The Fight for Conservatism

The Executive Branch: Romney vs. Santorum

2012-02-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who was surprised to see Rick Santorum sweep Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado this week. Here are my thoughts:

Good for him!

Rick Santorum seems like a good, honest, decent person who is very sincere about his convictions. He is an individual I would not have any problem supporting should he get the nomination. What he has done with his limited resources in this Republican Primary has been impressive. I believe this race should have been between Romney and Santorum from the beginning. May the best man win!

THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH

My one main concern with Santorum is the same concern I've had with other candidates -- He has never run anything. So you go from never having run anything of substance to running the largest "corporation" in America.

Rick Santorum earned a BS in Political Science, then went on to get an MBA, and finally his Juris Doctorate degree. He practiced law for 4 years, and then ran for Congress in 1990. He spent 3 years in the in the House, and then was elected to the Senate, where he served through 2006. After losing the election, he went back to law. Like 3 of the 4 candidates, Santorum spent most of his life as a politician in Washington.

In the Constitution, the Founding Fathers purposefully and thoughtfully created three branches of government: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial

Senators and Representatives are experts in law. They propose laws, debate laws, and vote on laws. Representatives and Senators are part of the Legislative branch of government. They legislate.

The President of the United States IS the Executive Branch of government. It is an executive position. The role of the President is to lead, to lay out the vision for the country, and to make critical executive decisions.

Let's analyze the principal professions of the four Republican candidates:

Newt Gingrich = U.S. Representative
Ron Paul = U.S. Representative
Rick Santorum = U.S. Senator
Mitt Romney = Chief Executive Officer

YOU'VE GOT MAIL

The U.S. Postal Service just announced that they lost $3.3 BILLION in the last quarter. They are now working to eliminate Saturday mail delivery.

Question: Which of the current Republican candidates (Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney) would you put in charge of the U.S. Postal Service if you could? Why?

If you had worked to save $25,000 and were investing it in a new start up company, which candidate would you put in charge if you could? Why?

Heck, if you were doing something as unimportant as putting on a golf tournament, which candidate would you put in charge? Why?

LEADERSHIP

We took a gamble as a nation in 2008 on an untested leader. Learning on the job has proven to be difficult and disastorous in that case. The last time before that where we had elected somebody who hadn't run a business or a state or both was in 1968 with Richard Nixon.

Rick Santorum might have the potential to become a great leader. He seems to have good vision, and he has led his campaign, which has been relatively successful in spite of few resources, so that is a good sign. He does have an MBA, so he has a fundamental understanding of the theory. So I think he might do a good job.

But I think that Ann Coulter stated it well today at CPAC:

"You know how [Democrats] are going to run against our candidate, because it is the only way that they run against any Republican: Call them dumb or stupid. And there is one presidential candidate we have right now who frustrates both of those. That is Mitt Romney. You can't call him dumb. You can't call him crazy. You can call him square, and that seems to be what a lot of right-wingers don't like about him.

"You ask them, 'What is it?' 'Well, he's kind of a Ken doll, sort of stiff.' I think we have had enough of hip. Hip has nearly wrecked the country. Let's try square for a while."

The Republican candidates share the same views on most of the issues. The debate over who is more conservative is silly. Next time you watch a Republican debate, notice how many times the words "I agree with what [this other candidate] has said..." are spoken. Ron Paul is the only one who drastically diverges when it comes to foreign policy. The candidates all hold conservative views, which is obviously important, but not the only important quality in a candidate.

Some times the natural choice for a leader is also the correct choice... especially when that leader is going to be the Leader of the Free World.

"I'm not concerned(2) about the very poor"

2012-02-04T13:43:00.000-08:00

There has been an uproar in the media over Romney's statement:

"By the way, I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling. I'll continue to take that message across the nation."

It was indeed a bad statement from a PR perspective, because that one line can be pulled out of context and played over and over and over again (which it has been, and will continue to be.)

The dictionary defines the word "concern" these ways:

con·cern [kuhn-surn]

1. to relate to; be connected with; be of interest or importance to; affect: The water shortage concerns us all.
2. to interest or engage (used reflexively or in the passive, often followed by "with" or "in"): She concerns herself with every aspect of the business.
3. to trouble, worry, or disquiet: I am concerned about his health.

Romney was obviously was using the second definition in his statement when you look at his statement in context. What he was saying is that his main focus is not going to be on the very poor because they have a safety net. We have a welfare system structured to care for those individuals. And his main focus is not going to be in the rich, because they are doing okay. His main focus is going to be on the middle income earners, those individuals who were a two-income household where one person has lost their job and now they are in danger of losing their home. There is no "safety net" for those individuals.

The media and two of the other candidates have jumped on the statement, using it in the context of #3. That Romney is not worried or does not care about the very poor. That is simply silly. His charitable contributions alone should speak for how he feels about the poor. If everybody in the world followed Romney's lead in his support for charity, there would be no "very poor" among us.

Even Ron Paul, who is running against Romney and could have chosen to use the statement against him like Gingrich and Santorum have chosen to do, chose to defend Romney. Ron Paul is a good, honest person. Gingrich and Santorum knew exactly what Romney meant.

The way to get the economy moving is not to give the very poor more money. That is what the government has been doing and it has not worked. The focus needs to be on the middle class, which is the majority of the households in America. For example, Ben Bernanke said the other day that the housing crisis is the main factor currently impeding recovery. The very poor do not buy houses. They don't invest in business. They don't do the things that are going to lead to recovery.

The way to help the very poor is to get businesses hiring again, which increases demand for workers. As more workers enter the job force, there are more producers and less consumers, and more money flows from company to company. The level of confidence increases, which leads to more hiring. And when unemployment reaches a natural level again and the supply of workers becomes constant, companies will raise the level of pay to attract workers, and the standard of living increases as a result. Mitt Romney understands economics, and he understands that the very best way to help the poor is not to hand them money, but to get them a job.

He is not concerned(2) with the very poor, but he is concerned(3) about the very poor, which is why he wants to turn this economy around.

A President's Personality

2012-02-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Somebody shared this article with me and I thought it was a great!

America Needs Mitt - Governor Mitt Romney's Secret Compulsion

What is the best indicator of future behavior? Past behavior.

Reagan the Liberal

2012-01-31T10:00:00.000-08:00

The Newt campaign appears to finally be imploding... thank goodness! Here are Newt's latest statements:

"The fact is I don’t believe the Republican party is going to nominate a liberal who is pro- abortion, pro gun-control pro tax-increase pro gay-rights and I don’t think Romney can frankly raise enough money to sustain the falsehoods that are the basis of his campaign."

Newt has said that Romney is "breathtakingly dishonest", and yet he is saying that Romney is pro-abortion, which is false, pro gun-control, which is false, pro tax-increase, which is false, and pro gay-rights, which is false.

Now what Newt probably meant is that Romney has held those positions in the past, but he didn't say "was" -- He said "is", even though the latest time Romney held any of those positions was years ago, and he has been consistent since.

If we are going to "was", then unfortunately Newt is in trouble, because then people have to analyze his voting record. How he is getting away with being the "conservative" candidate, I'll never know.

If we are looking at "is", how are Newt's current positions any more conservative than Romney's current positions?

Ronald Reagan, the greatest conservative maybe in history, was a liberal Democrat before he was a Republican.

Reagan actively supported Democratic candidates. But somewhere along the way, he realized he was wrong. His views changed, his stances on issues changed, and he slowly became a conservative. If Newt were running against Reagan, he would be calling him a liberal who "is" pro New Deal.

Newt is upset with Romney over being "dishonest" about a few accusations:

Lobbyist: Romney has called Newt a lobbyist. That's not true. Newt was simply a person who was being paid by health companies at the same time he was trying to influence legislation that affected those health companies. (Which is exactly what lobbyists do.)

Resign in Disgrace: Romney has said that Newt was forced to resign in disgrace as the Speaker of the House. That's not true. Newt was simply reprimanded by the majority of the House (395-28), and then he chose to resign. (As if he had a choice.)

Ethics Violation & Fine: Romney has said that Newt was investigated for 84 ethics-charge violations and handed a $300,000 fine. That's not true. 83 of the ethics-charge violations were dropped, and the $300,000 he paid was simply for the costs of the investigation. (He was investigated on 84 charges and paid a $300,000 fine.)

Newt does not like how Romney presents facts, and that is why he calls him "breathtakingly dishonest." But to say Romney is a "pro abortion liberal" when Romney has explained his position over and over again is somehow not dishonest.

Romney made this statement earlier in the week which I thought was absolutely perfect:

"[Gingrich] is now finding excuses everywhere he can," Romney said. "He's on TV this morning going from station to station complaining about what he thinks were the reasons he thinks he's had difficulty here in Florida. But you know, we've got a president who has a lot of excuses, and the excuses are over, it’s time to produce."

Newt needs to man up and buckle down and take his opponent on without resorting to slander. But that is not the campaign strategy of a desparate candidate.

Out of Touch

2012-01-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

Just read this story:

Agent Provocatuer Sales Boosted by US First Lady Michelle Obama

Wow. And Romney is the one that's out of touch?!

The Obama advisers need to be fired. You would have to know that this story is going to get out. What kind of a message does it send to the public? The Obamas are so far out of it that they obviously don't see any problem with this.

Then again... maybe they are just trying to win back some votes from the Clinton supporters.

Interesting

2012-01-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

Funny how many other stories have come out like this from former colleagues (including Ron Paul in the debate on Monday) who served in the House of Representatives when Newt was Speaker:

The Newt I Know

And funny that those who seem to be defending and supporting Newt like Rush and Sarah Palin and Michael Reagan never worked with Newt.

I find it interesting that the people who know him best seem to support him least.

Good article!

2012-01-26T08:40:00.000-08:00

Re-elect Obama: Vote Newt!

State of the Union: President Obama's Bake Sale

2012-01-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

I watched the State of the Union last night, and I can honestly say that I don't get it. It is beyond my comprehension to understand the mind of Obama and the liberals.

(Apparently we are beyond the comprehension of liberals as well. "Yes, there's a lot we don't understand about the GOP". Although in this case, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I agree with Paul Begala and James Carville!)

But to listen to Obama last night, demanding that companies and individuals and schools and Congress do what he says, is just beyond my comprehension.

If Obama were putting on a bake sale, and nobody was buying the cakes, his strategy would be to first demand that people buy the cakes. Then he would ridicule and belittle anybody who left without buying a cake. Then if they still wouldn't buy, he would declare that there would be a penalty for anybody who tried to leave without buying a cake. Then he would raise the prices of milk so that the price of cake looked more attractive. Finally, he would have some goons physically force people to hand over their credit cards so he could swipe them... and then give their cake to someone more deserving. That is apparently the Obama way.

OR, President Obama, here's an idea... you could lower the price of the cakes to the point where people would want to buy them.

Saying to businesses "Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country" does not work.

Pop quiz. You have your choice to have your business headquartered in:

A) A country with a corporate tax rate of 35.0%
B) A country with a corporate tax rate of 12.5%

Which do you choose?
(ANSWER: Congratulations! Your business is now headquartered in Ireland.)

Lower the corporate tax rate to 12.0%, and all the jobs flow back into the U.S. from other countries. Simple economics.

What about the tax revenue lost? If 100 business make a combined $1 billion in revenue, that is $350,000,000 in taxes at the U.S. rate. Let's say the lower tax rate lures 100 businesses back plus 100 new business from other countries. If 300 businesses make a combined $3 billion in revenue, that is $360,000,000 at 12% (at triple the amount of jobs.)

In 2010, Ferrari sold 6,573 vehicles, and had a net income of $392 million. In 2010, Ford sold roughly 1,931,534 vehicles for a net income of $7 billion dollars. How does the company selling the vehicle for $300,000 earn 1/20th of the company selling the vehicle for $30,000? The answer to that is the answer to our economic woes. (P.S. One of those companies employs 2,721. The other employs 164,000.)

President Obama, you can fight all you want to try to manipulate the system, but when you are ready for true hope and change, you will utilize the natural laws we studied in Econ 101.

Exactly!

2012-01-24T10:37:00.000-08:00

This is exactly what I was talking about in the last post. For anybody who is complaining about Romney paying a 15% tax rate, look what 15% of a person like Romney's income pays for:

Romney Paid 42 Percent of 2011 Income in Taxes and Charity

He paid his taxes on his income as the current tax system dictates. I can see how someone would complain about the way the current tax system is set up, but I have no clue how anyone could attack Romney for paying exactly what he was supposed to pay. The 50% of Americans who pay nothing in income taxes would especially be ungrateful to attack him and want him to pay more after the Top 5% already pick up 60% of the bill. 60%! In what world is that fair?

What we need is to create an environment that is condusive to business so that more people can become "Romney"s who pay $3.2 million in taxes every year. (Not to mention the charitable contributions.)

Romney & Taxes

2012-01-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

Romney has been really solid in the face of a barrage of criticism from all sides. That is what makes it so interesting that he has struggled to find a response when he has been asked about his taxes.

The problem has nothing to do with Romney doing anything unethical or illegal with his taxes. He has stated he has been very careful to pay all of his taxes. The problem is simply that he has been very successful in his career, and he is a very wealthy individual.

The Democrats are chomping at the bit to paint Romney as out of touch with the American people. They think that is the key to success in beating Romney.

This is the same Democratic party, by the way, that nominated John Kerry as their candidate in 2004. Romney's net worth is estimated to be $250 million. Kerry's net worth in 2004 was estimated to be $750 million.

Nevertheless, the Democrats will try to show that Romney is out of touch, and that the Obamas (with a measly net worth of $10 million) are just the people's people. (How many of you have a $2,000 sun dress hanging in your closet?)

This is to be expected of the left, but it is completely insane that these attacks are coming from the so-called "Republican" candidates.

PR

I can see from a PR perspective why Romney struggles with these questions though. There is no requirement anywhere for a candidate to release their tax records. I'm sure Romney, like everyone else, would prefer to keep their financial information confidential. But is something that has been done voluntarily in the past, and so the precedence has been set.

Because that precedence has been set, from a PR perspective, someone refusing to release their tax records would give the impression that they are hiding something. So you have to release the records. Normally that would be done after the primary is over and the nominee has been selected.

But because Romney was facing such extreme pressure from the other candidates, it was becoming a PR dilemma. The Romney camp either had to directly dig their heels in and say, "We'll release them in the summer as has been done in the past", or come out with the information and try to diffuse the situation. Romney was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

I actually thought the move for Romney to tell a reporter he pays about 15% in taxes was good strategy. There was a flurry of news stories, but there will be no surprises when he releases his tax records, and there will be no fuel left for that fire when President Obama tries to attack him later in the year -- It will be old news.

I also think the timing was not accidental. I think they knew that it was unlikely they would win the strongly evangelical South Carolina because of the evangelical view on the Mormon religion. They were willing to concede South Carolina, and they could hang the defeat on the tax information.

But I think they didn't account for having the Iowa win swept out from under them, and they didn't account for the surge that would push Gingrich to not just a win, but a win with a huge margin.

FIFTEEN PERCENT

As conservatives though, we should not and cannot buy into these attacks. Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum have attacked capitalism by attacking Bain Capital. Someone please tell me how that represents conservatism?

If we could see James Carville or Sean Penn or Susan Sarandon's tax returns, we would see that they work with their accountants to try to minimize the amount of tax they pay on their income. They might pay 15% as well. That is the structure of the current tax system.

If you had the choice to pay either 15% or 30% of your income in taxes, which would you choose? Attacking Romney for paying 15% in taxes is like attacking him for going 65 mph in a 65 mph zone. It makes absolutely no sense.

The fact that Gingrich paid a 30% tax on his income is not a compliment to Gingrich in my mind. It makes me think he "didn't get on the Virginia ballot" with his taxes, so to speak.

Furthermore, let's say that Romney made a conservative 10% in interest on his $250 million and paid a 15% tax rate. He would have paid $3,750,000 in taxes in 2011... which is more tax than most of us will pay in my lifetime. I think what the poor Democrats don't understand is that the "Romneys" of the world pay for the streets they drive on, the cash they get for their clunkers, the stamps they get for their food, and the income they get for each additional child.

In 2009, tax breaks included, the top 1% paid 37% of the taxes. The Top 5% paid 59% of the taxes. The Top 25% paid 87% of the taxes.

"IF YE HAVE NOT CHARITY..."

The other attacks at Romney have been directed at his giving significant amounts of money to the Mormon church, which is also insane.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. A "tithe" is 10% of one's income. So if Romney is worth $250 million, it would make sense that he would have paid at least $25 million to his church. There are articles about him paying in kind with stocks, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Mitt Romney has been very generous with the wealth he has generated. And he has been attacked for it.

Newt Gingrich just released his returns which show that he paid 2.5% of his adjusted gross income to charity. John Kerry's tax returns showed that he had paid $0 in charitable donations in 2003.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

The crazy thing is that all Mitt Romney has done to incite these attacks is live the American dream. The poor Democrat on food stamps dreams of starting their own business and being worth $250 million some day.

If someone were to give you a business tomorrow, you would work your guts out, you would try to maximize your profits, you would hope to be successful and become wealthy, you would hire an accountant to minimize the amount of taxes we pay so that we could decide what to do with your money, and you would be charitable with your wealth.

To attack Romney for doing what any of us (Republican or Democrat) would do is ludicrous. Romney has been very successful in his career. The tax records should be a reminder to all of us as conservatives of what is possible when the government gets out of the way and lets capitalism work.

Romney, like the other Republican candidates, wants to create an environment that best allows for individuals to live the American dream. Why his opponents are criticizing him for actually living it is beyond me.

The calling on the field is confirmed.

2012-01-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

Not 24 hours after my last post, Ann Coulter says almost the exact same thing I was getting at (but in a more concise, entertaining way.)

Ann Coulter on Newt's Win in SC

Romney vs. Gingrich

2012-01-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

As I watched the South Carolina primary results coming in tonight, I wasn't surprised to see Gingrich win. (I actually would have been more surprised to see Romney win.) I think it will be a different story in Florida, but what did surprise me was to see the margin of victory for Gingrich.

It did make me consider the possibility that Romney could actually lose, and that Gingrich could end up being the Republican nominee. Based on the speech he gave tonight after he had won, he would be good.

Unfortunately, speeches do not a President make. (Otherwise, President Obama would have been a great President!)

NEWT

The difficulty I have with Gingrich is that there is nothing that tells me he is not just a Washington politician. I just looked up his voting record to see if my memory was playing tricks on me about him not being all that conservative, and the thing that struck me was not moderate votes... It was his lack of votes. I just grabbed a random year, 1997. There were roughly 69 "key votes" in 1997, and Newt did not vote 47 times. 70% of the time, he did not vote. Is that normal? (I didn't count up every year, but it all looks roughly the same.)

