The Coyote

Why I think Bialek is full of crap

2011-11-08T12:44:00.001-07:00

Because I believe sexual assault is a serious crime, I want to be clear about why I think Sharon Bialek is a full-of-shit opportunist. She alleges that in 1997 she was harassed by Herman Cain, but in reality she's saying she was assaulted. This is an important distinction from harassment. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but harassment is a workplace condition where someone makes inappropriate gestures, comments, suggestions, or attempts to coerce sexual favors predicated on getting something in return, or "quid pro quo" harassment. Telling a female coworker she has a nice rack could be harassment, but only if the comment is unwelcome. Telling someone you'll promote them or give them a raise if they sleep with you is quid pro quo harassment. In the corporate environment, there's a pretty wide latitude about what is considered harassment. All someone has to do is say something made them uncomfortable, or they feel the workplace has become 'hostile' and Human Resources will raise red flags all over the place. Often, the company will run a calculation on what it will cost in lost productivity of the people involved, litigation expenses, and other tangible costs, and if that number is greater than, say, one year's salary for the complainant, the company will offer them that amount to just go away, typically with the person signing a non-disclosure agreement and covenant not to sue, which then protect the company from further action. This doesn't do anything to confirm or deny the guilt or innocence of the accused; it's simply the most cost effective way for the company to end the incident. Until Sharon Bialek stepped forward, these were the types of accusations described against Herman Cain. Often, the person filing the claim is looking for a cash settlement, or knows they're about to be fired, so they throw a charge of harassment like a hand grenade, hoping to save their position or get something (CASH!) on their way out the door. Personally, if I were the victim of workplace harassment, it would take a lot more than a year's salary to get me to shut up...I would want heads to roll. This happens even if the person is the president of the company. Just ask Mark Hurd, formerly CEO of HP. The legitimate cases of harassment I have overseen in my career in management were from people who were wronged, had evidence, and simply wanted the harassment to stop and the harasser to be appropriately punished. No cash was offered, no settlements proposed.

What Sharon Bialek is alleging happened is not sexual harassment. She claims Cain put his hand under her skirt in an attempt to fondle her genitals, then pushed her head towards his lap to encourage oral sex. She fought him off and after she emphatically said no, he backed away. This is called attempted sexual assault. This is not a matter to report to the person's employer; this is a matter for the police, yet no police report was filed. So here we have he said/she said anecdotal evidence with no actual proof and no corroborating witnesses being used to defame a political candidate. But why? Here are a few things we know about Bialek:

She is a single mother of a 13 year old

She had just been fired from the National Restaurant Association one month before the alleged groping incident

She's serially filed for bankruptcy; first in 1991 and again in 2001, just four years after she lost this job.

One of her creditors in the second bankruptcy was a lawyer who represented her in a paternity suit, and she owed them more than $17,000 when she filed

Since 2001 she's had five liens filed against her for more than $21,000

She says she did not file a claim for harassment or notify the national restaurant association like the other women had because she had lost her job. While she doesn't go on to say this, the implication is that she considered this option but there was nothing it it for her

She gives an unusually specific detail about the event, saying that she booked herself a hotel room in the Capital Hilton (202-393-1000) and when she checked in, her room had been upgraded by Cain to a suite. (Another version of this story I have read is that her then-boyfriend (who suggested she go meet with Cain) had booked the room, so there's some inconsistency here)

She waited over eight days after the other reports of harassment until she had a high-profile celebrity lawyer by her side before coming forward

She's in the middle of a series of job interviews with WIND radio, with a second interview scheduled for Thursday this week

She last saw Cain a month ago at an event in Chicago and approached him (she says) to see if he would come clean about his actions from 14 years ago

Maybe it's the cynic in me but the picture I see forming is that of a woman who has a decades long history of financial problems, some of which may likely have been precipitated by losing her job at the NRA while Cain was the organization's president. She's interviewing for a position in radio and has a teenager to support. There are two things you can call a person to discredit them; racist or sexual predator. Since the race card cannot be played against Cain, we're left with someone trying to turn him into a Kinsey-esque figure who runs around willy-nilly laying hands on women (ask Clarence Thomas about this tactic!) Bialek, with her financial troubles, her history with the NRA, and pending interviews with WIND radio, is a prime candidate to pay off to spread a false story, either benefitting directly from a cash payment (Soros I'm looking at you) or via the astronomically raised profile she'll enjoy from this (unless she's proven to be a liar). If she becomes the 'Able woman who slew Cain" you can imagine the book deals, the job offers, etc that will be coming her way. And hey - she's being represented by Gloria Allred, so despite ostensibly being a registered Republican (I wonder for how long) she will automatically be the darling of the left.

The serial bankruptcies and liens make me suspicious as well. This is noteworthy because I only know a handful of people who have filed for bankruptcy. I don't know anyone who has had one lien filed against them (let alone 5), and Bialek has multiples of both. The only person I know who has filed bankruptcy more than once lived way beyond his means and filed every 8 to 10 years as a matter of course. I think it's important because she claims to be a Republican and a Tea Partier, and these behaviors do not typify the fiscal conservancy and personal resposibility that are the calling cards of the Tea Party.

If her allegations are true, why did she not go to the police when it happened? There's no money in that, but it would have certainly created a bulletproof piece of evidence that something happened. Instead we're left with virtually unprovable allegations.

Why did she wait EIGHT DAYS after the initial allegations came out - until she had a celebrity lawyer at her side - to come forward? If she's been stewing over this for 14 years, to the extent that she ambushed Cain 30 days ago in Chicago (well BEFORE the other allegations), why did she have to read the statement from a sheet of paper yesterday, sounding like she'd never read it before. I could recite the details of her 'ordeal' more convincingly than she did, and I haven't lived through it.

I also find the whole setup of that initial meeting odd. She'd just been FIRED from the NRA. Fired. Given the boot. Ejected. Her next move is to request a meeting with the president of the company to get help with her job search? Is that normal? I've never been fired from a job so I don't know, but I have a hard time believing that he would have taken that meeting under those circumstances. If I were president of a large organization, I would not meet an ex-employee like that. Heck, I've managed a team of 40 people and I wouldn't even go out for drinks with them because of what can happen (side note - this is management 101, and is drilled into us during new manager's school, and I have personally benefitted from following this policy on more than one occasion). The few times where I had to fire someone, or had peers fire someone, there is no way on earth I would have met any of those folks for dinner a month later. That scenario just SCREAMS of being a set-up. If I know that, I have a hard time believing Cain wouldn't know that.

She claims that Herman Cain upgraded her hotel room. This is a very specific detail that, if true, could add a piece of credibility to her story. I've called the hotel to ask if they can confirm this information but they've transferred me to the hotel's HR department where I got voicemail, and they've not returned my call (nor am I optimistic that they will). If this is disproven, however, it shreds what little credibility she has.

The way this is playing out is very reminiscent of the James O'Keefe/Andrew Breitbart method used to take down Acorn, where every day a new revelation is revealed and over the course of several days an insurmountable pile of evidence demands attention. In the case of Acorn, this approach was necessary because the media initially was willfully ignorant of the issue, but Breitbart forced them to look. In this case, the problem is the opposite; the media is paying attention to nothing BUT this story, and there has yet to be one single, provable piece of evidence that Cain actually did anything wrong.

To sum it up, I think Sharon Bialek was desperate to get her job back, thought she could coerce Cain into making it happen back in 1997 (IF that dinner actually happened) and that plan failed. A bankruptcy, a paternity suit and five liens later she's finally in a position to get her revenge against the man she sees as having derailed her career, so she jumped on the chance to bring the man down.

Unfortunately, the media has been all too willing to help her, and the damage has been done. The guys and gals at MSNBC have been on the edge of orgasm since this story broke, and they've already convicted him. Cain has been taken off message, forced to respond to these allegations and has dropped in the polls as a result. Even if proven completely false, these lies are out of the gate and the adage is 'a lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth catches up.' Herman Cain is the first candidate to forcefully attack two of the power bases that government uses to control we the people - the tax code and social security. As such, he is dangerous to all politicians, not just those on the left, though they have much more to lose than the GOP does if these tools are taken away from them. Because he's so threatening to the establishment, it is more important than ever that his supporters rally to his side.

Franklin and Jefferson knew Obama very well

2011-10-07T12:42:00.000-06:00

I've never in my adult life paid more attention to our Founding Fathers than I have in the past three years. They were some of the most foresighted people in the history of....well, history. So much of what they said has become distilled down to quips and quotes, but the thing is, they're all as relevant today as they were two hundred and thirty five years ago.

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." - Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was speaking of the labor unions, the zombified followers of moveon.org and the hippie wannabe, patchouli smelling wastes-of-skin crowds protesting first on Wall Street and now across the nation. These people all are fit tools for the designs of ambition. The question is, whose ambition?

President Obama's, for one. It's no coincidence that these protests sprang up while Obama is trying push through his jobs bill which would raise capital gains taxes on those very people at whom the protests are aimed. When commenting on the law-breaking rabble, Obama gave implicit approval of their actions when he said the protestors “are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." Mainly, the original protesters only seemed chagrined that the way our financial system works is "you get a job, you get paid." One interviewee said that what they wanted was for the wealthy to give out their money so that "all of us can live in prosperity." Indeed, that's the frustration with our financial system - that the people who work harder have more money, and they don't want to give it all to people who don't work hard.

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” - Thomas Jefferson

A hedge fund manager often works 80 to 100 hour weeks. They work in the office. They work at home. They work while they're on vacation. They're motivated by money, every second they're trading is a second they're making money, and every second they're awake is a second they can be working. Some people consider them greedy. Some people envy them. Some people are jealous of their success. While some of these people are the ones protesting wall street, others are in the political realm (Obama being one of them). These are the people who preach 'redistributive justice.' What I never get is that people want the money of a hedge fund manager, but they don't want to put in the time and effort to earn it.

Are some hedge fund managers crooks? Sure, you bet. So are some mailmen (locally, tens of thousands dollars worth of DVDs in red Netflix envelopes were found in the house of a mail man). So are some union bosses. And so are some politicians. The point is, where there is opportunity, you will find weak willed individuals who will exploit the system. The system itself isn't to blame, these unscrupulous predators are.

In order to 'take care of' the poor who could not buy a house, the Community Reinvestment Act was created in 1977 to push lenders into making home loans to people who would not ordinarily qualify for a loan ('sub-prime' borrowers). These sub-prime borrowers were largely in urban areas and predominately minorities. In 1992 George HW Bush made reporting the race of loan applicants not just preferable, but mandatory. In 1993 Bill Clinton made the reports public, and Fannie Mae began withholding financial backing from lending institutions who didn't make certain percentages of these sub-prime loans to the right races and income levels. In 1999 Countrywide went to Fannie Mae to protest the risk of default from these increasing numbers of sub-prime loans. The response was simple; 'we'll give you more money if you go away.' All of this happened BEFORE George W Bush was president. Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines was eventually ousted over misstated earnings statements (to the tune of $300,000,000) but not before he got his multi-million dollar bonus based on these misstated earnings. You know the rest of this story - the bubble grew, collapsed, and Obama has spent the last three years blaming Bush for the whole thing. He said Thursday (Oct 6th) “I think part of people’s frustrations, part of my frustration, was a lot of [lending] practices that should not have been allowed weren’t necessarily against the law, but they had a huge destructive impact.” (emphasis mine)
Whether he meant to or not, he almost hit the nail on the head. It's not just that these practices weren't against the law, they were ENCOURAGED by the government. But since government is the solution to all problems, let's blame Wall Street. By the way, Franklin Raines, a man who holds as much responsibility for the housing meltdown as anyone in congress (or any president for that matter) was one of Obama's first economic advisers. But, no, really, Wall Street has all the crooks. Nothing to see in the White House, please move along....

"We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves." -- Thomas Jefferson

I'm not going to pretend that Obama and his minions invented governmental grift. It's been happening for a long time. Financially, we've been screwed by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson more than Obama, because they've set us up with an entitlement system that has over $115,000,000,000,000 ($115 trillion) in unfunded obligations. But while he didn't invent the grift, Obama has perfected it, right down to laundering money to line the pockets of his own re-election fund with our tax dollars. How does he do that? Well, he makes government loans to dubious 'green energy' companies. These companies then pay their employees and someone else work with the employees to bundle donations to Obama's campaign. It happened yesterday in St Louis at the residence of Tom Carnahan. Carnahan received a loan for his energy company, and then hosted a $25,000 per plate fundraiser. Your tax dollars at work.

“God bless their spontaneity,” - Nancy Pelosi referring to the Wall Street protesters.

Nancy Pelosi is a good example of a pure politician. She does nothing without an angle that will benefit her. She doesn't care what she says, how stupid or false the statement is, or what it might do to her image. With almost anything she says you can bet it's either nonsense (think "we have to pass it to know what's in it") or an outright lie (like the quote above.)

One example of how spontaneous these protests are is the Craigslist ad posted by the Working Families Party (see it here) offering to pay people to protest, and help shape New York politics "for the next 20 years." Yep, that's pretty spontaneous all right.

Another example is the sudden surge in participation from the public sector unions. Seeing people from the teacher's union holding up professionally printed signs literally SCREAMS spontaneous.

Further proof is the following, which comes from none other than the 'Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones. On September 27th he went on MSNBC, while the protests were still fairly small, and said this: "We are going to build a progressive counterbalance to the tea party...And you're going to see an American fall, an American autumn, just like we saw the Arab spring. You can see it right now with these young people on Wall Street. Hold onto your hats. We're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and to rescue America's middle class." And a week later, protests have sprung up (with spontaneous union support) in 147 cities. Coincidence? I think not. I can only assume by 'counterbalance' to the Tea Party he means 'polar opposite." When the Tea Party marched on Washington with a half million people there were no arrests, there was no vandalism, no one got hurt and there was no trash left behind. By comparison, in New York several people have gotten hurt, there have been hundreds of arrests and thousands of dollars in damage, and the show ain't over. They're the Bizarro Tea Party.

I don't think that I can succinctly respond to the protests any better than Ben Franklin did over 200 years ago when he said "In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries that the more public provisions made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” - Benjamin Franklin

Currently only about 47% of the population pays income tax. Obama and his cronies do not think that's enough. Not only does he not want them to pay income tax, he wants to get them out of paying the payroll tax too - at the expense of the rich. His beleaguered jobs bill, the one that these protests are supposed to help him pass, reduces the payroll tax and covers the cost by increasing taxes and fees on the wealthy. This class warfare is what the founders warned against. A vote for Obama is like voting for reducing your payroll taxes. This Robin Hood mentality plays well with the disaffected, spoiled youth who have the luxury of growing out their hair, letting it soil itself into dreadlocks, skipping showers and going out and protesting for days on end about how unfair it is that people who get up and work hard every day have all the money. But eventually these people are going to have to get jobs...and if they move up the ladder, they earn more and suddenly they're the ones paying for the hippie trash to lay around bitching about how they've done nothing all day and have nothing to show for it. It's not so groovy then. Churchill described it best when he said "If you're not liberal when you're 20 you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're 40 you have no brain."

We're at a tipping point. I saw a sign one of the protesters was holding up that said "Turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square." Really? That's the goal? I have to laugh at that because I work with several people in Cairo who told me, during the uprising, that the protesters/rioters were mostly unemployed, undereducated people who had nothing better to do. Sound familiar? It's pretty clear that Obama and the Obamites know that 'leveling the playing field' doesn't mean lifting people up, it means tearing the successful down. They know that government, to paraphrase Von Mises, can't make anyone richer, but it CAN make people poorer.

Watch the people on Wall Street, watch the people across the country in the astroturfed events put on by unions and backed by Van Jones and MoveOn.org. This, folks, is what the end of the Republic looks like.

Not Again.....

2011-09-08T09:54:00.001-06:00

I watched the Politico/MSNBC debate at the Reagan Library. If you're interested, here are my impressions in no particular order:

1. Someone at MSNBC and/or Politico is in an office today saying "can you believe they let us host this thing? The media is trying to pick the GOP for us, again, just like they did with McCain.

2. It wasn't really a debate. Johnathan Harris from Politico could barely contain his contempt for Governor Perry, baiting Governor Huntsman to rebut Perry's RHETORIC (emphasis his). The best line I saw on Twitter all night came from Neal Boortz about Harris: "Who is this footstool from Politico?" For his part Brian Williams could barely contain his contempt for the audience when they applauded Perry's actual enforcement of the death penalty. With all the attacks on Perry, it was less a debate than it was hit job. Makes me wonder who the establishment is really afraid of.

3. The hosts directed almost nothing at Bachman, Gingrich, Cain or Paul. Santorum got more time than they did. Afterwards, MSNBC unilaterally declared Bachman's campaign "Dead", adding "but we already knew that." Hmmm....again, who are they afraid of? If I were the GOP, here's how I would mandate the next debate be organized: if there are 8 participants, you have 8 questions. They each answer them, with the first response moving down the row so everyone gets a chance to go first. Then you have a lightning round where the AUDIENCE, not the hosts ask questions of specific candidates. The audience will have numbers assigned to them and the candidates can pick a number (without seeing the question first) to minimize the chance of plants being selected. Then you have a 2 minute summation by each candidate on why they're the best option, and you shut off their mike at two minutes. This way the hosting network has to check their views at the door.

On to the candidates, again in no order:

1. Huntsman came on strong last night. The hosts threw a lot of softballs at him, letting his liberal side come out. I think the media would love to see him as our candidate because he has no chance of beating Obama, and even if he did, he's a climate change believer and evolutionist so he's halfway in their court from the outset. He lost me on those two issues alone, but his "Hey, Romney & Perry, I was a governor too!!" schtick got old. Plus the spray tan looked like it was about to run. On Twitter someone said he was the "Orange-American" candidate.

2. Santorum was like a potted plant. I honestly can't recall a single thing he said.

3. Paul did OK but didn't get any time to talk. When he did he was hard to follow. I know Paul has a lot of hardcore believers, but for me his Achiles heel is foreign policy. Anyone who is OK with a nuclear Iran has lost me.

4. Gingrich continues to be the smartest man in the room. He scored major points for calling Harris and Williams on their bullshit. I don't think he's electable, but he belongs in the White House in some capacity. He knows too much to keep him out, and I mean that in a good way.

5. Bachman did well when talking about health care and jobs. She's good at humanizing the topics, but like Paul she didn't get much opportunity to say a lot. After all, MSNBC already knows her candidacy is dead.

6. Romney actually did a capable job defending his healthcare mandate in Massachusetts by pointing out it's failures. That's really what needed to be looked at for Obamacare: "Look, here's a case where it's been tried and it failed. Going national with it is a bad idea." Romney seemed more electable than the others, which is largely due to his having been through this before. As The Daily said yesterday though, the only reason he's not a career politician is because he loses a lot. Big points for him though, when he said he'd fire Bernake on his first day.

7. Cain impressed me. A Twitter user said he takes Paul and translates him into English. His ideas are smart. His idea for Social Security is in line with what I've been saying for a long time, and he says it better than Perry. It's too bad he didn't get more time last night. Like Gingrich, he belongs in the next White House in some capacity.

8. Lastly, Perry underwhelmed me last night. I liked his double down on Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. Like a trusty pitching wedge, Social Security is one of the best clubs the left has in their bag. If they ever get in a fix, they just scare the hell out of the elderly who are held hostage by their dependency on it. For that reason alone, the left has to be terrified of a world where Social Security is not an issue. Perry was more direct about it than Cain, but rightly said that young people are being lied to about the safety of the Social Security system. If Perry wins, he should put Cain in charge of fixing it. On the downside, Perry seemed a little stuttery and halting in his responses about climate change science being full of shit. He got there eventually but not in a concise way. This led mental patient Chris Matthews to say afterward that Perry is "Anti modern technology." Ah Chris, ever the non-biased journalist.

So what's the outcome? I would expect to see Santorum drop out soon. The rest will hang in there, especially Huntsman who got a fresh breath of life last night courtesy of the Footstool.

One final quote from Twitter: The entire panel, on their worst day, would be a better president than Obama. Let's hope we can raise that bar at the next debate.

The New Meme: Blame The Tea Party For...Everything

2011-08-08T18:44:00.024-06:00

"The problem with the economy these days is Republican extremism."

This is a quote from esteemed economist Paul Krugman. His expanded comments expressed a desire for the mainstream media to flat out blame the Tea Party for the S&P downgrade. John Kerry wants the media to stop giving airtime to the Tea Party because they don't have 'legitimate' ideas. And so the attempted destruction of the Tea Party continues in earnest with a new front of attack - the muzzling of anything that sounds Tea-Party-ish.

Media expert Bernie Goldberg had a great analogy tonight. He said blaming the Tea Party for the downgrade is like blaming the guy who calls 911 when there's a fire. All the Tea Party has done is sound the alarm, and that is a problem for the left. Exposing the ineptitude of Obama, his administration, and a Senate that has gone more than 800 days without voting on a budget is to expose the ineptitude of the left at large.

Several liberals have said that downgrade wasn't necessary. Here's the crux of the downgrade; with the extension of the debt ceiling to 116% of GDP, the United States government has become synonymous with people who, in the height of the housing bubble, mortgaged their homes to 120% of their value. How did that turn out?

Standard and Poor took some heat during the last months of the Bush presidency for not lowering ratings for companies offering mortgage backed securities. Now that we're, as a nation, acting irresponsibly about our spending (let's just keep spending and not cut anything!) and S&P is doing *gasp* their job, the downgrade is suddenly not necessary? Give me a break.

The bottom line is this - the Tea Party is the last line of defense against a liberal ideology that has no interest in saving the America our Founders created. And for that, per the Liberal-Media complex, they must be destroyed.

Obama, The Deadbeat Relative

2011-08-02T21:31:00.000-06:00

President Obama has just become that relative that only calls when he needs money. I say 'just become' because now that he doesn't have a stranglehold on both houses of congress, he has to ask rather than take whatever he wants. And despite what the old guard thinks, we have the Tea Party to thank for this.

First and foremost, the process of getting these hugely unpopular bills has changed because the Tea Party-backed House majority banned earmarks; therefore when Boehner needed votes, he had to make real deals rather than buying support with tax money. I hate to think how much money the DNC would have siphoned to pass this sham if they were in charge.

Next, the Tea Party-backed Reps held their ground for a long time through this farce, which frustrated the hell out of people in the old guard. It also brought out the true feelings of our nations leadership.

People like John McCain, who referred to the Tea Party as 'hobbits.' People like Joe Biden (and several other Democrats) who started referring to the Tea Party as 'terrorists' who were holding the economy 'hostage.' I found the insertion of this extreme rhetoric by the Democrats interesting given that Rep. Giffords returned to cast her first vote since being shot in the head by an assailant who was allegedly inspired by what the left believed to be extreme rhetoric, prompting them to say we need to end all of the extreme rhetoric. You see what they did there? They brought it full circle, in a kind of hypocritical-we're-so-superior-to-you-we-don't-even-know-we're-hypocrites kind of way.

The barely intelligible Chris Matthews seized on this meme, incessantly referring to the GOP as hostage takers, and the debt ceiling as a baby. "Why'd we let them get control of the baby?" he whined while sounding as though he was 5 martinis into a 3 martini lunch. But I digress. This screed started off talking about Obama.

Obama dealt with stiff opposition like a rookie used car salesman trying to sell a taxi that's been repainted (bonus points for anyone who gets the movie reference). He lied, badly, and tried to shift blame everywhere but on himself. He pushed for the stimulus bill (because there would be Armageddon if it wasn't passed NOW), he pushed for Obamacare (because there would be Armageddon if it wasn't passed NOW) and so he naturally blamed Bush and said if we don't raise the debt ceiling NOW there would be Armageddon. Only, like a savvy auto shopper, we know there's no such thing as yellow primer. We knew that there would be enough tax money coming in to pay for Social Security, Medicare, military expenses and pay the interest on our debt. The only way we were going to default on our interest was if Obama deliberately defaulted, or the government stopped collecting income tax.

The treasury threw in their two cents, echoing the same statements that we were running out of money. Of course, asking the treasury department to handle our finances is like asking a fat man to stand watch over a freshly baked batch of Krispy Kremes. The media bought into it (surprise) including the evil Newscorp e-publication 'The Daily' (which did surprise me.) There were several stories published about how, ending July, Apple Corp. had more cash on hand than the US Government did. All that did was make me think that Steve Jobs should be running the economy instead of Obama. I bet if he were in charge we would have come up with more than $1 Trillion in savings over 10 years.

In an odd coincidence, the average household that has credit card debt has $14,600 of it; just a few (nine) decimal places away from the national debt figure of $14.6 Trillion (I know, it's only $14.3 trillion but I am trying to make a point). If someone told you that they were trying to pay down their debt, and they had a plan to reduce their $14.6 thousand credit card balance by $1000 over ten years ($100 per year, less than $10 per month!), would you think they were serious about their situation? Me either. And neither is our government serious about paying down our debt. You know it, I know it, and the stock markets sure as hell know it too.

In the end, passage of the increase in the debt ceiling was inevitable. (Almost) all of Washington wanted to see it raised so they can keep spending our money. Obama dropped double digits in the polls throughout this sideshow, so he clearly lost some ground in the process. The Tea Party made it more difficult than it needed to be and in the process exposed that much of Washington, on the left AND the right, is afraid that their business as usual way of doing things is coming to an end. And it will, if we continue to elect principled leaders in 2012. Insult us, denigrate us, try to minimize us, but this Tea Party is just getting started. Viva la revolucion!!

Obamaland - Where All Of His Fantasies Come True

2011-07-22T22:15:00.004-06:00

Obama, during the 2008 campaign, derided Hillary Clnton's health care mandates by saying that they are ineffective. "If mandates work," he said, "we could cure homelessness by mandating that everyone buy a home." Somewhat surprisingly that is about the only thing he hasn't tried to mandate in the last three years. And yes, as we all know, his health care plan includes a mandate that is central to it's success.

He seems to believe the hype that his ascension to the presidency heralds a sea change in the world, as if just by being who he is things will get done. One of his latest moves is to push for 56 MPG standards for auto fleets by 2025, a move the people in the auto industry - you know, the ones who make a living manufacturing and selling cars and trucks - say will cost another 220,000 jobs. The problem here is you and me - the consumer. It turns out that we don't really want to pay more money for a vehicle that doesn't satisfy our wants or needs. We want cars that perform well, that can go hundreds of miles between refueling, and can be refueled in minutes rather than hours. But if the auto companies sell such vehicles to us, they will be fined for not meeting the standards set forth by the government. So this cost will get added to the price of the vehicle - estimates put it at $1000 per car - and WE will pay the price.

Proponents say that we should welcome the higher cost of a more efficient vehicle because it will save us $6000 on average. Whenever I see something like this I try to validate their numbers, but nowhere can I find how this figure was calculated. I did the math on my own vehicle. Buying a hybrid SUV would cost about $3000 more than a non-hybrid. The improved mileage would save me about $500 per year in gas based on my average annual mileage, or about $2500 over the life of a 5 year loan. So I would have to have it for 6 years to break even. Not a problem, since I've had my current SUV for 8 years now. But, here's the thing; by NOT buying the car I am saving $500 PER MONTH by not financing the new car. And my current one, poor mileage and all, is running just fine, thank you.

That's the biggest flaw in Obama's 'legislate it into reality' philosophy. For it to work, we all have to view the world the same way. While most of us are pretty grounded in reality, he operates as if the world is the way he wants it to be and then throws a fit and talks down to us when we don't cooperate. Along the way, people voted for him because they wanted him to live up to the hype have become somewhat disillusioned. Those that voted for him because they were pouting over their candidate not getting the nomination have seen the error of their ways, and those of us that saw behind the curtain and didn't vote for him in the first place can say we told you so. He will not get re-elected, at least that the version of the world as I see it. We HAVE to vote him out. Now, there's a mandate for you.

State Of The Union: Full Of Hot Air

2011-01-25T22:26:00.001-07:00

The 2011 state of the union speech was less a report on the state of our blessed union, and more a pep rally for pie in the sky projects. As Michelle Obama said in 2008, Obama's speech tonight was less about “the world as it is” and more about “the world as [he thnks] it should be.”

One of his central points was that the worst of the recession (the worst one that most of us can remember, by the way, just in case you forgot) is over, and the stock market has roared back. This is a far cry from the President who, when the market dropped every time he spoke in 2009, said "It bobs up and down day to day, and if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong." But now that it's approaching 12,000 it's a mark of success. Of course, it's built upon company profits generated in part because companies aren't hiring, or are hiring contracted labor. But don't worry, with 15,000,000 people out of work and another 15,000,000 underemployed, the worst is behind us.
He did have one phrase that caught my attention, and it’s one of the first I have heard from him that I agree with. He said, of our global competition for skills and jobs, that this is our “sputnik moment.” What we do after this will determine if we regain control of our collective destiny, or sink into a morass of complacency and dependence. Unfortunately, the 'what we do next' part was long on imagery and short on solutions. As usual.

On education, he touted the ‘race to the top’ program as being the salvation of the education system. I personally haven’t heard much about this program so it’s hard to offer a critique, but like most of his programs it centers on making the government (in this case the school system) responsible for the outcome. In other words, he wants the government to be responsible for the outsome of the education of America’s children rather than the parents and the children themselves. Everyone in the public school system is essentially on a scholarship, paid for by the members of their communities. Any system that allows the individual to be absolved of any responsibility for their performance is doomed to fail.

He also touted the reform of the student loan program as making college more affordable for millions of kids. What he didn’t mention was that the savings was divided into two piles – one aimed predominately at minority colleges and universities, and the other pile went to help fund the health care reform bill. This says two things – first, that funding education for America’s kids – ALL of America’s kids – is not his top priority, and secondly that his health care bill was not affordable on its own merits. More on this in a minute.

The final point he made regarding education was done in an attempt to tie immigration reform to our country’s success. He said that children of illegal immigrants are some of our most successful and brightest students (I'd like to see evidence to support that claim!), who, in his words, “pledge allegiance to” the same flag we do. I laughed out loud when I heard that, because as we all know, much of our liberal school system is no longer allowed to say the Pledge because of those two despicable words ‘under God.’ If immigration reform includes teaching in English only and reciting the Pledge on a daily basis, I might be able to support it.

