Healthcare Reform Bill: Nothing Will Change - Neither Should McMahon's Vote

Back in 2006, Democrats self-righteously mourned the "death of deliberative democracy," amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth:

"Republican leadership abused the Rules of the House to block Members, both Republicans and Democrats, from legislating in an informed and thoughtful manner. House-Senate conferences are a critical part of the deliberative process because they produce the final legislative product that will become the law of the land."

Now, at a time when the party that trumpeted their intention to be the most transparent in the history of government adjourns to reconcile the two healthcare bills in smoke-filled back rooms with blacked-out windows, sans even the slightest whiff of opposition, we should all be mindful of what a politician's word is worth. Spit.

And please bear in mind that some pledges are worth even less than others:

"We'll have the [healthcare] negotiations televised - on C-SPAN - so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituencies and who ise making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies..."

Thus spake Barack Obama on the campaign trail. Spit, again.

The Democrats have decided to "ping-pong" the bill, which means that there won't be any bicameral horse-trading, and that the House will merely take the Senate bill, tweak it, and return it. So at this juncture, and with the expectation that the complete removal of any dissenting voices will quicken the pace of negotiations mightily, we need to take a brief look at Congressman McMahon's statement after he voted "nay" on the House version of the healthcare plan:

"I believe that we need to reform the healthcare system, reduce spending, cut waste, fraud and abuse and expand coverage for more Americans. Unfortunately the bill that passed the United States House tonight does not do that.

The cuts to Medicare will affect seniors in my district, the cuts to the Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) will make it harder for hospitals to service Staten Island and Brooklyn and the cost containment doesn't go far enough. There is no guarantee that this bill will reduce the cost of healthcare premiums for Staten Island and Brooklyn families."

Now that we have seen what the Senate version contains, there seems to be little hope that many, if any, of the Congressman's quite appropriate concerns could possibly be alleviated. No matter what parts of either bill are kept or dumped, no matter how they are ultimately reconciled, he is bound to find the final product of the Pelosi/Reid tete-a-tete offensive, obligating him to vote no yet again.

That is, as long as he meant what he said and is a man that stands by his convictions. And unless and until he proves us wrong, we believe that he is.

This Insanity Must End

I think I lack the writing ability needed to describe the range of emotions I’ve been experiencing in the last 48 hours or so; starting about the time Senator Nelson sold his vote to Harry Reid.

I’m probably having so much difficulty because what I’ve been seeing and hearing is so remarkably alien to me. It’s like a poorly constructed plot line from a bad novel – you know, the kind you stop reading because it’s just too improbable.

Well, the highly improbable seems to be happening right before our eyes; I can scarcely believe that this isn’t a nightmare from which I’ll eventually awaken - sweaty, but none the worse for wear. But I am not asleep, and this is not a dream.

It seems that what couldn’t be accomplished in 233 years by the mightiest armies in the world - the subjugation of the American people and their Constitution - is being accomplished by a Chicago punk and a radical Democrat Congress.

The reality of what we’ve actually been witnessing has become abundantly clear after the 60 majority members of the Senate, in the wee hours of Monday morning, voted to shut down debate on the federal takeover of 17 percent of the economy. It is nothing less than the non-violent shackling of the citizens of the United States by their own government.

It is the shredding of the Constitution by those who have sworn to protect it.

The final indignity was an insult to our intelligence known as the Reid amendment. That’s the one that, among other things, bought off Ben Nelson by agreeing that Nebraska would be indemnified against all Medicare increases caused by the bill in perpetuity!

Now, mind you, that’s not the Senators’ money we’re talking about here – it’s your money and mine.

See how this works? If you or I were to try to bribe a public official we’d obviously be breaking the law and would wind up in jail, but at least we’d be using our own money in the attempt. If you’re the Senate Majority leader, not only are you not prosecuted – you don’t even have to foot the bill for the bribe. The suckers will pick up the check.

The unmitigated effrontery of it leaves me breathless. The sheer insanity of it has me spinning.

And now comes news that there are provisions in the bill that would illegally change Senate rules – making it virtually impossible for the new law to be repealed or changed. This is what is meant by the tyranny of the majority.

The more I think about it the angrier I get. The reaction to this abomination should transcend party lines – lovers of America, of any political denomination, should be decrying this legislation for the constitution-killing piece of socialist dogma that it is. What we get instead are lies, spin and distortions, which they really don't care if we buy into it or not. Such is the level of their arrogance.

