A Word of Advice to Liberals

I have liberal friends.

I try not to be seen in public with them, but I have them. One of them is my mother, which makes for interesting dinner conversations - but that's for another article.

I'd like to give my liberal friends, and my mother, some advice.

Seriously, we disagree on everything, and I hope their political efforts fail, but - friend to friend, son to mom - I'd like to offer them some advice.

Basically, here it is - don't trust the Democratic Party.

I'm not trying to cause trouble, I'm just giving a warning -- a warning based on experience.

Where the liberals are today is where we conservatives were a few years ago. We take turns having our day in the sun, apparently, and this is the liberals' day. They entirely control the federal government. They have the presidency and both houses of Congress. They are the bosses.

Only they aren't. The liberals don't control Washington, the Democratic Party does. That's where, for liberals, the trouble is.

Now, before I go on, let's make something perfectly clear: I disagree with liberals and hope that they get absolutely nothing of what they want. I disagree with them and believe that their philosophy will kill our country. They could not be more wrong.

But I respect them. I respect anybody who truly believes something. And I'm not bothered when people who truly believe something stand up for it.

That's what true conservatives and true liberals have in common -- they both passionately believe in things they think are very important. They both think that what they are doing is the right and best thing. They believe they have discovered and are advocating truth. After all, last I checked, the First Ammendment was still in the U.S. Constitution. That applies to both Republicans and Democrats alike.

Now, as a conservative, I believe my side is right and the other side is wrong. And I understand that liberals feel just exactly the opposite. Which is fine, we're both just being true to ourselves. But we're both also being exploited by our parties. More to the point, we both are played for fools by our parties. They take us for our money and our votes and then they push us to the side. They distance themselves from us and water down our priorities and pit us against one another and sting us along promising victories in the future. The things we believe in, the things that bring us to the political process, they never seem to completely get adopted. Always it's the next election, the next fight, the next round of fund-raising.

With both political parties, for true believers, it's all promise and no pay off. Which brings me back to the advice for liberals. You need to hold the Democratic Party's feet to the fire and make sure that it gives you what you want. Try to get a better deal out of your party than we conservatives got out of ours.

After we gave the Republican Party control of the White House and the Congress, it gave us exactly nothing. None of the issues that fundamentally matter to conservatives were addressed and several of our principles were directly assaulted and dismissed. We got the shaft. After all the years of work, the untold dollars contributed, the hopes and promises, and they spent their season in power doing next to nothing to advance that put them in office.

Conservatives gave the government to the Republican Party and the Republican Party defaulted on the debt just like the Democratic Party is defaulting on its debt to liberals now.

Liberals wanted the U.S. out of the war business. Yet their president has just escalated a conflict from which his secretary of defense has said we may not escape for 10 or 15 years. Liberals wanted the U.S. out of Gitmo. Yet their president has just suggested nothing more than simply moving Gitmo north to an Illinois backwater. Liberals wanted a single-payer government-run health system, or at least a dynamic and dominating public option. It's unclear what is going to pass, but it certainly won't include either of those things. Liberals wanted stringent rules to fight global warming. In Copenhagen, the Democrat government is pushing a policy that has the Third World walking out in a huff.

And how are gays in the military doing? And the illegal aliens?

Can you catch the scent in the wind? The supporters who worked most passionately for the Democratic Party and its candidates are the supporters who are getting nothing. Nothing but the back of the hand.

Now, personally, I believe that the amount of damage Barack Obama does to the nation will be directly proportional to how liberal he is, so I'm glad that he's flaking on some of his promises to the liberals. But - friend to friend, son to mom - I can understand that to the people who were chanting "Yes we can!" this failure to walk the talk is deeply disappointing.

From the liberal standpoint, the Senate health-care deal is not a compromise, it is a sell out. And, from the liberal standpoint, a lot of people who voted for the president and his party were sold a bill of goods. They are getting shafted just like we conservatives got shafted.

