Our beloved friend, Charlie Eames, passed away a year ago, on November 1, 2009. I thought it would be fitting to honor Charlie by dedicating this Veterans Day tribute to him. Charlie served Honorably in the United States Air Force, during the Vietnam Era in the early 70′s. Here’s a photo of Charlie that will forever be known as “Veteran’s Salute”:

Charlie was also one of the pioneer contributors to RochesterConservative.com and it’s our third anniversary today! Charlie, Veterans Day and RochesterConservative.com will forever be intertwined into my heart…

And we can’t forget starting the Tea Party Movement in Rochester. Charlie was there, speaking at the first three Tea Parties:

Charlie speaking at the first Rochester Tea Party, 3/11/2009

In the following video, you’ll hear Charlie speaking at the 2009 Tax Day Rochester Tea Party:

“I’m finally glad to see people standing up as Americans”.

Right after, you’ll hear phantomlord proclaiming:

“In the present crisis, government isn’t the solution to our problems, government IS the problem!”

We can all buy into those sentiments!

Charlie also spoke at the Rochester Independence Day Tea Party on July 3rd, 2009:

Charlie Eames believed in the American values of limited government, individual liberty and the Constitution and he layed those beliefs and his reputation on the line by standing for those values publicly, where all could witness and be inspired.

I don’t know about you, but I was both inspired and amused by Charlie! I loved Charlie’s commitment to liberty and also for his quirky sense of humor that I miss to this day.

After Charlie left us to be with the Lord Jesus Christ, we honored him and his wife, Donna, daughter, Tiffany and Aunt Vera at the 2010 Tax Day Rochester Tea Party by dedicating the “Tribute to Veterans” to him:

In closing, I feel compelled to share that life is not quite the same without you, Charlie. We love and miss you!

rochesterconservative.com was well represented this past Saturday at the 9/11/2010 Ground Zero Mosque Protest by RC co-founder, Freedom Fighter, and here’s a presentation of her photos that she took while there. She was right up front and reported:

I do know there were more than 2000 at our rally. We were packed in like sardines. I couldn’t even move my feet! The people went back for at least two blocks.

It doesn’t even matter what the media reported anyway. All you have to do is look at the photos. They’re never going to report fairly.

I waited three hours at the front line. I’m so glad I did!! All the speakers were great but Geert was the most meaningful because of what he’s going through himself. He mentioned the words to the song “Have you Forgotten”. I love that song!

Every few minutes there were chants of “No Mosque Here!”. It was great!

The “Geert” that Freedom Fighter speaks of is Geert Wilders. I posted his video, Fitna, here on rochesterconservative.com back on March 29th, 2008, after it was just released.

Speaking of Geert Wilders, here’s a few of photos of him!

Atlas Shrugged blogger, Pamela Geller, introducing Geert Wilders:

More photos of Geert Wilders speaking at the GZM protest:

Freedom Fighter reported that there were many other great speakers at the rally. Here’s some photos of them.

Robert Spencer, the owner of Jihadwatch.org.

The guy next to me was from Philly. Another guy was from Alabama. I met a couple from Florida. There was a Cuban immigrant behind me. They were from everywhere. It’s resonating and I hear Imam Rauf is reconsidering or something like that.

Here’s a photo of some guys who flew over from England. They’re members of the English Defence League (EDL). They’ve been going at it with the Muslims in England who spat on returning soldiers there. The media there makes them out to be members of the KKK but it’s not true. Look them up on Youtube to see some of their videos.

Here’s some candid crowd shots the Freedom Fighter caught, showing that there were many different nationalities participating in the GZM protest..

BTW, the most telling contrast of photo’s of the day were the following.

Here’s a photo of the GZM protest rally:

and here’s a photo of the pro GZM supporters:
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No Ground Zero Mosque!

Anyone with a pulse and their wits about them has heard through the Old Media that a mosque has been proposed for Lower Manhattan, mere feet from Ground Zero. While this is certainly controversial, and brings to the surface emotions perhaps some have not had in some time, there’s quite a bit in Imam Rauf’s background which should give even the most casual observers, even supporters of the mosque, some pause.

Imam Rauf has close ties with the Obama Admin., in fact he recently boasted about writing President Obama’s Cairo speech, and he’s traveled on State Dept. junkets across the world, all paid for by we, the taxpayers. Essentially, he’s your typical, smooth-talking type who loves to lecture others about perceived “insensitivity”, particularly when it pertains to the West and its dealings with the Muslim World. Basically, political-correctness, Islam-style, with a soft, candy-assed shell.

