Memorial Day
Memorial Day, the last Monday of May, is the day we honor Americans who gave their lives in military service.
This holiday was originally called Decoration Day and honored soldiers who had died during the Civil War. Immediately after the war, various towns in the North and South began to set aside days to decorate soldiers’ graves with flowers and flags. Those earliest memorial observances occurred in Waterloo, New York; Columbus, Mississippi; Richmond, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, and several other places.
The first widespread observance of Decoration Day came on May 30, 1868, which Maj. Gen. John A. Logan proclaimed as a day to honor the dead. General James Garfield (later the twentieth U.S. president) gave a speech at Arlington National Cemetery in remembrance of fallen soldiers, saying that “for love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.” Afterward, 5,000 people helped decorate the graves of more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers.
Over the years the day became an occasion to remember the dead in all American wars, and came to be known as Memorial Day.
On the Thursday before Memorial Day, in a tradition known as “Flags-in,” the soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry place small flags before more than a quarter million gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol twenty-four hours a day to make sure each flag remains standing throughout the weekend. On Memorial Day the president or vice president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the cemetery.
According to the U.S. flag code, American flags should be flown at half-staff until noon on Memorial Day, then raised to the top of the pole. At 3:00 p.m. local time, all Americans are asked to pause for a moment of remembrance.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
It Can Happen Here
It Can Happen Here
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On May 19, 2013 @ 10:39 pm In Uncategorized | 66 Comments
Shortly before the second-term inauguration of Barack Obama this January, I wrote [1] the following of my worries over the Obama way of doing business:
But the untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president — some of them perhaps necessary and logical. Indeed, the more emphatically he adds “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I’m not kidding,” or the ubiquitous “me,” “my,” and “I” to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true. Does this matter? Yes, because when the reckoning comes, it will be seen as logical rather than aberrant — and long overdue.
I ended my prognostications with the warning, “And so a reckoning is on the near horizon. Let us pray it does not take us all down with his administration.”
Four months later, it almost has.
In January, of course, we all knew that Obama had misled the country on the nature of the disaster that is called Obamacare—a bill forced through on an entirely partisan basis through extraordinary legislative pay-offs and exemptions. The author of the bill, Sen. Max Baucus, dubbed it a “train wreck”; the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (who helped ram through the bill), claimed that we needed to pass the bill to find out what is in it.
Obama’s first-term methodology was in line with his history of dissimulation—promising to accept public campaign financing before becoming the first presidential candidate in the general election to refuse it; demagoguing the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols as a senator as useless or unlawful (e.g., Guantanamo as “al-Qaeda’s chief recruiting tool”), only to embrace or expand them all once he became president; and stoking racial animosity by weighing in during the Professor Henry Louis Gates psychodrama and the Trayvon
Martin murder case, and asking La Raza activists “to punish our enemies.” The president had a strange habit, like a moth to a flame, of demagoguing the wealthy as toxic (spread the wealth, pay your fair share, fat cat, you didn’t build that, etc.), while being attracted to the very lifestyle that he damns, a sort of Martha’s Vineyard community organizer. Sometime in 2009, $250,000 in annual income became the dividing line between “us” and “them.” When we hear the president remind us that he is not a tyrant or monarch, then we assume he laments that fact; “make no mistake about it” ensures that you should believe that the president is not being “perfectly clear.”
Of course, in January I did not know yet that the IRS had targeted conservatives, in partisan fashion, to deflate their activism by denying their organizations pre-election tax-exempt status. (Do we now suspect why Harry Reid claimed that he knew the tax records of Mitt Romney, or why Austan Goolsbee popped off about the tax records of the Koch brothers, or how ProPublica had access to confidential tax information about Crossroads GPS [2] [compare the ProPublica boast on their website: “Now, for the first time, ProPublica has obtained the group's application for recognition of tax-exempt status, filed in September 2010. The IRS has not yet recognized Crossroads GPS as exempt, causing some tax experts to speculate that the agency is giving the application extra scrutiny”]?)
I did not think that the administration would be so haughty to go after the Associated Press and monitor their official and private communications, especially given that the source of most national security leaks par excellence was the Obama White House itself.
Recall the sordid details of the AP scandal: the AP sat on a story until they were given a quiet administration go-ahead to publish the account—even as the administration desperately wanted to scoop them and high-five over the story of the Yemeni double agent 24 hours earlier than the AP.
