How Much Can They Ignore?

On January 19, the people of Massachusetts actually elected a Republican to the United States Senate. Senator Scott Brown was elected to a seat that was held by Senator Teddy Kennedy from 1962 until his death late last year. The Democrats and the media have tried to spin the Brown win as everything from a result of a bad candidate, Martha Coakley, running a bad campaign to the voters of Massachusetts electing a Republican because they hate Bush. They can spin it however they want to help them sleep at night, but the fact remains that Brown was elected because the majority of the public have rejected the President’s socialist takeover of the Health Care system.

I find it a bit ironic that Brown’s election night victory comes a day before the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s Inauguration. In the ensuing 364 days leading up to the special election in Massachusetts, the President and Congress have taken over the banks and two of the “Big Three” automotive companies, spent $787 billion on a “stimulus” bill that did nothing to stimulate the economy, and tried to takeover the Health Care system. In a practical sense, the first year of “Hope and Change” has come up extremely short. Unemployment has risen above 10% and the latest numbers have “surprised the experts” by rising even more. The Democrats lack of accomplishments over the past year ought to make next week’s State of the Union speech very interesting.

Some speculation in the wake of the Massachusetts humiliation has suggested that the Democrats did not go “progressive” enough in their drive to destroy our economy. MSNBC political pundits suggested on Tuesday evening that the Democrats should now push forward with every liberal ideal. They believe that the best course for them is to completely ignore the will of the people for yet another year. Isn’t that what they have done for the past year? They ignored the public on Cap and Trade, the bailouts, and Health Care Reform. The poll numbers for the President and the Democratic controlled Congress have been a gradual decline since early summer and now they are in real danger of losing their majorities in both houses of Congress.

Will the Democrats pay attention to the results in Massachusetts or will they dismiss it as insignificant? Some early signs show that they will stay the course. After raising the national debt ceiling by $290 billion in a quiet vote on Christmas Eve, the Democrats are poised to raise it yet again by a stunning $1.9 trillion. The national debt ceiling will be $14.29 trillion and that is only expected to last until the end of the year before it will need to be raised again. That coupled with the President’s plans to takeover all student loans, leaves the voters to wonder, when will they stop? The answer to that question is when they are voted out of office and sent home to learn what real life is all about. In November, I believe there will be a surprising amount of politicians updating their resumes and looking for a new career.

The Obama Deficit Lie

President Barack Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have hypocritically promised since taken office in January that are going to be “deficit hawks”. We have not even reached the one-year anniversary of the Inauguration and the same Democratic leaders are raising the debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion. The national debt is already nearing $12.1 trillion and the economic geniuses in DC have realized that their historic deficit spending has made it imperative to raise the ceiling.

The federal deficit for last fiscal year that ended at the end of September was around $1.4 trillion. To put that into perspective, the federal budget for all of 2008 was $2.9 trillion. To be fair, and to prevent my left-leaning friends from hyperventilating, some of that deficit belongs to President Bush, but in the first 2 months of this fiscal year the Obama administration has spent $296.7 billion in the red. Project that out for the next 12 months and the 2010 federal deficit will be about $1.8 trillion. Of course we have to consider that the “emergency” stimulus spending has not really even started to be spent.

Based on President Obama’s penchant for socialist government, you can guarantee his response to the crippling deficit and ever-increasing debt will be to raise taxes. His tax increases will be “targeted” towards only the “rich”, but it will soon become apparent that the definition of rich will be continually redefined until the majority of the middle class will be hit as well. Of course the net result of his tax hikes will be an even bigger hit to the economy than his disastrous policies have already been. "There is no such thing as government money - only taxpayer money." William Weld

The bureaucrats in Washington have expelled so much hot air making promises about deficits, bailouts, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and health care that if I believed in the global warming hoax, I would be worried about a real life Day After Tomorrow. Thank God the carbon dioxide being spewed out in DC has no effect on our climate. Unfortunately the idiotic economic policies coming out of Washington will have lasting effects that our children and grandchildren will feel. To borrow a line from the President’s campaign, “It is time for Change!”

Thousands Draw A Line On The Capitol Steps Over Health Care

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to try to strong-arm through her plan to destroy our health care system, even in the face of overwhelming signals that she is fighting a losing battle. In the process she has continued her annoying little habit of breaking promises to the American people. She had promised to not hold a vote on the “health care reform” legislation without posting the final language of the bill online at least 72 hours prior to the vote. Apparently she is afraid that the final version of her 2000 page behemoth will further outrage the voting public.

The public has made their frustration and anger known all summer long, all the while congressional leaders have pretended to not hear them. The public outcry has prolonged the debate from something that the White House expected to be passed quickly and quietly by mid summer into an eternity for lawmakers. After the congressional switchboards were jammed with phone calls demanding that their elected representatives listen to them, the bureaucrats ignored their constituents. After millions of emails clogged the politicians’ inboxes, they sent out their canned responses claiming to represent their constituents. Tired of the unprecedented arrogance filling the Capitol Building, thousands of people showed up on the steps of the Capitol to hold a rally against the destruction of our health care system. After the rally they stood in line for hours to enter the Capitol to meet their elected representatives face to face. They wanted to ask one simple question, “Are you going to vote for this health care reform bill?” Several reports emerged showing the arrogance and superiority complex from which members of Congress are suffering. They could not spare even a few moments to “lower themselves” to the level of the common man.

It is most surprising that House leaders are pressing forward this week, of all weeks. Tuesday showed a dramatic reversal of the political leanings of the country. Democratic stronghold New Jersey saw their incumbent Governor Jon Corzine lose to Republican Chris Christie by 5 percentage points. New Jersey is a state that President Obama won easily by 20 points just one year ago. Virginia saw a political drubbing when Republican Bob McDonnell beat Democrat Creigh Deeds by 19 points. President Obama again won Virginia a year ago by 6 points. Right on cue, the White House downplayed the results saying that the outcomes had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his socialist agenda. The problem is that the President and his minions spent a lot of time and political capital in both states campaigning for both losers.

Whether or not the President or Ms. Pelosi are able to twist enough arms on Capitol Hill this weekend to pass their health care debacle is yet to be seen, but the damage has been done. The voting public has awakened to the fact that after the numerous bailouts already this year, the government now owns or controls 30% of our economy. They also see that if the power hungry bureaucrats are successful in destroying our health care, they will add another 18% of our economy. That will give them power over nearly half of our economy and they are just starting to erode our economical freedoms.

The War That The White House Does Want To Fight

Over the past few weeks the White House has openly declared war on the Fox News Channel. It has been going on since before the election when the Obama campaign refused to send campaign staff to appear on Fox. Now the senior staff and even President Obama have openly criticized an entire news organization. The President was asked about the squabble during an interview with NBC on Wednesday. He responded that he is not losing much sleep over it, and that he believes that the American people are more concerned with the war in Afghanistan and unemployment.

It is interesting that the President would choose to bring Afghanistan and unemployment. The Labor Department reported that in September 23 states saw a rise in unemployment. They also reported that 43 states lost jobs in September. The national unemployment numbers reached 9.8% for the first time in 26 years. It could be that my memory is failing me, but I seem to recall an unequivocal promise from the administration before the “stimulus” package was passed that if Congress passed the bill that no one read, unemployment would not go higher than 8%. Now economists are predicting unemployment above 10% and it will be at least the middle of next year before we start to see any type of turn around. Of course, those predictions could be proven wrong if the administration decides that they just haven’t spent enough money; money that we do not have. It has gotten so bad that Congress had to raise the federal debt ceiling to $13 trillion.

Afghanistan is another ignorant remark to make because the President is continuing to drag his feet in deciding whether or not to send the 40,000 requested troops. The administration is still trying their tired excuse of blaming Bush and Cheney for their woes. The problem is that they were fully briefed on Afghanistan during the transition time before the Inauguration. Obama had claimed all along that we were following a flawed strategy in Afghanistan and that he had the solution. He even picked his own commanding General to lead our soldiers in Afghanistan, but now he can barely seem to find the time to talk to the man. He refuses to make a decision on sending troops because he is terrified of angering his radical left-wing base by sending more troops. The problem is that the longer he waffles, the more danger our troops will face. This decision should be based solely on the intelligence from the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, and not by Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. This is a military strategy decision, not one to be made for political gain.

The administration has decided that going after Fox News is one of their top priorities. Shouldn’t they be trying to repair our flailing economy? Or speaking to General McChrystal about getting him the resources and troops he needs to fulfill his mission? I suppose they could be using their war on Fox as a way show that they do know how to fight a war. Unfortunately for the administration, they are losing that war. Every time they send some administration lackey out to bash Fox, the ratings for Fox climb. By the way, recent surveys have shown that independents and Democrats make up more than 50% of the Fox news audience.

The Inevitable Vietnam-Afghanistan Comparison

At nearly the same time that the ground war began in Iraq, the Democrats began comparing the war in Iraq to Vietnam. They claimed that Iraq was an un-winnable war. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that we had lost the war, while our troops were still in combat. The bureaucrats in DC tried everything they could to drive down public support for the war. It took them about 4 years to finally depress the American people on the war. President Bush remained resolute in his commitment to our troops in battle and peace in Iraq. Against growing, outspoken negativity by the Democrats, Bush installed General Petraeus as the commanding General in Iraq and fully supported the General’s plan for the “Surge” in Iraq. The result was the declining insurgency and the Iraqi government and security forces standing up to take control of their own country.

President Obama campaigned on the belief that we should never have been in Iraq and that we should be committing more troops and resources to Afghanistan. He believed that Afghanistan should be the center of the fight with Al Qaeda. He promised that as President he would recommit the fight to Afghanistan, sadly he seems to have a very short memory. In August General McChrystal, the General that he personally picked to lead the troops in Afghanistan, asked for a minimum of 40,000 more troops to prevent the country from slipping into chaos. Nearly 2 months after the request, the President has yet to decide whether or not to support our troops with sending the additional forces.

It wasn’t until 60 Minutes aired an interview with General McChrystal, where the General answered a seemingly innocuous question about how often he speaks to the President. The answer touched an embarrassing firestorm for the administration. The President had spoken to his General only once since he sent him to Afghanistan 3 months ago. The President’s reaction was an extremely obvious and rushed set of meetings on Afghanistan.

Since the Democrats were so eager to compare Iraq to Vietnam, I thought it would be appropriate to point out their folly. Their bureaucratic reaction to Afghanistan is precisely the kind of mistakes the politicians of 35 years ago made. The Vietnam era politicians decided that they knew more about fighting a war than the commanders on the ground in the theater of war. It is eerily similar to the idiocy of the DC politicians of today. They are more interested in holding hearings to discuss every possible contingency than to actually support the brave men and women that they claim to care about.

President Obama needs to realize that his role as Commander in Chief is not a political position that he can waffle back and forth on the decisions that affect our troops. It is time for him to grow up and actually make a decision and stand by it for better or worse. He needs to decide if he is going to support the best and the brightest our country has to offer and give them what they need to win the war. Or decide that this is not a battle he thinks is worthy and pull our troops out of there. Although I believe that it will be disastrous for him to pull out of Afghanistan, it would be better than sacrificing our military men and women while he “phones in” his duties as Commander in Chief.

President Obama Thinks He Is Still In The Illinois State Senate

Throughout the Presidential campaign, the legislative record of President Obama was looked at in an attempt to understand how he would lead as President. There was a common theme through out his time in the Illinois state Senate; it was his penchant for voting “Present”. I suppose it should be no surprise that he has continued that them during his tenure in the Oval Office.

He has become very non-committal when it comes to actually making hard decisions or backing up his flowery rhetoric. During his speech to Congress a few weeks ago, he announced a new plan for health care reform; unfortunately he has yet to deliver any such plan to Congress. He claimed that there would be no coverage of illegal immigrants in “his” plan, but yet the plan being worked on in the Senate had an amendment proposed to require a picture ID to receive the government option of health care. The amendment was voted down along party lines in the democratically controlled Senate.

Last week the U.S. General in charge in Afghanistan, that President Obama put in place 2 and a half months ago to implement “his” plan, was on ABC’s 60 Minutes during which he was asked how often he speaks to the President. His answer was shocking at first, but in light of the President’s history it was to be expected. He has spoken to his hand picked General once since he put him in place. If President Obama had downplayed the importance of Afghanistan then we could expect that it would not be that important to him, but he talked at length throughout his campaign about how important Afghanistan was in the “overseas contingency operations”(War on Terror to the rest of us). In August General McChrystal requested 40,000 more troops so that Afghanistan would not slip into failure. Is it too much to ask for the President to call his commander in Afghanistan when he provides such a grim assessment? Maybe the President was busy talking to David Letterman or taking in one of the weekly concerts at the White House.

Last week the President went before the United Nations to apologize yet again for the arrogance of his country. Also performing his stand up routine before the U.N. comedy club was Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad took the opportunity to deny the Holocaust and then later told the Iranian press that the U.S. President agrees with him on the U.S. being a “bully”. President Obama even said at the U.N. that the U.S. would no longer tell other countries how they should act. I can’t help but wonder how he will negotiate with Iran over nuclear weapons if he will not be telling them to not build nuclear weapons. It was also revealed last week about another nuclear enrichment facility that was previously undisclosed. The international response was surprising in the fact that embattled British leader Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were much more forceful and decisive with their response than President Obama. Sarkozy even pointed out “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions. President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.” For generations the French have been a joke on foreign policy issues and their penchant for surrender, now President Obama is looking to them for leadership.

President Obama has shown that he will make a decision when it concerns stealing our freedom, making a television appearance, or “sacrificing” by flying to Copenhagen to pitch for the 2016 Olympics for his cronies in Chicago. The American people expect the President to lead our country to prosperity not to wait for the international community to decide what he should do. His lack of leadership or ability to make any decision, along with the Congressional plan to slip the behemoth socialist health care reform into an unrelated bill as an amendment just to get it passed will surely spell disaster for our country. The United States of America will recover from Jimmy Carter Part 2 after 2012 when the current crop of bureaucrats in Washington are sent packing back to Chicago to cash in on their Olympic scam.

The House Celebrates Constitution Day In Typical Hypocritical Fashion

222 years ago 39 delegates gathered in the city of Philadelphia to sign Constitution of the United States of America. On September 17, 1787 our Founding Fathers created the greatest and freest nation on the face of the earth. I find it extremely ironic that the House of Representatives decided this week to limit free speech on the floor. Their actions this week were in response to South Carolina Congressman, Joe Wilson, calling out “You Lie!” during President Obama’s speech last week before a joint session of Congress. Wilson immediately apologized after the speech for his outburst.

While I felt that it was probably not the best opportunity to point out the false claims of the President, I agreed with Wilson’s sentiment. I was not alone in agreement, the Nancy Pelosi led House agreed with Wilson by passing an amendment to the Health Care reform bill that specifically states that illegal immigrants are not to be covered under the reforms.

The House also decided to dole out the moral equivalent of wagging their hypocritical finger at Wilson for having the audacity of speaking the truth about the President. They formally rebuked Wilson and laid out new rules covering what is not permissible to be said about the President in the chamber. No member of the House may refer to the President as a “liar” or a “hypocrite”, or describe his veto as “cowardly”, or describe him as “intellectually dishonest”, or refer to any alleged “act of sexual misconduct on the President’s part”, or describe the President as “giving aid in comfort to the enemy”.

I find it interesting that the Democrats took such offense to Wilson’s remark. Especially when considering their own rather sordid history of debasing a President and our troops from the floor of both chambers. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood on the floor of the Senate after 9/11 and demanded to know what President Bush knew and when he knew it. She questioned whether or not our President knew about the 9/11 attacks before they occurred and did nothing about it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Bush a total failure. California Representative Pete Stark called Bush a liar from the floor of the House. Senator Harry Reid declared that our military had lost the war in Iraq from the floor of the Senate. Pennsylvania Representative Jack Murtha accused our military of murder and rape in Iraq. President Obama claimed our military was air-raiding villages for the war on terror.

