Geronimoooo!

Geronimo.  Isn't that what we all used to say as kids when we were jumping off the high dive?

Maybe it'll work the same for the "fiscal cliff".

It's beginning to appear that the "conspiracy theory" I wrote about earlier wasn't so far fetched after all.  With time running out and no sign of compromise, it appears that President Obama is willing to see us all over the fiscal cliff in pursuit of his irrational need to "tax the rich".

Does anyone else see his idea of "compromise" as more than a little odd?  He flies back from vacation in Hawaii to attempt a last minute deal, does nothing more than restate his beginning position of tax increases for those making over $250,000, with possible spending cuts "to be determined later" and tells the leaders of the Senate that if they can't come to a compromise within a couple of days, he demands an up or down vote on his proposal.  Yeah, he's really working hard to meet the Republicans "more than halfway".

I say we jump.  Let's be realistic, the Senate Democrats aren't about to put any proposal on the table that will be at any risk at all of being palatable to Senate Republicans, much less the House of Representatives.  This is all nothing more than political theater.  Theater, I might add, with a tiresomely predictable plot and outcome.

The tax increases will come.  The Republicans, who are doing what they were elected to do (oppose Obama's tax/spend agenda), will get the blame with plenty of media coverage of just how badly Obama wanted to get a deal done and how heartless they were to allow a "middle class tax increase".  Obama will then, via executive order, rescind the cuts to social programs (not the defense cuts), and propose both an extension of unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed (for those keeping score, it's already exceeding 99 weeks) as well as the "Obama Tax Cuts for the Middle Class".

It's gonna happen.  And the low information voters, the one's who showed up to "vote for stuff" will all applaud the President's actions and bow to the altar of Obama, singing his praises to all who will listen.

<Sigh>

It's their world now, folks.  All we can do is try to salvage what we can in order to rebuild out of the ashes of the coming Progressive Utopia.

------------------------------------------------------

[Publisher's note:  Last week, I opined that the only thing worse than the tragedy in Newtown, CT was the rush by politicians to use the crisis to further their political agendas and hone their own personal axes.  I may have been a little premature.  It came across the news wires today that the first legal action concerning the Newtown massacre have been filed.  The parents of a 6yr old survivor of the attack have filed a lawsuit against the State of Connecticut, alleging their child has suffered by being exposed to the sounds of the attack through the school's PA system.  They are seeking $100,000,000.00 in damages!

It's bad enough that politicians attempt to use the attack to further their own ends, but for a family to prostitute their child's trauma for monetary gain?  Words fail me.]

Merry Christmas

There will be none of the "Happy Holidays" PC here.  The holidays are Christmas and Hanukkah. (I don't want to hear anything about "Kwanzaa").

Yes, yes, I know;  Christians supposedly appropriated the already-existing celebration of the equinox.  Fine.  I suppose we can stipulate to that.  After all, scholars have debated for decades the accuracy of the date.  I'm certainly not qualified to offer an opinion either way.  The point is, SO WHAT?

We aren't celebrating the equinox (when was the last time anyone sent you a "Happy Equinox" card?).  We are celebrating one of two religious traditions.  The most widespread in the U.S. is, of course, Christmas.  Whether you observe the holiday for it's religious significance, or not, the "reason for the season" is the birth of Jesus Christ.

The tradition of giving gifts is a direct reflection of the story of the three kings (the three wise men) who traveled to see the Christ-child bearing valuable gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  When we exchange gifts, whether we know it or not, it's in remembrance of gifts of the magi.

I've never understood the hostility of the atheistic, secular left to the traditional celebration of Christmas.  What harm is it to them if there's a Menorah, or a Nativity Scene, or a Christmas tree in the town square?  What do these groups gain out of lodging lawsuits against towns for their Christmas displays?  What harm is done them if there is a production of a Christmas play at the local school or (heaven forbid) church?  If an individual parent has objections to the content of the Christmas play, they are free to keep their child at home.

If they don't agree with the religious significance of the holiday, fine.  They are under no obligation to say "Merry Christmas" to anyone.  It would be nice, though, if they could somehow muster up the common courtesy to reply to someone else's Christmas wishes with a simple "Thank you".  What they do not have the right to do is to force others in their town or city to not celebrate the holiday as they wish, because they feel somehow "offended" at being "left out".

They will trot out the canard that the setting up of a Christmas display on "public property" somehow violates "The Separation of Church and State".  Problem is, it doesn't.  There is no such clause in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States of America.  The First Amendment reads, in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". [Emphasis added]  In short, there is no basis in law for allowing one group of people to prohibit others from celebrating Christmas (or any other religious holiday) in any way, even on town, city, municipal, or even state and federal property!