You know what? We’ll take a break to celebrate Christmas, we’ll let the New Year ring in, we’ll let the House/Senate conference make their changes – none of which will be able to prevent this bill from being a complete disaster - and then we'll pick a date and we will hit the streets.

Maybe I’ll be by myself. Maybe there’ll be a hard core of a hundred or two joining me. And maybe, just maybe, there will be thousands of you out there - because there damn well should be.

So go dig out your thermal underwear, your ski caps and your woolen socks.

It could be cold on New Dorp Lane.

The Contempt of Congress

When pollster and pundit Pat Caddell was asked recently why our elected officials seem to ignore the will of American citizens, his response was that Congress has “nothing but contempt for the very people they are supposed to represent.”

Sounds pretty harsh, doesn’t it? Surely, the good men and women of the United States Senate and House of Representatives have faults and make mistakes, but do they have “contempt” for their constituents?

Or, perhaps, is it merely that they see us as sheep; a flock of tiresome animals, possessing a bleating sameness, unable to determine what is really best for ourselves and our families, and incapable of making rational decisions about our own future?

Indeed, given the scope of recent legislation – all designed to take whatever decision-making autonomy we might have had out of our own hands and place it into theirs – it’s hard to dispute that they view themselves as our shepherds.

Here is what's in store now, or in the very near future, and in no particular order: they will tell us how much we can pay our executives; they will tell us what kind of cars we can drive; they will enslave us to the religion of global climate change; they will tell our bankers to whom they should lend money and on what terms; they will control the air you breathe by EPA fiat; they will tell your doctor how much he will earn and what treatment he may provide to you; they will force you to buy a product you may not need or want; they will usurp the majesty and wisdom of your creator and re-define the rights with which you were endowed – and worst of all, they will render impotent the ink and parchment we call the Constitution of the United States of America, making it an archaic relic of a glorious, but distant, past.

Caddell is right – it is contempt. When government elites pass, or attempt to pass against our will, various pieces of legislation that are so radical, so antithetical to our free market, capitalist roots, what else can we call it?

I find myself wondering what the breaking point will be for the American people, when it will come, how it will manifest itself.

And in my nightmares, I find myself wondering if there is a breaking point for the American people, or are we going to allow ourselves to be, like sheep, herded and penned up, oblivious to our fate, powerless to prevent the slaughter of our rights and the butchering of our future as free Americans.

We have always believed that we could never be defeated, that no foe could steal our liberty, that no army could bend our will, that we would know freedom not only for the rest of our lives, but for the lives of our children and grandchildren, and for future generations as of yet undreamed.

Today that is not so certain - so insidious has this radical administration and complicit Congress proven to be.

In April of 1775, when the shots rang out by the rude bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, the people of America knew they were at war and must fight to defend their freedoms.

In December of 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the people of America knew they were at war and must fight to defend their freedoms.

In September of 2001, as the towers fell, the people of America knew they were at war and must fight to defend their freedoms.

Now, as the first year of the Obama Administration draws to a close, our Constitution has come under assault by our own government - and even though no musket was fired, no bombs were dropped, and no buildings destroyed, once again the people of America must realize that we are at war.

And once again, we must fight to defend our freedoms.

A Short Course on Brain Surgery

Living in a DC Comic Book World.

During a Q&A session at one of the Meet and Greet events a few weeks ago, a young lady on our staff stood up and said she felt like she was living in Bizarro World, an expression I've used myself on many occasions.

For those of you too young to remember, Bizarro World was an invention of the fruitful minds of the writers of DC Comics, originally introduced in their Superman series in the early 60's. On Bizarro World, everything good is bad, everything right is wrong, everything beautiful is ugly.

Those who live on Bizarro World are hideously disfigured clones of their counterparts on Earth. As enunciated so clearly by Bizarro, the character after which the planet formerly known as Htrae (Earth spelled backwards, of course) is named, their credo is as follows:

"Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!"

It doesn't take a terrific leap of the imagination to see where this is going: the Obama Administration and the Democratic Majority have transported us magically, in less than one year, to what seems to be a bizarre alternate universe. Only, unlike the product of some comic book writer's imagination, this is all too horrifyingly and sickeningly real.

What makes this Administration bizarre? One scarcely knows where to begin.

What we as Americans have revered for centuries our own government now reviles. Our free-market, capitalist system, which made us the greatest nation in the history of the world, is in the process of being crushed under the boot-heels of radicals. Do you realize how successfully this Administration has made "capitalism" a dirty word?

They and their minions work day and night strip all the goodness and morality from it, to portray it as greedy and selfish - all the while ignoring that it is a system of true equality for all men, a system under which the poorest among us can rise - not simply to mediocrity - but to great heights, by the virtue of our own minds and our willingness to work hard for ourselves and our families.

