Words of Warning from Ronald Reagan

"There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails, they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government.

Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power. In doing so, we can only assure that we will eventually be totally subject to it. When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people’s weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon the ruled."

~~ RONALD REAGAN ~~

NOTE: Ronald Reagan can never be defined by a mere collection of one-liners but here is a random selection of a few of my favorites -- as timely today as they were when he said them:

“Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.”

“I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong."

“The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.”

“Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

“The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”

“It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.”

“Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.”

“No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

“If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

"Those who have never broken free from the mentality of tax-and-tax and spend-and-spend still think increasing taxes is the best way to solve America's problems. ... We need a tax policy that offers incentives for people to work, save, and invest -- all the things that will keep our economy growing and improve our well being. We need a basic tax reform that will permit us to bring everybody's tax rates down. ... Our country needs leadership that can see beyond the demands of the special interest groups and prepare America for a better tomorrow."

~~ Random Quotes of Ronald Reagan ~~

The Insult and the Outrage!

The Porkulous Package -- the largest stimulus-spending bill in the history of the United States -- passed in the House a short time ago. The vote was 246 – 183. Thankfully, there was not one single Republican on board.

The Senate is scheduled to vote later this afternoon -- about 5:30 PM -- and I would suggest that the 3 blind mice -- Specter, Collins and Snowe -- the RINO's of the Republican Senate rethink their positions carefully. Before the Senate votes, you still have time to MELT THE PHONES. Call one -- call all. The American people cannot afford to lose this round.

Republican Ladies and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives, I thank you for your desire to serve the wishes of the American people who sent you to Washington. We will not forget you for today you served your country well.

This bill was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, jobs, but it quickly became Pelosi’s pulled pork of spend, spend, spend. Can anyone tell me how we are supposed to pay for this beast of a bill? Can anyone who voted today on the bill, say with all honesty that they have read it? Not possible -- the 1100 page bill was not made available until very late last night. Our elected officials voted on an $800 billion (yes, that's billion with a b) spending bill that they have not even read! And what about the American people's right to read it? What happened to Obama's campaign promise of putting bills on the Internet before a vote? Another campaign promise bites the dust.

I'm insulted and I'm outraged.

The American President, Madam Speaker and the rest of the Dems cannot stop the fear mongering and urgent yapping, and every time they yap, more jobs disappear as they reveal that they are driven less by a desire to serve than to control. They are more interested in backroom connivance than transparency. Back rooms with only one party allowed in does not equal transparency even in Obamaland. Transparency, it seems, is just another word.

Barack Obama must be giving fits to those backroom supporters who never meant for the nation to so clearly recognize his hyper-partisan purposes - and his limitations. And we’re only a mere three weeks into his presidency.

And Obama promised there would be no federal sprawl. What about those construction jobs in the new stimulus package? They are mostly FEDERAL construction jobs meant to construct or shore up FEDERAL buildings and agencies in and around Washington, DC, where FEDERAL SPRAWL will be allowed. Bigger government needs bigger buildings -- and you can be sure Obama is going to have bigger government. Of course, some construction companies in Bethesda, Maryland may see boom times, but what about the rest of the country? Is that Obama's idea of sharing the wealth?

So, what is the message here? Obama is telling the country to find something else to do, something other than growing, working, producing, creating, innovating, building. He wants energy independence but does not want drilling, refining, and the jobs that go with them to take place in America. He wants everyone to have a house, but apparently we’re not supposed to build any new ones. He wants Americans to become less materialistic, more personally responsible for our mistakes, and he wants the government to grow larger and to spend our way out of debt.

One thing is painfully clear -- Obama’s rhetoric is empty, and what is not empty is evasive. He is, increasingly, the “just words” president. He speaks of American dreams, but he works to limit them. And he is not alone.

Where does Barney Frank, a wealthy public official (I find it impossible to refer to him as a public servant), get off telling free Americans what their salary caps should be?

Where does the extremely wealthy John Kerry get off slobbering on the floor of the United States Senate that Americans are too “free to invest their money where ever they want!”?

How dare the set-for-life Chuck Schumer show such contempt for the “little” people, who simply want to know what we’re being put on the hook for?