I read a few more articles on various positions Newt has taken over the years, and then I went to Newt's website and read these answers to questions on his record. I thought it was really interesting. For example, this is a response to attacks from the Democrats about Newt being a hypocrite for attacking Clinton for having an affair when Newt had admitted to having affairs himself:

"Opponents often try to delegitimize Newt Gingrich by pointing out that he had admitted to having an extramarital affair during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. What these accusers are ignoring is that the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton were due to the fact that the president committed perjury in front of a sitting federal judge, which is a felony. As the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt felt that he had a duty to uphold the rule of law by pursuing impeachment. He stands by that decision today."

He's right. Perjury just crosses a line!

Read through a few of those responses from Newt, and look at the quantity of positions he has to defend, and what those positions are. There is a definite pattern there.

LEADERSHIP

Like I said, based on Newt's speech on Saturday night, he would make a great President. He does talk like a conservative. He might be a good President. But the thing that concerns me most about him is that he is just like Obama in one regard -- He has never run anything. Or has he?

I hear over and over again about these "little guys" like Gingrich fighting against the Romney machine and all of his campaign money. Ummmmm... How did Romney get all of this money?

Romney's campaign runs like a well-oiled machine. He reportedly currently has $19 million on hand, with more money pouring in each day.

Newt so far, has had his campaign manager, press secretary, and senior aides all jointly resign last June. His campaign was rumored to be over $1 million in debt at the time. And then his campaign failed to meet the requirements by the deadline to even get on the ballot of Missouri (which he responded to by saying he didn't want to be on the ballot there anyway) AND in Virginia (which he blamed on one guy in his campaign committing fraud.)

Romney, on the other hand, is on the ballot in both Missouri and Virginia, because his campaign was aware of the requirements and gathered the necessary signatures by the deadline. (Wouldn't you think that getting on the ballot would be a #1 priority for a campaign?)

Should this tell us something about the candidates?

PROF. GINGRICH

My dad pointed out something interesting to me the other day. We both teach at a University. Newt finished school and started teaching at West Georgia College in 1970. One year later, he applied to be president of the college.

In 1974, he left the history department for the geography department. Why? I find that interesting.

Then in 1978, he was denied tenure by the college. This may not mean much to people outside the academic world, but this was very telling to my dad and I. The bottom line is that the College did not want Newt Gingrich.

He then left to become a politician.

84 ethics charges were filed against Gingrich as Speaker of the House and, in 1997, Gingrich was penalized $300,000 by a 395-28 vote in the House (which means the majority of the Republicans also voted for it.) He was forced out in 1998 as Republicans lost control of the House.

This just seems to be a theme in his personal, professional, and political lives.

CONCLUSION

Leadership is not the only important quality in a President. It obviously must be matched by correct views. But correct views alone obviously do not qualify an individual either.

Ronald Reagan was a great conservative. But he also ran the state of California (the largest in the U.S.) for 8 years. He became an amazing leader who changed the world and who was well-respected and almost universally liked. (What struck me as I watched that video was the contrast between Reagan and Gingrich -- Has Newt smiled during this campaign?)

There is no evidence that I've seen that supports the argument that Gingrich is somehow more conservative than Romney. In fact, in recent days, Gingrich has attacked capitalism, which is one of the wars that liberals are waging daily.

But there is ample evidence supporting Romney's leadership abilities. He has a consistent record of success. Whether in the business world, in the Olympics, in the state of Massachusetts, or in running the campaign, when Romney is involved, success follows. Wherever Newt goes, it would appear that failure eventually follows.

I'm sorry, South Carolina. Santorum, yeah -- He is a likable guy and at least feels like a leader (even though he also has never run anything.) Even Ron Paul -- He has an created an impressive following, and his campaign at least made it on the Missouri and Virginia ballots. But Newt Gingrich?... I'm just not seeing it.

A Letter to Rush Limbaugh

2012-01-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on Monday to see what he had to say about the debates that occurred over the weekend. As I listened, the following thoughts came to mind, and if I thought if I had the time to try to get through to him, here is what I would say:

I love you, Rush. Love the program. It's always very entertaining. And I agree with you almost all the time. But I listened to the show yesterday, and I think you are wrong to constantly be taking shots at Mitt Romney.

I agree with what you've often said, that we don't need to try to find a moderate to appeal to the "independent" voters. As you've mentioned over and over again, Reagan won a landslide vote by running on conservative principles.

But Reagan isn't running in 2012. The field is Newt Gingrich, Jon Hunstman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. Those are the choices. Bobby Jindal isn't in the race. Mark Rubio isn't in the race. Sarah Palin isn't in the race. All of our favorites aren't in the race. It has to be one of the six that ARE in the race.

Ron Paul: Good guy, lots of great ideas, and seems to be right on about 80% of the time. The other 20%, he gets loco (legalize marijuana, let Iran have nuclear weapons, etc.), and has some extreme views that makes himself unelectable to the general population. You shake your head when callers mention his name. He's obviously out.

Newt Gingrich: You said yourself yesterday that Newt sounds like the liberals. Newt would never win the presidency -- WAY too much baggage. Not "presidential" enough -- The fit he's thrown over negative ads from Romney's Super PAC has proved that. Unelectable. He's out.

Jon Hunstman: If you want to talk about moderates, Rush, maybe you ought to look at Huntsman. He got less than 1,000 votes in Iowa. He'll do better in New Hampshire, but you've seen him in the debates. Obama would chew him up and spit him out. Seems like a nice guy, did some good things in Utah, but no way he'll win the nomination, much less the general election. He just hasn't connected with the people. Not a strong candidate. He's out.

That leaves Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney. Who do you want, Rush? Perry has already proved that he has a hard time connecting with the people. His debate performances were not great, with a few major flubs. How is he going to do once the DNC attack-machine starts in on him?

That leaves Romney and Santorum. Those are the only two real choices. It's easy to sit and take shots at Romney based on his supposed "flip-flops" from 10 years ago, but I don't see you saying who you would vote for and why. Who do you want?

I like both Romney and Santorum. Both are likeable and "presidential". Both have done good things in their careers. Both have proved to do well in the debates, although Santorum only recently was able to gain any traction. And I don't get the feeling that Santorum is a bigtime Reagan conservative though. I'm just not sure what you're trying to accomplish by focusing on the negative things of our candidates.

I heard you say about Romney's response in the debate explaining how he would reach across the aisle to work with the Democrats saying he had been able to do so in Massachusetts that "That's one position I wish he would flip-flop on." What did you want him to say?? The question was something about, "Congress is divided -- How would you work to get things done with the other side?" Should he have answered, "Forget the Democrats -- We'll do things our way." That would have gone over really well. I don't get it, Rush -- You're not making sense.

Regardless of what you say, Romney was able to get elected as a Republican in one of the most liberal states in the Union. He is a businessman who graduated from Harvard. He understands how the free market works. He understands that we need to cut taxes to stimulate business. In fact, what position of Romney's do you currently not agree with?

Yes, Reagan is a better candidate than Romney. We all know that. But I've got news for you, Rush: Reagan isn't running.

Mitt Romney: "Flip-flopper"?... Or "Flip-per"?

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

PRESIDENT OBAMA

It's finally 2012! We've been waiting for this year since about a month after President Obama took office when we realized that all our fears were well-founded. Who could have guessed that it would have turned out worse than we could have imagined? As someone who has studied some public relations, I am dumbfounded by some of the decisions that our current President makes (like his latest "recess" appointments.)

When Jimmy Carter is giving you advice about not alientating voters in your first term, you know you're in trouble. Beginning with ramming through Health Care that the majority of the country was opposed to, to critcizing Bush for his deficit spending... and then doubling that spending, to manipulating unemployment numbers by using jobs created "or saved", to elaborate vacations and $2K sun dresses, to excusing his lack of success in the economy on President Bush... 3 years after President Bush is out of the office, to claiming to want to compromise and then blocking Republicans from meetings, to golfing more than I do (which is a lot), to going on late-night comedy shows as a sitting President of the United States, to bowing to every foreign leader he comes in contact with, to claiming transparency without being transparent, to providing no leadership or direction or even a statement on what our position was on the overthrow of the Libya government, and on, and on, and on. It's like he takes everything his PR people tell him, and he does exactly the opposite.

The only rationale I can think of for the decisions he makes is that he really only ever wanted to be President for the glory. He had never run anything. He had never really managed anything, certainly in a private setting. His jobs had consisted of securing "free" taxpayer money and then finding ways to spend it. He had never needed to provide a value or a service or turn a profit. He was an organizer. He is relatively young and inexperienced, having been handed much of what came to him in life (including the nomination for the presidency after giving his speech at the Democratic convention in 2004.) He appears to be in over his head. He never expected the job to be as hard as it is. He never expected it to entail the hours it was going to entail. He never realized how hard it is to get two sides to come together in relative compromise to get things done in Washington. Managing a dozen people at a McDonald's is a difficult job. President Obama's first experience as a manager was managing a country of 300 million people.

I get the feeling that President Obama hates going into work every day. He can't quit, because that would be disgraceful, and he does want to have his picture up in school classrooms around the country. I think he does want to leave a legacy of some sorts, even if it means just satisfying those to the extreme left with health care and green jobs and those types of initiatives. But his actions show that he has no interest in a second term. I honestly think he will breathe a sigh of relief if he is not reelected.

So will we.

LOOKING FORWARD

George W. Bush ran the state of Texas (and the Texas Rangers before that.) Bill Clinton ran the state of Arkansas. George H.W. Bush ran an oil company. Ronald Reagan ran the state of California. Jimmy Carter even owned a peanut farm. Barack Obama... organized.

I've discussed this idea in a previous post, but I believe we should always look to candidates with executive experience to run our country. Too many times we look to Senators and Representatives, who are mostly lawyers who specialize in law and have never run anything other than committees.

Barack Obama was a lawyer, a community organizer, and then a Senator. We see where that lack of executive experience has gotten us. George W. Bush may have been divisive because of his stances, but he was still able to get congress to come together to pass laws. President Obama makes Republicans look back fondly on the days of Bill Clinton.

We hope for change.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

As I've watched the field for Republican candidates first grow and then debate and then attack and now begin to shrink, I've discovered that I like most of the candidates. We have a good group of people.

I've heard liberal commentators try to accuse the Republicans of being splintered because Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucus with only 25% of the vote. Could it be that there are just a lot of good candidates, so it is hard to choose, because many different people have their favorite and each can only vote once?

Bachmann has dropped out, and Perry and Huntsman likely won't be far behind. That 16% of the vote is going to go somewhere. And then we'll see a couple more candidates drop, and we'll end up with a top three and probably a front-runner. This is just part of the process. I like that we have so many good candidates, and to hear them unite over and over again in the debates against President Obama's policies is refreshing.

NEWT

That's why we need to be careful. Rick Santorum gave a great and inspiring speech on the night of the Iowa caucus. Newt Gingrich used his time to declare war on Romney. Newt had pulled into the lead in the polls, and then the Romney super PAC came after Newt with a series of negative ads. Romney has said that he has no influence, nor could he legally have any contact or influence with the super PAC. Newt has now accused Romney of being a "liar" and secretly funding those ads, and has now made it his mission to derail Romney's campaign.

I lost a lot of respect for Newt in that moment. Here is a man who has a very respectable career in politics. He is a great debater and has a lot of good experience to pull from. But this move shows why he will never be President of the United States: He is waging a war against one of his own to act out a personal vendetta. He is thirsty for revenge. What I got out of his speech was, "If I'm going down, Mitt's coming down with me." A President needs to be able to take an attack, because they more than likely will on a daily basis.

Then Newt says that he won't go negative, BUT he does reserve the right to tell the truth about another candidate... which is exactly what the "negative" Newt ads were doing. The difference is, as Newt pointed out, is that he will do it with happy music instead of scary music.

We really need to be careful about bloodshed inside the party. Of course voting records are going to be used against each other in ads. Of course stances on issues are going to be brought up and old quotes are going to be played. But to call another candidate a "liar", and accuse them of illegal activity with no evidence is exactly the type of negativity that Newt claims to be above. This proves to me what I've thought every time I've heard him speak over the years: Newt is a grown up 5 year-old.

MITT ROMNEY

All of the candidates are now banding together to attack Mitt as the front-runner, and then if Mitt drops in the polls and Santorum moves ahead, I suppose they'll attack Santorum (except for Newt, who will still be attacking Mitt.) That is to be expected in a primary.

But when our own party is saying the same things as the liberals are saying, we know we're in the wrong place. I heard over and over again as I watched the Iowa caucus coverage on CNN was about how Romney has a ceiling of 25% of the voters because that's the same percentage he had in 2008 (when McCain won with 35% of the vote.) And now I've heard other Republicans repeating the same thing.

Rick Santorum has a good day in the Iowa caucus, nearly beating the front-runner Romney. But few people are talking about the fact that Romney made little effort to win Iowa -- His goal was to finish in the top three there. He campaigned relatively little in Iowa, and spent relatively little in Iowa (roughly $1.47M compared to Perry at $4.5M, who spent 3 times as much and got less than halfof the vote.) And he won. He spent less time and money than he did in 2008, and still won with 25% of the vote. As you look at the map, basically where he campaigned, he won.

Santorum chose to focus almost exclusively on Iowa to get this win. He spent approximately 250 days campaigning in Iowa, holding town meeting after town meeting, and criss-crossing the state in the Dodge pickup truck. He faced little opposition from the other candidates (who were focusing their attacks on Gingrich and Romney.) And he still lost. The strategy seemed to be effective, as he went from basically unknown to the top story in the election and raised $1M in one day, but I will be very suprised if he can come within 10% of Romney in New Hampshire where Romney has focused his efforts.

Jon Huntsman was content to concede Iowa, spending no time there, and recieved 1% of the vote. But I would not be suprised to see Hunstman beat Santorum in New Hampshire, where Huntsman has used the same strategy Santorum used in Iowa.

I've heard a number of times in the last couple days about how "75% of the Republicans voted against Romney" and "How is Romney the most electable when he can only get the vote of 25% of his people?" Ummmmm... he won. He got the highest amount of votes of any candidate. That means that 75% also voted against Santorum. And 79% voted against Ron Paul. And 87% voted against Newt Gingrich. So Romney is still the most electable by that measure.

The liberals would like us to believe we're splintered. We're not. Iowa is one state. Jon Hunstman is right that New Hampshire doesn't care what Iowa thinks. We are 50 states. Things will become a little clearer as the dust settles in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

FLIPPER

I've heard from some "conservatives" that having Romney in the White House would be no different than Obama. That is simply ridiculous. Romney may be left of Ron Paul, but he is a conservative. The left will try to paint him as a moderate so that the Republicans will shy away from him, but if he wins the Republican nomination, watch how they switch their tactics to paint him as ultra-conservative, "not sharing the views of the mainstream America."

One thing that really bothers me is when people refer to Romney as a "flip-flopper." That is also ridiculous. The true definition of a flip-flopper is someone like who flips on a view and then flops the next day or week or month on that view. Kerry and other true flip-floppers adapt their view to their audience or the latest poll.

I know Romney flipped on his stance on abortion. When has he flopped? I've heard that Romney flipped his stance on gay rights and "Don't ask, don't tell." When has he flopped?

Mitt Romney has told the story about why he changed his view on abortion again and again until he is blue in the face. He had held the view of being pro-choice, but the first time a bill crossed his desk that he was going to sign legislation that would lead to actual deaths of these unborn infants, he couldn't do it -- He changed his stance. He has been consistent on that new stance to this day (since 2002.) Where is the flop?

It sounds to me like he studied out the issue, and changed his position based on new information. I would hope that we would have a President who would be willing to research a particular problem or issue, and if they found that they had previously been in error, would change their mind in order to do what was right. (Just like I hope all of the Keynesian-economics disciples will realize that this trillion dollars in deficit government stimulus spending has done little to nothing for the economy... Maybe Reagan was right after all with his supply-side stimulus.)

Not only that, but the left tries to paint Romney as a chronic flip-flopper, and then they cite a couple of examples dating back 2002 and 1994. Nonsense.

FRONT-RUNNER

If the left wants to try to paint Romney as a flip-flopper, fine. We can expect them to. But we need to be careful about following their lead. And it may be instructive to note that the few "flips" that Romney has made in his lifetime have been to a more conservative position.

Romney is the front-runner. By Tuesday, he will likely have won both Iowa AND New Hampshire... a feat that no other Republican nominee has accomplished in recent history. He consistently polls higher than Obama than any other nominee. Thus, he will more likely than not be the Republican nominee come August.

These candidates are good men. But Santorum is a lawyer and a lifelong politician. Gingrich is a lifelong politician. Ron Paul was a doctor, but has been a politician for more than 30 years. Like Obama, none of them have ever run anything.

Rick Perry is a lifelong politician, but he has at least run the state of Texas. Jon Huntsman has been an executive of the Huntsman Corporation, and he ran the state of Utah. Between Perry and Huntsman though, they received only 12% of the votes in Iowa. For whatever reason, they're not connecting with voters.

Mitt Romney is a businessman. Most of Romney's adult life has been spent as an executive of one type or another. He has run the state of Massachussetts (which is a feat for a Republican.) His professional career has been spent taking broken companies and fixing them. Leading up to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the event was running $379 million deficit on expected revenue. Romney was hired as the CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committe when there were fears the games would be moved elsewhere. By the time Romney finished three years later, the Games cleared a $100 million profit. (P.S. I just read that he donated the $1.4 million salary he earned to charity.)

It just so happens that the biggest challenge facing our country right now is the economy. That makes Romney very electable to those who care about having a job, regardless of party.

O FIM

We have a lot of good candidates. Any of the candidates would be better than the current President. We'll see how it all shapes out over the next couple weeks and months leading up to the election.

But in the meantime, we can't let ourselves be divided. We can debate and we can talk about stances and issues, but name-calling is counter-productive. We can't echo liberal talking points. Mitt Romney may have "flipped" his stance on abortion nine years ago, but he is not a "flip-flopper" in any Kerry sense of the word.

The "flip-flopper" label is fatal in politics if it can be made to stick. The liberals know that, and that's why they always try their best to make it stick. I expect that from liberals, but I have no idea why someone who calls themselves a conservative would want to try to deal a fatal blow to the man who it appears will likely be the one to face off against Obama come November.

Let's debate issues and let's talk about records and let's find the best candidate through the process. But let's also remember that, regardless of who your candidate is, we're on the same side. We fight for a common goal -- A one-term President Obama. Here's to victory in November!

Irresponsible & Unpatriotic

2011-08-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

Just saw this one on the Drudge. In case you missed it:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/08/24/flashback_obama_adding_4_trillion_to_debt_is_unpatriotic.html

If only he would listen to himself...

Something to Laugh About...

2011-07-20T13:57:00.001-07:00

I just saw this video, and it made me laugh. The MSNBC host trying to stick it to the Republican congressman.

MSNBC To GOP Congressman: "Do You Have A Degree In Economics?"

Classy response from Rep. Brooks.

Does she have a degree in economics?

