The Few, The Proud, The Politically Incorrect.

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

We've all seen where America is going, The direction we're headed in is...unfavorable to say the least.
I'll just be blunt: America is Headed to Hell in a Hand Basket.
The question is, what exactly is wrong?
is it Global Warming?, is our financial state really that bad, was choosing Obama as the next president really the right choice?, just what is it that's giving us this horrible feeling?, we just can't seem to explain it, it's something in our bones, we can just tell.
The answer is: Our Government. They're more concerned with what's going in their pockets then with America's financial state, our children's education, or "Global Warming". and we only have ourselves to blame.
we've elected people who tell us what we want to hear, instead of telling us what we need to hear, people who'll give us what we want, instead of what we need, and People who don't care what we need, but only what they want. Immature, selfish, lying, spoiled brats! on both sides. they've got American's fighting each other, when what we need most is to Unite. I've been told that, since i am still a child, I'm too immature to do anything about America's current situation, I'm too young, i don't have enough experience.
Well, it doesn't take an adult to know Right from Wrong, Stupid from Smart, and Good from bad. if it's my own immaturity that makes me, "Unqualified" then the Government is unqualified as well. they act like children, and continuously screw us further into the ground, and We, The people of America, turn a blind eye to it, because we're Lazy, because we don't feel like dealing with it, Because it's easier to sit back and suck on our thumbs, and pat ourselves on the back, telling each other what a good job we've done, than to do the right thing, get off our butts, and speak up! The Government is "By the people, of the people, and for the people" not "By the Government, of The Government, and For The Government" we choose to hide behind these lies we share, instead of Speaking The Truth, and working to help America. please don't ask me "what can i do, I'm just me" you know what you can do.
when did it come to voting for the person who would do the least damage, instead of voting for the person you feel you can trust?
This is not about race, gender, financial situation, sexual orientation, PHD, or ADD, it's about America, we need to stop acting like "children" and look at the facts. don't be ruled by your emotions, i don't care if your offended, what you want, or how unfair it is that you can't live the "American Dream" there won't be an "American Dream", if there's no America!
"United we Stand" those were the words i looked up to as a young child, that's what i thought of when i thought of America, unfortunately that's not the case anymore, if you changed it to "get with the times" it would be something along the lines of "Divided We Sit" On. Our. Butts!. we don't need someone who'll tell us pretty things, instead of the truth.
"We Need Change" i believe that was Obama's Head line, it's Obvious we need change, what Obama failed to mention is what kind of "Change" we'll be getting! "for better or worse?, who cares, he seems like he'll give me what i want, I'll vote for him!" it's exactly this kind of thinking that got America where it is today. it's time to face the music, if i can't depend on the adults to take care of things, I'll get the job done myself! it's time to take action for the better, it's time to really be United, if not for America, then for your children, if not for your children, then for yourselves!

" Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again" -Ronald Reagan-

Unfortunately for us, he was right...
We'd do good to remember that


This Forum's purpose is to keep as many people who'll take the time to read it, up-to-date on the real issues in America.
I hope you will take the time to read this, and consider what you can do to help. Every topic here is up for discussion, and i encourage you to do so. Experienced or not, everyone is welcome.
Also, if you have any Questions, or Requests please PM me, i am always willing to listen.
Note: i am Neither Liberal nor Republican, i Agree and Disagree with both parties depending on what i feel is right. The only thing i am, is an American. This is not a Versus battle, bringing Liberal/Republican strife into this Topic is Strictly forbidden, everyone is treated equally, i encourage you to keep an Open mind, and focus on America and it's issues, and not the petty arguments of fools who believe America is made up of two people, and the other is wrong. America is One People, And the only fool's are the one's who would say otherwise.  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

You Can’t Defend What You Can’t Comprehend
By Arnold Ahlert (bio)


I was in a local supermarket where my tab came to $8.83. I handed the cashier–a 15-year-old high girl who will be in tenth grade when school re-opens–a twenty. Then reached into my pocket and pulled out eighty three cents. “I don’t know how much change to give now,” she told me. “I already got a total before you handed me the extra money.” “You can’t do $20.83 minus $8.83 without using the register as a calculator?” I asked. “No,” she replied. “We always use calculators in school…”

No doubt this scenario occurs thousands of times a day across the country. I bring it up, not to belittle the girl, but as indictment of those who took the finest public school system in the world and “innovated” it into the ground–which is exactly what is evidenced by a high school sophomore who can’t subtract simple round numbers in her head.