The actions of the House this week are just another tactic to divert attention away from the failing Health Care reform. They have also intensified the calls of racism for anyone who opposes the President. What the administration and the Democratic leadership fail to realize is that there is a growing tide of discontent against the plans for health care. As of this week, the approval ratings for the health care reform have reached their lowest point at just 42%. That approval is even after the latest “major” speech by the President to both chambers of Congress. If the administration pushes forward in the face of the growing objections of the public, it will be the end of any hope for reelection for the President. As for Congress, I believe their fate has already been sealed. Their will be a surprising amount of Democrats looking for new professions after next years midterm elections.

Is The President Lying, Or Is He Just Clueless?

Since January 20, President Obama has made more than 110 speeches or remarks concerning his push for Health Care Reform. On Wednesday evening the President addressed a joint session of Congress to once again plead for support for his unprecedented and unconstitutional power grab. His speech was heralded both before and after as providing clarity on the details of his proposal. Not surprisingly though the speech was basically a rehash of everything he has said over the past 8 months.

He continually perpetuates the same tired lies that his administration and the congressional leadership have been pushing since the debate began. He claimed that, “We are the only advanced democracy on Earth – the only wealthy nation – that allows such hardships for millions of its people.” Are these the same hardships that the citizens of Canada and the United Kingdom endure under their state-controlled health plan? DO we have 4000 women giving birth in stairwells, bathrooms, and broom closets as they do in the United Kingdom because there are not enough rooms for these women?

He claims that the reforms will not cover illegal immigrants, but yet 2 separate amendments were offered up in the House that added specific language to exclude illegal immigrants. Both amendments were voted down along party lines.

He claims that they are open to any and all reasonable ideas on reform, but yet the President last met with any Republicans on the issue of health care reform in April. That would be a full 3 months before the push started in Congress. The Republicans have offered options that would call for Health Savings Accounts, Tort Reform, and making health insurance portable among other ideas, but yet none of their options have been made part of the bill.

He claims that abortions will not be paid for with government money, but yet again the President is not being truthful. Again amendments have been offered that specifically added language to the bill that forbade abortions being paid for with tax dollars. Predictably, the amendments were defeated along party lines. In fact, they added an amendment that required that at least one insurer in the federal plan would cover abortions.

He claims that the reforms will be deficit neutral, but this claim has been proven time and time again to be false. The Congressional Budget Office looked at the proposal and concluded that the proposal would add at least $245 billion to the deficit. Of course, after his economic policies have added $9 trillion to the deficit, I guess it is easy to discount $245 billion as being insignificant.

The President is trying to sell the health care reform to not only the American people but also to his own party. The President does not need a single Republican to vote for this bill for it to pass, but yet he is trying to sell the notion that the evil Republicans are standing in the way of his socialist utopia. He has been unable to convince his own party to back him unconditionally in this fight. What he fails to realize is that the American people do not want this reform. They have read the bill and we know what is in the bill. We do not want to give away our rights and freedoms so that he can build a socialist legacy. His assertions throughout his speech are patently false, so we are left to assume he is either grossly misinformed about on which Congress is working or is boldly lying to the American people. Maybe it is time his health care proposal takes the blue pill instead of trying to revive it once again.

Why Not Try "Cash For Real Change"?

Over the past 12 months we have seen unfettered spending out of Washington D.C.. The reasoning for the fiscal recklessness has been attributed to the declining economy. The “drunken sailors” in our nation’s capital believe that the best way to stave off a recession is to spend our tax dollars on a myriad of government programs to spur economic recovery. They have bought into this misguided notion to the point of quadrupling our budget deficit, but yet our economy still lags. They have bailed out banks, automobile manufacturers, and labor unions. They have spent more than $1.5 trillion dollars over and above any budgetary spending and have proposed spending another $4 trillion in next year’s budget along with at least another $1 trillion in deficit spending.

Along with their disastrous economic policies, the politicians are trying to further hamstring our economy with an ill-advised “Cap and Trade” plan. The plan will in effect cause the price of energy, which is your gas and/or electric bill for the government Kool-Aid drinkers, to skyrocket. Not only will your energy bill dramatically increase, but also the cost of virtually every product or service that you currently buy. To put it simply, after you spend more money to heat/cool and light your house, you will have to spend more to buy food, drive to pick up the food, and clean up after your food is consumed. The House of Representatives passed this bill with an overwhelming public outcry against it.

The self-proclaimed smartest people in the world are trying to pass a “Health Care Reform” bill that will bankrupt private insurance, raise all of our health care costs, decrease the quality of health care, and help struggling labor union’s retirement accounts. Again they press on in the face of overwhelming public opposition.

The American public has grown weary of politicians who pass legislation without reading the bill, which they did for a massive stimulus bill passed earlier this year. The voters have educated themselves on what the legislation actually says and have begun to demand answers from their elected representatives. Recent polls by Rasmussen Reports shows that 57% of voters would like to replace every member of both houses of Congress, while 42% of those polled believe that just randomly picking names out of the phone book would be more productive than the current Congress. Public opinion is showing that very few members of Congress, regardless to which political party they belong, are safe in their re-election bids next year. Those numbers will drop even further if Congress passes their freedom limiting Health Care bill.

I have a proposal to replace every member of Congress, even those in the Senate who are not up for re-election in next year’s midterm elections. I propose “Cash for Real Change”. I think we should pay every member of Congress $1 billion to leave Washington immediately and never return. The $535 billion it would cost pales in comparison to the more than $1.5 trillion this Congress has already spent. I think we should then replace the new billionaires with citizen legislators that have never served in political office at any capacity. Before the new Congress can begin any legislative work, they will attend classes on the Constitution. The classes will not try to decide what the founding fathers intended or what they would have done if they lived in 2009, the classes will concentrate on what the Constitution actually says. After the new Congress understands what their duties and responsibilities are under the Constitution, they will now begin to undo the constitutional damage the current crop of political reprobates have done.

The Democrats ARe Becoming Desperate Over Health Care Reform

As I returned from vacation last weekend I became aware of the desperation of the Democrats and the White House over their socialist takeover of our health care system. After weeks of plummeting poll numbers and running scared at town hall meetings the administration and the Democratic leadership have resorted to the same tired tactics they have used for years. The politics of fear and race baiting has returned in full force in a feeble attempt to resurrect the health care power grab.

The Colorado Democrat Party headquarters in Denver was vandalized this week and immediately state party officials attempted to spin in into an attack by political opponents of the health care reform proposed by their party. Unfortunately the facts of the case tell a slightly different story. One of the two vandals was caught shortly after the attack and his name is Maurice Schwenkler. He worked in the 2008 elections for a Democrat running for the Colorado state house. He has a history of working for liberal 527 groups and was arrested for unlawful assembly outside of the Republican National Convention in 2008. Of course the Colorado Democrat Party Chairwoman was quick to back away from her initial statements accusing Republicans of the vandalism.

New York Governor David A. Paterson blames racism for his unpopularity in the sate of New York and added that President Obama will be the next victim of racism. They believe, or are at least trying to convince the public, that the reason for the disapproval among the voting public is that we are not comfortable with a black man in power. They want us to forget that the health care reform proposal is an unconstitutional power grab and will further drive our country into economic disaster. Governor Paterson is presiding over a state that is in dire economic straits, but he wants us to believe that it is not his fault but the fault of his racist political opponents. I have been called a racist more times in the past year than in my entire life; all because I have not supported Barack Obama. I have not and will not support any candidate or politician that I do not agree with on the issues. Was I a racist when I supported Michael Steele for Lt. Governor and Senator in Maryland? I supported Steele based on the issues, but because he is a Republican, the left believes that he has betrayed his race.

President Barack Obama said last week that there is a “right wing conspiracy” to defeat his health care reform proposal. It is interesting that he would use those words to describe the opponents of socialized medicine. It is interesting because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referenced a “vast right wing conspiracy” while she was the First Lady to explain the accusations of infidelity against her husband President Bill Clinton. Of course a few weeks later her husband had to admit his extra-curricular activities with a White House intern. I know the same is true in the current reference to a conspiracy. The facts are that the current health care reform will ration medical care, raise costs, reduce the quality of care, and will give the federal government unprecedented and unconstitutional power over our lives. I do think it is funny that they will try to pin this on the Republicans, but yet they do not need a single Republican to support it for it to pass either chamber of Congress.

The most disturbing, but not surprising ploy being used by the Democrats to force through this debacle is the death of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. No more than 2 hours after his death, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was calling for the reform to be passed as a tribute to Kennedy. They are hoping that they can guilt the “Blue Dog Democrats” into supporting the legislation despite the growing dissatisfaction with the proposal. It is ironic that they would seek to tie this reform to Kennedy who sought out the best treatments and doctors available for his disease, but he would not have had that opportunity if the current proposal were passed into law. The attempt to capitalize on the Senator’s death does bring to mind a similar attempt in 2002 when the Democrats tried to turn a memorial service for Senator Paul Wellstone into a political pep rally. The result was a defeat for the Democrats. The early reports of the coverage of Kennedy’s death have shown that the ratings numbers are very low, which points to the public’s cynicism over the political class trying to push this albatross onto our backs.

A side note to the death of Senator Kennedy; in 2004 Kennedy sought to have Massachusetts law changed so that a vacant U.S. Senate seat would be filled by a special election to be held within 5 months of the vacancy. He fought to have it changed because he was worried that Senator John Kerry would win the presidency and Republican Governor Mitt Romney would fill the vacant seat with a Republican. Now that there is a Democrat in the Governor’s mansion, Kennedy wrote a letter state legislators before his death to have the law changed so that Governor Deval Patrick could fill the vacancy immediately. I believe the frenzy to change the law and name a replacement will be more entertaining than any of the mind-numbing reality TV shows currently on the air.
As the summer recess winds down, the race baiting and fear mongering from the administration will continue to heat up and the politicization of Senator Kennedy’s death will reach nauseating levels. I fully expect President Obama to turn the eulogy on Saturday into a campaign-style stump speech for health care reform in memoriam for the good Senator. I also believe that the American public has wised up to the empty promises of the President. They see the economic trouble in which the country finds itself. They hear the reports that the federal deficit has quadrupled since President Obama was sworn in as President. The heard the administration admit that their estimates of the federal deficit’s growth was off by $2 trillion to a total of $9 trillion. They are unable to understand why we need to rush this legislation through now, when it will not even take effect until 2013. The more the public learns about the health care reform proposal, the lower the approval numbers drop for the President and the Democrats. The problem for the White House and the Democratic leadership is that they have sold themselves for this reform to the point that they are unable to stop now. I believe that 2010 will be a very bad year to be a politician in D.C..

The Dog Days Of Summer Are Hard On The Politicians

August is turning out to be a very hot, and uncomfortable month for the White House and especially the Democrat-led Congress. Members of Congress have been met with outrage and frustration over the rush to socialized medicine. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the White House have tried to spin the opposition as anything from Nazi-like to “Astroturf”. Throughout it all the public has continued to voice their displeasure over the sudden and severe hearing loss that has gripped Washington DC.

President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to a new low for him, down to 47%. His Presidential Approval Index has been hovering in the negative range for several weeks and currently sits at a –8, with a mere 29% strongly approving of the President and 37% strongly disapproving. His plummeting poll numbers are a result of several factors, but his push to socialize the health care system is the main catalyst for his decline.

Another factor for the public’s growing discontent is the unprecedented spending that the Congress and the President have engaged in over the past 7 months. The Treasury Department released it’s latest figures that showed that the Federal Government has spent $3 trillion in the past 10 months. Before my Bush-hating readers start to scream, allow me to say that Bush started this idiotic spending spree late last fall, but the current administration has more than followed suit. This year’s Federal deficit is projected to be 4 times that of last year’s deficit. Instead of working to reduce the deficit and release us from the stranglehold in which our creditors have us, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner went to Congress to raise the Federal debt limit above the current $12.1 trillion limit. The administration has further driven our country into bankruptcy and instead of changing their drunken-sailor spending habits; they ask to increase their credit limit. I suppose they need to raise it in order to pay for the economic fiasco known as health care reform. The American taxpayer had to work nearly an entire month longer than last year to pay for the ludicrous spending habits of Washington. The cost of government is 61.9% of our national income and these politicians want to raise it even higher.

The President has tried to portray his “townhall meetings” as open and fair minded, but yet there is never anyone who is opposed to his health care nightmare. Meanwhile, every member of Congress that goes out to meet the voters is met with overwhelming opposition. A recent Rasmussen poll has shown that 53% of voters are opposed to the Health Care Reform plan. Worse yet for the politicos in DC is that the much-coveted “independents” are opposed to the plan by a wide margin. President Obama has even tried to assuage our fears about a government run health care system putting private insurance out of business, by equating it to the post office. He said that UPS and FedEx are doing fine, it is always the post office that is in trouble. Can the President be that naïve? Does he really believe that the American public want a health care system that runs as efficiently as the post office?

The White House and Congress have severely overestimated the charm of President Obama. They believe that when the President speaks the public all feel a tingle running up their legs and they forget all about the actual words that he is speaking or the actions they are undertaking. The public is smarter than for which the bureaucrats in Washington give them credit. The public knows what is in the legislation that Congress is considering. The Congressional switchboards and email servers are being stretched to their limits with opposition calls and emails, but yet our elected representatives ignore our wishes and vote for the socialist agenda of the President. I believe the folly of the White House and Congress will be shown in next year’s midterm elections.

Was Orwell's Vision Off By 25 Years?

The debate surrounding the Obama administration’s and Congress’ plans to reform our health care system has exposed the folly of the media proclamation of the President as some sort of messianic figure. They have built him up to the pinnacle of power in the world, only to have his approval numbers rapidly fall due to the public growing weary of his socialistic “hope and change.” The American people in poll after poll have stated that they absolutely do not want the government to run our health care system. The disapproval of the reforms is growing on a daily basis as more of the details become known.

Congress is becoming aware of their constituents’ displeasure over the proposals currently being worked on in Washington. As the members of Congress travel home for the summer recess, they are being met with a voting public that knows more about the reforms in Congress than the President claims he knows. The American people have informed themselves on individual aspects of the bill, such as the fact that Congress has specifically exempted themselves from the government plan. Another aspect is that the government plan will force all private insurance out of business, by setting prices at such a level as to make it financially impossible for private insurance companies to make a profit.

The President claims that he does not want to take over the health care system, but unfortunately the President seems to suffer from memory loss. In March of 2007, then Senator Obama proclaimed that it was his goal to have “Universal Health Care for all” by the end of his first term in office. He also stated in 2003 that he is a proponent of a “single payer universal health care plan”.

Congressional leaders are vilifying the American people, who are voicing their opposition at the town hall meetings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week that these citizens were waving swastikas at the town hall meetings. The White House is asking people to email them about anyone who are “telling lies” about the Health Care proposal. It has been a few years since I read George Orwell’s classic 1984, but I seem to recall Orwell writing about children turning in their parents to the government for “thought crimes”. Isn’t the administration asking for names of people discussing the plan, even in casual conversation, sound eerily similar to Orwell’s vision?

Congress is in for a very rude awakening in 2010, especially if they pass this disastrous plan. The Democrats are running themselves right out of office and all the Republicans need to do is stay out of the way. There are a few Republicans that seem to believe that compromising with the Democrats on this plan is the best course of action, but a compromise that produces bad legislation is never a good idea. There are Republican proposals out there that actually will reduce costs and actually provide meaningful reform, but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would rather claim that the Republicans are the party of ‘No’, than to actually allow any of their proposals see the light of day.