Think about how far this President and the Democrats have come in denying you the right to keep what you earn. Think about how far this President and the Democrats have come in their fight to convince Americans that they, the bureaucrats in Washington, know better how to spend your money than you do - you, who have actually earned it.

Bizarre, indeed.

We are a country that, since its inception, bent at the knee before NO foreign power, yet now Obama bows and scrapes in a sickening display of groveling as if WE were the cause of the world's ills - not the best hope for a cure. Forgotten by Obama, or perhaps never fully understood or appreciated, are the sacrifices of 25 generations of America's youth, who died as protectors of liberty for freedom-loving people everywhere on the planet.

Yes, I would call it bizarre for an American President to refer to his own country as "arrogant."

And what would you call it when a country rewards terrorists with the finest legal representation in the world, and all the Constitutional benefits of the citizens of the country they despise and would destroy - yet imprisons three Navy SEALs, who bloodied the lip of an murdering jihadist during his capture, and now await a Court Martial.

What would you call it when, after an Islamic jihadist murders 13 American soldiers about to be deployed, in a blatant act of terrorism on American soil, the President of the United States reminds us immediately that we should not blame his Muslim faith, that we should not jump to conclusions as to his motives, and that we must not let "diversity" be a casualty. This is the same President that labeled the Cambridge Police "stupid" when they responded to a breaking and entering call while he knew none of the facts and only one side of the story.

He and the Democrats are so quick to blame America, and so quick to excuse those who would destroy us.

Almost since Inauguration Day we have had inflicted upon us crisis after crisis, all followed by a flurry of multi-thousand paged legislation, incomprehensible bills to be rushed through Congress - because, of course, there is no time to waste.

And yet our media, those brave watchdogs of democracy, sit mutely on the sidelines, their silence painfully indicative of their lack of objectivity, their rare questioning of policy a bone flipped to the masses, their smug belief in their own superiority barely concealed.

Yes, we live in bizarre times, but more than that we live in dangerous times. Those who are not on the inside of the strategy, all of us, are coming to the horrifying realization that the destruction of the America we know and love is imminent not because of the actions of some foreign dictator, but because of a dangerous and duplicitous rogue regime.

And because we are now living in Bizarro World, the rogue regime that would destroy America sits in the White House, and walks the halls of Congress.

The Way It SHOULD Be Sung

The Obama Administration: God DAMN America

Late on a Friday afternoon, with the President out of the country, the Attorney General of the United States announced that the mastermind of 9/11, and four of his cohorts, will be brought to New York for trial. In a courtroom that would be in the shadow of the Twin Towers - were they standing - will be the vilest America-haters in the world, and sadly, not all of them will be members of al-Queda.

At the forefront of these will be Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

This sub-human piece of garbage will be accorded the same rights granted to the American citizens whose lives he snuffed out, because he so believed in the twisted drivel that is radical Islam.

This sub-human piece of garbage will be granted a hearing in a way that his victims never were.

This sub-human piece of garbage will get a bully pulpit from which to publicly bash our country after killing thousands of its innocent citizens, and from the very place where those Americans died.

This sub-human piece of garbage will get to plead for his life in front of a magistrate, and with legal counsel.

I have some questions.

When the passenger on those jets realized that they had no alternative but death, to whom could they make a plea? When those poor souls working in the Towers - forced to choose between leaping out of a window or facing an inferno of burning jet fuel - had to decide how they wanted to die, who was there to give them counsel?

There is only one way to describe this decision by the Obama administration: sick and demented. Perhaps as sick and demented as the men they are bringing to New York to face the justice guaranteed to American citizens by a Constitution they so despise.

We have elected a diseased group of America-hating radicals, and must be turned out of office.

Interpreting McMahon

We can all feel very much gratified, for a number of reasons, when considering the vote of Congressman McMahon on HR3962 this past Saturday evening.

First and foremost, from my perspective, is the apparent affect your tireless work had on the outcome, forcing him to examine the roots of our opposition to the bill, and helping him to understand the reasonableness of our objections.

For his part, he listened, and that is big, and ultimately he voted against his party’s leadership. We’ll take as an act of faith that he voted his conscience.

But what if he didn’t? Should the Congressman be condemned if his vote was merely an act of political expediency? The more cynical among us will point out that Ms. Pelosi had 40 votes to play with – to pass, the bill needed a majority of 218 votes, and there are 258 Democrats in the House. This gave her, ostensibly, a pocketful of dispensations which could be doled out to nervous Blue Dogs - or other vulnerable Democrats. Michael McMahon is one of these, since he is a freshman D in a district that is reliably Republican - 28 years worth - in a district that voted comfortably for John McCain in the last Presidential election.

