As Usual the Proggies Have It Wrong…. What the Pope Is Actually Saying!

tiredoflibbs3 Comments

The Proggies think they understand everything.  How can an anti-religious political ideology understand any religion, their teachings and their origins especially when the proggies cherry-pick passages from the Bible to prove their pathetic points.

Fay Voshell says it all…

HuffPo and other liberal publications can stop rejoicing. The Pope has not turned into a radical progressive.

On the contrary, he is merely affirming what every pope before him has said.

The Holy Father is merely making the proper distinction between the pastoral role of the church and the church as the Christian counterculture confronting the evils of society. He is advising the faithful not to forget the two aims of the Church, one of which is loving evangelization and discipleship; the other of which is firm confrontation of the distorted standards of the world.

The pastoral role of the Church is basically as follows: All sinners — that’s all of us — are invited to accept the forgiveness of God freely offered through the gospel of grace. Each is invited to travel on the Christian journey of sanctification, seeking every day to become more like Jesus Christ.

The countercultural role of the Church means that at the same time the Church has a pastoral and evangelistic ministry that includes anyone who is a seeker of The Way, the Church takes a radically prophetic stand against the contemporary assaults on a transcendent God, his character and his commands. The Church retains its unyielding ideals and clear, unchanging directives concerning sexual behavior, marriage, and the sacredness of life. Such ideals remain bedrock foundations.

Progressives should not, then, expect the pope to endorse their agenda in any respect. Such matters as gay marriage, eradication of the distinctions between the sexes, and abortion on demand will not soon be endorsed by the leader of the Catholic Church.

The Left should expect to be deeply disappointed in this Pope.

Thank God.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/what_the_pope_is_really_saying.html#ixzz2fWEej5NN

If You Suspect Obama Supporters Are, Well, Dumb…

Mark Noonan50 Comments

…well, you’ve got good reason – from The Daily Caller:

…when asked what Obama had done to promote peace, she confessed she couldn’t think of any examples.

Another student said she supported everything that he was doing. His very existence was creating peace, she said.

“I just feel like in general being a good guy, it’s just creating a lot more peace and like, mellow,” she said. “The fact that he is for the people creates peace in and of itself.”

When asked how she could support Obama’s Syrian policies but oppose Bush’s Iraq policies, she justified the contradiction by stating, “Bush, I just didn’t like him.”

I’m telling you, its getting harder and harder to support universal adult suffrage.  When you read things like that, the desire to just give up becomes very strong.  We’re dealing with people who clearly haven’t the foggiest notion of how the world works.  But, then, you remember these are college students – and 90% of them are only being prepped to work in the Government/Corporate bureaucracies…and if we can curtail those bureaucracies, these dimwits will have to enter the real world, and that will eventually bring them ’round to our way of thinking.  Or, truth be told, to the act of thinking, at all.

It is, though, going to be an uphill climb – remember, as we try to save the nation, people like this will stand idiotically in our way…not out of malice, but simply because they don’t know any better.  But there is a cure for that – it is these dimwits combined with people in the blue cities which give liberalism its electoral power…and I think there are enough working poor in the blue cities who can be moved our way and when combined with our base in suburban and rural areas, that is enough of a majority to start hacking away at government and corporate bureaucracies with a meat axe until they are small enough to be managed.

HAT TIP:  Ace of Spades

 

House GOP Grows a Backbone?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Maybe:

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that the chamber will pass a resolution this week to continue funding the government but to deny any funds to implement President Obama’s new health care law.

“The law is a train wreck. The president has protected American big business. It’s time to protect American families from this unworkable law,” Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said at a press conference Wednesday morning…

Obama, naturally, has said he’ll reject any bill which defunds ObamaCare.  This, as you might expect, has frightened the RINOs who have been told by the Democrats and the MSM that the shutdown of the government during the 1990’s destroyed the GOP for a generation…except for the fact that the GOP post-shut down managed to hold on to their House and Senate majorities and elected Bush President in 2000.  If we get “crushed” like that because we shut down the government over ObamaCare, then I’m all for it.  It looked for a long time like the House leadership would cave to RINO fears – but, I guess someone on Boehner’s staff decided to step an inch outside the Beltway and discovered (doubtless much to his surprise) that ObamaCare is hideously unpopular with the American people and especially with the GOP base.

