Salt Teens

“Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce.
Special orders don’t upset us.
All we ask is that you let us
Serve it your way!”

So went the Burger King jingle of the Seventies. Burger King held to its promise. You could ask them to leave off any item, and they would.

In the pre-Burger King days, I remember how we would stop at McDonald’s and my mother would let us have French fries. The fries came unadorned, but inside the bag, you had your choice of salt and pepper.

And of course, all the fast food franchises did the same thing: they’d place packages of salt and pepper in the bag. But then something happened.

Whether it was a corporate bean counter missive or a government fast-food regulation, they stopped giving you the salt and pepper in the bag. Instead, the fries came pre-salted.

Now if you have kids and ever watched them try to prepare something to eat, their measurement skills don’t exactly measure up. They’re still trying to get the hang of it. They’ll dump a whole canister of sugar into the mixing bowl. Or they’ll use six eggs to make an omelette (two of which inevitably end up in a mess on the floor).

The teen workers had a tendency to shake half their salt shakers onto the entire batch of French fries. If you’ll excuse the expression, they were a little too “liberal” with the salt shaker.

Well, they’re young. It’s like trying to teach them to drive; they’re going to hit some curbs before they can distinguish between the road and the sidewalk.

I’m one of those people who can barely tolerate salt. I’d eat one of these holsters of salt fries and within an hour, came down with a migraine headahce. My boss wasn’t particularly sympathetic, either (to speak truth, she wasn’t much older than those teen burger flippers and less mature).

After awhile, I learned to specifically order the fries without salt. The franchises always complied, with no fuss, bless their hearts. Now and then, I’d feel guilty for having to ask them to accommodate my request and I’d explain why, just so they knew I wasn’t trying to be difficult.

The Burger King down the road from where I live has been especially gracious. And I’ve tried not to be a nuisance. When they ask me to pull up and wait, because they have to cook up a separate order of fries, I pull up.

Once, early on, I tried to tip the young person who came out in the freezing cold to give me my fries, but he said it was against the company rules for him to accept it. So things have gone on.

But then New York City banned salt completely from all its restaurants. Anyone who likes their salt is just out of luck because of a health-conscious few who not only want to watch their diets, but everyone else’s.

This law hasn’t come to pass in the state in which I live. Yet. But now when I ask the order taker to not put salt on my fries, I detect a distinct testiness in their voice, a readiness for battle.

Thank you, Uncle Sam, Nanny Pelosi, and all your bureaucratic ilk.

Things were going very nicely. I didn’t want salt on my fries, but I tried to be as uncomplaining as possible about it. The fast-food place, in their turn, was very pleasant and very accommodating.

They let me have it my way, without interfering with everyone else's – the majority of people – right to have it their way. I was able to take care of myself, thank you very much. I didn’t need the government’s help to order a salt-free meal.

Now the whole world is going to have to be turned upside down to accommodate me. Isn’t that just special? Don’t I feel like I’m  on top of the world? Everyone who wanted salt on their fries will now be forced to smuggle salt packets into restaurants with them.

If they’re out on the road and buy some fast food, they’re going to be stuck with bland French fries that taste terrible to them, for which they paid their hard-earned money. They’ll have to keep salt packets in their glove compartments to deal with it.

All because of someone like me. And someone not like me is going to protest, make a scene, cry foul, even sue, if they get salted fries, as a demonstration of their new-found power, their enablement to have it all their way. A way they once had for nothing.

All they had to do was be nice.

Doomsday Democrats

“Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

According to a new poll out, 24 percent of Republicans believe Obama is the Anti-Christ. The Big A.C. Gee, I wonder where they got that idea? Obama, for his part, dismisses Armageddon as asteroids and comets, fireworks, the stuff of kooks, not a battle between good and evil.

Years ago, a friend taught me astrology. The topic of the Anti-Christ is popular among astrologers. Like the Masons, though, they prefer to keep their secrets, and this date is one of them. They’ve shared it with many Liberal fanatics but not many Christian extremists. Those fanatics are waiting for a sign from God, not the stars.

Just as they won’t tell you when you’ll die, revealing this awful birth date is against the astrological code. They only teach the death-date calculation to their most trusted students.

