I Haven't Forgotten

Just a quickie post to let you guys know I haven't abandoned or forgotten you.  I'm working on a new post sparked by my previous post on The End of the World as I Knew It.  I'll be expanding on that theme and answering the obvious question:  "What would you do if you were king?"

It should be ready by next weekend (two weeks at the latest, I promise!).

See you then!

How Do You Like Him Now?

Remember this?

Well, apparently, not so much.  This was late this week in an interview with WebMD:

Waitaminnit!!!

He PROMISED!

Yeah, well he made a lot of promises.

Like this one:

Well, on March 6th, in an interview with a Spanish-language station, Obama said this:

So, you see?  It's not that Obamacare is too expensive, it's simply that you don't have your priorities in the right order.  If it's a choice between having something you want, like cable entertainment or your cell phone and all it's apps, something that you choose and the Obamacare insurance that the President requires you to have, the choice should be obvious to all right-thinking people.  After all, the President (and his party) know what's best for you.

The End of the World as I Knew It

"The World as I Knew It" ended a couple decades ago, when conservative Republicans first began showing themselves as merely a different flavor of Progressive; when people started filing, and winning, frivolous lawsuits (hot coffee, anyone?); when a sitting President could engage in sexual misconduct in the Oval Office itself and have it excused as "irrelevant to the performance of his job"; when those who dare decry such behavior are themselves condemned as "judgemental"; when "justice" officials began promoting the canard that it's not the criminal's fault that he/she mugged someone, broke into your home, stole your car/identity (these poor souls need treatment and understanding, not punishment); when a court of law pronounced that it was constitutional for a municipality to confiscate someone's unblighted private property and give it to a private developer in the name of "the public good" (and tax receipts); when our elected representatives openly vote to exempt themselves from the lawful obligations they impose on regular citizens; when the concept of the rights of citizenship are "modified" for legal citizens and expanded to include illegal aliens who's first act upon entering the country is to break the law...........................

My early life could be characterized as a combination of Mayberry and the Walton's.  I spent a large portion of my formative years on a family farm, though I must admit I've now lost many of the routine farming skills I had as a child.  Even allowing for the effect of nostalgia coloring my memories, it was a better, simpler time.  It wasn't any easier, just simpler.  At least, in our little corner of the world.  My grandparents were survivors of the Great Depression and had managed to keep their small farm together through the worst of times while raising a family.  From my grandfather, I learned the dignity of working with  your hands and providing for yourself and your family; from my grandmother, I leaned some of what it took to keep the household upright financially (she seemingly was able to get a dime's worth out of every nickle she spent).

While life wasn't easy, it was understandable.  It made sense.  In those long ago days, the adage of "playing by the rules" to get ahead still held.

Times have changed.

Now, people try to get ahead by "playing the system" and there is an entire industry devoted to helping people find (or invent) ways to do just that.  Were you "hurt on the job" (even if it was your fault)?  There's a law firm waiting to help you punish your employer for not adequately allowing for your clumsiness/incompetence (in some cases, there are doctors waiting to help you create an injury diagnosis that's hard to disprove, in order to win the proper judgement); did you slip on the sidewalk?  Sue the shopkeeper (after all even though it's the middle of a snowstorm in winter, it's their responsibility to keep the sidewalk clear at all times, no need for you to watch your footing); were you so unwise as to get pregnant without a marriage, job, or a place to live?  There's an entire wing of federal and state government dedicated to rescuing you from the consequences of your poor judgement.  They'll simply confiscate the property (income) of others in order to provide for you and your kid(s), and censure them for their "greed" and lack of compassion if they dare to complain that it makes it harder for them to provide for their families.

In today's brave new world, it can actually be seen as mean spirited or even a crime to be too self-sufficient, too successful.  We can't have some succeed while others lag behind.  It's not fair.  In fact, it's established practice in some schools that excellence remain unremarked and uncelebrated in order to not hurt the self esteem of those who, either through lack of effort or lack of ability don't rise as high.

The ultimate result of this pandering to mediocrity, of holding back the achiever in favor of the slacker, is the inevitable decline of all aspects of society: civility, criminality, moral standards, the eventual elimination of excellence in all fields of production, the replacement of rule according to an impartial, objective set of laws in favor of a system of entitlements for certain "disadvantaged" special interest groups and, eventually, the complete disintegration of organized society into nihilism.

  

I've taken a few steps towards preparedness.  I've started paying more attention to what comes out of Washington, D.C. and from my own state and local government officials; I've begun to set aside "alternative assets" against the eventual collapse of fiat currencies (hey, where do you think the money's coming from for the Fed's stimulus and "quantitative easing"?) and I've begun making arrangements for my, and my family's, security; I've begun brushing up on those long-unused farming skills (mostly through reading), though with being gone several weeks at a stretch due to my job a garden isn't a realistic possibility right now I hope to keep the knowledge fresh so I at least have a chance of reviving them if ever SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan); my next object is to build up long-term food storage (the goal is at least 1 year's supply).    

For now, I'll keep on as I have for the last several years.  I'll continue to educate myself as to what my government's doing, and work to raise awareness of issues I consider to be  either dangerous or injurious to personal liberty and individual rights as codified in the Constitution.  I'll continue to study ways to promote and strengthen those rights and liberties.  I'll do my best to be as informed as I can be in order to fulfill my obligation as a citizen to be an "educated member of the electorate".

