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!  

 

My mother would always include clothes wrapped as gifts to inflate the 'haul" beneath the tree but my brothers and I learned to unwrap these with the same kind of reverence we held for toys and later baseball gloves, footballs, tennis rackets and basketballs.   It made my Mother feel better that while my parents could not give us everything we craved..they gave us things we liked.

 

We would usually go to my Aunt's house for Christmas dinner which would be a Norman Rockwell feast with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, fresh rolls,string beans and carrots and at least four kind of pies.  (My grandmother lived with us while I grew up and she had this fantastic habit of baking at least two pies a day).  Over time we developed a custom of holding some gifts aside to take to my Aunt's where the extended family and friends of my Aunt and Grandmother would join us.  One Christmas during my teen years, my Grandmother's oldest friend ...who was notoriously cheap and just as rich ...gave my Mother as a present, a box of yellowed waxed paper which clearly had been originally  purchased immediately after the fall of Tobruk, 

 

 

I was confounded by two distinct  sensations...the need to suppress a tsunami wave of laughter that was about to consume me and an intense intellectual curiosity as to how my always polite and kind mother would respond to this unique gift from another era.  She did not disappoint.  In a response worthy of a seasoned diplomat she said " Thank you so much...you can always use waxed paper!"  That was my Mom!   Merry Christmas Mom!

 

I was raised as a Protestant...a Baptist if you will... largely due to the fact that one of my Aunts was a ferocious church lady who every Sunday would pick up my brothers and myself plus at least seven other urchins in danger of losing their immortal souls, for Sunday school where I dutifully learned about  Christianity and particularly the spiritual aspects of Christmas and Easter.  My Aunt was a formidable force of nature who would not take no for an answer when it came to issues of faith and the Bible.  My Father had been baptized a Lutheran and my mother like my Grandmother did not belong to an organized church, so this pretty much was a weekly abduction since no one ever asked my brothers and myself what we wanted. 

 

One Christmas Eve at my Aunts is particularly memorable due to the fact that my family was notoriously against the imbibing of spirits in any form.  This was hard on my Dad since he was Swedish and loved his beer.  Out of respect for my Grandmother who raised me while my Mom worked and who was known to pack up and flee if she smelled demon rum or any other variation of beer or liquor on someone's breath, he never ever brought a beer into our house when she lived with us.  Merry Christmas Grandma!

 

However he did come home in a jolly mood one Christmas Eve and fell into bed so hard,  while singing loudly in Swedish, that my poor Mother was catapulted out of a sound sleep on to their bedroom floor. 

 

But I digress... my Aunt the church lady  always pretended even to her best friends, that she was a non drinker.   Well it appeared that she had fooled all of us because on this occasion after her friends had left,  she ordered my Uncle to get her annual "Christmas medicine" in a yellow Dixie cup.  The medicine was Southern Comfort and she drank it like a truck driver at a "honky tonk" roadhouse.  Imagine the sound of an empty Dixie cup hitting the bar with a smack!   Merry Christmas  Aunt "Noni" and Uncle Vern.

Meanwhile, little did my family know save my Aunt "Rut",  that I had secretly begun a romance with the Roman Catholic Church that first began during grammar school when I would ride my bike over to the convent at St. Mary's each and every Saturday to ask the nuns if they had any errands for me to run.  Later my attraction to Catholicism would manifest itself at Christmas when I would go to Midnight Mass with friends or a girlfriend and be utterly entranced by the Latin, the candles, the music, the incense and the fact that if I went into any Catholic Church anywhere in the world, the mass save the homily would be comprehensible if you knew your Latin and your Catechism.  It was at Midnight Mass that I begin to take what I had learned at Sunday School and incorporate it into a spiritual journey that would end up lasting a lifetime centered around the real meaning of faith and especially Christmas.  My Aunt "Rut" was my only confidant.  Merry Christmas Aunt "Rut"!

 

I also as a teen became enchanted with the Christmas books of Charles Dickens and was especially fond of the Alastair Sim film version of "A Christmas Carol" which is now having it's 63rd anniversary.  I also came to love Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" which is having it's 67th  anniversary. I never miss these!.

 

Somehow over the years all of the above have combined to put Christmas for me,  in a rich and rewarding perspective that goes beyond the presents and the food and the music and the books and films and even the attendance at Mass, which I truly love.  In this age of disbelief...this age of vulgar appetites and cultural nihilism... Christmas is critical to and indeed responsible for putting the best attributes of humankind on display if even just for the brief season of Christmastide. 

 

Christmas is under attack by those who fear the best of us and who would be content to make it a secular event for commercial reasons thereby reducing it to a mere reason to shop.  But they will not win because the spirit of Christmas is too strong.  The presents of Christmas represents generosity and caring...the food of Christmas represents the family and friends that enrich and fulfill our lives...the  music of Christmas represents the surrender to the best emotions that we harbor within ourselves but often suppress...the books and films of Christmas represent our need to see these noble feelings manifested and vindicated...and the celebration of Christmas in a place of worship or simply in a place of prayer reminds us that the divine can enter our lives not just at Christmas but when ever we have the courage to summon it.

 

 

Christmas makes us better people...Christmas makes the world a better place...Christmas makes us holy whether one believes in God or not... Christmas is an announcement that joy is our inheritance if we choose to believe that there is more to life than just us...Christmas beckons everyone who believes in the redemption and salvation of love...

 

To all my kids, family and friends ...here and on the other side.. Merry Christmas... and to my wife who is Christmas for me.. 365 days a year... 143.

