Sunday, July 27, 2014

"STAND AND DELIVER"




"STAND AND DELIVER"
          Stand and deliver...those words have struck fear in many a heart, when highwaymen were as common as fleas on a dog.   The vehicle, usually a stagecoach or some other horse-drawn conveyance, would be stopped by a man, or several, standing in the middle of the road.  Once the coach stopped, and the robbers were sure that they had the advantage of surprise, they would instruct the drivers and passengers to stand and deliver.  That meant whatever was worthwhile was to be delivered to the robbers.  That was then...this is now.
          Our very own band of highwaymen don't actually say those words...they don't have to.  Our robbers have a huge government agency, the Infernal Revenue Service(and no, that's not a typographical error) to order the public to stand and deliver.   The IRS, which can strike fear into the heart of even the most law-abiding among us, simply sends a letter to the subject of their attention.   The letter tells you when, where, and sometimes, how, you will deliver what that bunch of crooks demands.  Long I have remonstrated against the IRS, and their under-handed, Gestapo-like, machinations.  Of all the useless agencies that the government insists on propagating, and which should be eliminated, that's probably the one that should be at the top of the list...and the list is long, believe me.
          For some reason that escapes me at the moment, the American public seems to have been struck dumb.  It appears that, no matter the provocation, the twin devils of ignorance and apathy are alive and well.  Domestic or foreign, enemies of the country are working round-the-clock to achieve the goal of complete dumbing-down.  The school systems, apparently held hostage by foreign governments who provide huge sums of money to have their choice of textbooks used...and that results in altered history, outright subtraction of important events, and a highly slanted view of the world.
          Being an old man, and looking back on a life of rather uninspiring events, it struck me that this could be the twilight of my country.  What happened to "morning in America"?  Where did the exceptionalism go?  Could it be that we have taken the bait...hook, line and sinker?  Because one person, a man that I personally believe is not an American, says that every country is exceptional in its own way, we swallowed that lie?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Americans invent a few things that the rest of the world now takes for granted?  Didn't this country defeat some of the world's finest militaries, and save the rest of the world while they were doing it?   Why then, would we accept
being second-best at anything?  Would we have meekly gotten out of the stagecoach when they said to stand and deliver?  I don't think so.  We might have gone down, but we would have been fighting.
          Americans have always been fighters.  At the Alamo, beyond Pearl Harbor, even the horror of the War Between The States, which some might call the Civil War.  I’ve never understood that name because there was nothing, and never is, anything civil about war.   When war comes, as it does from time to time, Americans have always answered the call to arms, so why now, when we are threatened by several countries with unstable governments and leaders, are we thinning the ranks of the armed forces?   The gall of the government, to issue
pink slips to troops while they’re fighting!  What imbecile thought that was a good idea?
          Say, here’s a thought…when’s the last time you read a book?   With the
advent of television, computers, tablets, pads, and who knows what…nobody is reading books anymore.  The shelves in my office are packed with books, and you could trace the history of America by reading them.  One in particular, “How America Saved The World” by Eric Hammel is, probably, the best book that explains what mistakes America has made in the past and is repeating those very same mistakes now.
          It may come to pass, during my lifetime, that a different sort of highwayman may order the United States to stand and deliver.  What will we do then?  Roll over and play dead?  The current administration would prefer that to happen and, if I’m right, is following an agenda that will allow that to happen.  If
you think Saul Alinsky, Cloward and Piven, and the Communist Manifesto, you will have the plan right there, and it’s ominous.
          Stand and deliver, America!
         

Sunday, July 20, 2014

THE 8 THINGS THAT NEED TO HAPPEN.



