Senior citizens are constantly being criticized for every conceivable deficiency of the modern world, real or imaginary. We know we take responsibility for all we have done and do not blame others.

HOWEVER, upon reflection, we would like to point out that it was NOT the senior citizens who took

The melody out of music,

The pride out of appearance,

The courtesy out of driving,

The romance out of love,

The commitment out of marriage,

The responsibility out of parenthood,

The togetherness out of the family,

The learning out of education,

The service out of patriotism,

The Golden Rule from rulers,

The nativity scene out of cities,

The civility out of behavior,

The refinement out of language,

The dedication out of employment,

The prudence out of spending,

The ambition out of achievement or

God out of government and school.

And we certainly are NOT the ones who eliminated patience and tolerance from personal relationships and interactions with others!!

And, we do understand the meaning of patriotism, and remember those who have fought and died for our country. 

Just look at the Seniors with tears in their eyes and pride in their hearts as they stand at attention with their hand over their hearts!

YES, I'M A SENIOR CITIZEN!

I'm the life of the party..... Even if it lasts until 8 p.m.

I'm very good at opening childproof caps..... With a hammer.

I'm awake many hours before my body allows me to get up.

I'm smiling all the time because I can't hear a thing you're saying. 

I'm sure everything I can't find is in a safe secure place, somewhere.

I'm wrinkled, saggy, lumpy, and that's just my left leg.

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

Yes, I'm a SENIOR CITIZEN and I think I am having the time of my life!

Now if I could only remember who sent this to me, I wouldn't send it back to them, but I would send it to many more too!

Spread the laughter

Share the cheer

Let's be happy

While we're here.

And, MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA

AND MAY AMERICA BLESS GOD!!!

Go Green - Recycle CONGRESS!!!

Soldier Murders Afghans, Generals Murder Soldiers

Ralph Peters — March 13, 2012 

On Sunday, just before dawn, an American staff sergeant walked away from his post in the badlands of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, went into a nearby village, and methodically murdered sixteen civilians, including women and children. This didn’t happen in the confusion of a firefight amidst the “fog of war.” It was the brutal act of a veteran who cracked. The deed cannot be excused. But I believe it can be explained.

For a final analysis we’ll have to wait until all of the facts come in, but it appears that a soldier who had served honorably during multiple tours in Iraq broke down and went mad in Afghanistan. We should not be surprised that this happened. We should be surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner and more often: The shock of this incident after a decade of hopeless, meandering efforts that have thrown away the lives and limbs of our troops while ambitious generals lie about progress, seek promotion, and engage in military masturbation is actually a tribute to our men and women in uniform out on the front lines (to the extent that “front lines” exist).

That staff sergeant—who turned himself in after the killings—is guilty of murder in a degree yet to be determined, but the amazing thing is how disciplined, patient and tenacious our troops have been. Given the outrageous stresses of serving repeated tours in an environment a brand-new private could recognize as hopeless (while his generals fly back and forth congratulating themselves), it’s remarkable that we have not seen more and even uglier incidents. The problem in Afghanistan isn’t our troops—although craven generals routinely insist that everything is the fault of “disrespectful” soldiers—it’s a leadership in and out of uniform that is bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of ethics, bankrupt of moral courage—and rich only in self-interest and ambition.

If there’s a “battle cry” in Afghanistan, it’s “Blame the troops!” Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to “respect Afghan culture.”

But generals don’t have a clue about Afghan “culture.” They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing. The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women. When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to “respect Afghan culture,” they must want to puke up their rations.

When I was a young officer in training, we mocked the European “chateaux generals” of the First World War who gave their orders from elegant headquarters without ever experiencing the reality faced by the troops in the trenches. We never thought that we’d have chateaux generals of our own, but now we do. Flying down to visit an outpost and staying just long enough to pin on a medal or two, get a dog-and-pony-show briefing and have a well-scripted tea session with a carefully selected “good” tribal elder, then winging straight back to a well-protected headquarters where the electronics are more real than the troops is not the way to develop a “fingertips feel” for on-the-ground reality.

Add in the human capacity for self-delusion, and you have a surefire prescription for failure.

Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind). What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.

