But what of those signatories who pledged … “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor…”?

Fortunately, Rush Limbaugh has a piece up with the text of the speech his father used to give each July 4th.

It chronicles what many of the signatories went through as a result of their decision to stand up to King George.

Here are a few excerpts;

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half – 24 – were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

What happened to them as a result of their signing the Declaration Of Independence?

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered — and his estates in what is now Harlem — completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons’ lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man’s heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: “No.”

Please remember what the 4th of July means to all of us. It is much more than baseball games, backyard barbeque and beer. It is immortal in the annals of Man.

-Thai

Here it is…

The culprit??

Global Climate Change !!!

That’s right. Jupiter is in the throes of climate change in which it is apparently warming up by anywhere between 15 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

We’ve been told by the “green lobby” for years , that humans are the cause of the warming of the Earth. Now, Jupiter is warming too.

Which naturally begs the question…

How many dangerous, global-warming-causing, SUV’s are up on Jupiter anyway?

Thai’s Take?

Global Warming is a natural occurance. Trying to stop it is akin to trying to stop the ocean waves from rolling into shore by standing on the beach yelling “Stop!”

Fortunately, National Geographic is suddenly coming around now that the Mars ice-cap is also melting.

We truly are a remarkable species to be able to affect not only our planet but MArs and Jupiter with the CO2 we emit into our atmosphere.

It truly is breathtaking the hubris the “greens” have isn’t it?

You cannot embrace an Obama-like use of words which signify nothing and expect the public to buy what you’re shoveling!

Her most recent comments regarding Iran, our troops and our policy in Iraq have shown her to be completely out-of-touch with reality.

She was speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle and said the following;

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space. A time for political change to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military and the progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal.  And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians. They decided in Basra when the fighting would end. They negotiated the cessation of hostilities…the Iranians 

Excuse me Madame Speaker…but you’re lying!!

Iraq’s Prime Minister has shown great courage in going after the Sadrists and clearing out Basra. The Sadrists had to sue for a cease fire, which was not offered nor given, and have been routed from many of the areas where they used to operate. This show of force allowed the Sunni blocs to re-enter the government and reunify with their Iraqi brethren.

Iraq has in short order;

• Gone after the Sadr militias
• Enacted oil legislation with equitable distribution of oil revenues
• Passed a budget
• Cleared the way for provincial elections this Fall

Want to know how I know this??

Because Nancy Pelosi, herself, said these very things to Prime Minister Maliki when she visited him earlier this month.

She welcomed Iraq’s progress in passing a budget as well as oil legislation and a bill paving the way for provincial elections in the fall that are expected to more equitably redistribute power among local officials.

So, with the violence going down and Al-Qaeda now admitting defeat in Iraq, how is that not achieving our goals Madame Speaker??

It is statements like these that make the Iraqis either ignore you or hate you Madame Speaker.

The lack of popularity of Pelosi’s views was evident in the fact that her first day on the ground Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not make an effort to see her. Maliki is currently in the northern city of Mosul overseeing a crackdown on insurgent networks there. But the city has been largely quiet in recent days, and there was no obvious pressing reason for the Prime Minister to skip Pelosi’s arrival.

Pelosi may not get much more warmth from the American military leaders she plans to meet either. Pelosi argued against sending additional surge forces to Iraq, a plan overseen by Gen. David Petraeus that is now widely credited with reducing the levels of violence in Iraq.

Goodwill Of The Iranians??

Is she serious? Or has she caught a case of whopper-itis from Bill Clinton ?? The U.S and Iraqi forces dominated the Sadrists in Basra. As for the “goodwill” of Iranians, would this be the same goodwill that kills over 10% of our troops in Iraq?

Steve Schippert has a great piece about this interview here.

