To the sound of the guns...

Thanks to OWB for the link via the GoE forum.

The ANSWER Coalition; Code Pink; Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation; Cindy Sheehan; Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, co-founder Appeal for Redress; Malik Rahim, founder of Common Ground Collective, New Orleans; Rev. Graylan Hagler, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice; Ramsey Clark; Latino Movement USA; Hermandad Mexicana Nacional; Michael Berg; National Lawyers Guild; Father Luis Barrios, Iglesia de San Romero de las Americas - UCC; and many others are joining together to sponsor a large protest in Washington DC timed to coincide with the report by General Petraeus on the "Surge" in Iraq. There will be actions in the halls and offices of Congress in the days following the September 15 march.

I'm already planning.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Some of you might know that The Wife is an RN, and has been for decades.

This came as a small shock from the CNA.

SiCKO Premiere Sign-up Form

Michael Moore's SiCKO Movie Premieres Nationwide June 29, 2007
Volunteer at a screening and help get Guaranteed Healthcare in America

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is joining with RNs and RN organizations around the US to host 3,000 screenings of the opening of SiCKO on June 29th. This is a historic opportunity to turn movie audiences into patient advocates and healthcare reformers—but we need your help! We urge nurses and movie-goers to attend the screenings and distribute information about how we can solve the healthcare crisis by supporting guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model. Purchase your movie tickets, wear our "scrub for SiCKO", print and distribute information at theaters, and bring your RN friends! Click here to watch the movie trailer.

It's fascinating this learned group (Union) is supporting the fat liar. The movie one an award or two in Cannes... [shrug]

Anyway it made me laugh, maybe it'll bring a smile to you?

And then?

Read this!

If I had known this earlier, I do believe I would have joined them! Now it's suicide mission.

Ed and Elaine Brown, heavily armed tax evaders, are under siege on a hilltop in New Hampshire, threatening to fight to the death if federal agents try to storm their fortified home.

"We either walk out of here free or we die," Ed Brown shouted from an upstairs window. He has been convicted in absentia of evading federal income taxes by hiding $1.9m (£900,000) of income between 1996 and 2003.

He refuses to pay, shouting: "Show us the law and we will pay what you ask - you can't do it."

Elaine Brown added: "If they come in, we're dead. That's it. We will not be arrested. We will not volunteer to go into their prison for a non-crime. We have committed no crime."

Like the issue of Jury Nullification there are basic questions that need to be answered. On either issue you can be aware or plowed under.

Hey, let's throw in illegal immigration - who ya gonna dance with?

Death by a thousand cuts or just Vote Democratic

While casting around for an alternative world view to console myself I realized history has a lesson or two for us. Not all that profound, but freeing, none the less.

For nearly 20 years I have found myself voting for the lesser of two evils when faced with the choices in Presidential candidates. Those in DC just keep taking us closer and closer to the abyss. Interestingly those on the liberal/left also see an abyss, although of a different sort.

So I'm leaning in the 'let's just get it over with' direction. I do believe I'll be voting Democratically next year! In a country where apathy is what passes for morals and, at least 50% of voters can't see the forest for the trees maybe it's simply time for a lightning strike to clear the brush.

Don't be confused, because I am an optimist. The great unwashed WILL wake up when faced with hard choices. Given it's head socialism will fail... let's just get it over with and move on.

VOTE DEMOCRATIC!

And Then... The U.S. Army was born

Americans first took up arms in the spring of 1775 not to sever their relationship with the king, but to defend their rights within the British Empire. By the autumn of 1775, the British North American colonies from Maine to Georgia were in open rebellion. Royal governments had been thrust out of many colonial capitals and revolutionary governments put in their places. The Continental Congress had assumed some of the responsibilities of a central government for the colonies, created a Continental Army, issued paper money for the support of the troops, and formed a committee to negotiate with foreign countries.

Makes one feel proud - and curious.

Round and Round it goes

If you're not already angry check out Jerry Corsi's latest reportage here!

With the U.S. Department of Transportation pushing ahead to start the Mexican truck demonstration project as early as July 15, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters met with her Mexican and Canadian transportation counterparts in Tucson, Ariz., April 27 to participate in the first "North American Transportation Trilateral."

A major goal of the Bush administration is to open the United States to Mexican and Canadian airplanes as well as Mexican trucks.

"Immigration reform", my ass. Existing laws un (or under) - funded, pretending this new legislation is reform, and all the while moving barely under the radar to open our borders even further.

We've been conned folks! Under the topic of Iraq we must start thinking the unthinkable and using terms like misdirection and fraud. It makes my stomach hurt to even think such things, but I can't ignore that which keeps rearing it's ugly head.

