The One Question No One is Asking as Obamacare Goes on Trial

March 28, 2012 | Comments (0)

The monstrous healthcare atrocity known as Obamacare has at last reached the United States Supreme Court.  By all accounts, left and right alike, the news coming out of the Chamber is not boding well for the monster’s prospects.  And thank God for that, say those of us who cherish the U.S. Constitution, those of us who cherish liberty, and, by extension, those of us who still wish to see our America remain the greatest country this world has ever known.

But with every news account, every interview, every commentary I see regarding the current Supreme Court hearings on the Constitutionality of Obamacare, I find myself begging the talking heads, begging the lefting interviewees, begging the Supreme Court Justices to ask one singular question:  Why are members of Congress and various and sundry union leaders and leftwing Obama/DNC supporters exempt from Obamacare?

I have yet to hear anyone covering the story this week on either side of it address this question.  I would suggest that the very existence of this question, coupled with the silence that surrounds it, is all the answer we, and the Supreme Court of the United States, needs.

Betsy Siino | Comments (0)

So Tired of Feeling Like a Hostage in My Own Country

October 4, 2011 | Comments (2)

It’s getting old, this feeling. This feeling of imprisonment, disbelief and fatigue. For far too many months now, we have lived in a nation held hostage by a gaggle of individuals who have only a sketchy notion of what our country is and hold what little they do know in contempt.

A president travels the country delivering the same tired axioms read with identical cadence from a mechanical device, berating the nation, the people, I love.  Secretly, silently, he grins as rioting leftists demand our nation abandon liberty and capitalism. Meanwhile, the president’s wife travels that same country, pricey entourage in tow, dictating what and how we parents will feed our children  – and mandating what restaurants will and will not serve their customers.

A governor of a southern state suggests we nix elections in 2012 to quell the successful rightwing efforts of an angry electorate, her words simply mirroring ideas the president and his officials have floated themselves. As unemployment skyrockets at breakneck speed, a presidential advisor informs us it is the government’s job to take care of us and provide all we need to live according to what our superiors deem an acceptable level of existence.

The president orchestrates a steady stream of public displays (with military backdrop whenever possible) in his quest for useful campaign photo-ops. That same president orders his minions to intimidate those who oppose him and do whatever they must to make his transformational dreams our nightmare. Meanwhile, we the people hold our collective breath in hopes that the man’s law designed intentionally to gut our health-care system, our bank accounts, and our personal health will be repealed.

As the current administration stands accused of allegedly placing guns in to the hands of drug lords in a neighboring country, people from that and other countries stream across our borders without sanction (presidential relatives among them), knowing that despite such open defiance of our laws, they will be showered with social services and our tax dollars upon their arrival. Meanwhile the narcissism, panic and abandonment issues of the petulant leader of the free world become more evident – and more dangerous – every day.

In short, we find ourselves trapped in a lawless nation, the perpetrators of our confinement carrying out their tasks openly, brazenly and with unabashed arrogance. And I for one am tired of being their hostage. Until this day, I never believed we as a nation would live to see, let alone tolerate, what now occurs within our great nation almost daily. But, despite my own moments of fatigue, I know in my heart that I am not alone. This nation teems with others, my fellow hostages, who share my love for this country and the resolve to wrest her free from our captors.

Carve away that hard crusty shell of betrayal and tyranny that has encapsulated the Tree of Liberty over these three difficult years, and you will find a moist green pulp still living and breathing at the tree’s heart. Those of us who love this country will continue to nurture that tree, and, like the political prisoners who found their own salvation, their own inspiration, in the words of Ronald Reagan that were smuggled into the frozen Gulag of Siberia years ago, we will wait for that moment when we, too, will at last be liberated from this modern-day tyranny, free to be America once more.