ERLANDSSON

DEATH BY GOVERNMENT

 

In 2008 Barack Obama surfed a wave of symbolism and emotion that at times resembled a political tsunami.  He told the country on election night that "change had come to America".

 

The problem was that almost everybody outside of his small but hard core progressive palace guard had stunningly different ideas of what change was.

 

The variations of the theme of change were as numerous as the stars in the night but "Obamachange" had several overarching sub-themes that time would prove amounted to little more than buzz words.  "Fairness", "fair share" and "level playing fields" for the middle class were three such examples.  However redistribution of wealth from the "haves" to the "have not's" was studiously avoided.

 

The political calculation by "Team Obama" was that this would be a killer of a deal breaker with the voters particularly when you did the math and the "haves" included the middle class that Obama had sworn to protect.

 

Obama, it turned out, was the tribune for every left wing, social justice cause imaginable.  Over time the progressive left had swallowed up everyone and every group who hated America, Israel, oil, coal, capitalism, hetero-sexuals, men, Caucasians, Republicans, the military, the Constitution, working for a living and the Catholic Church.  It had done so using the money and resources of people like George Soros and its army encompassed much of the mainstream press and media, academia, unions, militant  feminists, militant gays and lesbians, illegal immigrants, Islamists and anarchist fringe groups like the occupy movement.

 

This coalition of the perpetually outraged had assumed control of the Democratic Party which became a party of negativity with a totalitarian impulse, disguised as the "happy face" wave of the future.

 

Throughout the honeymoon of the first term, the fawning press allowed Obama, leeway's never before granted an American President in the modern television era.  They either misled or failed to report with the vim or vigor they had used with LBJ or Nixon and all their successors  save # 44.

 

And with these leeway's,  the scandals and lies mounted, many of which were and remain impeachable offenses if linked directly to the President or any of his inner circle.  And then he told lies which effected every single man, woman and child in the nation.  He had told other lies equally bad but they had little or no gravity with the average person who by 2012, was for the most part concerned primarily with keeping their head above the flood waters of a recession so grim and deep that many did not know what the future would bring.  A recession it should be added, made grim and deep by the policies of the 44th President.

 

"Obamacare" passed the Congress in 2010 with only Democratic votes.  It has come back to haunt this President, his party and the nation.

 

"Obamacare",  at its core means to redistribute the money of those who work to the pockets of those who don't.  It uses the rationale of the delivery of needed health care to the uninsured.  The fact is that only 8 to 10 million people needed health care and could not get it.  To allegedly service these people, Obama and the Democrats, decided to resurrect "Hillarycare" and turn the entire American health care system on its head.  They decided to put bureaucrats between a Doctor and his or her patients and they justified it by claiming that the cost of health care for all would down and the quality of health care for all would go up.  All of this was a lie.  "Obamacare" is built on one lie after another.  

 

More ominously "Obamacare" will also cause people to become sicker and die.  "Obamacare" does not simply  contain "death panels"..."Obamacare"   is a death panel.

 

Consider the following..."Obamacare is supposed to give quality, affordable health care to all.  However if you liked your current health plan and the Doctors and Hospitals you had ...you could keep them ...period!  This was both the promise of this President and how and why the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" passed to begin with.  All of this was a lie!

 

As we approach the rollout of "Obamacare" on January 1st, 2014 we discover that up to a third of the country will lose their current health insurance and instead find themselves with plans they can't afford containing services they don't need, dispensed by Doctors and Hospitals they don't know who will give them medicines that don't work!  The end result of this is that people will get sicker and die.

 

They will be faced with premiums and deductibles  they can't pay and if this is not reversed...people will die.

 

They will lose their Doctors who know them and if this is not reversed...people will die.

 

They will lose access to  both nearby and specialized hospitals and if this is not reversed... people will die.

 

They will be denied medications and, procedures they need and if this is not reversed...people will die.

 

Research and  innovations in drugs and devices will be thwarted by  the regulations of the bureaucrats  and the the realities of the new Obama  market place and if this is not reversed ...people will die.

 

Obamacare is so bad that the IRS "Obamacare" enforcers want to force Volunteer Firefighters to be covered as "employees"  and if this takes place, volunteer firehouses all over the nation will close...and people will die.

 

You have to ask yourself what kind of people would design something so monstrous and so harmful to the people they are sworn to serve,protect and defend?  What in God's name was and is in their hearts and minds when they created this and today, continue to defend it.

 

The Democratic Party owns "Obamacare".  It is an act of war against the American people.  Barack Obama as its political architect, is the "Bernie Madoff " of Presidents or perhaps Madoff was the Barack Obama of "Ponzi kings".  It is a bait and switch unknown in American politics and if it is not reversed...people will die.  It will be death by government.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

December 7, 1941

 

The first American casualties of WW ll did not occur at Pearl Harbor.  Some say the first hostile action happened in the Yangtze River outside Nanking on December 12, 1937 where the USS gunboat Panay was sunk by  Japanese aircraft, killing three and wounding 45.  Others maintain that since WWll was not yet officially under way on that date, the first Americans to die in action were on October 17, 1941 when the USS Kearney, a Benson-Livermore Class Destroyer was attacked off the coast of Iceland, by the U-568 which was part of a wolf pack eviscerating a convoy that the Kearney was trying to protect.  11 US sailors were killed and 22 were wounded in the fight.  

 

All of this is a reminder that great and terrible events do not happen in a vacuum. 