Hat tip to 5TownsJewishTimes for cluing folks into a Human Events article about the taxpayer-subsidized Slumlord Imam:

Ground Zero Imam a Taxpayer-Subsidized Slumlord

by Connie Hair

08/30/2010

The elitist, media-generated grand illusion of the Ground Zero mosque imam has begun to collapse under scrutiny.

New reports from The Record out of Hackensack, N.J., reveal Feisal Abdul Rauf, the would-be Ground Zero imam, owns taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings in Hudson County where the tenants have made municipal health complaints including rat, roach and bedbug infestations, seeping toilets, leaks, urine-soaked hallways, no heat and no hot water.

Despite millions of dollars in government subsidies, Rauf has trouble maintaining several small apartment buildings in North Bergen, Palisades Park and Union City.

From the NewJersey.com report:

Page after page of municipal health records examined by The Record show repeated complaints ranging from failure to pick up garbage, to rat and bedbug infestations and no heat and hot water.

Cynthia Balko, 48, of Union City — a longtime tenant of Rauf’s — said she’s had to live with rats, leaks and no heat: “I don’t have anything nice to say about the man.”

Despite having received over $2 million in public funding for renovations, Rauf’s tenants were forced to file municipal health complaints to seek relief. One such single mother living in a Rauf-owned apartment in Union City said Rauf has not answered complaints.

From an additional story in The Record:

To understand her perspective, you need to go to a forlorn corner on the Jersey side — to 22nd Street in Union City and a four-story apartment building owned by Rauf. The locks on a front door are broken and the hallway leading to [Melba] Lopez’s two-bedroom apartment smells of urine.

Looking east on 22nd Street — back across the Hudson — the Empire State building pokes the sky. On that side of the river, New York’s mayor speaks of Rauf as a symbol of religious freedom and last week invited the Imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, to dinner at Gracie Mansion to honor the Islamic celebration of Ramadan.

But in Union City, Lopez, a single mother, has another way of describing the man who has time to promote the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but does not seem to have time to answer her complaints about leaks in her toilet.

Lopez said in the report she has never met the would-be Ground Zero mosque imam but she says she has met Rauf’s wife Khan.

Lopez said she remembers Khan telling her that she and her husband did not have enough money to fix her leak and other problems in the building. What Lopez did not know was that at the same time, Rauf and Khan were trying to raise money for their mosque project on the other side of the Hudson

According to the new reports, Rauf has a long history of taxpayer subsidies and grants for slum properties. There’s even a new revelation of a lawsuit settled in June over what the report terms a suit alleging fraud.

From the link:

[T]he suit alleged Rauf and Khan transferred ownership to another firm they owned and then obtained a $650,000 mortgage on the same building from a bank. After the building was damaged by fire in February 2008, Rauf and Khan stopped making mortgage payments to Cockinos, a former key executive at Daibes’ Mariner’s Bank. When Cockinos tried to foreclose, he discovered Rauf and Khan had switched ownership and filed suit alleging “fraud.”

The case was settled shortly before a June 28 trial, with Rauf and Khan agreeing to pay off the mortgage to Cockinos within the next few years, said the couple’s lawyer, Richard Rosa of Hackensack.

There is much more on Rauf and Khan’s current financial woes at the link.

The New York Post reported the site’s developers owe hundreds of thousands in back taxes:

The mosque developers are tax deadbeats.

Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show.

El-Gamal’s company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department.

Sounds like a good time to raise $100 million for a mosque.

Reuters is reporting New York is considering granting the group a reported $70 million in public funding.

So, there ya have it. A smooth-talking imam, not unlike any other smooth-talking type who is not a real holy man, just another shyster who seeks to bilk millions out of the taxpayers’ pockets, both for his slum properties and a mosque/”community center” mere feet from Ground Zero. Same as any other dime store shakedown artist who hides behind his religion. I’d bet dollars to donuts he and his people, to include the deadbeat owner of the property, made all this noise so they could get more private funding. The fact that Bloomberg supports this is a shame, and a slap in the face to the survivors and victims’ families of the September, 11th, terrorist attacks.

Thanks go out to my friend in Montreal who sent me one of the articles.

