The Incredible Shrinking President ... J. D. Longstreet

The Incredible Shrinking President
A Humiliating Debacle For America
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*****************

Well, Obama just finished off what little was left of America's credibility around the world.

As we have said so often before, he is the least qualified President we have ever had.  He just proved it.

No amount of excuses from the left will cover the fact that Obama blinked. Hell, he didn't just blink, he ran.  Putin and Assad must be bent double in laughter at Obama's high-stepping, backwards, away from a fight.

The national honor of the US has just suffered a tremendous blow.  We will pay for it for decades to come. 

I sincerely hope Bibi Netanyahu and the nation of Israel understand they are on their own with Iran.  Any influence Obama may have had in any kind of negotiations with Iran is totally gone. Now that Iran has seen just how serious a threat from this administration really is, they have zero fear and, I suspect, perceive this all as a green light for the go ahead to compete their nuclear program so they can attack Israel and the US with nuclear weapons as soon s possible. (When a US coastal city goes up in a mushroom cloud Americans will know where to place the blame.)

I hope the Israelis will take the bit firmly in their teeth now and go ahead and do what must be done to save the world from Iran.  It is clear there is no longer a US with the character, the intestinal fortitude, the guts, the cahones, to lead the world any longer.

It is fairly certain the Congress will NOT give Obama the OK to attack Syria.  Why? Well, it might be because some 80% of Americans don't want to attack Syria.  Most of us cannot define a single American interest in Syria.  Most of us understand there would be no victory in Syria.  And, frankly, many of us are tired of having our military used as some sort of political bludgeon.

And how must Secretary of State John Kerry feel now?  I mean, his boss just made a complete blithering fool of him before the entire world.  Does he resign?  Should he resign?  And he gave up a safe seat in the US Senate to become Obama's fool.  

In any event, Congress will not return to Washington for about another week.  Understand, nothing says thy must place a debate on military action against Syria at the top of their "to do" list.  You can bet the phone lines and the Capitol Hill switchboard  will be red hot as will their email inboxes.

In the meantime, a President the press is already trying to paint as the target of all sorts of humiliation, did not retire to the Oval Office to contemplate his next move to gain congressional approval for an attack on Syria. No.  He sped off to the golf course at Ft. Belvoir.  See, he is sure he WON'T get Congressional approval and with this move he can extract himself from the corner he painted himself into months ago with his over active mouth pronouncing "red line" markers.

It is extremely difficult for those of us on the right side of the political spectrum to believe that a president could deliberately make such wrong-headed decisions.  It is hard to wrap our minds around the possibility that a man could deliberately do what Obama has done to America.  And yet, there it is. He has taken America from the pinnacle to the gutter in four and a half years -- and played golf or was on vacation for a good portion of the time.

Can there be any doubt, any doubt at all, that under Obama's leadership America is headed down the same route as the city of Detroit?  When a nation's leader treats the nation as a banana republic, that nation will become a banana republic. 

I am shamed by the actions of my President today.  Shamed and humiliated.  I am also angry.  I'm angry that the electorate saw fit to give the man another four years to destroy the work it has taken some 238 years to build. 

Up to this past weekend, Americans had decades of work ahead of us repairing the damage Obama had already done.  After his cowardly actions of backing down from Assad and Putin, it will take at least a century to claw our way back. -- if we ever can.

© J. D. Longstreet

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"Believing His Own BS" ... J. D. Longstreet

Believing His Own BS
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
***********************

Oh, this is embarrassing! Our wimp of a President trying to fit into the hat of the Commander-in-Chief.  Geez!  He could at least take the "Kick Me" sign off his back.

Look.  This is what you get when you put a guy in an office for which he is not suited, not ready for, and does not have the cahones to make hard decisions.  And believe me, Mr. Obama is decision averse!  He hates making decisions of any kind but he hates hard decisions the most dragging his feet hoping he can outlast the problem, run out the clock, and not have to make a decision at all.

I've known other people just like that.  It strikes me that the people who delay making decisions are the very same people who condemn the final decision maker if the slightest thing goes wrong. 

See,  here's where I am having an immense problem with Obama's feckless behavior.  Our national honor is now at stake and he, Obama, has caused it to be called into question and that just stinks!

We have this expression down south that covers situations like this.  It is something like this:  "It's is really bad to run a man down and THEN HAVE YOUR BUTT WHIPPED!"

Mr. Obama's mouth has written a check his butt cannot cash!  The man is folding like a wilted suit before the gaze of -- NO -- not Assad!  Putin! 

Anyone running their mouths as often as our motor-mouth President must be prepared to stick his foot in it fairly often.  Occasionally, he may step so deeply into it, that he must be willing to fight to back up his spoken rhetoric.  If he isn't willing to go all out to preserve his honor, and the honor of those he represents, well then, he isn't much of a man.

The thing is this:  You cannot take a nation like the US to the brink of war with threats unless you are willing to carry through.  Apparently Obama, as is his wont, believed his own BS.  He apparently believed that his just uttering the words would so fill the hearts of the enemy with fear and dread that they would shut-up and slink away with their collective tails between their legs. 

Didn't happen. 

Those of us who live out here in the real world never thought it would and said so publicly. All he has accomplished is to make America look like a paper tiger -- a reflection, perhaps, of its leader.

Oh, and he has emboldened our enemies the world over.   By his feckless action, or lack there of, he has made the situation exponentially worse. 

Whereas, a few days ago, a pinprick, surgical, strike might actually have served a purpose, done some good,  (The operative word in the preceding sentence is "MIGHT.") now, however, a pinprick, surgical, strike will do absolutely nothing besides provide a propaganda victory to the enemy. 

Now, the US Forces must make a major strike, seriously damaging the command and control centers of Assad's government, his airfields, his harbor(s), his transportaion modes, his communications, take out his air forces, his navy -- in other words,  we have to throw that ole "shock and awe" at Assad, or -- do nothing at all.

Oh, dear reader, how many times have we reminded America that liberal's have no understanding of military force nor its application.  You are seeing it play out right before your eyes today.  No matter how this Syrian adventure of Mr. Obama's plays out, it will not be good for the US.

Normally, I would say that calling off the attack would do the US less harm than if we carry through with a strike so surgical as to be perceived as a face-saving slap on the wrist.  Not now. 

Our national honor has been laid upon the alter of Obama's over inflated vanity by his words, vacuous words that demonstrated a distinct lack of intelligence or thought; that were, in fact, stupid and even silly  It is a sacrifice we cannot afford to make.  No nation can.

Obama made this bed, now America must lie upon it.

Personally, I didn't want this war.  I can find no definable US interest in Syria. Frankly, it appears (to me) to be more of a "micturition contest" between Obama and Putin than anything else. 

Obama has brought us to the stage at which anything less than a full scale attack will be interpreted by the remainder of the world as turning tail and running. Sorry, folks, but that's the way it is.

As a conservative commentator has said so many times:  "Words mean things."   A President has a responsibility to measure his every utterance. 

