The Sky's The Limit

You can chalk up the catchy phrase “Summer of Recovery” up there with “Mission Accomplished” with regards to its political damage and its inaccuracy.

The jobless numbers released today are as vivid a warning as a flaming tomahawk in a movie settler’s door. The increase in jobless claims by half a million is a cold water in the face, kick in the groin indication that the economy is in decline once again.

Let’s be clear…there is no recovery. There will be NO recovery until the insane agenda and the inane policies of this administration are trimmed back significantly. This agenda and these policies create unbelievable uncertainty in the business community, and one doesn’t need a PhD in economics to make the connection between the continued joblessness and the actions (and inactions) of this administration. And if we add in the impending sun-setting of the Bush tax cuts, then the business climate goes from toxic to downright radioactive.

It is a common trait of politicians to possess the inability to admit when they’re wrong. Mr. Obama, give Americans a refreshing look at US politics (one which, by the way you promised on your way in the door) and declare your policies wrong…and acquiesce to the obvious logic of extending the Bush tax cuts until the economy is on steadier feet. Any act of goodwill towards the business community will be a welcome sign. It might be the catalyst necessary to help spur some confidence and some much-needed new business activity.

However, continued and future hostility towards business and capitalism will surely guarantee us jobless numbers like those released today for the foreseeable future.

The ball is and will be in your court. Let’s see if you can recognize and prescribe the medicine we need as a nation to get us moving forward once again.

• The Rather Imperfect Ms. Sherrod. Shirley Sherrod has unwittingly become the new Joan d’Arc of race relations. Suddenly, this once more than casually racist (if you listen closely to her own words) woman had an epiphany and just as suddenly her past sins were, POOF, forgiven and she has been cast in a new light. This new light is the aggrieved and tragically maligned speaker whose words of redemption were taken out of context. Where we had calls for her resignation just mere days ago from the White House on down, including the NAACP, we now hear cries for canonizing this woman. And my God, let the apologies begin! Two things bother me about the who Sherrod situation: first is that as she spoke of her “transformation” from someone who provided a farmer with a lawyer of “his own kind”, the visible audience nodded their heads in agreement…and laughed heartily when she spoke of her past racism. This made me go hmmmmm… . And the second thing was that if you listen real closely, at the time starting at 23:40 of the NAACP-released video you can hear Ms. Sherrod, in her capacity as a Federal USDA employee, disparage the Bush administration and the “Republicans” for racism as it relates to their stand on health care “reform:”
  

  You know, I haven’t seen such a mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn’t it surface? Now, we endured eight years of the Bush’s and we didn’t do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black President.

  Maybe it’s just me, but Ms. Sherrod’s words are apparently in violation of the Hatch Act, which state that “a restricted employee may not (among other things) use an official title or position while engaged in political activity).” Well, she spoke as Shirley Sherrod, USDA representative, and her speech was highly political and inflammatory. Where are the consequences?

• “Cap and Tax” Takes a Holiday. It was announced today by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the Senate Democrats would no longer pursue “comprehensive” energy legislation — aka “Cap and Tax.” In place of this effort, the Dems will focus on the further beating up of BP for their accidental oil spill and increasing efficiency (whatever the hell THAT means!) I couldn’t be happier that this legislation and the effort to get it passed was abandoned. It is an economy buster, and we should oppose it in its various piecemeal incarnations that will be proposed in the future. But those of you who support this onerous pig of a bill there is still hope. Yup, there will be plenty of 2,000+ page pieces of legislation that will be floated between now and the time that the Democrats again become the minority party in both houses of Congress. And plenty of opportunities to tuck harmful, phoney-baloney amendments into, say a bill for education reform. Dear Lord, all that change, and so little time left!
• A Day That Will Live In Infamy. On January 1, 2011 we Americans will be subjected, across the board, to the largest tax increase in the nation’s history. On that date, the un-extended Bush tax cuts are scheduled to end. Contrary to the Democrats and their minion punditry are telling the masses, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts affect every segment of the taxpaying spectrum. The effects will be chilling and toxic to an already straining economy.  To give you an idea of the damage that will be done to our personal finances, it is expected that $2.6 trillion new tax dollars will be collected by the government. I just wonder what the dunderheads in Congress will do this this new windfall? Pay the debt down? Reduce the deficit? Unfortunately, these actions are highly unlikely. Don’t be surprised when they start spending these new taxes to cultivate a whole new co-dependent constituency. It makes me crazy to think that they will get all these new monies that will only perpetuate the present corruption and bad behavior. And one last thought — Isn’t it “funny” that tax cuts have a definite expiry, but entitlements and social programs have no expiration date — they just go on and on forever??

