Texas Secession? When Does The Next Plane To Austin Leave?

Things are looking better and better for us patriots. We're starting to emerge from the background. This kind of Governor is exactly what we need more of.

But did he really call for secession? No. All he did was acknowledge our frustration with an out-of-control federal government that is strangling American economic well-being, and quickly growing like a cancer.

Simply put, this Governor gets it. Here's a story on just what Texas Governor Rick Perry said, which has panty-waist bedwetter Chris Matthews apoplectic.

Poor Chrissy. He's never felt the sting of real men in his life. Rough men. The types who sacrificed all for this country in battle. Matthews likes to tout that he was raised in a blue-collar neighborhood, thereby trying to convince us that he knows how the real Americans live.

Yeah right. This overgrown pansy was afforded a very expensive, elite education from his early years: La Salle high school graduate; Holy Cross College for his undergrad; UNC Chapel Hill for post grad.

Tuition figures for Chris Matthews' "blue collar" high school.
Tuition figures for Chris Matthews' "blue collar" first college.
Tuition figures for Chris Matthews' "blue collar" post grad college.

Watch the reaction that this ivy-league elitist has when discussing the furor that is driving real, rough men in Texas to consider taking matters into their own hands:

Mainstream Media: Apparent Experts On TeaBaggin', Anderson Cooper Et Al Carry Their Purses Proudly

No surprise here that Anderson knows a thing or two about having a mouthful of male genitalia:



Rachel, here, whom no one watches, seems perfectly unphased by the slang term, "teabagging", due to the fact that she is repulsed by male genitalia, anyway. Watch her smugness as she tries to belittle both the numbers and purpose of our protest across the nation. (after all, when her carpet-munching sisters and limp-wristed LGBT crowd gather to pelt the California churches over Prop 8 results, do the MSM children treat her people this way?):



Now watch as Rachel seems to be stumped for a typical smirk of superiority over the notion that someone called this nation-wide protest the "largest grass-roots demonstration" in American history. ("WOW!!...The largest???...The largest???") According to insiders, the last time she was this lost was when someone hid her toolbelt. Poor Rachel can't fathom that someone besides her bedwetting Leftists may garner attention for political activism.

She recovers quickly, though, at the prospect of flirting with her Air America bull dike guest, who is equally flustered at attempts to sound above it all and aghast that heterosexuals may take to the streets for once. Their smug commentary reveals why Air America is bankrupt and MSNBC has only 4 viewers:



Notice how the self-described veteran protester (from her college days, of course, which we all know is a time of great persecution and disenfranchisement) immediately paints the protest in DC as "flaccid", filled with "mildly racist" signs. Between her condescending snarks about how a real protest would have been held, she actually tried, as did the rest of the MSM, to under report the numbers that were there. By her math, there were only a "few hundred" at the DC protest. She mockingly laughed at the stage that the citizens provided for the rally, calling it an "umbrella on a picnic bench".

I guess this veteran college protester was thoroughly unimpressed with what us regular Americans look like up close. It was probably her first time rubbing shoulders with "the masses". Poor thing.

For the record, here's some shots of the "few hundred" from the DC tea Party yesterday:



Now watch this incredibly over-the-top example of the MSM trying to tickle each other's asses to make themselves laugh. After all, when the grown ups aren't watching, the kids will do practically anything for a laugh:

Beautiful Sunset At Historic Pineland, Florida

I have been trying to learn some videography skills, and this is part of that process. I added a terrific (abbreviated) speech from Ronald Reagan's campaign stump speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964. In it, you will hear the "rendezvous with destiny" line used for one of the, if not the, first times in Reagan's public history:

Cape Coral, Florida Tea Party

This rally was officially canceled days before it was to be held. The city council of Cape Coral became afraid of the type and amount of people that would show up when they discovered that the local Republican party headquarters sent out an e-mail blast to its members, asking them to show up.

This is the "canceled' event.

I apologize for the amateur video quality. I had no tripod, but wanted to tape our numbers there to show the amount of outrage and motivation, despite being told to "stay home". It gets better at 4:00 into it, with a couple of passionate speakers.

Ft Myers Tea Party

I wish the quality was better, but besides being windy that day, I had no tripod.

Mainstream Media: Obvious Bias For Obama Shines As He Takes Credit For Somali Pirate Episode

Notice the applause from the reporters of the MSM for the deaths of three teenagers on a rickety lifeboat by highly trained US Navy snipers:



Juxtapose their obvious bias with the way they received other important news of military success by President Bush:

This is the first news conference held after 911. It is only 2 days after the tragedy, and one can only best describe the press corps attitude towards their hated Republican president as neutral.