This isn’t a gray area – it is a stark fact of life.  ObamaCare is a train wreck and everyone outside the White House and MSNBC can see it’s a train wreck.  People don’t want it.  They might not be sold on a free market solution to ObamaCare; they may, indeed, eventually opt for a very government-run health care system…but ObamaCare is a disaster that people have already seen too much of.  It has to go.  Only Obama’s pride and stupidity prevents him from just saying, “now that we’ve seen the complexities of health care reform, it is time for us to change the law in light of recent experience”.  If he did that, he’d probably wind up with 80% of what he wants…but, as I said: stupid and proud.

I’m just glad we’re fighting a bit…more drift like we’ve had the past 6 months and 2014 could end up a disaster for us.  Fight and win…and, heck, even if you fight and lose its better than “chicken out” and lose.

The Communist Conspiracy

Mark Noonan8 Comments

“…To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church…” – Our Lady of Fatima, 1917

You non-Catholics reading that might not be familiar, so I’ll explain.  We Catholics believe that our Blessed Mother, Mary, appeared to a few children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 and uttered that rather dire prophecy, as well as some other things.  You can believe that Mary appeared, or not, as you like (I do believe it), but no one can argue against the particular prophecy – the poison that arose in Russia in 1917 – communism – did indeed spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church, as well as many other horrors.  I bring this up not as a lesson in theology or faith, but because there is a bit of an argument brewing on the right over a book which not only asserts the indisputable truth of the prophecy, but also goes a bit further and asserts that our government policy came largely under the control of communists and fellow travelers.

The book is called American Betrayal: the Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, by Diana West and the premise is that communism so deeply penetrated American government that it not only swayed American government policy in a pro-communist manner, but allowed our society to be infected by communist ideology overall.  Not only did the communists get us to sell out at Yalta, they also got us to buy in to moral relativism and other communist ideas which have lead to the moral destruction we see around us today.  The first I heard of the book was when I read a very hostile review – not from some lefty, but from a prominent conservative who’s views I greatly respect, Ron Radosh.  The title of his review, McCarthy on Steroids, sets the tone for the whole piece.  Radosh’s review is excellently written and makes many good points – but I confess I was disturbed by the title: as if Radosh thinks there was something wrong with McCarthy; reading the review, I can help but believe that Radosh does think ill of McCarthy – that McCarthy had in some way gone wrong.  Not on the fact that communists had infiltrated, but I guess on some of the tactics that McCarthy is alleged by his critics to have used (being mean, browbeating, making false accusations, etc).  Trouble is, in reading accurate accounts of the McCarthy period, I find no evidence of McCarthy using any of the tactics his enemies claim.  Leaving aside McCarthy, we have a battle – between fellow conservatives and not about whether or not communism is an enemy which infiltrated, but about just how much infiltration there was and how culpable people on both the right and the left were and are.

Over at PJ Media, David Solway deplores the intramural argument – seeing in it a disintegration of the overall conservative movement as we battle internally while the leftist enemy advances.  There is much to be said for this.  We daren’t fight too much among ourselves.  I, too, deplore an argument which sets us against each other – and while one, small blogger is not likely to resolve the issue, I think I have a couple things to say which both sides may find useful.

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Navy Yard Shooting

Mark Noonan11 Comments

We don’t really know anything about it other than someone started shooting.  We’ll let the MSM tie themselves up in knots getting it wrong for a while and then see what the full details are.  But here’s my first take on it:

One or maybe two or three shooters shut down an entire US Navy base.  That is disgraceful regardless of whatever facts relate to this case.  Our enemies are now taking note:  if you want to go to war with the United States, you start with a few three-man commando teams attacking major US military bases – it will paralyze our military for hours, at least.

We need to change this – our bases have to be fully armed with people who know how to shoot to kill in an instant.  No US base should be shut down because of an attack – and no one should flee their post, nor should a “shelter in place” (translation: cower in fear) order be issued.  The strength of any military force is expressed by its instant readiness for war.  There are no rear areas for the military and there is no peace time.  Violent enemies are always out there, always seeking to kill…the military must always be ready.

