DAY NINE

For the Jews ask for a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness. But to them, the called-out ones, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1st Corinthians 1:22-24

Ever felt like Alice when she firsts falls into Wonderland and sees that incredibly wonderful garden but she just can’t get there because she’s either too big to fit through the door or too small to reach the key on the table? To me that’s symbolic of the repetitive circle most of mankind is bound to: swallowing their own tail in a vain attempt to reincarnate themselves from their own ashes.


Only one man has actually been dead (stone cold, no memory dead – not a ghost, not an out of body experience but really, truly dead) and now lives again never to die. He is the one and only door keeper and the only way out of this freak show for the rest of is to find out where He is and go there. And with all due respect to Aldous and Jim (Huxley and Morrison), some of us actually DO get out here alive. Because this door that I’m talking about is not just a mental or ‘spiritual’ door of perception but an actual ticket to a new reality and place.

But I certainly have had the common experience of angst, doubt and existential terror that all who seek to understand and escape this world find. Neither mescaline (cactus), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), cocaine hydrochloride (coke), psilocybin (mushroom) nor tetrahydrocannabinol (THC in Hemp), all of which I smoked, snorted or ingested during a particularly volatile time in my young life, opened any doors that provided escape from the reality of death. In fact if they did anything at all, rather than finding portals of escape, this dead end pursuit by me may have actually allowed unsavory and unwanted fiends entry into the portals of my mind and body. Nasty little devils that took a much bigger and stronger man than myself to evict once they had gotten used to the food and the furniture.

What I didn’t have when I was going through this pointless time in my life was the very uncommon experience, even among poets, scholars and sages, the very unworldly experience of coming face to face with the One. No I have not come face to face with God the Creator of the universe or I wouldn’t be writing this to you. No one can look at the true God directly and live. Instead I met the one who was dead and now lives: the alpha and omega of our salvation and this has made all the difference.

The innocent chosen one, who suffered as an outcast and criminal, was nailed alive to a wooden stake and hung up on a desolate hillside called “The Skull” in public shame so that the entire city could see and mock his situation. He who was abandoned by most of his family and friends to die alone in obscurity and whose body was wrapped in a sheet and placed in a shallow, unmarked grave. He is the answer to every question about the what, why and wherefore of life. He is the door that if a man or woman can find it, although it is always within the grasp of anyone, he or she will go in and out and find pasture for their soul. He is the WAY OUT, of which no groovy hippy in their wildest psychedelic trip could ever have dreamed.

My Lord Jesus Christ, (your Lord too if you want to him be) was raised from the dead, taken up to the right hand of God in the heavens, is currently directing an unseen kingdom that operates completely outside the duality of this tired and limited earthly realm where mankind bounces like a pinball between vanity and depravity seeking wisdom or signs but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth using microscopes, telescopes or psychotropes.

But his new kingdom will not remain hidden forever. Although we are pilgrims and strangers on this earth wandering and waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, it will not always be so. Stick around and I’ll tell you why the so called “New Age” is nothing at all like the pseudo-messengers of light (i.e. false apostles) are currently peddling in the marketplace of ideas. When the true water bearer comes back, it will be the dawning of The Age (yes it will be new) that we have always longed for in our hearts. It will be a time that will finally bring to pass and super exceed the tainted and limited visions of world peace, social justice and human potential than can be found in the fetid pools of pop psychology and utilitarian ideologies that surround us.

Are you ready and willing to take your place and be counted among the foolish for Christ’s sake? Be sure because if you take the red pill, you can never really go back to your blissfully ignorant state again. But then again, if you’re really one of us, you’d never want to.

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY EIGHT

What is it about passion and fervor for anything or anyone that can lead so many otherwise intelligent people astray? I am a passionate individual. And mixed with a modest portion of intelligence covered in a creamy arrogance sauce with a yummy side dish of selfishness, I have encountered any number of dead ends on my way to the fulfillment of my desires. But then, I’m an idealistic jester whose very satirical nature side tracks any serious attempt at influencing life and culture.

But why is it that even those stoic souls who worship at the altar of rationality and fervently believe in the power of the mind to trump the emotions at each and every turn, the phlegmatic Mr. Spocks, if you will, in cold contrast to the sanguine Dr. McCoys, still fall prey to mystical associations and conjurings of the most fantastic kind?

You think not? Show me the logic of concluding from the DNA record and the organic complexity of living creatures that homo sapiens derived from completely random, undirected processes taking place over exceedingly long lengths of time. I’m not sure that a high priest of any ancient pagan religion ever had to make a greater leap of faith in order to promote the local deity du jour than is made by the modern scientist in his fervent attempt to deny the possibility that intelligence of any kind may have played a role in our genesis as a species.

And as if this uncontested road of scientific certainty isn’t enough to open a case for doubt, there is always the extreme opposite end of the intellectual spectrum, if you will, namely the loosely defined movement known only as the New Age. Occultism, Neopaganism, Astrology, Human Potentiality and Universal Truth, recycled ideas, warmed over and spiced up to be fed as fresh meat to an uneducated clientele looking for new experiences to scratch their itching ears.

Of course, one might easily assume that a healthy balance would be to position oneself somewhere in the middle of this line between “pure” rationality and “mystic” spirituality and, it may be that most of the human race finds itself somewhere along that line. But there are a good number of us, who seeing the weaknesses inherent in each of these two opposing ideas as well as, and this is more important, the potency that there is more to nature of reality than this limiting duality, have fallen, headlong as it were, onto another possibility.

For the most part, the allegedly unlimited human mind appears trapped in a dualistic world, a kind of cruel, philosophical dialectic, if you will. We speak of good versus evil, Yin and Yang, Occident versus Orient, male and female, slave and master, up and down, right and left, mind and body, hot and cold, right and wrong, black and white, capitalism versus socialism, liberal versus conservative, anarchy versus totalitarianism, ad infinitum.

And this conundrum concerning opposites is not solved by mental gymnastics like trying to explain false dilemmas (Morton’s Fork as an example) or emotional appeals that we look for the shades of ‘grey’ between the black and white or the a hybrid version of opposing ideas like ‘bi-sexual’ or the proverbial ‘middle of the road’. While these may be correct within the confines of their own usage, they just reinforce the notion that our reality seems rooted (or stuck might be a better word) in the duality of opposites.

But there is another dimension to this seeming limitation that cannot be found out by rational inquiry or mystical musings but is nonetheless as real and plain as the nose on my face.

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY SEVEN

Ah the seventh day. God rested on the 7th day of Creation.

Where do we find peace in this world?

Is it to be found within ourselves…this same self that cannot even accomplish the good that we will to do…sometimes even doing evil that we don’t even want to do?  Although that certainly doesn't stop a lot of very convincing writers from exhorting us to look within ourselves to find the answers.  I guess they think that thanks to that unintelligent, unmonitored, freestyle event called evolution, every person who is born has universal truth encoded on their DNA. Tried looking within myself for answers - came up empty and miserable.

Do we find peace in a supplement? Ginkgo, Noni, Aloe, Algae, Acai, Alfalfa, Chlorophyll, Cranberry, Maqui, Royal Jelly, Spirulina, Greens, Reds, Proteins, and on and on and on…

Do we find rest for our souls in meditation? Yoga, Tai Chi, posture, focus, concentration, contemplation, bells, drums, chants, incense, candles, sounds, smells, music, atmosphere, the great outdoors, and on and on and on…

Is it in the heart? Is it in the solar plexus or the spleen? Is it between our ears or between our legs or sitting upright on top of our heads? Is it first sight, second sight or the third eye? Can you enervate peace? Breath it into being or capture it in a dreamcatcher on the wind?

Thirty two years ago I reached beyond this world and asked for help from the only source of help in this universe and without reservation or hesitation I was given a peace that I have never understood nor can I describe except to say that it abides with me and lives in me.

I have friends who have struggled to find the Secret to peace, happiness and prosperity seeking it among the stagnant pools of tradition or the poisoned wells of self aggrandizement. In their zeal to know and understand, they have swallowed the first lie believing that they themselves have the power within themselves to control the universe and draw good unto themselves. At best they are a bit foolish. At worst they become ensnared by a deceitful lie that masquerades as the truth; false light leading the unwary off the path and into the tangled wood.