Despite that, you can hear the next-to-last question from them referring to whether or not he should have boarded Air Force One [some idiots in our country actually called him a coward for it] in the beginning of the attack. This is followed by a question of what kind of prayers for himself he is asking of God. As you listen to the way he is quick to eschew any attention towards himself [high contrast to our present egomaniac president who says he will make the ocean waters recede], you will see President Bush fight back tears:



Not a press conference, but when I came across it, I felt it worthy of remembrance:



Only 5 days after 911, the press is already asking Do you see an end to the war?. It's amazing, isn't it? We haven't even sent ONE plane, tank, ship, or soldier into Afghanistan yet, and our press is already asking for an end strategy! (This clip, by the way, contains the famous "dead or alive" statement, which our anti-Americans loved to claim that he said about UBL. Listen carefully, and you'll see that he never says, "I want Bin Laden dead or alive".)

Notice closely in the first 10 seconds how stiff and obviously indifferent the reporter(s) is while throngs of servicemen, ready and eager to ship out to fight our enemies, as they clap and cheer wildly for President Bush:



Only 7 days after the national tragedy, you can see our press corps resort to their old selves again. Gone are the neutral tones [Barry gets nothing but sympathetic tones in his press conferences], and back are the "gotcha" type of questions for the Secretary of Defense. In this clip, you will hear a smug reporter try to embarrass Secy Rumsfield over his "pregnant pause" [known as thinking about what you say before you say it. After all, American GI's will pay the price with their lives for a misstep in defense information being divulged.], and another reporter already put incorrect words in President Bush's mouth concerning the "dead or alive" comment made in the above clip:




On October 7th, 2001, President Bush announces our response to 911:




Only two days after we started our war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the press are already displaying not a tone of congratulatory cheer for President Bush, but their typical skepticism of this Republican president:



Now only 4 days into our beginning of the Afghanistan war, the MSM, far from lauding our military greatness, are already raising questions about whether our military is targeting civilians:



Barely one month after we started air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, notice the tone of the questions from the MSM press pool:



Three months after 911, President Bush explaining our progress and methods of keeping this nation safe:

Barry In Charge: Responding To The Somali Pirates Only Inflames Those Against Us (Mogadishu Mortar Attack Response)

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali insurgents fired mortars toward U.S. congressman Donald Payne as he left the Somali capital on a rare visit by a U.S. politician to the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, police said.

"One mortar landed at the airport when Payne's plane was due to fly and five others after he left and no one was hurt," Abukar Hassan, a police officer at Mogadishu airport, told Reuters. (source)

Mainstream Media: Somali Pirates Are Nonviolent

This Easter will be remembered for the dramatic rescue of merchant marine Captain Richard Phillips. You can read the early details of it here.

What is obvious are two things, here. After 5 days of utter silence by our commander-in-chief, even to the point of scolding reporters three days ago for rightfully asking for information about the capture and ransom demand of their American hostage, Barry is now taking credit for what the US Navy did in the name of protecting American interests.

The other item of importance is the template that our smug, pacifist MSM is using to give us the "straight news". In essence, they are telling us that to have our military solve this crisis instead of using diplomatic means (paying the terrorists' ransom), we are inviting more and worse attacks.

Already, after less than three hours since the Captain's rescue, the reports are coming out with this bit of educational background on these "pirates":

Pirates have generally treated hostages well, sometimes roasting goat meat for them and even passing phones round so they can call loved ones. The worst violence reported has been the occasional beating and no hostages are known to have been killed by pirates. (source)

Oh really? So these highly trained, Muslim "pirates" carry AK-47's and shoot rounds inches from our merchant marines, and we're supposed to believe Reuters?

From the BBC:

A maritime official from neighbouring Kenya says the pirates killed the crewman because the ship's owners had failed to pay a ransom demand.

The Taiwanese trawler has been held by pirates for three weeks.

It was seized off the coast of Somalia and taken into inshore waters, where no rule of law exists. (source)

But the mainstream media doesn't have an agenda, we're always told by the smug left.

Barry In Charge: The Luster Is Beginning To Tarnish...At Least In Europe

Can you believe it? This international rock star we know of as Barack Obama has finally begun to wear out his welcome in Europe. It seems that some of the more astute observers of The Chosen One's words and deeds are beginning to realize that they ring as hollow as some of us Yanks have been warning for a couple of years, now.

