GBTV - Where the Truth Lives

Election Season 2014

And it has brought us to this trainwreck called ObamaCare and we have bankrupted our kids and grandkids!

We are now headed into the 2014 Election Season and common sense and conservatism are on the rise. Please stand-up and be counted!

Reading Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election is a great place to start!

The Founding Father's Real Reason for the Second Amendment

And remember the words of Thomas Jefferson "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." See Video of Suzanna Gratia-Hupp’s Congressional Testimony: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For, below (u-tube HERE).

The Leaders Are Here... Palin, Cruz, Lee, Paul, Chaffetz....

T'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Can You Really Still Believe That None of These People Would Have Done a Better Job???

Bloggers' Rights at EFF

SIGN THE PETITION TODAY...

Friday, August 29, 2014

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Accountability Edition

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Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

This week, The MidKnight Review, The Political Commentator, Seraphic Secret and The Pirate’s Cove earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you this week….

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Kurds Sending All-Female Units To Battle ISIS: “Jihadists Think If They’re Killed By A Female They Won’t Go To Heaven”…

Love it.

Via WSJ – h/t to Weasel Watchers:

Battle-hardened after two years fighting Islamic State and other Islamist rebel groups in the multi-sided Syrian civil war, Kurdish guerrillas linked to the PKK have in recent weeks made a series of military gains that have spotlighted their growing sway.

The Kurdish region of Syria was largely left to its own devices by the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, drawing accusations the PKK’s Syrian branch was in league with Damascus. PKK officials in Syria have denied those accusations.

Last week, the PKK’s Syrian-based units advanced into Iraq and punctured Islamic State lines to help tens of thousands of Yazidis escape an encircled Mount Sinjar. [...]

Syrian commanders say the security and quality of life is improving as their guerrilla forces expand rapidly, propelled by thousands of young volunteers. Recruitment is boosted by the deployment of women soldiers on the front line, often in all-female units.

“The jihadists don’t like fighting women, because if they’re killed by a female, they think they won’t go to heaven,” said one female fighter.

Aldar Khalil, a top PKK official in Syria, said the guerrillas don’t have vast stocks of heavy weapons but can easily buy lighter arms—mostly guns, ammunition and rocket propelled grenades—on the black market from well-established smuggling networks, using contributions from citizens and donations from Europe.

Nothing like beating them at their own game!!  It is like when the Spanish started pour pigs’ blood or slaughtered pigs at the sights of Islamic Temples or planned Islamic Temples.  It eventually led to the expulsion of Islam from Spain.

Related: 

Female Kurdish fighters prove a huge challenge for#ISIS

Muslim Kryptonite: Pigs | Adask's law 

Islamic State: “We Will Take Spain Back”

Coptic bishop: witnessing heinous cleansing of entire Christian population in Middle East  

Female Israeli Soldiers and American Feminists

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Drunk And Out of Line Edition

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Ethics, you know…after all, if a DA can’t try and use her position to muscle herself out of a DUI,who can?

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

The Council In Action!!

Terresa at The Noisy Room scored when her entry this week, Communists and the New Black Panthers Gin Up Violence and Racial Conflict in Ferguson was cited by DC Clothesline and Infowars…where it subsequently got picked up by Drudge!

This week, Blazing Cat Fur, The Political Commentator and  Gates Of Vienna earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you this week….

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Watcher’s Council Nominations: ‘There’s A Riot Goin’ On’ Edition

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Police state militarization of USA was foretold by alternative media

Because we all know nothing says social justice like breaking into a convenience store and looting it.

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

This week, MidKnight Review, The Political Commentator, The Pirate’s Cove and The Mellow Jihadi earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you this week….

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Depression and Suicide Re-Visited in the Aftermath of the Death of Robin Williams

Robin Williams… Humble Hero and Comic Virtuoso Dead at 63

Goodbye Robin Williams… May you rest in peace!!  Thank you for all the joy and laughter you brought into all our lives!!  For the talent you shared and for all your good works!!  May you find the joy, peace and laughter that you were looking for in the next life!!  Read more here

Robin Williams 

By Marion Algier  -  True Health Is True Wealth (THITW)  -  Cross-Posted at AskMarion

The world was shocked to hear of the death of Robin Williams and even more shocked to hear about the details of his death… his suicide after a life of depression.

Two movies that Williams made come to mind when thinking about the events surrounding his death: Dead Poets Society and What Dreams May Come.

How the lessons of ‘Dead Poets Society’ can help us understand suicide and depression:

By Alyssa Rosenberg – Washington Post: As we have absorbed the news that Robin Williams committed suicide at the age of 63, the conversation about his life and legacy has starfished in any number of directions, some of them outrageously ghoulish, many of them thoughtful. I have been struck by many of the pieces that focus on two ideas: the greatness of Williams’ performance in the period private school drama “Dead Poets Society” and attempts to render suicide and depression more comprehensible.

