Heroes

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When I first learned of President George W Bush’s hobby of painting portraits I was amazed. This was not what I expected from him. I guess not too many people did. I wanted to see his work, and to decide for myself whether he was an artist or not. I have seen his work and have decided he is an artist.

In his book Portraits of Courage, A Commander In Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors ninety-eight US Military personnel are depicted. Bush has written a short bio based on the warrior’s injuries and the path to recovery. There is a distinct similarity among all of them. They all lost limbs, suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury, and Post Traumatic Stress. Yet, each of them is distinctly different looking just like they are in life. President Bush captures not only the faces but also the look of the soldier. As an artist he is fully aware of the fact that no human being has a symmetrical face, and it is the asymmetry that defines all of us. He has captured the gaze of the eyes and more deeply into the soul of the subject.

A few years ago, while researching President Bush’s portraits of world leaders on the internet I read a series of comments regarding his work. I remember one in particular where the commenter sarcastically criticized Bush’s ability to paint by stating his amateur work was the opposite of an accomplished and seasoned portrait artist. I wished an evil act to befall the critic. His dislike for Bush as President showed.

All my life I have been a closet artist, and I can attest that drawing and painting faces is not easy. Capturing the lines, shades, values of a person’s uniquely distinctive facial features takes a ton of practice, and patience. Hell, I couldn’t even draw my own portrait to resemble me. I give George Bush five stars for his ability, and desire to do something radically different from what he did all his life, and to succeed in making people look like people in his work.

One Nation Under Obama

The Adoration of the Golden Calf'

This is an excellent essay on how Obama is replacing God with government.  It is the Progressive-Communist way.

Obama Wants You To Thank His God – Government
November 26, 2013
By Don Feder          
http://www.grasstopsusa.com/df112713.html

Obama keeps trying to rewrite American history. The latest was cutting the words “that this nation under God,” out of the Gettysburg Address, when he read the document in a PBS special.

On November 19, 1863 (in a speech that every schoolboy in the land once memorized by heart), Abraham Lincoln said we should “highly resolve… that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” In the expurgated (Obamaburg) version, Lincoln’s words became “that this nation (under no one in particular) shall have a new birth of freedom.”

This has been a consistent pattern throughout his presidency.

In 2010 and 2013, the president edited the Declaration of Independence by omitting the reference to “their Creator.” Thus, Jefferson’s “That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” became “That each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights.” When? Where? By whom? The answers might be found in “Dreams of My Marxist, Kenyan Father.”
In 2011, Obama left God out of his Thanksgiving message entirely. On other occasions, God became a bit player with a walk-on part – with “the community” or “those who work in soup kitchens and homeless shelters” in the lead role.

At the University of Indonesia in Jakarta in 2010, Obama told students that our national motto is “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one.). In reality, it’s “In God We Trust.” If the president recited the National Anthem, the last stanza would become, “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto in unum is our trust.”

In a 2009 press conference in Ankara, Turkey, our national turkey claimed, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” In June, 2007, the future president told CBS: “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just.” He went on to explain that America is also “a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation and a Buddhist nation.” Why not also Zoroastrian nation, a Baha’i nation and a Wiccan nation?

How many Buddhists were delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787? None – though 51 out of the 55 were members of Christian churches. Did the Mayflower Compact mention the Koran? And the Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers and pioneers who pushed their way west were inspired by what – the Bhagavad Gita? If you visit the U.S. cemetery in Normandy, see if you can spot a Muslim crescent.

In his Ankara speech, Obama also said Americans “will convey our deep appreciation to the Islamic faith… which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including in my own country.” (The president’s Islamophilia compliments his Christophobia.) The greatest impact Islam had on America was in Midtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001.

Both Obama’s administration and his party are implacably hostile to the faith of our fathers. The Democrats have gone from the party of FDR (whose D-Day prayer asked God to give our soldiers “steadfastness in their faith”) to the party of multicultural pagans and anti-Christian bigots.

A majority of delegates to the 2012 Democratic National Convention tried to drop a passing reference to God from their platform. Sensing a political disaster looming just 10 weeks before the election, Obama ordered his minions to backtrack.

The United States Air Force Academy recently removed God from the cadets’ honor pledge. (Wonder whose idea that was?) The FBI has formed a partnership with the stridently anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center, which considers “Christian fundamentalists” as much a threat to our way of life as al-Qaeda.

