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The Immortal Itinerants (Peredvizhniki) - Part I

By the end of the first half of the 19th Century, Russian intellectuals supported the need for reform in Russia. Russia had entered the age of capital development. Influenced by the liberal ideas of Chernyshevsky and Belinski, the Itinerant movement established the first Free Society of Artists in Russia. The founding of the Itinerant's movement was a measure calculated to express the need for rejection of the social order in Tsarist Russia. The objectives of the Itinerants were:

- the enlightenment of the people by affording them the opportunity to learn about the new Russian art;

- the aesthetic objective of forming a new artistic sense and taste;

- the economic objective of attracting new buyers in order to have a market for the new art.

Itinerants (Peredvizhniki) List: I.Shishkin, N.Ghe (Gay), V.Perov, I.Kramskoi, I.Repin, V.Surikov, G.Myasoedov, Kamenev, A.Savrasov, Amosov, Ammon, M.P.Klodt, M.K.Klodt, Pryanishnikov, A. Bogolyubov, Gun (Huns), V.Makovskiy, N.Makovskiy, K.Makovskiy, V.Maksimov, K.Bryullov, K.Savitskiy, A.Kuindji, Bronnikov, V.Vasnetsov, A.Vasnetsov, Litovchenko, Lemokh, V.Polenov, Volkov, Leman, Nevrev, Kharlamov, Kuznetsov, Bodarevskiy, N.Dubovskoy, Svetoslavskiy, N.Shil'der, Arkhipov, I.Levitan, I.Ostrouhov, Zagorskiy, Lebedev, Stepanov, Pozen, Kasatkin, Miloradovich, Shanks, V.Serov, Bogdanov-Bel'skiy, I.Bogdanov, A.Korin, Endogurov, Nesterov, Baksheev, Orlov, Kostandi.

With the onset of the itinerant movement, new terms to describe Russian art began to be heard. Phrases such as "enlightening," "aesthetic objective," "economic objective," "new," "fresh," "for the first time" were heard all over the country. This was the first time in the history of the Russian world of art that the subject matter was rich and expansive. The method used by these artists was to conduct traveling art exhibits in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other large cities throughout Russia. This set the Itinerants on a collision course with the forces of the Academy and set the stage for an entirely new type of art. Russian art has never looked back. Everyone in Russia became involved in the conflict. Critics, artists, academics, newspapers, politicians, and even the common people could not let the matter rest. Exhibition halls became battlegrounds between the new and the old. Today it is difficult to understand that the emotion of the times and the results of the movement clearly shook the forces of empire to their very depths.

The itinerant artists themselves were from all walks of life and age. Some were peasants, and some were of the nobility, but all were united in a single goal. That goal was to depict life in Russia as it really was. The difference between this path and Classicism and Romanticism was that for the first time painting was focused on present day reality. The artist's hand was freed from the restrictions of lofty ideals. Painting reflected events and the contradictions of Russian society. The lives of common Russian people including their struggles against oppression were revealed through art. The love of the Russian people for their country and its nature was deified, and for the first time, paintings were free of social prejudice. One must be aware that all the while Russia, unlike other Western European countries, was a land where the political freedom to express oneself was strictly prohibited. Free expression was prohibited almost to the point of non-understanding in this country. It was only in the field of the arts (painting, literature, music, theater, etc.) that there was any possibility self expression. This led the Itinerants to feel as if they were given a special responsibility to effect change. The artists willingly took on this mission as a sacred duty. The great Ilya Repin wrote that artists come from the people and that the people expect art that reflects a clear understanding of conditions and nature.

This generation of Itinerants tried to analyze and determine what art was and what role it played in social life. The great Russian art critic Vladimir Stasov defined this aspiration as follows: "The artists striving to unite to setup their own society were not doing it for the purpose of creating beautiful paintings and statues for the sole purpose of earning money. They were striving to create something for the minds and feelings of the people." This is why arguments that arose at the exhibition halls were concerned with far more than pure artistic arguments. The artists themselves were of varying talent, and different painting genres, but as members of the Society became "Universal Artists," who worked in different forms of art. For example, the most talented of the Itinerants (Repin, shishkin, and others) worked in both painting and drawing. As a result of their efforts, easel drawing stopped being merely preparatory work for future paintings and developed into an independent form of art.

Other examples of multi-talented artists include artists such as Vasiliy Polenov and Victor Vasnetsov. These two Itinerants worked, not only as easel painters, but each also devoted a great deal of time in reviving theater scenery painting thus laying the foundation for the tradition of Russian theater decor that reached its peak at the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. This effort was done in conjunction with artists of another artistic society, the World of Art. Vasnetsov, among others, also created many mural paintings for churches. Being universal artists, many Itinerants worked successfully in other genres. Ivan Kramskoi, Nikolai Ghe, Ilya Repin, and Vasiliy Surikov were fine portraitists and history theme painters. Polenov was an historical painter as well as a landscapist. Nikolai Yaroshenko worked in portrait, landscape, and genre painting. In spite of multi-talented artists that worked in many genres, one must not forget, subjects and heroes, the images of Russian nature and human destiny always remained the main themes of their creativity. While working on these motifs each artist revealed his own understanding of the fundamental problems of human existence.

In order to comprehend the work of the Itinerants more fully, one must examine some of the new tendencies brought by the Itinerants to Russian art. Genre painting was the primary method of bringing realism to Russian art though it was not new for Russian art in the whole. The range of themes represented here was extremely wide, embracing studio works depicting everyday life in the city and peasant life in the country. In some instances huge paintings were created in order to accomplish these goals.

Before serfdom was abolished by the reform act of 1861, peasants had belonged to a landlord. The liberation of the serfs entailed many new problems in society. The serfs were freed but were not given the right to own land. Therefore, they had no means of support. Many serfs fled to the cities and into the arms of a miserable existence. They were no longer peasants but they did not find acceptance in the cities. They were no longer able to always maintain the ties that had previously bound them to their families. The villages they left behind had also changed. Customary ways of making a living were changed forever, and again family relations were affected. The peasantry became very heterogeneous and in some cases were able to engage in cottage industry that changed their relationship with the local nobility. A classic painting by Maximov, The Division of the Family Property is a sterling example of this change in Russian lifestyles.
Vladimir Makovskiy, a very prolific artist dedicated his creative works to a reflection of urban life. His paintings The Date and On the Boulevard are perhaps his two best works. By depicting ordinary life he managed to reflect the deepest tragedies of contemporary society. The poverty of the most vulnerable members of society children and their miserable existence, mothers being doomed to the worst, the estrangement of sons totally exhausted by backbreaking labor were clearly recognizable in these two paintings.The Date is particularly remarkable. When viewing the painting, you can sense the same strain and emotional disconnect that you find in On the Boulevard. At first glance nothing seems askance in either painting. You sense nothing amiss due to the lack of action or covert tension. You see two people sitting on a bench - one of them a young woman with a child, newly arrived from the village to visit her husband. Her husband sitting beside her has become a foreigner to his family and apparently has been so for sometime. The more you look the more you see of a tragedy slowly unfolding before your very eyes. The viewer becomes aware of the contrast between the interplay of the people and the surrounding beauty of an August day on an old Moscow street, oblivious to the tragedy between the husband and wife.

The oldest artist among the itinerants was Vasiliy Perov. His creativity played a special role in the establishment of Russian realism. In his painting Religious Procession on Easter that belongs to his early period, we can find a critical tendency, a typical feature of early realism. He criticizes priests that are to bring the faith to the people but actually do not deserve to be the Lord's pupils. Following a period of creativity, Perov tried to avoid a rude unmasking of people's sins and defects. He starts telling a sad story of contemporary reality. Seeing -off the Deceased is a story in art in which we can see the image of a peasant woman free from idealization. Her fate gains the sympathy and compassion of the viewer. The landscape in an artist's paintings starts playing a specific role in setting the mood of the whole painting. In the 1870s, Perov changed from sad and tragic subjects. He started depicting common people happy with their simple human joy and hobbies. He depicted fishermen, hunters on the holt, and bemused duck hunters.