Betsy Siino | Comments (2)

Lessons Learned: Beware of Arbitrary, Undefined “Change”

February 15, 2011 | Comments (0)

To all who were lured into the touchy-feely belief two years ago or so that change for change’s sake is a goal to which we all should aspire, I would imagine, and hope, most of you are having second thoughts by now.

Those not so easily swayed know now, just as they (we) knew then, that in its most simplistic terms, change can be good, and change can be bad. To sign on haphazardly to arbitrary, undefined “change,” is to enter dangerous territory for yourself, your family, and, as we have witnessed firsthand, your country.

A quick look at history is all we need to see where that dangerous territory can lead. Hitler wanted “change.” Remember? And he made it happen.  Mao, Castro and Lenin wanted “change.”  And they made it happen.  Indeed just about every tyrant and dictator in human history has wanted change – sometimes defined for the masses, sometimes not – and with long-term, often damning consequences. On the flip side, our nation’s founders wanted change, too — clearly defined, clearly documented change — and they made it happen. Tyrants and dictators of the world (including those within our own nation’s capitol) no doubt view the success of the American experiment “dangerous,” and indeed it is for those who hunger for unbridled power and control of we the people.

And today the mainstream lapdog media, the United States president, and various pundits with undefined qualifications but clearly defined agendas, are singing the praises of change in Egypt after several weeks of undefined Egyptians demonstrating and causing mass destruction in the streets of Cairo. I won’t pretend to understand precisely what is going on in Egypt, but we all know that the Egyptian president Mubarak has stepped down, it appears the military has stepped in (the word “coup” being somewhat avoided), and the Egyptian parliament is being dissolved.  Our president, in turn, using these events to court college students in his bid for reelection in 2012, is congratulating those who have made these dreams a reality, insisting that such undefined, revolutionary “change” is what the slobbering college students are all about.

Because I am no expert, I will look to Israel, rather than the current U.S. president, for clues as to the true significance of the events in Egypt. Said U.S. president has not been what we might call supportive of Israel, so I will assume that his support for the undefined change in Egypt does not necessarily bode well for the Jewish State. Israel, in turn, has hardly been rejoicing over the events in a nation that has been the closest they have to an ally in their shared and very volatile region of the world. I also personally don’t find comforting the words “Sharia Law” and “Muslim Brotherhood” as potential consequences of the Egyptian rebellion.

Meanwhile, our president stands smiling before those cheering, maybe hungover, college students, taking credit for that rebellion, which has thus far resulted in a military coup, the loss of a parliament, and the opening of floodgates to other nations in the region who seek to destroy Israel.  But fear not, America, one of this administration’s top security officials is out there smoothing the feathers of skeptical Americans by insisting that the Muslim Brotherhood, mild and moderate “secular” organization that it is, is nothing to fear.

Sorry, this skeptical American intends to remain so.  In an era of undefined, arbitrary change, only a fool signs on without thought of consequence. Whether we’re talking light bulbs, portion control at restaurants, tin-can death-trappy “smart” cars, or national security and stability, the consequence of change for the sake of change, arbitrary and undefined, can be, and usually is, tyranny.

Betsy Siino | Comments (0)

Happy Birthday to Our Nation

July 4, 2010 | Comments (1)

I have always loved the 4th of July for what it represents: the birth of our nation, a nation unlike any other in any imagination, at any time, anywhere. I revere the men who risked their lives to create this grand experiment, and the men, women and families who have sacrificed their lives for us to keep it.

But today I find myself reflecting on the fact that this year we observe a 4th like no other. We celebrate our nation’s birth at a time when she faces a great danger unlike any other. Certainly our nation has faced danger before, particularly back in the 1860s during a war that threatened to tear us apart. But our threat today comes from forces within our own government who seek to tear our nation down and rewrite her story to fit a twisted view that in no way resembles what she is and what she is meant to be.