Steve excoriates her for much of the same reasons I do but then goes further about her shedding crocodile tears over our troops;

She went to Iraq last week to visit the troops “in preparation for Memorial Day.” How does that work, exactly? How does visiting Iraq prepare one for Memorial Day? Forgetting the ‘how’ for a moment, perhaps it should be asked ‘why.’ Speaker Pelosi answers that question unequivocally, after a very flat and tellingly unarticulated “they’re so great” reference to the troops, as she immediately spells out casualty figures of dead and wounded. Of course, she didn’t meet any of the dead honored by the nation, but somehow her trip was “in preparation for Memorial Day.”

And, just as she offered that the troops in Iraq are “so great” without articulating how they are so, she says, “We’ve lost, what’s it – 4,075 – something like that now, every one of them precious to us.” This is immediately followed by an uneasy silence, seemingly struggling for words and incapable of expounding on just why they are so precious to us. Not a word of what they have done. They’re just dead. And I am just disgusted.

Unable to articulate, she breaks the pause by immediately reminding of the over 10,000 wounded. And, without pause, of course informs also that she has just been to the hospital and is in fact going right back yet again to the local VA hospital in San Francisco just as soon as her media brief at the Chronicle is over

Thai’s Take

She was going back to the hospital to visit with troops? Ugh!

Please … Madame Speaker… please don’t subject our troops to more punishment by having to be in the same room with you again!!

I can assure you that they will smile and comport with all the “niceities” that your position requires, but they would much rather being undergoing rectal surgery than having to spend time talking with you.

Does anyone remember when Valdimir Lenin coined a phrase when called the Soviet sympathizers who lived in the West,  “useful idiots”?

That is exactly how Nancy is acting vis-a-vis Iran! She is a puppet that lends significance and credence to terror-sponsoring nations (and therefore terrorists) around the world. It would merely be a sad story about some deranged American woman, if not for the fact that she is 3rd in line to be President!

I’ll leave you with a second quote from Steve’s article where he explains the “goodwill” of the Iranians and exposes Pelosi’s usefulness to their cause.

Perhaps it has not occurred to Speaker Pelosi that so profound is “the goodwill of the Iranians” that over 10% of the 4,075 dead American military men and women she speaks of were felled by the hands of the same. In fact, 18% of US combat deaths in the last quarter of 2006 came at the hands of the EFP, an Iranian “goodwill” gesture to their proxy Iraqi militias. If we’re going to have a discussion of casualties and “the goodwill of the Iranians,” Madame Speaker, let’s please do. But let’s first get the context properly framed.

Amen Steve !!

Japan is recognizing that with oil prices as high as $135 a barrel that suddenly, alternative forms of energy are now becoming more attractive options.

But after decades of seemingly terminal decline, Japan’s coal country is stirring again. With energy prices reaching record highs — oil settled above $135 a barrel on Thursday — Japan’s high-cost mines are suddenly competitive again, and demand for their coal is booming. Production has jumped to its highest in nearly four decades, creating a sensation rarely felt in these mining communities: hope.

“We are seeing a flicker of light after long darkness,” said Michio Sakurai, the mayor of Bibai, on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. “We never imagined coal would actually make a comeback.”

Soaring commodity prices have had distorting effects across the global economy, driving up food prices and prompting fears of future energy shortages. But they have been an unanticipated boon to the coal producing regions of countries like Japan that had written off coal mining as a relic of the Industrial Revolution.

This is basic economics. As a commodity goes up in price, seemingly expensive options suddenly become cost-effective to use.

Remember, we’ve also had the technological ability to turn coal into a synthetic oil so that it can be refined to use in our automobiles. When did we have this technology?  The 1920’s – when German scientists developed it!

So why haven’t we gone and done this? Well the plain answer is economics. In the 1920’s you could literally stick a pole in the ground and strike oil in many places around the world. Oil was therefore easier and cheaper to extract than the process of turning coal into oil.

Now that oil is so expensive, alternative methods of obtaining energy are being explored (along with drilling in places where it used to be “expensive” to drill).

Thai’s Take

Its a win-win (or lose-lose) depending upon where you stand.