 

For most of the 1930's, America in proud and defiant isolation caused in part by the Great Depression, watched as both Asia and Europe became engulfed in war and dictatorship.  FDR eventually turned America into the Arsenal for Democracy after WWII began on September 1, 1939.  Politically however Roosevelt had to walk a fine line with regard to American neutrality even as Churchill pressured him to join the fight and as anti-Japanese and anti-German feelings began to emerge domestically on the political left, particularly after Hitler invaded the USSR.

 

On October 16, 1941, the Japanese Prime Minister Prince Konoe resigned and General Hidecki Tojo assumed the post and the planning for an attack on the American Pacific Fleet was set in motion. 

 

Simultaneously, in Washington, Japanese Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburo  continued his efforts to negotiate a peace treaty between the US and Japan, unaware of what Tojo and the Japanese military were planning.  He continued his diplomatic efforts becoming more belligerent right up to December 7th when he was coldly informed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the attack had already begun.

 

The plan for the attack was the work of the Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isokoru  Yamamoto who had studied in the US and privately was against the attack which had as its political aim to so cripple the American Pacific Fleet that Japan could go into the Dutch East Indies for the oil and rubber they urgently needed without fear of retribution.  He believed the War that would follow would allow him to "run wild for the first six months" but he had no confidence as to the second and third years.

 

On November 20, 1941 Japan issued an ultimatum to the U.S. demanding non-interference for Japanese actions in China and Indo-China thereby escalating the tensions between the two countries.

On November 26th the Japanese Hawaii task Force left the Kurile Islands bound for Pearl Harbor.  On the same day the U.S. Secretary of State demanded the Japanese Imperial Army leave China immediately.  In Tokyo, Tojo declared this to be an ultimatum, cynically using it as justification for a sneak attack he had already set in motion.  The next day the United States military was placed on high alert.

 

Admiral Husband Kimmel was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet  at Pearl Harbor.  His Army counterpart was Lt.  General Walter Short.  In the days after the attack both men would come under intense criticism for their lack of preparedness and eventually would be forced out of the military.  Both had determined that an attack on Pearl was extremely unlikely notwithstanding the heightened state of alert, Nor did they respond with alacrity to the sinking of a Japanese Midget Sub just before the first wave of the attack began or radar showing a large number of aircraft approaching Oahu. 

 

The attack began at 7:48 A.M. on a beautiful tropical and peaceful Sunday morning when the  first wave of 183 aircraft carrier based planes open fire.  The 70  U.S. combat ships and 24 auxiliary ships  were all lined up on Battleship Row providing excellent targets for the  air forces led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida.  Likewise, were the 400 Army, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft  lined up wing to wing on three nearby airfields.

 

The fist wave lasted until 8:30 A.M. and inflicted horrible damage on a half dozen ships including the Arizona, the Oklahoma and the California.  The second wave came at 9:00 A.M. under the command of Lt. Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and lasted for an hour. No third wave materialized.  

 

 The United States lost  3,600 men killed or wounded including 1,177 killed on the USS Arizona alone.  21 ships were sunk or damaged , 188 aircraft were destroyed and 159 were damaged out of 400 total. The Japanese lost 55 airmen and 9 submariners. The attack it should be remembered took place before any formal Declaration of War was ever issued by Japan.

 

There were numerous incidences of incredible bravery exhibited that day by both military personnel  and civilians.  129 medals, including 15 Medals of Honor were awarded to American servicemen.  68 civilians were killed and 35 were wounded coming to the aid of their country.  

 

Mess attendant Doris "Dorie" Miller won the Navy Cross for his actions that day.  Miller was aboard the USS West Virginia when the attack began.  He carried his wounded Captain to a safer place on the ship and while untrained, manned a .50 caliber antiaircraft gun until he was ordered to abandon ship.  Two years later Miller died in action.

 

Perhaps no one described the horror of that day better then Seaman Second Class Eddie Jones of the USS California who wrote the following:

 

"When that big bomb blew up and they put the fire out, I looked down in that big hole that went down three or four decks. I saw men all blown up, men with no legs on, men burned to death, men drowned in oil, with oil coming out of their eyes and their mouth and their ears. You couldn't believe it was happening. You could see it in front of your eyes, but you couldn't believe it. Here it was, a beautiful day -- a beautiful Sunday morning -- and you see everything blowing up and ships sinking and men in the water. And you think, we're at peace with the world. This can't be happening".

 

The next day, December 8th, FDR called December 7th , "a day that will live in infamy" and asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan.  Two days later Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war against the US playing right into Churchill's hands.  In the days, months and years to come in the Pacific theater Americans would learn the geography of war in far away places with exotic names like Corregidor, Bataan, Wake Island, Tawawa, Kwajalien, Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Saipan, Guam, The Coral Sea, Midway, The Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, and Okinawa. 

 

  No one knew immediately after December 7th what the outcome of this titantic struggle would be save perhaps the architect of the attack, Admiral Yamamota who lamented "I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant." Thus America cast off the shackles of isolationism and became in time a superpower...but a superpower built on the patriotism and sacrifice of  the Greatest Generation comprised of  young men and women who left the villages, towns, cities and farms of America to go off to war against some of the most evil forces in the history of the world.  In the words of the old WW II song we remember them today and say "Bless them All".

 

ERLANDSSON

THE AUDACITY OF A NARCISSIST 

 

 

Barack Obama is becoming a man alone with his self aggrandized vision of greatness that people around him have nurtured since he was a child.