The creative heritage of Ilya Repin plays a special role in genre painting and in Russian art as a whole. He is considered to be the most talented and famous Russian painter. His interests in painting were pointed mainly to contemporary subjects. He was interested in all aspects of Russian reality, but his talent was more fully revealed in genre and portrait painting. His works can be considered as an encyclopedia of Russian life with its heroes and events. His first famous painting, Barge Haulers on the Volga, painted while he was a student of the Academy of Fine Arts, showed his talent and characteristic manner of work. Unlike the artists who had treated this subject before, Repin was much more interested in the participants of the scene. He wanted the viewers to see their fates and personalities more than the hard labor they were forced to perform. He was the first in the history of art who tried to peer into people's faces to understand who they were. For the first time a common Russian man was depicted as a hero of artistic work. He didn't idealize his heroes but tried to demonstrate their personality. For the first time people could see a group portrait of miserable and humiliated Russian people.

Such an artist's aspiration to concentrate attention on the psychology of the bargemen was always Repin's characteristic feature. Another illustration of this was his painting Religious Procession in Kursk Province. This painting is very typical of Repin and is remarkable for its characteristic details of that time. Being a talented artist he had a wonderfully keen feeling of the main idea that needed to be expressed. One of the features of art of the 1870-80s was the tendency to create big monumental works whereby a person viewing the one life depicted on the canvas could analyze present day reality and see the whole historical epoch of the Russian people. This technique illustrated that genre painting proved to be as powerful and as important as historical painting. Genre paintings illustrated the life of the Russian province, in both events and in human portraits. The action in Religious Procession in Kursk Province takes place in a province famous for its dense forests, but in the picture we can see only stumps left after the trees had been cut down. Modern man's activity resulted in the destruction of nature. We see crowds of people marching along the dusty road.

The composition was arranged in such a way that we almost feel the crowd moving forward, about to crush the spectator. Real religious faith can be read on the faces of heroes depicted on the left of the canvas and especially in the face of the hunchback on the foreground. Note that he is pushed aside by the policeman riding a horse because this poor cripple might disturb rich people proceeding along the road. (Didn't Christ say we are all equal before him?) The painting shows us two extremes: superficial, cold, hypocritical religious feelings on the right half and true believers in God in the left half of the painting. These people are rejected by this insincere society on the left part of the painting. By paying such attention to the individuality of a person, Repin displays the great variety of types and characters of his heroes. In the foreground we see a rich merchant woman avidly holding a icon. She is drawn into arrogance, clearly breaking a main tenet of Christianity. We can spend hours examining the painting whereby the motley crowd is represented as an integral part of the Russian people.

Painting present day reality, Repin managed to reveal a new social phenomena by using new participants. He was an artist forever seeking new subjects, themes, images and means of expression. Many times in his paintings he addressed new social and political moods and, of course, revolutionary events. The policy of terror carried out by several revolutionary organizations entailed cruel murders of some prominent politicians and the assassination of Emperor Alexander II in 1881. This consequently resulted in extremely strict and bloody responses by the Government. As the country became more and more submerged in the blood of innocent victims, the attitude towards revolutionaries gradually changed in the society. Art in this matter absorbed and reflected all topical ideas. Initially revolutionary activity was often compared with the excruciating life and death of the saints of the Gospel who sacrificed their lives for faith. Repin was affected by these ideas, and he painted his Refusal to Confess which glorified fanatical ideas of the day.

Afterwards he conceived the idea of another work They did not expect him, a story about the return of an exiled convict. The interesting thing is that originally Repin planned for a woman to be the main actor in the painting, as women were fighting for these new ideas next to men. Later the artist gave up this idea having considered that it would add some sentimental aspect to the painting. Besides, he realized that the question of the main hero was not so relevant compared to the subject itself. Terrorists were ready to die for the sake of the idea and for the sake of their loved ones. Did these loved ones want such a sacrifice to be made? How did relatives meet these returning anarchists after being separated for decades? Repin's contemporaries usually associated this painting with the parable of the return of the prodigal son. None of the artists expressed an opinion, thus making the viewer decide the destiny of the hero.

Bloody events of reality had not always been reflected directly in genre painting. The background of Repin's Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan was an expression of the artist's feeling of the atmosphere and smell of spilled blood in the room where Ivan the Terrible is holding the head of his son. A son he had just struck in the head with a stave and murdered in a fit of temper. Another painting Nicholas from Mirl, calls for love and forgiveness and shows us how the main hero, Saint Nikolai, intervenes at an execution and saves the lives of people sentenced to death.

Continue in Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi6javLIDqg&hl=en

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Northern Lights (Golden Compass Deleted Ending Restored)

[TURN THE SUBTITLE BOXES OFF BY CLICKING THE BUTTON WITH THE TRIANGLE IN, NEXT TO THE VOLUME CONTROL] After 12000 saw my earlier version, here is my improved offering. This video has been designed to give an idea of what the true ending to 'The Golden Compass'/'Northern Lights' looks like. Also this being a video of the end of a story, major spoilers are ahead. Do not watch if you've not seen the film or read the book. This video begins where the film ends. It wraps the whole film up, it explains the intro to the film, Dust, and finishes the first book. The Golden Compass originally ended this way, but test audiences found the ending difficult to swallow. New Line decided to take it out at the last minute. The removal of the ending, mixed with New Line determind to keep the film less than two hours means that at times the theatrical version is just not what it should be. Endless scenes that were filmed, were cut (mainly any that involved character development). To add insult to injury the whole order of events were changed to suit the new 'happy ending'. This is how the film was supposed to end, and I have to say good ridance to New Line for managing to waste a great opptunity to make one of the most defining movies of our time. Internationally the film was a huge success, but it's now looking unlikely that we'll ever see the sequels due to poor takings in America. Hope still remains that we'll recieve a directors cut. However it's looking like that's going to be down to ...

Help Meet, Status Symbol, Or Both?

Image : http://www.flickr.com

When Adam was put to sleep, in order to switch off his senses, as in anesthesia, and to have solely his pre-operative mind-potential remain awake, he received his help meet from his bone (law). Later, he was given entitlement and mission to 'name' all other life forms.

Why the help meet?

For man should not be alone.

If Adam had been alone (all one), he would still be unconscious Adam, the automatically perfect appendix of God, naked, without awareness of what else he could be.

How did he give names (natures) to other life forms? He gave them their natures by imagining them and declaring them to be so, upon their 'discovery'.

Why did God want him to do such thing?

Because the entire upward gesture by man to first reach God (Old, carnal Testament), and then be as God (NT) begins with imagination of who, or what God is by those, other than Adam, who do not know their God.

How did the help meet come about?

By Adam 'making Jacob', or imagining her as something that IS REAL with which to play. She was made according to his mind-play, and according to the law, or material condition of earthly matter, as opposed to conditions in paradise. Her origin was the reason for her to respond to the serpent, while Adam knew God Himself.

When earthly Adam awakens, humanity will have acquired the conscious state of God, and be back in paradise. Paul calls Jesus The Christ the LAST ADAM. He is Adam WITH full awareness of God, thus clothed with light.

Why are there other life forms, rather than just man exclusively?

Man had to be given bread-crumbs to find his way home; the symbolisms in all other areas of life, spearheaded by the scriptures, which alone are sufficient to map out every perfectly synchronized step we are to take, if understood.

Why do we not understand the scriptures at this point?

We have been veiled in Apostasy, so the Mystery can unfold like a lightening in the end-times. The veil was torn upon the symbolic death of a perfect human and will now be removed.

Also, as long as we do not study the scriptures daily, speaking to the only God WITHIN, and still try to become wise in any other place, we will be foolish to God. He quickly takes away the little understanding (talent) we may gather from other sources and turns us into yo-yos, backsliders, or scoffers.

In Hebrew interpretation of scripture (and we are all potential Jews, who will KNOW "I AM" is inside), humans are to speak from God daily "I AM wonderful". If that is replaced with "I AM dumb", that human does not know our God; (s)he is, like Satan, IN VAIN.

Spiritual knowingness is like a perfect, perpetual train; slow to be accelerated, but unstoppable at momentum. "I AM" (is) the light of the world realizing perfection through human existence.

There is hot, or cold, for, or against God. Hot removes all mountains and restores the smooth and easy condition of the Jerusalem temple (peace of mind), while cold drops the potential penthouse back into debased behavior, or quicksand, having to put Jacob's ladder in place, once more.

Remember, in His exactitude, Jesus The Christ gave us the remedy?

"Follow ME."

How can we follow Him?

Do we wear cloak and sandals and walk through the geographic area of cultural 'Israel', expecting to be well-fed? Do we write hate-letters to our family members? Do we forget that beautiful things exist in our now-into-all-eternity-Spartan existence? Do we tell the ones who do see circumstances on earth as edged in stone "Satan"? Are we going to be stoned to death with rocks in the size of melons as martyrs under persecution?

