How many of us have taken the easy way out? We're all looking to save time, energy, and money. It's really easy, right? It's easy to tell a young girl that she's not responsible for her actions because, really, she's still just a kid, right? She made a mistake?
It's easy to throw money at a problem and make it go away. It's easy to say to people that, no, it's alright, we'll give you everything you need to survive.
It's easy to take, take, take, than ask, ask, ask.
It's easy to tout "social awareness" and "social responsibility" when what you're proposing is Id-style thinking.
Money buys everything in this society, and I'm sick of it.
I've mentioned personal responsibility before. My parents instilled in me cause and effect, and that I will eventually have to solve my own problems.
Just like the overbearing big brother associated with pretty girls, the government is -- nominally -- trying to protect us and -- actually -- seeking to control us.
The ever-present "They" is trying to take away our responsibilities so we need never do anything for ourselves. We live in a world where instant gratification is the only gratification many young people know. We live in a world where oral sex is no longer considered sex by many young people, and where 'fisting' is an appropriate and safe alternative to penetrative sex.
Pardon my language, but are you farking kidding me?
Parents no longer have any responsibility: park the kid in front of the television, or in a daycare where they'll eat snacks and play mindless games all day, then bring them home for a boxed meal, and put them in bed by eight so that mommy and daddy can stay up, have a box of wine, and complain about how hard having children is.
What ever happened to parents -- I don't know -- actually taking an interest in their children's lives? When I was little, my parents would ask me about my day, ask me about homework, help me with my spelling, help me do maths... Heck, when my dad was home, he'd read to me before I went to bed. As I got older, my parents spoke to me as a person, and now my dad and I can have actual discussions about current events.
There are public service announcements on the television imploring men to be dads. If you're going to have children, take the time to take care of them. They're your kid, but they can grow up to be your best friend.
It's easy to blame one group of people, or technology, or the 'times' or whathaveyou. It's difficult to come up with solutions to problems.
What I've seen in my limited experience, is that Liberals and Progressives are more keen at throwing money at a problem to fix it, than to get down to the root cause of the problem. As any gardner, dentist, or English major will tell you: if there's something wrong with the roots, there's something wrong with the whole. The whole is a symptom of the bigger problem.
It takes thinking. But with however-many people there are in this world (seven billion, is it?), we're not coming up with many solutions. It's money and murder we're throwing at everyone. We're throwing our lives and money away on what we need to be devoting our time, love, and work ethic.
But with a Liberal majority in the House and Senate, we're throwing money at problems. I'm repeating myself, and I feel like a broken record, but I'll reiterate: money won't solve the problem. Money is part of the problem, and we, the American people, don't have enough left over to throw at these problems, anymore.
WE are going bankrupt and the politicians are getting richer off of our taxes.
Look, it's not easy to think for yourself. I guess that's why so many people are Liberals: they don't want to put in the effort to think for themselves and come up with real-world solutions to problems (including that porous border, our reliance on foreign oil, and the fact that our Fearless Leader kow-tows to every foreign dignitary to step foot on American soil, when our citizens are looked down upon by our government because we're mere plebes compared to the suits we put in office).
We're not thinking. All we're doing is parroting the opinions of those we place above ourselves in the social hierarchy so that we can sound intelligent.
I'm sorry, even when I'm playing dumb, I know better than to put anyone above myself that I've never seen without shoes.
So please, don't be easy.
Friday 4 June 2010
Thursday 3 June 2010
It takes a village.
I grew up in Hawaii. There would be those who would argue that I haven't grown up yet.
I think it's more than age or time that counts for "growing up" and "maturity".
We'll get back to that later on.
Let's talk about being an ousider.
In Hawaii, there is a very large population of immigrants from Asia, the Philippines, Samoa, Tonga, and... you get the picture. And, if you know anything about the culture of those places, you'll know that people are extremely welcoming. You know the song "Southern Voice" by Tim McGraw? There's a line in there: "Howdy y'all//Did ya eat?//Come on in//I'm sure glad to know ya". Many of the women I was priviledged enough to meet and get to know were that way. Many ladies who didn't know me from Adam would say "Oh, honey, come eat".
Even strangers: I was stuck at a bus stop and I started talking to a woman who stayed in Chinatown during the week and went back to Kailua on the weekends called me "baby". People are friendly, and it rubs off on you. You're allowed to hug strangers, and you're allowed to call someone you just met "honey".
Not so back on the mainland, I've found.
I'm white. I don't get the distinction of being 'Irish-American' or 'Anglo-American', or even 'European-American'. Nope, according to all the census forms, standardised tests, and financial aid applications I've filled out, I am white.
I was working at this restaurant in Guam before my family moved back to "the States" (as we called the US in Guam) and I was bussing tables. I loved the job, I loved the place, I loved the people. No problem. So I asked a gentleman how he was doing as I took his finished plates. He said he was doing well, and looked a little perplexed. He asked me if I was the owner's daughter. I said, "Oh, no... she's not around..." and then he asked me the question I had learnt to dread:
"Oh, are you a military dependent?"
There it was.
Yes. I am. My father has served this beautiful country for almost thirty years.
I told the man "Oh, yes, my dad's in the Navy. Er... How could you tell?"
Here it comes...
"Because you're white."
I looked down at my hands sticking out from the long sleeves of my black workshirt, looked at my coworkers in their tanktops, looked back at my hands and said "Really? I couldn't tell. Thank you!". Of course, I said it all in a very joking manner, and we all laughed because it was a pretty lighthearted moment.