UPDATE:  Seems that the killer is going to fall in to the “nut” category.  Here’s the bit of news which caught my eye this morning over at The Telegraph:

Exclusive: The Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis played violent video games including Call of Duty for up to 16 hours at a time and friends believe it could have pushed him towards becoming a mass murderer.

Going through the whole article and seeing other things in the news about him, he appears to have been a dog’s breakfast of oddities.  There has emerged so far no hard center for the man – adrift on the tides, grasping some lifelines, but ultimately over the edge in to madness.  Naturally, most people will not blame what he saw and did prior to the attack.  Blame will be assigned in two ways:

1.  Anti-gun nuts will, as always, blame the gun.

2.  Rational people will almost all just blame the killer.

Me?  I blame the entire situation.  As I’ve said again and again and again these things used to never happen.  Now they do.  The dividing line is that school shooting in San Diego back in 1979.

It is everything that went in to the killer which caused him to kill – our broken morality, our glorification of violence, our attacks on masculine virtues (men not taught to be properly manly often wind up as brutes); all of this and more caused this to happen…and, yes, someone who plays violent video games for long periods of time is feeding in to his brain things which can come out in very bad ways.  As always in these situations, I’ll just point out that until we decide to change entirely, we’ll just get more and more of this.

Deep Liberal Thinking: Its the Fault of Those Damned Teabaggers!

Mark Noonan22 Comments

To be sure, they don’t use words like that – being all super intellectual and mainstream, you see, they don’t go in for vulgarity.  But, that is the sense of Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein when they write this:

A brighter future for politics and policy requires a different Republican Party, one no longer beholden to its hard right and willing to operate within the mainstream of American politics.

Unlike the Democrats who, of course, completely ignore their hard left and are willing to compromise on such things as abortion, right?  I mean, if some people just wanted to have some reasonable, humane restrictions on abortion in the later half of pregnancy, these moderate,  in-the-mainstream Democrats would have no problem with that.  Answer:  Wendy Davis.  The Great Pink Hope of the Democrat party in Texas who stood tall and brave against an attempt to prevent children 8 months in to pregnancy from being ripped limb from limb by abortionists.  Thank goodness for moderate Democrats who operate within the mainstream of American politics.

What, exactly, is the “mainstream of American politics”?  It is that big corporations and big government will get bigger while an insulated Ruling Class of corporate and government bureaucrats live high and mighty off the sweat of average Americans.  Mann and Ornstein are dead on about one thing:

Any degree of success in this arena requires enlisting a small group of Senate Republicans who have tired of the lockstep opposition to Obama and  relish an opportunity to legislate.

Opposition to Obama is “lockstep”, you see?  If you bother to read the article, you’ll understand that the authors think that Obama is the one who reached out to the GOP and tried to govern by compromise.  But then that dratted TEA Party came along and started to muck everything up (unstated sub-text – dog whistle, as it were – “they are racists who just hate”).  Meanwhile, opposition to conservatism is nuanced and willing to compromise…like the way Obama immediately abandoned the birth control mandate when Catholics reasonably pointed out they couldn’t do that without violating their moral beliefs.  But it is true that there is a group of Senate Republicans who do relish the opportunity to legislate and if such legislation works out to just giving more power and wealth to the Ruling Class at the expense of the people, so be it.  After all, its not the people who pass out invitations to the cool parties, nor can the people ensure a well-paid sinecure once the “small group of Senate Republicans” retires.

As I noted in “You Say You Want a Revolution“, below, its an entire class which is united against us.  People like Mann and Ornstein have got their marching orders…provide a patina of intellectual legitimacy for the McCains and Grahams of the GOP to stab the rest of us in the back…go ahead, they say, satisfy your desire to legislate.  Step away from those crazies Rand Paul and Ted Cruz (to Mann and Ornstein, the literal pictures of intolerance…and I mean that; the picture posted at the top of their article is Paul and Cruz).  You’ll get a nice write up in the Washington Post.  You’ll be lauded as a statesman.  President Hillary Clinton will award you a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  We’ll ensure that your memoirs sell in the millions!