The Pentagon (under Obama, that little engine of diversity that knows no rest) tried to ban the distribution of Bibles at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and prayers that mention Jesus at Arlington National Cemetery, but reversed course after a Congressional outcry. Overall, it’s no exaggeration to speak of a search and destroy mission against manifestations of faith in the military.

From the repeal of don’t-ask-don’t-tell to support for same-sex marriage to ObamaCare (which would compel religious employers to violate their conscience or the law, by providing contraceptives and abortion services to workers), it’s a far-reaching assault on the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Like the Golden Calf the Children of Israel made while Moses was receiving the law at Sinai, Obama is making a new God for the masses to worship – big government, the Golden Calf state. “Praise Washington from whence all blessings flow. Praise it all peons here below.”

The president’s policies are designed to maximize dependency – government as the source of all blessings.

Under Obama, the food-stamp rolls increased by 33% (to 44.7 million – a record one in seven Americans). The number now receiving Social Security disability payments reached 11 million. (Costs increased from $56 billion in 2000 to $144 billion in 2013.) And total federal spending rose from an average of 21% of GDP under George W. Bush to an average of 24% under Obama.

At the same time, the National Debt grew by more than 70%; the number of working-age Americans with full-time jobs fell from 60.6 million to 58.7 million; the average duration of unemployment increased from 19.8 weeks to 36.6 weeks; median household income declined by $4,000; and 76% of Americans now live from paycheck to paycheck. The State giveth and the State taketh away.

Obama’s God is the God of dependency, the God of redistributionism, and the God who rewards sloth and punishes success. From Caracas to Havana to Pyongyang to Sacramento, it is the God that failed miserably.

ObamaCare won’t just increase health-care costs astronomically and lead to a serious shortage of doctors, but will literally give government the power of God over its citizens. Soon it will determine who qualifies for what treatments, what new technologies and medicines will be developed and which will be left to languish.

Then will come rationing and death panels by another name. That’s the real goal of Obamacare – not cost reduction, not health care for the uninsured, but the power of life and death. Obama’s is a God who demands blood sacrifices.

The creed of Obama-ism is distilled in the president 2011 Thanksgiving message: “As we gather in our communities and in our homes, around the table or near the hearth, we give thanks to each other and to God for the many kindnesses and comforts that grace our lives. Let us pause to recount the simple gifts that sustain us, and resolve to pay them forward in the year to come.” Pay them forward how – with more government programs, greater subsidies and higher taxes?

“Our communities” take precedence over our homes as the focus of our lives. We “give thanks to each other,” first and foremost, and to God almost as an afterthought.

In his 2012 you-didn’t-build-it tirade, Obama wasn’t just bashing the rich (urging Congress to raise taxes on those who earn over $250,000 annually) and telling businessmen that their success came from the collective, so he had a right to plunder them (droll coming from a man who never spent a day of his life in the productive sector), but denying the role of the God of the Bible in the affairs of men.

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” the high priest of spread-the-wealth-around intoned.

“If you were successful, somebody along the way gave you some help.” (Not God but government.) “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in the roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Successful businessmen were mystified. Did “somebody” else risk every penny they had in a new venture? Did somebody else put in 70-hour weeks nurturing a new business like a newborn child? And, by the way, businessmen (the source of most federal revenue) built those roads and bridges with their tax dollars, and paid for the fraud and waste along with construction costs.

But Obama’s rant was as much theological as ideological. Where does God fit in Obama’s worldview? Christians and Jews understand that He plays a crucial part in our lives. If we’re successful, we should thank God.

No, says Obama. Thank your brothers and sisters (the collective) – and me, the voice of divinity on earth. Thank the government that built the roads and bridges and the Internet (with your tax dollars).

Marx called religion “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” How different is this, really, from Obama’s 2008 bitter-clinger comment, when (thinking he was speaking off the record) he observed that when people in small towns fall on hard times, “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them… as a way to explain (make sense of) their frustrations.”

Every totalitarian movement from the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks to the National Socialists saw religion as competition for the loyalty of the people and an obstacle to their agenda. That’s why they invested so heavily in anti-religion campaigns.

Obama is more subtle – telling us that God has little, if anything, to do with our lives, but any success we achieve we owe to the collective.

Politicians and bureaucrats only think they have God-like powers. God created sunsets, meadows strewn with wildflowers, snow-covered peaks and children’s laughter. Governments create wars that never end, depressions, recessions and downturns, the US Postal Service and ObamaCare.