However, it does speak back to generalisations and being the obvious outsider and that being really scary. If you go to a new place and you're the obvious "new girl" (a title I finished high school with, along with another girl, having moved the middle of Senior year), it can put your back up. It can make you wonder why you're unhappy.
Thankfully, I made some of the best friends ever the first few weeks I was there, and am proud to call them my fristers.
"It takes a village to raise a kid" is what "they" say. Yeah, it does, and it takes not knowing the steps to appreciate the dance.
That said: good gracious, this is all new.
I think it's more than age or time that counts for "growing up" and "maturity".
We'll get back to that later on.
Let's talk about being an ousider.
In Hawaii, there is a very large population of immigrants from Asia, the Philippines, Samoa, Tonga, and... you get the picture. And, if you know anything about the culture of those places, you'll know that people are extremely welcoming. You know the song "Southern Voice" by Tim McGraw? There's a line in there: "Howdy y'all//Did ya eat?//Come on in//I'm sure glad to know ya". Many of the women I was priviledged enough to meet and get to know were that way. Many ladies who didn't know me from Adam would say "Oh, honey, come eat".
Even strangers: I was stuck at a bus stop and I started talking to a woman who stayed in Chinatown during the week and went back to Kailua on the weekends called me "baby". People are friendly, and it rubs off on you. You're allowed to hug strangers, and you're allowed to call someone you just met "honey".
Not so back on the mainland, I've found.
I'm white. I don't get the distinction of being 'Irish-American' or 'Anglo-American', or even 'European-American'. Nope, according to all the census forms, standardised tests, and financial aid applications I've filled out, I am white.
I was working at this restaurant in Guam before my family moved back to "the States" (as we called the US in Guam) and I was bussing tables. I loved the job, I loved the place, I loved the people. No problem. So I asked a gentleman how he was doing as I took his finished plates. He said he was doing well, and looked a little perplexed. He asked me if I was the owner's daughter. I said, "Oh, no... she's not around..." and then he asked me the question I had learnt to dread:
"Oh, are you a military dependent?"
There it was.
Yes. I am. My father has served this beautiful country for almost thirty years.
I told the man "Oh, yes, my dad's in the Navy. Er... How could you tell?"
Here it comes...
"Because you're white."
I looked down at my hands sticking out from the long sleeves of my black workshirt, looked at my coworkers in their tanktops, looked back at my hands and said "Really? I couldn't tell. Thank you!". Of course, I said it all in a very joking manner, and we all laughed because it was a pretty lighthearted moment.
However, it does speak back to generalisations and being the obvious outsider and that being really scary. If you go to a new place and you're the obvious "new girl" (a title I finished high school with, along with another girl, having moved the middle of Senior year), it can put your back up. It can make you wonder why you're unhappy.
Thankfully, I made some of the best friends ever the first few weeks I was there, and am proud to call them my fristers.
"It takes a village to raise a kid" is what "they" say. Yeah, it does, and it takes not knowing the steps to appreciate the dance.
That said: good gracious, this is all new.
Tuesday 1 June 2010
A thank you.
Regardless of politics, Memorial Day is what we call Important. With a capital I. It deserves that capital, as well. Today is a day to remember those who gave their lives in service to this beautiful nation, and to pray for those overseas that they won't have to. It's a day to thank, and show appreciation for, those you know (and those you don't know) who have served.
I'd like to just say a huge thank you to the brave men and women serving in the military in the most beautiful country in the world.
And a thank you is not enough for those who gave their lives in service to this country, to protect the freedoms we hold so dear, and to keep us free.
I hope that today (and every day of the year) is peaceful, beautiful, and blessed, especially for these very much unappreciated heroes. God bless them and God bless America.
I'd like to just say a huge thank you to the brave men and women serving in the military in the most beautiful country in the world.
And a thank you is not enough for those who gave their lives in service to this country, to protect the freedoms we hold so dear, and to keep us free.
I hope that today (and every day of the year) is peaceful, beautiful, and blessed, especially for these very much unappreciated heroes. God bless them and God bless America.
Thursday 27 May 2010
Actions, Reactions, and Consequences.
From an early age, we're taught not to behave in certain ways. We're taught to always be polite and always treat people the way we'd like to be treated (ie "with respect").
This holds true until a person is introduced to outside influences. And then all heck breaks loose.
What we all learn, and forget, is that we CAN do whatever we want.
As children:
We CAN climb to the top of the tree. (We CAN fall out of said tree and break both arms.)
We CAN stay up past midnight. (We CAN still get up for school, and end up falling asleep at recess.)
As adults:
We CAN go out and have promiscuous sex. (We CAN get several STDs as we disrespect our bodies.)
We CAN socialise health-care. (We CAN wait six months for medical treatment we needed two weeks ago.)
Adults don't remember that there are consequences to their actions. Adults think for the 'long-term', so their thought process begins with "If I do this" and ends with "in twenty years, this will be the result".
(Personally, I think it's admirable that these people think that they'll be around in twenty years to see their plans -- particularly the health-care one -- fail so miserably. What imaginations they have!)
Children know better. Ask any eight year old: "Hey, why don't you play in the street?" 'Because mommy will yell at me.' "Well, why would she yell at you? You're only playing."
(And if you continue that line of speaking, the child will argue with his or her mother and their mother WILL shout at them, WILL tell you to get off their property, and very well might call the police if you persist talking to their child.)
We need to get back to "what is happening right now". Right now, our world is in turmoil.
We DO need long-term, SUSTAINABLE solutions for our problems.
