The Winter of Discontent

Somehow I thought (hoped) I would never write about another election cycle after our President won the last election cycle. Silly me.

In many ways, this upcoming election is more important to us than the last. I assume the noise the liberal press is blabbering concerning losses in the House and the Senate was a possibility. I don't believe it is possible. However, it is too much of a risk to ignore.

What are we to do? Just what we did two years ago. WE VOTED. We got our friends and relatives interested and we and they voted for President Trump. It was just that simple. The solution is that simple but the 'doing' will be much harder this time around. Midterm elections usually don't draw in the voters like elections where the presidency is concerned. It's just been our voting history.

At President Trump's rallies he always ask that we help him in getting new GOP candidates in office as well as reelecting  the ones that hold office.  That's not such a sacrifice. Efforts must be made and time must be spent but the pay off for us is huge. The cost is two more years of him struggling with a Congress half full of elected folks who hate him as well as his goals.

From my side of this keyboard all  the President's programs and goals I support along with a belief that the country needs the changes that go along with his goals. Growing up in a DEM state and a DEM family I thought this was just what the good Lord intended. At that time in our history the Southern DEMS were the conservative group of voters. The down side was that the Southern DEMS did not want any major changes in the way our government governed. In so many way our government is governing worse than way back when.

(Let me note here: For those who do not know Peter Schweizer let me encourage you to buy all three of his new books about who are elected are and how they govern for themselves.. Once you start reading you will start talking with friends and relatives who will want to read them. Time is short. About 20 days before the elections. Amazon has the books )

I won't list President Trump's goals. Both the liberal and we conservatives know what they are. You can't turn on any of the news media without hearing the rehash along with  the 'fake' news rehashing them.

During a rather long life it seems that people somehow see each election cycle as the most important one ever. Its silly for the most part. However, this time we have a President who makes promises and keeps them. One who can be trusted. I say this because going back four or five Presidents I did not trust them at all. I do this one. Donald Trump believes America is a country for and by the people and he has our back!

In a few weeks I want him to know that we have his back.

Sometimes knocking on a door is more powerful than running a ten thousand dollar TV add.

We can do the heavy lifting. When the country has needed us we have always answered the call.

RN.

The SS - Not related to Social Security

I am going to post this without comment. I think this family recanting their experience with our government offers us a view of both the present and the future for all of us.

Search for Pressure Cooker Leads to Knock on Door From Terrorism Police

It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.

Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now. 

I was at work when it happened. My husband called me as soon as it was over, almost laughing about it but I wasn't joining in the laughter. His call left me shaken and anxious.

What happened was this: At about 9:00 am, my husband, who happened to be home yesterday, was sitting in the living room with our two dogs when he heard a couple of cars pull up outside. He looked out the window and saw three black SUVs in front of our house; two at the curb in front and one pulled up behind my husband’s Jeep in the driveway, as if to block him from leaving.

Six gentleman in casual clothes emerged from the vehicles and spread out as they walked toward the house, two toward the backyard on one side, two on the other side, two toward the front door.

They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.

They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.

Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.

45 minutes later, they shook my husband’s hand and left. That’s when he called me and relayed the story. That’s when I felt a sense of creeping dread take over. What else had I looked up? What kind of searches did I do that alone seemed innocent enough but put together could make someone suspicious? 

They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week.

Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety. This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.

All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.

I’m scared. And not of the right things.

CLARIFICATION AND UPDATE

We found out through the Suffolk Police Department that the searches involved also things my husband looked up at his old job. We were not made aware of this at the time of questioning and were led to believe it was solely from searches from within our house.

Via reference from ZeroHedge, please consider pressure cookers, backpacks and quinoa, oh my! 

Question? How can we encourage Senator  Cochran not to run for office again. IF reelected he would be eighty -  two before his next term in office would be over.  Mississippi has a history of reelecting Senators until they die or can't get back and forth to the senate building. I think we should begin to break this cycle.

Many of us in Oxford grew up on small farms around the  County. So we know poor and we know need. We are generous compassionate people who given a choice would not deny medical services to anyone. However, given the growing number of immigrants we must find other solutions because we are rapidly running out of checks in our check book.

(Read the numbers and some of the links are not working on my browser.)

1. $11 Billion to $22 Billion

is spent on welfare to illegal aliens

each year by state governments.

Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year

is spent on food assistance programs

such as food stamps, WIC, and free

school lunches for illegal aliens.

Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.HTML

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year

is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.HTML

4. $12 Billion dollars a year

is spent on primary and secondary

school education for children

here illegally and they cannot

speak a word of English!

Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt..0.HTML

5. $17 Billion dollars a year

is spent for education for

the American-born children of illegal aliens,

known as anchor babies.

Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY

is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/%20TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison

inmates are illegal aliens.

Verify at: http://transcripts.CNN.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year

is spent on illegal aliens for

Welfare & social services

by the American taxpayers.

Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.HTML

9. $200 Billion dollars a year

in suppressed American wages

are caused by the illegal aliens.

Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSC%20RI%20PTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

10. The illegal aliens in the United States

have a crime rate that's two and a half times

that of aliens that are here legally.

In particular, their children are going

to make a huge additional crime

problem in the  US .

Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn..com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt..01..HTML

11. During the year of 2005,

there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens

that crossed our southern border.

Additionally, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens

crossed from Terrorist Countries.

Millions of pounds of drugs... cocaine,

meth, heroin and marijuana crossed into

the U  from the southern border.

Verify at Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National policy Institute estimated

that the total cost of mass deportation

would be between $206 and $230 billion

or an average cost of between $41 and

$46 billion annually over a five-year period..

Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/PDF/deportation.PDF

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION

in remittances to their countries of origin.

Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht..htm

456 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes till the polls open. Seems like a lot of time but it isn't…

Ron

Docnick37@gmail.com

http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/

There are no WHIPPED dogs here

Now is not the time for ease and comfort but time to dare and endure…

W. Churchill

Not such a long time ago, in the shining city on the hill, there lived a group of men that strode into the darkest corners of the earth. Little about them was known. Few that met them understood them, but they became the leaders wherever they walked on the earth. The important thing that was known was they were men you just didn't want to mess with. They had a big stick. They walked softly. If you crossed them you put your life on the line.  

Some of these men believed one thing and others believed something else.  It didn't seem to matter who believed what and what each believed they believed with passion. Each stood on those beliefs. Each walked with those beliefs. They  bumped into each other, they yelled and argued over the things they believed.

Each day as the sun set, there was something that pulled all back together around the dinner table to share bread and to thank God for their brothers.

There was a knowing and understanding and acceptance that was a bond that existed well beyond differences. Differences sometimes were seen as enriching and everyone added what they could to the dinner pot. To cross one was to cross all. To short change one was to short change all. These soft walking men got their stick and as one came after you. 

In that long ago time, their government took care of government matters and these men took care of the Country. Like good stewards, they tended, protected and shaped both the land, their families, and their communities. There was no equivocation. There was no half-heartedness. Things were done with discipline, correctness, and a passion that reflected love and responsibility. Most of the men are gone but there are a few still with us. The few left, with weak voices, telling the stories of how things were and how they can be. With their stories discounted they are discounted, like the rubble of torn down buildings in our intercity. So scattered that no one can imagine the service they provided or to their reach into the sky. Somewhere in the rubble the building's placard is buried so no one can recall the builders, or its time, or its contribution, or its purpose much like these older men with their told tales of past glories and triumphs.

Every society throughout history has its own evolving history, its stories of the forefathers with their values and beliefs and the society they shaped  and passed on. Ours is a young society. Still arrogant, still undisciplined, still impulsive, and as destructive as adolescent boys.

Much like young boys, this Congress and President are arrogant,  undisciplined, impulsive, and destructive. Tearing down our laws, discounting our beliefs, reshaping our nation by pitting one group against another, dividing a country of brothers. Being reelected through scheming, conniving, lying, manipulating are tools in this high stake poker game. These tools have worked well for them in our past. Few can remember when Harry and Nancy first came to Congress. If listed, the list would be long with both Dems and Republican incumbents who have WON reelections more than three terms and many six or more terms. To our shame, many applaud and say at each reelection "At-A-Boy".

The corrupting effect of power has been know and written about since the early days of Greece. Once acquired, power is hard not to abuse. What makes this abuse so insidious is because it's always denied. The abuser plays his part, the liberal press plays their part, and we play ours. Our part is to trust, reelect, and feel disappointment. This current group has simply gone farther than previous congresses and their arrogance is so arrogant that it can't be denied or "spun" or hidden. Is their behavior so egregious, this time, that  we will actually change our role in this play before it become a tragedy? This country is at a tipping point. This President/Congress wants us to change ourselves as free Americans to fit what their imagined political/social/economic America should be. The Health Bill is where they drew the line. So it will be "They" win and we lose. Or "We" win and they lose. Come November we will  take up our big stick and march into the voting booth.