Someone once said: "A man is never so empty as when he is full of himself."  I am very much afraid we have a Commander-in-Chief who has suddenly found himself backed into a corner by his own rhetoric.   Unfortunately, he has forced the country into the same corner with him and that is unacceptable in the extreme.

© J D. Longstreet

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First Gas, Then Fire

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

Over a week ago President Bashar al-Assad of Syria launched a gas attack on his own people.  Hundreds of civilians are dead and thousands are wounded.  Now to follow up such a hideous act, Assad has launched an incendiary bomb into the city of Aleppo.

Citizens from the area of the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, suffering from burns most likely caused by a incendiary bomb similar to napalm, were shown on Friday on a BBC network broadcast.

According to the report, 10 were killed and many more injured in a bombing on a school.

The broadcast shows a man, identified as a teacher in the bombed school, suffering from burns in most of his body.

The broadcast shows a man, identified as a teacher in the bombed school, suffering from burns in most of his body.

Wounded from the attack:

Click here if the video fails to load.

"The plane bombed a residential area in Orum a-Kubra," he said. "We tried to evacuate quickly, but it appears that fate had the upper hand today."

"The students gathered in one place, and then the plane got us," he added.

In another video, taken after the attack, a doctor who treated the wounded said that 10 students were killed and about 50 injured, most of them suffering from severe burns caused by napalm.

The BBC report described the scene and said the wounded looked like "walking dead."

A BBC reporter at the scene estimated the bomb contained either a napalm type explosive or thermite.

A British medic, Dr Rola, who was in Syria with the charity Hand In Hand, treated the victims at the hospital.

She said: "It is just absolute chaos and carnage here. We have had a massive influx of what looks like serious burns, seems like it must be some sort of, not really sure, maybe napalm, something similar to that.

"But obviously within the chaos of the situation it is very difficult to know exactly what is going on."

She said later: "We feel like some sort of, not even a second class citizen, like we just don't matter. Like all of these children, and all of these people who are being killed and massacred, we don't matter.

"The whole world has failed our nation and it is innocent civilians who are paying the price.".

Meanwhile, the NBC network released a survey which shows 50% of Americans oppose an US strike against Syria. Close to 80% of the surveyed said the President Barack Obama must have the Congress' go-ahead before a military intervention against Assad's regime.

SOURCE

On September 6, 2007 Israel destroyed Syria's nuclear reactor. Could you imagine Assad with a nuke or two?  Would he use it on his own people?  I do believe he would use a nuke on his own people.  He has already used Sarin gas and now an incendiary bomb.  Syria has descended into Hell.  A Hell of their own making.  How this will end is not known to the future, but it will not be a good ending for the Syrian people.

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Domestic Barbarians Destroy America ... J. D. Longstreet

Domestic Barbarians Destroy America
The Barbarism Within
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*************
“We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”   …   Hilaire Belloc

How many times have you heard someone say that when liberals are out of power their antics are funny …  but when they are in power they are dangerous?  My guess is you have heard it many times.  Most of us are quite familiar with it, in fact.

Today America is living the nightmare … disguised by the Left as the American dream.  It has been pathetically named "The New Normal."   It's not new and it's NOT normal.

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
— Edward Gibbon

Mr. Gibbon could easily have been describing modern day America rather than ancient Athens.  America’s coffers are empty largely to provide Americans a comfortable life.  And, just like the Athenians, we are losing everything, our security, our comfort, and most important, our FREEDOM. 

We have a government ruled by those barbarians America used to laugh at.  And they are solidifying and tightening their grasp on the throat of America’s freedom squeezing it out of existence. Viewing the constitution as nothing more than a speed bump, they are determined to drag America from the pinnacle to the cesspool -- and they are enjoying great success in their strivings!

In a recent commentary I noted how the peoples of a number of states have become so alarmed at the Obama government that they are harkening back to their rights as sovereign states and employing state nullification laws to countermand federal mandates intended to yoke them with federal laws to which they disagree and find overbearing, and massive financial costs they cannot bear.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of America, said the following:  “Whenever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”  He was there, at the birth of this nation, so he ought to know!

Thomas Paine, one of America’s great pamphleteers, author of “Common Sense,” and certainly one of the great rabble-rousers of all time -- and in many ways responsible for the American colonists’ revolution against Great Britain commented thusly: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worse state, an intolerable one.”  No truer words were ever spoken. 

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the renowned French historian, in writing about what we call today “Big Government” said the following: “It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

After reading de Tocqueville’s words above your brain happens to form the words “OBAMACARE” on the TV screen of your mind… then you, sir/madam, GET IT! 

Today we have first-hand knowledge of the destruction out-of-control big government can levy on a nation – even the most powerful nation on the globe.  Americans are weighted down, yoked to government as oxen were once yoked to the plow. Heads down, shoulders hunched forward we are pulling the weight with the near debilitating knowledge that our efforts only make the yoke stronger and will, eventually, end in our demise.

"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.”  Thus wrote Frederic Bastiat a French economist, statesman, and author in the 1800’s.

Freedom is slowly being crushed in America.  As an American, now in my eighth decade of living in America, I can tell you, with no hesitation at all, that I am not nearly as free as I was only a decade or two ago. Freedom, once lost, is nigh impossible to regain.  That’s why free peoples should fight every attempt to take from them even the smallest and seemingly least important freedom.

The man who has done more to diminish America and set her on a course to becoming another third-world dung heap asked Americans for -- and received -- four more years in which to complete the job.  Unbelievable -- but true.

I remain convinced nothing short of divine intervention can halt the wholesale destruction of a free America led by Barack Hussein Obama.

© J. D. Longstreet 

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Removing All Doubt ... J. D. Longstreet

Removing All Doubt
Obama's Syrian Slip-up
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*******************

"It is better to remain silent and allow others to wonder if you are a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." ... A. Lincoln, President of the United States.

Mr. Lincoln was making an attempt at  paraphrasing the Bible, Proverbs 17:28 to be exact, which says: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

It seems to me that the US President would do well to take to heart Proverbs 17:28 -- especially after his "Syrian Slip-up."  

I have often thought , and said as much, that our President talks to much, far too much. 
For most of my working life, I was paid to talk.  Not for showcasing my, uh, brilliance, but for the ease with which the ability to express myself seemed to come.  I can report to you now, that it did not come easy for me.  It was LEARNED BEHAVIOR. See, I figured out, as a kid, that a fellow with a good vocabulary and the power to,persuade -- plus the ability to speak in public would never go hungry.   I've been hungry.  Believe me, well-fed is much better.

So, where am I going with all this?  I expect you can guess. 

Our President doesn't know when to shut up! 

Look, there are two things you can always count on:  One, you will not always be the smartest fellow in the room, and two, there will always be someone ready, willing, and able to call your bluff.

Oh, and there is a third thing (when dealing with despots and terrorists.)  You can't bluff a person willing to lay down his life for his belief.  He has nothing to lose and, he BELIEVES, anyway, that he has everything to gain by dying.  Therefore, you cannot defeat him.  Yes, you can deconstruct his organization, demonize his cause, and kill him.  But you cannot defeat him. 

