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God Bless America
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Yes, Virginia, America WAS once FREE. 

Those of us born before the Second World War have fond memories of the halcyon days of America.  America stepped right from the Great Depression into a world war. In fact, the depression wasn't over at the time America entered the war.  After the war, after the world was "made safe for democracy," there were days of peace and prosperity for Americans. 

We are about just a few days away from celebrating America's birthday, the Fourth of July.  Once again, we will be celebrating a fraud. 

The movement to enslave America and make her citizens serfs to the state began on an April day in 1865 at a little place called Appomattox Court House, Virginia.  From that point on in our history Americans lost freedom after freedom, liberty after liberty through a process known as incrementalism. (A little bit at a time)   One hundred and forty-eight years later -- we are vassals of the state.

"Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free."  Those words were written by Jonathan Turley a Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.  They are from an article written by Professor Turley and published by the Washington Times on January 13th, 2012.

In the Article Professor Turley says: "Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?"  Source:  http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-01-13/opinions/35440628_1_individual-rights-indefinite-detention-citizens     

Professor Turley goes on to enumerate a few of the ways we Americans have lost so much of our liberty to the state such as: Assassination of U.S. citizens, Indefinite detention, Arbitrary justice, Warrantless searches, War crimes, Secret court, Immunity from judicial review, Continual monitoring of citizens, and Extraordinary renditions.  (Remember -- this article was written over a year before the most recent revelations of government overreach became public knowledge and congressional hearings began.   ...   Editor) 
Professor Turley points out: "An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will." SOURCE:  http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-01-13/opinions/35440628_1_individual-rights-indefinite-detention-citizens/3

"Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely," says Professor Turley.

We recommend you read Professor Turley's article in its entirety.  It is titled:  "10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free." You will find it at: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-01-13/opinions/35440628_1_individual-rights-indefinite-detention-citizens

I came across a video of the introduction of the great hymn "God Bless America" recently.  It is a clip from an old movie and it features that great American, Kate Smith, introducing and singing God Bless America for the very first time.  It brought a tear to my eyes as I watched and listened to a different time in this country. I also spotted an actor who would later become what many feel was the last REAL President of the United States.

Here is the link to that video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnQDW-NMaRs   

If you want to make your day, take a few minutes to watch and listen to that video.  Fair warning:  Get out the tissue and an extra handkerchief.

The patriotism portrayed in that clip was real.  We didn't wear our patriotism on our sleeves nor on our lapels -- we LIVED it!  It was alive in our hearts. We didn't mind if a tear trickled down our cheeks as we sang the National Anthem. It was the common honesty and integrity of men and women who loved their country to their core.

That was MY America -- and it is the America I miss sorely.

© J. D. Longstreet

Anne Frank House Muesum

Película en español "El Diario de Anne Frank" video


The Diary of a Young Girl (English version) video

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

A perfectly sensible and right decision by the SCOTUS... Even given the fairly obvious left bias throughout the article.

USA TODAY - WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court drew new limits on colleges' use of affirmative action Monday, saying that although racial preferences remain constitutional, they are permissible only if schools can first show that there are "no workable race-neutral alternatives."

The court's 7-1 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, suggests that public schools can use affirmative action only as a last resort for creating a diverse student body, and raises the prospect that colleges will face a tougher burden of justifying them in the future.

But the justices stopped short of issuing a broader decision either fully cementing or eliminating schools' ability to take account of an applicant's race.

Kennedy wrote that public universities could adopt affirmative action plans only if they can demonstrate that "no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the benefits of educational diversity."

The decision came in a closely watched challenge to the University of Texas at Austin's admissions policy that is based, in part, on applicants' race. But the justices declined to decide whether the university's program met that tough new standard.

Instead, they said that a lower federal court had acted too deferentially by, in essence, taking the university's word for the fact that such preferences were necessary. They instructed the lower court to hear the case again, and this time to require the university to prove that it had no other way to assemble a diverse student body.

"Strict scrutiny does not permit a court to accept a school's assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without a court giving close analysis to the evidence of how the process works in practice," Kennedy wrote. "The university must prove that the means chosen by the university to attain diversity are narrowly tailored to that goal."

Kennedy was joined by the court's conservative justice and two of its liberals, Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in the case.

Skip

The case hearkened back to 1950, when Heman Sweatt sued the university after being denied admission because he was black. As his attorney, Sweatt chose Thurgood Marshall, who would go on to become the high court's first black justice. He won the case, marking the first time the court had ordered a black student admitted to an all-white institution.

Since then, colleges and universities have become more integrated. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the court's 5-4 decision upholding the Michigan law school's limited use of affirmative action, O'Connor predicted, "The court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

That case wasn't a slam dunk for the civil rights movement. At the same time, the court ruled 6-3 against the undergraduate school's more numerical system of racial preferences. And O'Connor's decision upholding the law school's racial preferences included a dissent from Kennedy, now the swing vote on the court.

"Preferment by race, when resorted to by the state, can be the most divisive of all policies, containing within it the potential to destroy confidence in the Constitution and in the idea of equality," Kennedy said then.