 

ObamaCare is a daily reminder of the old adage that "Pride goeth before the fall".   In a column this week George Will referenced David Remick's worshipful biography entitled“The Bridge:The Life and Rise of  Barack Obama.”  On  page 274, Remick quotes Obama's gate keeper Valarie Jarrett about Obama and then Will opines as to her description of Obama.  Jarrett said:  

"I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is...He knows how perceptive hs is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability -- the extraordinary, uncanny ability -- to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them, and make sense out of them, and I think he has never been really challenged intellectually. I mean, he's the kind of guy you'd hate in law school, who would pick up the book the night before the final, read it, and ace the test. So what I sensed in him was not just a  restless spirit but someone with extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy." 
 

Will then added: "Leave aside the question of whether someone so smitten can be in any meaningful sense an adviser. About what can such a paragon as Obama need advice?"
 

In point of fact Barack Obama has rarely if ever been challenged about his ideas, policies or programs.  His life while at times strange, has largely been one of accommodation and not conflict.  He has glided through his career  because of his "amazingness".   He has eluded criticism because of his "uniqueness".  He has been hyped and won election twice as a new kind of leader for the new millennium. 
 

and then there's this from EAG News;
 

"A Common Core kid’s book teaches 3rd graders that Barack Obama is honest, kind, fair and godlike...On the heels of a controversial children’s book about Barack Obama – which stated “white voters would never vote for a black president” and that “Barack’s former pastor” said “God would damn the United States for mistreating its black citizens” – comes a new lesson that casts America’s 44th president in a messianic light. Literally...And – surprise – it’s Common Core-aligned. 
 
 

The lesson plan and accompanying visual presentation were authored by Sherece Bennett, and is for sale onTeachersPayTeachers.com. It’s all based on a book titled, “Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope,” by Nikki Grimes.  In one passage, a young Obama sees beggars and wonders, “Will I ever be able to help people like these?”  “Hope hung deep inside of him,” the book adds. Another excerpt from the book reads: “Before dawn each morning, Barry rose – his mother’s voice driving him from dream land. ‘Time for learning English grammar and the Golden Rule. Be honest, be kind, be fair,’ she taught him.” ". 

This adulation of Obama  is unprecedented in American history and incredibly creepy to boot.  It supplies part of the answer as to why his policies have been so disengenuous, misguided, un-American and destructive to the nation.

Obama and his acolytes believe that the act of thinking about a problem privately followed by the act of articulating those thoughts publicly and being applauded for doing so by either a backdrop of grinning drones or an adoring media is the same as solving the problem.  When reality steps in and the the problem grows worse, the default reaction for this President is to deny knowledge and responsibility while blaming the growing debacle on others and in particular his political enemies.

At a private Democratic fundraiser in Beverly Hills, Calif., Obama again lauded himself  and Democratic leaders for surpassing the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

in a text of these remarks, released by the White House he said “We have accomplished as much, if not more, than any time in our history."

 Take a moment and think about the myriad domestic and foreign crises and scandals of this Presidency and ask your self which of these were truly ever solved or resolved  and  which were self inflicted to begin with?  Who got blamed for them, who got fired for them and who absolved himself or any one close to him of any responsibility?  And finally who lied about them to the American people at every opportunity?

Overwhelmingly you will find if you look at facts and not feelings that the American public has been harmed over and over for naked ideological and political reasons.  And this brings us to the other side of the Obama analysis.  This President is and has been since a child, a creature of the hard left which has a world view that denies human reality and human history and seeks to replace it with a mythical counter history supposedly based on "the real truth".

The new progressive left like it's Marxist and National Socialist predecessors, believes in a utopia governed by an elite who will exercise total control over all those who are ill informed or outright inferior because of their beliefs.   Privately they hide their true feelings about gender, race and religion because that would compromise their political agenda which seeks to use minorities, women and non-believers as victims for their "Brave New World". 

Barack Obama promised in 2008 that he would bring "Hope and Change".  He failed in the first instance and succeeded in the second. The country is like a punch drunk fighter as they absorb one political blow after another.  Slowly some are realizing that he is a man who preaches the golden rule but practices class, gender and race warfare.  His is the politics of  unmaking the American experience and the American dream.

He is a man who doesn't know what he doesn't know.  But he does know what he believes and he does knows what and who he hates.  His belief in his own greatness and his inability to even understand that there is another point of view that is legitimate which may be contrary to his own, will prove ultimately to be his undoing. 

 

His is the "Audacity of Narcissism" coupled to  an ideology that believes in the 21st Century version of the creation of the "new Soviet man and woman".  But as we discover who he is and what makes him tick, we stumble upon a bigger story.  It is the story about us...about we the people who were gullible or desperate enough to elect him twice as our President.  It is a story about who we may have become as we surrender our independence for the false safety of the all embracing but ultimately carnivorous  nanny state. 

ERLANDSSON

REMEMBERING JFK AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  Any one of a certain age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they learned the news of the President's death.  It was one of those events like December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 that in their aftermath we come to understand that we have left one era and entered another.

 

One of the most significant changes that the assassination engendered was the death of the Democratic Party as a national moderate party with regard to National Defense, Tax Cuts, the size and function of government, "American Exceptionalism", historic American values and a consensus on domestic policy with the exception of race.  After 11/22/63 the progressive segment of the liberal wing of the party became dominant in an aggressive fashion to the point that today we have  neo Marxists and proto Fascists in leadership positions both nationally and locally. 