(Credit: Buena Vista Pictures)
(Buena Vista Pictures)

“I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way,” John Keating (Williams) told the boys in his high school English class in “Dead Poets Society.”

But poetry does more than give us unique perspectives on familiar subjects. It can be a powerful pathway into the mind-sets of profound depression and suicidal ideation that are difficult to render rational to people who are trying to understand them from the outside, and that are flattened by all but the most incandescent prose writers. If we are to truly take Keating’s advice, we ought to examine the same medium that explains to us why we live for insight into why some people choose to die.

Keating teaches his boys Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” with its injunction from the Greek hero, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”

He might have reached back to Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and the story of Ajax’s suicide. In Sir Samuel Garth and John Dryden’s translation, the mighty fighter, furious that Odysseus has been awarded a prize that Ajax believed rightly his, and unable to understand the logic that permits such a decision, commits suicide. “He who cou’d often, and alone, withstand / The foe, the fire, and Jove’s own partial hand,  / Now cannot his unmaster’d grief sustain, / But yields to rage, to madness, and disdain.”

Or what about the “Aeneid,” which gains so much of its power from a seeming contradiction. When Aeneas meets Queen Dido, he is in awe of her. In Robert Fitzgerald’s marvelous translation, Aeneas marvels “What age so happy / Brought you to birth? How splendid were your parents / To have conceived a being like yourself!”

But Aeneas’s hope that “your name and your distinction / Go with me, whatever lands may call me” carries with it the promise that he will leave. When he does, Dido’s understanding of the laws that are meant to govern gods and men cracks and she becomes fixated on a vision of her own death. Virgil captures the moment before her suicide in stunning verse: “Dido’s heart / Beat wildly at the enormous thing afoot. / She rolled her bloodshot eyes, her quivering cheeks / Were flecked with red as her sick pallor grew / Before her coming death. Into the court / She burst her way, then at her passion’s height / She climbed the pyre and bared the Dardan sword– / A gift desired once, for no such need.”

I sometimes wonder if Keating read the work of Weldon Kees, who disappeared in 1955. Kees’s fate is a mystery, but even if he did not kill himself, his vanishing act is a kind of self-murder.

Kees’s work captures the flatness of depression beautifully. In a series of poems about a character named Robinson, Kees describes the man’s “sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.” Ultimately, Robinson vanishes, his absence throwing a pall over the world: “The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall,” Kees writes, “Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black.  / Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian.”

Many of Kees’s other poems seem to suffer from infections similar to the ones that ravage Robinson’s spirit.

In “For My Daughter,” he darkly speculates about the fates that a woman can meet, “Parched years that I have seen  / That may be hers appear: foul, lingering  / Death in certain war, the slim legs green. / Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting  / Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel / Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.” The poem ends in a surprising place. “These speculations sour in the sun,” Kees admits. “I have no daughter. I desire none.”

In “The Upstairs Room,” he uses that same sense of surprise to talk cruelly about “The floor my father stained,” not with varnish but with “The new blood streaming from his head.” The characters in “Five Villanelles” are paralyzed, prevented even from acting to protect themselves: “Here in the kitchen, drinking gin, / We can accept the damndest laws. / We must remain until the roof falls in.”

“Dead Poets Society” is set in 1959, at the same moment that the confessional poets were emerging as a significant force in American letters.

If Keating’s teaching took, I can imagine the young men of that film encountering Anne Sexton’s sharp observation in “Wanting to Die” that “But suicides have a special language. / Like carpenters they want to know which tools. / They never ask why build.” Or maybe they would be touched by Robert Lowell’s report of his stay in a mental health facility in “Waking in the Blue” that “We are all old-timers, / each of us holds a locked razor.” Lowell himself recalled Dido in “Falling Asleep over the Aeneid.” His character dreams that he is Aeneas, holding the sword that Dido used to kill herself, when he is visited by a bird who counsels him “Brother, try, / O Child of Aphrodite, try to die: / To die is life.”

Sexton and Sylvia Plath captured the grinding drive towards annihilation in “The Double Image” and “Lady Lazarus.” In the former, Sexton watches leaves fall off the trees with the daughter she has failed to parent because of her suicide attempts and stays in institutions. “I tell you what you’ll never really know,” she tells the little girl, “all the medical hypothesis / that explained my brain will never be as true as these / struck leaves letting go.”

“This is Number Three.  / What a trash / To annihilate each decade,” Plath writes in an expression of extreme weariness.

In Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” she counsels readers that ” It’s evident / the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.” It is good advice. But poetry can help us see that while we are supposed to recover from losses like Bishop’s, or John Keating’s loss of a student and a job, not all of our brains work the same way.

What Dreams May Come also deals with depression, death and suicide and attacks the religious stance that there is not escape from suicide, that once you go down that path you will spend all eternity in Hell.

What Dreams May Come - Special Edition

There is such a profound sense of drama, magic and emotion behind the story in "What Dreams May Come," a film based on the novel by Richard Matheson. There is a strong story with which anyone who loves someone else can identify, as well as an ostentatious and elegant scope of visual and auditory imagery that jumps right for your eyes onscreen. Matheson's visions of heaven and hell are magnificently realized here, as well as the love between two people that is unbreakable, even after death. 

The movie begins with the chance meeting of two American tourists traveling in Switzerland. Soon after, Chris and Annie become inseparable, and after their wedding, they bear two children. Many years later, Ian and Marie are killed in a car collision, leaving their parents distraught yet overcoming. Another couple of years later, Chris dies in a car accident as well, on his way to celebrate the "Double D" anniversary of his wife's emotional recovery from their childrens' deaths. This begins his trip into heaven, which is rocky at first during his attempts to console his living wife, then graduating into his acceptance of his immortality and ascending into heaven, which turns out to be the creation of his own thoughts and settings. When he realizes that he is not completely happy without Annie, he becomes depressed, so it is no surprise that when Annie commits suicide and is sent to hell, he readies himself to rescue his wife from her emotional confines that keep her in her prison of eternal darkness.


The story for this movie is very ambitious, as are the filmmakers who bring it to life. There is an abundance of vivid memories in the form of flashbacks, many of which are precisely used to move the plot along and keep the story moving. Instead of becoming bored with the ongoing story of Annie and Chris's married and parental life, I found myself becoming more and more entranced as their lives unfolded, and say what you will, but the only way to tell a story like this is through flashbacks. If you were to take all of the memories and place them in order at the beginning of the movie, the audience would forget about the important moments that have an effects on the actions and events that take place in later instances of the film. Each one is a separate piece of the puzzle, and they all fit together quite well.

This film is one of those movies that showcases the possibilities for filmmaking in the future. Really, when you think about it, there is no way that the movie could have been made thirty years ago and still have the same impact as it does now. The settings and scenery play the most important role of the movie, for they provide the reason for the emotion and action that affects our characters. The beginning shots in Switzerland show us beautiful vistas of mountains and lakes, which will later become the inspiration for Chris's heaven, as well as many of the paintings Annie creates. Their home bursts forth with color and brightness, proving that color plays a big role in the film. When everyone is alive, everything seems light and airy. After Chris's death, all is dark, and the walls of the home seem dismal and gray. One scene in particular is a scene in which Chris watches his children being driven away in their van down a long line of lilac trees, a slight fog covering the scene. Their is that brilliance of color, yet the dark fog makes us uneasy, hence the accident that kills their children.

Heaven is elegantly portrayed in this film, and is done so with a new twist: that each person has their own private heaven created in the image of their own personal desires and thoughts. Chris's heaven is based on the paintings of his wife, from the mountains of Switzerland to a small island in the middle of a mountain lake with an opulent, airy house. The filmmakers give each scene the precise look of a painting, even after the special effects fade, using vivid colors, lots of flowers and mountainous backdrops, to transport us into Chris's new world. This is one of the most incredible film achievements ever, taking us to a special place that is warm, inviting, and personifies every thought we, as an audience, have ever had for beauty and vision.


Hell is given a truly horrifying and intense treatment, displaying visions of suffering as well as the personal and emotional pain of life that haunts us all. Somewhat like the way in which Heaven is created, Hell is seen as a person's "life gone wrong," which allows for the creation of their pain-driven eternity. The gateway to hell is a stunning visual image, a vast, smoky graveyard of smoldering shipwrecks that creak and groan. There is also a dismal, endless sea of decrepit faces of hell's inhabitants, that groan and scream at one another. The most striking of all the settings is the overturned cathedral, where Annie resides. The columns rise from the ceiling and go on forever into the darkness, which gives the whole place a sense of the never-ending.

There is a unique chemistry between the two leads that carries on the film's emotion and power. Robin Williams is charming, humorous and bold as Chris Nielsen, and through his acting and talent, he is able to make us believe in the love that Chris holds for Annie. Annabella Sciorra is moving as Annie, embodying all of the emotions and grief that set the stage for the second half of the story. When the two are together onscreen, they are happy and in love, and we buy it because they make it appear very authentic. Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays the angel that brings Chris to heaven, doing well in his performance of helping Chris through his struggle to realize his death. Max von Sydow, whose part is not as big as others he has had, is the tracker who takes them all to hell, and his words of wisdom keep the film's informative angle moving.

