Revolution? Yes We Can!

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.

--Abraham Lincoln

Not a huge fan of using quotes usually. I think it’s kind of hacky. If you are going to write something and can’t illustrate the point effectively yourself; don’t write at all! (Some of you just said…well then stop typing!)

Once in a while however, a good quote can really knock your thinking from one of myopic indoctrination to one of clarity.

Americans have become so influenced by the deluge of information and misinformation thrown down at us like so much offal over the last 150 years, that we have lost sight of who we are and how this country is supposed to work. The bulk of Americans no longer see themselves as We the People, but as Us the Powerless.

Think about it hard. The last time you got screwed by Bank of America, or the DMV or Wal-Mart, etc; what did you do? You probably screamed like hell up to a certain level of management and then gave up regardless of how truly pissed you were; chalking up whatever egregious indignation you suffered to the inability to fight such a behemoth of an organization. Of course, it’s true that for one individual it is virtually impossible to “fight City Hall” as it were.

But with a coalition, Americans can “fight City Hall”, or Bank of America, or Wal-Mart or whomever. That’s how our country was built. We are not powerless unless we make ourselves powerless and that is exactly what we have done.

This is why when I hear someone scoff at the idea of revolution my blood boils over.

Talk of revolution usually elicits two responses:

1. Abject revulsion; as the word Revolution to most liberals has become synonymous to drunken, inbred ramblings of racist redneck hicks propagated by a love of hell raising and hatred for authority in general. Liberals believe that anyone who even thinks of revolution to be clearly devoid of any semblance of intellect whatsoever. Revolutionists are in effect, dangerous ignorant extremists to most Liberals.
2. To conservatives and moderates, the idea seems fantastic, but impossible to achieve given the size and ingrained infrastructure of our current Government. The prospect just seems so damn daunting.

To the first group, my response would be: you are the truly ignorant amongst us.

Are you implying that Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Ben Franklin et al, were extremist dolts? Is it because you have become so fat and happy given the liberties these revolutionists fought for that you couldn’t possibly fathom any other mode of operation? Are we now to be a country that merely opines rather than takes action towards the betterment of their own people’s destinies? Or, shall we allow the Government to do that for us?

Liberals are not patriots. Oh, not by a long shot. They have no problem taking and taking and bitching about how little they receive for doing nothing and how stupid everyone else is. They offer solutions in which they have no intention of helping to achieve. Their raison d’être is perpetuating cradle to grave government reliance.

These are the same people who have labeled the Tea Party folks an ignorant mob of predominantly white-faced miscreants looking to shore up their 2nd Amendment rights. Clear and utter bullshit. Tea Partiers are not the problem, they are doing what they can to showcase a growing viewpoint: American Government as we know it does not work!

To Conservatives and Moderates: I would beg look back to the beginning when Britain’s Goliath-like grip was broken by a rag tag, ill equipped group of patriots who were short on resources but long on belief in the power of regular people and the desire for a good quality of life unencumbered by Government. This should be the very inspiration we need to begin a real change, not the crap Lord Falderal sold the nation last year. The first American Revolution was a seemingly impossible undertaking: fighting the formidable British Empire. But they did it and so can we. Any nay saying on the subject is bilge.

The difference between now and Revolutionary times is there were real leaders then. Now, we have nothing but trained rhetoric specialists and lawyers with aspirations and personal agendas. Any idiot with a team of newly minted college English majors sporting laptops and a teleprompter can get into office regardless of their experience in real life.

There was also a more pure distribution of information; no Internet, or biased media poisoning the minds of voters into thinking things are not what they really are and that the citizenry are in essence controlled by the Government and not vice versa. Sure, there were fewer people to get the word out to, but at least the voting public could be confident that information looked something like the Truth.

Today, the well has been poisoned. I know very intelligent people who take the word of CNN, MSNBC and even FOX as gospel and vote accordingly. Mindless. There is no initiative to seek the real truth since it is just easier to take the word of whoever the flavor of the week media correspondent is and go with that.

Seldom will you find me agreeing with Sarah Palin, but she is right on point with the media. Amazing things can be done through editing and camera angles as well as selective choices of dialog to use in any media package be it audio or video. They have the power to make an idiot look like a genius and a genius look like an idiot. Ask John Stewart, that’s how he makes a living. We have become a sound bite society and we use these clever edits to choose our so-called leaders.