Now we’re told that we have to stay to build the Afghan military and police. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! And Allah’s knickers, too! We’ve been training and equipping the Afghan army and the Afghan cops (and robbers) for ten years. In World War II, we turned out a mass military of our own in a year or so. The problem in Afghanistan isn’t that we haven’t tried, but that the Afghans are not interested in fighting for the exuberantly corrupt Karzai regime. Right now, our troops are dying to preserve a filthy Kabul government whose president blatantly stole the last election and which has no hope of gaining the support of its own people. Meanwhile, despite repeated claims that the Taliban is on its last legs, the religious fanatics remain the home team backed by Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority. (If the people didn’t back them, the Taliban would, indeed, have been long gone—we need to face reality.)

Recently, another friend, who clings to (now-retired) General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency notion that, if we just hang on and give the Afghans enough free stuff, they’ll come around to the American way of life, told me, yet again, “You should hear the intercepts we get from the low-level Taliban fighters…they’re in a panic…”

That’s the old Vietnam line: “We win every firefight!” Sure, we whip the Taliban every time we catch them with their weapons (if they’re not holding weapons, we can’t engage, even if they just killed Americans). But we dare not attack the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, where it’s protected by our “allies.” And no matter how many Taliban we kill, they still attract volunteers willing to die for their cause. The Afghans we train turn their guns on us.

It appears that the staff sergeant who murdered those Afghan villagers had cracked under the stresses of a war we won’t allow our troops to fight. But the real madness is at the top, in the White House, where President Obama can’t see past the November election; in Congress, where Republicans cling to whatever war they’ve got; and in uniform, where our generals have run out of ideas and moral courage.

That staff sergeant murdered sixteen Afghans. Our own leaders have murdered thousands and maimed tens of thousands of our own troops out of vanity, ambition and inertia. Who deserves our sympathy? In war, soldiers die. But they shouldn’t die for bullshit.

Ralph Peters

Culture wars have roots in Connecticut

By Dick Ahles

Publication: The Day

If, as legend has it, Lincoln called Harriet Beecher Stowe "the little lady who started the big war" with Uncle Tom's Cabin, I guess New Haven's Estelle Griswold could qualify as the lady who started the big culture war.

Griswold, who died in 1981, gave her name to Griswold vs. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that overturned an 1879 Connecticut law prohibiting the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception."

More significantly, the Griswold decision was the first to determine that the right to privacy is protected by the Constitution. Griswold thereby begat Roe vs. Wade and the court's ruling that a woman's decision to have an abortion was protected as a private action between her and her doctor.

I interviewed Griswold, the executive director of the Connecticut Planned Parenthood League, 50 years ago when I worked for The Hartford Courant. She and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, chairman of Yale's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, had been charged with violating the old law at their birth control clinic at the corner of Whitney Avenue and Trumbull Street in New Haven. They were found guilty and fined $100 each.

The rarely enforced law prohibited married and unmarried couples from using birth control devices and forbade their dissemination and sale by organizations like Griswold's Planned Parenthood League and drug stores, which sold condoms under the counter.

The law was one of many "Comstock Laws," named for New Canaan native Anthony Comstock, a YMCA worker turned postal inspector, who became a powerful watchdog of what he considered "lewd and lascivious" behavior. His laws, banning birth control and books, were passed by Congress and the states in the 19th century.

Over the years, Connecticut notables like Katharine Hepburn's mother, President Taft's brother and Taft School founder Horace Taft and Dr. Hilda Standish worked unsuccessfully for the law's repeal against the opposition of the then powerful Connecticut Catholic bishops. A 1940 raid on a Waterbury clinic led to the first test case, but the law was upheld by the Connecticut Supreme Court and Connecticut's law remained on the books long after it had been repealed by most states, making Connecticut something of a national joke.

Then, in 1961, Buxton and Griswold got themselves arrested and after their conviction was upheld on appeal, it reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The law was invalidated by the Court by a vote of 7-2 on the grounds that it violated "the right to marital privacy." Although the right to privacy is not explicitly stated in the Constitution, seven justices found it in two amendments. The dissenters, Justices Hugo Black and Potter Stewart, a liberal and a moderate, maintained the right to privacy was not where the others said it was.

Although Republican Stewart argued that the Connecticut law was constitutional, he memorably wrote it was also "an uncommonly silly law."