 THE 8 THINGS THAT NEED TO HAPPEN.  
 How many do you count as having already happened, so be sure to read  all the way to the end
Saul Alinsky, a quick biography... Saul David Alinsky, born January 30, 1909, Chicago , Illinois.   Died  June 12, 1972 (aged 63), Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, from a heart attack.  Educated at  University of Chicago, Ph.B.1930, U. of Chicago Graduate School, criminology, 1930-1932.   Occupation  Community organizer, writer,political activist and known for  Political activism, writing,
community organization.  Notable work(s)  Reveille for Radicals(1946); Rules for Radicals(1971)  Awards:  Pacem in Terris (Peace On Earth) Award, 1969
   Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 - June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing.   He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals.  He and his third wife (Irene McInnis) were the socialists that Barack Obama has studied and followed their community organizer philosophy. His book Rules for Radicals is dedicated to Satan.   How to create a socialist state by Saul Alinsky …There are 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a socialist state. The first is the most important.
1) Healthcare -   Control healthcare and you control the people
2)Poverty - Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people
are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3) Debt -Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are
able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty. 
4) Gun Control - Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government.
 That way you are able to create a police state.
5) Welfare - Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income)
6) Education -Take control of what people read and listen to -
take control of what children learn in school. Think: "Common Core"
7)Religion -Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare - Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more
discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.

 Any of this sound familiar? 
"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment."
      ---Robert M. Hutchins, former president & chancellor- University of Chicago





















Sunday, July 13, 2014

"LOOKING BACK"



"LOOKING BACK"
          Looking back at Independence Day, two weeks gone, and it occurred to me that nothing had changed.  For the most part, and I say this with great sadness, America has a very short memory.  On patriotic holidays we break out the flags and bunting, we have parades, we sing the patriotic songs...and then the next day arrives.  There might be a stray TV commercial here and there, still spouting off about the car sales, or bargains at the supermarkets, but in the main, it was business as usual as far as patriotism was concerned.  Just suppose in 2014, we had to engage in the kind of conflict that we faced in 1941...could we do it?  I honestly doubt that we could.  Sure, we have great technology, but the generations coming after mine seem to be less and less interested in anything but what might affect them in their daily life.  Sometimes, when they follow the latest goings-on of some foolish celebrity, or cease working to watch the latest sports event, it gives me a reason to think that my grandchildren will most likely grow up in a country that I wouldn't recognize.
          From where I sit putting these words down into the computer, I can see a bookshelf packed with books that I've read, and many that I've yet to read.  My buddies, the ones of my generation, send me books and I send them books, but my children do not read books.  My grandchildren do not read books...at least not in a form that I might recognize.
They have tablets, which are not really tablets by the way, because according to the dictionary, a tablet is a number of sheets of writing paper, business forms, etc., fastened together at the edge...a pad.  They look at something called a Kindle, and that, according to the dictionary is to start a fire; cause a flame, blaze, etc. to begin burning...but to turn a page of paper, in a real book?  Not happening.   To my mind there is an intentional dumbing-down of America.  It's a quiet, but effective, method of increasing the control of the population by the government...and if you don't think that it's happening, I feel sorry for you.
          My friends call me...well, they call me a lot of things and some of them can't be printed, but one of the tags that is put on me is that of pragmatic, and that's a good one.  Another one that fits me well is iconoclast.  If there's an apple cart that needs to be upset, I'll be right there.  Maybe that's why it irks me to see how quickly Americans forget.  The collective memory was most active during World War Two, I think, but in the years following that and before Korea, we were content to grow fat and happy.   Looking back, Americans were protected by an ocean on each end of the country, and so we began to think we were impervious to violence on our homeland.  Looking back, to September 10th, 2001 we were naive and we still believed that America was as it was during WW2.  Then, the next day, that all changed...and we can never look back the same way again.
          It is my fervent hope that whatever you hear me say, or read what I write, that it will strike a nerve.  It will propel you up off the couch and into the street...and you'll yell at the top of your lungs, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"   Recently, and I don’t remember who said it, but it was said that the US Congress is like a potted plant, that’s how much action they are taking.  Passive resistance is alright, when you’ve got all the time in the world, but this country is facing a definite down-turn, perhaps becoming a footnote in history…a noble experiment that didn’t last long enough.
          Looking back to a time when a handshake was a contract, when what you said was what you meant, and there were no two ways about it.  I’m no Pollyanna when it comes to this country…we’ve made mistakes, and we’ve paid for them, and corrected them and, hopefully, we don’t make the same ones again.  The current president was, and is, a mistake that was made, but with all good intentions.  We do not need to make another social experiment, no matter how good the intentions.  Laws, regulations, ordinances…all have unintended consequences so the fewer of them that we allow, the better off we’ll be.
          Just as it was proven to me in the Navy, so it is with politicians…if they don’t think of it, it cannot be a good idea.  Even so, if they do think it’s a good idea, the person that thought of it probably will not get the credit.  I’m not looking for any credit, but there’s some good ideas that need to be put into use.   Get the Congress to do their job, roust them out of their jobs, if need be, but make sure that We The People are in control.  Look back…way back, to 1776, and if you don’t know what was done then, what was said then, you’re a bystander, not an activist.  At the bottom of the Declaration Of Independence the men signed their
names and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
          What have YOU done, today, for your country?
Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired      www.AirHumanityRadio.net

