May 25, 2009 – Many years ago, when I was in high school, I ran into kind of a strange, lonely, muscular young man with a keen intellect and a quick and inquiring mind. He was full of life and future promise. Many nights we would sit in his 1940 coup until well after midnight, discussing philosophy, science, religion, school, cars, women, politics and airplanes. Not necessarily in that order.
Sometimes during our talks, he would sketch out cars, free hand. The detail in his drawings was astounding, in both depth and perspective. It was as if he could see every detail of the car he held in his mind and then transferred that detail through his arm and hand, to the paper. This skill he possessed, was indeed a gift but a gift that never blossomed into a full-blown talent.
May 25, 2009 - On Memorial Day I like to reflect on a few of my buddies who never made it back from Viet Nam.
Bobby Case never made it out of our tractor after hitting a land mine. The Amphibian tractor burned for two days, Bobby was burnt alive.
After being pinned down on a road in Chu Lai while going on an ammo run for the grunts, Johnny Adomoli grabbed his M-14 and led the charge out of the tracked vehicle, but was stopped by a snipers bullet which tore apart his forehead.
Uncommon valor was common virtue for the American troops who secured our nations liberty.
There is a reason why up until now I have avoided discussing in any detail the particulars of the Constitution itself. My purpose in doing so was to ensure you had, at least, a basic understanding of the how and why it came to be written, and the difficulty in getting the states to ratify it.
While it may appear that the Constitution was nothing more than a series of compromises, you would be mistaken in thinking it was something that was haphazardly thrown together. A great deal of care went into establishing a system of government with the various checks and balances you may have heard mentioned in discussions of the Constitution.
It truly is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the United States that we do not demand that our schools to devote the time required to fully educate our children about the principles contained in this amazing document. If we did, I would not feel the need to explain what we should have been taught.
May 25, 2009 – I have this theory that every so often governments go insane. Usually they have someone who is already demented heading up the government, but it takes a majority of the elected body to enact crazy laws and it takes the government apparatchiks to engineer the systemic failures, the wars, and the crazed rush off the cliff.
The election of 2008 is a splendid example of this. The majority of voters elected a man with the thinnest possible resume for the job of President. Indeed, the man has refused to release his birth records to reassure voters he met the minimum, Constitutional standards for the job. The man, however, was a skilled orator, able to give voice to the TelePrompter speeches written for him by master manipulators.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” - Hanlon’s razor
May 25, 2009 – Solutions to epic problems can usually be found in an objective return to basics. Too often, smart people exacerbate a problem with reinventing the wheel and mandating fixes doomed to failure and mantled in arrogant presumptions.
Ayn Rand once clearly restated an intrinsic reality, “…it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals –that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government – that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.”
As the nation struggles in the frothy wake of petty partisanship, ‘he said/she said’ sophistry, and ‘gotcha’ golden rules (the guy with the gold makes the rules) garbage, it becomes increasingly obvious that to assume the folks who created the mess will successfully clean it up is a shattered pipe dream.
“Gaza is not on the Pope’s itinerary, nor will it be. There will be no change in these plans. But I’ll say it very clearly, the Pope is absolutely not going to Gaza.”
Such were the astounding comments made by the Pope’s spokesman in Israel, Wadie Abunasser, prior to Pope Benedict XVI visiting Palestine and Israel.
As if there was no massacre in Gaza, no families entirely slaughtered, no human rights violated to match the record of the most grisly of crimes in modern history. As if Gaza were a mere irritant in the annals of human suffering. More, as if there were no Catholic flock in Gaza. To clarify, there are actually nearly 2,000 Catholics in Gaza, apparently not important enough for the ‘cut’.
May 20, 2009 – I predict that Hillary Clinton will be Obama’s nominee for Supreme Court. If not this time, she will most certainly get it the next time around.
Why?
During the elections, a mysterious transition occurred. Hillary went from slinging brickbats one day to being submissive and agreeable to everything Obama said the next – gazing upon him with eyes not unlike a teenage girl fulminating about her first dream prom date.
May 20, 2009 – As my last essay explained, the Constitution had been ratified by the required number of states. However to convince enough states to agree to the ratification the Federalists had made a promise to come up with a Bill, enumerating certain rights that were to be considered sacrosanct, rights which the government could not infringe upon.
It cannot be emphasized enough that people were extremely suspicious of any new form of government in which the possibility existed for abuses of power. Therefore, they wanted assurances that this newly established system would not trample upon their rights, and newly gained liberty, as had the British.
As I explained in my last segment, the Philadelphia Convention was, more often than not, nothing more than a heated argument over the size, scope, and structure of the proposed federal government.
Although the delegates were not unanimous in their approval, they did manage to come up with the Constitution as it exists today. Yet it was still merely a piece of parchment with words written upon it. For the Constitution to go into effect it had to be ratified by nine out of thirteen states, as per the requirements contained in Article 7.
This was not going to be an easy task, for as we already know that during the Convention there were some that were not happy at all with the new government that this document outlined.
~ Forward ~ While this very short item clearly explains what has to be done and HOW to do it (everyone keeps asking WHAT CAN WE DO) I do not see anyone taking up the challenge. Too many are still too comfy to get off their fat azzes and demand compliance by those hired (selected) to ‘represent’ those of us who foot the bills.