My teacher wouldn’t teach it to me and I really didn’t want to know when I was going to die. But I was curious about the Anti-Christ’s birth-date. On my solemn vow I would never share it, she revealed the theoretical date and even the manner of the arch-villain’s ascendancy.

I can tell you this, readers: it’s not Obama. He’s really close. But no cigar. He’s not the Devil Dude incarnate. However, while he may not be the Anti-Christ, he sure is the Anti-American.

The prophecies say that this Anti-Christ’s life would parallel, seemingly, the life of Christ. He would preach peace, heal the sick, and lead the young. Hmm. But to an evil, rather than beneficial, end. Of the world.

If the parallel theory holds any water that you can walk on, revealing the date would bring about the murder of many innocent people born on that date whose only crime is being frightfully incompetent at relationships.

Besides, who wants to be the Prophet of Armageddon? The Prophet of Doom? Geesh. On the other hand, while he’s not the Anti-Christ, Obama’s chart does have, shall we say, “issues.” If I were him, I’d be doing everything possible to help prove the Birthers right.

I abandoned astrology as anything more than a hobby years ago. People asked me to cast their horoscopes and I’d refuse. I just didn’t want the responsibility of telling people what to do. If you have a serious question or problem, ask God. He’s always listening.

Besides, you don’t need astrology to tell you what’s going on here. People – a small percentage, 24 percent – believe Obama’s the Tyrant of Tyrants. Golly, I wonder why they think that?

He’s been bowing to heads of state all over the world. Hardly the act of the future king of Hell on Earth. Obama’s mentors are the world’s worst tyrants. Quite a fraternity.

Still, Democrats are said to be living in mortal terror from death threats. Yet when Obama signs the illegal aliens amnesty bill, he’ll unleash an army of Mexican drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and gang members upon helpless American citizens. Don’t talk to us about fear.

Then, he plans to grant voting rights to all felons. He’s interested in throwing out the First and Second Amendments of the Bill of Rights altogether, so that we’ll be defenseless figuratively and literally. The God Police may arrest us if we publicly pray to the Almighty for help.

He’s declared himself a Citizen of the World. He wants the U.S. to adopt a world currency. He campaigned for President of the United States in Europe. He’s admitted that he’s an opponent of the U.S. Constitution and believes in the Marxist principle of “spreading the wealth.”

His credentials for the presidency, beyond one term as a State Senator and one as a U.S. Senator, consist of a university professorship and a stint as a “community organizer,” helping the poor.

While helping the poor is hardly a sign of evil incarnate, his motives and methods are questionable, not to mention his associates. His cadre consists of radical, left-wing Sixties activists committed to destroying the nation, haters of liberty all.

What’s more, Americans are observing more and more intrusion on their privacy and more government regulation of everyday life. There’s a tax or regulation for everything. There’s even news of a new monitoring device for cars that will record your driving speed.

With Nancy Pelosi’s aid, he rammed the Health Care Bill through Congress without revealing the bill’s contents until five days after it was passed. Congress passed the bill without making any corrections. They rectified it, correcting some passages, but adding even worse mistakes.

Obama’s preacher shouted, “God damn America!” and his wife vowed on the campaign trail that she was “finally” proud to be an American. All of this only points to the end of America, not the end of the world.

However, Obama has a counterpart on the other side of the world.

As Obama is Christian and American, but of divided parentage – one Christian, the other Muslim – this counterpart is the reverse: a full Muslim, with divided parentage, who also had a Christian mother and a Muslim father.

Even without astrological calculations, it’s not hard to figure how all this adds up. There is no mystical conjuring involved in putting together these concrete facts. What the sum will be of this union is anyone’s guess.

Are we on the brink of a worldwide holocaust? That depends on us, not the stars. Or asteroids. We can plunge over the brink. Or those who have brought us to that brink can step back from it.

Maybe he needs to think about his image when he bows to foreign potentates. Those with any knowledge of Islam are aware that “Islam” means “peace” and “submission”.

Maybe he, Congress, and the state-controlled Media need to rethink their boil-the-frog program of sweeping legislation. Americans aren’t as docile as they think, although they are boiling mad.