God makes miracles. When they stray from their proper, limited, functions, governments make manure. Obama sells it by the steaming truckload.

Opening Day For 2014 Elections

Cover of "Barack and Michelle: Portrait o...

Don’t They Make a Great Couple?

Traditionally, Labor Day is the kick-off for political campaigns. I adhere to the tradition and promise to pick up the frequency of posting my conservative political opinion. If you follow me and don’t want to hear bad stuff about liberal candidates like Obama then you might as well just un-follow me now. It is my goal to try to open some minds to the simplicity of Conservatism; a tough job to say the least. Most of us will not change our minds about our respective positions unless one points a gun at our heads.

To start off the 2014 campaign season, I found this article by writer Mychal Massie on my Facebook page. It is the kind of stuff I love to hear. Mychal posted this essay on his website Daily Rant on 22 February 2012. He makes real sense of the situation we face for buying into Hope and Change, and I commend him for it.

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A Black Reporter Summarizes Barack

The below summarization of Barack and Michelle Obama’s 5 year reign in the White House is by far the best I’ve ever read as it squarely hits the nail on the head. And it took a black reporter writing it to make it as effective as it is. A white man’s account would be instantly criticized by the liberal media as pure racism. But, how can anyone scream Racist when an exacting description of the Obamas is penned by a well known journalist of color?

BEST SUMMATION OF BARACK AND MICHELLE EVER!
Mychal Massie is a respected writer and talk show host in Los Angeles.

The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn’t like the Obama’s? Specifically I was asked: “I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama’s? It seems personal, not policy related. You even dissed (disrespect) their Christmas family picture.”

The truth is I do not like the Obamas, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policies and legislation. I’ve made no secret of my contempt for the Obamas. As I responded to the person who asked me the aforementioned question, I don’t like them because they are committed to the fundamental change of my/our country into what can only be regarded as a Communist state.

I don’t hate them per definition, but I condemn them because they are the worst kind of racialists, they are elitist Leninists with contempt for traditional America. They display disrespect for the sanctity of the office he holds, and for those who are willing to admit same, Michelle Obama’s raw contempt for white America is transpicuous. I don’t like them because they comport themselves as emperor and empress.

I expect, no I demand respect, for the Office of President and a love of our country and her citizenry from the leader entrusted with the governance of same. President and Mrs. Reagan displayed an unparalleled love for the country and her people.

The Reagan’s made Americans feel good about themselves and about what we could accomplish. Obama’s arrogance by appointing 32 leftist czars and constantly bypassing congress is impeachable. Eric Holder is probably the MOST incompetent and arrogant DOJ head to ever hold the job. Could you envision President Reagan instructing his Justice Department to act like jack-booted thugs?

Presidents are politicians and all politicians are known and pretty much expected to manipulate the truth, if not outright lie, but even using that low standard, the Obama’s have taken lies, dishonesty, deceit, mendacity, subterfuge and obfuscation to new depths. They are verbally abusive to the citizenry, and they display an animus for civility.

I do not like them, because they both display bigotry overtly, as in the case of Harvard Professor Louis Gates, when he accused the Cambridge Police of acting stupidly, and her code speak pursuant to not being able to be proud of America. I view that statement and that mindset as an insult to those who died to provide a country where a Kenyan, his illegal alien relatives, and his alleged progeny, could come and not only live freely, but rise to the highest, most powerful, position in the world.

Michelle Obama is free to hate and disparage whites because Americans of every description paid with their blood to ensure her right to do same. I have a saying, that “the only reason a person hides things, is because they have something to hide.” No president in history has spent millions of dollars to keep his records and his past sealed.

And what the two of them have shared has been proved to be lies. He lied about when and how they met, he lied about his mother’s death and problems with insurance, Michelle lied to a crowd pursuant to nearly $500,000 bank stocks they inherited from his family. He has lied about his father’s military service, about the civil rights movement, ad nausea. He lied to the world about the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address. He berated and publicly insulted a sitting Congressman. He has surrounded himself with the most rabidly, radical, socialist academicians today.

He opposed rulings that protected women and children that even Planned Parenthood did not seek to support. He is openly hostile to business and aggressively hostile to Israel. His wife treats being the First Lady as her personal American Express Black Card (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I condemn them because, as people are suffering, losing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, he and his family are arrogantly showing off their life of entitlement – as he goes about creating and fomenting class warfare.