Getting rid of these people will be difficult and then easy.  First difficult in finding enough GOPers who will fight – but once we do, we will win and win it all.  And then we just cut off the taxpayer funds for the left and be free of them forever.

You Say You Want a Revolution…

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Well, here’s why:

She drew the big names — but didn’t dole out the big bucks.

The celebrity-backed charity launched by departing Daily Beast editrix Tina Brown failed to meet the company’s goals in its first year out of the gate — handing out just $10,000 in grant money in 2011 despite raising nearly $1.2 million, IRS records show.

The nonprofit Women in the World Foundation kicked off to much fanfare in 2011 with a star-studded Manhattan party that cost $168,048 and was hosted by Meryl Streep…

…Total expenses, including the launch party, came to $536,868 for the period.

Of course, they are now claiming they are giving out bags of money – in 2012 about $1.1 million out of $2.6 million raised.  Given that I’m a knuckle-dragging, Bible-clinging, teabagging bastard, my math might not be so good…but that, I believe, works out to less than 50%.

Now you might ask, what has something like this got to do with anything?  Well, because this kind of self-dealing by the Ruling Class is what happens all the time.  They are always giving themselves bags of money and congratulating themselves on being so wonderful – and ensuring that they have fabulous parties along the way.  Do you think that Hillary is going to get a “Liberty Medal” because she’s done anything significant?  Nope.  She’s going to get it because she’s Hillary; and they can have a swank party to celebrate it – all at taxpayer expense either in the form of direct taxpayer money, or because the money being spent on it is tax deductible.

Just get in to that Ruling Class and do as you’re told and all door are open.  You’ll have wealth.   You’ll get awards.  You’ll be ensured a well-paid sinecure either in corporate or government America (which are becoming increasingly interchangeable).  Doesn’t matter if you’re a complete idiot or unrepentantly morally corrupt (though you can run afoul of things some times – as the former Mayor of San Diego found out…but even that took decades of misbehavior before someone decided to call him on it…he was one of them; he did as he was told…he had to be protected lest the unwashed masses find out).  Got no talent?  Can’t tell sh** from shinola?  Doesn’t matter.  Just get the right credentials, mouth the right liberal phrases and do as you’re told – you’ll be taken care of.

Leeches like Brown are living off the wealth produced by others – and they are legion in our nation.  Our whole country is infested with these folks – and they are destroying us because being mindless pinheads in service of a anti-human, leftist ideology they advance causes which destroy the very sources of wealth they latch on to.  You see them everywhere – they are in political office, they are running our largest corporations, they man the bureaucracy (especially at its highest levels), they are 90% of the MSM, they run most of the non-religious non-profits.  If you ever say “they are ruining things” then here’s your “they”.  Think of Tina brown blowing through half a million dollars as part of a “charity”.  That is the Ruling Class.

I bring this up because we must get unconfused about this – we are fighting a whole class of people, which includes at least half of the GOP leadership.  These people are either too stupid to know what they’re doing (I’d guess about 70% of them fall in to the “too stupid” category), while the rest know full well what they are doing and think its a good thing…after all, we Bible-clinging morons simply don’t know what’s best for ourselves.  We need a Ruling Class to ride herd on us, you see?  The stupid just want to keep living well, the rest believe that if they can finally, absolutely destroy the United States (fundamentally transform it, as it were) then they will have done a service to the world.  They will have got rid of a Christo-fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic entity which is destroying the world.

For us to survive as a people, all of the Ruling Class ultimately has to go – we can’t think in terms of just winning one election or hoping that a Republican gets in, even if that particular Republican is a a true-blue conservative.  We need a revolution – someone who will go to DC like Andrew Jackson in the 1830’s to clean out the whole mess…get rid of these people.  They are not only unfit for government and corporations, they are unfit for decent company.  Fire them. Send them packing.  Take away their taxpayer funds and tax deductible “charities” which are merely vehicles for their swank lifestyle.  Walk through the bureaucracy and fire everyone who has in even the least instance misused taxpayer money, or abused their authority.  Hammer the big corporations – break them in to little, bitty pieces so that a free market can emerge once there’s no longer corporate money-bags suppressing competition via government regulation.  Unless we think in terms like that, we’ll just be fighting with particular tentacles of the nasty beast rather than driving a stake through it’s vile heart.