 

John F. Kennedy was by almost every current definition a conservative who could not be elected as a Democrat today.  He was a "cold warrior" who believed in a strong defense (witness "Ich bin ein Berliner" and the Cuban Missile Crisis) .  He did not believe in a "nanny" state ("Ask not what your country can does for you...ask what you can do for your country").  He began the process of divorcing the Democrats from the southern segregationists which had a political hammerlock on the life of the national party.  Historic revision by progressives later redefined these racists as conservatives thereby continuing the process of distorting who Kennedy and his party really were.  He kick started the American space program into a race to the moon while stating "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...".

 

Kennedy's "New Frontier" was a pragmatic vision of an America ascendant where the problems of the nation were to be solved and not merely managed.  JFK included tax cuts as a critical part of his policy to make the US as productive and economically strong as possible and history proved him right and his Democratic critics wrong.

 

After his death, he was repackaged as a modern liberal in part by his family and friends and in part by because Lyn don Banes Johnson needed a martyred "liberal" icon to pass his "Great Society" legislation and move the progressive agenda pass the "New Frontier" to a place in history where it would be seen as a extension of the "New Deal",  LBJ was no JFK but a latter day FDR "wannabe" who needed a different predecessor in order to further his own place in history.

 

But he misjudged reality as so many politicians are wont to do and embroiled the nation in its first politically correct war in Viet Nan which as such, was destined to end badly.  This war combined with the Civil Rights movement and the birth of the counter culture propelled the Democratic Party into its current progressive social justice trajectory.

 

The Democratic Party which is the world's oldest political party, has been for generations, a "Pottering Village".  The so called "party of the common man" now sees the common man as a subject and not a constituent.  The party has in addition been on the wrong side of history more often than not.  For example Democrats have been in the past and the present, the party of slavery, secession, segregation, socialism and sedition.

 

Corruption, incompetence and fraud have also come to mark the party both nationally and locally.

 

Corruption follows Democrats like coke dealers follow Rob Ford and "paparazzi" follow Alec Baldwin.  The situation is so bad in NYS that the Democratic Governor has appointed a "More land Commission" to in effect, investigate the legislature which is largely comprised of members of his own party.  And of course...there is always Rod Large,  John Edwards, Marion Barry, etc. etc..

 

After corruption comes incompetence bred by a slavish devotion to an ideology derived out of magical thinking on just about everything.  ObamaCare is and will be forever the lowest point in the history of the American Presidency when it comes to incompetence and fraud. 

 

ObamaCare also illustrates the arrogance of modern Democrats and the steps they will take to protect their party even at the expense of the American people.  It  was not just the President who promised Americans they could keep their insurance and their Doctors but the Democratic legislators who clearly didn't know what they voted for or never read the bill they passed and who then lied to the American public for three years until they and the President and the lies they both perpetrated were exposed.   

 

The modern Democratic  Party also is notable for its disdain for any  religion except Islam.  Much of this purportedly comes out of their fanaticism for Abortion on demand and their support for same sex marriage.  In essence they despise the America that John F. Kennedy loved and died in the service of. 

 

Today's Democrats have as their idol not Barrack Baa but the fictional Frank Underwood of "House of Cards".  Underwood is  the Democratic House whip with a "Lady Macbeth" like wife who will do anything to get what he wants.  He is totally amoral and thus an avatar to many modern Democrats.  In the first episode he turns to the camera with a feral grin and introduces his wife to the viewers by saying "I love her like a shark loves blood".  Get the picture?

  The Democratic Party of today is not your fathers Democratic Party, nor is it the party of JFK.  That party died on November 22, 1963.
 

ERLANDSSON

THIS EDITORIAL WAS BROADCAST ON THE 11/23/2013 EDITION OF THE VERNUCCIO/ALLISON REPORT

 

GETTYSBURG, NOVEMBER 19, 1863

 

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The idea for the National Cemetery was the brainchild of Theodore Dimon, Deputy State Agent for the Governor of New York, Horatio Seymour.  Dimon and his superior had been sent to the battlefield in the summer of 1863 to retrieve the New York dead which accounted for over 25% of all the Union casualties of the great battle in south central Pennsylvania.  Fearing the expense  of such an endeavor while concerned over the rapidly deteriorating condition of the corpses, Dimon took the idea to David Wills the State Agent to Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin who immediately saw the political and economic advantage of  a National Cemetery where people would come and mourn and spend money for years to come

 

Wills began the task of buying the land and securing the approval of the other 18 state Governors whose troops  fought and died there for the Union.  The battlefield had been a health and sanitary disaster after the guns had gone silent.  Corpses from both sides had been hurriedly buried in shallow trenches and pits and the humid summer heat had caused the bodies to swell and bloat until parts of the remains broke through the surface where it was recorded that in several incidences, the hogs took to rooting at the bodies.

 

The smell had been overpowering and the mostly Dutch inhabitants of Adams County took to sealing their windows and doors to escape the stench even if it meant suffocating in the oppressive heat. 

 

The retreating Rebels had sacked the town and surrounding farms in both Adams and  neighboring York County, leaving the populace  near destitute.  Both armies had left over 21,000 wounded men to be cared for under the most primitive of conditions and a portion of the citizenry began to charge for water and bread and other necessities of life earning them the opprobrium for their insensitive greed, of the New York Times and then the entire nation.  Over 14% of the wounded were to die there in the swelter of the summer.

 

But all that began to fade as David Wills proceeded apace to make the National Cemetery a reality.  The land was purchased for $2,475.87 on Cemetery Hill between the Taneytown Road and the Baltimore Pike.