The voters are more aware right now than at any point in recent history. They have watched the Congress pass a monstrous “stimulus” bill, and spend more than a trillion dollars more than the government will collect in tax revenues, all against their expressed wishes. They have seen the House of Representatives pass the “Cap and Trade” bill that will stifle the economy more than they already have, again against the will of their constituents. It is time Congress is asked the question, whom exactly are they representing? Were they elected to carry out the extreme socialist agenda of the President? Or were they elected to represent their constituents? I believe in 2010, there will be many members of Congress looking for a new career.

The President's Health Care Reform Nightmare

The Health Care Reform debate was ordered to be complete by the August recess of Congress. President Obama declared that Congress needed to pass Health Care Reform by the time that they departed Washington for their summer recess. He has placed urgency on the reform stating, “If we fail to act now, we will lose an opportunity that only comes around every few generations.” My cynicism impels me to ask; of what opportunity does the President speak? Is he speaking of our impending national bankruptcy?

The President has applied more pressure on Congress to pass Health Care Reform as more and more Congressman express their concerns over passing such an expensive power grab. He has repeatedly expressed that more than 46 million Americans are living without health insurance. The number in and of itself is staggering, but it is a fabrication on the part of the administration. Investors Business Daily recently published an editorial exploring the facts behind the 46 million uninsured figure. Roughly 10 million of the uninsured are not U.S. citizens and about 17 million of the uninsured reside in households whose annual income is more than $50,000. The editorial further explains that 40% of the uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 34 and simply choose not to spend money on health insurance because they are young and healthy.

President Obama has also provided some enlightening clues as to where his vision for Health Care Reform will take us. In a town hall meeting in June, he was asked about a woman’s mother, who at the age of 100 her doctor informed her that she would need a pacemaker. 2 doctors refused to do the surgery to implant the pacemaker because of her age. The third doctor, after meeting the patient, realized that the woman had a zest for life and performed the surgery. That was 5 years ago and she is still going strong. The President was asked whether under his plan, she would have been allowed to receive the surgery. Would the plan take into account a person spirit and will to live? The President eloquently said that the plan could not evaluate a person’s spirit, but perhaps they would be better off taking medication to dull the pain. His plan is to provide “end of life” counseling instead of senior care. So we can expect that after we reach the government determined age, we will be evaluated on our viability before we will be treated.

Who are the people who are pushing to control our health care? President Obama has a record of voting in the Illinois Senate for allowing babies who were born alive after a failed abortion to die alone in a dirty linen closet. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg recently said that she understood that the Roe V. Wade decision was decided to control “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Former Vice President Al Gore said during the 1990’s that one of the best ways to control “global warming” was to establish an aggressive abortion policy in the third world. His words are chilling, “it is time to ignore the controversy over family planning and cut out-of-control population growth.” President Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren, has made similar statements regarding population control. In 1977 he wrote, "It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society." I realize that these will not be the same people actually making the decisions, but they all share the same twisted view on life. Who are they to decide who lives and who dies?

As a side note, I do find it a bit amusing that the abortion rights advocates have for years been crying to keep your laws off of my body, but yet now they are crying that the government needs to control every aspect of our bodies.

The administration has repeatedly asserted that no one will be required to join the government run plan. They claim that they are merely providing a government option to compete with the private market. The problem is that there is no government program that has ever produced a profit. For those less economically inclined, the government plan will not be required to provide services at a fair market value. This will then cause private market competition to either close before bankruptcy or operate at a loss to try to compete that will inevitably cause them to go bankrupt. For those citizens who choose not to enroll in the government plan or any private plan, will be fined by the federal government about $2500, or whatever it would normally cost to buy health insurance, a year for every year you go without health insurance.

This Health Care Reform debate is turning quite embarrassing for the Democrats and the administration. The President is taking the prospect of his proposal falling to defeat rather personally. He is repeating the statements from Republicans about defeating his plan as an attempt to rally support for the reform. He is apt to refer to Republican opposition to his proposal, but the truth is that the President does not need 1 Republican to vote for the measure for it to pass. He has enough Democrats in both chambers of Congress to pass this debacle, but yet he points to the Republicans as standing in the way of his power grab. The truth is that all members of Congress are hearing from their constituents and they do not want this plan. An increasing majority of Americans do not want any type of government run health care plan and they are expressing their displeasure over this proposal. Politicians, from both parties, are all generally the same. They all are worried about their next election. When public outcry reaches a point where the politicians realize their political career is on the line, they tend to take notice.

The Senate has postponed any vote on Health Care Reform until at least September and the House will more than likely follow suit. The administration’s push to pass the enormous measure while we are already operating under historic deficits is ludicrous. They are working under the assumption that, “It is better to beg for forgiveness, than to ask for permission.” They believe that we will forgive them for further destroying our economy and our country. They need to realize that if they act with that philosophy within their marriages, they will soon find themselves in Divorce Court. The same holds true for the political realm, if they follow through with this unconstitutional eroding of our personal freedoms, they will soon find themselves as unemployed politicians.

The House Passes H.R. 2454, The Economic Destruction Act Of 2009

Today the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The mammoth bill consisted of more than 1500 pages and would be more aptly named the Hamstring the American Economy Act. The bill will now head to the Senate for their take on the issue, where I cannot help but wonder if the Senators will actually read the bill before reading it unlike their counterparts in the House.

President Obama and the Democratic House leadership claimed that this bill was a “jobs” bill. Their claim is based on the premise that the legislation will create green jobs and will help the economy. The dirty little secret is that the cost of the bill to the American taxpayers will be astronomical. Everyone will pay more for their energy consumption. This may not appear to be that big of an issue for the millionaire bureaucrats in Washington or the hypocrite Al Gore, but for those citizens who already struggle to pay their energy bills on a monthly basis, it will be a major problem. Over the next 25 years electricity rates will increase an estimated 90%, gasoline prices will increase an estimated 58%, natural gas rates will increase an estimated 55%, add an additional $28,728 per person in the U.S. to the national debt, and reduce the gross domestic product by $9.4 trillion

As for the jobs that they are claiming that will be created, we only have to look to Spain to foresee the outcomes of the very same policies. In Spain the unemployment rate is at 18% and for every green job created 2.2 jobs are lost. The cost of creating the green jobs is a bargain as well, a mere $774,000 per green job “created”. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at King Juan Carlos University who authored a report on Spain’s green jobs initiatives said, “The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices”. Several U.S companies have already stated that it will be cheaper for them to move their entire operations out of the U.S. than to stay and pay the stifling taxes and penalties for doing business in the Obama led United States.

What I find most amazing about this legislation is the unmitigated gall of the President concerning its inevitable outcome. During his campaign, before the he became the media-anointed messiah of all people, the President said that his clean energy proposal would bankrupt the coal industry. This may not seem to be that big of a deal for most of my “green” readers, but the U.S. depends on coal to supply roughly 50% of our energy. Now how will we supply energy without coal? We could use nuclear power; you remember the cheap, reliable energy source that the President favors for Iran. The only problem is that the very same people who are trying to hamper our economy with this legislation are also the same hypocritical bureaucrats that have prevented any new nuclear power plants from being built in the past 30 years.

While the concept of wind and solar energy providing all of our energy needs is a laudable one, the simple fact remains that the technology does not exist today to make these economically viable. Provide funding for research if you want, but do not punish the American people and our economy for the sake of flawed science. As the Senate takes up this legislation, we can only hope that the Senators will put aside their party loyalty and actually vote to protect the American economy and our pocketbooks. I realize that this may be too much to ask for many of the lifelong politicians, but can’t we at least expect them to read the bill before they vote on it? After all, the author of the bill in the House, Henry Waxman, admitted that he had not read the bill and did not know all of the details of the bill. He was content to rely on the scientists that wrote the bill. I suppose the only ones that will be laughing and cheering about this legislation in the years to come will be China, India, and the rest of the world who will reap the economic rewards for the folly of our elected officials.

New Hate Crimes Legislation Poised To Muzzle Your Pastor

According to the United States Department of Justice, a “Hate Crime” is “the violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious, sexual orientation, or disability. The purveyors of hate use explosives, arson, weapons, vandalism, physical violence, and verbal threats of violence to instill fear in their victims, leaving them vulnerable to more attacks and feeling alienated, helpless, suspicious and fearful.” I have always been one who questions the need for “Hate Crimes” legislation. Before I am called everything from an insensitive bigot to my personal favorite, a reich-wing hate-monger, I am not saying that there is no racism or hate in our country. There are clearly ignorant, hateful people in our world that will commit some very heinous acts in the name of hate. My difficulty with “Hate Crimes” legislation is that it seems redundant. How do you punish the killers of James Bird, who was dragged to his death behind a truck, when two of his killers were executed and the third received life in prison? There are already laws on the books regarding murder, assault, and every other crime that could be considered a “Hate Crime”.

Over the past two and a half years since Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid assumed control of Congress, they have tried in vain to pass a new “Hate Crime” bill that would include sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity to the list of protected people. The Democratic leaders attempted to conceal the “Hate Crimes” legislation in a critical Defense spending bill in 2007. They later removed the measure from the Defense bill. Bush had vetoed the bill during his Presidency citing the constitutionality of the proposal. He believed that the existing laws on the books in the individual states were more than adequate and that any measure by the Federal Government would be overstepping their constitutional boundaries. Of course, the current administration believes that our constitution is “fundamentally flawed”.

Conservative groups have longed questioned the reach of such legislation. The main concern is how the law would be prosecuted. Would a pastor be charged with a “hate crime” for preaching in his church that homosexuality is a sin and that the Bible clearly says as much? What other types of speech would be limited next? Would it then be a crime to criticize the President or his policies? Of course the news media is already terrified of criticizing anything that the media anointed messiah says or does. After all, ABC News is turning over all of their prime time airtime on Wednesday to President Obama to pitch his socialist dream of health care to the American people without any opposing viewpoint. Another concern is that the new law will rescind the “Federal activity” clause of the current law. The existing law requires that the offense take place during a “Federal activity” such as at a school, but the new proposal will strip that requirement from the law, thus opening the door for a broad range of interpretations of what constitutes a “hate crime”.

It remains to be seen what the Senate will do when the measure comes up for a vote, but past history has shown that this Congress is at ease with trampling states rights and the constitution. Senator Harry Reid and President Obama need to realize that redundant laws with the aim of making headlines do not solve racial tensions. This law will only serve to try to muzzle free speech rights of Christian organizations with the end goal of either shutting down churches who preach the Bible. I do find it amazing that those who want to limit the free speech and the freedom of religion of Bible believing churches, applauded the racist comments of Obama’s own pastor Jeremiah Wright.

More Political Posturing By Obama On Spending

President Barack Obama has decided that all of this reckless spending has to stop. He has told Congress that they must now cut $1 from somewhere else in the budget for every $1 that they spend. The concept is not an original idea; in 2006 the Democrats gained control of Congress with promises to turn the tide of Republican spending. They promised to never introduce a spending measure without a means to pay for it. Of course, in the 2 years following their takeover of Congress they simply ignored their own rules. They added $398 billion in deficit spending without any concern for being seen as hypocritical.

For a bit of perspective, $398 billion is a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the $1 trillion forecasted by the Congressional Budget Office to be added to the deficit spending for every year for the next decade. Of course, the President added a few caveats to his “pay-go” requirement. He conveniently provided an exception for his health care reform spending which has been forecasted to cost the taxpayers at least another $1 trillion in deficit spending. To make matters worse, Obama warns that now is the only time to pass health care reform. He is trying to gin up fear to provide pressure on Congress to pass yet another disastrous spending measure. At this point with nearly $12 trillion in projected deficit spending over the next 10 years, why should we care about spending an additional $1 trillion of money we don’t have?
I believe that the rush to pass the President’s socialist dream is because the administration knows what 2010 will hold for the party in power. They realize that sooner or later the American people will wake up to how disastrous the policies of throwing taxpayer money around to seize control of more of the private sector really are. They are petrified of trying to pass this health care boondoggle during an election year. Recent polls have shown that while approvals of Obama personally remain in the 60% range, approval of his individual policies is dismally low. I fully expect the White House and their loyal sycophants in Congress will try to ramrod health care reform through with very little chance for the voting public to actually read and understand what is in the bill. Early in President Clinton’s first term, health care reform was one of the primary goals on their agenda. Their reform did have broad support until the voters knew the details of the reform. The voters expressed their opposition to the government power grab and the Democrat controlled Congress quickly folded under the pressure. I believe that the Obama administration will try to force their reform quickly through with very little debate to try to avoid the inevitable voter backlash. Of course, as much as Clinton was loved by the left, he never enjoyed the near religious following that Obama does.

Will Obama Say Anything To Distract From His Disastrous Domestic Policies?

President Barack Hussein Obama, formerly known as candidate Barack Obama, has proven once again that his own Vice President, Joe “which government secret should I reveal this week” Biden was correct when he said that the President of the United States is not a position in which you can learn foreign policy with on the job training. Biden chided Obama during the Presidential primaries for his extreme lack of foreign policy experience or even the vaguest idea of what foreign policy entailed. You may recall that Obama tried to separate himself from the pack of Presidential aspirants by promising to negotiate with Iran without any preconditions. He then quickly revised his foolish statements by saying that a nuclear Iran was unacceptable to him. Either the President has a very short memory or this is just another example of his desire to be all things to all people.

The Obama administration was hailed during the campaign and after the election as an administration that would regain the respect of the world. Over the past few weeks, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made a trip to China to reassure the Chinese that the investment in our skyrocketing debt was a safe investment. His speech before Econ students at a Chinese University was met with disbelieving laughter. How could anyone believe the Treasury Secretary when he tells them that the dollar is strong and will continue to be a safe investment, when the administration he works for and the Congress have shown no signs of reigning in spending? Or shown any signs that they have the slightest inclination to allow the free market to work through the problems that governmental interference have caused? Even Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez sees that the current policies of the Obama administration have clearly positioned Obama to the left of Chavez.

Maybe it is the 9.2% unemployment rate that has caused the President to make some outrageous statements over the past week while traveling abroad. How else can anyone explain why President Obama would claim that the Muslim population in the United States would make our country one of the largest Muslim nations in the world? A Pew Research poll puts the Muslim population in the United States at about 1.8million, which would make the U.S. barely in the top 50 of Muslim nations if we counted just the people who identify themselves as Muslim.

Maybe it is the soaring national debt, or his government takeover of the banking industry, the mortgage industry, and the auto industry, or his plans to nationalize our healthcare system that caused him to say that Iran has a legitimate claim to their nuclear aspirations. I realize many of his cult-like followers will claim that he was talking about their plans for nuclear power, but how can you disregard Ahmedinejad’s claims of having more than 7000 centrifuges for nuclear missiles? Do we ignore the Iranian leader’s claims that they will wipe Israel off the map in a matter of days, if they are provoked? Does anyone believe that Iran will not try to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons if they have them?

Iran knows that the U.S. is nothing more than flowery, but empty rhetoric condemning their actions against Israel. After all, North Korea has totally ignored all of warnings coming from Washington. Iran has also turned a deaf ear to the laughable condemnations from the U.N. and the U.S.. Why should they be concerned about any action from the impotent U.N. or the U.S.? Obama said as much in his speech in Cairo when he delivered yet another apology for the war in Iraq. He claimed that we had learned that taking action without broad international support was a mistake. Don’t we teach our children that they need to do the right thing no matter what their friends are doing or might say? I suppose that may be a lesson that is not taught in the school of appeasement and apology. I am still waiting for the President to apologize to Great Britain for our unlawful war in 1776.

Is There Any Backbone Left In DC

On Election Day, Barack Obama and the Democrats won control of Washington DC. Since the inauguration of Barack Obama, the President and the Democrat controlled Congress have set forth legislation that actually delivers on a campaign promise. They promised to change the country, and they are well on their way to accomplishing that feat. The problem, of course, is that the change will remake the United States into a country that is far from what our founders had intended. The Republicans in Washington DC and the party leadership seem to be more concerned about offering a “lite” version of the disastrous policies of the left. They appear to be more focused on not angering their political opponents or the media, than actually offering true conservative alternatives.

