Feb 1 2017

Weekend at Public School

 

A comedy movie, Weekend at Bernie’s, gained popularity with moviegoers for its combination of dark situational humor and slapstick sequences. The story chronicles the unfortunate series of events of two young men who are invited to wealthy man’s home for the weekend. The two boys arrive only to find Bernie has been the victim of a mob hit. Hilarity ensues as the young duo, fearing they will blamed, spend the whole weekend dragging a corpse around trying to pretend the lifeless is indeed very alive.

American citizens, parents and students, concerned with the education of now and tomorrow, are being to treated to reenactment of this cult classic, yet the ridiculous animated contortions are strangely divested of any humor. The public school system of the United States has been a dead and rotting corpse for some time. Still, the growing outcry of those trapped in the stench of its lifeless hulk seems to fall on tin ears.

If it were not for the fact that the educational freedom of the future generations is at stake, there might possibly be some humor to wrench from today’s news. This news that Senator Collins is one of two Republican Senators who plan to oppose Betsy Devos appointment to Education Secretary, while frustrating at best for conservatives here in Maine, can be filed once again under the “Par for the Course” header of the litany betrayals of Maine conservatives. At the very least, this is the exclamation point on the inability of entrenched politicians to accept that Americans want change and choice not the status quo.

Democrats and their Republicrat allies are willing to go to any lengths to prop the corpse of public education. The almost ludicrous attempts by establishment to defend the lifeless against the vitality of new life would be comical if not for the repercussions. Why not except the truth?

Americans are tired of failed bureaucracy, but more so, they are at wits end to why our leaders continue to protect those failed institutions at the detriment of society at large. Betsy Devos may not be the perfect appointee but thankfully she is not establishment as usual. Senator should rethink what is an obvious protection of special interest and support the Nation as it moves toward the future of Education, which is choice.

Jan 24 2017

The Rise of the Republicrats

I recently listened to an interview with a gay activist who was recounting his shock and horror over the behavior of his leftist allies in recent events. He made an interesting observation that perhaps the recent “blurring of the lines” that we have seen this election cycle would have a positive effect because we would find out who we really are. Once I got past my negative reaction to the “blurring of the lines”, I think I understood and agreed with the premise he proposed.

While I may be misinterpreting his intent, for me this election has exposed what many citizens have been suspicious of for some time: Republicans and most “conservative” pundits don’t believe in anything. At the core of the Republican Party, the only consistency is the desire to change their stripes with every election cycle. While Republicans are gloating and reveling in this victory as vindication of their conversion from conviction to duplicity, the price of managing Good Trump/Bad Trump may find the GOP in the end far over-leveraged and bankrupt politically.

Yes, I am, with many true conservatives thus far, thrilled with the turn of events and to be, for the most part, proven wrong. I am a citizen of the United States and, therefore, Donald Trump is my President. But as I must maintain my mantle of my own Party’s harshest critic, Andy Torment, I do have some nagging questions.

Didn’t we just spend 8 years obliterating the Obama Administration for adding trillions to our national debt? I’ll help you. Yes, We did. Then how is it that our Republicans in Congress just voted in another 9.7 trillion in debt? Why all the silence now?

Oh, the media is silent as usual too. Why? They want it. We are all on the same team now. We are all Republicrats now. Isn’t wonderful? The Republicans finally brought some unity to Washington. We can all go down on this fiscal Titanic together. Strike up the band!

Now help me with this one. Didn’t we stamp, shout, and scream for 8 years against Obamacare? So why the silence on President Trump’s insistence that everyone must have healthcare and his plan is going to be even bigger and better, yes, “yuger”. So the reason Republicans are repealing the ACA is to put a bigger universal healthcare in its place? So if its Republican socialized medicine its OK? I see. Then no need to warn you about that iceberg….then? Right?

Here in Maine we have our own founding member of the Republicrats, Senator Roger Katz. He has introduced a Physician Assisted Suicide Bill into the legislature. Senator Katz is one of the many Republicans who are constantly trying to remove the traditional family from family values in the Republican Party platform. Yes, this is as much removed from common sense as the idea that social conservative values cause us to lose elections except for all the elections they help us win like this past one.

I know I’m putting myself out on a limb. I’ve been here before a few times; in fact, there’s a worn spot from my posterior out here. I’m fully willing to take my lumps and bruises if the limp snaps off with me on it, but if the Republican Party doesn’t find its conservative mooring and develop a spine now, they will never be able to manage the cyclical tumble-storm of Good Trump/Bad Trump that awaits them for the next four years. I can assure my fellow Republicans that a big smelly mush of Republicrats is not what the populace had in mind when it elected them this past November.

Jan 16 2017

Dribble Much?

Once again the Bangor Daily News has allowed itself to be the platform for anti-American dribble from the alt-left. Khalil Gibran Muhammed teaches that racism is the bedrock of US history and he’s come to Maine to inform us of this “truth”. No where in the BDN’s glowing coverage of Mr. Muhammad’s speech is there a slightest attempt to check the validity of his claims. To the contrary, a nominal perusal through historical fact would debunk Mr. Muhammad’s claims and the self-same nominal perusal through the religion Mr. Muhammad embraces, Islam, would expose the hypocrisy of accusing Americans of perpetrating slavery, when Islam is the overwhelming greatest perpetrator of slavery throughout history, its atrocities ongoing.