I refuse to see this happen. And I end today, as I listen to the songs that celebrate the greatness of our nation and the people throughout our history who have created and preserved that greatness, knowing I am not alone in my resolve. I remain faithful, even as those in Washington attempt to dismantle and shred the Constitution that is our backbone, that the vast majority of us beyond those cloistered DC walls feel the same in our collective devotion to that nation we are blessed to call home. I thank all of you who over this last year since I began writing on these pages have stood up with me and confirmed what we all know to be true about the American spirit and its endurance.

So now together we embark on the road to the next 4th. Together let us pray – especially after an important wake-up call we are confident will be coming in November to push those deadly forces back – that this time next year we will be breathing a great sigh of relief, knowing we are headed back from the brink. In the meantime, my humble thanks go out as they do every year to our founders, to our troops who keep and have always kept our nation and our children safe, to the courageous and often unsung heroes who have made the nation what she is, and to our God for remaining with us in our past and in our present. Happy birthday, America. Not a day goes by that we are not grateful for you.

Betsy Siino | Comments (1)

Memorial Day 2010

May 30, 2010 | Comments (1)

Three months or so after September 11, 2001, the day we witnessed a devastating attack by radical Islamic terrorists on our nation, I went to Ground Zero in New York City. As my friend, a native New Yorker, and I walked from Greenwich Village to Lower Manhattan, we could feel it in the air, growing more palpable, more intense, the closer we got to the site of America’s collective loss. Call it a sensation, an aura, the footprint of the souls who were taken from us that day, the “it” to which I refer here is something known only to those who have been to ground we call sacred.

This was not new to me. I felt it at Pearl Harbor. And at Gettysburg, too. I hope someday to experience it at Normandy Beach and that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The footprint of the souls who left us in sudden fury. The souls of Americans who were taken from us.

I think of that sensation, those footprints, today on the eve of Memorial Day, the day when we honor the countless Americans who have given their lives, either consciously or in sudden unexpected fury, for our country. I honor as we all must the blood they shed for us, for our children, for the preservation of this extraordinary experiment we call home. And, though my words seem so feeble in comparison, I thank those extraordinary Americans for what they have done for us.

Our nation today is once again traveling treacherous territory. This time we are encountering threats perhaps not so overt as those we encountered on that day in December of 1941 or on the bloody battlefields of our nation’s terrible Civil War or on those beaches in France so far from home – threats that are thus probably even more treacherous because of that. So I think of that famous passage I would hope every American has heard and should embrace. To paraphrase, it reminds us that it is not the reporter or the lawyer or the politician or the preacher or the community organizer who gives us our precious freedoms, freedoms unique and extraordinary in all the world. No, we have only one individual and one individual alone to thank for those precious freedoms. The American soldier.

I for one will never forget the ultimate sacrifice the American soldier has made for me and mine, nor will I ever forget the ultimate sacrifice that soldier’s family has made for us. Knowing full well the enormity of what that sacrifice means to us all, I remain eternally grateful to that soldier on this Memorial Day and every day. And I pray that every American will join me in this. We must never forget.

Betsy Siino | Comments (1)

Thanks to the Grizzly Moms!

May 18, 2010 | Comments (1)

I want to thank all the Grizzly Moms out there who have contacted me since I praised the spirit of the great mother bear in my last post.

In the crazed times we are now enduring, sometimes it’s natural to feel we are all alone in the wilderness, facing circumstances none of us ever dreamed possible in this great nation of ours. We need to be reminded from time to time that we who love this country and want to preserve and protect her for our children are not alone.

When I hear from others out there who share my love for this nation and my faith in our people, then I know this insanity will be short-lived. You all are doing that for me, as you express your own love for this country and our heritage; your genuine concern for your children, their futures and our liberties; and your faith that together we will prevail in the ferocious spirit of mama Grizzly herself.

So many thanks to you all for reminding me that I am not alone. May this serve to remind you that you – and all who share our love for this country – are not alone either. Keep the faith. We will see morning in America once more.

Betsy Siino | Comments (1)