Maybe they need to step back on their condescending attitude towards the American public. Maybe they should stop lecturing us paternally, explaining how they know what’s best for us. Perhaps they need to stop acting like wolves, and we, like sheep.

Then, too, maybe they need to stop trying to replace God. They’ve thrown Him out of the schools, the Media, and even the public square. They’ve planted their Liberal flag on all of these venues, even denying school kids the right to play Ave Maria in a band concert, for God’s sake.

If you don’t want people to think you’re the Anti-Christ, maybe you shouldn’t act like him.

It would be nice if we could leave the Battle of Armageddon to some future generation to worry about. The Christians, incidentally – that is, the true believers – are ready for it. ‘Bring it on!’ they’ve exclaimed. I don’t know that the rest of us are quite ready, though.

We could sue for peace, at the price of our liberty. Some people just don’t care. They want the free stuff and don’t care what the ultimate price is. They’re the same dangerous people who owe thousands of dollars in debt on their credit cards. They don’t care about that, either.

Personally, I’d prefer to see Armageddon permanently relegated to the realm of Sci-Fi Horror movies. Both fanatical camps on this side of the ocean are at fever pitch for this catastrophe. We pawns in the middle aren’t so sure about all of this.

On the other side of the ocean, opposition to this world tyranny is vanquished. Osama Bin Laden promised only yesterday to commit yet another attack on America, and Europe is in her shadow, but under the sway of Liberals.

If we really want to help future generations avoid such a battle, it would be well if we didn’t pave the way smooth for that distant war. We think we’re frolicking on a meadow. But our line of sight is blinded to the huge gulf right in the middle of that pleasant field.

Sadly, the idolatry and reverence with which Obama’s loyal followers worshipped him along the campaign trail suggests they will not yield the ground they’ve gained. They will not step back but continue their juggernaut towards totalitarianism. It is a conquest long in planning.

His adherents display all the fervor of religious zealots. They chant mantras, react violently to dissent, and play psychological games with their adversaries. Reason falls on shuttered ears. They are a cult.

They implore us, with feigned weariness, to give up the fight, badgering us with loaded questions, as a prosecutor might ask an innocent man why he raped his wife. “Why do you hate the poor? Why do you hate immigrants? Why do you hate minorities? Why do you hate?”

Therefore, it is Conservatives’ responsibility to prevent the catastrophe. We need not submit. Indeed, we must do everything within our power not to consent to this overthrow of good. Will we provoke the other side by defying them, and precipitate what we fear and wish to avoid?

Maybe. We never imagine evil happening here in America. We could never imagine a tyrant rising to power, least of all in genial guise, greeting us from magazine racks. We never imagined 9/11. We can’t imagine an Armageddon and don’t want to think about it.

We were told we ourselves were to “blame” for 9/11. We will be “blamed” for repudiating the Health Care Reform law. We were told the sick would die if we didn’t enact this measure. We’ve been told a lot of things. We’ve been told a lot of lies.

They will try to frighten us with evil consequences for rejecting their measures, promising riots, bloodshed, nuclear holocaust. Global warming. We must resist them, despite their threats, despite the hard work it will entail, despite the criticism and negative publicity we’ll endure.

The bully will cry foul if he bloodies our nose, blaming us for being passive-aggressive. The victim shouldn’t have talked back, declares the principal, so they’re both at fault.

Conservatives, politicians and pundits alike, complain that repealing the health care law is virtually impossible. Nevertheless, we are bound to make the attempt. We must pull back from the side of wrong every voter we can, through patient, relentless persuasion.

Violence now will only ensure that we’re pitched over the cliff prematurely. We mustn’t let fanatics drive us to that edge. We can do this legally, honorably, and peacefully. We are not fanatics or barbarians; just patriots who love their freedom.

Yes, we must shout. And whisper. We must carry signs and we must sign petitions. We must make ourselves visible, and not skulk. We must, at times, meet in secret, and not reveal our strategies. We must practice peace, but anticipate violence.

We owe it to ourselves, as Americans. We owe it to future generations. We owe it to God.