Other than that, all I can do is continue to incrementally add to my preparations and try to keep up with the madness our "representatives" keep churning out "for the greater good".  The world as I knew it is gone.  Perhaps forever.  But maybe, just maybe, I can hold on to a small island of sanity as the rest of the world sinks further into the madness of Progressivism.

Kreskin Has Nothing on These Two

The "Amazing Kreskin" first came to fame in America in the 1970's as a modern day sage, seer and mentalist extraordinaire.  In fact, outlets like the Huffington Post and Fox News still occasionally have him as a guest.  He even supposedly predicted (for the 3rd straight time) the winner of the Super Bowl.  Hmmmm......I wonder where he was during the run-up to the elections of 2008 & 2012?

During the election cycle of 2008, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Vice-Presidential running mate to John McCain, issued the following warning concerning the potential international risks of an Obama Presidency:

“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next,”

This comment, made in a speech to Foreign Policy [subscription required] in 2008, was widely criticized at the time.  It was paired along with her misquoted comment that she could "see Russia from my home" as an indication of her ridiculous incompetence.  Mysteriously, Foreign Policy's reporting of the current situation in the Ukraine omits any mention of their earlier derision of Governor Palin's comment.

In a flashback to the Presidential debates between Mitt Romney and President Obama in October of 2012, Brett Baier, on his show on Fox News played a clip from the foreign policy debate in which President Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney for classifying Russia as one of the "greatest geo-political threats facing America".  Said President Obama:

“You said Russia. Not Al Qaida. You said Russia....The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because…the cold war’s been over for 20 years.”

Maybe we should have heeded that call?  While the left was all in a panic over the foreign policy of President Ronald Reagan, claiming that his hard line against the Russians was a direct threat to peace and would lead to World War III, nothing of the sort happened.  In fact, the Reagan policy of "peace through strength" is widely credited with the downfall of the old Soviet regime and the freeing of many of the former satellite republics.  It's a certainty that none of the bad actors currently agitating the world would be conducting themselves in the same manner if there were a President the stature of Reagan currently in the White House.

Mitt Romney's response was unequivocal:

“Russia, I indicated, is a geopolitical foe…and I said in the same paragraph I said and Iran is the greatest national security threat we face. Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin…”

Rose colored glasses?  I'd say it's more likely that Obama is wearing blinders.  He absolutely refuses to see what is obvious to many of the rest of us and will not admit his error even when presented with the results of his mistaken foreign policy decisions.

It goes beyond this.  During Benghazi, Obama was infamously absent and his whereabouts unaccounted for for a period of 7 hours.  As Commander-In-Chief, his place was in the Situation Room with his National Security team and military advisers.  During this most recent crisis in the Ukraine, with Russian troops invading the Crimea region, Russian warships converging on the Crimea peninsula, and this morning there are reports of Russian troops and equipment surrounding a Ukrainian military base and preventing Ukrainian military personnel from entering or leaving the compound.  What does Obama do?  He skips the meeting of his National Security Team!  Instead of attending a crucial meeting in person, where he could get information first hand and presumably ask clarifying questions and get immediate feedback, he sends Susan Rice instead.  You remember her?  She was the spokesperson the administration trotted out during the Benghazi crisis to label the attack as a "spontaneous response to a video" and not an organized terrorist action.

Taken from theBlaze.com:

There also was a high-level meeting at the White House Saturday after Russia’s parliament gave Putin the military go-ahead to protect Russian interests in neighboring Ukraine, the AP said.
Participants in the meeting included Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, CIA Director John Brennan, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the AP said.

No mention of the President attending this meeting.

So.  Sarah Palin warned of the potential of just such a crisis as far back as 2008, and Mitt Romney repeated the warning of an increasingly aggressive, even belligerent, Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin.  Each of these people were ridiculed and vilified in the national media as crackpots and dangerously uninformed, while the Obama administration and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were praised for the "reset" of U.S., Russian international relations and  for their enlightened foreign policy agenda of reaching out towards our former enemies (while our oldest allies seemingly got the back of our hand).

We are now faced with unarguable violations of international law by Russia and Putin.  It's clear that he seeks to reassemble the old USSR and return Russia to what he sees as it's rightful place of dominance in the eastern hemisphere.  What is our President and his administration doing about it?  They're working on plans to reduce and weaken our military below the levels prior to WWII.  We are/will be unable to respond militarily to aggressive actions taken by not only the Putin regime in the Ukraine; we will be unable to respond to China's aggressive actions in the South Pacific and towards Japan and Taiwan; we will be unable to respond to the belligerence of Iran and their provocation of sending "warships" towards our territorial waters.  Hell, we'll even be unable to respond to a pipsqueak like Kim Jong Un in North Korea.  Outside of any military response, Obama's weakness on foreign policy has seriously reduced the North American profile and presence on the world stage.  When America talks, few listen; fewer still take our pronouncements seriously.

Our enemies no longer fear or respect us, while our allies increasingly fear they can no longer trust us to honor our obligations to mutual defense and protection according to long standing treaties.

Both Governor Palin and Governor Romney warned of the consequences of electing someone as blatantly unqualified as Obama to lead the world's last remaining superpower and erstwhile beacon of freedom and liberty.

If only people had given them the credit they give to a stage act like Kreskin.