The Big Hoax

Posted on 24/03/2010 by Grumpa Joe

 

     Every day our lawmakers and pundits bombard us with BS.  They say, “we are a nation of laws,” but are we?  Sure, we employ sixty Senators and  four hundred and thirty-five representatives to write and pass laws, and they do write laws by the hundreds every year. When some poor slob has a problem, he writes to his Congressman to fix his problem so it never happens again. The Congressman, eager to keep his job for a lifetime drafts a law. He lobbies his friends in congress to vote for it. Together, they vote the law in. The rest of us who do not have the same problem  don’t really give a rats hoot about it. The law stays on the books, and congress forgets about it. Someone finds a loophole in the old law, and applies it inappropriately. Time passes, and some genius Congressman decides to be creative by working around the silly house rules requiring that congress debate it first, then vote on it.  A recent example of this is the reconciliation bill. The Senate adopted the reconciliation bill to fix differences between the house, and the senate versions of the health care bill. Originally, the bill reconciled differences in the budget. 

     How many laws do we have that lurk in the books with hidden time bombs like the reconciliation bill? Today, I tried researching what it takes for a person coming into this country to come in legally.  Try to Google that one. I got thousands of hits on what an American needs to get into Mexico, but very little on what a Mexican needs to get into the USA. There are stories of overcrowded border crossings and border patrol people at the gates who do a poor job at checking the credentials of those coming across.

     I was able to glean that several presidents were involved in opening the gates to the USA. Remember when, Jimmy Carter tried to make the country bi-lingual? He wanted to post all the signs in the country in Spanish as well as English. I bet that is where “dial one for English,” crept into the vocabulary. Bill Clinton made the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) part of his agenda. He also began looking the other way when the Mexicans began flooding across the border to jobs in border towns.  George Bush was no better. He wanted the country to have low-cost labor to pick lettuce, wash dishes, and mow lawns. He is highly regarded by the Latino population in Texas.

     I spent considerable time looking for the requirements for a Mexican to enter legally. I found one reference to a form that day workers use. Another actually mentioned a passport. A visa is not required. I’m sure the State Department knows what the rules are for entry, but I sure as hell don’t.

     So, what is the hoax? The hoax is we are a nation of laws. We have books filled with laws on immigration to the USA. Most of them worked very well until the 1980’s. (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA)). Ever since then, we have forgotten what the laws are, and disregard them. We fail to enforce immigration laws. Presidents encourage the border patrols to look the other way. Federal Immigration laws are in such poor regard that big cities pass “sanctuary” laws. A sanctuary law prohibits the police from determining if arrestees are in the country legally.  We do have many immigration laws, but hypocritically, we pass laws to say we don’t have to follow the laws. What is that all about?

The next big push by our president is to reform immigration. I have some recommendations:

  1.  Start by enforcing the laws we already have on the books.
  2. Several presidents have chosen to clean house by deporting all illegal aliens.    
    1. During the Great Depression, President Herbert H. Hoover,  (R) ordered the
      deportation of all illegal aliens in order to make jobs available  to  American
      citizens that desperately needed  work.
    2. Harry S. Truman, (D) deported over one million Illegal aliens after WWII to create jobs for veterans.
    3. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower,  (R) deported 1.3 million Mexican Nationals during ‘Operation Wetback’. He did it to give returning WWII, and Korean Veteran’s  a better chance at jobs. It took two years, but the illegal aliens went home by deportation!

These three Presidents deported illegal aliens to help the country.  Obama can do it too. He has both justifications, i.e. a poor economy and returning veterans.

  1. After we clean house, I recommend we use the laws we already have to allow these people to return legally. This is a tough action. We must take it if we are to live up to the claim that “we are a nation of laws.” If we don’t, we are perpetrating the HOAX and spreading hypocrisy across the world.

Obama will not do it because he is part of the HOAX.

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“Kill the Republic”

Posted on 23/03/2010 by Grumpa Joe

 

      Three cheers! The Democrats created a moment of history. They saved the first black president of the USA from the pits of disgrace: or did they?  I congratulate the five hundred and thirty five for their blatant disregard for the voices of 180 million constituents.  It is clear to me that this group of Congressman does not give a damn about the people who hired them. They have chosen to listen to a higher authority, the president. In this win-lose situation, they flexed muscles they forgot they owned.  They did exercise democrat political tricks learned on the battlefield from the likes of Alinsky, Kennedy, and Daley.  The ends justify the means, and the means is anything that works at the time. Bribery, lies, deceit, airplane rides, all fit the bill.