Our options are almost apocryphal. A truly evil choice is laid before us: yield to tyranny, with an illegitimate peace, or defend freedom now through the democratic process, while we still can, before we’re compelled to fight for freedom through arms.

Choose well and choose wisely. Because failure is not an option.

The Most Powerful Woman in the World

ABC News was called in right after the Health Care Reform “triumph” to do damage control on the woman they deemed “the most powerful woman in the world.”

Nancy Pelosi. Poker-Face Pelosi. The Face That Launched a Thousand Flips.

Reporter Diane Sawyer asked her what she thought of this distinction. Straight-faced, Nancy demurred that it was very nice to hear. Gone was the Joker-Faced smile, always painful to watch (and even more painful to maintain, I daresay).

According to Sawyer, Nancy’s poker face is her trademark. Such a smile invokes maximum aggravation, irritation, and frustration (and scars on the insides of her mouth from the wires holding it up), leading an opponent to costly emotional errors in the game.

Only this isn’t Monte Carlo. Or Las Vegas. Or a James Bond flick, with Nancy as the anti-Bond girl. The stakes are much higher. She’s gambling with our lives and her cavalier attitude didn’t win her any points back home on Main Street.

Her favorability ratings are at 11 percent. But she got what she wanted and she intends to get more. Damn the defiant Tea Parties; full speed ahead.

Tea Party leaders would warn us, rightly, that a poker face is no joke. We must be circumspect in our strategy leading up to November.

Letting this mocking puppet provoke us into emotional, rather than rational, arguments could lead us further into the trap. We cannot afford to yap like terriers at her teasing, noisy but ineffective, and irritate our neighbors. We can’t bite her, either.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let them know a burglar is in the bedroom, however.

Former President Gerald Ford said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have.”

Time and again, we’ve been led into government’s snare of all-encompassing social security. Once caught, we find it hard to extricate ourselves again.

Time Magazine published a caustic article deriding Conservative attempts to perform its own damage control. They listed “Five Reasons Republicans Should Let Go of Health Care.”

In the first reason, the article cites Obama advising the Democrat House Caucus that we’ll discover that ‘lo and behold, nobody is pulling the plug on granny.’

No, they’re just going to let granny die on her own, basically. The Medicare snare is tightening around their necks. Like the drugs they hooked a generation on in the Sixties, our elders are now financially addicted to this government health care solution.

Are their arthritic hands tied? You bet. And now the government has cut the service by $500 million, just to show us what it can do and laugh in our faces.

It also demonstrates to us why we should do everything we can to repeal this law before we find ourselves enslaved in a worse situation.

No. 2: Repealing the bill is popular with the base, but impossible to pull off without the numbers in Congress. No, we can’t put the cart before the horse. But nothing is impossible for the American people. If they want to, they will move heaven, earth, and hell to get the government off their backs. Ever hear of Prohibition?

No. 3. In opposing reconciliation, we’d cut off our noses to spite our faces. Go back and see No. 1.

No. 4. The courts have a long history of federal law taking precedence over states’ rights. Ahem, Medicare and Medicaid. Ahem, they also have a long history of ignoring the Constitution that gave the states’ those rights.

No. 5. We’ve been labeled “The Party of No.” Well, someone has to be the adult and take responsibility.

The Democrats are depending upon a seven-month advertising blitz and campaign appearances by Obama to see them through to the November elections. They plan to offer all the “goodies” to the public, and be well re-elected before the Jan 1st deadline when group health insurance premiums will skyrocket 300 percent.

Ever since the Tea Parties began, pundits have fretted over our public image. Would Main Street America join us, or shun us, fearing we’re the 21st version of The Hippies? Americans just don’t do those things. They don’t take to the streets, like gutter rats.

Here’s the thing about the Tea Partiers and the Hippies. In the Sixties, the protesters sang, “Blowin’ in the Wind” – a double entendre about war and drugs. The 21st century Tea Partiers sing “God Bless America”.

The Hippies burnt flags; we wave them. The Hippies drove psychedelic VW vans; today’s parents drive SUVs with car seats in the back. The Hippies wore lovebeads; we wear funny hats (so sue us!).