 

In October Wills advertised for workers to exhume and rebury the dead in the new cemetery. This would go on through the dedication and on into December.  He named Ward Hill Lamon, a friend of the President and the Marshal of the District of Columbia to be the Marshal for the dedication and he invited  Edward Everett, former Secretary of State, President of Harvard,  Massachusetts Governor and the man thought the greatest orator in the land, to give the keynote address. 

 

The first date selected was in late October but Everett feared he could not be ready for so august an occasion by that time so the dedication was moved back to November the 19th.

 

The President of the United States was invited as almost an afterthought to do the actual dedication with the clear understanding that Everett was the headliner and main attraction.  Still he wanted to say something fitting but in his words "short...short...short, since the battle in his mind had now merged .with two other great events...the fall of Vicksburg and the 87th anniversary of the founding of the nation.  The struggle had therefore been transformed into something more than significant...  It had become prophetic.

 

It had always not been so with the sad eyed, tall, craggy President who had aged twenty years in just three.  He had been initially distraught when Meade had failed to pursue Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia and end the war with a decisive victory at Union Mills...but with time he had come to accept that the war would only end when the spirit of the southern brothers turned enemies would be broken beyond repair.

 

On November 18th, he bordered a special train with a retinue that included three cabinet secretaries, his two personal secretaries, the Marine Corps Band and two Ambassadors among others. and proceeded to the small Pennsylvania town where he stayed with David Mills for the night.  The next day he he awoke to a gorgeous Indian summer day, put on his new black silk top hat  and mounted a Chestnut Bay horse to ride to the ceremonies.  It took an hour to get through the crowds but eventually the program began with music and convocations and finally a 13,000 oration from Everett which no one remembers today.  The President grateful for its conclusion, bounded up from his chair to congratulate the main speaker and forgetting that Ward Hill Lamon was supposed to introduce him launched into his remarks in his thin voice tinged with a western accent and in so doing gave the nation and posterity, 272 words that will echo down through the ages.  He spoke thus

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this  continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the  proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or  any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are  met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a  portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave  their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper  that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate --
 we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
 struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add
 or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
 here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
 rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
 fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
 here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these
 honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
 gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve
 that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under
 God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the
 people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address will be celebrated at Gettysburg on Tuesday.  The  President of the United States  has declined to attend and has given the public no reason for his decision.

ERLANDSSON AND LINCOLN

SAUL ALINSKY AND AMERICA'S "MEIN KAMPF" MOMENT PART FOUR: SOROS, HILLARY AND OBAMA...THE UNHOLY THREE!

 

Before the love affair with Barack Obama, there was the romance with Hillary Clinton.  George Soros was firmly in Hillary's camp for 2008 until he wasn't.  Hillary after all had had to weave and bob for the longest time in order to disguise how truly radical she was.

 

Deception at massive scales was becoming the norm in American politics as the hard left progressives infiltrated academia and the culture as well as the Democratic party.

 

Progressives, it must be remembered, usually begin as people who fervently desire to save the world and  who end as people who fervently need to control the world and Hillary was no exception as the debacle of "HillaryCare" demonstrated.  

 

 Moreover throughout her 8 year term as First Lady, The Clinton White House had one or more scandals percolating often with her at the center : witness White Watergate, The  Rose Law Firm billing records, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Lewinsky, bimbo eruptions, Impeachment, etc which all seemed to roll off Bill like water off a duck while it clung to the humorless Hillary like the faint traces of a bad perfume bought off a travelling salesman.  

 

After a  presidency during which she was famously billed as the "Co-President", she finally struck out on her own as the Jr. Senator from New York where her particular brand of celebrity was perfect for an electorate  battered by joblessness, high taxes and utopian political fantasies that always ended in a nightmare.

 

The stop over in New York turned out to be an out of town tryout for the big prize...the Presidency.  Former Clinton aides like John Podesta of the Center for American Progress,  were already in place to assist in a coronation/restoration return of the Clintons to power and George Soros was more than willing to fund it and provide it with political and policy muscle.

 

And then Barack Obama walked onto the center stage of American politics and Soros fell in love.  Obama was everything Hillary was not.  He was young, attractive, hip, a prize winning author, articulate, wicked smart and as devious as Soros was rich...and he was half black and married to a glamorous woman with no signs of serial infidelity to muck up his image. 

 

 

More importantly to Soros, Obama was a committed, up front , hard left progressive who was not ashamed of his Alinsky ideology which had marked him throughout his entire adult life.  Nor did he have a handler who was a former President to prevent Soros from using him to bring his radical agenda for America to fruition. 

 

Soros quickly realized that Obama possessed a celebrity "joie de vivre" that the often whiney and shrill Hillary  lacked.  His was the easy grace of a multi racial JFK who when he couldn't convince you with glib intellectual reasoning would  would seduce you with glib but enticing banalities.  After all by the time the Obama campaign entered its second year, school children were singing creepy North Korean like hymns  to the exotic man from Hawaii and Indonesia and Illinois. 

 

MoveOn.org, another Soros entity committed over a million volunteers to his 2008 election while the entire Soros network moved into high gear to deliver money and resources for a Presidential  candidate who just four short years before was just another State Senator from the scandal plagued state of Illinois.

 

Obama triumphant in 2008 was the moment that Soros had always dreamed off.  He had elected both a radical President and a Congress two years before, without principles who were more than willing to make the leap from liberal to progressive, all in the name of power. 