Not exactly.

When we begin to follow THE TEACHINGS of Jesus The Christ relating to ABUNDANCE & FREEDOM, we lift off from earth.

The 'LAW' no longer applies. Cause & effect leave our realm. We override human instated 'laws'. The stones of 'REASON' will no longer be visible to us, neither hit us right in the stomach.

Yes, we are not only above so-called human 'law', but also OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER.

The God, Lord & Savior, the "I AM", as in "I AM free", "I AM beautiful", "I AM rich" will not only lift us up, but each time we have another 'A-HA' moment, we sink a lower form of humanness in a thousand ways, and lift up the neighbors along with us.

The total state of human consciousness can only be as high as the least of us. However, in making Jesus, we raise them up with us.

Even more importantly, as our STATUS SYMBOL, or openly discernable state of mind, we will increasingly be enabled to imagine never-here-before life forms, and give them their name, just as in animated movies.

When we do "AS GODS" the remainder of the world speedily realizes that this is the prize of which Paul brought us knowledge.

So, I ask you, would you rather keep watching some one else's cartoon, or make your own IN REAL LIFE?

Note, however, ONLY ONE can win the race.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Pandemonium - Book Review

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Within the first few pages, I was engrossed and deeply moved by Apina Hrbek's eloquent writing skills. Tears of compassion were in my eyes at several points in this moving story of survival.

The main character, Edita, was raised by a heartless mother who became twisted after helplessly watching the communist government steal her family's vast fortune. Her nonconformist father was her only source of comfort and it was from him that she learned about these forbidden things called "choice" and "freedom".

The setting is a land under strict Soviet rule where people are in a constant state of fright and can not afford to trust anyone - not even their own kin. To trust was an invitation for disaster.

The story of their escape to a land of freedom was wrought with circumstances going wrong - and yet it all worked out in the end. Resettling in a place where they must learn new customs, new languages and find employment to support their small family was no easy task for Edita and her husband. Through poverty and displacement, the family struggled to find their dreams and learn how to deal with this new idea - the freedom to make choices.

Pandemonium is certainly an educational book that may be beneficial for children and grand children of immigrants who wish to understand what it was like. It also could serve as a useful reminder to appreciate, protect and expand upon the rights of all mankind.

Publisher: Publish America, Inc.
ISBN#: 1413756670
Author: Apina Hrbek

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Our Sons and Daughters Need Rites of Passage

Image : http://www.flickr.com

A rite of passage is an event that marks the passing from one stage or phase to another. This is a universal phenomenon, although it has fallen out of favor in our western society. This is truly a shame because this can be a time of major significance in the lives of our children We still do some things in our society like high school graduation and college graduation. There are some religious ceremonies that mark rites of passage such as the Jewish bar Mitzvah and the Catholic Communion. The Native American vision quest is also a rite of passage.

Oh, we may celebrate the high school graduation a bit, but is there a family tradition that is passed on as well? How do we celebrate the child's passing into puberty in our society? Unless it is a religious ceremony, then it just doesn't happen. But we parents are really missing a tremendous opportunity for celebration and tradition with our kids when we do nothing to celebrate these rites of passage.

I would honestly go so far as to say that the increase in teen sex and experimentation with alcohol and drugs at ever-increasing younger ages is due, in part, to our lack of rites of passage for our children. It is also due to our lack of instruction given to our sons and daughters on what it means to be a man or woman. We have abandoned our children and left the school and peers and media to pick up the slack. Our western culture has blown it. I believe that this is a tragedy of epic proportions. Parents, we need to work to get this back into the lives of our children. The impact on the lives of our children that these rites can have is enormous!

As mentioned earlier, a rite of passage is an event that marks (in ceremony) the passing from one stage to another. As a culture, we mark these rites with graduations and little else. Let me rephrase that. We allow the school system (and sometimes our religious institutions) to mark these rites of passage for OUR children. Or we allow gangs and other peer groups to supply the ceremony (initiation). What a shame!

Most cultures have instituted these rites of passage for their male population in the form of a ceremony marking the passage from boyhood to manhood. Regrettably, most cultures have done very little for the female to mark her transition to womanhood. In our western culture, how do we mark this passage? Do we have something in place that helps our sons and daughters transition from childhood to puberty and then from adolescence to adulthood? There is sadly nothing but perhaps a simple graduation ceremony from elementary or middle school and high school. How sad this is, indeed. It is a stinging indictment of our culture that we leave this to the schools. Or worse, to peer groups in the form of gangs! And the media? The media seems content to indoctrinate our youth with ever increasing sexual content and loose morals, if any morals at all. Rites of passage in our entertainment industry seem to be marked most often in the form of sexual conquest or initiation into alcohol and drugs. How sad!

As parents, we have a solemn duty to set a strong example for our children. While our children will always watch and learn from our example, as they approach puberty, it becomes our task to begin some intense instruction into what it means to be a man or a woman. This instruction will continue until it is time for them to officially enter manhood or womanhood. These transitions from example to instruction (puberty) to full-fledged manhood and womanhood (end of high school or, better yet, college) should be marked with ceremony.

Ceremony gives these passages meaning and value. Without the ceremony or something to mark this transition, the result is just a void. It is just something that we all go through on our way to adulthood. Why wouldn't we institute a ceremony to mark these transitions beyond what our schools do? And why wouldn't we establish some fundamental instruction to guide our sons and daughters through these times and onto the next phase of development?

These transitions (and the ceremonies that mark them) present us, as parents, with a tremendous opportunity to lift up our future leaders and grant them knowledge and wisdom in the process. We can choose to send them into the battlefield of life armed and confident, or we can continue to do nothing and hope that they will pick up that knowledge, wisdom and confidence somewhere along the way.

Three Thriller Books Now on Audio That Will Have You on the Edge of Your Seats

The Overton Window by Glen Back and read by James Daniels, will give you 8 hours of enthralling listening. Everything points to this being a ripper of a book. A Fun entertaining intelligent author with a wry sense of humor who hopes his little book " costs you as much sleep listening to it, as it cost him, creating it " Love it!

This is nothing less than Americas future at stake in a massive government led conspiracy that will change American lives forever. A ripping thriller yarn that gives us deeper things to think about, for example the way mass media is used to control our lives and manipulate out understandings. One listener is so enthusiastic, he says he is sending everyone he knows a copy of the book! You will enjoy this one, and in case you still have doubts, the author Glen Back has written five back to back New York Times best sellers. Hard to beat that as a track record.

The Passage is by author Justin Cronin, and read by Scott Brick. A full 36 thirty six hours of listening to follow this epic journey. A contemporary life odyssey propelled initially by a military experiment gone wrong, that divides the people of a devastated land into two primal groups, the hunters and the hunted.

This is a powerful novel that receives high praise from one of the foremost story tellers of our time, Stephen King no less, and I quote just a little from the master " read fifteen pages and you will be captivated: read thirty and you will be taken prisoner... read this book and the ordinary world disappears "

Nothing more needs to be said after words like that, except I should add, its also beautifully read by Scott Brick. A real winner of a audio book. You wont be disappointed.

The Lion
Author, Nelson DeMille and reader Scott Brick. Fifteen hours of great entertainment, Hang onto your seats for this one. The Lion is a contemporary thriller, set in New York, the cops this time being members of a special anti - terrorist unit, plus there's FBI agents in mix, and of course a deadly assassin recently returned to America to continue his murderous agenda. Now honestly, what more could you want?

This is the fifth is a series that follows the exploits of the wise cracking alpha male hero of the stories, John Cory. The books are solid and as a result, they have developed a loyal fan base who eagerly await the next enthralling adventures of John Cory. Fans who write reviews, give this latest book by Nelson DeMille a solid thumbs up and it's well read by Scott Brick, the inspired reader of The Passage. A big tick for this book an audio, for those who enjoy this genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMX1bGOYE7A&hl=en

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Testament - The Gathering - Sewn Shut Eyes

Audio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4IiwmaYNk&hl=en

Glenn Beck's Overton Window Trailer

Friday, September 24, 2010

Glenn Beck Books - All You Need to Know

Glenn Beck has become a widely recognized host of his own TV and radio programs that have become popular all over the world. He also has been touring the country since the early part of this decade voicing his opinion on a variety of social and political issues. Glenn began his public career at an early age as a DJ on a local radio station. This at the age of 13, that career has now exploded and he is heard and seen by millions daily. Despite his meteoric rise to national prominence as a political and social commenter he has been able to pen some 10 books and recordings, the majority NY Times bestsellers

His works have revealed a wit and intellect that have inspired many to take a greater interest and get involved in national and local political life.