Thus the advice. Don't comprimise your principles. You fought this fight for a reason, and you ought not to surrender your victory. You ought not to let the Democratic Party flake on its promises to you. Because it's not conservatives or the Republican Party that are holding you back, it's the Democratic Party. We conservatives have no power. We are completely excluded from the health-care debate in both houses of Congress. And yet liberals aren't getting what they want or what they were promised.

And that's because of Democrats.

That's because of Democrats' dishonesty, and their manipulation of the liberal base that supports their party and gives it power.

I'm not gloating. The same thing happened to us. It was a betrayal that still hurts.

It is a betrayal the liberals should stand up and challenge. It is a betrayal they should not accept.

The death of Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years.
No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
Why the early bird gets the worm;
Life isn't always fair;
and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but
overbearing regulations were set in place:
Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate;
Teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch;
A teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental
consent to administer sunscreen or an Aspirin to a student; but could
not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot.
She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death
by his parents, Truth and Trust;
by his wife, Discretion;
by his daughter, Responsibility and
by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I am a Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

A thanksgiving to remember

Found this on the people's cube friggin hillarious!!!

Last Thursday a flying saucer landed in my backyard. A friendly, if slightly disoriented alien pilot told me he needed a drink. I had just what he wanted, since this was Thanksgiving and all. I was glad to have company so I wouldn't have to eat my famous fat-free vegetarian imitation turkey all alone.

His name was Ollie and he came to Earth looking for an honest, self-reliant, optimistic, and technically inclined nation that could benefit from a contact with his more advanced civilization.
"Whoa, whoa!" I raised my finger. "To call yourself advanced you must take at least three diversity training classes. What planet are you from, really?"

"There's no such thing as a more advanced civilization," I said. "All civilizations are equally advanced; they just find different ways to express their advancement."
My guest laughed. "I just escaped from a planet where people eat their neighbors whom they kill with sharp rocks. Does that sound advanced to you?"
"That is a value statement," I objected. "Did you try to examine the cause of their anger? Could they, perhaps, be hungry? Could they be disenfranchised victims of unfair trading policies, exercising early forms of class struggle against the oppressive neighbors? They didn't kill innocent chickens; that we do know."
"They sure wanted to kill and eat me. Come on, they're savages."
Savages? Really? "If you must use the 'S' word," I said indignantly, "have the decency to modify it with the word 'noble' - as in 'noble savage.'"
"They threw me into the fire," he said. "I was saved by my asbestos spacesuit, which they thought was my shiny skin. They're savages alright."
"At least they didn't harm the environment with asbestos, " I quipped. "Nor have they caused Global Warming with industrial pollution. That alone makes them more advanced than most Americans who have no social consciousness whatsoever."

"Who are these Americans you speak of?"
"I'm glad you asked," I said. "Americans are the most biased, oppressive, exploitive, insensitive, homophobic, racist, sexist, bloodthirsty, greedy, capitalistic, environmentally-unfriendly people who live in the ugliest country on planet Earth. You just landed in it."
The alien moved his eyes from the vegetarian imitation turkey, bottles of Evian water and his scoop of Ben & Jerry ice cream to the flat-screen high-definition TV, computer, dishwasher, cordless phone, and a thermostat on the wall next to the bookshelves with collector's editions of Marx, Lenin, Chomsky, and Michael Moore.

"For a citizen of such a hideous nation you're doing alright," he said. "Are you some sort of a king or a dictator?"
"A king?" I rolled my eyes. "I work on an educational grant from the government."
"Oh. So you do work for the government."
"It's not what it sounds," I corrected him. "I only let the American government pay me because that takes money away from their illegal wars. Whatever the Department of Education shells out on my grant is obviously not enough."
"Do tell me about the nature of your work."
"I am a professional revisionist. Currently I'm rewriting old novels that are on the students' reading lists, bringing them in compliance with the progressive worldview," I said. "I turn classic villains into sympathetic characters with legitimate grievances. The readers no longer have to take sides, which promotes in them a correct attitude of non-judgmental moral relativism. Occasionally I also expose classic heroes as biased reactionaries who enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, blind to exploitation of the toiling masses. The grant is called 'Prosaic Justice.' It is meant to raise the next generation of Americans as kinder, gentler, more sensible and intelligent human beings, unlike the grotesque monsters they are today."