Back to health care, Obama said he would welcome ideas from the GOP about how to make the health care bill better. If this sounds familiar, it’s because he also said it in last year’s SOTU in January 29, 2009. Shortly afterward, he was pressed by Tom Price (R-GA) about saying the GOP has no ideas, and he responded with a denial: “I remember that speech pretty well. It was only two days ago. . . . I said I'd welcome ideas that you might provide. I didn't say that you haven't provided ideas. I said I'd welcome those ideas that you'll provide." This year, he said the same thing, then essentially admitted he ignored Republicans by indicating he would consider adding tort reform to the bill – an “idea put forth last year.”

He made a plea to avoid repeal of the bill, saying it would add "a quarter of a trillion dollars" to the deficit. As opposed to the trillion it will cost to keep it in place? Sounds like perhaps he got his math skills from one of those failing public schools.

He also recycled the idea of government transparency by proposing a web site where we citizens can go view how and where our tax dollars are being spent. If this sounds familiar, it’s because he campaigned on a similar promise – to have legislation up for review on the White House web site for 5 days of public comment before taking it forward for a vote. He broke that promise with the very first piece of legislation he signed (the public was invited to comment AFTER he signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law).

Speaking of taxes, here he was full of contradictions. He touted lowering the tax burden for Americans while wanting to raise taxes on the rich. He touted the great work congress did by extending the Bush-era tax cuts, while saying that these extensions can’t go on forever. He wants to remove tax barriers for businesses to spur job creation while punishing the oil industry with higher taxes.

He returned to form regarding business as weel. He spoke of reducing subsidies to oil companies, which is his most hated of all industries. He has to make oil more, and really all conventional forms of energy more expensive as it’s imperative that he drive up energy costs for his renewable energy plan, which he droned on about for the first 15 minutes of the speech, to succeed. He’s calling for massive spending on renewable energy, calling out the specific success of a plant making solar roof shingles (with the help of a government grant – i.e. taxpayer money), but the problem he doesn’t discuss is that it’s too expensive to have a market. A kilowatt of electricity produced by gas fired power plants costs about 4 cents. Coal is about 5 cents per kilowatt (as is wind energy, which is not ‘always on’ and therefore is unreliable). Hydroelectric costs about 8 cents, nuclear costs around 12 cents, geothermal about 17 cents Last but also least, is solar at 22 cents per kilowatt (and that’s a vast improvement over the past). In short, the only way there is going to be a market for alternative forms of energy is if the conventional costs rise to 2 or 3 times (or more) of the current costs. This is what Obama himself alluded to when he said of his cap & trade energy plan that costs would ‘necessarily skyrocket,” but of course this was left out of tonight’s discussion altogether.

In summary, the state of the union speech was less about the union and more about reelection. It was much akin to his campaign speeches of 2008, even recycling many of the same themes from the last two years. Obama has returned to what he does best – deliver a talk high on promise, low on details, high on ‘hope’ and low on reality. Truly, the 2012 presidential campaign has begun.

Welcome to the AOL! Your thoughts must be in line with ours!

2011-01-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

I just read an article about Maine's new Republican Governor telling the NAACP to kiss his butt and I was going to leave a comment when I got greeted with this message:

"Our New Approach to Comments
In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around."

At first I thought "hey, this will shut down the vile leftist comments saying the Governor should be killed" (because you know they're coming) but then I read the message again. The problem I have with this whole concept is that it's completely subjective. What constitutes a personal attack? Calling someone vulgar? Idiotic? Simple? There are no clear definitions here.

The line that really bothers me is "comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period." How is that defined? Productive in what way? By whose agenda? Productive to a Republican will most likely not be producitve to a Democrat, so do you let them all in, or keep them all out? And if you let them all in, why have the policy in the first place?

I predict that people will start complaining about the content that has been allowed to be posted. It's too liberal, it's too concervative, it offends me, etc - and AOL will be forced to either abandon this policy (the best possible solution), enforce it in a very strict manner (which is tantamount to censorship) or the comments section will wither on the vine because people will just go somewhere else to read and comment on stories.

I think that's what the left wants - for censorship to increase and participation to decrease. They have control of the mainstream media...the internet is the only place where conservatives have an equal voice to liberals. Even if the policies of censorship quiet the liberals on the web, they still have the edge in MSM communication (though conservatives have the edge on talk radio, which is also under attack). I also suspect that this is not the only web site where we're going to see this kind of policy being employed.

The PC crowd is doubling down and your thoughts and comments had better line up with those of the establishment, or you're going to lose your voice. Welcome to the post-Tuscon world.

I Agree With Obama - Please Get Out And Vote!!

2010-11-01T12:00:00.000-06:00

We’re down the wire in this year’s election. As I’ve previously stated, voter turnout means everything this year, and I am very worried about conservative overconfidence. When we hear in poll after poll how well the Republican candidates are doing, I am reminded of an episode of the Simpsons where Bart is running for class president against the bookish Martin. The class overwhelmingly supports Bart and amidst their victory celebration, the only votes that are cast are by Martin and his lone supporter. Martin wins.

We’re not up against a nerdy 4th grader with a lone supporter; we’re up against a well oiled political machine with fanatical supporters and seemingly unlimited campaign funds. Here’s what we’re fighting against:

• President Obama – while he may not be a good leader, the campaigner-in-chief can campaign like a stallion He has been travelling the country, appearing on talk shows, yucking up with Jon Stewart and bad-mouthing Americans who oppose Democrats all in the name of getting his progressive minions to the polls.

• Organizing For America – Obama’s campaign machine, now run by the DNC, has been making millions of calls, knocking on millions of doors and tweeting from the @BarackObama Twitter account like crazy. A couple of samples: “I need you fired up. In just 9 days you can set the direction of this country.” And “If you knock on doors and talk to voters, we won’t just win this election; we will restore the American Dream.” The only problem is an increasing majority of Americans don't want to go in his direction, and his version of the American Dream is more of a socialistic nightmare.

• Unions – with campaign donations in excess of $400 million from unions, Democrats have had over $1 Billion at their disposal this year. That has funded a lot of misleading, half truth advertising. In Nevada, electronic ballots were found with Harry Reid’s name pre-selected. The group that services those machines? The Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

• The Media – George Soros has given NPR $1 million to hire 100 new correspondents. NPR fired Juan Williams for just appearing on Fox News and having an honest dialog. With Soros buying media like a capitalist would buy a McDonald’s franchise, independent journalism is an endangered specie. In Alaska, CBS was caught red handed trying to manufacture news to damage Tea Party Candidate Joe Miller when a correspondent left a voicemail for Miller’s campaign manager and then forgot to hang up. It’s repulsive, but pervasive.

• Politics of division – Far from uniting the nation as a ‘post-racial’ president, Obama has unilaterally declared that people who oppose him are fearful and not thinking clearly. He later elaborated for a Latino audience that they need to vote so their ‘enemies’ don’t win the elections. Illegal aliens are actively campaigning for Patty Murray in Washington state. The Democratic National Congressional Committee has been running ads painting Republicans as anti-woman, anti-senior citizen, anti-youth, anti-civil rights. None of these charges are true, but a lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth catches up.

If the Democrats win tomorrow, here is a short list of what we have to look forward to in the next session of congress:

• An increase in the nation’s ‘debt ceiling’ to allow for more profligate spending.

• A $165 billion bailout of Union pensions.
• Continued increases in public sector salaries. Public sector employees make $30,000 more, on average than their private sector counterparts. That gap increases to $60,000 when you account for benefits. During the recession, the number of public sector employees making in excess of $150,000 tripled while private sector wages were stagnant or reduced. That’s our tax dollars at work, folks.

• Speaking of taxes, Obama’s ‘deficit commission’ is looking at the impact of reducing or eliminating the mortgage tax deduction.

• 2003 tax cuts will expire at the end of the year, raising taxes for everyone and trapping millions more in the Alternative Minimum Tax. The reinstatement of the ‘death tax’ will force thousands of family farms to sell large swaths of their land or face bankruptcy.

• Forced unionization via ‘card check’ legislation.

• Increased energy costs via cap & trade legislation.

I could go on, but I think the point is made. There’s a lot at stake for America in this election. We can stop the progressive agenda, but only by getting out and voting and encouraging our like-minded friends and family to vote as well. You can contact your local GOP office and see if they need help driving people to the polls. Don’t stop fighting until the polls have closed! REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER!!
Yours in liberty,

Rich Baker

Your iPhone is killing the Chinese

2010-05-28T14:56:00.000-06:00

Several things popped into my head as I read this article.

First, I really can't complain about work or the conditions we have in the office. Even though our bathrooms frequently smell like an outhouse because some disgruntled savage has shoved a wad of paper towel in a toilet to get it to overflow, we haven't had anyone kill themselves over the working conditions.

Second, Rita Wilson, the New Jersey teacher who is whining about her pay (highlighting her lack of knowledge about her own situation ) can shut right the hell up.

Third, this is why manufacturing jobs have largely moved overseas to China. When you read about the conditions these people live under (6 day work weeks, 10 hour days, living 12 to a room in a dormitory, not allowed to talk to coworkers on the production floor) remember that this is what drives the price of an iPhone or iPad down to a level where Americans will buy them.

Lastly, when China was lecturing the US delegate last month about the human rights issues in the United States, we should have just given him the finger and walked out. Suck on this, pal! C-ya later!

Of course, this can also be instructional. If we, as a country, keep spending our away our posterity, when China comes to collect what they're owed, we all may be living 12 to a room. Just something to think about...

November Can't Get Here Fast Enough

2010-05-23T16:51:00.000-06:00

"If you can't budget, you can't govern." - Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC), 2006

That quote may be one of the more prophetic statements made by a member of congress in a long time. Why, you may ask? Well, this week the Democrat congress announced that they will not pass a budget this year. By so doing, they rob the Republicans of a chance to cut government spending and absolve themselves of doing the same.

While they're not doing one of their main jobs, it didn't stop congress from reaching further into the pockets of America via their passage of S 3217, Chris Dodds "Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010." Like most Orwellian legislative titles, it sounds good but doesn't really live up to the name. Here are some of the lowlights:

The politically appointed (NOT elected) Secretary of the Treasury will have the authority to seize any 'financial entity' - bank or non-bank - if, in his sole opinion, the entity is 'too big to fail' and is in danger of insolvency. This is unprecedented power placed in the hands of someone appointed by the president. The left would have been SCREAMING if this kind of power had been given to George W Bush. The potential for abuse of this power is immense. It could be used to silence opposition, coerce campaign contributions or exact political retribution. Since our economy hinges so heavily on leverage, any company could be vulnerable - and what CEO would speak out against Obama's policies, would lobby against draconian legislation, with this threat hanging over their head?
Any business that lends credit must get approval to do so from the new Consumer Protection Agency, creating a huge backlog of red tape that will bring consumer lending to a standstill. Want that 12 month no interest line of credit from Home Depot? Not until it's approved. Want that 36 month no payment, no interest for furniture from Macy's? No so fast, bub, the CPA has to bless it first.
Oh yeah, this bill creates a new agency (well, at least one new one) called the Consumer Protection Agency. So once again, we're watching the size (and cost) of government increase while Democrats are in control.
While the auspices of this bill are to 'restore financial stability' it does no such thing. The housing crisis stemmed from shoddy lending practices pushed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Granted, there were numerous other factors, but Fannie and Freddie were at the heart of it. John McCain introduced an amendment to the bill that would have pushed the government away from the table, ending the taxpayer support for Fannie and Freddie...but the amendment was defeated by Democrat majority. So, the government has no problem seizing and breaking up private corporations, but will not do the same thing to Government Sponsored Entities. Oh, and by the way, this week Fannie Mae asked for another taxpayer funded bailout of $8.4 billion and Freddie Mac asked for another $10.6 billion.
While Fannie and Freddie get a pass (and more money they didn't earn), this bill once again attacks the credit card companies who had nothing to do with the financial meltdown, and we will pay the price for this in the end. By way of historical precedent, recall that government intervention 'saved' credit card holders by passing legislation that says that they cannot raise your interest rates simply because your finances are blowing up. So the natural reaction by the credit card companies was to raise ALL interest rates (mine went 13.49% to 19.99%, I've never missed a payment and my credit score is 830!) before the law went into effect. Now, working hard, making the right moves and establishing a solid credit score does nothing for you. You get the same interest rate as someone who made all the WRONG moves and trashed their credit. Thanks, government, for helping out on that one! Well, this bill goes even farther. Mastercard and Visa get a percentage of every transaction a merchant makes using their cards, and this bill limits what that percentage can be. Rather than let the merchants decide how much they're willing to pay, the government is seeking to make that decision for them. My prediction is that by cutting the rates per transaction, the government is going to force the credit card companies to take two actions; first, they'll charge a monthly or annual service fee to merchants for the rights to use their cards in addition to the lower per-transaction fee. This will compensate for their per transaction losses, but at the same time will force smaller companies to go to a cash only basis for their businesses (or they'll have to offer their own lines of credit, forcing them to play with the new CPA above). Second, because it's clear that they don't know what revenue streams the government will take away in the future, say good-bye to your no annual fee credit cards. Thanks again, government.

So how did this piece of crap bill pass? RINOs Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (both of Maine), Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Scott Browne of Massachusetts (really, Scott? This is how you repay us?) all voted for it, giving it the momentum to get passed. It still has to be reconciled with the House version, but we know from health care how that will play out.

The passage of this bill and the key votes that passed it highlight once again why we have to get the right people into office. We can see the tide is turning. This week another round of primaries ushered out a host of incumbents and put some good people on the November ballots. After Bob Bennett was tossed off of the Utah ballot two weeks ago, Arlen Specter was shown the door this week and Blanche Lincoln staggered to a run off against the Arkansas Lt. Governor with over 50% of the Democrats voting against her. In Kentucky, Rand Paul won the GOP primary, Pat Toomey won his contest in Pennsylvania and John Boozman is on the ticket in Arkansas.

It's not enough to get oust incumbents and get the right people on the tickets in November. We have to mobilize the masses and get them out to vote. We missed an opportunity in Pennsylvania's 12 Congressional district (once held by John Murtha) because the Republican turnout was 20% lower than that of the Democrats. Mid-term elections routinely have light turnout, but we can count on Obama and the Democrats to shake every tree and every bush to get their base out to vote. If we want to take back congress, de-fund the health care initiatives, repeal the financial bill's intrusion into the free market (such as it is these days), we need to ensure that everyone will REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER!!

T.E.A. Parties? The Left Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!

2010-04-25T21:22:00.011-06:00

One of the questions I sometimes get asked is ‘why do you spend so much time on politics? It's not like they listen to us anyway.’ To be honest, I get really frustrated with that attitude, but I can understand where it comes from. People spend a lot of time at work, with kids, paying bills, keeping the house and yard in good condition, keeping the car running, and keeping themselves physically fit. When you get up at 6 AM and are busy until you fall into bed at 11 PM, it's hard to carve out time for political activism. But, there are some things in life that once you've learned them, you can’t unlearn. I read the book “The Case Against Barack Obama” and it was an eye opener for me. It is what got me off the couch and into activism. As I read about how Obama got his start in politics, what he stands for and what he believes, I realized that there was no way we could let this man get elected. Have you noticed that lately there has been some press coverage of Obama’s tutelage at the hands of Frank Marshall Davis? There are people now, in 2010 saying “did you know that he was mentored by a COMMUNIST?” I just reply “Um, yeah, I’ve known about that since early 2008 way before people voted a slogan into the White House.” Mainstream (lamestream!) media outlets spend time interviewing American Idol castoffs or that ‘gameplay’ woman from The Biggest Loser but won’t cast a disparaging glance at the president, the leaders of congress or the agenda being played out by our government.. It’s frustrating, and it’s made all the worse because we as a society have allowed it to come to this.

For the last 100 years we have seen the political ideology of progressivism take root in America. Like a slow acting virus, it has infected our political system. Today, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (70 representatives and 1 senator) serve as the chair of over half of the standing committees[1]. This is frightening because Progressives view the Constitution as a living document that should be amended to fit the times. Specifically, it should be amended to fit their view of the times. They support people having guns for defense – government people, that is. Ordinary citizens? A different story. The second amendment to them is an antiquated relic that leads to every city becoming like the wild west, despite all evidence to the contrary. Progressives want to change the constitution so it can be used to shackle the people, while the Founders designed it to shackle the very government they created. They wanted the GOVERNMENT to fear the PEOPLE.

But that’s no longer the case. Government is running roughshod over the will of the people. They don’t care about our opinion because they have stacked the deck against us. How? One way is by using gerrymandering – congressional redistricting – to create “safe seats” for their parties. I say ‘parties’ because both major parties do this. The photo at right[2] is Illinois 4^th Congressional district. There are no natural features that require it to be drawn this way – it’s done to drive up the number of registered democrat voters in this district. The Republicans have similar districts so both parties play this game, but the progressives have the ulterior motives of wanting to use this tool to create a permanent majority to move their cause forward, while conservatives want to use it to preserve the constitution and protect our liberties. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the commercials you see on TV for the census (paid for with our tax dollars by the way) use the slogan “We can’t move forward until you send it back?” Census data is cross-referenced against the database of registered voters and the redistricting game commences. This is one reason it is crucial we elect solid, conservative leaders to the House and Senate in November.

I truly feel that we are at a crossroads in our nation’s history. We are dangerously close to losing control of our destiny. Right now 47% of the American workers don’t pay any income tax. When that number tips over 50%, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and other Founders, the republic will cease to exist. We’ll be left with a decaying corpse of liberty; one where our rights are taken away, our wealth (such as it is) will be pillaged and our property will no longer be ours. In the name of ‘redistributive justice’ so that some can have more, the majority will have less.

If you think that I am being alarmist, consider:

Our UN delegate has for the first time ever agreed to negotiate a UN driven small arms treaty that has the potential to defer our national sovereignty to the United Nations. Translation: If ratified, you just lost your second amendment rights.
Progressives are chasing amnesty for illegal aliens, and some Republicans (Lindsay Graham!) are backing it, ostensibly to court the Hispanic vote. Hispanics vote predominantly for Democrats, and illegal immigrants are among the lowest income earners. That 47% who don’t pay taxes? If amnesty passes that 47% will become 52%, if not higher. Welcome to the Nanny State.
Cap & Trade is still on the agenda for the Obama administration. Remember, in his own words he said that under his plan the cost of utilities will “necessarily skyrocket.” While there’s no disclosure of how that excess money will be spent, you can bet it will be on permanently expanding government’s role in our lives.
In 2012 you will no longer be able to purchase whatever light bulbs you want. The government has mandated, via the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (created by a Democrat controlled congress and signed by a Republican President) that you must, in your own house, only use the bulbs they approve of.

If they want to control the light bulbs you use, what will be off limits? Will they tell you what clothes you can buy, what kind of toothpaste you can use, what kind of food to buy and in what quantities? Nothing will be off limits if it’s for the ‘greater good.’

The UN treaty and the light bulb legislation are what I call ‘changes at the periphery’ – changes that occur without fanfare or much notice. Once these changes take hold, the next change moves closer to the middle. It’s insidious and done by design because progressives know they can’t take on something like the second amendment head on. They know they can’t send people into your house and force you to use a different light bulb (at least not yet...). However, if they make these changes at the periphery they effectively accomplish the same goal.

So, the elections this fall are crucial. They may very well be the last chance we have to preserve American Exceptionalism. If we succeed in bringing conservative values back to Congress, we have a shot at turning this ship away from the progressive iceberg. But we all have to pitch in. Politics can no longer be a spectator sport. In 2008 incumbent congressmen raised nearly four times as much money as their challengers. The senate was even worse, with incumbents raising nearly eight times as much for their campaigns as the challengers. It’s hard to get the message out if you can’t afford to buy the air time. So now, in addition to the writing, the blogging, and the Facebook posting, I’m taking it to the streets, and so should you. There are several things we can do, and what follows is by no means an exhaustive list. However, it’s a great start.

First, we need to be vocal and support our conservative candidates. Talk to our friends, use social media, volunteer for campaigns, and yes, financially support candidates even if they’re out of our districts or not in our states.

Second, we have to be aware of the issues and spread them like gospel. Speak to the facts, open and honestly. Progressives can’t argue on the facts. They can’t win an honest debate, so they resort to emotional arguments ("Don't you care about those less fortunate than you?") or personal attacks ("RACIST!") to guilt people into supporting them or to distract from the issues. However, fair-minded people CAN be won over by a thoughtful, fact based argument. In my own family (where I am, to my knowledge, the only registered Republican) I have gotten signatures on the Initiative 42[3] petition from family members who I assumed would support the UN treaty if for no other reason than it was Hillary Clinton who signed on to it. It turns out that even my more liberal relatives don’t care much for the UN. If I hadn’t had the conversation I would not have known that and would be several signatures shy of where I am now.

Third, we have to get out and VOTE and push others to get out and vote as well. Turnout for mid-term elections is historically light, and we can’t afford to let the other side out-vote us because our base stays home. And ultimately, we must unite behind one candidate. We can’t let a Ross Perot scenario play out where we divide our votes and let an incumbent weasel keep their seat because we were divided among ourselves. We won’t get a conservative candidate on every ballot this fall, but enough of them will make it on to make the difference. Remember, in 1994 we had a Republican revolution, where fully a third of the Republican candidates were seeking to unseat incumbents, and they did it. The next year they ushered in a wave of reforms and balanced the budget for the first time…ever? I don’t know and I’m too lazy too look that one up. The point is, we don’t have to have the perfect candidates all at once, and frankly it’s foolish to think that we accomplish such a feat. But remember the ‘changes at the periphery’ model…we get the majorities back, seed the stock with some true conservatives, and wind the engine up again for 2012.

If we do these things, all of us, and we are relentless about it, we can take the country back. But we have to get on a war footing, be willing to sacrifice time and money to secure our victory. We must with every step move forward, never give an inch and we must keep the volume TURNED UP. As we do, watch the media and the organizations on the left go crazy trying to discredit us and defame us. And as they lose ground, lose the battle of wills, and ultimately lose their control of Congress, it will be fun to watch them completely melt down.

Yours in Liberty,

Rich Baker

[1] Glen Beck, Common Sense, p66.

[2] http://maptogether.org/blogs/jim/fair-maps-for-illinois

[4] See www.initiative42.com for additional information. If you live in Colorado, particularly in the Boulder/Longmont/Loveland area and want to sign the petition, let me know and I can meet you and get your signature.

Michael Bennet and the Shmoo

2010-03-30T09:47:00.001-06:00

I just re-watched "Lucky Number Slevin" with Bruce Willis, Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley. If you haven't seen it and you like the mystery/gangster genre, I highly recommend it. In one scene, Morgan Freeman gives a wonderful monologue (as only Morgan Freeman can) about the Shmoo. The Shmoo is a wonderful creature from the L'il Abner comic. It essentially is all things to all people – it gives milk, produces eggs, its whiskers make excellent toothpicks, and it dies of sheer ecstasy, ready to be cooked, if looked at with hunger. Ultimately, the Shmoo was deemed bad for society. Since it provided for every need, people no longer had the will to work or provide for themselves, so the Shmoo was made extinct by giving everyone a picture of Andy Capp's mother with a hungry look on her face. Through the united will of the people, the Shmoo was no more. The Shmoo reminds me of the mythical Moderate Democrat, promising to do everything for everyone. The Moderate Democrat is pro-life while being pro abortion, spends money freely while being concerned about debt; they oppose war while supporting our troops; they're champions of small business while designing larger government entities to make small business suffer. In the end, their programs will provide for the people, taking away the people's desire to provide for themselves.

Speaking of the myth of the moderate Democrat, I recently received an email from accidental Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. In this email, he speaks about the deficit, saying:

"…if we don't get serious about bringing down the debt, our kids will be left to pay for today's irresponsibility, and our economy will suffer.

Our national debt now exceeds $12 trillion; a debt that poses enormous danger to our fiscal stability."

I could not agree with Bennet more. With the passage of Obamacare, our debt is now spiraling out of control. As a country, we are facing the loss of our AAA rating, meaning we will pay higher interest rates for our borrowed money. For individuals this is known as "exploding debt theory" – where the same amount of money borrowed now costs more due to increasing interest rates. Think about adjustable mortgage interest rates and the housing bubble. How did that work out for the country? Now imagine that on the scale of $13 trillion of debt (i.e. America's mortgage). More of our tax receipts will be going to pay for interest, leaving less to spend on government programs, like Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare. This effectively means we will need to either borrow more money, worsening the situation, increase our tax receipts to offset the rising interest, or a combination of the two. Already people in congress are talking about a Value Added Tax – or VAT – to help fund these programs. While this means more money for Washington, it means less money in all of our pockets; and in fact, it can reduce tax receipts as people under a VAT system will tend to delay or avoid purchases because of the added tax burden. A new TV is much less attractive when the cost just went up by 10 or 20%. A used car purchased privately is much more attractive when the $30,000 price tag on a new one suddenly becomes $36,000 with no additional value for the additional cost. Lastly, the 'black market' thrives under a VAT system, leading to an increase in organized crime.

This brings me back to Michael Bennet. I applaud his concern for our fiscal health. It would be more impressive if he didn't support every single act of wanton government spending that came down the pike for the last year.

He approved the stimulus.

He approved the GIVE act – expanding funding for volunteer programs

He approved the Omnibus bill

He voted against ending the TARP program

He voted for the Senate version of Obamacare (but against the amendment that would have had the congressional leaders purchase their health insurance through the same exchanges to which they're subjecting the public).

Then to really demonstrate his commitment to fiscal responsibility, he voted against the amendment that would have banned earmarks in years in which we run a deficit (effectively banning earmarks).

So forgive me if his concern for our financial security rings hollow. It's a desperate attempt to appear to have some conservative values only appeal to fence sitters and middle of the road voters who still believe the Moderate Democrat is real and not just a cousin of the Shmoo.

Just as the Shmoo was made extinct by the will of the people, so too must we unite and rid our congress of these pretenders to the conservative crown. It's time for Bennet to go.

P.S. For those concerned about the second amendment (hopefully everyone reading this) he voted to confirm Eric Holder and Sonia Sotomayor, two of the biggest threats to Second Amendment Rights (2AR). According to the Denver Post, in another act of chicanery he voted for the Thune amendment for concealed carry – AFTER the votes were there to defeat it, rendering his yes vote meaningless.

The End Of Days Is Here

2010-03-14T23:09:00.001-06:00

This is it folks – after a year of arguing back and forth, both sides accusing the other of lying, after the creation of the Tea Party movement in response to government arrogance, after those opposing the health care legislation were labeled racists, Nazis, and un-American by the very people whom 'we' elected to represent us, the final vote on health care legislation may take place this week.

Facing the Democrats is the choice of a lifetime. On the one hand, they can vote with Nancy Pelosi and fulfill the progressive dream of government run health care. In their view, this is the first step on the path to a permanent majority. Step two is to give amnesty to 20 million illegal immigrants who will certainly benefit from this and other government programs (the Democrats opposition to English as the official language of the USA ensures those who don't speak English will require government assistance) and thereby ensure that Conservatives will never again see higher elected office.

On the other hand, choosing to vote for this legislation could be sounding the death knell for the Republic. Realizing this, people are angry and in the short term anyone voting yes for this bill is risking their career. Dick Morris is projecting Democrat losses in the house in excess of 30 seats regardless of how the vote comes out, and up to 80 seats if they use the tactic Louise Slaughter is advocating to pass the bill without a vote. Politicians are not known for taking the long view and this reality could have a significant outcome on the vote.

So then, we too are faced with the choice of a life time. We can do nothing and hope that things work out alright, or we can take action. I for one do not think I can look myself in the mirror if I do nothing and this bill passes. If I take action and it passes anyway, at least I will have been on the losing side and gone down fighting. But what can we ordinary citizens do?

First, call the congressman/woman for your district and tell them that you expect them to insist on a vote. Then tell them you want them to vote no on the bill. Tell them you will spend time and personal treasure to ensure that, if they vote yes they will be replaced come the next election. Send them an email as well. They likely won't hear or see either one; but their aides will. They keep count, and they want to stay in power.

Then do the same for the other congressmen and women in your state, and the vulnerable officials nationwide. Tell them that you don't live in their district or in their state, but you are watching and will work to unseat them in November. And, you will do so publicly in on-line forums, recruiting people to join you ousting them from office.

Also, consider donating to an organization like the League of American Voters. The LoAV is running ads in the districts of the most vulnerable congressmen and women. Again, according to Dick Morris, public pressure in these districts is mounting and many of the people who voted yes the first time around are now saying they're undecided. Even if you donate only a couple of dollars, it has a cumulative effect. Conservative causes have always relied on large numbers of small donations to get things done. The RNC, the NRCC all can use financial help; if you believe in the work a group does, lend them a hand!

The Democrats are going to have to choose between their progressive legacy and their careers. Our choice is to quietly watch events unfold on TV, or ensure that if they choose to ignore the voice of the opposition we make that voice as loud as possible.

As for me, I intend to raise my voice.

Resources:

Donate to the League Of American Voters: https://www.newsmaxstore.com/contribute/lav/

List of swing votes in congress: http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2010/03/14/call-these-swing-congressmen-on-health-care/

Find your district, your congressman or woman, and lookup the others in your state & nationally: http://www.congress.org/

Bringing Chicago To Mainstream America – Part 1 - Bullies and Liars

2010-03-09T21:55:00.001-07:00

I remember when I read my first Ann Coulter Book several years ago. It was Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right and it was an eye opener for me. Until that point I hadn't paid a lot of attention to how the media operated. I wasn't very in tune with what was happening in politics, and though I voted Republican it more from force of habit than from force of principle. Slander changed all of that. I began to pay more attention to the 'tactics of the big lie' and I was amazed at how often it's used, and how successful it is. In life, there are some things you learn that you just can't unlearn.

To be fair, Coulter is a rabble rouser and her job is to stir up dissent, which she does very well using only truth and a sarcastic wit. The difference I see in her tactics and those of the mainstream media, is she speaks (or writes) honestly and from the heart. The media has an agenda and it matches that of the Obama administration. During the 2008 campaign Coulter was vocal about her disdain for John McCain as the Republican candidate (she started a mock support group called "Get drunk and vote for John McCain) and it brought forth some ire from those on the right; but as he's been a punching bag for Obama since losing the election (falling perfectly into the well planned "the election is over" sound bite from the health care debate for example) she may have been correct in her assessment. Regardless, she doesn't pander to anything but her own beliefs.

