Charlie Daniels Speaks Out

This needed saying and ole Charlie has stepped into the ring.  I have never been a big Paula Deen fan - but what has happened to her is disgusting. And what's happening with our main stream media is also disgusting....

 

This has been verified........





Charlie Daniels, is an American Patriot and famous Country Western Singer.  

Please take time to read his recent comments of July 1, 2013.  Pass this on if you agree.

The Press and Paula Deen (Charlie's SOAPBOX JULY 2013)http://www.charliedanielssoapbox.com/view_topic.php?id=10179&forum_id=4<http://www.charliedanielssoapbox.com/view_topic.php?id=10179&amp;forum_id=4>

I think that if anything exemplifies the overt prejudice and determination of the American media to report only the news that suits their social and political interests and concept of what does and does not fit their agenda, it's the totally overblown coverage of something Paula Deen said 20 years ago, and some party she planned that she wanted to resemble a plantation scene featuring black male waiters in period dress.

If Hollywood plans a movie featuring black waiters in a plantation scene or portray women as prostitutes or cast minorities in caricature roles does the media get upset and start calling the movie moguls racists?

Is there any grown person who could truthfully declare under oath that they have never uttered something that someone might find personally offensive?

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Do the twenty-year-old words of a lady with a television cooking show trump the lie an Attorney General told Congress, or officials at the IRS usurping the rights of the American public and pleading the fifth amendment when confronted about it or the hiding of the facts surrounding the murder of four Americans at a Consulate in Libya or the incredibly shabby image of a president taking a one hundred million dollar vacation in this economy while closing down tours of the White House or the NSA invasion on the privacy of millions of unsuspecting citizens?

I think not, and yet these and other stories of the utmost importance were either ignored or given a back seat to the Paula Deen story which, when taken in context with the high level scandals, Putin's snubbing of an American president, the potentially explosive situations in so much of the world the story was certainly not newsworthy enough to be featured five nights in a row on network news.

Wouldn't a week-long investigation into the life of Lois Lerner, the things she's done and the reason she's pleading the fifth be more meaningful to the American people?

What about what's going on in Israel? The media has been strangely quiet on that front lately, is there nothing worth reporting in that volatile part of the world?

How about the coming catastrophic tidal wave the effect of Obamacare is going to have on America, is there nothing worth questioning in the over 30,000 pages of regulations?

How about the fact that due to federal over regulation it's nearly impossible to live in the U.S. without breaking some law?

How about the Christian pastor who is being held in one of the worst hell hole prisons in the world in Iran for nothing more than sharing his faith?

How about a whole way of life that's being destroyed in West Virginia by the president's war on coal?

I think you get the picture.

No wonder the mainstream media has fallen so far in the trust of the American people.

Why is the Paula Deen story worth so much airtime if not to take attention off the truly important issue, the life changing things that really affect the lives of Americans?

The news is not about news anymore. It's about protecting some people, destroying others and shoving a socialist agenda down the collective throats of America.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

I'm Tired

According to my friend who sent this to me - Bill Crosby wrote this.  I haven't checked that out because no matter who wrote it, it's excellent and should be required reading for every American.
Please try to have all your friends read this - if we don't get some of this stuff under control now, we are rapidly approaching the point where we will not be "allowed" to fix it.  Scary thoughts.

This should be
required reading for every man, woman and child

"I'm 83 and I'm Tired"

I'm 83 . Except for brief period in the 50's when I was doing my National Service, I've worked hard since I was 17. Except for some serious health challenges, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick in nearly 40
years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to
earn it.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor";

                                               of Muslims rioting over some slight offense;

                                                of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't"believers";

of Muslims burning schools for girls; 

of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; 

of Muslims mutilating the
genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia , New Zealand UK, America and Canada , while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church,
synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance..

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught.

I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination
or big-whatever for their problems.

I'm also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and early 20's be-deck themselves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making
themselves un-employable and claiming money from the Government.

Yes, I'm tired . But I'm also glad to be 83.. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my
granddaughter and their children. Thank God I'm on the way out and not on
the way in.


There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!


" I'm 83 and I'm tired. If you don't forward this you are part of the problem"

The Green Thing or A Lesson in Consevation

I have to agree with this women and her analyst of the current generation and its' fixation with being green.  They think that we ruined our world for them and they have to fix it - when. in truth, we, the older generation, did more to conserve everything then they have ever done.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment f or future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling's. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

Why Romney Lost - and Santa Claus Won

As Rush Limbaugh said - the people wanted Santa  Claus as President and they voted for him. I like Santa and I hate to think of Obama as Santa Claus, but according to the uninformed voter - I guess that he is.  This is an excellent article and should be read by every working,tax paying American - will we ever recover from this idiot - I truly fear not, but I still pray that somehow we will prevail and sanity will be restored to our beleaguered Republic..