Endeavoring to totally defeat terrorism is akin to squeezing a balloon only to see it bulge in another location.  Squeeze that bulge and another appears.  Thus it is with terrorist organizations.

You would think that after nearly five years of the Obama administration we would no longer be surprised at the administration's amateurish efforts at foreign policy.  About the time we thought we were immune to any more infantile like surprises, Obama went and drew a red line and dared Assad to step over it.  Of COURSE,  Assad stepped over it.  Hell, he had to.  It is basic psychology.  When you are a "strongman" leader and you are challenged, you MUST rise to the challenge. Otherwise you risk being dispatched by your own people and replaced with another strongman who WILL rise to the challenge.

Obama should never have drawn that red line.  However, being the amateur that he is, he did, and now we have no choice but to back it up by going to war (in the middle of a civil war) in a country where there are no US interests and where the outcome, no matter what it is, will not be advantageous for the US.   It doesn't get much crazier than than this.

I can't speak for you but, I must tell you, I am fed-up with my country involving itself in "nation building" especially in the Middle East where it is a lost cause from the git-go. 

(By the way, this is a glimpse into what the entire world would look like under global governance.  Constant, never-ending war.)
But, the red line has been crossed and Obama must, repeat, MUST strike.  If he does not follow through,  all the implied threats, going forward, will be seen as hollow, worthless, gestures made by a country that talks big but hasn't the cahones to carry out it's threat. THAT will loose all sorts of mischief on the globe.  US foreign policy, such as it is today, will be a laughing stock. (Not that it isn't a laughing stock today.  Only MORE people will be laughing and a lot louder!)

One must consider what Russia and Iran will do the moment the first US missile or bomb slams into Syrian soil.  Personally, I expect terrorist attacks on Americans in diverse places around the globe.  There have already been rumors that orders have been given for Islamic terrorists to take American hostages forthwith in the event of US military action against Assad.  

It is also likely, there may be some jostling of Russian and American naval vessels and combat aircraft. 

Oh, did I say AIRCRAFT?  I did.  Once we learn that cruise missiles can't get the job done alone, expect US manned aircraft to be launched against Assad's forces. (If bomber aircraft are not a part of the original raid.)  There are reports, unconfirmed by this scribe, that US bomber aircraft have been seen flying into British air bases in the immediate area.

Some sources have made much of the fact that the US has not sailed an aircraft carrier into the eastern end of the Med.  It isn't necessary.  The British have military bases, including airbase(s) on the island of Cyprus just off the coast (Approx. 100 miles) of Syria. 

Another question:  Will Obama be able to withstand the withering criticism bound to come rolling in over the deaths of civilians as a result of our bombing and missile strikes?  Does he have the steel to stay the course once he has committed our forces to the task?  All we know of Obama's military prowess so far is his ability to retreat, as in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At the bottom of all this mess, I feel sure, is that damnable UN initiative of "The responsibility to protect" designed to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.  Of course, it is just more leftist feel good policy which doesn't do anything toward alleviating the problem, but cost a great many lives of US servicemen and women.

Obama has climbed way out on a limb with his Syrian adventure.  It is almost impossible for it to end well.  Look how Libya ended. Syria stands to be far worse than Libya.

All America can look forward to from our Syrian adventure is more flag draped coffins ... and for what?  No, I mean -- FOR WHAT?

© J. D. Longstreet

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Progressivism transforms “welfare to work” to “welfare to not work”

 Millions of Americans get some kind of financial support from the federal government. Some of them have earned it (Social Security and retirement recipients), some of them really need it (the poor and disabled), some need it temporarily (like those who can’t find a job in the non-recovering economy) and some don’t really need it, but get it anyway.

The widely reported number of Americans in poverty is 46.2 million, about 15 percent of the population. July’s Household Survey revealed that 11.5 million were unemployed; 2.4 million will work but aren’t actively looking; and 8.2 million wanted full-time work but could only a find part-time job. And the Civilian Labor Force Participation rate was a very low 63.4 percent.

Yet CBS News reported that a survey of 2,000 employers showed one-third of them said lots of jobs go unfilled for three months or more. Many of the roughly three million unfilled jobs are in skilled trades and pay good wages, making one wonder about the current “everybody needs a college education” mania that now grips the country.

Another reason that good jobs go unfilled is that the federal government’s assistance programs make it easy to not work, and frequently pay more than some jobs.

The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, writing in the Los Angeles Times (Online) notes that, “Contrary to stereotypes, there is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of welfare recipients consistently show their desire for a job.” Yet the “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says less than 42 percent of adult welfare recipients participate in work activities nationwide,” he continued. “Why the contradiction?”

“Perhaps it’s because, while poor people are not lazy, they are not stupid either,” he writes. “If you pay people more not to work than they can earn at a job, many won’t work.”

In looking at federal assistance programs, Mr. Tanner noted that most reports on welfare focus on only a single program, the cash benefit program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But he explained that “focusing on this single program leaves the impression that welfare benefits are quite low, providing a bare, subsistence-level income.” However, most get assistance from more than one of the federal government’s 126 separate programs for low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.

In order to analyze how the federal assistance programs affect recipients, the Cato Institute created a hypothetical family consisting of a mother with two children, ages 1 and 4, and then calculated the combined total of seven of the most common benefits that the family could receive in all 50 states.

In Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Hampshire and California, that group of seven programs provide benefits worth more than $35,000 a year. The value of the package in a medium-level welfare state is $28,500.

Since welfare benefits are not taxed, to put the benefits issue in perspective the Cato study calculated how much pretax income the family would need to earn in order to provide the same amount as a 40-hour-per-week job. This calculation took federal and state income taxes, earned income tax credits and the child tax credit into account.

The study found that welfare pays more than an $8-an-hour job in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and that in 12 states and the District of Columbia welfare pays more than a $15-an-hour job. And, in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job.

Comparing the results with specific jobs, the Cato study found that in California and 38 other states, it pays more than the starting wage for a secretary and in the three most generous states, welfare benefits exceed the entry-level salary for a computer programmer.

While not every welfare recipient gets these seven benefits, many do, and some receive even more than the package used by the Cato study. “Still,” Mr. Tanner concludes, “what is undeniable is that for many recipients in the most generous states — particularly those classified as long-term recipients — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.”

Welfare is supposed to be a temporary thing for most recipients, not a career. Yet in many cases able-bodied men and women do not look for work because they can do better on welfare.

Such a system discourages people from taking responsibility for themselves and their families. It creates a large faction of government dependents; a status that deprives people of self-respect and the pride of accomplishment that results when one succeeds in life because of their own efforts.

Even a low wage job is better than welfare, as it often is only a first step to better jobs. U.S. Census figures show that only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, while 23.9 percent of adults who do not work are poor.

This country became what it once was not by millions depending upon government to feed and clothe them, but by Americans making themselves successful through determination and hard work. That is the goal our welfare system must have.

