Palmetto Pachyderm

Dean Allen has just published a new book RATTLESNAKE REVOLUTION: The Tea Party Strikes!

To buy this book, go to the website:

RattlesnakeRevolution.com

Dean has also listed links to numerous other conservative organizations that are great sources of useful information to conservative activists.

This is a work in progress, so check back often and feel free to make suggestions for other sites that deserve inclusion on the list.

Suppose your alcoholic son comes to you and says “Dad, I am only making $46,000 a year on my job but it takes me $78,000 to live. My credit cards are maxed out at $243,000 and the bank is threatening to cut off my line of credit on August 2nd. You have to help me keep borrowing!”

My reply would be “No, son, you need to drink less, work more, quit borrowing, and spend some of your $46,000 income to pay down your bills.”

“But dad, I like drinking. I will no longer be popular with my buddies if I stop drinking. After all, one reason I am popular is I buy them drinks too!”

“ Son, there are things in life more important than being popular with your drinking buddies. You need to stop drinking, work harder, and figure out how you are going to pay your bills.”

This is a common sense conversation, the advice any reasonable father would give a prodigal son. Here is where common sense goes out the window, and Congresscritters get really dumb. Those numbers are the US government income, debt, & expenses, divided by the number of families in America, based upon a family of four. Instead of drinking alcohol, Congresscritters spend money on programs to buy votes and keep themselves popular with the 47% of Americans who do not pay any income taxes at all.

“Dad, you don’t understand how bad my situation really is. Unless I get my credit card limits raised I am not going to be able to make my house payments after August 2nd!”

“No son, you will have plenty of money from your $46,000 salary to make your mortgage payments, and even to pay at least the interest on your credit cards. However, you will have to stop drinking.”

“But Dad, you are a rich guy and you could just co-sign my debt so I could continue to finance all my necessary spending.”

“Son, you are right. I could co-sign your debt, and you would continue to live beyond your means, on borrowed money, after August 2nd. Of course, if I do that, and you continue to drink and run up bar tabs, there will come a time when you and I both can’t pay our debts, then we both lose everything we own.”

“Dad, I want you to negotiate with me in good faith. I will agree to stop drinking…. some day, if you will just co-sign my credit cards right now, so I can keep running up my bar tab after August 2nd.”

You and I know exactly how to give tough love, to a family member with these numbers and spending habits. This situation is not fixed by Daddy pulling a Band-Aid off, or eating peas. This problem requires alcoholic Son Barry to get in a 12 step program now, and get the spending monkey off his back.

For some unknown reason, an educated man can win an election, become a Congresscritter, move to Washington, D.C., and he gets stupid enough to “negoitate” co-signing more debt. Debt that allows irresponsible colleagues to spend money…. borrowed money, on programs to make them popular with folks who do not work for a living or pay any taxes.

To her credit, Congresswoman Michele Bachamnn says she has a “titanium spine” and absolutely will not agree to raise the debt limit, under any circumstances. Mr. Obama is threatening to not pay the Army, not pay the interest due on US bonds, and not send out Social Security checks after August 2nd unless Republicans cave in to his extortion and agree to raise the debt limit. Now is the time for the rest of the Congresscritters to learn what Mrs. Bachmann already understands. If the federal government of the United States stops spending $1.4 Trillion dollars a year more than they take in, there will be no need to raise the debt limit. There is plenty of money. As Ronald Reagan used to say, “We don’t have a taxing problem; we have a spending problem.”

Spineless cowards like Mitch McConnell say we must cave in and raise the debt limit, or the United States is going to default on its financial obligations. That’s the alcoholic son again…. “Dad, unless you co-sign my visa card I will not have money for food to eat, or be able to pay my mortgage; I will only have enough money left for drinking and partying.”

The time has come to tell Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell “No more borrowed money. None. Nada. Zilch. The borrowing stops on August 2nd.” Follow that up with more bad news for Donkeycrats and RINO’s, “You will use the $2,400,000,000,000.00 the federal government has coming in already, to pay the Army, fund Social Security checks, and pay the interest on our past debt.” If there is not enough money for all the insane, shovel ready stimulus, foreign aid, welfare, bailouts, farm subsidies, and earmarks, that make you popular; cut out those things. We need to cut out those things now, not in August, not by the end of the year, not after the 2012 elections, we need to cut that spending now!

“Dad, you don’t understand. This deadline by the bank is real and they will cut off my credit cards on August 2nd unless you co-sign my debts. There is just nothing I can do. You have simply got to help me. You don’t understand just how bad it really is. I know it is pathetic, but I am begging, I am almost ready to pee in my pants & cry like a girl.”

Son, you need to get a backbone, work more, spend less, stop drinking, and pay off your debts. No, things really are not as bad as you claim. You just do not want to stop drinking, or stop buying booze for your buddies, all on borrowed money. If you really had to stand up like a man and be responsible, there are plenty of other options. Remember son, you own half the land west of the Mississippi River and you are not even collecting rent on most of it.

OK, your real son is not an alcoholic, you were a better father than that. My question is, what are you going to do about your Congresscritter? Yours may be one of those on a binge, and unfortunately the Donkeycrats are not the only ones with the problem. What are you doing about it? Your end of the lifeboat is sinking too, so shut up and bail.

That’s my opinion on this phoney crisis. What’s yours? I welcome your comments.