This is excellent, but is a sad place to be. Please Read to the end.

We Are Not Coming Back

Please take a moment to digest this provocative article by a Jewish Rabbi from Teaneck , N.J.
It is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing. The article appeared in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi has some interesting comments in that regard.

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey

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"The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo - for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted.

But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.

Romney lost because he didn't get enough votes to win.

That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues - the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness - no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate.

The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff.

Every businessman knows this; that is why the "loss leader" or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama's America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who - courtesy of Obama - receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.

The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which "47% of the people" start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money - "free stuff" - from the government.

Almost half of the population has no skin in the game - they don't care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese.

They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone elses expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.

It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.

That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is ignorant anduninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters - the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson called back: "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!" Truer words were never spoken.

Obama could get away with saying that "Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules" - without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the "rich should pay their fair share" - without ever defining what a "fair share" is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to "fend for themselves" - without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.

Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws.

He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions - in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. (Sounds like Ontario)

Obama also knows that the electorate has changed - that whites will soon be a minority in America (they're already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America . Obama is part of that different America , knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.

Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his "negative ads" were simple facts, never personal abuse - facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not
embrace the devil's bargain of making unsustainable promises.

It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan - people of substance, depth and ideas - to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare - never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not be defeated - with his record and his vision of America , in which free stuff seduces voters - it is hard to envision any change in the future.

The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European socialist economy - those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe - is paved.

For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel . They voted to secure Obama's future at America 's expense and at Israel 's expense - in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin.

A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon - and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality.

But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline.

Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come.

The "Occupy" riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead - years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.

If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back."

-- The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.

A Chronology of Terror

Got this email today and thought that it needed sharing more than just to my friends.  It is truly scary when you see it all in chronological order like this. Please share with as many people as you are able to....

The author left out a few - like Fort Hood - oh, I forgot, that was work place violence...nothing to do with terror. RIGHT! ! ! The shoe bomber - and how many plots, by Muslim males, have been thwarted??? Lots, if my faulty memory serves me correctly.  Please remember to check out my great jewelry at my shop - hopefully, I'll get all my new stuff in there during my off season with my shops this summer.

 And now we have to add the Boston Marathon, April, 2013 Chronological Order of Muslim Attacks
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Everyone: This is so incredible! I remembered each happening, but when it is laid out in chronological order - WOW! A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine that America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves.
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Pause a moment, reflect back. These events are actual events from history. They really happened!!! Do you remember?
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1. In 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male.
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2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim males.
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3. In 1972 a Pan Am 747 was hijacked and eventually diverted to Cairo where a fuse was lit on final approach and it was blown up shortly after landing by Muslim males.
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4. In 1973 a Pan Am 707 was destroyed in Rome, with 33 people killed, when it was attacked with grenades by Muslim males.
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5. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim males.
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6. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim males.
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7. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim males.
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8. In 1985, the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim males.
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9. In 1985, TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim males.
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10. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim males.
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11. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim males.
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12. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim males.
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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.
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14. In 2002, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim males.
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15. In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by---you guessed it---Muslim males.
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No, 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. Absolutely No Profiling! Because President Obama---a professed Muslim---bowed to a Muslim king? They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males alone lest they be guilty of profiling. Have the American people completely lost their Minds, or just their Power of Reason???
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Let's send this to as many people as we can so that the Gloria Aldreds and other stupid attorneys along with Federal Justices that want to thwart common sense, feel ashamed of themselves---if they have any such sense.
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As the writer of the award winning story 'Forrest Gump' so aptly put it, 'Stupid Is As Stupid Does'
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Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet---Do It!
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How many peaceful Muslims have you heard of that step forward to help our authorities catch these radicals???
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PEACEFUL RELIGION MY ASS!!!
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“The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer” – Barack Hussein Obama

Islam - A Danger to our Country

This is an excellent article, saying things that must be said and asking questions that must be asked.  We, as a nation must wake up to the threat of radical Islam before it over takes us.  We have only to look at 9-11, Boston, the bombers who have been caught, the U.S.S. Cole, on and on to see just how dangerous Islam is to our country. Please share this article, it is important information that must be seen by the people.  We must stop being too afraid of political correctness to see the truth.

