Christmas and Redskins

Anyone who watches the O'Reilly Factor knows about the War on Christmas, politically correct robotons walking around with blank faces and glassy eyes spewing "Christmas is bad" and "Santa is bad'" and  “Christmas music” is bad.  Although O’Reilly calls it the War on Christmas, it is really a war on tolerance.  No one is more intolerant than people of this ilk.  Their lives are a permanent buzz kill.  They only tolerate one point of view…their own which they raise to religious status.  Pathetically guilt ridden, they espouse a world where there is a tyranny of one.  If one person is offended, then the whole world must bow down…of course unless that one person is you.  You don’t count.  Only they count.

The good news is things are finally starting to get better.  The mass hysteria of those attempting to look progressive and cool and caring and tolerant has waned.  It reached the high point over the past few years when merchants banned their employees from saying Merry Christmas in fear of offending someone.  Well…they did offend someone: the vast majority of those shopping in their stores for “Christmas” presents.  Americans finally said enough and fought back.  Merry Christmas was back in.   After all, it is a national holiday with major secular overtones.  Should we stop saying Happy 4^th of July because we might offend someone from Great Britain?  Should we stop saying Happy Thanksgiving if someone replies “thanksgiving for what?”

The Houston School System has just voted to ban “culturally insensitive” mascot names.  The top of the list is the “redskins”, never mind that several Native Americans showed up to say they were proud of the name.  The ban also included names like the “Rebels”.  How and to whom is that culturally offensive?  I imagine the PETA people will be banging on the door next because they are offended by the “panthers” or “tigers”.  It is a never ending slippery slope.  In a country of 335 million people, someone is ALWAYS going to be offended by something. Notwithstanding, the Houston School District has much more serious problems than this.  Try finding the graduation rate anywhere.  Wait a minute…they fudged what figures?  Of course, that is irrelevant…because they “care.”

The best way to handle these politically correct nut jobs is to call them on it.  Look them in the eye and tell them to just shut up, forcefully.  America is a wonderful ship filled with all sorts of people on a still relatively new political journey.  Compared to the countries in Europe, we are babes in the woods.  We are a diverse people, and all of those diverse cultures deserve to be celebrated. 

But at the end of the day, we are still a democracy rooted in a Judeo Christian ethic.  Just as we should be tolerant of the minorities around us, they should be tolerant of us.  If the goal is not to offend anyone, then we are on a fool’s journey.  It can’t be done.  More importantly, everyone just needs to lighten to up. 

Merry Christmas means the birth of Jesus, but also represents hope and peace and goodwill.  “Redskins” stands for bravery and strength and discipline and dedication…what’s wrong with that?  Native American culture has actually become iconic in overall culture.  Would you want the team named the Whiteskins?  Think of cultural connotations that would go with a name like that!!!! 

Merry Christmas everybody.  

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Turkey and football and the beginnings of the Christmas season make for an unbeatable combination.  I come from a once large now small family.  Our traditions have changed accordingly.  It’s been hard to do, but we have succeeded.  Better to go with change than to fight it.

Our Thanksgiving Day dinner changes from year to year.  One year my wife cooks at home.  Another year we go out for dinner.  This year we are driving to my brother-in-law’s house in Ashland.  His home almost burned to the ground last spring and he is celebrating its rebuilding.  We are thankful that his family and dogs survived as the fire spread across the ceiling very early in the morning while they were sleeping.  It could have ended in disaster. 

Our favorite tradition is Black Friday.  When my son was small we used to get up early in the morning to check out the lines outside the stores.  We walked through some but did very little shopping because, quite frankly, it was scary.  Then we went to breakfast.  We were home by nine in the morning just in time to begin putting up the Christmas decorations.

Black Friday is still a family tradition, but now we just go to breakfast and drink coffee until noon.  We put the outside lights up at the beginning of November when it is still warm leaving the wreaths and other visible accoutrements to hang on Black Friday afternoon.  Friday night we meet with friends for pizza.  Saturday is a trip to Kraynak’s in Sharon to look at tacky Christmas stuff.  We always buy some tacky Christmas stuff.    

One of my favorite Thanksgiving things to watch is A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  Snoopy is a cool dude and knows how to carve a turkey…and make popcorn and toast.  As always, we learn the true meaning of the holiday as we are taught to give thanks for family and friends and the blessings bestowed upon us.  Did I mention Snoopy does a good job carving a turkey?  And the music for this Charlie Brown special is outstanding. Little Birdie...Why do you fly upside down??