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American Paranoia Sets In -- Big Time! ... J. D. Longstreet

American Paranoia Sets In -- Big Time!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
**************

Have you noticed your friends speaking a bit lower and standing a bit closer as they speak to each other recently?  Have you observed, or thought you observed, whispered exchanges between people you know to be friends or even fellow employees?  And have you noticed these exchanges in what is sometimes referred to as neutral locations -- ie -- not the work place or the home?

I'll bet you have.  I have.  Yeah, most of us have IF we take a moment and think back over the past few days.

So, why do I bring this up?  What's the point?

My point is, dear reader, America is changing -- and changing big time -- and it is all happening right before our eyes and we don't seem to recognize the metamorphosis.

Why?  What's happened?

America is no longer a free country. Yeah, I know that is a strong statement.  I intended it to be strong.  I want to shake you up, to get your attention, to pry your eyes away from the TV screen, the computer screen, the cell phone screen, and every other type of electronic device we have today ... long enough to point out that the very thing you are holding in your hand, or sitting in front of and staring at -- has sold you out.

Every time I sit down at the keyboard to write a commentary, I am conscious that I have a captive audience.  I know for certain the US government is interested in every word I say, or type, or transmit.  I am conscious that every time I use certain key words or phrases, little metaphorical red flags go up where ever the heck my commentary is being received by the government.  I must tell you it is more than a little chilling.  Of course, that is one of the side effects of  living in a "surveillance society" such as the United States of America.  Our privacy is gone, zip, kaput!  Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all, every single one of us, is now under close observation by the US government. 

"Oh," you might say, "Longstreet, you're being paranoid!"  EXACTLY!  That's my point -- EXACTLY!

The entire country is becoming paranoid.  Americans are now carbon copies of the people who used to be citizens of the old Soviet Union.  We're even beginning to LOOK like them.  Their mannerisms have been adopted and then adapted to fit 21st century Americans. 

No, we don't have Gulags.  But some SWEAR we DO have FEMA Camps!  (Actually, there are two, uh, camps on the FEMA Camp controversy.  Personally, I'll hold my opinion on that until I can see a camp for myself.) 

Peggy Noonan, in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, said our loss of privacy will likely change Americans.  She said:  "The end of the expectation that citizens' communications are and will remain private will probably change us as a people, and a country."  SOURCE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639704579015101857760922.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

In her article, Ms. Noonan relates how 88 year old Nat Hentoff, a renown journalist and civil libertarian, spoke to a group of students at Harvard.  She said:  "About a year ago he went up to Harvard to speak to a class. He asked, he recalled: "How many of you realize the connection between what's happening with the Fourth Amendment with the First Amendment?" He told the students that if citizens don't have basic privacies—firm protections against the search and seizure of your private communications, for instance—they will be left feeling "threatened." This will make citizens increasingly concerned "about what they say, and they do, and they think." It will have the effect of constricting freedom of expression. Americans will become careful about what they say that can be misunderstood or misinterpreted, and then too careful about what they say that can be understood. The inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship."  SOURCE:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639704579015101857760922.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion
 
Please pay careful attention to the last line above:  "The inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship."  I can tell you, as a conservative writer myself, Mr. Hentoff is "spot on."  All conservative writers, commentators, and such, writing today with a progressive Marxist/communist administration looking over our shoulders 24 hours a day and eavesdropping on everything we say, or write, would be a fool not to be concerned.   Regardless of what we may say publicly, it DOES have a chilling effect upon our writing.  That, dear reader, is NOT an unwelcome effect so far as the current administration is concerned.

Until fairly recently, Americans were a breed apart. We were a free people who governed themselves.  We constructed and then we lived in a free republic.  That has now changed.

The republic that we once had is now unworkable. It has crashed and burned.  Why? Because the government is no longer answerable to the people.  The constitution no longer constrains the government. 

The US government now has only one branch functioning.  Originally designed for three coequal branches, the Legislative, the Judicial and the Executive,  the powerful Obama Executive Branch has either shuttered or co-opted the other two.  What we have today is not constitutional, but it doesn't matter as the constitution itself no longer applies.
There is an expression:  "When someone is out to get you, paranoia is just damned good thinking!"  While it IS true, the political left in America seeks to use our paranoia against us by insisting it is a weakness.   It is they, of course, aiding and betting the usurpers in our nation's capital in the soft despotism that has so quickly stripped America of her freedom and liberty and set her on the road to imminent destruction as a Marxist/communist society. 

But then, you shouldn't pay too much attention to my ranting.  I'm paranoid, you know.

© J. D. Longstreet

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Democracy Is Dangerous ... J. D. Longstreet

Democracy Is Dangerous
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*****************

I look at the utter mess in Egypt and I think: THIS is what democracy has wrought!

OK.  Before you climb all over me for my seeming put-down of democracy, hear me out.

I am now more convinced than ever that some people, some nations of peoples,  simple cannot handle democracy.  They are not ready for it.  Some never will be.   The grandiose idea that we, the US, can spread democracy throughout the world has proven to be America's bite too big to chew, and certainly, too big to swallow.

You would think after serial failures in the Middle East, notably, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Egypt, the US would recognize the utter futility of establishing an American style representative republic in any of those lands where Islamists hold sway. 

Freedom is scary and it is dangerous.  Even here in the land of the free, America, where a sizable portion of the citizenry's ancestors had freedom handed to them one hundred and fifty years ago, have yet to learn how to handle it. A century and a half later they still require help from the government that purportedly freed them. Being free is not easy. 

In the Muslim countries of the Middle East, their definition of freedom is quite different from our definition.   They have found their freedom within the confines of Shariah Law.  True freedom, such as we enjoy in America, cannot exist in a state in which it must compete with Shariah Law.   If you doubt that, look at Egypt today.   It is a roiling inferno of religious passion, hate, lust for power, despotism, and control.

Imad Eddine Adeeb, an Egyptian columnist, in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al Awsat has said:  "We lack the culture of democracy, and our institutions are still outdated, corrupt and decaying, operating with the same old administrative structures and tattered values and moral codes, all of which have nothing to do with democracy."
SOURCE:   http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/arabs-not-yet-ready-for-democracy#ixzz2ckAPc3Fa

There are considered to be fourteen countries in the Middle East.  Only two of those countries are electoral democracies.  ONLY TWO.  They are, of course, Israel and Turkey.

It seems that those of us in the west are just beginning to realize the unique challenges of bringing democracy to tribal societies.  We are learning, much to our chagrin, that there are, in fact, some cultures that are simply not, repeat -- NOT,  capable of creating a harmonious society of any kind, democratic, tribal, or otherwise.  

A free election does not guarantee the voters in the newly democratic nation will not vote themselves a new dictator.   We've already seen this happen.

My guess is that when all the smoke finally settles in the Middle East and the so-called Arab Spring has finally sprung, the world will be right back where it started -- or very near it.  I expect "strongman" rulers in all the Muslim nations now in turmoil.   Why?  Because the people of those nations are just not ready for a government in which they, themselves, take responsibility for their government.  Maybe in another century or two, but certainly, not now.

In the meantime, the US ought to stop meddling.  Let them alone.  If they want to fight and annihilate each other, more power to them.  Let them have at it.  If, and when, they strike out at us, smack them down -- hard. Otherwise, leave them alone. 