The media, however, is a puppet on a string for the Obama oval office. The Eric Massa scandal is an example. I don't know enough about Massa to know if he's a sleaze or a victim. I suspect as the days go by we're going to hear more and more about bad things he's done and likely we'll learn that he should be tossed out on his can. Arguably, so should the majority of people in congress (that the majority are Democrats is coincidental). Buy why the sudden bum's rush on an 18 month veteran of the House when Charlie Rangel's offenses festered for 18 years (and he still has his seat, if not his chairmanship)? Massa claims that this is what happens when you don't go along with the Obama program. The mainstream media have been reporting on his alleged misdeeds and downplaying the "why now" angle. Watching some of the news outlets over the last couple of days, much has been made of his no-so-quiet exit, but not as much has been said about the allegations of bullying by Rahm Emanuel. When I have seen it mentioned, it's in the context of "what a whacko this Massa guy is" and not "is Rahm really spawned from the devil?" Massa's descriptions were unusually specific, and given his record of voting against the grain of his party you have to admit there's a slice of credibility to his claims. On the other hand, he could just be trying to take someone down with him as he goes. The thing is, if the tactics that he says were applied really happened they've proven to be an effective ploy. Is it a coincidence that on the same day Massa announced that he was pushed out because he was voting against the health care bill, Bart Stupak, who has been strong in his stand against the bill (because of federal funding of abortion) now thinks a compromise is possible? Monday, while Massa was all over the news ranting about Emanuel chasing him down in the showers of the Congressional gym, Stupak said with regard to a healthcare compromise that "I think we can get there." Is the timing more than coincidental? Could he have been told "look, Massa is out – and you're next if you don't play along!"? You be the judge, but it fits in with the Chicago style politics, only now the arm twisting, back scratching, in-fighting, threat-leveling culture is riding high in the oval office and not just Lower Wacker Drive. It's entirely possible that this type of thing has always gone on to one extent or another, but I've never seen it played out unabashedly in the open like this. It's as if they don't care what anyone thinks….well, scratch that. Based on their response to public outcry over the health care bill, we already knew they don't care a whit about our opinions.

And the lies keep getting bigger and more front and center. Yesterday Obama lied to a crowd in Pennsylvania when he said the health care bill "brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next decade because we're spending our healthcare dollars more wisely. Those aren't my numbers…" they're from the CBO estimates. Except that they're not from the CBO, so even that statement was a lie. The CBO has said that he was off the mark by a about $900 billion dollars, The $1 trillion savings estimate is for the SECOND decade of the plan, not the first, and that the numbers that went into the second decade's estimate are subject to "substantial uncertainty." What is in that $1 trillion? According to Fox News, $130 billion in premium savings, $200 in reduced payments to doctors and $500 billion in savings from Medicare. In other words, 83% of the estimated savings are from things that we have no evidence will be brought about. And this is one of the tactics of the lie. You say whatever you want about a topic. That's what people hear and repeat. When the correction comes, it's not opening segment news, it not on the front page. It's buried on page ten, or relegated to one cable news network that will say something truthful about the president. The correction is never as big as the statement being corrected.

President Bush caught flak throughout his presidency for being ineloquent. For his use of words like "misunderestimated" he was labeled a moron. The "Somewhere in Texas a village is missing it's idiot" bumper sticker was a best seller. The media has descended on Palin like a pack of hyenas on a fresh carcass over everything she says or does. Yet Obama has visited 57 states – wait, it was 58 – lies about his handling of the health care debate, and makes statements about his pet healthcare bill that are off by a factor of ten, and nobody in the mainstream media seems interested. There's no retraction from the White House, no one calling him on the carpet for carelessness with his numbers or saying he's an idiot for miscounting the number of states – TWICE…in one sentence!! No one, that is, except the converted. But the converted didn't vote for him in the first place.

Bush's creative use of the English language was amusing to some, embarrassing to others, but it wasn't going to bankrupt the nation. Obama's math skills just might.

What Does Bipartisan Mean?

2010-02-22T07:53:00.001-07:00

I sincerely think someone needs to get President Obama a dictionary. He keeps paying lip service to a bipartisan healthcare bill, but either he doesn't know what the word means, or he's full of...well, you can guess what he's full of. Bipartisan's true meaning is "marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties." In that spirit, for almost a year Obama and the House and Senate leaders have ignored the Republican solutions and have ignored the will of the people. It has cost them, to date, two govermorships, a House seat, a Senate seat (held for over 30 years by a Democrat in the bluest state no less!), a defection from Dem to Republican in the House, and multiple retirements in both the House and Senate, leaving dozens of seats in jeopardy of going Republican in 2010.

Obama seemed to get the gravity of the situation by inviting the Republicans to a summit on the 25th of this month to discuss health care. We've been hearing for weeks - since Scott Brown's election - that Obama CAN save his presidency IF he moves to the right, really works with the House and Senate Republicans, really listens to what the ALL the people say, not just what his advisors and the people at the SEIU and MoveOn.Org have to say. And it seemed, for a few brief moments, like he was going to do that.

But then either his puppet masters or his ego took over again, and he has gone back to the "I know better than you what's best for you" style of politics. He announced that he is fully hoping for a bi-partisan solution to health care, and to prove it, until the Republicans come around, he will keep pushing forward with the existing legislation. This is where I think he may not understand the meaning of the word bipartisan, It does NOT mean that the Republicans need to agree with the Democrats. It doesn't mean that the existing legislation should be the starting point. It means getting out a fresh sheet of paper and starting over.

It doesn't stop at healthcare. To prove he's bipartisan, he's offered up money for nuclear power plants - IF the Republicans pass cap & trade legislation. In other words, he's trying to bribe them to get what he wants. He'll give us nuclear power, we just have to compromise our values - and our economy - to get it.

Back to his bipartisan approach to healthcare, he's going to be announcing his own version of the health care plan today, THREE DAYS in advance of the summit. This plan is expected to be purely budgetary, so they can pass it through reconciliation with only 51 votes in teh Senate, and then make up whatever they want on the back end once they have the money to pay for it. No one should be fooled, he has no intention of taking the wishes of the Republicans into consideration. He just doesn't get it!

If you doubt that this administration thinks that we're all a bunch of simpletons, his mouthpiece, Nancy Pelosi, said this: "We (Liberal Democrats) will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn't work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own (good)."

Did you get that? It's for our own good that healthcare be put in the hands of the government, which can't get the Cash For Clunkers dealers paid on time, which can't get unemployment checks paid on time, which causes the private sector to shrink by twenty cents for every dollar it spends, and which will create over 100 NEW AGENCIES with this legislation. If you get cancer and need a timely course of treatment, is this who you would turn to?

Please, keep writing and calling your elected officials. Keep up the pressure. Let's show them the way, or show them the door.

Honesty, Failure and the Permanent Campaign

2010-02-17T22:54:00.001-07:00

"If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months." –Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, Feb. 16, 2010

This was a rare treat – a slice of honesty from a career politician. It's funny how the rare dissent from the administration's party line comes at the same time Bayh announced his retirement. It's almost like he thought "Well, I'm leaving anyway; I might as well go out on a high note!" Honesty is too rare in politics. It's all spin, all the time, and with very few exceptions it's all disingenuous. But let's keep the honesty train rolling, shall we?

Studies have shown that people tend to be their own harshest critics. I've seen this borne out time and again over nine years as a manager. We have an annual review at work, and each employee has to do their own assessment. As a manager I would take their assessment of their work, couple it with my own observations and assign a rating. I would often use their own phrases when I would discuss the rating with them to describe why I gave them the rating I did. In nine years, having done probably 150 of these reviews, I never had anyone go over my head to complain. Sure, at times people were disappointed, but they knew it was right. More often, people were pleasantly surprised that I had rated them better than they thought they deserved. The times where I saw people ranting about how they'd been 'screwed over' by their manager's rating of their work, they were typically people who worked really hard at doing the minimum it took to keep their job while their peers were busting their butts to get ahead. These people would fit in well in the Obama administration.

Take the stimulus bill, for example. One year ago today Obama came to Denver to sign the stimulus act into law, violating, in less than one month from taking office, his promise to fight earmarks. He and his fellow cronies on the left have repeatedly touted the success of the stimulus despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Being objective, the stated purpose for the stimulus was to keep unemployment in check. The President's experts said that passing the stimulus act would keep unemployment below 8% - and without it we would see the numbers crest at almost 9%. Christina Romer even put together a nifty little graph that showed how the stimulus spending would kick in and the economy would be saved. In the world of project management this is called a 'success criteria.' It's the reason the stimulus was commissioned in the first place, and the measure against which its effectiveness is determined. By any objective accounting, it has failed, and failed miserably.

There are a couple of other graphs I would share with you. The first one highlights a close up view of the projections from the Romer with a bright red line reflecting the actual unemployment rate towering over both the Romer projections for unemployment with and without the stimulus. In other words, the stimulus failed. Had we not even put the stimulus in place, we were supposed to hit 8.9% unemployment; instead we hit 10% WITH the stimulus. We were lectured to by Obama in early February 2009 that rampant recklessness had gotten us into this mess, and only the government was big enough to get us out. Spend money on make-work jobs, and people will survive the collapse, he said. If I spend it, they will come. He got his money, but the jobs never came. One argument was that we weren't spending fast enough; but we were assured that the stimulus was working as it was supposed to; that the money from the stimulus (that had to be passed immediately, remember, or society would crumble!) was meant to be spent over the course of several years. That it was working as intended could not have been farther from the truth. If the stimulus was working as it was supposed to, unemployment would have crested at just under 8% in March, not over 10% by mid-year.

Next we began hearing about jobs "saved or created" with stimulus funds. Even yesterday, 'say it ain't so' Joe Biden said that over two million jobs were 'saved or created' with stimulus funds. Though he says this with great conviction, the truth is no one can prove it (and when they try, the reports are fraught with errors, attributing saved jobs to non-existent congressional districts. Oops!). What Joe WON'T say is so is that the two million number is calculated using formulas and economic models that may or may not bear any resemblance to reality. What we do know is that three million jobs have been lost since the stimulus was enacted. In a familiar refrain, the counter argument is that the previous administration left things in much worse shape than anyone really knew. That doesn't exactly provide a ringing endorsement for the people who designed this thing, does it? If they're the experts, and they misjudged things that badly, it's no wonder we're still mired in recession.

As for the 'we're not spending fast enough argument, here's another chart that shows a different view – as spending has increased, so has unemployment. Of course, this can't be true – can it?

It can, and here's how. Much of the stimulus money has been spent keeping state workers employed. This is significant because a study by Harvard economist Robert Barro indicates there's a negative relationship to government spending – that when the government spends $1, the private sector shrinks by $.20. A University of San Diego study puts that figure at .56 – so, for every $1 spent by government, the private sector shrinks by $.44. In other words, while the state workers have kept their jobs via stimulus spending, the private sector keeps shedding jobs.

With people angry, Democrats retiring rather than face expulsion at the hands of angry voters, and plummeting approval numbers, President Obama is going back to his stand by motto: when times get tough, the tough start campaigning. Biden, Pelosi, and Reid have been dispatched to go and tout stimulus success stories. Let me see if I get this right – we gave Obama $787 BILLION dollars to go and improve the economy and the stimulus has, by its own measure, failed to work. Rather than admit it's not working, pull back the unused funds and try something else, we're going to keep spending our way to oblivion, and his solution is to waste even more money by sending our top politicians (and their security details) around the country to spout dubious numbers and – let's be honest – blow smoke up our collective arse. Even Janet "The system worked" Napolitano has been sent out on the road to crow about how successful the stimulus has been (really, she's a good choice given that she's proven she's adept at signaling success while up to her neck in failure). I just thank God these people aren't in charge of something that can kills us in a more direct fashion, like our health care…er, wait – I don't like the sounds of that!!

What, Me Worry?

2010-02-10T00:59:00.001-07:00

This week, the Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned." Should we be worried?

This supposed event is to take place on the 31^st anniversary of the Islamic resolution that put Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in control of the nation back in 1979. One of his quotes is as follows: "Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those people are witless. The Sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim."

Despite this quote, despite repeated acts of terror, our current President lectures to us at every chance he gets about how much the world owes Islam. He has called the Islamic morning call to prayer the most beautiful sound on earth. He's gone so far as to tell Israel that they need to stop building new settlements and has tried pushing them toward policies that benefit the terrorist funding Hamas leadership. At the same time he won't put sanctions on Iran where people are being oppressed, beaten and even hung for daring to oppose their dubiously elected president, emboldening the despots in charge. Is all of this cause for worry?

Political correctness practically mandated that Bush qualify Islam as a religion of peace before being allowed to lambaste the fundamentalists who (peacefully?) murdered nearly 3000 American citizens on September 11, 2001. The following Sunday Jeremiah Wright condemned not the terrorists but the country that they attacked. Seven years and half a gross of Sunday sermons later, Obama only made a passing, half hearted attempt to repudiate the comments during the 2008 campaign. Does this indicate he agrees that the people in the World Trade Center deserved their fate? Is this cause for worry?

And now, back to Iran. This country has held Americans hostage, and for the next 30 years they've ended their Friday prayers with "death to America.". They have sponsored terrorist activity in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Former Iranian leaders have said that in a nuclear exchange, they would gladly lose the lives of 90 million Muslims if it meant that Israel would be wiped from the map in the bargain. They recently announced that they are increasing their enrichment of uranium.

Enrichment of uranium. Hatred for Israel. Public declarations of actions that will leave the West shocked – and a US President who seems completely unconcerned about the threat this rogue nation opposes. Should WE be worried?

Unlawful ban of guns

2010-01-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

CSU President Tony Frank

Colorado State University

Ft Collins, Colorado

Mr. President,

I have written you a previous letter regarding the Board Of Governors decision to go against the wishes of the Student Senate and ban the carrying of concealed handguns by people who hold the Colorado Concealed Handgun Permit. Having received no response, I felt I should send you another missive. The Board is taking this action despite the fact that it violates both the Colorado state firearm preemption law and the Colorado Uniform Shall-Issue Concealed Carry Law. I urge you to follow the established law and allow people who have been trained by the NRA, screened by both their county sheriff and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and had their fingerprints added to IAFIS, to carry a concealed handgun in the careful and prudent manner in which they've been trained.

As you are no doubt aware, criminals do not respect no-carry laws, and they seek places where they are less likely to encounter resistance to their crimes. They also know that the police cannot be everywhere, and making CSU a no-carry zone will serve to leave students and faculty vulnerable to crimes that might otherwise have been perpetrated elsewhere. Heaven forbid a Virginia Tech-style attack should happen, the student body will be completely defenseless.

Conversely, interviews with armed robbers who are in prison show that one of their top fears is encountering a victim who is armed. In our society it is the criminals who should be afraid, and following the existing law is one way to keep it that way.

Thank you for your time,

Rich Baker

State of the Union Reviewed

2010-01-27T22:28:00.002-07:00

Once a year the President is constitutionally mandated to get in front of the American people and a joint session of congress and provide a status update of how the country is doing. At least, that's what we're supposed to get. Instead, tonight we got a campaign speech that was a vain attempt to be all things to all people, while providing nothing of substance (which is really a good summary of the president's policies when you think about it).

To be sure, Obama tried to throw bones to a number of constituencies. He talked up his record as a tax cutter and even suggested getting rid of capital gains taxes for the people who invest in small business. He spoke about nuclear power, and drilling for oil offshore, both things that people not allied with the left are generally in favor of. He spoke of changing the tone of politics and of being open to suggestions from Republicans about how to achieve the goals of health care reform. And that's where I began to realize that this wasn't a state of the union address; this was a "Best Of the 2008 Campaign Speeches" montage. The reality is that Obama didn't back off of any of his big government ideas or the socialist plans he has for our economy. Let's go through some of the highlights:

"I'm eager to hear alternatives" on health care, said the President who has completely ignored the Republicans, held back-office meetings with strict admission standards (not a Democrat, health insurance company or union rep? Sorry, you must stay behind the velvet rope!) and authorized the outright bribery of many of the nation's leaders.

"We cannot wage a permanent campaign" said the president who just re-hired his campaign manager to help with his agenda in the wake of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts.

"Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false or how malicious is ok, but it's precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping our people" said the president who several times this evening blamed the previous administration for all of our problems and said the Republicans only say 'no.'

"I'm trying to change the tone of our politics" said the president who within 60 seconds of that statement took another shot at Republicans.

"I'm going to start meeting with the leaders of the Republican party" said the president who for a full year has shut them out of the health care debate and repeatedly insulted them.

"Tonight I'm calling on congress to publish all earmark requests on a single web site" said the president who has not delivered on his promise to have the budget online, broadcast the health care debate on CSPAN and on the web; nor has he gone through any bill 'with a scalpel' to remove earmarks as he famously said he would during the campaign. Instead he has simply signed everything that was put before him.

"Let's invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt" said the president who has overseen the largest expansion of the national deficit in the 228 years of this nation's history.

I could go on, but by now you get the point. It was all fluff, all smoke and mirrors designed to make you think that every statement he made didn't apply to him. He actually said the stimulus worked and pushed for another one, proposes giving $10,000 tax credits (not deductions) to families putting people through school, capping how much people will have to pay on their student loans in the same speech where he proposes a spending freeze. Remember this quote from the campaign? "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel." Yeah, that was Obama mocking John McCain for proposing a spending freeze. Now, a year and a few months later, Obama has not only not gotten out his scalpel, but he's picking up the hatchet. Well, kind of...the freeze will not take effect until NEXT year (2011). The timing is significant because by this time next year the supermajorities in the Senate and the House will be gone and the spending binge will be OVER ANYWAY. He's giving us the sleeves out of his vest.

He is still pushing for the health care bill to move forward even though public sentiment is against it, it has cost his party 4 elections (including a seat in a state that last elected a Republican in 1972!) and it has not been even remotely bi-partisan. He maintains that this is too big to back away from, and for him it is. It's one of three legs of his complete federal takeover of the nation, and is probably the keystone to it all.

He perpetuated his tactic of class warfare by continuing to attack bankers and corporations for turning profits and avoiding the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. Rather than change the system to encourage the right behavior, he wants to impose regulation that force even more work off shore and further depress risk taking, innovation and ultimately will kill more of the jobs that do stay in America. This is the second leg of the federal takeover.

He talked about cap and trade and climate change as being vital to our economy, even saying "there are those who doubt the evidence [of climate change]." What evidence would that be, Mr. President? The evidence that was improperly gathered, purposely excluded or intentionally destroyed? He just plowed through a chorus of boos as though there was no Climategate scandal, because cap and trade gives control of utilities and manufacturing industry to the federal government. This is the third leg of the Democratic federal takeover.

He mentioned towards the start of the speech that "China is not waiting to revamp its economy…India is not waiting." Is it a co-incidence that representatives from those two nations walked out of the climate conference in Copenhagen? They aren't about to let the global climate cabal get in their way, and they realize that there's nothing in it for them, so they left. They're not about to artificially increase their cost of doing business to give corrupt politicians in other countries their hard earned cash. While India and China are busy out-competing us on price of production and freedom of industry, the United States had over 165 members of its delegation stay for the duration, some paying over $2000 per day for lodging and food!! The Democrats can't even manage their expenses individually, and yet they're surprised we don't trust them on health care, corporate regulations or cap and trade? They're surprised that we don't think they have our best interests at heart? Their ignorance is astounding!

I think the fundamental thing that Obama misses is that in all of his pledges to invest in our people the source of that investment IS THE PEOPLE. Maybe it would be more precise to say he misses that WE understand that the government cannot give ANYONE ANYTHING that it has not first TAKEN from someone else. In the end, Obama's policies amount to robbing from Peter to pay Paul. At least he can always count on the support of Paul.

Coyote Call To Action – 2nd Amendment Rights (2AR) Under Assault at Colorado State University

2010-01-27T12:51:00.001-07:00

The information below came to me from the NRA Institute For Legal Action (NRA-ILA). Here's the background…the progressive, anti-second amendment CSU board of Governors wanted the Student Senate to issue a proclamation about the carrying of concealed weapons on campus, which they did. The problem was that the Student Senate did not issue the proclamation that the Governors wanted. The Senate voted to continue to allow students in possession of their Colorado concealed carry permits to follow the letter of the law in Colorado and carry guns on campus. CSU is one of the last universities in the nation that allows this, and the Student Senate is proud of that fact.

The board of Governors promptly went against the wishes of the students, however, and has decreed that law abiding permit holders will not be allowed to bring their guns on campus, leaving the students completely unprotected if ever a Virginia Tech-style attack were to happen. I urge all of you to call or write the University President (see contact information below) and let him know that:

As a publicly funded university he should be obeying the established laws of the state of Colorado
CCW permit holders have undergone NRA training, demonstrated proficiency with a handgun, been scrutinized by their County Sherriff Department and Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) background checks, and are fingerprinted and loaded into I-AFIS (International Automated Fingerprint Identification System) before they are given the responsibility of carrying a firearm.
Criminals do not respect weapons bans or the fact that murder is against the law.
Disarming citizens only leaves them vulnerable to criminals
Criminals are opportunists, and will look to commit their crimes in places they deem to be the easiest to succeed. Places that ban firearms are high on that list
Interviews with incarcerated armed robbers show that their number one fear when committing a crime is that the victim may be armed

I have already sent a letter to the University President letting him know that it pains me as a CSU alum, but until the established law is followed, I can no longer support the university financially, and if this moves forward as they plan, I will drop out of the alumni association and recommend my soon-to-be college-bound nieces attend college at the University Of Utah where the right to concealed carry is not abridged.

Thanks for your support of our 2AR. This insidious erosion of our rights is indoctrinating our youth in progressive beliefs, and we need to fight to ensure that we continue to enjoy our freedoms; otherwise, we will wake up one day to discover them gone for good.

Colorado State University Seeking to Outlaw
Concealed Carry on Campus
Please Stand-Up and Make Your Voices Heard!

On Wednesday, January 20, Colorado State University (CSU) formally announced their draft proposal to prohibit firearms on all CSU campuses. Exempt from the ban would be weapons used by law enforcement, military and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). This draft policy will be brought up for consideration at the CSU Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday, February 23. A copy of the draft can be found at www.safety.colostate.edu/files/weapons_policy_draft_01_15_10.pdf.

Last year, the CSU Board of Governors drafted the policy knowing that it would violate the Colorado state firearm preemption law and the Colorado Uniform Shall-Issue Concealed Carry Law. Current state law strictly regulates the carry or transport of firearms on schools, colleges and universities.

It is important that Colorado's NRA members voice their concerns to the CSU President that the policy must uphold the Colorado law and allow permit holders to carry concealed for self-defense.

Please contact President Tony Frank TODAY by phone at 970-491-6211 or email presofc@colostate.edu and respectfully urge him to comply with Colorado law.

Pardon me while I rant

2010-01-23T00:30:00.001-07:00

Before I get started on this rant I want to say that I do think the situation in Haiti is a tragedy. The toll in human life is simply staggering, and the misery the Haitians are enduring is something I cannot imagine. I'm glad we live in a prosperous nation there the government will give money and resources to help, and Americans of all stripes will part with their money and time to do whatever they can to aid the cause. Helping others is the right thing to do, particularly when you're in the enviable position of possessing the means to provide that help. Having said that, did we REALLY need all four networks broadcasting the benefit tonight? Wouldn't one have been enough? It's not like I'm going to donate while I watch channel 4, then switch to channel 9 and donate again.

Now, I don't want to go off on a rant here, but there are another couple of things that have been nagging at me. Barack Obama has been travelling around the world for a year apologizing for the arrogance of the United States, yet every time there is a natural disaster, the world seems to hold its breath waiting to see what the USA will do. And we're in a no win situation! If we don't do enough, we're crass, thoughtless Americans. If we take charge and get 'er done, we're an occupying force. So time and again we pour treasure, time and resources into places like the tsunami ravaged Asian coasts, earthquake zones in China and elsewhere, and now Haiti. The only natural disaster we have not had a stellar response to was within our own borders, and much of that problem was caused by the decisions of men (neglect of the levies, failure to evacuate, etc) not the lack of a proper response. So when we're always at the front, giving the most in terms of time, treasure and resources, what right do other countries have to criticize us for 'occupying' a land?

When you look at Haiti, you see a land where the United States has given over $1 billion in foreign aid over the last 5 years. Despite that, the country's infrastructure was crumbling (before the quake), half the population is out of work and illiterate, and drugs, gangs and disease prey upon the people who live there. Now, with the earthquakes, we're pouring in another quarter tone-half of a billion dollars of government funds (that we all paid for) and for the last week up to and including tonight's telethon, individuals are donating their hard earned personal money to help the relief efforts. I'll be very interested to see how much the people, not the government of France gives; or for that matter, the countries that house so much wealth and hatred for the west, like Saudi Arabia, China, Russia. They castigate the 'ugly American' but when the fan meets the feces halfway around the world, thousands of anonymous Americans will willingly give these people money because we have things so good here, because it's the right thing to do, even though we never can know how that money was used or who really benefitted.

And this is the country that Obama repeatedly apologizes for.

Now look forward ten years and pretend Obama has gotten all of his programs passed and Oprah is delighted because the US is now like Denmark. College education is free, healthcare is free and housing is subsidized. Evil corporate executives don't make much more than their employees, everyone drives a hybrid car, the population of trees is up 2000% because of people and corporations buying carbon offsets to make up for the fact that when we breathe we pollute the earth with carbon dioxide, and all the guns are melted down into statues so there's no crime. You can look forward to enjoying your retirement (social security is fully funded, of course) in peace and harmony with all beings. Of course, your federal income tax rate is 50%; payroll tax is another 15%; state tax is 10%, gasoline is $8 per gallon and your utilities are 4 times what they are today, leaving you about 15 cents of every dollar you make to purchase food, clothes, and any miscellaneous things like going on dates, or buying birthday and Christmas presents. In this world, when the earth quakes and people need help, if we can't afford it, who will run to the rescue? France? In ten years, they're going to be majority Muslim due to their declining reproduction rates. What is the humanitarian record of Muslim nations again?

If we're pouring our money into a country, use our military to restore order, bring in our health care workers to care for the sick and injured, shouldn't we be in charge of how that money gets spent? Our government is gung ho to tell our banks what they can and can't do while they owe TARP funds ("As long as you're under my roof, you'll live by my rules!") but we won't do the same when it comes to spending our relief funds. We have millions of people out of work, many of which are idled construction workers. Should not our money be spent putting our people to work? And if our people are the ones working, shouldn't we be directing them? Our money, our rules.

Of course I could be wrong.

Liberal Hypocrites – Isn’t That Redundant?

2010-01-14T23:12:00.001-07:00

One of the things that people seem constantly amazed at is the overt hypocrisy demonstrated by the members of the Democrat party. It's not surprising, though, when you think about it. The only people who have high moral standards are the conservatives; this is why it's such a scandal when one of them falls to earth. Only when the offender says he believes in something, and does the opposite, can you label it hypocrisy.

The left, therefore, can get away with murder because they have no compunction about standing for anything, other than that which will win an election. It's also made easier when there is a compliant and willing partner in the mainstream media.

Larry Craig, a Republican, has a long record of voting against gay rights. When he was in Minnesota and allegedly made an advance toward an undercover officer in a public restroom, a media firestorm ensued. Craig still denies any homosexual activity but his career was effectively over and he didn't run for re-election.

Across the aisle, Barney Frank, an openly gay Democrat, had an affair with a male executive at Fannie Mae. He received $40,000 from Fannie for his campaigns. He's a member of the House Financial Services committee, where he has routinely opposed regulation of the banking behemoth that is Fannie Mae. He defended Fannie only weeks before the financial meltdown in 2008, saying that the company was sound and not in crisis. Has he been excoriated by the press for a huge conflict of interest? Does he feel pressure to step down? Hardly.

The media has had a field day tearing down Tiger Woods, tracking down every mistress, finding every byte of text messages that were sent, but is unable to find Obama's long form birth certificate, high school grades, college grades, any evidence that he had student loans (or how his tuition was paid in the absence of loans) or any legal briefs he wrote while working at his Chicago law firm.

Harry Reid's comments about Obama's skin color and 'negro dialect' were 'beyond stupid' according to the Washington Post, but not worthy of his being tossed from office. While I don't entirely disagree with this statement (is the United Negro College Fund an offensive phrase? There are mixed messages here about what is acceptable…) I do disagree with the overall defense. They might as well say "Oh, c'mon, guy, relax - sure it was in poor taste, but it's not really that bad is it? C'mon, man, he's old – he's from a different time!" They have actually trotted out the Trent Lott scandal (Lott said he was proud of Mississippi having voted for Strom Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform. Wasn't 1948 a 'different time?" The hypocrisy comes in though, when Barbara Boxer said that she didn't think that Reid should step down, and that she didn't recall any Democrats calling for Trent Lott's resignation when he uttered his unfortunate comments. To borrow a phrase from Obama himself, the lady from California is engaging in some revisionist history. Mary Landrieu from Louisiana (she of the $100 million payoff for her vote on healthcare) said this of Trent Lott: "Does the Republican Party think this should be their leader? I can promise you if a Democratic leader said something like this or close to this, their leadership position would be pulled, because our party feels very strongly." Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it appears the strength of their convictions is not that great after all. Maybe the key word there is promise; based on Obama's track record, the word promise appears to have a different meeting from what I thought it did.

In any case, it would serve conservatives well to stop dropping our jaws every time a Democrat gets a pass on something that a Republican would be crucified over, and accept that hypocrisy is in their nature. Instead of spending efforts on bemoaning that they don't get their just desserts, we should spend our energy making sure that their hypocrisies see the light of day and work to get people elected to DO have a sense of honor and integrity. We're seeing a conservative reawakening, and to try to keep score against a political party who has no moral center or obligation to the truth is futile. Instead, to paraphrase John Adams, let's let the facts speak for us, for they are stubborn things that cannot be altered by the desires of men.

Slaying The Hydra

2009-12-04T00:02:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama has played more golf in 10 months than Bush did in his first two years. So what? Say his apologists; he has a stressful job, he needs to relax. This is nothing more than a 'manufactured controversy.' My personal litmus test for evaluating the actions of Obama has become this: if Bush did it, would I still be as upset? If yes, then I feel it's a legitimate beef. The big difference is that the media – our supposed watch dog – doesn't excoriate him for anything like they did with Bush. Rather, they defend him or even worse, ignore his foibles completely.

