We Owe It To Them October 29, 2010

Thinking about the outcome of this election and what we are leaving our posterity can be painful. Will they thank us for our foresight and courage, or revile us for our lack of vigilance? Thomas Paine once said, “These are the times that try men’s souls…” If our souls haven’t been profoundly tried by the roughshod trampling we have received from this administration, we are numb or dead, or part of the problem.

We are all about to turn this country back from the brink of the abyss — or not. If we fail, we will have to admit to our children that we couldn’t preserve enough freedom for them to pass on to their own children. We will have to say that although we grew up free, they won’t be able to enjoy the same blessings. We will have to tell them that we became complacent in our prosperity, that we grew lazy in the face of government largesse, and that we allowed the leviathan to devour our desire for liberty and the blessings of freedom. We will at least owe them an explanation, if nothing else. An apology is not going to cut it, I’m afraid.

This is not the first time the majority in government has switched sides, and it probably won’t be the last. Ronald Reagan’s stupendous landslide victory over Hubert Humphrey is a good example of a turnover that stunned and excited. The outcome of that election and the economic expansion that followed it were proof enough that conservative ideals are best for the country, and justified the enthusiasm of the voters.

That was an interesting election, partly because there was a good-sized group of “Reagan Democrats,” who voted for him because they knew the alternative was a pair of concrete shoes for a nation in danger of being pushed over the side into the inky depths of the Sea of Despond. They knew that the Carter years had been a mortal drag on business and the economy. Their one goal was to get that blithering incomeptent out of the white house before he did any more damage.

Those were also the days when people still actually THOUGHT about things like this, understood cause, effect, and consequence, and who put party loyalty aside in the best interests of the country they loved. But even at that, the turnout was only somewhat better than mediocre, and the enthusiasm was nothing compared to what we have been observing lately, on both state and national campaigns. Compared to what we are experiencing with this cycle, that was just the dress-rehearsal.

This time, the electorate is fired up like it probably hasn’t been since the Revolution. This time, the voters are willing to make sacrifices, to donate from already depleted pocketbooks to keep decent candidates in the races, and most have become virtual “Broken-glass Conservatives,” a term used to describe Conservative voters’ willingness to crawl across broken glass to vote for their candidates.

And, just as there was in the Reagan landslide, a lot of former democrats and “independent” voters this time are willing to join them on their knees. Can this broad-spectrum enthusiasm signal a landslide that dwarfs the Reagan juggernaut? One can only hope, because the fraud is rampant, like never before, and the plurality must, MUST be much greater than the fraud margin, or the elections will be stolen again. Turnout is our surper-weapon.

The outcome this time is no more certain than it has ever been, but this time, the voters are AWARE. And, this time, the electorate is aroused, and mad as hell. They are watching the opposition, and they are on the lookout for fraud and chicanery. With just a few days to go, the left, in its desperation, has begun the usual lying character shots and the ballot-stuffing. Rules still apply (see earlier post, “Rule #2″ below): The left can’t win without cheating, and they are proving it this week.

The degree of dedication and enthusiam for this election might have more than a little positive effect on the outcome. But, the voters who enthusiastically make their way to polling places on November 2 need to understand that this one is just the shot across the bow. This is barely the beginning; the beginning of the beginning, even. There is a lot of work to do between now and this time two years from now.

From this point forward, I am going to be praying diligently for the outcome of the NEXT election, and all the ones after it. This, in the words of the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher to George Bush, is “no time to go all wobbly.”

Please, for the sake of all our grandchildren and their children, don’t weaken. Don’t give up, don’t despair if the results aren’t as exciting as we would like them to be. For the sake of the generations to come, we cannot fail, faint, or lose heart. We owe them at least what we received. We can do no less.

1. KILL “early voting”
2. Mandate PAPER BALLOTS everywhere
3. Demand PHOTO I.D.s from all voters

Loving October 28, 2010

There is an art to loving those we love. Generally, the word “love” is used as a verb. We love someone, we “love” something. A verb is a word that denotes action. So loving another should be an act of the will, a deliberate movement toward them. There are uncountable little ways we can show our love for those we cherish. Making that little extra effort to express our feelings for our loved ones should never be a burden, but it should always be an act of the will.

