BluegrassBulletin.com

Stand Your Ground Update

When the Bureau of Land Management surrounded Cliven Bundy's ranch in Colorado in an effort to reclaim land upon which he and his family had been grazing cattle for generations, the armed forces of the United States took aim at citizens with their weapons.

Some say that revelations implicating Harry Reid and the Chinese in a plan to use the land for other purposes caused the BLM and the armed agents to stand down.  Not so says the rancher's son.

A show of force was necessary to stop the government seizure and sale of embattled cattle rancher Cliven Bundy's cows, his son said on Sunday, a day after an armed standoff between federal agents and hundreds of Bundy's supporters. [Reuters]

The armed standoff came after a contingent of militia groups headed for the ranch in support of Bundy and in opposition to the military like maneuvers of the BLM and other agents.

Under the Obama administration there has been a rise in the number of states which have created a separate militia unit under the control of the governor alone without any requirement that the  members treat the president as their commander in chief.

Obama is angered by the several State Governors who have reestablished “State Defense Forces.” These forces are described as: “State Defense Forces (also known as State Guards, State Military Reserves, State Militias) in the United States are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government; they are not regulated by the National Guard Bureau nor are they part of the Army National Guard of the United States. [Politcalvelcraft.org]

And just how has the president responded in the face of the increase in militia groups, state military units and private citizens having the ability to defend themselves?

President Obama has requested $1.1 billion and the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked for $382.1 million for gun control "to protect Americans from gun violence." [Foxnews]

Is it just me or do you hear echoes of "The Concord Hymn"?

Hank Aaron vs. The Black Sphere

Former baseball player Hank Aaron has accused Republicans of being like the KKK.

Speaking to USA Today Tuesday on the 40th anniversary of his then record-breaking 715th home run, the 80-year-old Aaron said that Republicans are hindering Obama’s job performance.

“Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he’s treated,” Aaron told USA Today Sports.

Aaron continued: “The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.” [CBS]

Maybe he took one too many hardballs to the head.

The Ku Klux Klan‘s first incarnation was in 1866. On September 28, 1868, a mob of Democrats massacred nearly 300 African-Americans. The Klan was involved in a wave of 1,300 murders of Republican voters in 1868. The group was an offshoot of the Democrat Party. [Gateway Pundit]

In a column back in February writing for his website "The Black Sphere" Kevin Jackson came up with this cool idea.

In celebration of 150 years since the Republicans freed the slaves from slave-loving (pardon the double-entendre) Democrats, my team has come up with a snarky way for you to get back at them. We are projecting what famous black people would be doing had Republicans not fought and died for their freedom. In short, my team does what the Republicans won’t do for themselves, and that is SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT.

Re-Writing History In Texas Textbooks

In case you didn't know it, most of the textbooks in the nation are based upon what Texas wants them to say.

No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence.

Texas originally acquired its power over the nation’s textbook supply because it paid 100 percent of the cost of all public school textbooks, as long as the books in question came from a very short list of board-approved options.

As a market, the state was so big and influential that national publishers tended to gear their books toward whatever it wanted. [NYBooks.com]

Well, hold your seats Moms and Dads, and liberty loving constitutionalists across the nation, guess what Texas is doing to the Second Amendment.

The authors of United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination have taken it upon themselves to change the Constitution of the United States. The high school textbook contains a summary of each Amendment that alters the initial intent in which they were created.

The textbook notes the Second Amendment as, "The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia."

The actual Second Amendment reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Guyer High School and numerous others have assigned the book for an "Advanced Placement History" course. By assigning anti-factual literature, the only advanced placement the school has ensured for their students is in the world of biased academia. [Breitbart]

It's hard to unlearn things, which is why it is so important to keep an eye on what we are teaching in the first place.

The Problem Isn't Republicans, It's The Hated View Of Republicans

EDITORIAL RANT

I was once asked by a news paper editor if I was a Republican, or a TEA partier.  I told him that I prefer to avoid labels because they are over-broad.  I am who I am, think what I want and try to have good reason for what I think always willing to be persuaded, if possible, where I am wrong.