1 + 1 = 2! Fighting a war to mitigate a real threat and giving away the very thing we fighting for does not add up.

Imagine, just a few days after D-Day and Roosevelt invites Japan and Germany to a trade conference.

Yep, I'm furious, irrational, and frustrated; but...

Beware - The Red-Headed-Americans

You know who they are... cantankerous and drinkers! Many are a subset of Irish-Americans, but that's only a partial excuse for them.

Redheaded-Americans crop up in all ethnic groups. I think it's a genetic throwback of some sort. Many true redheads even turn gray early.

They are an insidious lot, those redheads. They sneak into all corners of American life and cause chaos.

You know they can't be trusted and they tend to stick to themselves. They have developed a coded language that even includes those who use a bottle to turn red. You can see them on street corners and in the malls.

Once converted those chemical Redheaded-Americans are even more zealous in their conceit.

They sneer at the rest of us. I've seen them pointing and laughing.

I married one, you know, I've seen The Wife and her cronies plotting.

Beware!

Phyllis Schafly gives me the heebie-jeebies

But this article (via FR) captures my concerns with alacrity.

It's a bit dated, but it connects with other's concerns in significant ways.

Take a moment and read it, please.

I won't offer quotes, but I will offer citations of events since this article was posted if need be. And/or examine last week's vote in congress.

History Revisited - Second Element Updated

Nota Bene: Earlier I suggested that Native Americans weren't immigrants... of course they were, but I was addressing the last 500 years or so.

The following is part of my 'stating the obvious' series as well.

There are curious things going on concerning discussions about Iraq. Of course the mental gymnastics of the various presidential candidates on Iraq approaches the bizarre, but across the board the discussions have taken on a surreal flavor.

It doesn't matter if going in to Iraq was right or wrong... it doesn't matter if lies were told... and it REALLY doesn't matter who gets blamed!

Lessons learned have value that I'll not discount, but just now that's an exercise.

I am lost, I do not understand the priorities I'm seeing touted so it's hopeless to try to explain them.

We are there NOW! That is something no amount of revisionist history will undo.

And the delusion that the enemies that our troops are facing are not aware of what's being said and done here is criminal in nature. To say nothing of the devastation that will happen if we continue down the path towards quiting. Are our politicians so foolish?

I 'm afraid the genuine facts leave little doubt in that matter - they are.

Update: This article is making the rounds and fit's so well with the above that I should get credit.

Today, in Iraq, there should be no illusion that defeat would come at an acceptable price. George Orwell wrote that the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. But anyone who thinks an American defeat in Iraq will bring a merciful end to this conflict is deluded. Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.

A really good idea!

Check out this article: In Vermont, nascent secession movement gains traction

It raises important issues that require a second look. Vermont itself is described as: a left-leaning state that said yes to civil unions, no to slavery (before any other) and last year elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.

Left-leaning or not the ramifications are stunning and as much fun to consider as what to do with those lottery winnings I'll have someday.

The article notes that several other states are considering much the same and I think it's one hell of a fine idea. Provided, of course, that the process removes them from the federal government's teat.

I'd like California to secede and New York... and maybe Washington State.

At it's most fundamental it would force folks off the fence.

I'll leave you to your own day dreams. I'm having too much fun to take the time to write further about it just now.

History Revisited - One Element

This country was founded by immigrants, save for the Native Americans. Each wave has brought difficulties with integration. Yet after hundreds of years we can transact business in English most places.

Those places are dwindling.

In years past in Hawaii and on our west coast the Japanese immigrants put their children in public school, and then had them go to Japanese school after hours. This pattern was followed by many other groups. Their heritage was preserved without compromising integration.

Integration adds to the richness of our country. This is what is not what some multicultural re-writing of history suggests. A reasoned case can be made that the struggle to integrate has been a factor that binds us as a people. It's a shared hardship that creates a common bond.

Millions of folks have came here, struggled and adapted, why isn't that the lesson we've learned? Where did real wrongs and perceived wrongs take precedents over our real history?

The answer is simple, there are groups who feel the greatness we've achieved is evil incarnate. No matter that we have overcame most of our foibles and past mistakes... they resonate with a few.

And the rest of us are made to feel guilt, so we abdicate in favor of that few.

I don't feel guilty about slavery, I didn't own slaves. I don't feel guilty about the treatment of the Japanese during WWII, I wasn't born yet. I don't treat people improperly because of someone's race or creed, I do treat buttheads like buttheads.

I don't feel guilty because some nut shot a bunch of folks in Virginia, I simply didn't do it.

Further, there is little historical justification for allowing lawbreakers to gain over the law abiding, indeed our courts are full of cases where thieves are prosecuted.

Our great 'melting pot' is becoming a sieve, and that is just sad