Some years ago, I gave myself a task. I decided that there was never going to be a day go by when I didn’t make a deliberate choice to tell my husband I loved him, because I knew how quickly death could come, and I never wanted to have him go away forever without my words in his ears. I would find ways, I resolved, to express more than just an automatic, “love ya!” at least once each day. Some days, I’m sure, the expression fell a little flat, if there was any conflict in the house, but most times, there was no doubt in either of our minds that I was making that conscious choice not only to express my own love for him but to give him the opportunity to do so for me in return. And he did.

It became a precious ritual. We prayed together daily, a habit of longstanding diligence and a great consolation and source of loving emotion for a married couple. (My most heartfelt advice to newlyweds is always to admonish them to “PRAY together, every day!”) Whenever we tried to express our love for each other during these special times, the tears would flow, simply because there is so much real emotion involved in praying aloud for the one you love, who is in your presence.

Sentimental, I may be. But I know that the power of that deep love can work miraculous changes, not just in the hearts of those who are loved, but those who do the loving. Making a conscious decision of the will to love with all our hearts brings forth great changes in our own souls. Loving another for the simple reason that they exist in one’s life is a great act of charity. It does great things to the lover’s heart–smoothing rough edges in the relationship, giving them the ability to refuse to rise to the bait of taunts or accusations, bearing wounds graciously and without retort. Love for another makes our own hearts soft, and the longer we make that conscious act of the will, the easier it becomes. It molds us, fashions us into real lovers, and gives us a glimpse into the heart of Jesus as he went about his ministries, healing the sick, raising the dead, and forgiving those who executed him, all for the love of us, who are so undeserving.

Without an obvious action on the part of the loved one, real love from the heart of the one who loves begins to work its miracles on those who are the objects of that love. The old saying, “Prayer changes things,” could never be truer, because the selfless, determined love of the lover acts like a prayer, penetrating the heart of the loved one and beginning to work miracles of change there, too. “Real love changes hearts” could be the natural corollary of the statement. Both parties become lovers. Both hearts are healed and strengthened, and the lovers become one in ways that could never be hoped for or imagined by superficial people who think love is something people make in bed.

Real love is more than just valentines in February or bouquets of flowers. Real love sacrifices for the loved one. Real love makes allowances and admits fault readily.

“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…So faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of all is love.” (I Cor 13:4-7, 13)

Pleased As Punch October 27, 2010

I am so proud!

I have a small part in this beautiful book, and wanted to let you know that it has finally been released. It is available for pre-order from the publisher as well as from amazon.com. I hope some of you will be able to acquire this gorgeous collector’s item.

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

For Immediate Release — Cover art, interior shots, and author portrait available upon request.

Whitman Publishing Releases New Sarah Palin “Collector’s Vault” Book:

Sarah Palin, An American Story

(Atlanta, Georgia)—Whitman Publishing is releasing a new VAULT book devoted to Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and Tea Party favorite. Sarah Palin, An American Story: A Collector’s Vault retails for $49.95. The oversized slipcase-bound book is available for pre-order online, including at WhitmanBooks.com, and will be in bookstores in mid-November 2010.

In this richly illustrated scrapbook, author Dave Lifton tells the uniquely American story of Sarah Palin—from small-town Idaho to the governor’s mansion in Alaska, to center stage on the national political scene.

The special Collector’s Vault includes more than just behind-the-scenes photos and insightful text. Tucked into pockets and envelopes are more than 40 replicas of Palin memorabilia: campaign bumper stickers; famous speeches; old postcards; newspaper clippings; portraits of Sarah’s heroes, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher; a Boston Tea Party poster; a personally autographed “thank-you” card; a patriotic bookmark; official proclamations as governor. In addition, there are rarely seen historical replicas like the 1867 check the United States wrote to buy Alaska from Russia.

Sarah Palin, An American Story is a 10 x 12–inch hardcover coffee-table book in a library-quality slipcase. It retails for $49.95 and is available online and in bookstores nationwide.

Hardcover in slipcase

144 pages, plus inserted replicas

Author: Dave Lifton

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0794832768

ISBN-13: 978-0794832766

Retail: $49.95

Rule Number 2* October 26, 2010

In The Big One, I stated a couple of rules.
1. Liberals can’t win without cheating.
*2. Liberals always cheat, no matter what.

Since I posted that, some early voters in Nevada and other places are beginning to experience it up close and personal:

I find it very interesting, in view of what is taking place in America during the coming week, that most crooked election officials and SOS operatives appear to have overlooked/ignored a couple of facts:

1) You are required to pass a test IN ENGLISH in order to become a citizen.
*2) You must be a citizen to vote.