I bring this up because we have an economy being assaulted by the very same “progressive innovators” who find it perfectly acceptable to have denied generations of Americans fundamental economic skills. And that assault becomes substantially easier if people lack the capacity to add or subtract simple numbers–meaning they can’t possibly comprehend trillion dollar deficits, earmarks, interest rates, runaway inflation, etc.,etc.

Unfortunately, I strongly suspect such fundamental deficiencies aren’t limited to mathematics, which leads one to a disturbing question: how many younger generations of Americans lack even the most basic skills in other subjects–most notably critical thinking?

For most of my life I’ve assumed that most kids who graduated high school had certain benchmark understandings of American life, laws, culture, tradition, etc. What cultural reality suggests nowadays is a lot of heads with little more going on in them than figuring out where the next narcissistic moment of self-gratification comes from.

And I’m virtually certain that the ruling elites like it that way.

Cap-and-trade will kill the economy? Tell the suckers we’re “saving the planet.” Don’t think illegal aliens are entitled to live here? Call them “undocumented workers” and tell the dimwits it’s racist or xenophobic (look it up, public school graduates) to resist. Government-run healthcare will destroy the best system in the world? Tell our “best and brightest” it’s “free.”

When I wrote about education for a NY newspaper, I would always get the letters insisting that the dumbing down of our public schools was a “conspiracy” to make more Americans dependent on “others,” aka government, to do their thinking for them. I dismissed such theories and attributed the dismal state of our schools to ineptitude, as opposed to some Machiavellian scheme hatched by progressives.

Ironically, it doesn’t matter if either scenario, or any other, is correct. The bottom line is that we have a lot of two-plus-two-equals-I-don’t-know-what Americans who are infatuated with “change”–even when they can’t make change without the help of a calculator. Such does not bode well for preserving a democratic republic or free enterprise.

You can’t defend what you can’t comprehend–and don’t think for a second that a lot of people in Washington D.C. aren’t “counting” on that.

atahlert@comcast.net


(Source: http://politicalmavens.com/)  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

There Is No Such Thing as a “Right” to Healthcare
By Arnold Ahlert (bio)


A lot of Americans are so used to calling something a “right” they never stop to consider what that really means. Such is the case currently with regard to health care. Do Americans actually have a “right” to health care? No, they don’t–not unless it’s coerced. What do I mean?

The leftist hacks in Washington D.C. are desperately trying to convince Americans that an entitlement is the same thing as a right. But it is not, especially in this case, because your right to healthcare requires someone else’s rights to be rendered subservient to yours. Who is that someone?

A doctor.

A lot of misguided Americans think that no matter how much the proposed legislation slip-sliding its way through Congress negatively impacts members of the medical profession, doctors will just suck it up and learn to live with whatever restrictions government imposes on them. These people think that any time they get sick, they can impose their “right” to health care on a member of the medical profession.

Really? Last time I checked, no one could force a doctor to perform his craft. Even more to the point, no one can force any individual to become a doctor.

Already, in response to outside forces, the behavior of many doctors has changed. Some of them have dropped certain high-risk specialties such as obstetrics or advanced neurological surgery, due to out-of-control litigation which has ballooned the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Others have refused to see patients enrolled in government programs due to the burden of dealing with massive amounts of paperwork, low reimbursement rates, and staggeringly slow payment schedules. Even more ominously, highly experienced doctors who might otherwise have remained in the profession are retiring because they’ve “had enough of the nonsense.”