The AP was not first advised of the administration investigations, nor were the phone checks focused and narrow. Instead, the administration went whole hog after two months of phone records to send a message to its pets in the press—secure that Eric Holder, in Fast and Furious fashion, could always go to Congress with “I don’t now,” followed by executive privilege and stonewalling.
Meanwhile, in Machiavellian fashion the Obama administration had divulged classified information about the Stuxnet virus, the bin Laden raid, and the drone targeting—in order that sympathetic Washington Post and New York Times reporters might have pre-election fuel for the hagiographic accounts of Obama, the underappreciated commander-in-chief.
While we all knew that a filmmaker did not prompt a riot that just happened to kill four Americans, we did not, until the testimony of
State Department officials and the published communications of White House, CIA, and State Department staffers, appreciate just how far the administration would go to further a false narrative. And quite a myth it was: lead-from-behind Libya was still a success; al-Qaeda was still scattered; Obama was still on the global front lines condemning anti-Islamic bigots like Mr. Nakoula, whose religious hatred supposedly had spawned violence that even the Nobel laureate Barack Obama could not deter.
Yet in some sense, Obama won. The IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals were all adroitly kept under wraps for months before the 2012 election, as Goolsbee and Reid thundered about right-wing wealthy people not paying their fair taxes, and the press echoed a “how dare you” when anyone questioned the frightening state of events.
Living in Oceania
And now?
Suddenly in 2013, what was once sure has become suspect. All the old referents are not as they once were. The world is turned upside down, and whether the government taps, politicizes, or lies is not so important if it subsidizes the 47%. Does anyone care that five departments of government are either breaking the law or lying or both (State [Benghazi], Defense [the harassment issues], Justice [monitoring of phone lines], Treasury [corruption at the IRS], Health and Human Services [3] [shaking down companies to pay for PR for Obamacare])?
The National Rifle Association is now supposed to be a suspect paramilitary group, in the way the Boy Scouts are homophobes. One day we woke up and learned that by fiat women were suddenly eligible to serve in front-line combat units—no discussion, no hearings, no public debate. We had a “war on women” over whether upscale Sandra Fluke could get free birth control from the government, but snoozed through the Dr. Gosnell trial. The latter may have been the most lethal serial killer in U.S. history, if his last few years of snipping spinal cords were indicative of the his first three unmonitored decades of late-term aborting.
The Obama administration had decided to shut down as many coal plants as it can, stop most new gas and oil drilling on federal lands, and go after private companies ranging from huge aircraft manufacturers to the small guitar concerns—based not on law, but on certain theories of climate change and labor equity. As in the case with the IRS, the EPA is now synonymous with politically motivated activism designed to circumvent the law. The president in his State of the Union address assured us that cap-and-trade will be back, given, he says, the atypical violent weather that hit the U.S. in his term—even as global temperatures have not risen in 15 years, and hurricanes are now occurring more rarely than during the last administration.
The government, we were also told, would not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and would grant de facto amnesty for large numbers of illegal aliens as the election approached. Enforcement of existing law now is a fluid idea, always up for discussion For the first time in my life, I can not even find rifle shells on the store shelves—amid rumors that the Department of Homeland Security, at a time of national acrimony over the Second Amendments, believes it is an opportune moment to stockpile gargantuan amounts of ammunition—again, a sort of force multiplier in ensuring panic buying.
Are You a Correct Citizen?
So we are in unchartered territory. The IRS has lost our trust, both for its rank partisanship and its inability to come forward and explain its crimes. Eric Holder wants us to believe that he has no idea why his office was monitoring the communications of journalists, and yet now warrants the renewed trust of the president. Susan Rice serially misled on national television about Benghazi and so will probably be promoted to national security advisor. Even the Washington Post has decided that the president was lying in his defense about Benghazi (albeit with the funny sort of childhood rating of “four Pinocchios”) after the president’s team serially blamed the violence on an internet video, while the president simultaneously claimed that he also identified the crime immediately as a terrorist hit.
On campuses, the Departments of Justice and Education have issued new race/class/gender guidelines that would effectively deny constitutionally protected free speech in universities, a sort of politically correct idea that proper thinking is preferable to free thinking.