As Emerson once said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  I would emphasize the word "foolish" in that quote as I do not believe that there is anything inherently wrong in being consistently wise.

I know many people who are registered to vote under different banners who think very much alike on many issues.  The Republicans certainly have no special claim to the "right to life" issue, the "right to bear arms" issue, the right to be free from intrusive government regulations issue or many other issues that are of real concern to people regardless of their party registration.

But listen to the haters and you would think that all Republicans are evil.  Such thinking is over broad, over inclusive and born of a little mind.

Dea Riley, former candidate for Lieutenant Governor with the late Gatewood Galbraith recently posted this to her Facebook page:

Come on Dea.  Do you really think that all persons in the Republican Party openly embrace exclusion, elitism and social categorization?  That we are all radical fascists seeking to impose a specific ideology/theology on everyone, embracing intrusion into individual rights?  That certainly doesn't define me, and neither does it define or describe many of the republicans I know. That is an insult.

But you are in good company.  MSNBC which has turned out to be the great hater of all things republican made up out of thin air a claim that "conservatives" hate bi-racial families. 

My God!  First of all there was no "conservative" backlash last year which the facts prove and which caused MSNBC to amend it's tweet to remove the word "conservative".  But that doesn't cure the problem.

The far left, the liberals in the democratic party and yes, even some of the TEA party liberals who are hiding out under the banner of "constitutional conservatives" hate republicans so much that they refuse to see that we are all individuals, with individual thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

As a republican I still believe in individual freedom, and that is because like our founders I believe that my life is a gift from God and that I am endowed by Him with inalienable rights.

As a republican I still believe that when a government fears the people there is hope for liberty, but when the people fear the government we have tyranny.

As a republican lawyer I defend the constitution every day, which on some days means that I defend the rights of people to do things, and say things with which I might personally disagree, but they have the right to do and say them.

And as a republican I have no compelling desire to see that we control people through a particular theology.  I am a Christian and my faith teaches me that I am to love my neighbor, introduce them to God when the chance arises, but recognize that they operate with free will and their choices are their own.  Do I want everybody to be a Baptist, or a Catholic, or a Methodist, or a Quaker or a Mormon or a Pentecostal?  Of course not.  As a Christian I would like everyone to know and accept Christ and I think the best way to do that is to live what I believe to the best of my ability and introduce them to each other.

But as an American, who believes that people should be free from government dictates as to whether and how they worship, I do oppose the goal of radical Islam to force the world to capitulate to their twisted worship of a pedophile prophet or be killed or enslaved.

And likewise I oppose any effort, by any person or group of persons to enslave people under any ideology, including the disgusting political game that addicts people to government hand outs, destroying their sense of self worth, de-incentivizing them to reach their full potential and thus enslaving them to the masters who they eventually think are the only ones who can provide for them.

The problem in this nation isn't republicans, it's the irrational, unsupportable, off the chart hatred OF republicans.  And THAT my friends is not an accident. 

Hating republicans is not the natural consequence of an honest study of history.  It is not the result of deductive reasoning.  Hating republicans is the cold and calculated strategy of those who wish to fundamentally transform America into the kind of nation our founders and thousands upon thousands of our best and brightest ever since have fought to prevent.

It is unfair to say that all democrats are far left liberals.  It is unfair to say that all republicans are cracker-assed racists.

We are all Americans.  We all have the right to want and pursue different paths to happiness.  But hatred of others is destructive.

You may assign to me a desire to run things by my theology, but only on this one point.  In my view, hatred has no place in America.  I would prefer that we love each other, and all people, as we love ourselves. 

If that was our guiding principle, I believe everything else would fall into place.

Thank You Barack For Slapping The Hillbilly Sticker On Eastern Kentucky Again

I am aghast.  Barack Obama announces a big federally funded program to help the po' folks around the country and on any other day, in this political climate, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell would be railing against runaway spending, "great society" programs and creating greater dependence on government.