"What Dreams May Come" will go down in history as one of the most innovative and spectacular films ever made, full of ambition and inspiration. In its story, we are taken on a journey of the human heart, as well as a striking vision of what may lie in store for everyone under God's eye.

When I hear ridiculous statements from people like '”Robin Williams’ suicide or any suicide was a cowardly act,” it shows me how little progress we have made in this realm and how uninformed people really are.

I lost my Mother to suicide after a long bout with depression that also involved the shooting of My 21-year-old brother; all ultimately caused by the untimely death of my father from colon cancer and the events that followed.  It is a story for another time.  But as Dennis Miller said on the O’Reilly Factor, “If a gentle and cool cat like Robin Williams could be lost to this disease, we all can!” 

Who should you be calling today that can use your help?

Depression: Approximately 21.5 million American adults, or about 9.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year, have a depressive disorder. Nearly twice as many women (12.0 percent) as men (6.6 percent) are affected by a depressive disorder each year. These figures translate to 13.7 million women and 7.8 million men in the U.S.

  • Pre-schoolers represent the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers—more than one million—are clinically depressed.
  • The rate of increase of depression among children is 23%.
  • In most developed countries, 15% of the population suffers from severe depression.
  • An estimated 30% of women are depressed.
  • 41% of depressed women are too embarrassed to seek help.
  • 80% of depressed people are not currently receiving any treatment.
  • An estimated 15% of depressed people commit suicide.
  • By 2020, depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease. Furthermore, studies indicate that depression is a contributing factor to fatal coronary disease.

340 million people in the world suffer from depression and rising. 1 in 4 women will suffer from depression. Postnatal depression affects 14 per cent of new mothers. 1 in 10 men will suffer from depression (this statistic is not absolutely correct because more women are apt to see their doctor for depression than men do.) Depression strikes all races, rich and poor.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 121 million people worldwide have some form of depression, although less than 25 percent have access to effective treatment [source: WHO]. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 14.8 million adult Americans experience clinical depression in any given year — or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population over 18 [source: NIH Depressive]. Women are more likely to have major depression than are men, and the average age for a bout of clinical depression to set in is 32 years old. Older adults also are depressed, however. In fact, people 65 years and older commit suicide at a higher rate than the national average [source: Senior Health]. The good news is that NIH statistics show that the percentage of all adults in the U.S. who are depressed went down a full percentage point from 2007 to 2008… but something tells me that the figures from 2008 to 2014 will have gone in the other direction!!

Monday, August 11, 2014

Calling All Grandparents… Where Are You?

Calling grandparents… great grandparents… and mature family and community leaders to get-involved. Where are you?  What are you leaving behind? The Greatest Generation and now the Babyboomers are probably the most removed groups of grandparents in history.

We, America, are standing at the edge, and have been for a long time. But we are now teetering as far forward as a country possibly can before it falls over the cliff and is no longer recognizable.  We either wake-up immediately and get-involved or there will be no America, at least not as you knew her, not for your children, grandchildren, future generations of Americans… nor anything to take care of you from the benefits you already paid for!

It is time to choose… Which America do you want your grandkids, future generations of Americans, to live In!?!

By Marion Algier – Ask Marion

kerr_roach_grandkids_thumb

Those who subscribe to the anti-freedom, anti-capitalism, anti-‘self-rule’ movements, whether religious or political, never rest. Whether it is the Communists, Marxists, Progressives…, the ruling elite who want to erase our borders and push us all toward a one world government or the radical Islamists who have now taken hold in Iraq and plan to takeover the world world through a Caliphate where Sharia Law will be the supreme law.   They don’t take breaks!  In fact, they work twice as hard when their opponents take a break thinking they won the battle… or even the war.  And so it has been since after WWII and was again reinforced when the Berlin Wall came down.  The Greatest-Generation followed by the Boomers chose to put the blinders on, chose to focus on themselves, chose to have fun instead of paying attention and passing their wisdom to the next generation and chose to buy into anti-American, multiculturalism, politically correct leftist pabulum fed to them one spoonful at a time by the MSM media and the ‘ruling’ elite.

And that is in large part how and why we find ourselves in the place we are today… a shell of what America used to be.  Somewhere along the way, we lost our common sense; we allowed ourselves to be dumbed-down through an educational system geared toward indoctrination rather than education and that system stopped teaching or encouraging independent and critical thinking. We, as a nation and as a people, lost our interest and feelings toward a civic duty; our obligation toward political involvement; our interest in involvement at our schools; our membership and involvement in a faith community; and worst off all, we lost the call to be the light for the next generation.  Grandparents, great-grandparents, church and city elders and senior members of families and communities, in general, used to fill in the gaps for parents that were too busy making a living and tending to the daily demands and goings on of family life. They were the gatekeepers of generational transition and would expand developing youthful horizons with art, literature, travel and personal stories & in-sight; they would provide alternative opportunities; and would make sure that family and religious traditions as well as family and our nation’s history, history in general, were passed on.