If you oppose “comprehensive immigration reform” you become a nativist or worse—and apparently are one of the “enemies” the president wants to “punish.” The president just condemned American guns that wind up in Mexico–implying right-wingers opposed his own remedies of new gun control and neglecting to mention that his own Fast and Furious operation sold thousands of lethal weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
The end of the revolving doors, lobbyists, and non-transparency resulted in Jack Lew—recipient of a $1 million bonus from Citibank as it both lost money and gulped down federal bailout money—taking over from the tax-dodger Timothy Geithner as our new Treasury secretary to oversee the new IRS. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is now pumping corporations for money to help spread the gospel about how eager we are for the implementation of Obamacare, as the government now sort of freelances on its own—the federal equivalent of California Highway Patrol officers suddenly ubiquitous along our roadsides ticketing in a frenzy, in fear of their bankrupt state pension funds.
Now What?
What happens to a corporation that says “nope” to Sebelius? An IRS audit? Phone monitoring? Presidential denunciation as a “fat cat”? Talking points? Harry Reid taking to the floor to claim it had not paid its fair share in taxes?
Government has become a sort of malignant metasisizing tumor, growing on its own, parasitical on healthy cells, always searching for new sources of nourishment, its purpose nothing other than growing bigger and faster and more powerful—until the exhausted host collapses. We have a sunshine king and our government has become a sort of virtual Versailles palace.
I suppose that when a presidential candidate urges his supporters to get in someone’s face, and to take a gun to a knife fight, from now on you better believe him. And, finally, the strangest thing about nearing the threshold of 1984? It comes with a whimper, not a bang, with a charismatic smile and mellifluous nonsense—with politically correct, egalitarian-minded bureaucrats with glasses and iPhones instead of fist-shaking jack-booted thugs.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On May 19, 2013 @ 10:39 pm In Uncategorized | 66 Comments
Shortly before the second-term inauguration of Barack Obama this January, I wrote [1] the following of my worries over the Obama way of doing business:
But the untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president — some of them perhaps necessary and logical. Indeed, the more emphatically he adds “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I’m not kidding,” or the ubiquitous “me,” “my,” and “I” to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true. Does this matter? Yes, because when the reckoning comes, it will be seen as logical rather than aberrant — and long overdue.
I ended my prognostications with the warning, “And so a reckoning is on the near horizon. Let us pray it does not take us all down with his administration.”
Four months later, it almost has.
In January, of course, we all knew that Obama had misled the country on the nature of the disaster that is called Obamacare—a bill forced through on an entirely partisan basis through extraordinary legislative pay-offs and exemptions. The author of the bill, Sen. Max Baucus, dubbed it a “train wreck”; the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (who helped ram through the bill), claimed that we needed to pass the bill to find out what is in it.
Obama’s first-term methodology was in line with his history of dissimulation—promising to accept public campaign financing before becoming the first presidential candidate in the general election to refuse it; demagoguing the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols as a senator as useless or unlawful (e.g., Guantanamo as “al-Qaeda’s chief recruiting tool”), only to embrace or expand them all once he became president; and stoking racial animosity by weighing in during the Professor Henry Louis Gates psychodrama and the Trayvon
Martin murder case, and asking La Raza activists “to punish our enemies.” The president had a strange habit, like a moth to a flame, of demagoguing the wealthy as toxic (spread the wealth, pay your fair share, fat cat, you didn’t build that, etc.), while being attracted to the very lifestyle that he damns, a sort of Martha’s Vineyard community organizer. Sometime in 2009, $250,000 in annual income became the dividing line between “us” and “them.” When we hear the president remind us that he is not a tyrant or monarch, then we assume he laments that fact; “make no mistake about it” ensures that you should believe that the president is not being “perfectly clear.”
Of course, in January I did not know yet that the IRS had targeted conservatives, in partisan fashion, to deflate their activism by denying their organizations pre-election tax-exempt status. (Do we now suspect why Harry Reid claimed that he knew the tax records of Mitt Romney, or why Austan Goolsbee popped off about the tax records of the Koch brothers, or how ProPublica had access to confidential tax information about Crossroads GPS [2] [compare the ProPublica boast on their website: “Now, for the first time, ProPublica has obtained the group's application for recognition of tax-exempt status, filed in September 2010. The IRS has not yet recognized Crossroads GPS as exempt, causing some tax experts to speculate that the agency is giving the application extra scrutiny”]?)
I did not think that the administration would be so haughty to go after the Associated Press and monitor their official and private communications, especially given that the source of most national security leaks par excellence was the Obama White House itself.