The colonists separated from the rule of England partly  because of the demand of the King that they all celebrate the State's religion ONLY, and only in the manner prescribed.  They wished to be allowed the freedom to worship God as they saw Him and in the manner they deemed appropriate.  With that history behind them, they went out of their way to provide for that freedom when they set up the governing documents of the new country.  What they did not intend, was that some future religious observance could be derailed and prohibited over the manufactured outrage and complaints of a handful of malcontents, or in some cases, only one.

There is a very large gap between the town allowing a Christmas display with the baby Jesus and the wise men, or a cross or menorah or any religious symbol relating to the holiday, and the State's Establishment of an Official Religion and imposing it on the people.  No one is going to descend on an atheist or agnostic household and frog march them into the church of their choice to observe Christmas services.

Americans have the Constitutional right to our celebration of Christmas.  Progressives, atheists, and others  who demand that such displays be removed and prohibited from the public spaces have absolutely no right to demand that we conduct our lives to accomodate their personal prejudices.

I would like to take this  moment to wish all of my rational readers and their families the merriest of Christmas's, a Happy Hanukkah, and the most joyous and prosperous New Year!

To the secularists and progressives who seem to be determined to ruin our traditional holiday celebrations and erase any mention of religion (except, perhaps, Islam.  Can't forget them, can we?) from the public lives of Americans I can only say.............................................................................








"MERRY CHRISTMAS!!"

26

26.

6 adults. 

20 children.

DEAD.

For no other reason than some punk got up with a hair across his ass hating the world, and decided to "get even". 

Yesterday morning a 20 year old boy (I'm not naming him, he deserves no amount of fame; not even the fame of infamy) got up and shot his mother in the head, killing her.  He then stole her car and traveled to the elementary school where she worked as a substitute kindergarten teacher.  He bypassed the security system put in place by the new principal a few years ago and made his way to the office.  Once there, he used the guns he had stolen from his mother to begin killing the adult administrators.  He then killed a janitor who was running the halls warning people what was happening.

Then, he went to the kindergarten classroom and began the truly horrific part of his march of death by killing the teacher and the children.  One by one, he killed 20 children.  5 & 6 year old kids!

Once they were all dead, he then turned the gun on  himself and committed suicide, escaping justice and denying the community the chance to get answers to the question they'll be asking for a generation:  WHY?  His cowardice knows no bounds.  He was even carrying his brother's ID, leading to his initially being named as the shooter.

We'll never know why he decided to do what he did.  We'll never know why he tried to set up his brother to take the blame.  We will never know, WHY?

We will be subjected to around the clock news coverage for the next few days, with various talking heads and "mental health professionals" giving their opinions on what & why.  They will profess expertise on the matter of "emotional disconnect" and various psychosis and diagnosis of this syndrome or that condition.  They'll talk about his "home environment" and how that may have contributed to his actions.  They'll wonder whether he suddenly developed this condition, or whether it was the result of a long slow build-up of escalating behaviors of rage and violence and that no one happened to be able to connect the dots. 

All of this is a waste of airtime.  We can't ever know, but, being human; being thinking, reasoning beings, we all have the need to settle what happened and why, at least in our own minds.  I'm no different, although my answer likely is:

He was evil.

Don't give me the excuse, or give him the cover, of "Oh, he isn't to blame.  He had a tough childhood.  He was suffering from a mental illness.  We need to have compassion and understanding, not condemnation."

BULLSHIT.

He wasn't "suffering".  His victims suffered.  Their parents suffered, and will suffer for the rest of their lives.  Their friends suffered, and will for years.  All of the children who went to that school on that day have suffered the shock of a terrorist attack and the knowledge that some of their school mates are dead and that their world is no longer the safe, wonderful, magical place they believed.  The police and other first responders who had to confront the scene initially and those who will need to spend days with the contorted corpses of murdered children have suffered and will continue to suffer.

He didn't suddenly "snap" and strike out with whatever was at hand at a single person or immediate group.  His actions show that he moved with conscious intent, perhaps even some element of planning and anticipation.  His actions were the result of several conscious decisions:

First, he made the decision to hurt his mother.  As the first step in the fulfillment of his desire, he decided to murder his mother.  Whatever his reasons to want to hurt the woman who gave birth to him, it was his decision.  No one forced it on him.  Second, he made the decision to steal guns from his mother in order to fulfill his desire to kill. Third, he decided to steal his mother's car and make the drive to the school where she worked in order to hurt her more by killing the people she worked with and to eliminate the children she loved.  Fourth, he devised a plan to evade the security in place and gain entry into the school.  Fifth, he decided where to begin and who would be his first targets, the first to die.  Sixth, he made the conscious decision to go to the kindergarten classroom, the children his mother taught, to commit his atrocity.  He didn't harm or even threaten any of the older students or their teachers, unless they happened to cross his path and get in his way.  Seventh, he consciously, and with full intent, killed those children.  One by one.  Finally, he decided to avoid the consequences of his actions by committing suicide.  All of these were conscious decisions he made, not orders he was following.  His were the decisions, his is the responsibility.