But just when we needed the help and input from grandma and grandpa, and the retired teacher up the street or a senior volunteer at church, they decided to play golf; travel without their kids and grandkids; play cards instead of volunteering at school or being there when the grandkids come home instead of being left on their own unsupervised.  And regular Sunday dinner after church has been replaced by sleeping in on Sunday morning and everyone scattering for separate activities when they finally do get up.  And for most of those who actually do sit down together to eat on Sunday afternoon, it is often on TV trays in front of a sports event or some special, but almost always with the TV on and little or no discussion of weekly events, plans for upcoming activities or the general sharing of thoughts and opinions.  Blue Bloods, which airs on Friday nights on CBS, is one of the few and only media examples of what Sundays and Sunday dinners used to be like in more homes than not in America.

What has always made America great is the promise of freedom, liberty and an equal playing field… not the guarantee of equality for all, nor the promise that everyone gets what they want or the promise of wealth or easy times. Immigrants have stood in line to came to America from everywhere for the opportunity and chance to work hard, compete and follow their destiny. And it certainly wasn’t the same for everyone nor perfect… often it wasn’t fair,  but it was better than it was where most people came from.  And what made it work is the U.S. Constitution and respect for the law; a common set of rules and standards that changed and improved but often slowly; a common language; a connection to a higher being and calling; an unmatched work ethic by both immigrants and most Americans and the creation of a melting pot that slowly took the best from all newcomers as they assimilated… creating a soup that only got better as new seasoning was added. But in the mean time it was something you could depend on knowing the flavor and quality were relatively constant… yet offering the hope of improvement.

Statue of Liberty... Not Equality

It worked and America was the envy of the world and shone like a beacon of hope… Reagan’s shining city on the hill.

But like all great nations, societies, empires… things began to fall apart after the great wars… little by little, but it had begun.  We as a people became too settled, too affluent, too comfortable and allowed ourselves to be duped, undermined and dumbed-down by forces that never rest and feed on happy, contented and self-absorbed societies.  You can see it over and over again throughout history.  Fifty+ years ago those that knew their history warned that the U.S. would go the way of Rome if we didn’t wake-up, pay attention and change our path.  And so did the Socialists and Communists of the 1950’s and 1960’s who spawned the Progressives of today, while the rest of us chose to believe that Communism had breathed its last when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR was dismantled without firing a shot.

But that was not the case, for Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Fascism, and Progressivism are all just variations of the same evil whose goal is to control and enslave; exactly the opposite of what America was founded on… freedom and an equal playing field for all… within the parameters of what allows a country to exist and a society to thrive. Progressivism is America’s Deadly Disease, for which Barack Obama is purely a movement figurehead!  The real decisions are made by people like George Soros, Valerie Jarrett and other Soros minions.

The U.S demise has not happened by accident, but by a meticulous plan hatched in the 1950’s, by patient radicals that have developed into today’s Progressives that run the American media, the entertainment industries, the publics schools from kindergarten through college and the Democrat Party… as well as some in the Republican Establishment group.  When ‘The Greatest Generation’ (and their parents) came home after 50 years of depressions and hard-times, and 3 wars… WWI, WWII and Korea weary of strife and wanting a better and more enjoyable life for themselves and their children…

Tom Brokaw’s ‘Greatest Generation’ was the lynch pin that was purposely broken between tradition and what America was and the spoiled rebellious baby-boomers and what America ‘could be molded into’ using the left’s plan. The Greatest Generation who fought in one or both World Wars or Korea and were “Great Depression” babies or children or survivors of the “Great Depression and the Great War(s), in their attempt to spare their children the hardships they grew up with, produced the most rebellious, self-centered, self-indulgent and spoiled generation of all time.

Those in power today from the Clintons to the Obamas and the members of their administrations are and were products of the ‘could be’ generations that followed the so-called Greatest Generation.

Remember Hillary Clinton’s famous debate comment in 2007: “I prefer to think of myself as a Progressive!” (Video), after being asked if she was a liberal). Progressives… the Clintons are and were, having been part of the George Soros, Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven team; The Shadow Party.