• Ship Ahoy! SOS!! If there wasn’t so much hubris and duplicity involved, I’d probably have a little more empathy for the Obama administration. Because the wheels are coming off that wagon in a big way, or nautically speaking, the good ship Obama has run aground. Between his sinking in opinion polls, the mutiny in the Democrat ranks and the once lock-step, fawning, liberal media starting to turn on him, Obama and his minions are in serious political trouble. Although the future of our country is affected by all this, it is definitely a well-deserved comeuppance for this man who believes — truly believes — he is a demigod. I’m finally on the HOPE and CHANGE bandwagon: I hope that the Republicans can take both the House and the Senate and bring Obama’s contrarian agenda to a grinding halt. There has been no president in history so deserving of the term “lame duck” as our, hopefully, Commander-In-Brief.
• Useful Idiots. Yesterday’s declaration by the NAACP that the Tea Parties are racist (or at least have significant racist elements) is the opening shot in the official 2010 election season. The resorting to ad hominem attacks and making unsubstantiated, specious accusations are the hallmark and chief tool in the Democrat toolkit. It’s apparent that the Democrat powers-that-be see a potential advantage by scatter-casting the racist tag on their Republican opponents, and that the NAACP is just a group of useful idiots in achieving this end. However, I think that the average American voter is seething angry, and furthermore they see clean through the desperation tactics of the Democrats. The Democrats are going to have to live with the consequences of their past legislative actions (like the Porkulis, Obamacare, etc.) and resorting to distractions just ain’t gonna work.
• A Stranger In These Parts. I’ve finally figured out why Obama has such a tough time relating to the average American citizen. He’s not one of us! To put it kindly, his upbringing was way outside the mainstream. He might have been born and partially raised in Hawaii, but he spent his formative years as a Muslim — in a predominantly Muslim country. while the rest of use were being imbued and inculcated in everything American, young Barry Soetoro was subjected to a culture that is tens of thousands of miles and hundreds of years separated from that of a “mainstream” American. As a result, he’s having a tough time relating to his country, even though he went to college and graduate school here. He is essentially a stranger in a strange country. By the way, a country that he somehow became the leader of. I take little comfort in the fact that I understand him as little as he understands me and my cohort.  Hopefully, this accidental president won’t be allowed to do much harm during his tenure, and hopefully we’ll pick our presidents more carefully in the future. (More on this topic to come!)
• Whither Europe and the Euro?? Things have become awfully quiet on the financial front in Europe. The problems with the PIIGS and the Euro have suddenly become back-burner news over the span of four short weeks. Could it be a case of the calm before the storm? Or could it be an example of a tree falling in the woods with nobody to hear it? Whatever the case, if Europe does fall, it will take us with it. Because with all the spending like a drunken sailor (the Congress’ spending gives drunken sailors a bad name!) and the intergalactic-sized deficits here, our economy and our government’s finances are tottering at the edge of the abyss. I wish I could blame hyperbole on my feelings, but I’m too grounded in reality to become hyperbolic at such a grave and serious time in our history.
• Clueless In California. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) recently became the poster boy for cluelessness. In a recent town hall meeting with his constituents, he claimed that he had not heard about the recent brouhaha regarding voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia during the 2008 elections. Please, Mr. Sherman — do us all a favor. You are obviously not very engaged in the goings on in our country, so call it a day — retire — ride off into the sunset with whatever scrap of credibility or dignity that you can.  Otherwise, I beg the voters of the California 27th to retire Mr. Sherman for your and his own good.
• The Revenge of Obamacare, Part CCXVII! It seems like a week doesn’t go by when some new, and deleterious provision of Obamacare comes to light. And the newest affront to our sensibilities doesn’t even have to do with healthcare! No, it seems that a hidden and formerly obscure (until it’s passage) provision of Obamacare is the requirement for businesses to provide 1099 to vendors with whom they do more than $600 of business. My immediate question is: What the hell does this have to do with healthcare? It doesn’t, and it was one of the manifold ways that the desperate Democrats were trying to squeeze every penny that they could out of us citizens in order to pay for this monstrosity, and give them a favorable CBO report on “savings.” well, we now know those claims of savings to be a sham, but here we are left to deal with the collateral damage. As a small business owner, this new requirement is not only a nuisance, but it is a damper on my business. I will make damn sure that I just don’t procure more than $600 of anything with a single supplier. It will force me to keep track of my purchases and to spread my purchasing around. Because I will not be doing make work tasks, that prevent me from conducting real business, if I don’t have to.