The Key to the Economy: Netflix

2011-07-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the comments section of an article regarding the current budget talks about raising the debt ceiling, even though I know I should never do that.

There was comment after comment about big, rich Republicans that don't care about people on social security and Medicaid and how they are trying to protect their rich buddies in big oil. They trash the rich, and talk about wanting them paying their fair share of taxes (as if they weren't already paying the majority.) It would be interesting to know how many of the people posting don't pay a dime in income tax, and yet use the roads, schools, and the police. It would be interesting what they consider their own "fair share."

I don't have any rich buddies in big oil, but I am against tax increases, especially when the economy is hurting. Why? Netflix.

NETFLIX

Netflix announced on Tuesday that they were raising their prices. For some, the increase will be almost doubling the cost. For my family, our Netflix bill will go from $18 to $24. $6/month increase.

Yet, we are currently in the process of deciding whether to cancel our Netflix subscription or not. Thousands of people have complained and many have canceled their subscriptions. Netflix executives have admitted they plan to lose a percentage customers with the price increases.

Netflix might say, "But you make $30,000/year! You can afford a $6/month increase! That's only 0.2% of your income!" And in fact, a Netflix executive did say that in essence, saying that $6/month is the price of a latte (i.e. not a big deal.)

If you believe we should increase taxes on the rich, then you're obviously hanging onto that Netflix subscription without complaining, because a $72/year increase is a very small portion of your income. (To really be comparable to a tax increase on the rich, they ought to raise their prices 3% of your income. How about a $75/month increase for someone making $30,000?)

When you raise the price of something and hold the supply steady, demand will shift to meet that new price.

When you raise the taxes on business, the result is less business. Less jobs. More layoffs. Less income tax. More individuals on unemployment. Less producers. More consumers.

Many Netflix customers have talked about switching to Redbox. When American taxes are increased, businesses in America say, "Taxes are way lower in Ireland. Time to move."

If it holds true for Netflix, why would it not hold true for all business?

SMART BUSINESS

Netflix understands this. This increase has a purpose. They want to get out of the DVD business and move completely to streaming, and this is a step along the way. I read an interview with the CEO of Netflix who said if they were starting today, they would have skipped the DVDs and gone exclusively with streaming. It is obviously much cheaper to go that route as you remove all the costs associated with packaging, shipping, and employing individuals to handle those tasks.

In light of that, this move makes perfect sense. Netflix wants individuals to cancel their DVD subscription, which is suddenly not that great of a deal, and keep their streaming only subscription, whose price went from $7.99 to $7.99. That's right -- No increase in streaming only. You only pay more if you have a DVD plan.

Netflix is using the power of economics to modify behavior in order to meet their needs.

CONCLUSION

It is true that Republicans have issues with entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid that are broken and need to be reformed to function properly. These programs are a major reason for the debt problems. Too many people taking out for those paying in. But that has nothing to do with Republicans being so firm on not voting for any tax increases.

Republicans simply understand Netflix. They understand that raising the taxes on business is the worst possible thing you could do in a bad economy. Why would they vote for something that will stifle any potential growth?

And common sense says that you don't fix a debt problem by extending your credit line. That simply leads to more debt. The Republicans are like the spouse in a marriage that finally takes a stand and says, "Enough is enough -- We have to fix our budget problems."

So if raising our debt limit isn't going to solve the problem, and raising taxes is only going to cause more damage, the only possible solution is to reduce expenditures. I understand that there may be times, especially in times of war, where there is a need for government debt. There have been times in my personal budget where something unexpected came up, and it was nice to have a credit card available to get me through a month or two of some unexpected expenses.

But ultimately, it comes back to spending less than you bring in. One option would be to increase the amount you bring in, which is like the current Democrat strategy with raising taxes. That would be the same as Netflix saying, "I know how we can make more money -- Let's raise our prices!"

The only other option left is to reduce spending. Budgeting is painful. It means you can't buy everything you want. It means there are tough choices to be made, but if you are truly serious about balancing the budget, some things simply have to go. Maybe even Netflix.

I'm Proud to be a Conservative

2011-06-14T14:35:00.001-07:00

I caught the first hour of the Republican Primary debate last night. If you didn't see it, you need to take the time to watch a little of it. It did my heart good.

I know that we are still early in the elections and that the candidates will eventaully need to differentiate themselves and that there will inevitably be some mud-slinging. But what I saw on stage last night was a united group of Republican candidates who did not treat each other as the enemy, but focused on the real problem at hand -- President Obama and the Democratic leaders.

A number of times, a candidate began their statement by saying, "What [this or that candidate] just said is exactly right..." When CNN tried to bait some of the candidates to attack Mitt Romney on aborition or health care, they refused. As a group, they did something that would seem impossible: They got 2 straight hours of making solid arguments about how the current administration is doing it wrong and what they would do to fix it... in prime time... on CNN!!! I'm sure it drove CNN nuts.

I finished watching, and I thought, You could almost just pick one of the candidates names out of a hat for the primary! They were all very solid, and they were all on basically the same page. ANY of those candidates would be a huge breath of relief in light of the current administration. They were all strong and decisive and not afraid to say what they thought, despite potentially offending the left.

I couldn't watch the debate live, because I was in class. But I pulled up the debate on my laptop, turned down the volume, and then watched CNN's audience tracker. As they liked what a candidate said, the lines would trend up. If they didn't like what they said, the lines would trend down. With both the Republican and Independent voters, I never once noticed the lines go down. Regardless of who the candidate was, the lines would trend upward.

It was simply a very solid showing for the Republican party. It made me proud to be a conservative. I'm sure strong leaders will emerge out of that group as the debates continue. I would hope that those who eventually fall behind and see that there is no chance will bow out gracefully rather than try to tear down the other candidates. We ought to follow suit and support each other rather than tear each other down. If we can keep the focus on the real problem at hand, 2012 is going to be a very good election. We have some very good candidates.

Obama's Economic Master Plan

2011-05-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Finally! It's taken over two years, but President Obama has come up with failsafe plan to create jobs and fix the unemployment epidemic in our nation. Here it is:

Obama Tells Companies to 'Step Up' and Hire Workers

Why does this not surprise me? Instead of creating tax incentives for investment, which will naturally create jobs in the free market system as businesses and individuals invest money into the market, we just tell the businesses they need to hire workers.

This is the liberal mentality though. In order to change behavior, we "pass a law", telling people that they have to behave in a certain way.

The sad thing is that President Obama must understand this, because he has done absoultely nothing to fix the prices at the gas pump.

When gas prices were at record highs in 2008, President Bush simply lifted the ban on offshore drilling, and gas prices plummeted to prices that I hadn't seen since I was filling up in high school. The members of OPEC aren't stupid -- They know the U.S. is the biggest consumer of oil. They limit production to keep prices high, but when the U.S. threatens to drill at home, they say, "Oh, no, no, no... You don't want to do that. We'll drop the prices. See how low they are now! No need to drill! Save your environment!"

President Obama could lift drilling bans, but he wants the prices to be high. In fact, as President, he has canceled oil leases and increased the number of drilling bans. He wants high prices! If gas prices are high, we naturally drive less, and we purchase more hybrid vehicles. The government even gives us tax benefits for purchasing a hybrid vehicle!

(Please someone, anyone, explain to me the logic of how a tax incentive for purchasing a hybrid vehicle will lead more people to buy hybrid vehicles, but somehow at the same time a tax hike on businesses will somehow not lead to a decrease in jobs?)

President Obama does understand natural markets, but he uses them only as it benefits his agenda. When asked about the high gas prices, his master plan was:

"If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know, you might want to think about a trade-in."

In other words, he is telling us to 'step up' and buy hybrid vehicles. That's good though, right? Less pollution, and we save the earth from global warming!

The only problem is that he can't control the natural consequences of his manipulation in the market. Semi-trucks and trains don't run on batteries unfortunately, so increased gas prices means increased food costs as the shipping companies need to charge more to keep up with gas prices. And suddenly, the lower class sees their food bill go from $500/month to $700/month as the price of everything naturally goes up.

President Obama will have to pass a law in order to get companies to hire workers, because he is certainly creating no incentives in the natural market. He knows that a tax cut on capital gains would spur investment and create all the jobs we need, but he refuses to cut taxes because that is what the Republicans want him to do.

I'm afraid that we will just have to get used to 10% unemployment and $5/gallon gas as we have a President who is apparently content with those numbers... that is, until November 2012.

Racism, Rudy, and Reality

2011-03-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

I am currently taking a business ethics class at a local university. The past couple classes we have been having a little role playing mini debate. Let me give you a little background of the debate.

We are taking the role of an admission committee for a medical school. We are choosing from two different students who are on different waiting lists:

One, a male named Ben, is at the top of the waiting list in the Traditional Pool. The traditional pool mainly looks at quantitative numbers, such as GPA and entry level test scores. Ben received a GPA of 3.8 from Yale University and scored in the top 15% on the entry level tests. Ben grew up in a family that was well-off and he had a lot of opportunities presented to him (he was well taken care of even before birth, put into nice schools, etc).

The other applicant is a woman named Bonita. Bonita is in the top of the list of the Diversity Pool. The diversity pool not only looks at the quantitative numbers mentioned above, but also looks at other factors, such as community involvement, life situation, etc. Bonita didn't graduate from high school. Later in life, her employer suggested that she should go to a local university. Bonita went to the university and graduated from with a 3.6 GPA and scored in the top 30% in the entry level tests. Bonita did not grow up in a great family. She was born with a mild case of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was not presented with the same opportunities of Ben. She had to drop out of high school to help with her family. She has been involved with and volunteered for many different community activities.

And that’s the basic scenario (if you really want, I could probably get the entire scenario and stick it up here). For two days, we have been debating on this situation and who should be accepted into the medical school.

We got to choose our sides and we are able to switch sides at any point. I chose Ben's side. The point that keeps coming up (from Ben's side) is that he scored higher then Bonita. Plain and simple. Before and after class, I have discussed with Ben's side and this is exactly the reason that everyone on Ben's side is trying to get Ben admitted. He went to a highly esteemed school and got a 3.8. He also scored in the top 15%. Bonita didn't score as high. I can honestly say that I didn't even take race (or any other factors) into consideration, as I'm sure most of Ben's side didn't either.

Towards the end of the debate on day one, we were called racists by one of the people pushing for Bonita. The paper scenario the professor read to us, did not once mention race. The fact that Bonita is a minority, is not a fact, it is just an assumption.

Towards the end of the debate on day two, we were called sexist. A lady in the class asked if the roles were reversed (aka Ben was the less-fortunate who scored lower and Bonita was the well-off who scored higher) would we have chosen the same? Yes we would have. We were looking at the FACT that Ben scored higher (not to mention it was Yale university) than Bonita (who attended a local university). Nothing else. So had Bonita scored higher on both her GPA and entry level tests, I would have been in Bonita’s camp.

Both of these people (the person that called us racist and person that called us sexist) seem to have pretty liberal view points. I don't know if they are liberal or not. But it did get me thinking about liberals. In the case of the debate, they want the underdog to win. There's nothing wrong with that. Having the underdog win is great. It makes for great entertainment. It makes everyone feel motivated that they can accomplish anything. But even though it is great to have the underdog win, in life we have to have some kind of guidelines, rules and benchmarks to live by.

Let's take a couple of movies for example. “Rudy”. Rudy wasn't instantly let into Notre Dame. His grades weren't good enough. So what did Rudy do? He tried harder. He went to a school that he was accepted into and tried to raise he grades. Semester after semester he tried get into Notre Dame and he kept getting rejected. Finally, when his grades were good enough, he was accepted into Notre Dame! He wouldn't have appreciated what he had accomplished nearly as much, if he was just let into the school.

“Pursuit of Happyness”. Chris Gardner came from horrible circumstances. But he wasn't handed the position. He had to fight for it. He had to get the best test scores. Which he did! He turned his life around by his hard work!

These are the best kind of underdog stories. These stories wouldn't have been nearly as good if they didn't accomplish their goals by their own merits and they just had it handed to them. In fact, there probably wouldn't have even been movies or books written about them and their stories.

Here’s another example. Let’s say one of the contestants of the Biggest Loser made it to the Olympics as one of the top competitors in the 100-yard dash. Then on the day of the race, they finished only a few milliseconds behind a contestant that had grown up running (and being in shape) with the goal of making it to the Olympics. We wouldn't give the Biggest Loser the gold medal just because of the journey they had completed. They didn't earn it. But, I would still applaud them for all they had accomplished.

Bottom line, we all want to see people succeed. But we have to live by rules. Rules are what make society possible to live in. And just because we live by rules, doesn't make us bad people. It doesn't make us sexist or racist either.

(And p.s. you can apply this to anything: health care, welfare, immigration, etc.)

Letterman & The Great Depression

2011-03-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

I watched Rand Paul on David Letterman the other night. I have to admit I was not really impressed with Sen. Paul. It was the first time I'd heard him speak, and he seemed pretty unrefined. I felt like he didn't represent the conservative viewpoints really well. He came out of the debate as the loser in my opinion. The worst part is that he didn't need to be the loser.

I found myself wishing I could be sitting in the chair responding to the points Letterman was making. Here's the full clip:

I have watched Letterman a lot over the years, and I personally think he falls into the category of a liberal whose heart is in the right place, but who is misguided on how to arrive at the correct outcome.

RAHAL LETTERMAN

Most of Letterman's points have to do with the fact that there are a huge amount of middle class people who are unemployed, and the conservatives want to cut taxes for the wealthy to solve the problem.

Letterman framed the tax cuts as being some sort of a reward for the wealthy. The frustrating thing was that Rand Paul responded with figures about how much tax the wealthy pay, which just reinforced Letterman's argument.

If I could have responded in that moment, here is what I would have said:

"Dave, Let me ask you a question. You are obviously among the top 5% of income earners in the U.S. Think for a second about what you do with your money. You obviously buy goods like houses, cars, food and such. But where does the rest go?

"My guess is that you invest the bulk of your money, and the money that you invest allows businesses to employ workers. I happen to know that one place your money goes is to the Rahal Letterman Racing Team. It's one of your passions, and you have invested a lot of money and time in creating a racing team that (according to your website) now employs at least 65 people.

"You also started a production company called Worldwide Pants that has produced shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, and currently produces the Late Show and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, among other projects.

"How many people does the Late Show employ? How about the Late Late Show? How about Worldwide Pants? Between all of your investments over the years, how many jobs have you, as one wealthy person, created? All of these people wouldn't have jobs if it weren't for your investments.

"The reason we want to give tax breaks to the wealthy is that those tax breaks will lead to an increase in investment in business. Businesses will be more wiling to take risks because the opportunity for reward is higher. The economy will be spurred on by investment."

1929

My mind was wandering as I was driving home today, and I had a thought come to me that I felt proved this principle. I was thinking about the state of the economy and that led to thoughts about the Great Depression. What was it that caused the Great Depression? The major cause, as we know, was the stock market crashing in 1929.

But that always confused me as I was growing up and studying history. How many middle class people do you know right now that have a ton of money tied up in the stock market? If you're like me, there are very few. Most of us in the middle income bracket are just trying to make ends meet.

To me, it made sense that really wealthy people would have lost out big in a stock market crash because they had so much money tied up in investments, and they would be hurting. But I felt like if the stock market crashed right now, it wouldn't affect me at all, because I relatively little money invested. So the middle income earners in 1929 with no money invested should have been just fine, right?

Well, as we know, that was not the case. Unemployment rose to 25% during the Great Depression. How did that happen? The wealthy people and businesses who were creating the jobs had lost everything and no longer had the ability to invest.

The thought I had as I was driving home today is: So if the wealthy losing money leads to losing a ton of jobs and a nation descending into a ddepression (as history has proved), would it not also stand to reason that the wealthy gaining income through tax cuts would lead to an increase in jobs and the wealth of a nation?

Someone explain to me where I'm wrong.

GIVE A MAN A FISH...

I really do believe that Letterman is a kind person at heart. He currently makes $38 million each year. If he were to decide that he wanted to help some unemployed families out at an average household U.S. income of $45,000/year, he could help out 844 families.

Better yet, if Bill Gates decided that he wanted to dedicate $38 billion for the same purpose, he would help out 844,444 each year. The only problem is is that there are currently 6,200,000 people unemployed.

Handing money to people is not the solution. It is simply unsustainable. That is why a wise businessman like Bill Gates choses to take his money and form the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that provides computers to underpriviliged nations. They understand that by raising the education of nations, there will be more individuals who are income-producing and less who are income-consuming. The individuals will get better jobs and earn more income, which will give them more income to spend, and the ball starts rolling. They are trying to create a sustainable model that will not take a $38 billion invesetment... only to require another $38 billion the next year... and the next year... and the next year...

CONCLUSION

The true way to create wealth in a nation is to create jobs, and that is not going to happen through giving money to low income earners or by the middle class. It is going to happen through the wealthy, as the Great Depression ironically proves.

What Letterman doesn't understand about the conservative call for tax cuts is that the outcome we desire is the same -- That there be no poor among us. We want everybody to be wealthy.

The station we all want to get to at the end of the track is the same. But the train conservatives take is named "Sustainability", and the train liberals take is named "Handouts". One of these two will run out of fuel and never arrive at the station.

Obama vs. Obama

2011-02-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

I caught most of the State of the Union address last week. I have to admit I was a little uncomfortable watching for some reason. I couldn't put my finger on it until I listened to Rush the next day when he mentioned that Obama gave the speech as if it were his first day in office; as if the last two years hadn't happened.

It occurred to me that what made me so uncomfortable was that I was watching a President of the United States take himself on. He was throwing jabs left and right... at himself!

Here are a few excerpts from his speech:

"Now, by itself, this simple recognition won't usher in a new era of cooperation. What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.
"I believe we can. And I believe we must. That's what the people who sent us here expect of us. With their votes, they've determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all -- for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics."

Isn't this the same President who rammed through the health care bill despite not having a single Republican vote and with 60% of the public opposing it?

"We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. (Applause.) I don't know if -- I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. (Laughter.) So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's."

Okay, this is one part that has been consistent throughout his presidency: Bashing the oil companies that currently make it possible for he and us to travel around the world in an efficient, cost-effective manner. But the reason that I included this excerpt is that I'm trying to figure out what he means by "the billions of taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies". Please somebody explain to me when the government has evergiven a single dollar to the oil companies? I think what he meant to say there was: "And to help pay for it, I'm asking for Congress to allow the oil companies to keep less of the income they generate."

"Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation's infrastructure, they gave us a 'D.'"

Ummmm... What was the $1 trillion stimulus for? I remember the bridge in Minnesota that collapsed being referenced in the debate about the stimulus and that all of these construction workers were going to be put to work as a result of the $100+ billion that was going into infrastructure. In fact, a quick Google search shows that "Mr. Obama called the bill 'the largest new investment in our nation’s infrastructure since Eisenhower built an interstate highway system in the 1950s.'" That was two years ago, one month after Obama took office. What happened? (See the link in the next section for the answer.)

