Getting Better

I’m not sure how much time I am going to have to write over the next 11 months. I am beginning a course of study in Information Technology, specifically in Networks.

One of the things that I was lacking when I tried to start a communications business was a lack of understanding of computer networks. It was a case of not knowing enough to know what I didn’t know. Over the last 2 years I have learned more and now I think I know what I am lacking. These classes should fill that gap and give me the skills I need to become very effective in an area that I believe that reform groups are lacking - media.

Most people still get their news from the corporate-controlled, left-leaning, financially-obsessed media with its ego-driven personalities who are more concerned with ratings and markets than NEWS.

Everyone in the reform movement knows that we need better, fairer, and more honest coverage than what we have gotten. Too often the media slants the public’s perceptions of us by finding our lunatic fringe and trying to present them as the norm for our groups. Certainly we can help this by first being more educated. Check your sources. Verify your e-mailed information. You might be surprised how much of the “urgent - you must pass this to 10 people” stuff that you get is bogus. Get a better understanding of history, economics, and religion. Yes, religion. You would be surprised how much of a part it plays in our current political situation. I’m not telling you what to believe (although I would like to) but you need to understand it better. I got tired of people telling me what the Bible said. One person said this. Another said that. It was very confusing. I went out and got the tools so that I could find out for myself.

Secondly, we need to try to be more articulate. I know that for some of us this is very hard. But, how good is it if you know something but can’t express it? Take some courses in public speaking. There are places to get those skills that are cheap, if not free. Maybe within our own groups we should give members things to study and present to the group. It will be scary at first but you will get better. Believe me. I am a very good example. The first time I tried to speak in public I froze up, couldn’t say a word. I have gotten better.

That maybe the theme of this blog today getting better. I’m going to try to do my part. I have a long way to go. I have learned that I have a few personal shortcomings but I know that I am am a work in progress. The best is yet to come. God isn’t through with me yet. By His grace I will get better. How about you?

Not a "birther", but...

I am not a "birther". I don't want to see Barak Obama's real birth certificate.

I already know that he is NOT eligible for the office he now holds. A law book from the 18th century gives us a picture of what their view of a citizen was:

"The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the

society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their

tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country."

That fromThe Law of Nations by Emmerich de Vattel, Chap XIX, 212: Citizens and natives.

"This 1758 work by Swiss legal philosopher Emmerich de Vattel is of special importance to scholars of constitutional history and law, for it was read by many of the Founders of the United States of America, and informed their understanding of the principles of law which became established in the Constitution of 1787."

This was copied from one of the several sources that I read to make sure it wasn't just from someone making it up. My failure was that I didn't record the source. Good thing this isn't a term paper. I will say that people back then were a lot smarter than we are today.

By this standard I don't need a certificate of live birth or anything else. By all admissions Mr. Obama's father was from Kenya. At the time it was a colony of Britain, making Mr. Obama, Sr. a British citizen, making Mr. Obama, Jr. INELIGIBLE. I wish we had judges who had some guts and brains.

Our Failure

We have let our Founding Fathers down. I was reading The Federalist Papers yesterday while having my car inspected. While reading No. 68, The Mode of Electing the President, by Alexander Hamilton, I came across these words:

"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue."

They had had extremely high expectations of the process that they had devised for the election of the chief magistrate of the united States of America - the President. They also had high expectations for us.

I confess the we have failed. We have not held those who represent us to the standards our founders expected. We have become easy victims of highly skilled P. R. firms. We get little

useful information from candidates. Even in debates, it doesn't matter what the questions is; they only tell us what they want us to hear, and we and the press let them off.

We have a responsibility to our founders, to ourselves, and to those who will follow us to do a better job. We need to live up to the expectations of those great men. They deserve nothing less.

more to follow...

Bitter apology

I have always felt that a personal apology for an public insult was a good first step. Then a more formal, public one should follow. I did need a good place to put it. Here it is. This is my public one.

The course of political debate can easily slip away from practices and principles, and deteriorate into the interjection of personal opinions about people. I am guilty of that. I had written a letter that explained how I saw the collapse of the “Tea Party Coalition”. In my explanation I did let my emotions get the better of me.

Jim, I apologize now in public as I did in private. As I stated I had high hopes for the “Coalition” and when things started to fall apart I took it very hard.

Thank you for your totally classless response. I had hoped for better. Silly me.

You intimated in your blog that I didn’t understand what’s important as you tried to clarify it for me.

