Potato Hill

(From Original Intent-David Barton)
Because a prosecutor mentioned 7 words from the Bible in a courtroom- a statement which lasted less than 5 seconds- a jury sentence was overturned for a man convicted of brutally clubbing a 71 year old woman to death.

Because in Alaska, the word Christmas contains the word Christ, students are not allowed to display anything containing the word Christmas, or exchange Christmas cards or gifts.

Because she wrote about the life of Jesus Christ in her paper, even though other students wrote about witchcraft, the occult, reincarnation, etc., student Brittany Settle was given a zero. (Dickson, Tennessee)

Because he was afraid the jury would see the Commandment, “Do not kill”, a judge in DeFuniak, Florida, had the courthouse copy of the Ten Commandments covered during a murder trial.

BECAUSE, we have sent politicians to Washington, over my lifetime (79 years), we have this madness going on in our country and we can only PRAY on this day, ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.' (2 Chronicles 20:15)

This week, we have seen the candidate, for a lifetime Justice of the Supreme Court appointment, appointed by an anti-God president, respond to questions by Senators on the US Senate Judicial Committee. The entire stability of our government rests on the constitutional sameness of checks and balances. Everything ends at the Supreme Court; 9 justices, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, with a lifetime job of making the final ruling regarding every legal parameter in this nation. Sonia Sotomayor is the 3rd female and 1st Latin justice to be appointed to the Supreme Court. At present, the court is evenly split along ideology lines; 4 conservatives and 4 liberals. One man, Justice Anthony Kennedy, is the most powerful judicial figure in the world because he is the swing vote between the two ideologies. He has been known to vote with the conservatives, he has been known to vote with the liberals. On the most crucial subject facing the court in the last century, the matter of abortion, his vote had been liberal until the vote on partial birth abortions. Even this liberal Catholic could not vote for this horrendous procedure. Five of the present Justices are Roman Catholic, and could eliminate, forever, the worst heathen practice of American life; ABORTION. But, 25% of all American voters are Catholic (the largest denomination in the country) but 30% of the Catholic population are not practicing Catholics,(this is why 54% of the Catholic vote went to pro-abortion Obama) and so her (Sotomayor) vote on the abortion matter becomes CRUCIAL; but she, a Catholic, will answer no questions about her Catholic belief system and stumbles and dances around her belief system involving many other things.

Some years ago, in a legal dispute with a large company, my lawyer asked me if I were acquainted with several judges. He then said, “Justice in this county depends on who you know.” Like your writer, justice is supposed to be blind to be a fair umpire. If it is needed at the lowest courts, it should certainly be required at the nation's highest court. John Jay, December 12, 1745– May 17, 1829), first Justice of the Supreme Court, made the following statement: “Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

According to the Constitution, the sitting president has the right to appoint a legal mind to a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor states that she did not discuss her beliefs with Obama about anything. Is there anyone left in this country, so stupid, that they would believe that? Since her appointment, by the first President Bush, to a federal court, (he also made the unfortunate mistake of appointing Souter) she has known she was on a 'short list' (woman and Hispanic) to reap the political ends of further appointment. Does anyone doubt that her gender, her race, led the President directly to her doorstep in making the appointment? Republicans, scared of their own shadow, having forgotten a more reputable appointment (Miguel Angel Estrada Castañeda- Democrat filibuster to squash his appointment to the US Court of Appeals, DC district) will, like the Republicans during FDR's reign, allow this appointment to go through, which will affect decisions for many generations. FDR loaded the court with his appointees, Republicans too weak to withstand the liberal dictum of that day. (Hugo Black, who joined the Klu Klux Klan in Alabama as a young man, essential for his political career) Politics in the federal courts is the reason we have these disastrous decisions affecting Americans, such as those first cited; there are thousands.