There was a good article on townhall.com by Brian Walsh about Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle and the NY 25th Congressional race:

Excerpt from: 2010 Race of the Day: Democrats’ Maffei Problem

Highlighting the growing concern over Maffei’s left-wing voting record and Republican candidate Ann Marie Buerkle’s broad appeal, Buerkle was endorsed by the Independence Party this week, strengthening her bid to take this seat in November. Her campaign theme is “Jobs are Job Number One” and it has resonated loud and clear among central New Yorkers. Having united Independents and Republicans of all stripes, Buerkle faces no primary and will be the only candidate on the ballot in November under the Republican line, the Conservative line, and the Independence line.

Incumbent Rep. Maffei has voted with Nancy Pelosi 96.5% of the time over the past two years, which has made his constituents, and most notably independents in the 25th District, tired of the same old Washington politics. A former aide to the corrupt Congressman Charlie Rangel, Maffei has only voted against his party’s agenda a handful of times. He voted for the stimulus, healthcare reform, and now the costly financial overhaul bill, supporting the current Administration’s out-of-control spending and disregard for America’s future. In the past two years, all Maffei has proven is that he’s just another unimpressive Pelosi puppet, one who holds his party’s agenda above his constituents’ interests.

Click here to read the full article

Incumbent Rep. Maffei has voted with Nancy Pelosi 96.5% of the time over the past two years

A former aide to the corrupt Congressman Charlie Rangel

If I had input into Ann Marie Buerkle’s campaign, I’d be running with the above factoids, both Ann Marie herself bringing them up while on the campaign trail and also in ads. The ratings for Pelosi’s Congress are at 21.8% according to the RealClearPolitics Poll Average. That’s even lower than W’s ratings at the end of his presidency. Rangel’s corruption case is front and center now and as a former aide, how could Maffei not have known what a crook Rangel is! Heck, Rangel helped Maffei get elected.

Shout Maffei’s voting record and ties to Charlie Rangel from the roof tops, Ann Marie!

Here’s a video of Ann Marie at the 2010 Tax Day Rochester Tea Party

Remember in November!

This thrust of this piece is not for the patriot, the American that is vigilant of government, the individual that is actively working to restore our constitutional republic, or the man or woman that clearly views a threat to American freedom and liberty in our nation today.

Then who should learn about this rant? Every American that each of us can contact through our email lists, blogs, letters to editors, organizations we belong, candidate forums, et al., with the warning that America’s future is precarious if “we the people” ignore our responsibility and right to vote November 2, 2010 or make wrong choices.

There can be no doubt all America is aware, but may not comprehend, the bizarre and potentially fatal method the Obama Administration and Congress is governing America .

From ruling by czars, radicals in government, to fiscal insanity involving bail-outs, bank takeovers, fascist automobile industry interference, to socializing healthcare, encouraging immorality, demonizing America abroad, 2nd Amendment threats, ignoring sovereignty issues, suing a State Governor for taking measures to protect her citizens, condoning voter intimidation, encouraging racial confrontation in America, attempting to degrade the United States military, putting two wars on the back burner, to name a few serious issues. When viewed together, a destructive path emerges for America , if not peacefully reversed quickly.

If….the millions of Americans who are not registered to vote do not get registered; the millions who are registered and rarely vote, fail to vote in November; those that have been complacent with the attitude “let someone else do it” , fail to get energized to vote; those that excuse their duty to vote with a “my vote won’t count” and fail to seriously evaluate the threat to America and come to realize how critical every vote is; and if “we the people” do not ensure a free ballot box, the result will be America reflecting an attitude of surrender.

Our prayer must be that a free people will still have a choice and the courage in November 2010 to make right decisions. To reverse the threat to America we must select conservative, constitutional committed, Founding Father visioned, morally courageous candidates, with unwavering support for principles embedded in our Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

Failure of Americans of every color, race, ethnic background, political persuasion, gender, religion, to peacefully vote for right principles November 2, 2010 will signal continuation to those of the Marxist/socialist/communist ideology who are presently destroying over 200 years of freedom and liberty in America .

If the above failure occurs, I believe it will generate a massive, painful, bloody revolt in America . The overwhelming majority of Americans understand and abhor the thought of conflict in our beautiful land…but blood will flow before surrender to a dictator or socialist, communist regime. God help us keep our knees bent to Him, not a dictator.