Four years later, in a decision that barred voluntary integration programs in the Seattle and Louisville public schools, Chief Justice John Roberts issued one of his most oft-quoted lines: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Two members of the court were being watched closely in this case: Justice Thomas, the lone black justice, who has written that his Yale Law School degree was devalued by racial preferences; and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the lone Hispanic, whose recent book, My Beloved World, credits affirmative action for giving her access to Princeton and Yale.

In the end, the ruling was so narrow that both Thomas and Sotomayor signed on.

Kagan recused herself from the case, presumably because she was involved with it during her tenure as solicitor general at the Justice Department in 2009-10. {Read More}

Via: Memeorandum

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs-Tyranny


I am not a fan of Jimmy Carter, never have been. He was an inept president and he should, at least for the most part stick to what he does best. Humanitarian issues and his Habitat for Humanity.

Having said the foregoing I must acknowledge when the man is right he is right. His recent remarks on the on religion, most specifically the position of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and Islam with respect to for equality of women is, IMNHO, spot on. Of course there will continue to be those on the far right that will choose to take Carter's remarks out of context and twist them for political purposes. Fortunately there are more people who can think than there are those who can't.

TIME - Well, religion can be, and I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think. As you may or may not know, the Southern Baptist Convention back now about 13 years ago in Orlando, voted that women were inferior and had to be subservient to their husbands, and ordained that a woman could not be a deacon or a pastor or a chaplain or even a teacher in a classroom in some seminaries where men are in the classroom, boys are in the classroom. So my wife and I withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention primarily because of that.

But I now go to a more moderate church in Plains, a small church, it’s part of the Cooperative Baptist fellowship, and we have a male and a female pastor, and we have women and have men who are deacons. My wife happens to be one of the deacons.

So some of the Baptists are making progress, along with Methodists. For instance the other large church in Plains is a Methodist church, and they have a man for the last eight years and the next pastor they get will be a woman. They’ve had a woman pastor before, before the Baptists did. And of course the Episcopalians and other denominations that are Protestant do permit women or encourage women to be bishops, as you know, and pastors.

In the Islamic world that varies widely depending on what the regime is in the capital. Sometimes they try to impose very strict law, misquoting I think the major points of the Qur’an, and they ordain that a woman is inferior inherently. Ten year old girls can be forced to marry against their wishes, and that women can be treated as slaves in a marriage, and that a woman can’t drive an automobile, some countries don’t let women vote, like Saudi Arabia. {Read More}

Via: Memeorandum

Days after La Cucaracha business deposit in San Fernando was singled out as a Zeta hangout by Valor por Tamaulipas on Facebook, gunmen went to the business and killed the owner and a client, the owner's son was injured in the shooting.

Happy Monday to all! Anything exciting to report? We had rain, with a side of rain and large helping of humidity. Summer in St. Louis y'all.

So I blabbed long enough about this anniversary party I thought I should at least share a few pictures with you. My parents celebrated 50 years of marriage and in my book, 50 years of anything deserves a party. And party we did.


Now a (long) side note - I have had lists upon lists over the past few months to keep things organized for this shindig and we were on schedule. The hubs was on board and the weekend before the party he and I sat down and made a list of what we needed to get done each day that week to be ready for the party on Saturday. Teamwork is our middle name.

Then Monday night the hubs got sick. Tuesday morning I had to take him to the ER and by Tuesday night he had an emergency appendectomy. Which was kind of weird because I didn't remember 'surgery' anywhere on our to-do list.

Que increased stress level.

And to add to the fun, surgery was followed by an infection which kept him in the hospital until late Friday. Coupled with a mystery plumbing leak, a surprise tree removal and a daily increased threat of rain, my stress level runneth over.

I will save all of the gory details for cocktail hour, but needless to say by the time Saturday arrived I was just happy to have showered and brushed my hair. I didn't get as many pictures taken as I would have liked, and some are with my iPhone so they aren't the best quality but you'll get the idea. And we were lucky enough to have the talented Jeremy Keltner there during the party and he got some great shots as well.

Lesson learned. As my great-grandfather always said - don't bother worrying because you will always be worrying about the wrong thing.

So with all of that said, a great time was had by all and the party was a success. We did end up with a downpour shortly after the cake was cut but the fun just moved inside and we didn't skip a beat.

Now enough talk, let's look at some pictures.


Almost ready to go.


The welcome wreath that greeted everyone at the gate as they entered.


Would have been awesome if I had gotten a picture of these things filled out with the drink labels filled in but this will have to do.


I made the menu using the same monogram that appeared on the invitation and the cake.



Each table was decked out in ribbons in my mom's colors, blue, green and yellow, and pictures of the happy couple through the years. The frames were a DIY project I'll share at some point.




They were a pain to hang, but the lanterns were great. All the lanterns were battery operated and worked off of one universal remote which was heaven. Thanks Pier 1.



Inside was a table full of wedding pictures and albums.


And the yummy cake.