Can We Have a National Conversation About Islam Now?

 

 

• Kira Davis
• On April 23, 2013

Can we have an honest national conversation about Islam now? We’ve been having a “national conversation” on race for decades now. Remember Clinton’s “race tour”?

Obama also pledged to hold a national conversation on race. We’ve been talking about race and racism and racists for so long now that it’s pretty much the worst thing you can be called in modern America: a racist. Racism has been basically relegated to the fringes of our society. Race-based violence is a shadow of what it was prior to the 1970′s, and we have even elected a black man as the leader of the free world (twice, if you count Clinton).

My point is, we’re continually having a nation-wide conversation on something that is barely even a threat anymore and yet we are not allowed to openly discuss a religion that has spawned an ideology responsible for the majority of the most horrific crimes against humanity in recent times.

At what point as a nation do we say “Enough is enough”? At what point to we admit that this problem goes far beyond our traditional political labels of “left” and “right”? At what point do we recognize the danger in front of us? For an entire year the President and members of Congress talked about the fiscal cliff and gave us all types of scary metaphors to illustrate the dangers. The car is going over the cliff! It will crash into the ravine and explode in a fiery ball! If we don’t put on the brakes now we’re going over the cliff! Paul Ryan wants to push Grandma off the cliff! Danger, danger, danger!

Of course, as we all know the “cliff” has come and gone and while these are difficult times we are all still here. There was no mass loss of life to accompany the fiscal cliff metaphors of death. Yet here we are, faced with an undeniable evil. This evil needs no metaphors to describe the destruction it reigns. We have pictures and video and eyewitness testimony. We have images of men and women falling to their deaths from 100 stories high and little, innocent boys waiting anxiously at the finish line just seconds before being blown to pieces. We don’t need to embellish the threat, it has been made all too painfully obvious.

And still, we can’t talk openly about the threat of Islam. As even Bill Maher pointed out recently, this violence is not from Christians or Jews or Buddhists or atheists. Nearly every instance of mass terrorism across the globe has been perpetrated by Muslims. Instead of asking serious questions about the nature of the faith and why it breeds such violence, we are admonished to not make judgments. We are scolded with the reminder that Islam is a “religion of peace” and only a small minority of Muslims resort to terror and murder.

Our government is insistent on us suspending our natural instincts and sensibilities when it comes to the violence we see from the Islamic world and yet asks us to “stay vigilant and alert” in our daily lives to help prevent further attacks. They feed us the “religion of peace” line over and over again. There are plenty of peaceful, good Muslims – the vast majority of them are. Reportedly Islam claims over a billion followers; but if even just 1% of those followers choose extremism that’s still ten million terrorists! That number is too large for Islam to maintain the “religion of peace” status being shoved down our throats. Whenever I have questioned why we don’t hear a massive outcry from the other nine-hundred-ninety million Muslims about terrorism I am confronted with, “They are scared. They will be targeted by militants”. Which seems like less of a defense and more proof that we really do have a serious problem with Islam.

There is a fundamental flaw in the Islamic faith that needs to be discussed and addressed. As a Christian I don’t believe in Allah or the Prophet, but if you can practice your belief without blowing me up then I have no problems with your faith. There are too many Muslims who don’t want to abide by that one simple, yet important rule: don’t murder people.

Our children are at risk. Our neighborhoods are at risk. Our community events, celebrations, freedom of movement – they are all at risk because of the threat of radical Islam that has embedded itself in our nation. If Obama wants to have a national conversation that really moves the needle, he would have the courage to open one up about Islam. Not only would it help expose and possibly neutralize the threat in some way, it would also give those peaceful, patriotic Muslims the opportunity to be heard in a public forum.

Let’s stop having useless national conversations. I’m black and my family is black but I have never once worried about my children being killed by a racist at a sporting event. I do, however worry they will be killed or hurt by a Muslim terrorist in the public square. The odds are far higher and growing every day.

Eric Holder wasn’t necessarily wrong when he said “we are a nation of cowards”, he just got the subject wrong on which we were being cowardly.  It is time for courage when it comes to radical Islam. Let us not lose one more innocent, smiling child before we will allow honesty to be heard.

Presidential Vacations - Then and Now

This article that I found through my Facebook page, written by Joseph Curl,  covers far better than I could what I had planned on talking about in my next blog.  They didn't mention the 7 million dollar Presidents' Weekend where the Obama's took separate vacations - he to play golf  with Tiger and have lessons, at $1000./hr with Butch Harmon and she and the girls to go skiing in Aspen.  I also did not see Beau's, the first dog,  vacation trip on his own plane last summer.  I think that the worst is the fact that their Christmas vacations have not only  been unbelievably expensive - but they always leave before the holiday so that their support staff cannot spend time with their own families.  This, like nothing else, illustrates how little the Obamas' care about the little people that not only elected him, but make their daily life easy and safe.  Hypocrisy at its finest ! !