To be sure, Congressman McMahon listed a goodly number of appropriate reasons for voting against the bill – indeed, had he gone a little further, he might have been able to justify supporting the Republican version of healthcare reform, which came to be known as the Boehner Amendment.

In a statement, the Congressman said:

"I believe that we need to reform the healthcare system, reduce spending, cut waste, fraud and abuse and expand coverage for more Americans. Unfortunately the bill that passed the United States House tonight does not do that.

The cuts to Medicare will affect seniors in my district, the cuts to the Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) will make it harder for hospitals to service Staten Island and Brooklyn and the cost containment doesn't go far enough. There is no guarantee that this bill will reduce the cost of healthcare premiums for Staten Island and Brooklyn families."

To summarize, Congressman McMahon’s objections to HR3962 are as follows:

1. The bill does not reduce spending.
2. The bill does not cut waste, fraud and abuse.
3. The bill does not expand coverage for more Americans.
4. Medicare cuts will affect seniors in the district.
5. Cuts to Disproportionate Share Hospitals will affect service to Staten Islanders.
6. Cost containment does not go far enough.
7. There will be no guaranteed reduction in the cost of healthcare premiums.

A quick look at the Boehner amendment reveals that it would address many of these concerns; certainly the fiscal ones, according to the scoring by the Congressional Budget Office.

However, Congressman McMahon dutifully, and to no one’s surprise, voted against this Republican amendment, even though it would have overcome nearly all the hurdles that caused him to vote NO on the version that came to the floor. That may cause one to wonder if the stated reasons for voting against the bill were the real reasons he voted against the bill – or might he have voted NO to take political cover in his Republican district.

That would be known as having your cake and eating it, too.

(We should note that there is a distinct possibility that the bill will be back again for another vote, if and when the Senate passes its version. Having set a high bar, a bar any reconciled bill may not be able to hurdle, Congressman McMahon will be forced to vote NO once again. We certainly live in interesting times.)

Despite all of this, Congressman McMahon has voted the right way on HR3962, and in the end that’s all that we asked for. So kudos to the Congressman, and great big kudos to the tireless work of the hard-working, ordinary citizen-members of the Staten Island Tea Party.

We never stopped letter-writing, phone-calling, e-mailing, sign-making, trip-taking and generally being a tenacious bunch of pains-in-the-asses - and in the end, we learned that yes, we can make a difference.

I’m very proud of you all.

They Are Voting Us Into Slavery.

I don’t know what else you would call it. Nancy Pelosi’s version of HR3200, which is called HR3962, would essentially make slaves of us all.

Sounds dramatic, I know, but consider that never in the history of American law-making has the federal government ever mandated the purchase of anything.

Until now.

Passage of this bill will force every American to buy health insurance. For most of us reading this, the money that we use to “buy” something comes from our labor – OUR labor, not someone else’s. We trade the work product of our muscles or intellect for money, in a free exchange with our employer or employees. If the federal government forces you to buy something, it is compelling you to wake up and go to work some morning not to earn money for your own purposes, but to satisfy a bureaucrat’s vision of what he thinks is in the best interests of you and the nation.

Of course, you can choose not to make the purchase and pay a fine of 2.5% of your total income. Further, you can choose not to pay the fine. I don’t need to carry this exercise to its final conclusion, which I’m sure you have realized means, ultimately, being taken at the point of a gun to trial and eventual incarceration.

Your crime? Failure to turn your property, the sweat of your brow, over to a federal bureaucrat. In an earlier part of our country’s history, when a man was compelled at the point of a gun to work for the benefit of another, it was called slavery. It is still slavery today.

We expect our government to protect us from those that would enslave us.

How’s that for irony?

I have never asked anyone to send something I wrote to another, but I think it would be a good thing to make as many Americans aware of this as possible; if you agree, forward this to your email list.

If you’re a Staten Islander, or a Brooklynite living in parts of Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst, your Representative is Michael McMahon. Congressman McMahon has indicated lately that he is leaning towards voting for the bill. We have little time to persuade him not to. Here is where to contact him:

Congressman McMahon in D.C.:
Phone (202) 225-3371
Fax: (202) 226-1272

Congressman McMahon in Staten Island:
Phone (718) 351-1062
Fax: (718) 980-0768

Please call and fax.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he will be supporting a massive intrusion of government into our lives.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he is voting to forever change America – not to become a greater country, but to become a lesser one.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he is voting to kill the rugged individualist spirit of Americans.