"We'll put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We'll make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based [on] what's best for the economy, not politicians."

Again, this is wonderful. But I have to ask, why start now? Since the beginning of his presidency, when has President Obama ever worried about making sure that anything is fully paid for? When has he ever created policies that would attract private investment? And when has he ever picked projects based on what's best for the economy instead of politicians? *cough*Wastebook 2010*cough*

"Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. (Applause.) This could allow you to go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying -- without the pat-down. (Laughter and applause.)"

Ummmmmm... Which President's Department of Homeland Security is responsible for the new intrusive patdowns?

And last, but not least...

"But now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same."

I had to check this one again to make sure it actually came out of his mouth. So after a $1 Trillion stimulus consisting of borrowed money and leading to record deficits... now we are going to reign in spending.

CONCLUSION

Throughout the speech, I felt like I was watching an older brother playing "Quit hitting yourself" with a younger brother... only this time the younger brother was actually hitting himself! It was bizarre.

President Obama's speech had the effectiveness of a parent counseling a child not to smoke with an ashtray full of cigarette butts at their side.

As Rush pointed out, he acted like this was his first day in office. What about the last two years?? He has had TWO YEARS with a Democratic majority in both the House & Senate to try to cooperate with those across the table, to improve the infrastructure, to make sure the projects are fully paid for, to encourage private investment, to fix the tax code, and to reign in spending, among the myriad of other things he mentioned in his speech!

President Obama needs to become familiar with the phrase "Actions speak louder than words." His actions have been speaking for the past 743 days, and those actions make the words he spoke last week completely meaningless. Obama 2008-2010 beat the tar out of Obama 2011 in this fight. He was his own worst enemy last Tuesday.

W.

2011-01-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

Of all of the things I do not understand about liberals, I think the greatest thing I do not understand is the irrational hatred for George W. Bush. I may not agree with most of Barack Obama's policies, but I don't hate him. I may believe Bill Clinton is an unscrupulous person whose seeks power, but if he were to walk into the room, I would shake his hand and show him the same respect I would show any person.

The venom of the left speaking about George W. Bush, even two years after he left office, is astounding. As I've thought about it, I think the venom must stem from Bush's solid stances on his principles. Ironically, that is the same thing that impresses me so much about President Bush.

If I am at a party where people are drinking and someone offers me some alcohol, and I decline based on my principles, there is a tendency for those who are drinking to assume that I am judging them because they are drinking. There will generally be some comment about "you think you're better than us" or "holier than thou". But the reality is that I just simply choose not to drink. Everybody has the freedom to make their own choices.

The greatest controversy and source of venom in regards to President Bush had to do with his stance on terrorism. September 11^th, 2001 had a profound impact on President Bush. In his words:

"As I record these thoughts, that day of fire is a distant memory for some of our citizens. The youngest Americans have to firsthand knowledge of the day. Eventually, September 11 will come to feel more like Pearl Harbor Day -- an honored day date on the calendar and an important moment in history, but not a scar on the heart, not a reason to fight on.
"For me, the week of September 11 will always be something more. I will see the Pentagon smoldering, the towers in flames, and that pile of twisted steel. I still hear the voices of the loved ones searching for survivors and the workers yelling, "Do not let me down!" and "Whatever it takes!" I still feel the sadness of the children, the agony of the burn victims, and the torment of the broken families. I still marvel at the bravery of the firefighters, and the compassion of the strangers, and the matchless courage of the passengers who forced down that plane.
"September 11 redefined sacrifice. It redefined duty. And it redefined my job. The story of that week is the key to understanding my presidency. There were so many decisions that followed, many of them controversial and complex. Yet after 9/11, I felt my responsibility was clear. For as long as I held office, I could never forget what happened to America that day. I would pour my heart and soul into protecting the country, whatever it took."

That was the principle: "Protecting the country, whatever it took." I think one of major contributing factors to the hatred of George W. Bush is that he refused to defend himself in the barrage of relentless attacks by so-called news outlets, talk shows, celebrities, and protesters. Here is a perfect example:

Notice Bush's reaction. Even in the face of a physical attack, Bush doesn't defend himself. If it were me, I would have felt like saying, "Let's pretend this was a few years ago in Iraq that you did that, Mr. Journalist. Somebody get a sword." Instead, President Bush talks about in terms of an "important step" and "that's what happens in free societies." Bush felt it was beneath the office of the President to stoop to the level of the critics.

I am currently reading "Decision Points", George W. Bush's autobiography. It has been so refreshing as I've read to finally hear President Bush discuss why he made the decisions he did. Here are a few excerpts I've selected that address some of the more controversial decisions of his presidency:

PREEMPTION

"Prior to 9/11, many had viewed terrorism primarily as a crime to be prosecuted, as the government had after the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. After 9/11, it was clear that the attacks on our embassies in East Africa and on the USS Cole were more than isolated crimes. They were a warm-up for September 11, part of a master plan orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, who had issued a religious edict, known as fatwa, calling the murder of Americans 'an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.'
"On 9/11, it was obvious the law enforcement approach to terrorism had failed. Suicidal men willing to fly passenger planes into buildings were not common criminals. They could not be deterred by the threat of prosecution. They had declared war on America. To protect the country, we had to wage war against the terrorists."

"[In the speech following 9/11] I did want to announce a major decision I had made: The United States would consider any nation that harbored terrorists to be responsible for the acts of those terrorists. This new doctrine overturned the approach of the past, which treated terrorist groups as distinct from their sponsors. We had to force nations to choose whether they would fight the terrorists or share in their fate. And we had to wage this war on the offense, by attacking the terrorists overseas before they could attack us again at home."

THE PATRIOT ACT

"Putting the country on war footing required more than just tightening our physical defenses. We needed better legal, financial, and intelligence tools to find the terrorists and stop them before it was too late.
"One major gap in our counter terrorism capabilities was what many called 'the wall.' Over time, the government had adopted a set of procedures that prevented law enforcement and intelligence personnel from sharing key information.
"'How can we possibly assure our citizens we are protecting them if our own people can't even talk to each other?' I said in one meeting shortly after the attacks. 'We have got to fix the problem.'
"Attorney General John Ashcroft took the lead in writing a legislative proposal. The result was the USA PATRIOT Act. The bill eliminated the wall and allowed law enforcement and intelligence personnel to share information. It modernized our counter terrorism capabilities by giving investigators access to tools like roving wiretaps, which allowed them to track suspects who changed cell phone numbers--an authority that had long been used to catch drug traffickers and mob bosses. It authorized aggressive financial measures to freeze terrorist assets. And it included judicial and congressional oversight to protect civil liberties.
"One provision created a little discomfort at home. The PATRIOT Act allowed the government to seek warrants to examine the business records of suspected terrorists, such as credit card receipts, apartment leases, and library records. As a former librarian, Laura didn't like the idea of federal agents snooping around libraries. I didn't, either. But the intelligence community had serious concerns about terrorists using library computers to communicate. Library records had played a role in several high-profile cases, such as the Zodiac gunman murders in California. The last thing I wanted twas to allow the freedom and access to information provided by American libraries to be utilized against us by al Queda.
"Lawmakers recognized the urgency of the threat and passed the PATRIOT Act 98 to 1 in the Senate and 357 to 66 in the House. 'We took the time to look at it, we took the time to read it, and we took time to remove those parts that were unconstitutional and those parts that would have actually hurt liberties of all Americans, 'Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said. His Democratic colleague, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, added, 'If there is one key word that underscores this bill, it is 'balance.' In the new post-September 11 society that we face, balance is going to be a key word . . . Balance and reason have prevailed.'
"Over the next five years, the PATRIOT Act helped us break up potential terror cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Florida. In one example, law enforcement and intelligence agencies shared information that led to the arrest of six Yemeni Americans in Lackawanna, New York, who had traveled to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden. Five pled guilty to providing material support to al Quaeda. The other admitted to unlawful transactions with al Qaeda.
"Some claimed the Lackawanna Six and others we arrested were little more than 'small-town dupes' with fanciful plots 'who had no intention of carrying out terrorist acts.' I always wondered how the second guessers could be so sure. After all, in August 2001, the idea that terrorists commanded from caves in Afghanistan would attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on U.S. commercial airplanes would have seemed pretty far-fetched. For me, the lesson of 9/11 was simple: Don't take chances. When our law enforcement and intelligence professionals found people with ties to terrorist networks inside the United States, I would rather be criticized for taking them into custody too early than waiting until it was too late."

WIRETAPPING

"As part of the 9/11 investigation, we discovered that two hijackers who had infiltrated the United States... had communicated with al Qaeda leaders overseas more than a dozen times before the attack. My immediate question was: Why hadn't we intercepted the calls? If we had heard what [the hijackers] were saying, we might have been able to stop the attacks of 9/11.
"The man with the answers was Mike Hayden, the three-star Air Force general who led the National Security Agency... Mike told me the NSA had the capability to monitor those al Qaeda phone calls into the United States before 9/11. But he didn't have the legal authority to do it without receiving a court order, a process that could be difficult and slow.
"The reason was a law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Written in 1978, before widespread use of cell phones and Internet, FISA prohibited the NSA from monitoring communications involving people inside the United States without a warrant from the FISA court. For example, if a terrorist in Afghanistan contacted a terrorist in Pakistan, NSA could intercept their conversation. But if the same terrorist called someone inside the United States, or sent an e-mail that touched an American computer server, NSA had to apply for a court order.
"That made no sense. Why should it be tougher to monitor al Qaeda communications with terrorists inside the United States than with associates overseas. As Mike Hayden put it, we were 'flying blind with no early warning system.'
"After 9/11, we couldn't afford to fly blind. If al Qaeda operatives were calling into or out of the United States, we damn sure needed to know who they were calling and what they were saying. And given the urgency of the threats, we could not allow ourselves to get bogged down in the court approval process. I asked the White House counsel's office and the Justice Department if I could authorize the NSA to monitor al Qaeda communications into and out of the country without FISA warrants.
"Both told me I could. They concluded that conducting surveillance against our enemies in war fell within the authorities granted by the congressional war resolution and the constitutional authority of the commander in chief. Abraham Lincoln had wiretapped telegraph machines during the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson had ordered the interception of virtually every telephone and telegraph message going into or out of the United States during World War I. Franklin Roosevelt had allowed the military to read and censor communications during World War II.
"Before I approved the Terrorist Surveillance Program, I wanted to ensure there would be safeguards to prevent abuses. I had no desire to turn the NSA into an Orwellian Big Brother. I knew the Kennedy brothers had teamed up with J. Edgar Hoover to listen illegally to the conversations of innocent people, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Lyndon Johnson had continued the practice. I thought that was a sad chapter in our history, and I wasn't going to repeat it...
"I gave the order to proceed with the program. We considered going to Congress to get legislation, but key members from both parties who received highly classified briefings on the program agreed that the surveillance was necessary and that legislative debate was not possible without exposing our methods to the terrorists."

GUANTANAMO BAY

"Initially, most captured al Qaeda fighters were held for questioning in battlefield prisons in Afghanistan. In November, CIA officers went to interrogate Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners detained at a primitive nineteenth-century Afghan fortress, Qala-i-Jangi. A riot ensued. Using weapons smuggled onto the complex, enemy fighters killed on of our officers, Johnny 'Mike" Spann, making him the first American combat death in the war.
"The tragedy highlighted the need for a secure facility to hold captured terrorists. There were a few options, none particularly attractive. For a while, we held al Qaeda detainees on Navy ships in the Arabian Sea. But that was not a viable long-term solution. Another possibility was to send the terrorists to a secure base on a distant island or U.S. territory, such as Guam. But holding captured terrorists on American soil could activate constitutional protections they would not otherwise receive, such as the right to remain silent. That would make it much more difficult to get the urgently needed intelligence.
"We decided to hold detainees at a remote naval station on the southern tip of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay. The base was on Cuban soil, but the United States controlled it under a lease acquired after the Spanish-American War. The Justice Department advised me that prisoners brought there had no right to access the U.S. criminal justice system. The area surrounding Guantanamo was inaccessible and sparsely populated. Holding terrorists in Fidel Castro's Cuba was hardly an appealing prospect. But as Don Rumsfeld put it, Guantanamo was the 'lease worst choice.'"

"While our humane treatment of the detainees was consistent with the Geneva Conventions, al Qaeda did not meet the qualifications for Geneva protection as a legal matter. The purpose of Geneva was to provide incentives for nation-states to fight wars by an agreed set of rules to protect human dignity and innocent life--and to punish warriors who do not. But the terrorists did not represent a nation-state. They had not signed the Geneva Conventions. Their entire mode of operation--intentionally killing the innocent--defied the principles of Geneva. And if al Qaeda captured an American, there was little chance they would treat him humanely."

WATERBOARDING

"On March 28, 2002, I could hear excitement in George Tenet's voice. He reported that Pakistani police--with a hand from the FBI and CIA-- had launched a takedown operation against several al Qaeda safe houses in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad. They netted more than two dozen operatives, including Abu Zubaydah.
"I had been hearing reports about Aubaydah for months. The intelligence community believed he was a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden and a senior recruiter and operator who had run a camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers had trained. He was suspected of involvement in previous plots to destroy targets in Jordan and blow up Los Angeles International airport. The CIA believed he was planning to attack America again.
"Zubaydah had been severely wounded in a gun battle prior to his arrest. The CIA flew in a top doctor, who saved his life. The Pakistanis then turned him over to our custody. The FBI began questioning Zubaydah, who had clearly been trained on how to resist interrogation. He revealed bits and pieces of information he thought we already knew...
"Then Zubaydah stopped answering questions. George Tenet told me interrogators believed Zubaydah had more information to reveal. If he was hiding something more, what could it be? Zubaydah was our best lead to avoid another catastrophic attack. 'We need to find out what he knows,' I directed the team. 'What are our options?'
"One option was for the CIA to take over Zubaydah's questioning and move him to a secure location in another country where the Agency wold have total control over his environment. CIA experts drew up a list of interrogation techniques that differed from those Zubaydah had successfully resisted. George assured me all interrogations would be performed by experienced intelligence professionals who had undergone extensive training. Medical personnel would be on-site to guarantee that the detainee was not physically or mentally harmed.
"At my direction, Deptartment of Justice and CIA lawyers conducted a careful legal reivew. They concluded that the enhanced interrogation program complied with the Constitution and all applicable laws, including those that ban torture.
"I took a look at the list of techniques. There were two that I felt went too far, even if they were legal. I directed the CIA not to use them. Another technique was waterboarding, a process of simulated drowning. No doubt the procedure was tough, but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm...
"The new techniques proved highly effective. Zubaydah revealed large amounts of information on al Qaeda's structure and operations. He also provided leads that helped reveal the location of Ramzi bin al Shibh, the logistical planner of the 9/11 attacks. The Pakistani police picked him up on the first anniversary of 9/11.
"Zubaydah later explained to interrogators why he started answering questions again. His understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation up to a certain point. Waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfill his religious duty, and then cooperate. 'You must do this for all the brothers,' he said."

"Pakistani forces raided the complex and hauled out their target. It was the chief operating officer of al Qaeda, the murderer of Danny Pearl, and the mastermind of 9/11: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
"I was relieved to have one of al Qaeda's senior leaders off the battlefield. But my relief did not last long. Agents searching Khalied Sheikh Mohammed's compound discovered what one official later called a 'mother lode' of valuable intelligence. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was obviously planning more attacks. It didn't sound like he was willing to give us any information about them. 'I'll talk to you,' he said, 'after I get to New York and see my lawyer.'
"George Tenet asked if he had permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I thought about my meeting with Danny Pearl's widow, who was pregnant with his son when he was murdered. It thought about the 2,973 people stolen from their families by al Qaeda on 9/11. And I thought about my solemn duty to protect the county from another act of terror.
"'Damn right,' I said.
"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed proved difficult to break. But when he did, he gave us a lot. He disclosed plans to attack American targets with anthrax and directed us to three people involved in the al Qaeda biological weapons program. He provided information that led to the capture of Hambali, the chief of al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate in Southeast Asia and the architect of the Bali terrorist attack that killed 202 people. He provided further details that led agents to Hambali's brother, who had been grooming operatives to carry out another attack inside the United States, possibly a West Coast version of 9/11 in which terrorists flew a hijacked plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
"Years later, the Washington Post ran a front-page story about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's transformation. Headlined 'How a Detainee Became an Asset,', it described how Mohammed 'seemed to relish the opportunity, sometimes for hours on end, to discuss the inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group's plans, ideology and operatives. . . He'd even use a chalkboard at times.' The intelligence he provided, which proved to be vital to saving American lives, almost certainly would not have come to light without the CIA's enhanced interrogation program.
"Of the thousands of terrorists we captured in the years after 9/11, about a hundred were placed into the CIA program. About a third of those were questioned using enhanced techniques. Three were waterboarded."

CONCLUSION

These are just a few of the issues discussed in Bush's "Decision Points." It has been refreshing to hear him address the attacks from his critics and explain why he made the decisions he did. In every case, he has a sound logical argument for his decision that he arrived at with the consulation of experts.

If you agree with the philosophy of "terrorism as a crime to be prosecuted", I can see how you can disagree with his actions. But if you believe that we need to prevent terrorist attacks before they happen, I don't understand how you can disagree with his actions, given the facts, unless it is simply because he has an "R." out to the side of his name. (This is blaringly apparent by the fact that President Obama has continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has maintained the prison at Guantanamo Bay, despite criticism from his supporters.)

President Bush made the decisions he did through the filter of 9/11 and protecting the country, whatever it took. Nobody can argue with the results. There has not been a single terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. I, for one, am grateful for President George W. Bush.

Democratic Philosophy vs. Republican Philosophy

2010-12-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

Politics is a sensitive issue for most people. Any political discussions generally turn ugly quick, with both sides fiercely defending their side. That's a shame, because it makes it nearly impossible to have a rational discussion on politics with someone from the opposite side.

I think of myself as a rational person. I consider myself an average American. I certainly wouldn't classify myself as a wacko or an extremist. But I realize Democrats would likely classify me that way. The liberal views are so far removed from my views, I've always wished I had someone I trust on the opposite side of the fence I could have a friendly conversation with about why they believe what they do.

I had an interesting experience one day while watching The Late Show. I had always felt like James Carville and Bill Clinton and Bill Maher and other Democrats had a perfect knowledge of their fraud. They were too smart to believe the things they were saying -- They had simply chosen a side for popularity or power or legalization of drugs (in Maher's case), and they would say whatever they could to defend that side.

But then I was shocked to hear David Letterman say the same thing about Rush Limbaugh. He said that Rush was a talented guy who could have been successful at many things, and he just happended to choose conservatism. Having listened to Rush's show (which I'm guessing Letterman has never done if he has that opinion) on a fairly regular basis, I knew that was a false statement.

It then dawned on me that perhaps Carville and Clinton and Maher actually believe what they say, and that was a huge revelation to me. How can rational people actually believe those things?