I could really care less about the golf. I know from experience you can get a lot done on a golf course. I've even played better while listening to a conference call on my Bluetooth because I not focusing on the minutiae of my swing. What's really sticking in my craw (at least right now) is that he's paying more attention to everything that doesn't matter than he is to things that do matter. He's attended 22 fund raisers so far (Bush did 6 in his first full year); he's given over 120 speeches as of mid October (one every 2.5 days); he dropped everything and flew to Copenhagen to pitch the Olympics for Chicago (and failed) but he couldn't attend the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall because of his busy schedule; he's bowed inappropriately to royalty, first in Saudi Arabia, then in Japan (faux pas at best – a deliberate message of submission and regret at worst) while snubbing the Royalty of our greatest ally; he's won the Nobel Peace Prize for accomplishing…nothing. He believes we can spend our way to prosperity despite hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary. He spent $300,000 of our money on 'date night' with his wife – TWICE! He believes making 95% of the population change their health coverage to accommodate 5% who need help is a good thing, and that adding millions to the insurance rolls and increasing the things that are covered, including pre-existing conditions that guarantee a loss, will somehow reduce costs. When Americans have stood up to both him and the congressional bobbleheads, we the people have been labeled all sorts of nasty things. He's personally appeared before joint sessions of congress to ram through the stimulus bill and the health care reform, yet he's dithered for months over sending troops to Afghanistan. While people have been dying half a world away, he finds time to blame Bush for not sending more troops while he was still president.

In other words, Obama is not leading, he's campaigning and seeing the world on our dime. It comes as no surprise to me that someone who had all of 185 days of experience as a US Senator before abdicating his responsibilities to Illinois and beginning his campaign for President that he would not know how to lead. The question is – who IS leading the country? One need not look beyond Axelrod, Emmanuel and the dozens of 'czars' with their dubious backgrounds to see that the leadership of our country is a hydra. When the unpleasantness of reality crashes down (Van Jones is a communist, Anita Dunn hearts Mao) Obama, Inc is loathe to admit imperfections in anything they've done, so they defend the indefensible until it becomes damaging to the collective to do so. At that point, the offending head of the hydra is lopped off, only to have two more take its place somewhere else. Of course, the media is too complicit in this charade to do any actual investigation. They leave that to professional, seasoned reporters like Hannah Giles.

In the end, I wonder how much any of this really matters. We're at a tipping point in the history of our nation. We have upwards of twenty million illegal immigrants in our country. The administration has every intention of giving them amnesty, getting them on the government dole, and giving them the vote. When that happens, we'll never see a conservative elected to major office again. Ben Franklin said "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." 45% of the population already doesn't pay any taxes; when we add another 8% to that total, we're sunk. Demography, as they say, is destiny. We have this one change to seize ours. We take back congress in 2010 severing many heads of the hydra; then we take back the White House in 2012, severing the central head and burying it forever. It's either kill the hydra or go the way of the Soviet Union. What will you do today to help kill the hydra?

Calling a spade a shovel

2009-11-13T00:52:00.002-07:00

Semantics are very important in politics. The wrong phrase uttered at an inopportune moment can sink a political career. Conversely, the right phrase said at the right time can make an immortal statement. "Four score and seven years ago"…"we have nothing to fear but fear itself"…"ask not what your country can do for you"…"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" As you read these words, you probably envisioned the men saying them[1].

Now, how about these: "read my lips; no new taxes" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Both of these lines are unforgettable, but for different reasons than the previous examples.

So, with all the eyes on a politician, the opposition watching for a misstep to take advantage of, it's not surprising that they are so careful with what they say, and the President gets the most focus of all. With all the goo-goo eyes the media makes at Obama, fawning over his celebrated oratory skills, it gets lost that what he DOESN'T say that can be just as important as what he DOES say. In the case of the Ft. Hood shootings, the word to be avoided at all costs is TERRORISM. If the attack was decreed to be terrorism, it would be the first attack on our soil since 9/11, and would be a mortal blow to Obama's credibility.

Enter the science of semantics. It was mass murder, a mass killing, the desperate act of a troubled mind, but it was definitely NOT the ideological act of a terrorist.

Then start the blame game. Psychiatrists who examined Major Nidal Hassan wondered if he was capable of something like this. The Army knew he was unstable but did nothing. The FBI knew he was communicating with Al Qaeda but didn't do anything with that knowledge. Everyone else is to blame, not Obama!

Why would I blame Obama? One of his first acts as president was to send a video to the Iranian people [2] telling them how much America admires them. The most beautiful sound in the world to Obama is not the National Anthem being sung before the World Series or church bells on Christmas morning; rather, it's the Islamic morning call to prayer. He's bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, which was the first time an American president has done so. He went to Cairo at talked at length about how, like, totally awesome Islam is and how much the rest of the world owes Muslims for their contributions to society at large[3]. He gave two minutes of fluff and 'shout outs' in a speech on the day of the shootings before addressing the tragedy and cautioning not to jump to conclusions about the motives. He's repeatedly referred to Islam as a peaceful religion and is careful not to offend Muslims by referring to them as "Islamic Extremists," but has no qualms about his Department Of Homeland Security labeling people in our own country "Right Wing Extremists." And he's let Eric Holder run roughshod over the intelligence community for past perceived indiscretions. In light of the environment fostered in the last 10 months, can we fault the FBI for not labeling an Army Major as an Islamic extremist and potential terrorist? Political correctness has replaced honesty in our society, and that is obviously a dangerous thing.

Here are some things coming to light about Major Nidal Malik Hassan:

He shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is great in Arabic) before he peacefully opened fire, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more
He sent several emails to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who has since praised Hassan's peaceful actions.
He felt Muslims should be exempted from being deployed to war zones where they will be killing fellow Muslims. Apparently deploying to kill Christians was not a problem for him.
He had personal business cards on which he declared himself to be a "Soldier of Allah."

As I said, political correctness has replaced honesty in our society. Let's call a spade a spade [4]; a terrorist act is committed with a ideological or political goal in mind. A mass killer goes to an office building in Orlando and kills 8 people because he believes the business is preventing him from getting unemployment. A terrorist kills 13 people in an Army base because he is a Muslim and wants to prevent the soldiers from killing other Muslims, and killing these soldiers is an acceptable form of protest in his mind.

Do the actions of Major Nidal Malik Hassan meet the definition of terrorism? What do you think?

[1] Well, except for Lincoln. Maybe you envisioned Hal Holbrooke in "North & South" in which case I recommend you visit Boone Hall Farm just outside Charleston, SC. You'll love it! But I digress…"

[2] Later Obama would later stand mute while these same people he professed his admiration for were gunned down in the streets of Tehran for protesting their election results.

[3] Go to this link to see a heavily edited video containing segments of this and other speeches: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28 It really is amazing the lengths to which he goes to pander to Muslims.

[4] No, it's not a racial slur. Look it up.

Things Were Not Always Thus (Part 1)

2009-10-01T21:59:00.001-06:00

At the beginning of the movie "The 13^th Warrior" (one of my favorites!), Antonio Banderas is on the deck of a Viking ship that is rocking violently in a storm. His voiceover says "I am Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, Ibn Al Abbas, Ibn Rasid, Ibn Hammad." [water crashes on the deck of the ship as waves batter it] "And things were not always thus. At one time, I was a poet in the greatest city in the world. Life was easy and I lived without care."

I feel that way about our political landscape now. When I think back over the last year and a half, it's amazing to me how far we've come from where we were. Eighty weeks ago, the GOP was gearing up for a fight with Hillary Clinton for the presidency. 56 weeks ago, John McCain's campaign was soaring, buoyed on the wings of Sarah Palin. 52 weeks ago, his campaign was souring, weighed down by a collapsing economy under the tenure of a Republican president, and Obama coasted into the presidency after 180 days of actual service as a US Senator (followed by his campaign, which last time I checked was still ongoing). He coasted, just like he did for the Illinois State Legislature, when his campaign staff meticulously disqualified signature after signature on his opponents ballot registrations until Obama was running unopposed [1]. He coasted, just like he did when he ran for the US Senate and a few months before the election word leaked out that his opponent had tried – unsuccessfully - to take his actress-wife Jeri to sex clubs [2]; after this revelation, Obama was again running virtually unopposed. Events sure have a way of repeatedly going Obama's way in a fashion that would raise suspicions at the black jack tables in Vegas. It's no wonder, then, that he and his team expected little to no resistance when his reign began and he began to shove his agenda down our collective throats.

The American people, on the other hand, are used to a certain level of apathy from our politicians. They make a lot of promises, bloviate, muddle through some legislation, but by and large they don't do a tremendous amount of damage; or if they do, the next guy (or gal) can undo it when the balance of power shifts. We've grown accustomed in many cases to voting for the least objectionable candidate, or blindly pulling the lever for the person with the 'R' or 'D' next to their name. Most people, if they're honest, would say they do more research when buying a new car, the latest generation plasma TV or iPod than they do when going to the polls. Some people are so jaded they think voting for the R or D doesn't even matter – they'll both just screw you in the end. I can and have identified with many of these attitudes at various times.

This is why the ferocity with which the Obama administration attacked their agenda has taken so many people by surprise, including congress. Take the stimulus bill – it was pushed through before anyone had a chance to read it, and no one really knew what hit us.

The omnibus spending bill, with it's hundreds of earmarks, was next. Obama had promised during the campaign (which still hasn't ended) to go through spending bills with a scalpel, removing earmarks and waste. He didn't even take a second look at the omnibus bill before signing it. We were left like a batter who just watched the first two pitches whiz by. We were down 0-2 in the count without even having the chance to swing.

We hit a foul ball into the stands with the House's crap & trade bill. Even if the eight RINOs had voted against it, it only means eight more democrats would have had to vote for it . It would have passed anyway, but we gave it a good fight, and the people started to wake up. Finally, people became alarmed at the spending and the nefarious methods being deployed to get us to foot the bill for this fiscal gluttony.

Like a college student waking up with a hangover wondering "What the heck did I do last night?", Americans are viewing the economic wreckage that we now have to clean up, and we're saying "not one more cent." People are either unemployed, about to be unemployed or have a job but in the back of their minds are wondering when the sword will fall on them. They're either facing foreclosure, a mountain of debt they can't pay off, or they're terrified to spend money lest they need it for that rainy day – and they see storm clouds on the horizon. Like the hung over college student who wretches at the thought of taking a drink, the American taxpayer sees the amount of spending going on, and feels sick. They know that in the end they are the ones left holding the bill; so they reject it.

Enter Obama and the Democrat controlled congress. At the very time when Americans are fighting to regain some fiscal stability and control over their destinies, the Obamacrats blow through the debt ceiling, recklessly approve legislation not because it's right but because Obama asks them to do so, blame the previous administration for their own actions, and they're not done yet! With health care reform, they have pitched legislation that portends to take away our control over choices in our healthcare and carry with it a great cost to boot. These changes only stand to benefit a small number of people. Consider:

Cuts to Medicare negatively impact seniors.
Plans to force all people to carry the prescribed levels of coverage negatively impact the people who are young and healthy and don't need gold plated coverage.
Plans to tax – I mean fine – people who don't buy insurance negatively impacts those who either don't want it or can't afford it.
Mandating what insurance plans must cover to stay in business negatively impacts the 90 % of the people who have insurance today and are largely satisfied with it.

With these changes being so negative to so many groups, and so many promises already broken, is it any wonder that people are skeptical? When elected officials can't or won't answer or explain things related to the plans proposed, is it any wonder we began to voice that skepticism? When politicians dismissed our skepticism, is it any wonder we began to protest? The politicians, with the help of the media, minimized the size of our protests; so we got organized and created larger protests. Rather than address our issues, or at least even play lip service to them, the media and the politicians openly mocked and insulted us [3], calling us racists, domestic terrorists and whatever other 'ist' they had handy. Is it a wonder, then, that we began to lose our tempers at town hall meetings?

Even in the face of massive opposition they still won't give it up. They know that even in their own party support is weak, so they keep saying that the 'nuclear option' where the legislation only needs 51 votes in the senate to pass, as opposed to 60, is being considered. Essentially they're saying "You don't like it? Too bad, we're doing it whether you like it or not." It seems they've forgotten that they work for us!

As this escalates back and forth, what is our next move? We're facing the possibility of our government breaking protocol to pass legislation that has overwhelming opposition from the people who elected these folks in the first place. If they do it, where do we go from here? A likely move will be to eject all the people who supported the bills and are up for re-election in 2010. Will there be open rebellion? Will Texas secede? Are we potentially facing a modern civil war? Your guess is as good as mine. However, I truly believe the DNC doesn't really care about the seats they'll lose, because they know that once they get this entitlement passed, even if they lose power in 2010, they'll get it back because step two is to grant citizenship to illegal immigrants. Naturalized citizens predominantly vote Democrat, so with heath care and an influx of tens of millions of Democrat voters, they will have created their nanny state. We want to boot them in 2010? You can't threaten them with taking away something they're prepared to lose. My advice? Work to defeat their agenda, but stock up on bottled water and canned foods…if this thing passes, life could get interesting, and we may all be saying "things were not always thus…."

[1] In the book "The Case Against Barack Obama", David Freddoso details how Obama talks of a speech he gave during this time being one of his best at that point in his career. The fact is, he could have stood on the dais and made fart noises in his armpits for 20 minutes; when you have no opponents it only takes one vote to win, and he could probably count in Michelle's support.

[2] This has been called the "sexless scandal" and many allegations have been levied that David Axelrod pushed hard on the Chicago Tribune to ensure this got a lot of press.

[3] When I think about Rachel Maddow using the phrase "tea bagger" as often as possible and chuckling to herself because she's so clever that she put one past the network censors, I want to vomit with rage.

Guilt By Association

2009-09-19T01:11:00.001-06:00

After Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer withdrew from cabinet nominations, Geithner and Sebelius were confirmed even though they both owed years of back taxes, and Van Jones and Yosi Sergant were ousted from their czar posts, people assumed that there was a vetting problem in the Obama camp. "Who's vetting these people?" was the question asked. Implicit in that question is an assumption of innocence on the part of the administration. They didn't pick bad people; they have a poor selection process. The question that hasn't been asked, at least out loud by the mainstream media, is "Are these the people that Obama REALLY wants in place representing his administration?" What if the vetting process is working exactly as designed? Well, that just may be the case. Hillary Clinton recently called the vetting process "exhaustive." [1]

When I was young there were kids on the block that used to run around and cause trouble. Slingshots and BB guns were their common accessories, and there was a certain amount of lure that came with tools like that. Even though I went to school with them and knew them fairly well, I was forbidden from hanging out with them so I missed out on the all the fun. Then one night, shortly after my mom came home from a women's club meeting there was a knock on the door, and when she answered it, there was a policeman on the other side. He was looking for someone who had shot out a car window with a BB gun, and the shot had come from the bike path next to our house. I had just become the prime suspect. I swore I hadn't done it and it was true; another neighbor put the finger on the responsible parties, and all the kids who were with 'the shooter.' I was off the hook; they all got in big trouble. This was my first exposure to 'guilt by association.'

I tell this tale because it's relevant to our president. He has, for a long time, surrounded himself with people who openly hate our country, hate the government, and hold racial biases. He's supported organizations that have been exposed as criminal enterprises. He's been endorsed (sought their endorsement!) by a communist organization and selected communists to represent him in his administration. My parents didn't let me hang out with some of the kids in our neighborhood because they knew sooner or later those associations and the behavior they would encourage would get me into trouble. Is that going to happen to our president? It may already be starting.

If you go back to the 1990's, ACORN and the SEIU (local 880) were two of the groups who helped form The New Party in Chicago. This communist organization was frustrated with the centrist governing of Bill Clinton, so they endorsed candidates who pledged to push their agenda. Obama was one of those candidates, and members of the new party actively campaigned on his behalf. [2] Is this relevant? It may help explain the presence of communist Van Jones as the Green Jobs Czar. It certainly makes one wonder just how far to the left does Obama go?

Obama's ties to Acorn didn't stop with the new party. He was part of a team of lawyers representing ACORN in their attempt to register voters in Illinois in 1995. They won, forcing Illinois to implement the law. Of course now ACORN is under investigation in several states for voter registration fraud, so they don't follow the law anyway. He also successfully represented a group of aldermen in getting ward boundaries redrawn. So with new wards favoring the aldermen, loosened voter registration laws and the endorsement of the New Party, Obama's political career was off and running. [3]

In politics, a favor given must be returned. Obama helped ACORN; they helped get him elected to the Illinois state legislature. Last year, they helped him get elected president. So it was no wonder when Obama came to the White House and forced the stimulus bill through it was loaded with pork that was going to go to "community organizations" like ACORN. They weren't going to get all of it, so say the apologists, but you can take it to the bank that they were going to get some of it. Then ACORN was going to be one of the groups helping with the census…the census that determines congressional districts. With a history of redrawing boundaries for political gain, savvy people grew nervous. Talk of using "sampling" to "extrapolate" numbers in the census did nothing to mollify critics.

Enter James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, two independent investigative reporters. The enterprising duo set out to see just how far they could get ACORN to go, and the answers shocked even them. Posing as a prostitute and a pimp, they went to several ACORN offices looking for assistance with taxes (turn $96,000 into $9,600? No problem!), housing (Want to run a brothel? Sure thing) and importing underage sex slaves (I have contacts in Tijuana! Gotcha covered!). Giles, in an interview with Sean Hannity, said that every single office they visited helped them. When you watch the videos, the people don't even blink at the requests they make. Acorn's nut has been cracked.

Of course, the apologists claim that Obama has no direct ties to ACORN. Please...John Gotti didn't pull the triggers, either, but he still wound up in jail. That it took a scandal this huge, this insurmountable, for the Obama and the left to abandon ACORN is telling, just as it was telling that it took ad-nauseum repetition of Jeremiah Wright screaming "God Damn America" for Obama to say he was no longer associated with him. The apologists at that time said that Obama wasn't in church for the bad stuff Wright said. He knew him well enough to use one of his lines as the title of his book (The Audacity Of Hope) but had no idea Wright hates America? Please.

Still, America elected him. It wasn't a landslide, but it was a convincing win. It SHOULD have been a landslide; he was running against a mediocre opponent who represented the party of the incumbent President, whose popularity was in the low 30's, in the midst of a financial meltdown. He was slick and well spoken, adored by the media who focused not on what he said but on how he said it. After 185 says as US Senator, he was on his way to the White House.

Anyone who read "The Case Against Barack Obama" was wise to his history and his tactics. I have to believe that anyone who read that book voted against him. Others voted for him simply because there was a D next to his name, or because of the R next to the other guy. I saw firsthand last fall while making calls for the Boulder County Republicans, that many Ron Paul supporters were so angered that McCain got the nod that they voted for Obama. He ran as a centrist, then upon coming to office he has pushed his agenda as far to the left as he could, and from the stimulus to pushing the health care debate, he has done things very quickly.

But people - 'we the people' - don't want to be governed from the left. In the midst of the recession, people are seeing the folly of using debt to get to the promised land. As houses get foreclosed upon, cars get repossessed, jobs continue to disappear and retirement plans no longer cover the goals set forth, people don't want risk; they want safety. Pushback against his policies has been rising, and may not have crested yet. The shine has worn off, and with the demise of ACORN, people may be waking from the dream of a new day to realize there is a nightmare below the surface, and that bodes not well for the president.

In the March 30th issue of Forbes, in his "Fact And Comment" section, Steve Forbes said "The President himself will start to see the light when his poll numbers crash below 50%, which they will if the economy isn't on the mend by Labor Day. Despite periods of suspension, the American system of checks and balances always reasserts itself." Well, the economy isn't on the mend, the poll numbers have dropped but Obama is pushing blindly forward, not only oblivious to the light, but to the cliff he's heading towards. Let's hope he doesn't pull the country down with him when he goes over.

[1] http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/hillary_usaid_job_search/2009/07/13/234892.html?s=al&promo_code=833F-1

[2] http://earthhopenetwork.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=3101

[3] http://archive.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/barack_obama_sought_the_new_partys_endorsement_knowing_it_was_a_radical_left_organization

September 11th – The Year After

2009-09-10T23:40:00.001-06:00

With all the current political strife, in the midst of the recession, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we Americans, when united, are the most formidable force on the planet. Americans are the "sleeping giant" the Japanese awoke in 1941, and less than four years later we had routed both the Nazi regime and Imperial Japanese forces from their positions of power. We are, however, a people easily divided when we don't have a common enemy. The speed with which the partisan politics returned after the attacks on 9/11/2001, and the huge ideological divide currently reigning supreme in our land illustrates that sad fact.

On the first anniversary of 9/11, I felt a compulsion to talk to my team at work about what 9/11 meant to me. I composed a note that I emailed to them, and one of my team mates was so inspired by the note that he forwarded it to Lewis & Floorwax of 103.5 The Fox (a radio station in Denver, Colorado). The two deejays read the letter on the air, which I thought was remarkable given that I hadn't intended for it to be read to so large an audience. One of their comments was "this guy gets it" – which made me feel a remarkable sense of validation that yes, other people shared my worldview.

Last year, on the eve of the 7^th anniversary commemorating these horrible homicide attacks, I was looking for that letter and could not find it, so I reached out to the guy that had been so moved by it in 2002. His response was really humbling…here's an excerpt of his response (emphasis is mine):

"I couldn't find the file on my computer but I had a hardcopy that I keep with me. This was a very important letter to me that you wrote and I want to thank you for it. It means a lot to me."

He keeps a hard copy with him? When I wrote it, I never thought it would affect anyone so deeply, and THAT is why I write my articles and weekly Howls for The Coyote…if I could reach this guy and affect him so deeply, if I can do something positive for one person, then maybe here is a vehicle to reach other people.

In its entirety, here is my original note from 9/11/2002:

I vividly remember a year ago, on the morning of Sept. 11^th[2001], I was getting ready to leave for work. My girlfriend [1] was working from home and was on a conference call in her office. I went in to say goodbye and she put the phone on mute. She told me that one of the guys on her call said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. She asked if I would turn on CNN and see what was going on. When I turned on the TV the same images were on every channel; a churning cloud of smoke billowing out of the top of the lone building. I remember thinking, "where's the other tower?" I thought it must have been obscured by the smoke, or hidden by the tower they were filming. It was just a bad camera angle. I didn't find out until I was in the car on my way to work what I was not ready to believe with my own eyes; that one of the two towers had fallen as a result of what was now obviously a terror attack. Shortly after I arrived at work, the second tower fell. The Pentagon was the site of the third attack, and then flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania. The thoughts that seemed to be on everyone's minds were "Why?" and "How many more are out there?" and "What's next?" We worked through the day and tried to make sense of everything that was going on around us.

The devastation was incomprehensible. The images of the people in New York, frantically searching for hope, holding up signs with pictures of loved ones who were missing were especially gut wrenching. I went through the first few days after the attacks feeling numb, and then feeling pain and anguish as the stories the survivors told would bring me to the verge of tears. At every turn the sorrow and the grief grew more and more overbearing. I knew that at some point the shock and the disbelief would begin to wear off, but every time I turned on the TV it killed me to see what was happening. Now, as more media coverage turns to the anniversary I am finding that while I am no longer shocked, the grief is still close to the surface.

Whether you knew someone personally who was in the Trade Center or the Pentagon, or knew someone who knew someone who was there, the odds are you were not more than 1 or 2 degrees of separation away from New York or Washington DC that day. Somehow we all got through it though, each in our own way, at our own pace. We got on with our lives. We've made it through the first year.

While words have a hard time describing the totality of this tragedy, there were a few things that came out of September 11^th that were positive. For a brief while the bickering between our political parties stopped, and our leaders had a united purpose. At a time when we were faced with the worst things humans are capable of, we saw in the actions of the police, fire departments and medical and rescue workers the best that humans are capable of. There has also been a lasting sense of patriotism that is still going strong, at least among the citizenry if not the politicians.

I attended the opening ceremonies of the Highland Games in Estes Park this past weekend. As part of the ceremony they played the National Anthem, and I don't recall ever hearing a crowd sing it so loud. The piper bands played "Amazing Grace" in honor of those who died in the attacks. There is no more sorrowful sound than bagpipes playing that song, and many people began to openly weep. It really hit home to me just how deeply the attacks still are affecting people. Our society has been scarred by these events, and while they took place a full year ago, at times it seems to me that it was yesterday, or the day before. There are many days and weeks since then from which I don't remember anything in specific, but that day is as sharp and clear in my mind as this very moment.

At the Highland Games opening ceremony, the last speaker was the Commander of NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command center buried deep within Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. He spoke of that day, of the way the staff inside NORAD responded. He echoed the words we have heard from this nation's leaders many times. He said that every citizen of this great land has a duty to live their life, to go to work every day, to attend events like the Highland Games, football and baseball games, to show that the spirit of freedom cannot and will not be put down by cowards who live in caves and murder innocent people. I couldn't agree with him more.

As the anniversary of the attacks is imminent we have a lot of uncertainty about what may happen. Many rumors and warnings of new attacks are flying about in the media, and certainly there will be a lot of trepidation surrounding the many memorial services. One thing I do know is that the sun will rise tomorrow and I have a job to do. I'm not a policeman, or a fireman, or one of the heroes in uniform actively fighting terrorism half a world away. But I am an American, and I will live like one. I will get up, go to work, and do my job. I play a role in the survival of this country, just like each of you, like everyone you see. I am an American, and no one will take that away from me.

[1] Now my wife. J

As I read that last paragraph it becomes very clear to me that this September 11^th we are facing a very different level of uncertainty. We have in power a president who relies on radicals, extremists and communists to help advance his ideology and a congress that openly expresses disdain as it looks down upon the people who put them in power in the first place. It occurs to me that there may be someone who CAN take away my right to be an American by ensuring that there is no longer an America that I can respect and love. This may be a tad melodramatic, but each day brings with it a new revelation, a new scandal, a new member of the administration who has dodged taxes, embraced communism, misused the power of taxpayer funded organizations to advance the president's cause, insults our intelligence or completely disregards our opinions. But I am an American, so I will continue to fight for what I believe to be right. I am an American so I will continue to exercise my constitutional right to freedom of expression.

I am an American…but I am not so sure our leadership wants to keep it that way.

Land Of Confusion

2009-09-04T01:43:00.001-06:00

If you can wade through the distractions this week (Obama's September 8^th indoctrination of our youth, "I Pledge" video, etc,) health care reform is still the topic that needs our attention the most. The trillion dollar travesty is going to sink us into a hole we may never get out of. While the progressives have no problem with that, those of us that think America is a good an noble place who owes no one an apology for 200 years of fighting for our freedom and the freedom of others would like to see it maintain it's status as the greatest country on earth. The liberals are still using the tired old tactics of name calling and character assassination to make their points, but the public ain't buyin' it this time around. Here's a verbatim (spelling errors included) post which attempts to belittle Those Who Would Oppose The Chosen One (hereafter known as TWWOTCO):

"I was going to join this debate but since it seems that most who oppose healthcare reform still have yet to educate themselves by reading any of the propossed legislation, I will just say that my quess is these are the same people who want to keep there kids home from school because the president is going to talk to children about the importance of staying in school and getting educated."

I see what you're doing here and I don't like it. First, way to work in a defense of the Sept 8 Indoctrination Speech before it's even been delivered, but let's not get off track. I replied with a number of my talking points, and I closed my response with this message: "So please tell the great uneducated masses, exactly how is this boondoggle going to work. And I'm only being partially sarcastic...if you can make a better case for it than any of our elected officials, hats off to you." Of course he ignored this challenge and after numerous other people left comments he threw in the towel by saying "I give up ignorance is bliss so all should be happy here."

And this is the problem with this entire debate. The left is so desperate to pass this for the Chosen One that they shut out any and all comments to the contrary, and they lie, lie lie about it. Here are a couple of their lies:

"This is an issue of vital concern to every American, and I'm glad that so many are engaged," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "But it also should be an honest debate, not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are."[1]
1. I see what you're doing here and I don't like it. Let me translate this: "You're all a bunch of liars who would rape your own mother to make a buck. Shut up already!" Honest debate is taking place in the guise of Harry Reid having townhall meeting by invitation only, with the people who are aggrieved not being allowed in. Honest debate is taking place in the guise of Organizing For America coaching it's members to stand and chant "Health Care Now" to drown out when someone (TWWOTCO) disrupts a town hall meeting. These are ways in which the left encourages honest debate.
In debunking myths about the health care plan, Obama said the overhaul would not use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions [1]
1. Barbara Mikulski introduced an amendment to the bill that would provide for abortions. "Madame Chairman, would you be willing to put some language in that says, 'Not including abortion services'?" [Senator Orin]Hatch asked. "Then I think you would have more support." Mikulski concluded a convoluted response by saying, "So, no, I would not be willing to do that at this time." [2] This reminds me of the episode of the Simpson's where Marge asks Homer if he's licking toads (to get high) and Homer replies "I'm not not licking toads."
Top White House advisers on Sunday challenged Republicans to offer alternatives and not simply criticize administration approaches [3]
1. What happens when you offer alternatives? Ask John Mackey. He wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html ) with alternatives. The house bill? 1000+ pages. Mackey's plan? 8 bullet points, one page. The company, 270 stores and 54,000 employees, voted on the new plan and decided by a majority of 77% to go with the plan as Mackey describes in his op-ed. 77! That's even more, as a percentage, than voted for Obama. [4] What did Mackey get for his offer of alternatives? A liberal boycott of his stores. [5] I guess you could file this under honest debate as well.
My favorite Obama line: "so let me be clear: If you like your doctor or health care provider, you can keep them. If you like your health care plan, you can keep that too."
1. From HR3200, Page 16, section 102, subparagraph 2 [abridged]: You can keep your current coverage if the following conditions apply: Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1. In other words, if your co pay or any other terms or conditions change, you must enroll in a plan that meets the government approved standards even if that means dropping your current coverage. In 12 years with my insurer there has never been a year where the terms and conditions haven't changed. So - what the plan REALLY says is "you can keep your current coverage - for a while"
2. Further, page 17, paragraph (b) GRACE PERIOD FOR CURRENT EMPLOYMENT BASED HEALTH PLANS.—Subparagraph (1) GRACE PERIOD.— subparagraph (A) IN GENERAL.—The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the essential benefit package requirement under section. In other words, if your plan doesn't look just like the government plan, you must switch to one that does. So after five years it won't matter if you're in the government plan, they'll all look like the government plan. So sure, you can keep you coverage if you like it - as long as nothing in any of the Ts and Cs changes for five years, but sooner or later, you WILL eat this cooking.
Right wing extremists shattered windows and vandalized the DNC offices in Denver, according to Pat Waak (Colorado Democrat Chairwoman). "Clearly there's been an effort on the other side to stir up hate. I think this is the consequence of it." [6]
1. Turns out, the culprit was a left wing extremist with an arrest on his record for protesting at the RNC in Minneapolis last year. Even more damaging was the report that he worked for a democrat and was paid by the SEIU. [7] Rahm Emmanuel said "never let a crisis go to waste." He could have added "If there is no crisis, invent one."

