I always suspected

So true that it's scary

The left's most potent weapon is that fact that most on the right are too polite to call them what they really are.

If we ever gain the courage to simply tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about how Satanically evil they are they will melt faster than the Wicked Witch under a waterfall.

Bob Welch RIP - August 31, 1945 – June 7, 2012

Sentimental Lady was originally recorded on Fleetwood Mac's album Bare Trees.  A more polished version was included on his solo album French Kiss.

This was Welch's biggest hit.  You can hear Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham doing backup vocals.

Another very popular song written by Bob Welch while he was with Fleetwood Mac was Hypnotized.



Mr. Welch gave his wife the last gift he would ever be able to give her when he took his own life to spare her the pain of having to care for him while he slowly died.
 
These things tend to come in threes.  First Doc Watson, now Bob Welch.  I wonder who's next.

On of the greatest American Presidents

Ever wonder who is is on the opening montage of the Glen Beck show who says  “I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves."?

It is president Calvin Coolidge, speaking from the White House grounds in 1924

"This country needs every ounce of its energy to restore itself. The costs of government are all assessed upon the people.

“This means that the farmer is doomed to provide a certain amount of money out of the sale of his produce, no matter how low the price, to pay his taxes. The manufacturer, the professional man, the clerk, must do the same from their income. The wage earner-often at a higher rate when compared to his earnings-makes his contribution, perhaps not directly but indirectly, in the advanced cost of everything he buys.

“The expenses of government reach everybody.

“Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government.

“When we come to realize that the yearly expenses of the governments of this country-the stupendous sum of about $7.5 billion -- $700 million needed by the national government. And the remainder by local governments.

“Such a sum is difficult to comprehend. It represents all the pay of 5 million wage earners making $5 a day, working for 300 days in the year. If the government should add $100 million of expense, it should represent four days more work of these wage earners. These are some of the reasons why I want to cut down public expense.

“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves.

“I want them to have the rewards of their own industry-this is the chief meaning of freedom.

“Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.

“These results are not fanciful, they are not imaginary, they are grimly actual, and real, reaching into every household in the land. They take from each home annually an average of over $300.00, and taxes must be paid. They are not a voluntary contribution to be met out of surplus earnings. They are a stern necessity. They come first.

“It is only out of what is left, after they are paid, that the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter can be provided and the comforts of home secured, or the yearnings of the soul for a broader and more abundant life gratified.

“When the government affects a new economy, it grants everybody a life pension with which to raise the standards of existence. It increases the value of everybody's property, raises the scale of everybody's wages.

“One of the greatest favors that can be bestowed on the American people is economy in government."

This is what Calvin Coolidge thought and this is how he governed.  This is why you will not find him on any typical historian's list of the greatest American presidents. 

The academy has a symbiotic relationship with the government.  The government funds the educational establishment and the educational establishment reciprocates by providing the intellectual foundation for ever larger, more intrusive and more expensive government.

Would it not be wonderful if men who thought this way could once again come to dominate the government of the United States.

This looks like it will be good

D-Day June 6, 1944

I include this clip from the movie Saving Private Ryan because those who lived through the Normandy Beach landing say that is is as close as anyone can come to showing what it was like.

Walker Wins!

Nation doges bullet.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker beat back a recall challenge Tuesday, winning both the right to finish his term and a voter endorsement of his strategy to curb state spending, which included the explosive measure that eliminated union rights for most public workers.

The rising Republican star becomes the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall attempt with his defeat of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and the union leaders who rallied for months against his agenda.

[. . .]

With nearly 80 percent of precincts reporting, Walker had 55 percent of the vote, compared with 44 percent for Barrett, according to early returns tabulated by The Associated Press.

Good news indeed.   

Forbes contributor Bill Frezza believes that this could spell doom for public sector unions.

Despite a last-minute smear campaign accusing Scott Walker of fathering an illegitimate love child, the governor’s recall election victory sends a clear message that should resonate around the nation: The fiscal cancer devouring state budgets has a cure, and he has found it. The costly defeat for the entrenched union interests that tried to oust Walker in retribution for challenging their power was marked by President Obama’s refusal to lend his weight to the campaign for fear of being stained by defeat. We’ll see how well this strategy of opportunistic detachment serves in the fall as Obama reaches out to unions for support.

This fight is not without precedent. Progressive patron saint Franklin Delano Roosevelt—who more than any other president set our country on a course away from the founding principles of limited government—knew that public sector unions would be the death of the social welfare state he worked so hard to create. Hence, he consistently opposed allowing government employees to unionize. Today, Greece sets the example of what happens when public sector unions gain the upper hand.

[. . .]

Best of all, the myth that union bosses represent their members’ interests has been exposed as a lie. Now that union dues are voluntary, tens of thousands of union members have stopped paying them.  Membership in the Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME) has dropped by half. Membership in the stat’s American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is down by over a third. Given unions’ influential role in most elections, the national implications of this trend are staggering.

This last is truly monumental.  When no longer forced to belong to - and finance - a union large percentages of workers simply dropped out.  On his radio show this morning Glen Beck predicted that if Walker won this election that at least one third of those Wisconsin public sector workers who remained in the unions would withdraw as well.  I tend to agree with him, but we will have to wait as see.

For now what is important is that in a state which voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008 a Republican governor who had earned the bitterest possible hatred from public employee unions (one of the most important of the core constituencies of the Democrat party) won a decisive victory in a recall election, something no US governor has been able to do before.

The thrill which ran up some Democrat's legs in 2008 has suddenly become a chill running up their spines.