Thanksgiving is a laid back holiday.  Sure…the dinner is a lot of work, but there is really very little pressure to do much of anything else.  There are no gifts or Thanksgiving Eve dinners.  No present opening cleanup before the company arrives.  It’s expected the men will stretch out and watch whatever football game is on after the kids watch the various Ho-Ho parades.  The turkey makes us sleepy…or maybe the wine or maybe all those carbs.  The food police haven’t attacked Thanksgiving dinners yet.  Be on the lookout.

So…this year we are another year older, but we made it  through another year.  The country is struggling, but we still can speak our mind.  The economy is shaky, but we aren’t destitute yet.  The politically correct crowd is out to destroy our traditions and beliefs, but we still have a voice to tell them to shut up.  Families are scattered throughout our great nation, but we have cell phones and skype to keep us in touch.  Health care politics brings us stress, but the miracles of modern medicine have us living longer and healthier.  The American family is changing, but it is still family.   I think it is safe to say….

...for all of that, we are thankful.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving. 

Road Cleared for Mideast War

 

The number one rule in Political Science is there is no power vacuum. Now Barack Obama is about to learn that lesson, and we are all going to pay the price.  On August 31, 2013, the world became a much more dangerous place.  The road to massive war in the Mideast is now clear. 

Mark Knows It All opposes intervening in Syria.  There is no upside for the United States.  There are only bad guys and really bad guys.  We can’t tell them apart. 

The big problem is the complete collapse of what little American foreign policy the Obama administration had.  His policy, or lack thereof, has been a total disaster.  Now there is a vacuum in the Mideast.  As I write this it is being filled by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.  The United States is now the laughing stock of the world.  Obama wants to disarm American nuclear weapons. Maybe he should hold off on that for awhile. 

In August of 2012, in one of his rare moments of unscripted commentary,  Obama stated that there is red line that the al-Assad regime should not cross.  The United States would respond to any use of chemical weapons by his regime against the Syrian people.  Evidence was presented several months ago and Obama skirted the issue.  But he could not skirt the 1400 dead Syrians from a week or two ago including over 450 children, most likely from Sarin gas.  Secretary of State John Kerry waxed poetic leading the world to believe military action was imminent.  He painted a total picture of reliable intelligence and cause and effect.  We were ready to go. 

But then it started to go wrong.  British Prime Minister David Cameron approached Parliament for permission to move forward in concert with the United States.  For the first time since the 1780, the British House of Commons refused to sanction military action requested by the Prime Minister.  One MP stated what the American press was afraid to state.  Why should Britain involve itself in a war the sole purpose of which is to save face for Barack Obama?  There is no British security interest in Syria. 

Now Obama would have to go it alone.  Years of leading from behind appeared to be over.  Not so fast…while John Kerry was preparing the world for American military action, Obama was scheming one more way to vote present.  Shift the blame to somebody else. 

On Friday night, he met with his advisors.  On Saturday afternoon he made a statement saying that while he didn’t need Congressional Approval for anything, this one time he was going to Congress to get that approval.  He may or may not get the vote in the Senate.  He most likely will not get approval in the House in which those Democrats without a spine will vote for it…and those with the strength of their convictions (remember George Bush) will not.   AND THEN OBAMA CAN BLAME THE CONGRESS FOR THE COLLAPSE OF WHAT  LITTLE FOREIGN POLICY HE HAD.  What a brilliantly cynical plan...go to Congress for political cover. 

What a joke.  Now we face real problems.  Obama has proved himself to be the paper tiger people like me knew he was.  There is no peace or strength through appeasement.  How many times do we have to learn that lesson?   Iran will feel emboldened.  North Korea will feel emboldened.  China and Russia will feel emboldened.  I suspect the Israeli leaders are in shock.  They will rather quickly come to the conclusion that they will have to move against Iran by themselves to stop Iranian development of nuclear weapons.  The only entity in the Mideast to show any backbone at all against this Islamic/Arab mess is the Egyptian Army.  And he bungled that too. 

   

Right now the Suez Canal is at risk.  All out war in the Mideast is a stong possibility.  If Barack Obama were smart, he would explain to his environmental whack job friends the facts of life, and start drilling for oil here and now.  

After his speech, Barack Obama went to play golf; never mind he has to go to Europe and Russia for various economic conferences.  He said in his speech he is comfortable with his decision.  We should not. 