However, we also have children being brought into this world RIGHT NOW who need somewhere to live RIGHT NOW. If we don't work on our problems for RIGHT NOW, we won't have a future. We won't have children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren onto whom to pass this world. Our descendants will inherit outdated "long-term" solutions, the way we're going.
I recently saw IRONMAN2. I thought it was spectacular. I loved the effects and I loved Robert Downey Jr's performance and I thought it was a fun movie. Those (other than the very last) are not what stuck with me.
What stuck out to me was the legacy (or the duty, however you want to look at it) that Anthony Stark's father, Howard Stark, passed onto him.
Not to give too much away, but Howard Stark never built his greatest invention because he didn't have the technology at the time, so he passed it on to Tony.
It was a very gentle reminder to us all living in the real world. What we can take away from this is that the plans of this time will not be completely effective in the long-term because the world is always changing, technology is always advancing, and we are always growing as individuals. Anything implemented as a long-term solution is not truly sustainable because there is ALWAYS going to be a tomorrow, there is ALWAYS going to be a future, and there is ALWAYS going to be someone out there who can do "it" better.
(Yes: there is always a future. Whether it's for the next five seconds, or the next five-hundred years, there is a future. We all have a past, and we all have a future. Time is a relative issue. In five minutes, the current time will be five minutes past. It's kind of a mind-warp.)
I digress.
We can do whatever we want, we just have to pay the consequences.
Yes, you CAN kill that person stopped in front of you on the expressway. (Yes, you CAN go to jail as a murderer, having just killed some mother's son, some sister's brother, and some daughter's father.)
Yes, you CAN implement a Socialist government. (Yes, you CAN have everything you own taken from you and redistributed to people who've never worked a day in their miserable lives, prompting you to slack off because, HEY, you'll get the same amount of money, right? And then nothing gets done because no one is doing anything.*)
In conclusion:
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and you are responsible for what you do and don't do. And if you don't like it, I suggest you crawl into your own little cave where physics and basic principles don't apply, because this is how the world works, sweetheart.
*For end-game, see: Serenity (2005))
This holds true until a person is introduced to outside influences. And then all heck breaks loose.
What we all learn, and forget, is that we CAN do whatever we want.
As children:
We CAN climb to the top of the tree. (We CAN fall out of said tree and break both arms.)
We CAN stay up past midnight. (We CAN still get up for school, and end up falling asleep at recess.)
As adults:
We CAN go out and have promiscuous sex. (We CAN get several STDs as we disrespect our bodies.)
We CAN socialise health-care. (We CAN wait six months for medical treatment we needed two weeks ago.)
Adults don't remember that there are consequences to their actions. Adults think for the 'long-term', so their thought process begins with "If I do this" and ends with "in twenty years, this will be the result".
(Personally, I think it's admirable that these people think that they'll be around in twenty years to see their plans -- particularly the health-care one -- fail so miserably. What imaginations they have!)
Children know better. Ask any eight year old: "Hey, why don't you play in the street?" 'Because mommy will yell at me.' "Well, why would she yell at you? You're only playing."
(And if you continue that line of speaking, the child will argue with his or her mother and their mother WILL shout at them, WILL tell you to get off their property, and very well might call the police if you persist talking to their child.)
We need to get back to "what is happening right now". Right now, our world is in turmoil.
We DO need long-term, SUSTAINABLE solutions for our problems.
However, we also have children being brought into this world RIGHT NOW who need somewhere to live RIGHT NOW. If we don't work on our problems for RIGHT NOW, we won't have a future. We won't have children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren onto whom to pass this world. Our descendants will inherit outdated "long-term" solutions, the way we're going.
I recently saw IRONMAN2. I thought it was spectacular. I loved the effects and I loved Robert Downey Jr's performance and I thought it was a fun movie. Those (other than the very last) are not what stuck with me.
What stuck out to me was the legacy (or the duty, however you want to look at it) that Anthony Stark's father, Howard Stark, passed onto him.
Not to give too much away, but Howard Stark never built his greatest invention because he didn't have the technology at the time, so he passed it on to Tony.
It was a very gentle reminder to us all living in the real world. What we can take away from this is that the plans of this time will not be completely effective in the long-term because the world is always changing, technology is always advancing, and we are always growing as individuals. Anything implemented as a long-term solution is not truly sustainable because there is ALWAYS going to be a tomorrow, there is ALWAYS going to be a future, and there is ALWAYS going to be someone out there who can do "it" better.
(Yes: there is always a future. Whether it's for the next five seconds, or the next five-hundred years, there is a future. We all have a past, and we all have a future. Time is a relative issue. In five minutes, the current time will be five minutes past. It's kind of a mind-warp.)
I digress.
We can do whatever we want, we just have to pay the consequences.
Yes, you CAN kill that person stopped in front of you on the expressway. (Yes, you CAN go to jail as a murderer, having just killed some mother's son, some sister's brother, and some daughter's father.)
Yes, you CAN implement a Socialist government. (Yes, you CAN have everything you own taken from you and redistributed to people who've never worked a day in their miserable lives, prompting you to slack off because, HEY, you'll get the same amount of money, right? And then nothing gets done because no one is doing anything.*)
In conclusion:
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and you are responsible for what you do and don't do. And if you don't like it, I suggest you crawl into your own little cave where physics and basic principles don't apply, because this is how the world works, sweetheart.
*For end-game, see: Serenity (2005))
Saturday 1 May 2010
[WARNING] Graphic Language And Ideas Present.