While the left is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst, those on the right do themselves no favors by blindly reposting or repeating material without doing a little fact checking and research. Facts are stubborn things, as they say. Liberals don't let them get in the way of their arguments, but they can't out-debate you if you have them in your arsenal. You'll know you've won when they say "I give up" and call you ignorant on their way out the door. As Ann Coulter says, if you don't leave a liberal in an impotent, sputtering rage, you're not doing it right.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/22/obama-calls-for-honest-de_n_265936.html

[2] http://townhall.com/columnists/TerryJeffrey/2009/07/15/how_senator_mikulski_slipped_an_abortion_mandate_into_the_health_care_bill?page=full&comments=true

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/politics/20cong.html

[4] Contrary to the revisionist history of the Obanauts, he is not the most popular president in history. Day 1 of his presidency saw him ranked 7^th among presidents dating back to Truman with an approval rating of 64. Who was more popular? Truman (81), Johnson (78), Kennedy (72), Ford (71), Eisenhower (68) and Carter (CARTER!) (66). After six months in office he had fallen to 10^th place with a rating of 55; even the left's favorite punching bag (seriously, when will someone tell Olbermann and Maddow that he's not the president any more!?) George W Bush was rated higher (56) than Obie Wan Baloney after the first six months.

[5] http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33188

[6] http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_13199902

[7] http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/breaking-denver-vandal-worked-for-dem.html

H1N1 – The Gathering (political) Storm

2009-09-02T07:29:00.001-06:00

I will dive into this topic in a little more depth later...but I want to get these thoughts out there before the rest of the pundits.

The health care debate has stalled the reform bills, at least temporarily. People have grown weary of the spending, the government largess, and in the current economy they're crankier than normal anyway, so they've been spoiling for a fight. What the Obama team needs is a good crisis to distract us from how bad this legislation is and make us more pliable and open to pushing it through congress. What to do, what to do...[go into liberal mindset]

Aha! On the horizon - SWINE FLU! If it hits badly enough, and people start dying - WOW, that would really make a case for health care reform, right? Because if we had universal health care, everyone would have received a vaccination and no one would have died! Those evil Republicans must not care about your grandmother if they let her die from the swine flu, right? Let us pass the bill and this will never happen again!

But how to get the message out in a sufficiently scary way so we can use the politics of fear? If only we had a media that was complicit with our agenda. Oh wait, silly me, we do!! MSNBC, NBC, ABC - start doing your pieces on this scam - er, crisis. Warn people about the 500,000 plastic coffins the WHO and CDC have being stored outside the Atlanta airport, talk about the deaths being double to triple the normal death rate from the flu...do everything you can to scare people. Then we can beat them with the H1N1 club until they relent and let us pass the appropriate-length non-pork filled bill. Maybe it will actually be bad enough that we can suspend civil liberties and shut people up by force!

[come back to reality]...ugh. That was nasty in there! I feel dirty.

Will H1N1 be a big deal? I don't know any more than the rest of us do. The media seemed disappointed that round one didn't kill more people. Remember, if it bleeds it leads, and no blood makes for dull programming. The better question is: Will the administration use any and all means necessary to get health care reform passed, at any cost? You bet. You heard it here first...if H1N1 doesn't actually make you sick, prepare for the coverage and the political drafting off of its wake to make you ill anyway.

Is there a doctor in the house?

2009-08-20T21:37:00.001-06:00

When I was in India in 2004, there were many, many things that were a culture shock to me. One in particular was the traffic. It's so thick that on the way to work in the evening (I was working the North American schedule – eleven and a half hours behind India) that we never got above 30 miles per hour (at 4 AM it was a different story…). After night after a particularly slow trip to work, one of the people I worked with asked how fast I drive in when I drive to work in the US. I told them that it was not unusual for me to go 80 or 85 MPH. They asked what the speed limits are, and I said that I drive as fast as I can afford. They didn't get it so I elaborated that as long as I didn't have too many tickets on my record I could afford to drive over the speed limit.

"But that is against the law." One of the Indians said to me.

"Yes," I tried to explain, "but as long as I have enough points on my license and I can afford the fine there's no reason to drive slower than I want to as long as I'm not being reckless."

She persisted. "But why would you intentionally break the law?"

Someone came and got me at that point and further saved me from labeling myself a criminal. The conversation has stuck with me through the last few years as an example of the culture clash between a moral relativist society (ours) and a karmic society (theirs). While I was in India I remember seeing several PC monitors with a scrolling screen saver that said "Integrity is doing the right thing – especially when no one is watching." This lesson historically has been lost on me with regard to speed limits (ok, even not so recently…I am going to traffic court at the end of September) and it is lost on much of our society. Most disturbingly, we are led by people at all levels of our government who hold more than just the laws regarding traffic speed with contempt. Witness:

Rod Blagojevich (attempted to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat)
Tom Daschle (tax problems – only came to light after his name came up as a potential for the DHS cabinet post)
Tim Geithner (tax problems – only paid when he was named to the treasury post)
Bill Richardson (pay for play scandal – only came up when he was being considered for commerce secretary)
Barack Obama (left 15 of 17 parking tickets in Cambridge, Mass unpaid until he got serious about running for President in 2007)
Most recently, David Axelrod may be getting $2 million from his former company, Phrma, which just worked a behind-closed-doors deal with Obama in a follow-the-money tale worthy of any Cheney-Haliburton rants the liberals love so much.

It seems the Democrat motto is "Integrity is doing the right thing ONLY when other people are looking."

To be sure, there are people on both sides of the aisle who violate the law or other moral standards. Republican Senator Larry Craig was arrested for lewd behavior in a public bathroom, placing him in the illustrious company of Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens and singer George Michael. No Democrat would ever let us forget Nixon. However, I don't recall such a large number of tax dodgers and bribe takers ever associated with one party, let alone one person.

The Democrats want us to believe that the government is the solution to all of our problems. Obama has said as much in one of his first televised speeches. It seems to me that rather than the solution, government is part of the problem, and this administration keeps pushing more of it down our throats. Obama says that the key to our economic recovery is health care reform (it was the stimulus, but once that passed, the blame had to move to the next bill that needed to be passed). While I agree that our health insurance industry is fraught with issues, I think the government is the system that is sick and needs medical attention. With the number of pols getting caught for their legal transgressions, how many haven't been caught? Like a cancer patient, our government has become rank with tumors and now it's time to operate. Only when we've removed the cancerous politicians and replaced them with healthy, fresh ones who believe you should do the right thing especially when no one is looking, will we have a shot at healing the rest of our country's problems.

The great thing in all of this is that you and I are the surgeons here. We operate with our right to vote, and if we use it wisely we can bring this patient back from the brink of death. Surgery is scheduled for November 2010…will you be ready to operate?

Who will speak up for us?

2009-08-13T20:50:00.001-06:00

The phrase "death panel" is now being bandied about in reference to the Obama health care plan. Sarah Palin coined the phrase in a statement where she said that a system that judges the people's eligibility for health care based on their level of productivity in society is evil. And I agree.

The question I can't answer is why the Democrats are surprised by the allegations. Since there is no single plan in existence, but pieces of several different plans, we're left to draw our own conclusions about what we do know. We know that the Dems are pro abortion, we know that Ezekiel Emmanuel wants to assign worth to people based on their level of genetic perfection (or lack thereof) or their age and has been named to the group that one version of health care reform would have making these kinds of decisions, and in extreme cases (like Peter Singer) we know that they think infanticide is permissible and actually preferred. Obama has responded to the protests by calling on his shock troops (the Service Employees International Union and Organizing For America) to hit back at protestors "twice as hard." At least one town hall meeting led to SEIU members beating a conservative merchant in the parking lot. Nancy Pelosi brings up the specter of Nazi-ism when referring to the protestors, but all the things listed off in this paragraph are tactics the Nazis used in the 1930's and 40's to first grab and then desperately attempt to cling to power. While I am sure that Pelosi uses the Nazi reference as a scare tactic to conjure the horrible images from World War II and attempting to link them to the Republican Party, either she's ignorant of history or simply doesn't care to remember it before defaming her opponents.

The Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Worker's Party and was founded in 1919 prior to Hitler's involvement (though he quickly took it over). The members of the party called themselves "National Socialists" not "National Conservatives." The Nazis, like the Democrats of today, were proponents of eugenics. The Republicans are not. The Nazis, like today's Democrats, had the general public turn in names of people who were spreading dissent. The Republicans have not. The Nazis, like the Democrats, used the nation's youth to strengthen their position and propagandize the Nazi message. The Republicans have not.

Hitler, upon taking over as Chancellor Of Germany, wasted no time taking over the entire government, using the 1933 fire at the Reichstag as an excuse to suspend civil liberties. This is a common charge levied at Bush and the Patriot Act post-9/11. The logic seems completely lost on the Democrats when looking at their own actions. The Cash-for-clunkers web site disclaimer authorizing the government to access your PC – all data, including emails and financial records – doesn't seem to faze the liberals at all. The white house "snitchline" – the request by the white house to turn in people who send emails or engage in casual conversation that is 'fishy' with regard to health care - is redolent of Nazi Germany when there were spies everywhere and no one dared speak out in public for fear of being captured by the SS. What does the white house intend to do with this information? Imagine if Bush had done this! The outrage would have been deafening – but here, the people being vilified by congress and the media are the people who are speaking out and exercising their right to free speech and assembly.

"We are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries…" is a quote that could easily have come from Obama, but it's actually from Hitler. The tactics of class and racial warfare were used effectively in Germany in the '30s and '40s, and are being used in America today. Obama started out pushing for healthcare reform…but as resistance has built against it he has switched to calling it health 'insurance' reform and he has turned to the best club in his bag – the Evil Capitalists (previously it was the oil companies, but having almost reined them in with crap-n-trade, he's attacking, in this case, health care insurance CEOs). He even chastised the health insurance companies, as if this is a crime, for making the most evil of all evils - "record profits" - in the middle of a recession.

Why aren't the profits of Google (which as a percentage were higher than Exxon-Mobile's vilified 'record' profits) being targeted? In terms of people making obscene sums of money, why doesn't he want to go after Oprah Winfrey? She makes more than 10 times the average CEO salary (from the Forbes 400). Why isn't her $260 million income subject to the same scrutiny? George Soros is worth an estimated $11 billion. Why isn't he on the list? Earlier this year, after adding in language to the stimulus bill that allowed payment of already committed bonuses, Obama has encouraged people to protest at AIG executives houses, causing them to fear for their lives and seek police protection. Is it right that our President helped make people fear for their lives? Where's the outage? Apparently, having wealth or earning a significant sum is only bad if you don't directly support the president (though AIG did support him, so it's a double cross that they wound up in the line of fire). Like so many things with the liberals, the traffic only flows one way.

As for racial warfare, well, if you disagree with Obama you are a racist. Just ask Janeane Garofalo – she'll probably call you an ignorant redneck too. She doesn't even need to know what your objections are…if they're not what Obama wants, you're a racist. If you brand his style of government 'socialism,' you're a racist. The word is being used so much it's losing its meaning, and that is a dangerous thing for America.

The folks are starting to see things for what they are – a left wing organization has control of all branches of our government, and it will stop at virtually nothing to get what it wants. As Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org said after the 2004 election: "We bought it [the Democrat Party], we own it and we're going to take it back." And so they have. With the American people recognizing what is happening, we now have a fight on our hands. For the first time in my life time, we also have a president who is willing to literally send people out to actually fight us in the streets. He has the unwavering support of the Speaker Of The House and the Senate Majority Leader, who both follow his bidding without question while viewing the American people with contempt, and a media that blatantly fawns over Obama and actively demeans the American people. If this continues, my prediction is there will be real trouble and people will be hurt or killed in the process.

I'll close with a classic poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller (written about Germany in World War II):

They came first for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

With the white house trying desperately to silence dissent over health care, how long will it be before we create a poem like this for our own countrymen? At no time in recent history has an American President been so desperate to silence all voices of opposition and so active in making happen; if he succeeds with this attempt, who is next? Who will speak up for us? Freedoms are lost a little at a time, and once lost they are gone forever unless a rebellion occurs. Everyone should be concerned about the direction in which things are headed.

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

2009-08-07T00:07:00.001-06:00

Ok, I've voted in the CSU vs CU poll (go Rammies!), used up all my stamina and energy in Mafia Wars, gone through my email and deleted all the spam, caught up with everything on the Facebook news feed…Now it's time to work on this week's Howl.

It's hard to talk about anything except the battle over health care. Things have gotten interesting this week as the American people seem to be waking from a slumber and they're cranky. They should be. Not only are We The People about to get a royal screwjie over health care, but for those who dare dissent, the media minimizes us as 'the fringe;' the elite snobbery that is the democrat-led congress says we're not sincere and are only getting angry because we're being paid to do so. Someone please beat Pelosi and Reid with the condescension stick and tell them we're angry not because we're getting paid to be angry, but because we want to keep our pay! What dolts.

We're going to play a game called 'connect the dots.' Ezekiel Emmanuel (Rahm's brother) has said that 'communitarianism' should guide who gets what health care. Why should we care what he thinks? Mainly we should care because he's been named by Obama (can you say 'nepotism?') to the Center Of Comparative Effectiveness Research (that's the first dot). What is the CCER? On page 501 of the House health care bill, the Center is described as (abridged) being responsible for conducting research "with respect to the outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services." Appropriate is the operative word there (second dot). Emmanuel is on record as saying that he feels that a way to reduce health care cost is to deny care to those who are "prevented from being participating citizens…An obvious example is not guaranteeing services to a person with dementia." (third dot) Answers.com has a good definition of dementia. It even provides numbers like the following: "Dementia affects 5–8% of all people between ages 65 and 74, and up to 20% of those between 75 and 84. Estimates for dementia in those 85 and over range from 30–47%." Fourth dot. Chances of developing cancer if you're over 65 are double that of someone under 65. Fifth Dot. Cancer treatment can be very expensive. Sixth dot.

So…Emmanuel is part of the group who decides what treatments are appropriate under the proposed health care plan. Starting at age 65 and rising steeply after 75 the incidence of dementia increases dramatically, as does the risk of cancer. Treating cancer can be very expensive. Emmanuel feels a way to reduce costs is to not guarantee coverage to people with dementia. Are the dots connecting? Can you see the picture forming? Does this sound like we're being set up for rationing of care? It sure does to me.

The libs can see that we're onto them, and they're going all in on this one. Liberal columnist Froma Hanop, writing for the Providence Journal, penned a piece with the fair minded title "Republicans Looking Crazy On Health Care." In it she said that she didn't think it had to be said, but apparently it does: "No one is trying to kill grandma." Well, Froma, Republicans didn't say that. In a roundabout, connect the dots kind of way, Ezekiel Emmanuel did. Well, more accurately he didn't say he wants kill grandma; he just doesn't want to help her live longer; so she'll die sooner rather than later. On the bright side, we'll have lower health care costs, which I'm sure will be a great comfort to grandma's family.

Who's crazy here? Conservatives, for wanting to have freedom of choice in their health care? Or liberals, who are so desperate to control every aspect of our lives that they are telling us that this plan will give everything to everyone, it won't change anything already in existence and won't cost a nickel more. This plan sounds an awful lot like the Shmoo.

The name calling is typical of liberals. Liberals probably think that Hanop showed remarkable restraint by not prefacing 'crazy' with 'bat-shit' when naming her op-ed piece. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. And that brings me, finally, to my point.

Liberals operate from bizarre world, where everything is the opposite. Or maybe they've been brainwashed reading 1984 and think newspeak is a GOOD thing. In either case, what they're really practicing is called 'projection.' Freud coined the term to describe someone who, rather than deal with their own undesirable traits, motivations, actions, feelings or desires will assign them to someone else. Liberals do this with constancy and precision. Witness:

Obama recently sent an email saying that the GOP would be resorting to scare tactics to stop the health care legislation from moving forward. He then used a scare tactic by saying that if we don't pass the bill, "health care costs will double, millions more will lose their coverage and state governments will go bankrupt."¹ In practically the same sentence he predictively accused (Minority Report anyone?) the GOP of using a tactic he himself used in the next sentence!
People like Joy Behar say that Republicans need to get over the fact that we lost the election, but can't stop complaining about the President's actions. President Bush, that is. Um..Bush isn't in office any more. Who needs to 'get over it?'
The recent town hall meetings that have been interrupted by people who are fed up with being lied to are labeled by the left as being 'planned disruptions' and that the people are planted by the evil insurance captains of industry (whenever a liberal needs a villain, they just use class warfare and conjure up a CEO somewhere. In their mind he probably wears a top hat and has a waxed handlebar mustache and walks around saying "you MUST pay the rent!" But I digress). They can't fathom that normal everyday people would take time from their day – at their own expense – to go voice their opinion. The reason they can't fathom people doing this without being paid is that they pay people to do things like follow the Americans For Prosperity bus from stop to stop, or bribe young people with college grants if they will be community organizers.
The people disrupting these rallies are filled with hatred and violence…yet no one has been hurt and no windows have been broken. But there are plenty of examples of violent liberal protests.²
Obama in a speech asked that Republicans not engage in 'revisionist history' – then went out on the Apology'09 tour, telling various nations that:
- Russia 'helped us' get to space. If by helped he meant 'competed against' I guess he's right. Is he next going to tell the Germans that they helped us win World War II?
- The cold war ended because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe decided it would end peacefully, completely omitting the Reagan 'peace through strength' doctrine or his speech at Brandenburg Gate.
- America has an interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Unless you mean in Iran. Or North Korea. Or Burma.

When you see the mass of things the liberals actually do that they imagine that the Republicans are guilty of, you begin to think that they actually are clinical in their projection. Saul Alinsky even taught this pathology. Rule number 5 of his "Rules For Radicals" states that "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions." Hmm….maybe they're not as crazy as I think….

Maybe they're more cagey than crazy. It's important that we recognize this tactic for what it is, and not be intimidated by it. Take ridicule away from Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher or Janeane Garofalo and what do you have left? They have nothing else in their tool kit. They're just sad, angry people still punching at President Bush and looking for the next conservative boogeyman to lash out at. Just remember, it's all projection. They ridicule conservatives because they're intimidated by them. Use that to your advantage. Stand firm on a fact-based argument and all the projection in the world cannot save them in the end.

¹I turned this 'fishy' behavior in to the whitehouse.gov snitchline.

² http://www.republicanoperative.com/forums/left-vs-right/13087-documented-cases-liberal-violence-intimidation-vandalism.html

Healthcare Rally Had Great Turnout!

2009-08-06T13:32:00.001-06:00

The Americans For Prosperity 'Hands Off My Healthcare' rally was great! I'll post pictures and video (if I can figure out the editing piece) later on.

Obama’s War On America

2009-07-31T01:09:00.001-06:00

I know that the Beer Conference is all the rage right now, and is a nice (purposeful?) distraction from the health care debate, but I'm not going to talk about either one of them. Instead I want to discuss the war that is waging in our country. If you follow Bill O'Reilly he calls it "The Culture War." Whether you believe it's real or not, you're going to have to pick a side. (Though if you're reading this, you probably already have.) The opposing forces are, in simple terms, those that want to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and those that want to take those fruits, put them in a big basket, and distribute them to the masses as they see fit.

Before I get into the meat of this issue, let me discuss an interaction I had recently. It's no secret that politics divide people faster than a Yankees-Mets world series would split New Yorkers, but I've never seen it as clearly as I did a couple of weeks ago. I recently posted a video to my profile page (before I started The Coyote fan page) that took a street level view of the Canadian health care system, the point being that emulating this system is not a good path for this country go down. One of my friends left a comment that said people should stop drinking the "kool-aid" that Obama is offering. Another friend responded with the following, quoted verbatim: "Drinking the Kool-Aid? Heck I'm showering in it. I brush my teeth with it. I swim in the Kool-Aid! It is good to see people like yourselves going out on a limb sticking your neck out for the most rich and powerful. way to go guys. maybe dick cheney will taking you hunting one day."

At first I was stunned. Someone I friended on Facebook, someone I went to high school with, partied with, and had a measure of respect for, essentially just said he hopes that I get shot. Never one to shy away from a debate, I replied, asking him if he had even watched the video – that it showed pretty clearly that the poor are not helped by socialized health care as only the wealthy can afford to go to the private clinics, etc, etc. His response? He de-friended me. He took his ball and went home. See, without knowing it, I had crossed the line in the sand that he had drawn. I can only assume that he has some deeply held beliefs – maybe a relative was denied care because of a pre-existing condition, or is facing bankruptcy trying to pay for a traumatic illness – that have colored his world view. Or maybe, like he admitted, he simply drinks the Kool-Aid. Whatever the case, he was obviously not interested in a debate. He's closed off his mind to any ideas other than those to which he subscribes, and rather than play nice he found it easier to drop me as a friend. At first it bothered me, because I knew him from before any of us even thought about these kinds of things, and I was honestly happy to reconnect with him after 20+ years. Besides, there's something so final about clicking on the "remove friend" button. It was like being erased. But the more I thought about it, the more OK I became with it. It's a free country, after all, and until the government takes over our social calendars no one MUST be friends with another person, either in person or virtually. Anyway, if it was that easy for him to drop me, we couldn't have been that close to begin with, right? This Facebook friendship became a casualty of war.

This exchange highlights just how serious this war is. Bill Whittle, in a great video piece (1) says that this is a fight to the death between populists and elites. A fight to the DEATH! That may seem like alarmist language, but obviously, since he wants me to be shot by Dick Cheney, people like my erstwhile friend take it pretty seriously. I think it's time that we do the same. In his video Whittle mentions "Rules For Radicals." There's no question that our president is a student of Alinsky. Michelle Obama has spoken (2) about hearing Barack speak, and how his words were so moving. They were almost word for word from Alinsky. In the prologue for Rules, Alinsky writes that the book "is for those young radicals who are committed to the fight" and that "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." Let that ruminate for a minute…the original community organizer, who has inspired our president, wrote this book specifically for people committed to the FIGHT to TAKE AWAY from those that have and GIVE to those who don't. Redistribution of wealth? Why not? It evokes images of Robin Hood, standing up for the oppressed, except in Obama's view, the oppressed are a fraction of the population. He knows that government can't make men richer, but that it can make them poorer, thereby shrinking the gap between them and taking power away from the old guard in the process. Once we're made poorer by policies like the stimulus and cap and trade, we'll still have our health, right? Well….not so fast. We could very well be losing control over our very health and well being too.

It gets better. Has anyone wondered why Obama is so perplexingly pessimistic? Why, within days of his inauguration, he says the sky is falling and as a result drives stocks down to prices not seen since 1996? Why is he going on this apology tour of the world? Why is he constantly telling us that our history is horrible, that we've all been lied to and that we're victims of the past administration, or that we're a racist nation, or that the wealthy are horrible people? Why does he play the class warfare card and lie about CEO pay (3) to get people fired up? Why does he tell us that without his plan, health care prices will double, millions will go uninsured and the government will go bankrupt? (4) The reason why is in Rules For Radicals too: "They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."

Why does, in the White House email regarding health care proclaim that "Over the next month there is going to be an avalanche of misinformation and scare tactics from those seeking to perpetuate the status quo"? Go back to Rules For Radicals: "Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical." So we see how effective nationalized health care will be in advancing his radical agenda and we protest; he's thinking a move ahead and predicting the response so he can say "see, I told you so."

But isn't he looking out for us? He says he is…he says what he does will be better for everyone! Again, look to Rules For Radicals: "Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace."

So, fellow conservative thinkers, libertarians, politically agnostic agitators, whatever your stripe is, if you value the freedoms we have too often taken for granted, if you don't want to see the United States made into something else, now is the time to stand up. Thomas Jefferson, a member of a group of men (The Founders!) who would know better than any of us what the boot heel of oppression feels like, said "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." We are there, at that precipice, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to stand and deliver. If you don't think the Obamacrats are going to fight to the death, I will leave you with one final lesson from Rules For Radicals:

"In war the end justifies almost any means."

http://tinyurl.com/lkwmyl
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/08/figures-michelle-obama-quotes-lines.html
http://tinyurl.com/lq2qzs
White House email correspondence "What Health Care Means To You"

Veritas et libertas ultra omnis sunto – Truth and liberty above all

2009-07-23T23:58:00.001-06:00

During Obama's umpteenth presidential address to sell to the public on yet another costly government experiment, he inadvertently said something that may be more prescient than he realized. At one point during one of his rambling, incoherent examples of why he thinks we should have the government control our health care, he said that people will have to make sacrifices like "Giving up paying for things that don't make them healthier." Then he said something about having a blue pill and red pill and if they do the same thing but one costs twice as much, why pay for the costlier pill? I don't know if that was his whole point or not, because I drifted away to a scene from "The Matrix."

For those who haven't seen it, here's a quick summary (from http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/matrix.php)

"The Matrix is a film filled with religious and philosophical symbolism. The plot supposes that humans live in vats many years in the future, being fed false sensory information by a giant virtual reality computer (the Matrix). The perpetrators of this horror are machines of the future who use humans as a source of power. Humans are literally farmed.

The central character of the film, Neo, is presented to us in the opening part of the film as a loner who is searching for a mysterious character called Morpheus (named after the Greek god of dreams and sleep). He is also trying to discover the answer to the question "What is the Matrix?"

Morpheus contacts Neo just as the machines (posing as sinister 'agents') are trying to keep Neo from finding out any more. When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.""

How fitting is it that Obama chose those colors the pills in his example? Red – the color attributed to the Republican Party, as in "Red States" is the color of the pill that reveals the truth. The blue pill, for Democrats, carries on with the lie, keeping people in ignorance. Could that be any more appropriate for this debate?

At another point in the movie, when the crappiness of real life is weighing Neo down, another character, Cypher, says to Neo "I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?" Many people ask themselves that every day. I know I was perfectly content a year and a half ago, conservative but not politically active. I couldn't have told you who my senators were, what congressional district in which I reside, or any details of pending legislation (except for what the media chose to tell me). Then I read the book "The Case Against Barack Obama." It was like taking the RED pill.

The Democrats want people taking the BLUE pill. When Obama trots out his numbers, like the 47 million people who are uninsured, he hopes people won't read articles like this one: http://tinyurl.com/n6clof that cut the legs out from under that argument. When he uses a figure like $700 per month for insurance as an example of the high cost of insurance, then says people are paying "thousands of dollars in hidden costs" in their insurance premiums, he doesn't want us to scratch our heads and say "wait a second…$700 per month is $8400…thousands per year in hidden costs means at least $2000….so 25% is 'hidden costs?' Where do these numbers come from?" He doesn't want us to ask questions like that because we then might question the sources of that data, and of other data like the 'hundreds' of letters he gets from people begging him to help them with their health care costs. What about the hundreds of letters telling him to leave their insurance alone? Do they not count? Suddenly I'm feeling a little disenfranchised. Here are some other BLUE pill moments from his speech and Q&A:

I don't think anyone will argue with the idea that health care could be reformed for the better. But there are myriad other options that are not being considered simply because they're offered by conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, or by Newt Gingrich's Center For Healthcare Transformation. They promote choice, efficiency and keep the government out of the middle of things, and therefore we're asked to take the BLUE pill.

I say resist the urge to keep the blinders on. Take the RED pill, discover the truth, and fight to keep your liberty.

What "Clerks" can teach us

2009-07-16T23:53:00.003-06:00

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) inserted language into the health care bill that will allow for coverage of abortions. When called on it, she fussed and fidgeted and gave an evasive answer. That should be for the opposition like blood in the water for a shark. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) even asked her at one point if she would insert the line "except for abortions" into the amendment so that she could garner more support. She declined. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania) said he could not support the amendment because she made it so vague. A Democrat said that! The amendment passed anyway.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colorado) inserted language into the cap & trade bill that helps provide business to New Resource Bank in San Francisco, the nation's first so called "green bank." The problem is that Perlmutter is an investor in this bank. So is his ex-wife. So is his father. Can you say "undisclosed conflict of interest?"
Colorado is on a roll. Governor Bill Ritter just awarded the law firm of Hogan and Hartson a no-bid contract to review the disbursement of Colorado's stimulus money ($40,000 of which has already been paid to the law firm for their services...how many jobs were created from that? I can guess...). The problem is that Hogan and Hartson is Ritter's former employer and several of the lawyers are Ritter supporters. Two of them, who are working directly with the money that has partially gone to them, are direct contributors to the governor's campaign.

Media:

Sarah Palin never said "I can see Russia from my house." That was Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live (while her impression was nearly spot on, I have a hard time believing that pundits and wags can't tell them apart). However, Palin's original statement has been lost and the country thinks that is what she actually said, thanks in no small part to it's being repeatedly attributed to her by the media. Back to the TOTBL (tactic of the big lie): if you repeat it often enough, it becomes the truth.
Maureen Dowd plagiarized a passage from another writer, changing only one phrase from "we were looking" to "the Bush crowd was looking." Aside from that passage, the two paragraphs were exactly the same - more than 40 words, identical, in the exact same order. That has to be like picking a 40 digit powerball winner! Supposedly she was told by a friend to make the point and somehow between the friend telling Dowd to make point and the actual making of the point she came up with the identical thought as the other author, only Bush-bashing for three words instead of using the royal "we." Did she lose her job? Get excoriated by her peers for committing what has to be the worst offense one journalist can inflict upon another? Nope. She apologized - without admitting she did anything wrong. End of story.
Bill O'Reilly's column this week dissects a piece in Newsweek where Palin, conservatives at large and Fox News in particular are attacked. O'Reilly's point is that if Newsweek were to openly say "we're trying to build a liberal/progressive base to keep us in business, and this opinion piece by a committed leftist is part of that strategy" there would be nothing wrong with it. But they didn't - they presented it as though the author was a Newsweek columnist. In reality he's a blogger who has an axe to grind against Fox News and lists among his interests "conservative failure."