Hair, Theater, and Politics

My wife and I went to see a local production of Hair last night at the Oakland Theater in Youngstown.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Oakland, it is a relatively small theater making the audience up close and personal with what was a very large cast.  It has specialized in “edgy” type productions, but as of last year the management changed.  It is still somewhat edgy, but on the “mainstream” side of the line.  Over the top or not, the Oakland has always produced a quality product and draws both cast and audience from beyond our area.  We have seen several productions of Hair over the years including the original Broadway production.  This was the best.

First the promo:  It was an outstanding production. This is Community Theater, and great community theater.  The word that comes to mind is gritty.  The intimacy of the theater plus a cast of “real” people who you might know personally made the tribe in Central Park come alive in ways you won’t see in New York or Pittsburgh or Cleveland or in the movie version. These were the people I saw protesting in 1968 as they marched to change America…and if you were in the audience last night, you were out there with them.  This is the beauty of the Oakland:  taking a show like Hair from Broadway perfection to exquisite local reality.  They did it with The Full Monty several years ago.  They have done it again with Hair these past few weeks. 

The audience reflected the age of the show.  There were lots of folks my age in the packed theater.  I was eighteen when Hair made its Broadway debut.  In the spring of my senior year in high school both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.  I campaigned for Eugene McCarthy.  I cheered when Lyndon Johnson said he would not run again for president.  I watched in disbelief the violence at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention.  And then I worked for Richard Nixon because I am a Republican.  Those were scary and exciting times as America experienced a burst of creative energy in all aspects of the arts the likes of which we will never see again as the nation moves further into the digital cocoon. 

I thought the premise and music and message of the show would be dated.   I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Within the story line there was much to dislike about the main characters.  They were rude, goofy drugged up hippie freaks that desired a life of self gratification living as bums.  But underneath, they understood who they were...with lots of insecurities but understanding the necessity for some of life's evils such as money.  

What I remember most about those times was the overriding feeling of hope and idealism.  These concepts were rooted in respect for the individual.  Although the musical dealt with generally accepted liberal issues including race, drug usage, anti military, and a rigid social and governmental hierarchy, it wasn’t the “collective.”  The message was get government out of our lives so we are free to live our lives as we choose.  It is libertarianism. There is a difference. Libertarianism is where liberals and conservatives meet. 

Where did that idealism go?  Where is the hope?   We have been told by the media that folks running things in Washington today are the descendants of those protesting on America’s campuses in the late 1960’s and early 70’s.  I disagree.  They are the ideological descendents of the radical fringe of the movement.  In today’s Washington you are finding the progeny of the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the SDS, SNIC and other violent groups.  These folks believe in government control by force and use of government as a political weapon to achieve their goals.  We are just now finding out how autocratic these folks can be in the pursuit of their radical vision of an egalitarian utopia. For them, their end always justifies the means.

The reality, however, seldom matches the fantasy.  So now it is time to assess and move on as we face new issues of an over reaching government; rigid and unfeeling.  And the music goes on.

Somewhere

Inside something there is a rush of

Greatness

Who knows what stands in front of

Our lives

I fashion my future on films in space

Silence tells me secretly

Everything 

Everything

Let the sunshine in!

Obama

Now it’s time to say what needs to be said.  Barack Obama is the worst president in my lifetime, and I suspect in the history of the Republic.  This man has systematically set out to destroy the country and he is succeeding.  He has destroyed any semblance of rule of law.  He has destroyed the Constitution as Americans, and a compliant press, have sat idly by…secure in their own pomposity…watching it happen bit by bit.   Obama and his compatriot Eric Holder have managed to do the impossible.  Their lies and their antics have made Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and John Mitchell look like babes in the woods.  The President and the Attorney General should be ashamed.  They’re not.  They are enjoying it.

Under his watch, spying on Americans has reached Orwellian proportions.  Every single thing you do, right down to each key stroke on the computer, is watched by the government.  Corporations send out privacy notices relating to bank accounts and credit cards; hospitals put on a big show with HIPPA.  The reality is you have no privacy.  The revelations today that all the government needs is an email address and they know what you are thinking is frightening…and yet we passively shrug our shoulders.  Sooner or later, the government will use this information against us.  Read your history.  Obama was supposed to be our protector against this type of activity.  He is the worst offender.

The Department of Justice has thrown rule of law out the window replacing it with crony justice.  There are so many incidents that you can’t begin to list them.  There is no excuse for government behavior during the Trayvon Martin trial.  There is no excuse for end running the Supreme Court’s decision on voter rights laws going after Texas.  There is no excuse for not prosecuting Black Panther thugs in front of polling places.  There is no excuse for lying to a judge about a journalist being a criminal suspect in an affidavit for a search warrant.  There is no excuse for stone walling gun running in Fast and Furious.   There is no excuse or justification for using the IRS as a political weapon. 