Look, it is just extremely difficult for me to become concerned when I see the enemies of my country busily, and industriously, slaughtering each other.  And it seems utterly nonsensical to me for elements within the US government to insist that we supply weapons to help one side, or the other, thereby inserting the US into the middle of a civil war that is, in fact, working to our advantage by decreasing the numbers of our enemies.

One has to wonder if Israel would not be better served if Assad's forces eventually win the ongoing conflict in Syria.  Israel and Assad's governments know and understand each other -- and they know just how far one can push the other.  A new Islamist dictatorship in Syria will almost certainly lead to war with Israel.

As we have seen, democracy did not lead to peace, love, and joy in Egypt.  Why in the world would we think it would do so in Syria should the forces in rebellion to Assad win and decide democracy is the way to go for them, as well.

Yes.  Democracy IS dangerous.  Even a limited democracy, such as our constitutional republic can be dangerous.  With all the checks and balances we have in the US, we have seen how ignorance can produce a socialist/Marxist government in America, the citadel of democracy, itself.

I am of the opinion that we Americans need to clean up around our own doorstep before we go meddling in other nations conflicts.  We have enough problems to keep us occupied for at least a few decades.

© J. D. Longstreet 

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The Left's Guilt is Weighing America Down ... J. D. Longstreet

The Left's Guilt is Weighing America Down
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
**********************************

I am absolutely convinced that had America had the government we have today back in oh, say, the late seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds we would never have grown into the world power we became and, in fact, were - up until the Presidential Election in 2008.

Never in my life on this earth, as an American, have I seen the people of America so morose, so depressed, so completely whipped, as I see today. The ‘spirit” has almost gone out of the average American.  In biblical terms: our “countenance has fallen.”  In other words, our self-esteem has fallen through the floor - and then some.

The average American has watched as his job has fled from him, his home has been foreclosed upon, his car has been re-possessed, his president went traveling around the world, early in his first term,  apologizing for doing all the things that made America great, making the average American look and feel like a fool. Yes, Americans have a right to feel let down.

If I were a young man and had fewer responsibilities, I’d pack-up and move to Australia.  I am hearing more and more young American men uttering those words today than I have since the 1960’s, when a number of middle aged Americans took their families and fled to Australia.

But, you see, this is what socialism does to a people.  This is what socialism does to a country.  It guts it. It eviscerates a country and that country’s people.  It smothers their motivation.

There is little reason to feel any of that HOPE Obama preached about during his first campaign for the presidency. Oh, we got the “change” all right.  Yep!  Everything changed for the worst.  But, there simply is NO HOPE. Even if there was, the average American is without the energy to grasp even the proverbial straw.

Just a few short months ago America had limitless horizons. Today the American horizon lies just in front of the toes of his shoes. Americans find themselves  beaten down by a relentless government grown so big it sucks the air out of any project it touches. Once Obamacare goes into full effect, the US government will have, indeed, touched everything in America.

The average American’s nerves are strained so they are virtually vibrating as we are hit with a continuous parade of one crisis after another, many man-made and formulated, in my opinion, in the offices of the West Wing.  For the first time in the history of the United States, Americans speak of their government in hushed voices and in guarded tones for fear that someone friendly to the Obama Regime may overhear and report them to whomever one reports such things.  There is genuine fear of our government in America these days and, unfortunately, those in power have found they like it when Americans fear them.

Those of us accustomed to speaking out with our honest opinions about our government and what our government is doing have now found that we must weigh our words even more carefully, especially when the words we speak and scribble are not complimentary of the Obama Regime. Our speech, our actions, our affiliations, are all carefully scrutinized by the Obama Regime.

Unused to this fearful atmosphere many Americans are confused and disoriented and unable to combat the all out attack of socialism on our democracy.  The use of “thugocracy” to defeat democracy in America is an altogether new experience for most Americans, especially those of us who live outside the urban areas where the practice of strong-arm politics has been known for a hundred years.

Here in the hinterlands the aforementioned  “atmosphere of fear” will last only so long. There WILL be a backlash.  Fear will turn to anger. Americans will demand the return of their birthright of freedom and liberty, and they will not be denied.

Already Americans in the so-called “fly-over” country are well ahead of their brothers and sisters in metropolitan America in making the transition from fear to anger. Unwilling to live under the yoke of slavery lain across their shoulders by the politburo of Obama’s socialist Central Committee, they will not quietly accept the desecration of their constitutional rights. 

There are among us many who believe America may not survive.  I think she will.  But – America will never, I repeat, America will NEVER be the same as she was prior to the Obama Regime.  The doubt, the guilt liberals carry around like lead weights on their souls has now been draped onto the shoulders of this country.  It will drag us down.  Much as an athlete running the hundred-yard dash with weights tied to each leg, America will find she cannot distance herself from the pack as she has in her meteoric past.  Now she is a part of the mediocrity of the pack and there is no real future for a nation as an “also ran.” 

America was a leader.  No longer. That distinction has been stripped from us by the political left whose feelings of guilt for being superlative strangles the desire to excel.

Limits on America’s potential are imposed by those among us who preach “fairness” in all things. Fairness may provide a warm feeling but it throttles the ability to excel in those whom God has endowed with special abilities exceeding those of their fellow Americans.  America was a special place because she dared to  BE special.

Americans today are restrained by their government and by their fellow Americans by laws, the purpose of which, we are told, is to save the earth. Creativity and innovation, formerly the hallmark of American society will be, in fact already are, restraining the country from meeting standards of excellence that come naturally to a free people. And therein lies the key.

In the paragraph above I mentioned “a free people.”  People must be free to accomplish the truly marvelous things America has accomplished in her brief history.   By voluntarily giving up that freedom, that liberty, in 2008 America began her meteoric crash into the dustbin of history and relegated herself to the bone yard of once great nations.

© J. D. Longstreet  

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Maryland needs leaders not followers

Maryland needs leaders not followers

 

Maryland’s Governor and Attorney General (AG) are running away from their respective offices to move higher on the food chain. Governor Martin O’Malley has his eyes on the White House as Attorney General Douglas Gansler looks towards the State House. Governor O’Malley’s few accomplishments are drowned out by the enormous number of unsolved problems he will leaves in his wake. Violence throughout the state of Maryland, especially in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, has only received lip service from someone who incessantly brags of his nonexistent achievements. Taking his lead from President Obama, Governor O’Malley will waste several billion dollars or more on green projects to nowhere. Under his mindless tutelage a rain tax now falls across Maryland, the only state in the union to institute such idiocy. Taxes, tolls, assessments and other financial extortions from the state have moved up exponentially to fund O’Malley’s massive entitlement structure. Efficiency is not in the Governor’s vocabulary. His inability to understand business dynamics caused Maryland to be named a business unfriendly state by those in the know. In the event this is the record O’Malley will run on, conservatives will have no fear of him succeeding.