     With the current economic situation, and a new Great Depression still looming before us, I predict that this new bill will bankrupt the country before Obama Care will take care of a single newly insured person. Do we really think that after collecting a huge pile of money for four years that the 535 will fail temptation to spend it on something else? History is on my side on this point. They will spend it, but not on health care.

     Even if we were to vote them all out of office today, it will take a hundred years to undo the damage perpetrated on us by this act. By that time, the culture of the USA will evolve into a godless social state of twenty first century slaves serving the 535. Will you care?  Will living in the nanny state fill you with rapture? Will you accept the loss of liberty and a life of servitude?

     Congratulations America, you got the change you want to believe in. You will have an opportunity to debate the point with me in the soup lines soon.

     In the near future, a group of people from the United Socialist States of America will draft a new Declaration of Independence. It will begin something like this. . .

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. . .

Extracted from the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

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Tsunami

Posted on 15/03/2010 by Grumpa Joe

     In the year I was born unemployment was at 19% down from 25% a few years earlier. FDR was frantic with anxiety over people going hungry in his socialist world. He spent, spent, and spent. Nothing worked. Then the British became involved with Hitler. Britain was broke, and Churchill needed armaments.  FDR invented the Lend Lease program to help the Brits fight Hitler. We built the guns, tanks, jeeps, etc. and loaned them to Churchill. Suddenly, people were working in the USA. Suddenly, people had money. The real reason the first Great Depression ended was our participation in WWII, not the New Deal, CCC, WPA, or any other spending program FDR came up with..

     With a new Great Depression coming to a neighborhood near you, what will end it this time? How long will it take, and which soup line will you be standing in? On a brighter note, the soup line may be the answer to national obesity.

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Slavery or Liberty?

Posted on 28/09/2008 by Grumpa Joe

My personal history is what shaped my thinking today. Mom and Dad came to this country to escape slavery. Yes, they were slaves. In Europe, most countries were feudal monarchies. In a monarchy the Lord owns everything, and everyone on his property. History is nice enough not to call them slaves; they were referred to as “serfs.” Living on a royal estate meant that if you were caught stealing a rabbit or a pheasant for your meal, you were punished. Everything belonged to the Lord of the estate. Happily, the monarchies eventually crumbled. My grandparents and my parents were born during this era. Living as a serf meant they were dirt poor. My grandfather couldn’t afford to feed his son, so he sent him to the “promised land.”  My father landed at Ellis Island in the nineteen twenties. He was seventeen, with only the clothes on his back. Somehow he managed to get to Chicago where he settled in a neighborhood of fellow immigrants who spoke the language. He managed to get a job with the railroad as a laborer. HE LEARNED TO SPEAK AND WRITE ENGLISH, He became a citizen. He registered to vote and voted in every election until he died. He retired from the same job forty eight years later.

 Shortly after he arrived, the country collapsed into the “Great Depression.”  His hours were cut in half. The RR wanted to spread the work around. He was happy to be employed. He married Mom, and together they worked things out. She grew vegetables in empty lots, learned to sew, and patched clothing. When she could, she worked part time jobs as a cook. There was no minimum wage, no health care, no forty hour week, no vacations, and welfare was a swear word. Only the very desperate went on welfare. They didn’t have a “Community Organizer” or “Acorn,” to help them. Mom and Dad survived on their own using their God given brain. They learned and understood the value of citizenship and the right to vote. They registered and voted in every election as Democrats. They lived as conservatives.

 They worshipped FDR because he brought the country out of the depression, and put men to work. We were never allowed to forget the depression. Any time we complained, we got the “depression,” lecture. Mom and Dad didn’t want to go through that again, ever. They warned us of the hardship that a depression would bring, and lived their lives as if another one could happen any moment. My grandfather lost his life savings in a failed bank, my Aunt lost her house to foreclosure. Life in a depression is not good.

