Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Twelve More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama: Part 4

37.  Domestic oil production on federal land has declined 40% during Obama's presidency.

38.  Obama has made intentionally deceptive and blatantly false claims about our oil usage and reserves.

39.  He killed the NASA moon mission.

40.  "The private sector is doing fine."

41.  Excessive new regulations are crippling small business development.

42.  He ate dog meat.

43.  Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin after he blew the whistle on fraud at AmeriCorps.

44.  Obama has a war on small business:  just ask the folks at Gibson guitars.

45.  We are currently looking at a 1.5% growth rate in the U.S. economy.

46.  Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom to socialist and friend of Chavez, Dolores Huerta.

47.  Under Obama, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar blocked 77 previously approved oil lease sales in Utah, delayed leases in the Rocky Mountains, and blocked leases of oil shale rights in western states, further increasing our dependency on foreign oil.

48.  We can't afford to support Michelle's vacation obsession.

Stay tuned for more.

Previously:
Twelve Reasons Not to Vote for Obama:  Part 1 
Twelve More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama: Part 2
Twelve More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama:  Part 3

End of Summer, Looking to the Fall

School starts for me on Sunday - summer is over.

We have open house Sunday afternoon and then I'm back to work on Monday.  Doesn't it seem to get earlier every year?

I'm spending this week getting ready to go back to work, hitting those doctor appointments I put off during the school year (and have put off all summer), doing some back to school shopping, and finishing a few books that were on my summer reading list.

Going back to work will be good; it's always overwhelmingly busy those first few weeks but to be honest, the political news cycle has me a little disgusted and burned out right now.  The hate speech, hypocrisy and vitriol (from both sides!) has me more than a little sick and the state of things in this country right now, frankly, has me more than a little frightened.

Emotions are high right now with so much on the line in November.

And for the life of me I can NOT figure out why the polls are even close.  You mean to tell me that half of the country is prepared to turn us over to European style socialism?  That half of the country thinks that Fast and Furious was okay?  That half of the country thinks that this record unemployment was really all George Bush's fault?  Half of the country thinks that big government can just spend us out of the crisis we are in?  That cutting defense and raising taxes is the answer?

Or are there just that many uninformed people out there?  As K. Carl Smith said in Runaway Slave, voter apathy comes in two forms.  Those who don't vote and those who don't care how they vote.

Those people better start caring.  They better pay attention.

You can't vote for Obama just because you think he's "cool" or "hip."

Four more years of Obama's policies will kill this country as we know it; this is the real deal, people.  This is not a drill.  It's time to do your research and pay attention.  Do not rely on the media (or blogs!) to tell you what to do.  Read.  Research.  Look at the issues in an historical context and figure out where you want this country to go.  Look at the future as well as the past.  Read the Constitution.  If you haven't looked at it since your middle school civics class, it's time to read it again.

There's too much on the line.

Meanwhile, I'm going back to my reading list.

I'm still here.  Never quit.

Run!  Run Harder!

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Twelve More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama: Part 3

25.  Barack Obama has spent more time playing golf than working on solving the economic problems we face.

26.  Rather than increasing domestic oil production, Obama told Brazil "we want to be one of your best customers" for oil imports.

27.  "You didn't get that on your own...you didn't build that!  Somebody else made that happen!"

28.  The Obama administration loaned more than $1 billion to PEMEX so Mexico could drill for oil while still restricting American drilling in the Gulf.

29.  ObamaCare is such a bungled mess HHS has granted over 1,200 waivers from the laws restrictions and benefit caps.

30.  Dr. Donald "Death Panel" Berwick.

31.  An iPod?  Really?

32.  Obama's Justice Department demanded several banks approve loans to minorities with poor credit, alleging discrimination.

33.  Five percent of the stimulus recipients were tax cheats.

34.  Speaking of tax cheats...

35.  Keystone.

36.  Oil production on federal land declined by 11% in 2011.

To be continued.

Previously:
Twelve Reasons Not to Vote for Obama:  Part 1
Twelve More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama: Part 2

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Dim Bulbs

Not a single 100 watt bulb on the shelves today.  Not unless you count those Reveal bulbs (made in Mexico) at $8.71 for four bulbs.  Not to mention that they blow out almost as soon as you screw them in.

Glad I have a stockpile of 100 watt American made bulbs to light up my life for a very long time.

Romney and the NAACP Ad

So, what do you think about this ad?



