Be well

The Big Lie

Dear Citizens:
An interesting article by Michelle Goldberg today.  
"This isn’t really a debate about numbers, though. Republicans have long seen themselves as synonymous with America, and everyone else as deviant and marginal. This article of faith is impervious to evidence. Surveys show that a majority of Republicans believe that Obama stole the election with Acorn’s help, a conviction that allows them to deny a political reality they find intolerable. More subtly, conservatives have long derided the Democratic Party’s “dependence” on minority voters, as if these voters are somehow less valid. The GOP’s belief in their right to rule has an unmistakable racial aspect; hence the racial slurs hurled against black congressmen last week, and the right’s repeated comparisons of health-care reform to slavery. This is, in part, white men reacting in furious disbelief that they can no longer rule as a majority, because they aren’t one."


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-23/the-biggest-republican-lie-of-all/

Enjoy it or get upset, but above all
Be Well --it is now your right.
A Journeyman


"Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments."
Mr A. Hamilton

Why all the hate?

My Dear Citizens:

Recently A question (Why all the Hate and Anger?) was asked.

Here is one response, well meaning, I hope, but flawed.

"I think the issue of anger is based in with being forced to trade individual freedoms (mostly thought increased taxes, but in this case also through insurance mandates) for government-run benefits (most recently, social entitlements).  Those who don't perceive that trade-off as beneficial (socially or individually) do have a sound basis for their anger.  I'm not sure if anger itself is beneficial, but it makes as much sense as anti-war demonstrations or human-rights advocacy."  

Could it have been tainted by any of the following

John Avlon of The Daily Beast quotes from a soon to be released Harris poll--

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
•    57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
•    45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
•    38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
•    Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Non of the above five beliefs are true--sorry , it is Hate speech and if  you believe any of them you are now defined as a "Hatriot".

Puerto Rico Rush is a Hatriot.  The protesters who spit and called out the "N" word  on black congressmen and women are Hatriots.  If you pray that lawmakers will die you are not a Christian you are a Hatriot. 

Glen Beck is telling his viewers and listeners to run from churches that preach social reform or

"human-rights advocacy" .

Leonard Pitts explains it from left of center--

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/21/1539820/the-fierce-urgency-of-now-justice.html

Kathleen Parker, from the right, laments about the Independent's voice in all this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031903702.html

Citizens ---we must stand up with Leonard and Kathleen against this hate speech--condemn it in all its ugly forms and then we must remember the poor, the sick, the lonely, and those in prison.
The disenfranchised need our help.  

"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

Citizens: Please Be well It is your right!
and I will finish that great first Unconstitutional Mandate--my taxes  (a little humor)

A Journeyman

One addenda to some friends--England and Switzerland are not socialist states.

That pesky CBO

This just in From Ezra Klein on the cost of the Health care bill----
According to a Democratic source, CBO has finished its work and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years -- so, 2020 to 2029 -- it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.


My Dear Citizens:
The poor CBO has been used by friend and foe alike to justify their arguments concerning Health Care reform.  In the next few days it will be interesting to see the spin opponents of Health care reforms will say about this latest analysis.--I will bring it to you if I can.
Be well
A Journeyman

Text-as

Dear Citizens:
This just in from Texas and the Huffington Post
Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar championed a vote changing a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She dropped the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards.  She added John Calvin.

Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom

Thomas Jefferson

"Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no powers equal to our own and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right."

It is amazing how well Jefferson answers Ms Dunbar
Be careful out there teachers--those conservative thought police are watching.
Be well
A Journeyman

Show me your guns.

Dear Citizens
Jim McClosky of Staunton, VA drew a great cartoon recently.

Be well
A Journeyman

I'm Giving Them Up For Lent and (maybe even after that)

Dear Citizens:
I am late in this confession and this Lenten resolution so please forgive me.
I have a "thing" about blondes.  Whether on TV or the news or meeting them in person I am always infatuated with ladies with golden tresses.  I start to sweat, I stammer and basically operate like an idiot around all of them.  My brunette lady friends have questioned why I will give a pass to conservatives like Laura, Liz, Megan and Mika but will soundly fuss with Moaning Joe and even Miss Maddow, a liberal, when I am not pleased with their views. I really don't know the answer.  My dark haired pals repeatedly have told me in no uncertain terms that --all the good things in my life are because of brunettes.  They are right.  I admit it.
So, today, I am promising to give up most blondes for Lent.  My daughter in law, the singer in Pistols and Pearls and my Chesapeake Bay dog are excepted during these excruciating days.
No more Liz keeping America safe from lawyers, bye bye to Jihad Jane,  anyway, both of these peas seem to come from opposite ends of the same scary political pod.  I, now, bid a fond fare-thee-well to you, Mika on Morning Joe and a big so long to Miss McCain.
---Laura, after all these years, I treasure you and your red alerts the most, but it is time to say goodbye.---

So there it is.  I hope that with a little help from my friends and family, music from Reba and maybe, on feast days, a column or two from Kathleen Parker I can make it through this difficult period of my life.
After all, Lent is about self examination and denial is it not?
Be well
A Journeyman

Wake up and smell the Sanity!

Dear Citizens
Finally a rational alternative to The National Mad Hatter and March Hare's Tea Party
The Coffee Party--meeting near you this week end...

http://coffeepartyusa.com/
be well and keep laughing.
A Journeyman