We can mitigate the price of oil by building more refineries in the U.S. We haven’t built a new one in the last 30 years and the ones we have are already running at their peak. But for now, the high price of oil is allowing the oil companies to drill in areas that used to be too costly to develop. It is allowing us to look at a technology that is almost 90 years old (but never widely used). It is also allowing us to start looking at renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, hydro, etc…) and to develop these into viable solutions. However, it is driving up prices of everything and making people go crazy about bio-fuels (using corn, sugar, etc…) to make ethanol. All this does is drive up the price of food and makes it that much more difficult for poor and starving people to eat.

Make no mistake, someday we will need to get off the “oil-standard”, but that day ain’t coming anytime soon so we need to find ways of increasing our oil production to alleviate the price at the pump. This means allowing states to drill off their coastlines and allowing Alaska to drill in ANWR. It also means building more refineries and more nuclear power plants. We also need the price to come down so that the price of food will also come down ( the ”greens” pushing for biofuel have blood on their hands as far as I’m concerned). And in the meantime, the high price at the pump is making it so we can develop alternative means and renewable sources of energy.

So – try to lobby your Congressman or Senator to have them allow for more drilling and add more refineries and nuclear power plants. And in the meantime, realize that economics will ensure that while oil is high, it will begin to lose its prominence enough to allow some enterprising people to make enough breakthroughs to replace it. 

Barack was in San Francisco, speaking to donors, and was trying to tell them what he is trying to overcome and “fix” in order to win the election.

The result was a particularly odious, condescending, monologue exposing Barack as just another limousine liberal who looks down his nose at “Middle America”.

Barack said;

Obama Is Wrong

Lets review his statements;

 Remember – Obama Is Never Wrong – You Are

Barack first tried to deny that there was nothing wrong with what he said.

Especially Bill.

It seems he has been so used to the media covering up for him, that he doesn’t realize that we are in the YouTube Age where you can’t say anything you want to local media without it going national and global within a heartbeat.

Case in point is his recent whopper this week.

Bill Continues The Bosnia Sniper Lie

Yesterday, Bill was in Indiana stumping for his wife. He issued the usual lies and fabrications about his record, her record, their finances, etc…

But then he couldn’t stop himself from uttering the following;

“And, you know. I got tickled the other day. A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me. But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. Did y’all see all that? Oh, they blew it up.

“Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and General Wesley Clark — who was there making peace where we’d lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way — both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

“Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they’re 60 they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11 at night, too.

“But I say this because you need to know this. Hillary is not only on the armed Services Committee, but when she was in the White House, she asked to be our point person to make sure that Vietnam veterans exposed to the hazards of Agent Orange were taken care of….”

Thai’s Take?

[blink, blink, blink]

Huh?? Did he just try to spin something the whole world knows now to be false?

I wrote, back in March, how Hillary and Chelsea lied about dodging sniper fire. The lies were caught and exposed by the media (who seem to be fully in the tank for Obama as evidence by the fact that they didn’t cover this lie up).

Ben Smith at Politico has the following;

For those who forgot about the Tuzla rabbit hole, the speech where she got in trouble for “misspeaking” about arriving under sniper fire was in the morning, she told the story more than once, she didn’t acknowledge that she misspoke until more than a week after giving the speech  (and long after the comedian Sinbad had disputed her recollections of the Bosnia trip)

 Oh yeah…it seems that both Bill and Hillary forget that Pat Nixon visited Vietnam in 1969.

So other than that…they’re a veritable vat of veracity (alliteration aside)

- Thai

We’ve seen for months the “change” that Obama has promised to deliver.

Many have wanted to find out what exactly that change would entail.

Enter Michelle Obama (Barack’s wife) to help pull back part of the curtain that shields Obama and expose…

A socialist.

Michelle Obama Is a Baker?

Michelle Obama was speaking to a roundtable of women in North Carolina and again displayed a profound ignorance of capitalism.

The money quote from this article is here;

Most Americans, she said, don’t want much.“They don’t want the whole pie,” she told the women. “There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach.”If we don’t wake up as a nation with a new kind of leadership…for how we want this country to work, then we won’t get universal health care,” she said.

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

 I’m going to let that last part of the quote sink in before I go forward. 

