If you mouthed off to an adult – even a teacher in school – you’d more than likely get the taste slapped out of your mouth, and anybody who saw you get smacked would assume you had it coming.

Doctors made house calls, and they were usually paid in cash for that service.

Boosting a kid’s self-esteem was maybe the last thing any teacher cared about. Forcing their students to study and get good grades was the top priority, and accomplishing that goal naturally led to kids feeling better about themselves.

Climate change was a concept we were keenly aware of, although, back then we just called it weather.

Black folks were called blacks, colored people or negroes by most whites and blacks alike. There was no such thing as an African-American. Even immigrants from Africa who had passed their citizenship tests weren’t called African-Americans, they were just Americans like the rest of us.

There wasn’t a single kid in my school who couldn’t read, write, do basic math or recite the Pledge of Allegiance by the time they were eight years old… not one.

The word gay just meant cheerful.

Wearing a helmet while riding your bike was far more dangerous than not wearing one, because if other kids saw you in sissy gear like that, they’d beat the crap out of you.

Israelis were known as the survivors of the worst genocide in modern history, and Palestinians were thought of as just a bunch of Arab Nazis pretending to be the victims of Jewish tyranny.

A rich person was somebody you aspired to be like, not somebody you sought to punish.

Communism was an almost treasonous concept that only doped-up, America-hating hippies experimented with.

Every classroom in my grammar school had a Christmas tree in it at Christmas time, and if any parent had complained and tried to force us to remove them, that person’s car would have ended up with sugar in its gas tank, a busted windshield, four flat tires and the words ‘Merry Christmas’ spray-painted on its hood.

Our heroes were people like George Washington, Neil Armstrong, Mother Teresa, Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, General George S. Patton and Albert Einstein.

We understood that the Vietnam War wasn’t lost by U.S. military forces, it was lost by incompetent politicians in Washington DC.

Only wimps played tee-ball.

Most folks had home computers, although they were more commonly known as calculators.

After school, on weekends and during the summer months – unless the weather was particularly bad – kids could be found outside playing with their friends. We didn’t hang around inside, watching TV or playing board games before dinner, and even if we’d wanted to do that, our parents would have forbade it.

Most black voters were Republicans.

Popular music was incredibly diverse, and most performers knew how to play instruments, compose complex melodies and lyrics, and sing entire songs without proving to their audiences that some notes can, indeed, be strangled to death.

Able-bodied people who received public assistance were pitied by other folks, and most of them felt shame for allowing themselves to become dependent on the government for their sustenance.

Nobody played any game just for the fun of it. That’s why we always kept score. If you weren’t playing to win, the game was pointless.

If you saw a grown man cry, it was probably because either his mother or his dog had just died.

It was mostly Europeans who thought of Hitler’s Nazi party as a right-wing political movement. Americans generally understood what the term National Socialist implied.

Reality TV shows included Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Candid Camera and The Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau.

We didn’t need government warming labels on everything. We knew that electrical appliances were dangerous if used improperly, that smoking was bad for you, that swallowing things like marbles and those little, plastic, toy soldiers could choke you to death, and that placing a scalding hot cup of coffee between your thighs while riding in a car was as good a way as any of proving to emergency room staff just how freakin’ stupid some people can be.

Books were more popular than food stamps.

Respect was something that your parents were entitled to, your friends earned, and politicians pretended they deserved.

Gas station attendants didn’t just take your money, they pumped your gas, washed your windshield, checked your oil level and even applied a pressure gauge to your tires if you asked them to. And their service didn’t cost you a penny extra.

Only teenage boys bragged to their friends about having sex, especially when they hadn’t. Most teenage girls denied that they’d had sex, especially when they had.

Heavy drinkers didn’t have a disease, they simply lacked self-control. Diseases were things you had no control over.

A liberal was an open-minded, intellectually honest individual who looked at all sides of an issue before arriving at a thoughtful conclusion, not a scatterbrained, reactionary jackass whose natural inclination was to spout socialist theory as a default position on practically every topic.

Everybody who was born in America was a native American.

Men were builders, risk-takers, hunters, warriors, protectors and heads of their households. Women were refiners, nesters, nurturers, teachers and disciplinarians who were usually willing to let their male counterparts delude themselves into thinking that men were the heads of their households.

Most folks understood the difference between discrimination and bigotry.

Marriage was an institution that a man and a woman entered into when they wanted to exhibit their commitment to one another, their willingness to accept adult responsibilities, and their desire to legitimize their offspring. It had nothing to do with making a political point.

Teenagers bringing guns to their high schools was commonplace – especially during hunting season – and anyone who complained about such a thing was generally considered a nutcase.

Illegal aliens were called illegal aliens by practically everyone, because that term best described foreigners who’d snuck into our country in defiance of our laws.

The greatest movie ever made was The Great Escape.

On the scale of human trustworthiness, the vast majority of politicians fell somewhere between used car salesmen and coke whores. In fact, the only people who ever exhibited any level of trust in politicians were the people who had enough money to buy them off.

Plumbers were more respected than Harvard law students.