Glen's life has not been easy and his early trials and tribulations are displayed nicely in his somewhat autobiographical rendition of events in his 2008 book The Christmas Sweater. In this touching book Glen describes the events of his childhood through the eyes of a 12 year old boy. Through the crucible of these early childhood events a distinguished and insightful political and social commenter emerges This book comes highly recommended to get real insight into Glenn's formative years.

Glenn Beck has published over the past 10 years has been remarkable. He has managed to publish 10 books and recordings and has 2 more books in the works, including the recently published and acclaimed The Overton Window. The much awaited Overton Window has been released and debuted at number 1 on the NY times best sellers list.

Reading one of Glenn Becks books provides a window into what lies behind the popular character and hints at the noteworthy promise of the potential offerings from the future

The remarkable assortment of work in a variety of media already produced and continuing to be produced daily on the radio and television programs indicate a truly prolific contributor, I am sure we can look forward to many years of insightful commentary from this probing and thoughtful commentator of our time.

Get a copy of one of Glenn Beck books today and begin a journey that will, whether you agree with Glenn or not, awaken insights into current events and encourage further study of American history, politics and social sciences.

If you get the chance get out and see a live performance of Glenn Beck and be inspired by his energy and commitment. Short of that grab one of his books and enjoy. Enjoy the chance at these events to see for yourself this remarkable man. His energy and commitment will inspire you. Don't let this pass you by.

Poets Biography

Poets Biography Review

Poets Biography Overview

This book is about the top historical poets of all time. Their works speak for itself but gives you a great idea of where they were compared to where you are today by the words spoken and feeling what they felt in those times. Reading their poetry is like classical music to your ears and makes you fantasize wishing you were there. When we read books and poems and listen to certain music we love what is being said but want to know badly who was it who wrote the story, poem or song and what are they all about along with wondering how they live. Well this book will give you an idea of who they were when you come across their works in your local bookstore or online ebook store.so go ahead and read about Alfred Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Omar Khayyam and D H Lawrence inside the Poets Biography Part 1.

Available at Amazon Check Price Now!

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 24, 2010 09:31:34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXdWgvvJ1Ng&hl=en

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Dick OWNS Peter Sprigg (part 2)

Myth #4: 10% of the population is gay en.wikipedia.org Myth #5: Homosexuals do not experience higher levels of psychological disorders SEE 9 Myth #6: Homosexual conduct is not harmful SEE 9 Myth #7: Children raised by homsexuals are no different than those raised by heterosexuals According to the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers, there is no evidence that the sexual orientation of one's parents or adoptive parents interferes with one's social adjustment. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that children raised in gay households function just as well cognitively, socially, and emotionally as children of heterosexual parents. www.apa.org Myth #8: Homosexuals are no more likely to molest kids than hetero sexuals Ten Myths pushes the inaccuracy that a man who molests a boy is automatically gay even though the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Academy of Child Psychiatrists and the Child Welfare League of America, all say that the homosexuality and pedophilia are not linked www.apa.org Myth #9: Homosexuals are disadvantaged by discrimination But the most egregious inaccuracy in Ten Myths - and also something that says a lot about the mindset of its author, Peter Sprigg - is the following passage: Even the pro-homosexual Gay & Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) acknowledges: • "Gay men use substances at a higher rate than the general population . . ." • "Depression ...

Tempest at Dawn

Tempest at Dawn Review

This is the best, and most insightful, novel ever written describing the motives, methods, means, and politics that shaped, and ultimately degraded, our founding document. It provides a realistic description of the environment and motivating factors that drove the evolution of the Constitution from the Virginia Plan to the final result. It describes in great detail the moral, ethical, and principled (and in some cases unprincipled) struggle that virtually every delegate had to deal with during this process.

I found it fascinating and truly reflective of their times as well as ours. Politics is a blood sport. It was then and is now... It's just unfortunate that the delegates were unable to construct a political architecture that would unite the country while making absolutely sure the rights of every individual would never be subordinated to the pack of thieves known as "politicians".

Obama's ongoing imposition of Bolshevism totalitarianism on the United States has exposed the glaring weaknesses of the original document and the manner in which it has been perverted over the years.

It's unfortunate that the delegates did not fully understand the depths of depravity to which man would sink. Their confidence in the "goodness" of the "nature" of man was an assumption built upon sand. The "Old Sin Nature" or "Original Sin" is a constant that will always drag corruptible men down to the lowest possible of debasement and lead them to enslave their fellow citizens for the personal benefit of these corrupted and corruptible politicians.

Tempest at Dawn Overview

As featured on The Glenn Beck Show. Tempest at Dawn is on the Glenn Beck Reading List.

The United States is on the brink of total collapse. The military has been reduced to near extinction, economic turmoil saps hope, and anarchy threatens as world powers hover like vultures, eager to devour the remains. In a desperate move, a few powerful men call a secret meeting to plot the overthrow of the government. Fifty-five men came to Philadelphia in May of 1787 with a congressional charter to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead they founded the longest lasting republic in world history. Tempest at Dawn tells their story. (edited by author)

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Illegals - Not For the First Time

I. Before Columbus

Long before there was an America, the trick of infiltration and takeover was an old tale in Mexico.

Before Columbus landed, there were two major cultures in what is now called Mexico, plus one in what was then called Arizona, which included everything from the Rio Grande to southern California. In southeastern Mexico lived the Mayans, beginning to slide into decline. In the central west lived the Toltecs, whose culture was vigorous and flourishing. North of them, in the Arizona territory, lived the Pueblos -- primarily the Navaho.

All of these civilizations had domesticated animals, agriculture, weaving, pottery, stonemasonry and some metal-working: gold, silver and copper, at least. All of them were literate; the Mayans and Toltecs had alphabets in which they wrote on clay, leather or stone, and the Pueblos had a remarkable alphabet of knots tied in string. They worshipped various gods, goddesses and spirits of natural forces, but did not commonly practice human sacrifice. The Toltec god of the sun and enlightenment, Quetzlcoatl, would occasionally ask his worshippers to shed a small amount of their own blood as proof of the dominance of the mind over the body, but no more than that. These cultures were all relatively peaceful, and traded regularly with each other.

Up and down the east coast of Mexico wandered the Chichimecs, a very different sort of people -- possibly related to the fierce Caribs, who gave their name to the Caribbean Islands after wresting them from the peaceable Arawaks. The Chichimecs had pottery and weaving, but no literacy. They didn't bother with farming or domesticating animals, but lived on hunting, fishing, gathering -- and raiding their neighbors, for the Chichimecs were cannibals. They worshipped bloodthirsty gods like Chac Mool and Tezcatlipoca, who demanded the fresh hearts of human victims, so that the Chichimec worshippers could then eat the rest of the bodies and use the skins for leather. The Chichimecs were not nice people, and in a very real sense they deserved what Cortez evenually did to them. The Chichimecs waited until the Toltecs were weakened by civil war and plague, and then began an effective strategy of infiltration.

The Invasion

By twos and threes, posing as simple merchants dealing in forest bird-feathers and hides, Chichimecs moved into Toltec territory. The Toltecs, always willing to trade, saw no harm in this. The problem was that those Chichimec "merchants" didn't go home again, but settled in Toltec territory. Little by little they took over outlying villages, then larger towns, and finally the cities, until the entire Chichimec population was settled in Toltec lands.

Just why the Toltecs didn't realize their danger, or act on it until too late, is anyone's guess. Perhaps they were flattered that the Chichimecs wanted to live among more civilized folk. Perhaps they thought the Chichimecs were eager to become good Toltec citizens. Perhaps they liked the availability of cheap Chichimec labor. Perhaps they'd been so badly weakened by civil war and plague that they couldn't unite against the invaders.

In any case, when enough of them were settled in Toltec lands, the Chichimecs made their bid for power.

There are very few surviving records of that conquest, so all we know for certain is that it ended with a Chichimec king on the formerly Toltec throne, and the rest of the Chichimecs were the new nobility ruling a Toltec underclass.