Who would want to drink from the muddy waters of man’s philosophies and vain deceit when we are offered living water from the author of life? Not me and hopefully, not you.

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY SIX

What is it about us human beings that makes us have to relive some of the same mistakes generation after generation? Wouldn’t you think that if something bad happened to my father and he told me about it or warned me about it, that I would avoid that trap.

It sounds logical but for some strange reason life doesn’t work that way.
I mean how many of you have children or younger brothers and sisters or grand children or somebody younger than you that are just doomed to repeat the same failures in marriage, love, sex, drugs and rock & roll that many of us went through?

What is it about youth that makes it impossible to believe that churning milk long enough turns it into butter whether you want it to or not.  Same thing with poor lifestyle choices: they get you into places you don't like being. 

How many times do we hear young people, or how many times when we were young people, did we say or believe: “Oh that won’t happen to me!”

“Oh yes, Betty is an alcoholic but that will never happen to me...bartender one more round!”

“Tommy was a drug addict but I can shoot up that heroin or take a little meth and nothing will happen to me…hand me the bag…”

Yeah and we’re all going to live forever and we can live any lifestyle we choose and we’ll always stay perpetually young. Now this would be an instance where a fairy tale rather than bringing clarity to reality would actually cloud good judgment.

Of course nobody actually believes this but try to find the one young person in a thousand that actually does something about it without being forced by some circumstance to change?

I was NOT that young person…at least not before I turned 21 anyway. I could do anything to my body and mind and nothing was going to happen to me.

And I know why it was that way for me. I knew that things I did were wrong and I knew what the right things were to do but I just didn’t want to change. I mean my younger self was more than willing to ruin things for my older self if it meant I could have a little more fun.

What’s really intriguing is to realize that this is actually not just a condition of youth but it’s a systemic problem for everyone their entire lives. Listen to how this man describes the condition:

For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I…For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

His name was Saul of Tarsus and he is one of the writers of the Bible, specifically The New Testament.

If we’re all subject to like passions and our natural course is to be contradictory and self destructive then how can any of us escape?

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY FIVE

Even in my first life…that one that ended all those years ago on that porch…even back then I was always intrigued by fantasy. Myth, science fiction and fairy stories all provided a vehicle to describe the indescribable parts of life.

It was Clyde that once told me that “we do not retreat from reality, we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves... By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly."

Certainly for some, fantasy is an escape and God knows we all need to escape sometimes from the stifling reality of the sweatbox we call the daily grind. But much more than just mere escape or a child’s daydreams, well thought out fantasy allows you to pass through a wardrobe or a picture or travel in a rocket ship into another world and by interacting in that strange or bizarre environment see and understand our own world that much more clearly.

But even beyond that, fantasy gives voice to the reality which lingers just beyond our vision…the reality that we all knew as children that the world was much bigger and more awesome, in the true sense of the word, then most of us are able to recall when we get older. In that sense, fantasy has the power to awaken within us, if only for brief time, the sense of wonder that sometimes finds itself buried beneath the burdens of adulthood.

“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.” (Patricia to Joe aboard the TweedleDee in Joe Versus the Volcano)

`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY FOUR

What is a Ragamuffin anyway?

Webster says it’s a ragged, oafish person…a ragged disreputable person, poorly clothed, often a child.

That’s me…well at least it is me when I try to wrap myself up in all the glorious works my hands have created for myself. And I’ve always felt that my figs leaves were a lot nicer than a whole bunch of other fig leaves I had seen.

But come to find out…there ain’t nothing new under the sun…the thing that has been will be again…and all that piss and vinegar pride I wore as my youthful crown was nothing more than a bunch of leaves and grass that withered and dried up…not even enough kindling to make a good fire…and it left me cold and naked.

And then I got invited to this most wonderful feast I’d ever been to and this incredibly kind groom gave me a beautiful suit of clothes to wear to his wedding…and I haven’t been cold or naked since…except…well…let’s say that I’m still a ragamuffin at heart but I’ve got a good benefactor who despite my shortcomings, covers for me when I’m wandering a little by the side of the road.

Now not all that wander are lost you know. I’ve met a few good friends on the side of that road…one is a former priest and struggling alcoholic and another is a beautiful soul who no longer sings on this earth…and meeting them both has made my life fuller.

Rich was a stranger in this land and on this road to righteousness, although we falter in our steps, he always knew we were never out of reach of aid. And I remember what Susan said: How love is found in the things we’ve given up more than in the things that we have kept. And when home is just another place where you’re a stranger and far away is just somewhere you’ve never been, I hope that I remember, he was my friend.

And Brennan, God love him, Brennan showed me the valley of desolation far away from the Hallelujahs of piety. And introduced me to a gospel made for the weak and sinful with hereditary faults and feet of clay. He wrote and spoke for the smart among us that know we are stupid and the honest among us who admit that we are scalawags and ragamuffins and misfits.

And as the Caterpillar said to Alice: Who are YOU?

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY THREE

God how I hate religion! Man is so damn pious and holier than thou with his sacraments and vestments and testaments and regiments…God how I hate religion.

What a small world it would be if all we were living for was to join some church or some synagogue or some temple or some mosque and subject our bodies and minds to the discipline au jour…Lord, Lord, I hardly knew you…

Ha! I tried that one too. I think it was right after about 20 days of Orange sunshine and window pane acid…wasn’t that what we called those little orange pills and that stuff on a blotter that we kept in the freezer? Oh you missed that trip? Good for you…

Yeah hair cuts and right living…less drugs and no drinking…buckle down and read the paper…go to church and do my homework…Dear Lord I was a good boy at 19. I was a good, good boy for a little while. My house was clean and my clothes were washed…and the roaches all went upstairs to my neighbors for food…Yes Lord, life was good. Mmmmm…It was good. And I was good. And everything was good…until the fall.

I was a good Pharisee…I was a righteous man in my own eyes…I was a well painted mausoleum…looking good and being white…washed that is…and I was asking Jesus what should I do to escape the wrath to come…mmmmm…

Then I watched my dumb ass self fall from heaven, at least from the pedestal I had constructed for myself somewhere in the clouds…and I fell back to earth…oh and great was that fall brothers and sisters…Mmmmm…give me a hallelujah…amen.

Thankfully somebody with a little more common sense woke me up and showed me the way more perfectly…and it was a thrilling and humbling experience…

That’s when I became a misfit. Are any of you misfits? Or maybe you’re a Ragamuffin?

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY TWO

Hello again.

Sometimes I marvel how quickly I burned through my first life…

When it ended I felt like a middle aged character from a Dickens novel. The big difference being that I was barely 20 years old.

As good as I was at weaving my complicated persona to cover up the fear and weakness inside me, the threads weren’t strong enough to hold it all together. And then it happened.

As the clock struck midnight on the last day of 1977 and a group of young people stumbled blindly into the New Year as I had done the past three years myself, I turned my back on the party and stepped out onto a small stoop on the corner of a main street in my hometown, less than half a mile from the hospital where my first child would be born someday and breathed the fresh air of a new day.

I often feel badly for people whose only experience of the dramatic comes in a bottle or a pipe or a needle or a pill. I lived that drama till I was naked and wounded with nowhere to hide.

And I know so many people who live vicariously through books or songs or movies or cartoons as if they really know what it feels like to be free. And I love those people but I can’t lie to them.

Until you’ve stood on the precipice of extinction and looked fully into the abyss of your own failures, you’re still living a cliché founded on a lie. I wish I could take away your pain but some paths you’ve got to walk on your own.

I have a friend that lost a finger one day but it saved his soul. I lost a friend one time but it saved my life. Too many have lost so much more for so little.

My road has sorrow but it always ends in joy. Sometimes there’s even joy without the sorrow but there’s never sorrow without the joy. If you’re not on this road, isn’t it time you took the red pill?

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

DAY ONE

Hello my friends. Welcome to the first of the twelve days.

When I was a child I dreamed incredible dreams and I had incredible fears. Sometimes my fears mixed with my dreams. Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re still having those fretful dreams. Wherever you are and whatever you’re experiencing, I love you…and that has nothing to do with how you feel about me.