Let him know that if he votes in favor of this bill, he will be complicit in the bankrupting of the United states of America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

Let him know that we do not want any form of socialized medicine – it has failed wherever it has been tried – and it will fail here.

And finally, let him know that he will be held accountable for his votes.

The Stuff of Nightmares.

It is the stuff of nightmares.

I’m standing outside my own home, my wife and children are huddled alongside me, and my precious baby granddaughter is asleep in the arms of my eldest.

I am peering through the window, and in the house - my house - are faceless thieves. They are methodically stealing everything I have worked for in life – stuffing it into a sack that is bottomless and seemingly able to hold anything they are capable of lifting. I don’t know why, but I am powerless to stop them, frozen in place and mute.

All my life I thought that I was protected from this. I thought that what I was witnessing was impossible; after all, I worked hard, I saved, I was a good citizen, charitable and community-minded. I was, along with my neighbors, my fellow Americans, enjoying the bounty of a carefully planted and nurtured garden. What did I do wrong?

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. There were locks on the doors, defenses in place. There was a magical document (I had seen it!) which guaranteed that what I was witnessing could never, ever happen in this country. My father, and countless other fathers, sons, brothers and loved ones, fought to defend that document, and far too many paid the ultimate price to ensure its safety for all future generations.

They didn’t want to die, but they did. For a few lines of ink on an old piece of paper.

I'm confused. I don’t understand why the ones who are supposed to be protecting me from this crime are instead standing guard at the door, so that I cannot stop the looting, stop the destruction. I chose those protectors, and I pay them – very well. They are supposed to look out for us, especially for my grandchild, so vulnerable, so trusting, and with her entire life ahead of her. Her name is Emma, and she sleeps on, blissfully, with no idea that I am watching them steal her future.

What will Emma have if they take everything?

I realized as I watched in stupefied horror that they are snatching up all the things that made the house my house. Little by little, into that cursed sack has gone the precious freedoms that made me unique, that made me an individual before the eyes of God and man, the freedoms that guaranteed that I could take care of my family – I, not the thieves – to the best of my abilities, the freedoms that guaranteed me the right to make my own choices in life, according to the dictates of my values and my conscience.

In stunned silence, I watch them as they substitute their cheap, ugly and degrading ideas for mine. As they work, they mumble about my "greed."

After a while, I cannot recognize my house – oh, the foundation is still there, but it’s cracked and all manner of damp mold is forming. The frame is racked and worm-holed, the roof leaks, the plumbing's rusted, the wiring frayed and dangerous.

It has become ugly. There is no secure life there anymore. There is no presence of God; no grace.

The house, once so strong and safe, is now vulnerable. Unlocked as it is, vagrants wander in and out, gleefully stealing what they can. The protectors tell me that these strangers, the ones who had no part in building the house or working to make it what it was, have as much right to be there, to help themselves to the fruits of my labor, as does the peacefully-sleeping child in the arms of my son.

I wonder when I will wake up. I will wake up, won't I? This is, after all, just a nightmare.

Michael McMahon's Time for Choosing...

Sooner, rather than later, there will be a bill before Congress that addresses health insurance reform in the United States, and when it happens, it will be Congressman McMahon's time for choosing.

If he utters the word "YEA" on any of the bills now before the various committees, it will be the Congressman's way of telling us that he supports his party's thinly-veiled contention that the age of rugged individualism is dead. His yes vote will indicate his belief that the Age of Statism has come, because, grown fat and lazy both physically and intellectually, the American voter is less concerned with hewing his own path to success and prosperity than he is with being led down the gently-sloping paved road created by his federal government, replete, as it is, with low-hanging fruit to be effortlessly plucked from trees planted by stealing the labor of others.

This is not the excuse that will be given, of course, but make no mistake, it is the underlying truth. We will be told that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the trillion-dollar cost of another government boondoggle - oddly enough, however, no free-market solutions will be entertained. To the current administration, the only road to problem-solving runs through Central Planning City, loops around Entitlement Town and terminates at Dependency Depot.

All Congressmen wear two hats; that is understood. And when it comes to delivering the requisite tonnage of pork to his district, Congressman McMahon pulls into Staten Island driving a fully-loaded semi with admirable regularity. Bringing home the bacon requires skills, to be sure, but little tough decision-making.