"It still sounds as if you're part of this government's elite," he insisted.
For someone claiming to come from a "more advanced civilization" his naiveté was rather insulting.
"Let me put it this way," I said patiently. "I belong to the heavily underpaid intellectual elite, working against this government virtually in the underground."
"The anti-government rebels on this planet sure have style," he insisted. "Look at all the things you've got."
"Don't you understand?" I exclaimed indignantly. "All these things have been stolen from the oppressed people of the world through neocolonialism, unfair trade agreements, and wars. And now we're supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving? Honoring the theft of resources from the world's poorest citizens? Personally I use this occasion to celebrate my immeasurable guilt for having all these things that I don't even really need."
"Why don't you just give them back?"
"The former owners are dead," I lied. "But to talk about my guilt for having these things feels just as good as giving them back. Especially if I succeed in making others feel as guilty as I am. Your spaceship for instance. Where did you steal the metal to build it? And what solar system did you rape to get all that fuel? See what I mean?"
"I see," my guest stood up. "Looks as if this planet is not ready for contact yet."

"Wait!" I said, running after him. "We have other countries, much better than America! Progressive, socially conscious countries! Members of the United Nations!"
"It doesn't work that way," the alien said, beeping the door of his ship. "If this planet has a group of people that match your description, it's damaged goods."
"Damn you, America!" I cried. "Now that we finally had a chance to build a mutually beneficial relationship with other planets you had to go ahead and ruin it for everybody!"

With a faint whirring the flying saucer leaped above the roofs, hesitated for a few moments, and then disappeared among the stars, forever. I went back to my vegetarian imitation turkey, suddenly realizing that all the anger and the guilt that had been haunting me all day were gone - replaced with a sense of an accomplished mission. Come to think of it, I just saved a whole alien world from the corruptive American influence! It felt almost as good as when the US Forces withdrew from Vietnam and Somalia, or when we defeated Republicans in the midterm elections.

I adjusted the electronic shiatsu massage pad on my couch and turned on CNN.

December 7th 'A Date Which Will Live in Infamy'

Today we remember the lives lost on this day in 1941. Well, some of us do. I have yet to see a blurb on the news, Google did nothing with their cutesy banner like they do on world earth day. In that day the Japanese were locked in a struggle with China and as thier conquests and brutality grew the west slowly choked off the oil and mineral supplies it desprately needed to continue their war. In July of 1941 The west shut off the spigot and cut the Japanese from the raw matireials that it needed. This caused the Japanese to begin to look to the conquest of the East Indys and South East Aisia to gain the resources it needed. In November of 1941 peace negotiations were clearly approaching an end, U.S. officials fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. The prospect that Japan would attack east was unanticipated.

8AM on December 7, 1941 saw A Japanese task force attack the Island of Oahu and specificly Pearl Harbor. in the three hours that followed 2400 US servicemen and women were killed, 5 of 8 Battleships were sunk or sinking and the rest were damaged. Several othe ships were damaged and the bulk of the aircraft on the island were destroyed or damaged to the point where they could not fly.

The Japanese launched this attack to keep us out of the war. Ironically it was the deciding factor that galvanized us as a nation and gave us the backbone to keep fighting to the end. Even when the Japanese were defeated in the Coral Sea, the memory of this attack kept American spirit high and we pushed until we had erased the territorial gains they had made and forced them to surrender

Seems like everyone has forgotten this day. Like another day a little more recently in our history. but that is another post.