It’s official! Our Dear Leader and his cast of congressional Democrat minions are certifiably crazy. With the full court press conducted yesterday with the release of the “favorable” analysis of the Kerry (D-MA) and Lieberman (I-CT) cap-and-tax legislation…followed by the 17 minute droning by our Dear Leader (of course punctuated by the grand push for cap-and-tax legislation), one can only come to that inescapable conclusion.

Obama’s speech, although it contained words, phrases and sentences that addressed BP and the Gulf oil leak situation, was NOT about the Gulf oil leak. Not by a country mile! The leak and spill were merely tools of political rhetoric — devices he tried to use to drill home (pun intended!!) his Quixote-esque quest for the next jewel in the crown of statist societal control, a universal energy tax. But I think even the most marbled-in-the-lean liberals, like Matthews and Olbermann at MSDNC, oops, MSNBC weren’t suitably impressed with the leadership acumen or vision put on display last night by the Dear One. No, last night’s lecture was just the opening round in Obama’s full court press on cap-and-tax –  a desperation move by a desperate man way over his political head. Rather than take a temperate approach to this crisis and work just on solving the leak and the effects of the spill on the Gulf Coast, he chose to go “all in” politically. And he’s going to do it while blowing the political equivalent of a vuvuzela all the while.

Listen, Obama might think that he is the Entrepreneur-In-Chief, but I assure you that he doesn’t have a single capitalistic idea floating around in his socialist/statist skull. Perhaps with the exception of buying lunch on his various forays among the suffering hoi polloi at the oil-stained Gulf Coast. His insistence that viable alternatives to fossil fuels are just around the corner if we burn enough time/effort/wishes looking for them is, well, crazy talk. Real crazy talk. In order for there to be an alternatives, there have to be an underlying theories or materials that prove themselves viable (given the proper money/time/effort/wishes): there could have been no Manhattan Project if the theories undergirding nuclear fission and fusion were not established to some confidence level. No amount of research would have resulted in a man-made nuclear fireball without the solid background theory in place.

No such situation exists for replacing fossil fuels. Sure, we have “alternative” and “green” solutions to supplying some of our energy needs. But these are transient, secondary sources of power that are incapable of replacing the steady primary power sources (that is they’re always ON even at night or when the wind doesn’t blow!) provided by fossil fuels. Of course, then there is nuclear power. This is a viable alternative as a primary power source for our electricity needs, but the science-illiterate American public fears nuclear power for its destructive power (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had a lot to do with this) than it appreciates this power source for its usefulness. Unfortunately, NIMBY rules the day when it comes to siting anything nuclear, so there is a lot of public push back when this discussion arises.

And, beyond petroleum for transportation and electricity generation, we have the myriad uses of petrochemicals in our daily lives. How can we replace the chemicals and compounds that we depend upon on a daily basis (think plastics, medicines, detergents, etc.) that are extracted from oil along with gasoline and heating oil? Simply put we cannot or, I propose, it would have been done already!

Poor misguided President Obama and his power cronies in the Congress need to step back and away from their single-minded quest to make fossil fuels so expensive as to change the fabric of our society, for the worse, forever. If they wish to cheer lead for their schemes, and try to influence American citizens to adopt alternative energy usage voluntarily, then I suggest that they go for it. But to try to jam another complicated and unintended consequence-filled piece of legislation down our throats by partisan fiat at a time when the US economy is both stagnant and fragile is foolhardy and CRAZY.