My friends and I genuinely cared about nature because we spent a lot of time hanging out in it. We went into the woods and built forts, fished in streams, and made campfires, employing the lessons we’d learned in the Boy Scouts and from studying American Indian cultures. We respected nature because we knew what nature really was; a hostile, unforgiving place that would kill you if you didn’t know your way around it. We loved the challenge of the wilderness, and soldiering through it made us appreciate our cushy home lives all the more.

Making fun of other kids or calling them names – while generally frowned upon – wasn’t considered bullying. A bully was a guy who punched you in the head and took your lunch money.

The President of the United States wasn’t a father figure to anybody but his own kids.

Mainstream news reporters were pretty much the same sort of biased, dim-witted, arrogant, assclowns that they are today, only we didn’t have the internet at our disposal to easily prove just how unreliable they were.

Video games were things you played at arcades, unless you were lucky enough to get an Atari Pong console for Christmas.

Abortion wasn’t a privacy issue, it was a moral issue, and people who committed abortions weren’t “pro-choice”, they were baby killers.

The application of oil and its byproducts to run machinery and generate electricity was widely understood to be as important to the advancement of human civilization as the discovery and utilization of fire, the practices of cultivating crops and breeding livestock, and the development of a written language.

Nobody I knew gave half a damn what people in other countries thought about anything.

Concepts like honor, integrity, courage and chivalry were alive and well.

The United States of America was the greatest nation in the history of the world, bar none, and just about every American school kid knew why. Our brilliantly conceived Constitution, Judeo-Christian ethic, free market economic system, adherence to the rule of law and willingness to embrace people from every culture on Earth made us great, and we were conspicuously proud of that fact.

What do I mean by that? Well, it’s quite simple really, if success is defined as accomplishing one’s goals then who among us can deny that President Obama has achieved nearly everything he’s set out to do since taking office?

Think about it, during the 2008 campaign cycle he promised to transform our health care system. He promised that his energy policies would dramatically increase energy costs. He promised to redistribute the citizenry’s wealth in a manner previously undreamed of by his leftist peers in government. He promised that he would pull American troops out of Iraq, regardless of the situation on the ground. He promised to appoint left-wing activist judges to the federal courts. In essence, he promised to fundamentally change America, and damned if that isn’t exactly what he’s gone and done.

Many of you will remember a few years back when the leftist media got all bent out of shape because Rush Limbaugh told us that he hoped Obama would fail. The MSM lemmings assumed that what he meant was he hoped America would fail under Obama’s administration, but that’s not the case at all. What Rush was hoping for was that Obama would fail to get his way and further erode our nation with his leftist machinations. Unfortunately, Obama’s “hope” has won out over Rush’s thus far, and the “change” he promised is now evident all around us.

Just because we, the conservative majority, despise what is going on in our country today doesn’t make the man who is chiefly responsible for our woes a failure. Quite the contrary, he is a maddeningly successful politician by any reasonable measure. The failure does not lie with Barack Obama, my friends, it lies with those of us on the right who have yet to stop the most anti-American man to ever control the Executive branch of our federal government from getting his way at almost every turn.

Now, I know what some of you are going to say. Ed, our country is failing BECAUSE of Obama’s policies. THAT is why we call his administration a failure! Don’t you get it?

Well, yes, I do appreciate where you’re coming from and agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, but I still object to the terminology being used by every GOP primary contender whenever Obama’s name is mentioned. I mean, cripes, is there a bigger cliche’ in all of politics than saying “my opponent’s policies have failed”? How about, instead of characterizing the Obama presidency in this way, we start calling it what it actually is for a change?

That is why I hereby propose that, from now on, every right-winger in America use the term ‘virulently oppressive’ to describe the current regime. After all,  what is the upcoming election anyway if not a desperate battle between those who believe in the virtues of individual liberty and those who endorse governmental tyranny? If someone out there can describe it in more exacting terms, please feel free to do so at your earliest convenience.

Name:

Undisclosed

Facts:

1. She accused Herman Cain of sexually harassing her in the late 1990s while she and he both worked for the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

2. Her claims were found to be baseless following an internal investigation.

3. She left the organization and later received $35,000 in severance pay.

SECOND ACCUSER

Name:

Karen Kraushaar

Facts:

1. She accused Herman Cain of sexually harassing her in the late 1990s while she and he both worked for the NRA.

2. She admitted that his behavior was not overtly sexual in nature.

3. Her claims were found to be baseless following an internal investigation.

4. She left the organization following Mr. Cain’s resignation as President and CEO of the NRA and later received an undisclosed amount of money in severance pay.

5. She is currently employed by the Obama administration as Communications Director for the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration.

THIRD ACCUSER

Name:

Undisclosed

Facts:

1. She claims that Herman Cain behaved aggressively and inappropriately toward her in the late 1990s while she and he both worked for the NRA, alleging that he had once extended to her a private invitation to join him at his corporate apartment. (Note: no evidence has surfaced to show that such an apartment existed.)

