US Flag Removed

Last year my son was in Iraq. He’s now in Afghanistan, and has discovered no, it isn’t easier the second time over there. He told me the day The Flag came down last month. I was surprised that the enemies of our American Way of Right of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness had taken that step. I don’t know why I’m always surprised when something is done on a grand scale that I thought would never happen in this wonderful country God has blessed. II Chronicles 7:14

He related:

He watched solemnly as Old Glory was to be lowered the last time. Other sad eyes watched with him for this American Flag was to fly no more on his base in Kandahar. The pole remains, without a flag. Gone, too are the Canadian flags. It offended the Afghani, he was told.

As his camp’s living area changes this unused flag pole still stands, new tents placed around it. The pole was erected at night a few years ago, and the following evening American soldiers died there.

Today the pole still stands, bereft of its honor.

What’s a flag, anyway? Just a standard that troops gather around, a reminder of why they’re risking their lives. So I can see reason for the removal of the American flag where our troops are: deny an enemy, you’ll not fight him; remove a banner that unites a people in the sharing of a cause, to pretend there’s neither enemy or ally; remove what represents the values of that which binds US as a free people, to discourage and weaken US.  A good tactic to use against the enemy: divide and conquer.

Ambitious goals are achieved one small step after another, followed by bigger steps, then bigger, until the goal is reached. We were founded as one country of many cultures with one language, one source of values from benevolent religions, a people declared to be endowed with the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Our flag represents the republic of the United States of America, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
One small step at a time, from confusion of our language to denial of the principles that guided our founding, a bigger goal is being accomplished. The removal of the Stars and Stripes is another step to diminish, then banish,  from US the rights bestowed upon US by our creator as declared 250 years ago.

America isn’t as free as it thinks it is

I don’t recall where I heard the above, nor to whom it’s attributed. I’ve wondered whether it was intended as a statement, or question. Whichever, whether as a statement of frustration with the president and his congress, or a question of the hope and determination to return the governance of US to we, the people, ’tis food for thought.

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

—Calvin Coolidge

There’s a dispicible fad in Washington. Bad laws, really bad laws, are imposed — lots of bad laws that needed to be killed, not passed. Political Correcttness is Changing our American Exceptionalism into Dependent Servitude at an alarming rate. More problems, which they name “solutions” are created with each malignant bill they pass. Those people who populate the Elitist Seats in Washington confuse acknowledging a problem with the acknowledgement being its own solution. And contribute to diminishing liberty on an ugly, Orwellian Animal Farm played out against US, we the people.

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Spoken hundreds of years ago,yet, still, pertinent today:

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

—Jefferson

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If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace…. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

– Samuel Adams

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The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.

– Thomas Jefferson

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Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.

– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816

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It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.

– Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

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There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.

– James Madison

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If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

II Chronicles 7:15

East is West?

East and West became names to cause anyone not living in Uzbekistan to not think in terms of compass points. Here’s how to reason it.

Long ago, our planet Earth stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Earth, the earth part of Earth, spanned from China to Europe. Those were wonderful days, an era when sailors would sail over the edge if they ventured too far. Sailors had lots of excitement in their lives, with all kinds of sea monsters on their maps of old along with other imaginables.

There are people today who still know they’ll fall over the edge if they go too far, or encounter marvelous monsters of the seas. These people are the cousins of the ones who live under the surface of the Earth, the hollow space between what we, you and I, know generally as Earth’s Mantle, between the crust and the core.

The Flats are the people whose world is, well, flat. It may be a disk or square, or undefined and irregular, I don’t kmow. The remarkable feature of their earth is that there are edges to the ocean over which an unwary navigator can sail. And there are places not at the ocean’s edge, like Like Niagra Falls, where one can be floated over the edge if you get too close! Their world must spin, which would be proper for something flat, but a flat earth couldn’t rotate as that motion would make it become spherical. Plain and flat, their world.

The Flats, with nothing over the edge of their world, may not subscribe to the notion of round things orbiting other things like the Sun. It may be that acknowledging all the round things out & up there, like planets, may dispel their flat. But the Hollows have a space, complete with stars & things in their sky under the Earth Crust you & I know.

The Hollows have their own space, like an airtight bubble, encased below this world familiar to you and me. The Hollows are the folk who live in the center of the earth. This is where goblins, elves and leprechans are born and die. When their sons are fathered by mere mortals (female Hollows entice earthly men), their offspring are expunged to the surface of UpHere to talk about the Hollows on late night programs.