So you can see the tactics being employed against the American people. As a politician you can do whatever you want with legislation, even if it directly benefits you, and no harm will come you as a result of it. Journalists can repeat lies, misrepresent their status and even steal from each other and that's all OK in today's America - as long as it benefits the liberal/progressive agenda.

You know what? I don't appreciate their ruse.

Sources:
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=101270487461&h=MqCyq&u=ST-EP
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/15/perlmutter-provision-would-aid-familys-green-bank/
http://cbs4denver.com/local/ritter.stimulus.hogan.2.1080748.html
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/05/18/the-maureen-dowd-plagiarism-scandal/
http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn?pid=26893

2009-07-15T09:18:00.004-06:00

Here's a widget to track the status of H.R.3200 America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009:

Note to Michael Bennett

2009-07-12T22:29:00.001-06:00

Senator Bennett,

I recently wrote to you regarding my concerns about Sonia Sotomayor. On June 5th you provided an eloquent response. One line from your note was: "Her skill and fair-mindedness on the federal bench has won the praise and support of Americans from all walks of life." Has it not also drawn scorn from people from all walks of life? Indeed, hasn't she had several decisions appealed and ultimately overturned?

You also said:"She brings with her a compelling life story and personal experience that will add to the Courtâ€™s diversity and its shared understanding of how its decisions affect the daily lives of hardworking Americans." Are these now the qualifications for a Supreme Court Justice? Justice is supposed to be blind to race and gender - all people are equal before the law. Why then is race and gender - "diversity" - a qualifier for the supreme court? Her cases that have been appealed have been overturned more often than not, she feels that gender and race trump rule of law, and that the courts are where policies are made rather than enforced. Judges have been rejected in the past based on lower rates of overturned judgments, but you seem willing to look past this serious issue.

Activist judiciaries are usurping the power of the legislature, and yet the Senate, including you, seem to be determined to rush to confirm Sotomayor. Your note to me closed by saying that you value the input of Coloradoans. Is that really the case? I wonder only because, based on your response to my note, you seem to have made up your mind on Sotomayor before the confirmation hearings have even begun. I fully anticipate that the Democrat led Senate will confirm Sotomayor. I fear it will be done without a serious look at her record, and generations of Americans will pay the price for that haste.

Sincerely,

Richard Baker

Pride Goes Before A Fall

2009-07-09T23:35:00.002-06:00

Obama, if you believe the media, is loved around the world. He's a great leader, a great man, a great orator. He's simply...great. He's greater than great. He's above the world, he's pan-human, like a god. That's all if you believe the media. But I think that's all a thin veneer, a $100 polish put on a $3 pair of boots by the media, which lives by Costanza's Rule: it's not a lie if YOU believe it.

Could it be that people around the world love him for other, less altruistic reasons? Look first at who has been the most hated. George W Bush, of course, was hated by the American left and by people world wide. He certainly had his faults, but he did liberate Iraq and put down the Taliban (though they've crawled their way back). Afghanistan is about to have an election where there will be actual choices for the first time in a long, long time. Iran was so encouraged by the liberation of Iraq that a month after their "elections" the people are still being locked away and punished for expressing their desire for freedom. He may not have protected the economy (not that the current state was all his fault either!) but he did liberate millions of people.

How about Reagan? Sarah Palin was/is absolutely despised after just being compared to him. He was hated world wide as the leader of "The Great Satan" and was called the anti-Christ because his first, middle and last names have 6 letters in them. He too liberated millions of people. He single-handedly led the West to victory in the cold war, proving that Communism eventually ends in bankruptcy and corruption. His call to tear down the Berlin Wall was answered, and people who had not known freedom for two generations were liberated. Those scenes of jubilation can't be forgotten. Unless you're a member of the committed left.

To the committed left, personal responsibility, free markets and individual liberty are all aberrations to be poisoned and killed like insects. For 233 years other nations, and at times our own people, have tried to alter and change the United States. As the most successful constitutional democracy in history, we have endured hard times, been brought to our knees a few times, but have never been knocked out. Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society were no match for Reagan's Shining City On A Hill. He succeeded because he knew what made this country great, and great leaders allow the strengths of those they lead to come to the surface.

Enter Obama. It's my belief that he is loved because he is the anti-Reagan. Carter's malaise brought us to our knees, but Reagan changed that. So for the committed left, and the America haters world wide, Obama represents the best chance in 29 years to knock the US from the top of the mountain. Of course they welcome him! He's going to do what the Soviet Union, Al Queda, the Taliban, the KKK, the Black Panthers, the Secessionists, the French, the English, the Nazis, the Empirical Japanese, SARs, West Nile and Swine Flu could not do. He's going to remake America into a weak imitation of the failed and failing societies around the world. Instead of bringing them up to our level, when he talks of level playing fields, he's bringing us down to theirs. And they don't have to any of the work!

The danger is that Obama views these open armed welcomes as validation of his world view; he sees an invitation to go and lecture everyone else about what we're doing wrong. The Democrats view his election as a vindication of their beliefs and a vilification of conservative values. The truth is far from this rosy interpretation. The left is joining the rest of the world in cheering the death of the things that have made America great, and the media is covering it as though it were Lindbergh landing in Paris, Armstrong walking on the moon and Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate all rolled into one. I think Obama is more like the Trojan Horse, waiting to bring misery to everyone inside our walls. The rest of the world can see it. Why can't we?

Our ace in the hole is that the truth always wins out in the end. As the reality of free market economics proves that you can't spend your way to prosperity and the recession lingers longer than it should, holes will begin to appear in the fabric of this deception. Obama's condescension will start to ring hollow to the less committed of those who supported him. Buyer's remorse will set in, and the pendulum will swing. Pride goes before a fall, and brother, Obama sure is proud.

4th Of July, 2009

2009-07-04T09:22:00.003-06:00

233 years ago the founders of this nation started a rebellion against tyranny. They didn't want glory, they didn't want power, they didn't want all other national leaders to like them or respect them. The wanted to be free. They no longer wanted the fruits of their labors to be confiscated by a government that did not represent them or their interests.

They created the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights specifically to LIMIT the power and size of the federal government and EMPOWER the individual, for they knew well the dangers of too much power residing in one place.

The created the three branches - Executive, Legislative and Judicial - so that there would be checks and balances against abuse of power. They established the free press to keep the people informed about the actions of their elected officials.

Think about this in the context of today's society. One party controls the Legislative and Executive Branches. The most recent nominee to the Supreme Court does not believe that a judge's role is to enforce law, but rather to set policy (the role of the legislature!) and she places race and gender above the rule of established law. The free press nearly unanimously dotes on the president, and the lone network who dares to levy criticism (Fox News) is made the punchline of a joke that isn't funny.

With the stance of the president very weakly denouncing the oppression of the Iranian people, and resoundingly against the constitutional uprising in Honduras, he has placed his foreign policy squarely at odds with the rule of law and constitutional freedom. What does this say about his deisigns for America?

Thomas Jefferson said "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people there is liberty."

On this Independence Day, in which direction are we headed?

My latest message to Congresswoman Markey

2009-07-04T08:39:00.000-06:00

Betsy Markey

US House Of Representatives

July 4, 2009

Re:

Congresswoman Markey,

I just received your mailer where you tout how you've been working for me, the taxpayer, by reluctantly voting against President Obamas titanic budget. In support of this claim you listed seven bullet points that show your dedication to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington. Among these was voting against the release of the last $350 billion of the bailout package. Kudos to you.

However, when I examine your voting record, I'm puzzled. Among the bullets listing your fiscal responsibility and service to the community, nowhere is listed the votes for larger government at the taxpayer expense.

You voted FOR the $819 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This bill, which was needed ostensibly to keep unemployment under 6.4% (according to Christine Romer) has failed in that purpose as unemployment has surged to over 9%, but we're still stuck with the tab of this failed legislation.
You voted FOR the omnibus spending bill.
You voted AGAINST the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 (which was intended to prevent mortgage foreclosures and enhance mortgage credit availability. Michael Bennet, Senator from Colorado voted for this in the Senate).
You voted to impose additional taxes on bonuses received from TARP money (this despite the fact that the TARP legislation explicitly authorized these bonuses). In other words, this arbitrary, confiscatory taxation removed money from American pockets - money the congress put there in the first place - and set a dangerous precedent that the government can take what it wants, when it wants.
You voted for the measure that gives federal employees 4 weeks of paid parental leave, adding (at taxpayer expense) to a benefits package that is already better than that of most Americans and adding money to the federal budget
And most recently, you voted FOR the cap and trade legislation which some estimates say will DOUBLE the energy costs of many American families, in particular those who get their electricity from coal fired power plants. Other negatives of this bill include estimates of at least 1.8 million jobs lost and a $283 Billion reduction in the GDP by 2030 and $1.1 Trillion by 2050.

So while I appreciate your mailer touting your fiscal conservancy, it seems like many politicians you're handing me a dollar with one hand while plucking two from my wallet with the other. Now, more than ever, the American people are watching our elected officials. How they vote on EVERY issue matters, so I hope you remember that when you go to vote on the next issue and send your next mailer. Happy 4th of July!!

Richard Baker

Longmont, CO

Every Player Has Their Tell

2009-07-03T14:37:00.000-06:00

This has been a busy week...people are dying for trying to express their opinions in Iran and our president could care less; a coup in Honduras, executed to preserve their fragile constitution, has been swiftly condemned by our president in a show of unity with Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers; the conservative movement lost the first cap and trade battle in the House, Al Franken was awarded his Senate seat and another celebrity seems to die with each passing day. Whew, that's a lot to process. I think out of all of this the Honduras-Iran comparison tells us a lot more than what's happened on the surface.

Anyone who has any lingering hope that Obama is not a complete leftist need only look at his reactions to world events over the last week to have those hopes crushed. Like a poker player who can't stop smiling when he has four aces, Obama may have unintentionally tipped his hand regarding his real hopes for change in this administration.

While taking a "wait and see" approach to people trying exercise freedom of speech and assembly in Iran (rights we take for granted), he waited until China and Russia - CHINA and RUSSIA!! - spoke against the harsh treatment of protesters before "strongly condemning" the actions.

Yet in Honduras, when the constitution was threatened and a coup was executed to protect it, Obama rallied round the issue with this hemisphere's most notorious dictators to denounce it. Why be so quick to bash one and slow to attack the other? One could postulate what he's thinking:

On Honduras: "Gee, all the president was trying to do was change the constitution so he could continue his rule! What's so bad about that? When I try that I don't want to be arrested and dropped off at the border!"

On Iran: "Gee, all the mullahs are doing is protecting the fraudulent results of a bogus election, and the people are being really unreasonable! I wish we could shut down the internet, arrest people at will and shoot and hang protesters with no repercussions in this country. Why should I condemn them for doing what I don't have the power to do...yet."

But if one were to postulate such thoughts, one would have absolutely no faith in our leader, would one?

Obama has made a career of being sufficiently vague about his beliefs so as to allow people to draw their own conclusions about what his stance on issues really is, and thus far it's worked for him. He'd better develop a real platform of beliefs and make them public soon, or the conclusions people draw will not be to his liking. I don't hold out much hope for that though...in my opinion, he's too concerned about his image to worry about substance or principle. What cards is he holding in this political poker game, and is he a good enough player to win? I guess we'll find out soon enough, but at least now we can see his more of his strategy.

The Power Of Words

2009-06-25T21:25:00.003-06:00

"If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help." - John F. Kennedy

"Speak softly and carry a big stick." - Theodore Roosevelt

These lessons appear to be lost on Barack Obama. He loves his words, and loves to hear himself say them. But he neither speaks softly nor carries the big stick, and once he successfully weakened his image by talking, more words are not going to get the message across.

How did he weaken his image? Three specific quotes come to mind:

“In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe‘s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”
“My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”
“While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”

By going on this apology tour, what he has told the despots of the world is that as Americans our days of walking the talk are over. First, while the demographics of Europe show a dying out of Western values, we don't want to be dismissive! Heavens no! Let's don't call it as we see it! Secondly, we're not perfect, as his job to the Muslim world shows us. I didn't realize he HAD a job to do for the Muslim world. I thought he was the President of the United States! Had he said "Christian world" I am sure the left would have wailed about the separation of church and state. And who ever said we were perfect? Churchill said it best when he said that Democracy was the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried. Lastly, after taking an upbraiding from Hugo Chavez which he let go with no response, he submissively whines that we've tried to dictate our terms to....an audience of dictators! Did he not get that irony?

Now when Iran is in the middle of an uprising, when the world is looking for someone to stand up and take the lead, he uses more words: "we're still waiting to see how it plays itself out." Waiting? For what? More innocent people to die? After all his talk of fresh beginnings with the Muslim world, when a country is reaching out to the west for help, we suddenly decide to wait and see what happens. He also went a step farther in saying "I strongly condemn these unjust actions." Maybe that will work....

....fade into a dream sequence....

Ahmadinejad: "See, the American President is weak! He's going to 'wait and see!' It will be over before he sees anything!"

Ali Khamenei: "I don't know...he said he 'strongly condemns' our actions."

Ahmadinejad: "He said 'strongly?' Really? That's not good."

Ali Khamenei: "I know, right?. Let's give up our iron grip on our power, stop pursuing nuclear weapons and funding terrorism and embrace freedom for our people. Then let's go to the mall and buy some Levis and some KFC. Get your Member's Only jacket and let's go! I'm buying!"

...transition back to Obama sleeping fitfully and smiling.

Fade to black.

Denis Leary's Presponse to Obama's Tobacco Legislation

2009-06-24T22:16:00.000-06:00

In a serious feat of prognostication, in 1996 Denis Leary wrote a response to Obama's smoking legislation. The law, in part, will require cigarette manufacturers to place large health warnings on the packages by 2012. Leary's 12 year old response reads as follows:

"You fucking dolt! Doesn't matter how big the warnings are. You could have cigarettes that were called the warnings. You could have cigarrettes that come in a black pack, with a skull and a cross bone on the front, called 'tumors,' and smokers would be lined up around the block going, "I can't wait to get my hands on these fucking things! I bet you get a tumor as soon as you light up! Numm Numm Numm Numm Numm"

Let's Drink To Your Health!

2009-06-18T22:14:00.002-06:00

In 2006 I spent three days in the hospital with a kidney stone that ultimately required surgery to remove. It was an expensive three days, with the bill coming in around $24,000. Thankfully, I have health insurance so I spent less than $3000 out of pocket by the time all was said and done. That drain on my savings was painful - almost as painful as the stone was - but without the insurance it could have been much worse. Unfortunately, this was my second kidney stone, and I am told that once you have two, the chances are better than 90% that you'll keep getting them. So it goes without saying that I have a vested interest in keeping my health insurance. $3,000 drains my savings - $24,000 would bankrupt me.

But why was it $24,000? When I examined the itemized bill you see that the cost of treatments were way out of line with what you could expect. Two Advil were $8. Each click on the morphine button was $28 (I actually have no idea if that's high or not - but had I known that I probably would have suffered just a little longer between clicks...). The special circulation-boosting socks they put on my legs before surgery? $128. For socks.

Of course, part of that Advil, morphine and sock charge wasn't really paying for those items, it was paying for the nurses who looked after me, who came in during the night when my oxygen levels dropped too low, who made sure that I didn't, well, die. It takes some of the sting off, but I think next time I will still have my wife smuggle in the Advil for me since $8 buys 1000 pills of the stuff at Target.

Health care has been a big talking point for the Obama campaign, and the mandate he has given congress is to come forward with a plan for national health care by the end of July. The concept of national health care is noble, and people on the left will tell you that the right to health care is a fundamental human right. The government will drive costs down, they'll say. Look at what Britain has done with national health care, they'll say. And just to make you feel comfortable with it, Obama has repeatedly said something (of course I am paraphrasing here) along the lines of "look, no one is going to take your health care away. If you want to keep your employer provided plans, you can!"

But what lies beneath the promises? When the government set prices on flu vaccines in the 90's (remember Hillary-care) the results were horrible. The intention was to make the vaccine affordable for the elderly since they are one of the more at-risk groups for the flu. The reality was that companies could not manufacture the vaccine and make a profit at the government mandated prices, so several of them stopped making it and moved to more profitable pursuits. The remaining manufacturers could make their profits on the volume needed, but lacked the production capacity to keep up with demand, resulting in shortages of the vaccine. Fewer seniors got the vaccine than would have if the prices were just left alone. If this is the effect of government controls on a simple vaccine, what happens when the start monkeying around with more specialized procedures?

Karol Sikora, former head of cancer control at the World Health Organization uses Great Britain as an example. Government controls on the available cancer drugs have resulted in decreased availability of newer, more effective (and more costly) cancer treatments. Result? Men in Great Britain have a 20% to 33% greater chance of dying of cancer than their peers in Sweden. Women have an 18% to 22% greater chance of death. When it comes to YOUR health, is that change you can believe in? Are you chomping at the bit for chance to have a greater chance of dying from cancer so your uninsured countrymen can get their treatment at your expense?

And trust me, it will be at your expense. Not only will taxes have to go up (remember, Obama said he will be cutting income taxes for everyone, but medicare is funded through the payroll tax, and he made no promises there!) to pay for a national health care system, but according to Jim Frogue of the Center for Health Transformation, if you keep your company's plan so you have access to the best health care, you can expect to pay more for the services. You see, the government plan will not pay the market rates for services, so health care providers will face a shortfall in capital and will be underfunded. This can be offset in a couple of ways. One would be to reduce the costs - like employ fewer nurses, use older equipment, opt for lower cost treatments even if they're less effective. Does that sound like improved health care to you? The other and more likely way to cover the shortfall is to raise the rates on the private insurance plans. My $128 socks could easily jump to $150 or more. In effect, then, the cost will hit us twice; once in the payroll tax and again via inflation when we have services delivered.

Lastly, what of the uninsured? According to the National Coalition on Health Care, 18% (or nearly 1 in 5) Americans doesn't have health insurance. The reasons listed are primarily that people do not have either access to health coverage through their employer, or they can't afford the premiums. I have two examples to discuss, then I'll quit beating this horse.

First, I have a friend who was laid off from a title company about a year ago when the housing bubble burst. He lives simply and doesn't have much in the way of expenses, and had substantial savings. He has chosen to live without a job since then, and consequently without health coverage. The key word here is "chosen." He is without coverage BY CHOICE, and I am certain he is not the only person in the nation who has made this choice. Nowhere in the NCHC statistics do I see this number represented. I love this guy like a brother, but why should I pay for his health care through my taxes when he's made this choice?

The second example is another friend of mine. This one is a teacher. He had a SWEET deal on health care through the school district. I forget the numbers, but his coverage was free, his spouse was $1 per month and their kids were covered for a somewhat larger fee. The total for the family of 4 was less than $100 per month. Then the district went bankrupt and his coverage ballooned to over $900 per month (on top of a 7% cut in pay! So much for the NEA protecting teachers - but that's for another day). What did he do? He took a part time job at UPS, working enough hours to cover the cost of the lower premiums UPS offered for their health coverage.

And this is the missing piece of the health care debate. There are absolutely people who are in desperate situations who cannot afford or don't qualify for coverage, but there are also a number of people who abdicate their personal responsibility and wait for the government "nanny state" to come in and take care of them rather than rolling up their sleeves and working harder for what they want. How do we help the former without coddling the latter?

One thing is certain - once we open the lid and let out this entitlement, it is going to be next to impossible to put it back in the box. If you want to make your voice known, go to Congress.org and send a note to your elected officials. If they value re-election, they will listen to the will of the people.

These kids today...they just don't get it!

2009-06-11T21:54:00.002-06:00

Many things have been puzzling me since the ascendancy of Obama to the national stage. The gleeful abandonment of even the appearance of journalistic integrity, for one. Another is the double standard handling of Sarah Palin and her family. But tonight I'm ruminating on the Obama Youth Movement.

It's been pretty well documented that young people turned out for Obama in huge numbers. While walking out of Folsom Field after this year's Bolder Boulder, I passed a group of, I assume, CU students wearing shirts with the Obama logo on them, but some community organizing slogan underneath. I expect that at CU, but I've run into other young people who think Obama is just the best. Why? Well, I have a theory.

First, the gleefully ethically (and increasingly financially) bankrupt media has helped perpetuate the myth that the GOP is the party of rich, old, white men while the DNC is the hip, young party - or par-TAY - that has as it's representatives Jon Stewart, Hayden Panatierre (did I spell that right? Who cares...) and a host of other Hollywood people. As they know from experience (check here for more), if you get the media to repeat something often enough, people will believe it. If you need proof, bogus statistics about abortions in the 1960's found their way into the infamous freedom of choice act. Anyway, The GOP's doddering, decrepit old white guys are no match for the DNCs counterparts - Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden...um, wait a minute...

Next, the young people, particularly those still in school and old enough to vote are awash in the left wing indoctrination camps that are America's colleges. This means a few things. First, they're getting primarily one side of the story from their teachers. My friends in academia may bristle at these accusations, but there's not a lot done in schools to teach conservative values, and it's a fact that the NEA is one of the largest donors to the Democratic ticket. Since they're practically brainwashed anyway, the Hollywood cool factor makes it even harder for youngsters to break free from the mind control. If everyone around you in the dorms and on campus is for Obama, you're not likely to deviate from that or you'll be an outcast. Nothing is more frightening for a young person. Secondly, by their very nature, young people, especially students, don't have a lot at risk. Few have much in the way of savings, and certainly not many make enough money to worry about taxes. With Obama promising free college education in trade for community organizing and tax rebates to everyone regardless of how little they pay in taxes, young people stand to benefit from Obama's social programs (assuming he actually delivers on these promises) more than most other demographic groups. Why wouldn't they vote for him?

Lastly, the Democrats, or at least the liberal subset, represent the par-tay of if it feels good, do it. Remember, these are the flower children from the summer of love, Woodstock and a million 'love-ins.' They laugh at the concept of abstinence, promote abortion as a method of birth control, have laid the groundwork for young people today to do what they want, when they want and bear none of the negative consequences. Incurable sexually transmitted diseases like herpes (your friend for life) are the only permanent reminders of misspent youth. Young people are all about having the good time, putting off responsibility and getting instant gratification. The DNC plays to that with vigor. As a young person, why wouldn't you vote for the left?

As all of us old farts know, youth is wasted on the young. Once these kids who turned out in record numbers to vote for Obama get out of school and get a job, they'll start to see what they've done. Once they're out of school, mom and dad's health care coverage won't be there anymore, they'll have to pay for coverage through their job. The only thing is, if Obama passes his health plan, fewer companies are going to offer health care, so they'll be stuck with whatever government rationed plan is available. You can't get in to see a doctor, you won't get any meds if you do, but hey - it's free! (Except for those taxes that come out of your paycheck, of course.) Speaking of taxes, as they move up the ladder in their companies and their salaries increase, they'll understand just how unfair the progressive tax system is. Those rebate checks won't seem so hip any more once they realize that more they make, the less they keep. And when they find out that their daughters went and got an abortion without their consent and the law says there's nothing they can do about it, they may have a different perspective on the whole no consequences thing.

The ultimate payback for them will be when, well into their 30's, closer to 50 than to 20, a fresh faced Hollywood starlet, just turned 18 and voting in her first election, putting into practice all the knowledge she's gleaned during her long life, condescends to tell them that if they don't vote for the democrat, they're out of touch. Maybe they'll shake their head and mutter under their breath "These kids today....they just don't get it!"

Puntucated Equilibrium And Our President

2009-06-04T21:46:00.003-06:00

I recently read an article by Justice Little (contributor to the Taipan Daily investment newsletter) that talked about "change at the periphery." According to Little, "change at the periphery is related to a powerful concept from the theory of evolution known as “punctuated equilibrium.” A key thrust of the punctuated equilibrium idea is that, despite what many assume, the center does not actually evolve or change. Instead, the center remains relatively stable, while interesting things happen out on the fringes (the periphery). These fringe-area happenings are mostly inconsequential...But then, given enough time, something happens. One of those fringe happenings out on the edge catches on. Something new and powerful takes place at the periphery. This new model or idea or experiment or whatever it is – the precise technical term doesn’t matter – begins to catch on. The source of peripheral change then begins to compound in force and impact, reaching a stage where it grows and expands rapidly. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the dominance of the old center is challenged. The old center does not actually change or evolve. Instead it is challenged and eventually dominated – perhaps dominated out of existence – by a new center that quietly grew in the shadows, out on the fringes, while few were paying attention."

Whew. Punctuated equilibrium...peripheral change....what does any of this have to do with politics? I think it's very relevant to the Obama administration's method of operation. In his case, I would call it relentless change at the periphery. People, Republicans mostly - notably Sarah Palin in her speech at the convention last year - mocked Obama's experience as a community organizer. In retrospect I think that was a mistake. I think people have underestimated the determination and power of the community he has brought with him, and underestimated the organization of it. Thanks to Obama and an all too willing and compliant Congress, the entire periphery of our national values are being attacked, and there seems to be nothing the GOP can do to stop it.

Part of the organized community is the media. Some things get a tremendous amount of play in the press, which takes our collective eye off of the real issues that are happening, much like a magician uses misdirection to fool your eye into thinking the coins really disappeared or the woman was really cut in half. We're well familiar with the nomination of Sotomayor to the supreme court, but how much have we heard from the media about the testing of a nuclear device under the soil of North Korea? Were it not for Fox News, the protest of over a half million people on April 15th would have gone unnoticed (the New York Times ran a story on the tea parties on page 14. On page 1? A story about climate change). Then wonks like Keith Olbermann bring up the protests only to mock the protesters, which creates another distraction.

Obama the uniter has proven to be Obama the divider, and the opposition is digging in it's heels against everything he does and says. This plays right into the hands of the Obama team, which I have to admit is one of the craftiest political teams I've ever seen - for now. More on that in a minute.

To paraphrase Robert Menzies, no government does the wrong thing all the time. By opposing everything Obama does, the GOP becomes the party of NO, and that doesn't play well with the public, because the public WANTS to believe in their leaders. We look up to them, we want them to do good things so our lives can be better tomorrow than they were today. Instead of opposing everything, the GOP needs to make big stands on the major issues. The first - the stimulus package - was resoundingly opposed by all but a few Republicans. As this misuse of our money continues to bear no fruit, that opposition will appear wise in retrospect. The next big one is the prospect of cap and trade. This is a horrible idea that will smother business and raise living expenses of everyone who uses electricity. The other big issue looming is heath care. A national health care plan is not a good idea for several reasons, not the least of which is that people with chronic diseases will die more often under a nationalized plan. On these things, the GOP should be loud and strong in their opposition because they affect everyone. Every one of us has skin in the game if these travesties become the law of the land. As people see the danger posed by the big plans, the little ones become more suspect. It will be peripheral change in reverse.

Back to the political smarts of Obama's team. They're riding high right now, they have a media that simply adores them, a pliable congress that condescends to the GOP and the public when they're not ignoring them completely, and the wind of a freshly won election at their back. Dick Morris in a recent column likened this to a reflexive impulse against buyers remorse. Admitting now that Obama is bad for America is, as Morris puts it, like a new bride realizing that she's married the wrong man. To make that admission early on is to admit making a mistake that one must do something about...and doesn't one really need to give a new marriage a change to work before calling for the coroner?

But, with a principled stand against the peripheral changes, soon the polls won't be as high and the accolades as frequent. Unlike a marriage, in politics we're invited to change partners every couple of years. In 2010 the congress will look much different than it does today. In 2012, God willing, neither will the person in the Oval Office.

I am a rightwing extremist

2009-04-18T01:42:00.001-06:00

This week a Department Of Homeland Security internal memo - intended for law enforcement only - leaked to the public. The contents have caused quite the firestorm for Janet Napolitano, prompting her to apologize to veterans for the broad smears the memo paints of them. If you have not read the memo, I encourage you to do so here: http://www.freedomalliance.org/images/stories/extremismreport.pdf. It's a quick 10 minute or so read, and it speaks volumes about how the government perceives those who disagree with their vision. It essentially reads like a liberal-progressive manifesto. For example, from page 2:

"Rightwing extremeism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate oriented(based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups) and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."

I'm certainly glad it specified the definition was broad. To put it in context, if you do not believe in abortion Janet Napolitano now puts you in the same category as neo-nazis and Timothy McVeigh. How about the nineteen states (including Colorado) that have passed or are debating bills enforcing a state's sovereignty? Are they now considered right wing extremist states?

Under this definition, who isn't a right wing extremist? Well, it sounds like if you shut up, nod your head in agreement to everything the Ministry of Truth - I mean, NBC - puts on the air and give up all your rights to free speech, assembly, and arms (you know, the stuff we're granted by that pesky thing called the Constitution) then you may not make the list. But, look at the bright side...at least with DOHS monitoring internet chatter, you know that someone, at least, is reading your blog!

What are your thoughts?

Before the liberals attack the TEA parties...

2009-04-15T08:43:00.004-06:00

I want to go on record now, before I've read any of the liberal responses, about how I think the liberals will respond to the TEA parties taking place today. Here, in no specific order, are their likely responses:

"Small numbers of right wing extremists don't speak for the majority of the nation." No matter how many thousands turn out (taking the day off from work no less) the libs will call it a "small number" and of course, since it is anti-big government, they are all "right wing extremists." The same number of left wing fringe ideologues, however, would represent significant bi-partisan public support for the Savior-in-chief.
"People who just say no are only obstructionists, and therefore do not matter." Expect this one because, no matter the reason, if one is against Obama's big government, one is "only saying no." Does it matter that much of the discussion is centering on the Fairtax, which has been gaining momentum for years, has been introduced as a bill in the last three sessions of congress, and is an alternative to the punitive progressive tax we have today? No, that matters not to the liberal horde. Alternatives do not matter to them because they don't jive with their ideology, and an ideologue isn't open to alternatives.
"It's all part of the right-wing conspiracy and smear machine." When all else fails, just blame the RWC&SM. Whenever possible, work in a comment about big oil, Halliburton, links to the Saudis and comparisons to Hitler.

Anyway, you can gauge the effectiveness of the TEA movement by the amount of denial of it's relevance. The more the left says it's irrelevant, the more it's getting to our elected officials, who crave re-election above everything else. And that is where we hurt them.

