Living In Fantasy Land

In the 1950s Walt Disney dreamed of an amusement park. “It was a vision of a place where children and parents could have fun together.” This dream was realized in the creation of Disneyland. Within Disneyland one of the popular sections is Fantasyland. Fantasyland was created with the goal to "make dreams come true" from the lyrics of "When You Wish Upon a Star." It is good for the human condition to, on occasion, relieve the stress of everyday life and indulge in relaxation. But it is very unhealthy to live your life divorced from reality.

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It is very frightening to realize how many adults seem to live in a fantasyland that they have created. The Progressive movement and the New Age Religion have encouraged this type of delusional thinking. A major idea behind Progressive thinking is the idea that man can create a perfect world. The belief that man can find a way to change the world to fit their image of perfection should make everyone worry. What happens to those who do not fit their mold? Just what will happen to those who don’t match or agree with the prefect image created by those in power? How far will this totalitarian regime go to control this perfect world? What price will have to be paid by those who think differently?

To demonstrate such thinking you only need to look at what people are saying about the terrible shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Before the victims had been removed from the school house, people were already wallowing in the blood. They wasted no time to start blaming the violence on guns and demanding new gun control laws. It doesn’t matter that this tragic event had nothing to do with guns or so-called “assault” weapons. This entire affair falls directly on the shoulders of government and misguided gun laws. The laws now being proposed in Congress are the reaction of blood thirsty politicians who were just waiting for the next mass killing to manipulate the emotions of the American People. They wasted no time to dance out and propose new laws and attempt to undo (dare I say it) progress made over the last few years to undo the damage done by the gun grabbers in the past. Many are being misled into believing lies, half-truths, and misinformation about the cause of this tragic attack by a coward.

There is the idea that we would all be safer if all guns were taken out of the hands of American Citizens. The idea comes right out of fantasy land. Those who live in this fantasy land believe that the problem is the guns. That anyone who owns a gun should be considered a criminal. The idea that anyone would ever need to engage in self-defend is a crazy notion. They believe that somehow we can put all of the evil in the world back into Pandora’s Box. They see guns as the root of evil and that without guns people would not kill one another. Well that is simply crazy. Guns are not the problem. Yes we do live in a society that has violence in it. But that is the nature of a free society. We must accept some violence but we must also be able to fight violence with violence. That is what self-defense is all about. Guns are not the only device that can be used to mortally wound another person. But that really is not the point. Man alone cannot end man’s inhumanity to man.

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As the Progressive / Democrats have moved to outlaw gun possession in this country, crime increased. Now as states have undone the anti-gun laws and instituted concealed carry laws, the crime rate has decreased. In many cases this is due to those who might consider robbing someone, are now uncertain of who might be ready, willing, and able to fight back. A potential victim may be well armed and willing to use it. The biggest problem with the implementation of these laws, and the ones that came before, is the creation of free-fire/killing zones. The most glaring are educational institutions. If I walk into a school building, or any place that does not allow concealed-carry, I know that all the law abiding people in there are unarmed. Unless there is an armed police officer or security guard, the criminal feels free to create as much mayhem as they wish. If they are suicidal then they can go down in a blaze of glory with the Left Stream Media more than willing to give them the notoriety they desire. But if there is the possibility that their potential victims will fight back, their blaze of glory will turn into a short lived news flash, soon forgotten.

Almost every morning millions of parents send their children off to government run schools. In the fall parents send their teenager off to government regulated colleges. These schools and colleges should be safe. But the government has failed in their primary responsibility because politicians refuse to admit that they were wrong. By preventing the trained professionals who are committed to not only teaching but protecting their daily charges, they created an environment that welcomed the type of events that have occurred in Newtown and other educational institutions in this nation. By not trusting the educators to protect their charges they created an environment that allowed this coward to walking and kill at will. I will not use the name of any coward that commits mass murder to gain fame. By creating schools that are “gun free” the state welcomed anyone so inclined, to have no fear of meeting any resistance as they carry out whatever senseless act they wish. Sandy Hook Elementary School’s only protection was a locked door. There was nothing else standing in the coward’s way that could even slow him down. This is a failure of government and the politicians who promised to keep our children safe. This is not the fault of educators as a whole. Many of them feel responsible for their students and would do anything to protect them. You need to look no further than the heroics of those adults killed at Sandy Hook.