The current political season is ripe with opportunity for a strong, truly conservative leader to point out the lies and fallacy of the Democratic agenda. The massive stimulus bill was just the beginning and the Republicans in the House did unite against that bill, as well as the majority of the Senate Republicans, but merely voting against the earmark laden stimulus bill is only half the battle. What happened to educating the voting public about why you are against the historic demolition of our economy? Then there was the bank bailouts, the Chrysler and GM debacle, numerous appointees that were incapable of paying their taxes, Obama’s magical apology tour of the world, Iran’s and North Korea’s defiance of Obama and the world, the monstrosity that will be universal/socialist healthcare, and now even his pick for the Supreme Court. All of these are sitting ducks for a conservative response from the Republican leadership.

Instead, what we have seen is attitudes of appeasement settle over the leadership. There have been a few bright spots of conservative Congressman standing up and fighting, but from the elites of the party we are told we need to be a “Big Tent” party. Colin Powell, who has voted for more Democrats in Presidential elections than Republicans, lectures the party that we need to be more moderate and inclusive. Isn’t that what he got in the last election with John “Amnesty” McCain? The same group of elitist Republicans is now preaching that we cannot oppose Sonia Sotomayor because we will be seen as anti-Hispanic because of her Puerto Rican heritage. First of all, were the Democrats seen as anti-Hispanic for their opposition to Miguel Estrada? Secondly, the Republicans received very little of the Hispanic vote last year, why would anyone believe that if we support Sotomayor for the Supreme Court that the numbers would change? Sotomayor is an easy target for criticism based solely on her judicial philosophy. She is on record stating that it is the role of the court to make policy. She is on record stating that she believes that a “woman of color” would more often make better judicial decisions that a white man. Her judicial decisions have been overturned 60% by the very court to which she has been nominated. I believe it is telling that her supporters are touting her inspiring life story as a great reason to confirm her, but yet the very same people were vehemently opposed to Justice Thomas whose story is equally compelling. A supreme Court Justice should be considered based on their record of opinions and their judicial philosophy, not whether their life story would make for a great Lifetime movie of the week.

I don’t expect that the Republicans to be able to stop all of the Marxist plans for our country, but they have an excellent opportunity to stand up voice their opposition and educate the American people on why these plans are bad for our country. Ronald Reagan was able to push his tax cuts through a Democrat controlled Congress, with a hostile media covering the news, and no Internet to aid in the dissemination of the facts. The Republican leadership needs to wake up and realize that the Tea Parties on April 15 were just as much a protest of their lack of leadership as it was a protest of Obama’s spending spree in Washington.

Pelosi Changes Her Story Yet Again On Torture

For the past several weeks, the media and the Democratic leadership in Congress have screamed and yelled about the enhanced interrogation techniques employed after the September 11 attacks. These techniques have been attributed to saving lives by their proponents, and have been condemned as torture by their opponents. Probably the most out-spoken opponent of the EIT’s in the past few weeks has been House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ms. Pelosi initially feigned outrage at the news that techniques, such as “waterboarding”, had been used against the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. She claimed that she did not know that these techniques were even being considered. Then the reports came out about numerous congressional briefings by the CIA, to which Pelosi responded that they never told her about any techniques. As more staffers, congressman, and CIA reports came out, Pelosi proceeded to change her story as quickly as Arlen Specter changers political affiliations.

At one point, she claimed that she did know about the interrogations but did not object at the time because she wanted to follow the “legislative process”. As the heat continued to increase, she decided to try to claim that the CIA lied to her and the rest of Congress. She now claims that the CIA deliberately misled her and Congress by withholding the information about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. She sounds like a child caught in a lie, and instead of owning up to the truth when questioned, she continually piles lies upon lies.

With Pelosi flailing about with her myriad of stories of what she knew and when she knew it, the Democrats were having a bad enough week on national security, but then just before the 40 some pictures of the “torture” of detainees were to be released, President Obama reversed course and decided not to release them. I applaud Obama for not releasing the pictures. The only purpose it would serve would be to incite our enemies. For the record, I am not saying I am opposed to the use of EIT’s, but you can guarantee that Al Qaeda would propagandize the pictures and use them against us. Another surprising twist arose this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration is considering leaving the Bush administration policy of detaining enemy combatants indefinitely intact. Can you hear the screeching from MoveOn.org?

The fate of Speaker Pelosi is still unknown, but I do believe that if she continues down this self-destructive path she will be forever politically damaged and her days as Speaker will be numbered. As for the Obama administration’s national security policy, it will be very interesting how they proceed. The calls for a defined Afghanistan policy have begun from they typical cast of characters, led by PA Representative John Murtha. Will Obama be able to hold his party’s anti-war elements in line? Will Obama choose to appease his rabid anti-war followers or choose a competent national security policy? I pray, for the sake of our country and all of our safety, that he chooses the latter.

Who Is Watching How Our Money Is Spent?

Back in February, after President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress passed the $787 billion stimulus bill, we were told no to worry about massive fraud and waste because they government was going to closely monitor where the money was going. Vice President Joe Biden even went out and threatened the local and state government officials that if they spent the stimulus money unwisely, he would personally go out and name names of the wasteful spenders. We were assured that the government would set up a website so that we could check for ourselves where the money was going. Shockingly, the truth is that the government has no clue as to where the money is going and the elected representatives who signed the check don’t seem to care.

This week the House subcommittee tasked with oversight of the massive amounts of money hemorrhaging from the Treasury Department, held a hearing to get an update on the progress of the website and other tracking methods. The chairman of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, Earl Devaney, told the panel that the website is not ready and probably will not be ready until maybe next year. One would think that this news would raise some eyebrows of the Congressman on the panel, but unfortunately the most of the members decide dthat it was not important to even show up for the hearing. Of the 10 members only 3 showed up in the beginning, with 1 other member showing up late. I suppose that this should not be surprising, especially when you consider that no one in either chamber of Congress actually read the “stimulus” bill before voting on it.

At least we can count on the President to follow through on his promise of going through the federal budget line by line to find areas to cut the spending. This week the President did come out and announce his proposed budget cuts from his $3.55 trillion budget. He plans to make more than 100 cuts in his budget that will save the taxpayers $17 billion. To put it in perspective, if the federal budget were just $355, the President’s cuts would equate to $0.17. How excited would you be if you were buying a new TV and the salesman told you that he could save you 17 cents? Obama’s proposed budget cuts out of his budget amount to less than .5% of his total budget proposal. Do you feel that the government is effectively watching out for your hard earned money?

With a Federal budget deficit forecasted to be more than $9 trillion by the Congressional Budget Office over the next decade when can we expect the President’s promise of fiscal responsibility to be fulfilled? I suppose we could just hope that Congress and the President will change the drunken sailor spending habits. Then again, didn’t thousands of people show up in cities across the country to protest the ludicrous spending and overbearing taxation? Maybe elected officials will take notice of the groundswell of discontent over the tax and spend policies of the current administration. I believe members of both parties need to wake up and see the disastrous future they are preparing for our children. Otherwise they will all find themselves out of work in 2010.

Apparently I Am A Bigger Threat Than Al Qaeda

President Barack Obama is apparently unable to make a decision and stand by it. Last Thursday the President promised that no officials from the Bush administration would be prosecuted for the practice of enhanced interrogations. Just a few short days later; he reopened the door to prosecuting officials who wrote memos detailing the legality of enhanced interrogations. What could have caused the President to so quickly change his mind? Of course, he created a political fall guy if the public outcry against any prosecution is too great. He firmly planted the Attorney General, Eric Holder, in the political line of fire.

The legal questions surrounding enhanced interrogations gained attention last week when the Obama administration declassified CIA memos detailing which methods could be legally defended. The various methods included the now infamous water boarding, but also included such methods as a facial grab, facial slap with an open hand, serving the terrorists a bland, but nutritious diet, and threatening to place a terrorist in a confined space with a caterpillar.

These methods have been called torture by some, but have been called highly valuable by Clinton appointee George Tenet. Tenet said during a 60 minutes interview that he knew that these methods provided valuable information that allowed law enforcement officials to prevent a 9/11-style attack in Los Angeles. In fact, the Bush administration briefed members of Congress on the techniques used during interrogations in 2002. Of course, the hypocritical congressional leaders created a stampede to get in front of the cameras to feign their outrage about such practices when they became public knowledge.

Now that it is public knowledge, what have we lost in terms of national security? Now that the murderous terrorists know what methods we use and now will not use, how can anyone expect the CIA or military to be able to effectively interrogate the captured terrorists? All that they are authorized to use now for interrogations is the Army Field Manual, which will not allow such harsh tactics as insults or name calling. I guess all that is left is to serve them Prime Rib without a proper salad beforehand.

The Obama administration has taken a stance that seems to indicate that what other countries think about us is more important than preventing another terrorist attack on our country. They are more afraid of “right wing extremists” than they are of a terrorist attack from Al Qaeda.

The Department of Homeland Security has added that dangerous group of people, known as conservatives, to their watch list. Apparently they believe that if you are Pro-life, support the second amendment, oppose government expansion and regulation of every aspect of our lives, want our borders secured, oppose higher taxes that stifle economy, any combination of the above, or the worst kind of hate monger, a veteran, then you are a risk to Homeland Security.
The investigation into the enhanced interrogations will take years and will probably include a few indictments of lawyers who wrote the memos, but it will do nothing to prevent another terrorist attack and I guarantee it will not quell the desire on the left to see Cheney and Bush brought up on charges. Cheney and Bush will not be charged simply because, although this investigation has no merit from the beginning, Obama does not want to open the door on any future investigations into anything he does while in office.

Is Obama Leading Us Into Socialism?

I have taken a bit of criticism over the past few weeks because I have defined President Obama’s proposals as socialist. In the interest of fairness, I have decided to explore socialism and it’s definition to see how closely aligned Obama’s proposals are to socialism.

To begin we must first define socialism. According to Yahoo, socialism is defined in one of two ways. First it is “any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.” It is also defined as “the stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.”

I am tempted to just end this article now because I believe that those 2 definitions sum up what the Obama administration has proposed in just their first few weeks in office, but what would be the fun in that? Let’s take a look at some of the proposals to come out of Washington since January 20 and see if they fit the socialist mold. One last note before my liberal minded friends begin the catcalls about Bush, Bush definitely started the socialist ball rolling with his own meddling in the free markets, but he is gone now and we are dealing with this President and his socialist agenda.

The automotive industry bailout, while passed during Bush’s last days, has shown some true socialist tendencies. Since the bailout, the White House has fired the CEO of General Motors and the new CEO has been given notice of what the administration expects him to do. The White House insists that they do not want to run the auto industry, but yet they have fired the CEO of GM and they are demanding that the auto industry manufacture the least profitable models. A report has come out of GM showing that the most profitable models that they manufacture and sell are Sport Utility Vehicles and trucks, but yet they are being told to come up with a plan to manufacture more hybrids and electric vehicles. Shouldn’t the free market decide which vehicles it wants the auto makes to manufacture?

President Obama recently made a terrifying statement, at least to anyone that was paying attention. He stated that they will change the laws to allow the government to “seize control” of troubled companies and sell of their “toxic assets” to other companies to save the financial markets. Exactly how would the omniscient government decide which companies to seize? What right does the government have to swoop in and seize control of a company that a private citizen has built? What constitutes a troubled company?

The last proposal that I want to analyze is his proposal for reforming health care. He has proposed universal health care for all Americans. The argument is that there are too many uninsured Americans and because they are uninsured, they are not receiving proper medical treatment. First of all, it is illegal for a hospital to turn away a patient in need of medical care. If you do not have insurance and you are involved in a car accident, do you really believe that the ambulance will not deliver you to an emergency room for medical treatment? Secondly, why does anyone believe that the same inefficient government who runs the Social Security Administration will do a better job with you health care? Does anyone love going to stand in line at a government institution? When was the last time that you were pleased at the service you received when you called the IRS? The same government that was so upset with the AIG bailouts, even though they specifically approved them in the stimulus bill that they never read, you want to decide whether or not you deserve cancer treatment after the age of 65?


Socialism has been tried around the world and it continually fails to deliver on its promises of equality. Mark J. Perry, of the Foundation for Economic Education has cited what he believes to be the fatal flaw of socialism. He says, “It is a system that ignores incentives.” Margaret Thatcher once quipped that the result of Britain’s socialist agenda was they eventually “run out of other people’s money.” Winston Churchill saw the differences between Capitalism and Socialism this way, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Ben Franklin is reported to have responded to the question of what type of government do we have, with “A Republic, if you can keep it.” It has taken more than 200 years of politicians slowly chipping away at our freedoms to get to this point, but I think we can safely say that we are now on the verge of losing the Republic in favor of Socialism.

Hypocrisy Reigns Supreme In Washington DC

In September of 2008, the Federal government orchestrated an $85 billion bailout of the insurance company American International Group, better known as AIG. The move was part of an effort to shore up the faltering financial sector. At the time, conservatives blasted the bailout as an expensive, foolish, and meddling experiment to “fix” the economy. Now that 6 months have passed since the initial round of bailouts, we can plainly see the folly of such an experiment. To make matters worse, AIG has just paid out millions in bonuses to many of their executives. This obviously touched off a flurry of hearings and press conferences in Washington D.C. to enable the politicians to feign their moral outrage over the payment of bonuses.

The news out of DC this week has been a constant drumbeat of anger, and calls for the names of the executives to be made public. The House has even voted to tax the bonuses at an outrageous rate of 90%. As a side note, does anyone honestly believe that Congress will stop at the selective bonuses of these executives? When does Congress ever abolish a tax? They more often than not simply expand the tax to include more taxpayers. When Congressman Barney Frank pompously pontificated about his desire to make the names of those receiving bonuses public, AIG CEO Ed Liddy responded by cautioning Frank about the danger of publicizing the names. He then read a couple of recorded death threats aimed at the executives of AIG, to which the “omniscient” Frank replied that he would take it under advisement. Sadly, for Frank and many other politicians, the visions of headlines cloud the very real possibility of bodily injury to the executives.

The hypocrisy of the politicians reigns supreme in Washington. Last month, the “stimulus” bill was pushed through Congress without any chance for real debate. It was rushed through so hurriedly, that the majority of Congress did not even have the chance to read it. Maybe if they had read the bill, they would have noticed a small addition to the bill that stated that any contractual bonuses that were promised before February 11 of this year, would be allowed to be paid out. Who added this tiny amendment to the bill? Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut was the author of the amendment. Please allow another side not here as well. The 2 top recipients of campaign donations from AIG last year were Senator Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama. Dodd admitted that he had added the amendment to the bill, but that an administration official had applied pressure to ensure that it did get added to the final version of the bill. So Congress passes a bill that specifically allows these bonuses to be paid, and then when it becomes public knowledge that the bonuses are being paid, the same congressman arrogantly declare their moral outrage.

The White House was questioned about how could they allow these bonuses to be paid out. Their response was that the Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, had only learned of the bonuses last week and was working to prevent them from being paid. The truth is that Geithner had known for at least 2 weeks, and AIG had been working with Federal officials for at least the past 3 months on these very same bonuses. Either the Federal government does not pass along information to the Treasury Secretary, or they knew about it and waited for it become public knowledge to milk every last ounce of political capital out of the outrage that they created.

President Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change. He swept into office with the promise to reform Washington and to work on a bipartisan basis to save the economy. This “crisis” was a manufactured crisis to allow the government to feign their surprise and anger to snatch more of our freedom away from us. One other piece of news released this week that has gotten little to no coverage was that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are poised to pay out their own share of bonuses to their top executives. Will Congress and the White House put on just as big of a show for these 2 government-controlled agencies? If the past 6 weeks have shown us anything, they have shown us that the mantra of “Hope and Change” should be changed to “Hypocrisy and Cronyism”.