But, because a chunk of the money is coming to Eastern Kentucky they stand up and cheer, along side the president, in the White House.  It's not that I have any personal position on the program it's just that my exposure to politics over such a long time has once again confirmed my belief that little of what politicians say they stand against they wouldn't lie down for at the right price. (Yes, that association was intentional)

So what did the Obama cash for Kentucky do in the media?  Re-awakened LBJ's photo op on the front porch of Tom Fletcher's cabin in Martin County and start the discussion of how poor and impoverished the people of Kentucky are.  Just take a look at some of the words written in response to this newly announced program published in the National Review:

"There are lots of diversions in the Big White Ghetto, the vast moribund matrix of Wonder Bread–hued Appalachian towns and villages stretching from northern Mississippi to southern New York, a slowly dissipating nebula of poverty and misery with its heart in eastern Kentucky, the last redoubt of the Scots-Irish working class that picked up where African slave labor left off, mining and cropping and sawing the raw materials for a modern American economy that would soon run out of profitable uses for the class of people who 500 years ago would have been known, without any derogation, as peasants. Thinking about the future here and its bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meetings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occasional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking of teenaged mothers, and death: Life expectancies are short — the typical man here dies well over a decade earlier than does a man in Fairfax County, Va. — and they are getting shorter, women’s life expectancy having declined by nearly 1.1 percent from 1987 to 2007.

If the people here weren’t 98.5 percent white, we’d call it a reservation."

Great.

We finally achieved some serious clout in Washington DC with the power of Mitch McConnell.  We finally proved that we are capable of thinking outside the box with the ascendancy of Rand Paul and his brand of "new think".  And we finally captured back to back basketball championships in the NCAA and look what Barack Obama has done with the stroke of a pen.

It's back to possum holler.

Oh, and for you Republicans who can still think, don't let this one slip past you.  There is a US Senate race in Kentucky this year and the lady challenging the republican just might need some more votes out of the mountains than the hands of the republican power brokers in that part of the Commonwealth would ever deliver to her. 

Think, think, think.  Her buddy Barack just opened the door for her there.

Apartheid, Mandela, Terrorism, The UN, The USA: What, When, Who?

The funeral for Nelson Mandela has been advertised to be the biggest such event in modern history.  President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will travel to South Africa today on Air Force One, accompanied by former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.  As world leaders arrive let's set history straight.

"Apartheid" is an African word that means living apart.  In other words, it is an official policy of racial segregation.

This policy began long before South Africa was a nation, back when it was a Dutch Colony.  It eventually became the official policy of the nation and was enforced with League Of Nations support even in South West Africa.  Eventually the ruling government removed the citizenship of black residents based solely on skin color.

The Apartheid government was the subject of sanctions by the United States and Great Britain.  But little else was done to end the serious mistreatment of black people in South Africa.

As blacks protested the worsening conditions of their lives, the government arrested and jailed them.  This in turn brought protest to a much more violent confrontation. [Wikipedia]

Educated, wealthy black skinned people in South Africa organized and formed a variety of groups with the mission of ending the Apartheid through negotiations and political pressure.  Among those who led such groups was Nelson Mandela.

Mandela was college educated.  He was a member of the Thembu royal family. While his early efforts to end Apartheid were non-violent, he eventually formed a militant group called Umkhonto we Sizwe.  He aligned himself with the Communists who engaged in many acts of terrorism.  Madela was a Communist Party member when he was arrested.

His group had led a sabotage campaign that landed him in jail.  He was convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government and sentenced to life in prison.  He spent 27 years behind bars.

Mandela was released in 1990 and began negotiations with the government of South Africa to end Apartheid.  Apartheid officially ended in 1994 with multi-racial elections which made Mandela South Africa's first black president.

He only served one term in office after which he focused on social reform, charitable work and became known as "The Father Of The Nation", a respected international figure whose passing will receive world wide notice.

He has been denounced as a Marxist, a Communist and a terrorist.  All of these are true.  And while many of us to this day hold dear the right to petition the government for redress in a non-violent, peaceful process of debate and persuasion, that has not always been our history here, in the United States. [Wikipedia]

I remind you of the words of Patrick Henry, spoken to the Virginia House of Burgess, at a time when we in this land were under colonial rule, subjects of a tyrant and without the full measure of our God given rights:

Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

 ...The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. [History.org]

Would our founders have been called traitors?  They were.  Would their actions have been declared terrorism?  They were.  Would they have been arrested, killed, jailed and broken by the King's men?  All of this happened.

