George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

Thanksgiving Proclamation

[New York, 3 October 1789]

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor  -- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. 

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation -- for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war -- for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed -- for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions -- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually -- to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed -- to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord -- To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us -- and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go: Washington

Seizing the Moment?

Barney Frank to quit Congress to pursue dream job with TSA?

Then and Now

To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel F. Miller 

Writing for the majority  in

Loan Association v. Topeka, 1874

Our Exempt Rulers

Having undergone the government induced transformation from independent and self reliant citizens to dependent and submissive Stepford subjects, Americans seem capable of swallowing any and all outrageous intrusions on their freedoms, individual liberties, and persons. At the same time they appear to be paying little notice to, or are meekly accepting the fact that, as is spelled out in this report, their rulers are exempting themselves from the latest outrage that the rulers are inflicting on the rest of us.

The Way It Was Supposed To Be

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.

. . . Patrick Henry

A Truly Useful Service/Facility

It's a Training Program and We Are the Trainees

What's going on at the nation's airports has little -- and quite possibly nothing -- to do with preventing terrorist attacks on aircraft in flight. There are better ways to prevent such attacks but they are politically unacceptable to our (oh, so proper) ruling oligarchs.

Instead the program of voyeuristic and irradiating screenings or gropings are part and parcel of  a sustained training program to condition and acclimatize Americans to accept the loss of individual dignity and freedom . . . to become part of a uniformly docile and easily-led undifferentiated herd.

It is hardly coincidence that the same elitists who have fashioned the airport security program have opposed and are blocking development of the domestic sources of oil that could result in lower gasoline and energy prices. They at the same time are pushing hugely expensive and uneconomic light and high speed rail projects. They want everyone dependent on public mass transit, not driving around in private automobiles. They want a population dependent on, and unquestioningly accepting of government and anything and everything government does or may do.

Neither Germany under the Hitler-led Nazis nor the Soviets under  the Lenin and Stalin led Communists attempted anything as breath taking as what now is routine at America's airports  -- those earlier and comparatively amateurish totalitarians just insisted on their enforcement goons being able to view the government issued documents, not the private parts, of their subjects.

And subjects is what we are destined to become if we allow the conditioning program to go forward. Out "leaders" have made and are persisting in making it clear that their genital inspecting program will continue no matter what we, as citizens, say or do. This is government of the people, by the people, and for the people?

No, it is not. It is all encompassing and totally controlling  despotism beyond anything George Orwell envisioned. Whether by design or natural progression, if allowed to continue it will transform America into the land of the servile and the home of the fearful.

Protective Action By Our Helpful Government

Atrocities like this one are become routine in the police states that our airports have become under the aegis of the Transportation Security Agency.

A Dream From Before It Degenerated Into the House of Reprehensibles

The house of representatives ... can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.

. . . James Madison

  Federalist No. 57 

1788

Air Travel Tip

Want to avoid being irradiated and viewed naked by the TSA's voyeurs or felt up and fondled by its groping goons? It can be done . . . and done quite easily.

Just wear a hijab.

That's right. According to this report, hijab wearing Muslim women are exempt from the humiliatingly intrusive screenings that Christians,  Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and virtually everybody else*  are subjected and required to undergo at the nation's airports.

Allahu Akbar 

* Excluding, of course members of congress and certain other select elected and federal officials. 

An Obama Kinsman Lines Up With The Tea Partiers

A cousin takes on both the president without giving any comfort to, or sparing establishment Republicans for valid substantive reasons that he spells out in this clear and perceptive essay.

Now I'm Worried

Never gave much thought to any health risks that might be associated with the imaging machines that one has to go through to travel by air these days.

Now, however, the government is insisting that those machines are safe and claiming that the radiation they emit and direct at and through our bodies does not pose any health hazard.

It being a given that nothing the government says can be taken at face value, I now am worried. 

As a very senior citizen, I in all likelihood will have departed from this mortal coil long before the cumulative effects of all those rays do me any significant harm. But what about my kids and, especially my little grand kids? 

As I don't want them groped by Janet Incompetano's professional pervert goon squads, the youngsters better travel by car, private or chartered aircraft, or stay at home.

California Bailout In the Works but Out of Sight

California is broke . . . flat busted broke . . . busted. Nonetheless it is continuing to spend money it doesn't have, going deeper and ever deeper into the hole, and the nation's taxpayers almost certainly are going to end up paying California's bills.

The tipping point appears to have been reached much quicker than the post immediately beneath this one anticipated.

An effort by the golden state to borrow the money needed for its current and ongoing spending is failing. Financial institutions and other private investors are shying away from bonds the impecunious state is trying to peddle. After all, who wants IOUs from a deadbeat?

But as Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan learned and were wont to say:  Where there's a whip, there's a way.

The whip and the way in this case is California's use of it political clout to get the federal government to guarantee the bonds. With that guarantee the same investors who previously shied away from purchasing the bonds will buy them as they are secured and backed up by the U.S. Treasury . . . meaning the nation's taxpayers. The federal guarantee is taking shape beneath the public's radar screen, avoiding the attention that would be given a direct federal purchase of the bonds as anticipated by the earlier post on this subject.

In any event though, when California is unable to make the payments called for by the bonds, taxpayers in states that have managed their finances prudently -- and whose taxpayers therefore have done without the goodies that Californians have persisted in bestowing on themselves through their state's now empty coffers -- will end up making those payments through the U.S. Treasury.  California and Californians will merrily continue going their way.  Meanwhile, New York and Illinois, the other politically powerful and profligate states, already are lining up to share in the largess of the federal government with what it extracts from citizens' purses and wallets.