2. She never formally accused Mr. Cain of any misconduct.

FOURTH ACCUSER

Name:

Sharon Bialek

Facts:

1. She claims she met with Herman Cain in Washington, DC in 1997, after losing her job at the Educational Foundation of the National Restaurant Association, to discuss future employment opportunities. Upon arriving at the Capital Hilton, she claims she found that Mr. Cain had upgraded her room to a suite. She further claims that she had drinks with him at the hotel’s bar and later went to dinner with him at an Italian restaurant where he allegedly asked her why she was meeting with him. She then claims she drove with Mr. Cain to the Restaurant Association’s headquarters and was fondled by him in the car as they parked nearby.

2. She never brought criminal charges or a civil suit against him.

3. She has hired infamous media-whore, Gloria Allred, as her attorney in the matter, even though criminal charges are not possible due to the fact that the statute of limitations has expired, and any civil suit would be impossible to win without any actual evidence to support her claims.

4. She claims she told her (now former) boyfriend about the incident in 1997, yet he claims to have first heard about the accusations only two weeks prior to her public announcement this past Monday.

5. WIND radio host, Amy Jacobson, claims she witnessed Bialek embracing Mr. Cain and acting friendly toward him only one month ago, while backstage at the WIND-sponsored TeaCon Conference at the Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center in Schaumburg, Illinois.

FIFTH ACCUSER

Name:

Donna Donella

Facts:

1. She claims Herman Cain requested that she help arrange a meeting for him with an Egyptian businesswoman who had asked him a question during a USAID speech he delivered nine years ago. She alleges that after the seminar was over, Mr. Cain approached her and a colleague and asked if she could put him in touch with the audience member so he could give her a more thorough answer to her question over dinner.

2. She claims that she was suspicious of Cain’s motives and declined to arrange the meeting, yet she and two of her female colleagues then agreed to go to dinner with Mr. Cain themselves that very evening.

3. She then stated that Mr. Cain did not behave in a sexually inappropriate manner toward any of the women present.

The DaleyGator News Blog

http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/

And the following day, those same stalwart propaganda-knights got to expend a considerable amount of energy telling all of us what we think about the aforementioned debate… as well as glorifying the pointless exploits of those ridiculous, spoiled brats who comprise the ‘Occupy something-or-other’ crusade and, of course, fiercely ignoring the numerous criminal activities of the Obama administration.

But enough of that ugliness. On to my penetrative, insightful and thought-provoking – yet still humble – views concerning the eight GOP presidential candidates who participated in the round-table debate of October 11, 2011.

First off, Newt won the thing. That was clear to anyone who witnessed the spectacle in its entirety. You are free to disagree with me on that score, of course, but keep in mind that if you do you will prove to me that you are very nearly as featherbrained as Joe Biden, and really, what good can come of that?

If you ask me – and what serious person wouldn’t? – Mr. Gingrich proved beyond all doubt that he truly is “the smartest guy in the room,” especially when the only other people in said room are his fellow Republican presidential candidates and a few, self-important Obama apologists disguised as impartial journalists.

Furthermore, he’s the best debater of the lot, and to deny that simple truth is to turn one’s back on all vestiges of reality. Sure, Newt’s got his negative attributes like everyone else, but when it comes to verbally sparring over the important issues of the day, nobody possesses more general knowledge of those issues, is better prepared and, therefore, is more intellectually intimidating than former Speaker Gingrich.

To borrow from the hipster vernacular of the day, he da man!

Before I continue, I must relate that I can feel the eye-daggers of Ron Paul‘s more virulent supporters piercing my virtual heart at this point, and for the record, you can all bend over and plant a great big, sloppy kiss right on my virtual ass.

Dr. Paul is a perennial loser when it comes to running for President of the United States, and the fact that he’s now older than dirt doesn’t exactly enhance his odds of winning the 2012 Republican nomination.

But I’m getting WAY ahead of myself here.

Rick Santorum did himself a favor by being the most in-your-face participant of Tuesday night’s debate, and although he received the least number of questions throughout the evening, he made the most of the opportunities he had to speak his mind. Sadly, while the former U.S. Senator is a relatively bright individual, he also has the personality of toenail clippings.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with most of the man’s political positions, and I believe that his performance during this event warrants rating him the second-place debater of the evening. However, I get the distinct impression that if Santorum ever managed to laugh out loud, my ears would explode from shock.

Herman Cain, in contrast, is the sort of guy you’d expect to offer up a good belly-laugh every now and again, even in the face of harsh criticism. He’s easily the most affable and seemingly genuine of all the right-wingers currently running for president and, more importantly, he is slowly learning that details matter in a GOP primary race.

Nobody at that Washington Post/Bloomberg-provided table was confronted more harshly, more often or by more people than former CEO Cain, yet he mostly held his own, and it is not insignificant to note that he did so with confidence and composure. That’s why I rate Herman’s latest debate performance third overall.

Then there’s Michele Bachmann – or as I like to call her, Sarah Palin light – who was much less aggressive than I had expected she’d be. Apparently, somebody on her campaign staff got hold of her before the debate and explained that snippiness is not the most attractive quality in a lady, and that she might want to try accentuating her intellectual side a little more.