But we all know now that the die is cast…that there is going to be the incessant push for this cap-and-tax legislation because it’s “good for us.” The same way that all other socialist schemes, like Obamacare, are “good for us.” Until they aren’t. Obama has let the proverbial cat out of the bag starting last evening — he’s now put his dog in the fight and he has too much to lose politically if he caves in on this. I suspect, though, that Obama may have to go this alone or with token support as there are many shell-shocked Dems who will be facing the equivalent of locked cage death matches come November for re-election. They simply don’t have the stomach to follow their Anointed One off the cliff in the same manner that they did with Obamacare. Most are still wiping the political blow-back off them from that fiasco! They might be ideological fellow travelers with Obama, but they’re also craven vote whores first and foremost, so in that light,  they’re not crazy enough to touch this political third-rail just yet. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think so!

Obama on the other hand has nothing to lose…his foray into insanity last night only costs him political capital (just wander over to Rasmussen if you need to be convinced). He’s got two and a half years to possibly regain his footing, so what the heck. See, for a true believer like Obama, the totems of his ideology (like spreadin’ the wealth, etc.) are more valuable than reality or moderation or compromise. He sees himself as righteous — exploiting this oil leak/spill crisis — by proposing his means to an end. Unfortunately it means the end of prosperity and American exceptionalism. Still, Obama sees himself the Changer-In-Chief iconoclast: particularly when it comes to capitalism. He thinks himself the knight in shining armor saving us from greedy oil companies and greedy, hostile Middle Eastern emirs and potentates.

Unfortunately for him, the rest of us see him as just plain CRAZY…

• The EU is in serious fiscal and financial trouble, and we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to countries that are faltering or in grave economic danger. For about 60 years, since the US liberated Europe from Nazi oppression, many counties in the EU have been living the large life, and treating themselves rather nicely. It’s as though they’ve been living on financial room service and ignoring the check…or forwarding it to the good old USA. Well, the check has come due, and as the premiere example of the harm of this great excess, the Greeks will have to learn to live as mere mortals rather than as citizens of a socialist Utopia — a situation they’re finding particularly hard to accept. Unfortunately, there will be many more EU nations that will have to suffer swallowing this bitter pill, and begin to embrace reasonable “entitlements,” more modest social benefits and more Draconian fiscal expenditures. You know, social concepts like you’ve had to work and pay into the system before you can get benefit from it and, oh yeah, only to the level of your former contribution. In the end, this is a good thing that will help insure a stable future for these troubled countries. And perhaps our proto-Marxist/socialist administration and Congress will witness firsthand and learn something from the unraveling of practicing national systems based on theoretical egalitarian principles and socialist doctrine rather than on good old-fashioned hard work and frugal living.
• The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is going to become the largest excuse for the government spanking the oil producing industry since the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. But, unfortunately, only half of the culpable parties involved will be punished or savaged. Unfortunately, the real villains in this most recent act in the Theater of the Unintended Consequence, the Congress, will get off scot-fee as always. To be sure, BP will be keel-hauled and excoriated for their role in this mess, and rightly so. They should have seen this disaster coming — what with drilling and recovering oil from over a mile beneath the ocean this situation couldn’t have been imagined by a simple risk assessment? But Congress shares the blame in this fiasco because their Draconian drilling regulations and leases forces oil exploration into deeper-and-deeper waters (ostensibly due to “environmental” concerns), and into the jaws of untenable situations like we presently have in the Gulf. If the laws regarding oil and gas exploration had been drafted with common sense in mind rather than for political gainsay and gotchas, then we might not be in the dire circumstance we are in right now. Because it seems clear to me that it is infinitely easier to cap a leaking oil well in several hundred feet of water than it is at bone-crushing depths where only submersibles can operate.
• The “immigration” demonstrations yesterday (on May Day) didn’t have the turnout that were portended by the mainstream media. But that didn’t stop the media from hyping the number of mostly ILLEGAL ALIENS who took to OUR streets in opposition of a law that they never read the provisions of. Listen, we law abiding citizens can’t argue with the flawed logic being used by the illegals and their vociferous supporters. Regardless of what they call themselves, or what a sympathetic government administration and mainstream media choose to call them, in the end they are present on our soil ILLEGALLY. Meaning that they chose to break our laws — our social compact with each-other that assures each and every one of us that we will not fall into a state of anarchy from doing whatever each of us wants to do. We can only trust we can rely on the laws of our land to handle this completely out of control situation, but past practices and actions by the federal government have shown that we cannot. So the government of Arizona has acted out of self-preservation and self-interest to protect its citizens from the hordes of invaders and criminals that enter the state on a daily basis. They have taken the fist, faltering step in assuring us that the inmates do not run our national asylum — even though emboldened illegal trespassers at May Day rallies would have us think otherwise.
• President Obama made an off-script comment at a recent political pep rally in Quincy, Illinois: “We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.” I added the emphasis because now our chief Marxist wants to become the Salary Coordinator-In-Chief. This coming from a man who “earned” more than $5 million last year! As US citizens, it’s none of our damn business how much our neighbor makes as a result of an honest, hard day’s work. Whether it’s fair to us or not, the achievements and rewards of our neighbors are theirs and theirs alone and not ours (even though the government has insinuated themselves in this process by redistributing the fruits of their labors to the rest of us via “progressive” taxes.) No matter how hard the gods and goddesses of the presidential teleprompter would have him stay strictly on script, his ad-libbed forays into streams of consciousness cause him to “step in it” on a consistent basis. The teleprompter text is just so much hot air and political psycho-babble…BUT those small “gaffes” are a peek inside a president’s true nature and feelings. He’s apparently a president who embraces an alternate view of the American dream than the vast majority of the citizens and common folk.
• The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has showcased the recent, palpable lack of climate change and global warming talk on the worldwide political stage. The “Climategate” scandal and the subsequent revelation of “inaccuracies” in the most recent IPCC report on climate (Details? We don’t need no stinking details!) have made this topic a political hot potato.Then comes along Eyjafjallajokull which, aside from being the world’s most difficult word to pronounce, dumped more stuff into our atmosphere in a weeks time than man has for about a decade. It’s kind of humbling when God and Nature remind us of our true, insignificant place in the scope of things. Man may conjure up the hubris to declare that he may influence “big things,” such as the climate on our planet. God obviously has other ideas on that topic…