We have let this system run on autopilot for way too long and are paying the piper for it now. The United States Government and Capitalism as a whole is a rudderless ship careening towards the reefs of destruction. The near miss of Lord Falderal’s hapless healthcare reform is the perfect example. Despite an overwhelming amount of people who were against it, it would have passed both Houses because our leaders have no clue what their constituents really want. And, for those of you who see some sort of conspiracy by the right wing that claim Falderal is tinkering with Socialism; here’s a clue, he is and it is no conspiracy.

This collective legislative scum could care less about the people they represent. They care only about their own careers and their places in history.

Thankfully the people of Massachusetts spoke, sending a shot across the bow of rank and file legislators all over the Nation. Now the House healthcare plans will have to be scrapped and retooled. The message is clear; the people are angry and will not be pushed around any longer.

Massachusetts was indeed a game changer, and it should be used as an example of what can be accomplished when people get together, express how they are feeling and turn those feelings into action. If the aforementioned topics in addition to the Massachusetts election don’t get you fired up, how about this: the Supreme Court's latest ruling on Campaign Finance? It not only lets the foxes into the henhouse, it also filets and breads the chickens.

It’s time to find real leaders regardless of what party they come from; strong leaders that can speak directly to the people at their own levels. We haven’t had a real leader since Teddy Roosevelt was President. In short, we need a real revolution. Not the kind where we forcefully take over the government, but the kind with a long-term strategy devised to dump this President and the entire legislature. We the people must take over the government and get back to where we came from.

It is also important to realize that revolution is not about throwing out the party in control and replacing it with the other party. It’s about rethinking the whole structure. It’s about replacing the morons who are running things from the Executive Branch down. They no longer represent real people; they represent party hacks and special interest groups. If Massachusetts didn’t illustrate that point, I don’t know what else would.

Can we do it in the next three years? Yes, we can; only this time for real.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
--Thomas Jefferson

Anger, Ego & Healthcare Reform

I have waited to comment on the atrocity that is Healthcare Reform as I found myself so angry as to risk an unintelligible tirade, the literary version of firing a bullet at some idiot Congressman’s field office. I have found putting a little distance between myself, and Lord Falderal’s signing off on the largest publicly funded ego trip since Roosevelt and the New Deal, to be very therapeutic.

What has ensued in the last week since this abortion of legislation was vacuumed out of the womb of Congress is both deeply troubling as well as encouraging.  By encouraging I mean the outrage shown by the overwhelmingly large majority of voters against Healthcare Reform lends well to potentially “throwing the bums out” in the midterms this November.

The troubling part is two fold. First, the thing is law. Law, which will never be administrated correctly because the numbers just do not work. Basically, we have yet another useless and hopelessly flawed piece of legislation that will make welfare look like Microsoft in comparison.

The second more troubling issue is the insidious reversion to violence that has occurred in some factions of the Tea Party. This kind of behavior is not a good thing for Conservatives as a whole. This is the kind of crap that makes the less educated Liberals dive onto the “right wing nut job” bandwagon, screwing it up for those of us who stick to and abide by the more basic facets of the Conservative Republican platform.

Republicans now have a very tenuous line to walk heading up to the mid terms and need to flesh out any extremism in order to attract back into the fold, the Independents that were (hopefully) temporarily dazzled by Lord Falderal’s incredible pile of hyperbole and empty rhetoric. That particular brand of voter is not going to take well to the threats and violent actions of a few angry people who just can’t take it anymore.

That said. What the hell did Lord Falderal and his pack of zombies expect when they passed this piece of crap? Of course people were going to go crazy. No one wanted the flippin’ thing to begin with. The whole “mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore” response is alive and well here in the good ol’ US of A. All the signs were there. Rallies, protests, the fact that only 17% of the whole country wanted Healthcare Reform in first place, should have given someone a clue. And, honestly I have to say if faced with some of these people (Congress) in person, I am not so sure I could keep from popping them in the nose!

Anger is a valid human emotion. The extremism we have seen in the last two weeks is inexcusable for sure. However, the origin of it is pretty easy to understand. For people who love this country and pay attention to what is going on, getting angry is their only resort to being heard. This legislation has cancelled our Representative Republic status and that in turn has pissed of a whole bunch of folk. The jackasses we elected into office are not doing their jobs and the common man has no real way to express himself or herself, except to vote or resort to more extreme tactics.