Whatever Michele‘s adviser(s) said to her, it worked, because she came off as a bright, business-like, and even marginally cheerful woman for the first time in recent memory. I don’t know if she helped her poll numbers in any substantial way, but at least she didn’t say anything that might cause folks to begin referring to her as the GOP’s ‘Cruella de Vil’, and for that she get’s my fourth-place debate ribbon.

Which brings me to Rick Perry. Of the four debates he’s engaged in thus far, this one did the least amount of damage to his crumbling campaign. In other words, Perry didn’t shoot himself in the foot again, but he also didn’t say anything particularly memorable, nor did he appear very presidential throughout the event.

That having been said, there is still time for the Texas governor to get his act together and pull himself out of the hole he’s been digging since the first debate he appeared in. Fortunately for Rick, he didn’t bring a shovel to Tuesday’s debate, so I’ll award him fifth place for at least managing to avoid complete electoral disaster for a while yet.

By now I’m sure that many of my fellow Republicans are asking: hey, where’s Mitt? The answer is: he’s right here in my number six slot. I know that a lot of you are shocked and appalled that I would dare rate former Governor Romney so poorly. After all, he IS the favorite of the GOP elite and the mainstream press alike… plus his hair is to die for.

The problem with Mitt is that, while he is a smooth-talking dude to be sure, over half of the words that come out of his mouth add up to complete bullshit. Few people possess his innate ability to chatter on endlessly while simultaneously saying almost nothing, and although the man is also adept at masking his contempt for honesty with a toothy smile, that’s no reason for me to treat this media-ingratiating bastard like a serious-minded debater.

Now onto the most annoying candidate of the bunch, Ron Paul. What can I say about the good doctor that hasn’t already been used as a punchline in many of the jokes told by actual Republicans since the aged congressman decided to throw his hat into the presidential ring for the umpteenth time? Hmmm… well, there is the fact that he was recently exposed for wearing eyebrow toupees. Really, Ron? REALLY?

Most of Paul‘s diehard fans expected that this debate would amount to his shining moment in the sun once they heard it would be entirely focused on economics. Ironically, that fact proved to be his biggest hurdle, because even most anti-Paul conservatives already agree with the guy generally on economic issues. What people wanted to know was who ELSE has sound fiscal views. As it turns out, several of his fellow GOPers proved to be just as well-versed in the subject as the Texas libertarian, which made him seem largely irrelevant. That’s why Ron Paul ranks seventh in a debate that many folks thought he’d win in a walk.

Last (and yes, least) we come to Jon Huntsman. I suspect that the only reason why this man still gets invited to these debates is because the event planners find even-numbers of people on a stage to be more aesthetically pleasing than otherwise. How else can one explain the continued appearance of this tedious and unpopular dullard at such venues?

I know, his hair is nearly as impeccable as Mitt Romney‘s, but practically everything else about the former Utah Governor screams “assclown” with a capital ASS. All I can say to you, Mr. Huntsman, is please go away. Even Ron Paul thinks you’re a loser, and the only reason you managed to rank eighth in this debate is because Donald Trump decided not to run for president this time around.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States because, even if most Americans don’t understand what baseline budgeting is, credit agencies do, and they aren’t fooled by the media’s insane mischaracterizations of the “historic debt ceiling deal” reached in Congress several days ago.

To begin with, practically every story written about the debt fight over the past few weeks has included some reference to an ‘imminent debt default’ if our government failed to reach some sort of agreement on extending the debt limit yet again. This term – or something like it – was used as a scare tactic by both the Democrat party and the mainstream press, who knew damned well that such a default was NEVER going to happen, regardless of whether Congress and the President came to an agreement on the debt ceiling matter.

The only way the U.S. would have defaulted on its debt-payment responsibilities is if President Obama had decided to not make good on them for purely political reasons. According to the Treasury Department, existing federal revenues were more than sufficient to cover these costs, as well as Social Security, Medicare and military expenditures.

So when Barack Obama said he couldn’t guarantee that crucial payments to our nation’s elderly citizens, disabled folks and military personnel would be made if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, he was flat-out lying!

To make matters worse, the GOP leadership in both the House and Senate did little if anything to dispel the fears of their constituency which had been fueled by an irresponsible news media over and over again. They failed embarrassingly to make it crystal clear to the people who elected them that, no matter what, our debt obligations WOULD be met, those in genuine need WOULD be taken care of, and our most brave and honorable defenders WOULD be paid for their service to our country.

The fact that they allowed this Democrat-invented lie to fester in the minds of the American people is nearly as shameful as the lie itself, yet that is not the only false notion they were complicit in fostering recently. Another blatantly untrue narrative embraced by the leaders of both the Democrat and Republican parties was that the final deal they “hashed out” would somehow reduce the size and scope of our national debt, that there were actual spending cuts in it, and that such a scheme was “the best we could do” under the circumstances.

I won’t bother recounting why NONE OF THAT IS TRUE. Those who already understand why, don’t need me to remind them, and those who don’t get it at this point, never will. All anyone really needs to know is that the two branches of our federal government responsible for the course-correction of that economic Titanic we call our ship of state have once again proved that no serious adults are currently running the show in Washington DC.