Eric Holder should have been fired years ago.  He never should have been appointed in the first place after facilitating the re-entry into the country of one of this nation’s biggest tax cheats in exchange for a political contribution to Bill Clinton.  That is the kind of man he is.  He is a thug and a liar.  He has destroyed respect for the law in America.

Then there is American foreign policy which can be summed up in one word: Benghazi.  The revelation today that CNN found one of the perpetrators and interviewed him as our government sat idly by is beyond comprehension.   These people attacked our embassy and killed our ambassador and three other Americans.  All we have gotten is stonewalling.  When asked about it today, Press Secretary Jay Carney told the reporter to call the FBI.  That is contemptible.  What are they hiding?  The only person who has gone to jail is the poor guy who made a two bit video that was insulting to Muslims.  And he had nothing to do with it.

The press continues to be complicit in the cover-up.  First it was to protect Obama.  Now it is to protect Hillary Clinton.  You know…the one asked who should answer the phone at 2 in the morning!!!  Hopefully it won’t be her.

Meanwhile, the economy is growing at a whopping 1.7%!!!  And that was considered good news.  What they are not telling you is that the government had to go back to 1929 to recalculate GDP growth for the last 80 some years to achieve that 1.7% growth.  Obama has accumulated more debt that all of the other presidents put together.  But don’t worry.  He has fixed health care.  Well…sort of…maybe they will put off full implementation another year.  But who cares, we are now a nation of part time jobs. But don’t worry, he is addressing the energy problem.  Maybe the bankruptcy court will give back to the government some of the billions that have gone down the toilet with Obama's green energy start-up companies (run by his campaign contributors).  I know...then he can give the money to Detroit!!!!

Take out the African American support for him based mostly on his race, and Obama’s approval rating would be about 30%.   That is pitiful; but definitely earned.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.  But this has been a dirty and rotten and corrupt presidency…to the core.  I’m not so sure America has it in her to reach the end of the tunnel.  Houston, we have a problem.

Egypt: The Front Line Against Islmaic Extremism

Egypt is such a far-away place.  For much of my life it seemed benign enough, steeped in the most ancient of history.  Most Americans think of the Pyramids and Charlton Heston leading the Jews out of slavery with Yul Brynner chasing them in his chariot….or maybe Elizabeth Taylor exchanging Eddie Fisher for Richard Burton while filming Cleopatra (much to Debbie Reynold’s delight).   To see Egyptian history you could either go to Cairo or the British Museum, where many of Egyptian antiquities landed during the British colonial era.

But just underneath the surface it has been smoldering and a hot bed of international activity.   Egypt led two wars of note against Israel, the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  This resulted in the Arab oil embargo to the United States and gas rationing.  Although it did better militarily in 1973 than 1967, Egypt recognized it would never defeat the Israelis and in 1979 and made peace with Israel under the Camp David Accords.

Now it is back in the forefront.  Egypt is a poor nation and relied heavily on the Soviet Union for financial assistance, and then the United States.   It’s the United States which keeps the Egyptian military in business.  We pay 70% of the Egyptian military’s budget. Through assassinations and military uprisings Egypt has had several changes of government starting with Hosni Mubarak who came to power after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mubarak was then overthrown in February of 2011 in the Egyptian version of the Arab Spring.  Elections took place about a year later electing the radical Muslim Brotherhood led by Mohamed Morsi to power.  Morsi, in turn, rammed through an Islamist constitution, usurped power from the Egyptian courts, threatened the military, and just last week was thrown out of office in an Egyptian military coup in response to millions of people taking to the streets.  He is now under house arrest, and the head of his party is under real arrest. 

The story that is not being told by any of the media in the United States is that it is the Egyptian people who are now leading the war against radical Islam.  Egypt has become the hot war front line against the Islamists.  What is even more disturbing is that Barack Obama seems to be falling on the wrong side of all rebellions against radical Islam over and over again.  It gives one pause.  What is he doing?

Since the beginning of his presidency Obama has taken a conciliatory approach to radical Islam.  Domestically, he declared the war on terror over.  While cracking down on Christians and Jewish religious activity in the public sector, he has accommodated Muslim activity.  He has refused to call Muslim terrorists what they are…terrorists.  He has pointed Homeland Security away from Islamic terror and towards “right wing” terrorist groups.  He failed to follow up on information provided to his administration about the Boston bombers.  Meanwhile, granny in a wheel chair is still being patted down before getting on an airplane to placate “profiling” Muslims…and my phone calls to my wife are being monitored.  The Fort Hood massacre is still not being called a terrorist event, and this Islamic whack job is defending himself in the courts.