But back then I didn’t love you. I feared you…but not just you…I feared life. I feared death. I feared myself. So I said and did many things to protect myself from the fear. Maybe you did too.

How did you cope with childhood? How did you cope with friendships, school, relationships, family, growing up, becoming you? Do you remember? Do the memories hurt? Do you have shame mixed with joy? Happiness mixed with disappointment? What went right? What didn’t?

I was born in 1957, the beloved son of two wonderfully young foolish people trying on the garment of parenthood. In 1977 I died…but my body lived on. And those two wonderful parents of mine, as oblivious to me as I was to them, never knew I had passed on.

In 1978 I was born again. If you know what that means then I don’t need to say any more to you. If you don’t know what that means, then you’ll just have to find out. Stick around…who knows what might happen. Then there’s a few of you who think you know what it means but you don’t and because you think you do, you’ll never know what it really means and that’s sad…for you.

Death is an interesting phenomenon. I’m sure I don’t understand it. I hate it and I’m fascinated by it. And I hate it. And I’m drawn to it daily. But living death was much worse.

If you’ve ever done time on this earth as a shade, a wraith walking in the crack between the world that is and the world that isn’t then you know what happened to me. If you’re still living there…I don’t know what to tell you except there are two ways out and they’re both final…but they’re not both equal.

How many of our friends, our families, our brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbors, school chums and children (dear God we’re all just children) have moved beyond our reach forever? You may think you’re too far gone but if you’re a living dog then you’re much better than a dead lion. Think about it.

I like... no that’s not true...I LOVE the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus offers Neo the Red pill. Have you seen the movie? Did you like it? Did you hate it? Have you asked yourself why?

If you haven’t seen it, the hero is a seeker named Neo who is looking to find out what’s really going on in his world and what is this thing that he knows only as The Matrix. Morpheus, a person claiming to know what The Matrix really is, offers Neo two pills: one red and one blue.

The red pill is an opportunity to see ‘beyond the world that has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth’ and as Morpheus says “to see how deep the rabbit hole really goes”. The blue pill is the fall back position: If Neo chooses the blue pill, he can go back to sleep and forget that any of this had ever happened.

How many times have you (and I) taken the blue pill and gone back to sleep pretending all this never happened?

I’ll see you tomorrow…or I won’t…

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

There is a place...

There is a place of peace and serenity, a place that is within and yet just beyond this world – a place that exists and yet is not seen. You and I have the ability if we desire to visit this place.

We visit it in thoughts and dreams, through music and reflection, waking sleeping, walking, lying down and looking at clouds.

It is always a choice – whether we stay only in the world that we see or make the effort to visit the world that is just beyond the veil.

For many this world is shut off. Like Alice unable to enter the garden, these poor souls alternately grow larger and smaller but are never able to enter that which they can only peer at through the keyhole of the locked door.

We however who by the grace of God have accepted the sacrifice of the lamb of God; we who follow the righteous one, God’s only begotten son. We, without any effort to grow larger or smaller, enter freely through the door of the sheepfold and go in and out and find pasture.

If the world knew the pleasure of His company, the joy of His fellowship and the absolute serenity of His presence, they would not seek to find the half-truths being hawked at the carnival sideshows of pseudo-spirituality that only lead the unwary off the path and into the three ring circus of confusion.

The path to holiness, the path to salvation is not the world’s path to enlightenment: far from it. Following after the lie of the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air – or lord of the wind if you will - these impoverished and hungry souls take the bait and are ensnared by the good forsaking the true. A mess of pottage, a game and they are gone absorbed into what they think is the universality of oneness only to realize too late that they have sold their soul for a glimpse behind the curtain when they could have kept their life and walked in triumphantly with the Lord Jesus Christ to reign with Him forever. Even so come quickly Lord Jesus.

@ 2009 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

Towards a More Reasoned Conservatism

Here is a link to blog recently written by a Conservative individual, Patrick Ruffini, regarding some disagreements going on between his group, The Next Right, World Net Daily (a radical right wing website), the Republic National Committee (RNC) and some other individual Conservatives.

Can We Have Buckley Back? - http://www.thenextright.com/patrick-ruffini/can-we-have-buckley-back

In his blog, Mr. Ruffini argues for a more mainstream approach to Conservative politics using William F. Buckley and his treatment of the right wing conspiratorial group, The John Birch Society as an example. If you are not familiar with this take a few minutes and read his blog.

I submit to you that this is an excellent example of a Conservative thinking about HOW to rescue our Republic from the policies of the current administration which are considered to be antithetical to Conservatism WITHOUT having to resort to aligning ourselves with conspiratorial groups and their paranoid beliefs.

The reason that this particular organization, The Next Right, is resonating with me right now is because they are calling on the "spirit" of William F. Buckley (not literally of course) to inspire and guide us through these current times where, similar to the time period after the Roosevelt Administration's 15 years of alleged "social engineering", the Conservative movement once again needs to be rebuilt, re-energized and, in some ways, re-imagined.

William F. Buckley with his publication of "God and Man at Yale" in 1950 started a revolution in Conservative thought and politics that ended with Ronald Reagan and the fall of Communism. It was President Reagan's example and this book by William F. Buckley that introduced me to the rich world of Conservative thinking almost thirty years ago.

I think that there are many young people today who are both enamored and inspired by Barack Obama as I was back in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. So even though I disagree strongly with his politics, I don't have the same distaste for the Barack Obama phenomenon as some on the right, having lived through the phenomenom of Ronald Reagan.

And I remember how many left wing groups there were back then who thought Reagan was going to destroy our country. Remember the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy" associated with Hillary Clinton? Do you know how many left wing Democrats lived (or still live) in fear of that one?

And we don't even have to go back that far. Just yesterday an individual named Van Jones resigned the Obama administration at least partly for the reason that he signed on to the "911 Conspiracy Theory" that says that the Republicans and President George Bush caused or allowed the events of 9/11/2001 to happen unopposed.

It's ironic isn't it that a conspiratorial website like World Net Daily who pushes the conspiracy theory about Barack Obama's birth certificate (a group currently derisively called the Birthers), is the same group that claims they were the first to expose Van Jones' association with the 9/11 conspiracy. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

So conspiracy theories abound and they will probably always be with us. I think it's a wonderful exercise of our 1st Amendment rights that individuals so moved can express their ideas in our country. It's just that we shouldn't legitimize groups like World Net Daily and individuals like Jerome Corsi (author of Obama Nation) who despite overwhelming answers from the Left continue to push their ideas out to the rest of us as if these are actually mainstream ideas. (If you want more info on World Net Daily and who they are from another Conservative's point of view, check out the research article about WND on Brent Bozell's website Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/research/200907230036 )

What feels different to me about today's approach to building a Conservative base, is that we are less willing to go through the hard work of the rebuilding process, choosing instead for the 'quick fix'. There are substantive reasons why President Obama has, at least up until now, been warmly received by so many American citizens and we dare not sweep all of them under some rug of conspiracy or try to fool ourselves into pretending that all of these people were just somehow mesmerized by his good looks and fair speech.

Some of that 'personality magic' happens in every election as hope springs eternal in party politics and as certain segments of society ponder who is the ‘cuter’ or more ‘viral’ candidate.

But beyond this standard bill of fare, there are deeper reasons why we have the President that we do and as Conservatives we need to look honestly at the bedrock Conservative principles (limited government, freedom of speech, rule of law, etc.) that were put aside without a lot of contention during the Bush administration.

There's a gap in our awareness that we Conservatives need to fill and we'd be better served to try to remove the planks out of our own eyes before we turn to our brethren and try to remove the specks from theirs. And it seems that one of the planks we need to remove are the conspiracy theories (like the Birthers) that cloud our vision and provide really tasty fodder to those who want to criticize and devalue the Conservative movement.

@ 2009 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

Other Related Blog Posts from The New Right

The Original Proposal

World Net Daily's Response

The Republican National Committee's Response

Fighting for the Right

Liberty to Serve

Each day I am confronted by well intentioned, clear thinking individuals, in print or on TV, who are either trying to rouse me to action or who are just reporting on what they believe to be the destruction of our republic, the United States of America by Marxist and Socialist politicians, plans and policies. I am not wise enough to know whether they are correct. But this is how I feel about my country.

