Back to Basics

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.” – Barack Hussein Obama, spoken at a White House dinner to celebrate the beginning of Ramadan!

Well, of course, he does. Why wouldn’t someone who thinks the sound of the call to evening prayers from a nearby minaret is one of the sweetest sounds in the world? Why wouldn’t someone who spent his formative years, age six to twelve, in Indonesia, the step-son of a Muslim father and the son of a Muslim father who had deserted his wife and child.

But, I hear you say, he spent twenty years in a Christian church in Chicago. Yes, with a preacher who said of 9/11 that “the chickens had come home to roost”; a preacher who embraced Black Liberation theology and maintained close friendships with Nation of Islam leaders in Chicago.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”

What a pompous hypocrite. He’s been president since January 20, 2009 and has yet to have selected a church to attend in Washington, D.C., like every other president before him has done, but he makes sure to celebrate Ramadan.

That’s what you get when you elect a man named Barack Hussein Obama about whom you know nothing other than the fawning, worshipful puke served up by the liberal media all through the campaign and for most of his first year and a half in office.

Too late! The majority of voters selected a complete stranger; a man with virtually no available paper trail, including the one item most people can produce on request, a legitimate birth certificate.

This commentary was posted as a comment on this site, but is too important to be hidden among the comments. So here it is. Thanks for sharing and I hope everyone takes note.

WHO AM I?

I was born in one country, raised in another.
My father was born in another country.
I was not his only child.
He fathered several children with numerous women.

I became very close to my mother, as my father showed no interest in me.
My mother died at an early age from cancer.

Although my father deserted me and my mother raised me,
I later wrote a book idolizing my father not my mother.

Later in life, questions arose over my real name.
My birth records were sketchy. No one was able to produce a legitimate, reliable birth certificate.

I grew up practicing one faith but converted to Christianity, as it was widely accepted in my new country, but I practiced non-traditional beliefs and didn’t follow Christianity, except in the public eye under scrutiny.

Barring a preliminary injunction by some warped leftist judge, Arizona’s SB 1070 will go into force next Thursday. If that blessed event comes to pass, the Grand Canyon state will become the nation’s leader in efforts to restore grace and honor to the rule of law, American sovereignty, common sense, and the U.S. Constitution, all of which have been vulgarly spat upon by Marxists now occupying Washington, D.C.

As reported by reuters.com, in part, illegal aliens are doing Arizona a huge favor by leaving the state early:
“Phoenix, July 25 (Reuters) – Nicaraguan mother Lorena Aguilar hawks a television set and a few clothes on the baking sidewalk outside her west Phoenix apartment block.

“A few paces up the street, her undocumented Mexican neighbor Wendi Villasenor touts a kitchen table, some chairs and a few dishes as her family scrambles to get out of Arizona ahead of a looming crackdown on illegal immigrants.

“Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving,” said Villasenor, 31, who is headed for Pennsylvania. “We have no alternative. They have us cornered.”

“The law, the toughest imposed by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration, seeks to drive more than 400,000 undocumented day laborers, landscapers, house cleaners, chambermaids and other workers out of Arizona, which borders Mexico.

“It makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and requires state and local police, during lawful contact, to investigate the status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.”

As could be expected, there are those who see nothing but racism and bigotry in SB 1070.

For example, one confused illegal alien was quoted as saying, ““They wanted to drive Hispanics out of Arizona and they have succeeded even before the law even comes into effect,” said one mother of three young children.

Sorry about the confusion mum, but SB 1070 is merely trying to combat the flow of invading criminals, those with no legal or moral basis for being here, from coming in violation of our borders and laws. It applies to all races.

It is similar to what Mexico does to invaders from south of its borders, except that illegal aliens in Arizona do not face kidnap, rape, and murder as is the case in Mexico!

Here is hoping that SB 1070 is allowed to become the law of the land in Arizona next Thursday and that lawmakers there can concentrate on ending the scourge known as “Anchor Babies,” another rip off of America by free loaders and scam artists from south of the U.S.

As the illegal alien population migrates back to Mexico, the invaders will cry Adios, and American citizens will respond with Gracias!

In the days and weeks following 9/11, friends and neighbors saw the American flag flying by my front door and assumed it was in remembrance of the people murdered by Islamic terrorists. I didn’t bother correcting them because, by then, that was certainly part of my intention. The thing is, the flag had been out there for several months, but they just hadn’t noticed. Or maybe they just thought it was corny and didn’t want to comment. But, now, I think, is a good time to set the record straight.

I went out and bought the flag because of my grandparents. I should explain I had never known my dad’s parents, both of whom died before I was born. I knew my mother’s parents, but could never speak to them. Although they had come to America in 1921, they never learned English. They could speak Russian and Hebrew, but they preferred Yiddish. I couldn’t converse in any of those languages. And, so, to me, my grandmother was this little old woman who would give me a wet kiss on the cheek and slip a quarter into my hand. My grandfather was a very quiet, bearded man who always wore a black frock coat; he looked like a short Abe Lincoln. He went to shul twice a day. When he was home, he was either reading the Torah, shelling lima beans or sipping tea through a sugar cube held between his front teeth. In short, if my life were a movie, they’d have been dress extras.