So yesterday when I saw a story entitled "Here are the reasons I am a Democrat", I immediately clicked on the article. I am honestly curious about how the Democrat brain could be so vastly different than mine. I have had enough experiences to know that we have to be open to hear other points of view because we are not always right.

THE IDEAL

As I read through the article, I think I gained a huge insight into the mind of a Democrat. Mr. Nielsen describes a world that would be perfect to live in. Who wouldn't want to be a Democrat? I realized that one of the main differences in Republicans and Democrats is reality.

That isn't an attempt at being smart. I honestly think that if I told a Democrat something is impossible, they would say, "With that kind of an attitude, it really is impossible. You just have to do your best and eventually we'll get there."

I agree with many things Mr. Nielsen said in the article. In fact, I think we ought to take it a few steps further and add: "I am a Democrat because I believe that everybody should be happy, and that nobody should ever be sad. I am a Democrat because I believe nobody should ever die. I am a Democrat because I believe the world should be at peace and there should never be another war."

All of this in a Republican mind is like saying, "I am a Democrat because I believe we should be able to drop a rock off a cliff and not have it fall. I am a Democrat because I believe that every action should not have an equal and opposite reaction. I am a Democrat, and I believe that water should not boil until 312 degrees fahrenheit."

No wonder so many people agree with the Democrats and think of the Republicans as cold-hearted people. The Democrats say, "I believe no one should go bankrupt, lose their home and life savings, or die because they can't afford health care and don't have reasonable health insurance." The only response Republicans can give is, "How is that going to work? It makes no sense." And Democrats infer from that that Republicans don't want good health care for everyone.

It might surprise Democrats, but Republicans would love for everybody to be wealthy. They would love for everybody to be happy. They would love for there to be no war. They would love for everybody to have their health care covered. They would love to allow all immigrants into the U.S. to receive the same blessings we've been given. They would love for everybody to be equal.

The dilemma for Republicans is that they have to face reality and realize that you can't make everybody happy, you can't stop war, somebody has to pay for health insurance, if everybody who wanted to come to the U.S. was allowed to come to the U.S, the system would immediately crumble under the weight of the physical and financial strain, and that no matter how hard you try, life will never be fair.

The thing I think that Democrats don't understand is that the Republicans have the exact same end goals in mind. I realized in reading this article that we just have different philosophies on how we get there. A few examples:

TAXES & BUSINESS

Many of Mr. Nielsen's points had to do with taxes and where the money should come from to equalize the standard of living.

"I believe in economic security for everyone, not just the top 5 percent of Americans."
"I believe that government giving money to the rich doesn't create jobs for the rest of us."
"I believe government should reward businesses only after they have created jobs for Americans."
"I believe in a free enterprise system for the working and middle classes, not just global corporations."
"I believe in both limited government and limited big business."
"I believe in free competitive economic markets for local and small businesses, not just distant and monopolistic corporations."
"I believe, neither in raising nor lowering taxes, but in a fair tax system — one that promotes innovation and industry, not an imbalanced tax system that rewards greed and excess."
"I believe in fiscal responsibility, but that sacrifice should first come from those who can afford it, not from the poor."
"I believe the rich don't always earn their wealth, and the poor frequently aren't to blame for their poverty."
"I believe no one should be homeless, hungry, abused, or neglected regardless of the causes."

Mr. Nielsen seems to take the approach that most Democrats do: to place a heavier burden of taxation on wealthy businesses and individuals, and to redistribute the wealth to the poor. This seems like a fair and charitable thing to do on the surface.

The first obvious flaw is that when you pay a person to not work, they have no incentive to work. In fact, the opposite is true -- Unemployment and welfare give individuals incentive NOT to work. The natural result of the system we have in place is an increase in consumers and a decrease in producers.

That aside, let's look at the situation from the perspective of a business. If a business that makes $10 million per year in revenue is currently paying 60% in taxes, and the tax rate is raised to 65%, that means that that business now has to make up $500,000 somewhere just to keep everything even. Where does that $500,000 come from? As we've seen, the easiest place to cut back is through layoffs. Lay off a half dozen employees, and we are back in business. Those individuals go on unemployment, and become consumers instead of producers for a year. The government now uses the additional tax revenue they recieved to pay those individuals not to work.

But what about those individuals at banks receiving a $1 million bonuses? They can afford to pay more taxes, right?

What do the wealthy do with their money? How much money does the average millionaire have in his checking account? My guess (based on hearing a millionaire speak on the subject) is that it's no more than $25,000. The wealthy generally don't get to be wealthy by being foolish. They don't let their money sit collecting 1% interest. So what do they do with the rest of their money?

Well, first they spend it. They buy big homes with lots of furniture and big yachts and they take trips and fly on airplanes and they eat out and drive fancy cars. This keeps construction workers working, furniture shops selling, boat manufacturers building boats, economies in different tourist areas growing, and airlines, restaurants, and car dealerships in business. Which in turn gives all of the employees of all of these businesses a paycheck. Which they in turn spend on gas and groceries and heat and light and an occasinal movie. Which keeps the gas station, grocerty store, gas companies, and electric companies in business. And so it goes.

What do individuals who are in lower income levels do when they receive an unexpected $500 check... oh, say from a stimulus? They save it. That's what I would do. I don't buy new cars, I don't eat out often, I rarely buy new furniture or travel, and I throw any big chunks of money I get in savings where it does little or no good to anyone but my bank.

Next, the wealthy realize that the interest earned on a checking or savings account is paltry. So what do they do with the rest of their money. They invest it. Where? In other businesses. They invest venture money for startups and put money into the stock market. What do those companies do with the money? They expand and grow in order to get bigger and make more profit, which means more jobs for more individuals.

How many people below an average income invest their money in businesses? When you redistribute the wealth, you cut off investment, and a decrease in jobs is the natural result (as we've witnessed over the past two years.)

When taxes are low, the wealthy tend to make more risky investments with start up companies and small businesses and to put more money into the stock market because of the potential for higher returns. But when the tax rate is raised (especially on capital gains), the wealthy tend to invest in more safe "guaranteed" investments like T-Bills because the post-tax return they would receive is not worth the risk. The money is pulled out of the system.

Higher taxes = Less investment. Less investment = Less jobs. Less jobs = More consumers & Less producers. Consumers > Producers = An economy that cannot sustain itself.

The reason that the United States is in the world financial position it is in now is because of capitalism. Someone like Oprah, who started out in extreme poverty, can become one of the nation's most wealthy women. She has created an organization that employs many people, and her millions of dollars in investments create employment for many other people. And on top of all of that, she gives a lot to charity as well and tries to help individuals out. She does a lot of good in the world, and she has that ability because of her wealth.

Bottom line: Republicans want everybody to be wealthy. They want to take care of the poor. This is demonstrated by the fact that Republicans give a bigger share of their income to charity. They believe, like the Democrats, that "nobody should should be homeless, hungry, abused, or neglected regardless of the causes", and that is why they donate to charities that make it their mission to remedy those problems. The end goal is the same. Republicans just realize that the way to make individuals wealthy is not to hand them money (which cannot be sustained), but rather to give them the means (in terms of employment, education, and opportunity) to allow them to make themselves wealthy (which is self-sustaining.)

HEALTH CARE

"I believe no one should go bankrupt, lose their home and life savings, or die because they can't afford health care and don't have reasonable health insurance.
"I believe in the family; specifically in policies that support the family — like paid parental leave, more support for public schools, a safe and sustainable environment, more prenatal health care, better support for working moms, better day care programs for our children and immigration policies that don't punish children or split up families."

Again, health care for everyone is clearly a noble pursuit. But it is not based in reality. Death is a part of life. Doctors and hospitals are not in the business of working for free. This means that for someone who gets cancer and receives $300,000 in medical care, there is $300,000 that needs to be paid. So who pays it? Insurance companies, right?

Insurance companies are businesses that need to make a profit in order to stay in business. The reason they didn't accept pre-existing conditions is that the risk is too high to take on that individuals. If I were to tell you I would pay you $250/month, and that there was a 95% chance I would need you to pay me $300,000 sometime in the next 5 years, what would you tell me?

Passing laws that force insurance companies to take on individuals with pre-existing conditions is forcing those insurance companies to either A) Go out of business, or B) Raise the rates on all customers in order to stay in business, which makes health care even less affordable.

That's simple -- Just get the government involved and raise taxes on the rich to fund it, right? (See the previous section.) Raising taxes reduces jobs and slows economic growth, creating an unsustainable system with even more individuals dependant on the "free" health care. That system will eventually fail.

Bottom Line: Republicans would love to have excellent health care for everyone on the planet. But the solution is not to force the insurance companies to do anything. The solution is to lower barriers and create more competition in the health care industry to naturally reduce the astronomical costs of health care. More competition = Lower prices. Then to shift back to insurance being insurance. Demolition derby drivers don't buy insurance on their cars. Insurance is for unexpected events like getting cancer or having open heart surgery -- Not for dental cleanings or having a baby.

If health care insurance were truly insurance (with a $10,000 deductible, for example), it would truly be affordable for everybody. That's why we can insure a $200,000 house for $400/year. For those who still could not afford health insurance, that could be handled through charities. Same end result, but through means that are self-sustaining and do not infringe upon our freedoms.

WAR

"I believe terrorism is a reprehensible criminal act, not an act of war. Thus the 'war on terror' is deeply flawed."

I guess maybe this is the one point we disagree on. The "reprehensible criminal act" on 9/11 killed twice as many Americans as the attack on Pearl Harbor -- I don't know about you, but it sure felt like a declaration of war to me. I would be interested to know Mr. Nielsen's philosophy on how he would have responded on 9/11. Ho do you handle terrorists who do not come out into open battle, but rather who hide, and infiltrate, and strike at innocent people. They have killed thousands, and if it could have been millions instead, it would have been.

Democrats wants peace. Republicans also want peace. But Al Queda does not want peace. Iran does not want peace. North Korea (making threats every day to use their nuclear weapons) does not want peace. Iraq most certainly did not want peace.

When you live in a world where there are individuals who simply do not want peace, what are your choices? The Democratic solution is to be nice. How did that work with the bully at school?

When I was in junior high, I had a neighborhood bully tease me on a regular basis. He continued to do it until one day he came up from behind and slapped me on my neck with a ruler in science class. I knew at that moment that I had a decision to make. I knew there would be consequences, but I was willing to accept them. I pushed my chair out from under the desk, stood up, turned around, and stared the bully in the eyes, ready for a fight. He turned, walked away, and never bothered me again.

The Republicans believe that you can never reach peace through being nice, because there are people like Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-Il, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in this world. If any of those individuals had a button they could push that would wipe the United States off of the earth, they would do it without blinking.

The way to achieve peace is through strength. One of the most striking exampls is when Iran held 52 U.S. Citizens for 444 days while Jimmy Carter was President. Asking nicely did not work. 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn into office in 1980, Iran released the hostages. Why did they not release them in any of the previous 444 days, in spite of all of the talks and negotiations and attempts to have them released?

When Al Queda attacked us on 9/11 and killed thousands of innocent civilians, we realized as a nation that this type of thing could not stand. The attack was completely unprovoked. The attackers were not a formal nation. But we needed to end the bullying, or watch more innocent Americans die.

We had a decision to make. The Bush Administration responded exactly the way it should have. Because Al Queda is not a specific nation, the administration had no choice but to identify those nations that were a threat to the U.S. either directly or indirectly by harboring terrorists and funding terrorism. (Iraq had done both.)

The United Nations (consisting of many different countries) did not allow Iraq to build or possess weapons of mass destruction. Both U.S. AND British Intelligence showed that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMDs. The U.N. sent in inspectors, but Saddam Hussein refused to let them do their job. The U.S. gave Saddam Hussein the ultimatum: Allow the inspectors in by a specified day, or we will launch an attack. Saddam refused, which left the U.S. no choice. Had he cooperated, he would likely (and unfortunately for the Iraqi people) still be in power today. But as it happened, Iraq is no longer a terrorist threat to the U.S. or Kuwait or the United Kingdom or any nation for many generations to come.

The United Kingdom, South Korea, Austrailia, Poland, Romania, Denmark, El Salvador, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Latvia, Albania, the Czech Republic, Mongolia, Lithuania, Armenia, Bosnia, Estonia, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Fiji, Hungary, Nicaragua, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zeland, Tonga, Portugal, Singapore, Norway, the Ukraine, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, and Slovakia ALL agreed with President Bush as they deployed forces into Iraq as part of the colation. They all saw the same thing he did.

I would really like to hear what Democrats would have done differently. It sounds like Mr. Nielsen's plan was to arrest the terrorits that flew the planes into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers... except they are dead. How would that have helped prevent future attacks? I've heard President Obama say we should have focused on Afghanistan and not gotten distracted with Iraq. But then Iraq would have continued funding and harboring terrorists and being a scourge to all nations. Has Mr. Nielsen read the history of Iraq? Has he read about Bill Clinton boming Iraq during his presidency?

The U.S. has showed their strength in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan just like they did in World War II. Thousands and tens of thousands of terrorists have been killed. And, as a result of the strength of the Bush administration, there has not been another attack on U.S. soil. That isn't because the terrorists don't want to attack us.

Bottom Line: The Republicans hate war and want peace, just like the Democrats. But they understand that the only way to achieve peace in this world is to stand up to your enemies.

CONCLUSION

I could go on about illegal immigration, or big government, or social responsiblity, but I'm already setting a new length record, even by my standards. It was simply interesting to me to get a peek into the mind of a Democrat and realize that for as different as we are in the roads we travel along the way, it seems that on many issues that we all want to arrive at the same station in the end.

TSA "Patdowns"

2010-11-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

The backlash at the new TSA screening techniques has been interesting to watch. Especially now that with video cell phones and YouTube, we're seeing and hearing about more stories like this one:

Based on how liberals generally respond to opposition, the solution to this obvious problem would be simple: Ban Cell Phones at Airports

If you haven't read it yet, you need to read Ann Coulter's latest column:

Napalitano: The Ball's In My Court Now

For somebody who is constantly referred to as a crazy extremist, Ann Coulter seems to exercise some real common sense.

The problem isn't with the TSA -- They are just following orders. The problem is with the liberal philosophy that everything in life needs to be "equal". And because it is impossible to make everybody equally happy, they need to make everybody equally miserable.

In the area of airline travel, they're doing an amazing job.

Coincidence? I think not.

2010-11-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

The day following the "schellacking"...

Stocks climb to the highest in Two Years

Hmmmmm... Does this say anything about how the economy feels about the liberal agenda? (Just imagine if Republicans had taken control of the Senate as well.)

Where Did President Obama Go Wrong?

2010-11-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

I read an article this morning entitled "Am I The Last Person in America Who Still Adores President Obama?". Curtis Sittenfield, who wrote the article, appears to be in complete disbelief that so many people have turned on the President. He seems to believe that the people who have turned are the equivalent of fair weather fans in sports, and he wants them to hold on through these tough times just like you would through a rebuilding year.

In 2008, President Obama won the Presidential Election with 68% of the electoral vote and 53% of the popular vote. Since that time, his approval rating has dropped from around 45% to around 30% today. Those that "strongly dissaprove" of his performance has increased from 15% in January 2009 to roughly 45% now.

What happened? Where did this backlash come from? Obama was elected on the expectation of bringing hope and change to this country. But as it stands on this election day, what he appears to be bringing is the largest political swing of power in recent history. The voters are sending a message this election.

Sittenfield seems to indicate that the reason for the backlash is that President Obama didn't follow through on his promises, like closing down Guantanamo Bay. That may be an issue for some, but I think there are three major reasons that President Obama has fallen out of favor with the American people.

1. THE STIMULUS

I believe the first major blow was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (a.k.a. "The Stimulus Package.") One of the major talking points for President Obama during his campaign was how George W. Bush had spent this country into a record deficit because of the War on Terrorism. Then, not two months into office, he passed a bill that shattered any record Bush had set. Americans do not appreciate hypocrisy.

President Obama justified the spending bill as being necessary to save the economy, and the people took his word. But then news stories about $233,000 going to the University of California to study why Africans vote (5 U.S. jobs created), or $1.5 million going to Penn State University to study plant fossils in Argentina (3 U.S. jobs created), or Crouse Hospital getting $360,000 to change to "green" light bulbs, among hundreds of others like those, started appearing. Americans do not appreciate waste.

That was amplified with the highly-visible "Cash for Clunkers" program, where many Americans who were struggling to make ends meet and could barely afford a car watched as perfectly functional cars were destroyed. $3 billion was spent on the Cash for Clunkers program. $3 billion! With that same amount of money, President Obama could have given 60,000 unemployed workers $50,000 each (roughly the median income of an American family.) Americans can sense when someone has an agenda they are pushing.

The original Stimulus package cost the American taxpayers $787 billion. That's $787,000,000,000. At $50,000 per household, that should have created at least 15,740,000 jobs. (More, if you consider that many families have two income earners.) To put that into perspective, that means that Obama could have handed a $50,000 check to every single person (man, woman, and child)who lives in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, and Arizona. Every person in those 5 states. Americans understand how much $50,000 is and how hard it is to come by.

That would have been okay, had jobs actually been created. But after the stimulus bill was passed in 2009, America lost 4,000,000 jobs. No problem -- Blame Bush. Which worked... for the first year. But Americans don't appreciate excuses, and after the first year, the "Bush's fault" excuse grew tired.

The logic that Sittenfield uses, and that I have heard from so many people, saying: "As far as I can tell, the economic stimulus package might not have been perfect, but it prevented something bad from being even worse" has to be the craziest logic I've ever heard. The liberals have been using it since January 2009. I've taken a number of economics courses, and "Jobs created... OR saved" was a term I'd never heard before President Obama. We always spoke in terms of tangibles: "Jobs created." (Incidentally, had I known we could just make stuff up, I would have much done better on my exams.)

CUSTOMER: "You're charging me $1,000 for a sandwich?"
RESTAURANT OWNER: "I could have charged you $1,500."
CUSTOMER: "Oh, man! Close call. Thank you."

The American people gave President Obama the benefit of the doubt with the stimulus package. But now, almost two years later, the stimulus package has been exposed for what it truly was: An opportunity for the Democrats to push through their liberal agenda. Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's former chief-of-staff summed it up when he said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." The American people do not appreciate being played.

2. THE HEALTH BILL

Next, in the midst of an economic crisis, record unemployment, and a diminished stock market, President Obama decided that the most important issue to tackle was universal health care. The Democrats announced a $940 billion health care bill. This was while people were still stinging from the $787 billion stimulus bill. But President Obama assured the people that this new $940 billion bill would lower the deficit by $130 billion.

(If anybody would like to use this logic and give me $940 in return for the $130 I'll give you, I'm in.)

Almost immediately following the discussion of a health care bill, there was severe public backlash. I have never seen anything like it. 54% of the American people (roughly the same amount that voted for Obama in the first place) strongly opposed the Health Care bill. Only 32% approved (the other 15% being undecided.)