The S&P’s actions of Friday last are a direct repudiation of our so-called leaders and their utter refusal to do exactly what the members of the tea party movement have been begging them to do since day one; CUT SPENDING NOW!

It turns out that all those slack-jawed, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, violent, racist, flyover-country, would-be terrorists – who insist upon calling themselves patriots in spite of the vicious, defamatory insults hurled at them every day – knew one thing that all the Harvard-educated elitists on Pennsylvania Avenue didn’t… that “government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem!”

Apparently, tea partiers are just smart enough to understand that Ronald Reagan’s famous indictment of the federal overlord class is even more righteous today than it was in 1981. Reagan’s remarks during his first inaugural address were not only prescient, but eloquent in their simplicity, yet TO THIS DAY the majority of our elected representatives are either too dumb, too naive, too corrupt or too self-absorbed to heed his words.

Frankly, I don’t give half a damn why so many of them refuse to do what average Americans have known for decades is the right thing, all I’m concerned with is that they HAVE refused to do so. That’s why most of them need to be replaced as soon as possible for the sake of future American generations of every race, ethnicity, religion or political persuasion.

So go ahead and call me a right-wing extremist, an ideological terrorist, an economic ignoramus, a hobbit (I know, right?) or any other opportunistic nonsense-name you can dream up. None of that pointless rhetoric matters to me or to the millions of people out there who know the score and refuse to yield in the face of such juvenile political tactics.

We are done playing your moronic games while our country sinks with ever increasing speed into the quagmire of ineptitude that history will label this particular government’s fiscal policies. To put it simply, time is not running out on you useless, self-congratulatory do-nothings in the federal government, IT HAS RUN OUT!

Prepare to be vanquished.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Edward L. Daley
Owner Of The Daily Benefactor
http://home.roadrunner.com/~daleytimespost/dailybenefactor.html

Okay, so some of the things I’m going to write herein will probably piss a few people off, but hey, you can’t please everybody… if you could, you’d make Jesus look like one of those silly pop music icons that spring up every few years and then fade into obscurity just as readily.

Suffice it to say that even conservative-minded folks like you (Paul) and I are going to disagree from time to time, and that’s actually a good thing. To paraphrase the famous chewing gum manufacturer, William Wrigley: when two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

And so begins my critique of your piece on the subject of ‘Sister Wives’, the Learning Channel and the polygamist culture in general.

In your article, you write: “If you want to see another blatant example of social activism at the expense of traditional marriage, go no further than The Learning Channel (TLC). Part of TLC’s knowledge-enhancing program lineup is the show featuring polygamist Kody Brown and his ever-growing, Utah-based harem of ‘Sister Wives.’”

On this point you’ll get only minimal argument from me. TLC may well be engaging in social activism in this case, although, like most television networks today, it may just as easily be that the folks who run that network are perfectly willing to exploit any situation in order to improve their company’s “bottom line”.

To put it another way, it just might be that TLC is merely a network of ratings whores with no real ideological dog in the ‘marriage wars’ hunt. To be perfectly honest, I don’t watch the network, so I cannot speak authoritatively on TLC’s socio-political leanings or the possible motives of its programming staff. I have seen several episodes of ‘Sister wives’ online, however, and I find it to be a fascinating – if somewhat disturbing – show that I intend to watch again in the near future. Why, you may ask? Well, because I am intrigued by the more twisted and perverse aspects of the human psyche, that’s why. Sue me.

You go on to write: “The show, Sister Wives, despite being given a positive spin, still highlights the cult-like mentality of polygamy groups.”

Now this I agree with wholeheartedly. Indeed, there is a cultish component to the way the women on this program behave with regard to their “husband” Kody, and it carries over to the manner in which their respective children interact with each other and their collective parental unit. That having been said, I find this component to be no more pronounced in the case of the fundamentalist Mormon sect in question, than it is in the more widely accepted religious practices of – say – Jehovah’s Witnesses, Krishnas or Scientologists.

You continue: “Kody Brown emanates a shyster vibe that is common with manipulators found in cult settings. He preaches to his bedroom cohorts that they are each individually special and respected while at the same time adding new women to his brothel.”

Again, I cannot argue with your basic assessment here, yet I feel the need to remind you that this very same “shyster vibe” is also given off by Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Anthony Weiner, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank and practically every other prominent political figure in the Democrat party today. You’ll note that, as of this moment, the majority of American citizens have failed utterly to criminalize the DNC.

You opine: “It is doubtful that Kody Brown’s cherub-like smile would withstand a request from his stable to bring another man into the love circle. I suspect that would spoil the “specialness” of these marriages.”

Of this I have little doubt. His mentality bares a striking resemblance to that of any male adulterer in the world who routinely makes excuses for his own cheating, yet would likely go ballistic if his poor, suffering wife were to ever have a sexual affair. Still, while a certain amount of hypocrisy does exist in this situation, there is a substantial difference between Kody and your average adulterous husband, which is that he isn’t committing adultery – at least as I understand the definition of the word.