Follow up: check here for a Fox article where ACORN reps hit all three of my predictions!

And here's something just for fun:

Pot-heads dominate the country

2009-03-25T22:21:00.007-06:00

First, let me recap the prediction I made last night. I predicted that the market would drop last night. I am pleased to say I was wrong. Though it was down almost 80 mid day it rallied on surprising news that durable goods purchases were up 5% in February and closed up 89%. So, was wrong, and my portfolio is better for it.

Now on to other topics. Last night Obama mentioned that he was going to hold a virtual town hall meeting and anyone can submit questions on-line. I submitted three questions myself, but I was also wondering what other questions people were submitting. When you look at the chart below,
you might note that the topics people are interested in are strangely in line with Obama's budget. That's not because they are of one mind...it's because those are the only categories to choose from - so be wary if you hear anything about how 19% of the people are concerned about the budget...they only has so many options to pick from.

The nice thing about the site is you can search for topic. As of this writing, when I search for "tax" it pulled up 5186 questions submitted by the folks. Search for fair or flat tax and it returns a total of 565 questions. And when you click on a topic - say, "Budget" it returns 8543 questions. You can vote on individual questions, and the ones that have the highest favorable rating are underneath the questions you vote on. You can't put too much stock in the people's voting criteria, however. Under the Budget category, 7 of the top 10 questions are related to legalizing marijuana. According to the people voting on the questions, 70% of the top ten questions related to the horrific budget plan Obama has submitted can be solved by legalizing dope. And in a tactic worthy of Acorn, the pot people often submitted the same question to each category, thereby increasing the odds that people will see, read or vote for their presiden - er, I mean their question. Incidentally, 4 of the top 10 questions under "Financial Stability" were related to legalizing dope; 2 of the top ten under "Health Care Reform" and one each under "Jobs" and "Green Energy" were related to legalizing dope.

So Obama has given the people a voice to ask about his vision for America (whether he'll actually answer the questions is another matter) and to take advantage of this opportunity, people slyly whisper to him "legalize it!"

Come to think of it, this may explain how he got elected in the first place. Remember, friends don't let friends vote while high!

Enough Already - You're The President! The Buck Stops With You, Dingus!

2009-03-24T22:27:00.002-06:00

Prediction: the stock market will drop by 100+ points tomorrow. Why? Because Obama spoke tonight. It's not that he spoke; it's what he said, or rather what he didn't say, that will send people into a funk.

First of all, he didn't say anything new. Second, he was asked not tough, but more pointed questions than he's been asked before, and he didn't answer them. Even a straight yes/no question was deftly ducked by the Pres. Not exactly confidence inspiring. Last, he continues to lay down the Nathan Thurm "it's not me, it's them" vibe.

One reporter pointed out how he has said twice in the last week that he doesn't want to leave a massive debt for the next generation to pay. He then pointed out that republican critics of the budget plan say it doubles the debt to 10 TRILLION dollars in the next ten years, and asked how that was congruent with not wanting to leave debt for the next generation.

Obama went straight to Thurm mode. "First of all," he said, "I suspect that some of those Republican critics - uh - have a short term memory - uh - because as I recall I am inheriting a 1.3 trillion deficit - annual deficit - from them. That would be point one."

From them? From Republicans? The Democrats have had control of the Senate and the House for the last two years - years that have seen the largest increased in federal spending, I might add. Who has short term memory? The Republicans who don't want to raise taxes on a weak economy because of the damage it has done historically, or a one term Senator-turned-president who consistently forgets to mention that he was a part of the 110th congress that approved these massive deficits?

The good news is he only mentioned inheriting the problems four separate times, so at least he didn't overdo it. He also touched on AIG - but I'll save that for tomorrow, and I'll recap the stock market and track the DOW and see if his speech inspired confidence, or made people want their money out of the market altogether.

Is Post-birth Abortion A Possibility?

2009-03-23T22:25:00.002-06:00

As the first 60 days of Obama's administration have unfolded, we have heard people say that he's nowhere near as liberal as he was made out to be in the campaign...and we have also heard that he's MORE liberal than was even imagined. I have a friend who says that he's not done enough for anyone to say one way or the other what he's going to do. But, that is only part of the problem facing the country. The other half is the Democrat controlled Senate and House, with Nanci Pelosi leading the liberal charge.

One of the euphemisms for Obama is "President Present" - so called because he voted present so many times in the Illinois state senate. Only he knows the full reasons why, but the popular theory, and one he has not disputed, is that he voted present on controversial issues so that people would not be able to point to his record and label him one way or the other, and it worked. Critics say that he cannot vote present in the white house - but I disagree. He's got Pelosi and Reid to do the dirty work and advance his causes, and then if there's an uproar, he can step in and look like the mediator rather than the instigator.

Which brings me to abortion. How far will they go in their quest to change the laws? There's no doubt that liberals are furious about the ban on partial-birth abortions that Bush signed into law. In case you don't know, the generally accepted gestational age of viability is 24 weeks, and babies born this early now have a good chance of survival. Repealing the ban on partial birth abortion would allow babies to be killed right up to the 40th week, well beyond established dates for fetal viability.

But is repealing the ban going to be enough? Not for some liberals. Take Peter Singer, author of "Animal Liberation." This publication has been the inspiration for PETA; featured in the movie "Legally Blonde" and is the animal rights bible to which animal rights activists turn for guidance the same way Christians reference the actual bible. Beyond rights for animals (see if you catch the irony here) Singer believes that abortion should be available for any reason, up to and beyond birth. That's right - if you eat a hamburger, he'll call you a murder, but if you kill a baby he'll say you're doing the right thing. He believes that killing a disabled baby leads to a world with greater happiness, so therefore is not only desirable, it's the moral thing to do.

But is that enough? Not for Singer. He views killing a day old infant is no different than killing a slug; he even advocates killing babies with 28 days of birth. Only after 28 days does a baby have any right to life. Most rational people would think he's off his nut, and no right thinking person could give him any credence, right? If you think that, you would be wrong.

Princeton University, in 1998 made him - Orwellian Newspseak alert - their first Professor of BioEthics. Yes, the "Life Ethics" professor believes in infanticide. Amy Guttman, director of Princeton's Center For Human Values, defends him when she calls his views "mainstream." Maybe she believes that because the world of academia is so liberal that the majority of the people she associates agree with him, but the nation is divided roughly down the middle on abortion. Without doing any real research, I am willing to bet that mainstream America is not in favor of infanticide. But I digress.

What does any of this have to Obama? Hopefully nothing; but with his election and the Democratic takeover of both houses of congress, the liberals are large and in charge. However, they know that it won't be that way forever; history shows that when power shifts this far to one side, it swings back fairly quickly. Look for Republicans to make some gains back in 2010. So, that gives the liberals less than 2 years to ram through as much of their agenda a possible. And like someone who loses their sight slowly, if we don't get more conservative leaders elected in 2010, we may suddenly see Peter Singer in a Health and Human Services post, whittling away at the walls that keep abortion at bay.

Random Thoughts About Liberals

2009-03-22T20:22:00.002-06:00

A while back a friend of mine asked what it is that Republicans believe. I gave the answer to a different question - what do conservatives believe, because I believe the answers to the two questions to be very different. I believe that a conservative is value driven and will vote for the person who most closely represents those values. It just so happens that the person who ususally - but not always - represents the conservative view the most closely is a Republican.

But what do liberals believe in? Again, I draw the distinction between Democrats and liberals because not all Democrats are liberals. However, the person who most closely represents the liberal point of view is usually a Democrat. I also place the liberal at the far left of the spectrum; the conservative in the middle-right; the neo-con, which is a term popularized by Pat Buchanan, is at the far right. Buchanan, as an aside, I whole heartedly agree with about 20% of the time; about 40% of the time I think he makes a few good points, and about 40% of the time I think he's out in left (not politically) field. But I digress.

Back to the liberal thing. Not being a liberal, I really can't begin to understand their point of view. But I did some brainstorming the other night when I could not sleep, and here is the result of that session:

"We're Liberals...our primary mantra is "Do as I say, not as I do." We'll raise your taxes, but won't pay ours. We want your guns - so you can't defend yourself against the criminals we'll set free. We don't want a single American to die in a declared war, but don't get too upset if 4000 die in a terrorist attack in New York. We don't think one single murderer should be executed, but we have no qualms about 1,000,000 abortions per year. We want gay marriage, but won't fight dictators who kill men for being gay. We oppose charter schools which allow poor children a chance to get a good education, but we won't send our own kids to public schools. We'll disarm pilots and other law abiding citizens, but won't disarm criminals. We'll spend money we don't have to put in place programs people don't need to help people who didn't ask for it. We'll ask others to make sacrifices to pay for our programs but we won't make those same sacrifices ourselves."

Is this fair? I don't know. A liberal will certainly not see it that way, but this is my view of their beliefs. The really bad thing is the country is being led by these people. Everyone is excited about Obama and his promise to give everyone free health care a free college education, but they seem to have forgotten that nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever free. It's just another liberal lie.

Second Amendment - Take A Stand

2009-03-07T17:36:00.002-07:00

There have been numerous rumblings from Washington recently that Attorney General Holder and President Obama are going to move ahead with their pursuit of a ban on guns - semi-automatic versions of handguns, rifles and shotguns in particular. This is disturbing in light of Obama's multiple campaign trail pledges not to take guns away and assurances to law abiding gun owners that they have nothing to fear from him. What are we to believe? As far as Holder is concerned, he's more open in his views. In 2003 he actually said "The second amendment does not protect firearms possession or use that is unrelated to participation in a well regulated militia."

I urge you to go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ and enter your zip code to identify your representatives. Below is the text of a message I've just sent to Mark Udall, Betsy Markey, Michael Bennett and Barack Obama. If we, as citizens, do not start standing up and reminding our elected officials that they work for us, then one by one we'll find our rights have become endangered.

Esteemed Representatives,

I'm writing, as a citizen of the United States, to ask you to please oppose ANY "anti gun bill" that includes ANY "gun ban" to repeal the Second Amendment to the Constitution or would confiscate the legally owned firearms of millions of law-abiding Americans.

The Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote the Second Amendment -– they were giving the people the right to defend themselves against all threats -- including the threat of an oppressive government.

Americans will be highly skeptical of any diversionary talk of “waiting periods”, “background checks” or “gun-registration” and additional promises to enforce any new and deeply flawed approaches.

If history is an accurate guide, banning guns would only embolden criminals and encourage crime, leaving honest Americans defenseless. One need only look to Australia and their increase in national crime rates following the enactment of restrictive gun laws to see the negative impacts of such legislation.

Further, it would be impossible to administer and even more unlikely to be enforced, would create another underground criminal enterprise, and would turn millions of honest Americans into outlaws.

That’s what’s at stake here. Our freedom. Our future.

One of the most important jobs you have to do right now is to protect U.S. citizens Second Amendment rights. Like millions of Americans, I'm sick and tired of the "inside the beltway" politics on this issue; I will listen to NO MORE weasel words or slick excuses. On the campaign trail, then-Senator Obama repeatedly said that law abiding gun owners have nothing to fear, and that he would not take our guns. The current rumblings from far-away Washington regarding gun-ban legislation appear to be making this the next in a long line of false statements a politician has put forth for the purposes of getting elected, only to recant once in office.

This issue is BLACK OR WHITE - there are NO "shades of gray." We need you to protect Americans and their Right to Bear Arms. Please, oppose ANY "gun bill" that includes ANY "gun ban" provisions. I will be watching your vote on this issue very closely, and sharing this message with all of my friends who enjoy sport shooting and who value home and family protection. Thank you.

We're From The Government, And We're Here To Help You

2009-03-06T10:08:00.004-07:00

On March 3rd, Rachel Maddow was on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. She, like her fellow blowhard Keith Olbermann, basks in the warming cocoon that NBC provides. Coming from the ultra-liberal MSNBC, she knows that venturing out into the world could be tough, except this was an appearance on NBC. So, she knows that she can try hard to be cute and snarky and Leno is not going to take her to task.

When the conversation turned to Rush Limbaugh, she of course latched onto the concept that it was horrible for Rush to say he hopes Obama fails as our president. Her point was that if Obama's policies are meant to improve the economy, why would you root against them? According to Maddow, we should all be hoping that they succeed! And so she uses the classic ploy of linking the political agenda to improving the crisis du jour to make anyone who opposes it seem like a dingo lurking outside a preschool.

The fact is that the policies Rush is taking exception to are not policies that are designed to bring the country back to prosperity. As he said, "what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it?" Why indeed?

The Orwellian policies of the committed left are designed to keep poor people under the thumb of kindly old Uncle Sam. If you don't think that's true, then why is Obama and the Democratic congress so bent on increasing welfare, effectively reversing the reforms made in the 1990's? As Harry Browne said, the government is good at one thing: it breaks your leg, hands you a crutch and says "See, if it wasn't for government, you wouldn't be able to walk." And so it goes with welfare. If you're completely dependent on the government for your subsistence, why would you vote that government out of office? The Left says it wants to help the poor? That means it wants to KEEP them poor. Miss Maddow, this policy is NOT meant to bring the country back to prosperity.

If Maddow is so convinved that Obama is trying to lead America back to prosperity, why is he raising capital gains taxes at a time when the stock market is at the lowest point in 12 years? In the first place, raising capital gains taxes reduces investing; in the second place, NO ONE is making any gains right now, so including this as a budgetary item is not going to help the balance sheet in the least. Miss Maddow, this policy is NOT meant to bring the country back to prosperity.

If Obama is trying to lead the country back to prosperity, why is he limiting the charitable contribution deduction at a time when so many people need help? Look at who this move hurts: religious and conservative Republicans give on average three times as much to charity as secular Democrats. In his book "Who Really Cares; The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," Arthur C Brooks also reveals that conservatives are also more likely to do volunteer work for charities, participate in blood drives, and even are more likely to give back extra change when a clerk makes a mistake at the cash register. Since Democrats don't give to charity as much, there's no harm in reducing the tax benefits, is there? If you're paying attention, the answer is YES. Increasing the tax burden on charitable individuals will reduce the money they have available, and they will either reduce what they give to charity, or they will reduce what they spend in the marketplace. Is either option what you want at time when factories and stores are laying people off by the thousands because of a lack of spending? If you're Obama or Rachel Maddow, the answer is yes. Miss Maddow, this policy is NOT meant to bring the country back to prosperity.

Why would we be limiting the mortgage interest deduction at a time when the housing market is already suffering so badly? Supposedly the reduction will only affect people who own a second home...but that doesn't do much to help the economies of Florida or Arizona, the second home capitals of the United States. Many people buy second homes with the tax benefits playing a major factor in the investment decision. If you take away that incentive, the demand for housing will drop even further, prices will continue to decline and the market will further stagnate. Why would Obama do this? One reason might be that if the housing prices are depressed far enough, poor people can afford to buy them. The problem here is that the poor are getting poorer along with everyone else, so owning a home is just as far out of reach for them now as it ever has been. Miss Maddow, this policy is NOT meant to bring the country back to prosperity.

The only reason that can carried through all of this is that Obama, a proponent of "redistributive justice" wants to punish people who are successful (he has clearly said he doesn’t intend to punish success, but in true Orwellian prose, that means he intends to do exactly that!). The Committed Left cries all the time about having a level playing field, and people assume that means that the poor are lifted up to the level of the middle class. What no one says aloud is that it also could mean that the middle class are brought DOWN to the level of the poor, the wealthy are brought DOWN to the level of the middle class. Instead of trickle down prosperity, it's trickle up poverty.

Back to Rush Limbaugh and his comments - at least he calls it like he sees it and says proudly that he wants Obama's liberal agenda to fail. Rachel Maddow and her ilk at the Ministry Of Truth (I mean, MSNBC) hate actual truths when they hear them so they go on the attack, but rest assured when it comes to the 4th estate attack dogs, Obama is holding the leash. In his first press conference Obama said that only the government can get us out of this financial crisis. Since the government got us INTO this crisis, I think it’s more important to ask "who will save us from the government?"

My Open Letter To The President

2009-02-18T22:22:00.001-07:00

Mr. President,

In your first press conference you made several statements that caught my attention. I am very curious if these statements have teeth or if they were merely more of the empty rhetoric ‘we the people’ have come to expect from our elected officials.

Early in the press conference you said that you would do “whatever it takes” to right the economy. You made a strong case for government intervention, but that we “are still going to have to attract private capital.” As you’re no doubt aware, it is estimated that there are about $12 trillion in offshore funds[1] held by individuals and corporations; some for use in conducting business in offshore locations, some simply to avoid paying taxes on these monies. These funds are expected to grow at a rate of $800 billion per year. If taxes were taken off of the table, Alan Greenspan estimates that it would only take months for a large portion of this money to return to our economy.[2] In light of the depth of this crisis, would you consider enacting a 12 month amnesty on tax for purposes of repatriating this money?

In the campaign you talked of bi-partisanship. You’ve reached out to Republicans and even added one (briefly) to your cabinet. Yet you made it a point to hang the blame for the economic crisis on the Bush administration, even attempting to absolve yourself from any culpability. You said “When I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, uh, then, uh, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now, and the economic crisis we have right now.” I’ll be honest; this comment got my dander up. You were a sitting senator for four years working alongside people like Senator Dodd and Barney Frank. You accepted money from Fannie Mae. On both sides of the aisle there was irresponsibility that contributed to the problems we’re facing. There were missteps from the Bush administration, but there are many hands dirtied by this mess, but more on that later. You’re our president now. Another American President was famous for saying “the buck stops here.” You wanted the job, you got it, now own it. When you scapegoat and the media scapegoats on your behalf it makes you appear weak and look like a victim rather than the president of the most powerful nation on Earth. Now more than ever we need a strong leader. Please, be that leader and get past the blame game.

Next, you said that “what got us into this mess initially were the banks taking exorbitant risks based on shaky assets.” That is true…but it is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. It’s well known that Fannie Mae encouraged this behavior, rewarding companies like Countrywide for writing prolific numbers of subprime mortgages which were sold off bundled in securities. Given that Fannie Mae, thought to be too big to fail, pushed this economy over the edge, are you willing to take action that many economists like Steve Forbes have been advising for years and break up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into smaller units so no single organization has such crippling power in the future?

The final remark was this one: “so if…if you wanna get…if you wanna buy a house…then puttin’ zero down and buying a house that is probably not affordable for you in case something goes wrong…that’s something that has to be reconsidered…so, uh, we’re gonna have to change our…our bad habits.” Again, to me this is a symptom of the problem and not the cause. While there were certainly irresponsible behaviors exhibited by some people, it is hard to blame people for acting within the boundaries the system provides. It is well known that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 is where the housing crisis began. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act on 1992 shined a spotlight on lending practices. Flawed studies[3] made it appear that there was racial bias in home lending; when corrected to include not just race but creditworthiness the bias disappears. However, due to the scrutiny of the raw data, and the rewards offered by Fannie Mae (mentioned above) banks and lending institutions (notably Countrywide), began loosening underwriting standards and using ‘nontraditional’ credit analysis and income sources as underwriting criteria. Zero down mortgages (you called these out in your press conference), mortgage payments well in excess of the 28 to 36% of gross income standard, dubious or non-existent employment and credit histories became commonplace. Given what we know now, are you ready to take the emphasis off of the HDMA and back on reasonable underwriting standards?

These actions – a tax holiday on repatriating offshore money to flood the market with private capital, leading rather than playing a victim of the past, breaking up the mortgage cartel, and reinforcing proper lending standards – are simple moves that cost the government (and by proxy the taxpayers) nothing but would send a bold and decisive message to both sides of the aisle that in addition to the spending programs you’re going to stabilize the basis of the economy.

Thank you for your consideration in reading this letter. If you’re able to respond, I welcome your feedback. On a personal note, I have never sent a letter to the President before. This past year, the historic nature of the election and the increasing failure of Congress to represent the people have gotten me off of the couch and involved in the process. For that, I owe you my thanks.

[1] http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=news_commentary_070517FairerTax

[2] http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=news_events_5

[3]Liebowitz, Stan J, Anatomy Of A Train Wreck, National Review October 20, 2008 pp 36-38

Can you imagine if Sarah Palin said this?

2009-02-06T14:40:00.003-07:00

First, Obama said he'd been to all 57 - no, wait - 58 states. Then, to show how in touch with the common man he is, Joe Biden invited people to join him at a cafe...that has been closed for 20 years. Then Biden rewrote history by saying PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT was ON TV in 1929 talking about the stock market crash. Now Pelosi claims that a delay in passing the pork laden stimulus package will result in 500 million people being out of work. Not bad for a country with only 300 million people in total! These are our top three leaders, people - and all of them have demonstrated that they are totally out of touch with reality.

We hate to say "I told you so," but...

2009-01-28T07:54:00.005-07:00

From the time he said he would talk to Iran people had criticized Obama. His stance is that you can't be afraid to try new things when it comes to diplomacy. Even George Washington said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that you can't let old hatreds dictate your future course. However, Iran, and particularly their president, Amanutjob, aren't an "old hatred." They're a very current hatred, in that they hate the United States. They close their prayers on Fridays with "death to America" and have done so since 1979. The only thing they hate worse than the United States is Israel.

Earlier this week Obama has gone public saying that when the US deals with the middle east we too often "dictate first" and listen last. This statement makes the US appear to be weak, and that goes much deeper than an ego thing. Barely a day later, Amanutjob had this to say:

"Those who say they want to make change, this is the change they should make: they should apologize to the Iranian nation and try to make up for their dark background and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation,"

Crimes? What crimes has the US committed against Iran? According to Amanutjob, the crimes are criticizing and trying to block their nuclear program. (For you "America is a country of oppression" folks out there, note that to Iran, criticism is considered a crime. Think about that next time you're calling for Bush to be prosecuted and have no fear of reprisal!) Iran's former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who seems to be somewhat less crazy than their current one (Rafsanjani at least acknowledges the holocaust happened), says this about their nuclear program:

"We are not bothering anyone, but we have acquired nuclear expertise and we want to benefit from it to improve our life."

But he also says this:

"Look, as long as we can enrich uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don’t need anything else. Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions."

And this:

"If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."

So what are we to believe? That one of the most oil rich nations in the world, who can produce electricity far cheaper with petroleum than with nuclear power, wants to use nuclear power peacefully, or that they want to build a weapon to destroy Israel? Since they've said they want to destroy Israel, and a nuclear bomb being set off inside Israel is "an eventuality," and we are to draw the "proper conclusions" about their nuclear program, it doesn't take Pythagoras to figure this one out.

Obama has this overriding desire to be liked. Nations are not so different from canines in that they need a leader, they need an Alpha so they know their place. A pack without an Alpha is going to have a fight for power. Being liked by all doesn't equate to leadership; and furthermore, it's not possible to make every nation want to be friendly with the US. But that's what Obama wants to do, so he adopts this posture of diplomacy, which is like a dog rolling over and exposing it's belly to show it's not a threat. And now, with our belly exposed lest we appear to be trying to be the alpha dog, we're being asked to apologize to a nation that has openly expressed it's hatred of the United States and has openly expressed the desire to destroy one of our allies. Like a frat boy being spanked and saying "thank you sir may I have another," we're being asked to apologize for trying to stop them from acquiring the means to effect that destruction. Nice...I only hope Israel can survive 4 years of this kind of diplomacy.

My latest message to Colorado elected officials

2009-01-24T13:40:00.003-07:00

Off to a fast start - the wrong direction?

Esteemed Elected Officials,

I am disappointed that you have voted for the Ledbetter and Paycheck Fairness Acts. These simply open the door for untold frivolous lawsuits against which corporations will spend fortunes to fight. In a time where our economy is already struggling, is it really wise to give access to a populace more likely to need, therefore sue, for money they haven't earned? Is it wise to further burden employers who are already struggling to survive? I see more harm than good coming from this interference in the free market. It was Caleb Strong who said "Inequality arises from the nature of things and not from any defect in the form of administration of government. All that the best government can do is prevent the inequality which fraud, violence or oppression could provide." These bills go beyond the bounds of good governance into the realm of government administering business. Lawyers must be positively licking their chops at the scent of blood in the air over these votes.

While speaking of votes, please thoroughly vet the nominee for Secretary Of The Treasury, Tim Geithner. His comments that he was sorry for his non payment of $34,000 worth of taxes fall short. He says he was "careless" but the mistakes were not "intentional." The same could be said of all of the people who got us into this mess, starting with Jimmy Carter, through Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Alan Greenspan to Ben Bernake and Hank Paulson. None intentionally destroyed our economy (I hope that's the case!), but an argument could be made that all have been careless. Do we really need more careless leadership in Washington? I firmly believe that he will receive a rubber stamp, just as I firmly believe the Democratic elected officials from this fine state will vote party lines on every issue that comes before them. It's up to you to prove you can and will listen to the people you represent. Assuming you actually read this and not just an aide or intern, thank you for your time.

Sincerely, Richard Baker

Random Thoughts From Ann Coulter

2009-01-22T10:03:00.001-07:00

Ann Coulter Quotes

Get one on your Facebook or site

How Long Did The Unity Last?

2009-01-21T23:00:00.002-07:00

In Obama's inaugural speech he said "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

It wasn't even a day before you have Jay-Z and Young Jeezy spouting off, with Jay-Z saying "My president is black" and how he doesn't want anymore "white lies" and several other Bush-bashing rants. Yep, time to end the petty grievances, alright. Oh, I forget that means that conservatives should shut and let the liberal hate mongers have their say. Remember Obama's big speech, the one Chris Matthews likened to the Gettysburg Address, where he spoke about race and hoped that we could end racism, that we should have a national dialog about it? Then he brought up race time and again? Good Christ, it's one thing for people to go on and on (and on) about the historical significance of our first [half] black president but then Jay-Z and young Wheezy shoot off their mouths and reduce the whole thing to white vs.black. Frankly, I think there will never be a time where we don't look at color in this country because people like Jay-Z won't let us move past it. And what if, four years from now, Eminem were to say "My president is white!" at a party after the inauguration? He's be called on the carpet for his blatant racism, as Jay-Z and Jeezy should be.

Again, I'm no Obama fan, but it's in my best interest, as well as the rest of the country's, that he succesfully get the economy back on track. I hope he's successful in that regard. I am not hopeful - the only thing so far that's changed is who sits in the chair in the Oval Office. He's submitting an $800 billion stimulus package? The only change that represents is that it's larger than the one Bush enacted last year (when Obama said stimulus packages don't work). People always get pissed when the government takes our money and does things with it that we don't like...here's a chance for a little revenge. Tomorrow, Obama is signing an executive order allowing federal funds (your tax dollars) to be used to fund abortions for people who can't pay for them themselves. Well, I'm using my stimulus check to buy a handgun! Thanks for the gun money, Bommie!

Time to walk the talk

2009-01-20T20:59:00.003-07:00

"On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

This is a line from Obama's inaugural speech transcript (I read the transcript rather than listen to his halting, condescending tones). The irony is that he said this moments (I heard) after the partisan crowd finished booing not just Bush and Cheney, but their wives as well! What could the liberals in the crowd possibly have against these women? Other than the facts that they are conservative and married to the outgoing president and vice-president, I can't imagine. But hey - we're all about ending petty grievances, now right? Obama has proclaimed it. Here's the deal though - ending petty grievances, false promises, etc means that the Democratic congress has to play nice with the Republicans. I'm not going to hold my breath. And so starts Obama watch. As I've said before, I am determined to show Obama all the respect his position deserves - in the exact same manner that the liberals treated our last president! Maybe I'll start with the Obama Countdown Clock.

How to contract your elected officials

2009-01-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

I got this from the "against the so-called freedom of choice act" group on facebook.

What can you do to stop FOCA?
1. Sign the petition: http://www.fightfoca.com
2. Take part in the peaceful protests for life in January 2009 - more info here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=98866290561&ref=ts
3. Leave a comment on President-elect Obama's website about FOCA: http://change.gov/open_government/entry/advancing_reproductive_rights_and_health_in_a_new_administration1/. This site also shows an agendum for abortion issues in his administration.
4. Find your Senators and Representatives here http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ and tell them you don't support FOCA. (You will need to supply a zipcode, click the congressman's name, and then click the "contact" tab.)

FOCA - Abortion On Demand? Tell your congress NO!

2009-01-04T22:27:00.006-07:00

One of the first battles that Obama will fight will be one for full access to abortion – removing obstacles like parental consent and late term prohibitions. Barack Obama’s own words affirm this commitment. From his his Statement on 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Decision: "Throughout my career, I've been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.”

In an op-ed piece published in Boulder Weekly, Jill Hopke laments the horrible state we’ve come to in America, writing “In 2003, Bush signed into law a federal ban on late term abortions, called the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act…This law does not include any exceptions for medically necessary abortions…”

On this topic, the former president of Planned Parenthood, Alan Guttmacher, weighs in: "Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal disease such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save the life of the mother.i"

In other words, medical necessity is rarely a factor in making a decision about whether or not to abort a child.

Hopke, in an attempt to undermine the partial birth ban, goes on to say “partial-birth abortion is not a medical term used by the American Medical Association..” Why is this important? Semantics matter when you’re talking about killing children. That’s why they’re referred to as “fetuses” instead of babies. Hopke would rather refer to partial birth abortion as a “professionally accepted procedure such as intact dilation and extraction.” Sounds better, doesn’t it? What does it involve?

From Wikipedia, here’s a synopsis: “The fetus is turned to a breech position, if necessary, and the doctor pulls one or both legs out of the birth canal, causing what is referred to by some people as the 'partial birth' of the fetus. The doctor subsequently extracts the rest of the fetus, usually without the aid of forceps, leaving only the head still inside the birth canal. An incision is made at the base of the skull, scissors are inserted into the incision and opened to widen the opening,[9] and then a suction catheter is inserted into the opening. The brain is suctioned out, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the birth canal. ii” Let’s put that in layman’s terms: The doctor pulls the baby part way out, cuts open the skull, shoves in scissors, then sucks the brain out before pulling the baby out the rest of the way. When you hear in plain language what is involved you can see why semantics matter to pro-abortion activists.