Recall the sordid details of the AP scandal: the AP sat on a story until they were given a quiet administration go-ahead to publish the account—even as the administration desperately wanted to scoop them and high-five over the story of the Yemeni double agent 24 hours earlier than the AP.
The AP was not first advised of the administration investigations, nor were the phone checks focused and narrow. Instead, the administration went whole hog after two months of phone records to send a message to its pets in the press—secure that Eric Holder, in Fast and Furious fashion, could always go to Congress with “I don’t now,” followed by executive privilege and stonewalling.
Meanwhile, in Machiavellian fashion the Obama administration had divulged classified information about the Stuxnet virus, the bin Laden raid, and the drone targeting—in order that sympathetic Washington Post and New York Times reporters might have pre-election fuel for the hagiographic accounts of Obama, the underappreciated commander-in-chief.
While we all knew that a filmmaker did not prompt a riot that just happened to kill four Americans, we did not, until the testimony of
State Department officials and the published communications of White House, CIA, and State Department staffers, appreciate just how far the administration would go to further a false narrative. And quite a myth it was: lead-from-behind Libya was still a success; al-Qaeda was still scattered; Obama was still on the global front lines condemning anti-Islamic bigots like Mr. Nakoula, whose religious hatred supposedly had spawned violence that even the Nobel laureate Barack Obama could not deter.
Yet in some sense, Obama won. The IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals were all adroitly kept under wraps for months before the 2012 election, as Goolsbee and Reid thundered about right-wing wealthy people not paying their fair taxes, and the press echoed a “how dare you” when anyone questioned the frightening state of events.
Living in Oceania
And now?
Suddenly in 2013, what was once sure has become suspect. All the old referents are not as they once were. The world is turned upside down, and whether the government taps, politicizes, or lies is not so important if it subsidizes the 47%. Does anyone care that five departments of government are either breaking the law or lying or both (State [Benghazi], Defense [the harassment issues], Justice [monitoring of phone lines], Treasury [corruption at the IRS], Health and Human Services [3] [shaking down companies to pay for PR for Obamacare])?
The National Rifle Association is now supposed to be a suspect paramilitary group, in the way the Boy Scouts are homophobes. One day we woke up and learned that by fiat women were suddenly eligible to serve in front-line combat units—no discussion, no hearings, no public debate. We had a “war on women” over whether upscale Sandra Fluke could get free birth control from the government, but snoozed through the Dr. Gosnell trial. The latter may have been the most lethal serial killer in U.S. history, if his last few years of snipping spinal cords were indicative of the his first three unmonitored decades of late-term aborting.
The Obama administration had decided to shut down as many coal plants as it can, stop most new gas and oil drilling on federal lands, and go after private companies ranging from huge aircraft manufacturers to the small guitar concerns—based not on law, but on certain theories of climate change and labor equity. As in the case with the IRS, the EPA is now synonymous with politically motivated activism designed to circumvent the law. The president in his State of the Union address assured us that cap-and-trade will be back, given, he says, the atypical violent weather that hit the U.S. in his term—even as global temperatures have not risen in 15 years, and hurricanes are now occurring more rarely than during the last administration.
The government, we were also told, would not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and would grant de facto amnesty for large numbers of illegal aliens as the election approached. Enforcement of existing law now is a fluid idea, always up for discussion For the first time in my life, I can not even find rifle shells on the store shelves—amid rumors that the Department of Homeland Security, at a time of national acrimony over the Second Amendments, believes it is an opportune moment to stockpile gargantuan amounts of ammunition—again, a sort of force multiplier in ensuring panic buying.
Are You a Correct Citizen?
So we are in unchartered territory. The IRS has lost our trust, both for its rank partisanship and its inability to come forward and explain its crimes. Eric Holder wants us to believe that he has no idea why his office was monitoring the communications of journalists, and yet now warrants the renewed trust of the president. Susan Rice serially misled on national television about Benghazi and so will probably be promoted to national security advisor. Even the Washington Post has decided that the president was lying in his defense about Benghazi (albeit with the funny sort of childhood rating of “four Pinocchios”) after the president’s team serially blamed the violence on an internet video, while the president simultaneously claimed that he also identified the crime immediately as a terrorist hit.
On campuses, the Departments of Justice and Education have issued new race/class/gender guidelines that would effectively deny constitutionally protected free speech in universities, a sort of politically correct idea that proper thinking is preferable to free thinking.
