abandoned to the fate promised by the Taleban. Note that the US has had troups stationed in Germany for over 50 years, and the Huns have behaved themselves. The same should happen in Afghanistan, but don't hold your breath... remember the little girls as they are now.

RIP Larry Allison, Conservative Analyst and 9/11 Victim, New York City

RIP Larry Allison, Conservative Analyst and 9/11 Victim, New York City

So, who was Larry Allison? Larry was a conservative writer and talk show host who has contributed dozens of essays to our blog for the last eight years. He was a victim of 9/11 but he refused to let that define him. On that infamous day, Larry was flying back from Washington and missed the Pentagon attack by 15 minutes. The horrible World Trade Center disaster awaited him when he arrived back in NYC. As a member of Rudy Guiliani's administration, he volunteered to help as soon as access to the site was allowed. The dust, the body parts, the jet fuel and god knows what else in the air was absorbed into workers' skin and lungs. Thousands got sick, and Larry was one of the worst.

When he got sick, he was officially recognized as a 9/11 victim, so his medical treatment was always taken care of by the City. He also had a car and driver to ferry him around as he became increasingly immobile. His damaged lungs, the ensuing leukemia and all the medicine he had to take, caused him to gain too much weight, which slowed him down even more. His life saving treatment consisted of monthly chemotherapy and blood transfusions. This past summer I spent four days with him in the Bronx and his spirit never wavered. He would talk your ear off, and you loved listening to him. The treatment finally stopped working.

Larry was also an unabashed Catholic and supporter of  Israel and everything Jewish. His jewishness probably came from the three Jewish wives he married and divorced. (he obviously loved Jewish women.) One day we were talking and he said he was very tired of being alone. He said a friend had recommended an international web site for people like himself, so he put forth his information. It took a couple of months before he received any inquiries, and he got two. One was from a Russian tractor driver and the other was from a young grandmother in the Philippines. In the end he visited the beautiful lady from the Philippines and she became his loving wife and soulmate. He was never happier than when he was with her.

Besides being a voracious writer, Larry and his very good friend Frank Vernuccio hosted a conservative talk show on WXOX in the City. Although they mostly concentrated on New York issues, they also gave conservative voices to international politics.

And lastly Larry was a friend, my oldest friend since we were 5 years old. We grew up together along with our other friends back in Corning, NY. When James Dean's movie Rebel Without a Cause was having it's way with young teenagers, we bought identical jackets and started a street gang, the Rebels. Our biggest claim to fame was when we rolled a truck tire through the back door of a bar, and watched it roll all the way to the front door. We hid behind the big stone eagle at the Eagles Club to see what would happen. Sadly, nothing.

Larry has left behind twin brothers whom he was very proud of, two daughters, many cousins, nephews and nieces, too many close friends to count, and his wife Jocelyn. He will be sorely missed by all of us. He went too soon. He had so much more to do, to say and to write. God Bless his soul.

Good bye old friend. The tears will stop.