But after our founders won, they established a new nation and in that form gave us each a peaceful way to revolt against the government, to replace those who do not represent us, to end abuses, and govern ourselves.  The entire House of Representatives is elected every two years.  Every seat at one time.  Our forefathers gave us the law by which we can replace our government without blood shed.

Today there are some in this nation who have called for armed revolution.  Even among presumably rational people frustration runs high.  And in some circles the most radical among us are losing patience and decry the system of elections as not producing the kind of results they want, fast enough.

When the world remembers Nelson Mandela it would be wrong to exclude the facts that he was a Communist and a terrorist as much as it would be wrong to forget that he fought for liberty.

It will be up to you to decide what his life was about, not the revisionists who are working to change history.  And it will be up to you to decide if there is ever a rational basis for the murder of innocents.

Let's hope that his funeral will inspire these kinds of discussions rather than the mere glorification of one man's life.

The REAL Mandela

One writer has prepared a public eulogy of sorts for Nelson Mandela that most who lament the death of nationalist leaders dare not repeat.  I share it here because history is made of facts.  I report, you decide.

With the media gushing about the greatness of Nelson Mandela now on the day after his death, a counterpoint with the rest of the story is badly needed. Below are a few video interviews of South African missionary Peter Hammond, who tells the real truth about Mandela.

Portrayed as a liberator by the media, Mandela was a Marxist and convicted terrorist. Hammond relates of Mandela:

He admitted in open court—pleaded “guilty”—and remember, he was trained as a lawyer—he pleaded “guilty” to 156 acts of public violence and terrorism. He was the head of the revolutionary terrorist wing of the ANC [African National Congress] “Umkhonto we Sizwe.” And he was behind so many different operations: from the plotting of bombs in the railway station (which killed women and children, which crippled people), bombs in shopping centers, attacks on farmers, . . . so many acts of violence.

He goes on to say that modern portrayals make Mandela out to be a saint, but never mention why he was in prison to begin with. It was for good and just reason. “Not even the Amnesty International would take his case, because they said he wasn’t a political prisoner. He had had a fair trial and a reasonable sentence. He had his day in court. He was not a political prisoner. He was in jail for acts of violence.”

In light of the truth about Mandela, Hammond can say, “I’m astounded that so many in the west idolize Nelson Mandela and lift him up as a messianic figure, because they obviously don’t know what he teaches, what he believes, or what he does, or his support for some of the most radical Marxist dictatorships on the planet.”

This includes many Christians: “A lot of Christians out there idolize Nelson Mandela just because they’ve only been given false, misleading, and incomplete information.”

In the wake of the Boston bombings, Obama stated that the acts would be investigated as acts of terrorism, because, “Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terror.”

“Any time. . . .”

Yet this morning, when addressing the death of Mandela only a few months later, the same president said, “We’ve lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this earth.”

There is indeed a disconnect in the public discourse.

And yes, even, many Christians will be confused and cornered. Many will find themselves trapped by the perceived dilemma created by the whitewashed narrative of Mandela. If opponents openly criticize him, they risk being publicly associated a friends of apartheid and racism (just as supporters of states’ rights in the U.S. today get associated unduly with slavery and racism). Give Mandela a pass, however, and you give a pass to his Marxist ideology and terrorism. It sounds a lot like many other lesser-of-two-evils decisions presented to us. [American Vision]

Remembering JFK On The 50th Anniversary Of His Untimely Death

President John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

150th Anniversary Of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” – Abraham Lincoln

The Problem With The GOP

EDITORIAL

I am a fourth generation Kentucky Republican, married into a strong civil war era Republican family and have held nearly office at every level in the Republican Party of Kentucky.  I cut my teeth on politics in the 60's, and 70's and 80's when republicans didn't stand a chance of winning in all but a few places in Kentucky.