If you come across a ballot printed in anything but English, or if your voting machines offer Spanish langage voting, your vote is in peril.

Be warned.

AN UPDATE: (Link here) Since posting this, it has been discovered that in the facility where the above voters were defrauded, all the machines were serviced and adjusted by members of SEIU. I’m wondering why these guys never thought that voters would NOTICE that their opponent’s name kept coming up on their voting machines! Hello??

All The Marbles October 25, 2010

Let me see if I have this right:

1. Megabanks and the Fed mess everything up, then fix it so nothing has any real WORTH any more. They remove the gold standard. Then, they print money, or burn it, according to the activity of the economy, just to keep control of all the marbles.

2. Reason being, as far as I can tell, is they want to own all the STUFF in the world, including all the money and gold, then drive the price so high nobody else can afford to buy it, or make it illegal to own it…Hello? George Soros…?

…(thinking)…but, wait! If money’s not worth anything beyond its intrinsic value, why do they want it? My guess is they think if they control all the money in the world, they will control all the people. Now, this is not my idea of a good time for the rest of us.

Americans are notoriously independent, and they are not going to stand around and let a few rich guys in Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Monte Carlo tell them when to get up in the morning and how much to pay them for the privelege, especially after having had to put up with the mess we now have in Washington. We are in a BAD MOOD, elitists, so don’t mess with us!

3. Once they find out we don’t want their money any more because we are trading corn cobs, Hello, Kitty stickers, or red and yellow pushpin thumbtacks (all about as wothless as the money we have), maybe they’ll realize they are sitting on top of a huge mountain of pretty paper and indecipherable digital input worth just about what a huge mountain of pretty paper and indecipherable digital output should be worth.

Well, I guess they can always trade back and forth among themselves. I don’t have any problem with that. The genie is out of the bottle, now. Doesn’t matter if the legal tender is gold, greenbacks, or marbles. Humans will always find ways to trade their time and talents for someone else’s time and talents. Especially Americans.

We Are Watching October 24, 2010

This time, Washington, we are watching.

The people we will send to Congress in 2010 will have been selected for certain political characteristics, after having convinced us that their goals match our own, and that their aim is to turn the debacle of this administration’s malfeasance around as well as they can. They will have one term to prove themselves in battle, and to show their constituencies that they are honestly trying to undo as much evil as they can accomplish. If, after that time, they show themselves to be self-serving and no better than the people they are replacing, they WILL be removed. They will not receive a “pass” simply because they bring home the pork.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we Americans have not forgotten how to govern ourselves, which has been illustrated by our willingness to vote out GOP/RINO incumbents as eagerly as we vote out democrats, equally and enthusiastically. We have not forgotten; although, from the looks of things, the incumbents most certainly have.

The elitists in Washington have had the idea that the Tea Party movement is going to go away as soon as this election is over, and I hope they keep thinking that way. It makes our job of rooting them out and sending them home in 2012 that much easier. An ignorant, lazy opponent is a beatable opponent, so here’s hoping they keep leaning on that line of thought.

But the Conservative politicians we will be electing will be on notice. Their elections have not meant they will have carte blanche to move to Washington or to state capitols and pick up where their predecessors left off. Going along to get along is going to be a very dangerous political strategy from now on.

Either the new class of legislators will GOVERN ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, or they will be removed and replaced. And, promising one thing in the campaign and performing in the opposite manner once in office is the very hypocrisy we are in the process of neutralizing. Most of us are able to spot liars, especially after the experiences of the last two years. If “a burned child fears the fire,” a burned electorate is going to be doubly suspicious of political promises from now on. We are NOT in the mood to be made fools of again, to the peril of our country and our freedom.

This time, Washington, we are watching.

P.S. Apparently, the League of Women Voters doesn’t quite GET it. WATCH THIS!

Fisk Tale October 21, 2010

Few things in blogdom are as much fun to find as a good fisking. And being the one doing the fisking is even more fun.

Michael Moore wrote a smarmy, sanctimonious piece of snark a few years ago, when the left took the House and Senate, to let the Right know we shouldn’t feel too badly, that they would be very nice to us while they were in power. I simply couldn’t resist fisking the blubbery blowhard, so this was the result.