The Congress is now, in my learned opinion, exerting fraudulent legislative power over the American people because of generous interpretations of their powers as set forth in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and a complicit, non-confrontational Supreme Court.

I’ve railed in the past about the generous interpretations of the words “welfare” and “commerce” and the assumed powers that these interpretations give to Congress. These “lawyerly,” scholarly interpretations are an affront to the average citizen’s rights given the (actual, put on paper) very limited set of duties and powers assigned to the Congress by the Founders. Over the past decades in the modern era (post-1900), Congresses have been on a political power grab to achieve legislative primacy over the American people, and the American people have been numbed by the residue of the cumulative legislation and “grateful” for the goodies that have been unleashed by these laws as well. We have been incrementally transformed from a nation of natural freedoms, rights and liberties to a nation where freedoms, rights and liberties are granted by our generous government. This transformation is a perversion of the intent of the Founders, and it sets us on a path of ultimate national failure due to our governmental excesses.

If we review Section 8 in a literal sense, our Congress has few real legislative powers. They don’t have the assigned power to, say, mandate our purchase of health care or manipulate our energy policy. They do however, have a fraudulent, assumptive power that WE have allowed them to assume. Congress’ powers have been assumed and accumulated over time due to the laziness and lack of oversight of the American citizen/voter. We have been lax in our oversight of our elected representatives, and we have with time replaced vigilance with dependence. Our representatives are expected to bring home the bacon rather than be vanguards of our collective Constitutional rights.

Simply put, the federal Congress should have little influence over our daily lives. The Constitution allows that the state that we live in is responsible for enacting legislation that affects our lives. Not the federal government. Any laws enacted should be done as close to the influence of the individual as possible…not at the stratospheric federal level by a detached legislature.

What better explains the reason why many Congressmen/women state that they don’t care about the Constitution? If the Constitution and it’s relationship to the average citizen doesn’t matter to them…or a piece of legislation is more important than the Constitution that it is supposed to be subordinate to, then we have definitely chosen our representatives unwisely, and they definitely have powers to legislate that are wrongly assigned or fraudulent in nature.

It has taken a long time for this situation to come into existence, so it will take a long time for us to reverse this legislative mindset. But this will only occur if we act soon. There has been much talk of tipping points in regards to establishing a permanent citizen-government political co-dependency in our nation. Trust me folks, we are almost there now!