Once in power, the Chichimecs began cleaning up their reputation. They inaugurated a propaganda campaign claiming that they were really a branch of the Toltecs, rewrote the existing history books, and changed their name to Aztecs to make themselves look respectable.

We do know that the Chichimec/Aztec takeover was thorough and ruthless. They forbade the use of the Toltec language in public, making the Aztec language the official tongue. They were happy to make use of the Toltec alphabet, but applied it only to the Aztec language, so that today the archeologists have little idea of just what the original Toltec language was. They were also happy to make use of the skills of Toltec craftsmen, but put them to work only serving and glorifying the new regime. They destroyed or re-carved most of the old Toltec monuments, so that today precious few of the originals exist. And of course they changed the official histories to say that the Aztecs had been the original inhabitants of the Toltec lands, and had merely returned to claim what was rightfully theirs.

Does any of this seem familiar?

II. Before and After Cortez

After the takeover the Aztecs reordered the local religion, destroying or emptying the temples of the old Toltec gods and putting up the cruel Aztec gods in their place. The worship of the Aztec gods included state-sponsored holidays that involved mass human sacrifices and cannibal feasts afterward. The Aztecs made regular raids on their outlying neighbors, not only to keep the neighbors frightened and obedient but also to collect prisoners to be sacrificed -- and eaten. Though they were happy to let their Toltec underclass farm and raise food for them, the Aztecs were not about to give up their convenient and profitable cannibalism.

One god whom they left in power was Quetzalcoatl. He had not only been a major god of the Toltecs, but there was also a legend that he had once walked among the Toltecs in human form and had promised to return someday. When a god says "I'll be back", it's prudent to listen. Even so, the Aztecs altered his worship to include mass human sacrifices -- and feasts.

Despite, or pehaps because of, the ruthlessness of Aztec rule there were continual revolts among the Toltec underclass and outlying tribes. Though these revolts were reliably put down -- and the rebels captured, and eaten -- Aztec rule left a constant resentment among the survivors. Cortez made good use of this later.

The Aztecs repeatedly tried to conquer the Pueblo lands, but never succeeded. The Pueblos were a pacifistic people, but they knew the desert well and made good defensive use of it. Their favorite trick was to lure Aztec troops out into a stretch of desert, where the only available water was well hidden, and leave them there to die of thirst. Eventually the Aztecs stopped trying.

The Aztecs never conquered the American southwest.

That land remained in the hands of the Pueblo Indians, and was never truly owned by Mexico in any of its incarnations.

Then came Cortez. He had at most 600 men, 16 cannons, and 18 horses, but he walked right into the legend of Quetzalcoatl's return. This was excuse enough for the outlying Toltec tribes to join with Cortez, swelling his army by thousands, in hopes of overthrowing their hated Aztec masters at last. The rumor that Quetzalcoatl had returned, and was highly displeased, traveled before Cortez and threw the Aztec rulers into a religious panic.

We all know the rest of the story. Cortez conquered the Aztecs, murdered their rulers, stole their treasure, and devastated their society. The Spanish priests he'd brought with him destroyed as many Aztec temples as they could and burned most of the Aztec books, primarily because they found that those temples hosted mass human sacrifices, and those books -- tens of thousands of them -- were written on human skin. The Spanish conquistadors also, quite unconsciously, spread smallpox throughout Mexico and thereby killed another third of the population. All this is ironically parallel to what the Aztecs had done to the Toltecs.

Cortez then laid claim not only to Mexico but to all the lands of the New World, from the Russian settlements in Alaska down to Tierra del Fuego. The fact that he never set foot that far north or south was beside the point; he claimed it all for Spain, to which the king of Spain happily agreed. The kings of other European countries contested this -- which is how Portugal got ownership of Brazil, and Engliand and France and Holland got settlements in eastern America -- but Spain got the lion's share.

Mexico was just another Spanish colony in the New World. Mexico did not own California, Texas or the Arizona territories; Spain did.

But Spain's rule was not absolute. In 1586 Sir Francis Drake -- a real "Anglo" -- destroyed the Spanish military outpost and ended Spain's rule in Florida. Dutch, English and French settlers gained footholds in eastern America and in the Caribbean. Russian explorers laid claim to large tracts of Alaska.

And in 1680 the Pueblo tribes, having learned all they needed from the conquistadors, overthrew Spanish rule in the Arizona territory. They organized the revolt by the use of their unique knot-alphabet, which the Spanish didn't recognize as letters. When the revolt was over, Spain owned only Tucson, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, a few silver mines, and whatever their guns were pointed at for the moment. The Spanish viceroy in Mexico City kept sending punitive forces into the Arizona territory until 1697, meanwhile sending optomistic reports back to Spain. He dared not admit that he'd lost so much land to mere Heathen Savages; that would have earned him a quick return to Spain and a quicker visit to the cellars of the Spanish Inquisition. Instead he claimed that he'd put down the rebellion and the land was still under his rule -- just not very productive, and therefore not sending much money to the treasury. Succeeding viceroys did little more than continue this polite fiction, establishing a few missions and the garrison of Tubac in 1752 to protect settlers -- of whom there were not many. The Pueblos didn't care, since the vast majority of the land was theirs in fact. The last of the Spanish mines and missions in Arizona were abandoned in the aftermath of the war over Texas.

In other words, Spain lost the Arizona territory -- to the Pueblo Indians -- long before Mexico was an independent country. Mexico itself never truly owned Arizona or New Mexico.

III. After Spain

Mexico, as distinct from Spain, never owned as much of America as its propagandists claim.

As early as 1685, Robert Sieur de LaSalle established Fort St. Louis and claimed Texas for France. He and his colony died, but French and English settlers continued to move into Texas. Although Spain established towns and missions throughout Texas, it accepted non-Spanish settlers both for their skills in blacksmithing and as a hedge against the local Indian tribes, especially the Apaches.

The US did not "steal" Texas from Mexico; Texas rebelled on its own, and for good reasons.

In 1807 Napoleon attacked Spain, which broke Spain's hold on the New World colonies, and those colonies began freeing themselves from Spanish rule. In 1812 the Guiterrez-Magee revolt tried to pry Texas free of Spain, and in 1817 Jean Lafitte settled Galveston Island. Mexico broke free of Spain in 1821, and continued the Spanish policy of inviting in "civilized" settlers -- especially trained blacksmiths. In 1823 Stephen Austin received permission from the transitional government in Mexico to settle a colony on the Brazos river. Mexico itself didn't gain a constitution until 1824. In other words, when Mexico became an independent country there were English and French and American settlers already well established in Texas.

In 1830 the new Mexican government, under Santa Ana, began flexing its muscles at Texas. It forbade all further "foreign" immigration, added special taxes, and finally demanded that the settlers all become Catholic and speak nothing but Spanish. This is what set off the Texas War of Independence, which ended with Texas becoming an independent republic in 1836. Mexico continued the war until Texas joined the United States in 1845, and then made war on the US until defeated in 1847.

And the US did not "steal" California, either.

After Cortez' conquests, and after Juan Cabrillo mapped -- and claimed -- the coastline up to Santa Barbara, Spain waited more than 200 years before trying seriously to develop California. Other countries hadn't been so lazy. By 1769, when Spain began setting up military forts and church missions to "civilize" the Indians, settlers from Europe and America had already established populations there. Although Spain offered land-grants to attract more, the settlers didn't care overmuch for Spanish rule -- and the Indians died under it. This is when and where the legend of Zorro began. In 1777 the settlers created the first independent town with a civil government in San Jose, and other free towns followed.

In 1808, when the Spanish navy withdrew to fight Napoleon, more ships from England, France, Russia and the US were able to trade with the free towns, and more immigrants came to settle there. When Mexico became independent in 1821, the new government encouraged foreign trade and offered more land-grants to immigrants -- provided that they were or became Catholics and spoke nothing but Spanish. It also broke up the old missions and gave their land to the settlers -- many of whom now came from Britain, Canada and the US. Mexico's insistence that these settlers become Catholics caused considerable friction, as did the Texas rebellion, and by 1845 Mexico stopped trying to send Mexican governors to rule California.

In 1846, when Mexico expanded its war with Texas to include the US, the California settlers rebelled and formed the California Republic. A month afterward, California joined the US and likewise joined the war against Mexico. The war ended with Mexico's defeat, a year later.

In every case, the inhabitants of the southwestern states -- Indians or White settlers -- rebelled against Spanish and then Mexican rule. They later joined the US primarily to improve their defenses against Mexico. The US "stole" none of it.