And those are the people who are already doctors. What about those who look at the current climate, and decide becoming a doctor isn’t worth the headache of sky-high medical school costs, coupled with an overly-intrusive bureaucracy?

How meaningful is your “right” health if there is no one available to administer it?

Doctors, and those aspiring to the profession, are just like everyone else. They need incentive to perform their craft, and if they don’t get it, health care reform is meaningless.

Unless incentive is replaced by coercion.

Perhaps we are entering an age where government bureaucrats actually believe they can force doctors to do their bidding, no matter how onerous they make it. Perhaps they truly believe they can limit doctors pay, or force them to take a certain number of patients on Medicare and Medicaid.

Perhaps these socialist-driven thugs even think they can outlaw private practice altogether.

Don’t bet on it. And while you’re thinking about it, ask yourself this: how comfortable would you be lying on an operating table about to be cut open by a doctor forced to perform surgery?

A “right” to health care? A “right” to force someone else to do your bidding?

Laughable–in a free country. Are we still a free country?

atahlert@comcast.net

(Source: http://politicalmavens.com/)  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

No Teleprompter, No Clue
By Arnold Ahlert (bio)

Healthcare conference caller from Maine: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Barack Obama: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”

Is there anything more dangerous for this president than being without a scripted answer? Regarding the above quote, it is worth remembering that Mr. Obama has been doing his level best to completely revamp America’s healthcare system as quickly as possible. That he would be unfamiliar about the provision that, as written, eventually puts private insurers out of business is breath-taking.

Is the president a) lying? b) so bereft of political acumen he was caught off guard? Or is it c) so arrogant, he considers the “details” of a trillion dollar budget-busting government take-over of the healthcare system irrelevant?

Considering this president’s track record, I’ll go with all of the above.

Precisely like most of the ruling elites that infest Congress, President Obama’s contempt for the average American and their “petty” concerns–like multi-generational, trillion dollar deficits, e.g.–is his defining characteristic. He is far from alone. Such contempt is the essence of the American leftist worldview. It is what animates those who consider themselves so superior to ordinary Americans, that to question their ambitions or motives is to be both stupid and insulting at the same time.

Such is the essence of administration whose promise of “transparency” has yet to be fulfilled.

Imagine the arrogance it takes to demand that healthcare reform, which has bedeviled the best and brightest minds in America for three decades, be completely fixed by August. Imagine the ease with which one can lie when one considers those one is lying to beneath contempt. Imagine the level of moral corruption in a president and Congress which passes multi-billion dollar legislation without being bothered to “familiarize” themselves with it–as in passing bills completely unread.

Now imagine one more thing: imagine the media reaction if former president Bush, attempting to completely overhaul one-sixth of the American economy, said he was “not familiar’ with one of the most salient provisions of the impending legislation. Would “stupidest president in history” have been a week-long catch-phrase hammered home by our “unbiased” news broadcasters?

The answer, with apologies to Sarah Palin: you betcha.

atahlert@comcast.net

(Source: http://politicalmavens.com/)  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

Obama proving incapable of terror fight
By Mark Davis (bio)



Indignation is a curious thing in the era of Barack Obama. Having seen the mockery this White House can heap on voters who dare to show it anger, this week has provided a window to what in turn sparks the Obama team to outrage.

• Release of one of the world’s most notorious terrorists by Scottish authorities – not much indignation.

• Techniques used by the previous administration to get answers from terrorists to keep Americans safe – massive indignation.The evidence mounts that an administration that cannot even bring itself to use the word “terrorist” has shown itself thoroughly unfit to fight them. From the wildly foolish notion of affording Guantánamo detainees access to American courts to the stunning gullibility of its soft stance on Iran, this administration has made it clear to terrorists: there is indeed a new sheriff, and his holster is empty.