Dear Weather Channel Hosts;
Do you enjoy shaming your mothers? I mean, you're reporting on the weather. So riddle me this, stupids: WHY ARE YOU DOING POLITICS?
I mean, I know you're run by NBC and stuff, but why can't you just let it be when I'm trying to figure out if I have to watch out for tornadoes or if my family is going to be in the way of foul weather. I don't want to hear about how Big Oil frakked up in their underestimation of the oil spill in the Gulf. Really, I'll watch an actual NEWS channel for that.
Whatever the heck happened to straight-out WEATHER FORECASTING on the weather channel? I don't give two hoots and a hollar about the goshdarned Kentucky Derby going on... I care about the goshdarned WEATHER when I'm watching the WEATHER CHANNEL.
I'm sure your mothers love you.
I'm sorry to have to tell you this... but you've shamed those mothers who bore you and reared you and, were I not a God-fearing woman of principles, I would be tearing you a new one using words I haven't uttered in years.
I hope you're proud of the shame you've brought to your families by sullying a channel supposedly about climate forecast with left-wing political forecast.
You, sirs and ma'ams, should be ashamed of yourselves. You should be lowering your eyes to the FLOOR when neutral parties walk into a room where a recording of you is playing on the television. You should be writhing in AGONY at the weight that should be present on your conscience.
I wish you no ill will. In fact, I hope that you go to church and pray for forgiveness for attempting to indoctrinate children hoping for a snow-day, or old men looking out for their travelling children.
Your mothers love you, and I do, as you're also a child of God.
Thank you.
Miss Cat.
Do you enjoy shaming your mothers? I mean, you're reporting on the weather. So riddle me this, stupids: WHY ARE YOU DOING POLITICS?
I mean, I know you're run by NBC and stuff, but why can't you just let it be when I'm trying to figure out if I have to watch out for tornadoes or if my family is going to be in the way of foul weather. I don't want to hear about how Big Oil frakked up in their underestimation of the oil spill in the Gulf. Really, I'll watch an actual NEWS channel for that.
Whatever the heck happened to straight-out WEATHER FORECASTING on the weather channel? I don't give two hoots and a hollar about the goshdarned Kentucky Derby going on... I care about the goshdarned WEATHER when I'm watching the WEATHER CHANNEL.
I'm sure your mothers love you.
I'm sorry to have to tell you this... but you've shamed those mothers who bore you and reared you and, were I not a God-fearing woman of principles, I would be tearing you a new one using words I haven't uttered in years.
I hope you're proud of the shame you've brought to your families by sullying a channel supposedly about climate forecast with left-wing political forecast.
You, sirs and ma'ams, should be ashamed of yourselves. You should be lowering your eyes to the FLOOR when neutral parties walk into a room where a recording of you is playing on the television. You should be writhing in AGONY at the weight that should be present on your conscience.
I wish you no ill will. In fact, I hope that you go to church and pray for forgiveness for attempting to indoctrinate children hoping for a snow-day, or old men looking out for their travelling children.
Your mothers love you, and I do, as you're also a child of God.
Thank you.
Miss Cat.
Sunday 7 February 2010
I am not a necessary dissenter,
I just watched Sarah Palin's speech from the Tea Party Convention.
For those who are in any way unfamiliar with the Tea Party movement and what it really is, I'll attempt to summarise:
Tea Partiers (who the Liberal/Progressive/MSM [choose one, they're all the same] have wrongly called "teabaggers") are everyday American citizens acting upon their ideals and actively creating the change we were promised -- but did not receive -- when Mister Obama campaigned for the Presidency. The Tea Party movement is grounded in fiscal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government, and really going back to basics when it comes to the government and its role in the lives of those it is supposed to be governing.
It doesn't matter where you stand on Governor Palin, I personally think she's neat and a breath of fresh air in the stale cave that Washington and its politics have become.
But there are those who would call Tea Partiers "racist" or "hatemongers" or any number of slanderous and libelious things, simply because these anti-Tea Partiers either disagree or are ignorant to the mission, core values, and/or purpose of the Tea Party Movement.
This is taken directly from the Tea Party Patriot website's* mission statement page [emphasis mine]:
Tea Party Patriots as an organization believes in the Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. is a non-partisan grassroots organization of individuals united by our core values derived from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill Of Rights as explained in the Federalist Papers**. We recognize and support the strength of grassroots organization powered by activism and civic responsibility at a local level. We hold that the United States is a republic conceived by its architects as a nation whose people were granted "unalienable rights" by our Creator. Chiefly among these are the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Tea Party Patriots stand with our founders, as heirs to the republic, to claim our rights and duties which preserve their legacy and our own. We hold, as did the founders, that there exists an inherent benefit to our country when private property and prosperity are secured by natural law and the rights of the individual.
Now, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I'm pretty sure that that was Plain English enough for even an uneducated crazy person like me to understand:
The Tea Party Movement is about ground-level activism and going back to what was written on that piece of paper in 1787 when a bunch of men holed up in that building in Pennsylvania in the middle of Summer and banged that document out. You know... the Constitution? And the one that was written in 1776 that said that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable*** Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."**** The Declaration of Independence?
Anyone who has seen SchoolHouse Rock in school knows the Preamble to the Constitution, as well:
"We the People [of the United States], in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."*****
That right there? That is what this country was built on. That was the "Mission Statement", the opening remarks, of the Constitution. That was what the Founding Fathers were talking about when they established this country. And this country wasn't founded by men in suits who sought to make money or marginalise the citizens of this nation. Unlike the current administration (and many of those past, don't get me wrong) -- who only care about money -- and the Main-Stream Media (MSM) -- who seek to marginalise those who don't agree with Our Fearless Leader -- the men who laid the foundation for the next 200+ years of this country thought ONLY of making a better place for their families and neighbours and their descendants to live and grow.