What these people – “the Browns” – are engaged in is a consensual, adult religious practice. And while I may personally find it to be weird and even creepy – which I do – I cannot, in good conscious, condone its prohibition under the law as you seem to do in your article.

You note: “Utah has anti-polygamy laws and this faction has more than written their confession to the crime of polygamy on national television.”

Which begs the question: what right does the state of Utah – or any other government in the U.S. – have to imprison someone for engaging in consensual sex outside of their legally recognized marriage, especially when their lawful spouse is not only aware of the act, but actually encourages it? In this case, Kody and three of his four ‘sister wives’ may claim to be married in the eyes of God, but they are not – and cannot – be lawfully wedded in the eyes of any government in these United States.

So far as I am aware, Mr. Brown has never attempted to apply for a second legal marriage license while still being wed to his first wife, and until he does, his other “marriages” mean nothing in any legal sense of the word. So where’s the crime?

You also remark: “Sister Wives is nothing less than a counterculture advocacy program that undermines biblical values and promotes sexual perversion.”

Once again I find myself in agreement with you on this point, but even though I consider such advocacy disquieting, I refuse to condemn Kody and his clan as a criminal enterprise. Is it an immoral one? By normal Christian standards it clearly is. Is it potentially corruptive to the generally accepted institution of traditional marriage in America? I think so. Is it a crime to sleep with a bunch of people while you’re legally married to one person? It may be in Utah, but it shouldn’t be, at least not if the words “free country” still have any real meaning in America.

To give you a good idea of just how astoundingly weak Boehner’s proposal is, consider that the budget deficit for February of this year ALONE was $223 Billion, or almost four times the amount that the Speaker proposes to cut by year’s end.

Even if the Senate agrees to sign on to these cuts, Obama’s obscene spending policies will still add another $1.6 Trillion to our already crippling and unsustainable $14.2 Trillion national debt.

Add to that, the fact that the President has crafted a monstrously irresponsible $3.7 Trillion budget for fiscal year 2012, and Boehner ‘s $61 Billion scheme is exposed for the pathetic monetary joke that it is.

To put it bluntly, if the Republican leader of the House is not willing to propose at least $700 Billion in cuts this year in the hopes that he may be able to strike a $350 Billion deal down the road, then he has no business being Speaker, or even being a member of the GOP leadership.

Sure, I understand that the Speaker of the House has no power to force the democrat-controlled Senate or the President to accept such a proposal, but he does have the authority to set the budget-cutting negotiations bar as high as he likes.

I ask you, why allow the Democrat leadership to malign and demonize you over a mere $61 Billion in proposed budget reductions when they could easily be maligning and demonizing you over a number many times higher than that?

At the end of the day, you’d have to be the most inept haggler in the world not to get at least a quarter of a Trillion dollars in cuts out of the bastards, and what’s more, they’d come away from the experience understanding that you actually are what you said you were in November.

Unfortunately for us all, John Boehner is not what he claimed to be during the conservative electoral tsunami of 2010.

In fact, he is a demonstrably unmotivated, unremarkable and unserious individual. who’s just made it painfully clear that he has no intention of confronting the tax-and-spend left in any appreciable way.

As a deist, I’m generally regarded by most religious people as being a little weird, which suits me just fine, since I AM a little weird… and believe me, religion has absolutely nothing to do with that fact. Still, I’ve always been fascinated by religion, and that’s why I’m writing this article today.

For you see, I’ve come to conclude over the course of my 48 years on Earth that there are good religious practices and bad ones. I shall not name the various memberships of either camp here, but I will outline, in the simplest terms available to me, the necessary elements of what I believe to be a ‘good religion’.

In my view, a good religion is one in which its practitioners understand that a person cannot force another to honestly and wholeheartedly embrace any particular belief system. True faith can only be achieved of one’s own free will, devoid of coercion, bribery or any other illicit act.

Secondly, no good religion systemically endeavors to punish people for not embracing it. If one truly believes that one’s faith is the only means by which one may enter into the kingdom of God, such a person would necessarily pity a non-believer, and one does not punish those for whom one has sympathy.

Lastly, no practitioner of a good religion would seek to openly demean, degrade or defame the good religion embraced by another, even though one may strongly disagree with the latter’s method of worship. One may attempt to convert a person of a different faith to their own, but only via positive means, lest one be essentially corruptive in nature.

After all, if the point of embracing a religious faith is to find oneness with God (and please tell me, what other point is there?) what Godly purpose would it serve a person to embrace a religion which causes harm to non-believers for simply failing to share in said faith? Are not all people created equal in God’s eyes? And if one is judged wicked by God, isn’t it God who determines one’s ultimate fate?

I rest my case.

As Monica Crowley wrote recently in an opinion article titled ‘Obama Channels His Inner Mubarak’ ¹:

Over the past week, Obama’s signature “achievement,” the monstrous ObamaCare, was ruled unconstitutional by a second federal judge. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson stated that his declaratory judgment that the entire law be voided was a de facto injunction. In other words, without an administration request for a stay, Judge Vinson’s ruling stands. The federal and state governments should thus cease and desist. The current status of ObamaCare is that it’s been declared unconstitutional and all implementation must stop.