 

And thus we got ObamaCare, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandals, the NSA scandals, the various DoJ scandals,  Benghazi , the wholesale deterioration of American military, economic and political might in the world, the wholesale political purging of 13 senior military Generals and Flag Officers, and the impoverishment of the American middle class.  Our allies became irrelevant as our enemies became attractive.  The radical environmentalists, now in charge of the EPA are relentless in making sure that the country becomes jobless and poor in the name of a pseudo religion called climate change.

 

ObamaCare was the coup de grace of the fundamental change Obama and Soros  lusted after.  This was the fundamental change that would finally destroy American exceptionalism along with the promise and the dream of the founders.  In its place would be a new American Reich dedicated to the proposition that government in the hands of the elites will make everyone equal by making everyone poor, dependent, compliant and relegated to fixed place in society...and thus we come to the realization that George Soros and George Orwell have been all this time, talking about the same thing.

 

 

ERLANDSSON

SAUL ALINSKY AND AMERICA'S "MEIN KAMPF" MOMENT PART THREE:  RENDER UNTO SOROS!!!

 

 

George Soros was born Gyorgy Schwartz in 1930 in Hungary to a well to do family that was pointedly non-religious and which some critics describe as anti-semitic.  During the Nazi occupation which began in 1944 he was asked as a teenager by the Jewish Council to deliver deportation slips to Hungarian Jews headed to the death camps.  It is still unclear exactly what he did but dark rumors persist that he and his family collaborated with the Germans.

 

After the war, Soros left Hungary and went to London to study at the London School of Economics where he came under the influence of the philosopher  Karl Popper.  After completing his studies he began a career in finance and in 1956 emigrated to NYC where he began to amass a fortune that now makes him the 22th wealthiest person in the world.

 

Soros was convicted in 1988 of insider trading in France, a conviction that has been upheld on appeal and confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights in 2011.  In 1992 during the British currency crisis he held a huge position re the British Pound and sold short thereby earning the sobriquet as "the man who broke the Bank of England" along with incidentally the futures of countless poor British pensioners.  Soros, however made $1.1 billion in the process.

 

In 1997 he again engaged in massive currency speculation during the ASEAN financial crisis and once again sold the Thai Baht and the Malaysian Ringgit short.  This earned him in the opinion of liberal economist and journalist  Paul Krugman as "Someone who moves money around in anticipation of a currency crisis while doing his level best to trigger the crisis itself!"

 

As Soros got filthy rich he began to delve into philanthropy and progressive politics in both Europe and the United States.  Over time he has developed an international network of hundreds of hard left organizations funded by his  flagship...The Open Society Institute... to promote the following issues:

 

1) Anti capitalism and the subjugation of the free market system by Government...

2) Global governance through the United Nations...

3) massive redistribution of wealth from the productive to the non productive by increasing taxes on the wealthy and the middle class...

4) militant feminism...

5) promotion of "cap and trade" while shutting down the production and use of fossil fuels and substituting this energy source with wind, solar etc...

6) promoting massive immigration reform through amnesty, open borders, paths to citizenship, and ending workplace immigration raids...

7) remaking the Constitution into a "living Constitution" which is fluid and "changeable to changing needs and preferences"...

8) establishing "socialized medicine" in the United States...

9) treating terrorism as a "criminal" matter rather than an "act of war"...

10)promoting euthanasia and Physician assisted suicide...

11) promoting the concept of "Responsibility to Protect" which encourages the International  community to intervene at certain times and under certain circumstances in a country's internal affairs...

12) promoting anti Israel and anti Semitic  positions on Israel and Palestine by placing the blame and onus for the 65 year struggle for survival by Israel on the Jewish state and American Jewry...

13) placing the blame re world crises and world problems on the actions and policies of the United States...

14) promoting anti voter ID laws and  same day voter registration and non citizen voting laws

 

In furtherance of these  and other goals, Soros has spent over eight billion dollars since 1979 and has become the principle patron of such hard left progressive organizations as:

 

a) The Center for American Progress or CAP which is a left wing think tank run by former Clinton aide John Podesta.  Many believe the CAP to have more influence on the Obama Administration than any other entity...

 

b) The International Crisis Group which advocates negotiations with Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban while constantly casting Israel as the bad guy and the problem...

 

c) J Street, which advocates a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue including also engaging in a dialogue with Hamas who officially denies Israel's right to exist.  Recognition of Hamas, which is a creature of the Muslim Brotherhood and  funded by Iran would mean a subtle de facto recognition of al Quaeda which  also originates from the Brotherhood... 

 

d) The American Constitution Society which seeks to drive our laws to the far left...both Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton have been either Board or advisory Board members...

 

e) ACORN and Project Vote, the voter mobilization arm of ACORN which was under investigation in thirteen states for voter and voter registration fraud...ACORN had to disband but is still with us as the Association of Community Organizations which recently was signed up to be Navigators for Obamacare...

 

f) MoveOn.Org which provided a million volunteers for the 2008 Obama campaign...

 

g) The Shadow Party which was organized by Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold Ickes to become a network of radicals driving the Democratic Party and turning America into a socialist state...

 

Soros has also substantially funded hundreds of other hard left entities such as The National council of La Raza, the Gamaliel Foundation, the Midwest Academy, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Health Care for America Now, Catalist, The American Immigration Council, The Arab-American Institute, The Alliance for Justice,and the Lynne Stewart Defense Fund.

 

He has through his money, caused other more  mainstream appearing entities to move further left  e.g.....  The NAACP, People for the American Way, The Brennan Center For Justice, The Sundance Institute, The ACLU, and Amnesty International...and the list goes on!