I'm at cross purposes with it.  We all know the NAACP received Romney for the most part with reservations.  He even got boo'd when he said he'd repeal ObamaCare.  There was the occasional polite applause.

The lefties are upset with this ad because it seems to show the NAACP giving Romney support and applause, a standing ovation, even.  Horrors!  A black person might support a Republican?  OMG!

As far as ads go, I think Romney ought to hire the guy who was doing Rick Perry's ads; while Perry didn't make it, he had some really great ads!

But, having seen Runaway Slave, and having read books by black conservatives like Deneen Borelli, Marvin D. Rogers, Mason Weaver, and Star Parker, I know there is some black support for Romney and I think it's growing.  I don't think Obama will get 95% this time.

What do you think about the ad?  Is it "open and transparent"?  Is it deceptive?  Does it work?

Monday, July 23, 2012

Take A Summer Trip to Jefferson, Texas and Meet New Friends

The last time I was in Jefferson, Texas the weather was much cooler, but then, that was in October.  In late July, Jefferson is sweltering!

As I was getting ready to type this post I looked back at my October post and noted that I took many of the same pictures on this trip!  I'm going to have to get more creative next time!  But, bear with me and let's go back to Jefferson, because it's always a treat.

This trip had the added bonus of two new friends.  Earlier in the year we made plans to meet up with Mike from A Cop's Watch and his fiance Beth who live in the Houston area.

Steve and hit the road about 11:00 and were in Jefferson by noon.   For you non-locals, Jefferson, Texas in situated on Big Cypress Bayou in east Texas.  It was a river port town; steam boats came up the Mississippi River, into the Red River, through Caddo Lake and up Big Cypress bayou.  One of the early settlers of Jefferson was Captain William Perry who built the Excelsior Hotel.  He arrived in Jefferson around 1844.  Jefferson was the only dependable port in North Texas.  The railroads weren't there yet.

Back then, cotton was king and without railroads the huge bales had to be shipped by boats.  Jefferson was a boom town.  People from all over flooded into the area and settled in Texas.  Many wealthy planters settled along the bayou.  During the Civil War, Jefferson was critical to the Confederacy as a supplier of food, munitions, iron and other goods.  The black powder that was manufactured in nearby Marshall, Texas was stored in Jefferson until it could be shipped out.  The Union army set out to destroy the river port in the Red River campaign but they were stopped  in Mansfield, Louisiana.  After the war, Jefferson grew even larger as people moved into town and the steam boats were more active than ever.

After the Great Raft was cleared in the Red River in 1873, the water levels in Big Cypress bayou declined making shipping less reliable.  By then the railroads were more dependable than the waterways.  At its peak in the late 1800s, Jefferson had a population of about 12,000 people, but after the decline the population leveled off at about 2,000 which is about what it is today.  Today Jefferson is an east Texas treasure frozen in time.

You can read more about the history of Jefferson here.

When Steve and I got to town yesterday we went straight to the hotel to check in and check up on Mike and Beth.  We had reservations at the Excelsior House and would not stay anywhere else.


When we were there last October was our first time to stay there and we fell in love with the place.   This time we had reserved the Diamond Bessie Suite because it has a sun porch that opens up onto the courtyard and we thought it was gorgeous.  We were not disappointed!

It's a little blurry but this is the room:


This one is a little less blurry:


The sun porch, complete with plantation shutters and a wooden screen door that opens to the courtyard:


And another view:


I took that one with my phone and it came out sort of pink, but it was white.  There's a big 'ol tv mounted on the wall (you can see it past that lamp) where Steve checked out the baseball scores before we set out to find Mike and Beth.

There's the room from the outside:


We put our luggage up and set out to find Mike and Beth.

The fellow that puts up a decent cell tower in Jefferson is going to be a hero.  The cell phone service in that town is terrible.  Mike and I made several futile attempts to make phone contact before I finally figured out that they were at Auntie Skinner's waiting for us.

We found them sitting near the back and joined them.  We'd never met each other before but they seemed like old friends and we all quickly settled into the business of ordering lunch, telling cop stories and talking about wedding plans.  Mike and Beth brought us a box of Shiner beer which is brewed in Texas between Houston and San Antonio.  They carefully picked out a sampler of different kinds for us to try and I've got some of them chilling right now!