Whereas the Obama’s are part of the generation inspired and spawned by Soros, Alinsky, Cloward, Piven, the Clintons and their ideas. Both President Obama’s mother and grandparents were Communists, who attended the Little Red Church in Washington state as well as his mentor (and many believe Obama’s real biological father), Frank Marshall Davis. They were part of the ‘anti-traditional America’ movement.

We allowed our kids to be programmed and manipulated by Big Brother… at school, in the media and by electronics of all kinds, from social media to video games, to two-way access with the world via phone and Internet with little monitoring and with no counterbalance.

My husband has been in part of a new environment over the past month and has randomly asked the people he has been working with or encountered if they know who Barry Soetoro is… what Sharia Law is… what the difference between the Republican and Democrat Parties are… What Abraham Lincoln’s party affiliation was, who Valerie Jarrett, Reverend Wright, Cloward and Piven or Saul Alinsky are…  Not one person has gotten any of those question right and nobody could explain the scandal in Benghazi. Most people can only come up with 3 of the 10 Commandments and 5 of the Amendments to the Constitution.  We are in serious trouble my friends.

A plea to Grandparents…

When you are dead and gone and your grandchildren are grown and living in an America that most of us don’t even want to think about, they will not remember your vacations and trips without them, nor will they want to look at your photos that you left behind.  Most of you don’t even remember those trips or look at the photos more than a couple of times after you return.  But if you took your grandkids and great-grandkids, the trip would be part of your family history and a memory for your kids to emulate and pass on to their children and grandchildren.

If you are golfing several times a week, playing cards or meeting at the mall to walk, shop or have coffee, your absence will barely be missed.  If you home-school your grandkids or become part of a neighborhood homeschooling co-op, the bond you will create will last for generations and your grandkids will remember you forever.

If you sit by and are doing nothing but yell at the television, nothing will change and your kids, grandkids and great-grandkids will ask… where were Grandma and Grandpa when America was dying?  What were they going to try to stop it?  If you are involved in the electoral process, a civic project or perhaps put together at Patriotic camp for youngsters to attend for Summer, Christmas and Easter/Spring Breaks, you will be making a difference and if you involve the kids, they won’t have to ask or wonder.  And make every holiday during the Patriotic Season a learning experience as well as a fun day.

Each of us was put on this Earth to use their gifts and make a difference… and for most of us that does not mean golfing, traveling without your family or becoming a mean couch potato in our old age.

Even those of you out there who are in their mid-80’s, 90’s or even 100+ can often work in partnership with someone else or have great stories to tell of the America of yesteryear or just about your own family’s history.

Make a difference for your family and future generations of Americans.  Use your golden years to make a difference!!

For anyone who thinks… “Sounds great but I’m too old!”, let’s take a quick walk down memory lane:

In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term — until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over” — but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives. The economy was in tatters. And as Americans began thinking about their nation in a new way — as one more nation among nations, no more providential than any other — the pundits declared that from now on successful politicians would be the ones who honored this chastened new national mood.

Ronald Reagan never got the message. Which was why, when he announced his intention to challenge President Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination, those same pundits dismissed him — until, amazingly, it started to look like he just might win. He was inventing the new conservative political culture we know now, in which a vision of patriotism rooted in a sense of American limits was derailed in America’s Bicentennial year by the rise of the smiling politician from Hollywood. Against a backdrop of melodramas from the Arab oil embargo to Patty Hearst to the near-bankruptcy of America’s greatest city, Rick Perlstein asks the question in The Invisible Bridge: “What does it mean to believe in America? To wave a flag — or to reject the glibness of the flag wavers? And a lot more…”

Ronald Reagan was 69-years-old (just weeks from 70) when he was elected president the first time, 73-years old the second time after being shot in his first term and 78 when he left office.  He believed in America, kept a positive attitude and never considered his age a hindrance!! 

When Ronald Reagan's age was starting to to become an issue in the 1984 election, Reagan quickly disarmed his critics and his opponent with the quip, "I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's (Walter Mondale’s) youth and inexperience."  His confidence and humor ended the discussion.

Many careers and projects have been started during the second half of life.

Life and America’s time to turn things around are short!  Start today!!

Friday, August 8, 2014

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Dog Days Edition

Ah, the sultry days leading up to the end of summer, when the warm weather brings out the torpor and laziness in all of us and little gets accomplished except by the determined and the desperate.

Of course, in this election season, that group would include the members of the political class and a veritable army of consultants, pollsters, advance men, hangers on, hired muscle, campaign workers, groupies, sycophants, body servants, soundmen, lighting directors, you name it. Just the thought of it reminds me of the old touring days, slogging down the highway to the next town….an unnatural way to live, but the common lot of political junkies, musicians, carnies and con men always on the way to the next gig, the next score….