 

Soros is now the major political player for the progressive hard left who tries to project a benign personality while aiding and abetting some of the most vile people and causes in modern politics.  To paraphase a theme from the world of 007;

 

 George Soros, he's the man
The man with the midas touch
A spider's touch
Such a cold Soros
Beckons you to enter his web of sin
But don't go in...

 

 

ERLANDSSON

 

SAUL ALINSKY AND AMERICA'S "MEIN KAMPF" MOMENT PART TWO FIGHTING BACK!!!

 

 

Bernard Lewis, the noted scholar on Islam once remarked that when something bad happens in the  Muslim world, the predominate tendency is to ask  "Who did this to us?" while in the west the predominate tendency is to ask "How do we fix this?".

 

There is a similar situation existing between so called "progressives" and conservatives and other rational people.  "Progressives" seem programmed to deny personal responsibility and instead find a villain for their problems thereby becoming  victims in the process.  Perhaps that is another reason why the hard left is so sympathetic to Political Islam.

 

Both groups regard America as the source of evil in a world that needs a good cleansing.  Everyone else...conservatives...moderates...independents and other adults focused on solving problems are in charge of or want to be in charge of their own lives and not dependent of others or the government. 

 

Thus when rational people try to debate ideas with progressives, they are often not prepared for the childish, rude  and stupid tactics that they use and consequently spend their time and energy defending themselves against the name calling, the lies and distortions and not making their case...classic Alinsky tactics!!!

 

Any adult with common sense who wants to participate in the world of politics now has to expect Bedlam  from the left so they must begin to learn how to seize the upper hand, spank the unruly child they are engaged with and take control of the debate.

 

In many instances they must act preemptively even if they will later be called by the Alinsky press and media,  bigoted, insensitive, racist, sexist, or any of the other libels that are used to shut down legitimate and sorely needed debate.

 

Instead they have to drive the discussion to facts and not wallow in the emotionalism that the left lives in.  They must make the the discussion about reality as well as the fact that generally their opponents are obnoxious, crude, disingenuous demagogues who care so little about solving problems that often it is simply a waste of time to talk to them.

 

Alinsky advocates the use of ridicule and demonization in order to control the debate and divert it to destroying the individual enemy via a chaotic free for all.  When this is allowed to happen then no rationality can pierce the shroud of lunacy they substitute for reasoned thought and discussion.  So the rational must stamp out the irrational quickly and without remorse.  Rude behavior, talking over people, not letting anyone respond should be met by disdain and similar tactics if warranted or the rational should take control by making the behavior the issue and thereby turn the tables on the opponent. 

 

 With real progressive thugs one has to get in their face by saying that you are there for serious reasons and a serious discussions and they are not.  Then the issue should become why are they there and why do they behave the way they do.  Media that let this happen or who report it as news should be attacked for letting the idiot show go on.  The trick is for the public and the media to be put on notice before the rational enter the field of battle.

 

Prior behavior becomes the predictor of future behavior and sets the stage for the audience to anticipate  jackass behavior and infantilism.  No rational defender of the republic should ever be caught off guard like Paul Ryan was when he debated a sitting Vice President turned jerk who used every vile Alinsky tactic he could against Ryan who never saw it coming.

 

Progressives also like to associate their enemies ( Progressives only have enemies...they never have mere opponents or people who simply disagree with them) with groups they have tried to make people believe are evil or groups that actually are evil...Nazis and the Klan are always a sure bet when you want to demonize someone!

 

The Tea Party scares the hell out of "Progressives".  Their latest tactic is to never say Tea Party without saying extremist in addition.  Most of these loons have never met a member of a Tea Party so they have no clue that Tea Party members are sober, common sense taxpayers who are tired of wasteful spending, huge oppressive government that intrude in their lives, sky high taxes, and watching the hard left trash the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  They are in the main, religious people and people who believe in the Golden Rule.  To "Progressives" this make Tea Party members "extremists"

 

The following are 13 rules to counteract Alinsky bully tactics.

There are probably more but these are the ones that first come to mind.

 

1) prepare the public for the battle...constantly remind them of prior behavior and  stupid arguments...go on offense...get off defense and stick to your principles!

2) pick the battlefield, set the rules and anticipate the attack..

3) have absolute control of your facts and have alternatives ready...

4) counter attack at the first sign of bully and childish behavior...

5) attack the Alinsky "Progressive" media 24/7/365...

6) keep your message simple...

7) use the popular culture to help your fight...i.e. don't let these jerks take Rock n' Roll away from you!!!...take back the culture!!!

8)always be for and focus on the people and their problems ...don't focus primarily on process...remember the 2012 exit polls that showed 85% of the voters who believed that of the two candidates, Obama cared more for people like them... 

9)  expose lies and never let the public forget those lies...

10) use ridicule to make your opponents as ridiculous as they really are...

11) after you have shown people or groups or a party to be  phony make part of the debate about them

12)  attack the language and tone your opponents use and discredit them...

13) force the system to work the way it is supposed to work...

 

 Alinsky leftists are savages who  try to appear rational.  The Media supporting them are savages with microphones.  They are never to be trusted because they have been proven over and over again to be untrustworthy.

 

They are the new Jacobins trying to make the state and not the individual, the power in this country.  The first Jacobins used Libertie, Fraternitie, Egalitie to start a Reign of terror that saw thousands die a bloody death that culminated in a dictatorship.  Its starting to feel like 1793 here in America!

 

 

ERLANDSSON