We spent an hour or so over lunch visiting, eating burgers, and watching our waitress, Charlene, run the length of the restaurant in her cowboy boots.  That little girl was a dynamo and since I like to recognize good service when I see it, I'm giving props to hard-working Charlene here and hoping Auntie Skinner's holds on to her!  She took good care of us and lots of other tables too; she was a blur up and down that restaurant, tossing her blond curls behind her and carrying huge trays of food out, then running at a sprint back to the kitchen for the next load.

After lunch we took Mike and Beth back to the hotel so they could check in then we explored the hotel so they could see some of the other beautiful rooms (the hotel leaves the doors of unoccupied rooms open and you can walk around and look at them.)  There are only fifteen rooms but they are all gorgeous.

This is the Ulysses S. Grant room:


This is the Rutherford B. Hayes room with its tiger mahogany bed:


This is the Jay Gould room; according to the Excelsior's website, the furniture is Circassian Walnut and dates from the early days of Jefferson. Most of this wood comes from Russia and was obtained from the cross cut root of the walnut tree.


We stopped on the upstairs balcony long enough to enjoy the courtyard before setting out to hit a few shops:


Beth and Mike are planning a wedding next year and she was on the lookout for some pretty jewelry for her wedding.  We stopped in an antique store near the hotel and while she didn't find the jewelry she wanted there, we saw lots of beautiful things and Steve made friends with a cat:


One of our favorite stops is the Jefferson General Store because they have so many goodies to sample:


Steve loved the jalapeno stuffed olives.  I bought a bunch of candy I didn't need and we moved on.   We ended up in Big Cypress Antiques and that's where Beth found a beautiful piece that she declared she simply had to have:


It's gorgeous and I secretly covet it.  But, it's very Beth and will be beautiful on her wedding dress!

I bought a nifty mother of pearl salt dip there:


We ambled along making our way back to the hotel for a little siesta before dinner but we made a quick stop in Jefferson Bottling Works.

I wrote about that shop in my October post last year and incorrectly identified the shop, a mistake which thankfully was pointed out to me and I corrected on that post.  The proprietor of Jefferson Bottling Works did not impress us on our last trip as a particularly hospitable shop owner.  When we were in there last year he barely spoke to us and sat behind the counter drinking his Bud Light Lime while he surfed on the computer.  We asked him to show us something in one of the locked cases and it seemed almost an imposition to him.

Well, thinking we had just hit him on a bad day we decided to give the shop another shot; there really are some cool things in his shop.  He's got an impressive display of stuff.  When we walked in he greeted us cheerily and I thought maybe we had in fact been mistaken in our rash judgment.  I had an empty water bottle in my hand and asked if he had a trash an I could throw it away in.  he told me there was one outside a couple of doors down.  WTF?  I just stashed the bottle in my purse until we left.  He retreated back to his computer (Facebook) and his Bud Light Lime and didn't say another word to us.  As we browsed the store I couldn't help but notice a large blue plastic garbage can filled about a quarter of the way with .... mostly plastic water bottles.   I guess the fellow had a good reason for not wanting the street riff raff to fill his garbage cans with trash but I thought it was a little ridiculous.

As we left we said goodbye and thanked him for letting us look.  Not even bothering to turn away from his computer screen he said, "It's what I live for."  Alrighty then.

Again, maybe the guy has a reason to be a grump; I'm not judging him.  But for my money there are plenty of super friendly shop owners in that town for me to give my business to.

We went back to the hotel and Steve crawled up on the daybed in the sun room and took a power nap while I tried in vain to get a wifi signal on my iPad.  Giving up, I ate chocolate covered coffee beans, drank a Boston Lager, and read a book.

For dinner we went back to Auntie Skinner's and watched Charlene fly all over the restaurant again.


We had several drinks and talked for a long time and when it was dark we walked the streets of Jefferson pointing out some of the more interesting landmarks to Mike and Beth.  We went back to the hotel and sat on the porch outside our room while Mike and Beth sipped scotch and I had a beer before we all turned in for the night.

Beth and Mike had to leave at the crack of dawn this morning so we said our goodbyes and then today we set off on our own.  I was on a search for Jadeite.

We had breakfast in the courtyard - orange muffins and fresh fruit.  Steve ate a fig off the tree growing right outside our window.


I wished for fish food to toss to the turtles and koi in the fountain:


We checked out of the hotel but not before exploring the ballroom and dining room of the hotel.  I loved this china cabinet in the dining room:


The ballroom:


And back out into the heat we went.