There is only one thing worse than the events of yesterday morning and it's aftermath.  It's the entirely predictable attempt by those with a political agenda to use this tragedy to their advantage.  The gun control extremists and other "community activists" will begin demanding stricter laws and greater restrictions on the 2nd Amendment.  They will point to this as an example of the "gun culture" of America that is running amok. 

The actions of the shooter were evil.  The attempts of politicians and others to capitalize on the event for their own purposes is obscene.  No amount of increased gun regulation would have prevented this tragedy.  If it wasn't a gun, it would have been something else.  On this same day, in China, a man entered an elementary school and slashed dozens with a knife.  A couple years ago, Norway was the scene of a similarly horrific mass shooting, and they have some of the strictest gun regulations in the world.  Restricting access to legal ownership of firearms isn't the answer.  Criminals aren't interested in whether they are breaking the law in obtaining a gun.  But gun control activists aren't as interested in saving the innocent and protecting society as they are in controlling society and limiting the individual's right to self defense and individual freedom in the name of security.

Evil will always find a way.  No amount of legislation will prevent attacks of the type we've seen in the last few years from occurring.  It's a cultural sickness resulting from the gradual breakdown of civil society.

All we can do, what we must do, is recognize the face of evil and deal with it.  We can no longer blind ourselves to potential consequences in the name of "tolerance" and a false compassion.

Conspiracies?

This has been a banner week for conspiracies and their proponents.

There's the ongoing issue of Benghazi, Libya:  The President's whereabouts are largely unaccounted for during the 7-hr assault.  Theories include he just wasn't interested, couldn't be bothered and left all the decisions to underlings;  his staff intentionally left him out of the loop (on his instructions) in order to give the President "plausible deniability" in the event of any controversy;  it was a secret scheme intended to help his re-election effort by having an embassy compound stormed and our Ambassador kidnapped, he would then stage a "rescue" and be an American hero; and that our Ambassador was operating in a dual role as a CIA operative directing secret arms shipments and was the victim of a double cross, which of course would have to have no links back to the White House. [Publisher's note/Update 1/13/2013:  The Washington Examiner, quoting retired Four-Star Admiral James Lyons, writes: "the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi... was the result of a bungled abduction attempt.... the first stage of an international prisoner exchange... that would have ensured the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, the 'Blind Sheik'..."  The plot thickens....]This all also ties in with the controversy over the possible nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to the position of Secretary of State, after her statements to several Sunday morning news programs claiming the attacks were the results of outrage over a movie trailer on youtube..

There're the actions of Speaker John Boehner in the House of Representatives:  There's been an apparent "purge" of conservative, Tea Party-supported Republicans from the more important committee assignments.  Theory is that this is retaliation by the Republican leadership for not following directives and bucking the "party line" by voting against caving to Democrat demands.  A companion theory is that Boehner is taking these actions as a warning to the caucus of what will happen to members if they vote to block any deal he makes with Obama on the "Fiscal Cliff".

The "Fiscal Cliff" is yet another conspiracy hotpoint.  One theory here is that Obama and the Democrats not-so-secretly want us to go over the cliff.  The reasoning goes that going over the cliff would give them much of what they want, at little political cost.  They get the largest tax increase in American history (blamed on the Republicans) and they get huge cuts in Defense, always a favorite of Liberals;  the spending cuts on the domestic side are largely inconsequential, as Social Security and Medicare are exempted from any cuts.  Then, after the tax increases have gone into effect and the public has started to complain in earnest, Obama can propose "Tax Cuts for the Middle Class" and pretend to be the Great Defender of the Middle Class, portraying the Republicans as only out for the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class should they try to block his proposals.  Included in all of this is the theory of an extra-constitutional power grab by the President in Obama's proposal that authority over raising the debt ceiling be given over to him, in direct violation of the Constitutional requirement that Congress hold sole authority to authorize any borrowing and national indebtedness.