Rant over.  But I’m serious – we’ve got to kill the whole, nasty dragon…not just bits and pieces of it.

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Obama: The Self-Parody President

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Fresh from having Putin rub salt in his diplomatic wounds, Obama will now pivot for the nth time back to the economy:

The White House is signaling it wants to shift back to the economy after two weeks in which the Syrian crisis has dominated President Obama’s schedule and workload.

Obama will be “focusing” on issues related to the economy in the coming weeks, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday at his daily briefing.

He said the president wants to push forward with economic policies that the White House believes will grow the middle class…

I do wonder – are they just joking around with us in the White House?  Was the whole purpose of Obama merely to give liberal hacks greater scope for graft – and while they’re in there, its just a matter of keeping up the appearance of governance while they loot the Treasury?  Pivot back to the economy?  Don’t we have a few, little things like ObamaCare, the debt limit and the 2014 budget to deal with at the moment?  Obama is going to pick up where he left off two weeks ago and start giving forgetting speeches about growing the middle class?  As if anyone thinks he gives a darn about the middle class?

If you wrote this as a comedy skit it would be spiked because it is too unbelievable – no President facing Obama’s problems would ever be this silly.  This stupid.  This absurd.  The United States and the world are heading down the tubes and Obama is going to start campaigning, again…has no one noticed that the election is over and he can’t be re-elected again?  Or is it just a way for his staff to keep him busy and out of trouble while they continue to steal?

January 20th, 2017 cannot come fast enough.

Oh, good grief:

White House Press Sec. Jay Carney told Fox News Channel’s Senior White House Reporter Ed Henry on Thursday that Americans appreciate President Barack Obama’s shifting approach to the Syrian crisis. He said that the American people “appreciate a president” who “doesn’t celebrate decisiveness for decisiveness’ sake.”

I’m sure of it now – they are just playing with us; seeing how long they can keep up the joke.  Oh, to be sure, they’re mostly playing with the MSM…the people who get leg tingles when they think of Obama.  Back in the Oval Office, it goes like this:

Carney:  So, Mr. President, we’ve kinda topped off on the level of absurdity.  I don’t know if we can push it any further – eventually, even those pinheads will have to figure it out.

President:  Look, I’ve got a bet with Biden on this one.  And, remember, he’s the guy who got the MSM to give him a pass on claiming that we and the French kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon…

Carney:  (laughs).

President: …so you’re going to march out there and say the most ridiculous thing possible and make them swallow it!

Carney:  But, what?

President:  I got it – tell them I’m to be lauded for deliberately being indecisive!  Tell them that its a positive virtue that I dickered around on Syria.  That but for my brilliant indecision, all would have gone to heck in a hand basket.  Better than Horatius at the bridge, I dithered until our enemies retreated in confusion!

Carney:  No way, you’re not getting me out there to say that.  I have a shred of self-respect left, sir.

President:  Oh, really Mr. “Obama welcomes the debate over the NSA”?

9/11 Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

We pray, of course, that at least one adult has been monitoring the situation in Washington and we won’t have a replay of last year’s Benghazi debacle…though even if it is pure idiots in charge, perhaps we’ll be graced with peace on the theory that we were so humiliated last night with Obama’s boneheaded Syria policy that we deserve a cosmic break.

It is hard to believe that 12 years have passed since That Day – also sad to reflect that 12 years on, we’ve pretty much lost the segment of the war which started back then.  I’ve long thought – indeed, within weeks of 9/11, thought – that we were entering a Thirty Year’s War…that the battle our enemies brought to our shores in 2001 would not be ended swiftly or easily.  Never did I imagine in the face of such a horrific attack that a good number of my fellow Americans would prove willing to lose the war if that would result in changing an (R) for a (D) in office.  But, so it goes – a prophecy once said that the poison unleashed in Russia in 1917 would spread far and wide…and so it has, infecting us here in the United States to the point where we have “the worse the better” leftists just as Russia did…hoping for and provoking catastrophe because, as was once said, you should never let a crisis go to waste (and “waste” in their minds is “not gaining political advantage out of it”).