The Hippies smoked dope and wore flowers; after one N.J. Tea Party, the Tea Party donated its money back to the park’s caretakers to restore the landscaping, and patronized the local tea shop.

Liberals hope to frighten the public away from us, the way they alienated the public four decades ago. But our public rallies are organized and peaceful. No one has ever used tear gas to disperse us. We don’t lay down in front of traffic until the police cart us away.

And we don’t hurl bags of feces at American soldiers; we honor them.

You’ll never find positive images of us in the state-controlled Media. If people want to know the truth, they’ll just have to come see us for themselves on April 15th.

The Media’s derision of us is laughable, given Nancy Pelosi’s performance this past week. The picture of her with the sledge hammer is worth a thousand-word bill.

In fact, it just puts a smile on your face.

For Whom the Belle Tolls

As yesterday’s blog was too long – responding to the very interesting and satisfying commentaries of Mssrs. Beck and Limbaugh – today’s will be briefer.

Obama signed the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act into law yesterday at high noon – high time we learned the bill’s actual name – and the media rang their bells in jubilation.

This law sure doesn’t ring my bells. Nor those of anyone I know, save my communist friends who laugh at my dudgeon. It doesn’t ring my bells that my group insurance premium is going to increase 300 percent after January 1st. But I’m sure going to ring the warning bell about it.

Incidentally, I really am a bell player. Orchestra bells. Glockenspiel. Chimes. There are many patriotic “Belles” running around the internet these days, and more power to every one of my sister “Belles”.

But when it comes to ringing bells, I believe I’m the expert among them. The only bell I would ring at this juncture is the bell of warning. Not mourning. Not yet. Just warning.

It’s a warning not just for patriotic Americans, but for arrogant Democrats who feel secure in their victory. It’s a warning we did not heed two years ago when the campaign began. As early as the Spring of 2008, we were cautioned not to be fooled by glossy magazine covers.

A spam making a hit on the Internet these days speaks of Obama as a fool. But only those who were fooled by him are fools. He is no fool; Obama has accomplished exactly what he promised he’d do. He’s also preparing to open the floodgates of illegal immigration.

People who have no stake in the country other than as a plot of ground to plunder will arrive in the next month to ensure a Democrat victory in November.   Or maybe they're planning an October surprise.  Who knows?

Do you know how the middle class in Mexico City lives? In fortresses, behind walls that are difficult to scale.

In fear.

No “mere fool” could be so insidious. The smell of corruption fouls the wind, stings the nostrils, and makes one’s neck bristle. In this the season of treason, who has more to fear, loyal Americans, or the elected officials who betrayed our trust?

If Nancy Pelosi and Judge Sotomayor are so powerful, what are the Democrats afraid of? Maybe it’s that they know what they would do, if the positions were reversed.

Why else would one of their legislative plans include regulating the Internet and Talk Radio, breaching the First Amendment? If they plan to unleash upon us a torrent of illegal aliens, what use could either be to us, if political redress is no longer an expedient?

The hives of the Tea Parties are already abuzz with excitement, anticipating the battle ahead. Those who fooled us will pay for their lack of foresight and they will be stung.

To paraphrase poet John Donne, ‘Ask not for whom the Belle tolls; she tolls for thee.’

Signing the Paper

Today, Obama signs into legislation the ominous Health Care Reform bill.

Some Americans are downcast, feeling defeated. In spite of all our efforts, the Liberals won this battle and we’re wondering what else we could have done to prevent its passage and what we can do now.

First, we can look on the bright side. Yes, there is one. We conservatives fought them to a closer draw than was comfortable for them. With polls showing Americans against the bill, 219-212 is hardly a sweeping mandate for the Democrats.

It took all of Nancy Pelosi’s sledge-hammering, bribery, corruption, conniving, and threats to accomplish it. Despite her smug smiles and carefree laughter on the Capitol sidewalk, you’d probably find her expensive suit was stained with sweat.

A sledgehammer is a double-edged sword. You use it to destroy old obstacles in order to create new ones. But when you’re an American legislator and that obstacle is the U.S. Constitution, and you’re publicly photographed smiling and laughing as you’re about to sledgehammer the nation’s founding legal document, you’ve got an image problem.