In 1945 Jefferson flooded; they have a marker for the high water mark:


Our first stop this morning was the huge Old Mill Antique mall on Austin Street.  It gets way too hot in there if you wait too late in the day.  As it was, we went through pretty quick because even at 10:30 it was hot.  It's a huge place with lots to see.


How about a funky turkey cigarette holder?


Coffee pots:


A nifty beer sign:


This telephone stand was cool:


A display case full off cool smalls:


Steve bought me a pretty Jadeite refrigerator dish (missing the lid but I love it anyway) and we left in search of a shop with AC.

We went to Gold Leaf Antique Mall which has beautiful stuff but much of it was out of my budget this trip.  I was in depression glass heaven:


They had lots of gorgeous Jadeite but again, way, way out of my price range:


And more:


There was so much pretty stuff in there I just had to bail out and leave.  I wanted a lot of it but part of the fun of finding some cool collectible piece is getting a really good deal on it and so that put much of this out of my reach today.

I had to laugh at this Stop sign in the road; no liberals allowed:


One of the nicest, friendliest shop owners in Jefferson is at Granny Had It.  We had a nice visit with the proprietor and her husband (and their cat!).  Wonderful, friendly people!  And she had some beautiful furniture in there.  I loved this bookcase:


And I've been coveting this Fostoria cake stand for a long time but I really think I like the round one better.  But I think this is gorgeous:


It was time for lunch so we headed over to the Hamburger Store and Steve had one of their wonderful burgers and I had the chicken fried steak.  I'm ashamed to say but I ate almost every bite.


The Hamburger Store is a cool place; it's that restaurant where they have dollar bills stapled to the walls:


The back story on that can be found here.

Exhausted and stuffed, it was time to head back to Shreveport.  On the way out of town we passed this beautiful place:


I had to get out of the car and take a picture of that one.  Those are stained glass windows on that top story.  Here's the marker in front of the house:


Apparently you can stay there; they have guest rooms and you can definitely tour the place which will be on my list for next trip.  The House of the Seasons website is here.  Here is a blog with a few pictures.  More here from the same blog.

All in all it was a quick trip but a wonderful one.  Time sort of stands still in Jefferson and 24 hours seems much longer and I mean that in a good way.  It was great to meet Mike and Beth and I look forward to a long friendship with them and many more trips in the future.

Great weekend!


The SIGIS Take a Trip Series:
Take a Trip to the 2012 Defenders of Liberty Air Show at BAFB
Take a Springtime Trip to Second Hand Rose Antiques in Minden, LA
Take a Trip to Logansport, Louisiana
Take a Trip to the Lock and Dam on Red River
Take a Trip to the 2012 Barkus and Meoux Parade
Take a Christmas Shopping Trip to Second Hand Rose in Minden
Take a Trip to Grand Cane's Fifth Annual Pioneer Trade Day
Take a Trip to the 2011 Highland Jazz & Blues Festival
Take an Autumn Trip to Jefferson, Texas
Take a Fall Trip to Second Hand Rose Antiques in Minden
Take a Trip to the 8th Air Force Museum at Barksdale Air Force Base
Take a Summertime Trip to Grand Cane
Take a Trip to Desoto Parish
Take a Summer Trip to Second Hand Rose Antiques in Minden
Take a Trip to Natchitoches and Melrose Plantation 
Take a Trip to Ed Lester Farms and a Random Antique Stop
Take a Trip to the Norton Art Gallery and the Masters of Cuban Art Exhibit
Take a Trip to Natchitoches to See the Christmas Lights
Take a Trip to Natchitoches and Oakland Plantation
Take a Trip to Jefferson, Texas

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Sit a Spell

We are in Jefferson, TX enjoying the sunroom of the Diamond Bessie suite at the Excelsior House.

We drove over this morning and met up with Mike ("A Cop's Watch" ) and his fiancé Beth. We've spent the afternoon shopping and strolling the streets and now everyone has settled in for a siesta. But not me. I bought chocolate covered espresso beans.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Twelve More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama: Part 2

Continuing on with the list:

13.  Obama has blamed everyone but himself for the disastrous economy including, but not limited to, Republicans, gridlock, George W. Bush, the media, the Japanese tsunami, ATMs, the Gulf oil spill, and just plain bad luck.