 

Attorney General’s office sits in prime real estate in the midst of Baltimore City, not in the less expensive state towers on Preston Street. From this perch a panoramic view of Baltimore’s nightly blood bath is evident. Since his installation as Attorney General, Gansler has made no effort to stem the flow of violence surrounding his office or elsewhere in the state. The daily body count attests to the fact that his very liberal agenda, to retain office, excludes the possibility of taking on the true challenges necessary to reduce the death toll. Gansler’s well concocted bio displays his strong push for; nontraditional marriages, health care solutions through the abomination called Obamacare, gun control for victims not victimizers, diversity in state appointments without consideration for merit, baseless green energy projects and numerous other left-wing assaults driving businesses to more friendly environs. Baseless lawsuits against physicians are one of his office’s specialties. Douglas Gansler has intimidated a sufficient number of people to keep his name afloat in the media, not to dissimilar from another cohort Eliot Spitzer, who followed the same path from AG to the Governor’s office in New York. Power hungry people will go to many lengths to stay in positions that give them control over others, Gansler is no different. Recently, Gansler made several gaffes when he insisted his opponent Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, an Afro-American, has only his race to offer as a justification for seeking the governorship.  This denigrating statement may move many out of his camp for obvious reasons. According to Gansler’s bio Civil Rights are a high priority for him, yet his speeches appear to reflect otherwise.  Both Martin O’Malley and Douglas Gansler have their priorities misplaced. Their motivations for seeking office have less to do with improving living conditions in Maryland than staying in positions of power at all costs. With these two men in charge Maryland has become more blue pushing state coffers into the red. Neither one should be honored with higher office, yet knowing Marylanders they like the status quo. Mark Davis, MD President of Healthnets Review Service and Davis Book Reviews, www.healthnetsreviewservices.com, platomd@gmail.com, twitter.com/americassage, Author of Demons of Democracy and the forthcoming book, Obamacare: Dead on Arrival, A Prescription for Disaster. To comment please join us on LinkedIn in the group, Government in Transition.

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Where Are America’s Heroes? ... J. D. Longstreet

Where Are America’s Heroes?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*******************
DEFINITION of HERO:  A man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility

and strength 
This country, America, needs some heroes.  Badly.

Have you noticed that we have none?

In my youth heroes abounded.  There were, first and foremost, the military heroes, then the sports heroes, even the guy down the block who saved the neighbor’s cat by climbing up the tree to retrieve the cat, he, too, was a hero.  But it is not so, anymore.

Humans need heroes.  Heroes remind us that there is a better side to us.  Heroes remind us that we DO have it in us to be better than we are… to accomplish what was thought to be the impossible, and that we do have it in us to defend those things most precious to us, like our families and our homes and even our country. 

But today there are no heroes.

Military heroes went out of style during the Vietnam War.  Although many, many, Vietnam veterans came home as a heroes, they were not accorded that status by their fellow Americans.  Many were reviled and even spat upon.  Men who had answered their country’s call and gone to war, and had every right to be accorded the status of heroes were, instead, shunned by American society.

When I was a boy, there actually were sports heroes.  Oh yes.  No any longer.  Professional athletes tell us they have no desire to be a ROLE MODEL, A HERO, if you will. And they aren’t.  Many we would silently think of as heroes turn out to be abusing drugs, which brings into questions their athletic triumphs.   So, we no longer have sports heroes. 

Well, you may ask, what about the neighborhood guy who climbs trees and rescues felines for the neighbor’s children?  What about him, huh? 

Well, that cat is stranded now, for good and all, except in the rare case where the local fire department will agree to come rescue the critter. 

Why? 

Well,  the neighborhood guy is concerned that if he should climb that tree and break a limb, some enviro-nut group will sue him.  If he should accidentally harm the kitty, while in the attempt to rescue her, then the animal welfare groups might sue him, and if the kitty scratches the kids he returns it to, he might well be sued for allowing those children to play with a dangerous animal.

See the direction America has taken… and why, there are no heroes today?  It is, indeed, far too risky to be a hero today. 

And then there is the “Moral Relativity” problem.  Here in America, the Moral Relativity adherents rule the day.  Now known as “political correctness”, we are indoctrinated, from day one, that all men are created equal.  Well, one can easily put the lie to that… if one wanders into the shower room of any military barracks in the world, or walk down a crowded beach in July.  All men are NOT created equal.  All men are guaranteed an equal shot at life and its abundance here in America by the constitution, but that is as far as it goes… or at least, that is as far as it SHOULD go. 

Now, if you believe that all men are equal then you cannot have heroes.  Because the very nature of heroism means that one person has exceeded the level playing field of equality and has become better than his fellow man in some way. 

We used to understand that, in this country, and we celebrated our heroes.  Look back at Audey Murphy, the most decorated soldier of the Second World War.  A tiny little fellow, unimposing, but the man had the heart of a lion. He was a true hero. 

And there was The Duke.  Yep, John Wayne.  So far as I know Duke never served his country in uniform.  Except that, actually, he did.  He portrayed such heroes, so often, and so convincingly on the American movie screen, that he became one.  He played role after role of a hero in different uniforms of our military service. Those western characters he portrayed paid homage to the early days of America on the frontier.  He became a hero.  The thing with Wayne was that “what you saw was what you got”.  Off screen, he was the same man he played on screen.  And that came through, clear as a bell, in the characters he portrayed.

Say what you will about the Duke, but he taught, at least one generation of American men, what it meant to be a man… and even more importantly what it meant to be an American man.

Heroes provide us with role models. “We don’t need role models,"  you may argue.  Oh, but we do, I would counter.  Role models teach our children important lessons about who they are and of what they are capable.

When I first reported for military training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, back on July 5th, 1959, I had no idea what I was capable of.  None.  I thought I did.  But, boy, how wrong I was.

I weighed approximately 126 pounds ... and that was soaking wet! And then they took us up to a place known then as “Tank Hill”.  That’s where you went, in those days, when you reported to Ft. Jackson to be whipped into shape as an American soldier.  Eight weeks later, having survived pure hell, I left that Army post a brand new American soldier, believing I could lick the world and, if necessary, single handed.  

How did it happen?  One important factor of that training was that there were genuine heroes training us.  The instructor cadre were men who were veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War.  Men who had seen the worst the enemy could throw at them and they rose above it… and won! 

We had a First Sergeant, with an Irish name, and all the accoutrements, including the blue eyes and red hair.   Never saw him that he didn’t have a bayonet scabbard hanging from his web belt.  Never. He was a sergeant in the manner of old first sergeants. That guy was something to behold.  When he walked into a room, or onto a training field, all the noise became muted and all eyes were on him.  He commanded respect.  For those of us un-initiated, at the time, there was one huge question we all wanted to ask and that was… “Why”?  After a few weeks, I screwed up enough courage to ask one of the lowly buck sergeants what it was about the Top Kick that brought all that respect.

The sergeant pointed to the Top Kick’s bayonet.  “You see that,”  he asked? I assured him I couldn’t miss it.  The sergeant went on to say there was a story behind that bayonet.  He told me that even though he didn’t know all the details he knew that the Top Kick had saved his squad, in Korea, by charging an enemy machine gun nest with nothing but that bayonet in his hand.  He over ran that enemy gun emplacement and put the machine gun out of action and saved the lives of his men.  For his actions the Army had award him a medal. His fellow soldiers had awarded him something far more precious… their respect.