Still, with all that, the effects of the attack will continue on – and part of the continuation is the increasingly clarity emerging from the fog of delusion we lived in since the end of the First World War.  All those who think understand that our civilization was attacked on 9/11 – and, furthermore, that it isn’t just people flying planes in to buildings which are the problem.  Indeed, a good part of the enemy is found in our bathroom mirror each morning…each of us when we are greedy or base or cowardly contribute our mite to the ruin we see all around us.  But things are changing – a bit of the Founder’s spirit does live within us.  Old Hickory also now strides the land and is winning some surprising victories when issues are clarified and the people simply cannot ignore the truth.  Heck, even some of our leftists citizens are starting to understand that just because someone mouths leftist platitudes, he or she still might be a creep – a mere tool of Ruling Class corruption (we on the right figured it out longer ago – which is why we’ve crushed so many RINOs in the past four years).  Some times I even ponder whether we shall Occupy the Federal Reserve and set things straight?  Perhaps, perhaps – and all part of the battle to be won both at home and abroad.

Today, pause a moment to remember the dead – stay away from all bitterness and anger and remember even those who drove the planes in to the buildings were driven by lies.  Lies are at the root of all our problems – to a Christian, of course, the lies of the Enemy…but believer or not, it is lies which are the problem.  Lies drove planes in to buildings, and have done many other horrors.  So, remember the dead – and pledge upon their graves that the truth is what you’ll seek…what you’ll fight for and if necessary die for.  Because the truth shall, indeed, set us free…and, in the by and by, win the war for us, too.

UPDATE:  The “2 Million Bikers” showed up in force in DC…offering an excellent, peaceful response to the deliberate insult of the “Million Muslim March”.

UPDATE II:  In re: Putin’s insulting little op-ed in the NY Times – up yours, Vlad.  Sure, you danced rings around Bambi but there will come a US President who’ll put your contemptible Russian ass in a sling.  Count on it.

Secession is the Answer, Update

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Seems to be spreading like wildfire:

…West Virginia was the last state to break off from another. Now, 150 years later, a 49-year-old information technology consultant wants to apply the knife to Maryland’s five western counties. “The people are the sovereign,” says Scott Strzelczyk, leader of the fledgling Western Maryland Initiative, and the western sovereigns are fed up with Annapolis’s liberal majority, elected by the state’s other sovereigns.

“If you think you have a long list of grievances and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately this is what you have to do,” says Strzelczyk, who lives in New Windsor, a historic town of 1,400 people in Carroll County. “Otherwise you are trapped.”…

Maryland is governed by the DC/Baltimore area of the State – holding the largest population and entirely dependent upon Big Government (federal and State), the people of those areas prefer their politicians to be Big Government boosters.  And no problem with that.  More power to them.  But this means that the people of western Maryland – much smaller in population and thus playing little role in either the legislative or executive branches of State government – are left out in the cold…and many of them don’t want a government which is keen mostly upon creating more government.

In government, smaller is better – the smaller the territory under any particular government the more attuned it will be to the needs of the local people.  The Founders knew this – and thus set up a federal Republic in order to secure local rule in most areas of government, leaving to the federal government only those limited powers necessary to secure the broad rights of all the people.  Over time, both the federal and State governments have engrossed power to themselves – and do not think that this was just some trick pulled by hucksters…for a very long time, starting in the misbegotten “progressive” era of the early 20th century, the people, themselves, sought government to “do something” about problems.  The trouble is that government “doing something” means government growing in power…and often not doing at all what people wanted.  Now the reaction has set in – and in a very American fashion, it is emerging on the national level as a revived “Jacksonian” desire to reign in the federal government, and a desire to break up the States in to smaller political units which can better be managed by the people, rather than being resigned to the Ruling Class and it’s permanent bureaucracy.

This is the revolution, folks – the Second American Revolution.  The people are leading it, and it will reform this great nation of ours.