Obama's Hypocrisy On Earmarks

During his Presidential campaign, President Barack Obama promised to end the era of earmarks in Washington. Sadly for the American taxpayer, his promise has turned out to be nothing more than empty campaign rhetoric.

After Congress passed the $787 billion “stimulus” bill, President Obama stood before a joint session of Congress and proclaimed, “I’m proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks, and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities.” Either Obama suffers from short-term memory loss or his understanding of what constitutes an earmark is severely warped.

One of the many spending measures in the “stimulus” bill was $1 billion measure for one specific “zero emissions power plant” in the former Senator’s home state of Illinois. The same power plant was removed from a program last year because after years of government funding it had produced no results. After several years of trying to capture carbon emissions and turn them into liquid to return to the earth, and $1.8 billion, they were unable to show any progress. Instead of spending taxpayer money on a project that might actually stimulate the economy, Congress and the President saw fit to waste approximately 1/18th of the amount spent on all earmarks last year on a proven failure.

Next came the $400+ billion Omnibus spending measure that was pushed through Congress last week. This bill contained more than 8000 separate earmarks from members of both political parties. President Obama tried to deflect the criticism by saying that this bill was actually drawn up before he was inaugurated. The truth is that it was written back in December before Obama became the current resident of the Oval Office, but a deeper look shows that Obama is far from innocent on the earmark case in this bill. The former Senator had submitted his own earmarks that were included in the Omnibus.

For my readers who are intellectually challenged, the timeline is as follows: Obama campaigns on ending earmarks, he gets elected in November, in December the Omnibus bill is written including his earmarks, he becomes President and signs the “stimulus” bill and the Omnibus spending bill, he then proclaims his pride that they were able to pass the recovery measure without any earmarks.

After the political fallout started to become clear to the White House, the President claimed that they would be fiscally responsible in the future. He went on to say that they would make it clear who had requested the earmark and where the money would go. With his stellar record of the truth on earmarks, I suppose we are expected to take him at his word. After his drunken spending spree is completed, all we will have left is his word. Maybe I am just cynical, but that doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Rookie Mistakes By An Inexperienced Politician

As I begin to write this week’s article, I can already hear the cacophonous cries from my left leaning friends that we just need to give the new President a chance, a chance for his policies to work, a chance for him to show the world how he will lead. After all, he has only been in office about 45 days. How could we possibly know what direction he will take our country?

If we look at what he has accomplished over the past 45 days it provides part of the picture. He has pushed through an earmark laden $800 billion “stimulus” package, all the while claiming that there were no earmarks in the bill. He has nominated several tax cheats to high-level cabinet positions, including the current Treasury Secretary. His administration has attacked members of the media who have questioned his policies. They have thrown money at virtually every area of government with the promise that this will fix the economy, while claiming that they will control spending.

If we examine what he has proposed the picture becomes a bit clearer. He has proposed the largest increase in spending in the form of a federal budget at the cost of $4 trillion. He is proposing a government take over of the health care system. He is proposing drastic cuts in funding for our military and the research programs that help keep them alive. He has proposed to end the development of any type of missile defense system to prod Russia into working to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions; after all, Vladimir Putin is exuding honor and trust.

Finally an inspection of the results of his accomplishments and proposals will bring the entire picture into focus. The President has said that he does not pay any attention to the “gyrations” of the stock market. His belief is that it is akin to a daily tracking poll. If that is the case, a drop of more than 33% since the election should show weakening confidence in his administration’s ability to lead us out of this recession. I know he has only been in office since January, but investors are not going to invest in the stock market if they are not confident that the government will stay out of the way of the private sector. Every company that the government has “bailed” out is doing worse now than before the government opened their coffers to “help”. Citibank, GM, and AIG, to name but a few, have all seen a continual slide since the government stepped in to help. Obama and his team believe that we need to continue down the same failed road.

In the past 45 days, Obama has shown his true liberal colors in the form of spending like a drunken sailor on a 24-hour shore liberty. Along the way he has even managed to disrespect our closest ally. When a foreign leader visits the White House for the first time after a new President is inaugurated, the 2 leaders exchange gifts that portray a mutual respect. When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the White House, he brought with him a first edition biography of Winston Churchill and a penholder made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, the same timbers from which the desk in the Oval Office was made. Obama’s gift to Brown was a set of 25 DVD’s of Classic movies. This is on top of returning a bust of Winston Churchill that was presented to President Bush by the British government after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

It has been a fast and furious 6 weeks since the transition of power took place and the pace at which the new administration has spent taxpayer money and destroyed wealth has taken many by surprise. Now that the true socialist colors have been shown, many of his one-time supporters are starting to protest. The question is, will there be any economy to turn around by the time the full effect of the failure of his policies is known?

President Obama, The $4 Trillion Man

Earlier this week, President Obama addressed both chambers of Congress to discuss the economy and his plans for the coming years of his administration. During his speech and throughout his campaign, the President promised to end the era of earmarks and deficit spending. He went as far to promise to go line by line through any spending measure and publicize all earmark spending and which congressman had requested it. Just one month into his administration, we have seen massive pork barrel spending and non-stop “the sky is falling” rhetoric.

The ink from President Obama’s pen had not had time to dry on the $800 billion “stimulus” bill, before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through another $400 billion spending bill. The newest spending bill from Congress contains more than 8000 earmarks. This is on top of the countless earmarks in the “stimulus” bill. The new administration and Congress have signed on to spend more than $1.2 trillion in the first 30 days since the Inauguration. To put that into perspective, that is more than half of the federal budget for 2004, or almost half of what the federal government received in tax revenue for all of 2008. We are more than $1.2 trillion more in debt and we are not even into March yet. Of course, Obama’s breathless supporters in the media would tell us to wait until his budget comes out to see where he has made the cuts to pay for the massive deficit spending, but his budget calls for a more than $1 trillion increase in spending over this years’ budget.

The President has released his budget proposal and it totals over $4 trillion, with about $1.75 trillion in projected deficit spending. This is the largest increase in federal spending in our history. In 2008 the federal budget was a paltry, by comparison, $2.978 trillion with total revenue received at $2.523 trillion. That budget had about $450 billion in deficit spending, but to jump to $1.75 trillion in deficit spending and then claim that you are going to control spending is laughable.

The $4,000,000,000,000.00 budget includes tax increases for those making more than $250,000. My friends in the class envy camp applaud this notion of taxing the rich, but they fail to see that a majority of small businesses will now see tax increases. Allow me to ask one simple question. How will your life improve if some nameless “rich” person is taxed more? The Bill Gates and George Soros’ of the world will not pay any more in taxes; they will simply shift their money around to avoid the taxes. The small business owners are the ones that will bear the brunt of the tax increase. After this plan fails to raise the revenue that the “experts” in Washington project, they will be forced to either raise taxes on the rest of us, after all it is the patriotic thing to do, or hopefully they will see the error of their ways and cut taxes across the board. This budget is equivalent to $11,833 for every American.

President Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change; the first indicators of his administration definition of that campaign slogan are beginning to become clear. They are desperately hoping that the voting public will not notice that the change is the unprecedented spending and power grab in Washington. I believe that the voting public is very aware of what affects their wallets and they have a very long memory when it comes to their own financial well being.

The Return Of The Politics Of Fear

As the debate over the massive spending bill heats up in the Senate, the outrageous rhetoric has stooped to new lows. The $800 billion “stimulus” package that the Democrats pushed through the House of Representatives has continued to expand to more than $900 billion. Instead of fulfilling the promise of “trimming the fat” from government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has overseen the addition of even more pork to already bloated spending bill.

A Rasmussen poll taken this week showed that public support for the bill has shifted dramatically over the past 2 weeks. 2 weeks ago 45% of the public favored the plan compared to 34% opposed to the plan. Now a mere 37% support the measure with 43% firmly opposed to spending billions of taxpayer money on frivolous pet projects that will do nothing to stimulate the economy.

Talk radio and Internet bloggers have combed through the proposal and highlighted numerous line items that the politicians have had much difficulty trying to justify the billions pledged. The American public clogged the phone lines at the Capitol this week voicing their displeasure over the enormity of the spending bill. The reaction to this measure is reminiscent of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of the summer of 2007. As you may recall, the Senate attempted to just push the bill through with very little debate or public scrutiny. The public outcry over the immigration bill doomed it to an early grave.

As public opinion over the “stimulus” plan has soured, the administration and congressional leaders have come out to try to scare the populace into supporting it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed this week that for every month that they do not pass their “stimulus” package, 500 million Americans would lose their jobs. That number is staggering, especially considering that the U.S. Census bureau projected the U.S. population on New Years Day to be about 305 million. I know that she misspoke, but she said it at least 3 separate times. Surely someone on the Speaker’s staff could have corrected her after the first gaffe. President Obama made the rounds to the network news shows to try to sell the need to pass the proposal now. He even claimed that if the Congress did not pass the bill now, “we may never recover”. The proponents of the massive waste of taxpayer money claim that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression. The trouble is that they are obviously lying. The economy during the Jimmy Carter presidency was by leaps and bounds much worse than it is now. We had double-digit national unemployment and interest rates. Of course, if we continue down this foolish road of frivolous spending we will surely see the return of malaise.

A stimulus bill is needed to turn our sluggish economy around, but it needs to be a measure that will put more of our own money back in our pockets. It should not be a bill that steals more of our money to fund the pet projects of politicians. Action just for the sake of action is folly. I believe that this current bill should be defeated in it’s entirety and Congress should start over with more focus on actual economic stimulus vice more unnecessary spending.

Will The Obama Administration Meet With Hamas?

With a little more than a week left before Barack Obama officially becomes the President of the United States, the speculation of how he will handle the violence in the Middle East is growing. While he is readily willing to show his hand on virtually every other issue in the news, he has been strangely silent on his intentions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has repeatedly said that we have only one President at a time, and he is currently not the President. As shocking as this may be for many to hear, I agree with him. Although I believe he is being silent for other reasons, I do believe that if he did enlighten us on his stand on the conflict, it could weaken any foreign policy that his administration may implement.

During President Bush’s tenure in the Oval Office, his administration’s policy was to not legitimize the terrorist group Hamas by dealing with them. Unfortunately, their plan blew up in their face when they pushed for elections in Palestine and members of Hamas were elected in majority numbers to the Palestinian Parliament.

During President Clinton’s 2 terms as President, his policy was to try to bring both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the bargaining table to negotiate a peace. Clinton helped negotiate a treaty were Israel gave in to 95% of Palestine’s demands, only to have Yasser Arafat reject the deal and walk away from the negotiating table.

During the eternal campaign, President-elect Obama called for unconditional talks with Iran and North Korea. At the time, Hillary Clinton called his foreign policy intentions naïve and foolish. In a few weeks, Clinton will be called upon to carry out Obama’s “naïve” foreign policy wishes.

While do not yet know what Obama’s true intentions are, we do have a small hint of what is to come. The UK Guardian has released a story that predicts that the incoming President will deal directly with Hamas to end the conflict and finally achieve peace in the region. The story alleges that the preparations are underway to begin low-level talks with the terrorist organization. They believe that it will be done secretly to politically protect the President from legitimizing the terrorists.

I believe any talks with Hamas, or any other terrorist organization, is completely pointless. Even worse, it could be deadly if you give in to the demands of the heartless murderers. How do you come to an agreement with someone whose sole stated purpose is to kill you? How do you negotiate with someone willing to strap a bomb on their child and send them into a crowded marketplace to blow themselves up? How do you find common ground with someone who would not think twice about cutting your throat and the throats of your children? The answer is that you cannot. The United States has had a policy of never negotiating with terrorists, because as soon as you do it once, every terrorist group is lining up to hold us hostage to get something that they want. Only time will tell what the Obama administration will do, but we can only hope that they do not pursue the naïve approach of appeasement.

The Culture Of Corruption In Illinois Politics

President –elect Barack Obama’s magical victory tour through the transition process was sidetracked this week by the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on charges of corruption. Blagojevich is accused of attempting to sell the now vacant Senate seat of the President-elect. He was caught on tape by FBI wiretaps discussing the potential for his personal and political profit off of the appointment of Obama’s replacement. The U.S. Attorney that is prosecuting this case is Patrick Fitzgerald, the same Patrick Fitzgerald of Scooter Libby fame.

Fitzgerald, you may recall, investigated the Valeria Plame leak and found that Richard Armitage was the original source of the leak. Fitzgerald learned it was Armitage during the first few weeks of the investigation and continued to investigate until Libby was charged 2 years later with a process crime. Now that Fitzgerald is on the case of corruption in the Governor’s mansion, how far will he take the investigation? The complaint documents against Blagojevich mention convicted “slum lord” Tony Rezko more than 100 times. Rezko is rumored to be talking to Fitzgerald in order to shorten his prison sentence. Rezko was very well connected within Chicago politics and the heat is now on anyone who may have had dealings with the convicted felon.

Obviously, President-elect Obama was asked what he knew about the scandal and his statements of shock, outrage, and innocence were to be expected. What was unexpected was his declaration that he had not spoken to the Governor concerning his replacement. On November 5, the day after Obama’s election victory, a Chicago news station reported that Obama’s first order of business was to meet with the Governor to discuss his replacement in the Senate. The news station is now claiming on their website that they have not verified that the meeting ever took place. Then on November 23 David Axelrod, Obama’s chief advisor, stated that he “knew” that Obama and the Governor had spoke to discuss the vacant Senate seat. After Blagojevich was arrested, Axelrod quickly claimed that he misspoke. The Huffington Post has a long article that has chronicled the news events related to the appointment of a replacement for Obama in the Senate. Several times over the past month, there have been reports of Obama advisors talking to Blagojevich about the Senate seat. I do not believe that Obama would be stupid enough to discuss any type of payment for an appointment to his Senate seat, but why did he so unequivocally state that neither he nor any of his staff had any idea of the scandal before the arrest?

This investigation will not be over quickly and it will include some very high profile names. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who aggressively campaigned for the Senate appointment, has been named as candidate #5. Although, he has said that the prosecutors have told him that he is not the focus of the investigation, the pressure is on him because the Governor is on tape saying that he is certain that he could get at least $500,000 if he appointed candidate #5. Another interesting point is that the Congressman’s father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, has retained legal counsel. Now I can’t help but wonder why would the elder Jackson hire legal counsel; especially when he is not mentioned anywhere in the complaint or the media coverage since the Governor’s arrest? There are only a few certainties in the eventual outcome of this investigation. The first being that Blagojevich will not be the Governor for much longer, it won’t matter if he is ever convicted of any of the crimes for which he is charged. The second certainty is that Fitzgerald has the most secure job in the world right now. There is no possible way that Fitzgerald could ever be fired. Incoming Presidents have in the past fired many of the U.S. Attorneys from the previous administration. Clinton fired all of them the first week, Bush fired a handful after the 2004 election, but there is no possible way that Obama can even consider firing Patrick Fitzgerald until well after the investigation is over.

Socialism Is Not Called Fairness

Millions of dollars have been spent over the course of this presidential campaign season to persuade the voting public that one candidate is better prepared than the other to lead our nation. The campaign promises have ranged from cutting taxes, to raising taxes only on the rich, and to nearly 1 trillion dollars in new spending. Through it all, the mainstream media has exposed themselves as nothing less than political partisan hacks. From Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews fawning all over the Obama campaign, to the Los Angeles Times reporting that they have a video of Obama toasting the spokesperson for Yassir Arafat in 2003, but not releasing the video. Since the media appears to be intent on carrying Obama into the White House, I thought that I would do their job for them.