So where did we go wrong?
Well, it all started with a little thing called "self-interest". I can hear the Necessary Dissenters now: "But Miss Cat, one could argue that the Framers of the Constitution were acting out of their own self-interest and were looking to make their own lives better. Besides, didn't Thomas Jefferson own slaves and weren't the Republicans of that day and age REALLY the Democrats? OMG ARE YOU SAYING YOU'RE A RACIST??? OMG SHE TOTALLY IS. SOMEONE CALL THE NAACP ON HER AND GET HER TO THE NEAREST INDOCTRINATION CENTRE!!!!!"******
(For the record: NO. The Republicans of Days Gone Past were ACTUALLY Republicans and the Democrats ACTUALLY have roots with the KKK.******* I want to know why it always comes back to race when I don't bow to lick Mister Obama's boots.)
Look, right? The Constitution was written as the base for all that this country stands for. We have a strong foundation there. But it seems that this administration, and those gone past*********, seem to want to build towers and turrets kind off off to the side and over that-a-way and really not attached too well to anything connected to the foundation upon which we're supposed to be building. We've got this tenuous connection to the principles upon which this great country was built, and it's not going to be too long until this tower we've allowed to be built (and helped build with our tax dollars and our bare hands) comes crumbling down and we're FORCED to go back to the main principles we should have been building on these many, many years, or it becomes an unrecognisable structure, bastardised and supported only by the once-grand, but poory-built houses of cards Mister Obama seems to value above his own country.
Is that what we want? Being shocked back into our senses when it's too late to salvage anything resembling order? Socialism under the guise of "Enlightenment"? Or falling so far that we lose all of our rights and are forced into servitude by nations we once counted as allies?
Or is there another choice? A choice that takes us back to where we came from? A choice that takes us back to the values upon which this great nation was founded and forged? A choice that strips back the overhead and over-complicated beauracracy to a place where the current status quo has no place?
Is there a choice like that?
Yes. It's called Doing Something About It. It's called getting off your bum and taking a stand. It's called talking. It's called activism. It's called getting together with people who are also Doing Something About It and letting the people YOU voted into office know that the unConstitutional principles which they are touting as "truth" and "hope" and "change" are unacceptable. Doing Something About it is We The People getting together and working toward a better world, and not waiting on the world to change.
We are the only ones who can change the world. If we don't change it, someone else will, and it may not change in the direction we want to go. It is, in fact, our own goshdarned fault that this country is in as bad a shape as it is in and is US who need to work toward the change that we need. Obamessiah? No. We The People. We The People of The United States need to fix this. We The People need to get off our collective bums and fix what's going wrong with our country and not count on the people in office to do it for us.
Who puts them in office? WE DO. They don't just magically appear there like the money in the Magical Pot of Money called The Federal Reserve. We are the ones who put the politicians we despise in office, and it's our fault, so we need to take responsibility for our actions and do something about it.
THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Tea Party Movement is all about.
It's not about partisan politics. It's not about money for lobbyist groups. It's not about race, religion, or personal philosophy.
It's about tearing down the piss-poor construction job on this we have done in the past hundred or so years and rebuilding ourselves upon the foundation which we were given. It's about Doing Something About It when we don't like the way something is going. It's about hard work and working for something worthy. It's about believing in actual change, and not just nominal change.
Thank you.
*Tea Party Patriots: Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement.
**Read the Federalist Papers here
***Define:unalienable - "incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another" (source)
****Read the Declaration of Independence.
*****Read the US Constitution.
******I keep telling my dad that the only reason I haven't been black-bagged by the government is because they can easily write me off as a mentally unstable, undereducated, overprivileged middle-class white girl with a martyr complex.
*******Carter's Cover Up, Back to the Future - Racist Democrats, White Guilt 101, Black Legion of Superheroes.
Kevin Jackson is awesome. Read his site, TheBlackSphere.net, and marvel. He's also got a book out called The BIG Black Lie: How I Learned The Truth About The Democrat Party. Oddly enough, no one else seems to want to talk about that.
********Don't misunderstand. This "truth" and "hope" and "change" -y thing isn't just a Current Administration problem. As much as I dislike Mister Obama, he's not the first to betray the American people and do something stupid like Obamacare. Woodrow Wilson started the Federal Reserve. The Fed, as we call it around here, makes money out of nothing and is the reason we're broke. Franklin D Roosevelt started Social Security as a temporary measure. Social Security, if you read the Constitution, is unConstitutional. And then you've got Lyndon B Johnson who decided that Medicare and Medicaid would be nifty ideas. Those are also unConstitutional and really shouldn't be in effect. But they are because we've grown familiar with the status quo and allowed it to wrap its little wires and whatnot all into our nervous system like the Borg or the Matrix so we've come to accept Medicare/Medicaid/SocialSecurity as our due and as something completely normal. In point of fact: we shouldn't even be paying into them at all if we're reading the Constitution.
For those who are in any way unfamiliar with the Tea Party movement and what it really is, I'll attempt to summarise:
Tea Partiers (who the Liberal/Progressive/MSM [choose one, they're all the same] have wrongly called "teabaggers") are everyday American citizens acting upon their ideals and actively creating the change we were promised -- but did not receive -- when Mister Obama campaigned for the Presidency. The Tea Party movement is grounded in fiscal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government, and really going back to basics when it comes to the government and its role in the lives of those it is supposed to be governing.