You'll remember that this was the summer of 2009, where senators and representatives were afraid to travel back to their constituents because of the backlash and uproar at town hall meetings and the floods of letters, e-mails, and phone calls that were coming in. The "people" in "We the people..." were furious.

In my recollection, there has never been an issue that caused such a heated debate. So what was President Obama's strategy with the majority of the Americans opposing the health care bill? Just ram it through. Speak of consensus, and then exclude Republicans from taking part in discussions. Blame the Republicans for impeding, even though there was nothing the Republicans could do to stop the Democrats because they had the majority in the House and Senate.

And thus, in an ironic twist of fate, the Democrats created the Tea Party. The Tea Party name was taken from the Boston Tea Party, where a group of people protested about taxation without representation. These people spontaneously came together, without a leader (or even a community organizer), bonded by a fury deep down inside that something wasn't right. They had strongly opposed the health care reform, and their elected public representatives had given them the legislative equivalent of the finger.

The public got the distinct feeling that, in this Democratic government, their views were not being represented. Furthermore, their representatives' motives were suspect. There seemed to be too many career politicians who had lost touch with the people.

I have never seen anything like the first Tea Party protest last year. It just came out of nowhere. As much as the media tried to characterize the protesters as the extreme right, the reports I saw showed people of different backgrounds, genders, ages, and races who were sick of the government. It was one of the most impressive things I've seen as I got a sense that the people of this country truly care and are in control.

Had Obama not pushed through the health care bill, there would be no Tea Party, and I don't believe they would be in jeopardy of losing the majority in the House and Senate.

3. OUT OF TOUCH

President Obama completely discounted the Tea Party movement as a bunch of wackos. The problem was that many of those wackos voted for him.

The Tea Party movement is not Republicans vs. Democrats. In my home state of Utah, Senator Bob Bennett was elected in 1992, and it was basically a given that he would win each election after that. But in the Republican primaries for the current election, it was a shock that he was defeated. This defeat came because he was not representing the views of his constituents.

The Tea Party is not a political party. It's a movement. A grassroots movement, meaning there is no person at the head controlling it. Nobody can claim being the leader, because it is not an organization. People are simply sick of business as usual. The Tea Party movement doesn't care if the candidate they put up for the primary loses, but they will not stand for business as usual.

And yet, President Obama carries on with business as usual. He continues to discount the Tea Party movement instead of listening to them, which creates even more furor. He continues to blame Bush for the current problems, nearly two years after he was sworn into office. He recently refered to his fellow Americans as "enemies", because they are Republicans.

Who is in charge of PR for President Obama?? As a graduate in Public Relations, this kind of stuff kills me. It was reported today that the U.S. Taxpayers will spend $200 million per day for President Obama's trip to India. $200 million per day! (That is 4,000 jobs at $50,000/year per day.) I have no idea how that is possible, and I really hope it's not true. But it's in the news, and the American people are reading it.

The most important quality of a leader is to lead by example. If I (heaven forbid) were the President, we would be doing a video conference with Mumbai. We would cut out elaborate and unneccesary expenses. And I guarantee that the First Lady would not be taking a $160,000 vacation to Spain. There has to be somebody in that White House that could have said, "You know, Montana is really nice this time of year. Lots of pretty places to see and places to relax with your friends. Plus you would be spending money that benefits the local U.S. economy. Probably a much better option from a PR perspective."

President Obama gives the impression that he simply doesn't care. He doesn't care about the opinion of the majority in the United States. He doesn't care that he has ruined the career of many long-term Senators and Representatives by forcing them to push through the Health Care bill in a move that was simply political suicide. He doesn't care about the uproar that bill has started. He doesn't care to act like he's doing something about the oil spill, even if he really has no control. He doesn't seem to care about constantly making excuses. He doesn't care that he's already played golf more times than highly-criticized President Bush played in his entire time in the White House. He just continues with his agenda, pursuing business as usual, completely out of touch with the average American. He seems to be a PR advisor's worst nightmare.

CONCLUSION

So, Curtis Sittenfield, there is your explanation as I see it. The passionate feelings in this election against President Obama and the Democrats has nothing to do with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" or Guantanamo Bay or the Oil Spill (although they do add fuel to the fire.) The disapproval we see is because the President hypocritically spent an astronomical amount of money we don't have to push his agenda, and then spent another astronomical amount of money we don't have to ram through health care reform despite the strong opposition, and he is simply out of touch with the American people.

President Obama and the Democrats are in serious trouble in this election, and they have nobody to blame but themselves. It will be be interesting to see how things turn out tonight after the vote. One thing is for sure -- The American people are back in control.

Told You So

2010-08-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

To any who may have doubted everything the conservatives were saying prior to the 2008 election about President Obama, we are now a little over 1 1/2 years into the Obama presidency. How is everything going? Unfortunately, you know it must be really bad when even the media and fellow Democrats are starting to publicly turn on and distance themselves from Pres. Obama (which I honestly thought would never happen.)

I thought the following article made a lot of good points:

10 Key Reasons Why the Obama Presidency is in Meltdown

Whether it's the Bailouts, the Economy, the War on Terror, Health Care or the myriad of other issues we have addressed, Obama has unfortunately proven us right in every respect.

And so, it is with great regret, the conservatives of the world say, "We told you so."

Enough Said

2010-03-26T14:39:00.000-07:00

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Cuban-leader-applauds-US-apf-124808403.html?x=0&.v=1

Democrats '05 vs. Democrats '10

2010-02-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

What is the right thing to do in any given situation? If you're a Democratic senator, the answer to that would depend on what year it is. Here are a string of clips of trashing the "nuclear option" that Republicans were considering using in 2005 because the Democrats were set to filibuster Pres. Bush's judicial nominees. (They didn't end up using it.) Listen to their comments, understanding that this is the same process they plan to use to pass Pres. Obama's Health Care Bill now.

Dems '05 vs. Dems '10

(I'm sure this will be the headlining story on CNN tonight...)

If I were a Democratic supporter, this hyprocrisy from my elected leaders would really bother me. But I suppose it's like the fighters from the local air force base flying over -- If you're exposed to it enough, you become less and less sensitive to it, and soon you don't even take notice when it happens.

What Do Conservatives Stand For?

2010-02-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

(A Must-Listen)

I haven't heard conservative values articulated as well as they were by George Will at the CPAC convention on Thursday. This is what we stand for.

The speech is about 30 minutes, but well worth the time. Give it a listen, and post your thoughts.

(Thanks to my dad for pointing this speech out.)

Obama's Version of Bipartisanship

2010-02-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

Wait... I thought the plan was to meet with Republicans and look for a bipartisan solution, keeping in mind that one side can't only get what we want with no compromise (because it doesn't work that way in his marriage with Michelle)... I guess this is Pres. Obama's version of "bipartisanship."

Obama to spell out new healthcare plan

Truth & Climate Change

2010-02-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

In case there were any doubts about the veracity of climate change:

The Great Climate Change Retreat

This is coming from a brilliant scientist... or you could have just asked my little nieces and nephew who were sledding in DALLAS, TEXAS over the weekend!

Case In Point

2010-02-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

Not 24 hours after the last post, and we see this...

Senate Dems Ax Bipartisan 'Jobs Bill'

Hypocrisy

2010-02-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

I read a couple of headlines on the Drudge Report today that struck me. The first:

Obama admin wants to track cell phones

If George W. Bush had said he supported using cell phones to track U.S. citizens, there would have been an absolute uproar from the left. The Obama administration says in the article that there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy" when using a cell phone. By using cell phone logs, law enforcement track individual information that can be useful for security. And... how is this different from the Patriot Act that the left was so violently opposed to?

I think using cell phones to prevent and solve crimes is a great idea. Just like I think using the same means to prevent terrorism is a great idea. I support this just like I support the Patriot Act. So I suppose we'll be hearing a barrage of violent opposition to this from the left now as well... right?

The second article was:

Obama open to tax hikes on middle class

Ummmm... Didn't Obama promise approximately 6,042 times during the campaign that those making less than $250,000 per year wouldn't see there taxes go up by "a single dime"? So why is he now open to the idea? (Oh, that's right... "C'mon -- Every president breaks their promises.") His rationale is that he doesn't want to leave any options off the table. So the option of breaking one of his main campaign promises is fair game.

I'm sure we'll see an uproar from the left about Obama being a liar and an expose from CNN about how the option of raising taxes on the middle class will affect "Main Street"... right? I've already mentioned in an earlier post how George Bush Sr.'s broken promise was his downfall with the Republicans. We expect people to keep their promises.

STRATEGEM

It has been interesting to see how the left has reacted after seeing the bombshell of a Republican senator being elected in one of the most liberal-leaning states in the U.S.. They are nothing, if not sly.

The President is now taking every opportunity to publicly meet with Republicans in a "bipartisan" manner to discuss all of the important issues. This begs the question: Why start now? Why were the Democrats locking the Republicans out of the health care debate and hiding the bill less than two months ago, and now they're having big meetings together to discuss how they can get health care done (and conveniently inviting the cameras in?) When behavior changes so drastically, you can guarantee that a Democratic Strategist is at work behind the scenes.

The strategy now is to make the Republicans appear to be playing partisan politics. The Obama administration has been working hard to equate a vote against Universal Health Care to be a vote against Democrats, when in reality, it's simply a vote against a bad idea.

If the Obama administration came out and said they were going to repeal the stimulus package which is very obviously not working to create jobs, and instead to cut taxes on employers, you would see most if not all Republicans voting for the package. If the Obama administration reformed health care to trim the fat and create competition in the private sector, you would see Republicans cheering the bill.

In other words, the Republicans are against the idea of getting the government involved in health care, because whatever the government touches becomes inefficient. Republicans realize that a public health care system would destroy private competition, and we would end up with a very bulky, inefficient, ineffective health care system.

Republicans want health care reform. They just want good health care reform. There are major problems in the health care system as it is. The Republicans have great solutions that are already being implemented at the state level with success, as I've mentioned in other posts. They have solutions. They aren't voting against the Democrats. They are voting against a horrible bill.

If the Democrats could do away with the filibuster option in legislation (as they conveniently want to do now that it's working against them) to block votes on bills, would Obama still be holding all of these bipartisan discussions? (We already know the answer, because we just need to look to a month ago before Scott Brown was elected.)

From now until the midterm elections, watch the Democrats frame everything in terms of "Republicans" instead of in terms of ideas. They will frame them out to be a voting block that will vote against everything Obama puts forward. And then they will purposely put forward bad (i.e. liberal) ideas, and when Republicans vote against it, it will be "Look -- They did it again. We just can't get anything constructive done with these 'I's in the American 'TEAM'".

This will be a very sensitive time for Republicans as the Democrats launch their strategic "Us vs. Them" assault. The Republicans obviously need to meet to try to get their good ideas out, but they have to realize they're walking right into a trap every time they do. The phrase "Wise as a serpent, yet harmless" comes to mind.

Republicans need to be very public about their good ideas. But then you will have Obama saying (as he did in their first meeting) that "bipartisanship" doesn't mean that one side gets all their ideas passed without any compromise and uses the example of "that's not the way it works with Michelle and I." (Maybe Obama needs to tell that to himself a month ago when they were trying to ram the health care bill through with no Republican input.) And that's exactly the way they'll frame it when the Republicans to put out their ideas -- "They just won't compromise."

There doesn't appear to be a good solution for Republicans. They simply don't have the numbers to get any of their good ideas for solving the nation's problems passed, but at the same time the Democrats truly are playing partisan politics and would never allow a Republican idea to be passed in case it might actually be successful, and how would that look for the Obama administration?

The next nine months will be interesting. But if there's one thing we can count on, just like the rising of the sun and the waves of the sea, it is that the Democrats will do what they promise and behave the same way regardless of the situation... right?

Ever Wonder Where Your Hard-Earned Tax Dollars Are Going?

2010-01-29T09:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=123472

The State of Obama

2010-01-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

FORD vs. Government Motors

The Ford Motor Company just posted a $2.7 Billion profit for 2009. Just one year earlier, Ford was posting a $14.6 Billion loss. Thank goodness for the government bailout! Oh, wait... That's right -- Ford did all this without one cent from the government. They turned down government funds when it meant loss of control, despite being a company categorized as "too big to fail." How are GM and Chrysler doing?

A person watching the State of the Union last night would never believe that such a turnaround could be pulled off without the help of the government. I watched in awe that liberals' ideas could honestly be so different from my own.

U.S.A! U.S.A!

In just over 200 years, the United States of America has grown to be one of the most prosperous nations in the world. The standard of living is among the best in the world. The health care is the best in the world. The technology is the most advanced in the world. The U.S. military is feared around the world. The freedoms we enjoy are among the greatest of any nation.

As someone who spent two years living in the third world conditions of Northern Brazil, I can speak from personal experience. I saw families living in one-room houses with dirt floors smaller than most of our bedrooms. I drank bottled or boiled water every day for two years to avoid getting sick from the water. I ran to catch crowded buses. I sat for hours in the "free" hospitals waiting to get a shot for a fever. One night, as I was walking along, I saw a man get hit by a car. Some men gathered around, threw him in the backseat of the car which had just hit him, and told them man driving to take him to the hospital (because there were no ambulances.)

I was so grateful to step foot back on U.S. soil. I felt safe again. I took a drink from the drinking fountain at the airport, and thought about the many blessings we enjoy as U.S. citizens. I got back home, got a good-paying job, bought a car, got a great education, and continued on with life. During the birth of our first little baby, my wife had complications, and they needed to do an emergency c-section. In that desperate moment, there wasn't another country in the world I would have wanted to have her lying on a surgery table in.

INSANITY

How was it that the U.S. got to the place it's at? If it ain't broken, why fix it? In the State of the Union last night, Pres. Obama said:

"Next, we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow. From the first railroads to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products..."

"... You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China’s not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany’s not waiting. India’s not waiting. These nations aren’t standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They are making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs."

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results. How is it that Obama wants to socialize health care and business and regulate and tax business and be like all of these other countries, and expects to get a different result than these countries? Did he really cite China as a country whose example we want to follow?

The U.S. is what it is because of the American Dream. The freedoms that allow any person to become whatever they'll work to become. The U.S. is what it is because of Capitalism. It has been proven again and again throughout history. Capitalism leads to prosperity, and Socialism leads to poverty.

THE BLAME GAME

Obama was quick to note (with a smirk on his face at his cleverness):

So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight. At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.

What Obama failed to note is what happened after he walked in the door. He immediately doubled the $1 trillion deficit that had taken a decade of unforeseen events to create. The projected deficit is now at around $16 trillion over the next decade. The unemployment rate has increased by 3%, which equates to about 3.5 million jobs lost since he walked in the door. And there is no end in sight.

But that doesn't matter, because all Obama has to do is compare it to what it would have been like otherwise:

"And if we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost."

LET'S HEAR FROM THE FRONT ROW

After listening to the State of the Union, it occurred to me that the biggest difference between the liberals and the conservatives is personal accountability and responsibility.

It reminds me of driving on a road when there is a merge because of construction. Some people always drive up past all of us who have merged over beforehand up to the very last possible spot before they hit a cone and then try to get over, forcing everybody who has played by the rules to slow or stop to let them in.

Pres. Obama said last night:

So I supported the last administration’s efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and accountable. As a result, the markets are now stabilized, and we have recovered most of the money we spent on the banks.
To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn’t keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

How is taxing the biggest banks fair? What did they do to deserve an extra tax? What did the people who earned the bonuses for their good work do to deserve to lose it? How many jobs will be lost now at the biggest banks due to the tax because they now have to scale back?

He also said:

Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time home buyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities, all of which helped businesses keep more workers. And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.

It's true that I saw my tax withholding go down by about $80/month, which equals about $720. But the government spent $10,000 per taxpayer on the stimulus. I don't know about you, but I would have rather had the $10,000.

More importantly, he's raised the taxes on businesses that make more than $250,000/year. How many of the businesses you work for fall into that category? If taxes are raised on these businesses, they need to scale back to keep their bottom-line even, and the easiest place to do that is eliminating jobs.

Obama said:

We cannot afford another so-called economic “expansion” like the one from last decade – what some call the “lost decade” – where jobs grew more slowly than during any prior expansion; where the income of the average American household declined while the cost of health care and tuition reached record highs; where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation.

I watched the finale reunion show of a Survivor season a few years ago, and one of the more outspoken, proud Survivors who had finished somewhere around 7th place was giving advice to the finalists about what they could have done differently to win. Jeff Probst finally cut him off and said, "With all due respect, maybe we should hear from the front row."

If this first year of Obama's presidency is any indication, I'll take the economic expansion of the last decade any day. Obama criticized economic growth (in spite of the worst attack on U.S. soil and the economic repercussions that followed) when his economy is failing. The man has a lot of nerve.

But the statement that shocked me the most was this one:

"And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years – and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service. Because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college."

RESPONSIBILITY

This was the moment where I realized that personal responsibility is the major difference between liberals and conservatives.

I would never, in a million years, expect somebody else to pay for a loan that I had taken on myself. I would work to pay every penny back of any obligation I had. If I can't afford Harvard, then I go where I can afford.

If the debt is forgiven, somebody still pays for it! Just because you can't identify that person doesn't mean they don't exist!

Whether it's forgiving student loans or placing another burden on the heavy-laden 5% who already pay 70% of all of the taxes, there is simply a lack of personal responsibility in the liberal mindset. They reward businesses who made bad decisions and punish the businesses that make good decisions. They punish the people who have worked hard to make themselves and reward those who do nothing to contribute to society. They place the blame on anyone but themselves. They drive past all the cars who have followed the rules and merged early to make traffic run smoothly because they can.

Obama can say what he wants, but what counts is action. And according to what happened last week in Massachusetts, voters aren't fooled.

Kudos to CEO Alan Mulally and the executives and workers at Ford for buckling down and turning the company around in such a short period of time. Guess it just goes to show what hard work and ingenuity can do... in spite of the government.

Two Wrongs DO Make a Right??

2010-01-20T21:27:00.000-08:00

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW, I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

I was driving home the other day listening to Sean Hannity interview Bob Beckel (a Democratic Strategist.) Hannity asked Beckel about the fact that Obama has broken his promises to not raise taxes one cent on anyone making less than $250,000 and to broadcast the health care debates on C-SPAN among various other promises.

My ears perked up as I was really curious to know how a Democrat might respond to that question. Pres. Obama has blatantly broken major promises, and I would tend to think that even loyal Democrats would have a hard time defending that behavior.

In responding to Hannity's question, Bob Beckel blew it off, saying, "Oh, come on, Sean! Every President breaks their campaign promises."

I was shocked by the response (even knowing it was coming out of the mouth of Bob Beckel.) I couldn't believe that he would blow off this blatant dishonesty from our nation's President as just something politicians do to get elected, as if nobody expects a President to keep their word. I've got news for you, Bob -- I DO expect my elected officials to keep their word.