Too many are still saying to *let the Feds pay for it*. Well, folks, the *Feds* have nothing except that which they first take from us. So when you say *Let the Feds pay for it* you are saying for the Feds to TAKE YOUR MONEY to pay for *it*. It has always amazed me at the screaming ignorance of people who make statements about it being a Federal, State, County, City, responsibility. They are ignorant of where those entities get their money and power from… the same individual who is saying it is a (insert level) problem or responsibility.
May 16, 2009 – Like an old Blues song, this column should open with the proverbial line, “I woke up this morning….”
Shortly after I began my “career” in broadcasting in 1995, I met a man, who I would interview on numerous occasions, and who over the years, would converse with me due to a common-connection: We were both Veterans of the Rumble in the Jungle – the Police Action known as Viet Nam.
In an age, when the political stage is filled with near-do-wells, queer-do-wells, and well-funded perpetual dilatants, who occupy offices of influence, Ted Sampley spent many years exposing these “heroes” for what they truly are – cowards.
May 17, 2009 – Unlike the United States Capital, U.S. Senator Roland Burris was not barred from entering the Belvedere Mall in Waukegan, Illinois yesterday to address a crowd of open border groups. particularly; Family Latina Unida, Elvira Arellano’s group, and Central Sin Fronteras (without borders) whose executive director, Emma Lozano acted as emcee and interpreter for the event.
Ms. Lozano, an anarchist, is the sister of Rudy Lozano, the person credited for bringing the Mexican and Puerto Rican communities together behind Chicago’s first Black Mayor, Harold Washington’s campaign.
Rudy was also the Midwest field organizer for the old International Ladies Garment Workers Union, before he was gunned down execution style in the kitchen of his Little Village home, back in 1983.
May 17, 2009 – What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?
A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.
Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed.
May 17, 2009 – I don’t know, I must be getting old. Maybe it is senility, or possibly the early stages of Alzheimer’s, but I am confused. This whole issue of terrorism has got me in a conundrum.
Putting aside the still unanswered questions about 9/11, if we are to believe our government, we are in a war on terror with radicals who want to bring death and destruction to American soil.
After all, isn’t that why we have approximately 140,000 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq, and another 30,000 deployed to Afghanistan? Isn’t that why President Bush established the Department of Homeland Security? C’mon, if a President is going to overstep his Constitutional authority, he may as well do it in a way the benefits the country, right?
May 17, 2009 – Americans need a civics lesson. And so do politicians. Of all the wrong and delusional thinking about the US Constitution the one that is most thoroughly incorrect and routinely used for political propaganda purposes is that there are three coequal branches of the federal government.
You hear presidents, members of Congress and media pundits say it all the time. They are wrong. Nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers is there any statement or declaration that the three branches are coequal. Why has this myth persisted for so long? Why do so many prominent and supposedly educated people keep invoking this outright lie?
May 17, 2009 – People, bear with me here, I’m only a few days removed from having completed a frustrating and maddening master’s level class in effective teaching strategies to help English language learners pick up our baffling but beloved language, and a report that was just released has me climbing the walls.
But more about that in a moment, let me vent some more:
It was the kind of class where the teacher framed everything in terms of “cultural respect” and where all the students felt it was imperative to teach kids in their native language and that to insist otherwise was to buy into the evil construct of the “white man” trying to keep poor Latinos “down.”
Much like my experience being an actual teacher in a classroom of non-native English-language speakers, where I was castigated as the lone weirdo who insisted on talking to and teaching her students in English, I was the freakish anomaly in this class.
May 17, 2009 – US President Barack Obama took the podium in a White House press conference and stood with an all-embellished confidence that often accompanies new presidents. He was flanked by two leaders whose apparent grandeur barely reflected their embattled situations on the ground: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
The meeting at the White House on 6 May was fashioned to give the impression that the new US administration is both “serious” and “committed” about resolving the crises plaguing Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are imprudently reduced to that of a Taliban resurgence in the former, and a Taliban- inspired militant encroachment in the latter. Obama declared the meeting “extraordinarily productive” as the three nations, he said, are joined by the common goal to “defeat Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan”.
May 17, 2009 – The threat to American freedom and liberty may be coming from a foreign enemy, but it may also be sneaking up on us by mere demographics ….. demographics that are the direct result of the premeditated failure of the American government to secure our borders and stop illegal immigration ….. immigration coming mostly from Central and South American countries. Although some may construe what we have to say here as racist, it is not. It is merely reporting salient facts that are staring every legal, freedom-loving, producing, responsible and self-reliant American in the face and in the wallet.
It is estimated that the current American illegal alien population, mostly Hispanics, ranges from around 12,000,000 to 20,000,000. No one knows for sure because they hide in the shadows. But there are two vital statistics about this issue that most people ignore, at their own peril. The two statistics are: 1) the significant increase in the illegal Hispanic population from new births, if left unchecked, over the increase in White and other ethnic groups in the next 30 to 50 years; and 2) the political mindset of that illegal alien population, since most of that population comes from socialist countries.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." ~ Ronald Reagan
May 25, 2009 – Many years ago, when I was in high school, I ran into kind of a strange, lonely, muscular young man with a keen intellect and a quick and inquiring mind. He was full of life and future promise. Many nights we would sit in his 1940 coup until well after midnight, discussing philosophy, science, religion, school, cars, women, politics and airplanes. Not necessarily in that order.