But it is not too late yet. We need to change our expectations of what our federal government is or isn’t. We need to educate our children in the lost art of personal Constitutional vigilance. How can we expect to be vigilant over our rights and liberties if we are ignorant of the particulars of the Constitution?. We shouldn’t be dependent upon legislators, judges and lawyers to be the stewards of our rights and liberties. They are NOT the vanguards of our rights, etc., that we expect them to be as they are creatures of the SYSTEM. The desperately flawed and manipulated system. The system crafted in part by the fraudulent powers assumed by our Congress! This means that individually we need to become more active in the process of governance, regardless of how much time it takes from our private lives or our leisure. If we aren’t watchful, or don’t place a high value on our legislative governance process, then we can expect to be fleeced of our rights and liberties in order to satisfy those special interests who are.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…the choice is yours and yours alone. I can’t make you become engaged and vigilant, nor can anyone else. But mark my words — if you abdicate your Constitutional responsibilities to an elected politician, then be prepared to accept the results. And since you only exercise your responsibilities on Tuesdays in November, then you heartily deserve to be used and abused.

Your inaction and passivity is your own reward.

The political scene has taken another turn for the worse as a result of the über-partisanship revolving around passage of the health care “reform” legislation. Claims and counter claims are flying about from the left and the right regarding threats and violence from the “other side” in the hours before and the days after passage of this bill. However, no entity can make hay out of their claims like the Democrats and their party. Let’s just look at the spectacle for a moment and take account of the alleged carnage to date: the alleged use of bitter invective including the so-called “n-word” by protesters at the Capitol; an alleged incident where a black legislator was spat upon; a coffin left on the lawn of a Democrat rep.; windows were broken in the local office of another Democrat rep.; death threats were made to by phone to several reps. of both parties; a Republican rep.’s discovered a bullet hole in the window of his local office; and other incidents of less than acceptable deportment and decorum vis-a-vis elected officials.

I think all of these incidents reside at the intersection of reality and hyperbole. I also think that the Democrats, using their strongest politically ally in the mainstream media, have performed a bit of political alchemy on the events of earlier this week — changing the controversy of the unpopular partisan healthcare vote to ersatz-sympathy for the alleged “attacks.” See, there is quite a bit of political apprehension and guilt on the left-leaning side of the aisle. The Democrats folks knew that they, proverbially-speaking, tweaked an angry dragon’s tail with their passage of Obamacare. But they did so in order to bolster their Ideologue-In-Chief and his socialist “transformative change” agenda. So they desperately needed political cover (and since not a single Republican voted for the monstrosity they can’t take cover behind them because of that), and fast! How better to obtain this cover, and fire up their base (because we all have poor short-term political memories in the face of righteous indignations affecting “our guy” or gal) than by playing presto-chango with their vote and the alleged “violent” repercussions? How can you despise someone and their actions if they’re the hapless “victim?”

Couple theses specious and increasingly debunked claims with the fact that the alleged perpetrators of these affronts are the Tea Party protesters, then you have the basic ingredients of a spittle laden rage and tirade by the likes of Comrade Keith Olbermann et. al. that even a heaping dose of mother’s little helper can’t curtail. And so the entire width and breadth of the government controlled media are now actively involved in the debasement and derision, if not outright ridicule, of the Tea Partiers (almost as though they received specific instructions by FAX as to what to say and how to say it!) This action by the MSM would be laughable except for the fact that the Tea party folks are from all political stripes — certainly the lion’s share are right-leaning ideologically– and I know several moderate Democrats who have joined the movement out of buyer’s remorse for their 2008 vote folly. So the swiftness with which the MSM painted the alleged “violence” as right wing and associated with the TP protesters is shameful and deceptive.

But really, isn’t that their job? Aren’t the entire MSM, probably with the exceptions of FOX News, the WSJ and the indies on the internet, in the bag for the current Democrat powers-that-be and their liberal base? So why would it be unexpected or raise a single eyebrow that the MSM is off trying to do everything they can to discredit the TP crowd in the eyes of the perhaps dozens of readers and viewers that they have?

The plain truth is it isn’t unexpected. In fact, it’s entirely expected! The fact of the matter is is that if you’re persistent enough and can tolerate enough liberal dreck and pablum, you will see a pattern emerge where all the newsreaders (no, they’re not journalists!) seem to have an eerily similar story to tell. So eerily similar, in fact, that one has to wonder if it wasn’t drafted in a windowless communications office in a certain Washington landmark and FAXed to the corpus of useful media idiots for them to recite.

