Dear America,

"The argument is now put forward

that we must never use the atomic bomb until, or unless,

it has been used against us first. 

In other words,

you must never fire

until you have been shot dead. 

That seems to me a silly thing to say."

Sir Winston Churchill

Today, in comparison, the argument is now put forward to reply with nothing more than bi-bi guns, pardon me, I mean conventional weaponry and maybe even a little name calling.

"Peace will not be preserved

by pious sentiments expressed in terms of platitudes

or by official grimaces and diplomatic correctitude."

(yes, folks, Churchill once again)

Suffice it to say, Churchill must be coming unglued.

Yeah, I guess I could be one of those people brushed aside in the "what does Sarah know about nuclear weapons" house of common sense -- so go ahead and fire away, shoot me, say whatever you have to say.  (oh no, did I use too many fighting words?  wouldn't want to offend anyone in this politically correct climate of do as I say but not as I say or do, or incite violence in any way -- really, I don't.  But oh to live in the head of stupidity meets double standard, surely that is ignorant bliss).

Last week, for the first time ever, even if WE are attacked -- with either biological or chemical weapons, or be on the receiving end of an attack on our primary real estate known as cyberspace, crippling all communications -- WE, according to our President and Commander in Chief, is explicitly committed NOT to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states in response -- oh, as long as they are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty...ooooh.

Yeah, I think any one of us should have a say in that -- not in my back yard, Mr. President -- and Sarah did.

Then Obama retaliated, defiantly, and with great disdain, and yet, relying on what he learned from Rules for Radicals, the pragmatic primer for regime change -- his first line of defense was ridicule, not nukes, when confronted with the opposition -- saying "last I checked [hardy har har] Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues."  Funny guy. 

But oh my and you betcha, did you ever leave that door wide open...

Sarah's earth to planet president reply,

“And President Obama, with all that vast nuclear expertise he acquired as a community organizer, a part-time senator, and a candidate for president, has accomplished nothing to date with Iran or North Korea” (and for more conservative commentary on the subject, you can also read this.)

It was in the mid fifties when Churchill responded to a question about such time he would consider retirement, and he replied with this:

"If I stay on for a time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love of power or office.  I have had an ample feast of both.  If I stay it is because I have the feeling that I may, through things that have happened, have an influence on what I care about above all else -- the building of a sure and lasting peace." 

Sure and lasting peace, ahhh yes, would be so lovely.

Hanging on to his post as Prime Minister still a year later -- and repeating his claim and commitment he said, "Not until I am a great deal worse and the Empire is a great deal better."

Has the world ever been without war?

Does mankind ever really live without conflict? 

Conflict is inherent to life itself; and we wouldn't want it any other way, would we?

I am reminded in this moment of the movie, The Stepford Wives; the ideal of creating harmonious relationships, no matter how fake the sentiment, or how shallow the connectedness, no matter what we lose in the process, as the primary force in manifesting a Utopian, suburbia community and home life that became the end all for lasting peace.  Wives catering to their husbands every need, virtual relationships cavorting within the trappings of an unimaginable life and masking anything that is really real.

For goodness sakes, the yin and yang of life experiences is what makes life, real life.  The free will that is implanted within each and every one of us is what binds, as well as what separates, at any given time. But the experience of life in monochrome, picture perfect, disingenuous bliss is hardly a happy ever after -- where is the challenge, where is the conflict that impresses movement of any kind -- left or right, up or down, happy or sad, highs and lows?  Stepford is not only narcissitic and unrealistic when it comes to human nature -- we would die of boredom way before a time bomb.

I believe we can be a nation which prescribes to peace above all things, yet that peace can only come from a position of strength. 

Every president to date has known this to be true -- every single one of them.  And yet, this one, does not.  And in the process we watch him as he bows to the Muslim world and gives Habeas Corpus to terrorists, disses our friend and ally in Israel, the Jewish capital of the world, and mocks any position of strength -- past, present and future -- on which America stands.

Our founders gave  power to the President to be the Commander in Chief on purpose -- to illuminate and engage such powers whenever deemed necessary with force, strength, and commitment for all the ages in order to stand firm against our enemies to protect the liberties and blessings which we hold dear.  Churchill, late in life, realized just how precious a position for an American President must be when recalling a meeting he had with Stalin and Roosevelt (can you just imagine...):

"It was with some pride that I reminded my two great comrades on more than one occasion that I was the only one of the trinity who could at any moment be dismissed from power by the vote of a House of Commons...or could be controlled from day to day by the opinion of a war cabinet...