I'll let this professional UK writer sum it up:

Barack Obama Really Does Go On A Bit
Iain Martin, Apr 5, 2009 at 18:26:40

Isn't it time for him to go home yet? It is good, in theory, that the new President of the United States is taking so much time to tour Europe. He arrived in London last Tuesday, has been to Strasbourg, Prague yesterday and now he's off to Turkey. It shows, I suppose, that he cares about the outside world and that is 'A Good Thing'. But his long stay means that we are hearing rather a lot from him, way too much in fact.

His speeches have long under-delivered, usually leaving a faintly empty sensation in this listener even though I welcomed, moderately, his victory last year as offering the possibility of a fresh start and a boost to confidence.

Yet, we are told that he is a great orator and in one way he certainly is. He does have a preternatural calm in the spotlight and a mastery of the cadences we associate with the notable speakers in US history - such as JFK and MLK. But beyond that, am I alone in finding him increasingly to be something of a bore?

His performance at the first press conference in London with Gordon Brown featured moments in which he sparkled - his riff on loving the Queen was a high-point. But most of the serious answers that I listened to were interminable, windy and not very impressive. At points there were pauses so long that it appeared he had simply lost his train of thought.

Today, we were treated to another set-piece Obama speech, and my didn't he go on a bit? The crowd in Prague was huge, and initially wildly enthusiastic, but what he served up was not any more impressive than his damp squib in Berlin last year. Is there a computer which churns this stuff out for him?

"For over a thousand years, Prague has set itself apart from any other city in any other place. You have known war and peace. You have seen empires rise and fall. You have led revolutions in the arts and science, in politics and poetry. Through it all, the people of Prague have insisted on pursuing their own path, and defining their own destiny. And this city - this Golden City which is both ancient and youthful - stands as a living monument to your unconquerable spirit."

Empires rising and falling, destinies being defined and a Golden City standing as a monument to unconquerable spirit... goodness, what a ham. When he really gets going he's worse than Tony Blair.

But Obama was only warming up. "When I was born," (Everything usually leads back to him, you'll notice)... "the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become an American President." (Him again)...

"Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams". (Not by Ronald Reagan they wouldn't have been, when most of Obama's Democrat friends thought the then US President's robust approach to the Cold War made him a loony on the loose).

"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We are here today because of the courage of those who stood up - and took risks - to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like... (subtly this time, but right at the end the sentence leads back to him again).

The Obamas have handled their trip well and in their public appearances have been a credit to their country. But I'll wager that within a year or so he'll be marked down as a wind-bag.

(source)

I'm Not Catholic...But He's Right

Pope Benedict before his Good Friday address.

I was raised as a Baptist for the first 12 years of my life. From there, I began to drift away from the church as many do. By the time I'd turned 18, I was finding great energy from studying Plato and Socrates.

I still had a Christian identity, but my "seeker" soul was telling me that there is more out there.

Later in my 18th year, I found myself jumping out of planes with the 82nd Airborne. I joined the Army and volunteered for paratrooper duty before I'd ever even ridden in an airplane. I had no idea what to expect, of course.

During one particularly bad flight (there were a few), I found myself being airsick. For those of you who have never had the privilege of suiting up with the red berets, you are crammed into the belly of a cargo plane (C-130, C-141, and a few others), and you are treated to every smell, heavy engine noise, and elbows and knees from the men surrounding you.

You don't want to be that guy who throws up during mid-flight. Besides the immediate shame and ridicule you will most certainly endure while heaving your last meal all over yourself, and them, you will also have to be stuck with the smell and wet, sticky results for as long as your mission lasts after you hit the ground. Plus, the mere smell in highly cramped quarters like that will trigger others to lose their dinners, as well.

It's a good way to 'never live it down' in a painful way for an 18 year-old like I was. Simply put, I was terrified of puking.

So I started silently reciting to myself a Buddhist chant which I had recently learned at a Fayetteville temple. I still remember it, over twenty years later: NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO. It came in handy. My mind stopped swimming and the nausea ebbed. Thank God.

My fascination with Eastern thought was heightened a couple of years later, when I was stationed in South Korea for a year. I had been searching and searching the American sources for Buddhist truth and wisdom, but, unfortunately, all I was finding in these "temples" were pamphlets which featured famous actors and other celebrities who were claiming to have enriched their personal finances and career advancement through the practice of Buddhism.

I was definitely young, then, but not too immature to see a bastardization of what I considered to be a true fount of spiritual enlightenment, truth, and wisdom. So my hardship tour in South Korea was something of a blessing to me, I thought.

