When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in an Australian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.  Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Melbourne.  The old man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas editions of magazines around the country and appearing in mags for Mental Health.  A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.

And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this "anonymous" poem winging across the Internet.

Cranky Old Man

What do you see nurses? . . .. . .What do you see?
What are you thinking .. . when you're looking at me?
A cranky old man, . . . . . .not very wise,
Uncertain of habit .. . . . . . . .. with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food .. . ... . . and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . ."I do wish you'd try!"
Who seems not to notice . . .the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . .. . . A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not . . . ... lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . .The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking?. .Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse .you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am . . . . .. As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, .. . . . as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten . .with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters .. . . .. . who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen . . . .. with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now . . .. . . a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . ..my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows .. .. .that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now . . . . .I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . .. . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . .. With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons .. .have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me . . to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, .. ...Babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . . My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me . . . . My wife is now dead.
I look at the future ... . . . . I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing .. . . young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . And the love that I've known.
I'm now an old man . . . . . . .. and nature is cruel.
It's jest to make old age . . . . . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles .. .. . grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone . . . where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass . A young man still dwells,
And now and again . . . . . my battered heart swells
I remember the joys . . . . .. . I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living . . . . . . . life over again.
I think of the years, all too few . . .. gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people .. . . . .. . . open and see.
Not a cranky old man.
Look closer . . . . see .. .. . .. .... . ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within.  We will all, one day, be there, too!

The name of the author was Dave Griffith.  The best and most beautiful things of this world can't be seen or touched.  They must be felt by the heart!


Scott Sonnon

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

Thomas Jefferson

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

James Madison

My article on the Supreme Court ruling below upholds these principles.  We now have an unlimited government with unlimited power to tax.  Thank you Supreme Court.  Thank you Progressives.  Thanks to all who have compromised or abandoned principles.  Our Constitutional Republic appears doomed unless the people change themselves, awaken, and demand principled and virtuous candidates.


Bill Cochrane

Regular visitors here may have noted my "absence" for the past couple of days.  A number of us traveled to Raleigh early Thursday morning to be at the Legislature when the Supreme Court announced its decision on Obamacare.  We all had our individual expectations of what might be announced, and mine were certainly limited in optimism.

But none of us were prepared for what we heard.  We were completely "blown away".  I came home in a deep depression, and until this morning, I simply could not bring myself to do anything except listen to the media pundits and "experts", read the articles and blogs, and listen to talk radio.... searching, hoping, yearning for some "silver lining", some "ray of hope" that I had missed.

Oh, people have tried to find such.  And for a brief moment yesterday I was tempted to accept some of those propositions.  But their propositions are all false arguments.  They are based only on political rationalizations, on speculation of ulterior strategies on the part of Justice Roberts, and on specious interpretations of Supreme Court interpretations which are, themselves, un-Constitutional.  And now I'm angry.  More angry than I've ever been in my entire life.  All of our institutions have now failed.

In short all of the arguments made to defend the decision, to defend Justice Robert's statements in the ruling, to paint silver on the seamy twisted logic -- all of it is based on a lack of principle.  And unprincipled behavior is poison to governance and to our rights and liberties.  Let me explain.

1.  A Tax?  The Court was completely unprincipled here.  To begin with, this was the first question addressed by the Court during the hearings and oral arguments.  Because the Government was arguing that the individual mandate was not a tax, the Court even hired an independent outside attorney to make the oral argument that the penalty associated with the individual mandate was, indeed, a tax permitted to Congress under the Constitution.  Why would the Court do this?  Answer:  They had to do this.  You see there is a 19th century law which applies:  The Anti-Injunction Act.  That law states that a federal tax cannot be challenged in court until it has been collected.  Since this part of ObamaCare will not be implemented until 2014, no penalty/tax has been "collected".  Therefore, if the fines associated with the individual mandate were adjudicated as a tax, the Supreme Court would have no option, under rule of law, but to throw the case out until 2014.  But everyone wanted the case adjudicated now, not in 2014; therefore, the Court accepted the Government's argument that the fines were not a tax.

So, by ultimately ruling that the fines are a tax, Justice Roberts and the Court violated federal law themselves.  How can we place any faith on a Court which will willingly and knowingly violate law?  We cannot.  This behavior was completely unprincipled.