The President's term of office is fixed and his powers not only as President but as Commander in Chief were almost absolute under the American Constitution.  Stalin appeared to be, and at this moment certainly was, all-powerful in Russia.  They could order; I had to convince and persuade."

The thing is, I would feel much more comfortable if I knew my President was capable of doing whatever it takes to stand on the side of strength in order to combat terrorists and rogue dictators, who haphazardly jeopardize world peace every day. 

I want a President who holds all the cards. 

I want a President who doesn't teleprompt military secrets, compromising our efforts by telegraphing when we say quit. 

I want a President who just might threaten we will come at you with all we've got and that it would be utter stupidity to think twice about it.  It's called a deterrent; putting all we've got on the front lines, knowing it's not all we've got.  It has worked for decades -- while up until now, both sides of the aisle have agreed to this stance wholeheartedly. 

Peace through strength.

Palin is right -- what we have is not a leader, but a chief community organizer in office; and with as far as my eye can see, he had no military experience, no nuclear experience, no international relations experience up until January 2009.  He was a senator who campaigned for higher office longer than he sat on the floor of the U.S. Senate; he was handpicked by the powers at be to persuade America to fundamentally change in every way, right from the very start.

He doesn't care for America in the same way as you and me -- or for that matter, even a Churchill (made an honorary citizen by President Kennedy in 1963), who at one time made this appeal when making worldly observations, "Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left [and precious] of the old."

It is almost as creepy as thinking that somehow, some way,  America is slowly disintegrating into a nation of stepford citizens, leaving government to tell us what to eat, what to think, what to hold onto and what to throw away -- while also allowing the world to walk all over us in the process.

Well, I'm with Sarah; I have every faith in the world that she could do what Obama is doing -- if she were in office, she could surround herself with the people she trusts to make decisions about nuclear disarmament just as easily as the next guy; she could surround herself with high caliber fellows, a circle of influential people, and a cadre of conservative czars of her choosing, too -- you know, the people who would accomplish such tasks and still hold true to America's Constitution -- and act accordingly, just as she believes. 

I have no doubt in her capabilities -- after all, she was a mayor, a business owner, a governor, and a republican rebel with a cause when it came to fundamentally transforming the State of Alaska -- no doubt at all -- for I, for one, fundamentally agree more with her, than in this administratrion; all my doubt lies center court in the Oval Office.

Come to think of it, if I were playing hoops with the President right now -- an activity widely recognized as near and dear to his heart, having no racial undertones whatsoever -- I would be calling him a wuss (and again, being non-discriminatory, a wuss can be of any color, look it up).  Perhaps a weekend at the Naval War College is in order, but what do I know.

Make it a Good Day, G

if you have eight minutes, watch this remarkable video of a time gone by...papa and I were on the same wavelength today, 3500 miles away from each other...never ceases to amaze me x

Dear America,

My head is about to explode.

But before we can go any further, I think today is a good day to stop and take a look at what it truly means to be an American. I realize that there are so many issues swirling around us right now, how can I ask you to contemplate something so elementary even for a moment. We have racial tensions uprooted, health care in a forest of concerns and an economy hanging on by our last dollar.

But let's just assume that if you are reading this, you were probably born right here in the good 'ole US of A. Well done. The stars were certainly aligned for you, now weren't they -- that being a statement, not a question.

I may be stepping out on a broken limb but I must say, just because you may be born in the states doesn't guarantee the American tree is embedded in your roots.

America was created by hand and through hard work. What began with the Pilgrims, a discovery that used to be celebrated in our schools with Columbus Day, has now evolved into a serious case of identity theft, that which we need all fellow Americans to find the courage to address.

For the sake of conversation, let's bounce over our first two hundred tumultuous years prior when America found herself grappling with wars, documentation, creating government and giving birth to western culture and the hip, young, up and coming democracy we know today (for people who don't know me, there was a bit of sarcasm in that last remark).

Point is, we created a Republic -- a people working freely and equally for the same cause, and direct opposite of monarchies and dictatorships.

As part of our American way, we all grew up pretty much in the same way for a very long time. Not without a few exceptions of course, having had our grandparents and great grandparents and maybe even all the generations before that, we can trace our roots back to a family member arriving to the land of the free to become an American.