On abortion, Senator Barack Obama has an extreme record of voting against the sanctity of life. NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, has awarded Senator Obama a 100% rating based on his voting record while in the U.S. Senate. Obama is on record as saying that his first priority as President will be to make the Freedom Of Choice Act a law. This bill would go a long way in repealing the abortion laws in virtually every state. Obama also voted twice against a bill before the Illinois state senate that would have required that a baby that was born alive after a botched abortion receive medical attention. The existing law allowed these babies to be left to die in the soiled laundry room. In some cases, these babies lived for several hours, fighting for every breath before finally dying alone in the dark. Obama has tried to deflect the criticism of his extremist abortion record, but his voting record is clearly on the side of killing innocent babies.

On taxes, Obama has campaigned around the country on his promise to raise taxes on anyone making more than $250,000. Then over the weekend he made a comment at a rally that anyone making more than $200,000 would see a tax increase. Now this week, both he and Biden have made references to no one making less than $150,000 would see a tax increase. At this rate, by Election Day the figure will be down to $50,000. He has said that he will let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. If the tax rates go back to what they were in 2001, then all taxpayers will see a tax increase. Obama has also said that he will raise the capital gains taxes, even though history has shown that raising capital gains taxes causes the revenues received by the Treasury drop. In this economy, why would anyone want to stifle economic growth?

As we found out this week, Obama has a long held belief that the government should spread the wealth around. A few weeks ago, Joe the Plumber became a household name by asking a simple question of Obama. He asked if Obama’s tax plan would increase his taxes if his plumbing business made more than $250,000. Obama’s reply was that he believed that if we “spread the wealth around”, we will al be better off. The Obama campaign’s reply was not to refute his socialist ideals, but to attack Joe the Plumber. Obama has said that McCain calls his proposal socialism, but he calls it fairness. I believe Karl Marx thought it was fair as well and we saw how that turned out. If Obama is elected, I fully expect to see him come on TV in February, channel Bill Clinton and bite his lower lip, and tell us that he really tried to cut taxes, but could not find any way to do it.

Obama has tried to tie McCain to Bush throughout the campaign, but he fails to recognize that he is inextricably tied to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Reid and Pelosi are presiding over a Congress with the lowest approval rating in at least a century. At times their numbers have dipped into single digits. Their leadership has led a do-nothing Congress into an economic crisis where their party has stood in the way of reforming the 2 major contributing corporations. Obama and his party leadership are on record stating that if they are given the requisite majority, they will bring back the “Fairness Doctrine”. The doctrine simply states that any broadcast must present both sides of every issue. This is a clear and direct attack against conservative talk radio. The left has tried to venture into talk radio with Air America, but that quickly failed. The left has decided that if they cannot compete in the arena of ideas, then they will simply silence their opposition. If they are successful in implementing the “Fairness Doctrine” once again, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will not disappear from the airwaves, they will simply move into satellite radio where the FCC has no control. That is until the left decides to take over that medium to silence their opposition once again. For all of his rhetoric about change, Obama has voted 96% of the time with his party.

November 4, 2008 will be a historic election day no matter who wins. It is my sincere hope that the American people are intelligent enough to see the difference between empty campaign rhetoric citing change, and proposals that will bring socialism to our doorsteps. Although the media has declared this race over and Obama has already held his first “Presidential address” to the nation, the election is not over until we go vote on Tuesday.

American Workers Do Not Need Democracy

In early April, Senator Barack Obama spoke before a gathering of the AFL-CIO and made a promise to the labor union to ensure that the Employee Free Choice Act becomes “the law of the land”. This bill will strip the rights of employees to cast a private ballot either for or against forming a union. The bill enable union bosses to increase membership by simply having 51% of employees turning in signed cards stating their desire to form a union. This process will be steeped in fraud. It sets up the scenario of union thugs to intimidate employees into signing the cards. The private ballot is a proven effective method of determining each employee’s desire.

Union membership has declined at an astonishing rate over the past 50 years. In 1958, nearly 40% of the American workforce was a member of a union. Last year, the percentage was down to less than 7.5% with a significant number being government employees. The EFCA is a scheme designed to swell the membership rolls of the unions. The Democratic controlled House of Representatives passed the bill last year, but the Senate failed to pass it when the Republican minority blocked the efforts of Obama and the Democratic leadership. Now Obama promises to ensure it’s passage if he becomes President.

Obama claims that this bill will do nothing more than change the process of union forming, but his own past statements continue to haunt him. Obama has said that, the bill “will allow workers to form a union through majority sign-up and card checks”. Why would Obama favor a process that strips the private ballot right from the American worker? I thought that Obama claimed he was the candidate for the little guy? His co-sponsorship of this scheme is a clear indication that he stands with the union bosses and not with the workforce. The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace conducted a survey of union households and the results are clearly at odds with the union bosses and Obama. 80% of all union households surveyed support private ballot elections. When asked specifically about the EFCA, 70% are opposed to the bill.

What I find amazing is that private elections are widely seen as one of the essential elements of our Democratic system, but with this bill, Senator Obama is showing that he believes that private ballots are overrated. If he had simply voiced his support for the bill, it would be bad enough, but the fact that he has co-sponsored the legislation sheds a much brighter light on his ideals. Last week, he admits that he wants to “spread the wealth around”, and now we see that he is willing to throw away the private voting rights of American workers. I would call him a socialist, but we are now told that that term is a racist code word. Should I just call him a Marxist?

Taxes, Lies, and Distortions

As we head in to the final weeks of the campaign, the candidate’s plans for taxation are becoming clear. Both candidates claim that their tax plan will help the middle class, but which one is best for the country as a whole? Which tax plan will help all Americans achieve the American dream? Which proposal will allow small and large businesses to grow, while helping the employees to keep more of their own money? Which plan will encourage capital investments so that companies can grow? Which candidate truly understands that taking money from one person to redistribute to another is nothing more than socialism? Senator Barack Obama this week proved that he is all in favor of bringing socialism into the forefront of our American economy.

This week while campaigning in Toledo, OH, Obama was asked about his tax proposal of increasing taxes on any business making more than $250,000. A plumber from Toledo informed the candidate that he was in the process of buying a plumbing business that would bring in more than $250,000 a year. He also informed Mr. Obama that he would have to work 10 to 12 hours a day to make his business successful. Obama’s response was very enlightening. He said that his purpose was not to punish the man, but to ensure everyone else behind him had a chance at success. He went on to say that he believed that when you redistribute the wealth around to everyone, then we are all much better off. Please tell me, why does Obama believe that he has the right to tell anyone how much that they may earn?

The Obama campaign claims that the $250,000 mark for business would not affect a vast majority of small businesses. Unfortunately the Small Business Administration standards are a bit different than Obama. As an example, the owner of a Tire Fabric Mill can have up to 1000 employees and still be considered a small business. I am not a mathematician, but in order to stay below the $250,000 mark set by Obama and the owners of the mill would have to pay a paltry $250 per employee. Let us not forget that there is equipment and materials to buy out of that $250,000, plus they need to pay for the utilities. I can hear the whining already, how many Tire Fabric Mills are there in the U.S. So to quiet the incessant whining, let’s look at the numbers for a roofing contractor. According to the same standards from the SBA, a roofing contractor can make up to $14 million and still be considered a small business. How can a company make that much and still be considered “small”? Again, $14 million is not all profit that is the amount of their annual receipts. They still have make payroll, pay liability insurance, buy materials, buy tools, pay for any advertising, pay for company vehicles and their maintenance, and lastly pay the local, state, and federal governments.

Obama is fond of saying that under his plan, 95% of Americans will get a tax cut. Unfortunately only 70% of wage earners actually pay federal income tax. We all pay social security and Medicare taxes, but there are about 30% of the low income wage earners that pay virtually zero federal income tax. He plans on sending them a rebate check for taxes that they never paid. He also plans on raising the Capital Gains tax. Even though history has shown that every time the Capital Gains rate has been cut the revenue into the government coffers has increased. In the 1990’s, when the Clinton Administration raised the rate, tax revenue dropped. Obama is betting that the vast majority of the voting public will blindly accept his proposals without doing any real thinking on the matter. Basically, he believes the voters are either stupid or lazy. Sadly, there are plenty of people willing to display the ignorance on this matter.

Corruption By Association

We are in the home stretch of the never-ending campaign season. It is a little more than 3 weeks until election day, when the voting public will decide which candidate will lead our nation either further into the financial abyss or out into the bright shining sun of recovery. The campaigns have pitched their proposals and we have the records of the candidates to aid us in the decision making process. One other tool we have to decipher what a particular candidate will perform is the company that they keep.

The past week has brought a firestorm of media criticism upon the McCain campaign for daring to bring up the relationship between Senator Obama and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers, for those who do not know, co-founded the radical socialist organization, the Weather Underground. The group under Ayers leadership bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol building, the State Department building, banks, and police stations. They also coordinated jailbreaks and riots during the late 60’s and early 70’s. Ayers has since become a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. On September 11, 2001 the New York Times published an interview with Ayers where he expressed dismay that their bombs didn’t do more to affect the Vietnam War. He expressed no regret or remorse for his terrorist acts.

Barack Obama claims that Ayers is just a man that lives in his neighborhood, but the truth is quite different. Obama held his first political fundraiser at Ayers home in 1995. Also in 1995, Obama was named as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a self-proclaimed school reform organization. Ayers formed this organization, in addition Ayers was the co-chairman of one of the operational arms of the CAC. Obama claims that Ayers was not involved in his hiring as the chairman, but the CAC’s own meeting minutes show Ayers was indeed involved in Obama’s hiring. Obama has said that what Ayers did 40 years ago is irrelevant to their relationship today. If Ayers ugly past were truly in the past then it would not be an issue. The fact that Ayers is stridently unrepentant about what he did 40 years ago. The Obama campaign then claimed that Obama did not know about Ayers past when he held the fundraiser in his home in 1995. Does anyone really believe that Ayers would not be spouting his anti-American diatribes when Obama was in his presence? Even if Obama somehow missed the obvious in 1995, why did Obama serve on the board for the Woods Fund until December of 2002? That would make it more than a year since Ayers interview with the New York Times went public.

Obama’s attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s church made headlines earlier this year until Obama was forced into denouncing Wright. It still does not excuse his sitting in the pew for more than 20 years while Wright ranted and raved against the United States. He also had to distance himself from Father Phleager, another man of the cloth fond of racist rants in the name of Obama.

Obama also has very close ties with the controversial community-organizing group ACORN. ACORN has made news this past week for their fraudulent voter registration drives. In one case, the entire starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys football team registered to vote in the state of Nevada during an ACORN voter registration drive. Obama and ACORN have worked closely for years, dating back to Obama’s days as a community organizer. He ran the Project Vote campaign in 1992, which is the voter registration arm of ACORN. Obama claims that Project Vote is not part of ACORN, but all major media outlets credit Project Vote as being an arm of ACORN. Obama also paid $800,000 to ACORN to register voters during this election season.

Lastly, Obama has attempted to point the finger of blame for the economic crisis anywhere but back at his economic advisors. Obama has as his advisors Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae fame. Raines and Johnson soaked Fannie Mae for millions of dollars while running it into the ground. They exaggerated the value of the mortgages that they held in order to score huge bonuses. To add insult to our injuries, McCain and the Republicans called for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004 and 2005, but the Democrats blocked that effort. In fact, Barney Franks even went as far to say that there was no evidence to call for reform. He claimed that the reform calls were strictly politically motivated. Now Franks is being touted as a savior of our financial markets because of the colossal $700 billion pork laden bailout.

If Obama had just one or two ties to unsavory people, we could understand, but he has developed a pattern of behavior of cultivating relationships with controversial people. His ties to convicted felon Tony Rezco are yet another example of his lack of judgment. All of these examples have one major thing in common, they all had a unique ability to elevate Obama’s political career. Obama’s reaction to each scandal has developed into a routine for him. He first tries to downplay the relationship. Then he claims he did not know anything about the scandal surrounding his friend. Next he attempts to weakly condemn the act or statement in question. Finally he claims that this “is not the man that I knew 20 years ago”. All of his questionable relationships bring into question his ability to make a sound judgment of one’s character. Are we supposed to trust his judgment while negotiating with Ahmedinejad?

Corruption By Association

We are in the home stretch of the never-ending campaign season. It is a little more than 3 weeks until election day, when the voting public will decide which candidate will lead our nation either further into the financial abyss or out into the bright shining sun of recovery. The campaigns have pitched their proposals and we have the records of the candidates to aid us in the decision making process. One other tool we have to decipher what a particular candidate will perform is the company that they keep.

The past week has brought a firestorm of media criticism upon the McCain campaign for daring to bring up the relationship between Senator Obama and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers, for those who do not know, co-founded the radical socialist organization, the Weather Underground. The group under Ayers leadership bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol building, the State Department building, banks, and police stations. They also coordinated jailbreaks and riots during the late 60’s and early 70’s. Ayers has since become a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. On September 11, 2001 the New York Times published an interview with Ayers where he expressed dismay that their bombs didn’t do more to affect the Vietnam War. He expressed no regret or remorse for his terrorist acts.

Barack Obama claims that Ayers is just a man that lives in his neighborhood, but the truth is quite different. Obama held his first political fundraiser at Ayers home in 1995. Also in 1995, Obama was named as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a self-proclaimed school reform organization. Ayers formed this organization, in addition Ayers was the co-chairman of one of the operational arms of the CAC. Obama claims that Ayers was not involved in his hiring as the chairman, but the CAC’s own meeting minutes show Ayers was indeed involved in Obama’s hiring. Obama has said that what Ayers did 40 years ago is irrelevant to their relationship today. If Ayers ugly past were truly in the past then it would not be an issue. The fact that Ayers is stridently unrepentant about what he did 40 years ago. The Obama campaign then claimed that Obama did not know about Ayers past when he held the fundraiser in his home in 1995. Does anyone really believe that Ayers would not be spouting his anti-American diatribes when Obama was in his presence? Even if Obama somehow missed the obvious in 1995, why did Obama serve on the board for the Woods Fund until December of 2002? That would make it more than a year since Ayers interview with the New York Times went public.

Obama’s attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s church made headlines earlier this year until Obama was forced into denouncing Wright. It still does not excuse his sitting in the pew for more than 20 years while Wright ranted and raved against the United States. He also had to distance himself from Father Phleager, another man of the cloth fond of racist rants in the name of Obama.

Obama also has very close ties with the controversial community-organizing group ACORN. ACORN has made news this past week for their fraudulent voter registration drives. In one case, the entire starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys football team registered to vote in the state of Nevada during an ACORN voter registration drive. Obama and ACORN have worked closely for years, dating back to Obama’s days as a community organizer. He ran the Project Vote campaign in 1992, which is the voter registration arm of ACORN. Obama claims that Project Vote is not part of ACORN, but all major media outlets credit Project Vote as being an arm of ACORN. Obama also paid $800,000 to ACORN to register voters during this election season.

Lastly, Obama has attempted to point the finger of blame for the economic crisis anywhere but back at his economic advisors. Obama has as his advisors Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae fame. Raines and Johnson soaked Fannie Mae for millions of dollars while running it into the ground. They exaggerated the value of the mortgages that they held in order to score huge bonuses. To add insult to our injuries, McCain and the Republicans called for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004 and 2005, but the Democrats blocked that effort. In fact, Barney Franks even went as far to say that there was no evidence to call for reform. He claimed that the reform calls were strictly politically motivated. Now Franks is being touted as a savior of our financial markets because of the colossal $700 billion pork laden bailout.