(If you wish to comment, please add your comments to this page, and not the referred one in the link.)

The Big One October 19, 2010

It is easy to read the signs in the current political races and see the right moving into power and undoing at least some the bad legislation that has been forced on America in the last couple of years. It’s also easy to see the less enjoyable consequences of failure should we be unable to pull this one off.

The whole goal of the Tea Party movement could go down in flames in a heartbeat should we give in to hubris at this point. We must stay the course, and not lose sight of a couple of small but momentous facts:

1. The liberals can’t win without cheating.
2. The liberals always cheat, no matter what.

Knowing what we do about the left should give us the information we need to make sure that we have all our bases, I’s, and T’s covered, dotted, and crossed. This election is ours to lose, but we can do it if we forget that every vote must go in and be counted fairly. Every voter must make the effort to go to the polls. We have to provide such a plurality that there won’t be any way to deny who has won. I’m sure that we will hear plenty from the media, who will be more than happy to provide dialogue for whiny leftists who hate losing. But we will lose it if we allow cheating, if we fail to turn out because we “already have it won,” and fail to seize this opportunity to stop the bloated socialist monstrosity in its tracks.

We on the right MUST NOT allow hubris to keep us from finishing this fight. It “looks good” from here, and we only have a couple of weeks to go before we vote, but we can’t allow that two weeks to pass without making a heroic effort to insure that we not only get out every vote we can, but that we keep our election promises, and do the right thing repeatedly. And, winning (God willing) this one is going to mean that we must also win the next election. And the next. And the next.

The survival of the country is at stake. This election is arguably the most important one since the Revolution. If we can’t make this one, we simply won’t get another chance, and the leftists will make sure that we suffer and suffer miserably as a consequence of our attempted uprising.

I don’t know about you, but the idea that my grandchildren would have to live under a continuation of the current topheavy, onerous, intrusive, and destructive government is simply too much for me to bear.

Win we must. Prevail we must. Restore we must. This IS the big one.

Freedom Gas October 17, 2010

“Freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom.” — Whittaker Chambers, in “Witness.”

One of the things I think we will discover when we return ourselves to power will be the realization that Americans have actually not forgotten how to govern themselves.

In spite of all the years of nanny-state oversight, overprotection, and over-regulating busybody laws cloying and clogging our daily lives, there pulses a still-living stream of true independent freedom. Even people who receive subsidies and payouts from whatever government programs still feel that desire to do with it as they please, without the hindrance of petty bureaucrats and smothering do-gooders. They would feel even more strongly should they ever have to actually pay the taxes that such income incurs.

I’m not sure if I believe in “racial memory” or not, but I do know that there has to have been some fragment of the desire to breathe free implanted in the souls of most of us who are natural-born Americans. Who knows? In a whimsical image, I pictured in my mind a “Freedom Gas,” piped into the delivery rooms in the past, so newborns could inhale its sweet fragrance with their first breath. Whatever the cause, even though many Americans continue to complain, to take, to demand, to whine, and to dispute, deep inside is the vestigial understanding that they are at least still FREE enough to do so without fear of execution or arrest.

Can the spark be quenched entirely? Yes, obviously. Look at North Korea, for one example, to see what becomes of a brainwashed people. Is there hope for such a place, such deprived people? I would say, “Not much.” In order to have a faint and flickering spark, one has to have actually tasted that freedom at some point, and such can’t be said for the people of North Korea. Even though it might have been born in them, it is possible to subdue and squelch it until it simply dies from lack of use. Granted, there are even some Americans, like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who have deliberately squelched and subdued their spark of freedom in order to continue in their desire for all the power all the time. Thank God, people like this are actually few and far between in America.

In that freedom that lives within the hearts of Americans is also the ability to use it carefully, if we will; to utilize it to govern carefully, in the sense of “The Law,” by Frederick Bastiat. We have a God-given right to freedom, the inborn spark, as long as that freedom does not impinge upon the rights and freedom of our neighbors. Even the aforementioned recipients of subsidies and payouts realize that without freedom, such payouts would have little meaning. They, too, long to remain free, if even for a less exalted reason.

I pray that we can return to the peace and prosperity of self-governance in the lifetime of my grandchildren. I realize it’s a big dream, but that’s what America was built on, remember?

Say What? October 16, 2010

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Some people think things like this are just window-dressing, meaningless and pretty. Thank God they are in the minority.