The FlatEarthers and HollowEarthers are either living in peace never seeing each other, or are Earth’s Hatfield & McCoys (Flats&Hollows). Maybe they occupy different parallel universes for some other planet. I’ll go with the former. It’s friendlier.

Imagine, for a moment, the peaceful convergence of the Flats&Hollows on earth:
Space, as we know it, presents problems for Flats&Hollows. Dispel the notion that man has been as far as the moon, or even the Earth’s stratosphere, so we can be in the Flats&Hollows where east and west aren’t necessary.

Flats live without benefit of direction as each direction leads over the edge. The compass of a Hollow, if he had one, would wear itself out pointing to the north above the crust, above Hollow’s outer space beneath the crust. Flats&Hollows were prominent contributers to the navigation of the DarkAges, before the discovery of the United States. This is why China is East, to our west and Europe is West, to our east.

Now, back to our peaceful Flats&Hollows earth, who have no need of compass.

For the Flats, this world doesn’t exist below the crust. There is no crust, really, as crust would imply something below. It’s just flat earth, to the Flats. So the waters of the oceans, from the Pacific going westward to the Altantic, encase earth’s continents. The waters flow over the edge and are recycled underneath. Life remains flat.

On, or I should say down, to the Hollows earth. Create a mental picture (or look at a picture) of the atmosphere surrounding our planet. Don’t worry about getting the spheres in the right order, just picture the space from your feet to about where the moon is. (Beyond this point and way out where Cassini is exploring, & beyond, is too much distance to include in the mantle as their space needs to fit in Our Earth’s core.) Then look at the soild earth below whatever you’re standing on, and think of its depth. (Remember when in Kansas we pondered if we could dig a hole clear to China?)

Beyond my comprehension, the Hollows fit something like the world you and I know, including Space, in the inner area of earth we know generally as Mantle.

But, I continue to elude the description. I continue to avoid thinking of it, really. This Flats&Hollows earth has no bottom.

Sandwich this: On the top: Flat Earth, with her oceans and seas, and ships of fools, cascading over the edge
Center:  Hollow Earth, with Flat Earth’s water creating a curtain of water all around the edges, sustaining the bubble beneath the crust where the Hollows love
Bottom: Well, Hollows must have a bottom, musn’t they?

Now that I think about it, Hollows must have also been flat, or Flats really round.

The Flats&Hollows, I think, were the first to call the East, Asia and West, Europe. Marco Polo & his kin in the 13th century saw more profit in East meaning China, where fortunes were made in fine extravagances. The West was good for the setting sun. The Orient was to die for, but the Occident was lost.
East and West came around before US. We in US need to regard the distinction between the place that is East and direction that is east. We know, too, that the place West is not in the direction, west.
This brings me to the reason directions on the Hawaiian Islands aren’t confusing. If we fly west, we’ll go to the East so we just say Asia. The US is part of the West, going east, so we just say Mainland. We know which direction is windward, mauka or makai. We save east and west to confuse the tourists who don’t know Ewa from DiamondHead.

Pau!

I wrote this to get The West being to our east, and vice versa, out of the absurd arena of my thoughts. Referring to The East as Asia may have been pertinent to an era when the world’s land was a single mass. (And when people cared about the rotational relation of orient to the occident.) Pertaining to US (United States) specifically, and the Americas in general, East and West do not comply with their directions. East is in the west, but east is east, but not ying and yang.

Wikipedia refers to The Orient as an antiquated term and doesn’t even give Occident its own meaning, but redirects to The Western World. This reference source is a freely-compiled one, so consider the source!

aloha!

PS. Couldn’t resist this pic from one of my favorite blogs, Strange Maps.
Check out the Square and Stationary Earth!

English, Please

I recently bought a [something in a box, don’t recall just what, right now].

I got it home, then began a hunt for the item’s [specific information]. What would have, should have, been an easy find became a hunt. The [thing] was made in the US and sold in the US, to be used in the US. Wouldn’t the item’s information be printed in English?

Information on the box was a bit like a simplified, overgrown Rubik’s Cube. It was necessary to turn the box this way and that, to find the English. I scanned TheOtherLanguage. “Why”, I wondered, “is this TheOtherLanguage more important to include on that box than the German, Irish, Scottish, Armenian, and Celtic of my children’s heritage? And what about the languages of the Japanese, Italians, Sweeds, Maori, Chamorro and Mandarin peoples, aren’t their languages as important as TheOtherLanguage?” Is it only those whose first, and apparently, only, language is TheOtherLanguage, who can’t learn English, who require a hunt for information mingled with TheOtherLanguage? Or are manufacturers transitioning away from English, perferring TheOtherLanguage consumer?