If Obama had just one or two ties to unsavory people, we could understand, but he has developed a pattern of behavior of cultivating relationships with controversial people. His ties to convicted felon Tony Rezco are yet another example of his lack of judgment. All of these examples have one major thing in common, they all had a unique ability to elevate Obama’s political career. Obama’s reaction to each scandal has developed into a routine for him. He first tries to downplay the relationship. Then he claims he did not know anything about the scandal surrounding his friend. Next he attempts to weakly condemn the act or statement in question. Finally he claims that this “is not the man that I knew 20 years ago”. All of his questionable relationships bring into question his ability to make a sound judgment of one’s character. Are we supposed to trust his judgment while negotiating with Ahmedinejad?

Playing Politics With Race

There are about 40 days left until Election Day and the excuses have started to surface. Last weekend Stanford University released a poll that suggested at least one third of white Democrats have racist tendencies. The poll findings, according to the researchers, could cost Barack Obama the election. Also this week, Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings was quoted as saying, "If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through." To top it off, a few weeks ago when John McCain was on the morning talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg asked him if she should be worried about becoming a slave if he is elected President.

These are but a few of the examples of the stage being set for the excuses if Obama loses the election in November. The Obama campaign and its’ surrogates have decided to slyly play the race card in an attempt to guilt potential voters into voting for Obama. They also truly believe that the only reason Obama will not win is because of racism.

They simply cannot comprehend why a majority of Americans does not buy into Obama’s brand of socialism. Why wouldn’t the voting public be flocking to the polls for higher taxes? Obama has said that he will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. For those with short memories, the tax cuts passed in early 2001 were actually tax cuts for all tax paying Americans. Allowing the tax cuts to expire will be a tax increase on all of us, not just the richest Americans.

Why wouldn’t the masses be eager for a foreign policy of surrender and appeasement? Obama has said that he would negotiate without any preconditions with our enemies. How do you negotiate with someone who has sworn to destroy you? What common ground do you find? Do we agree to let them only destroy certain states?

Who wouldn’t want a “leader” who waits to see which way the public tide is turning before making the hard decisions? Over the past few weeks, every major issue in the news has brought Obama out to try to straddle the fence on what needs to be done. When Russia attacked Georgia, he called on both sides for restraint, while McCain decisively condemned the Russian action. Obama later feebly condemned Russia as well. When the bailout of AIG was announced, Obama waited to announce his thoughts and later scolded his running mate Joe Biden for speaking too soon. Americans need a leader to make decisions instead of weakly voting present.

Why do those of us who do not agree with Obama have to be racists? For a candidate that is claiming to transcend race, why does his campaign seem to focus on race so often? I do not support Obama because of his policies. His race is not a factor. I do believe that Obama will lose in November. Not because of his race, but because of his policies and his inability to think on his feet and speak without the aid of teleprompters.

Why Is Obama Afraid Of Town Hall Debates?

In early June, Senator John McCain invited Senator Barack Obama to attend a series of up to 10 “town hall” style meetings throughout the summer. At the time of the invitation Obama was receptive to the idea of appearing with McCain at the “town hall” meetings, but in early August, the Obama campaign cited a very busy campaign schedule as to why they would not attend the meetings. To date, the candidates have only agreed to the standard 3 presidential debates and 1 vice presidential debate. My question is simple. Of what is the Obama campaign afraid?

Since Obama’s meteoric rise in popularity, he has long relied on the use of teleprompters to deliver his speeches. He has even taken to using them at campaign rallies, such as in a rodeo ring at the Colorado State Fair this week. Obama is a very gifted speaker when delivering his speeches with the aid of electronic devices, but when he is speaking without their help, he stumbles over his words. Much has been said about McCain and Palin, but both of them are able to think on their feet and deliver speeches and answer questions without outside help.

Perhaps Obama is worried about taking questions from those who have not sworn their allegiance to him. The news media has been very loyal and easy on Obama. They have not asked him any of the tough questions that McCain and Palin have faced. Is Obama worried that he may get asked tough questions from the lowly citizens of the United States? Will they ask about his extremely liberal record in the Illinois state senate and the U.S. Senate? Will they ask him about his 2 economic advisors who were part of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers? Advisors Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson were both CEO’s of Fannie Mae during the time frame of scandal, which directly led to the meltdown we have seen over the last week. In fact, Obama is second on the list of recipients of donations from Fannie Mae. Is Obama afraid to be asked about his nearly $1 trillion increase in government spending? Is he hiding from his plan to increase taxes on all taxpayers by not protecting the Bush tax cuts?

I believe that Obama knows that he is very vulnerable when speaking off the cuff. Without his teleprompter or one of his legions of advisors whispering in his ear, he is completely lost. His confusion was on full display this week when he said he wasn’t sure whether or not insurance giant AIG should be bailed out by the government. McCain said it best by noting that Obama needs to realize that as President you cannot simply vote “present” on the tough decisions. I believe that the standard debate format is set up to hide the candidate’s true character from the voting public. The “town halls” allow the citizens to ask the candidates questions without any media bias to either side. Obama is trying to become the next Bill Clinton, but Clinton was able to handle the public’s questions, while Obama is looking to run and hide from their scrutiny.

Sarah Palin Pick Ignites A Liberal Panic

The political conventions have come to a close and one surprising reaction has been noticed. The Democratic Party is in a state of panic over the nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Since John McCain revealed his selection of Palin on Friday, August 29, the liberal blogs, the news media, and Democratic operatives have unleashed a constant barrage of negative attacks on Palin. The Obama/Biden campaign, to their credit, did publicly come out and say that any personal attack on Palin’s family was off limits. Of course that did nothing to slow the relentless assault on Palin and her family.

The major networks reported on unsubstantiated stories of infidelity, ethical violations, and even claimed that she covered up a pregnancy of her daughter by claiming her 4 month old son was hers. They questioned whether or not she was capable of being a mother to 5 children and Vice President. Some even questioned her judgment for having a baby at 44 years old, as well as having a baby with Down Syndrome. The Boston Herald even ran a story claiming her hairstyle was 20 years out of date, and then made a correlation between her hairstyle and her policies. I believe that this election has shown the extreme bias of the major news media outlets. They made their presidential selection early on and have done everything in their power to prop him up and tear everyone else down. I am not just referring to their tearing down of Republicans; they were merciless with their coverage of Hillary Clinton.

MSNBC, for example, has Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman who both have not hidden their admiration and support for Obama. Matthews went as far to say that when Obama speaks, he gets a tingling sensation up his legs. If Matthews and Olberman were strictly political pundits, in the mode of Sean Hannity or Alan Combs, it would be understandable, but these 2 host news coverage of political events. Their spin is always positive for Obama without ever pointing to any negatives, yet when they speak of any other candidate they cannot stop themselves from pontificating about every flaw.

Women’s groups should laud Governor Palin as the poster child for women’s empowerment, but the National Organization for Women does not support Palin. They have released a statement to denounce Palin as a role model for feminists. I find this very enlightening. The National Organization for Woman has just identified themselves as a group not interested in empowering women, but rather elevating liberal ideals. Palin is a woman who has done everything for which feminists have been clamoring for decades. She has risen to the top of Alaskan politics, she has raised a family and kept her career, she is a strong woman that is not afraid to take on a male dominated political field. The only thing that she has not done that modern day feminists believe in is have an abortion or support the practice of abortions. This one issue has defined what modern day feminism has become. Even Oprah has decided that an empowered woman is not worthy of her television show, citing that she does not want her show to become a political platform. It is amazing that she feels that way since she had both Bush and Gore on her show in 2000, and she has spent the past year and a half actively campaigning for Obama, both on and off the air.

Obama and Biden realize they are in danger of losing the election. They have seen that McCain has energized the conservative base with his pick of Governor Palin. They have noticed that Palin is able to speak directly to the American people and connect with them in a way that neither of them is able to do. In a feeble attempt to try to offset the appeal of Palin, they are sending Hillary Clinton to Florida next week to campaign for Obama. I believe that if Obama was man enough to pick Hillary as his running mate 2 weeks ago, the Palin pick would not be so frightening to them. I think Rudy Giuliani was right when he suggested that Biden get his Vice President nomination in writing.

Obama's Convention Fails To Deliver Substance

Senator Barack Obama is officially now the Democratic nominee for President. After months of campaigning for the nomination, Obama concluded his convention with another eloquent, but completely empty speech. The convention in Denver was hyped by the media, especially MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, as something akin to a coronation of Obama. Matthews and Olbermann months ago hitched their wagons to the Obama campaign and have been openly campaigning for him to be President. The convention was four days of speeches paying tribute to Senator Kennedy, Senator Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton. The substance of what Barack Obama and Joe Biden stand for can be summed up as, “We are not Bush”. The rallying cry from Denver, as has been throughout his campaign, is one word, “Change”.

Speech after speech in Denver cried for the need for change, but spoke of nothing that an Obama/Biden ticket will really change. They made scant references to being oil free in 10 years and ending global warming, but there was very little in the way of substance. I believe that the American public is growing weary of the rock star treatment that the Obama campaign has enjoyed over the past year. Even after Obama picked Senator Joe Biden as his running mate, there was a noticeable drop in the polls for Obama. Obama can no longer claim that his campaign is bringing something new and fresh to Washington. Biden has been in Washington for the past 35 years, which is 9 years before McCain was first elected to the House of Representatives. Biden was clearly chosen to attempt to prop up the campaign’s severe lack of any resume.

The news one day after the convention ended, and after Obama’s acceptance speech, was filled with reports of McCain’s Vice Presidential pick of Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin. Palin is known throughout Alaska politics as a reformer and a tough political opponent, but relatively unknown in the rest of the country. The Obama campaign quickly issued a statement questioning her experience because she was the mayor of a small town in Alaska. It is quite amusing for the Obama to question anyone’s experience. Palin has been a member of a City Council, a mayor, and now a Governor. All of which adds up to more experience than the “chosen one” from Illinois. At the very least, Governor Palin has chief executive experience, which is by far more experience than the 143 days that Senator Obama has spent in the United States Senate.

The next 2 months are going to be very exciting and interesting. The contrast could not be clearer between the 2 campaigns. The Democrats have nominated arguably the most liberal political duo in American history. Obama and Biden are clearly on record as supportive of higher taxes, more government intervention in our everyday lives, for a foreign policy of appeasement, and pro-abortion to unimaginable extremes. The Republicans are on the verge of nominating a conservative ticket that will bring actual reform to Washington. McCain and Palin both have records that show they believe in lower taxes for everyone who pays taxes, cleaning up the political corruption that is entrenched in Washington, completing the task at hand in Iraq and Afghanistan, and protecting the lives of those born and unborn. The choice has become clear. Do you favor flowery but empty rhetoric, or actual reform in Washington?

The Politics Of Pessimism

We are almost halfway through the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Every four years, the world comes together to compete in the Olympic games. The games are marked by national pride, with every nation’s citizenry cheering on their countrymen to gold. The resurgence of pride in the United States has me wondering about the American pride of certain politicians.

Over the past several years, it has become en vogue to espouse a pessimistic view of the United States of America. We have witnessed high profile politicians go to the floor of the Senate and declare that our own troops have lost the war in Iraq. One congressman charged our troops with the cold-blooded murder of civilians in Iraq. These are just two examples of elected officials taking a very dim view of not only our country but also of the brave men and women who are fighting for the very freedom of speech of these politicians. The charges of murder were proven to be completely unfounded, and the defeat in Iraq turned out to be wishful thinking of a politician looking to turn public opinion against the war.

Before the hate mail goes into full swing, I am not questioning the patriotism of anyone opposing the war in Iraq. I am simply pointing out the pessimistic worldview of many on the left. The liberal elites have opined their depressing view of the U.S. on a variety of issues. They believe that we are engaged in an illegal war of aggression in Iraq, even though Congress approved the military action twice. They believe that we are the sole cause of “global warming”, even though they discount the pollution of China and India. They point to our refusal to sign on to the Kyoto protocols, even though the European countries that did sign on have found the infeasibility of the protocols. They believe that we are using more than our fair share of the world’s resources and that we should all learn to live with less, even though the elites preaching conservation fail to live by their own standards.

The presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama has made some very pessimistic comments over the course of his campaign. He has said that as Americans we need to learn to live on less. He has also said to a 12-year-old questioner that he believes America is not great as it once was. He has gone overseas to criticize the country that has enabled him to climb to the brink of the highest office in the world. I realize that his campaign is based on “hope” and “change”, but why does he feel the need to tear down the greatest country in the world?

I am not saying that the U.S. is without any problems, or that we have not made any mistakes. We are the country everyone else in the world looks to in time of crisis. When the Tsunami hit, the U.S. Navy was on the way immediately with supplies and medical help. The citizenry of the United States is the most charitable in the world. In 2006, American citizens gave nearly $300 billion to charity. That is not the government sending money after a disaster, that is your neighbors giving to help those that are less fortunate. I believe Obama is playing a politically dangerous game. He is running the risk that the voting public will grow tired of being told that they are selfish and uncaring. Ronald Reagan in contrast to Obama ran on optimism. He genuinely believed that the United States had unlimited potential because of the citizens. He constantly spoke of how great the U.S. was and how much greater we could be. I believe we are still the greatest country in the world and have the potential to go even higher if the government and it’s pessimistic politicians just stay out of our way.

Obama's Lack Of Experience And New Ideas Is Beginning To Show

As I watched the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I was reminded of the countless practice and training of the athletes for this one moment in time. The Olympic participants are the best in their particular sports from their native countries. They have sacrificed much to reach their full potential. Probably because I have a slightly warped mentality, I found myself making a correlation to politics, and to the current presidential race.

An inspection of Senator Barack Obama’s political biography provides a glaring lack of practice or training. Mind you politics does not generally require the years of sacrifice and rigorous training that preparing for the Olympic games demands, but it odes require some preparation. The past few weeks have highlighted Obama’s extreme lack of experience and shown hints of his socialist leanings.

Senator Obama suggested that by simply having all of us inflate the tires on our cars and have them tuned up, we could save all of the oil that we would get by drilling. First of all, from where did he conjure the numbers? As I walked to my car this week through a parking lot, I didn’t see hundreds of cars with flat tires, I saw hundreds of cars with inflated tires. I realize that some of these cars may have tires that need a pound or two of air, but that would not equal the amount of fuel savings that Obama is promising. In order to buy into Obama’s fantasy, one must assume that the vast majority of the automobiles in the United States are driving around on flat tires. Even then, that would not equal all of the oil in ANWR, or the oil on the outer continental shelf. It appears that once again, Mr. Obama is not aware that his words are heard and can and will be verified.

Another pillar of the presumptive Democratic nominee’s energy policy is to create a “windfall profit tax” for the oil companies. He would then use the money from the new tax to give every family in the United States a $1000 check. The idea of a “windfall profit tax” is not a new concept. Actually it was tried once before by the economic geniuses of the Carter administration in the late 1970’s. Does Obama believe that a failed policy from 30 years ago will have a different outcome? One other note on his proposal, the latest round of economic stimulus checks that most of us received over the past few months cost those of us who actually pay taxes $159 billion. How mush profit does Obama believe that the oil companies are making? The last time I checked it was nowhere near even $100 billion. His proposal is pure and simple socialism. It is a redistribution of wealth plan in his usual flowery rhetoric. His proposal, if it ever came to fruition, would create an even greater energy crisis, and more than likely see the oil companies either pass along the tax to the consumers, or change their business structures to avoid the tax altogether.

Obama was recently asked, by a twelve year old, why he was running for President. After stumbling for words, which he is prone to do when not reading from a teleprompter, he began to explain that the United States is not as great of a country that we once were. Mr. Obama’s handlers need to explain to him that most Americans are patriotic and do not like being told that our country is not the greatest country in the world. We realize that we have room to improve, but we are the freest and greatest country on the face of the earth. Of course, when you consider whom the Obamas have called friends over the years, you begin to understand why they are not proud to be Americans.