I have expressed gratitude to President Obama for not pulling the rug out from under our troops in Afghanistan as he has constantly sought to do in Iraq. But I’ve also known that Afghanistan is the portion of the war liberals say they can stomach to insulate themselves from being identified as gutless pacifists.

Now that Afghanistan is entering a tough stretch, we’ll see if Obama has the will to give our troops what they need to achieve greater success. This week’s news does not inspire optimism in that regard.

First came the sick spectacle of the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison. As families of his 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 mass murder recoiled in shock – along with most of the civilized world – Obama, a supposed master of word choice, found the whole thing “disturbing.”

“Disturbing.” Really.

A dip in the housing market is disturbing. The Scottish decision to release the only man convicted of blowing up 270 people is an unmitigated outrage, compounded by the hero’s homecoming he received in Libya.

FBI Director Robert Mueller wrote a decently stern letter, but I suppose a presidential mouth that very nearly kisses the ring of Saudi royalty cannot be expected to speak truth to any evil cloaked in the Islamic faith. Might get in the way of that Happy Ramadan message on the White House Web site.

But the Obama administration did get its collective dander up this week against a specter of evil it has always been eager to fight: the Bush administration.

But not just administration officials. With its maliciously reckless decision to criminalize tactics used to interrogate terror detainees since 9/11, the Obama White House is seeking to demonize and punish trained professionals tasked with preventing future 9/11s, a job for which one might believe thanks are due for inarguable success.

It won’t be coming from this administration.

Politicizing national security is a shameful thing. I dream of the day when that’s all this White House does. Their current intent is not only to change interrogation policies (with a White House “Interrogation Group” sure to strike fear into al-Qaeda hearts), but to cast differing policies of the past as illegal and evil.

I can only imagine Attorney General Eric Holder choking back gasps as he heard of some detainees threatened with guns and power drills and others threatened with harm to family members.

Pardon my misdirected vexation. I’m still pretty worked up about my countrymen dying in various ways at the hands of the 9/11 hijackers. If, after careful evaluation of a suspect’s value and demeanor, questioners thought a particularly intense method of interrogation would yield information that could save American lives, it is the height of moral idiocy to tell them not to do it.

The only thing more despicable is to prosecute them for it.  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

Compassion for a Mass-Murdering Terrorist
By Arnold Ahlert (bio)


Is it possible a couple of enduring myths perpetrated primarily by the left were shattered on the same day? Consider such a premise as it relates to the release of terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

First myth shattered: life in prison actually means life in prison. In previous columns, I have mentioned that I am against the death penalty–yet support it without reservation. The release of al-Megrah demonstrates exactly why. A thug responsible for murdering 270 people, a man who has never offered up an ounce of remorse for this monstrous atrocity, gets freed from jail because he is suffering from terminal prostate cancer and only has months to live.

Why? Compassion. Apparently there is something hard-wired in the brains of bleeding heart types which completely over-rides common sense and common decency. It is the idea that no one truly deserves to die in jail, regardless of the crime one has committed. Such insanity is justified by the phrase which invariably accompanies it:

“He’s suffered enough.”

Compared to whom? Certainly not the 270 men, women and children snuffed out in a mid-air explosion and the ensuing plane crash. Certainly not to the friends and relatives of those same people whose lives were irrevocably damaged by grief, despair, guilt and anger. Certainly not compared to those of us who realize there are far too many misguided souls for whom no amount of depravity or heinousness is enough to dampen their “compassion.”

Thus, the death penalty becomes the only sensible fallback position. Better to hang a mass murderer like al-Megrahi from the neck until dead–and endure all the touchy-feely candlelight vigils–than allow the promise of life in prison to be broken whenever weak-minded individuals in positions of authority decide “he’s suffered enough.”

