Diatribes and Diversions

This is our Father’s world, and to our listening ears

All nature sings, and ‘round us rings the music of the spheres.

This is our Father’s world. We rest us in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;

His hand the wonders wrought.

This is our Father’s world. He shines in all that’s fair;

In the rustling grass we hear Him pass;

He speaks to us everywhere.

This is our Father’s world. Oh, let us ne’er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong,

The battle is not done ‘til earth and heaven are one.

Dear Tea Party Friend,
Please sign this pledge:

I,________________, as a member of the Tea Party, pledge that I will not use “socialist” programs such as Social Security, Medicare, other medical coverage provided by the Feds. I will not take out loans from the Feds. I will not use the Federal highways, roads, fire departments, the 911 emergency
 system, police departments or programs of any type benefiting from Federal funds. I will not accept protection from the Armed Forces.
I will not use libraries,
schools, cell or land phones since they use Federal money. I will avoid television, radio stations, and the internet. I will not use Federal workers to guide my plane to an airport, or use public transportation.
I will avoid anything that uses Federal money, including free wood from national forests, hunting land, fishing resources,
and camp grounds in national parks. I will also take a chance on the food I eat and the water I drink, since I will have to test them myself along with the wastewater leaving my property.
If I am using or benefiting from any Federal program, I will immediately stop and repay the money.

Sincerely,______________ Date___________

Wanted to share with you comments from another site that carried the letter below:

I enjoyed your letter about as much as I disagreed with its content. Your diatribe against our Governor is just disingenuous regarding his acts of giving “aid or comfort to those who proclaim their enmity toward our country”. The group he was speaking to was the “Tea Party” patriots who have enmity toward our Government (Obama and Congress) not our country. They, as well as he, were exercising their first amendment right to free speech. Your reference to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ludicrous and I must believe it was just your failed attempt at humor. Liberals are just not very funny, pathetic maybe, but just not funny.

I liked the cartoon but your charges about the Board of Education should have included the entire failed Government Education System and called for its immediate disbandment. Your statement that “George Orwell warned us 62 years ago that tyranny through force is but one form of tyranny. Tyranny through control of information is another more insidious form.” would better be directed at Chairman Obama and his minions in Washington.

KILL the BILL

…and here’s old Bill himself:

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-George Orwell, 1984

I must begin this statement by establishing my identity and background. I was born in Texas, and but for a few years just after college, have lived in this state for all of my life. I was educated in the public school systems of three progressively larger Texas cities and graduated from a university in Texas. This is by way of announcing that I am proud of my state, but I am not at all proud of the current state of my state.

I am, first of all, not proud that we have a sitting governor who, if justice were done, should have been removed from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which states: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The Governor of Texas who now asks to be elected to yet another term did just that; gave aid or comfort to those who proclaim their enmity toward our country when he stood before an anti-government rally and suggested secession of this state from the union. He has continued to suggest secession without cessation and has aligned himself with those in at least one other state who also speak of secession.

Second of all, I am not proud that the State Board of Education of Texas has acted in such a way as to give rise to the belief that the entire population of this state is, to put it gently, loco. Here is a suggestion for correcting the undue influence the 10 uber-conservative members of that body apparently have regarding the adoption of information to be contained in textbooks that will serve the nation’s schools.

Texas has always been very proud of its Alamo defenders. The story of Colonel Travis’s line in the sand is one Texans learn early on. It is time to draw another line in the sand and to ask our sister states to cross over and stand with us to defend facts that should be available to students who deserve unbiased information. Those who are the future of this nation should receive education not indoctrination.

I call upon the other 49 states to join those of us in Texas who deplore the actions of this board. I suggest that they can do this by telling publishers of textbooks that they will not buy any materials that incorporate the omissions and/or misstatements demanded by the Texas Ten. The only thing that works in the country today seems to be monetary pressure. If there is a blanket refusal to spend state money on the incomplete, slanted material proposed by the Texas Ten, we might see some reason returned to this process. Within our own state, I call for a serious effort to discover a way to rid this board of those who would pervert the facts in order to promote political and religious views. George Orwell warned us 62 years ago that tyranny through force is but one form of tyranny. Tyranny through control of information is another more insidious form.

Listen teabaggers and sympatico conservatives, if you just HAVE to send Sarah out without a muzzle, at least equip ‘er with a real prompter and some sarcasms snazzier than retreads of high school girls’ locker room “cattychisms”. Please!

What’s It All About?

A new president was elected last November. For a day or two thereafter, I allowed myself the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps this country was at last growing up….then I remembered May 17, 1954.

On that day, I was a college student. The U.S. Supreme Court had voted 9-0 to end segregation in public schools. I had a friend who was not native to the South. We had a serious discussion in which she, as I allowed myself to do these many years later, thought that perhaps, just perhaps… the country was at last going to grow up, abide by the court’s decision and that everything would work out just fine. Sadly, I knew better and tried to explain that the troubles had just begun and that there was and would always be an element in the South and in the entire country that would never peaceably abide by such a decision. They didn’t. They still aren’t going to peaceably abide by a decision, not of the Supreme Court this time, but by the electorate.

If Barak Obama were evil as the and the Tea Bagger/Klan class would have us believe, he would have already declared himself President for Life, ordered the army to silence the protests of August and closed Washington, D.C. to prevent their recent exercise of free speech.

The progeny of those who fought integration is on the march agitated by propaganda that is dispensed with the complicity and blessing of the movement that has taken the Republican Party. There’s a whole lot of lying going on from that source. And that’s the truth.

Former President Carter is right. It’s not about health care, socialism, loss of liberty or any thing else. It’s about race.

Norman Rockwell - "Free Speech"

At a recent town hall shout down, a woman was interviewed who tearfully parroted a weepy “pundit”, saying that she wants her country back. I agree. I also want my country back. I want the country I grew up in. I want the country that valued civility. I want the country in which there was a willingness to let both sides of a question speak, and then consider each point of view. Do we have to give up America’s long-held belief in free speech in order to satisfy those who, as Christ says in the book of Matthew, follow blind guides, and will strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel?

Is this to be the symbol that represents the future decline of our free nation?