However, when the Congressman dons his other cap, he becomes a legislator voting on issues that affect not only every individual in his district, but every individual in the country. It is then that a choice must be made; whether he will vote to uphold the liberties endowed by our Creator and guaranteed to us by our Constitution, or whether he will vote for the marginalization of those rights, and that document, by the moral busybodies of the left - who wish to substitute their best judgment for our own. There really is no middle ground.

The country is more divided now than it has ever been in my lifetime, and that includes the era of the Vietnam War. This great rift has not occurred because the Right has moved further right - Conservatives want what they have always wanted, to be left alone to earn for themselves and their posterity the best life possible, and to enjoy the freedoms that our Constitution was created to protect.

And as always, Conservatives continue to believe that capitalism is the single most moral political and cultural system in the history of the world, allowing, as it does, for the possibility that the individual who is the least among us can to soar to unimaginable heights - an opportunity no other system could have afforded him.

The Left, however, is a different story. This chasm between us has become immeasurably vast because the Left has drifted so far from our founding principles that it has rendered Democrats unrecognizable. They are clearly no longer a party that believes in the liberty of the individual; they have become naked collectivists and re-distributionists - indeed, such ideas were enshrined by our current President in his college thesis.

Liberalism is beginning to reek with the stench of the oppressor, and it tries to cover it by bathing in the sweet-smelling perfume of government handouts. It requires no great leap of imagination to see this for what it is - a systematic approach to creating a permanent underclass, so dependent upon government largess that they will unthinkingly supply enough votes to keep Leftists in power for generations to come.

So a simple "NAY" vote by our Congressman will not do; not if it is based on some minor funding technicality, or other innocuous and transparent bit of cover.

What it is necessary is a resounding repudiation of the underlying philosophy.

Congressman McMahon is now charged with taking a real stand. Will he vote to uphold our Constitution and protect the liberty of the individual men and women who made this country great and strong? Or will he vote to give it up to the collectivists?

Will he have the courage to demand free-market solutions, or will he vote to continue the headlong rush into American decline? The 13th Congressional District of New York waits and wonders.

Time to check the moral compass, Congressman McMahon, and let us know in which direction it is pointing.

The U. S. Marines: Tellin' it like it is since 1775

"I'd like to go somewhere where I can be free..."

"I’d like to go somewhere where I can be free."

That’s what I said to my wife this morning at the kitchen table, after hearing the news that the New York City Council passed a law banning the sale of flavored tobacco products.

I’m much more sensitive to that kind of thing now – this willy-nilly diminishment of my freedoms - and that’s what’s really at the heart of the Tea Party movement; a last-minute, almost desperate attempt to protect what’s left of our individual liberties. I guess, in our hearts, we know this is going to be an uphill battle, because the barbarians are not only at the gates – they're inside the fortress walls.

In a sense, we owe Barack Obama and his administration a debt of gratitude. The chip, chip, chipping away of our individual liberties had been going on for quite some time - we just slept through it. Because of their ham-handedness, though, we’re awake now; maybe even in time to do something about it.

Sneak thieves in the night, camouflaged as our elected representatives, have been stealing our liberties while we slumbered, filching a little independence here, a little autonomy there – hey, after a while it adds up. But here comes the Obama administration, stumbling and bumbling and crashing around like the novices that they are, grabbing everything in sight, stuffing it into their sacks, and making no attempt to be the least bit quiet about it.

Now, the rule is if you don’t make a lot of noise, and you only take the small stuff, I’m probably gonna keep sleeping. However, when you’re clumping around like a bunch of asses wearing cement shoes, trying to stuff the baby grand into a pillowcase, or the triple-dresser into a tall kitchen can bag, I’m pretty sure I’m going to sit up and take notice. Probably even raise an alarm. Call the cops.

It’s when the cops turn out to be the thieves that you know you’re in big trouble.

So, what’s the upshot of all this? And why the big fuss over flavored tobacco products? I don’t use them, and frankly don’t know who does – though the law is ostensibly on the books to protect children. I guess, when the synapses in my brain (aided by my morning coffee) really started firing, I came to understand that the City Council had decided that I couldn’t do a proper job teaching my children about the dangers of tobacco products – at least not to their satisfaction. So they took that right away from me and assumed it for themselves.

Along the way, they trampled the rights of the smokers who might have used and enjoyed the products, the retailers who sold the products, and, in essence, they mandated lower revenues for the companies that produce the products. Additionally, it’s not too great a leap to imagine that down the line this will lead to some measure of increased unemployment. But what chance do these “rights” have when there’s social engineering to be done?