Which we cut just in time to move inside before the monsoon hit.


It was a late night but a great time.

Happy Anniversary mom and dad!

Have you thrown any parties lately? Any great outdoor celebrations on your calendar? Wanna come over for a drink? The house is clean.

Margaret "Margie" Moran, Domingo Garcia and Darryl Morin

I Want To Be Free!
Bring Back the Magna Carta!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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I have had it, up to the gills, with the federal government acting as some sort of over-protective parent or nanny. I just want to be let alone! In other words -- I want what the US Constitution is supposed to guarantee me. I want to be FREE!

Just leave me, the h**l, alone!

Pathetic, huh?  You bet it is.

The last thing you're gonna get in America today is --- let alone!   

Heck, we even fought a war over it and over 700,000 Americans lost their lives because a portion of the country asked -- and then insisted -- upon being let alone.

"We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms."  Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, Monday, April 29, 1861.

Well, we all know how THAT turned out. 

It should have been a tip-off as to the direction the US would be taking during and after the war.  And it WAS.

For those who have spent the time and devoted themselves to the study of that period of US history it is obvious that the southern states where suspicious that the US was moving toward a far stronger central government than they were comfortable with -- what with their Celtic ancestry.  But that's another story for another time.

I nearly wrote that "we'd made full circle" ... but we haven't ... not really.  In fact, ever since the American Civil War the United States government has grown ever stronger squeezing the personal freedom and liberty of all Americans into a smaller and smaller box.

Today we find ourselves without privacy, our lives laid bare before the prying eyes and
ears of the government -- in and out of our homes.  The Fourth Amendment to the constitution has been all but shredded.  American citizens are now approaching the conditions Englishmen were enduring as vassals to their king before the Magna Carta which was signed 798 years ago this month (on June 15th).

The Great Charter of the Liberties of England "was the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges."  SOURCE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta     

The Magna Carta is extremely important to Americans as England's legal system was used as a model for most of the American colonies in developing their own legal systems.

Back when our public school system, oft referred to today as the "government school system," taught REAL history, not the revisionist propaganda they teach today, every American schoolboy knew that the Magna Carta influenced the early settlers in New England and inspired later constitutional documents, including the United States Constitution.

Ask an American schoolboy today about the Magna Carta and you are likely to get remarks referencing a large bore hand gun or a powerful all terrain vehicle, uh, between the blank stares, that is.

Yes, Americans are cursed with repeating history.  This should explain why we so-called "senior citizens" sometimes appear so smart.  It's not that we are any smarter than anyone else.  It is simply that we are able to predict the future by knowing what Americans have, as a lot, not paid heed to in the past.  We recognize it -- and call it -- with a great deal of accuracy.  It's really quite easy. It just SEEMS like magic.

I have concluded it is going to take another Magna Carta moment pretty much as they experienced in England in 1215 to force, yes, I said FORCE, our government back within the prescribed parameters of the US Constitution.  Once they have tasted corrupt power, rogue governments rarely, if ever, voluntarily give that power up.  Americans can expect a fight to the bitter end in any contest to reclaim their freedom and liberty from our "progressive overlords."

Frankly, I believe America needs a Great Reformer in the mold of Brother Marin Luther,
who (in my opinion) saved the Christian church from the rot at its core, to (metaphorically) nail the constitution to the door of the US Supreme Court, the doors of the US Senate, the House of Representatives, and the front door of the White House. 

You may recall that Luther lived his life afterwards under a death threat.  But he never recanted. NEVER.

It will take a leader with the character, the strength, the determination, the belief that he is right, and the fearlessness of an archangel, and, most importantly -- a reluctance to place himself above other men, to spearhead a successful movement to reclaim the constitutional rights of Americans.

The freedom movement in America is nearing a critical mass.  The government knows it and has been preparing for the coming American apocalypse for some time now.   They know it will be a cataclysmic event. 

Yet one thing is lacking -- that leader we described above for America's freedom movement.  When he appears on the scene -- and he will -- the curtain will go up.
Neither side is assured of victory.  We can only pray God that freedom wins out.

© J. D. Longstreet 

D.J. Arnulfo Aguilar Vásquez sends out message to fans about his Sonido Condor truck at link: http://is.gd/oQuTlV


Sonido Condor released the following list of items stolen in Commerce, CA along with truck, total worth in the thousands of dollars.

Embracing great weather lately and one of those days I opted for a pair of sporty leatherette shorts, printed oversized shirt and electric blue accessories. Instead of flats shoes I chose these nude Zara sandals that I think will be my go-to pair of the season.
Sporty chic anyone?



                                                                             Top: Costa Blanca thanks to Lulu's/ Here
                                                                             Shorts:  thanks to Jovanista/ Here 
                                                              Sandals: Zara/ option Here
                                                                             Bag: Cynthia Rowley/ great option Here 
                                                                             Sunglasses: thanks to zeroUV/ Here
                                                                             Shield cuff bracelet: thanks to Cooee/ Here

Raul Villarreal and Fidel Villarreal

Edward J. Snowden