So why did I buy a flag because of those four people — two of whom I had never met and two of whom I had never spoken to? It’s simple. Because of sheer, unadulterated gratitude.

You see, one day, on my way home, I began to think how lucky I was to have been born in this country. Through no effort of my own, having made no sacrifice, taken no risk, I was the beneficiary of freedom, liberty, education, comfort, security and, yes, even luxury. It was not the first time I had acknowledged this good fortune. The difference this time is that, for some reason, it suddenly occurred to me that my good luck hadn’t just happened. It had been the direct result of these four people pulling up stakes and moving thousands of miles, across an entire continent and the Atlantic Ocean, to a new country, pursuing a dream that their children and their children’s children, of whom I am one, might, just might have better lives.

There were no guarantees. That was my epiphany. They had been denied the assurances of hindsight. They had done all this on a roll of the dice, only knowing for certain that there would be no going back.

My father’s parents were illiterate peasants. My mother’s parents not only never spoke a word of English, but her father — although he owned a small grocery store in Chicago — never, in 30 years, spoke on a telephone because he didn’t want to embarrass himself. But their grandson, bless their hearts, has enjoyed a career as a successful writer. I doubt if any of them imagined anything so specific or anything quite that wonderful when they snuck across the Romanian border in the dead of night, but they had certainly heard a rumor that in America anything was possible.

The fact is, had those four people, all of whom were poor and barely, if at all, educated — their little children in tow — not somehow found the courage to make the journey, I would have been born a Jew in the Soviet Union. Between Stalin and Hitler, the odds are likely I would have wound up a slave in Siberia or a bar of German soap.

A real case of government healthcare…

One of my daughters became pregnant and found to everyone’s surprise she was going to have identical twins.  The news came with mixed emotions as well as difficult decisions.  This was not her first child and she, like many in the family, believes in natural childbirth without medication.  Only her first child was born in a hospital while all the others were born at home with a midwife.

She initially started seeing her midwife for prenatal visits, but when they discovered she was expecting twins the reality of government interference took hold.  The state of Arizona does not allow midwives to knowingly delivery twins, so they had to find a doctor.  They are on the state insurance, which poses it’s own challenges.  However, trying to find a doctor that not only would accept the state insurance but would also deliver twins and accept a patient at 10 weeks became almost an impossible task.  It took her a month to even obtain the booklet of doctors she requested from the state to start her search.  She went through the book and was more often turned down because the doctors no longer accepted the state insurance.  With the help of her midwife and fortunately a state employee willing to help, she was able to obtain the services of a high-risk OB team.

Through the ultrasounds they discovered the babies were identical twins, had separate bags of water but shared one placenta.  This put her in a higher risk category.  At one point during the pregnancy they determined she was experiencing twin-to-twin transfer and was then referred to a specialist.  Because of this the doctors wanted to see her 3 times a week and she underwent regular ultrasounds and non-stress tests.  During her third trimester an ultrasound indicated she actually had two placentas; that there was a division in the placenta that had not previously been noticed; the twins may not be identical.  At that time it was also revealed that she had not actual experienced twin-to-twin transfer, it was only borderline.  With only 4 weeks remaining until her due date the doctor told her she needed to find another doctor because she was now no longer considered high risk!

She took childbirth classes at the hospital she was to deliver at.  She is also a childbirth instructor so these classes were quite unnecessary from a childbirth aspect, but with this unusual pregnancy she wanted to be informed about the hospital, their procedures, as well as the special considerations in delivering twins.

During her regular doctor visits they discussed the expectations of delivery.  This resulted in a difference of opinion from the doctors and expectant parents.  The doctors believed in a medicated birth with a likely outcome of an induced labor as well as a cesarean delivery.  The parents believed in an unmedicated birth, as natural as possible, and only in an emergency to save the mother and/or babies did they want a cesarean.  They created their birth plan and the doctors made their modifications.  They were able to “negotiate” delaying an induction until 38 weeks.

She went in to labor naturally and the first baby came quickly.  They never made it to the hospital.  Labor never stopped and what seemed like a very short time later the second baby was delivered; he was a breech delivery.  Both babies were well and of good size, especially for twins (7 lbs. 14 oz. and 6 lbs. 9 oz.) with the mother and father cooperating during delivery; no one else was present.  This was a Sunday and at this point they did not want to go to the hospital because there was no need.  So they contacted one of their midwifes who came over to make sure mother and babies were okay – everyone was fine.  It also turns out the twins are identical, sharing only one placenta – the latest ultrasounds were wrong!