That indelible image is going to follow her around at every Tea Party this summer, right up until the elections. Thank God for the photographer who shot it, though their intentions were no doubt in service of the Liberals.

Nancy Pelosi is rather like a suicide bomber, minus the bloodshed. The ends justify the means – it’s the communist mantra. Anything she does in service of the greater cause of socialism she’ll consider an honorable sacrifice, even to sacrificing her own career.

We know what they are. But do we know what we are? We’ve been too complacent for too many years, and too trusting. We believe anyone who espouses our conservative cause, without any actual proof beyond vague promises.

We also let the Liberals write too many of the rules of the game. Last evening, Glenn Beck spoke of battle ball, or dodge ball. He said too many parents were overprotecting their children in this game and that they must learn to accept defeat.

Glenn’s a guy of course, and the rules are different for guys. But I remember dodge ball, too. I remember for too many years being lined up against opponents for whom I was no match. I didn’t stand a chance and neither did other, weak team mates.

It’s true, we can’t always win and life isn’t fair. But that doesn’t mean we have to paint bulls-eyes on our foreheads, either. That’s what we’ve allowed the Liberals to do to us.

When I was in the 8th grade, the gym teacher pitted the boys against the girls. You can imagine how that match was going to turn out. It was one thing when there were mixed teams, some stronger boys, and even girls on each side.

In this match, it was the girls versus the gorillas and the only weapon, a rubber ball. Had we other resources, perhaps we could have devised some defense, at least. But there was nowhere to hide and nothing with which to deflect the balls.

I decided to take the Sixties option - I rebelled against authority and held a sort of one-girl sit-out. I refused to play. There was nothing sportsman-like about this game, nothing fair, nothing to put us on an equal footing with our opponents.

This wasn’t a game, I told her in conclusion; this was target practice and I wasn’t having any part of it. If the boys wanted to play this game, let them play amongst themselves.

The teacher asked if any other girls felt that way. Nearly all did. Only two husky girls admitted they were up to the challenge, but they wouldn’t blame the smaller girls if they didn’t want to play.

Obama and Pelosi would like to change the rules of the American political game so as to leave the other side exposed and vulnerable. They want to play dodge ball. We conservatives, however, have more resources at our service than we did in the 8th grade.

Media coverage was very one-sided back in the Sixties, also. But that’s not the case today. We’re still out-numbered in outlets, but intellectually we hold our own, and in fact, we enjoy the advantage. We can Twitter as well as any young Liberal.

They would have us believe that we’re making ourselves targets by holding Tea Party rallies. Mocking us, they hope to intimidate any other followers. Some are frightened, but none more than the Liberals themselves. We’re fighting back and nothing daunts a bully more than a victim who suddenly turns on them.

We must hold our team captains to a higher standard, though. John McCain was clearly not that man. Various warning signs about him went unheeded. Average people were aware of them and perplexed when he commandeered the primaries.

The red light went on in the news interview with the Viet Cong prison guard. “He betrayed his own country,” said he. “He signed the paper.”

When you envision John McCain, his arms paralyzed, his hair white, his face burnt from the torture of the hot box, it’s difficult to condemn him for signing that paper. They’d only have had to say “Boo!” to me and my signature would have been on that form.

To censure him would be to censure every prisoner of war who’d ever gone through that kind of hell. Who would we be to judge him who’d never endured that sort of treatment?

Still, that statement, “He signed the paper” hovered, like a bothersome fly you don’t want to swat but won’t go away. Conservative Americans were placed in an awkward position regarding John McCain.

He had no reservations about crossing the aisle, either, particularly on immigration reform. If he signed that paper – which other POWs had not, though they suffered the same treatment and worse – if he crossed the aisle, what else would he sign, as president?

Still, impugning his patriotism is wrong. He’s an honorable, if at times misguided, man. I believe McCain loves America. His ambition, hubris, and determination to win at all costs, controverting the will of the people to choose their candidate, cost us the election and have helped bring us to this pass.