Eight years later, with Black retired and Stewart voting with the majority, the court ruled abortion was protected as a private decision. The vote was again 7-2, with only Kennedy appointee Byron White and Nixon appointee William Rehnquist dissenting.

Roe launched the culture war that has raged intermittently over the past 40 years and recently enjoyed a revival when President Obama required church run organizations like colleges and hospitals to provide birth control coverage with their health insurance. This historic gaffe divided the public and even found Obama faithful like Connecticut Congressmen Rosa DeLaura and John Larson on opposing sides.

When the president offered a compromise, the Catholic bishops decided it wasn't enough and seemed to divide not only the country, but their own church, with the bishops and priests on one side and nuns, Catholic organizations like hospitals and schools and the laity on the other.

With the number of sexually active American women at some point practicing birth control running about 98 percent by various estimates, this does not appear to be a winning stance for the bishops, whose credibility on sexual matters has suffered in recent years.

But the culture war will continue this election year, at least through the primary season, as Republican candidates have long fooled their social issue-conscious base by promising if nominated and elected, there will be constitutional amendments for all, from banning abortions, flag burning and gay marriages to requiring prayer in schools.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury.

Waiting for the shoe to drop

The potential of third-party challenge

(by someone else) fascinates Lieberman

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut's self-described independent-Democrat, who is not seeking re-election in November, recently sat down with the Editorial Board and discussed Iran, the growing deficit and partisan politics in Washington. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

Question: Can you talk about the extreme partisanship in Washington and the inability to reach compromise on major issues?

Lieberman: To say what's obvious - and it's frustrating to face this reality in my last year in the Senate, although maybe it makes it easier to leave, you may have noticed it's not a very productive place. It may not even be a functional place. It's been much too divided by both partisanship and ideological rigidity.

The debt is probably the most threatening (impasse), because it's not politically easy to deal with ... in an honest and real way because it requires us (to reduce the growth of) Medicare (and) Medicaid. They're popular, they're good programs but they can't keep growing the way they are, and that takes political guts to deal with that.

We have to raise revenues, and that's not obviously ever popular; probably that means that people with more money have to pay more taxes. That's just the reality, so nobody's willing to face that.

Q. How concerned are you about the growing federal deficit and the failure in Washington to deal with it?

Lieberman: If we don't deal with the debt by cutting some spending, again particularly the tough one, the big one is entitlements, and we're not willing to raise some taxes, there's no alternative. Well, the alternative is to let the national debt go so high that the whole country will go over the cliff, and what does that mean? Maybe our bond ratings will go down, we'll have to pay more interest for people to loan us money, we'll print more money so we'll inflate the currency, which is a terrible thing to do. And that's one (choice), not to do anything and just let the debt keep rising. It's now $15 trillion.

Q. There were opportunities to address the situation - the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, the super committee, the "grand compromise" discussed between President Obama and Speaker Boehner.

Lieberman: I had high hopes after the Simpson-Bowles commission came out, which really was a bipartisan agreement including some members of Congress who were on the commission, I thought that might be the moment to create a movement toward getting something real done on the debt, but it fizzled. I regret that the president didn't support the Simpson-Bowles commission early on and then the super committee failed as well.

Incidentally, I think it's also about the best thing the government can do to stimulate a big economic recovery. I think if the federal government got together and really adopted a meaningful, balanced budget proposal, bipartisan, like Simpson-Bowles, I think there would be a tremendous surge of confidence.

(Instead) we're facing ... cuts to domestic defense and non-defense programs that will decimate the government, not just defense, but education, public safety, environmental protection, housing, so much of the aid to the cities and states, so the process is not operating in a sensible way and it's not doing what it should do.

Q: What about the prospects of a third-party challenge in the presidential race?

Lieberman: There is going to be a third-party movement this year. It's gotten very little attention so far ... it's fascinating to me, it's called Americans Elect (2012).

They're tired of the partisan division and as I understand it they're (close) to getting over the first hurdle, which is to get on all 50 ballots. Then they're going to hold an Internet convention in the spring, I guess, and they're going to nominate candidates. Each one of the candidates is going to have to choose a vice presidential running mate from the other party. Again, this is fascinating.

Q: Would you welcome a third-party candidacy?