Manuals I’ve long avoided. They’re less like a Rubik’s Cube and more like a child’s “find the next step” puzzle. While the box included text in only two languages, the non-American language was decipherable from its resemblance to the second language I was required to learn to graduate from high school. Manuals, a.k.a. “instruction booklets”, typically include one or two pages in English, and eighty-nine pages in other languages, although they still ignore the tongues of the Hawaiians, Greeks and Eritrean.

Looking at that box with its printed English (Americanized, of course) and TheOtherLanguage, I realized I really like Apple. I’m talking Steve Job’s Apples, like Apple Computers and iPods. An Apple package is printed in English, clean and uncluttered, with only the necessary words (Apple) and nothing to distract, frustrate or hinder the excitement of unwrapping the contents and plugging it in for the first use. The simple “how to” papers included are in English, too. Maybe Apple prints boxes in other languages for its Mac Nuts elsewhere, but here in US, Apple uses English.

I’ve made a decision. If something is made in another country and sold in US, it’s just fine that the packaging includes another language, even if it isn’t English. (Long’s has lots of neat things with labels I can’t understand.) However, if an item is made in the US for sale in the US, to be used by US, then English is an acceptable language. English is, after all, the language our our Constitution. I will hunt for Made in USA product whose packaging doesn’t disregard the languages of America’s forefathers, rather respects the language our American forefathers learned: English (Americanized, that it is).

3/2008

NotGrace with Potato Soup

If you know me, you know my name is NotGrace.

If you don’t know me, let me assure you that mishaps are my mother’s fault. She did not name me Grace.

I like soup. When Cleatus just happened to mention Leak & Potato Soup, it sounded good. (Note: the term, “just happened” does not apply to chance. “Just happened” is the result of a Bigger Plan.) So she emailed the recipe for her Leak & Potato Soup. I looked at it, thinking I’d make it soon.

This recipe came a just the right time! Dutch (she’s 89) found a cold. She was congested, with the works coming up. Dutch left much of her lungs with a doctor at Ceders Sinai, so anything involving breathing is a major issue for her. What’s practical? Chicken soup. I took Dutch some chicken soup, freshly brewed at Safeway. I was going to visit her, so the idea to take chicken soup wasn’t planned otherwise I’d have made some. She was probably happy to see the bought-en container.

When I make chicken soup (or any soup, really), the end result is a creation. No one ever knows what will swirl in the broth until they see it. I use whatever strikes me as a nice ingredient at the time, and, occassionally, whatever ingredient was available, and struck me at the time, doesn’t result nicely. Anyway, Dutch likes chicken soup to be predictable. My soup is not predictable.

Before I next went to visit I asked, “What do you want me to bring you?” “Potato Soup.” So I was at Safeway, again (it’s close to my house and I get miles with my purchases), on my way for another visit. I sleuthed the aisles. I found two cans of Campbell’s Potato Soup. Two cans! That Soup didn’t sound too good to me, but I quickly snatched those two cans, for Dutch, before the person two aisles over could get a chance see them.

“Hmm,” I thought. Maybe I can make Cleatus’ Leek & Potato Soup. I wonder what’s in it: leeks, potato, chicken broth. I coaxed: “Okay brain, what else?” There was no reply.

So I bought what I thought were leeks. (Note: I had never, knowingly, cooked a leek before.) I put half a dozen, various colored potatoes in  bag. I was sure there was the chicken bullion at her house I like, so put back on the shelf the carton of all-good chicken broth.

Fast forward to arrival location. I anxiously looked for Cleatus’ email with the recipe. I was so disappointed. “5 leeks”, she wrote. I had bought one. “One potato”, she itemized. There were six potatoes, various colors in the bag. Oh, Oh. Cleatus’ recipe needs ham & chick peas. I can forfeit the peas, but not the ham. Ham is a must! My wanting to make Cleatus’ potato soup became a matter of challenge.

So I put on the Galloping Gourmet hat. Remember him? He did everything better with wine.

Backtrack, now. Dutch liked the sound of Cleatus’ Potato Soup. No, the cooked & shredded pork butt isn’t the same as ham. That’s what she had in the freezer, cooked pork butt. “There’s some bacon in the freezer,” she said. Bacon? That’s always nice.

I diced the bacon, about 2/3 of two pounds, to substitute for the ham. Then I looked at Cleatus’s recipe, again. It called for 1/4 c ham while more than a pound fried in the pan. Oops! But, bacon is always nice. Wine is good.