I’m an educator. After the murders at Virginia Tech, there were those of us that hoped that those in power would see the danger created by not allowing educators the ability to defend our students. But all the talk was about gun control and improving security plans. (It is easy to see how security plans fall apart.) Yes, many schools studied the murders at VT and put in new procedures, but few really made any major changes. After a while most administrators simply forgot or moved on to other projects. Little has changed on many campuses that would stop the type of death and destruction seen at VT.

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Now I know that the detractors will say: That we can’t trust teachers to actually carry and use firearms in a school. But why can we not trust them? Why haven’t we already had an educator who opened fire on their students? As it has been said many times; murder is illegal. So what is stopping any person who wants to kill from carrying out that crime? If you are going to murder someone in a public place, you are not going to care about whether or not it is illegal to possess a firearm. So yes we actually have to trust law abiding citizens who are charged with the protection of innocent children, young and in many cases adults.

I’m not saying that you should arm every educator in the nation, no more that everyone in the country should be forced to wear a gun all the time. What I’m saying: is that we should remove the label free-fire zone from our schools and make sure that a coward will never feel comfortable with the idea that they can walk into any educational institution and kill at will. We should never have children huddled, defenseless, in a closet waiting for a cowardly madman to take their lives. It is time to take action to stop limiting guns, but improve access to the guns that are needed by law abiding citizens. Any move to disarm the nation will leave everyone at the mercy of the next madman who wishes to impose his will or kill us outright. The Progressive anti-gun lobby would have us all cowering, defenseless like the victims at Sandy Hook.

So, no we are unable to stop all violence. We cannot live in a perfect world as the Progressives wish. We must demand some answers to one very important question. What do they do with those who don’t fit or accept their definition of “perfect?” The last attempts at creating perfect societies were major human disasters. I can name three off the top of my head:

1. Jonestown
2. Pol Pot’s Cambodia
3. Adolf Hitler’s Germany.

All ended badly in mass murder. But don’t forget about Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Each killed millions and still didn’t fulfill the stated goal. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

I don’t want to live in a world controlled by those who would try to create a “Brave New World” on the bodies of millions of their victims. This is a disaster that would make the Sandy Hook killings look more like a happy day at the park. There is nothing perfect about that world. That is not a fantasy land, it is a nightmare. Don’t forget that man is not perfect and any attempt to create perfection will not end well. We must live in a reality that does not always fit our idea of how we desire to live, but it beats living under the total control a tyrant who is willing to kill millions just to satisfy they desires.

We live in a very dangerous world. We need the people in positions of influence to not be delusional. But in the hours following the last few tragedies the news media (Left Stream Media) was painting the standard narrative, blaming the violence on "Assault" weapons. The Second Amendment, and the NRA. Just like Vichy Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) in Casablanca as soon as the media hears a gun shot they round up the usual suspects. Which any thinking person should realize is a smoke screen. They start to play upon the emotions of the moment to convince us that the only way to stop this from happening again is to throw away one of our most important freedoms. Unfortunately I'm sure that many of the uninformed believe the media. It is up to the informed to fight back against those who have shown no regard for those killed. They only wish to use the blood of the innocent victims to: In the words of Rahm Emmanuel "not let a crisis go to waste."

The failure of the current system is not due to guns, it is due to unrealistic and unconstitutional gun control laws. We as a people must live in the real world. In the real world there are monsters, madmen, and pure evil. Believing that we can change that and still live a life of liberty and happiness is living in a fantasy land. The real world is real. Living in fantasy is a step closer to the madness that propelled the coward to murder the innocents of the world.