Ed Offley is a writer for several websites, notably Soldiers For The Truth, a site he helped found with Col. David Hackworth, plus he’s done work for Stars&Stripes and other forms of print media. When I first read this, it reminded me of a quote from Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence:

—And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Although written several years ago, the issues and themes contained within the following carry on through to today. We find ourselves in a culture war at home, while many of our nation’s best and bravest fight in the hills, mountains, and hinterlands of Afghanistan, and keep the peace in Iraq. We face real, determined enemies of freedom abroad, and we’ve come to realize we have our own struggle here at home.

Enjoy Independence Day weekend, and the prose of Ed Offley, who is descended from the main character in this account.

From Landed Gentry to an Unmarked Grave

By Ed Offley

He was born in 1738 into the land-owning gentry of planters and traders who dominated colonial Virginia’s rural economy and political system. Yet Thomas Nelson Jr. of Yorktown would die 51 years later so deeply in debt that his sons were forced to bury him secretly in an unmarked grave so that his creditors could not seize his remains as collateral for their unpaid loans.

It was no mere crop failure, business collapse or natural disaster that brought Nelson down. It was his conscious decision that American freedom was more important than his own personal gain.

Confronted by an intolerable system of British imperial edicts that American colonists perceived as a political and economic tyranny that threatened their very existence as a people, Nelson was typical of the small group of leaders who gambled their lives, pocketbooks and futures to win American independence and set the young nation on its course to become the modern United States.

As the nation observes the July 4 holiday this year, a serious debate has emerged over the current all-volunteer military. With our troops still locked in a vicious and protracted counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, and a lesser but still dangerous mission in Afghanistan, a number of pundits and critics of the war are beginning to suggest that only the economically disadvantaged are signing up for military service. The sons and daughters of the elites, critics say, support the war only if someone else’s child is sent to fight it.

It is appropriate this week to remember that this is not the first time we as a nation have been confronted by hard choices between freedom and security, and between self-interest and the national welfare. And it is proper to point out that even in the vital struggle for American independence, the nation was roughly divided among supporters of the British crown, advocates of separation from the empire, and a third group indifferent to the war.

Still, the generation of Americans who came of age in the 1760s and 1770s faced a daunting challenge, as Thomas Nelson’s own experience attests.

The eldest son of a wealthy planter and trader whose family had turned Yorktown, Va., into the second-largest seaport in the Old Dominion, Nelson at the age of 14 was already earmarked by his family to carry on its legacy of leadership. He was sent to England for education at the elite Eton school, and later graduated from Cambridge University, returning to Virginia in 1761 at the age of 22.

Even while still aboard the sailing ship enroute to Yorktown, his family engineered his election from York County to the colonial House of Burgesses. The following year, he married Lucy Grymes, the daughter of another landed gentry, receiving from his father, William Nelson, the marriage gift of a landed estate. They would raise a family of 11 children. His plantations covered thousands of acres of lush farmland, and his personal wealth ranked him in the top handful of powerful families who directed the affairs of their colony under the suspicious eyes of the British royal governor in Williamsburg.

Like most colonists who later rose in rebellion against King George III, Nelson’s transition from gentry to rebel began with the infamous 1765 Stamp Act passed by Parliament in London that assigned a tax on every official document created in the colonies. (The colonists’ fury over the tax was that it was imposed by the British government with no input from the Americans it affected, sparking the slogan, “No taxation without representation.”)

Soon thereafter Nelson, like many other prominent colonists, joined the Virginia Convention (a precursor of the Continental Congress) and offered the first formal proposal to create an independent Virginia militia. This little-remembered legislative ploy is recognized by most historians as Virginia’s first major turning point away from compromise and toward outright revolution against the British Empire.

The following year, Nelson became one of Virginia’s seven delegates to the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence authored by his friend and fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson. As the history, The Centennial Book of the Signers , recounts, Nelson was proud to have signed because of his particular background:

“He admitted proudly that he was the only person out of nine or ten Virginians that were sent with him to England for education that had taken part in the American Revolution. All the rest were Tories.”

Many colonial-era Americans, even of high social status, failed to leave detailed personal histories, diaries or correspondence for future study, and Nelson was one of them. However, the physical and mental strains he suffered during the seven years of the American Revolution are well known to historians. In 1777, while continuing to serve in Congress in Philadelphia, Nelson was stricken “with a disease of the head, probably of a paralytic nature,” and was forced to return home and resign his seat.