If you oppose “comprehensive immigration reform” you become a nativist or worse—and apparently are one of the “enemies” the president wants to “punish.” The president just condemned American guns that wind up in Mexico–implying right-wingers opposed his own remedies of new gun control and neglecting to mention that his own Fast and Furious operation sold thousands of lethal weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
The end of the revolving doors, lobbyists, and non-transparency resulted in Jack Lew—recipient of a $1 million bonus from Citibank as it both lost money and gulped down federal bailout money—taking over from the tax-dodger Timothy Geithner as our new Treasury secretary to oversee the new IRS. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is now pumping corporations for money to help spread the gospel about how eager we are for the implementation of Obamacare, as the government now sort of freelances on its own—the federal equivalent of California Highway Patrol officers suddenly ubiquitous along our roadsides ticketing in a frenzy, in fear of their bankrupt state pension funds.
Now What?
What happens to a corporation that says “nope” to Sebelius? An IRS audit? Phone monitoring? Presidential denunciation as a “fat cat”? Talking points? Harry Reid taking to the floor to claim it had not paid its fair share in taxes?
Government has become a sort of malignant metasisizing tumor, growing on its own, parasitical on healthy cells, always searching for new sources of nourishment, its purpose nothing other than growing bigger and faster and more powerful—until the exhausted host collapses. We have a sunshine king and our government has become a sort of virtual Versailles palace.
I suppose that when a presidential candidate urges his supporters to get in someone’s face, and to take a gun to a knife fight, from now on you better believe him. And, finally, the strangest thing about nearing the threshold of 1984? It comes with a whimper, not a bang, with a charismatic smile and mellifluous nonsense—with politically correct, egalitarian-minded bureaucrats with glasses and iPhones instead of fist-shaking jack-booted thugs.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
Sunday, May 19, 2013
The POW/MIA Flag
From Bill Bennetts
This somber flag reminds us of the debt we owe the thousands of Americans who have been prisoners of war (POWs), as well as those who have gone missing in action (MIA). The POW/MIA flag is the only flag displayed in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where it stands as an emblem of resolve that this nation will never forget those who have suffered in enemy captivity and those missing and unaccounted for.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is another place where you will see the POW/ MIA flag displayed. Inscribed on the monument’s wall are more than 58,000 names of soldiers lost during the Vietnam War. Approximately 1,200 of those names represent POWs and MIAs.
Congress has specified six days when it is particularly appropriate to fly the POW/MIA flag: Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day (third Friday in September), and Veterans Day.
This somber flag reminds us of the debt we owe the thousands of Americans who have been prisoners of war (POWs), as well as those who have gone missing in action (MIA). The POW/MIA flag is the only flag displayed in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where it stands as an emblem of resolve that this nation will never forget those who have suffered in enemy captivity and those missing and unaccounted for.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is another place where you will see the POW/ MIA flag displayed. Inscribed on the monument’s wall are more than 58,000 names of soldiers lost during the Vietnam War. Approximately 1,200 of those names represent POWs and MIAs.
Congress has specified six days when it is particularly appropriate to fly the POW/MIA flag: Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day (third Friday in September), and Veterans Day.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Dem's and the IRS
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to welcome you to our annual Federal Employees of the Year luncheon. We are here today to honor the people who get things done when the pressure's on.
You know, as the president, I get credit for a lot of things, and it's well-deserved. But the decisions I make are broad and conceptual. I leave the details to you, and to the thousands of people with whom you work side by side every day in cubicles across this great land.
Often during my administration, you've heard outsiders talk about "low-level" employees of our magnificent federal government. Now, let me be clear: I'm tired of hearing that sort of thing, ladies and gentlemen, because, frankly, I think it's insulting.
In my administration, no one is a low-level employee. Everyone is a decision maker. Some may think of the people in this room as anonymous bureaucrats, but I think of you as full partners in this presidency -- experts who fully deserve the autonomy they exercise.
In my administration, the drones don't sit behind desks. They fly!
That's why I never, ever micromanage. I consider it vital to the continued functioning of this administration that important decisions be made at the lowest possible level -- by the folks who, unlike me, have to live with the results.
Yes, you're far below Cabinet level, but I trust you guys. And if something you dream up doesn't work out, I hear about it eventually -- probably just read about it in the paper, like every other American who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Then we set about fixing it and learning from it, so you don't make the same mistake again.