IV. Reasons Why

Mexico began as a far richer country than the US, with milder weather, vast tracts of arable land, tremendous mineral wealth, and an advanced native civilization. It should have progressed steadily to become one of the wealthier countries on Earth. But what happened?

First, the Chichimen/Aztecs: an abolute military and religious tyranny, with the addition of cannibalism, does not create a healthy culture. The number of rebellions among the Toltec underclass, plus their willingness to join the army of a foreign conqueror, shows just how much the general population hated their masters. The legendary Malinche, the native slave-girl who became Cortez' mistress and helped him defeat the Aztecs, was in fact not "betraying her own people"; she was a Toltec, and had good reason to hate the Aztecs. The necessity of such treachery, and of hiding their intentions from the Aztec ruling class, made the people generally secretive and habitually criminal.

Second, the conquistadors: late-medieval Spain was not a healthy culture either. Government corruption, total feudalism, shameless nepotism and favoritism, rampant sexism and racism were business as usual, and the Spanish Inquisition was not a joke. On the excuse of hunting out hidden Jews and heretics, the church actively encouraged people to spy on -- and report any misdeeds of -- their neighbors. As a result, the only people one could trust were one's own family, and not always all of them. All this produced a culture of paranoia and rank opportunism, with a glazing of religious mania.

When these cultures collided, the results were not happy. The natives who survived the conquistadors' plagues and pillagings found the new ruling class an improvement in only a few ways; it imported new breeds of farm animals, new crops, new construction techniques, bronze and iron-working -- and it did not practice cannibalism. Otherwise, the same old tyranny and corruption prevailed. The ideas of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment didn't reach Mexico until well into the 19th century, and even then were accepted only by the intellectuals -- not by the general population, and definitely not by the government.

The Spanish government in Mexico tried very hard to establish old-fashioned medieval feudalism, with the Spanish settlers as aristocrats and the native peoples as serfs. The king back in Spain gave land-grants and aristocratic titles to his cronies, and the viceroy in Mexico suggested cronies of his own, whom the king usually agreed to ennoble -- for the right price. Spain at the time was an absolute, not constitutional, monarchy.

After Spain was immoblized by Napoleon there were several rebellions that attempted to liberate Mexico, but all of them were defeated by the colonial government. Then in 1820, with Napoleon safely gone, a liberal revolution swept Spain -- demanding, among other things, a constitution and a constitutional monarchy. This upset the feudal conservatives in Mexico, and they broke away from Spain in 1821 under the leadership of General Iturbide -- who had, ironically, led the troops that put down the last revolt. This makes Mexico the only ex-colonial nation in the New World that rebelled in order to create a government that was not more liberal but more conservative than its former ruler's.

Once on its own, Mexico started on a merry cycle of palace revolutions. Iturbide was ousted in 1822, by a revolt that tried to establish a republic and made Guadalupe Victoria its first president. Victoria was overthrown in 1829 by Vincente Guerrero, who was assassinated in 1831 and replaced by Anastasio Bustamente, who was overthrown and replaced by Antonio de Santa Ana in 1833. Santa Ana "centralized" the government, declared himself dictator-for-life, and began to "get tough" with the settlers in Texas.

Besides not wanting to give up their religion, the settlers in Texas had another conflict with the Mexican government: slavery versus serfdom.

A Spanish-style serf, or "peon", differed from an American-style chattel slave in various ways: 1) he could not be sold separately from the land he tilled for his master, but went with the land as a package deal; 2) a peon was purely an agricultural worker, and could not be rented to a skilled craftsman nor learn any other trade; 3) he could not under any circumstances be taught to read or write; 4) a peon could be freed only by special dispensation from the king, the viceroy, or -- later -- the president of Mexico.

The few settlers in Texas who were rich enough to afford slaves treated them in the American fashion: 1) a slave could be sold or rented separately from his master's land; 2) slaves were often rented to skilled craftsmen, and learned skilled trades which added to their value; 3) a master could give his slave an education as preparation for freeing him; 4) a slave could be freed by a simple written declaration by his master, at the master's own discretion.

Even after the liberation, the government in Mexico City was disturbed by the presence of slaves who were mobile, not tied to land, could learn skilled trades and even a real education, and could be freed on a whim of their owners'. To Santa Ana and his cohorts, American-style slavery was too liberal for them; they feared it might give the peons dangerous ideas. So, the Mexican government tried to force the Texas settlers to adopt Mexican serfdom instead, which is another reason why Texas rebelled.

When the dust had settled, in 1853, America owned Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona -- and another rebellion ousted Santa Ana in 1854. By then the political lines were drawn, between the old feudal aristocracy and the new liberals who wanted a real republic. Then, in 1861, France invaded Mexico and drove the liberal government -- and its president Benito Juarez -- into hiding. France established Archduke Ferdinand Maximillian as "Emperor of Mexico" in 1864, and it wasn't until 1867 that the Juarez government managed to overthrow French rule.

Perhaps because of his status as a patriotic hero, despite various revolts Juarez managed to stay in office until he died of natural causes in 1872. When his successor Sebastian de Tejarda sought re-election, the loser -- Porfirio Diaz -- led a revolt that made Diaz dictator in 1877. Diaz ruled until 1911, when he was forced to resign by followers of the liberal Francisco Madero.

Diaz brought 20th-century industry to Mexico, usually by selling or leasing big tracts of oil-rich and mineral-rich land to Dutch, British and American businesses. These foreign businesses then built mines, oil wells and refineries there, and hired local people for labor at better wages than they'd ever seen before. Madero, though he made many 20th-century reforms, was resented by other political factions who wanted the Mexican government to seize the wells, mines and refineries on land that Diaz had sold or leased to "foreigners".

Madero was overthrown and assassinated in 1913 by General Victoriano Huerta. Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza then made war on Huerta, and forced him to resign in 1914. Carranza took power, and Pancho Villa promptly made war on him. The only thing Carranza and Villa could agree on was that they both hated the United States; in 1916 Villa led a raid on a town in New Mexico, and when the US army sent General Pershing to chase after Villa, Carranza made great efforts not to help. Even so, Carranza was overthrown and assassinated in 1920, and Alvaro Obregon was elected president.

Obregon lasted until 1924, when Plutarco Calles was elected. Calles made land reforms and political reforms, ousting many of the old feudal land-barons and taking political power away from the Catholic Church, for which the conservatives hated him. In 1928, Obregon was re-elected, and then assassinated by a religious fanatic.

Two provisional presidents followed, and Lazaro Cardenas was elected in 1934 on a "progressive" platform, which meant the passage of an expropriation law which officially allowed the government, in 1938, to confiscate the oil and mineral lands that Diaz had leased or sold. From 1911 to 1938 the Mexican government had tried to get back those lands -- and the mines, wells and refineries that the "foreigners" had built with their own money -- but the one tactic it never seems to have tried was buying the lands and businesses outright.

Confiscating the wells, mines and refineries did not automatically make Mexico rich; it seems to have killed the golden goose. The government-run oil and mining companies had difficulties getting the products out, and more difficulties selling them. One reason they sold badly was because their quality was so poor.

In 1940 Manuel Camacho was elected and, seeing where the money was, joined the US in the Good Neighbor Policy -- which involved commercial and military alliances. During World War Two and afterward this agreement brought considerable American industry and money into Mexico -- and since then, no Mexican presidents have been assassinated or overthrown. Yet despite this alliance, Mexico's economy continues to be poor -- to the extent that today an average of 500,000 Mexicans per year immigrate illegally to the US.

What this grim history reveals is a culture which simply does not understand such concepts as equality, the Rights of Man, the rule of law, or sensible economics. This is a culture which sees the world as a Zero Sum Game: that wealth is limited, and the only way to get it is not to create it but steal it from somebody else. It is also a culture that has no respect for the literal truth, especially when lies and propaganda will better serve its immediate politcal ends.

As evidence of this, note that the political faction known as La Raza was founded in the late 1930s by agents of Nazi Germany, who hoped to raise a Mexican war against the US that would distract America from fighting Germany. The Nazi hope failed because America simply bought out Mexico with the Good Neighbor Policy, but La Raza survived. It continues today, urging Mexicans to immigrate illegally and "take back" everything but the New England states, lying blatantly about Mexican and American history, and of course demanding all manner of special concessions for Mexican immigrants, legal or not.

This is not a culture that we want in the United States, and the people who live by it are not people we want here either.