As I listened in awe, I came to understand the awe, in which his men held him, that day. And… I had something of an epiphany, and that was that… even heroes need heroes.  The men training me were genuine war heroes, and yet… they looked up to the Top Kick as THEIR hero.

It is the nature of the human beast.  We need “markers” to show us what we can achieve.  Those who rise above the rest ARE those “markers” and we call them heroes.

America has become a nation in limbo.  Having no markers, no heroes, to look to we are wandering about in a sea of disillusionment, not knowing who we are. Ofttimes we are discouraged from accomplishments, which exceed the norm.  We are told it is better to remain a non-entity than to accomplish more than one’s neighbors, and rise above them, for in so doing we make those who seek to remain equal feel ashamed, or less important than we.

To that I say… “Tough!”  It is that kind of thought that is killing the American spirit. It is that kind of thought that is killing America… period!  It is that kind of thought that is ushering in socialism in America with Mr. Obama at the point of the socialist spear.

America used to be a “can do” nation.  Now we are a “can you do it FOR me?” nation.  We have not yet recognized that those who willingly “do it” for us will soon reign over us.    

Regardless of what you may think, or you may have been taught, there are persons among us who are heroes.  These are persons who have risen above and simply not been recognized by a society that has chosen to hide itself in the mire of equal aspirations based upon our society’s lowest common denominator.

 We desperately need a hero to lead this nation through the dark decades ahead.  We are facing an enemy, which wants us dead and will stop at nothing to wipe us out.   We need a leader who is not afraid of taking the tough stands, and making the hard decisions, which may lead to the deaths of countless numbers of our enemies, but, in the end, save the USA.

But can a man, such as that, be elected in America anymore?  Probably not.   Can a man, such as that, be found among us?  Oh yes!   But I must warn you… they are few and far between.  You see… some say America stopped producing “real men” in the 1960’s.  And those of the male persuasion, who survived the ‘60’s, are now teaching our male children what THEIR definition of a real man is and, dear reader, it is far from what nature created the human male to be.

So what are America’s options?  Frankly, I don’t see any.  We, as a nation, are destined to ride this train to the end of the line.  You see, when a people, voluntarily, choose to emasculate themselves, they must pay the price.  America has only begun to pay that price.

© J. D. Longstreet

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Sensitivity Training Equals Communist Brain Washing ... J. D. Longstreet

Sensitivity Training Equals Communist Brain Washing
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
************************

I got to thinking about sensitivity training after reading that someone has suggested sensitivity training for the rodeo clown who donned an Obama mask and was promptly fired and then banned from ever working as a rodeo clown in that particular  state again.

A couple of things:  For a couple of years of my misspent youth, I worked as an announcer for a rodeo and as a track announcer for a quarter horse race track. 

I have the greatest respect in the world for rodeo clowns.  They save lives at great risk to their own personal safety.  The whole while they entertain the spectators which, in turn,  lessens the feeling of danger amongst the onlookers until the critical moments of exposure to that which presents the danger is past.

There is no more public figure than a President of the United States.  As a public figure, having fun poked at you goes with the territory. Having a "thin skin" AND finding oneself a public figure is not a good thing.  Either you thicken your skin or you get the heck out of your public job.

Poking fun at public figures is far more American than apple pie ever was. It is one of the ways Americans maintain the playing field on an even keel. "All men are created equal" ... remember?  

I have lived under every Presidents since FDR and I can say with no hesitation, Obama is the most sensitive of them all.  Even worse are his minions, his henchmen, that cohort of leftists/socialists/statists/collectivists/Marxists and communists who construct a phalanx around Obama to protect him from the proletariat. (Or as we like to refer to them down here... "the great unwashed masses.")

One must remember that Liberalism is an authoritarian philosophy.  To be a good liberal you must get in line -- and STAY in line.   If you get out of line you WILL be punished.

One of the favored ways of punishment is by isolating the offender from the group by the use of labels like racist, extremist, etc.

All tyrants know it is much more acceptable to keep the proletariat in line than to bring them back into line.  Often the later is extremely difficult requiring the spilling of large quantities of blood.  

All despots attempt to avoid such messy solutions to problems when one can avoid the problem altogether by ... brain washing the masses.

Yep.  That's what I said:  BRAIN WASHING.

The manner in which the Obama administration governs has been described as "soft despotism."  One of the most often used tools of the "soft" despot is sensitivity training, known by plain speaking folks as plain ole brain washing.

Sensitivity training is, when stripped of all the hyperbolic build-up, nothing more than "thought reform" based on the Communist Chinese technique of brainwashing from the Korean War era. 

It is good, I think for all Americans to understand that communists are social engineers.   They continually seek to change things like laws, institutions, and primarily -- society.  

Remember, Obama promised "change."  He meant it.  It was not JUST a campaign slogan.  Social engineers, like Obama, actually believe they can change society and in so doing eradicate wars, racism, hate, even squash prejudice.  The end result they are so sure they can attain is summed up in a word in little use today -- Utopia.

Utopia is an imaginary place, an ideally perfect state; especially in its social and political and moral aspects. 

No.  It doesn't exist and never will -- not on this earth, anyway. BUT -- with brain washing, with sensitivity training, the communist state can compel you to believe that Utopia IS attainable and you will act accordingly.

After four and a half years of the Obama administration,  we see a boy praying to Obama rather than God.  Does that tell you anything? Are you not alarmed?   You may read the article and view the video here:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/video-stunner-boy-prays-to-obama/ 

I worry that this young man's prayer to Obama is a sign of things to come in America.  Primarily -- the replacement of God with "The State." 

It is a fact of life that those pushing a radical agenda always go for the young and nieve FIRST. Getting access to them, indoctrinating them, brain washing them,  renders more foot soldiers for their cause and draws them ever nearer to attaining their end goal.

An integral part of reaching the Marxist/Communist goal of a take over of America is conditioning the citizens in "group think" and directing that group think in the direction they would have them go.  To do that sensitivity training is a must. There must be brain washing.

It's funny, isn't it, how someone firing a clown nearly a thousand miles away sparked the thoughts in this commentary.  Good thing I've not been brain washed.

Uh ...

© J. D. Longstreet

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The Cover-Up Continues ... J. D. Longstreet

The Cover-Up Continues
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
******************

I wrote the commentary below -- and published it -- in late October of 2012, just days before the Presidential Election in November.  Here we are, some ten months later, and we seem no closer to the truth, or to answers for multiple questions that arose at the time of the incident.
 
WHY?

 So ... I'm publishing it AGAIN in the hope (vain, perhaps) that it will peak enough interest among readers that even more pressure will be brought to bear on Congress to stop fiddling around and begin playing hardball with the administration to force answers.

As you read below you will find that much of what I wrote ten months ago could just as easily have been written today ... that little has changed.  That fact alone tells us there has been -- and is -- ongoing obfuscation at a monumental level by the administration, in hopes (I believe) of leaving us baffled and/or bewildered.  Instead, it has left this scribe angry.