This is NOTHING new…it’s just the new order of American politics. American politics Democrat style. Part of the de-evolution of our society into a modern day orgy of blood sport, ad hominem attacks and ridicule. And if you add in the new administration’s Chicago political roots, you’re left with a bare-knuckled, winner-take-all implementation of the previous.

So, fasten your seatbelts for the political ride we’re about to have between now and November. By the time that the Democrat spin machine is done, we won’t know right from left or up from down. But you can bet your grandma that we WILL know one thing — that the Republicans are the problem, they are the party of NO, they are egging-on violence, they don’t have any answers, they are the party of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and they are closely aligned with the Tea Partiers. You can also be darned sure that their claims are righteous and true.

The FAXes say so…

I have updated the Liberty Clock to reflect the latest insult to our freedoms and liberties as contained in the Obamacare legislation passed by the House of Representatives Sunday night:

Because of the contents of this legislation and he manner in which the corrupt and contemptible House of Representatives chose to pass it I have taken the liberty (no pun intended) to add a sec0nd hand, which is set to one-half (0.5) second to midnight.

Yes, I think we’re THAT close to national social Armageddon.

In fact, I’m so convinced that the United States of America has been set on a road from which we cannot recover that I’m pulling out the panic button from times past as well:

You see yesterday our elected representatives, by a vote of 219-212, put themselves into the “rights” creation business. They stuck a proverbial finger into God’s eye…and usurped the authority to create rights that is only reserved to God. And they used a process that was not only highly flawed and corrupt, but indisputably unconstitutional. The very people sworn to uphold the Constitution blatantly ignored the spirit, intent and wording of our nation’s guiding document. In fact, they took every opportunity to stretch and disfigure their constitutional observance in the passage of this far-reaching bill.

So what are we left with? We’re left with a health care system that will be mandated and dictated by bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, DC. And as a bonus, as if we’ve needed one, the government will also take over the college student loan program. In the final analysis and for all time following, we will be left with the basic structure/rationale for additional socialistic programs and laws.

We’ll also be left with an even larger and more oppressive debt, regardless of the blue sky/rose colored glasses analyses by the CBO. I’ve heard several politicians, including my own US representative, state that the passage of Obamacare was an historic undertaking by the Congress — right up there with Social Security and Medicare. Hyperbole aside, these dunderheads might want to be more careful in their choice of comparisons. Social Security is presently in a debt hole, also known as “unfunded liability”, of $14.2 trillion and Medicare is in debt to the tune of $74.9 trillion. (And if we add the prescription drug “benefit” debt of $18.8 trillion into the mix, we get a debt trifecta of $107.9 trillion.)

Clearly, when these programs were contemplated and the legislation passed, the proponents never dreamed that they would put such a weight of debt on our country — on our children. But with time they did, growing as entitlement programs inevitably do because it is political suicide to say “NO” to an entitlement. So, what makes us think that a similar escalation won’t occur with this new health care “reform” scheme? The simple answer is of course it will! What is realistically a $1.75 trillion plan for the next 10 years will end up costing many times more than this if we use the other entitlements as templates. If I had to guess, I would estimate that the unfunded liability for this bloated health care entitlement will top $150 trillion in a mere 25 years.

Such are the unintended consequences of the myopic political decisions of ideologues and the adoption of new “rights” given to an ever-increasing in size population, whose demographics are constantly changing. This is a game changing occurrence except the game is changed by forcing America, due to crushing national debt, to sit on the sidelines and lose it’s competitive advantage in the world economy. We won’t suffer, but all generations hence will come to curse the date March 21, 2010. Because they will pay dearly for medical care that might generously be described as third world in quality and delivery.

The Democrats may celebrate their hollow “victory” from yesterday, but I am firmly convinced that today, somewhere, the Founders weep.

With all of the out of control and unsustainable spending by the government, coupled with the liberty-snatching proposed and recent legislation coming from Washington D.C., I felt it was time to recycle two quotes from past historical figures (that I’ve used in previous essays) that are still perfectly germane to our present situation.

They are, more than anything, words of warning to each of us that there are consequences that we must bear if we don’t buckle down and reduce our profligate spending and we don’t (via our vote) restore fiscal and constitutional sanity to our government with the folks we elect to represent us.