Corrupt and singular, many of these little kings and godlings serve themselves alone. They are merely playing Lego's with the rest of us. And you can be sure they will not cap their own salaries.

Where do any of these public officials who have either grown wealthy on the public purse, or used their wealth to purchase their office, or have used their office to protect their wealth, get off telling us, the can-do Americans, how much we can earn?

How dare they begin to shred the Constitution and dismantle The American Dream? How dare they discourage the sort of dreaming that made America into Ronald Reagan's shining city on a hill, an exceptional nation of limitless possibilities?

How dare they -- those who aspire not to serve but to rule, create destructive, historic and transformational 1100-page bills behind closed doors and show them to lobbyists before they show them to legislators or to the American public they are supposed to be serving?

But it's done.

It's scandalous.

And no one is calling it treason.

President or Dictator?

Today would have been Ronald Reagan's 98th birthday. If the Gipper knew what was going on in Washington over the stimulus package, he would be spinning. And he would never approve of the scare tactics being used by Obama and the Dems.

Such great memories from the past -- such unbelievable insanity in the present.

There's insanity and then there's the insanity of the Democrats -- and I must say, Democrat insanity is in a league of its own. It's no longer a question of a stimulus, but of what should be included in the package. And the Dems have it all wrong, again. You don't spend your way out of a financial crisis. You cut taxes, you cut spending and you put people to work. You don't mortgage the future of your children and grandchildren on an asinine spending bill, especially one using100 percent borrowed money.

If you're so inclined, MELT THE PHONES. More numbers can be found here.

I hope the Republicans stick to their guns and hold the line against the current bill. I hope you've let your representative and your senators know how you feel. I'm on the verge of being on first name bassis with mine. And if you haven't contacted yours, shame on you. After all, it's your money, and your children's money, and their children's money. What's being done to their future is nothing short of criminal. Their chances for achieving the American Dream are rapidly diminishing. I pray that sanity will somehow prevail.

~~~~~~~~

Lately, we've seen flashes of anger from "the One who would bring us together." The message is beginning to come through -- "It's my way or the highway." Tough talk from one who would unite.

Are we witnessing the leopard changing his spots; the President morphing into the Dictator? Or are we watching the Socialist letting his guard down and being the Socialist that he has always been? I've been warning readers about Obama the Socialist since the inception of The Shepherd Report but I take no joy in being proven correct.

We're in for a world of hurt, my conservative friends.

May God help us.

~~~~~~~~~~

The must-read of the day: Charles Krauthammer

"So much for the president, who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill."

Read Mitt Romney's Sound Advice

And this interesting piece from DeRussy at Pajamas Media.

And then there's this:

Mr. Obama's "Non-Negotiables" For the Stimulus Is Really His Domestic Agenda That He Intends to Cram Down Our Throats Without Going Through the Normal Legislative Process:

Infrastructure, weatherizing homes, health IT spending, (liberal) education spending, investments in science/technology (alternative energy) research, health insurance for the unemployed, relief to states and aid to families."

The fact is that much of this is Obama's effort to get his domestic agenda enacted under the guise of stimulus that has lawmakers -- on both sides -- increasingly agitated.

"And make no mistake, a significant portion of the stimulus spending comes right out of the agenda Obama announced last summer -- long before the need for a massive stimulus bill emerged."

IBD Editorials, February 5, 2009

~~~~~~~~

“If this is the change we all can believe in, then Americans’ best days are behind them.”
~~~ Senator Lindsey Graham, SC, on the so-called stimulus package ~~~

Requiem

When I began this, my first venture into the blogosphere on September 18^th of this year, I said I had no specific agenda and that's still absolutely true. I write about what's on my mind; the issues that move me; the good that people do, the bad, the wrongs that need to be made right. I hope someday soon to be able to write something trivial, joyful, and perhaps even silly. That day is not yet.

The election is now history and the outcome no surprise. The nation is gleefully planning the coronation of King Barack Hussein Obama. I'll watch the proceedings from the comfort of my home but I won't be celebrating. There is too much to mourn.

Elections have consequences, and I fear many consequences were born on November 4^th that will take us to places that we never intended to go.