If you’re reading this I’m pretty sure you’re not sleeping anymore, though you may still be sitting up in bed rubbing your eyes – probably in disbelief. And maybe, like me, your first reaction is to want to pack up and go to that mythical place – that place where we can be really free again. But, sadly, that place doesn't exist. In a famous speech, Ronald Reagan related this story:

“Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to."
In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”

That speech was delivered on October 27, 1964, 45 years ago next week, on behalf of Barry Goldwater. It is perhaps the most famous of his speeches, certainly one of his most beloved. The title given to those remarks is A Time for Choosing; how much more prescient that speech could have been I cannot imagine.

It is, indeed, a time for choosing in America, because I believe that very shortly, meaningful “choice” in the manner in which we are governed might well disappear.

So we, the Tea Party movement, suffer the ridicule of our more “enlightened” friends and neighbors. We are routinely insulted, mocked, denigrated, vilified and marginalized as a fringe group. Did you ever imagine that people who believe in the Constitution of the United States, and the individual liberties it guarantees, are now a “fringe” organization?

But still we do it, and if you ask yourself why, the same great man can provide the explanation:

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here.

We did all that could be done.”

You're In the Army Now.

Maybe you’ve already served, and thought you were done. You’re not.

Or maybe, like me, you were caught up in traveling life’s highway and took America for granted, believing that the United States was the greatest country in the world and always would be - with or without our help. America didn't need us to do any fighting...

Well, guess what? We’ve been conscripted.

Think about how your personal world – and your country – has been flipped on its head in the last eighteen months or so, starting around the time you realized that Barack Obama could indeed become the Democratic nominee, and hence, might very well assume the helm of the ship of state - the most powerful state in the history of mankind. I suspect that the term for what you felt is “icy shivers.”

It was the stuff of political potboilers: "Our government falls under the control of nefarious characters - bent upon the destruction of the Constitution and the moral tenets that made us great..." This might be the subject of a “gripping” Cold War-era novel, but any such plot rooted in these constructs was purely fictional and always would be. That's what we believed, anyway.

So we slumbered. And worked. And raised kids. And shook our heads in wonderment as one-by-one, the institutions, morals and values with which we were raised became corrupted and politically incorrect.

“My, my, are they allowed to say that on television? Are they allowed to show that in a movie? I can’t say what without offending anyone? Am I really a racist, a xenophobe, a homophobe, unenlightened, misogynistic, uncaring, selfish and condescending? I hadn’t realized…”

While we slept, they crept. While we were engaged in out-of-hand dismissals of their attacks on the innate goodness of our country and political system, or watching the “counterculture revolution” happen from afar with bemused smiles, they worked insidiously and studiously to change our world. We accommodated them by staying busy with just plain making a living, and naively handed over our most precious legacy – our children – to their influence and instruction.

So now we find ourselves under the control of statists, socialists, a few communists, some failed 60’s revolutionaries, radical academics, revisionists, race-baiters and entitlement agitators. And that’s just in the White House.

Congress is really bad, because to all those characters listed above you must add another group: cowards. Lord knows there are plenty of those on Capitol Hill.

At the head of this motley collection sits a man with no qualifications for the job he holds – actually, he wasn’t even qualified for his previous job, and only barely so for the one before that, which was, as Mark Levin calls it, as a back-bencher in the State Senate of Illinois.

He came to office with no accomplishments other than a solid radical upbringing, nurtured by mentors and friends for whom the destruction of the United States was a consummation devoutly to be wished. And devoutly is the way he is following the script.

The time-honored premise that the government which governs least governs best has been shredded in less than a full year. In choosing to believe that human self-interest is greed, our President feels justified in subjecting such self-interest to a test: does it benefit the greater good? That such a philosophy will inevitably lead to a diminishment of personal freedoms and a country ruled by political elites does not concern him. Indeed, it is the goal.

These radicals, who have hijacked the Democratic Party, have already started to put in place the mechanisms by which they will perpetuate their power, including slowly but surely dismantling the guarantees of liberty Americans have taken for granted for more than 200 years. To get their way they will legislate if they can, but if they cannot they will regulate, tax, harass, restrict and intimidate.

They will expand the single, ever-growing constituency that will insure their elections in perpetuity: the entitlement class; the slaves that are beholding to the federal government for their food and shelter, insuring a permanent underclass that will go to the polls as instructed and vote for he or she who will provide their next meal.

Worse still, they will defend their actions by couching them in moral terms. C.S. Lewis said:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

To get their way they will spin the judiciary, ignore the Constitution, and make great use of the mainstream media to convince the people that their goals are lofty, enlightened and necessary.

They will demonize the right and try to control or silence its voices.

