"That's God Giving Us an Amen"

The speaker is Kevin McCullough: columnist, author and radio-show host.

The occasion is the August 2nd Staten Island (NY) Tea Party held at historic Conference House Park. Despite dangerous weather, almost 700 patriots came out to make their voices heard.

Kevin makes a reference to Jesus Christ, and then...

Our Incredible Vanishing Congressman

Congressman McMahon admitted the other day that he has no intention of holding a Town Hall meeting during this summer’s recess. He did so after a particularly hard-hitting set-to with a group of bingo-playing seasoned citizens at the Assumption Senior Center in New Brighton.

Despite a withering verbal assault in between the calling of N37 and B15 (BINGO!) our fearless leader stuck to his principles – no matter how much they threatened, cajoled, browbeat and bribed, he would not take a stand.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to vote.

Now the skeptical among us might think that indecision would be a good reason to speak to a wide swath of your constituency, especially when you have all this down-time back in the district. Perhaps a strong, healthy dose of what ordinary, hard-working, tax-paying Staten Islanders are thinking might help to clarify the mind a bit, right?

Wrong. In a post-Bingo interview with NY1, our Congressman made the following statement, verbatim and in toto:

“When you have some Town Hall meetings of this sort of ‘new version’ where this certain group comes in, hijacks the meeting and tries to drown out any thoughtful discussion, then I don’t think those meetings are helpful. So I will continue having dialogue in meetings like this….”

Apparently he’s met with civic leaders, community leaders, business leaders, and, as we know, a certain demographic of Bingo players, but I guess “meetings like this,” do not include you and me. And when we’re excluded, deliberately excluded, this story stops being funny.

Mr. McMahon, I suggest you take a step back and recognize that “this certain group” you refer to so disdainfully is YOUR constituents, and voicing their opinion to their Congressman is their right in a representative democracy. That you lack the fortitude to hear what they have to say because they speak in strong and passionate voices is very telling black mark on your re-election resume. Or do you, like President Obama, feel that we should just “stop talking and get out of the way?”

Personally, I don’t hear people “drowning out” thoughtful discussion – I simply hear people drowning; drowning in a sinking ship of ill-conceived, budget-busting, socialistic legislation. I hear people who perceive these meetings as a last chance to stop our country from plummeting into the murky depths of socialized medicine.

Please understand that the reason we are not interested in debating the minutiae of the various bills is because they all share the same titanic gash below the waterline; no matter how the deck chairs are arranged, any one of these bills will sink our healthcare system.

It's time to come out of hiding and face your constituents, Congressman. Leave the "Where's Waldo" games to the kids.

The Rage and the Pride.

It seems as if this administration has taken dead aim on our freedoms - starting on Inauguration Day - and has hit the mark just about every time. Is it any wonder that the steady drumbeat of frustration has been growing ever-louder and more insistent over the months?

We watched Congress pass, and the President sign, a "stimulus" package that stimulated virtually nothing, but included big payoffs for his cronies and enablers, like ACORN. We watched them take over GM and Chrysler, trampling both the rules of law and contracts in the doing. We watched them barge into corporate boardrooms, fire CEOs, threaten ruinous taxation on legally contracted bonuses, and cap corporate pay.

We watched them take the first steps towards gaining control of our energy industry, using manufactured crises and tissue-thin excuses, all of which are based on junk-science and pie-in-the-sky "green" technological breakthroughs that are not even on the horizon.

And now, healthcare. They are trying to portray it as a system that is hopelessly broken and in need of complete overhaul. It is nothing of the kind - they know it and we know it. It needs fixes, yes, but fixes of the American kind, not the European kind. It needs free-market reforms, it needs to let competition work and it needs the government to stay out of it.

The truth is that health care reform is not about health care any more than cap and trade is about energy - the beating heart of all of this legislation is government control.

Those of us that disdain and resist this quicktime march to socialism are the ones who watched the Left demonize the former administration for 8 years - and we just kept our mouths shut and took it. Nobody said a word. Nobody pushed back. Nobody fought back. That's when the drumbeat really started.