Let me ask another question – if the baby can be delivered that far, why can’t it be delivered all the way? Certainly, if there’s a life threatening condition, with the child hasving reached a viable stage of development he or she can be delivered via c-section to end the pregnancy without ending a life. As said on the American Life League site: “Essentially, both mother and child should be treated as patients. A doctor should try to protect both. iii”

The answer is that abortion is not about reproductive rights or reproductive “justice” as Obama calls it; it’s actually about convenience. As Obama says himself: "Look, I've got two daughters -- 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

That says it better than I ever could. Abortion is about avoiding the consequences of one’s actions. Whether it’s going to negatively impact a career, a college education, or anger parents of a young or unwed girl, an unexpected child is hugely inconvenient. The liberal first line of defense is abortion – it’s quick, easy and until later term abortion was outlawed, easy to access. They never talk about other options like adoption unless they’re pushed.

This year, congress is going to try to reopen the partial birth door with the Freedom Of Choice act. Introduced by Barbara Boxer, the stated purpose is “To protect, consistent with Roe v. Wade, a woman's freedom to choose to bear a child or terminate a pregnancy, and for other purposes. iv” The bill is thick with scary language like the following: “Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, an estimated 1,200,000 women each year were forced to resort to illegal abortions, despite the risk of unsanitary conditions, incompetent treatment, infection, hemorrhage, disfiguration, and death. Before Roe, it is estimated that thousands of women died annually in the United States as a result of illegal abortions.”

This is not true in the least. Bernard Nathanson was one of the founding members of NARAL, and in his “confession of an ex-abortionist v” he says: “This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000.”

The FOCA also quotes the World Health Organization as saying that 600,000 pregnancy deaths occur world-wide every year, 80,000 of them from illegal abortions. The intent is to make us think that if this act isn’t passed, those numbers could be applied here in the US. Again, this is a feint to mislead anyone who would actually take the time to read the bill.

However, also according to WHOvi , 97% of these deaths occur in developing countries in Africa and Asia where hospitals lack proper sanitation, health care in general is poor and access to medical facilities problematic. The most common complications leading to death both in a pregnancy and an abortion in the developing world include hemorrhage, sepsis, peritonitis, and trauma to the cervix, vagina, uterus, and abdominal organs. WHO also states that the main barriers to proper care include:

frequent shortages or lack of medications, essential supplies and equipment;
inadequate blood transfusion services;
inefficient laboratory support services;
inadequate staffing, shortage of appropriately trained personnel and lack of staff supervision;
shortage of operating theatres for obstetric emergencies, resulting in delays in surgical interventions;
weak policy on delegation of authority for the management of obstetric emergencies, and
mismanagement of obstetric complications as a result of staff incompetence, negligence or poor attitude.

Timely access to appropriate obstetric emergency care (EOC) could avert 75% of these deaths, according to the paper, which enumerates the delays on the pathway to appropriate care in the region.vii Barbara Boxer and Barack Obama would have people believe that the simple act of increasing the availability of abortion will somehow fix these numbers.

The truth is that the worldwide deaths related to pregnancy (roughly 10% are from “unsafe” abortion – WHO does not use the term “illegal”) have more to do with the quality of medical care in the developing world. In America both the quality of care and the access to it are among the best in the world – it is only the convenience of abortion on demand that liberals feel is lacking. The fact that they must dress up their argument with bogus statistics and muddy the waters with global, third-world data should tell people this piece of legislation should be sent to the shredder.

i http://www.all.org/article.php?id=10216
ii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intact_dilation_and_extraction
iii http://www.all.org/article.php?id=10216
iv http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/FOCA2007S1173.html
v http://www.aboutabortions.com/Confess.html
vi http://www.who.int/whr/2005/overview/en/index4.html
vii http://www.afro.who.int/press/2003/regionalcommittee/pr20030904.html

POST SCRIPT:

I got this from the "against the so-called freedom of choice act" group on facebook.

What can you do to stop FOCA?
1. Sign the petition: http://www.fightfoca.com
2. Take part in the peaceful protests for life in January 2009 - more info here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=98866290561&ref=ts
3. Leave a comment on President-elect Obama's website about FOCA: http://change.gov/open_government/entry/advancing_reproductive_rights_and_health_in_a_new_administration1/. This site also shows an agendum for abortion issues in his administration.
4. Find your Senators and Representatives here http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ and tell them you don't support FOCA. (You will need to supply a zipcode, click the congressman's name, and then click the "contact" tab.)

Liberals Are Bullies, Too

2008-12-18T06:31:00.002-07:00

A bully is someone who picks fights with someone weaker than he is; someone who can't defend himself or fight back. And so I contend that liberals, special interests and progressives are bullies.

In China, a man who had gone to his local government office to complain that his local school wasn't being funded appropriately was severely beaten for his efforts. When he complained to a larger regional government office, he got a larger response. To remedy the situation the school was burned down and his tongue was cut out. In Iraq (while Saddam was still in power) a man who publicly spoke out against Saddam was captured, his tongue cut out, and then he was put in the back of a pickup truck and paraded around town so others could see what happens to those who speak out. There are numerous other examples, but take these as evidence that around the world "free speech" is relatively unknown, which brings me back to the bullies here at home.

In the US of A people have the right to say just about anything they want. Jeremiah Wright can call the country the US of KKKA and he's within his right to do so. Yes, slavery was bad, but the number of slaves in the US accounted for about 1% of slavery worldwide, and slavery is still practiced in places around the world. I'm not trying to minimize slavery as an evil practice, but I never owned any slaves, my ancestors never owned any slaves, and further, no one alive today owned any slaves. Blacks are on equal footing and have more rights here than anywhere else in the world. It was not always thus, and it took a long time to get here, but we're here. People like Clarence Thomas will tell you the only thing keeping a black man down is that man himself (for which he is denigrated by people on the left - the only time it seems OK to attack a black man is if he is conservative politically).* But, Wright is entitled to his opinions, and even if people feel he's misguided and, to use a favorite phrase of the Obama campaign, manufacturing controversies, that is his right as an American.

People can (and do) say numerous vile and untrue things about George W Bush. People can put bumper stickers on their cars decrying his perceived stupidity without fear of their tongues being removed.** Even if what people are saying is not true, it's their opinion and they're free to express it. That is their right as Americans.

And this is why they're bullies. They make whatever hurtful allegations they want about whatever cause they want, absent any facts or intelligent debate, and because it's their right to do so nothing can be done to stop them. They pick fights against which there's no defense.

Witness the text of billboards popping up around the country (Washington, DC, Wisiconsin, Illinois and Colorado right now) [emphasis is mine]: "At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

This makes shopping for the atheist on your list pretty easy. They get...no presents. Not even a lump of coal.

In seriousness, the allegation is that if you are religious, you are superstitious have a hard heart and an enslaved mind - and by proxy you enslave others and harden their hearts. So goes the contention - and if you disagree, you can do nothing about it, because it's their right as Americans to pay for and post these billboards.

But let's reverse the situation...if you posted a billboard that said "Atheism is an ignorant non-believing practice that has no value and nothing to offer more intelligent society" do you think there would be an uproar? Do you think the ACLU would step up to their defense? You bet they would. How dare anyone put such hateful words up for public display? Hate speech! That's the cheese! Hate speech is not protected by the 1st amendment, so let's get this torn down!

And that's the bullies mantra. If they're fighting against (insert preferred noun here: republican president, republican anything, organized religion, corporate entity, heterosexualism, globalization, etc) it is a just an noble cause. If the target of their ire fights back, it's hate speech. I've written on other posts that it's all one way with the far left. Free speech as long as it's their speech; tolerance for others as long as they don't have to practice tolerance. They rail and complain against the establishment because they can get away with it. The very country they so often condemn is the same country that permits them to condemn it - but that irony is lost on them. The rules of engagement that they hide behind do not apply to them - and that is the ploy of the bully.

*I'm sure that these opinions could be viewed as controversial. If you disagree or think I am oversimplifying the issue, I invite you to leave a comment and we can debate the issue.
** My personal favorite is "When Clinton lied, no one died" This should serve a confirmation that liberals and progressives, with their moral relativism, can't be trusted. One could paraphrase this statement to read "I believe it's OK to do whatever you want, including lie under oath, provided no one directly dies as a result."

Lies, Hypocrisy and the Liberal Way

2008-11-21T07:29:00.004-07:00

The tenets of liberal philosophy seems to be geared around, if not outright lies, then mere deception, and hypocrisy. In a Townhall.com post I gave a view into the liberal playbook: Deceive, Defame, Decry, Deny. Add to that list "Do as I say, not as I do."

Currently, the media is (still) fawning over Obama, comparing him to Lincoln for meeting with rivals and reaching across divides to build his cabinet. In Ann Coulter's recent column she says: "I don't recall the media swooning when President George W. Bush reached out to rivals, such as Sen. Teddy Kennedy, who was asked to co-write Bush's education bill. In fact, the way I remember it, Bush is liberals' most hated president ever (only because they can't remember George Washington or they'd hate him, too)." While this is a good example of the selective liberal lens being applied, there are others as well.

I recently saw a "pin" on Facebook that said "People who compare Obama to Hitler are douchebags." Now, aside from offending the douchebag lobby, haven't liberals been comparing Bush to Hitler for, say, 8 years. When the Nazis were rising to power they used strongarm tactics to silence the media and get their propaganda published. It was Obama's campaign, not Bush's or McCain's, who censured a Florida radio station for violating the unwritten rule that the media shall not ask tough questions of Obama's policies. It's the liberal media who launched full scale investigations, some illegal, into the background of Joe "the plumber" who merely asked a question about an Obama policy that he felt was going to affect him greatly (and Obama sought him out, not the other way around!). One lunatic on a San Francisco radio station even said he wanted Joe killed. It is Obama who wants a national civilian security force just as well trained and well funded as the military, but has yet to explain what exactly they will do. Hitler formed a civilian defense force, well funded and trained, to skirt the Versailles treaty that banned Germany from having a military. Look how that turned out. The point here is that liberals are hypocrites. It's OK to compare republicans to Hitler, but to dare to do so to the anointed liberal-in-chief makes one a "douchebag." Do as I say, not as I do.
Tolerance is a central tenet of liberal theology...as long as it's the conservatives who have to be tolerant. If you're liberal, it's OK to beat an elderly woman who supported prop 8 in California and form a wall so media and help can't get to her. It's OK to vandalize churches, force people from their jobs and disrupt church services to voice dissent about prop 8. Gay marriage has been voted down in 30 states (31 if you count California voting it down twice) but the vocal minority can't accept the results. One dissenting opinion I read on a blog said the violence that is now spreading is the natural result that comes from "living under the jackboot of oppression." (Note the Nazi reference!). Gays can do pretty much anything they want in this country except get married. There are civil unions and legal trusts that give them all the same rights as a married couple, with the exceptions of getting spousal benefits from an employer. This, while inconvenient, is not oppression. The millions of women in Africa who undergo forced genital mutilation are oppressed. Gay people who cannot marry are inconvenienced. There IS a difference, and it does not warrant violence. Prop 8 passed by a margin of 52% to 48%. This is roughly the same margin that put Obama in office, so I guess it's OK for the anti Obama crowd to go wilding until that decision is overturned? Good to know.
Abortion activists oppose any law that requires ANY restriction on abortion, including common sense rules like parental notification for minors seeking abortion or a waiting period before the abortion is performed. One can't get a tattoo without parental consent unless over age 18. One cannot buy a handgun unless there's a waiting period and a significant background check. There is, by some calculations a murder commit ed every 22 minutes in America. If you do the math (((24 hours *60 minutes)*365 days)/22 minutes) you get 23,891 murders per year. Not all of those murders are commit ed with handguns. There are approximately 1,200,000 abortions performed every year. Which kills more people, abortion or hand guns? Which one is more tightly regulated?
Free speech is another thorn in the side of the liberal. Being debated today is the "fairness doctrine." (with liberals, anything that restricts freedoms will be labeled "fair"). As defined in Wikipedia, the Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. The FCC abolished it in 1987. Today, conservative talk radio dominates the airwaves, and Fox News trounces the competition daily, and this is a concern for the liberals (who own print "journalism" almost exclusively and own every other demographic on cable and network TV, aside from FNC). The liberals have Air America, which is a commercial failure. This is the free market at work. Nancy Pelosi's book was outsold by Tori Spelling and Ernest Borgnine's autobiographies. Not subject to the fairness doctrine, but again, the free market at work. The reason conservative talk radio and FNC dominate is because that's what the people WANT to listen to. Force stations to put other formats on the air and people will change the station. The solution is to reinstate the so called "fairness doctrine." If you can't beat 'em, shut 'em up. To the liberal, that's what free speech is all about. Where's the ACLU on this one, defending private broadcasters from the tyranny of government?

I can list several other examples but I need to get to work. Suffice it say that when it comes to free speech, free elections, and moral issues, liberals are all about doing the right thing - as long as the right thing is what they agree with. Otherwise, anything goes. For the conservatives this behavior is "hate speech" or "fascism" or "using the jackboot"; for liberals, it's called tolerance.

2008-11-07T07:14:00.004-07:00

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I voted against Obama. He is now the most thoroughly unqualified person to be president, getting elected on policies that have proven to be failures under Jimmy Carter, that have been proven wrong by the scientific community and that by his own admission will bankrupt entire industries and not just make us pay more in taxes, but will cost us hundreds of dollars more per year for our energy. He's also going to turn the abortion spigot on full blast so there will be fewer people in 20 years to pay for his increased entitlements so in a generation America will be as deep in the hole as France is today.

My vote wasn't one of party loyalty; rather it was based on beliefs. Before the election I took a quiz which, upon completion, compared my answers to the policies of Obama. My beliefs differed from Obama's on 48 of 48 issues. Sadly, according the Zogby and USA today polls from which the quiz questions were compiled, the majority of Americans differed with him on 48 of 48 issues as well, but we still elected him. It makes no sense. Some questions were broken out by income bracket, and even the low income respondents differed with him on 46 of 48, with the only 2 agreements being on raising top marginal tax rates and increasing entitlements. I just don't know what happened.

Three days after the election most pundits are saying that Obama, like Clinton, will go more centrist than left. So far his cabinet picks don't show much in the way of change or inspiring hope, but they are pretty consistent with his past (Chicago politics of reciprocity all the way). What's funny is the things I point out below make conservatives gasp and make liberals clap. I hate to say it, but I think Pat Buchanan was right - he will either make good on his many promises and be at odds with the majority of America (the rejection of gay marriage in California of all places - twice - serves as proof that America IS center-right) or he will move to the center and be at odds with his party. Either way there will be blow back. I liked Ann Coulter's take on it. She said "As Republicans we need to reach across the aisle and show the new Democratic president the same respect that the democrats and the media have shown the current Republican president. Tomorrow, if not sooner." In that vein, here's the post:

McCain, in the third debate, was reticent to call Obama a liar. However, as Mark Twain said, there are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics. Obama deploys all three.

ACORN
Here, in his own words, is his explanation of his relationship with ACORN: "Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names. It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved."

Here's what he's not telling you1:

In 1992, Obama directed Project Vote - an arm of ACORN that also encouraged voter registration. This means he's intimately familiar with their tactics.
Around the same time, Obama began teaching classes for "Future Leaders Identified by ACORN." This means he taught their future leaders - and guess what? 2008 is the future to those 1992 trainees.
In 1995, Obama represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois for its supposed failure to implement a federal law designed to make voter registration easier, and thus increasing the likelihood of voter fraud. This means that not only was he aware of their tactics, but he went to court to ensure that they could practice them!
Obama also supports them in a fiduciary manner:

He joined two well-known boards with strong ties to ACORN - the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation. Under Obama's watch, the Chicago ACORN branch received thousands of dollars in grants from both organizations.
$832,000 given to Citizen's United, Inc to fund Acorn's "Get Out The Vote" campaign. Given all this support, don't be surprised if he claims ACORN as a dependent on his taxes (since he repeats so often that he hates paying them.)
Obama accepted the endorsement of ACORN in 2008. In a press release touting the endorsement on his official campaign website, Obama says: "I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues that you care about my entire career."

So here is a real clear example of what Obama says being different from what Obama does. At it's most benign, he's practicing the "sin of omission" - lying by not telling all of the truth. But - a sin of omission is still a sin! He may not have directed ACORN in this instance of voter manipulation, but he doesn't tell them to stop either. He's an accessory after the fact, he denies the depth of his involvement, therefore, I file this under the category of a "LIE."

Taxes
"It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama said, adding, "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too ... When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." This is his famous response to Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher's question about his tax policies.

Obama has repeatedly thrown out this notion that he is giving 95% of Americans a tax cut. The facts do not bear this out. 30% of Americans, either by virtue of low income or the number of dependents, do not pay any taxes. You can't provide a reduction on $0.00. You can give a rebate, which is not a tax cut. He uses (successfully it turned out) semantics and statistics to fool people. What's even funnier that when Bush pushed through his $600 rebate for the 2007 tax year, Obama railed against it, as did his wife, saying rebates do not work. Michelle Obama asked what Bush expected people to do with the money - go out and buy earrings? (That tells you the kind of shopping she does! But Palin being a shopaholic - oooh, that's bad.) But when the rebate is Obama's idea, even if it's $100 less, well, suddenly it's a good thing.

Currently the 5% of income earners in America pay 80% of the income taxes collected annually. The top 10% pay 90% of the tax revenues. 30% don't pay income tax. That means that 60% of the population pays 10%. If the tax revenue were a dollar, and there were twenty people paying it, one person would pay $0.80, one person would pay $0.10, twelve people would pay less than $0.01, and 6 people would pay nothing. But in Obama's mind, that one person paying the $0.80 is not paying enough. This set up is, in his mind (and in his words), the "tragedy of the civil rights movement" - that the supreme court didn't mandate wealth redistribution. Never mind that the supreme court is there to enforce existing laws, not create new ones. This is the real Obama, and this is what we can expect of him - legislation that despite what he says to the contrary, will punish success.

Tomorrow - I'll talk about the deceptive "Freedom Of Choice" act that he promised will be the first piece of legislation he signs into law.

1http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/10/mccain_memo_attacks_obama_on_a.html

The man makes me want to start smoking cigars

2008-11-06T17:14:00.002-07:00

This guy is funny. Too bad more people didn't see his video before the election. Don't play out loud if the f-bomb can get you in trouble.

Things that make me go "hmmm..."

2008-11-05T09:08:00.003-07:00

The Freedom Of Choice Act (has passed the house, will be debated in the Senate, and Obama has promised Planned Parenthood it will be the first piece of legislation he signs into law) provides that any woman of any age can get an abortion, even a minor without parental consent. At the same time, you can't get a tattoo without parental consent unless you're 18.

You have to wait five days (a "cooling off" period) to get a handgun - which might be used to kill someone - but you can get an abortion at will, with no waiting period, which kills someone every time.

You can't shoot an intruder in your own home unless your life is being threatened (and Obama wants to change that law to reduce your legal protection if you do shoot someone) but you can get an abortion if your financial or mental health, not physical health, will be threatened.

Will we have to reap the whirlwind?

2008-11-04T22:12:00.005-07:00

From Rich Band of Investorplace regarding the plans to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 (this doesn't even touch on the tax increases the RePO team - Reid-Pelosi-Obama - will enact):

According to the most recent Heritage Foundation Report, the results will be shocking…

One million jobs lost each year from 2010 – 2014
More than $100 billion lost in economic output during the same time period
An epic slowdown in wage and salary growth, and along with it the…
Evaporation of consumer spending

These are but a few of the dire predictions coming out from the financial pundits. We know for a fact that a lower tax rate stimulates the economy (look at the Irish miracle for proof) but against this Obama wants to cut off tax breaks for oil companies and those companies that export jobs overseas. If only it were that simple. Those added costs of doing business will be passed on to the consumer, so instead of trickle down economics we will have trickle up poverty. Those who can least afford increases in energy costs will be affected the worst...of course phase two is to take money from the people who are successful and give it to those people who are most affected by the manufactured spike in prices. That's right - Obama wants to punish companies for being successful, and when the poor get hit by the backlash, he'll penalize individuals for being successful. Jeremiah Wright called it the US of KKK A. We may as well call it the USSA - the United Socialist States of America.

I realize this is melodramatic, and I hope these predictions are wrong, but if they're right no one can say we didn't see it coming and no one that voted for Obama - that's you Mom and Dad - can complain about it. You all knew these issues were out there and chose to ignore them, so play the hand you're dealt. You heard it here first!

Religion

2008-08-24T00:51:00.000-06:00

Religion. The word by itself conjures up images in one's head based on one's background. When I wrote that word, religion, I had a mental picture of the black bible given to me as a child by the pastor at the 1st United Methodist Church. Other people may picture Christ on the cross, or the Virgin Mary, or the nun who hit their knuckles with a ruler in grade school. Other people think about religion and see only zealots and snake charmers. Still others see a waste of time, a black hole that conjures up no imagery whatsoever.

Liberal loons hate religion. They hate the fact that people have something to feel good about. As a certain progressive presidential candidate patronized, people "cling to" their religion. He said it like about people in depressed areas of Pennsylvania, I think in an attempt to show empathy for their plight, but he came off as an elitist. He made it sound like people are all drowning and will grab anything to survive. The subtext is that he views it as unnecessary - vote for him and you can quit clinging to religion. But a Harris Interactive Poll shows that 90% of people believe in God, so either there's a lot of bitter people in dire straights out there or not as many people are "clinging" to religion as some would have us believe. In times of trouble, people do turn to prayer for solace and comfort, and it's hard to find that a negative - unless you don't want people to have comfort, or don't want them to get it from God, but instead from some nanny-state entitlement.

The Founders established in this country freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. There is no separation of church and state in the constitution, only a provision that the state can't mandate the religion people will follow. Henry VIII created the Church of England out of personal desperation; there would be no Church of America. America has survived on faith based capitalism for 232 years. Godless Soviet Communism died in less than 70. The monstrous Nazi regime lasted less than a decade. In the Ardennes in 1944, do you think God was in the foxholes with our men? I'll put a sawbuck down that they would tell you yes (Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame was a deeply religious man. His book Beyond Band Of Brothers goes into some detail about his beliefs.).

I'll close with a tale of divine intervention. In 1996 I was driving south out of Ft. Collins, Colorado in my 1984 Ford Tempo. I wasn't wearing my seat belt, and at the last red light at the edge of town, I was struck with a very powerful, specific sense of vulnerability. I've not felt anything like this before or since that afternoon, but on this day I had a vision of just how unprotected I was without my seat belt. I literally had chills run up and down my spine, I got goosebumps and I shivered. Almost compulsively, I fastened the seat belt and immediately the feeling went away. 20 minutes later I was in a head on collision with a small pickup truck that turned in front of me. The crash totalled both vehicles and sent the other driver to the hospital with multiple serious injuries. I walked away virtually unscathed, with only bruises on my hips and neck from the seat belt. The accident investigation unit, or AIU officer said that I most likely would have been killed had it not been for that seat belt. She was actually amazed that I was even able to stand under my own power.

Did God tell me to put the seat belt on? Was it Divine Intervention? I can offer no proof other than my own testimony. I believe without question that the urge to put on that seat belt came from outside of myself. The forcefulness of that feeling has never been duplicated in any situation since then, and I can't chalk it up to anything I can explain; nor can I believe, as skeptics will surely say, that it was a coincidence. Someone was looking out for me that day, and that's all I really need to know.

I will have upcoming blogs looking at the new religion the progressives have embraced, and why it has the capability to doom us all.

Question - have you experienced divine intervention in your life?

Everyone Loves Ernie

2008-08-14T10:47:00.000-06:00

Nancy Pelosi is up to no good again, and by that I mean spending time and effort on the wrong things, and showing some hypocrisy in the process.

Joey Cheek, American speed skater, is the founder of Team Darfur. Team Darfur is a group of athletes who are bringing attention to the plight of people suffering what some say is a carefully orchestrated genocide in the the African country of Sudan. Certainly it is a bad situation - over 200,000 people have died and over a million are homeless. Joey and a group of other non-competing athletes were planning on going to the Olympic games in Beijing to help spread awareness of the situation in Darfur. Less than 24 hours before his flight was to leave, his visa was revoked by the Chinese government. On his blog Cheek said "I find this very concerning because I believe that it is an effort to silence anyone who is even suspected of disagreeing with the Chinese government."

A couple of points: First, I'm sure what the implication is - does he think China is behind or supports the situation in Darfur? How exactly is he in disagreement with them on this issue? Second, China is a sovreign nation and their visas are issued and can be revoked at their discretion. If they don't want non-competing athletes there for the sole purpose of speaking out about human rights issues, so be it. Maybe this makes the freedoms we enjoy in America seem a little more free, no? Third, the Olympics are supposed to be a time to set aside politics and engage in the pure competition of sport. Now, everyone who watches is rooting for their nation, and victories in the games can have political overtones (1980 Lake Placid, anyone?) but for non-competing athletes to come for the express purpose of protesting is not, in my mind, in keeping with the spirit of the games. The 400+ members of team Darfur will disagree with me, but that's my stance. Lastly, the liberal left in America is still aghast that we toppled the Hussein regime in Iraq, which over the last 30 years has killed thousands of people with chemical weapons, systematically tortured and raped thousands more and attacked two neighboring countries...yet they're eager for us to get involved in Darfur and to tell the Chinese who they should and should not let into their country? You can't have it both ways, and yet like on most other issues, they want to play both sides of the fence.

Now segue to Nancy Pelosi. After she heard about the revocation of Cheek's visa, she urged President Bush to intervene, saying that the actions was part of an "orchestrated campaign to deny entry to individuals because of their political views." Hello? Pot and the kettle? This is coming from the same person who, the week before, refused to allow our elected representatives to vote on offshore drilling by turning off the lights in the senate chamber, shutting off the microphones, and running as fast as she could from Washington. Why did she do this? Well, I think it has something to do with denying individuals based on their political views.

There is some cause for celebration though. The book tour Pelosi fled Washington for was wildly unsuccessful. Her book "Know Your Power: A Message To America's Daughters" has not risen above a sales rank of 1333rd. It's worst ranking was 5226, and it currently is ranked the 3199th best selling book. Let's contrast that with Dick Morris' new book "Fleeced." It rose to number 5 on the best seller list, falling as low as 43rd and now is ranked 22nd. Even "Ernie - The Autobiography" written by Ernest Borgnine is currently ranked 969th. This means that, in terms of messages to America's daughters, America finds Ernest Borgnine's writing more relevant than Nancy Pelosi's. I know liberals think the average American is not very bright, but I think America got it right on this one!

Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home!

2008-08-05T14:15:00.000-06:00

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has morphed into Eric Cartman. When she was being pressured to go to an up or down vote on the topic of energy strategy, rather than debate the topic she did the adult thing and turned off the lights and left the room.

The House Republicans issued an open letter to her (read the whole thing here). Here's an excerpt:

"In protest of you and your Democrat majority not allowing an up or down vote on producing more American energy, we and our House Republican colleagues were prepared to take to the floor on Friday, August 1, 2008, and speak to the nation. Rather than allowing that to happen you and your Democrat majority adjourned the House, turned off the television cameras, shut off the microphones and turned out the lights. Nearly 50 House Republicans remained on the floor of the House in defiance speaking to those citizens gathered in the galleries and to the media."

Is that what our elected officials have sunk to? They'll kill the power and run rather than face a conflict? No wonder the Dems want to get out of Iraq...they can't even stomach a debate in the halls of Congress!

Even George Stephanopoulos was tough on her in an interview (read the transcript at the end of the open letter). After asking her 4 times why she won't allow a vote and receiving non-answers, he finally just says "So you won't allow a vote." I particularly like this exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But why not allow votes on all that? When you came in as speaker, you promised in your commitment book, A New Direction for America, let me show our viewers, you said that bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full, fair debate, consisting of a full amendment process that grants the minority the right to offer its alternatives. If they want to offer a drilling proposal, why can't they have a vote?

PELOSI: They'll have to use their imagination as to how they can get a vote, and they may get a vote. But I have tried, you know, we have serious policy issues in our country.

I completely agree. We do have serious policy issues in this country when one person can make unilateral decisions to keep our elected officials from doing their jobs.

In a final twist of irony, Pelosi scampered off to her 5 week vacation to promote her new book. Yes, that's right, rather than trying to help out her constituency, she is out trying to make herself some money. And what of the planet she's so desperate to save by not allowing us to use more fossil fuel? Apparently that matters little to her as she's traveling from Boston to Philadelphia to Miami to Michigan over the next few days. I guess carbon footprints only matter when they're not hers.

Will race be an issue? Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

2008-08-03T11:57:00.000-06:00

One of the questions that the media has been throwing around is that is "will race be an issue?" in the coming election. Maybe not as much as people think. Pat Buchanan in an article "Whitey Need Not Apply" asserts that blacks are favoring Barack Obama over McCain 90% to 10%. While that certainly points to a bias, it's about the same percentage of blacks that voted for Al Gore in 2000. The bias is probably solidified by race, but can be traced to political party as well, and that should not surprise anyone.

If you read the rest of Buchanan's article, what is disturbing is the continuing trend of the left in America to continue to try to legislate a change in the dynamics of business. The group UNITY wants to have a forced number of racially diverse people in leadership positions in the media. That means anyone not white. They even go so far as to demand that the candidates be given the proper training for the leadership positions. Rather than hiring the most qualified candidate, which is how hiring should be done, they want to place someone in the role and then train them. Isn't that like putting someone on the Olympic team and entering them in 100 yard dash before knowing whether they can run or not? In business, as in sport, you can't afford to put the wrong person in a key position or the results suffer. That is why a proper vetting process - one that selects the strongest candidate, regardless of race, religion, or any other factor outside of capability - is so important. But Obama would have it otherwise.

From Buchanan's article:

"On Sunday, McCain came out in favor of an Arizona civil rights initiative that would outlaw any state discrimination either for or against folks, based on race, gender or national origin. Barack said he was "disappointed" with McCain and told UNITY he favors affirmative action "when properly structured."

The Arizona referendum banning preferential treatment based on race is also on the ballot in the swing state of Colorado. It won in California in 1996, in Washington in 2000 and in Michigan in the great Democratic sweep of 2006. It has never lost, and may just win McCain Colorado, and with it the nation."

Obama favors affirmative action "when it is properly structured" but doesn't explain what that structure is. Does this mean he favors one race or group of races over others? Given the audience to which he was speaking, I think it's a fair bet he does.

McCain wants to outlaw any bias based on race, gender or national origin. In other words, the best man (or woman) wins. I can only hope - and pray - that the same holds true in November.