Sunday, July 6, 2014

PLATITUDES, CATCH-PHRASES AND SLOGANS



PLATITUDES, CATCH-PHRASES AND SLOGANS            
Hope and change...that was the launch for the president's foray into the race for the White House.  He was a cool dude and, according to Harry Reid, didn't speak with a dialect.   Yes we can...that was another cliche trotted out for the masses, and they ate it up like it was an ice cream sundae.  Here was a guy who was bound to fundamentally change America, but gave no indication of what he was changing it into...but we know now, don't we?  Forward he said, like the Bolsheviks he so resembles, he all but recited the Communist Manifesto, but he put it into operation.  If you've never heard of Saul Alinsky, or Cloward and Piven, you're missing out on some really radical ideas.  As a matter of fact, Alinsky wrote a book called RULES FOR RADICALS.  The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".
          A guaranteed annual income?  Someone else is going to determine how much money you can make?  Who would that person be, you might ask?  My guess is that it would be a governmental agency that would oversee the money that you make.  Somehow that doesn't sound like a free society to me, but Americans have been ceding their freedom to the federal government one little bite at a time...so the ignorant don't notice...and they haven't.  Perhaps, once you've reached your guaranteed annual income, you could sit back and relax, huh?  No, I don't think so.  In all likelihood, if you managed to make more than you were supposed to, the government would take that excess and give it to someone else.   By golly, that sounds like communism to me, or at the very least, socialism.   The two stated that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would strain local budgets, precipitating a crisis at the state and local levels that would be a wake-up call for the federal government, particularly the Democratic Party. There would also be side consequences of this strategy, according to Cloward and Piven. These would include: easing the plight of the poor in the short-term (through their participation in the welfare system); shoring up support for the national Democratic Party-then splintered by pluralistic interests (through its cultivation of poor and minority constituencies by implementing a national "solution" to poverty); and relieving local governments of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare (through a national "solution" to poverty)
          Another catch-phrase used by the president was that one about how, if you liked your doctor, you could keep him/her.  He also said the same thing about your healthcare program.  Both, as we now know, turned out to be lies, as was the one about every family will save about $2,500 a year on their insurance.
Then there was the speech back in 2009 when he said his administration was going to clean up the VA mess, and in that same year he said he was going to take responsibility for the AIG executives getting big bonuses while they took
173 billion in bailout money.  He always has a neat little catch-phrase handy when the occasion demands it but it’s lip-service and only lip-service because nothing gets done, nobody gets fired, no scandals get cleaned up.  In February of that same year he said that he would be a one-term president if the economy did not recover in three years.
          It’s 6 years, the economy is in the toilet and he’s still on the job!  There’s a man that, when his lips are moving, you know he’s lying.  No matter the subject, he’s got a little slogan for it, and the low-information folks lap it up like it’s honey.
The man is an incompetent, feckless, spineless, puppet and he needs to do the honorable thing and resign.   He promises to fix things that, for the most part, he screwed up…that would be the economy, our military, foreign relations, border security and the list goes on and on.  Maybe, the most telling phrase was recently uttered by our wannabe king, when he said that he’ll go it alone because Congress wouldn’t act on the children-at-the-border immigration problem.  There was the time when Obama promised, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Only a deranged environmental wacko and duped people could believe that a non-god can change ocean depths.  Go home, Barack…wherever that might be…go home and leave the American people alone.  Do not pass go, do not collect 2 billion dollars, and make sure you don’t fly Air Force One on your way out, either.
          Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired   www.AirHumanityRadio.net