The recent activity with militias should come as no surprise. It is the oldest form of rebellion in our Nation’s history.  Forming militias is basically built into the DNA of the US. That doesn’t make arming ourselves against our own government a good solution to the country’s problems. The thing about human beings is we still resort to the primordial slime when our backs are up against the wall. We still have war; we still kill and maim each other like some kind of highly functioning Serengeti predator.

What needs to happen is for Conservatives to tone down the violent rebellion rhetoric and have an honest to goodness uprising by coming together and voting this Congress and eventually this President into oblivion. That is the right kind of rebellion. Let’s face it, as Conservatives we have the ammunition needed to do it we just have to stay focused.

Lord Falderal has indeed broached Socialism with the Healthcare Reform Bill.

One of my favorite sayings that I use all the time is “sometimes things just are what they are”. And, this is what it is. I am so fucking tired of listening to Liberals defending Falderal’s actions by saying that Fire, Police, Education and Infrastructure Services are Socialist by their very nature. That is just blatantly wrong.

Fire, Police, Education, Infrastructure creation and maintenance are NOT Socialist programs. There is no redistribution of wealth, they do not create goods, not everyone uses them in their lifetime and we have all agreed as a Republic to pay for them. Some would say that we shouldn’t be forced to pay for things we don’t use. That may be true but we made the decision as one to do it. Yeah, taxes suck, but for these types of services it just makes sense. Unlike Healthcare Reform, we were somewhat well represented when the decision to turn those services over to the Government were made. This is wickedly different than what the Healthcare Reform Bill shoves down our throats.

With Healthcare there IS a redistribution of wealth in that person A’s insurance premiums will be used to offset person B’s health insurance. We are forced under penalty of fine, to pay for everyone else’s healthcare situation. The key here is that EVERYONE is mandated to have health insurance. The means of production, exchange, and distribution of goods and services are all owned by the community with Healthcare Reform. That is Socialism.

And so here we are stuck with a useless law that will never gain any traction, beset on us by an equally useless President whose enormous ego prevented him from working on the issues the public cared about most just so he could experiment with a Socialist agenda and make some kind of show for those who stayed loyal to him. Now more than ever, this President’s power needs to be usurped not by violence, but by a carefully crafted and orchestrated rebellion at the voting booths.

The Obama Religion

Man, I am pissed off about our so-called President, and I know it shows. I’ve lost at least one Facebook friend that I know of because of it and there may be others. And, a good portion of my regular retinue of friends and family feel I am unduly obsessed with hating on Lord Falderal.

Yes, I am obsessed and I need to tell everyone why.

The last year has been a real struggle trying to figure out what it is about this guy that has gotten to my core. There have been politicians at all levels that I have recoiled from and cursed to the bowels of Hell many, many times in my life, but this feeling is epic. I can’t get it out of my mind. At first, I thought maybe I have finally snapped and having too much time on my hands to reflect on his continued syllabus of foibles am internalizing more than in the past.

Then I found a way to help me understand it.

Religion and faith.

I am not a religious guy by any stretch of the imagination. I am a Congregationalist, just for show. I got married once and had to join the Church I wanted the ceremony to take place in. It wasn’t hard as it was my hometown Church I had been involved with all my life, I just had never joined.

I do have a spiritual leader but only by happenstance. I didn’t seek him out he just came into my life. His life experience has been hard and time tested, which is why I call him my spiritual leader. I trust in him not really as a man of the cloth, but as a man in full. This person and I speak rarely; usually when someone in the family is being married or buried, but that doesn’t matter, the advice and knowledge I have gotten from him over the years is more than helpful. My point is that I get religion on its face. I completely understand why people are so ardent about it.

It wasn’t always that way though. Basically, I grew up thinking the Catholic Church was the real root of all evil and shunned learning about any of its tenants and teachings. My only exposure was the occasional wedding or funeral where I would count on someone to tell me when to kneel, sit, say the Lord’s Prayer, tip the Usher, or whatever.

Then I got the case of a lifetime.

I am the former owner of a Private Detective agency. In my career, I was fortunate to get some truly outrageous cases that I was nowhere near qualified to handle, but I took them, did my best and the results were usually good.