We were given the image growing up in school of the "melting pot" and how all kinds of people, through strife or through joy, came to America to make a better life in the new land. A land where freedom was fought for and revered by not only ourselves through generation after generation, but through the eyes of the entire world. We were respected, and honored, and deep down inside each and every one of us, we KNEW we were special and that this country of ours was some kind of wonderful.

Our federal government was somewhat controlled. Our states personalized our experiences. Our communities celebrated American culture individually and collectively through the simple turning of the pages in the calendar. America had her seasons. America had her culture of holidays and festivals, from birthdays to Memorials, and rites of passages and traditions. America had her roots in all kinds of different soil, but deep down, we all drank the water from the same well.

Our formative years, besides being a world entrenched in security, liberty and means, gave custom to a culture that grew from this place of faith and tradition. Whether we had an Irish grandma and Italian pop, whether British or German, African or Asian, Mexican or Islander we were created on American soil -- giving birth to an American soul -- and blessed with the great duty as caretaker to the health, wealth and life of all that She stands for.

As history proves time and again, the most precious of these freedoms may lie in the separation of church and state; our founding fathers recognized that as simple as it may sound, making a land and it's people free to follow God (or not) by not aligning with a state religion. This allowed for all people who come to our shores the free will "endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". But the conversation on faith is not going to happen today...

I am going to make a giant leap now and warn all of you that if we, as a people, as a Republic, do not "wake up" as one of my favorite people, Glenn Beck, likes to say, we are going to lose our American Identity, our American Way, and find ourselves living in a state without the simple liberties we seemingly are taking for granted now.

Our young President Obama was not raised American. Forget about the documentation of the birth certificate people! It doesn't matter even if it were true. What does matter is how this President, who represents us as Americans, has struggled with an identity crisis of his very own, admittedly in his own words from his memoir Dreams From My Father. He stresses how so much of his early life was wrought with questions of who he was and void of the firm foundation that only a nurturing, secure parent can bring.

His formative years were absent of any security. Both of his parents struggled with the duty of raising their son, having his father flee by the age of two and his mother leaving him to his grandmother. Neither parent offered much of a spiritual foundation; his mother proudly atheist and while both his birth father and step father were Muslim, Obama claims he was never really involved with the teachings of Islam however illogical that may sound. He had little tradition, little faith and hardly a mainland experience to speak of. The reality is, the American culture that most of us were raised on was just not a part of his life.

Now that Obama is safely grounded in the oval office he talks about his Muslim roots, as if all of a sudden he had this great epiphany. Clearly afraid of discussing it while campaigning, I ask then what is this allegiance all about? How have these young formative years, absent of American culture an tradition, truly shaped our President? These are fair questions.

While Obama may say that we are not a Christian nation, we are founded under "one God" with Liberty and Justice for all as defined in our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution, Pledge of Allegiance, and our money. Our founding fathers recognized something greater than ourselves as evident in our unwavering faith in our Creator; and as most Americans agree today, make no apologies for it! Accentuating the positive, we love how we are a country of faith and tradition and Christmas and Easter. Whats more, 86% of us believe in God altogether.

As Americans, we have inherent by our birthright formative years as a country and as individuals that come together to shape us into who we are today. While we may not all look the same or come from the same place, we choose to have these traditions of faith, family, ritual and certainly the English language in common with each other; conversely, the more we look at what divides us, the less grounded and uprooted we become.

The culture that trumps whatever else we bring to the table is being true blue Americana. It is through our traditions year in and year out that bind us together and make us as strong. And even though the American tree is diverse, I am most assuredly not speaking in terms of turning us into one big loaf of white bread; I am only recognizing that it is through this pure dynamic of melting into one that we are longing for and show great loss as a culture without, as evident in these trying times. I believe America is intelligent and regenerating. It evolves with each new season, blossoming into new generations springing forth innovation and discoveries that are for the betterment of the American future.

The Sun shines upon our Culture and the entire world has reaped our bounty.

Before I leave you today, I only recently discovered something that I thought fascinating. By contrast, John F. Kennedy made Sir Winston Churchill an honorary American in a ceremony in the Rose Garden in 1963. The remarks made were extraordinary and to recite the entire read may be a little much, so I will leave it to your free will if you are so inclined (see http://www.winstonchurchill.org/)

Point is, in a rare occurrence you can become a citizen of this great country through profound service and inspiration. While our fine young President Kennedy's words of commendation and proclamation made a stunning finish in saying:

"DONE at the City of Washington this ninth day of April, in the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States
of America the one hundred and eighty-seventh."

Need I say more.

Make it a good day, G