Of course, the crossover voters casting ballots for him in the Republican primary were of great value. Alas that we awoke to that danger too late. Enough people harbored doubts about McCain to avoid the polls in the 2008 election, and Obama became part of history.

If we are to learn the lessons from the past, as Rush Limbaugh bids us do, rather than simply gnaw on the old bones like a toothless dog, it’s that the people, not the money, power, and influence of political machinery must decide America’s direction.

That’s been the resounding message of the Tea Parties. We’ll not make the mistake again of leaving our representatives to their own, corrupt devices, to backroom deals and other shenanigans, beyond the light of reason and honesty.

If we knew John McCain would sign the paper, then it was a certainty Barack Obama would. Only those who voted for Obama not only entertained no doubts but welcomed that certainty.

Today, Barack Obama, displaying the same flaws as his opponent, will sign the paper that will betray our country and send it spiraling into the gulf of socialism and inevitably communism, and then totalitarianism.

To watch this event unfold will be certain torture for loyal Americans. We must meet the battle head-on, however, and not shirk from the coming onslaught against our rights as Americans.

We must stand our ground. We must not give up and we must not give in (inspired by Winston Churchill, my World War II-era mother drilled that bulldog mantra into my head when I was young and being bullied in school).

We cannot and must not walk away from our duty as Americans.

Historic Legislation?

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America.

Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Health Care Insurance Reform bill by a vote of 219-212.

In some extraordinary examples of propagandist journalism, the state-run media claimed the new bill will cover 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce deficits, and force insurers to provide previously banned coverage such as pre-existing conditions.

Even Fox News, always faithful to its conservative audience, chimed in with celebratory proclamations.

“Historic Legislation!”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a display of equally extraordinary poor saleswomanship, compared this new legislation to its socialist predecessor and grandparent, Social Security.

Never underestimate the ignorance of the American people, who succumbed to manipulative media stories of families beset by medical and financial problems, senior citizens who believed Hilary Clinton’s lies on the campaign trail (how’s that Medicare thing working for you, Grandma and Grandpa Citizen?), and suckers who believe in the free lunch program.

Social Security is bankrupt. There is a vault with endless rows of file cabinets filled with IOUs for all the money the government has handed out to retirees, the disabled, and illegal aliens. The American worker put in hard-earned money to the system, and received worthless paper money in return.

Is there something about the Democrats' lies, distortions, and misinformation that the American people failed to grasp all this time? Critics in the Thirties decried the Social Security system, but they were smugly dismissed as unsympathetic, heartless cranks.

The American people meanwhile, for generations, began collecting their Social Security benefits (at increasingly older ages), which they assured themselves they had justly earned. “This isn’t so bad,” they told themselves.

Then came the Great Society in 1965. Democrats promised a skeptical American public that Medicare would work. This generation of Liberals sneer at the Americans who finally woke up last year to the shouts of the Tea Party, realizing they’d been hoodwinked.

“You don’t want Universal Health Care, but you took the Medicare, didn’t you?” the Liberals caw.

What is that story again about the snake biting the trusting girl who took it into her arms to cradle it?

The American people were beguiled by the pitch about insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. When I was young, I thought it was terrible and heartless, too.

However, my mother explained it to me this way: suppose you opened a bank account today? You put in the minimum of $100. And then you wrote a check for $1,000. What would happen?

The check would bounce and you could be arrested for writing bad checks. Cruel as it may sound, you simply can’t sign up with an insurance company one day, then present them with a bill for say, dialysis, a week later.

A health insurer must look at your record the same way an auto insurer does. An auto insurer has a right to know if you have an accident or traffic violation record a mile long and deny you coverage. They must; taking on such a known risk is simply not fair to the other policyholders who’ve been paying their premiums.

At the very least, a health insurer would have to charge you a higher premium. A friend pays $1,200 a month in coverage. But she has huge medical expenses and has had them for a long time.

But never fear, America, Uncle Sam is here. He’s in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars. But he’s hewn down all those craven private insurers, or soon will do so. Bankrupt though he is, he can print money, and they can’t.

The money he’s handing out is worthless. He has nothing but IOUs in his vault. But who cares? You’ll be getting everything for free.

