Thanksgiving...

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.



In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.



Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.


No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.


It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.



In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.



Abraham Lincoln – President
William Seward – Secretary of State


Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Love phonics #8372

4 africkin' LEfont 3


Sent to the bog by a frend...

Kermit

I am so glad...

...that I voted for the only qualified Democrat that ran for president...

Viva

JOHN McCAIN

!

Maybe the sky is not falling...

...and maybe some big pieces will not land in the bog. And, maybe, the tooth fairy will leave a dime (that is $837.63 when adjusted for future inflation) under Kermit's pillow tomorrow night.

Somehow, it seems to this Constitutional Populist that the fox has been put fully in charge of the henhouse. The founders of our nation (you know... smart... dead... old guys... referred to in some quaint and ancient texts that purport to be HISTORICAL as the "founding fathers") railed against the concept of a federal / national bank. The silly twits even put it into that quaint, quasi hysterical document referred to as the constitution. Well, actually, they did not make it constitutional. That was done in 1913 and signed into law by the late (also an old dead guy) Woodrow Wilson, who depending on the historian that you quote, may or may not have regretted signing that particular quasi legal bill into law as he approached the end of his life.

Now what is all this bovine extract about the sky falling.

The head director of the largest FEDERAL RESERVE BANK is being named as the SECRETARY of the TREASURY.

Somehow, cherished reader, I see the fox guarding the chickens here. I will pray, fervently, that we have ONLY a long and gut wrenching depression. I will continue to pray that we will not wake up one morning clutching our pitchforks as we man the barricades in defense of our homes against foreign troops in the streets.

Thank God for zip loc bags.

I am keeping my powder dry here in the bog!

Kermit

I keep feeling...

…older and older. It may be the weather, but I doubt that.


One of the quaint old (??!!:) notions that I am stuck with is that the purpose of the Constitution is to limit the size of the government. I do not remember that I was ever taught that purpose of the Constitution was to define how fast the government could grow.


Now I remember. The Government exists to serve the people. How quaint. The people, if I remember correctly, were not designed by their creator to serve the ruling class of professional bureaucrats. Something or another about inalienable rights springs (well-stumbles) to the forefront of my diminished (as opposed to DHIMMI) cranial cell’s capacity for abstract ideas.


I am standing here in the farmyard staring up at the side of the barn. The words say…


“All animals are equal, except some animals are more equal than others”.


Wowee… We may be on to something here! But I have the nagging sensation that there used to be more words than that written on the barn. Maybe I should go take another dose of the medicine that the doctor at the V.A. Clinic gave me. Things are always better after I do that. After all, “A gram is better than a damn.”


Groggily yours,


Kermit


The constitutional populist…


And with apologies to Aldous Huxley for any misquotes from Animal Farm and/or Brave New World.

THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN IDEA - Steyn on America



Saturday, 15 November 2008
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1477/




"Give me liberty or give me death!" "Live free or die!"



What's that? Oh, don't mind me. I'm just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs.



My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a "center-right" country. Americans didn't vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a "Dancing With The Stars" election: Obama's a star, and everyone wants to dance with him. It doesn't mean they're suddenly gung-ho for left-wingery.



Up to a point.



Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to "go left." Yet oddly enough that's where they've all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter.

When there is nothing to hide...

...hide nothing!

This ranks right up there with

RIDE HARD

SHOOT STRAIGHT

SPEAK TRUTH

If Mr. O, the President Elect, has or knows of a document thats proves his birthright as a citizen of the United States of America, why is he not trotting it out at at this late date or when it first became a question when he chose to run for the presidency.

I may be green in all my frogishness, but...

I AM AN AMERICAN.

I CAN DOCUMENT IT.

AND, I DID FIGHT FOR IT...

...both in Viet Nam and

in more than one really nasty bar

at home and abroad!

So, as soon as Mr. O proofs up on his place of birth, I can invite a few Pinko Libs down to the front gate of the Bog. I'll have Al Vin build a little bonfire. And, we can all roast some bogmallows, hold hands and sing Kumbuyah.

Kermit

P.S. - Marines can come into the bog afterward for a stiff drink of some really good whisky!