Barack Obama has a very thin political resume and his inexperience is beginning to show. It is becoming increasingly evident that his campaign and his surrogates are ready and willing to throw the race card whenever they believe it will benefit them politically. For all of the rhetoric about Republicans being the racist party, it was the Clinton campaign that started with the race issue and the Obama campaign has just continued to use it. I guess it is easier to distract with race than to allow any type of real discussion of Obama’s outlandish and foolish proposals.

Is Reverend Jackson Threatened By An Obama Presidency?

Last Sunday, Reverend Jesse Jackson made some comments to a fellow guest on Fox and Friends while they were waiting to go on the air. What Jackson did not realize, was that his microphone was on and caught his remarks on tape. The “good” Reverend asserted his desire to violently remove certain parts of Senator Obama’s nether regions. He made these comments while discussing the presumptive Democratic nominee’s recent remarks on the black community.

First of all, after decades of making television appearances, how could Jackson not realize that his microphone was on? Most media personalities will admit that when the microphone is clipped on to your lapel, you are being recorded. This is event is similar to former President Clinton’s gaffe from a few months ago. Both men made comments from which they had to back away from, and both men did not realize that they were being recorded. Isn’t a comment made while the microphones are perceived to be off, a more credible account of what that person believes? A prepared statement for the cameras is just that, a prepared statement. It is generally a politically correct, sanitized statement to deliver a predetermined message. What a person says in private is a truer representation of their beliefs.

Jackson is not new to critical remarks about Obama. In September of last year, Jackson was caught by a reporter from The State newspaper in South Carolina commenting that Obama is “acting white” in his response to the Jena 6 debacle in Louisiana. Jackson later asserted that the remarks do not accurately reflect his opinion of Senator Obama. He didn’t deny that he made the comments, just that he didn’t recall making them. So what does Jackson think about Obama? His public comments are always full of praise and support, which is not surprising for a political opportunist such as Jackson. His private comments have shown a much different picture of his true feelings for the presidential hopeful.

This will come at quite a shock for many of you, but I actually agree with Senator Obama on an issue. Obama’s comments on Fathers Day in the Apostolic Church of God have one concept that I, and many others from both sides of the aisle have been calling for. That concept is personal responsibility. Obama was speaking about the black community as a whole. He pointed out the prevalence of single parent households, the school dropout rate, the violent crime, and the high rate of unemployment within the black community. His point was that the men in the community needed to take the personal responsibility for their families. He pointed out that studies have shown that a strong family unit is the best deterrent for the rampant problems for which the black community is dealing. I believe that personal responsibility is the answer to many of the problems that the country is dealing with as a whole. This is not just a black community problem it is an American problem. If the citizens of the United States would take responsibility for their own lives and stop expecting the government to fix all that ails them, we would all be much better off. Government does have a role in fixing some of the issues, but it was intended by our founding fathers to be a very limited role. I applaud Senator Obama for challenging the black community and all of us, now if only he would apply the same mentality to the rest of the issues of the day.

Reverend Jackson’s comments have served to highlight his irrelevancy in today’s political and social world. He is quick to criticize Senator Obama, and even Bill Cosby, for a call to action on responsibility, but has done very little to promote personal responsibility with all of the media attention that he has been given over the past few decades. I believe it is time for Reverend Jackson to quietly fade into retirement as a new generation of community activists, with new ideas of responsibility, takes a more prominent role in our society.

How New And Fresh Is Obama?

The supporters of Senator Barack Obama continuously tout their candidate as a new type of candidate, a man that is positioned above the fray of the political process. A political genius filled with new and exciting ideas to “change” our country. Obama is indeed a new and fresh face in politics. He served 7 years in the Illinois state legislature before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He served just 2 years in the Senate before declaring his candidacy for the office of President. He has relied on his gifted oratory skills to deliver speeches that have inspired a cult-like following. It will come as no surprise that I do not share the same lofty opinion of the junior Senator from Illinois.

First of all, let’s look at a few of the proposals from the Obama campaign. He has offered up his plans for socialized medicine, faith-based initiatives, windfall profits tax on the “big oil” companies, raise taxes on the “rich”, and bring home our troops from Iraq as soon as he is sworn into office to name but a few. None of these ideas are new or fresh. Hillary Clinton first proposed the nationalized health care plan nearly 15 years ago. President Bush was vilified for even considering a faith-based initiative, but Obama’s supporters are preparing for his canonization. Windfall profits tax is a nice throwback to President Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise. Raising the taxes of the “rich” has been the liberal battle cry for decades. Every single Democratic candidate for President, except for Joe Biden, promised to bring home the troops from Iraq on January 21 of 2009.

Senator Obama has been a staunch advocate for public financing of political campaigns since he burst on to the political scene. Now that he has developed a taste for the millions of dollars of private financing, he has decided that public financing is fine for everyone else, just not for him. His weak assertions that the “Republican machine” is poised to unleash their attacks on him and he desperately needs the money to fight the smears have shown that he is nothing more than a typical politician. He will do and say anything that he feels will get him elected.

Over the course of the past few months, several high profile Obama supporters have called into question Senator John McCain’s war record and his heroism. The most recent being General Wesley Clark stating that McCain’s war experience did nothing to enhance his qualifications for the Presidency. I suppose that the General could have had a change of heart over the past 4 years. In 2004 he was praising John Kerry’s war record and touting it as a chief qualification for the office of President. Obama is careful to distance himself enough from the comments to appear shocked at such remarks, but yet never fully repudiating the comments or those making these assertions. Again, this aspect of his campaign is nothing new or fresh. The Clintons perfected this tactic back in the 90’s.

Senator Obama is a very gifted speaker when he is delivering a stump speech. He is obviously a very intelligent man and has surrounded himself with some very politically savvy advisors. Unfortunately the list of his qualifications stops there. Even General Clark made the same assertion, although I doubt he realized it, when he said that Obama is running on his communication skills and not a story about getting shot down in Vietnam. Obama and McCain have very different ideas about what America is and should be. Even their ideas about patriotism are vastly different. McCain believes patriotism is putting your country first, while Obama believes patriotism is that faith we have in each other as Americans. It is quite amusing that for the past 10 years the news media has built up McCain as a maverick and a new type of politician because of his willingness to go against his party’s wishes. Now Obama comes on the scene touting the same ideas that have been brought to the table countless times and he is portrayed as a messianic figure here to save us all with his brand new way of thinking. It doesn’t matter if Chris Matthews has a tingling sensation running up his leg while Obama speaks, he is and always will be just another liberal politician.

The Tale Of A Schizophrenic Court

The Supreme Court of the United States has developed a bit of an identity crisis of late. As a judicial body, they can’t seem to decide if they are part of the legislative branch of government or part of the judicial branch. On the legislative side, they have handed down decisions that have done nothing less than to create new laws, citing foreign laws or public consensus as the justification for their decision. On the judicial side, they adhere to the original interpretation of the Constitution and decide cases based solely on the constitutionality of a law or case. To be fair, it is actually only one Justice that is struggling to find his judicial philosophy. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy has been the swing vote on the controversial decisions of this current session.

One of the decisions that have been handed down that has ripped the Constitution to shreds include deeming the death penalty too harsh a punishment for a man convicted of brutally raping his 8 year old step daughter. Associate Justice Kennedy wrote in his support for the decision that there is not a strong nationwide consensus for the death penalty in child rape cases. He also alluded to our country maturing past the point of using the death penalty in such cases. Associate Justice Alito pointed out in the dissent that the ruling would not take into account how many times the victim was raped, how many victims there were, the age of the child, or how sadistic the rape was. Senator John McCain issued a statement strongly denouncing the ruling, saying that there is no greater responsibility as a parent than to protect the innocence of a child. Senator Barack Obama chose to be ambiguous with his response. He stated that he opposed the ruling but went on to clarify his position of opposition.

Another ruling that caused uproar of cheering from the left was the Guantanamo detainees decision. The conflicted court ruled that the enemy combatants that are being held at Guantanamo Bay, have the same Constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen. They have the right to attorneys and to have their cases heard before a civilian court. The problem with this decision is that at no time in our two hundred and thirty-two year history have our enemies that were captured on the battlefield been granted our Constitutional rights. We have applied the Geneva Convention to prisoners of war, but never brought them into our courts. In World War II we captured several German spies on our soil. The Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered that they be brought before a military tribunal and subsequently shot. These detainees do not fight under a recognized national flag. They do not wear a uniform of any organized country’s military. With that in mind, these enemy combatants do not fall under the auspices of the Geneva Convention, but yet our heartless military and government have granted them the protection of the Geneva Convention. The Supreme Court just awarded more rights to our enemies than members of our U.S. military enjoy. Senator Obama applauded the ruling, citing that he has long called for the prisoners to be brought into our courts. Senator McCain was outraged by the decision, stating that he wants to close Guantanamo but does not want them brought into our court system.

The Supreme Court did make a ruling this week that was worthy of praise. They decided that the Washington D.C. handgun ban is unconstitutional. This was the first decision on gun ownership in 70 years and as Antonin Scalia wrote in his support of the decision, there is no doubt about the right to keep and bear arms. The reasoning behind the ban makes for great headlines, but shows very little in results. Once again, the well-meaning politicians asked to be judged on their intentions not their results. Washington D.C. is near the top of the list as one of the most violent cities in the U.S. In 2005, D.C. had statistically over 35 murders per 100,000 people, but yet the law-abiding population was unarmed. Isn’t it funny how the criminals never seem to abide by the law banning handguns? Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain agreed with the decision, but McCain pointed out that Obama has long been opposed to gun rights. Only recently has he come out in support of gun ownership.

The recent decisions from the Supreme Court highlight the importance of this year’s presidential election.Senator Obama has coined the word “change” as his campaign theme, but I must point out that change just for the sake of change is potentially disastrous. Obama has said that he supports justices like Ginsberg and Souter. If he is elected, the change he will bring is one that will see our Constitution rewritten at the whim of the Supreme Court.

Who Will Be Fred Thompson’s VP?

Now that Thompson has wrapped up the GOP nomination, the question on everyone's mind is who he will pick to be his running mate. I know we are still months away from the primaries. I am also aware that Fred hasn't actually announced his bid. But let's be honest, he is going to run and he is going to win. He is the most popular Republican in the race, despite the fact he isn't officially in the race.

The Presidential race is more about popularity than politics. Why do you think the two current front-runners are also the most liberal? Rudy and McCain are popular because of their past. The other candidates don't have the same history. Romney is doing well because he knows marketing, or someone on his team knows marketing. But the rest of the candidates, despite their conservative values, have very low poll numbers. Just don't tell the Ron Paul "truthers" that I said that. Internet polls that allow you to vote 100 times don't count, ok.

Fred is popular, mostly because of his time on the television, which interestingly enough started when he played himself. This led to some great movie rolls, and of course his current roll as a conservative prosecutor. All of this has increased his popularity amongst conservatives and has made him a favorite with conservative pundits and blogs. Some trivia for you, part of his inspiration to run was Dick Wolf, the guy who put together the many Law and Order shows.

So, again, now that he has this thing wrapped up, who will he pick as his running mate? We have seen in the past where the candidate picks a former foe from the primaries. There is some speculation that Fred will pick one of the current candidates. Steve Elliott of grassfire.org is expecting a younger governor, thinking that two senators won't play well in the fight against Barack O'Clinton. This is a very good point, especially given the recent record for senators against governors in the presidential race.

I won't speculate myself, but I will tell you what to look for. Look for polls, transformed into pairing people up with running mates. An example: Would you vote for Hillary/Obama or Thompson/Romney or Thompson/Tancredo?

Fred is running because fictional polls that included himself and Newt put the both of them well above other candidates. Fred played this so that he would know whether or not to actually run. He wanted to be certain that the people were tired of the front-running RINOs. And we are tired of them. Fred will find out who makes the best ticket, and he will start this process very soon.

I'm not sure that he can win it all right now. Republicans are very angry, mostly about amnesty, I mean "Comprehensive Immigration Reform"; I mean amnesty. I don't know if this can be saved, but with his popularity, maybe he is the guy who can do it. The pick for VP will play a very important factor here. The democrats will do the same, we could even see another Clinton/Gore ticket believe it or not. My guess is that it will be Clinton/Obama.

Don't screw it up Fred, the country can't afford it right now.

Health Care Reform, Just Another Way To Raise Taxes

On Wednesday the Gather homepage posted a poll that asked if you would be willing to pay more in taxes for Universal Health Care. Out of the almost 200 respondents, a shocking 57% answered yes. I assume that most of the people answering yes have an amount that would be too high to pay in taxes for health care, social security, welfare, or even national defense. The poll did not mention how much you would have pay in taxes for the coverage, which is not that different from many of the health care plans being touted by some of the presidential candidates.

Democratic Senator Barack Obama released the “details” of his plan recently, during which he mentioned that it would provide an average of $2500 savings for each individual covered. He plans to make the government, businesses, and consumers share in the cost. Allow me to translate that last statement. Each and every one of us will be footing the entire bill for this health care coverage. The government has no means of making money to pay into the system. They rely on tax revenues from all of us to pay the bills. Businesses pay their taxes, for everything not just health care, by incorporating their taxes into the price of their product or service. Their customers pay their taxes by buying their product or service. If the business tax goes up to help pay for health care then so will the price of their product or service. Lastly the consumer is privileged to pay whatever cost is left.

Former First Lady Hillary Clinton was first on the scene in 1993 during her husband’s first year in the White House. She was the point person for the Health Care Reform plan that the White House tried to push through Congress. Her website states that she wears the “scars” of fighting for health care reform. Her reform was ultimately defeated after “aggressive opposition”. Keep in mind that her version of reform was defeated by a Democrat controlled House and Senate. Her own party rejected her plan in 1994 and was one of the reasons for the Republican takeover of Congress that same year. She has not offered a new plan, so we can only surmise that she will reintroduce her original health care reform plan.

Former Senator John Edwards offer the most details of his health care plan, calling for, among other things, all Americans to contribute to drive down the cost of health insurance, and to expand Medicaid. He also talks of tax credits and using “innovative” ways to control health care costs. I admit that I am leery of any politician that says they will “find innovative ways to control health care costs”. In my skeptical mind, that simply means higher taxes. A brief look at history will show that most attempts by the government to “control” the cost of a product or service, usually drives the price of that product or service up in the long run.

Proponents of this Universal Health Care, or Socialized Medicine, point to Canada and to Cuba as shining examples of how well Socialized Medicine does work. A simple Google search provided a few major media stories that show a different story. Canada offers free health care for all, but you just have to wait in a little line to be seen. One doctor spoke of a letter informing a patient of an electrocardiogram in 3 months, a significant wait for someone with a heart condition. An added statement on the letter is frightening. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies." Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore’s recent movie “Sicko” is a look at health care and points to Cuba as having world class health care. Mr. Moore neglects to point out that when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro needed surgery he had a Spanish surgeon flown in to perform the surgery. If Cuba has the finest health care available, why would the leader of that country need to fly in a surgeon for his own surgery?

One aspect of each plan posited that is the same is that in order to pay for the reform, taxes will need to be raised. None of the candidates have mentioned how much taxes will need to be raised to pay for their plans. Obama mentions that he will rollback the temporary tax cuts for the wealthy. He does not inform us of what the criteria is for being considered wealthy. Wealth is a relative term. For a person who makes $20,000 a year, anyone who makes more than they do could be considered wealthy by comparison. I find it amusing that the last time a presidential candidate publicly admitted that they were going to raise taxes if elected, it was 1984 and the candidate was Walter Mondale. For the record, he lost 49 out of 50 states in the general election to President Ronald Reagan.

Health care in the United States is by no means perfect, but what country in the world has better health care? There is room for improvement in any system, but creating a socialistic system of health care is not the answer. Every time the government tries to “reform” something, we all end up paying more in taxes and the “reform” is worse than what we had in the first place. The Medicare reform plan that was passed a few years ago, more than doubled in cost before the ink on the bill was dry. Why does anyone believe that this government plan will be any different?