The Romans were the first to label this time of year the Dog Days(diēs caniculārēs), noting that the skies were ruled by Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the night sky at this time of year. And Herodotus, Plutarch, Caesar and Thucydides all noted the effect this time of year has on men…the influence of the days of Dog Star giving rise to tempers, frustrations, gambles and many times, war and rumors of war. Some things never change. Or at least that’s what the smart money in Vegas, DC and other oracular venues where the entrails get read for omens says. The mood can get ugly very quickly.

http://frigginloon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/dog-sleeping.gif

This week’s contest is dedicated to letting sleeping dogs lie…at least for the moment.

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week we have nominations; each of the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

The Council In Action!!

Tom White over at VA Right! is rapidly achieving guru status as a political expert in the Old Dominion. His latest mention was in a monthly Virginia Magazine, The Chesterfield Monthly.

This week, The MidKnight Review, Blazing Cat Fur, The Political Commenator and The Pirate’s Cove earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you this week….

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!

1,000-member secretive progressive journalist group uncovered

Media Trackers Media Trackers is dedicated to media accountability, government transparency, and quality fact-based journalism. Archive »

By Brian Sikma -  Cross-Posted at EAGNews.org -  Cross-Posted at AskMarion

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.

top secretFounded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

Sally Kohn, formerly a Fox News contributor, now works for CNN reliably echoing pro-Obama Administration talking points and championing leftwing ideas as a network commentator. Kohn is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and e-mails show that she occasionally approached the group’s membership and asked them to promote her television appearances.

“I’m guest co-hosting CNN’s Crossfire tonight at 6:30pm EST, with fellow co-host Newt Gingrich. I would be grateful for folks (a) helping spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc to encourage people to tune in; and (b) tuning in and live tweeting during the show,” Kohn wrote to the group on January 14 of this year.

In another e-mail, Kohn pitched her TED talk about working as a liberal at Fox News. “I would be grateful for any shares and reactions. Here is a straightforward, sample tweet[:] Watch @sallykohn’s amazing TED talk on emotional correctness: on.ted.com/Kohn” she wrote. “Thanks for everything all of you do every day to make the world a better place!” she signed off.

Amanda Terkel, the “Senior Political Reporter and Politics Managing Editor at The Huffington Post,” is a member of Gamechanger Salon along with The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim.

In mid-July, Terkel and Grim jointly wrote a piece about a leftwing effort to push Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) to run for president. The pair of reporters heavily quoted Erica Sagrans, a fellow member of Gamechanger Salon and leading organizer of the “Ready For Warren” effort, and cited Billy Wimsatt’s support for the project. Wimsatt’s work as founder of Gamechanger Salon and the reporters’ own membership in the group, along with Sagrans’ membership, went unreported.

In a subsequent piece Terkel again reported on the effort to recruit Warren for a presidential bid, and a previous piece by Grim contrasted Warren with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

A former New York Times freelance columnist who now works as an energy and commodities reporter for Thomson Reuters is also a member of Gamechanger Salon. Anna Louie Sussman is listed as an “investigative reporter and journalist” on the Gamechanger Salon membership list, and while her beat focuses on energy issues, she has also writes about “local and international human rights and social justice issues” according to her website.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, a prominent and well-known periodical of leftwing political and social thought. She is also a member of Gamechanger Salon and a regular opinion writer for the online edition of The Washington Post.

A late-July column for the Post by vanden Heuvel entitled Building a progressive alternative to ALEC” hit on a theme regularly mentioned on Gamechanger Salon: liberals must build an alternative to the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Lisa Graves, who leads the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, is also a member of Gamechanger Salon, and – according to e-mails reviewed by Media Trackers – regularly promotes material developed by CMD to attack ALEC and the right-of-center lawmakers who tend to make up the majority of ALEC’s active legislative membership.

Vanden Heuvel suggested in her column that liberals support the efforts of the American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange – ALICE (a leftwing counterpart to ALEC) – and the Progressive States Network. Gamechanger Salon member Prof. Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin Madison founded ALICE. Vanden Heuvel in a 2012 column for the Post wrote about Rogers founding ALICE.

Not once does she appear to disclose her membership in Gamechanger Salon along with some of the very people she writes about.

Jordan Flaherty was, as of last year, a producer for Al Jazeera America television. He is also listed as a member of Gamechanger Salon and for a while he occasionally blogged for The Huffington Post.

In addition to working at the left-leaning American Sustainable Business Council, David Brodwin writes an online column for U.S. News & World Report. Brodwin is a member of Gamechanger Salon, and on July 14 he published a column arguing that small business owners support a minimum wage increase. Fascinatingly, the Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of Labor relies on Brodwin’s American Sustainable Business Council to argue that very point in a recent “fact-sheet” advocating for a minimum wage hike.

