Rapid Response

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

Two Different Versions ...
This one is a little different....
Two Different Morals:

OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:

Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving..

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'
Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome.

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake, while he damns the ants.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the
Pope for the grasshopper's plight..

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity &
Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2016.

I've sent this to you because I know you're an ant not a grasshopper!

Make sure that you pass this on to other ants.
Don't bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they wouldn't understand it, anyway.

SATURDAY, April 9, 2016

Children of the 30s & 40s “The Last Ones”
              A Short Memoir

Born in the 1930s and early 40s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the “last ones.” We are the last, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the war itself with fathers and uncles going off. We are the last to remember ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans. We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available.

We are the last to hear Roosevelt ’s radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors. We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945; VJ Day.

We saw the ‘boys’ home from the war build their Cape Cod style houses, pouring the cellar, tar papering it over and living there until they could afford the time and money to build it out.

We are the last who spent childhood without television; instead imagining what we heard on the radio.   As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood “playing outside until the street lights came on.”   We did play outside and we did play on our own. There was no little league.

The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like. Our Saturdayafternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons. Newspapers and magazines were written for adults.   We are the last who had to find out for ourselves.

As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.   The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow. VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled with new installment payment plans put factories to work. New highways would bring jobs and mobility. The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics. In the late 40s and early 50’s the country seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to its new middle class. Our parents understandably became absorbed with their own new lives. They were free from the confines of the depression and the war. They threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

We weren’t neglected but we weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus. They were glad we played by ourselves ‘until the street lights came on.’ They were busy discovering the post war world.

Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and went to find out. We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief that there was more where this came from, we shaped life as we went.

We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future. Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared in this experience. Depression poverty was deep rooted. Polio was still a crippler. The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks.   China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first ‘advisors’ to Vietnam . Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.

We are the last to experience an interlude when there were no existential threats to our homeland. We came of age in the late 40s and early 50s. The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, climate change, technological upheaval and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease.

Only we can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty.   We experienced both.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better not worse.

We are the ‘last ones.’

- Author unknown

FRIDAY, April 8, 2016

THURSDAY, April 7, 2016

WEDNESDAY, April 6, 2016

Subject: Stupid is as stupid does

Ask any person not your child between the ages of 18 and 25 if they
ever heard of the Nuremberg Trials. 1 in 13 might say they have but
will not be able to tell you “what” was on trial (not who).&nbs p; Those same
people will not be able to tell you the name of the Vice President. 84%
of those who receive this will not read it completely, or at all. 10%
will but will also chose not to forward it. The remaining 6% will
forward it.

Stupid is as stupid does...

The war started in the 7th century and lasted through the 17th century.
I would contend it never stopped but historically the facts below are
correct.
This is why I choke when I hear someone say we will defeat or contain
these Islamic terrorists in a few years or even 30 years as recently
stated by Leon Panetta.

If the latest batch of murders, beheadings, and killing of innocent
Christians has shocked you, maybe you should read this compilation of
historical facts about the hatred of Muslims.

WE, THE STUPID

This is factually (and historically) correct - and verifiable:

&n bsp; In 732 A.D. the Muslim Army, which was moving on Paris, was defeated
and turned back at Tours, France, by Charles Martell.

In 1571 A.D. the Muslim Army/Navy was defeated by the Italians and
Austrians as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to attack southern
Europe in the Battle of Lepanto.

In 1683 A.D. the Turkish Muslim Army, attacking Eastern Europe, was
finally defeated in the Battle of Vienna by German and Polish Christian
Armies.

This crap has been going on for 1,400 years and half of the politicians
don't even know it.

If these battles had not been won, we might be speaking Arabic and
Christianity could be non-existent; Judaism certainly would not exist.

Reflecting: A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality
that they imagine that America can suffer defeat without any
inconvenience to themselves. Pause a moment and reflect back.

These events are actual events from history. They really happened! Do
you remember?

48 years since 1968 and this just keeps going on and on.