Please Let Us Go Down the Drain

Please do everything you can to prevent the federal government from attempting to rescue my sorry home state of California from the sea of red ink in which it currently is foundering and into which it is destined to sink in the not too far distant future.

Only that disaster will shake this debt ridden la-la land's dreamy voters out of the irresponsible complacency that led them just this month to continue to avoid  reality and again elect the biggest and wildest governmental spenders to virtually every state office. The voters even facilitated still greater future spending excesses by passing a measure that reduces the vote to adopt a state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority of the legislature.

Voters in other states should do everything they can to ensure that their elected representatives actively oppose any federal bailout of California's feckless government. And the same thing is true in the case of the almost equally debt ridden and irresponsible State of New York.

These monstrously big spending states will be trying to issue and sell bonds to the federal government to obtain cash infusions to fund their continuing profligate spending. The current national administration, the Federal Reserve, and the country's major financial institutions are predisposed to go along with such transactions even though there is very little possibility of such bonds ever being repaid or even serviced for very long. "Too big to fail" and a plethora of other theoretical and philosophical -- but phony -- claims will be offered to justify the proposed bailouts.

But why -- and this is the relevant question that the bailout proponents won't answer or even address -- should taxpayers in states that have handled their finances prudently chip in and pay to try to keep the fringe bookend states from bearing the consequences of their recklessly spendthrift ways? 

Furthermore, the pain that the forthcoming collapse of the California and New York fiscal houses of cards will inflict ultimately will benefit the big coastal states' voters by driving home a much needed lesson on the need for, and benefits of financial discipline.

Government Creation: Not Just Jobs But Whole New Career Fields

They're in Janet Incompetano's Transportation Security Agency that's now staffing up our nation's airports with Professional Gropers, Peeping Toms, and Voyeurs.

Wonder if they'll eventually have sub specialties such as groping children, toying with teens, laying hands on the handicapped, fondling the elderly, playing with transgender folks, or on minute visual examinations of such special categories.  Caligula would have loved it but for the lack of Ms. Janet's imagination.

We can look forward to the day that we'll have a National Groping Academy to train tomorrow's torso tickling troops. It should be able to proudly take a place alongside such institutions as West Point, the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy. The new institution undoubtedly will offer theoretical and philosophical courses as well as hands on training in every pubic poking, probing, and prodding fetish. 

Applications of course will be welcome from convicted criminal perverts. Highly qualified by their past experiences, these intrepid future protectors of the traveling public will be released from prisons for additional training to enable (and allow) them to complete their sentences by working at airports near you.

Is this a great country or what? Only one around in which one can make a living by copping feels.

Maxine Views the Elections

Did Harry Cheat and Did Harrah's Pitch In?

Light Weight Harry Reid is accused of having played fast and loose with the election laws and Harrah's may have done so as well to help him win reelection to the Senate, if this account is correct. In any case, the possibility of Harrah's being willing to cheat in this way is enough to make me question whether they play fair with their customers and that's enough to make me avoid visiting any of their establishments in the future.

Daylight Sanity Time

Something's Rotten in the Nutmeg State

How much more corrupt can it get in a state that elects to the U.S. Senate a guy who has what Shakespeare's Julius Caesar accurately described as "a lean and hungry look" even after he was outed as having lied about his military service?

Quite a bit apparently, according to this report, which points out serious questions about the integrity of Connecticut's gubernatorial election.

Legal Elites In A Snit

The nation's elite lawyers -- those  in its huge law firms and prestigious law school faculties -- have been trying, with some but decreasing success, to deprive voters of any say in selecting judges but now they, along with a good many appellate court judges, are reacting with outrage over the effrontery of Iowa's voters who removed from office all three of the state's supreme court judges who were on the ballot this week. Had the rest if the state's high court judges been on the ballot the impudent voters probably would made a clean sweep of it and cleared the bench of the occupants who recently instilled gay marriage into Iowa constitutional law by judicial fiat.

Horror of horrors: the unimaginable audacity of the electorate wanting some say about the laws of their society. 

The Wall Street Journal has it exactly right in this editorial, pointing out that if judges are going to issue decrees setting political and social policies they are going to have to be held accountable. Without the  very limited accountability that exists and that was exercised by Iowa's voters, the courts would be free to govern every aspect of our lives as arbitrary despots. Our courts already have moved even farther in this direction than the nation's founders feared they might, and by doing so they have transformed the judiciary, which once was viewed as the government's least dangerous branch, into a highly dangerous one.

P.S. Among those supporting the drive to remove voters from the judicial selection process is George Soros . . . and he's been putting big bucks into the effort.

Don't Ask . . . . Don't Tell

Look at the face on that cop!

An Eyebrow Raising Election Oddity

For a conservative to win an election, he or she apparently must do so by a wide enough margin to be declared the winner on election night. As the counts and recounts in close races go forward they slip behind closed doors and out of the view of the public, which moves on and focuses on other things as days and more days pass. Such prolonged counts ultimately and invariably end up with the progressive candidate being declared the winner. It is a remarkable coincidence that, given enough time, the government employees counting the votes outside of the public spotlight always seem to find enough ballots to put the statist candidate -- the one favoring ever bigger and more costly, intrusive, and powerful government -- over the top.

The Anti U.S. Lineup

Take a look at this report on the great humanitarian regimes that are lining up for the United Nations' review of America's human rights record. Not surprising but nonetheless mind blowing . . . and the administration is going to sit still for this?