And then along came Rick Santelli, and when he shouted those fateful words - "President Obama, are you listening?" - the fuse was lit. Because we knew the President wasn't listening, and if he was, we knew he didn't care. His agenda became perfectly clear, and the drumbeat quickened yet again, the frustration began to harden into anger, and finally, the anger into action.

We are tired of being called compassionless cretins because we don't support bailing out the irresponsible. We're tired of being called kool-aid drinking racists because we support the vigorous defense of our borders. We're tired of snide remarks that allude to us as relics of the past because we love and revere the Constitution.

We're sick and tired of the sneering condescension that drips from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and Henry Waxman, who exult in their super-majority even as they dance on the graves of our Founding Fathers. We're tired of it all.

And so here comes August and we're stewing with this pent up rage. At the same time, the health care issue - the latest assault on our liberty - advances to the fore. This is the big one.

After the stimulus, the budget, the Detroit shakedowns, the Wall Street takedowns, the energy-industry hijacking, the finger-pointing, the demonizing, the disdain, the scolding and the ridicule, we get a chance to say our piece at a Town Hall meeting. Is it any wonder that voices are raised?

We are witnessing the rage and pride of the free citizens of the United States of America.

I am filled with the heart-breaking image of ordinary Americans struggling to decipher the legalese in a thousand-page bill so that they can debate their elected representatives, in the hope that they can slow, stop or divert this march to socialism.

I am filled with the heart-breaking image of ordinary Americans trying, with sputtering indignation, to formulate a question that will convey their feelings to a smooth-tongued politician who has been thoroughly schooled in all the answers.

I am filled with the heart-breaking image of ordinary Americans shouting and gesticulating because they are nervous and not practiced in public speaking, because they know they are not getting through to politician in front of them, because they are afraid to give up and sit down, to give up on their country, to give up on their belief that they will somehow, if they keep talking, right the ship they feel is listing so badly and in danger of sinking.

I am filled with that rage and pride - aren't you? Aren't you enraged at those that would put good, hard-working American men and women through this hell? Aren't you proud that those same Americans will not go down without a fight?

Those who demonize Tea Party protesters and Town Hall activists are blaming some nefarious plot by Republican obstructionists, or talk radio, or insurance company misinformation - because they cannot fathom the truth.

The truth is that people such as we - groping for an answer, searching for a tactic - are desperately trying to figure out a way to stop the enemy from disgorging its minions from the Trojan Horse we have allowed inside our gates.

The truth is that without the media to voice our concerns, Tea Parties and Town Hall meetings are the only way we can be heard.

This is the rage and pride of Americans, pure and uncut, pouring out in actions we never thought we were capable of taking, in words we never thought we were capable of uttering. This is the rage and pride of Americans who will sit still for these indignities no longer.


*The title of this piece has been borrowed from an essay written by the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci after the events of 9/11/01. "La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio" is an inspiring piece which can be found here.

The Obama Administration: Thugs and Slugs

Not long ago, Barack Obama exhorted his troops to use an "in your face" style when debating those who dared to disagree with his agenda of false hope and radical change. Sharpening the point, the White House set up a "snitch line," encouraging citizens to forward emails opposing Obamacare, or even report "casual conversations" that "smelled fishy."

If anything smells in this country, it is this inexperienced, radical, hateful and divisive administration - easily the most dangerous in the history of the nation. And this particular fish is most certainly rotting from the head down.

After senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina met with Democrat senators, and promised them that "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard" using the party and its allies, things started to get dicey. Apparently, these "allies" include union thugs and goons.

Here is the future of free speech and dialogue in the United States of Barack Hussein Obama:


According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.

“It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked,” he said.

Downplaying the meeting with Axelrod and Messina, Senator Harry Reid told reporters “They are just helping us understand the fringe that is trying to mess up our meetings.”

Sorry, Senator, but it is we who are trying to understand. We're trying to understand how and why this fringe administration is trying to mess up the greatest healthcare system in the world. Of course, we're doing it the American way, through informed discourse and making our feelings known. Your Thug-in-Chief seems to prefer a different way, one he learned on the streets of Chi-town, I suppose. There's an old union phrase: "If we can't win with the power of persuasion, we'll win with the persuasion of power."

BHO seems to have learned that lesson well.