 All the mighty nations throughout history have fallen through political suicide. Their suicidal demise always began through government's corruption of national and religious values. This destruction always begins by the discounting of a nation's history. The national history says to each new generation who we are, who they are, and how we got to where we are. This President in so many ways and in his short time in office has traveled the world discounting who we are by apologizing for America. Armed with a liberal congress this President began discounting each of us, the American people, directly by creating laws that limits our rights and freedoms. 

We have not forgotten our heritage. We have not forgotten our values, nor have we forgotten the men and women who built this Nation.

We cannot stop change..... Change is the hart beat of time and life... What is possible is that we have a voice in what and how change takes place... Our goals and purpose must be clear and easily understood by all... This is the element that has been missing during our last few election cycles... We have left the liberal media to define our goals and purposes... They will do it again IF we let them... 

Senator Wicker is beginning to find his name on the list of Senator who need to be re-vetted before that next primaries. During the past century Mississippi senators have been known to sell their votes for a handful of 'pork bones.' Can it be that Wicker is joining this august body? One can only hope not. 

Regardless of what we do or say between now and the next election there is a problem that we must think about and consider with empathy. The growing number of people who, for a whole variety of reasons, cannot find work that they can do.  The low skill jobs are simply gone.... (Again for a variety of reasons.)... This group along with the growing group of people who are here illegally are a burden on all the working families. Whatever else our purposes  are as a group we must include and offer hope and some level of solutions to this group of citizens. Through reduction in regulations on business and changing tax laws business would be willing to bring back a lot of their low skilled work back to this country. 

When businesses  price their good or services they price in the federal and state tax. In doing so they become a tax collector for government. Putting this burden on our businesses inhibits their growth and their ability to complete at the international levels. 

We need business to reach our goals as a group. We need a strong economy and they are the only ones that make this happen.  

As our group begins to fashion our goals for 2014 the elimination on all taxes on businesses and a flat tax on individuals and families.... This would be a simple goal that can easily be understood.  

Ron

http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/

Doubt and Other Trivial Things

It seem and feels like I have awakened in some science fiction future… I assume much like characters in Orwell's book 1984…. In our lifetime I can't believe any of us expected to see a President, his administration, and government departments behave in ways that say so clearly that they govern without regards to the will or interest of the people or the nation and the constitution and will punish whoever opposes them…. At the very least from of this debacle I have a better sense of what the children of Israel felt when God finally decided to punish them for their misdeeds. I suspect they, like us,  got to that point slowly by cutting corners, losing sight of goals, and mission as well as their moral compasses.

 Is this not where we are?  We the children of America…

For sure we have lost our way. Not in some "bang" moment but over generations and many congresses and presidents. With each new law and regulation we have lost a bit here and there thinking that what we are doing is the right thing to do….. Trying to solve real and imagined problems.

Long before Obama became president the people, on the whole, had lost faith in their elected federal government as well as many in their state governments. Nixon at his swearing in ceremony said that government is too big to manage. Could it be that is the core of our problems? Reagan said government was the problem. Are our government departments to big and too complicated to manage? Is the population too big to manage?

As more laws, rules, and regulations are passed it takes more people to enforce them.  As more people join the social programs it takes more people to manage them. Government grows and will continue to grow so long as there is growth in the population. The idea of cutting the growth of government so long as these conditions are in place is simply a pipe dream. It doesn't matter who we send to Washington…. It doesn't matter what they say as candidates. They can only slow the train down.  (Maybe not even that.)

In our lifetime has there ever been an election where most candidates didn't promise to cut taxes? Change the tax codes… Even when the elected got one tax cut  they added another somewhere else… Like an old shell game..

Federal government has lost its way… This IRS scandal is nothing more than a reminder…

The good guys in Syria that Obama is wanting to help out are bad guys. We can't tell, in the Mideast, who are the good guys are any longer.  If we ever could. Maybe there aren't any…The question is when do we acknowledge and realize this part of the world has been killing each other since - forever. .. Over many years many administrations have tried to buy their friendship and they can't be bought.

In different ways this country is also divided. Obama and his group of appointees along with the liberal media have defined the American good guys and the American bad guys. This is not new. We have always been divided in some ways such as rich and poor, producers and takers, farmers and city folks but there was core elements back then we could all rally around… Our beliefs, our values, our government, and our country…. We are now a fragmented bunch organized around mostly silly self-interest. Fear grows and in this fragmentation government flourishes. It grows and garners more power to rule… More and more this government  power lies outside congress. Its members also live in fear of their positions and personal power. How they vote on legislation alters how voters vote for them.