Michelle Obama Is NOT An Economist

Michelle displays an ignorance of our capitalist system and compounds her error by exposing herself and her husband as socialists.  For starters, and forgive my baking analogy, there is not just one pie that is our economy.    There are many pies.   America is like a giant bakery with which people are free to create and market their own pies.   We are free to accumulate as many pies as we can as a result of our labor and our ingenuity.  What is most chilling to me is that she has basically admitted that the Universal Healthcare that they want to foist on the American Public will require them to forcibly take and redistribute wealth from those who produce to those who don’t.  Its bad enough they want to make our healthcare system worse, but now they are going to force us to pay for the decline as well?   UN…  REAL …   Michelle – keep your hands off my pie.   -Thai  

In fact, now that the situation on the ground doesn’t fit their “quagmire narrative” they devote barely any news about Iraq at all.

Of course, any news which will reflect badly on our brave troops is still front-page-above-the-fold news in our papers and on the nightly news it is still the lede.

It is sad that the liberals who run these organizations don’t take the time to balance their coverage and include stories of real heroism which permeates our military. Oh sure it comes in drips and drabs, but for the most part the reporting is obscenely one-sided.

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. And as far as I’m concerned, each member of our Armed Services is a hero.

However, even in the rare air of “Hero-dom”, there exist those particular individuals who go so above and beyond it makes us all stand in awe.

For those who are wondering what type of individual this might be…

I give you Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor (Navy SEAL).

A Hero Emerges

Michael Monsoor was deployed to Iraq in April 2006. He had been involved in dozens of firefights and had saved a teammate’s life (earning him a Silver Star). That alone would qualify Michael for entrance to the realm of those who go above and beyond.

But Michael was about to go even further. His last acts in Iraq give life to the creed that follows;

All Gave Some,

Some Gave All

On Sept 29, 2006 - Michael was deployed with his team in Ramadi. Their mission was to provide cover for the troops who were clearing out terrorists from the area. Small-arms fire was traded between the SEAL team and the terrorists. And while the sweep through Ramadi was proceeding, a terrorist scum-bag lobbed a grenade at his team’s position.

“Grenade!” Monsoor shouted. But the two snipers and another SEAL on the roof had no time to escape, as Monsoor was closest to the only exit. Monsoor dropped onto the grenade, smothering it with his body. It detonated, and Monsoor died about 30 minutes later from his wounds.

“He made an instantaneous decision to save our teammates. I immediately understood what happened, and tragically it made sense to me in keeping with the man I know, Mike Monsoor,” said Lt. Cmdr. Seth Stone, Monsoor’s platoon leader in Ramadi.

For his quick thinking and brave actions, on April 8, 2008, Michael will be posthumously awarded our nation’s highest military honor;

The Congressional Medal of Honor.

Since my post will not do Michael justice, I thought you might be interested in a video tribute to the man who gave his life for his buddies.

The video is here.

I am not ashamed to admit that this brings a bit of a “creeper” into my eyes when I watch it.

One of the comments brings my post into perfect clarity;

 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

 Where do such Giants such as Michael come from? I cannot say, but I can say that I am happy to know that we have them looking out for us.

God Bless You Michael And Those Like You!!

-Thai

**Thai’s Note** To its credit, the Washington Post did report this story. The New York Times, in between making up stories out of whole cloth or revealing our nation’s secrets, couldn’t be bothered to report about this particular national hero. I’d like to say I’m surprised by this but I’m not so I cannot.

You submit your resumé listing your accomplishments and your skillset. This is the document that the employer has to go on when deciding if you get an interview and… ultimately… the job.

What do you think would happen if the employer found out that you lied on your resumé ?

I know that I would not get an interview, let alone the job.

Which is why I’m curious as to why Hillary Clinton still has a snowball’s chance for the democrat nomination given her most recent “whopper” of a lie. I know, a Clinton lying is not really a big shocker. But bear with me and you will be amazed at the way this woman can lie without any discernible physical indication that she is dissembling. Psychiatrists call that a mark of someone who is a Sociopath. I’ll let you decide.