It doesn't matter where you stand on Governor Palin, I personally think she's neat and a breath of fresh air in the stale cave that Washington and its politics have become.
But there are those who would call Tea Partiers "racist" or "hatemongers" or any number of slanderous and libelious things, simply because these anti-Tea Partiers either disagree or are ignorant to the mission, core values, and/or purpose of the Tea Party Movement.
This is taken directly from the Tea Party Patriot website's* mission statement page [emphasis mine]:
Tea Party Patriots as an organization believes in the Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. is a non-partisan grassroots organization of individuals united by our core values derived from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill Of Rights as explained in the Federalist Papers**. We recognize and support the strength of grassroots organization powered by activism and civic responsibility at a local level. We hold that the United States is a republic conceived by its architects as a nation whose people were granted "unalienable rights" by our Creator. Chiefly among these are the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Tea Party Patriots stand with our founders, as heirs to the republic, to claim our rights and duties which preserve their legacy and our own. We hold, as did the founders, that there exists an inherent benefit to our country when private property and prosperity are secured by natural law and the rights of the individual.
Now, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I'm pretty sure that that was Plain English enough for even an uneducated crazy person like me to understand:
The Tea Party Movement is about ground-level activism and going back to what was written on that piece of paper in 1787 when a bunch of men holed up in that building in Pennsylvania in the middle of Summer and banged that document out. You know... the Constitution? And the one that was written in 1776 that said that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable*** Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."**** The Declaration of Independence?
Anyone who has seen SchoolHouse Rock in school knows the Preamble to the Constitution, as well:
"We the People [of the United States], in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."*****
That right there? That is what this country was built on. That was the "Mission Statement", the opening remarks, of the Constitution. That was what the Founding Fathers were talking about when they established this country. And this country wasn't founded by men in suits who sought to make money or marginalise the citizens of this nation. Unlike the current administration (and many of those past, don't get me wrong) -- who only care about money -- and the Main-Stream Media (MSM) -- who seek to marginalise those who don't agree with Our Fearless Leader -- the men who laid the foundation for the next 200+ years of this country thought ONLY of making a better place for their families and neighbours and their descendants to live and grow.
So where did we go wrong?
Well, it all started with a little thing called "self-interest". I can hear the Necessary Dissenters now: "But Miss Cat, one could argue that the Framers of the Constitution were acting out of their own self-interest and were looking to make their own lives better. Besides, didn't Thomas Jefferson own slaves and weren't the Republicans of that day and age REALLY the Democrats? OMG ARE YOU SAYING YOU'RE A RACIST??? OMG SHE TOTALLY IS. SOMEONE CALL THE NAACP ON HER AND GET HER TO THE NEAREST INDOCTRINATION CENTRE!!!!!"******
(For the record: NO. The Republicans of Days Gone Past were ACTUALLY Republicans and the Democrats ACTUALLY have roots with the KKK.******* I want to know why it always comes back to race when I don't bow to lick Mister Obama's boots.)
Look, right? The Constitution was written as the base for all that this country stands for. We have a strong foundation there. But it seems that this administration, and those gone past*********, seem to want to build towers and turrets kind off off to the side and over that-a-way and really not attached too well to anything connected to the foundation upon which we're supposed to be building. We've got this tenuous connection to the principles upon which this great country was built, and it's not going to be too long until this tower we've allowed to be built (and helped build with our tax dollars and our bare hands) comes crumbling down and we're FORCED to go back to the main principles we should have been building on these many, many years, or it becomes an unrecognisable structure, bastardised and supported only by the once-grand, but poory-built houses of cards Mister Obama seems to value above his own country.
Is that what we want? Being shocked back into our senses when it's too late to salvage anything resembling order? Socialism under the guise of "Enlightenment"? Or falling so far that we lose all of our rights and are forced into servitude by nations we once counted as allies?
Or is there another choice? A choice that takes us back to where we came from? A choice that takes us back to the values upon which this great nation was founded and forged? A choice that strips back the overhead and over-complicated beauracracy to a place where the current status quo has no place?
Is there a choice like that?
Yes. It's called Doing Something About It. It's called getting off your bum and taking a stand. It's called talking. It's called activism. It's called getting together with people who are also Doing Something About It and letting the people YOU voted into office know that the unConstitutional principles which they are touting as "truth" and "hope" and "change" are unacceptable. Doing Something About it is We The People getting together and working toward a better world, and not waiting on the world to change.
We are the only ones who can change the world. If we don't change it, someone else will, and it may not change in the direction we want to go. It is, in fact, our own goshdarned fault that this country is in as bad a shape as it is in and is US who need to work toward the change that we need. Obamessiah? No. We The People. We The People of The United States need to fix this. We The People need to get off our collective bums and fix what's going wrong with our country and not count on the people in office to do it for us.
Who puts them in office? WE DO. They don't just magically appear there like the money in the Magical Pot of Money called The Federal Reserve. We are the ones who put the politicians we despise in office, and it's our fault, so we need to take responsibility for our actions and do something about it.
THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Tea Party Movement is all about.
It's not about partisan politics. It's not about money for lobbyist groups. It's not about race, religion, or personal philosophy.
It's about tearing down the piss-poor construction job on this we have done in the past hundred or so years and rebuilding ourselves upon the foundation which we were given. It's about Doing Something About It when we don't like the way something is going. It's about hard work and working for something worthy. It's about believing in actual change, and not just nominal change.
Thank you.