Obama’s reaction? “What? Did someone say something?”

As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, “The Obama administration said it has no plans to halt implementation of the law.” A senior administration official said, “We will continue to operate as we have previously.”

In other words: Up yours, judicial branch!

What do you think would happen to you, an average American citizen, if you decided to simply ignore a federal injunction against you? Do you think anyone in any position of authority would support that decision, even if they espoused your political views? Do you honestly believe that you’d be allowed to continue doing whatever you’d been enjoined from doing indefinitely, or is it more likely that you’d be readily prosecuted for your crime?

Don’t bother addressing those questions, because we all know what the answers would be. However, it seems quite apparent that if you’re an elected official to a high government office in this country – in this case, the highest – then the rules the rest of us have to live by don’t apply to you.

If that isn’t so, why then aren’t our congressional leaders – especially in the Republican party – currently in the process of drafting articles of impeachment against Barack Obama for High Crimes and Misdemeanors?

Perhaps our representatives in Congress don’t think that a single, criminal act constitutes a substantial enough affront to our Constitution and the rule of law to warrant impeachment proceedings. But if that’s the case, one needs to consider that this is not the first time President Obama has willfully disregarded an unambiguous federal court ruling against his administration. As Crowley aslo noted in her op-ed:

In another stunning example of the executive running roughshod over the judiciary, another federal judge, Martin Feldman in New Orleans, ruled this week that the Obama administration was in contempt for blowing off his ruling lifting the Deepwater drilling moratorium. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, Obama halted offshore drilling. Feldman struck down the moratorium. Obama’s Interior Department went ahead with another moratorium, which was rescinded in October, but replaced with onerous new drilling safety rules. Feldman struck those down as well.

This week, the judge found that the Interior Department acted with “determined disregard” for his ruling when it deliberately re-instituted policies that restricted offshore drilling. “Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling. “Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.

You read that right, the Executive branch of our federal government has been found in contempt of court for essentially doing the same thing it more recently did with regard to Judge Vinson’s ruling over the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’, which was to ignore it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we just elect Republicans by huge numbers in the mid-terms so that we could put a stop to irresponsible spending, governmental intrusiveness and blatant abuses of power at all levels of government?

Is it just me, or was eliminating ObamaCare not extremely high on the priority list of most Republicans last November?

Again, there’s no need to answer such rhetorical queries, since we all know exactly why the GOP gained control of our House of Representatives this year. What we don’t know is why our newly elected Congresspersons on the right aren’t raising the roof off the U.S. Capitol in outrage over the Obama administration’s blatant disregard for our most fundamental laws.

Perhaps Congress is so used to being held in contempt by its constituency that it just doesn’t take the charge seriously anymore, who knows. Still, there’s another charge to consider, even if contempt of court doesn’t fully ignite one’s impeachment passions.

In the opening sentence of this article I mentioned that the president (and, necessarily, others in his administration) may just be guilty of seditious conspiracy. The following article by Karl Denninger titled ‘Health Care Unconstitutional: Obama Sedition?’ ² should help you to understand why.

Denninger writes:

This is now a full-blown Constitutional Crisis. The Executive’s willful, intentional and publicly-stated refusal to honor a declaratory judgment is an open act of willful and intentional violation of The Separation of Powers in The Constitution and, if combined with the use of or threat of use of force as is always present when government coercion is employed, treads awfully close to the line, and may cross it, of 18 USC Ch 115 Sec 2384, to wit:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

The exercise of power by the Executive and Judicial branch, under which the Internal Revenue and Health and Human Services operate, inherently constitutes the use of force.

When such is used to “prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of The United States” the parties that have done so, it can be argued, have engaged in a Seditious Conspiracy.

A “full-blown Constitutional Crisis”? Probably so, but you wouldn’t know it judging by the way the Republican-controlled House is behaving today. Sure, we’re all used to the mainstream news media giving Obama a pass on every act of corruption he commits. After all, his policy decisions are HISTORIC – which, in media newspeak means unassailable – so don’t expect any reporter to delve into the unsavory question of whether or not his deeds are actually legal. Still, I expected just a little bit more from the right-leaning men and women we recently elected to represent our interests in Congress.

Sadly, what these folks seem to have rapidly forgotten – assuming they ever really meant what they promised us during their campaigns – is that the number one goal of all true conservatives in this country is to see their government comport itself honorably.

I ask you, where is the honor in allowing the head of the Executive branch to trample, in a most shockingly belligerent manner, upon the very laws he has sworn before God and country to preserve, protect and defend?

By Edward L. Daley

1 – http://biggovernment.com/mcrowley/2011/02/05/obama-channels-his-inner-mubarak
2. – http://beforeitsnews.com/story/389/065/The_Market_Ticker_-_Health_Care_Unconstitutional:_Obama_Sedition.html

That having been said, if I were a politician today, I’d be spending all my time speaking out against the so called “enhanced” pat-downs that they’re undertaking at American airports of late.