I believe that God Almighty, the creator of the heavens and the earth does not sleep and is not mocked. There is nothing new under the sun and no actions among the children of men of which he is unaware. I believe that it is and has been his intention to do good for and with America for the sake of his Son Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation in that name since our founding and that his intentions have not changed only our commitments.

Therefore no matter how inflated my money becomes or if I have to close down the businesses I currently own and steward, laying off my employees and losing my house and car, I have faith that God will provide food and water and shelter. But even if that fails and I were to fall into poverty and suffering beyond which I can currently imagine as a child of the post World War II generation of prosperity, I have a future home prepared for me in the heavens which neither gold nor silver could buy and which neither rust nor moth can decay.

Because of this foundation, if the opportunity is present I can go forth confidently, in humility, in the face of Marxist or Socialist ideologues and institutions, economic malaise and moral decay, reaching out to others of like mind with whom, together, I can pick up the worn out tools used by my predecessors which now lie abandoned by the roadside and with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other I can utilize what time is given me and what strength is afforded me to start rebuilding the walls of liberty against the horde of misguided religious zealotry that is angrily amassing followers in our world. And if I must die by any other means than old age lying in bed, then I choose to die with a sword in my hand, a prayer in my heart and a victory cry on my tongue.

Use not liberty as an occasion to the flesh but in love serve one another.

@ 2009 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

History Repeating Itself?!...must be something I ate

Check out this 65 year old cartoon from the 1934 Chicago Tribune. Those crazy midwesters. Except for the names of the individuals doesn't this scene seem strangely familiar?

And I don't think the familiarity is necessarily because the cartoon is an accurate depiction of what's happening in our country today (although it could be that). The way I see it this is interesting as a historical piece no matter which side of the political aisle you feel most comfortable sitting in.

For example, if you are appalled by what's happening today and believe that President Barack Obama and the current political gang in Washington are drunk with power and spending us towards socialism, then this cartoon will definitely appear as an accurate depiction that what was happening during the Great Depression under Roosevelt is reappearing with new names and faces. Please feel free to pass it on to your friends.

On the other hand, if you don't believe that the amount of spending going on today is actually bad and that our surviving the Great Depression and the subsequent societal gains are the proof of that, then you could actually see this cartoon as a historical indicator that the anti-government reactionaries and naysayers have nothing better to pull out of their bag than the same old demons of communism and intellectualism. In that case show it to your friends and have a good laugh.

Interesting isn't it this great experiment in self government? It sure would be a lot easier if everything were black and white with no shades of gray, wouldn't it? You know I think sometimes the political pundits on both the left and the right actually sell us this lie, that things are just black and white. This guys a good guy. That guys a bad guy.

I don't know, maybe I just need corrective lenses but I see a lot gray on both sides of the political spectrum. I'd say political rainbow but I don't want to offend anybody.

The one thing I do appreciate about the process though is the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression that allows us to disagree, sometimes vehemently, at yet still remain Americans. That is a great thing.

For the past 20 to 30 years, I have, by choice, moved in conservative, right wing, religious circles. Politically I've been Republican. It has been difficult for me to be a Democratic during these years because I felt the party was so beholden to what I feel are radical elements in Environmentalism, Social policy and economics.

My heart has always been bent towards freedom and individual liberty which means that I believe strongly in limiting government's power over the individual. I've seen the Democratic party loyalties after Kennedy's assassination solidifying themselves more and more in ways that seemed to me to be an expansion of governmental power and control. If I was going to be a Democrat I'd have to be a blue dog choking for air since Harry Truman and John Kennedy. The only problem is that I come from the liberal Northeast and I don't have a southern twang.

And yet my ideas concerning limited government and individual liberty were not at all crystallized during my teen years. I spent the 1970's, like many others of my generation, wondering why the heck we were in Vietnam and disliking Richard Nixon. I mean how do we kill four college students at Kent State even if they are disrespectful and throwing rocks? That was scary. To this day no one has ever been brought up on charges for that one.

And seeing the race riots and the prejudice that existed against blacks...that was really harsh too. As a teenager I became suspicious of almost all governmental authority because they had the power to shoot you or club you and throw you in jail which seemed really oppressive to my young mind.

In my junior year of high school, my buddy and I got an A- from our English teacher for our anti-Nixon, anti-Watergate song and slide show. I argued a lot with my Dad back then who was clear about what side of the fence he was on. I mean he wasn't comical like the caricatured Archie Bunker and I wasn't as liberal as the caricatured Michael Stivick but we were a little like that back then. (for those of you who don't know who Archie Bunker is...I'm sorry...use Google, you may even get a laugh out of it.)

I think the reason why talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and even Bill O'Reilly have risen to such popularity is that they really do give voice to a silent group of Americans who do not and did not relate to all the turmoil that accompanied the 1960's and 1970's. There was such an emphasis in the media on the Civil Rights issues and the student protesters and the Vietnam War and the Environmental initiatives, all of which needed coverage don't get me wrong, but I think it left a lot of 'common folk' as Bill O'Reilly calls them (#1 cable news program in the US for over 8 years in a row?...that's got to say something) feeling like nobody cared about them. Yeah it might be white rage but I don't see everything in terms of black and white, remember?

So I think that when the Carter administration failed to unite the country while at the same time appearing weak and ineffectual against terrorists as gas prices and interest rates rose in an inflationary spiral, there was a backlash. Many Americans were embarrassed by how quickly the greatest nation in the world that had defeated National Socialism in Germany (Nazis) and put down the burgeoning empire of Japan was now somehow wallowing in self-pity and defeatism.

And into that vacuum stepped Ronald Reagan. With Carter hiding out in the Rose Garden and Luke Skywalker defeating Darth Vader on the silver screen, Reagan, the former actor, former governor, former Democrat rode onto the political scene like Roy Rogers on Trigger with both six shooters blazing. His speech was simple, direct and to the point: Government wasn't the solution to our current economic woes...it was the problem.

Now for those of you who either dislike Reagan because he was a Republican or just don't know enough about him because you are under 35 years old, I want to draw an analogy for you to help you understand how popular he was back in the 1980's.

What if Barack Obama came into office this past year and had to immediately deal with massive unemployment, a sinking stock market, runaway inflation, failing institutions, a car industry in ruins seeking help, high gas and oil prices, a weak real estate market, a divided electorate after eight years of unsatisfactory Presidential administrations including scandal and corruption at the highest levels, a terrorist threat from the Middle East and an enemy that was threatening to rule the world and moving into Afghanistan with armored tanks and personnel?

You're right. It does sound just like today. So maybe that is what President Obama is facing. But he's not the first. That was exactly what President Reagan was facing 28 years ago. And to make matters worse, on his 69th day in office President Reagan entered the hospital after a bullet from a would be assassin named John Hinkley Jr. punctured one of his lungs. Talk about facing a challenge.

So both President Reagan and President Obama started their administration's under fire, so to speak. Now what about popular support?

I don't think you can argue against the fact that President Barack Obama is very popular today especially among the younger generations in our country. In his presidential race against John McCain, President Obama won 28 of 50 states (365 electoral votes verus 173 for McCain) and had 9,500,000 more votes than John McCain. A pretty decent showing. I don't think it's too much to expect that his followers, at least, take this result as a clear mandate that the country wants the change President Obama was addressing during his campaign.

What many young people today may not know is that in President Reagan's first term in office, running against the incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Mr. Reagan won 46 out of 50 states (489 electoral votes versus 49 electoral votes) and had 18,500,000 more votes than President Carter. And, just for the record, in his second term in office, President Reagan, carried on by the strong economic recovery following the 1981-82 recession, carried 49 out of 50 states for a record 525 electoral college votes the most ever received in a Presidential election.

I'll leave it to you to decide how to define a clear mandate because my point is not to lessen President Obama's victory. I like the guy and obviously so do a lot of other folk. I did not vote for him, however, mostly because of his lack of governing experience and his voting record that leaned towards far left wing economic policy. But he won easily without my vote.