Come visit me at my shop -gotta pay for my vacation that's planned for sometime way in the future!

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Being president of the U.S., the most powerful man in the world, is often most about perception. The man (or, one day, woman) in the job takes actions large and small every day, but it is the perception of the man that seeps into the everyday lives of working Americans.

That’s why presidential candidates always hit Philadelphia for a cheesesteak during campaigns (Democrats to Pat’s, Republicans to Geno’s). Sure, they’re running billion-dollar operations trying to win the White House, but one picture of them wolfing down a Cheez Whiz-covered glob of meat on a Philly street hits home with millions of voters: “Hey, that guy’s just like me! He loves him a Pat’s [or Geno’s] cheesesteak, too!” (Unless you’re John F. Kerry and order Swiss cheese — then everyone hates you.)

Sometimes, that perception cuts to the core. Like when President George W. Bush stopped playing golf in 2003, at the height of the Iraq War.

“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said years later. “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them.”

That’s also why Mr. Bush did two other things, without fanfare or praise. First, he never headed home to his Texas ranch until after Christmas, instead going to Camp David for a few days. That way, the hundreds of people revolving around him at all times — White House staff, Secret Service agents, reporters, photographers, all the others — could spend the holiday with their families in and around Washington, D.C. No one ever reported that — until this column.

Second, he rarely attended sporting events, although he once owned a baseball team and was a self-confessed stats junkie. His thinking there was the same: If he went to a baseball game (right down the street from the White House), his mere presence would mean hours and hours of extra security for fans. He once stopped off at the Daytona 500 and the metal detectors through which every fan had to pass left thousands outside in line when the green flag fell; he didn’t attend many sporting events after that.

But something remarkable has happened with these occupants of the White House: Neither President Obama nor first lady Michelle appear to give a damn about perception. They won the White House and, by God, they’re going to enjoy their time there, no matter the cost. And who cares what you think, anyway?

How else to explain the nonstop vacations the pair keep taking during what Mr. Obama calls the “worst financial crisis since the Great Depression”? In 2013, the First Family has already enjoyed three vacations — that’s one a month. (Sorry, Joe America, you might have to forget your week at the beach again this year, but make sure you get those taxes in on time!)

The Obamas ended 2012 and kicked off 2013 in an $8 million, 6,000-square-foot house in Hawaii (they left well before Dec. 25, by the way). There, the president played five rounds of golf (breaking the 100-rounds-as-president threshold). Scarcely a month into Term 2, Mrs. Obama headed off for Aspen, taking along the couple’s daughters. Vice President Joseph R. Biden also hit the Colorado slopes. While the girls (and Joe) were gone, Mr. Obama nipped down to Florida for a four-day boys weekend of golf, teeing it up with his buddies — and Tiger Woods. He hit the links again this weekend, then dropped in for an NCAA tournament game in Washington.

Jumpin’ Joe, for his part, spent New Year’s in the Virgin Islands and popped off over the Easter weekend for a golf outing at the glorious Kiawah Island, S.C. (where rounds of golf on the spectacular Ocean Course run $353 — nearly $20 a hole). His third vacation of the year came the same week as reports that he and his entourage spent $460,000 for a single night in London and $585,000 for a night at a five-star hotel in Paris.

Then, last week, reports emerged that the Obama girls were kicking it in the Bahamas for spring break. Days later, a Colorado news station, KMTV, reported that the girls were now skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho. The White House flacks didn’t like that one bit.

“From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest,” said Kristina Schake, communications director to the first lady. “We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.”

At their demand, the station scrubbed the report without explanation. What losers.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with the daughters. Never has. They are wonderful girls. The issue is use of taxpayer money, especially since Mr. Obama has shut down the White House to visitors, citing the cost of security. All these trips cost millions for Secret Service protection; couldn’t they just skip a few vacations so taxpayers could visit “America’s House”?

But no, the Obamas don’t care a whit about that, or the perception of them living high on the hog while many hardworking Americans are struggling to get by — and hoping to save enough for just one vacation this year.

And that perception, juxtaposed with reality, more than nearly anything else, tells you an awful lot about this president.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times and is now editor of the Drudge Report. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and @josephcurl.

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