Our nation's honor has been besmirched.  The conduct of our government, on many levels, has been disgraceful and that disgrace has tainted our entire country.   Our national honor is in question.  And, dear reader, when a nation loses its honor, it has lost everything.

Understand this:  We Americans are all painted with the same brush. In America the government is representative of the people. When the government lies -- the people lie.  When the government allows four Americans to be murdered without lifting a hand, it means ALL Americans allowed four of their fellow Americans to be slaughtered -- without raising a finger to defend them.

Whatever happen in Benghazi was wrong, terribly wrong, whether planned, or unplanned, or part of a plan, it should never have happened.  But it DID happen and it is an ugly part of our history that will never be successfully swept under the rug. Honest Americans will not allow this horrendous blot on our past to go unnoticed or to be sanitized by the historical revisionists who have dipped their poisonous pens into the inkwell of lies and deceit to overwrite distasteful and even illegal errors in judgment by our national leaders.

When, however, it is the national leadership instructing the obfuscation, the sanitization, and the revision of facts pertaining to one of the ugliest of incidents in nearly two and a half centuries of national existence, much of it as a global leader, the people on whose behalf the so-called leaders hold office, have a responsibility, yea, a solemn duty, to insist they be held accountable and/or removed from the high office of trust and leadership bestowed on them by the very citizens they have betrayed by their disingenuous actions or inactions.

H. L. Mencken once said:  "Honor is simply the morality of superior men."   Men of honor tend to be, in my experience, men of high morals and character.  Mencken also said:  "The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught."  EXACTLY! 

How fortunate this country was to have men of such high moral character and high standards of honor create, not only the founding documents of the country, but the foundation of the government itself.  It is simply beyond the scope of my understanding to envisage the gathering of these men in one moment in time, in one geographical location on the earth, in one particular struggle for freedom and independence, without -- repeat -- WITHOUT divine intervention.  I no more believe the congress of those men an accident of nature, or time, or circumstances,  than I believe the creation of man was an accident of nature.

I am, unabashedly, of the school of thought that America has had a divine mission since the toes of the earliest settlers settled into the wet sand of the beaches of our verdant continent.  It was, I believe, to offer the people of the world an example of how harmony between Providence and His creation could prosper a nation while the people of that nation maintained a close working relationship with their God AND their government and not succumb to the siren call of a theocracy.  Our new form of government would be responsible to the voice of God and to the voice of her people.

Now, however, our government has turned a deaf ear to both its principals.  It has become drunk on its own power and like unto a drunken man it is staggering and lurching into one disastrous situation after another, unable to resolve domestic or foreign problems as it relies solely on its own limited powers of understanding carefully camouflaged from itself by layers of shiny sparkling arrogance.

It is this ignorance, this arrogance, of America's leaders that brought us the horror of Benghazi.  And rest assured, it will bring more such disastrous incidents in our future.
Here, now, is what I wrote in October of 2012:
*********************
Benghazigate: What Are They Covering-Up?

Four Americans are dead and the American people are being lied to as to how and why they got that way.

Either the President is lying - and needs to be impeached, or he's NOT lying -- and needs to be impeached -- because he DIDN'T know what was happening!

Repeat: Four Americans are DEAD. And as much as it pains me to say it -- it doesn't look as if our government made a genuine effort to save them.

I have watched, listened, and read as much as we have been allowed to know -- plus -- information gleaned by non-mainstream media sources, and I have concluded there is a major cover-up at the top levels of the US government over the incident in Benghazi.

Now, let me be clear: I am not an investigative reporter. That is not what I do. I am a commentator -- an opinion writer ... nothing more. I have deliberately "hung back" on any in-depth comments on the Benghazi affair simply because there always seemed to me to be more THERE there. In other words, it was obvious, at least to me, that we were only getting drips and drabs of what really happened and, I felt (and still do) that we have been told nothing of WHY it happened. But, dear reader, even Helen Keller could see there is a major cover-up surrounding the incident in Benghazi!

That CIA "safe-house" has troubled me from the very beginning of this horrible story. What was the CIA doing there? There was no embassy in Benghazi. In fact, the building attacked was not even a consulate. If anything, it was a "mission." Had it been an embassy, I'd not question a CIA presence. They are practically a part of the furniture in any US Embassy. But, as I said, this was NOT an embassy.

Remember too, the last person our ambassador met with the evening of the attack was a Turkish diplomat. What was a Turkish diplomat doing in Benghazi, Libya, meeting with Ambassador Stevens at an unprotected site. Why not meet in the embassy in Tripoli?

It now seems that the ex-SEALS were not attached to the consulate, but were assigned to the CIA "safe-house." They (laudably) went against orders and made a rescue attempt of the US officials and staff at the consulate -- and lost their lives in the attempt.

There is now a fog of misinformation spewed up and out by the Obama Administration in what -- in my opinion -- is an attempt to cover-up an on-going scheme/operation to smuggle weapons into Syria through Turkey.

A few weeks ago, there was a report that Libyan militia members had been ordered to turn-in the weapons that had been supplied them in their struggle to overthrow Qaddafi. That report confirmed that many of those weapons had been turned in. Where did those weapons go? Perhaps, to the Syrian rebels?

It has been suspected for some time now that the US has been supplying small arms to the rebels in Syria for a while -- even though the Obama Administration denies it.

It is the kind of operation the CIA would be up-to-their-necks in and it would explain their presence on the ground in Libya in a safe-house a mile away from the consulate/mission.

For the sake of argument, suppose the guns gathered from the Libyan militia were being covertly sent to Turkey and then smuggled across the Turkey/Syrian border to the Syrian rebels.

I continue to cycle back to the question -- why was the Ambassador THERE , alone, without a security detail, at that particular time, meeting with a high Turkish diplomat. Remember, this was on September 11th. If there was going to be an attack by terrorists -- September 11th would be the day for it.

Now, I'm just hypothesizing here. I have no idea, at this point, what was really going on. But, I have confidence in my opinion that there was a covert operation underway -- one so black that sacrificing the lives of four Americans was deemed "worth it" by our leaders in Washington.

For whatever reason, the Obama Administration has chosen to tell the world a bald-faced lie about what happened in Benghazi.

So politicians lie, right? Yeah, they do. But this time -- four Americans are dead and the country wants to know why that happened and why the Obama Administration chose to lie to us about it.

It is clear now, that all the warnings from the political right about the penchant of this President and his administration for lies was absolutely correct. If they are lying about the "Incident in Benghazi," what else are they lying about?

Look. The cover-up of "Benghazigate" is far more important that Watergate ever was!

It is what it is. The Mainstream Media in America is an organ of the political left -- as is President Obama. There is simply no way we are going to get anything approaching impartial reporting or a REAL investigation of Benghazigate from the MsM.

For me, it is not just a matter of trust, it is a matter of honor -- NATIONAL HONOR.

America deserves better than we have gotten, or, are likely to get from Obama.

© J. D. Longstreet

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