2.  What kind of tax?  Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants to Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises....".  However, neither the Framers nor the Nation nor the Courts ever held this power to be unlimited.  Indeed, it required an amendment to the Constitution -- the Sixteenth Amenment -- to authorize Congress to levy personal income taxes for the first time back in 1913.

By allowing the Government to now levy a tax on inactivity, the Court essentially removed all Constitutional limits on taxation.  The Government may now levy any kind of tax for any reason on anyone for any activity or inactivity.  This Court has expanded the powers of Congress to infinity, limited only by the political process.  This renders the Constitution essentially meaningless and useless as a constraint on government power.  Congress already thought they had loopholes for unlimited power through the Commerce Clause and through the tortured and twisted "interpretations" of the "welfare clause" -- now they have yet another route to infinite unlimited power fully granted and blessed by the Supreme Court.  How can such a Court claim to be "protecting and preserving the Constitution of the United States"?  It cannot.


3.  Speaking of interpretations....  There is nothing in Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution which grants the Supreme Court any powers to "interpret" or "re-interpret" the Constitution.  Nothing.  This is a Progressive Lie which has been accepted by too many ignorant, unthinking people and by too many of the sitting justices on the Court.  The Constitution is not a "living" "liquid" document which can be "re-interpreted" to "fit" "new ideas and problems".  This Progressive technique is exactly why Obama scolded George Stephanopoulos for using a dictionary during that 2009 interview where Obama insisted this was "not a tax".  Progressives and socialists do not like dictionaries.  Dictionaries state the meaning of words.  Words must mean something; meanings are important.  But meanings get in the way of Progressives.  Progressives constantly come up with new meanings of their own for words in order to hide and conceal their real intent and purpose.  So, Obama hates the dictionary and scolds George for even bringing it up.

Well, the Supreme Court and Justice Roberts engaged in the same behavior in rendering this terrible ruling.  They not only "re-interpreted" the Constitutional language having to do with taxes, but they "re-interpreted" the language of the ObamaCare act as well.  The Court twisted the words of both documents as well as the legal arguments brought before them to (by their own admission) find a way to rule the act "constitutional".

This, again, is unprincipled behavior.  It is akin to the concept of "situational ethics".  If the words of the Constitution and of acts of Congress can mean anything when convenient to "re-interpret" them, then those words actually mean nothing at all.

4.  But Justice Roberts put a new limit on the Commerce Clause....  Really?  Did he?  Where is that limit?  Firstly, the Court did not reverse Wikard vs. Filburn.  So, the Court left standing the perversion that the government can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause.  The Court did not roll back any of the regulatory powers that the federal government has imposed under the Commerce Clause within intra-state commerce.  All this Court basically said was that the Commerce Clause did not apply in this instance.  That did not change past precedents whatsoever, really.  To argue that it did is a vapid stretch and really nothing more than the kind of "hopeful thinking" to which so many succumbed back in 2008.

The complete and utter perversion of the Commerce Clause in Section 8 remains in effect along with the un-Constitutional concept of court "precedents" which have accomplished that perversion.  This again, is unprincipled behavior.  And to argue that Justice Roberts "sneaked one over" on the liberal justices to somehow limit the now-unlimited scope of the simple little Commerce Clause is completely a "red herring".  Besides, if he did attempt to "sneak one over" by joining with the liberals in upholding ObamaCare, simply to be able to write a majority opinion that somehow limited the perversion of the Commerce Clause, is such sneaky behavior worthy of a Supreme Court Justice?  I would say it is, again, unprincipled behavior.


5.  Justice Roberts cited former Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:  “As between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act.”  Must I say anything more about duplicitous "interpretations"?  Justice Roberts went on to say:  "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Well, is it the "job" of the Supreme Court to re-write legislation?  To uphold anything that Congress passes?  To "protect the image" of the Court.  No, no, and no!  Those on the Court were granted lifetime tenure and shielded from political and legal liabilities in order to protect them.  They need no further protection -- they certainly do not need to render convoluted rulings to assuage the ire of some in the other branches.  And their job was designed to be a check and balance on the abuse of power by the other branches --- NOT to find a way to "interpret" the act or Constitution so as to rubber-stamp the will of an out of control Congress.