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©2012 Pedro Sykes - Some Rights Reserved

Power and Privilege

One of my early memories was going to a political rally with my parents. I remember hearing two adults talking about the candidate. In this conversation one person was questioning the candidate’s character. The answer to this question was basically: Hey the best thing we can do is send him to Washington where he can’t do as much harm. This statement shows some of the political naivety of the person and the times. The mid 60s was a time when few people were touched by the Federal government. It was a time when local politics outweighed those of the national government.

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Today it is over 40 years later and few are as naive and believe that those in the US Congress can do little harm. With the National debt passing the $15,000,000,000,000.00 ($15 trillion) fueled even faster by the Federal Government’s takeover of the healthcare system the increasing amount of regulations that are suffocating the economy it is hard to not see that Washington is not the place to send people who are not trustworthy. As more and more power is transferred away from the state and local governments those in the new national government have set up a system of power and privilege that is unlike anything ever seen in the nation’s history.

There is a major problem with the actions of those who say they are in Washington to serve the nation. With the release of information that shows that those in Congress have abused the power given to them and now believe that they are above the code of ethics that once guided the nation. This sense of privilege to wealth and power has enriched those in power and harmed the nation. I was not surprised to see evidence that members of Congress have engaged in insider trading, been bribed with options for IPO stock, and used their power to gather wealth through means that would be illegal for anyone else. In these cases they have exempted themselves from the laws they pass. They also write their own ethics rules. Such power and privilege undermines the foundation of our republic. It is no wonder that their approval ratings are so low. Few people would ever agree that our so-called “public servants” were elected for the purpose of self enrichment.

No one is sure how deep the corruption in Washington goes. Over the years there have been too many things done the only speak to corruption so deep that it is the rule, not the exception. Over the years, more and more of the actions taken have been in direct opposition to the will of the people. It goes deeper than the passage of ObamaCare, but it is the most glaring example of imperialistic rule. It is an example of our government grabbing power with the stated idea that: Once the American people began to get the benefits it would be impossible to repeal it. They hope to corrupt the entire nation in the same way that they have been corrupted. When a national leader states openly that: “That we must pass the bill to find out what is in the bill” they no longer care about serving the public.

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The only defense to this corrupt behavior that I’ve heard was: that nothing that has been done was illegal or violated the ethics rules of Congress. Just because they exempt themselves from the same laws that the rest of America are subject to does not mean that it is moral. Just because they determine that insider trading does not violate their ethics, doesn’t mean it is not unethical. This whole affair calls back to the behavior of monarchies, dictators, and tyrants throughout history. When those who rule lookdown upon those who they are supposed to be protecting, they have lost the humanity required to govern. They seem to believe, and with some good reasons, that they can do anything. They have been able to bribe us with our own money and many of us happy with it. This is not the form of government that many of us expect. Those of us who believe that the nation was built on freedom and honest hard work want those who we send to serve to be ethical, honest, and believe in protecting our Constitutional freedoms. This is not done through insider trading, dishonest self-enrichment, and unethical behavior.

In their places of power the leadership has seemed to sell out the country to the lobbyist and the narrow special interests of those who are willing to buy the privilege. The Dodd/Franks Law was supposed to be an answer to the problems that caused the banking crisis of 2008. One of many issues with this law is the timing. Why was this bill passed before the actual issues that caused the problem were identified and understood? How did the debit card fees charged to retailer cause the near collapse of the economy? Why did it do nothing about the real problems in the banking system? Could it have something to do with the corruption of the authors of the bill? Barney Frank defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac up to the crisis. Chris Dodd as head of the Senate Banking Committee was way to close to the problem and temptations that his position allowed. What do we not know about his involvement with the insider trading scandal? I trust neither and believe that the rush to pass this bill into law had more to do with covering tracks and less with solving problems. It only appears to be another “feel good” law that shows that they had done something. Whether it did any good or not, it made people think that the problem was solved.