So, please accept my deepest thanks for everything you do to keep me out of trouble and to move America forward.
Before we all take the rest of the day off because of sequestration, there are a few people I want to single out for special recognition.
Edna Dimmelfarb, come on up here. . . . Edna is a file clerk at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix.
Entirely on her own initiative, she came up with the gun-walking program known as Fast and Furious. Now, don't look so surprised,
Edna. It's time you got the credit you deserve.
Next, I want to bring up Bill Farnsworth, from the State Department. . . . Bill's just 19 years old, right out of high school, and he's a messenger. It's his job to carry important notes from one office to another so they get into the right hands, right away. Back in September, after running his legs off carrying sensitive memos from State to the CIA and back, Bill took it upon himself to fix the Benghazi talking points. The next morning, on the weekly TV talk shows, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice put her full trust in Bill's rendition of the events. No, Bill, you stay right here. We're taking some photos once everyone's on the stage.
Bertha Clark is here today, all the way from Cincinnati. Come on up, Bertha. . . . Bertha works for the IRS, processing applications for tax-exempt status. A couple of years ago, she decided -- all on her own -- to make sure that Tea Party and "patriot" groups were paying their fair share to support our great socialist leap forward -- er, I mean our great democratic experiment. Now, it might seem strange to some that an IRS forms processor could wield such power, but that's the kind of administration I believe in. Oh, my! Could someone get Bertha a glass of water?
And finally, I want to call on Joseph Fabeetz Jr., a student trainee at the Department of Justice. Joe? . . . You want to talk about patriots?
You don't need to look any further than this young man, right here. When Attorney General Eric Holder recused himself from the tough decision on tapping the phones of a bunch of Associated Press reporters, it was young Joe who stepped up and signed the order. I've got it right here. Your signature, right Joe? No, you don't need to see it again. You're the intern and I'm the president.
Folks, it's a privilege to stand here with these great American public servants. Without them, and many others like them -- people who don't wait around for orders, who ignore the chain of command whenever they see a need, who just go completely and inexplicably rogue whenever they get the urge -- my administration would not survive.
O’Brien is The Plain Dealer’s deputy editorial page editor.
All the Presidents Fall Guys - O'Brien (Plain Dealer)
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to welcome you to our annual Federal Employees of the Year luncheon. We are here today to honor the people who get things done when the pressure's on.
You know, as the president, I get credit for a lot of things, and it's well-deserved. But the decisions I make are broad and conceptual. I leave the details to you, and to the thousands of people with whom you work side by side every day in cubicles across this great land.
Often during my administration, you've heard outsiders talk about "low-level" employees of our magnificent federal government. Now, let me be clear: I'm tired of hearing that sort of thing, ladies and gentlemen, because, frankly, I think it's insulting.
In my administration, no one is a low-level employee. Everyone is a decision maker. Some may think of the people in this room as anonymous bureaucrats, but I think of you as full partners in this presidency -- experts who fully deserve the autonomy they exercise.
In my administration, the drones don't sit behind desks. They fly!
That's why I never, ever micromanage. I consider it vital to the continued functioning of this administration that important decisions be made at the lowest possible level -- by the folks who, unlike me, have to live with the results.
Yes, you're far below Cabinet level, but I trust you guys. And if something you dream up doesn't work out, I hear about it eventually -- probably just read about it in the paper, like every other American who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Then we set about fixing it and learning from it, so you don't make the same mistake again.
So, please accept my deepest thanks for everything you do to keep me out of trouble and to move America forward.
Before we all take the rest of the day off because of sequestration, there are a few people I want to single out for special recognition.
Edna Dimmelfarb, come on up here. . . . Edna is a file clerk at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix. Entirely on her own initiative, she came up with the gun-walking program known as Fast and Furious. Now, don't look so surprised,
Edna. It's time you got the credit you deserve.
Next, I want to bring up Bill Farnsworth, from the State Department. . . . Bill's just 19 years old, right out of high school, and he's a messenger. It's his job to carry important notes from one office to another so they get into the right hands, right away. Back in September, after running his legs off carrying sensitive memos from State to the CIA and back, Bill took it upon himself to fix the Benghazi talking points. The next morning, on the weekly TV talk shows, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice put her full trust in Bill's rendition of the events. No, Bill, you stay right here. We're taking some photos once everyone's on the stage.