My point is that many of us didn't have the incredibly uplifting experience our country experienced during the Reagan presidency. Anyone who was born after 1975 probably wasn't old enough in 1980 to really understand the devastation our country was facing and then in contrast just four years later to experience what real change is and what it feels like to have the morale and the economy of an entire nation lifted back up from despair to hope again. We experienced that with the election of President Reagan in 1980. Right now I can only hope that we will experience it again with President Obama.

And back then I was a registered Independent like many of us that voted for Reagan. I finally registered as a Republican after the Reagan years when I moved to Colorado in the early 1990's. Today I'm seriously thinking of changing back to an Independent for reasons that extend beyond the scope of this 'public service' length email.

So back to the political cartoon. Is this current administration with their hope for change doing the right thing? No matter what I believe or say, the fact is only time will tell. But I know one thing, the Democrats didn't inherit from President Bush anything harder than President Reagan inherited back in 1981 from President Carter. You may not believe it but I lived through both periods and the facts pretty well bear out the truth of that statement. It was bad in 1978 and 1979...really bad. That's not saying that this current economic situation might not be harder to control because of how long it's been ignored, but we were in just as much hot water in 1980 as we are in 2008. In some ways it might have even been worse.

So since the Democrats now control both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency, whatever happens from here on out will be in their hands. There are no excuses left to blame on the last President or the Republicans or anyone else. This is President Obama's and the neo-progressive Democrats time to lead and let History write the story when it's all over.

For all of our sakes I hope that after four years of this Presidency we feel the same united hope and good feeling that Carol and I felt back in 1984 when we were just 26 years old, with one young child and a very bright future ahead of us. I desire that for this generation of young people also - the chance to feel good about what's happening and what's going to be happening in their future.
@ 2009 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

I Quit! (and now we know the rest of the story?)

Below is a link to an interesting letter from one of the 'greedy ones' at AIG: John DeSantis. I don’t know this man personally nor do I know his background or motivation for writing this letter any more than what he writes himself.

But it does make me wonder how many of those calling for 'blood' from AIG executives would, if faced with similar circumstances, actually have the wherewithal to do themselves what Mr. DeSantis claims he is doing?

I also wonder how many of those who boarded the CT 'tour bus' to visit these 'rich guys' and protest in front of their actual homes (whose idea was this?...) will actually read this New York Times op-ed piece and get more of the story?

Here is John’s actual article in the New York Times à New York Times artice - John DeSantis of AIG
This article appeared in the New York Times just yesterday (March 25th, 2009) and it already has been picked up internationally. (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/25/aig-bonus-boss-resigns ).
As you probably are well aware, the AIG executive employee bonuses were somewhere between 165 and 220 million dollars. The bailout money to AIG was like 150 billion right? (did you know they're paying it back???...And of course, now we’re calling for these greedy executives from AIG, at least one of whom worked for a whole year without any salary (read the article New York Times artice - John DeSantis of AIG) to give back their bonuses OR we’ll pull out our big stick and the U.S. Congress will take it back via a law adding a line to the tax code that specifically targets employees from AIG. (by the way, are you familiar with the term: ‘bill of attainder’? It is by definition a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder . Bills of attainder are forbidden by Article I, section 9, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Funny what the gaps are in our education, isn’t it?)

I’m not defending the AIG executives, I’m not familiar with enough of the details to make a stand either way. Maybe most of them are all just greedy ‘fat cats’. But John DeSantis’ letter has to make you question jumping to that conclusion too quickly.
What’s more interesting to me is the outrage displayed by members of the U.S. Congress and allegedly the American public about these AIG bonuses. The frenzy of news coverage about this small group of people makes me wonder if the union workers at GMC had to drop any of their $135 per hour salaries, bonuses and benefit packages in order for GMC to receive their bailout money, which although currently less than the AIG bailout is still in the tens of billions and projected to increase this year and next.

I guess, these obscene costs for union worker’s salaries are not not something that Congress or the American people are outraged by although reducing the GM union worker benefit package to what Toyota compensates their non-union employees, for example would save about 6 BILLION dollars per year. Hmmm…let’s see what should I be more outraged by…$200 million in salaries for AIG executives in CT or 6 billion in salaries for UAW workers in the Midwest? That’s simple: those white collar Bourgeoisie piggies from CT of course. I mean who wants to hurt those poor blue collar proletariats from the UAW struggling to keep food on their table at a cost the American taxpayer of around $20 billion dollars per year, right?

And did you hear about the handout (bribe?) that GM is offering union employees to give up their jobs so they can retire their current Union workforce and rehire others at a lower per hour cost? It was in the papers but it’s still hard to even imagine numbers this large. GM offered a one time $140,000 payout to 74,000 employees as incentive to leave the company, sever all ties and NOT collect their pensions or health care that union retirement promises them. Now that’s a tough decision for these guys who have been working for 15 or 20 or even 30 years for GM to be all of sudden having to face the prospect of GM going bankrupt or NOT being able to pay their retirement pensions and healthcare costs that they have been counting on for years.

So I’m not saying it’s an easy decision but you know they are not the only people who have lost their jobs or their retirement money recently. Have you checked out the statistics of what current individuals 65 or older who have IRA’s and pensions in the stock market have lost in monthly and yearly income now that the stock market tumbled from 14,000 points to 7,000 points in 6 months? It’s not pretty for anybody out here right now.

If you’ve had trouble finding work lately or been laid off or had to bankrupt your business, etc. how nice would it be if the government would come in, bailout your company and then offer you a payout of $140,000 (I wonder if it’ll be taxed at 90%?) so that you can quit your job and either retire or maybe be hired back by the same company for less money…maybe say you’ll only make $84,000 per year instead of the $125,000 you were making.

It’s not a fairy tale. It’s happening right now at GM. You can read about it here: http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/news/companies/gm/ The government props up GM so they don’t fail and GM is offering all 74,000 of their union employees, supposedly with the government’s blessing, a one time payout of $140,000 per employee. Do the math. Really. Do the math. Grab a calculator and multiply $140,000 times 74,000. Not to be funny but you may need to use a spreadsheet or a computer because some calculators will NOT display that many digits. That’s right. GM, using government bailout funds has offered to give their employees (not executives…just rank and file, you know) slightly over 10 BILLION dollars.

I hope you get the point here. This outrage over AIG and executive bonuses, although maybe an important psychological or symbolic issue, certainly isn’t about economics or government stewardship of our resources.

But something that history has taught us is this. When the money's short and the breadlines are long every good king (dictator, tyrant, generalissimo, whatever) knows that it's prudent to hang a few 'fat cats' in the town square in order to appease and amuse the populace as well as to take the attention off of themselves.

So knowing history and the way of those in power, it’s hard for me to get worked up about 200 million to AIG when our own President within 50 days of saying forcefully and publicly that he will ban pork in his economic recovery package (http://www.nypost.com/seven/01072009/news/politics/obama_bans_stimulus_package_pork_149013.htm ) signs into law a stimulus package with pork that totals in the billions. How can I not be pessimistic and view this as a political diversion? I mean, definition of pork notwithstanding, 1 billion for community-development block grants, 4.2 billion for neighborhood stabilization programs and 650 million for the analog to digital TV conversion including 90 million towards educating “vulnerable populations” before they lose TV signals. (Heck it might have been cheaper to buy them all new color TV’s than to educate them!)

Again you can read about these non-stimulative, non-emergency portions of the ‘stimulus’ bill for yourself at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjcyODIyZGM2MGU1ZDdkNDgxZDc3OTNjYjM4ZDY1ODI= .
Look it's not a republican versus democrat thing. To me that's just another smokescreen perpetuated by some in power to keep US, you know 'We the People', fighting amongst ourselves while they steal the Republic right in front of our eyes..(.God help me I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist...) And it’s not an anti-Obama thing. I didn’t vote for him but I don’t have any hidden agenda against the guy. It’s all about reality and what’s best for all Americans not just special interest groups.

I read a funny cartoon by Randall Munroe on his XKCD website yesterday. I was just introduced to this website and I find it quite humorous in a quirky way. Here's a line from that comic strip a few days ago: "The difference between a million and a billion is the difference between me having a sip of wine and 30 seconds with your daughter and a bottle of gin and a night with her.” (You can see the comic for yourself at http://xkcd.com/558/ )

And that’s the real problem, our government is all ‘ginned up’ in their emotional frenzy of rescuing everybody and everything by spending money. And in this flood of feel good politics we’re trying so hard to sell this to the American people (some say shove it down our throats) that we get silly spectacles like a busload of 35 American citizens traveling on a bus to CT to visit and protest in front of AIG executives homes. I mean is this really significant or just a the latest in a series of video ‘sound bites’. And where is the national coverage of the thousands of American citizens who have been showing up to protests against the billions being spent by our government?