The first quote is an excerpt from a letter to an American friend by Thomas B. Macaulay, a 19^th century English writer and historian, dated May 23, 1857:

A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority will always cast their ballots for the candidates promising [the] most benefits from the public purse with the result that a democracy always collapses from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.

and the second was written by Professor Alexander Tyler (University of Edinborough, Scotland) when our democracy was still young in 1787:

The average age of the world’s greatest democratic nations and societies has been 200 years. Each has gone through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back again into bondage.

These two individuals lived in an era of simplicity and sacrifice. They could only imagine the largess and wealth that we enjoy as modern American citizens. Yet they knew human nature. They knew that free men and women cannot be trusted to be thrifty and prudent. But little could they imagine just how greedy and imprudent that a free nation, like ours, could become given enough time.

Our gluttony regarding the largess of the public treasury has gotten away from us — we’ve spent too much time at the ‘all you can eat’ buffet. Most of us have paid a modest price for the continued ‘benefits’ that we reap from the government. Like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, SSDI, WIC and the myriad other alphabet soup entitlements that have become a co-dependent lifeline for far too many Americans. We don’t sit back and realize that we literally get something for nothing: That we get a return far beyond our investment.

This to me isn’t being a good citizen or being a patriot. No, this greed is far from it! It is selfish and it is destructive to our nation’s future. Our want for goodies will make our children’s future unbearable and filled with sacrifice. In our single-minded greed we are using the future, our children, as pain proxies for our unconscionable actions.

It’s not the way I want my generation to be remembered in history books in the future. It’s not the legacy that I want to pass on to our nation’s heirs.

But that’s the way it’s going to be. And damn us all for letting this happen. We are squandering the legacy of the finest nation in the history of the universe to satisfy selfish, greedy personal and political motivations. I can only hope that our fall from plenty and our plight thereafter will be kind to us. I suspect otherwise, as we have been unrelenting and single-minded in our journey into this situation.

We need to suffer in our time of bondage (as Tyler so presciently predicted) to remind us that we, by the Founder’s intentions, are first-and-foremost a nation of modesty and thrift rather than the gluttonous nation of gimme guys and gals that we unfortunately have become. I get the impression that we are, collectively, slow learners who are quick to complain and who are quick to demand relief from others more industrious, thrifty or luckier than ourselves (i.e. “the rich”.)

If we stop our national spending orgy NOW and reduce our government outlays to a more reasonable level, then maybe we still have a chance to pay down the inter-galactic-sized debt we owe as a nation. But that will mean true sacrifice for many if not most of us, and changes to our lifestyles that will be — in one word — painful. No matter, changes must take place…and they must take place sooner than later. We’ll see if we are patriots and good citizens, or we’ll see if self-interests and greed are the continued watchwords of our lives.

Only time will tell…

In the statement released today that President Obama will be traveling to Copenhagen to negotiate America’s portion of greenhouse gas emissions reductions, he is obviously and most probably intentionally ignoring the obvious 900 pound gorilla in the room. And that 900 pound is the increasing-in-momentum unraveling of the climate change/global warming data, and the discrediting of the scientific underpinnings of global warming theory.

In light of the recent and developing news that much of the climate change data has been manipulated and fraudulent, our Commander-In-Chief still plans to attend the Copenhagen summit to make what would seem to be idiotic concessions to solve non-existent issues — resulting in actions and restrictions that will negatively affect the well-being of all Americans. And for what? Well, nothing it seems.

I would think that rather than increasing his already inter-galactic-sized carbon footprint by going to Copenhagen he would, rather, angrily demand an investigation into what now appears to be the biggest political-scientific conspiracy and scandal in the history of the world. A real leader would want to get to the bottom of this and pronto!!

However, Obama’s intended actions don’t seem like sound leadership to me. They seem like the pursuit of a conclusion to a preconceived notion regarding the perceived harm being done by anthropogenic global warming…a notion that will not be changed even if the theory is completely and utterly debunked.

It makes me think that the whole to-do surrounding global warming/climate change was never ever about reducing temperatures or saving polar bears…it was ALWAYS about increasing control on the average citizen by an ever-enlarging central government. It was and is about adding to the ever-increasing list of do’s and don’ts that our government-masters dream up for us unwitting citizens for our own good.

If it were otherwise, and if all the proposed and looming legislation and treaties were in our best interests, then we should expect Obama to act accordingly and put the brakes on any negotiations until the latest scandal is settled.

To do anything else ignores the obvious…