*Tea Party Patriots: Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement.
**Read the Federalist Papers here
***Define:unalienable - "incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another" (source)
****Read the Declaration of Independence.
*****Read the US Constitution.
******I keep telling my dad that the only reason I haven't been black-bagged by the government is because they can easily write me off as a mentally unstable, undereducated, overprivileged middle-class white girl with a martyr complex.
*******Carter's Cover Up, Back to the Future - Racist Democrats, White Guilt 101, Black Legion of Superheroes.
Kevin Jackson is awesome. Read his site, TheBlackSphere.net, and marvel. He's also got a book out called The BIG Black Lie: How I Learned The Truth About The Democrat Party. Oddly enough, no one else seems to want to talk about that.
********Don't misunderstand. This "truth" and "hope" and "change" -y thing isn't just a Current Administration problem. As much as I dislike Mister Obama, he's not the first to betray the American people and do something stupid like Obamacare. Woodrow Wilson started the Federal Reserve. The Fed, as we call it around here, makes money out of nothing and is the reason we're broke. Franklin D Roosevelt started Social Security as a temporary measure. Social Security, if you read the Constitution, is unConstitutional. And then you've got Lyndon B Johnson who decided that Medicare and Medicaid would be nifty ideas. Those are also unConstitutional and really shouldn't be in effect. But they are because we've grown familiar with the status quo and allowed it to wrap its little wires and whatnot all into our nervous system like the Borg or the Matrix so we've come to accept Medicare/Medicaid/SocialSecurity as our due and as something completely normal. In point of fact: we shouldn't even be paying into them at all if we're reading the Constitution.
Tuesday 19 January 2010
I don't even LIKE going to parties.
I really don't like talking about politics. Really, I don't. Just like I don't like talking about the weather, and just like I don't like talking about religion with my non-religious friends. So I very rarely talk about politics because it seems that I surround myself with people whose views are the exact opposite of mine. When this happens, it's usually sheer numbers of liberal views against my very conservative ones and I just say "Whatever" so that we can all shut up and get back to being agreeable. The few conservative individuals I've spoken to in some capacity revile me just as much as strangers who don't share my views do. Which is kind of funny because we more than often have the exact same views on ninety-four percent of the issues.
I think that has something to do with the fact that I refuse to say "I'm a Republican". I tried that a few years ago, only to find out that there were just as many corrupt politicians in one party as in the other. Now (since I've been able to Google political parties and lay my eyes on an actual voter's card), I don't identify with either "major" party. If anything, I consider myself a Libertarian. A very conservative one, but a Libertarian nonetheless. And I don't necessarily agree with everything going on in the party, but I don't feel attacked when I don't readily agree with absolutely everyone-omg-isn't-it-great-we-have-this-party-guys? And I don't have to agree with everything going on in the party. I guess you'd say that I'm an Independent because I disdain all parties.
Everywhere I look, I see politics. I hear about politics. I turn on the news and there's coverage on Haiti (which is an absolute tragedy, please don't misunderstand) with both parties mudslinging. Grown men and women cat-fighting and sniping at each other and ignoring the fact that people are dead.
How much money do these politicians get paid, anyway? Enough to put up mistresses in some condo down in Florida, and more, I'd wager. Why not have every politician in Washington donate fifteen-hundred dollars of their salary this month to a Haiti relief fund? Oh... wait... they have to fund their self-righteousness with hybrid cars and siphon money into their off-shore accounts. I forgot. Silly me.
I don't put much stock in government aid. I don't think it's the government's job to provide aid to every Joe Somebody who puts their cap out. I believe in private charity, as it seems that the private sector and private charities are much more adept at the distribution of funds and goods. It also seems to be that non-profit private charities have more money than the government, and they're not funded by tax-payer dollars.
This is in contrast to the government, who get their money from the money that tax-payers pay. Funny, isn't it? Maybe they should do a bake-sale to raise money for the multi-trillion dollar deficit? Or a car-wash or something, I don't know. I just know that every time a "normal" group of People Who Need Money get together, they invariably do a bake-sale or a car-wash. Or they get actual jobs that pay. But that'd just be silly.
As it is, Washington itself is kind of like those clubs in high school who were constantly fundraising because they had an inadequate treasurer and president and they weren't upholding the club's constitution.
...Wait a minute...
I was actually a member of one of those clubs my junior year. I was one of the "executives". And then the president wasn't doing his job and no one else was doing their job, so I said "screw it" and that was the end of it. (I also had a pretty fantastic and emotional event take place and I basically said "screw life" and wanted to move to Iceland because I was fed up with everyone I knew, but that's not the point.) We even paid dues in this club! Alright, it was like ten dollars or something to join, but still... that was ten sodas from the machine, or money we could have used for lunch. Or at Jack-in-the-Box down the road. Or Starbucks.
I digress.
Politics is JUST like high school. Rumour fly, hair gets pulled, and (before you know it) someone is getting their trousers pulled down in front of the cafeteria and you've got the Sharks and the Jets about to rumble in the car-park and everyone is gathered to watch because this is the most exciting thing that's happened. Of course, the seniors and juniors are just like "whatever" because this crap happened their freshman and sophomore years and they've got more important things to take care of. Because this happens every four years. Or two years, depending on the size of your school and the cattiness of the student body.
...Wait a minute...
"Partisan politics" has become synonymous with "politics". It doesn't matter what your actual ideals are because we all know that "Liberal" means "Democrat" and "Conservative" means "Republican". Everyone is familiar with those two parties. When you ask someone their political affiliation, you're more likely to say "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" than "Are you Conservative, or are you Liberal?" because the former sounds intelligent and the latter sounds too simple and frank.