Did you know that April 15th is National Tea Party Day? (http://www.teapartyday.com/ ) Are you going to one? Did you read about the Florida Tea party three days ago in Orlando that drew somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 American citizens? You can read about it here à http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-locteaparty21032209mar22,0,426670.story and here à http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/3/21/thousands_rally_against_stimulus_plan_at_orlando_tea_party.html .
So we get National News coverage of 35 people on a bus going to AIG executive homes (and did I see it correctly was one woman on that video actually opening someone’s private mail box? That’s a federal offense…) and yet thousands of people in Florida protest the spending policies of the current administration (a little over a trillion dollars right now) and I have to read about it in the Orlando Sentinel or see it on channel 13 news Orlando? What’s wrong with this picture? And who cares about analog to digital TV conversions anyway if the common man isn’t going to get the truth in color or black and white?

If you read nothing else, do remember to check out John DeSantis “I Quit” letter to AIG in the New York Times.
New York Times artice - John DeSantis of AIG

The Chicago Tea Party - be sure to NOT wear flowers in your hair

TRUTH WARNING! If you are not used to people speaking their mind with conviction, passion and freedom, this email may not be for you. This pill may be bitter and difficult for some people to swallow. No sugar has been added for taste.

Check out this video. An individual NEWS REPORTER with some passion, an opinion and who’s not afraid to tell the truth on national TV.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853 (Rick Santelli – Chicago Tea Party)

This isn’t Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh…this is Rick Santelli, a ten year veteran reporter at CNBC working the Chicago Board of Trade.

Wake up America. Throwing good money after bad doesn’t “fix” an economy, it weakens it even further.

Although Franklin Roosevelt was very effective, a great communicator and much loved by the American people, it certainly wasn’t any of his economic pogroms (look it up) that got us out of the great depression. It was, unfortunately, World War 2. This knowledge is becoming more and more commonplace today among scholars and government officials. If you grew up with parents and journalists around you who adored FDR (like so many of us did), you may want to update yourself on what history is now saying about the Great Depression. The consensus more and more is coming to light that we would have been better to do nothing than to legislate the social programs of the 1930’s which only prolonged the Depression and did NOT end it or even get it under control for that matter.

And it wasn’t Bill Clinton or any government organization that made the 1990’s so prosperous. It wasn’t even Reagan’s tax cuts although lowering the corporate tax rates always stimulates growth and in the long run more tax revenues than raising tax rates does.
The two simple things that happened 15 to 20 years earlier that made the 1990’s so prosperous at least in terms of the stock market and investment returns was:

1. the invention of the microchip in the mid 1970’s and the subsequent rise of technology in it’s wake
2. the ERISA act of 1974 that allowed individuals a tax deductions for investing in the stock market using a vehicle known as an IRA

This video underscores how most businessmen and women really feel about redistributing wealth a.k.a. legalized theft under the guise of government aid.

We’d rather fail than bail because we know the fallout that results from bailout: when there’s no upside potential you turn the engine of productivity upside down and we go nowhere when the train’s on it’s back with the wheels spinning in the air.

Listen closely to exactly what Rick says while it’s still possible to turn this ship of state around. And if not, at least you’ll learn about what it will take to build a strong economy in the new country you may live in after the United States of America goes bankrupt. (for those of you who think this is impossible for a major world power to go bankrupt in the modern era please go to http://www.fas.org/news/russia/2000/russia/part08.htm )

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853 (Rick Santelli – Chicago Tea Party)

Will our government listen before it’s too late?

For those of you old enough to remember we went through similar times to these in the 1970’s.
A republican President (Richard Nixon) who was extremely popular early on and then became a liability to the party.

- A gas crisis with Arab nations raising and lowering gas prices leading to inflationary and recessionary fears.
- A regionally strong, relatively unknown “man of the people” running for President of the US as a Democrat and winning (Jimmy Carter)
- Democrats control both houses of Congress and start raising taxes and spending money
- Carter creates the department of Energy and implements a National Energy policy emphasizing conservation, price control and new technologies (wind, solar, etc.)
- Under his watch Russia invades Afghanistan, we have the takeover of the American embassy in Iran Hostage crisis and we voluntarily give up control of the Panama Canal.
- Carter visited Cuba and the socialist dictator Fidel Castro, the first American President to do so since the 1950’s revolution.
- Carter attended the recall elections in Venezuelaand supported Hugo Chavez’s right to continue as “President” (socialist dictator) even when everyone else cried foul and believed - Chavez had rigged the polls. The European Union wouldn’t even attend the election because they felt that there were too many restrictions put on them and they didn’t want to be “seen” supporting Chavez. This didn’t bother Carter.
- Carter always seemed to take the side of the Palestinians in the Israel/Palestinian conflict even supporting known terrorist groups at times. Even as late as a few years ago, Carter published a book entitled Palestine: “Peace, Not Apartheid”, linking the Israeli occupation of Gaza with the White occupation of South Africa.

So Barack Obama, except for being from a mixed marriage (black dad, white mom) and having a weird name that sounds Middle Eastern, is not really that “new” of a political leader to those of us who are his age and older. We’ve seen this all before.

When Carter, who was a really nice guy but a terrible administrator, left office after just four years, we had runaway inflation, home mortgage interest rates between 18% and 21%, gold was at an all time high and the stock market was very glum during his administration with Forbes magazine rating the stock market as 8th lowest out of the 10 for the past 10 presidents.

And what’s even worse than that, and may be the single biggest factor to account for why we are in the financial crisis we are in today, was the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act signed into law by Jimmy Carter. (for more info go to http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/09/20/ibd-carter-more-blame-financial-crisis-bush-or-mccain )

Remember Carter is the same President that started Habitat for Humanity. If FDR was a ‘chicken in every pot’ kind of guy, Carter is definitely a ‘house for everyone’ type of guy. Not that the concept is bad…we’re all for that…it’s how we go about implementing that vision that is under attack. The Community Reinvestment Act (or C.R.A.P. for short) required banks and savings institutions to make loans to the lower-income areas in the communities they were in. Haven’t we been hearing about Toxic Assets and Mortgage bailouts a lot lately? The root of this idea that we banks must lend money to people that they know can’t afford to pay it back is in the Carter Administration. So like I said nothing new about Obama - just a different name and face.

But back to the original video: Rick Santelli’s Tea Party…if you read or watch nothing else in this email, you must watch this. It just happened a few days ago on national TV…it’s real, it’s live and it’s not all milquetoast and tea…it’s gut level stuff that doesn’t buy into the lie that it’s government’s “job” to help those that are failing…where to spend my money in the realm of charity is MY DECISION not government’s decision…and when you pay off someone’s mortgage or credit cards and don’t allow them to feel the pain or to fail, that’s charity…and charity begins at home not in Washington…churches, missions, non-profits, helping hands, volunteerism, boys clubs, girls clubs, United Way, YMCA’s, soup kitchens, Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity…all these are right ways to help…government mandates to private organizations and government bailouts to private individuals OR corporations (like GM)…is outside of their constitutional powers…it’s an abuse of authority and, we’ve shut governments down for much less in the past (i.e. the Boston Tea Party)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853 (Rick Santelli – Chicago Tea Party)

Will we listen and speak up and act out before it’s too late? Maybe we should all go to the Chicago Tea party…I wonder if Santelli will really do it? I wonder if our brethren who like and support Obama because of his fair words and pretty face will be able to discern between what’s right and wrong and stand up and really let him know how they feel or if they’ll crater under the weight of public opinion? At least Santelli wasn’t afraid to put his job and reputation on the line on the CNBC…I wonder if he’ll end up unemployed over this free exercise of his First Amendment right to free speech…what do they say about big government?…it’s only free when you’re not criticizing me…something like that.