Remember, my name is NotGrace. But it’s cooked, and the bacon fat must go out. So, I begin to separate the bacon from its fat. The bacon is easy to blot. The bacon fat, bubbly hot, is just not nice when you don’t know how to coax it. “Okay, fat”, I instructed, “Pour into this can!” It was more willful than I, for it splattered on my foot. Hot bacon fat isn’t gentle. Then I see LittleDoggie, curious about what I was doing. I shooed him away, out from under my feet and all those things not protected by wine. (He’s all of seven pounds, a little thing.)

Now it’s time for the chicken broth, but none in the refrigerator, just those salty cubes. Okay. I used those to cook the potatoes, diced in 1/4″ cubes. Don’t know what condition the potatoes were supposed to be in, but 1/4″ cubes is what they became. Chick peas? Why couldn’t my brain cooperate while at the store, to let me in, in what it knew?! (That last punctuation is supposed to be an interrobang, a combination of ! & ?.) Canned corn became chick peas. The wine was good.

Like I already said, I was thinking of being the Galloping Gourmet. He cooked liberally, with wine.

…
“What are these little things?’, she asks. I don’t have a clue. The wine is good.
The second batch of Cleatus’ Potato Soup was better. This wine is good, too.

11\2007

Big Insurers Like ObamaCare

Reuters posted a series of items relating to the healthcare overhaul that passed last night. Its position in favor the reform is not surprising. What is surprising is that Reuters also comments with headlines like, “Wall Street gains as healthcare uncertainty ends,” “US employers brace for health reform changes” and “US states launch lawsuits against health plan.”
LOL!
The Health Care sector of the Market likes the change, including Health Care Insurers!

Big Health Insurers like the Health Care Reform because it puts taxpayer money in their pockets. The evidence is in the surge in a variety of Health Care stocks, including Health Care Insurer Sectors. That means Big Money is buying lots of Health Care stocks because they LIKE the hemorrhaging red ink Congress poured on US.

The peon public for CHANGE see the ill-covered lies and dismiss the CHANGE to rape we the People.

Call HealthCare a Right and Fools for Change will clamor for Equality in Execrable HealthCare.
Call Rape a Lollipop and Fools for Change clamor for a really big one.

socialist democracy – Government In Spite of the People

It is a sad thing for a man to betray his oath for monetary gain
-Tyndale

Last night with the arm-twisted 218 vote to pass a CHANGE agenda, it was confirmed.

We, the People, are left without Congressional Representation. Our voices: ignored by we who elected them for the purpose of representing each of our fifty states in Washington.

Congressional Senators and Representatives do the biding of their President Obama. They clandestinely converse behind closed doors (the PC version of Transparency) to decide the advantage to Politically Correct Democrats and other Elitists. They choose to violate their oaths of office in favor of filthy lucre.

Article. III. Section. 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

Our Constitutional guarantee of a Republican Form of Government is eschewed by those sworn to protect it, in favor of a Government Over the People, In Spite of the People.

Domestic Violence is perpetrated via Legislation against US in forms of such as:

taxation without representation
elimination of jobs by killing private business
confiscation of private wealth, by redistribution:
– welfare
– illegal immigrant benefits
– Elitist benefits and gains
– Graft
pretense that a proclaimed enemy against US is a peaceful religion
Closed Doors
The CHANGE voted into the White House November 2008 brought with him a skill: Community Organizing.

We, the United States of America, with a Congress for the President, are CHANGed into a Socialist Democracy.

We, the People, are left without Congressional Representation. Our voices: ignored by we who elected them for the purpose of representing each of our fifty states in Washington.

A Stability Police Force for the United States

The RAND Corporation provides objective research services and public policy analysis. RAND Corporation, for instance, currently offers on its front page the impact of US Military drawdown in Iraq:

… it (United States) must recognize that this drawdown will affect vulnerable and at-risk populations, some of whom have depended on U.S. forces for their security over the last six years. How vulnerable groups are affected by the U.S. drawdown has significant implications for the evolution of Iraq and U.S. policy interests in Iraq and the Middle East more broadly. Oliker, Grant, and Kaye assess the risks and implications of drawdown and withdrawal for some of the Iraqis in greatest danger: (1) populations whose vulnerability to violence will increase specifically because of the U.S. drawdown and (2) Iraq’s displaced population, both within Iraq and in neighboring states.

And their article, “Terrorists will strike America again” appeared as a documentary in Los Angeles Times this past January 19. They highlight three critical points of the Christmas Day episode.