1. In 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male.
2. In 1972, at the Munich Olympics, Israeli athletes were kidnapped and
massacred by Muslim males.
3. In 1972, a Pan Am 747 was hijacked and eventually diverted to Cairo
where a fuse was lit on final approach.
Shortly after landing it was blown up by Muslim males.
4. In 1973, a Pan Am 707 was destroyed in Rome, with 33 people killed,
when it was attacked with grenades by Muslim males.
5. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim males.
6. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by
Muslim males.
7. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim
males.
8. In 1985, the cr uise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70-year old
American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair
by Muslim males.
9. In 1985, TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver
trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim males.
10. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim males.
11. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim
males.
12. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by
Muslim males.
13. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles
to take down the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one
crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by
the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim males.
14. In 2002, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against
Muslim males.
15. In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnap ped and beheaded by - you
guessed it - a Muslim male. (Plus two other American journalists who
were just recently beheaded).
16. In 2013, the Boston Marathon Bombing resulted in 4 Innocent people,
(including a child) being killed and 264 people injured by Muslim males.

No Obama, I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling, do
you? So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly
fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer
be allowed to profile certain people.

So, ask yourself "Just how stupid are we???"

Absolutely No Profiling! They must conduct random searches of
80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper
identification, secret agents who are members of the Obama's security
detail, 85-year-old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor
winner and former Governor Joe Foss, BUT........leave Muslim Mal es alone
lest we be guilty of profiling.
Ask yourself, "Just how stupid are we?" Have the American people
completely lost their minds or just their Power of Reason???

Let 's send this to as many people as we can so that the Gloria Alred's
and other stupid attorneys, along with Federal Justices, that want to
thwart common sense, feel ashamed of themselves -- if they have any such
sense.

As the writer of the award winning story " Forrest Gump " so aptly put
it, "Stupid Is As Stupid Does."
Each opportunity that you have to send this to a friend or media
outlet... Do It! OR JUST SIT BACK, KEEP GRIPING, AND DO NOTHING. As
OBAMA SAID IN HIS BOOK NOTHING SOUNDS SO BEAUTIFUL AS THE MUSLIM EVENING
PRAYERS FROM THE TOWER.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!---and anyone else reading this

MONDAY and TUESDAY, April 4 and 5, 2016

Islamic terrorism threatens our lives in ways both visual and dramatic. Primordial screams, the stench of death, and blood-streaked streets where bodies so mutilated they are virtually unrecognizable capture our senses of hearing and sight. It is horrific, real and frightening. It is meant to scare. It does.

The danger from political correctness is different, but no less treacherous. It arrives like the morning fog that, as Carl Sandberg wrote, “comes on little cat feet.” It settles imperceptibly and enshrouds us. Political correctness makes one feel noble and caring, because it is said to be inclusive and sensitive to the feelings of others, especially those who are racially and culturally different. But it is exclusive; it impugns those whose thinking is at odds with convention. It is based on “group think.” It is dependent on minds closed to ideas outside what is deemed correct. It was the basis of fascism and underlies communism. Its consequence can be deadly to those who value freedom and democracy.

We see it on college campuses when students and faculty prevent conservatives from speaking, and in the willingness of administrations to provide “safe places” for those who feel threatened by opinions and expressions that do not match what they have been taught to believe. Political correctness ill prepares students for a world that does not march to a single drummer and puts them at a disadvantage when they enter the workforce where diversity of ideas is as commonplace as cultural diversity. Diversity is a powerful force for good, but only when it extends beyond genetic traits and delves into the realm of ideas. Its adherents claim idealism, but that is not true, as it denigrates those who think differently. It is, in fact, anti-intellectual and anti-liberal. It suffocates curiosity, accountability and individualism, characteristics critical to a liberal education and necessary for life after college.

Political correctness is behind advocates of “man-caused” climate change – those who say man is the principal (or sole) reason for changes in climate. Those who question, who are skeptical of conventional wisdom, or who suspect ulterior motives on the part of the claimants are impugned as “deniers.” Those like Al Gore who have made fortunes with scarifying tales of rising seas, are reminiscent of the Catholic Church, which in the 17^th Century demonized Galileo because he threatened their view that the Earth was the center of the universe. They are like the eugenicists of the early 20^th Century, represented by what was then the establishment, who excoriated those who dared question their findings. In both cases, “science” was considered “settled.” Now we have the attorney generals of Connecticut and New York, and Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, like the Inquisitor Father Firenzuola, proposing to prosecute “deniers.”