If you’ve already been sipping the kool-aid of government expansion and bailout (our should I call it the Democratic re-election spending initiative which is what it really is…tax, spend and influence peddle), it MAY NOT be too late to stick your finger down your throat and spit it up…
By the way, Rick works in Obama’s backyard – the Chicago Board of Trade is, of course, in Chicago, Illinois, so not everyone from Illinois is a socialist or labor union sympathizer.

RICK SANTELLI
CNBC On-Air Editor

Rick Santelli joined CNBC Business News as on-air editor in June 1999, reporting live from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. His focus is primarily on interest rates, foreign exchange, and the Federal Reserve.
A veteran trader and financial executive, Santelli has provided live reports on the markets in print and on local and national radio and television. He joined CNBC from the Institutional Financial Futures and Options at Sanwa Futures, L.L.C. There, he was a vice president handling institutional trading and hedge accounts for a variety of futures related products.
Prior to that, Santelli worked as vice president of Institutional Futures and Options at Rand Financial Services, Inc., served as managing director at the Derivative Products Group of Geldermann, Inc., and was Vice President in charge of Interest Rate Futures and Options at the Chicago Board of Trade for Drexel, Burnham, Lambert. Santelli began his career in 1979 as a trader and order filler at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in a variety of markets including gold, lumber, CD's, T-bills, foreign currencies and livestock.
He is a graduate of the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana with a Bachelor of Science degree. Santelli has been a member of both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.

The Ostrich - New Baby Boomer Mascot

WARNING – Proceed at your own risk: The following has been labeled an angry email, in other words: it might make you angry (I was actually quite happy during the writing process). Please do not continue unless you are willing to take responsibility for your own actions, think your own thoughts and really mean it when you say you have an open mind. In other words, you need to be a bit out of step with “m, m, m, my generation.”

Okay you’ve been warned.

I just finished reading one of those stereotypical emails contrasting the idyllic 1950’s with the terrible Two-thousands. It was titled: “Schools 1957 vs. 2007” and it gave 8 different scenarios and how they were allegedly handled in 1957 versus how they'd be handled today. Here's one example from the email:

Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

I usually get a small burst of sentimental juice out of this kind of thing. But not today.

I’m just getting so tired of the arrogance of my generation: people born between 1945 and 1965, commonly referred to as Baby Boomers.

I was born in 1957 and turned 50 in 2007 so I’ve experienced some of these ‘changes’ that are alluded to in the example above. Notwithstanding, this type of email strkes me as another one of our Baby-Boomerized, Brady Bunched self-serving fantasy island emails contrasting the absolute best case scenario of 1957 vs. the absolute worst case scenario of 2007.

What gets me is how we pass around these emails like some kind of religious relic or cultural fossil from a past era, when boomers roamed the school hallways. We pick up the relic or fossil, turn it over in our hands, calmly adjusting our reading glasses, then sigh and knowingly shake our heads ever so sentimentally and pass it on.

This kind of pig swill is just so predictable and trivial. Is there really ANYBODY left in America that does not know that it was different 50 years ago? I mean everybody 45 and older knows it. And probably any of our kids who grew up with us have had to endure hearing it like a zillion times…so I’m just wondering out loud: Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

You know it's kind of like when our parents would get out the round trays of faded slides from the top of the hall closet and subject guests to a few hours of our family's history.

"There's Joey at the top of the slide. There he is at the bottom of the slide. Isn't that a cute snowsuit?"

At least our parents served Tom Collins or Old Fashioneds with the pig swill. Now we're just dry and dull.

There’s no doubt that things were simpler and less complicated in 1957 and there’s no doubt that we have become, in our quest to be understanding and tender-hearted, a bunch of whiners sometimes but here’s what I would ask myself if I was a young person today:

“Okay so it was better back then well then how come your generation (Baby Boomers) went and screwed it all up? After all you are, or were, our generation’s principals, teachers, parents, police officers, guidance counselors, doctors, psychologists, etc.”

I think that would be a very fair question. And I wonder how we’d answer it?

Maybe we should start by asking ourselves the question: “How did it get so bad so fast when we intended to do so much good?”

Then we should quickly follow it by: “What can we do before we die to make it better?”

After all we’re supposedly a generation of cause-oriented, individuals seeking the good of the social collective.

Right now I think the most good we can do is de-bunk, de-mystify and de-louse the country from all the pseudo-intellectual, feel-good crap we’ve shoved down the palates of too many unsuspecting ‘you-tes”. It’s time for the “Don’t Mess Around with My Generation” clan to do a little housekeeping and clean up a few of our own messes before we go noisily into that dark night (don’t worry, we never do anything quietly…that’s what the “boomer” really stands for in baby boomer…).

After reading this glorification of the 1957 schoolyards, I was reminded of another type of email in this genre that I receive at times. This other type of email typically contrasts kids from the 1960’s (allegedly us Wonder Bread children) playing outside and riding bikes while today’s overweight kids are at home on the couch playing video games and watching movies (like their parents).

When I read these I think to myself: “Okay, who invented these gadgets? Who buys these things and puts them in the home?”

You know what I mean? Isn’t this more of a condemnation of us, you and me, from either our parents (the over 70 crowd) and/or from our children (the under 40 crowd) about what we’ve screwed up over the past 40 years? We’ve somehow presided over a period in America's history that seemingly turned simple idyllicism into complicated consumerism and then we pass around these unmetered paeons of trivia to each other electronically, lamenting the loss. Sounds a lot like hypocrisy to me.

I say it’s time we baby boomers grow up and face the music: we wanted social justice, diverse inclusivity, freedom from moral restraints and the negation of individual and societal feelings of guilt that use to accompany traditionally bad behaviors and lifestyles and now we’ve accomplished that. And alongside of it another crop has grown up as well: the worst case scenarios of 2007 with which we are all familiar.

Maybe all those “repressed feelings” and “unliberated bondage” of the home, family and work environment weren’t as bad as we obviously thought they were back in the late '60's and early '70s when we were blowing up buildings and burning bras in the same cauldron with common sense and decency. Maybe that’s where the “baby” part of baby boomer comes in: we throw babies out with the bathwater, even if we don’t bathe ourselves.

I sure hope the under 40 crowd finds a better way to deal with their ‘cultural angst’ than we did. As Baby Boomers, we’re allegedly very much ‘in touch’ with the impact that our dealings have had upon the physical environment: trees, waterways, animals, etc. However despite our eagle eye awareness of "mother nature", our generation appears almost blind to the havoc that our social manipulations and ‘creative psychological engineering’ have caused in the day to day lives of ordinary Americans.

Where did the worst case scenarios of 2007 come from?

But of course, it’s greedy capitalists in big corporations (except ones in Boulder and certain parts of California) who caused this or, let’s see, maybe it’s the uptight, judgmental right-wing religious nuts or those uncaring Republicans or it could be global warming, well probably not…but it’s somebody’s fault darn it…it can’t be ours because we’re the young (in heart), groovy, hip, socially conscious, love the world, imagine there’s no heaven, blow up all your guns and bombs, BABY BOOMER generation.

We’re the greatest generation that never lived up to it’s potential but we’re still willing to hug you, your trees and your atheist neighbor because if we could all just get one more summer of love, share our dreams and our wallets together in a kind of daisy chain of humanity than we could maybe love bomb our enemies into community by throwing out our aura into the global mentality while acting locally to encourage free expressions that run counter to the intuition of thousands of years of culture, religion and experience. Our way of thinking about the world just HAS to be right because we believe we can change the universe if we’ll just concentrate hard enough, rub our Birkenstocks together and repeat the mantra “There’s no right or wrong…if it feels good, just do your own thing”.

Come on people now, smile with me, hold my hand and sing “Nothing’s going to change my world”…Pay no attention to that terrorist cell in the small town or that radical mosque that’s asking for Sharia law outside of the constitution…Just concentrate people, if you can’t see your navel anymore use any part of your body, feel your skin, be here with me now…ready, sing it out: “Nothing’s going to change my world”…

That's it, really concentrate on it, feel it and the universe will bring it to your door without you having to lift a finger or, God forbid, sacrifice a career or defer a desire…get out the spf 50, there’ll be no raisins in the sun as long as our generation rains...I suggest in the meantime that you buy an umbrella unless you're an Ostrich, in which case you've already got your head covered...in sand...