14.  He presided over the first S&P downgrade in 94 years.

15.  Kevin Jennings.

16.  Since former La Raza VP Cecilia Munoz joined the Obama administration, funding to race-based La Raza has nearly tripled from $4.1 milliion to $11 million.

17.  Obama sought to apologize to Japan for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a move not even the Japanese could tolerate.

18.  Crippled the economy in the Gulf of Mexico region with an extended moratorium on off-shore drilling.

19.  Obama's ridiculous FY2013 budget was voted down 99-0 in the Senate.  The FY2012 budget was also a goose egg.

20.  Solyndra.

21.  The "beer summit" in which Obama attempted to intervene in local police matters.

22.  Obama overturned the "Mexico City Policy" instituted by Reagan which would restore taxpayer funding for groups that promote or perform abortions in other nations.

23.  Over saw the largest tax increase on middle class America in history.

24.  During the debt ceiling crisis, Obama used scare mongering on Social Security recipients by suggesting their checks may not go out unless the debt ceiling was raised when, in fact, he knew all along there would be enough money in the coffers.

To be continued.

Previously:
Twelve Reasons Not to Vote for Obama:  Part 1

SIGIS in American Thinker

I've got an article up at American Thinker today.  Please take a moment to check it out.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Twelve Reasons Not to Vote For Obama: Part 1

I can't find any good reason to vote FOR Obama but there are lots of reasons to vote AGAINST Obama.  Let's start with these (in no particular order):

1. The Obama administration sends $600 million every year to the Palestinians; $225 million of that goes to the Palestinian Authority - a violation of U.S. law.

2.  The Obama administration sought approval from the United Nations to intervene in Libya, but not the approval of the U.S. Congress.

3.  Want to talk about "outsourcing"?  Up to 80% of the stimulus funds promoting "green energy" went to China, South Korea, and Spain.

4.  The Obama administration blamed the Standard & Poor's downgrade of 2011 on the Tea Party rather than any economy killing Obama policies.

5.  Obama has offered no entitlement reform whatsoever and in fact just last week gutted the work requirement from welfare.

6.  Obama lawlessly decided to ignore immigration laws on the books and announced his administration will not enforce them.

7.  At Obama's urging, the District of Columbia was allowed to fund abortions with taxpayer dollars resulting in some 300 elective abortions before the practice was stopped.

8.  Veteran's Day 2010 found Obama in Indonesia criticizing Americans for distrusting Islam.

9.  Obama's Justice Department refused to prosecute clear cases of voter fraud, i.e., the New Black Panthers case.

10.  Van Jones.

11.Under ObamaCare, Catholic institutions are mandated to provide birth control and abortifacients.

12.Not quite five months after Brian Terry was killed in border violence, Obama declared the Mexican border secure.

The list goes on.

To be continued.

Get Ready For Taxamageddon

I heard a caller on a local radio talk show today say "For the life of me I can't understand why anybody would vote to re-elect Barack Obama!"

I've spent the better part of three years trying to figure out why anybody would vote for him in the first place and I've yet to find a liberal who voted for him that could coherently explain to me why they did.  All I get is mushy-feel-good tripe.

All the news around here is depressing today.  The first thing out of the gate this morning I got word that my insurance will be going up between $50 and $60 a month and the co-pay will be increasing as well.  I guess we all saw that one coming.  The closing line of the memo was a reminder that my paycheck will be less than it was last school year.

I love my job.  I really do.  I love teaching.  But this year we'll begin implementing the Common Core State Standards and a new teacher evaluation system which makes is more than extremely difficult to be scored "highly qualified" and now we'll be getting less money for it.  More pressure, less money.  

It's a condition I guess we all better get used to.  Have you read Grover Norquist's piece in American Spectator today?  It's all about "Taxamageddon" and I wouldn't advise reading it with sharp objects nearby. 

Basically, on January 1, 2013 when the tax cuts lapse, some $500 billion will be added to the nation's tax burden.  That doesn't include the ObamaCare taxes that will begin to kick in:

Of the 20 new taxes or tax hikes in Obamacare, four will take effect January 1, including a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income (on top of existing capital gains and dividend taxes) and a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, such as wheelchairs, pacemakers, and children’s braces.