It is political correctness that causes Mr. Obama to refuse to declare that today’s terrorism is caused by Islamists. Denying a fact does not make it go away. Claiming that the killings in 2009 at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) as he shot to death thirteen people, was “work-place violence” did not reduce the number of future Islamic attacks. It was a lie and did nothing to abate the growth and the evil of Islamic extremism.

Multiculturalism is a byproduct of political correctness. Cultures are not equal, nor are morals relative. The President, when in Havana, equated all revolutions, including Cuba’s, as “liberation movements seeking democracy.” His words showed either a gross misunderstanding of history, or a pandering to his Communist hosts. I suspect the latter. Either way, it was political correctness at its most dangerous. Political correctness in geopolitics is ubiquitous. Even today Che Guevara is portrayed as an idealistic youth and Ho Chi Minh is seen as the “George Washington” of Vietnam. Neither were pluralists. Both were tyrants, intent on power for themselves, while subjecting their people to the rigors and deprivations of communism.

North Carolina Governor, Republican Pat McCrory has been vilified and his state has been boycotted because he signed (did not veto) a bill that does not allow those who claim to be transgenders, but have not legally or surgically been designated so, to use bathrooms other than the ones appropriate for the sex of their birth. Was that so outrageous? If you watched your fifteen-year-old daughter disappear into a Ladies room followed by two young men claiming to be transgenders would it not make you nervous? Edward Cline recently wrote that a society that allows one to believe one is a particular gender simply because it is what he or she wants to be “is possible only in a culture of philosophical disintegration.” There is validity to his concerns. Putting horns on an ewe doesn’t make it a ram. I have no particular prejudice against Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner, but he (she) is not the stereotype I would wish for my grandchildren. Hiding behind a mask of political correctness prevents us from seeing the downside of the world we are exalting.

Living in a pluralistic society requires harmony, which is dependent on civility, respect and sensitivity to others. I can respect the quirks in others. But they should not demand I abide by theirs. Those of us who grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s were taught, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Its purpose was to teach children to avoid physical retaliation, to remain calm when taunted. Teasing may not be pleasant (and should be discouraged), but it is unlikely to cause lasting damage.

Political correctness presents a distinct but different threat, as mentioned at the start of this essay, from that of being exposed to a terrorist with a gun, a bomb or an exploding vest. It augurs poorly for a democracy. If we are prevented or become fearful of expressing ourselves, it is a step down the road toward tyranny. When ethnic groups are in conflict, as are Jews and Palestinians today, the multicultural aspects of political correctness require choosing sides. Today, Palestinians are favored. That has given rise to the anti-Semitism that has infested Europe and menaces the Unites States.

Erika Christakis, an early-education expert, was forced out of Yale last fall because of an e-mail she sent regarding Halloween costumes. “Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people?”, she asked. “Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.” Her e-mail, a defense of liberty, was in response to one sent by the administration. But hers was considered racially insensitive; it caused students to seek “safe places” and resulted in protests. It was a scene that could have been included in dystopian novels, like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies or George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four. Unfortunately, what happened at Yale was not an isolated instance, but that it did happen at Yale should scare all of us.

Yet, even as the P.C. crowd surrounds us, my optimism remains. I am reminded of the famous quote, usually attributed to General “Chesty” Puller, when he was encircled by the enemy in North Korea: “All right, they’re on our left; they’re on our right. They’re in front of us; they’re behind us. They can’t get away this time!” Rally for freedom now, while there is still time! Our democracy depends on it!

What Trump has wrought
Posted By Patrick J. Buchanan On 04/04/2016

As Wisconsinites head for the polls, our Beltway elites are almost giddy. For they foresee a Badger State bashing for Donald Trump, breaking his momentum toward the Republican nomination.

Should The Donald fall short of the delegates needed to win on the first ballot, 1,237, there is growing certitude that he will be stopped. First by Ted Cruz; then, perhaps, by someone acceptable to the establishment, which always likes to have two of its own in the race.