What took me to the RAND site was a url in an email, Subject: Gestapo and a request to please read, from an active-duty soldier:

Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for
this publication.
ISBN 978-0-8330-4653-6

The research described in the report was sponsored by the United States Army under Contract No. W74V8H-06-C-0001. Which means your taxpayer dollar and mine paid for it.

This project investigates the need for a U.S. Stability Police Force, the
major capabilities it would need if created, where in the federal govern-
ment it would best be headquartered, and how it should be staffed. In
doing so, it considers options based in the Departments of Defense,
Homeland Security, Justice, and State. The project was conducted
for the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute
(PKSOI). Its purpose was to make recommendations to PKSOI, the
Army, and the community of rule-of-law researchers, practitioners, and
policymakers on the need for (and characteristics of) a U.S. Stability
Police Force.
This research was conducted within RAND Arroyo Center’s
Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. RAND Arroyo Center,
part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and
development center sponsored by the United States Army.
The Project Unique Identification Code (PUIC) for the project
that produced this document is ATFCR07234.
The project point of contact is Terrence Kelly, 412-683-2300
X4905, tkelly@rand.org.

Quotes from A Stability Police Force for the United States

The report was released January 2009.

The title of the sixth chapter of the report is a question: Staffing: Standing or Reserve?

The questions that follow in their conclusion makes one wonder along with them.
Their Conclusion begins: Law enforcement in the United States is not a federal responsibility.

Since the skills needed by an SPF are similar to those of high-end state
and local law enforcement, no federal law enforcement or military can-
didate is a perfect fit.

Their conclusion that the United States “needs an SPF or some other way to accomplish the SPF mission.”

The United States will continue to experience major challenges in stability operations if it does not have this policing capacity. These challenges could include an inability to establish basic law and order, as well as defeat or deter criminal organizations, terrorists, and insurgents.

In all its language, I missed the identification of exactly where, or where not, the Stability Police Force is to be used.

Four Branches of US -the way it was 2008

 

Four Branches of US In case you weren’t in school the day they taught about the Three Branches of US government, here’s a brief description, intention and the reality.
. . Legislative WHO: Senators in the Senate and Representatives in the House Function: Make US Law	General Pelosi   current speaker of the house	.   . General Pelosi, in a headscarf, paid a visit to Syria. (Legitimate US Dignitaries don’t submit to terrorizers.) General Pelosi would, if could, command US military.      Except for its high-profile, scurrilous members, the Senate is unremarkable.
. . Judicial WHO: Supreme Court Justices, quantity: nine (9) Function: judges who judge the arguments of Laws	nine (9) judges   current justices	. . US Justices work extra hard. They create law from the bench, as well as judge it.      Ya’ think they think that General Pelosi’s House she speaks for is so busy commanding military affairs they have no time to read what they would make US law?
. Social WHO: Special Interest Groups, theMedia, Legislators… Function: create Programs	theVoice of the Whiners   current directors	. . With Personal Responsibility and Knowledge of US History passé, BigBrother has to do it for US. More Programs are needed, they claim.
. . Executive WHO: The President, Vice President, Cabinet & Departments Function: sworn to uphold US Constitution	Alfred E. Bush   current president	. . . What’s to say?

080221
aloha!

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Shoot an Elephant in Pajamas

Ever notice how things tend to be in the same time?

Yesterday, Dilbert’s no-brainer coworker received only glares for his miss at humor over his dream of watching tv in his pajamas. Today, a Lister attempts similar humor regarding shooting an elephant in his pajamas. For both, the punch was Groucho’s denial of knowing how it (elephant or gun) got in the pajamas.

Only with thought to conjure a word more appropriate than “groan” do I question just why that’s the word we use, “groan,” to describe a combination of words that convey humor less than cacophony of words.

I wondered as we wandered the great city of Philadelphia the couple of years my family lived there: so many great men, living at the same time. They not only discussed the project, but actually formed the nation ours would become. I still don’t truly comprehend the influence of any individual person, although I must admit that Benjamin Franklin was a man whose curiosity is fascinating. (I like Mr. Franklin’s museum!)

If men such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock hadn’t shared tangent living years, would their contributions have been as effective if they had lived in different eras? If John Hancock had lived in the 1600s, would we be using his name to sign ours? If Benjamin was born in 2000, would someone have chased lightening for him?

Today there’s Stephen Hawking who holds my respect. He lives in my time. The circles of his life are on the same plane of time as mine and yours, but no matter. His circle is so remote from mine (likely yours, too), they’ll never touch. Except for my wonder of his wonderings.

What I really want to know is, where’s the elephant in pajamas, and did he do the shooting/watching tv?

aloha!

3/2006