Winter 1777-78 Valley Forge, Pennsylvania – The US Capitol, then at Philadelphia, fell to British occupation September 26th. George Washington’s Continental Army, short of just about everything, and numbering only 12,000 men, retreated twenty five miles to Valley Forge and encamped for the winter. Among the members of this rag tag band, was a boy of 16, who, like most of the American army there, had no shoes. A French nobleman, Chevalier de Pontgibaud, described the scene: “Soon I came in sight of the camp. My imagination had pictured an army with uniforms, the glitter of arms, standards, Etc., in short, military pomp of all sorts; Instead of the imposing spectacle I had expected, I saw, grouped together or standing alone, a few militiamen, poorly clad, and for the most part without shoes -”

 Of these, 2000 died of starvation and disease. In spite of hardships, Washington managed to find provisions, and train them. When they left Valley Forge, in the summer of 1778, for the first time, America had an Army!

 February – March 1836, San Antonio de Bexar, Republic of Texas – One hundred eighty six  volunteers, many from Tennessee and South Carolina, barricaded themselves inside the Alamo. William Barrett Travis, born in Saluda County, South Carolina, commanded what passed for Texas’ regular army. Volunteers from Tennessee, served under Col. Davy Crockett. The rest were with James Bowie, a hard drinking, knife fighting, frontiersman, who owned six million acres of land in Texas and Mexico. He married the first cousin of the Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The same Mexican dictator who now, surrounded the 186 defenders of the Alamo with 3,000 battle hardened troops and threatened no quarter for rebels!

 Refusing to surrender, they raised the first Texas flag and, held out against overwhelming odds for thirteen bloody days. With their lives, they bought time for General Sam Houston to raise and train the Army that defeated Santa Anna April 21st at San Jacinto, securing the freedom of Texas.

 1862, Eudora, Arkansas – A company of volunteer infantry was raised in Chicot County, Arkansas. Among the men who enlisted in the Confederate service was Private Edward Green Allen who participated in numerous battles, and spent almost a year in a Yankee POW camp. Paroled at the end of the war, he returned home, raised eight children, and farmed cotton on the banks of the Mississippi river.

 December 7, 1941, Eudora, Arkansas – Three brothers from Eudora grew up eight miles from the Mississippi River. When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, Charlie James Allen was already in the US Navy. He would die a year later when a Nazi U-Boat torpedoed and sank the U.S.S. Jacob Jones in the Atlantic. Older brother Benjamin Franklin Allen, Jr. served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific. He survived the war, worked for the Bechtel Corporation, built nuclear power plants, and lived to be 93. Youngest of the three brothers, William Edward Allen, was drafted into the Army early in 1943. He landed in Italy  in September 1943 as part of the 36th Infantry Division (Texas National Guard) and participated in the liberation of Rome. Landing at Normandy, August 15, 1944, as part of  Lt. General Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army, he helped liberate France, and participated in the Battle of the Bulge.

 In 1945 he helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen Belsen. He would be haunted the rest of his life by the memories of emaciated prisoners, starved till they could no longer speak, or eat, and knowing they would soon die.

 December 7, 1941, Edna, Texas – Hearing news of the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor; brothers Charlie, Gillus, and Eddie Reese, all joined the United States Navy, and went to war. Younger brother Tony Calvin Reese, joined the Army, and served in Europe. Eddie earned a Silver Star on Guadalcanal. He was credited with saving the lives of six fellow Sea Bees by throwing an unexploded grenade back at the Japs. The grenade exploded just as he released it, taking off two fingers, and the thumb, of his right hand. All four Reese brothers would survive the war, marry, and have lots of children.

 December 13, 1968, Houston, Texas – Days after his eighteenth birthday, a volunteer stood beside 68 other boys, most of whom were drafted, and took the oath to preserve, the constitution.  Over the next four years he served on the DMZ in Korea, and two tours of duty in Vietnam. He earned a Combat Infantryman’s Badge, and an Air Medal, on a hilltop 20 miles west of a place called Phu Bai, Republic of Vietnam, for a firefight the night of November 15 – 16, 1969. He later earned twenty-one other medals, and ribbons, and three honorable discharges.

 Memorial Day, 2011, Your Home Town – Please enjoy your long weekend. Have a cookout and invite friends over for steaks – enjoy a cold beer, or two or three. Take your kids swimming, hug them and tell them you love them – even if it does embarrass the crap out of them. Take the boat to the lake and get in some fishing. Watch some fireworks, watch TV, or perhaps take in a movie. Buy your grandchildren ice cream cones, and take your wife out dancing. Oh, and if you happen to see a bunch of old men, wearing funny looking hats, carrying American flags & hanging around the cemetery - don’t worry about it. They are not part of any cult.

 They are my buddies from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. I will pause to remember the 16 year old boy at Valley Forge, my Great, great, great, great, Grandfather on the Holt side. I will remember James Bowie’s aunt was my Great, great, great grandmother. The Confederate POW, Edward Green Allen? He was my Great, great, grandfather. Benjamin Franklin Allen, Jr., Charlie James Allen, Charlie James Reese, Tony Calvin Reese, Gillus Reese, and Eddie Leroy Reese – the one with the missing fingers – were all my uncles. T-5 Sgt. William Edward Allen, the draftee who helped liberate Bergen Belsen, was my Daddy. They are all gone now.

 The kid who joined the Army in Houston, and went off to Korea, and Vietnam, to fight communism – was me. For over forty years, I have helped put flags on the graves of veterans each Memorial day. I would like to tell you the men in my family are different from yours; or even special. The fact is, the Allens are not particularly exceptional. Almost every family in America has ancestors who sacrificed to secure your freedom.

 Please, by all means, enjoy your holiday to the fullest on this Memorial day! That’s what we were all fighting for – just don’t forget, that freedom was bought at a price. If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read it in English, thank a veteran!