The lie in question surrounds her trip , as First Lady, to Bosnia in 1996.

Hillary Lies About Her “Experience”

Hillary was speaking to a group last week. The theme was “Ready to Bring Our Troops Home” and it was a desperate attempt to show that at least one of the democrats vying for President have any relevant experience for the job (none actually do).  It was also an insidious attempt to show that she knows what it is like to be under fire like our brave troops are now.

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to <chuckle> get in into our vehicles to, ah, get to our base”

Here’s the clip;

Hillary Lies

Notice the chuckle for effect to try to convince you that she was actually in any danger but she’s just shrugging it off like its no big deal now??

Her spokeswoman then tries to cover up the lie by saying;

“She meant that there was fire in the hillside around the area when we landed.” 

UN…

REAL…

Clinton Pilot Speaks Out

First of all, if her spokeswoman were correct. And there were hostilities going on in the hillside around the area they were intending to land… they wouldn’t have landed!

She and her staff, are impugning the record of Col. William “Goose” Changose, who piloted the aircraft. Had he actually tried to land under fire, with the First Lady on board, he would’ve been removed from command.

Of course, the honorable Changose recalls the trip quite differently;

“Yeah, so, no evasive maneuver. I gotta tell ya, I will give it to the commander of Air Base Eagle. He had that place – you know, not only were there no bullets flying around, there wasn’t a bumblebee flying around.“

Sinbad Slams Hillary’s Bosnia Lies

Sinbad has come out and slammed Hillary for her lies. Here’s a snippet from the article where he slams her;

..In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the “scariest” part of the trip was wondering where he’d eat next. “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’”

Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. “They said there might be sniper fire,” Clinton said.

Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn’t remember that, either.

“I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or ‘Oh, God, I hope I’m going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.’”

In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, “We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady.”

Say what? As Sinbad put it: “What kind of president would say, ‘Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife…oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you…’“

A Hat-Trick Of Liars In One Clinton Family

Not to be outdone by her mother, Chelsea also lies through her teeth.

A video of her is here;

Chelsea Lies

Looks like Bill isn’t the only Clinton who is a pathological liar.

Thai’s Take ?

I’m offended because my brother has actually been under fire. As a member of the Army National Guard, he has already served one tour of duty in Afghanistan and is slated to go back again at the end of the year (unless orders change). He has lost members of his company to enemy fire. He has left blood, sweat and tears on the battlefield. He has had a painful injury that took years of treatment and one surgery to solve. And yet he is still going back to finish the job, even though he will, again, be put directly in harm’s way.

For Hillary to try to transform her “reception line” experience in Bosnia to ANYTHING that my brother and his “brothers-and-sisters-in-arms” have had to go through is patently offensive to me and, in my opinion, anyone else that still holds to a certain “code” of conduct.

 You, are certainly free to draw your own conclusions.

- Thai

According to the story;

Last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation called the Emperors Club. The club charged up to $5,500 an hour for one if its prostitutes, who were rated on its Web site on a scale of one to seven diamonds.

According to a federal complaint, more than $1 million was laundered through the ring over four years.

Administration officials would not say whether this was the ring with which the governor allegedly become involved. The federal complaint mentions an Emperors Club suspect identified as “Client 9.”

Federal law enforcement sources confirmed that Spitzer was the Client 9 named in the complaint. Client 9 seems to have allegedly spent about $4,300 on the services of a prostitute identified only as Kristen. He paid for her to travel: “train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time and hotel.”

There have been calls already from some of his political opponents to resign and as of now there are conflicting reports on whether he just might.

Oh yeah, one other thing.

Notice I haven’t mentioned his political affiliation yet.

It is because ABC saw fit NOT to mention it either. I noticed on the screens of CNN that the “D” wasn’t included after his name either.

Important rule of thumb is that usually when this happens it is because the person is a Democrat.

Good call on this one because he is!

Hopefully he will do his state some good and resign from office before he becomes further marginalized and ineffective.

- Thai