These flaming epitomes in the mind numbing study of the intellectual duplicitous standardizing of selective amnesia have become nauseatingly predictable but no less repulsive to those who strive to be objective thinkers. What is far more morally repugnant to any decent American on this day is that Mr. Muhammad speaks as a representative of the MLK Foundation. For it was Martin Luther King who understood the “bedrock” of this society, our Constitution, better than perhaps any of the great leaders of this Nation when he said these words:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

Reverend King understood that in the bedrock of this civilization our Founders had placed the “promissory note” in the Founding Documents with the intent and belief that good people of this Nation, in the light of their faith in God and their love of freedom, would in time eradicate the stain of slavery from this Nation.

And they did so, spilling the blood of their own sons to cleanse this land. No other nation has accomplished what our nation has in fight against racial injustice. So I ask, if slavery is the bedrock of this society, how is it that so many have fought from its very inception and laid the groundwork step by step to destroy slavery? Does Mr. Muhammad think that if the foundational bedrock of this nation was slavery and racism that the slaves would have been freed and the Nation would have heeded the calls of Martin Luther King to follow the words of its own Constitution with all men? If slavery is the very fabric of our society, as Mr. Muhammad intimates, than how is it a majority of Americans abhor slavery and racism? In no other nation could King have voiced his concerns much less mount the call for equality with out being crushed. Why? because its in the bedrock of who we are, freedom for all. 

Martin Luther King understood the unique opportunity afforded to him in the true fabric of this nation. It was Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Mr. Muhammad disdains the very thing, the very hope, that was the bedrock of Dr. King’s hope and the bedrock of this Nation, that “all men are created equal and our endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. On this day, let us remember the truth that Martin Luther King believed and not the lies that Mr. Muhammad imagines.

Jan 12 2017

So You’re Scared Now?

 

The recent rants of fear and even some hysteria coming from the left over the inevitable Trump presidency has many of my conservative colleagues gloating in the anticipation of at least four years of retaliation. I cannot embrace this new normal as the swings of the political pendulum are becoming dizzying at best. This is not what our Forefathers envisioned.

While I do not concur with Diane Feinstien that the whole world is living in fear at the looming shadow of a Donald Trump, I should remind said conservative colleagues that it was not but a few years ago that we were fearing and prognosticating the demise of this Republic at the hands of one Barack Obama. It didn’t happen. Though shaken and weakened, the Republic has survived. (At this point I’d like to ask those same said conservative colleagues if they could kindly reexamine the title “conservative” they have affixed to themselves and help me understand what their new version is because there is a whole lot of stuff now that is “OK” for “conservatives” to advocate for that was not “OK” for conservatives to advocate for before that flaming display of idiocy, otherwise known as the Republican Presidential Primary, occurred this past summer.)

So whatever tired, tortured, melded, manipulated, rehashed, regurgitated version of conservative you are, we need to remember that a large portion of the nation is feeling the same fears we felt for 8 years. Yes, even some of us conservatives, pre-primary conservatives, have very real concerns with this President. It’s true that thus far, with the exception of Rex Tillerson, I have been thankful for the sake of my nation to be proven wrong with Trump’s cabinet picks. But with the handful of pre-primary conservatives left who have concerns about Donald Trump’s ego and overreaches combined with the litany of liberals who are hand wringing distraught with visions of dire calamities with the second coming of Hitler, it’s safe to say that a large portion of the American populace are at best suspicious of the incoming administration.

So to my liberal friends I ask this question: Have we come to a common place of understanding? Do we understand now why the Constitution was intended to be a document of “negative liberties” as President Obama so famously accused? Can we see now why the Executive Branch should never wield unchecked power and ignore Congress as it has under both Presidents Obama and also Bush?

With our Republic’s system of checks and balances in place and obeyed, no people’s should need fear the election of a President. No persons should fear that the President will use the power of his office to target them based on their faith, ideology, ethnicity, or political persuasion. If a dressmaker refuses to design or sell the First Lady a dress or a baker refuses to bake a cake because it violates their personal beliefs, let them face the repercussions of their decision on the market where they compete, not underneath the whip of government.

Are we all now starting to see why our Founders believed so strongly in severely limiting the power and scope of government? Can we all now see the value of a government that fears the people rather than a people that fear their government? Can we all now see, both conservative and liberal, that looking for a one man solution, a king, is lazy dangerous solution?

It is time for the pendulum to stop its swing before we truly do the damage we fear to the Republic. Our Founders did not fear so much the ideology of those in the Presidency as much as they feared a President who would not honor the restraints of the Constitution. President Trump and the Republicans have this opportunity to restore the Constitutional system of Checks and Balances to this Republic, which it desperately needs. If these so-called conservatives do not work to stop the pendulum’s swing, then shame on them, for history will recall their names as the catalyst to the demise of this great Republic when the Nation called to them for peace and they heeded it not.