Bertha Clark is here today, all the way from Cincinnati. Come on up, Bertha. . . . Bertha works for the IRS, processing applications for tax-exempt status. A couple of years ago, she decided -- all on her own -- to make sure that Tea Party and "patriot" groups were paying their fair share to support our great socialist leap forward -- er, I mean our great democratic experiment. Now, it might seem strange to some that an IRS forms processor could wield such power, but that's the kind of administration I believe in. Oh, my! Could someone get Bertha a glass of water?
And finally, I want to call on Joseph Fabeetz Jr., a student trainee at the Department of Justice. Joe? . . . You want to talk about patriots?
You don't need to look any further than this young man, right here. When Attorney General Eric Holder recused himself from the tough decision on tapping the phones of a bunch of Associated Press reporters, it was young Joe who stepped up and signed the order. I've got it right here. Your signature, right Joe? No, you don't need to see it again. You're the intern and I'm the president.
Folks, it's a privilege to stand here with these great American public servants. Without them, and many others like them -- people who don't wait around for orders, who ignore the chain of command whenever they see a need, who just go completely and inexplicably rogue whenever they get the urge -- my administration would not survive.
O’Brien is The Plain Dealer’s deputy editorial page editor.
Make time to visit the ill - Terry Pluto
By Terry Pluto, The Plain Dealer
Follow on Twitter
on April 05, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Most of us know someone who is sick or aging, someone who could use a visit or a phone call.
And, if we're honest, most of us have an emotional battle when it comes to actually connecting with that person. It's easy to be busy. It's hard to just sit still. And if we do reach out, it's sometimes depressing and frustrating because nothing we can do really changes the big picture for him or her.
Dan Dubsky sent me this email:
"My wife and I are both 59 and have been married for 37 years. We were high school sweethearts before that. About four years ago, [Joyce] was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It also attacked her vision. I have been her full-time caregiver for the last three years."
Dubsky was a police officer who took early retirement after 30 years.
While he didn't say it, I know that visiting someone in his wife's situation can be a real challenge.
When my father had his stroke and lost his ability to speak, many of his friends backed away after a call or a visit. It was so hard to communicate, so sad to see what had happened to this once strong man.
But a few people made the effort. They played cards with him. They watched TV. They didn't see the need to engage in long conversations; they simply were there for a while.
And as a caregiver, those people truly were blessings.
Dubsky said: "My wife can't be left alone. She is suffering from paranoia and delusions. At times, she doesn't know me. I pray every day for God to give me strength to be able to take care of her."
He has reached out to the area chapter of the Alzheimer's Association in Beachwood, "and they truly are angels."
Each of us can also become an "angel" for someone.
Rick Huscroft emailed: "My mother has been institutionalized for more than three years with Alzheimer's. . . . I would find reasons not to visit my mom because I left so depressed after seeing her. But [last week], I sat with my mom (she doesn't talk much), held her hand and prayed.
"It was an incredible feeling. At the end I said to her 'I have to go' -- She opened her eyes and said, 'I love you' -- only God could have intervened to have her say that!"
Many years ago, I visited someone I had not seen in years. We were not especially close friends, but I had heard he was dying. I also had heard that not many people went to see him, and that he probably wouldn't do more than open his eyes and stare.
That happened for a while, as I told some old stories that involved both of us. He didn't seem responsive.
I asked if he was scared, and he nodded.
I asked when he had arrived at the hospital, and he whispered, "Friday."
I was silent for a moment, and he whispered, "Terry, it's bad."
I prayed with him and then left. He died a few days later.
I also have visited people who never did seem to know I was there. It was depressing, but I was still glad that I went.
Nearly every time that I've felt that tug on my heart to visit someone who was ill, it was the right thing to do.
Terry Brlas emailed me this: "My father passed away on March 21 at the age of 80. I had not seen him in a few weeks. I was going to wait until the following weekend to go visit him. But a voice told me that I had better go on March 16 instead of March 23.
"I was able to watch the Ohio State basketball game with him and speak to him before we had to ambulance him to the hospital. . . . He died a few days later from a brain hemorrhage."
Terry's email explained that he was so glad that he had that last day with his dad.
This column is not about making anyone feel guilty about missing that last chance to connect with someone -- I've done it. But it is to say that when the opportunity is there, we need to go.
It's good for them . . . and us.