They work you an extra day in South Korea, simply because there is much more trouble you can get into in this developing nation. (prostitution is quite legal, along with no drinking age restriction for American GI's) I was lucky enough to get one weekend off that entire year. I had been in country for over 6 months at that point, and decided to take a bus tour for a day to see some of the surrounding regions.

To my immediate delight, the guide told our bus that we would be making a brief stop in a remote wilderness area, where a narrow footpath through the forrest led to...a Buddhist Temple! This would not be the "Buddhist Temples" I had been accustomed to in Fayetteville, NC, I gleefully told myself.

No typical American-style concrete building that looks exactly like every other business structure you run into in the US...

No disappointing American-style version of this ancient, Asian philosophy...

No round-eyed American citizen greeting me at the door, shoving some pamphlet in my hand with Richard Gere's mug and self-righteous nonsense quote...

So the bus stopped. I quickly got up, dismounted the bus, and started my walk on the serene, unfinished, footpath to what I had been searching for for years at this point. I had just turned 21.

Lo and behold, after a small crest on the trail, the trees parted, and I saw a beautiful building that looked like it had been built by the monks of the old order. I was SO excited!

And do you know what I found when I got to my final destination after ALL of those years of searching?

Nothing.

There was no one inside the Temple. No spiritual guide to learn from. No Buddhist monk whose brain I could pick. No master from which to sit and learn.

Just some brass urns with incense. And some beautiful colors around me.

I came to realize, after a year or two of pondering on the irony of my long search, that this incident was, indeed, a Buddhist lesson in itself. All of the outwardly searching, the traveling across the world to sit at the feet of masters, all of the effort was something of a...mistake. I was chasing an illusion.

The answer is inside myself. And inside all of us. Just like Christ said 2,000 years ago. And just like Buddha said, also.

I have seen the last 20 years pick up in speed across the world. There is less and less appreciation for the ancient. I feel this, and see it every day in my life. I hear grown men and women openly mock the spiritual journey and its goals laid out by the greats, be it Christ, Buddha, Yahweh, etc. I still cringe when I hear people ridicule Christianity for all of the ill-informed reasons that have become all too fashionable: Judeo-Christianity is sexist, homophobic, superstitious, and laden with every logical pitfall immaginable, as illustrated last year when the enlightened Matt Damon said, with a straight face, that he just wanted to know if Sarah Palin, who simply admitted to revering the Bible and Jesus Christ, "believes that dinosaurs roamed the earth 4,000 years ago."

Yes, yes, I know that Damon is merely an actor. But in my life, I'm hearing more and more of that kind of smug disregard for Christianity and those that seek its answers...from all areas of this country I've lived in for my 41 years. You almost get the feeling that you have to apologize for seeking Christ's message and answers.

My own return to Christianity happened not long after my return from the war (Desert Storm). I came to realize that I was probably a Zen Baptist at heart. I find the life of Jesus Christ particularly inspiring, and have invited him into my heart as my personal savior. I don't walk the life of a perfect Christian, but none of us do, of course. The trick, I believe, is to never lose sight of the goal: salvation. The afterlife of the soul seems to me to be the result of how you passed this test we call Life On Earth.

Eastern thought speaks of it in terms of "nirvana". The way you ponder on your own awareness and being on this plane will dictate your next domain. Reincarnation comes into play, which I depart with as a belief system. Another aspect from which I depart is in how Buddhism doesn't have a God in their framework of cosmic understanding. You are the only God in that respect. Nice thought, but a little too convenient for me.

Are you able to rise above the slings and arrows of this Earthly domain, to remain thankful, balanced, and mindful of a Creator who gave you all? Are you lost? Are you vengeful and chaotic?

As I get older, I seem to see more and more of my fellow human beings who, indeed, seem "lost".

That's why I understand Pope Benedict's Good Friday message. Here's today's story about it:

Pope Benedict XVI last night attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a 'desert of godlessness'.

He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified.

'Religious sentiments' were increasingly ranked among the 'unwelcome leftovers of antiquity' and 'held up to scorn and ridicule', he added.

'We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink,' said the Pope at an evening ceremony at the Coliseum in Rome.

'Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode.

'Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.'

The German-born Pope, who turns 82 later this month, prayed Christians would respond by growing in faith.

'May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic,' he added. He also condemned the oppression of women, saying there were 'many societies in the world where women fail to receive a fair deal.'

'Christ must be weeping for them,' he said. (source)