The job of the Supreme Court IS (was) to uphold their Oath -- to preserve, protect, and uphold the Constitution.  Instead, this Court has done irreparable damage once more to the Constitution.  The Framers intended the federal government to have the 18 enumerated powers listed in Article 1, Section 8.  The Framers intended a limited government.  The Supreme Court has now granted the Congress and Administration at least three unlimited plenary ways to seize new powers.  This is the opposite of what the Constitution was designed and intended to do.  If the words of the Constitution can be so wildly "interpreted", then those words mean nothing.  If the government now has unlimited powers, then the Constitution means nothing.  The Progressive goal of making the Constitution irrelevant has finally been achieved with the help of this Court.

As Rush Limbaugh put it:  "There are now no limits anywhere on the size, scope, the growth of government."  As Colorado's Attorney General, John Suthers, says:  "Whatever limits remain on Congress's power will now be left to the political arena.  If our liberty is dependent on the voters, history has proven that little stands in the way of further encroachments on individual and state rights."   As Senator Lindsey Graham responded to an reporter's question:  "How do you hold the President accountable, Senator?" Graham responded:  "It's called an election."

The Court surrendered its role in checks and balances.  The Court abdicated its responsibility to protect the people from government overreach.  Now the self-appointed role of the Supreme Court is to find ways to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations.  This is unprincipled behavior.


But it is not only the three branches of government who have abandoned principles and failed.  The media has failed in its role to be a check on the government and a purveyor of the truth and facts.  Our schools have abandoned principles of education in favor of bureaucracy, employee benefits, political ideology, and indoctrination.  Our culture is riddled with unprincipled and unscrupulous behaviors.

An unprincipled populace is ungovernable except by force.  This is why our institutions and our Constitution have failed.  Our populace is generally unprincipled, and their representatives and institutions merely reflect the people.  John Adams said:  "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  So, our unprincipled behavior creates a populace which can only be governed by force -- which is why we are quickly transforming into a totalitarian state -- a dictatorship.

We are close to dictatorship.  We must now resort to the purely political arena to preserve any vestige of our once-great Constitutional Republic.  We have one more chance this November to pull back from totalitarianism.  Considering the ignorance, apathy, greed, and misguided ideologies among the electorate, that is a very slender thread upon which our nation dangles.  If the electorate get it wrong this year, or if those we elect again betray us, we will become either serfs in a poverty-struck proletariat or revolutionaries in a desperate last-ditch bid for our freedom.



Bill Cochrane

There is a persistent idea or opinion among many "establishment Republicans" that once ObamaCare has been repealed, the Republicans must be ready to "replace" it with a program of their own.

NO!  No!  No!  No!  No!

I wrote about this back on January 3 in response to a misguided article from a "conservative" writer on BigGovernment.com, of all places!  Yes!  The Republicans need to repeal ObamaCare in its entirety.  Fully, completely obliterate the abomination.

But NO!  They don't need to replace one Big Government, mammoth program of the Left with another Big Government mammoth program of the "Right".  We don't need Big Government programs!  Will the Republican establishment ever wake up and "get it"?!  We need small government back!  We need government out of the way.  One of the biggest objections to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign was his support of Massachusetts RomneyCare.  We don't want to replace ObamaCare with RomneyCare!  If this is what the Republicans do after the 2012 elections, they will have betrayed us again and, as far as I'm concerned, for the last time.

Decrease spending.  Cut regulations.  Balance the budget.  Create a good environment for business growth and prosperity.  Repeal everything this communist Administration has done.  Get government out of our private lives.  Restore Constitutional government.  DO NOT impose more big bloated government programs!

Once again Judson Phillips says it better than I can.  See his article below.


Bill Cochrane
_____________________________________

I have long since reconciled myself to the Republican Party being the loser party.  I say this as a life long Republican.  I have worked in campaigns, served in offices within the party and have even run for office as a Republican.   Yet, there is no one who can snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory like the Republicans.

In the “Not terribly shocking” department, the GOP is now quietly working to commit political suicide again.

How?

Mitt Romney, along with party leaders is working on Repeal and Replace for ObamaCare.

From the Washington Times:

House Republican leaders are quietly working with Mitt Romney’s campaign to fashion a unified GOP health care platform to replace President Obama’s health law, according to lawmakers involved in the effort.

Hill Republicans said coordinating with Mr. Romney, who is the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, boosts the chances that the two sides can avoid clashing over one of the big issues of the fall campaign but it ups the chances that the House GOP will miss its self-imposed June deadline for rolling out its alternative to Mr. Obama’s blueprint.

