At Least There Will Be No Rioting

Well, we all saw what just happened.

What’s next? Well, Conservatives and Republicans will prove once again that they are as gracious in defeat as they are in victory. Small comfort, maybe, but it does mean something. And so I congratulate President Obama on his victory, and wish him the very best in guiding our nation for the next four years. I will be praying for him and the country.

So now, it’s time to re-group. Maybe now the press will finally start to cover the stories they should have been covering all along: things like Fast & Furious, and more recently, the debacle in Benghazi, and more widely, the President’s disastrously weak foreign policy. Okay, well that gave me a little chuckle anyway.

But it is clear to me that the very notion of America has changed dramatically. We are no longer a center-right nation, and the people have figured out that they can vote themselves bread and circuses.

So be it. It has happened before in world history, and I have no doubt it will happen again. Problem is, this time, it’s happening to us. I don’t want to end up like Greece, with rioting in the streets. I’m not afraid, but I don’t want it to happen here.

What I am afraid for is our Constitution. Four more years of President Obama means at least two more Supreme Court justices that he gets to choose. Just think about that for a moment.

Honestly, dear readers, I don’t know what we will be facing over the next four years. But if we can weather them, I can only pray that we will come through them stronger as a nation than before.

Right now, that’s what I’m praying for. Because that’s all I’ve got.

Stoutcat

Are You Smarter Than Your Congress? Prove It!

 

Looks like our elected officials are failing at all sorts of things. Latest on the FAIL list is knowledge of the Constitution. Since many are required to swear (or affirm) an oath to uphold that document, you’d think that they’d know a bit about it. But then again, you might also think that most U.S. citizens would know at least a bit about what’s in the Constitution, right?

But you’d be wrong on both counts, of course. As HotAir reports:

“The bad news: the general public gets an F, with just a 49% average on the 33-question civics test.  The worse news: those who identified themselves as public officeholders scored an average of five points worse than the general public…”

But before you scoff too hard at our officials, here’s a warning: it’s actually a challenging quiz! I zoomed through and expected to get 33 out of 33 correct. To my mortification, I missed three questions!

Here’s the link. You take the quiz and then see how smart you feel. On the other hand, you’re sure to do better than our elected officials.

You could hardly do worse.

Stoutcat

Oh, Well THAT Explains It

 

The latest clueless Democrat Congressman to spout off about the healthcare bill is Rep. Phil Hare. View the absolutely priceless video of Rep. Hare makning a fool of himself several times over, including saying that “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest.” Yes, that is clearly an honest, off the cuff remark. In the days to come, let’s see how he and his co-horts spin that one. Sadly for Rep. Hare, he also confuses the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence,.

He’s also called out on a lie as blatant (and stupid) as the denial a five-year-old caught with both hands in the cookie jar.

“I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest…” Hmmm.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

He doesn’t worry about his oath of office. He’s taken it twice. If it were a Republican, wouldn’t that be considered treason?

Of course he also lied about his vote on the healthcare bill itself, saying last summer,

“The purpose of having a public option — and that’s why I can’t vote for any bill that doesn’t have one — is that without the public option, people don’t have any place else to go, except for the insurance companies.” [emphasis mine]

But there’s one extenuating circumstance which excuses all his ignorance, his lies, and his flip-flops: He’s from Illinois. He does business the Chicago way. The President’s way. Which is rapidly becoming “business as usual” for America.

It’s up to us to make sure that “the Chicago way” does not end up being synonymous with “the American way.”

Rep. Hare is up for re-election this year. Let’s be sure to vote this ignorant, flip-flopping, lying, treasonous bum out. It’s the least we can do for our country.

Stoutcat

H/T: HotAir

We Must All Be Sentinels, Lest We Lose What’s Left Of Freedom

 

“Living history is more treacherous than merely witnessing it.”

As a somewhat impudent young man when I was in school, I didn’t really apply myself to history class. After all, history was about things that happened in the past, and I was contemptuously obsessed with “now” and what mysteries lay ahead.  But when a “D” on my report card in history caught my parents’ eyes, they knew it was time to make sure I appreciated the significance of understanding history and, more importantly, our place in it.

My mother’s contribution was the short but time-tested phrase, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” I’ll get back to that in a moment. But my father chose to deliver his message in his own words, and those are the ones that ultimately haunt me to this day. He said, “We must all be sentinels to history, or else this fragile freedom we enjoy will be snatched away from us… and we won’t see it coming until it’s too late.”

Where Hath Objective Journalism Gone?

Part 1: Acknowledging The Problem

 

Brace yourselves, folks. There’s an outside chance that the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting might just be given to The National Enquirer. Even more shocking: It would be well-deserved. I can almost hear their commercials now: “Looking for the best in in-depth coverage? Forget Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report. Go straight to the only dependable source: The National Enquirer!”

 

When the best source of reliable investigative reporting is the National Enquirer, it’s time to break out the thermometer and check to see if the ambient temperature in Hell has reached 32 degrees Fahrenheit yet. If not, it’s getting mighty close.

 

By now, anyone with a passing interest in current events knows The National Enquirer uncovered the affair between former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) and one of his campaign workers. Read Alan’s post below for more info on the level of stupidity Edwards has managed to achieve on his own. We have also learned from the Enquirer that they uncovered the story back in October of 2007, and literally tried to GIVE the story to the mainstream media. But the mainstream media decided not to “get involved” with the story due to the source (The Enquirer).

 

But when I look at the Edwards story, and how the mainstream media made a conscious decision to ignore it for ten months (during which the subject of the story was running for his party’s Presidential nomination), it becomes painfully obvious that there’s a subjective journalistic agenda at work which is indicative of a far more serious issue facing this nation: the loss of quality, unbiased journalism the public can count on. And if you don’t think that’s a serious issue, it is time for a reality check.

 

The significance of biased journalism in any society is a serious invitation to both political and social calamity. It can play a vital role in the collapse of a government or the downfall of a society. Far too much for one rant to cover, in upcoming chapters, I will address the specifics of how the loss of quality journalism in America is like removing one of the support beams in a once-sound structure. 

 

In the end, the concept of a free press relies on the existence of several key ingredients:

• A government progressive enough to guarantee within its constitution the freedom of the press to print without fear of political persecution
• Responsible journalists who exercise that freedom in a fair and unbiased manner.
• A public that demands the utmost in responsible, accountable journalism; nothing less. 

The absence of any one of those ingredients renders the concept of a free press moot. We have a Constitution that has guaranteed us the first ingredient and has done so for well over two hundred years. Sadly, however, we appear to have misplaced the last two ingredients and have no one to blame but ourselves. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who yearn to live in a land where they can count on a free press as a source of dependable information presented in a responsible manner. How tragic, then, when you realize we’ve had that privilege in this country since day one, and we’ve chosen to squander it. In my next post, I’ll examine how we got here and what (if anything) we can do to undo the damage.

 

Gerry Ashley