Dakota Beacon

Folks, the mask is off and this government and its pillars – Harry Reid and Barack Obama – are revealed as the monsters they really are.  For the past week we’ve heard just about every depraved act of a Saturday melodrama matinee.   The Democrats, led by Harry Reid in the Senate, and Obama, lurking in the shadows, have sought to attack the most vulnerable of our citizens in a heinous act of vitriolic retaliation for the effrontery of our Congress doing its job – the job it was elected to do, the job it was given by our founding fathers in our Constitutition. 

Last week Congress sent to the Senate a bill funding time-sensitive, urgent, research at the National Institute of Health, hoping to benefit some 200 or so very sick children dying of cancer and other terminal diseases.  Obviously, these young Americans would not have been in this program if any other treatment were saving their lives.  This was their only hope.  If you want to be less “personal” or “emotional” about this heart-rending situation, think of it this way.  If these trials proved successful, many thousands of children, perhaps their mothers and fathers, might benefit and survive this cruel disease.  Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world would benefit as well as the children who, today, see this as their last hope for life.  But His Vindictiveness, Harry Reid, would not let the Senate vote on this bill.  By the way, it also provided for WIC funding for nutrition for  indigent women, infants and children.  Still, no sale with Reid, who in one of his most fiendish retorts, is quoted:  “Why would we want to do that?”

Over the weekend, it was learned, the funding was stopped for the Amber Alert program.  This is a networking system for state law enforcement to report and share information on missing children under age 17.  This is not a labor-intensive or particularly high-tech program.  It’s not expensive.  It is a program designed to protect helpless and endangered children.  So that program was targeted for a shutdown.  Apparently this move looked so over-the-top to those OUTSIDE the famous unprincipled and degenerate Beltway that the Justice Department covered their behinds with the public by re-instituting funding.  We’ll never know whether the Senate Democrats and Harry Reid were disappointed that no child died as a result of the brief suspension.  No Conservative  would have interrupted this.

So here we have a couple of clear examples of how our President and our Senate leadership feel about our kids.  And therefore, arguably, our future.  What about our past?

Perhaps not since the Revolution have we had a more storied history that the victory in World War II.  How many Americans were not affected by that global conflict?  I don’t think you’d need both hands to count them.  We all have someone, a father, grandfather, grandmother, perhaps, uncle, brother, who served our military or sacrificed for that war.  We have seen hundreds of movies about the people who went to battle.  Just last week I watched The Great Escape again.  So what happened last week? 

The “government” closed our national monuments. They barricaded the access to these public places, places where we see visible tribute to the sacrifices made by our fallen soldiers.  Many of these were erected with private contributions.  Nearly all of them are out in the open.   Regularly civic-minded people arrange, with private donations, to ferry veterans to Washington to actually see for themselves the evidence of our veneration and gratitude and to tell them we remember them.  Well, last week, these monuments were “shut down”.  Now, how do you do that when you aren’t responsible for keeping them open in the first place?  Most of them are too large to throw a tarpaulin over them, but our public servants did the next best thing.  They simply blocked access  to 80- and 90-something year-old veterans of World War II.  In response to the Republican Congress’s determination to address our extreme budget crisis, they added personnel to ensure that aged veterans would come to Washington only to be denied taking a last look at the monuments raised to their service and sacrifice. 

We’ve seen nonagenarian and octogenarian WWII veterans on perhaps their last mission – honor flights organized by private citizens and funded with private donations – stopped and prevented from viewing the monuments to their glory in protecting the very people manning those barricades.  The Iwo Jima monument, the very symbol of American valor and courage, was roped off and barricaded with sawhorses.  To their credit, about 200 of these stalwart veterans, wheelchairs, walkers and all, crossed that barrier and stood with the statue of their former comrades-in-arms.  All of America outside the Beltway cheered.  Any other outcome would have been unseemly – the very men who were a part of raising the flag in the heat of battle in the South Pacific prevented by some sawhorses and sandbags from approaching the monument to their act of valor.  That would have been a sorry statement.  Somehow, though, keeping our public grounds open for illegals is not a problem.  Permission WAS granted to illegals demonstrating to demand amnesty.  Precursor of things to come under growing government control – Obamacare, for instance? 