The Tea Party offers some hope. Some rallying place where the conservative voice can be spoken. Where the notion of a government for and by the people is an old but valued mission. 

Given where the country is today you would have to have forty fingers to point to who, what, where, and why this has happened… This is a wonderful trick that keeps everyone dazed and confused…. However it's not the rich folks nor the poor folks on the myriad of social programs…. The linkage to all of these problems finds their way back to government and the elected. No matter what we are told or how well the White House staff and the news media edits and interprets reality, it is government that is the wellspring.

TJ say:

The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then we must be content to return, quo ad hoc, to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property, for want of a stable, common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebanks. –Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, 21 March  1819.

Can anyone imagine the majority of our elected go to lunch and discuss these same problems that Jefferson and Adams were discussing almost two hundred years ago. What can be imagined is that they gathered and discussed what he or she said on last night's news or this morning's news article, or scores of the football, baseball, or basketball scores. Or some scheme to be used in some way by their political party or themselves for some imagined political gain. To try and label some good and some bad is simply a waste of time. They are who they are and they are a reflection of the times we find ourselves in….

We must replace them. Particularly the older, been around a long time, good old boys… So long as they are in place they will make sure the system of government they have had a hand in crafting will continue. This secures their power. The growth of their personal wealth is directly linked to the number of days they have been in elected office as well as the number of people indebted to them who will contribute to their next political campaign. Period.

Know that the values, beliefs, and principles that are held by Tea Party members are viewed by many as dangerous…The President and the media say we are dangerous. Certainly our values run counter to theirs. We are their political enemies. The current administration and the various federal departments such as the IRS are being brought to bear on any and all groups such as ours. It is the core of Chicago politics to not just  beat the opponents but to destroy them at a personal level so they can never challenge again.

Certainly the Tea Party is in the sights of the Obama's administration. This will not stop.

Another Trivial Thing:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

The DHS appears to have finally found a use for all those bullets it’s been buying. At a Tea Party protest outside an IRS building in St. Louis yesterday there were no regular police – only armed Homeland Security guards

In 2011, the DHS asserted that it had every right to spy on peaceful protest groups and had been using Federal Protective Service (FPS) agents to do so since at least 2006.

In March, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis admitted  that the federal agency spies on Americans deemed to be “anti-government,” noting that the DHS concentrates on, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information,” so-called threats which included people, “putting political stickers in public bathrooms or participating in movements against the death penalty.”

A 2012 Senate subcommittee investigation of DHS data fusion centers found that millions of dollars had been spent not on gathering important anti-terrorism information but on collating “a bunch of crap,” which was “unrelated to terrorism” and in fact targeted Americans peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.

In its promotional material for the ‘See Something, Say Something’ snitch program, the DHS has routinely portrayed white, middle class Americans as the most likely terrorists. Mock news reports and security drills run by the DHS have also depicted gun owners and homeschoolers as violent terrorists.

It’s no surprise that the DHS is now deploying its agents to defend the IRS against the ire of the American people given that both federal agencies have gone to extreme lengths to target law-abiding, conservative, or God forbid “anti-government” Americans as domestic extremists and even terrorists. (www. Infowars.com)

In closing let me suggest to all the Tea members in Mississippi and all other Tea folks around the country  to look at the Democratic party activities in you town. Monthly meeting and training in all of them. They are well funded and organized. We may have right on our side but come the 2014 elections that is not what turns voters out.  If the DEMS get control of the House back, the last two years with Obama will be like no other in our history. He will, in those two years, write a socialist legacy for himself that will be difficult if not impossible to change.

Last go around the rumor spread that most or the people who voted for Obama would not vote for him and he could be beaten by a wimpy white rich guy who made it through one term as governor and managed to create the failed health program in the state he governed. Clearly that rumor was started by the elite political  group that runs the GOP. What will they concoct next election cycle? The national GOP believes that we have to go along no matter who they decide on.

Or do we?

Another trivial thing:

Today's Polls: New Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% of Likely U.S. Voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. That's up 14 points from January but still down from April 2009's high of 51% when the Tea Party protests against President Obama’s spending policies first erupted.

Another NOT so trivial thing:

2000 of the students graduating last week from Mississippi High Schools could not pass the reading test.

(I guess we can be grateful they didn't publish the results of the math test.)

532 days - 6 hours - 32 minutes till the next round of voting…..

Ron

http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com

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