I remember the commercial for the walkie-talkie on the phone. "If firemen ran the country"? Everything was straightforward and simple.
Not so with Congress. It doesn't matter if we don't WANT to watch the proceedings going on, but we'd like to have the option of knowing what the good-gosh-darned-heck our elected officials are doing when they're deciding how to spend our money and run our lives. No one ever says that they have "average citizens'" best interest at heart. That's something that we should be able to take for granted, but it's simply not true. The politicians in Washington care more about their political parties than they do abut the people who elected them.
In my opinion, we need more simplicity in our politics. No playing daes dae'mar, no manoeuvring for personal interests. It'd be great if everyone in Washington could just be quiet for a little while and get it together and do what's best for the citizens of this country. I really don't think that will happen, though, because everyone in office is secretly a high-schooler trying to get the popular kids to notice them so that they have a "better" place to sit at lunch.
Of course, what no one's telling anyone, is that the popular kids are cheating on tests and paying off the teachers to get better grades.
I think that has something to do with the fact that I refuse to say "I'm a Republican". I tried that a few years ago, only to find out that there were just as many corrupt politicians in one party as in the other. Now (since I've been able to Google political parties and lay my eyes on an actual voter's card), I don't identify with either "major" party. If anything, I consider myself a Libertarian. A very conservative one, but a Libertarian nonetheless. And I don't necessarily agree with everything going on in the party, but I don't feel attacked when I don't readily agree with absolutely everyone-omg-isn't-it-great-we-have-this-party-guys? And I don't have to agree with everything going on in the party. I guess you'd say that I'm an Independent because I disdain all parties.
Everywhere I look, I see politics. I hear about politics. I turn on the news and there's coverage on Haiti (which is an absolute tragedy, please don't misunderstand) with both parties mudslinging. Grown men and women cat-fighting and sniping at each other and ignoring the fact that people are dead.
How much money do these politicians get paid, anyway? Enough to put up mistresses in some condo down in Florida, and more, I'd wager. Why not have every politician in Washington donate fifteen-hundred dollars of their salary this month to a Haiti relief fund? Oh... wait... they have to fund their self-righteousness with hybrid cars and siphon money into their off-shore accounts. I forgot. Silly me.
I don't put much stock in government aid. I don't think it's the government's job to provide aid to every Joe Somebody who puts their cap out. I believe in private charity, as it seems that the private sector and private charities are much more adept at the distribution of funds and goods. It also seems to be that non-profit private charities have more money than the government, and they're not funded by tax-payer dollars.
This is in contrast to the government, who get their money from the money that tax-payers pay. Funny, isn't it? Maybe they should do a bake-sale to raise money for the multi-trillion dollar deficit? Or a car-wash or something, I don't know. I just know that every time a "normal" group of People Who Need Money get together, they invariably do a bake-sale or a car-wash. Or they get actual jobs that pay. But that'd just be silly.
As it is, Washington itself is kind of like those clubs in high school who were constantly fundraising because they had an inadequate treasurer and president and they weren't upholding the club's constitution.
...Wait a minute...
I was actually a member of one of those clubs my junior year. I was one of the "executives". And then the president wasn't doing his job and no one else was doing their job, so I said "screw it" and that was the end of it. (I also had a pretty fantastic and emotional event take place and I basically said "screw life" and wanted to move to Iceland because I was fed up with everyone I knew, but that's not the point.) We even paid dues in this club! Alright, it was like ten dollars or something to join, but still... that was ten sodas from the machine, or money we could have used for lunch. Or at Jack-in-the-Box down the road. Or Starbucks.
I digress.
Politics is JUST like high school. Rumour fly, hair gets pulled, and (before you know it) someone is getting their trousers pulled down in front of the cafeteria and you've got the Sharks and the Jets about to rumble in the car-park and everyone is gathered to watch because this is the most exciting thing that's happened. Of course, the seniors and juniors are just like "whatever" because this crap happened their freshman and sophomore years and they've got more important things to take care of. Because this happens every four years. Or two years, depending on the size of your school and the cattiness of the student body.
...Wait a minute...
"Partisan politics" has become synonymous with "politics". It doesn't matter what your actual ideals are because we all know that "Liberal" means "Democrat" and "Conservative" means "Republican". Everyone is familiar with those two parties. When you ask someone their political affiliation, you're more likely to say "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" than "Are you Conservative, or are you Liberal?" because the former sounds intelligent and the latter sounds too simple and frank.
I remember the commercial for the walkie-talkie on the phone. "If firemen ran the country"? Everything was straightforward and simple.
Not so with Congress. It doesn't matter if we don't WANT to watch the proceedings going on, but we'd like to have the option of knowing what the good-gosh-darned-heck our elected officials are doing when they're deciding how to spend our money and run our lives. No one ever says that they have "average citizens'" best interest at heart. That's something that we should be able to take for granted, but it's simply not true. The politicians in Washington care more about their political parties than they do abut the people who elected them.
In my opinion, we need more simplicity in our politics. No playing daes dae'mar, no manoeuvring for personal interests. It'd be great if everyone in Washington could just be quiet for a little while and get it together and do what's best for the citizens of this country. I really don't think that will happen, though, because everyone in office is secretly a high-schooler trying to get the popular kids to notice them so that they have a "better" place to sit at lunch.
Of course, what no one's telling anyone, is that the popular kids are cheating on tests and paying off the teachers to get better grades.
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