When I first heard the term ‘enhanced pat-down’, I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. Initially I had envisioned something on par with the sort of physical contact one might expect if one were ever to meet an overly enthusiastic daytime television starlet at an Emmy awards ceremony; gropey and embarrassing, but not technically felonious in nature.

Once I found out what the Transportation Security Administration actually meant by “enhanced”, it occurred to me that the only time in my life I’d ever allowed a total stranger to touch me in such an intimate fashion, it cost me $60 in advance, and afterward I couldn’t find my watch.

In my opinion, one of the more disquieting aspects of these enhanced friskings is that they don’t even include “happy endings”, at least not in any appreciable sense of the term. I mean, if I wanted to be teased for no good reason, I’d call one of those adult 900 numbers for $4.99 a minute and then hang up before the charges reached ten bucks.

Worst of all, everyone at the tippy-top of the very government that is forcing this appalling diddle-fest on the rest of us, will likely never have to feel the cold, clammy hands of federal fascism upon their elitist jiggly parts unless, of course, they dig that sort of thing.

What I want to know is why our good friends and champions of liberty at the American Civil Liberties Union aren’t frothing at the mouth over these clear abuses of our personal privacy, at least to the degree that they were when they found out that George W. Bush wanted to treat non-uniformed enemy combatants differently than the kid who stole my ceramic lawn trolls last spring. If they are, I haven’t noticed it.

Heck, even the National Center for Transgender Equality now has a page on its official website dedicated to the subject of air travel and TSA regulations, and if anyone asks me how I know that little tidbit of information, I swear I’m gonna punch them right in face.

Suffice it to say that I have my sources, and as soon as I became aware of the fact that the NCTE was informing its membership of the current state of TSA affairs, certain questions began leaping to my mind. Among them were: what if a man who is in the process of becoming a woman is patted down by a TSA agent, and the agent discovers that the “woman” has something dangling from “her” groin area? Can an unexpected penis be considered a concealed weapon? Beyond that, are two TSA agents needed for the task of frisking a pre-op tranny – a female agent for the top parts and a male for the bottom – or do we have to start hiring transgender airport security officers now? Oh, and if a transexual airline passenger is a burqa-clad Muslim, will he/she be exempted from the pat-down process entirely, or will only half of him/her get a pass?

And speaking of Muslims, I met one just the other day at the checkout counter of my local supermarket. I noticed that she was buying nothing but fruits and vegetables, and asked her if she was a vegetarian. She informed me that she was, and upon hearing that I remarked: so, I guess that makes yours a true religion of peas. At that point she declared a fatwa on my family.

But I digress.

Perhaps the ACLU actually is up in arms over this whole TSA screening business, and I’m just a clueless hack with no real journalistic credibility… wait…

Still, I read up on these sorts of things regularly… okay, maybe not “regularly” but certainly as often as the editor of the New York Times does. And even though his may not be the highest fact-finding standard to which my own may be compared, at least I’m not asking for a government bailout to support my journalistic endeavors.

Now, where was I?

Oh yes, I was talking about the seeming outrage deficiency of the ACLU concerning the invasive and obviously unconstitutional passenger screening procedures of the Transportation Security Administration. And as disappointing as that state of affairs might be, it pales in comparison to the complete lack of righteous indignation exhibited by the average American citizen in this regard.

I don’t know what you ladies think about all this, but if you ask me, any adult male who would allow him self to be fondled by some high school dropout with a badge in front of dozens of gawking airline passengers, deserves the beating that he should have given his federally-sanctioned fondler as soon as the family jewels became the object of an unwelcomed jangling.

Congressman Barney Frank may consider that sort of behavior to be conducive with just another Saturday night out with the boys, but to heterosexual men like myself, having our genitals examined by other guys is something we only expect to experience in a doctor’s office, or if we’re ever arrested and thrown into county lock-up with several tattoo-embellished gang members.

And what’s the deal with those TSA zombies feeling up our pre-pubescent children? If you’re willing to sit idly by and watch as your 10-year-old daughter is molested by someone who – for all you know – gets off on “screening” little girls, then congratulations, you’ve just joined the ranks of the pathetic American sheeple class.

I would say that modern American males are sorely lacking in balls, but ever since I saw those full-body scan images posted on the internet, I know that’s simply not true. Then again, maybe the men (if you can still call them that) of this great country have traded in their forefathers’ brass cojones for happy-sacks full of cowardly compliance and a pair of shriveled, government-approved chickpeas.

By any means, at times like these it’s relevant to ask the question: what would General George S. Patton do? And while I cannot speak for the man in the sort of overreaching, faux-authoritative way that Harvard professors do about the “brilliant economic policies” of FDR, I do know one thing about “old blood and guts”. That thing is that he never, EVER would have allowed his “junk” to be grabbed – or even discussed in public – by the likes of your average TSA agent.

And if that concept doesn’t induce you to perform remarkable acts of civil disobedience the next time you attempt to board a commercial airplane, then you’re as useless as an ashtray on a motorcycle.