I don’t like them, and I neither apologize nor retreat from my public condemnation of them and of his policies. We should condemn them for the disrespect they show our people, for his willful and unconstitutional actions pursuant to obeying the Constitutional parameters he is bound by, and his willful disregard for Congressional authority.

Dislike for them has nothing to do with the color of their skin; it has everything to do with their behavior, attitudes, and policies. And I have open scorn for their constantly playing the race card.

I could go on, but let me conclude with this. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate them, as they did President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are. There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord over the people, as these two are permitted out of fear for their color.

As I wrote in a syndicated column titled, “Nero In The White House” – “Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood…

Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation, and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement – while America’s people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.”

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Let the games begin. It will be fun experiencing the slurs, mud slinging, lying, and slandering as our citizen politicians spend millions of other people’s money to get jobs that pay squat in comparison.

Big Brother Now In Your Pocket/Purse?

A Spy In Your Pocket?

A Spy In Your Pocket?

Everyday I review headlines from several news sites to see what is going on. Today, a headline from Rush Limbaugh caught my eye. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to explore what it is all about. Rush reports that our phone service providers have invaded our privacy with an app. It seems, a law passed in Spring of 2013 mandates that phone service providers downloaded an app that will give us emergency information. I checked my phone immediately and wallah there is was. It seems that now if Obama wants to send me some of his socialist propaganda under the guise of emergency information he can text me his message. Supposedly, the system will tell me if there is a pending tornado bearing down upon my house, or a hurricane is creeping in from the north along the length of Lake Michigan from Mackinaw Island, or the Cook County Forest Preserve is on fire and heading toward Will County thus putting my home in jeopardy. Most likely, it will be our dear president speaking about the virtues of Obama Care and why we have to be  patient with the implementation. Big, complicated 1200 page bills that our elected Representatives did not have the time, energy, nor interest to read before voting take time and a great big bunch of money,(which by the way the Reps forgot to write into the Bill), to carry out. (Sorry, that sentence is the result of two generous pours of Winking Owl).

Check your cell to see if the app has invaded your phone. Click on the link to Rush Limbaugh’s commentary and he will give you instructions for how to go ahead. It’s kind of fun to decide if you really want all the benefits of modern technology in your pocket/purse.

I’m leaving my emergency notification button turned on, I want to see for myself what kind of BS, I mean benefit, this will lead to.

Will We Awaken to Find We Have Communism?

A billboard from the highways of America

Thank you, thank you, thank you Dorothy. She has sent me stuff for years that is right on the money. This article below explains why the USA is at war; with itself. It pits Conservatives against Progressives. (Progressivism is a code word for Liberalism, Socialism, Communism)

This election will decide which direction toward which the country will move. It won’t decide the direction absolutely because the two factions will continue to labor toward their ideologies for many elections to come, but eventually, the stronger will prevail. This election, though is bringing us closer to a socialist state than any previous.

Nikita Khrushchev said:

We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.

Google this quote and you will find author David Emery make a detailed case trying to confuse who made the quote or if  someone said it at all. I remember reading the quote in the newspapers at the time of Khrushchev’s visit with President Eisenhower in the USA .  Somewhere during that trip Khrushchev said it.

What does this quote have to do with the article below?

In my opinion Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and many Democrats declare themselves Progressives. They are the ones who set the agenda for the downfall of the economy. Harry Reid continues to use delay tactics in the Senate to keep from passing budgets and the many laws passed by the House of Representatives. Why?

The article below is what Dorothy sent me, I checked it out and lifted it from SNOPES.

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The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007, which was the day the Democrats took overthe House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the110th Congress.The Democrat Party controlled a majority in both chambers for thefirst time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacythat everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this: January 3rd, 2007was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress.At the time:The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%The Unemployment rate was 4.6%George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOBGROWTHRemember the day…January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House

Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate

Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months

later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL

SERVICES!

Unemployment… to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping

5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie

Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!

Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie – starting in

2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy.

And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie

Mac? OBAMA And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? OBAMA

and the Democrat Congress.

So when someone tries to blame Bush. REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007….

THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!”

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and

the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat

Party.

Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 &

2009 as well as 2010 & 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused

them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough

on spending increases.

For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush

entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running

until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a

massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that

very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he

signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009.

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the

last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five

years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After

that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that

includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself. In a

nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted

for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since

January 20th.

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We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.

I’m thinking this generation of elected leaders leap frogged the effort.