Since that time, I've heard multiple Democrats use the same defense. If you'll notice, they always cite Reagan and a campaign promise that he broke, and that somehow is supposed to make Pres. Obama's lies right. (Beckel must not have made it through kindergarten.)

Pres. George Bush Sr. infamously said in his campaign, "Read my lips. No new taxes.", and then ended up raising taxes in his presidency. Try to find a conservative who will defend Pres. Bush on that point. To a conservative, wrong is wrong. And Pres. Bush Sr. was wrong to break his promise, and that was likely the main reason that so many Republican votes went to Ross Perot, leading Bush Sr. to become a one-term president (and Bill Clinton to win the election with only 43% of the vote.)

The Democrats are going to have to find a stronger position -- The "everybody does it" argument and the "two wrongs DO make a right" mentality won't work with voters.

SEN. SCOTT BROWN (R - Massachusetts)

That fact is evident as Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senate seat, running on a conservative platform in one of the most liberal states in the U.S.. And, as crazy as it seems, Democrat congressmen couldn't be more relieved.

At first I was confused Wednesday as I listened to various Democrats talking about how they really need to wait to vote until Brown is seated. This was in complete contradiction to their actions in the past few months, ramming the bills through without any bipartisan discussions, not allowing anybody enough time to read the bill, and physically hiding the bill from the public so it wouldn't have to face any scrutiny. Democrats have desperately done everything in their power to get the bill passed over the past few months. Why wouldn't they delay the seating of Sen. Brown and try to smash the bill through now?

And then I heard Pres. Obama say there was no need to rush to get this vote on the bill passed. I really knew something must be up, because a month ago, they had to have an unprecedented emergency vote on Christmas Eve to pass the health care bill.

Then it occurred to me that the truth is that the White House and Democrats never knew what they were getting themselves into with the health care bill. They thought they could ride Pres. Obama's popularity and pass this bill that so many others had attempted in the past and failed. Pres. Obama wanted to show off his political muscles and secure his place in the first year of his presidency as the Greatest President of All-Time.

Obama and the Democrats could never have imagined the storm that would follow. I'm sure they immediately wished they had never brought it up. They thought they would be lauded by the masses as "free" health care was handed out, but they never expected the public uproar from every state in the union, red or blue.

But the problem is that the Democratic leadership make decisions based on political implications rather than core beliefs. If they were to drop the health care issue, the problem would be that the public would perceive it as a failure for Pres. Obama, and it would show weakness. What would that mean for 2012?? So no matter how bad the idea, they had to move forward, full speed ahead.

At first they tried to blame the Republicans for not being able to pass the bill, trying to draw pressure so that at least a few Republican would vote for the bill so the blame of the health bill's eventual failure wouldn't be placed squarely on Democrats. But, unfortunately for the Democrats, the public were smart enough to realize that the Democrats could pass the bill by themselves without a single Republican vote (which they eventually did.)

The Democrats surely wanted to quit because of the political backlash, but the issue was too public and the stakes were too high to do anything but move forward. They were trapped. Even in spite of the public outcry and the threat of losing their majority in 2010, they pushed forward. My only guess is that they somehow thought that if they could just ram the health care bill through, enough people would be happy about the "free" health care coverage, that it would in essence "buy" them votes, and 9 months would have passed by the November elections.

Had Martha Coakley won the open senate seat, they would have been forced to continue to push the bill through. But Scott Brown's victory gave the Democrats an out, and they are taking it gladly, with a sigh of relief.

Now the Democrats believe they can have it both ways. They think they don't have to face the political ramifications of passing the health care bill, and they can blame it all on Sen. Brown saying, "We did everything we could -- The Republicans screwed it all up!" They get the votes of the people who wanted the bill, and they keep the votes of the people that didn't want the bill -- The perfect situation. (Just ask Sen. Kerry.)

But they can't let the election be perceived as the result of backlash at the Democrats. If you listen to the coverage, they've already started to try to spin the election results. They will talk about how Scott Brown ran one of the greatest campaigns ever. They will focus on how Martha Coakley ran one of the worst campaigns ever. They won't mention that Obama tried to use his political muscle to get Coakley elected. They will talk about how handsome Scott Brown is. They'll even say that the voters are angry with "Washington". Basically, they will say anything to keep the public's minds off of the fact that the last time a Republican senator was elected in Massachusetts was 1972.

Make no mistake about it, Pres. Obama and Democrats, this is backlash. Don't be fooled. I can't wait until November 2nd, as we see just how powerful the backlash is. (And I really can't wait until November of 2012!)

The Democrats are scared. As I mentioned earlier, Democratic leadership make their decisions based on political implications. Rather than beliefs and morals, they cast their votes based on polls and political future. After seeing what happened in Massachusetts, it will be really interesting to see what strategy the Democrats pursue over the next 9 months as they get desperate about keeping their individual jobs. My guess is that we will see Democratic senators and representatives turn on Pres. Obama to save their seats. Unfortunately for them, it's probably too late.

OH, JUST ONE MORE THING...

I just have to say: Thank you, thank you, thank you, people of Massachusetts! Only a week ago, it looked like we were doomed to this horrible monstrosity of a health care bill, inflated taxes, and the destruction of our quality of health care. You have brought hope back to the conservatives of this nation! Today was a good day.

What Do the Democrats Have to Hide?

2010-01-06T17:50:00.000-08:00

As once again the Democrats meet behind closed doors to discuss the health care bill, I watch this video, and I wonder what liberals are thinking about all this.

It's interesting to me that the first (and, presumably then, the most important) right guaranteed by our Founding Fathers in the Bill of Rights is:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

When I was young, I used to wonder why the Founding Fathers would be so concerned as to include the Freedom of the Press as the first right of citizens. But I understand now that the press plays a critical role in society. The press has traditionally been referred to as the "watchdog" of the government. The truth is that, without the press, average citizens like us wouldn't know what was happening in Washington. Knowledge gives us the power to protect ourselves from the government, should they try to supersede their power, just as the Founding Fathers intended.

As I've mentioned before, I spent a little time in the world of journalism. The traditional role of the press is to be at odds with the government, watching every tiny move and suspecting the worst. Investigative journalism turned up stories like Watergate and the Monica Lewinsky story. The first things that corrupt governments such as Cuba or China or Iran do is take control the media. Look at what is happening in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez.

(Sadly, as has been mentioned in numerous posts on this blog, much of the media, unsatisfied with simply objectively reporting the news, has taken up sides and moved to attempting to influence the news, brazenly acting as guard dogs for the Obama administration. Thank goodness for the Internet and media outlets like BreitBart that still act as watchdogs.)

It is scary to me that members of Congress are meeting about a bill that will dramatically impact every citizen of this country, and this administration that campaigned on "transparency in the government" is allowing (and promoting) the Democrats to vote on a bill that nobody (including those that are voting) had been given sufficient time to read, to literally hide the Health Care bill from Republicans, and to meet once again behind closed doors to discuss the final draft of the bill that is going to go into law. Of all the things I've seen the government do throughout my life, the behavior of the Democrats in trying to get this bill passed is the scariest.

It has to even make liberals wonder... What do the Democrats have to hide?

Does this really surprise anyone?

2009-12-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

Check out the following articles:

Climategate
The Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation

But why would they need to make up facts...?

Need Help Today!!!

2009-11-20T09:08:00.000-08:00

This is from my sister-in-law. I encourage everyone to please read it and make some phone calls.

Hello Friends,

The Senate is trying to pass, on a weekend so there is less press coverage - the 2,000 page health care bill, that they haven't even had time to read fully, TOMORROW. So I'm sending the link below with a plea to you, to call both your senator's office and Harry Reid's office today - phone calls do matter even if your senator already doesn't support the health care bill. Plus you can send information to anyone you know, especially anyone in Nevada and any of the blue dog democrat states. I talked with my Senator's office yesterday and they said the only thing we can do at this point is call - and spread the word so that others call. So I'm doing it - the prospect of this passing is frightening.

Here's a link to show all the added taxes - frightening stuff even if we aren't considering the way the quality of health care will decline and the socialistic nature of this bill!

http://www.atr.org/userfiles/111809pr-comptaxreid%282%29.pdf

There is no excuse for not doing something if you believe it's wrong. Please call.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091119-717535.html

Jenn

To find your US senator and contact info:
http://www.senate.gov/

Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You... Unless You're a Democrat

2009-11-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

In local Utah news, a mayor was voted out of office this week. A few days before the election, this mayor had fired a police officer for giving his son a ticket for driving without a license. The question is: Had it been anyone other than his son, would he have acted the same way? (I guess the public thought not.)

The past year since the presidential election has been an eye-opening experience. For example, what if George W. Bush had talked about the amount of lives he saved that would have been lost had his policies not been in place during Hurricane Katrina? He would have been ridiculed.

Yet Pres. Obama continues to cite jobs that he's saved that would have been lost had it not been for the stimulus, and where is the uproar from the Democrats as jobs continue to be lost in droves?

Democrats were in an uproar about Bush golfing while troops were dying in Iraq. (He decided to give up golf for that very reason.) Yet they are silent as we find out that Pres. Obama has already played more rounds of golf in 9 months than Pres. Bush did in his entire presidency. Troops are still dying, and our economy is crumbling. Where are the protests?

In fact, August was the deadliest month for troops in Afghanistan. Barack Obama could have pulled all of the troops out of Afghanistan. Where is the uproar?

(I actually gained a little bit of respect for Cindy Sheehan as she protested Barack Obama for vacationing in Martha's vineyard. Unfortunately, there was no support from fellow Democrats (or the "unbiased" media.))

If it's Democrats protesting, then they're exercising their rights to free speech. If it's Republicans protesting, it's a bunch of crazy, mind-numb kooks that should be ignored. Ever notice how you never hear of Republicans trashing Democrats for protesting? We understand it's an important right.

Any liberals reading need to be honest with themselves. Let's say that a story broke tomorrow that said:

"Pres. George W. Bush Accused of Conspiring to Hide Evidence in Afghanistan Deaths"

Now what if the story instead said:

"Pres. Barack Obama Accused of Conspiring to Hide Evidence in Afghanistan Deaths"

If how you react to the story depends on who the story is about, there is something wrong. A principled person would react the same regardless of who the story was about.

Democrats' opinions are based on what is politically expedient at the time. That is why they haven't passed health care reform. If Democrats truly believed that universal health care was a right of every American, they would simply pass the bill based on principle. They have the majority -- There is nothing that the Republicans could do to stop the bill from being passed. But Democrats are scared, because the vote they thought would make them popular with the masses is turning out to be extremely controversial.. but they now have to pursue the bill because they can't afford the implications of a political loss this early in Barack Obama's presidency.

When Pres. George W. Bush sent our troops to war, Republicans supported him. (So did Democrats... until it was no longer politically expedient.) When Pres. Bush passed his tax cuts, Republicans supported him.

But when George W. Bush supported the McCain / Kennedy immigration bill, Republicans protested and fought against the bill. When he wanted to bail out the banking industry, Republicans protested and fought hard against the bill.

For Republicans, it truly doesn't matter who presents the idea. If Barack Obama were to announce tomorrow that he was slashing the capital gains tax in order to stimulate investment, Republicans around the country would cheer and support him.

This is all generally speaking, obviously. I'm sure there are principled Democrats and unprincipled Republicans. But I believe the last year has been telling.

Any other examples come to mind?

Is This What Liberals Really Think?

2009-08-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher was on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on Monday night. I think it goes without saying that Maher is a liberal (regardless of what he claims to be -- A libertarian would never support government-run health care.) What scared me about the interview was that Bill Maher might be saying what other liberals are thinking. Here are a few highlights:

CONAN O'BRIEN: Some people got upset because you said that America is stupid.
BILL MAHER: Yes.
O'BRIEN: And they got upset.
MAHER: You know who did? The stupid people.

O'BRIEN: You have said, and you may have a point here, that you think that President Obama, uh, in how many day has he been in office now? They were counting for a while. It's his ninth day. It's his 100th day. And I don't know what it is now -- it's 140 days, 120 days in office -- that he's overexposed. Do you think our president is overexposed?
MAHER: Well, he is. I mean, at some point, 'Change we can believe in' became, you know, 'Tyler Perry meets the Obamas,' which is fine. I like him. I mean, let's put this in perspective. I'm glad he is the president. You know, I mean, it's a big difference from what we had, just grammatically, you know.
When the president speaks, English teachers don't cry now. But, yeah, there is a fine line between transparency, which we did not have with the previous administration, and being overexposed.
I mean, I get it. He likes to be on TV. I like my bong. I take it out of my mouth every once in a while.

MAHER: Right, right. Uh, but, yeah, I mean, you know, they're talking about 60 votes they need. Forget this stuff, 60.... You can't get Americans to agree on anything 60 percent. Sixty percent of people don't believe in evolution in this country.
He just needs to drag them to it. Like I just said, they're stupid. Just drag them to this. Get health care done, you know, with or without them. Make the Gang of Six an offer they can't refuse. This Max Baucus guy? He needs to wake up tomorrow with an intern's head in his bed.
O'BRIEN: Good Lord.
MAHER: I'm serious. You know, this is where, I said this months ago and people criticized me, this is where the president needs to be a little more like Bush. Bush had horrible ideas -- torture, deregulation, massive tax cuts for the rich, preemptive war -- horrible ideas.
But you know what? He had that swagger that said, 'I'm just gonna get it through. Suck on it, America, if you don't like it.'
O'BRIEN: So, you think Obama needs to get to that level of toughness.
MAHER: He needs to marry his good ideas with that kind of attitude.
They asked Dick Cheney once, 'Most of Americans are against the Iraq war.' Do you remember what he said? 'So?'
In other words, 'We got elected. You have your opinions. Fine. That's what Twitter is for. But, I'm gonna do what I have to do.'
And that's what Obama should do. He should wake up tomorrow and say, 'Jesus told me to fix health care.' I'm certain about it. Seriously.
O'BRIEN: Well, he does. It's one thing to say that he needs to get tough, but we have a two party system. He needs those votes. He has to convince....
MAHER: He doesn't need those votes. That's the point. He does not need those votes. They have 60 votes. They only need 51.
O'BRIEN: But there is something to be said probably for making in a two party system...
MAHER: He has tried. We do not have a two party system.
O'BRIEN: Right.
MAHER: We have two parties, but we don't have the right two parties. We have one party that is a good party if you're defending banks, credit card companies, big agriculture, pharmaceutical lobby. That would be the Democrats. And then on the other side, we have a fringe party of religious lunatics, flat-earthers, and Civil War reenactors who call themselves...
They call themselves the Republicans, and they take their orders from Rush Limbaugh. And they think Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal. What we need is a progressive party in this country. We don't have it.

I think Bill Maher's comments speak for themself. (I did cut out a few comments because Maher is a crass individual, and I didn't think they needed repeating.) Sometimes we don't even have to say anything -- We just need to stand by and watch the person shoot him/herself in the foot. If Bill Maher were President, this is what he would do!

Maher did make one good point that we need to remember. I need to preface my saying that by refuting Maher's argument that Bush and Cheney simply said "Suck on it, America, if you don't like it." Here is the voting record from 2002 for authorizing the war in Iraq:

Republicans
Yea: 263
Nay: 7

Democrats
Yea: 111
Nay: 147

71% voted to go to war in Iraq, Bill, including 43% of the Democrats. Bush and Cheney never told anybody to "suck it." In their second term, they didn't even have majorities in the House and Senate.

And even when they did have Republican majorities in the House and the Senate in their first term they still never told Americans to "suck it." Look at the voting record for the Bush tax cuts in 2001:

Republicans
Yea: 211
Nay: 0

Democrats
Yea: 28
Nay: 153

62% voted for the tax cuts, including 18% of the the Democrats! For tax cuts!

That being said, Maher was correct in saying that the Democrats don't need any Republicans to pass the Health Care Reform Bill. So why aren't they just dragging us "stupid" people to it and get it done like Maher is suggesting?

The reason is that the Democrats are afraid to go at this alone. They realize there will be repurcussions at the voting booth. They don't want to pass it alone because they want to be able to share the blame with the Republicans when health care reform fails.

A vote for socialized health care is political suicide, and they know it. They've seen it at town hall meetings around the country.

What Bill doesn't understand because he is an elitist is that the government doesn't control the people; the people control the government. The "stupid" people have spoken and will continue to speak as long as bad ideas are presented.

I hope and pray that Bill Maher does not represent the liberal viewpoint, or our country is in serious trouble.

The Largest Business in the World, Run by a CEO with No Business Experience

2009-08-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Studies have shown that for people who open a restaurant, 26% fail in their first year, another 19% fail in the second year, and 14% more fail in the third year. So in the first three years, almost 60% of new restaurants fail. (Some estimate that average to be higher.) Why would that be?

Somebody makes some killer food and loves doing it. Friends and family start telling them they need to open a restaurant, and they start thinking about how much they would enjoy that. So they find a place to buy somewhere, take out a second mortgage to pay for it, put a kitchen together, throw up some decorations, and open for business.

Everything moves along fine for the first few months as customers show up and that first dollar is tacked to a wall somewhere. The money starts adding up, but so do the expenses. Before long, the owner tries to figure out why the numbers aren't adding up.

This chef has never had a class in accounting, or finance, or marketing, or management. He's never heard of a cash flow statement, or net present value, or niche markets, or reward systems. All he ever wanted to do was cook.

A bad month or two hits, and the dream turns into a nightmare. The same thing is happening to our country.

CHARMED

President Barack Obama graduated from high school and attended Occidental College. After two years, he transferred to Colombia University, majoring in political science. He worked as a research associate at Business International Corporation (mainly a publishing firm) and then at New York Public Interest Research Group.

Four years later, he moved to Chicago and worked as a Community Organizer for three years. Nobody really has a good definition for what a community organizer does. According to Wikipedia, community organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together to act in common self-interest. (The only familiar example of community organizing I could find is ACORN, which organizes community members to register dead people to vote and hand out cigarettes to have voters register 72 times.)

In Obama's case, he was the director of Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization comprising eight Catholic parishes. The main purpose of the 13-person organization was to set up a job training program. The budget came from fundraising (which Obama found he excelled at.)

Obama then went on to Harvard Law School, earning his Juris Doctorate. He was the editor and then president of the Harvard Law Review. He directed another community effort called "Project Vote." He spent time as a lecturer at at the University of Chicago and worked at a law firm.

He was elected to the state legislature, where he stayed for 7 years, and then was elected as a U.S. senator. He served for 5 years (2 of those on the road, campaigning.) And he was finally elected President.

HOW CAN YOU TELL WHEN A LAWYER IS LYING?

Barack Obama has never run a business. He is a lawyer. He specializes in politics and the law. Most of his career has been spent in government. He is a talented speaker and writer. His specialty is researching, writing, talking, and voting (assuming he's actually there to vote.) He has never, in all of his experience, had to worry about turning a profit. In his world, if you run out of money, you simply raise more.