One such consequence happened in the state of Washington with the passage of legalized physician-assisted suicide -- one more acceptance of the culture of death in America.

It's important to note that I'm not referring to an informed person's right to die by refusing medical treatment for a terminal condition even if the patient chooses to receive medication for pain. There is a strong moral distinction between allowing death to come naturally, without being prolonged by artificial means, and in ending a life by suicide.

I'm talking about death by design, death that is planned, death on purpose. I'm talking about death that masquerades under names like euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning. By any name, it's the culture of death.

Proponents of the abortion industry call their business healthcare. They cite the health of the mother or even the life of the mother as a reason to justify the murder of the innocent unborn. That's a lame and deceptive excuse that does not stand in light of medical facts.

I write from personal experience when I say that killing the unborn child is never required to save the life of the mother. I know. I've been there. I chose to go against the advice of my doctors and carry my third child to term and deliver by Cesarian section. It was a very close call -- I did indeed come very close to death, but I did not die. My doctors were wonderful Christian men and my personal faith was in Jesus Christ. I never doubted that He had the ultimate control. He brought me through the valley of the shadow of death and blessed me with a wonderful, healthy son. Even though I live with some residual health problems, I have never regretted my decision.

The abortion industry is about killing the most innocent and defenseless of all human life and doing it in the cruelest and most vicious ways imaginable. To those who do it, and to those who approve of it, and to those who tolerate it, you are supporting the most horrific and sinful actions ever embraced by any culture in human history. Over forty-eight million innocent babies have been killed in the U.S. alone -- and still counting. In light of this, how can we possibly expect God to continue His blessings on our country?

Peggy Noonan reminds us that The Children Are Watching. Indeed, they are and Barack Obama's election should eradicate once and for all the blight of racism from our national conscience.

But I wonder if the children will see and learn the most ironic lesson of all -- that Barack Obama, the man who has pledged to provide absolutely no support whatsoever for the rights of the unborn, or even to those born alive after botched abortions, is himself a shining example of the enormous opportunities available to anyone born in America –- that is, if they are wanted by their mothers and if they can live long enough to be born.

Barack Obama, the child of a white mother and a black father, was conceived out of wedlock and abandoned at a young age by his father. Raised by his white mother and white grandparents, he has now grown up to be the President of the United States. That in itself is a remarkable accomplishment. Had Obama's birth come a generation later, after Roe v Wade, such difficult circumstances could have caused his mother to legally end his life before he had a chance to take his first breath.

Let me be brutally honest -- the culture of death is not about choice; it's not about rights or freedom, and it's certainly not about private decisions made between a woman and her doctor. Most often, it's about convenience for the mother, but it's always about killing, it's about death. If they cannot inflict death inside the womb, they'll settle for doing it outside the womb, and it's legal. (See Born Alive Truth for Obama's shocking voting record on this.) And in several states, it's no longer just infants, they can now kill the infirm and the aged, and with the added attraction of providing physician assistance for the procedure. But it's still about killing – everything else is merely timing and geography.

I mourn the decline of the greatest nation in the world. I mourn America from sea to shining sea, Ronald Reagan's "shining city on a hill;" a nation born of faith in God and the sacrifices of its people. I mourn a nation that is now losing its way and its bearings, exchanging the Godly moral accord of our Founding Fathers for the floundering depravity of the secular progressives.

I mourn a nation so easily misled, so willing to ignore character and embrace fleeting visions of change with little consideration to where such change could lead. I mourn the triumph of the superficial over the substantial; the culture that now chooses death over life, frivolity over faith, pandering over productivity, political correctness over truth, and selfishness over sacrifice.

I mourn the failure of the people to learn the valuable lessons of history; a people so desperate for the One that they would joyfully invite an inexperienced illusionist to lead them. I mourn the foolishness -- the myopia that pervades our land in the most dangerous and unstable time in our nation's history.

It is doubtful we will ever again see -- ever again be -- what we once were.

I mourn for America but I know that a sinful and corrupt culture cannot change from the outside. Change must come from within -- one life, one heart, one soul at a time. Now is an excellent time to start. The best place to begin is on our knees.

Nikki