When he recovered his health, Nelson in 1778 would receive a more important appointment: commander of the Virginia militia. In addition to leading the volunteer force in several engagements, Nelson himself advanced money to supply and arm his soldiers. When the Congress appealed to men of financial substance in the colonies to form troops of light cavalry, Nelson, at his own expense, raised and trained a unit.

But by early 1781, Virginia was in dire straits. Attacked several times by powerful British raiding parties led by turncoat Gen. Benedict Arnold, the colony was economically bankrupt and its leadership scattered in to the western foothills when then-Gov. Thomas Jefferson’s term came to an end. The legislature elected Nelson to succeed him on June 12, 1781. Within several days of his appointment, Nelson and the rest of the state government were forced to flee again, from Charlottesville to Staunton, when British Col. Banastre Tarleton led a surprise cavalry raid deep into Virginia seeking to capture them and decapitate Virginia’s leadership.

But the tide was about to turn, and Nelson would play a major role. A combined Franco-American army consisting of French troops under the Compte de Rochambeau and Gen. George Washington marched south from New York state into Virginia in an attempt to intercept Gen. Lord Cornwallis as his British force marched north from Charleston, S.C.

As commander of the Virginia Militia, about one-third of the American troops under Washington, Nelson marched down the Virginia Peninsula through deserted Williamsburg to join the siege of the British force at Yorktown, his home town and family seat.

He was a brigadier general commanding soldiers many of whom wore rags as uniforms and muskets paid out of his own dwindling fortune. The stress of simultaneously managing a bankrupt state government and organizing a final military blow against Cornwallis, apparently caused a relapse in his health. Historians note that Nelson vanished from sight for two weeks in the summer of 1781, presumably because of illness.

By September, Nelson was forced as governor to make emergency decrees for arming and provisioning his soldiers that exceeded the formal limits of his power, a step that would come back to haunt him later. But by the middle of that month, it scarcely mattered: He left Richmond for the last time and joined Washington, Rochambeau and the Marquis de Lafayette at the siege camp outside of Yorktown.

On Sept. 27, 1781, the allies with a combined force of 16,000 troops moved into position, digging trenches and laying artillery in a semi-circle around the town, and on Oct. 9, a combined artillery force of 52 cannons opened fire, forcing the 7,200 British and Hessian defenders to take to ground.

One of the more fascinating incidents in the Yorktown battle concerned a stately, two-story brick mansion that dominated the town skyline – then and now. When word came to Gen. Washington that Cornwallis had moved his headquarters into the house, Nelson reportedly recommended to his commanding general that the allies bring heavy artillery fire upon the new target. As one history recounted, the two men held a brief conversation:

“Whose house is that?” Washington asked.

“Sir, it is my house,” Nelson replied.

Ten days after the firing began, Cornwallis surrendered his army to the allies, and the Revolutionary War fighting came to an end (formally concluding with the Treaty of Paris nearly two years later in 1783).

Victory did not bring a return to prosperity and contentment to Nelson and his family. In fact, it brought economic ruin as the debts he had co-signed or sponsored to fit and feed the Virginia militia – including one personal note for $2 million – came due. To add insult to injury, Nelson’s political enemies in 1782 accused him as governor of impressing supplies for the revolutionary Army without constitutional authority. After an ailing Nelson personally pleaded that his acts were from “the necessities of war,” the legislature formally indemnified him of any liability. It also failed to compensate him for the personal fortune he had spent arming his men.

But in one of the few direct statements on record, Nelson later responded to a friend who asked if the effort had been worthwhile, “I would do it all over again.”

His health failing, Nelson and his family retired to a small family farm in central Virginia, where he died at the age of 51 on Jan. 4, 1789.

One of the few things that Nelson proudly kept in his later years was the memory of this praise from George Washington, his military commander at Yorktown:

“The General would be guilty of the highest ingratitude, a crime of which he hopes he shall never be accused, if he forgot to return his sincere acknowledgements to his Excellency, Governor Nelson, for the succors which he received from him, and the Militia under his command, to whose activity, emulation, and bravery, the highest praises are due.”

A physical reminder of Nelson’s dedication and sacrifice to win his nation freedom, can be seen today at his restored family home in Yorktown, where several cannon balls are still lodged in the brick exterior 224 years after the siege. Of course, the greater symbol of Nelson’s commitment rests in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where the original Declaration of Independence carries his signature and that of 55 other men who pledged “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” for American freedom.

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