Lieberman: I think the public is ready to do what most politicians don't think they are, which is to take some tough medicine to make the country's future healthier. I understand it's easier for me to say because I'm not running, although I've been saying this for a while, and that's what I hope that a third-party candidate could do is force the other two candidates to face this reality and decide.

Q: Would you be interested in being the Internet candidate?

Lieberman: No.

Q: How do you view the potential for an Israeli military strike on Iran and do you think the Obama administration is taking the right approach in dealing with Iran and the threat that it will develop nuclear weapons?

Lieberman: To me the administration's policy on Iran has been mixed and lately, again, a bit confusing. The president said a lot of things that I think should be said, most significantly that it is unacceptable to him and the United States for Iran to become a nuclear power, to have a nuclear weapon and that he will keep all options on the table to prevent that, including obviously the use of American military power.

We had a very strong legislative proposal made by Senators (Robert) Menendez and (Mark) Kirk in December. The administration really was quietly against that, ultimately it passed 100 to nothing in the Senate, so I wish they had been more for it. The bill ... basically says to people, "If you want to do business with Iran and the central bank of Iran, you can't do business in America." And we presume the choice will be to go with America because it's such a bigger market for companies.

If the president doesn't waive it, it goes into effect at the end of June. The European Union has adopted something similar and I think that's the last hope, I guess the last threshold about whether the regime in Iran will respond to that.

Other than that I think the only thing they'll fear is a military strike by us and/or Israel, and I think the more we make clear to them that that's the alternative, the more likely we are to achieve a peaceful solution to this genuine crisis.

An Obama classmate speaks out

Yes, Wayne Allyn Root's statement below has been "Correctly Attributed"

The link to Snopes.com is at the end of his statement.

If Obama is re-elected in 2012, the US is finished.

The following is in simple language that everyone can understand.

Not the gibberish that our government keeps telling people.

Please read this carefully and make sure you keep this message going.

This needs to be emailed to everyone in the USA ...

OBAMA'S COLLEGE CLASSMATE SPEAKS OUT

By Wayne Allyn Root

Barack Hussein Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent.

To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing.

He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. Economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -

thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.

Barack Hussien Obama was my college classmate.

( Columbia University , class of '83).

He is a devout Muslim; do not be fooled. Look at his Czars... Anti-business. anti-American.

As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Barack Hussien Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University ... They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands.

Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival... And can be counted on to always vote for even bigger government.

Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

Universal health care!

The health care bill had very little to do with health care.

It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers,

as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions).

Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt.

What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government.

Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?

Cap and trade!

Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming.

It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors.

Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power.

The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."

Make Puerto Rico a state. Why?

Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression?

Certainly not American taxpayers! But this has been Barack Hussien Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressmen and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.

(This will tip the balance of those living off the government to more than those who must pay for it; and we're done for)

Legalize 12 million illegal Mexican immigrants.

Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America .

But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government.

Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security...

(see note above re: Puerto Rico )

Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go?

It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country.

It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues.

It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions).

A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues).

All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America ...

The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful.

The ends justify the means.

Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama).

Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government.

Barack Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.

With the acts outlined above, Barack Hussien Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.

Add it up and you've got the perfect Marxist scheme -

all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Hussien Obama using the Cloward and Piven Plan...

Struggle for unborn recalls anti-slavery

Jeff Young Gales Ferry

Publication: The Day

Many years ago many in our fair country thought that a significant portion of the residents were better off as property than people. The price for our more perfect union was tacit acceptance of this peculiar institution in our Constitution. It took about four score and seven years for us to begin purging the stain of slavery. It took another 100 years to recognize that separate was not equal. And we have yet to realize quality of character over color of skin. Our history teaches us that we can look at another person and deny his personhood to his face. It teaches us that we were wrong.

Now for the last 39 years, this struggle has been repeated. We can look at the child in the womb and say, that is not a person. Now the legislator's of Virginia, where the first version of twisted logic reigned, are trying to help us see this truth in the second case. Yes, the specific language of the bill has become an easy joke for those who demand the right to take the life of the unborn. But the pictures are witnesses against us. Will it take us another 150 years to see the error of our ways?

Obamacare turning U.S. into Venezuela

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Publication: The Day