Now let me try to understand this. The nation that I had known is disappearing before my eyes. Rights that our founding fathers correctly called unalienable are being eroded at an alarming rate. Those who hold to the right to estate (being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor) are now called selfish and greedy. Now there is “social justice”, which is just another way of saying that it is noble to take one person’s money to give to another person. The rights that the Bill of Rights were to insure are being egregiously ignored. I now can not say anything that will offend someone, or else fines and imprisonment will be coming. So much for free speech or the freedom of religion. It won’t be long before personal rights will consist only of being able to have sex with anyone I want. For now I can have a gun if they let me. State governments are so addicted to Federal money that they won’t speak up. I had taken an oath in 1972 to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. I don’t remember there being an expiration date on that. So it is still valid.

But you say these are not important. The only thing that is important is beat the machine, that collection of corrupt local political bosses who control everything. It is the evil above all evils. It’s us verses them. There can be no compromise, no negotiation, no prisoners, no touching the unclean thing. I must ignore the fact that it has sought our endorsement. I must ignore the reality that they need our popularity and people,as much as we need their money and people. I should not concern myself with anything but destroying the machine.

I sorry but I seem to remember that your main concern was winning. How will you win if no one will work with you? Getting a major party endorsement is critical. Without it a candidate will lose 95% of the time. Some of us are willing to work with the machine for now because the cost of not working with them is too high.

This compromise that you despise so much is demonstrated in early American History. Our founding father compromised principles when they sought and got the help of the King of France. Hadn’t they just espoused that they had unalienable rights given to them by their creator and that government rules by the consent of the governed? I don’t think that the French king was too big on those ideas. However, the cost of failure for them was too high to not compromise. I believe this year is also important. We need reform minded people in our Congress and State House. No, no one should sell his soul to the devil or the machine to gain office but to demand the purity that the “Coalition” is demanding will leave you pounding the halls of some middle school looking for candidates that are pure enough to receive your endorsement.

I am sure you are saying,” that’s not much of an apology.” Well, I apologize for anything that was about you personally, not for my opinion of your actions relating to the collapse of the “Coalition” that I described, or my opinion of your failure to understand the implications of national events and the inadequacies of your strategies.

At the end of my life I want to hand over to my children and grandchildren a United States of America that they will enjoy, and be able to prosper in, so that they will be proud to say they are Americans. I have a choice: do I fight against those who are working to take that away from me, working with people who are not perfect but have the same goals, knowing that it is a difficult and dangerous path; or do I follow you down the sanctimonious path of purity that leads to irrelevance and impotence? Hmmm. An easy choice for a thinking man. I choose the first.

By the way, I know that I don’t warrant much thought with you, but next time you might dress up your cliched similes. Use something like,”your apology is a useless as A Tea Party Coalition Endorsement!” That would really hurt.

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Who am I and what is a political grunt. Anyone who has been in the military knows what a grunt is. It is a foot soldier, a ground pounder, a guy who does the dirty work and gets little glory. Now coming from a U.S. Air Force Vietnam-era veteran this term is a little humbling to accept but I guess that is what I am.

I live in Western New York, an area known for political dysfunction. I am not from this area. I'm a transplant but I love this area, even the snow. I think I would rather live here than anywhere else in the world. I do have to confess that even though I love it here I still have a little attachment to the Pittsburgh area. You know what they say, "you can take the boy out of Pittsburgh, you can't take Pittsburgh out of the boy," at least not completely. I still cheer passionately for both the Steelers and the Penguins. (It's too bad the Pirates became a major league farm team.) Now, I like the Bills and the Sabres but they aren't my teams.

O.K. Enough about me. Why am I writing this. I, with about everyone else who lives here, have one major complaint with New York - THE GOVERNMENT. Talk about a bunch of nincompoops. After watching these people since 1988, when I moved to New York, I finally had enough complaining from others and me. Something had to be done! Through "Providence" I met Lenny Roberto of Primary Challenge. After talking for a couple times a week over a few months he invited me to become a part of Primary Challenge. So here I am. I am the guy who does the video for major events. You will see me off on the side recording the history of the reform movement here in the Buffalo area.

And it is a movement. We have some people out in front who get the bulk of the attention but it is filled with people like me, grunts, who don't seek glory but struggle for one goal - RECLAIM OUR GOVERNMENT. We have seen the American ideals that were taught to us, that we came to love quickly eroding under a "European - idolizing" bureaucracy that is increasingly expanding and it scares us. We are not all scholars but we are well read. We are not all geniuses but we are not the dumbiesthat the media makes us out to be. There may be a racist or two there; but, when we know who they are, they are not tolerated. This is not about one man - Obama. This is not about one issue - taxes. It is about a forgetten concept - FREEDOM and the God-given right to govern ourselves. More to follow....