I am proud to have been part of the effort to break the stranglehold the democratic party had on government in Northern Kentucky and to have helped elect a republican governor in 2003.  I have many  conservative friends in the TEA party who are trying to bring the GOP back to its senses and I have many conservative friends who have weathered the storms and battles and are a bit confused by what they see as the accelerating decline of the republican brand.

So let me add one opinion to the question:  What is the problem with the GOP?

First, there really is no GOP any more.  Oh sure, there is still a party, but little in the way of a clear definition of what it stands for.  Yes there is a platform, but it hasn't governed the behavior of elected officials for decades.  We announce a mission statement then let anybody who runs under our banner choose which parts, if any, they will adhere to  and to what degree they abide.

Second, we have permitted the "other side" to define us.  Ask anybody who is hanging on to the nation's safety net what they think of republicans and I suspect you will get a pretty unflattering answer.  How much of the population does this represent?  Nearly half, and quite frankly, the half that votes alot because their safety net depends on it.  They see republicans as representing the wealthiest in our nation, have no ability to reason through the "trickle down" theory of "job creation" and couldn't care less if millionaires have to pay more taxes.  Hunger and poverty and fear drives them, not tax cuts.

Third, we have allowed the "socialists" to shame us and to mobilize against us feeding off of the perception that we are "heartless".  Some of them really do care about the poor, the sick and the elderly, but a bunch more of these progressives at the top of the political food chain are using the compassion of their supporters to fundamentally transform America into a socialist state.  They know what they are doing and so do we, but we haven't found a way to beat them.

Fourth, we are now nominating a bunch of young, "me generation" TEA party kids who are  enamored by the concept of "Bitcoin" without any understanding of the abject panic that senior citizens live in every day facing the prospect that they will be forced to live on less in a world that costs more.  Sure, paying for somebody else's Grandma's cataract surgery seems like an unwelcome burden to the under 50 crowd, and of course they see no reason why we can't balance the budget by cutting "entitlements" the euphemism for senior citizen care.  But how many people do they know trying to make it on $800 per month?

The whole idea of using a computer is second nature to these kids.  They can't understand why everybody isn't like them.  I know many people who are trying to pay their rent, their utilities, buy food, pay for life saving prescription medicines, pay their transportation costs and get by on less than $800 per month.  They are too old, or infirm to start a new career and will  not live long enough to save for retirement.  They are already too close to or past retirement.  Their very lives depend on the safety net of Social Security and Medicare.  They simply cannot absorb increases in costs or cuts to benefits.

The GOP needs to stop letting the kids force their world on the rest of us.  The GOP needs to stop being the enforcement arm of big business.  The GOP needs to develop a much more populist message and in order to do that the GOP  needs to listen to "the people".

And the GOP needs to stop forcing every candidate to fend for themselves.  If this is going to be the party of political relevance it needs to start acting like a "party", not a name, a banner under which people run, an organization that hosts a convention but will not help good candidates raise money, refuses to jump into races like the Virginia Governor's race and needs to close ranks.  And yes, it needs to begin recruiting the right candidates who can win, but not those who can win and then abandon the party's conservative principles.

There must be rules governing membership.  Like any organization there must be consequences of not abiding by the party's rules.  Every person should be eligible to run for office, but in order to get the "party nomination" there must be some degree of "party control" else a simple switch of registration could have enemies of conservatism winning as republicans for the purpose of destroying the party from within.

And lastly, the GOP needs to stop trying to return America to a day gone by.  It's gone by.  Yesterday is over your shoulder.  The world has changed and Mayberry was fiction then and not likely to come back through the effort of the best intentioned among us.  We need to look around, take stock of what this nation has become and find a way to win the hearts and minds first of the people we may eventually get to vote for us in the future.

And the longer we pursue policies "the people" see as "heartless" the longer we will suffer losses.  The TEA party and the GOP can preach to and pass the collection plate among the choir all it wants, but the larger congregation should be our focus.  We need to look around the nation and see who our countrymen are.  We can't win souls until we get them to listen and they certainly won't listen if they don't believe we care.