“From the policy perspective, we can do all these great things, but if [Mr. Romney‘s] not on the same page with us, then that’s a recipe for political disaster,” Rep. Phil Gingrey, Georgia Republican and a medical doctor who sponsored the medical-malpractice reform the House passed in March, told The Washington Times.  “So, clearly, there has to be some coordination on all of that.”

The GOP took control of the House last year promising to “repeal and replace” Mr. Obama’s signature health law.  So far, House Republicans have held dozens of votes on repeal, but they have yet to produce a broad replacement bill that would try to boost coverage without resorting to the mandate to buy insurance that Mr. Obama’s plan employs — a mandate that is now the subject of a Supreme Court challenge.


Please excuse me for a few minutes while I step outside to express my outrage in some very creative, unique and very obscene ways.

America did not want them to replace Obamacare.   We wanted it repealed.  The Tea Party did not support the GOP so the GOP could create a Republican bureaucracy instead of a liberal bureaucracy.

We want Obamacare dead and gone.

The issue is not insurance coverage. The issue has never been insurance coverage. This is the Democrat’s issue so they can try to nationalize the economy.

You can have the best government health insurance in the world and if it bankrupts the healthcare market place it does not matter. Access to medical treatment is the issue and the issue is how to make it affordable.

There is an answer. It is the free market. The free market works and it works every time.   Unfortunately, the Republican leadership is staggering around looking for John Boehner’s bottle of Whisky, trying very hard to be popular with the Washington elite and act just like Democrats only slightly different.

The message of the Tea Party movement is a simple one.  Government is too big.  It needs to be reduced.   Health insurance or even regulating health care is not in the constitution. It is not one of the enumerated powers given to the Federal Government.

The good news is that every Congressman is up for reelection this year.  We need to remind them if they vote for a Romneycare bill to replace an Obamacare bill, we will replace them in 2014.

Anyone remember Richard Lugar?


Judson Phillips

The Left and President Obama love to cite anecdotes that they claim support their views and positions.  OK, I'll do the same here.

One of our three sons emigrated to Australia and married an Aussie girl there.  She and her family are fantastic.  I couldn't hope for a better daughter-in-law, and her familly is wonderful.  I truly believe she is the best thing that's ever happened in my son's life.

He's working on obtaining his Australian citizenship (they really don't make it easy there).  And, at first he was excited about the nationalized health care system in Australia which is modeled after the Europeans and British examples.  He's been educated here and in Austrailia now as a nurse, which profession he is pursuing, and he's young and still naive.  At first he was full of praise and excitement that everyone in Austrailia, including himself as a legal foreign worker, is entitled to free government health care.  He extolled the virtues of their system to us, and he believed that ObamaCare would prove as beneficial to us, once implemented, as he perceived the Australian system to be.

Then he ran into his own health problem.  He began experiencing severe problems with his digestive tract.  Nothing seemed to help and his assigned physician was baffled.  He was in serious pain and becoming distraught.  His physician put in the necessary referrals to obtain tests and specialists to diagnose what was wrong.  But it was going to take six to eight months, minimum, on a waiting list to see the first specialist and begin tests.

He called us all upset and agitated.  He couldn't get any help for his pain and problems while on the government's wait list, and he was concerned about his health and his ability to function in his job.

Fortunately, the Austrailian health care laws do not outlaw private health care as do so many government-run "single-payer" systems.  Austrailia, like Mexico, has two independent health care systems:  the government health care system and a private health care system.  For those who opt to spend their own money, private doctors, clinics, and hospitals are available.

Our son, being young and just starting out, having just immigrated to Austrailia with virtually nothing, and due to the extremely high tax rates in Australia to support the cradle-to-grave government services there, had little savings.  He humbly asked us to wire him funds so that he could "go see a real doctor".  We did.

He went to a private doctor, who ordered the tests he needed straightaway, and within a few days he had the prescriptions and treatment he needed.  His problems were solved.

After this experience, his outlook on government health care has changed dramatically, as you might imagine.  He admitted to us that he had been so wrong.  The government run system in Australia was not only badly run and managed, it was inhumane.   The Australian bureaucrats were merely interested in managing a rationing system and not in the health of their citizens.

He's growing up.....fast.


Bill Cochrane