Then, for good measure, the government prohibited Catholic priests in the military from celebrating Mass.  This included volunteer service.  Somehow, they attribute this to the Republican Congress trying to stop the hemorrhaging of government spending: “Give up now or we’ll violate your people’s right to communion.”   This could have come from the script for a movie about the Mafia.  In fact, of course, we all recognize this as just one more attack on our First Amendment and another attempt to stifle religious practice.  I doubt that this ban extended to Islamic services – at least if so, we haven’t heard about it.

Now, today, comes the story of our fallen soldiers in the CURRENT war.  Their families are being denied death benefits.  Their remains are being warehoused until, presumably, the Republicans capitulate and allow Democrats to run the country without their input – our ours.  This is a true hostage-taking.  It is incredible that this could be happening in a “civilized” nation in the 21^st Century. 

We have seen the effects of government control.  A government “shutdown” would mean little or nothing to the man on the street or in his fields if it were not for the control that government exercises over our everyday lives.  If our state highway departments refused federal dollars, if our schools just said “no” to federal funding, if our law enforcement agencies worked together as independent partners without federal involvement we could go on with our lives, our businesses and enjoy our freedom whether or not Washington D.C. is on board with us or not.

The concept of our healthcare in the hands of people who would shut down Amber Alert or stop life-saving efforts at the NIH should be chilling for us all.  If our government is willing to arrest our grandfathers and great-grandfathers or prevent them from seeing their monuments and blighting their last “hurrah”, out of mere spite, would you want to be on the waiting list for treatment for a serious illness?  Would you want to be on that gurney in the hall – waiting for approval for your appendectomy or treatment of life-threatening injuries?  Really?  Does this display of brute force on the part of our federal government during the “shutdown” or “slowdown” want to make you hop on the bandwagon for Obamacare?

If this last week alone were not enough, let us hope it has not been enough to obliterate our memories of the NSA scandals and the perversion of the IRS as a tool to bring us down – as the Japanese say, the nail that sticks up gets pounded down.  The IRS has been revealed as nothing more than the auto de fe of our time.  Obama is our Torquemada.  Would you want to think how your case will be handled by the federal medical “providers” if your political views are not in line with approved opinion?  Unless you are an illegal alien you will need to find another way to the front of the line for treatment.  And, just in case you’ve forgotten, the IRS will be in charge of your health care decisions under Obamacare.  As we all know, a lot of caring and compassion there.

We won’t go into the many other flaws and bitter outcomes that would eventuate if Obamacare is implemented.  There are plenty – many sour results for our economy and for the medical profession and its research.  For now, just look at the evil behind the mask of the Godfather government.  These people do not believe in “compromise”, but more importantly, they view you and your God-given rights as expendable.  If we support Obamacare or those who would capitulate to its implementation (even on a “temporary” basis), we will allow the federal government to put crutches under us.  And we have seen in the past week, that this government has no qualms about kicking those crutches out from under us whenever they so choose. 

This has been a test of America’s mettle.  Do we still have the stuff to be free?  The calls that come into our Congressional offices are the barometer.  If we keep the pressure up to hold up funding for Obamacare we can re-assert our independence and our self-reliance.  This government has tried with all its might to bring us to our knees.  If we don’t want to stand up to them that is where we will be forever.

Call your Congressman today.  The number is 202-224-3121. Tell him we are not Chicken Little.  We are not going to panic because our parks are closed.  There are higher stakes here.  We have our eye on the ball and that ball is our national debt and the irrational deviation from common sense that is Obamacare.  Tell them we’ll have none of it.