One day I was called upon by a New England Archdiocese (name & cases withheld for what should be obvious reasons) to help investigate a few wayward Priests. I was shocked they wanted my firm, and to this day have no idea who referred us.

Fortunately, there weren’t any child/priest situations (had there been I would have solved each one with my Glock, a dark alley, and no witnesses), they were cases involving Priests who couldn’t keep their quills out of the Congregation’s inkwell. In fact, not only were they sleeping with the wives of the faithful, they were bilking them for all they were worth as well as the Archdiocese itself.

At first I treated the client as I would any other. I approached the cases with the same set of rules as always. The job of a PI is to get the truth, not to tell the client what they want to hear or manufacture situations that never occurred. They were paying me a ton of money, way too obscene to impart here, and I was committed to doing the best I could and expected my staff to do the same. That thinking was a mistake.

I had the cream of the crop on my staff; former military guys, ex-cops, computer experts, extremely tough and smart people. They also all happened to be religious with the majority consisting of practicing Catholics.

Very quickly I learned just how important religion is. I had PI’s I thought could handle anything refuse to work on these cases because they could not deal with the idea of modern day Charlatan priests. They just didn’t want to know. I had one guy crack during surveillance, this gigantic, former Marine broke down after witnessing a Priest follow his paramour into her car port, remove his collar and partake in a little afternoon delight. This was after she bought him a new high def flat screen for his quarters at the rectory. He told me the abuse of power was too much to handle and his faith was being torn out from under him right before his eyes.

I thought he was nuts, until I looked into his eyes and saw the pain.

That is the pain I am feeling right now for our country, and even more so for my friends. I value my friends and family more than anything on this Earth. You can take my money, my possessions, anything but my friends and family. I have more respect for them than I do myself, and most of them are diametrically opposed to my political views. It is the memories created by these people that are the essence of my life.

And, they were duped. They were duped by a modern day Charlatan that doesn’t wear a collar, but flits about the world with a TelePrompTer and an arsenal of unobtainable hopes and dreams to sell. That sell job has shaken the faith of many of my friends who believed the crap Lord Falderal was slinging and is still slinging.

Like a bad Priest, he manipulated, took captive and raped the very intellect and goodness that allowed these people to believe his outrageous claims. The powerful and dangerous rhetoric was so well placed, and so well orchestrated it superseded any semblance of common sense to these folks. It created a religious zeal. I have never blamed the people who voted for Falderal; I get why they did it, I blame him and the people behind his assent.

I can honestly say most of my Obama supporting friends regret their choice. There are the few holding out for what would have to be a miracle to change this guy’s fortunes, but I believe it is out of stubbornness, or just unabashed hatred of Republicans and the former Bush administration.

My religion is the United States of America, where at one time anyone could be anything they wanted. Hope wasn’t just a buzzword; it was a way of life. Where the industry of regular people made up the majesty of the country. Our greatness was once predicated on our own individual efforts to make the country work. Now, it is a shambles because of the arrogance and lies of this person making a mockery of the Office of President.

This is why I am angry. It is not Falderal’s job to dictate, it is his job to serve us. It is not his job to push through legislation the country doesn’t want so he can preserve his legacy in the History books. It is not his job to traipse around the globe apologizing for our past actions; it is his job to represent his country with the pride and love of a true American. It is not Falderal’s job to be experimenting with Socialism and acting as a de facto dictator. It is his job to be bipartisan and play well with others in both parties and give the people what they want, not what he wants.

And, although this may seem petty, I believe it provides a good metaphor for how Falderal envisions himself. Falderal is a guest at the White House and like a guest at any home he should treat it with respect and a modicum of decorum. Seeing press shots of him with his feet up on the desk given to Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria makes my blood boil, likewise his habit of not wearing his jacket in the Oval. I know I seem like a tight ass here, but these are the kinds of things that cheapen the Office of President.

This is not about partisanship. I wish so badly that it was. I would have been more than happy to be arguing with my friends and family over age-old differences between R’s and D’s for the next four years rather than trying to make them see we are facing the demise of what was once a great country. We can no longer intellectualize politics and government like we used to. Now we are in real danger and have to do something about it.

If even the most liberal of liberals in the Continental Congress knew what this country was going through, they would be spinning in their graves.