They will engage in census shenanigans – in full view of the American public – to re-shape electoral boundaries in a way that will ensure their party’s continued electoral dominance.

They will hammer away at the second amendment and completely bury the tenth.

They will try to create a two-party system in name only, with the Republicans merely providing a convenient cover for their one-party rule.

They will continue to use our own freedoms against us. Inherent in a democracy is the right to dissent, and within that right fulminates the cancer that gave rise to current Administration. Indeed, the free Americans they wish to subjugate are, in many cases, actually trumpeting the rights of the destroyers to do so.

We have met and defeated foreign enemies, and American blood has been spilled for the cause of liberty since the birth of our nation – but we now fight an enemy of a different stripe, an enemy within, and our military cannot help us now. Shouldering the burden of this battle is a task that falls to the citizens.

That would be you. And me. And while this war will not be fought with guns, or by force of arms, it will nevertheless be long, exhausting and brutal.

The challenge we face is real, and it is immediate. The 13th Congressional District of New York is currently represented by a Democrat, a good man but a man who will, when the chips are down, vote with his party on a preponderance of issues. I will not besmirch Congressman McMahon by accusing him of casting his votes for political expediency; I will trust that he has told us the truth when he said his votes are guided by his moral compass.

But his compass and mine point in different directions far too often for me to be comfortable with his continued representation. We are obligated, unless the Congressman does a philosophical about-face, to work against his re-election.

We have laid the groundwork. We have held the Tea Parties, marched on Washington, read the blogs, and watched our numbers grow. That was the easy part; the hard part is yet to come – translating our beliefs into concrete actions, actions that will make a real difference.

Be prepared.

Swamp Replaces Dump to Assault Our Nostrils.

We don’t generally get involved in local politics, but this is too much.

Those of you in Republican Jim Oddo’s 50th Council District – you know who you are – should be aware that he has accepted the endorsement of the Working Families Party, a coalition of ACORN, SEIU and other community activist organizations.

This “party,” besides having been accused of numerous campaign violations, and dirty dealings involving its for-profit company Data and Field Services, hardly represents the principals one would expect a Republican elected official to espouse; that they would offer Councilman Oddo their endorsement, and that he would accept it, can only be described as bizarre. It reeks mightily of quid pro quo.

So, while the country is focused on national politics and the healthcare debate, Councilman Oddo has quietly waded deep into the Staten Island political swamp; a festering, stinking amalgam of rotting cross-endorsements, murky deals, and, well, inbreeding.

As a Republican/Conservative, I always thought it absurd to have a Borough President - himself a Conservative - actively campaigning for a Liberal Democrat in a Congressional race. Did Big Jim not realize that Mike McMahon would not only bring home the bacon, but that he'd be part of the cabal to shove it down our throats as well? I guess we can't all look at the big picture, especially when doling out the goodies is what it takes to get you re-elected to yet another term.

Well, our Borough President no longer swims alone.

By accepting the endorsement of the Working Families Party, Oddo is effectively thumbing his nose at, and making fools of, the loyal base of GOP voters in his mid-Island district. That’s right - we now have a Republican Councilman who shares a soiled mattress with a party that's synonymous with ACORN and SEIU, the poster children of election fraud, hooliganism and intimidation. In fact, the WFP shares offices in Brooklyn with the ACORN group that turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to prostitution and sexual slavery, and is now under investigation by the Brooklyn DA's office.

Strange bedfellows, right? No, not the WFP and ACORN - the WFP and Oddo.

It’s hard to believe that he would take informed Island Republicans for granted that way – but that’s just what he’s done. He thinks he has his Republican/Conservative base locked up, and that they wouldn’t consider voting for any Democrat opponent he may face - so the swamp of Staten Island politics just gets a little deeper, and Councilman Oddo is the one doing the digging.

I mean, if he doesn't think you're well-informed, what does that mean he does think? That you're dumb? Or ignorant?

Well, Jimmy, there are Republicans who can look past the end of their noses, and who don't like being taken for granted while you play footsie with a party that is anathema to all they hold dear. We have to ask ourselves if a Democrat could be much worse - at least Pocchia is consistent, and true to his core beliefs, such as they are.

You? Well, maybe not so much. You're either being disingenuous by accepting the WFP endorsement, or disingenuous by calling yourself a Republican. I can hardly see any middle ground.

Is pulling the lever for whichever candidate is NOT endorsed by the WFP an impossible thing for Republican voters? I'm curious to know the answer. Are you?

Some acts of political expediency can be swept under the rug, some cannot. This one cannot