A new one concerns the U.N. and their international development plan, Agenda21.  The theory here  for decades has been that Agenda21 is a global plot to infringe on national sovereignty and impose on the U.S. the socialistic desires of member nations in the U.N., unfriendly to the national interests of the United States.  The theory goes on to state that Agenda21 has already been instituted almost universally in your local, county and state Development Planning Boards.  Details of which, read a certain way, gives U.N. oversight authority over such things as zoning and approved land use, "conservation districts" where no development or construction is ever to be allowed, and "sustainable" housing and infrastructure.  Supporters pooh-pooh such talk as ridiculous hysteria, while others see this as yet another step in the construction and imposition of a future "New World Order" and a global government which allows for no private property or individual rights; the ultimate in wealth redistribution.

Glenn Beck has written a new book, appropriately titled Agenda 21 that is causing quite a stir.  The book is the literary version of the type of "made for TV" movie promoted as "based on actual events".  He says that what he has done is taken the details of Agenda21 from the U.N. website itself and expounded on the individual points and taken them to their ultimate conclusion, if implemented as written.  It's a fictionalized account; until you get to the end and get to the Epilogue.  In the Epilogue he has listed references and links to the actual Agenda21 documentation on the UN.org website.  This is where this particular "conspiracy theory" gets interesting.  His book came out less than a week ago.  Mysteriously, links to the U.N. Agenda21 documentation are no longer active.  You will find a "404" error message saying that the information has been taken down or isn't available.  Even if you go to the U.N.'s own website and search for Agenda21 you will still get search results that show hundreds of pages of results.  Problem is, if you click on a link to a pdf posted or hosted by the UN, it's suddenly missing.  A slightly more diligent search of the web in general will still turn up the majority of the documentation.  The full text of Agenda21 (which was offered for sale directly, on the UN website), however, is nowhere to be found.  I wonder if Glenn has already obtained a hard copy of the U.N. document.  Given his diligence (some would call it paranoia), I would imagine he has several copies in his safe.

Conspiracy theory or investigative journalism?  Crackpots?  Or clear-eyed visions of potential danger to the country?  Look into these, investigate and decide for yourself.  Just remember the conspiracy theorists' creed:  "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean someone ISN'T watching you."

Freedom?

If you were to ask the "average American" if they wanted freedom, you'd likely get a near unanimous, "Of course!"  If you asked if they were willing to accept the responsibilities that come along with freedom, you'd likely be met with a blank stare of incomprehension.

I submit that the "average American" is not competent to handle freedom and that, further, they don't wish to.

Freedom has come to mean (or has been corrupted to mean) something other than its original intent.  Originally seen as a Right of Man, as concrete and matter of fact as the rising of the sun, to pursue his own life and self-interest in whatever manner deemed fit, free from governmental interference; it has now  come to be interpreted as freedom from want, freedom from the hard work and responsibility of having to provide for themselves.

 A majority of the voting public has apparently decided to subscribe to the Utopian future promised by the Progressives in our government.  A future where everything will be made equally available to everyone on demand.  A future where all needs will be met by a beneficent government body without the necessity of creating a good or providing a service.  All they need do is agree to give the political class sovereignty over their lives; magically, all of their problems will disappear.

Ask the residents of Staten Island how that's working out for them.

Ask the residents of Oakland and San Bernadino, California how relying on government has worked for them.  Their city governments have decided to cut essential services, such as fire and police, in the face of budgetary problems.  The city attorney told residents of San Bernadino to "...go home, lock their doors, and load their guns."    Because, due to the elimination of as many as 80 officers, they could not guarantee adequate police presence or response.

In an earlier time, such an idea as taking responsibility for your own safety and security at home would have been met with "Duh".  Now, it's causing a storm of controversy from liberal Progressives who say it undermines public faith in government's ability to provide safety and security.  I think that they are equally outraged by the idea of citizens' keeping loaded guns in their homes.

As long as you continue to put your faith in government and government agencies, you will continue to be disappointed and in danger when events require action be taken to either provide or preserve your security.

Freedom demands that you accept total responsibility for conducting your life in such a way as to minimize exposure to  risks, or at least that you be capable of responding to those risky situations that come up.  No man is an island, as the saying goes.  No man needs to be.  But all men should be capable of self-reliance.  If you aren't capable of providing for your needs yourself, you will be bound in obligation to those on whom you rely to provide what you can not.  Whether it's electricity, emergency food rations, water or shelter, you will be quite literally at the mercy of others.

Freedom isn't for the faint of heart.  Being self reliant and responsible simply isn't fashionable.  In fact, if you happen to be one of the few who are able to adapt to whatever life throws at you and can thrive where others suffer, you will be denounced as a greedy and uncaring bastard.  A heartless person with no compassion for the suffering of others.

Freedom isn't for pussies.  But that's what the government wants us to be.  Free men don't need government.