Would it not have been a better solution to once again outlaw interstate banking and separate the brokers from the bankers? With the system created by the repeal of Glass/Steagall Act of 1933 in 1999 allowed banks to grow into what is now known as “too big to fail.” Instead of making a more stable banking system it has created a situation where a failure in one major market endangers the entire economy. It opened the door to the Federal government now is able to meddle in the operations of these large nation banking institutions. Leaving state regulators in less control of what should be a state’s responsibility. It also lead to the crisis of 2008 since banks were open to the bulling by groups such as ACORN as they sought approval for the mergers needed to build the nationwide banking powerhouses.

Another thing not fixed by Dodd/Franks was that they did not separate the commercial banks from the investment banks. You would think that the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 would have caused an honest, ethical, and sane person to reconsider the danger of combining the two types of banks. The failure of the system in 1929 and once again in 2008 should prove that the risk involved in such large organizations should be limited by limiting the scope of such failures. But since 2008 to today there are fewer banks. These banks now hold more money and are a greater danger to the security of the national banking system. By once again moving away from the too big to fail model and to smaller state based banking the Federal Government will have less say in the day to day operations of banks.

It is impossible to end all corruption, but the question remains on how we can limit the corruption in Washington and our state houses. The power and privilege of such offices presents too many temptations and a total lack of virtues, ethics, and morals seems to be the norm with many of the elder politicians. With the riches that many have amassed through various means it makes it difficult to remove many of the life time members. There is also the fact that many of those who are suspected of being corrupt have large monetary supporters outside of their districts and home states. There is also the problem of uninformed and corrupt individuals that support them. Another issue is that our elections have become the cloud of suspicion, due to the lack of voter verification imposed by the Democrat party. As long as our electoral system is suspect, then there is always the possibility that the American people no longer are in control of the nation. This truly means that the republic is dead.

I pray that it is not too late to save our nation. I see the TEA Party as a major movement that could reignite the understanding of our country and what makes it so special. My biggest fear is with the number of people who ignore and or ignorant of the dangers that face our nation. Those who are living off the corruption don’t want the people to understand or know the troubles the nation face as we go forward. They don’t want us to understand the dangers of the national debt to this generation and all of those who come after it. They tell us that they are going to fix the debt while continue to increase spending. They cut Medicare payments to shift it to a takeover of the healthcare system, and tell us that it is not a problem.

The system may be beyond salvaging but not the Constitution. We must look at our system and determine how to fix it. There have been changes to it that must be repaired. There must be an educational process to undo the lies told and the truth restored. Our founding fathers created the greatest nation on the planet. No system is perfect, but I do believe that ours is recoverable. We as a people must take back control from those who have set up a system designed to reward the powerful and privileged. As long as we have a government that places itself above the population we are no longer a nation of laws. By continuing down this road we are doomed to servitude to a tyrannical and imperial government.

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©2011 Pedro Sykes - Some Rights Reserved

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The Blinding Light of Power

Former Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich appeared On Fox New Sunday today (8/22/2010). In his own way he sought to defend himself and explain his actions as Governor of Illinois. He said several times that what he was doing was "political horse trading." Every time he said that, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Rod Blagojevich is an example of someone from the Chicago Political Machine. Unfortunately too many of the political leaders in this country may feel the same way. They see political favors and power as something that should be traded. Instead of looking for the best person for a job they look to patronage. Instead of honest belief and loyalty they prey on fear and intimidation. Too many politicians have been blinded by the light of power.

I can not speak for all Americans, but I know that what I don't want our elected official to engage in political horse trading. Political patronage just breeds more corruption. Mr. Blagojevich does not see anything that he has done as wrong. This is one of the saddest parts for the citizens of Illinois. The fact that these types of politician only see power as a tool to maintain their own position and not to serve those that gave them their responsibilities to society. It seems that they have forgotten their swore duty and think that maintaining that power is good for everyone. This selfish quest for power can have nothing to do with money or wealth. It has everything to do with corruption.