V. Solution

So we find ourselves in the position of the Toltecs when the Chichimec/Aztecs began moving in. What can we do about it?

Plenty, it turns out -- but we have to be firm.

First, regardless of the Democrats' hopes for cheap votes and the Republicans' hopes for cheap labor, we must expel the illegal immigrants. Regardless of foot-dragging by the federal government, we must finish the border wall and patrol it regularly. We must then, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, state by state, round up the illegals and send them home.

By all means, let them keep the goodies they got and the money they made here in Goody-Land; they'll need decent grubstakes when they get back to Mexico. Perhaps we should also give each of the departing illegals a parting gift: a sturdy revolver, a cleaning-kit, several boxes of ammunition and an instruction book -- with simple illustrated instructions, printed in Mexican Spanish. Perhaps, armed with experience and guns and money, they'll be able to alter Mexicon's culture for the better.

Under no circumstances should they be allowed back into the United States.

Second, the US must stop propping up the government and economy of Mexico. Like a third-generation Welfare case, Mexico will never change its destructive culture or build up its own economy or give itself a stable government so long as it can leech money out of the United States. We must repeal NAFTA , close off our borders and shut off the foreign-aid spigot.

There's nothing "undemocratic" about these methods; the majority of Americans want illegal immigrations stopped and the illegals gone. It is certainly lawful to deport people who, by coming here illegally, have committed one crime already -- and they usually commit a few more on the way. There's nothing "cruel or unusual" about sending unwelcome visitors home again, especially if they return richer than they left. There's certainly nothing requiring the United States to support any other government or population to the detriment of its own people.

In any case, a country that cannot or will not defend its own borders will eventually be overrun. It has happened here before -- and if we don't want to go the way of the Toltecs, we must keep it from happening again.

Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 14)

Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 14) Review

Lots of people reviewing the book seem to want character development. I happen to like the Plum gang just as they are. What I want in each book is some adventure and some laughs, and this book gave me both. The characters are pretty much the same as they were in the last several books. Stephanie has gotten better at dealing with skips, and while she doesn't do a lot of bounty hunting in this book, when she does, she almost seems competent. Lula is also pretty much the same, though her relationship with Tank is taken up a notch. There is a lot of Lula in this book, and I get a kick out of her so I was happy. There isn't a whole lot of time for several of the other characters, though everyone makes an appearance, but that is because Stephanie and Lula spend a lot of time dealing with the main adventure and a sub plot that goes along with that adventure. For me, it is about getting to visit with some old friends once a year. I like that we can pick up right where we left off, have some laughs, and enjoy a story.

Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 14) Overview

Personal vendettas, hidden treasure, and a monkey named Carl will send bounty hunter Stephanie Plum on her most explosive adventure yet.

The Crime: Armed robbery to the tune of nine million dollars

Dom Rizzi robbed a bank, stashed the money, and did the time. His family couldn’t be more proud. He always was the smart one.

The Cousin: Joe Morelli

Joe Morelli, Dom Rizzi, and Dom’s sister, Loretta, are cousins. Morelli is a cop, Rizzi robs banks, and Loretta is a single mother waiting tables at the firehouse. The all-American family.

The Complications: Murder, kidnapping, destruction of personal property, and acid reflux

Less than a week after Dom’s release from prison, Joe Morelli has shadowy figures breaking into his house and dying in his basement. He’s getting threatening messages, Loretta is kidnapped, and Dom is missing.

The Catastrophe: Moonman

Morelli hires Walter “Mooner” Dunphy, stoner and “inventor” turned crime fighter, to protect his house. Morelli can’t afford a lot on a cop’s salary, and Mooner will work for potatoes.

The Cupcake: Stephanie Plum

Stephanie and Morelli have a long-standing relationship that involves sex, affection, and driving each other nuts. She’s a bond enforcement agent with more luck than talent, and she’s involved in this bank-robbery-gone-bad disaster from day one.

The Crisis: A favor for Ranger

Security expert Carlos Manoso, street name Ranger, has a job for Stephanie that will involve night work. Morelli has his own ideas regarding Stephanie’s evening activities.

The Conclusion: Only the fearless should read Fourteen.

Thrills, chills, and incontinence may result.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9y0IvztN0&hl=en

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Adventure (Deathly Hallows) ~ Ron & Hermione

**SPOILER WARNING: if you have not read Deathly Hallows, do not watch!** This video follows Ron and Hermione on their journey with Harry to find Horcruxes in book seven. I did my best at including: The seven Potters broom chase The Burrow / discussing Dumbledores will Bill and Fleur's wedding / Kingsley's warning patronus The Tottenham Court Road tea shop attack Hiding at Grimmauld Place The Ministry of Magic break-in and escape Camping The argument / Ron abandoning Hermione and Harry Hermione Ron being distraught before their reunion The Snatchers, Malfoy Manor, and Dobby's rescue Shell Cottage Gringotts break-in and escape The Hog's Head / Aberforth Dumbledore / Passage to Hogwarts Finding basilisk fangs in the Chamber of Secrets The Battle of Hogwarts /Harry finishing Voldemort The kiss =) (just pretend it's really emma watson that rupert grint is kissing lol) I had an absolute blast making this video because I've been a fan of this pairing since I first read Sorcerer's Stone. I've loved watching their relationship evolve throughout the series. I felt that the song represented their relationship throughout Deathly Hallows well. RON & HERMIONE FOREVER!! **Awards!** -Honorable Mention in Vivalavidagrl's HP Couples Contest -3rd place in greeneyeschi96's HP Couples Contest -1st place in CREN13Queen's Massive HP Contest of 2009 -Honorable Mention in Merope16's Weasley's Wizard (W)ideos Contest Song: "The Adventure" by Angels and Airwaves Clips: JK Rowling, Warner Brothers ...

Help the community, help yourself.(Selling Point): An article from: Hawaii Business

Help the community, help yourself.(Selling Point): An article from: Hawaii Business Review

Help the community, help yourself.(Selling Point): An article from: Hawaii Business Overview

This digital document is an article from Hawaii Business, published by Hawaii Business Publishing Co. on April 1, 2004. The length of the article is 4664 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Help the community, help yourself.(Selling Point)
Author: Bob Sigall
Publication:Hawaii Business (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2004
Publisher: Hawaii Business Publishing Co.
Volume: 49 Issue: 10 Page: S12(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Monday, September 20, 2010

The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America

The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America Review

The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America Overview

A prominent British conservative warns Americans to stop President Obama from leading their country down the path to European-style socialism.

In March 2009, British conservative Daniel Hannan became a celebrity overnight when he assailed prime minister Gordon Brown on the floor of the European Parliament. The YouTube clip went viral, leading to whirlwind appearances on FOX News and other conservative media outlets. A thoughtful and articulate spokesman for conservative ideas, Hannan is better versed in America's traditions and founding documents than many Americans are. In The New Road to Serfdom, Hannan argues forcefully and passionately that Americans must not allow Barack Obama to take them down the road to European Union–style social democracy. He pleads with Americans not to abandon the founding principles that have made their country a beacon of liberty for the rest of the world.

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The Best Grilling Book by Far

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The best grilling book is one that tackles not only recipes but gives out an in-depth guide to all things related to grilling. Most books that claim to be the best grilling book lack necessary information, which makes it confusing and difficult for first-time grillers. The following is a list of the four books that deserve to be called "The Best Grilling Book:"

1. How To Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques by Steven Raichlen

In this book, author Steven Raichlen further explains the differences of grilling on every type of grill and teaches the readers how to grill every kind of meat. He shares many different grilling techniques as well as a great number of excellent recipes that are easy to follow. This is a lovely testament to grilling and an excellent must-read.

2. The New Grilling Book: Charcoal, Gas, Smokers, Indoor Grills, Rotisseries by Better Homes And Gardens

A team of experts from Better Homes And Gardens has gathered pages upon pages of recipes, cooking techniques, practical grilling information, and even secrets from master chefs to provide a book that just might be the definitive guide to grilling. This is also very convenient for those who are new to the kitchen and haven't even attempted to grill before because the recipes are easy to follow and there are detailed instructions and even instructional photographs. This is how the Best Grilling Book should be.

3. Grilling America by Rick Browne

More than just a grilling cookbook, Grilling America by Rick Browne chronicles his travels through various barbecue festivals in the United States. Included in this book are photographs, basic grilling information, cooking tips and techniques, excellent recipes, and even secrets from master grillers.