My parent’s only education was their language and citizenship classes. Yet, they believed in the value of education. I went to a parochial school, they gladly paid. If I wasn’t getting good marks, they wanted to know why. They couldn’t help with my homework, but they insisted it be done. I went on to college. Dad didn’t understand what my chosen profession was about, but he supported me financially, and morally. They never complained, never asked for any help. They insisted I finish school.

Currently, our country faces the prospect of another “depression.” I know that those of us who were prepared to survive will make it through. I can only hope the same holds true for those who are not. What the people of this great country do not understand is the meaning of ‘poor.” I have personally seen poor people in other parts of the world. The poor in the U.S.A. are by far the richest poor in the world. They don’t know what poor means. We are also faced with a huge redistribution of wealth from the very rich to the so called “poor.” This move is definitely in the direction of socialism. Add that move to the effort to remove “GOD” from everything and we have “Communism.” Once the wealthy have been taxed to the point that they are no longer wealthy, we will all be the middle class. Those of us who are still working will be “slaves” to the Federal System to socialize everyone.

This is the way I see our choices:

1.    Vote for BO, become a slave to the feed the system.

2.    Vote for McCain and maintain your liberty to make a living as you choose and to use your earnings as you wish.

What will it be? Slavery or Liberty?

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Older and Wiser

Posted on 25/07/2008 by Grumpa Joe

Wow! Too many projects, too little time to get them all done. Does that sound familiar? Let me tell you something folks, it doesn’t change with age. As long as a person has his health, and mental faculties, he will continue to want to be a useful citizen of this earth. I had a question last night from one of my Lions Club friends. We touched upon the election in our discussion. He is concerned because he is a conservative in all his views, yet he is questioning about voting for an old man.

He looked at me and asked, “how old are you Joe?

“Seventy,” I replied.

“Do you feel that you have the energy and mental capacity to be president?

“Yes,” was my answer. 

The real question in my mind is whether nature will be good to me, and let me keep my health and energy as I age. I fully intend to stay healthy, and today, I am reasonably healthy, but will I stay that way for much longer? I don’t know, neither do you. Only the Lord knows what is ahead of us. All we can do is, “Remember yesterday, Dream tomorrow, Live today.” 

So what if our current conservative candidate is old? He will select a younger Vice Presidential partner, who will rise to the occasion if it is necessary.  It is also a fact that young men die too. Many of them live a higher risk life style than older men, so their chances of meeting with injury or accidental demise is probably greater. Remember Christopher Reeves, “Super Man,” broke his neck while enjoying his passion, i.e. riding a horse. More recently, Heath Ledger died of too many medicines at one time. To quote a line from the movie “Forest Gump,”

” Shit Happens.”

 Life is filled with stories about people who die when they shouldn’t.

Instead of worrying about a candidate’s age, and his prospects for surviving life, we should concentrate on which political philosophy we want our kids, and grandkids to grow up with. We should be discussing our life values and the reasons that we believe in them.

My parents were staunch Democrats. They made one “X” on their ballot. They believed in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the saviour of the working class. Mom and Dad, lived through the depression, they blamed President Hoover for everything that went wrong with the economy. Yet, when I think about how they taught me to live, they were as conservative as the day is long. They never spoke of conservatism, but they lived it. They wouldn’t have understood what “Green” meant, but they lived more “Green” than any modern citizen does today. Their bottom line philosophies:

“If you don’t have the money, don’t buy it.”

“When you have land, you will always be able to feed yourself.”

Mom wasn’t talking about acres or hundreds of acres, she was talking about a back yard. She made our tiny yard into a farm. She raised vegetables, chickens, flowers, and some grass too.

“Never waste.” Mom knew how to mend socks, shirts, and pants. She knew the value of re-cycling hand-me-downs, and somehow we managed to survive without knowing we were poor.

“Welfare is for people who are worse off than we are.” My Dad would have hung himself before he accepted money from the government. He came to this country with the clothes on his back, got a job, learned English, took abuse from his co-workers, and managed to feed and educate three kids.

If you believe in big government, and the philosophy that Big Brother should take care of you, that’s okay. You should vote for the Liberal.

I happen to believe that the government is way too big, and the National Debt is out of control. If you want to tax me to pay off the debt, okay. If you want to tax me to pay for more social programs, go fly a kite.

I’m voting conservative even if the candidate is 101 years old. He’d be the much wiser choice.

Filed under: Characters I knew, Election, family, Garden, Memories, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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