When I think of the great recession, and I lived during that time, the memory molded in my brain which comes out first, is the 'potato hill'. Potatoes were piled in a pyramid, covered with thick layers of pine straw and dirt, with an opening at the top for access and ventilation. Potatoes would last all winter housed in this manner. Apples, removed from apple trees during the Fall, were wrapped in newspapers and stored in baskets. I can still see my mother, at a large, outdoor iron wash pot, preparing hominy grits after the corn had gone through the corn sheller. (Which it was my job to operate) I still remember the grist mill by the large fish pond. There was enough water run off, under the grist mill, to turn the wheel where corn was ground into corn meal. I remember most looking at the fish in the stream that came out from under the mill. The grits were put in containers and given to the poor families in the community. Perhaps the most deprived were the animals. (this was before the time of canned or bagged dog food, which I understand now consists mostly of soybeans) The dogs and cats had to find their food from wildlife. There were times when there was nothing for our beautiful cow to eat except cotton seed. How will people survive if things get that bad again?

An old English word for the cleaning and preparing of wildlife and fish is 'dressing'. I said to two of my young male employees, “I don't know what either of you will do if things get bad, neither of you know how to dress a rabbit!” One said, “In clothes?” In my large collection of antiquarian books, the same two had seen a book on butchering. They looked at the pictures in the book and I actually thought they were going to get physically ill. Then I told them about a 'hog killing', the time when farmers would butcher their hogs in the winter for the winter supply of pork. You see, most young people think meat, eggs, butter, etc just magically appear on grocery shelves, wrapped in plastic. They do not remember the time when meat could be purchased which had not been 'subsidized' with antibiotics and water. (Do you realize how much money you spend on a pound of meat because of the water which has been injected into the meat?)

Things happening in our economy now, the stock market now, can not be predicted or understood because we have never been in this 'mess' before. This ignorant president said recently, “Credit is the lifeblood of the American economy.” Credit has RUINED the American economy; credit cards, thieving bankers, self serving financial advisors, political appointees who have never worked a day in life, who live in a subterfuge of book knowledge and little common sense. In the Great Depression, only 5% of the total population had ever been inside a college. Since the arrival of the Federal Reserve (not federal, and has NO reserves) the American dollar has decreased 98% in value. The only thing Bernake knows to do, and he inherited this mess from Greenspan, is just to print more worthless money, hoping that federal dollars borrowed now can be paid off with even more worthless dollars later; as was the case, in 1987 when Peter Grace (Grace Commission) told us that for each dollar borrowed in 1987, it would take 71 dollars to repay in the year 2000.

The Federal Reserve is the most destructive force in American history. Jefferson (president #2) said, “The American people have more to fear from bankers than invading armies.” Using generally accepted accounting procedures, instead of the National Debt being the projected $13 trillion, when you consider the obligations of Social Security, Medicare, the interest on the National Debt, which accounts for most of our expenditures, it's nearer $100 trillion. Try to justify this to your grandchildren and unborn great grandchildren. The entire cost of WWII was $3.5 trillion. We have spent 3 times this amount in the first year of the Obama presidency.

Until the last of September, there will be an auction of treasury bonds every week. The old bonds are good for nothing except wallpaper, who will buy the new ones? The financial officials in India, China and Japan are trying to find ways not to do financial business with the United States.
It starts in California, and has a way of spreading across the nation, that state is now broke. Their 'movie star' governor, even though associated with the big spending Kennedy's, has been unable to pull a 'raw deal'. I say this because I rented one of my buildings for his filming of the movie “Raw Deal”. Those of us who have dealt with the film industry, here in this town, know why California is burning. I was telling a movie maker here, about my sad experiences with the movie studios, not paying me for using facilities for which they had contracted. He said, “People in NC will learn to deal with the movies like the people in California, not to trust them at all. You get your money upfront for EVERYTHING. In California, every tree before it is filmed, has a price tag.”

For years, one of the most comforting sayings, “What's good for GM is good for America.” or “As GM goes, so goes America.” GM is now bankrupt. Most buildings in America, once used by our car manufacturers, will be used in the future by foreign automobile manufacturers. America is not ready for a recession, a depression, a change in lifestyle. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, towards the end, when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are so troubled by their neurosis, the doctor said, “God have mercy on us all.”