Dozens of members of the leftwing network have contributed columns to The Huffington Post, and others have written opinion pieces for several other publications. The full extent of the network’s activity and effectiveness at amplifying and coordinating left-leaning messaging campaigns has yet to be fully explored.

*This is not the first time that members of the liberal progressive media, enabled by Progressives in our government, have colluded to undermine the general and especially the conservative media, the American people, the election process and the thinking of the average American. 

See: 

Journolists… The Truth of Media Fraud Confirmed 

Fixing the News 

The lie launderers 

Creating an Incident… Ignoring the Facts… Manipulating the Public… Controlling the Media 

Long Lost Sarah Palin Emerges From Released Emails Victoriously… 

Politico Palin Alert: Vast Left Wing Conspiracy’s Mission: ‘Sarah Palin Must Be Destroyed’ Uncovered! 

The Lesson in the Betrayal of Sarah Palin

**The media’s job is to report the news without biased… not to make policy and to act as another check and balance on our government, system and elected officials… not to sway the electorate, editorialize, or create news.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Obama and the US Army Open the Door to the UN

This is serious my friends… serious!!


Gen. Markus Laubenthal is the first German officer to be assigned to US Army Europe. He is the command’s new chief of staff. (US Army Europe)

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton  -  The NoisyRoom -  Cross-posted at AskMarion

A headline blipped by this morning that I’m sure very few took note of, but it caught my attention big time. As Weasel Zippers astutely put it: Nein, this could open the door for a UN blue beanie.” Indeed this does, because my friends, if they can put a foreign officer in charge of our troops there, what’s to stop them from doing it here?

From the Army Times:

A German Army brigadier general who recently served with NATO forces in Afghanistan is assuming duties as the chief of staff of U. S. Army Europe, the first time a non-American officer has held that position.

Brig. Gen. Markus Laubenthal, most recently the commander of Germany’s 12th Panzer Brigade in Amberg, and chief of staff of Regional Command North, International Security Assistance Force Afghanistan, will be stationed at USAREUR headquarters, Wiesbaden, Germany. He could report to duty as early as Monday.

Laubenthal also has served as military assistant to the deputy commander of operations and assistant chief of staff of operations for NATO forces in Kosovo.

As the major staff assistant to USAREUR commander Lt. Gen. Donald Campbell, Laubenthal will synchronize the command’s staff activities much as American predecessors have in the past.

“This is a bold and major step forward in USAREUR’s commitment to operating in a multinational environment with our German allies,” said Campbell.

“U. S. and German senior military leaders have been serving together in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan for years. Sustaining the shared capability from this experience will benefit both the U. S. and German armies,” said Campbell who has headed the Army’s largest and oldest overseas command since 2012.

This is a first, a big one. Never before has a non-American officer held the position of Chief of Staff of US Army Europe. It boggles the mind. So, let me get this straight… we fire our generals, gut our officers and then place a German in charge? WTH? Does anyone else see a problem here?

And it gets better… you know why we did this? To say we are sorry for spying on Germany. I kid you not. All this crap leads back to Snowden. The Administration is saying this appointment is a rare sign of cooperation following recent spying allegations. Oh, you bet it is. This is a brilliant maneuver to subvert our military command and it happened without so much as an ‘excuse me’ or a ‘by my way’ being ushered:

BERLIN—A German will for the first time become chief of staff of the U.S. Army in Europe, a sign of further cooperation between the two nations despite a chill caused by allegations of U.S. spying here.

Brig. Gen. Markus Laubenthal from Germany’s Bundeswehr will report to Lt. Gen. Donald Campbell, the U.S. commander for U.S. Army Europe, known as USAREUR, with headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“This is a bold and major step forward in USAREUR’s commitment to operating in a multinational environment with our German allies,” Gen. Campbell said.

The appointment of a German to the position has been several months in the making and is part of the U.S. Army’s strategy to internationalize the command of its overseas operations.

What it is, is a blatant move to allow foreign command and troops eventually to come to American soil. Yep, I said it and Americans better take note. This is a very bad development. What? Didn’t see this coming when Snowden landed on the scene? I did. And Merkel has communist underpinnings in her history and a disturbing bond with Russia. So, tell me again how this helps our national security? The only thing it helps is bringing the UN and NATO into our military’s midst and forcing us into a one world collaboration.

You want fundamental transformation? Look at the ongoing invasion across our Southern border… Look at foreign officers in charge of our troops… Look at Obama’s behind the scenes ties to our enemies and you will discern that where we are heading is very bad indeed. Why are our military officials silent on this? You took an oath, time to honor it. Obama and the US Army just opened the door to the vampiric UN — America do you really want those asshats on your soil?