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on April 05, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Most of us know someone who is sick or aging, someone who could use a visit or a phone call.
And, if we're honest, most of us have an emotional battle when it comes to actually connecting with that person. It's easy to be busy. It's hard to just sit still. And if we do reach out, it's sometimes depressing and frustrating because nothing we can do really changes the big picture for him or her.
Dan Dubsky sent me this email:
"My wife and I are both 59 and have been married for 37 years. We were high school sweethearts before that. About four years ago, [Joyce] was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It also attacked her vision. I have been her full-time caregiver for the last three years."
Dubsky was a police officer who took early retirement after 30 years.
While he didn't say it, I know that visiting someone in his wife's situation can be a real challenge.
When my father had his stroke and lost his ability to speak, many of his friends backed away after a call or a visit. It was so hard to communicate, so sad to see what had happened to this once strong man.
But a few people made the effort. They played cards with him. They watched TV. They didn't see the need to engage in long conversations; they simply were there for a while.
And as a caregiver, those people truly were blessings.
Dubsky said: "My wife can't be left alone. She is suffering from paranoia and delusions. At times, she doesn't know me. I pray every day for God to give me strength to be able to take care of her."
He has reached out to the area chapter of the Alzheimer's Association in Beachwood, "and they truly are angels."
Each of us can also become an "angel" for someone.
Rick Huscroft emailed: "My mother has been institutionalized for more than three years with Alzheimer's. . . . I would find reasons not to visit my mom because I left so depressed after seeing her. But [last week], I sat with my mom (she doesn't talk much), held her hand and prayed.
"It was an incredible feeling. At the end I said to her 'I have to go' -- She opened her eyes and said, 'I love you' -- only God could have intervened to have her say that!"
Many years ago, I visited someone I had not seen in years. We were not especially close friends, but I had heard he was dying. I also had heard that not many people went to see him, and that he probably wouldn't do more than open his eyes and stare.
That happened for a while, as I told some old stories that involved both of us. He didn't seem responsive.
I asked if he was scared, and he nodded.
I asked when he had arrived at the hospital, and he whispered, "Friday."
I was silent for a moment, and he whispered, "Terry, it's bad."
I prayed with him and then left. He died a few days later.
I also have visited people who never did seem to know I was there. It was depressing, but I was still glad that I went.
Nearly every time that I've felt that tug on my heart to visit someone who was ill, it was the right thing to do.
Terry Brlas emailed me this: "My father passed away on March 21 at the age of 80. I had not seen him in a few weeks. I was going to wait until the following weekend to go visit him. But a voice told me that I had better go on March 16 instead of March 23.
"I was able to watch the Ohio State basketball game with him and speak to him before we had to ambulance him to the hospital. . . . He died a few days later from a brain hemorrhage."
Terry's email explained that he was so glad that he had that last day with his dad.
This column is not about making anyone feel guilty about missing that last chance to connect with someone -- I've done it. But it is to say that when the opportunity is there, we need to go.
It's good for them . . . and us.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
National Day of Prayer - Bill Bennett
The National Day of Prayer
The first Thursday in May is the National Day of Prayer, a day that encourages Americans to pray for the United States, its people, and its leaders.
The tradition of a National Day of Prayer dates to 1775, when the Second Continental Congress set aside a day for Americans to pray to “be ever under the care and protection of a kind Providence” as they began the struggle for independence. In the following decades, Congress and the president set aside various days for prayer. In 1863, for example, Lincoln proclaimed “a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer” to help the country get through “the awful calamity of civil war” and for “the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”
In 1952 Congress and President Truman established a National Day of Prayer as a yearly event. Truman called for a day “on which all of us, in our churches, in our homes, and in our hearts, may beseech God to grant us wisdom to know the course which we should follow, and strength and patience to pursue that course steadfastly.”
In 1988, President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer, urging Americans to ask God for “His blessings, His peace, and the resting of His kind and holy hands on ourselves, our Nation, our friends in the defense of freedom, and all mankind, now and always.”
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
President George Washington's First Official Act
President Washington’s First Official Act
On April 30, 1789, George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he began his duties by giving thanks to the Almighty for the blessings the new country had received during the Revolution and making of the Constitution:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own. . . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. And in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.
On April 30, 1789, George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he began his duties by giving thanks to the Almighty for the blessings the new country had received during the Revolution and making of the Constitution:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own. . . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. And in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.
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