People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

The Who - My Generation (1965)

@ 2008 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

Failure - It Actually is an Option

Have you heard the phrase: “Failure is NOT an option”? Well it makes for a great line in a movie but in life many times failure is a great option.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no pessimist or quitter; I like winning as much as anyone.

But when you’ve done the best that you can in business or a hobby or perhaps even a relationship and you’re still not getting where you want to, it just might be okay to admit that you failed. Now I didn’t say give up. I said to admit failure. There’s a difference, subtle as it may be.

As long as you can make a difference, you should persevere. It was Winston Churchill who said: “Never, never, never give up” when facing the german attacks during the WWII.

It was also Winston Churchill who said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Churchill understood that at times, we fail, plain and simple. And it’s the ability to get back up and into the race again that is the important point.

People ask me all the time how I am able to juggle three businesses, a family, hobbies, part-time work and other interests. It’s an easy answer: I’m used to failing and it doesn’t scare me.

But I know and have known many men and woman who are paralyzed by the fear of failure and in that state never try to accomplish anything unusual or of great value. Fearing to fail they never do but then again they never do succeed either.

I have known both: failure and success and I can honestly say that there isn’t much different between the two except the press you receive after the fact. I’m just as scared sometimes to succeed as I am to fail. I thank God for His Grace that allows me to stay in the game despite my less than stellar record at the plate.

So if you’ve always wanted to do something but have been afraid to fail, well don’t let that stop you. And if you’ve been praying for a miracle like David did with his offspring with Bathsheba but the baby’s died anyway, well get out of the ashes, put off your sackcloth, wash up and get a meal. Failure is NOT the end of life. Sometimes it’s just another stop on the road.

Enjoy the following poem by Edgar Guest. God bless you.

The Loss Is Not So Great
Edgar Guest

It is better as it is: I have failed but I can sleep;
Though the pit I now am in is very dark and deep
I can walk to-morrow's streets and can meet to-morrow's men
Unashamed to face their gaze as I go to work again.

I have lost the hope I had; in the dust are all my dreams,
But my loss is not so great or so dreadful as it seems;
I made my fight and though I failed I need not slink away
For I do not have to fear what another man may say.

They may call me over-bold, they may say that I was frail;
They may tell I dared too much and was doomed at last to fail;
They may talk my battle o'er and discuss it as they choose,
But I did no brother wrong--I'm the only one to lose.

It is better as it is: I have kept my self-respect.
I can walk to-morrow's streets meeting all men head erect.
No man can charge his loss to a pledge I did not keep;
I have no shame to regret: I have failed, but I can sleep.

@ 2008 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

Joey B. Goode

I wish I could tell you I was a good guy. I’m not.

I’m not necessarily a bad guy either…I’m just a guy.

I think that it isn’t a matter of goodness as much as a matter of character.

You know how Jesus said: “Call no man good…except God” or something like that?

There really is no good thing in me. I don’t feel like I have a fountain of innate goodness flowing through my soul. I mean I have the comforter, the holy spirit, and that’s good and pure and righteous. But in and of myself I can’t say I’m “good”.

Remember your mom (or dad) calling you a good boy or good girl? What did they mean by that? It was almost always related to some behavior, something you did: either you obeyed or helped out or did a good deed, etc. Goodness wasn’t related to being as much as it was to doing.

Okay so I don’t want to get too heavy here nor do I want to get bogged down into a Buddhist-like discussion of the nuances of being versus doing, etc. I only bring it up to make my point which is: goodness isn’t innate. We’re not just “good” men or women. We make ourselves “good” by doing acts that are recognized as being “good” (and not evil) and these are more a result of our conscience or character than of any inherent goodness in us.

I know that goodness is one of the fruit of the spirit. It a sense it is a “doing” fruit whereas something like “joy” is more of an experience than an action. So as we “put off the old man with his deeds” (action) and “put on the mind of Christ” (action) we are “transformed by the renewing of our minds” and therefore not like everyone else in the world.

But is that true because of our birth? Is it a result of what family we were born into? Is it true because of where we live, who we know, how much money we acquire? No. You know a good tree by its good fruit: beginning and end of story.

A man or woman that wants to have friends, must be friendly. So a man or woman that wants to be “good” must do “good things”…act in a way that portrays goodness.

And I’m not talking about acting in the sense of a Broadway actor playing a role, although at times it might be beneficial to “fake it till you make it” in life. But I’m talking about acting (or it’s converse: not acting) by a deliberate decision of the will.

For example: most of us would never steal something because we know it’s wrong. How do we know it’s wrong? Well in the sense of the natural law, we wouldn’t want anyone stealing from us. Then maybe our parents put us in mind of this by teaching us the Ten Commandments or another body of religion or philosophy that advised: Thou shalt not steal. Then perhaps we live in a society that discourages theft by enforcing the laws of the land and providing negative consequences for engaging in that activity.

All of this adds up to the end result that: most people do not steal. But what about the old story of Abraham Lincoln walking a mile to return a penny? I don’t know if any of that is true but it’s a cultural thing so what about that? What if a shopkeeper accidentally rang up your order and forgot to charge you for a book or a DVD or a small appliance. Maybe it was only $10 or $20 or $30. Would you go back to Wal-Mart or Target and show them the receipt and pay them the difference? Or would you think: “Oh they’re rich enough, they don’t need my money”?

You know, I think I’ve done both: gone back and not. Why? Because I’m not inherently good or anywhere close to perfect. I believe in goodness, oh wretched man that I am, but I don’t always practice it. We all look good at times, to the outside world. We give “good” advice. We do “good” works. We sponsor “good” activities. We appear to be upstanding, “good”, solid citizens. And, for the most part, we are. But then ask our spouses (male or female) about us and sometimes a whole different picture emerges. Why? Because we’re not that good? No, more because when you live with someone everyday in a close up and personal way you see all the dirty underwear, all the times you’re tired or confused or angry or depressed or whatever. And so when friends and acquaintances and neighbors think how great we are, we can then come home to our husbands and wives and be reintroduced to reality.

That’s too big a subject to go into because on some levels, the love of God manifested dictates to our hearts that we overlook, forget, forgive and NOT bring up all those weaknesses and foibles to each other. You know love is patient, love is kind, love doesn’t thrust itself in the center ring, etc. Love is another fruit of the spirit. It’s not the natural condition of the sons and daughters of Eve (and Adam) to live there. We bear children in stress and we work out the thorns and thistles in the ground to get our bread in the sweat of our faces and then we return to the dust unto which we came. Not exactly an epic movie script.

But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love, gave us His only begotten Son, that whosever believes in him shall not perish but have life in the age to come. Now there’s a man that proved himself worthy of acclamation. Our Lord Jesus Christ went through the fires of persecution, torture and crucifixion for our sins and came out the other side of that experience a whole new man able to save us to the uttermost who follow him. And when the Pharisees called him “Good Master”, he says to them: only God is good boys…don’t call me good. How do you like that?

I like it a lot and it’s one of the realities that keep me pursuing righteousness, goodness, faith, meekness, etc…all those things that “against which there is no law”. I have not reached these things but I am confident that they are more real than gold and silver which I can see and that the fruit of pursuing after them, is better than any earthly master can pay.

So am I good? Not really. I’m just convinced that my soul is worth more than the whole world because without it: where am I really? So, in a sense, I’m a mercenary, I’m a survivor, I’m a fanatic, I’m a fool for Christ’s sake that I may hold on to my golden ticket and see, if not Paris, London, Bangkok and Macchiu Pichu, at least I may open my eyes in the Kingdom of God and behold the Holy City someday, in the age to come. When I think about that, it’s really not that hard to labor in the sweat of my face against the weaknesses that are within me. When I forget that, even the holy spirit within me can’t help me overcome my feelings of self concern and doubt.

So I pray that God piles just enough fertilizer into your life and mine to keep us growing; not too much to burn us up, but just enough to make us very fruitful in all things pertaining to Him. It’s some good sh_t even though it really stinks at times!

Be good by doing good and, if you think you’re wise, then become a fool. It’s a great career move. The benefits are out of this world.
@ 2008 Joseph Ricciardi Jr