You can go back home to your 3,000 square foot McMansion you paid too much for, that you’re going bankrupt yourself just trying to heat in the winter, and watch Obama and Pelosi beam on your new HDTV you just maxed out your credit card to buy.

And comes April, when you see the now-enraged Tea Parties “shouting”, you can just hit “mute” and scorn them as “fools”. By November, you’ll have predictably forgotten all about this. You’ll be in the tank for the people who cared enough about you to enslave us forever in a fool’s paradise of endless debt.

You’ll forget all about the financial costs of Universal Health Care the way you’ve forgotten what money really looks like, how to balance a checkbook, what a savings account was, and how to clip coupons.

As for the cost of freedom? Oh, heck. What’s freedom? What’s liberty? What are they? Who cares, dude?! Freedom is so last-century, like the typewriter, the record player, and the Conestoga wagon, and just as worthless to you.

This is the 21st Century, the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Obama’s Hope and Change.

This is the United States of Socialist America!

The Colossus of Goads

President Obama has been on many tours:  The Candidate Tour, The Beer Tour, The Apology Tour. But he has a rival now for the laurel wreath spotlight: The Julius Caesar New England 2010 Tour, compliments of Tour Productions of Shakespeare.

The tour began at Brandeis University on Feb. 11th and will end in Morristown, N.J., on April 21st.

In one of AOL’s political chatrooms, Obamalytes, seeing victory in sight for their beloved Health Care Bill, gloated and jeered at its opponents. “Obama will ram it down your throats!” they exclaimed.

Today’s newspaper depicted Nancy Pelosi gleefully parading about the Capitol, her entourage in tow, bearing a gavel the size of a sledgehammer. Obama was said to be waiting in the wings to triumphantly sign the bill, a legion of his SEIU sycophants eager to throw down palm fronds before him.

“What means this shouting? I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king?”

“He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves.”

The “Colussus” of which Shakespeare wrote is the famous Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. The statue was erected in the city of Rhodes on the Greek island of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos between 292 and 280 BC.

Towering above the entrance to the harbor at 107 feet tall, the statue honored Helios, the god of the sun and husband of Rhodos, for whom the island is named.

Helios was his Greek name. Apollo was his Latin name, or Apollon, the destroyer.

Shakespeare’s Caesar was wary of the man who called him a “Colossus.”

“Let me have men about me that are fat,” he tells his loyal friend, Marc Antony. “Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep at night. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

Caesar goes on to say, “He reads much. He is a great observer, and he looks quite through the deeds of men.”

As they exit the scene, Caesar bids Marc Antony to speak in his right ear, because his left ear is deaf. Are all Caesars thus afflicted, that they hear only with one ear and one mind?

Yet when it’s announced that Caesar will be crowned king by the Roman Senate, in essence, deifying him, an angry Cassius plots to spill Caesar’s blood in the marketplace. His contempt for the Romans is a great as it is for Caesar himself.

“He would not be a wolf but that he sees the Romans are but sheep.”

Americans are not Romans with a thirst for blood. Our civilized, federal republic offers a representative government, with a guarantee of the right of free speech. Our citizens are not ignorant and illiterate. We are not sheep, forced to bleat:

“Ohhh – baaaah – maaaah!”

There are sheep amongst us, though, as illiterate, ignorant, and poor as the mobs of ancient Rome. If we are not to be the Cassiuses and Brutuses of our time, driven to a blood-thirsty madness by a pompous egomaniac, then we must continue our civil protests and not give up shouting until the ignorant can be made to understand.

Let Caesar continue to bestride the Capitol, with his nymph Rhodos clearing the way before him with her sledgehammer. Let Americans watch their modern-day Apollon with the searching eyes of Cassius, but the patient wisdom of Christ.

Politics, it appears, is parading along the same two thousand year-old route, with backroom deals, bribes, chicanery, and lies. The Romans, however, had not a single, omnipotent God recording all that passed below, mightier than Apollon and more just.

Our job, our duty to future generations, is to defend freedom to the very last. As long as one heart is left that beats for liberty, they have not won. The battle is for the mind and spirit.

Our modern-day Apollon would will to the people property which they already possess.

We shall will to posterity our freedom.