After outlining a series of tax hikes vile enough to make one want to jump off a cliff (but do it before the death tax goes up!), Norquist closes with this:
Election Day sits only 56 days from a $500 billion tax hike, and the only way to stop it is to re-elect a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, add at least four Republicans to the Senate, and install Mitt Romney in the White House. Then, through reconciliation, the House and Senate can extend the lapsing tax cuts for one year, enough time to pass a real revenue-neutral, Reagan-style tax reform, like the one outlined by Rep. Paul Ryan, which drops the personal and corporate income tax rates to 25 percent. 
A vote for Obama is a vote for an immediate $500 billion tax hike and the long term continuation of Obama’s downward path toward the fate of Europe.
Which brings me back to the original question.  Why would anybody in their right mind vote for this guy?

Here is a liberal's take on Taxamageddon:

The fact is, once one rips the scales from one's eyes (the scales inserted by the likes of Grover Norquist) one realizes the expiry of the Bush tax cuts especially will lead to a new era of growth. Whatever minor immediate dip in GDP occurs, will be more than corrected for by higher productivity, more jobs and more investments....in labor, not just speculative capital. 

Said liberal babbles on about "al-Qaeda phantoms" and "useless wars" before concluding that the Laffer curve is nonsense and so is a vote for Romney.

The Heritage Foundation has a page dedicated to determining how Taxamageddon will affect you and says:
Taxmageddon falls primarily on middle- and low-income Americans. That’s because, contrary to the President’s rhetoric about “the wealthiest Americans,” 60 percent of the Bush tax cuts went to middle- and low-income taxpayers. The expiration of the patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will cause these taxpayers to pay a tax that was never supposed to hit them, and the expiration of the payroll tax cut is a tax hike almost exclusively on middle- and low-income families.
It's all quite depressing.

Read Norquist's piece if you dare.

And vote Romney.

(Graphic via Heritage Foundation)

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Shhh! Working

Agitators

Sometimes truth hurts as when Rush Limbaugh declared yesterday:

“I think it can now be said, without equivocation — without equivocation — that this man hates this country,” the conservative radio host said. “He is trying, Barack Obama is trying, to dismantle, brick-by-brick, the American dream. There’s no other way to put this. There’s no other way to explain this.”

Rush made these comments coming off an Obama speech Friday in Roanoke in which he said:

“Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.” 
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama continued. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

The remarks quite naturally created a stir all over the internet and Rush just fanned the flames.  Via Professor Jacobson:



The good professor writes that both Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama "are hypocrites cut from the same cloth."

Be sure to check out video of Charles Krauthammer's smackdown of Obama's remarks at Legal Insurrection.


Friday, July 13, 2012

Obama Throws Welfare Reform Out the Window

As you may have noticed, this blog has been obsessed in the past few days with C.L. Bryant's documentary, Runaway Slave.  I believe it is critical that everyone see this film; both sides of the aisle have something to learn from this movie, however I think it will take more courage from those on the left to see it because they will be challenged.  Their life long beliefs will be challenged.  I'm hoping they'll have the courage to see it.

To that end, the film is more relevant now than ever.  The topics the film discusses are all over the news these days.  That's why I said yesterday, when this film breaks nationwide on the 27th of this month, it is all anybody will be talking about.  Because they already are - they just don't know it.

Case in point:  the Obama administration's move to gut the work requirement from the 1996 welfare reform law:

Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that were the foundation of the reform law. The Obama directive bludgeons the letter and intent of the actual reform legislation. 

This move is probably illegal since the original law stated that this provision was in no way eligible for waivers:

When it established TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from waiver authority. They explicitly did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of HHS bureaucrats. In a December 2001, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service clarified that there was no authority to override work and other major requirements: “Effectively, there are no TANF waivers,” it reported. 

But legality has never been an issue for the Obama administration.

Entitlements under Obama have skyrocketed.  One in seven Americans are on food stamps.  In 2000, seventeen million people were on food stamps.  Today forty-six million people are dependent on food stamps.

More people have gone on disability than have found jobs.

The Obama administration is enslaving a class of people who are perpetually dependent on the government to save them.  And these people keep voting Democrat so they can keep getting handouts.

Wouldn't the better option be to create jobs so people won't need welfare?  Wouldn't it be better to create an environment where entrepreneurs can flourish and small businesses could grow?

Instead, the Democrats just want to keep handing out checks.

How demoralizing.

Wake up people!  Turn away from government hand outs and make your own way.  Create your own success.  Be a role model for someone who is looking up to you.  Break the cycle of dependency.  Don't let the Democrats enslave you to a life of poverty; you'll never get rich on handouts.

(H/T:  Memeorandum)