Second myth shattered: the “overwhelming majority” of Muslims are on our side in the war on terror. Really? It certainly looked like al-Megrahi received a hero’s welcome at the Tripoli airport. Somehow I find scenes like that one–along with the scenes of Muslims celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001–far more compelling than much of the diplo-speak offered up by Western politicians.

Perhaps it is nothing more than my affinity for the old adage, “actions speak louder than words” which colors my thinking. And perhaps such reactions don’t reflect the majority view of the Muslim community at large.

On the other hand, I am hard-pressed to believe that silence, which IS the most prevalent reaction of the Muslim community with regard to most jihadist atrocities, equals support for the West. Fear of the murderous crazies within their own community has a much more realistic ring to it. But again, how fear automatically translates into being on our side is
something beyond my understanding.

Why do so many people buy into such abject nonsense? One can’t ignore the stench of moral relativism, which hangs in the air over Western societies like un-refrigerated meat. When good and evil are elusive concepts, all things are possible. Stupidity can become compassion and silence can be construed as support.

That such delusions rarely withstand the harsh light of reality never seems to faze the deluded.

So Scotland releases a convicted terrorist who gets a hero’s welcome in Tripoli for killing 270 innocents. There’s still a hole in the ground where New York City’s tallest buildings once stood. Jihadist atrocities, such as the most recent bombing in Iraq, pile up like so much cordwood amidst the silence of the Muslim community. And world waits for the next monster to be released in the name of compassion.

Stop the bus. I want to get off.

atahlert@comcast.net  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

Five Words
By John J. Pitney,Jr. (bio)


The Wall Street Journal reports: “‘Everybody’s very nervous,’ a senior Democratic leadership aide in Congress said Tuesday. Members of Congress have been asking for the five words they need to explain the health-care imperative, the equivalent of ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ the aide said.”

Let us help our Democratic friends by offering five-word soundbites explaining the essence of Obamacare. Here are a few suggestions:

* Pay more and get less.
* Stand in line and wait.
* What’s a trillion among friends?
* Postal or FedEx? Don’t answer!
* Choice: a burden we’ll remove.
* Sorry, no one understands it.
* Goodbye, granny, it’s checkout time.  

[Paradoxismminant]

Where do you get this stuff?  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

Paradoxismminant

Where do you get this stuff?

Mostly, http://politicalmavens.com/
discluding the First Post. which was, Obviously, Written by myself...  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

Palin, Obama, and a Double Standard:

By John J. Pitney,Jr.


During the 2008 campaign, Sarah Palin suggested that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her some insight into national security. The media lampooned her.

A bit of a double standard is at work. President Obama’s mother took him to Indonesia for a few years, and he has repeatedly cited that experience as giving him some grounding in Islam and Pacific Rim affairs. Think about it: he was all of ten years old when his Indonesian stay ended. He was probably a bright little kid, but does anybody really think could have absorbed anything significant at that age? Yet the media take his claims seriously, even reporting without commentary his dubious self-description as the “first Pacific president.”

Note: a hundred years ago, we already had a president who had lived in a Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft had been governor-general of the Philippines. Might he have had a more significant experience than the 10-year-old Barack Obama?  

[User 15282449]

You say to keep an open mind in your first post, but all of your consequent ones seem to follow a very definite slant.

 

[Eleiza0250]

I agree with the posts but I also concur with the person above me about the hypocrisy.  

[Yuuki Aoyagi]

Eleiza0250

I agree with the posts but I also concur with the person above me about the hypocrisy.

My, what a thing to say! I am deeply disturbed by this.
Hypocrisy, to me, is the worst crime one can commit.
you feel i have committed such a serious crime?
i suppose, I'll have to take your word for it; I am sorry, believe me, it wasn't my intention to do such a thing, i could blame it on my childhood, or my stubborn head, but I can see where you are coming from, so i will make no excuses. I am sorry, and i will watch myself from now on, though coming to terms with my faults may -and probably will- take much more effort...

Sincerely: your deeply disturbed author, Yuuki Aoyagi.