Internationally, he failed to support the Iranian green revolution pulling American support for those in the streets opposing the Mullahs, leaving demonstrating students twisting in the wind.  He has led from behind in Egypt offering succor to the Islamists who eventually came to power and now have been thrown out by the Egyptian people and army.  He still is saying the Muslim Brotherhood must be included in a new Egyptian government.

In Libya, America came late to the party as Ghadafi was overthrown. The night of the Islamist attack on Benghazi and our embassy and ambassador, Obama was nowhere to be seen.  He later blamed the event on a video rather than terrorism from Islamic radicals while he fund raised in Nevada.  His administration refused requests for additional security before the raid, and military help during the raid. 

All of these things, plus a myriad of others, have been shrugged off by the American press.  Maybe individually they can be ignored.  Together, it paints a disturbing picture.  Obama has NEVER answered his view of radical Islam which is anathema to everything his left wing supporters believe.  America needs to know his core beliefs about Islam as Russia, China, and just about every other nation leaves us in the dust in dealing with a philosophy that beheads gays, burns down Christian churches, and beats women for uncovering their face. 

America owes the people of Egypt and the Egyptian army a debt of gratitude for doing what we have failed to do.  

America at the Crossroads

This Independence Day, America is rudderless and leaderless adrift in a morass of liberal orthodoxy that doesn’t work.  Folks are being indoctrinated in our primary and secondary schools.  Universities have been taken over by the extreme left under the guise of “academic freedom” which is anything but.  Try finding a Republican or a conservative tenured professor or a center right commencement speaker.  The media is crawling with the spawn of 1960’s hippies who have dropped principles of freedom and individualism for the collective and a cult of personality.   The melting pot of my immigrant grandparents has become a “celebration of diversity” which harbors the threat of tearing this nation apart in the future.  “From many, one,” has become “from many, many.”  The founding fathers have been relegated to the trash can of irrelevancy; a bunch of old white men who promoted the slave trade.  Our leaders seem ready to sacrifice our country on the altar of internationalism cutting out the country’s heart using the knife of sacred environmentalism to “redistribute” wealth not to our citizens, but other countries.  America should pay for its sins.

Our nation has been turned upside down. Kids lemonade stands are closed down.  Men are expendable.  The government is watching every key stroke we make on the computer, including mine typing this essay.  Our phone calls and emails are being gathered in the name of “national security”.  The IRS has become a political enforcement agency.  The thought police are looking for every non-politically correct utterance we make notwithstanding how long ago (consider Paula Deen’s problems).  Monitoring cameras, both private and government, are everywhere.  Now the government is turning government worker against government worker through an Obama executive order advising federal employees to report on co-workers who might be experiencing stress, or marital difficulties or financial difficulties or have expressed “discontent.”  Even in schools students have been asked to report on parental activities which might seem strange.  This is the stuff of totalitarian governments.

What is more disturbing is the arrogance of those doing these things.  The Obama administration has stonewalled Congress, the people’s house, in investigations relating to the Mexican gun running operation Fast and Furious, the investigation of the Benghazi fiasco, the IRS scandal, the Associated Press scandal,  the NSA matter.  This includes non-operative department heads lying to Congress and an Attorney General who has been held in contempt of Congress with no consequences.   Add to the current of the IRS who provided a redacted report which said nothing, a combative Hillary “what difference make it now” Clinton, two IRS acting heads who pleaded the Fifth and went on Easter Egg hunts in the White House.

The result of all of this is a public who distrusts and fears the government, a press that is afraid to report the news, whistleblowers going into hiding, and a world community that for all intents and purposes is laughing its ass off at American impotency.

This Independence Day, it’s time for America to press the reset button on ourselves.  It’s time to re-examine the principles on which this nation was founded.  The Bill of Rights needs to be dusted off and moved to the front of the room.  America is in trouble.  There is apparently not a leader in sight to take this nation into the future.  People need to get their nose out of the computers and tablets and cell phones and pay attention to the real world. 

This is America’s crossroads.  The Barbarians are at the gate, and they are us.  No on needs to take away freedom that Americans are now willing to give it away to an omnipresent government.  If it is not fixed, the Independence Days of the future will be hollowed out celebrations with no substance…only fear.