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As a citizen I do expect selflessness from our public servants. I don't want people who only seek political patronage. I want people who are willing to consider the good of us all, not the good of a select few or members of one political party. I don't want people who have sold their souls to a single idea and are willing to listen to all good ideas. I'm tired of see politicians demonize anyone who disagrees with their ideas.


Many in government seem to think in black or white terms. I keep hearing the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader in the Senate claim that all opposition to their agenda is from partisan Republicans. They seem to not understand that the larger of the political voting blocks is the independents. This November we must remember the words of Blogo and how he sees nothing wrong with the abuses of power he so willingly used with no feelings of guilt. We must remove those leaders who can not understand their responsibilities to this country because they have looked too long into the blinding light of power.

©2010 Pedro Sykes - Some Rights Reserved

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AG Holder Acting Stupidly

It became clear this week that the chief law enforcement officer of the United States has a problem with the law. The man sworn in as the 82nd Attorney General of this country, who's job is suppose to be the enforcement of the laws, seems to not care about the law. For years illegal aliens have systematically been invading our country. This is not his fault. Administrations have failed to secure our borders for many years. He as have other Attorney Generals, inherited the problem. But this is no excuse for him or his predecessor. American citizens have repeatedly been promised that this problem would be fixed.

With the Federal government unwilling or unable to act the state of Arizona passed a law that ordered its law enforcement agents to enforce the law. Just to make sure that there was no issues with some of the language in the law it was amended. Apparently this was a novel idea for many in the Federal government. Members of Congress, the President, and his administration, including the AG proceed to make speeches and toured the talk show circuit and spout distortions of the AZ law. to many, including myself, it seems that they were trying to insight violence. This coming from a person who is suppose to keep the peace. But much of what they've said was inaccurate, misleading, or just plain lies. These blatant attacks and open campaign to discredit the law enforcement officers and the government of Arizona is a disgrace and should never have been carried out by someone in the US government.

Now after all of the attacks which can be seen to feed the fire of the riots across the nation, it is now known that AG Holder has not read the AZ law. Around 2:45 in the linked video Attorney General Holder makes this admission. He says that section 287g is constitutional and basically the Arizona law is just an extension of that program. If you watch the entire video, you will hear many things that are just not true. The AZ law is not taken affect and any claims that it is being enforced must be backed up.

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He said that this is a national issue, but I feel that this is a national disgrace. The Attorney General's job is to prosecute not persecute. But he has repeatedly made claims that he could not back up with facts. He also said that he had not been briefed. Since this is true, then why was he speaking out against something that he was completely ignorant of its contents. He said that he has made no conclusions, but he has spoken out against it. His boss, the President, has made inflammatory remarks that are factually incorrect.

I challenge Rep. Judy Chu to present evidence of her charges of Arizona violating the rights of anyone in the enforcement of a bill that has not become law. The types of remarks that she has made is yet another attack on law enforcement officers. How can our so called leaders expect to rule when they openly attack those who have been given the responsibility of maintaining order. These continued attacks are foolish and should end. This failure of the administration to defend the sovereignty of the country and the lives of those that they are sworn to protect undermines our system of law.

This episode has tainted the AG by politicizes the Department of Justice. He and our leaders have failed their primary duty to this country. We must return to the rule of law. We must defend our country and expect our law enforcement agencies to work together and honor their commitments. It seems obvious that by taking his stand and fueling the lawless rhetoric he is unwilling to carry out his duties. The government's stand on this foreign occupation, shows that our leaders have no desire to protect us. If the current AG is unable to fulfill his duties then he should be replaced with someone who will protect our country.

©2010 Pedro Sykes - Some Rights Reserved

Additional video footage is available here.

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