4. Born to Grill: An American Celebration by Cheryl Alters Jamison & Bill Jamison

This is a book that cherishes the good old basics of grilling. Authors Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison further explain the importance of going back to basics when it comes to grilling. This book offers many insights on classic grilled favorites as well as the art of grilling.

These four books have everything you need to know about grilling and then some, which make each of them deserving to earn the tile, "The Best Grilling Book."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UolYhTEZY5Q&hl=en

Sunday, September 19, 2010

6-16-10 Glenn Beck - 'History of the Overton Window'

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Tea Tree Passage

Tea Tree Passage Review

Tea Tree Passage Overview

The crippling legacies of the Great War resound down the generations in this new novel from Robyn Burrows. This volume follows the fortunes of the Carmody family down the generations, through two world wars, depression and shattered dreams. Yet in the tranquility of Tea-Tree Passage some solace can be found. Perhaps even love ...

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New Dimensions: A Book of Poems

New Dimensions: A Book of Poems Review

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7I78HOY7CU&hl=en

Friday, September 17, 2010

3/4 CRIME INC in Washington - Overton Window Glenn Beck

Cap And Trade - the plan by corporations like British Petroleum, and politicians like Al Gore, to get filthy rich by trading air (carbon dioxide).

Thursday, September 16, 2010

New Book Shows Bond of Army Wives During the Turbulent Vietnam War Years

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On the coattails of the new hit TV show, Army Wives, comes a blockbuster hit novel from Phyllis Zimbler Miller. MRS. LIEUTENANT is getting rave reviews and gives us our "army wives" fix when relaxing by the poolside or by the beach instead of the TV.

In the spring of 1970 - right after the Kent State National Guard shootings and President Nixon´s two-month incursion into Cambodia - four newly married young women come together at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, when their husbands go on active duty as officers in the U.S. Army.

Different as these four women are, they have one thing in common: Their overwhelming fear that, right after these nine weeks of training, their husbands could be shipped out to Vietnam - and they could become war widows.

Sharon is a Northern Jewish anti-war protester who fell in love with an ROTC cadet; Kim is a Southern Baptist whose husband is intensely jealous; Donna is a Puerto Rican who grew up in an enlisted man´s family; and Wendy is a Southern black whose parents have sheltered her from the brutal reality of racism in America.

Read MRS. LIEUTENANT to discover what happens as these women overcome their prejudices, reveal their darkest secrets, and are initiated into their new lives as army officers´ wives during the turbulent Vietnam War period.

MRS. LIEUTENANT was a semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Phyllis is a former Mrs. Lieutenant and lives with her husband in Los Angeles. The co-author of the Jewish holiday book "Seasons for Celebration," she has written a success guide for teens. She welcomes messages and visitors at her website at http://www.mrslieutenant.com or her blog at http://www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

Goldstein

Goldstein Review

Goldstein had the same visceral impact as reading Vonnegut for the first time as a 15 year old; a feeling that one as jaded and cynical as myself tends to appreciate.

The tight storyline sucks you in fast, and doesn't let up for a second. The author takes the current debates about security vs. liberty, collective vs. individual and command/control vs. free market and blows them out to their entirely logical conclusions. In fact, the logic is immaculate...as is the level of detail.

In Amerika, 2068, political correctness and nanny-statism have come to the end of the line. From the rotting cityscape populated by sullen gadget-addled sheeple down to the omnipresent do-goodism enforced by bureaucratic thugs with itchy taser fingers, the oppression of Grice's progressive communitarian paradise is palpable. The protagonist, exiled from the last bastion of freedom on the planet - Goldstein - is on a mission. Only he's not exactly sure what it is. And as he navigates the equal-opportunity nastiness of what Amerika has become, he realizes that maybe the place he left behind was better than he originally thought.

A genuinely kick-ass read, Goldstein crystallizes the essence of Atlas Shrugged in a deliciously readable, lecture-free package. After reading this book, the question might not be "Who is John Galt?" but rather "Where is Goldstein and how the hell do I get there?"

Goldstein Overview

Devin Moore broke 'The Law' in this dystopia set in the not-too-distant future. For his crime, he is exiled from the last free colony of Goldstein, Alaska. His journey into fascist Amerika is an odyssey of chaos, delusion, and violence. Devin experiences firsthand the ravages of hyperinflation, the mind-numbing holovision, the omnipresent surveillance and the imperious nanny-state . The Land of the Free had become a serfdom where you have nothing to worry about if you are being good . But Devin could not embrace the role of gelded rebel and his exile becomes a mission of self-discovery. Pursued by the arrogant, leathery-faced Director Morgenthau and his vicious minions seeking to hotwire his brain, Devin contemplates making a mysterious Delivery that will exonerate him and allow him to return home...to GOLDSTEIN.

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Seeing the Light - Author June Chen - Book Review

June Chen's debut novel, "Seeing the Light: A Novel" takes you on a lifetime of events of a selfish and self-centered girl awakening to the meaning of life. The storyline unfolds similar to a soap opera, whereas a succession of events occurs to Rhea, the only daughter of a farming family with three brothers. Her dad nicknamed her Princess, a bit sarcastic because of her lack of feminine vanity. The family moved from the mid-west to the Central Coast of California to raise cattle just west of San Luis Obispo. The story begins in California when Rhea was a young girl, and follows her into maturity and eventually her "Seeing the Light."

June Chen writes in a way of conveying her story without overly embellishing descriptions, nor filling in details unrelated to the story. She is not pretentious with her choice of words, wanting the book to be easily understood for its meaning by everyone - mostly by young adults. It is a brisk read, and filled with many lessons learned affording the reader quality time and is an enjoyable book.

She tells a story of an ordinary family having some extraordinary experiences. Rhea is an observer to some bizarre behavior of local farm workers, wanders, and hitchhikers. She holds steadfast with her zero tolerance for alcohol and drug use while seeing others fail at the challenge. She finds love in the aftermath of an event by a person coincidently placed in her life that wouldn't have been there if it weren't for an unfortunate incident. Not to expose the plot, Rhea comes to her life changing reality with the sobering circumstances of a tragedy which is no doubt the worst kind imaginable.

June Chen takes Rhea's tragedy and begins a journey into a dream sequence. Rhea's dream recurs and the characters within the dream play out. In a montage of religious beliefs, spiritual encounters, demonic characters and self actualizations, she masterfully shows the reader just how Rhea's thoughts had altered her personality so dramatically. In essence, June Chen explains how the core of her character changed thus bringing the superficial behavioral difference to the surface. From originally thinking that generosity and charity as shown by her parents were a form of weakness of character, she matured to having humility and kindness in a way which seemed disgusting to her in her youth. This is a significant accomplishment of June Chen's writing technique, one that can be understood and assimilated by maturing adults.

What takes a lifetime and a horrific experience in Rhea's life can be learned by others in a few hours by picking up and reading "Seeing the Light."

Heart of the Matter

Heart of the Matter Review

Heart of the Matter was one of the books of summer that I was eagerly anticipating. In that post I talked about two reasons I loved Giffin's work. The first is her skill at depicting interpersonal relationships. The second is the characters she creates. Both of these skills were well represented in her latest novel.

The main thing that stuck with me after I finished this book was the realness of it. I believe this feeling was a result of the characters Giffin created. Often I find characters to be either "too perfect" or "too flawed." When this happens, I find it difficult to become interested in the plot due to the lack of reality in the characters. In this story each character is believable due to their good mix of strengths and flaws. Each character is balanced enough to make them feel like real people instead of plot points.

The credibility of the characters lead to a quality of realism to the story. At some points the story was so personal that I felt like I was snooping into a neighbor's life. I felt guilty enough to want to put the book down; however, my curiosity got the better of me. While this book could have easily been predictable, I never wondered what came next. I think this was due to the fact I was riveted by what I was reading and didn't want the experience to end.

Review: I was a bit reserved in my excitement about this book due to the fact I had not enjoyed Griffin's last two releases as much as her first two. This book ended up being perhaps my favorite of her novels. Giffin again demonstrated her great storytelling ability, creating great characters whose experiences will stay with me.

Heart of the Matter Feature

ISBN13: 9780312554163
Condition: New
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Heart of the Matter Overview

"Giffin excels at creating complex characters and stories that ask us to explore what we really want from our lives."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother's warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.

Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie--a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance--and even to some degree, friendships--believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.

Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.

In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.

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