But this city of self-delusion should realize there is no going back for America. For, whatever his stumbles of the last two weeks, Trump has helped to unleash the mightiest force of the 21st century: nationalism.

Transnationalism and globalism are moribund.

First among the issues on which Trump has triumphed – “We will build the wall – and Mexico will pay for it!” – is border security.

Republican candidates who failed to parrot Trump on illegal immigration were among the first casualties for that is where America is, and that is where the West is.
Consider Europe. Four months ago, Angela Merkel was Time’s Person of the Year for throwing open the gates to the “huddled masses” of the Middle and Near East.
Merkel’s Germany is now leading the EU in amassing a huge bribe to the Turks to please take them back, and keep them away from the Greek islands that are now Islam’s Ellis Island into Europe.

Africa’s population will double to 2.5 billion by 2050. With 60 percent of Africans now under 25 years of age, millions will find their way to the Med to cross to the Old Continent where Europeans are aging, shrinking and dying. Look for gunboats in the Med.

If immigration is the first issue where Trump connected with the people, the second is trade.

Republicans are at last learning that trade deficits do matter, that free trade is not free. The cost comes in dead factories, lost jobs, dying towns and the rising rage of an abandoned Middle America whose country this is and whose wages have stagnated for decades.

Economists who swoon over figures on consumption forget what America’s 19th-century meteoric rise to self-sufficiency teaches, and what all four presidents on Mount Rushmore understood.

Production comes before consumption. Who owns the orchard is more essential than who eats the apples. We have exported the economic independence Hamilton taught was indispensable to our political independence. We have forgotten what made us great.

China, Japan, Germany – the second, third and fourth largest economies on earth – all owe their prosperity to trade surpluses run for decades at the expense of the Americans.

A third casualty of Trumpism is the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus among liberal interventionists and neoconservatives.
Trump subjects U.S. commitments to a cost-benefit analysis, as seen from the standpoint of cold national interest.

What do we get from continuing to carry the largest load of the defense of a rich Europe, against a Russia with one-fourth of Europe’s population?

How does Vladimir Putin, leader of a nation that in the last century lost its European and world empires and a third of its landmass, threaten us?

Why must we take the lead in confronting and containing Putin in Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia? No vital U.S. interest is imperiled there, and Russia’s ties there are older and deeper than ours to Puerto Rico.

Why is it the responsibility of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to defend the claims of Hanoi, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Brunei, to rocks, reefs and islets in the South China Sea – against the claims of China?

American hawks talk of facing down Beijing in the South and East China Seas while U.S. companies import so much in Chinese-made goods they are fully subsidizing Beijing’s military budget.

Does this make sense?

Patriotism, preserving and protecting the unique character of our nation and people, economic nationalism, America First, staying out of other nation’s wars – these are as much the propellants of Trumpism as is the decline of the American working and middle class.

Trump’s presence in the race has produced the largest turnout ever in the primaries of either party. He has won the most votes, most delegates, most states, Wisconsin aside, he will likely come to Cleveland in that position.

If, through rules changes, subterfuge and faithless delegates, party elites swindle him out of the nomination, do they think that the millions who came out to vote for Trump will go home and say: We lost it fair and square?

Do they think they can then go back to open borders, amnesty, a path to citizenship, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and nation building?

Whatever happens to Trump, the country has spoken. And if the establishment refuses to heed its voice, and returns to the policies the people have repudiated, it should take heed of John F. Kennedy’s warning:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.”

TUESDAY through SATURDAY, April 26 through 30, 2016

MONDAY, April 25, 2016

THURSDAY through SUNDAY, April 21 through 24, 2016

MONDAY through WEDNESDAY, April 18 through 20, 2016

WEDNESDAY through SUNDAY, April 13 through 17, 2016

MONDAY and TUESDAY, April 11 and 12, 2016

SUNDAY, April 10, 2016

SATURDAY, April 9, 2016

FRIDAY, April 8, 2016

THURSDAY, April 7, 2016

WEDNESDAY, April 6, 2016

MONDAY and TUESDAY, April 4 and 5, 2016

SUNDAY, April 3, 2016

SATURDAY, April 2, 2016

FRIDAY, April 1, 2016