My faith in this Government is completely shaken, but not my faith in the people of this nation.

Don't Dismiss the Tea Party Movement

I am not a member of the Tea Party, but I’m not a hater either. In fact, I am extremely gratified as an American and political junkie for their existence.

Like most people, I am no fan of hypocrisy; something we have in abundance in this country when it comes to politics and Government. The big problem with political opinions in the United States is they are so polarized, and that polarization is what effects the negative opinions people have towards the Tea Party movement. That polarization of political ideologies is what fuels the hypocrisy in political opinion.

That’s one crazy paragraph up there so let me explain.

Most political opinions, at least the ones thrust at us by the main stream media, come from either the East Coast or the West Coast, where people tend to think they are more sophisticated than the average voter from any other region of the country.  I feel qualified to say this having grown up in Connecticut, attending University in New Haven and having spent some time in small town and state politics.

The mentality in New England and New York is that of being the intelligentsia capitol of the world, the power brokers of the universe. Yes, I am generalizing and I am doing it with confidence and wild abandon. We are a snooty bunch us New Englanders and we know everything. We have money, most of it old money passed down from idiot heir to idiot heir and we possess the luxury of being able to mentally masturbate every single political notion out there, with the incorrect view that we can experiment with these notions to appease our intellectual curiosities. Forget there are other people living in this country without our advantages, it is us that matter. That is why New England can afford such liberalism when it comes to their political opinions and philosophies.

Now that I live in San Diego, I see the very same thing only more clearly than I ever did before. Because of course, when I lived back East I didn’t give a flying you know what about the West Coast, their opinion on politics meant nothing to me. But, the West Coast fosters a different kind of liberalism, in my opinion, an even more disgraceful form. The West Coast is all Unicorns and Rainbows. The political power base in California is fueled by guilt and glamour.

Most of the money and power out here comes from Hollywood with a few exceptions of East Coasters who have moved west for various reasons, and of course there are the millionaire software geeks. The money and success fueling the politics on the West Coast doesn’t come from the same ilk as the East Coast, no not by a long shot. This philosophy is fueled by people who either feel guilty about having so much when others are so desperate, or the need to be recognized as actually mattering on the political front. They want to feel like they have more substance than they actually do. And, they have the money (new money) and the infrastructure to do so. Mainly, what they are looking for is access to major politicians.

Lord Falderal benefited greatly from this in last year’s election. Hollywood helped deliver him the White House and all he had to do was stack the White House guest list with serious star power upon taking office.

Both coasts’ philosophies reek of idealism and not realism. They do not live in the real world but somehow think they are qualified to comment on it. The information they choose to process comes from a faulty mainstream media, which they themselves basically control. It is this incestuous micro chasm that has absolutely nothing to do with real life on which major decisions are made.

The healthcare debacle really is a great example of this as is the failed stimulus program. The benefactors of both those abortions of legislation certainly weren’t going to be regular people.

The useless bunch of offal occupying the White House and the Houses learned a big lesson when Scott Brown was elected. The message to Congress being; you are not doing what we elected you to do. You must listen to the people in order to keep your jobs. Even in the most liberal of all states, people are fed up with not being heard. Real people.

Scott Brown is the new Rosa Parks for the American people. He is a symbol stating that the politicians we elected to represent our interests will not be allowed to push the American people to the back of the legislative bus. (Let’s just hope he lives up to the hype!)

These self appointed masters of politics on both coasts call themselves American Patriots. They feel their perceived political superiority is license to pounce on groups like the Tea Party folks, using such negative slurs as un-intelligent, rednecks, extremists, nut-jobs, and oh-my-god…Republicans even. They disparage the very name Tea Party, apparently not understanding the symbolism.

The Tea Party movement is something this country has sorely needed. It is a refuge for the disenfranchised from many different political bents. And, it showcases for everyone to see that in between the coasts, there is a huge area inhabited by people who also care about their country. Real people, living their lives through what was once the American Dream and having seen that dream bastardized, are now pissed and doing something about it.

The Tea Party is made up of a diverse array of people from all walks of life but sharing one thing in kind; they all love their country. The core values and platform of the movement are admirable; fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. If I remember my history correctly, it was those same ideals the founding fathers launched this country.

Pay attention to the Tea Party movement.