How far would we have to go back to find another President with no business experience:

George W. Bush: M.B.A from Harvard University, ran oil companies, the Texas Rangers, and the state of Texas
Bill Clinton: Ran the state of Arkansas, and studied Economics in school
George Bush: B.A. in Economics, co-founded and ran an oil company
Ronald Reagan: Ran the Screen Actors Guild and the state of California.
Jimmy Carter: Ran a peanut farm, and the state of Georgia
Gerald Ford: No business experience, but at least a B.A in Economics.
Richard Nixon: Lawyer

The answer is Richard Nixon (although he, unlike Obama, had at least served as vice-president.) He was a lawyer and a career politician. With the exception of George H.W. Bush (who had been vice-president for 8 years), every President in the last 33 years has been a governor of a U.S. state previous to being elected, which makes perfect sense.

THE GOVERNATOR

Governor and Senator are two vastly different positions. The position of a senator is legislative and requires expertise in law. The position of a governor is executive and requires expertise in business.

A senator studies issues, and proposes bills, sometimes as a member of a committee. Debates occur and speeches are given. After many hours, a vote is taken. The situation is very much like a courtroom, with procedure and formality, posturing and rhetoric.

A governor, on the other hand, does exactly what the President does, just at the state level. The governor runs the "business" with thousands of employees. The governor works through his/her "managers", all the way down to last employee, to accomplish tasks. The governor controls the national guard, signs and enforces law, and makes appointments. The governor works on a fixed budget. (No printing money at the state level.)

This is why it was so comical that any liberal would question Sarah Palin's two years' experience as a governor + 6 years' experience as a mayor (which is also an executive position, just at the city level), in light of Barack Obama's experience.

COMMON CENTS

So Obama is now getting on-the-job business training in his first executive experience as the Commander-in-Chief. His inexperience is apparent.

Anybody who has studied business would understand, for example, that you can't decrease unemployment by raising taxes. A tax discourages a behavior. When you raise the tax on a business, the business has less money, and has to find ways to cut expenses. The quickest way for a business to cut expenses is to slash jobs.

Even the anticipation of raised taxes leads to higher unemployment. Businesses realize, unlike Obama, that money doesn't grow on trees. Introducing a health care bill that plans to insure all Americans, after spending $1 trillion of money we don't have, and in the middle of a financial crisis, is an incredibly stupid idea. In a meeting today, the university I work for spoke about cutting back in anticipation that things are going to get worse. I'm guessing the business you work for is doing the same.

And even if you happen to be a liberal and believe in demand-side (trickle-up?) economics, you would realize that stimulus money should be used to actually stimulate the economy. Back in the Great Depression, FDR (who ran the state of New York as governor before being elected, by the way) used the New Deal to put people back to work. They built roads, bridges, schools, and houses that didn't exist -- Huge projects that required a lot of people and work. Obama is using the stimulus money, as expected, to push his liberal agendas.

For example, spending $8.3 million to replace perfectly functional light bulbs at an airport with overpriced high-efficiency "green" light bulbs. How many jobs does that create? What kind of lasting value does that have? I drove past a school today that the New Deal built 71 years ago. Where will those light bulbs be in 71 years? How about 10? How about even 5?

We won't even mention the perfectly functional cars...

AND IN THE END...

Obama thinks like a lawyer, not a businessman, because that's what he is. He has grown up under privileged circumstances, having nearly every penny he's "earned" in his career being handed to him by fundraising or through taxpayers. He is using this financial crisis to posture and position in order to push every item on his liberal agenda through. Nothing he has done, or is currently doing, has been for the financial good of the country.

So we shouldn't be surprised that the economy continues to crumble when a manager at McDonald's has more business experience than the current leader of the free world.

Obama Won't Accept Health Care Limits for His Own Family

2009-08-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to write more about this, but wanted to post the link to an interesting article. It comes from an ABC News special on health care reform.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/Story?id=7919991&page=1

Thanks to Skylar for sending it in!

The Conservative Solution to Health Care

2009-07-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

I was watching the Health Care Reform infomercial channel (CNN) yesterday, and they continually made comments that gave the impression that the big bad Republicans were blocking the Democrats' attempts to help the poor downtrodden citizens of the U.S. to recieve good health care. Completely false. The Republicans simply realize there is a better way:

"Mr. President, what's the rush?" by Mitt Romney

Imagine that... Provide health care to all citizens, allowing them to maintain their freedoms, at no additional cost, limiting government control, and all the while creating a structure that will continually drive down the costs of health care. 2012 will not come soon enough.

Palin and the Wolf

2009-07-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

I just flipped over to CNN (as I do sometimes when I want to get the liberal viewpoint). Wolf Blitzer was talking about Sarah Palin and played her quote where she tells the media to quit making things up.

After they played the clip, Wolf asked the question: "If she wants national office, is that a smart strategy for her?"

I rewound it and listened to it again to make sure I'd heard right. That is exactly what he said, word for word. Wolf, probably without even knowing it, was showing his true colors. His comment was a threat.

It used to be that journalists would report the news. The mark of a great journalist was objectivity. But somewhere along the line, the media decided that rather than simply reporting the news, they wanted to influence the news. Like most liberals, they consider themselves elite (i.e. smarter than others), and they seek for power. Rather than just standing by and reporting the outcome of elections, they want to actually influence who gets elected. Wolf believes that if Palin wants to get to White House, the road goes through the media. Cross them, and they will crush your dreams.

Better watch out, Sarah! If you're not careful, the media will attack your experience as a mayor of a small town, your record and investigations, your education, your record as governor, your husband, your teenage daughter, your handicapped son, the way you talk, the way you dress, the state you were governor of, your religion, your hobbies, your finances, your win in a pagent 20 years ago, and everything you do or say, and it will continue long after the election is over!

"I'm not asking for a handout"

2009-07-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS A HANDOUT?

I turned on the news this morning to see a woman speaking at news conference. She was telling a sad story about her experience with health care. The story went something like this:

"I was being responsible. I purchased a health care plan with a high deductible for a true crisis. Then one day I heard the horrible words 'You have cancer.' My first thought was not about the treatments or my family or my life; I worried about how I was going to pay for it. I went through the treatments, and one item on the 4-page itemized bill was for $6000. My only thought was whether I was going to have to lose my house. I finally made it through all the treatments. My mortgage company threatened to foreclose on my house, even though I had never missed a payment or even made a late payment."

Then came the kicker for me. She said:

"I'm not asking for a handout."

Then she proceeded to say that she just wanted government to take care of people like her that can't afford health care.

Once again, I thought I must be taking crazy pills. My understanding had always been that a handout was when somebody got something for doing nothing. I realized that I must have been wrong my whole life. So I went to the dictionary and saw this:

"Hand-out: Anything given away for nothing."

This woman was asking for the government to give her $100,000 worth of hospital treatment for $0. It doesn't matter if it was $100,000 worth of treatment for $10,000, or $20,000, or even $99,999. What she is asking for is for the government to give her a certain amount of treatment in exchange for nothing. I've got news for you sister: That is a handout.

STRATEGO

Nancy Pelosi stood contently behind this woman as she told her story. It really would have been a compelling story, if it were true. I don't doubt that the woman had cancer, and I am completely sympathetic to her situation in that regard. But I know other parts of the story are either not true or are exaggerated. How do I know?

If she had truly purchased the insurance with a high deductible for a crisis situation, I believe the cancer would have qualified. If her deductible was $10,000, then she would have paid $10,000. The insurance would cover the rest. Even if there were a co-pay of 10% on a $100,000 bill with no maximum (an unusual situation), that would have added only $10,000 more. My guess is that the car she drives cost more than that total.

Then, as Dave Ramsey tells us, he's done some research, and 100% of the homes that are foreclosed have a mortgage on them. This woman took out a loan, and obligated herself to repay that loan in 360 monthly payments. If she fails to make those payments and meet her end of the obligation, the mortgage company takes the home as stated in the contract she signed when she bought the home. It has nothing to do with health care. But a mortgage company will never (and legally can never) take the home if she has never missed or even been late on a payment.

The Democrats find a well-spoken, well-dressed woman to tell this half-true sob story, and the people sitting at home think, "If it can happen to her, it could happen to me!" They mislead them to believe that she had to pay for every item on that 4-page itemized list (with only one of those items costing $6,000) even though she had insurance, and that the mortgage company was trying to take her home even though she was doing everything right.

Liberals operate on emotion, and one common liberal tactic (that is an Obama-favorite) is to try to scare people. It's been quite an effective tactic over the years. Democrats like to tell elderly people that the Republicans want to take away their Social Security, for example. Then when the Republicans say, "What? No we don't", the elderly people think the Republicans are trying to hide something.

Obama used fear to push the stimulus through, and the Democrats are using the same tactic to try to get health care socialized in two weeks. "We don't have time to debate this -- The American people need health care now!"

KARL

Unbiased CNN, presenting the official story as "What would you be willing to give up for health care?" then played a clip from Obama saying something like, "Some people say this is socialized health care. I don't want to socialize health care. The government shouldn't and couldn't run health care."

OK. Back to the dictionary:

"Socialized Medicine: Any of various systems to provide the entire population with complete medical care through government subsidization and regularization of medical and health services."

Hmmmm... Maybe Obama's dictionary got misplaced along with his birth certificate.

I GUAR-AN-TEE!

Liberals believe that every American citizen should be entitled to health care, although they get quite offended if you actually use the term "entitlement":

"Entitlement: The right to guaranteed benefits under a government program."

Where in The Constitution does it say that Americans are entitled to health care? Where did this idea come from that a person should get something for nothing?

Why has America emerged as the superpower that it is? It wasn't because of handouts from other nations. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. America is the land of opportunity, where it doesn't matter if you were born a "peasant"; anyone can rise as high and go as far as they want to if they are willing to work hard. That is why peole from other countries flock to the United States.

The American philosophy of "something for something" (the opposite of something for nothing) is what has pushed us and propelled us to be the economic and political power of the world. If a person gets out what that person puts in, that person will be willing to put more in to get more out.

THIS OLD HOUSE

And as long as we're entitling, why start with health care? Basic human needs are food, shelter, and clothing. If the government is going to provide, why not start with universal food? Or how about handing out a house to everybody? I know I spend way more money on housing than I do on health care. Why not socialized clothes? Where does it end?

We understand that if we want to buy a house, we have to pay for it. So how has this sense been created that a surgery is something that we shouldn't have to pay for? (Especially understanding that it is our neighbor who is paying for it.)

THE Y

Some are probably thinking, if universal health care is such a bad idea, and it's going to increase costs and hurt the economy and lead to even more job loss and increase waiting times at hospitals and reduce the quality of care and on and on... Why would the Democrats be pushing for it?

One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, said:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."

Obama and the Democrats would silently smile and say: "Exactly."

Once again, it's about power and control.

Real Life Economics

2009-07-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

I regret that I'm feeling vindicated. I've taken my fair share of courses in economics over the years. In each of those courses, it really bothered me every time the teachers would ridicule "trickle-down" economics. Without mentioning any names specifically, they would smugly bash Reagan and his economics policies. As we studied the Great Depression and other depressions throughout history, they would demonstrate that the best way to get out of a recession and grow the government was for the government to spend our way out of it using demand-side economics.

I sat there in each class, knowing what they were saying was contrary to everything I believed, but not having enough knowledge to debate them as they "proved" everything through formulas.

It's unfortunate for our country, but the past 10 months have vindicated everything I believe. The country doesn't run on formulas.

Starting with President George W. Bush (who, as great as he was in many ways, was unfortunately not a fiscal conservative) and the housing bailout (remember when we thought $700 billion was a huge number?), and then the additional $1 trillion from Obama's stimulus plan, the government has been pumping record-breaking amounts of cash into the economy since September 2008. If what my economics professors had been telling me in each of these classes was correct, the GDP should have skyrocketed, unemployment should have sunk, and we ought to be well on our road to recovery.

PAINTING BY NUMBERS

Instead, here are the results of the government "saving" the country through spending:

Economic (GDP) Growth

Q1 2008: 0.9%
Q2 2008: 2.8%
Q3 2008: -0.5% (This is when the economy was "really bad")
Q4 2008: -6.3% (First bailout)
Q1 2009: -5.5% (Second bailout)
Q2 2009: ? (Numbers are not yet available)

Unemployment

July 2008: 6.0%
August 2008: 6.1%
September 2008: 6.0%
October 2008: 6.1% (First bailout)
November 2008: 6.5%
December 2008: 7.1%
January 2009: 8.5%
February 2009: 8.9% (Second bailout)
March 2009: 9.0%
April 2009: 8.6%
May 2009: 9.1%
June 2009: 9.7%

So what's President Obama's solution? The bailout and the first stimulus worked out so well, that Obama is now telling us we "need" a second stimulus.

"ANY EXCUSE FOR NON-PERFORMANCE, EVEN IF VALID, WEAKENS THE CHARACTER"

Any time anybody calls Obama on the horrible performance of the economy, he tells us:

A) This is the Bush administration's fault. (He'll be using this one throughout his term as President.)
B) "This was not designed to work in four months. It was designed to work in two years." (Seeing the numbers, I'm scared to see what the economy will look like in two years.)
C) The condition of the economy have been worse had we not put the stimulus through.

C is my favorite. This is the same method liberals have had to revert to when global temperatures decreased (record July lows around the country): "Ummmm... Well, the fact that the country is seeing record lows is actually caused by global warming. Let's call it... 'climate change.'" Just compare the numbers to imaginary numbers. If only Bush would have known about this technique: "Well, the economy grew by 0.1% in Q1 2008, but that is actually 10% better than it was going to grow."

WISHFUL THINKING

If a true conservative like Romney or Thompson had been elected, or even the non-conservative Republican John McCain, the first item on the agenda would have been to slash taxes. The record shows it. The result of slashing taxes is immediate; there would have been no excuses and no waiting period.

What would have happened if, rather than opening the floodgates on government spending, we would have slashed taxes? Nothing imaginary about this. We know what would have happened, because it's already been done in the early 1980s in a similar recession. Check out the post "The Solution" from April 10, 2009 for some numbers on what happened as a result of those tax cuts.

I just read a quote from Eric Cantor (R - VA) that I thought put things into perspective:

"For the [first] stimulus alone, Washington borrowed nearly $10,000 from every American household. Let me ask you: Do you feel $10,000 richer today?"

You will have to feel $10,000 richer before the stimulus is worth it to you. What if, instead, the government had cut your taxes by $10,000? Would you feel $10,000 richer then?

PRINCE OF THIEVES

It looks like to pay for a part of the stimulus (it won't pay for it all, so look for more tax increases), the government is going to raise the tax rate of those making more than $1 million per year by 5.4%.

Better us than them, right? They won't miss it! The problem is that people who make more than $1 million got that way buy investing in business for the most part. (Check out "Econ 101" from February 11, 2009.) So if you take 5.4% of $10 million, that's $540,000 in additional money that would have been used to open new businesses and hire new employees and invest in start ups.

The tax increase kills business growth and increases unemployment. But the liberals keep stealing from the rich.

SICK ECONOMY = SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE?

So why do the democrats persist when the stimulus is obviously not working? The strategy is to increase spending to the point that taxes need to be raised, and then you get stories like this:

Calif tax officials: Legal pot would rake in $1.4B

In order to push through their agenda, the liberals have to create an environment where their policies "need" to be pushed through in order to save the country. President Obama has used the stimulus, not to create jobs, but to socialize the country.

It now appears the next item on the liberal agenda is to finally push through socialized health care. That money has got to come from somewhere, and according to the Drudge Report today, New York's richest may pay 57% in taxes to pay for it. Taxes will be similarly hiked around the country.

The economy will continue to flat line as more jobs are slashed, more businesses shut their doors, and more companies move their operations overseas. Obama's policies will destroy the economy of this country.

THE SOLUTION

The democrats have a super majority, so the Republicans can't do anything to stop them. There is only one thing we can do. Write a letter, wherever you are, to your congressmen, and let them know they are facing their last term if they vote for the health care bill. Their job is the only language they understand.

We have to limp along until 2010, retake majorities in Congress, and then work hard for 2012 so that we can undo the mess that's been created.

VINDICATION

Demand-side economics may fine work on an exam, but we've had nearly a year of running the model in the real world. If you were assigning a grade to the economy over the past year, what would it be?

I want my tuition back.

[Insert Laughter Here]

2009-07-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, look what our commander and chief is up to:

Looks like he's giving his own personalized Presidential Seal of approval! ZING!

But seriously, folks, this picture, though funny, is just a case of a picture taken at just the wrong time. You can see the entire video of this "incident" here. But this once again raised a question that has been bugging me since Obama began to run for office - WHY IS EVERYONE SO AFRAID TO MAKE JOKES ABOUT PRESIDENT OBAMA??

I'm not a political person by any means. I've refrained from posting on this blog for some time because I am not informed about political issues. However, I do watch a lot of TV and, in particular, a lot of comedy and it's shocking to see how they avoid mocking our 44th president.

During the campaign, it was pretty obvious that the majority of "Hollywood" wanted Obama to win. Saturday Night Live (a sketch comedy show, NOT a politicial forum, might I add) made a point of slamming the McCain/Palin team each and every show while mocking the people who were against Obama. In a world where the rising generation (people like me) knows less and less about the political system, television shows like SNL really will sway their opinon. And I truly believe that this was the case with this past election. Entertainers said that John McCain was old, Sarah Palin was stupid and Barack Obama was cool - and the mindless masses blindly believed them.

Someone else noticed this as well:

There was even a study done by the LA times that gave statistics of how many jokes were made about President Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. You can see the results here. It's not just me, comedians really were avoiding making fun of Obama!

I figured it would all blow over after the election, but I have been shocked and annoyed with how late-night comedians like David Letterman and Conan O' Brien have CONTINUED to make jokes about John McCain, Sarah Palin and even former President Bush even though they are, for the most part, out of the picture.

Now why is this the case? Why does President Obama remain practically untouched by the humor writers? Well, there are some theories out there (see here, here and here). Some say that it's because you'll be considered a racist if you make fun of him, others say that it's because the media is biased and wants to keep President Obama "cool" in the public eye. It's definitely not because the media respects the office of the President of the United States. Comedians have been making fun of presidents and presidential candidates almost as long as those positions have existed - and it's only gotten worse in the last 30 years (think Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford).

And please, please do NOT give me the excuse that you "just can't make fun of the guy."

Bull.

You're just not trying hard enough, comedians.

We deserve current comedy.

Obama's Health Care is Not the Answer

2009-06-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, a friend invited me to go down to an NBA playoff game. He had tickets to a box suite. We ate prime rib and crab while we watched the game, and then sat and watched the second half from our cushioned leather box seats.

My friend guessed that our box tickets to this game were probably worth $250, but that for this particular game, they could have probably been sold for more like $1000. We had no idea, because the tickets had been given to them by his brother's employer. The ironic thing is, that had I been paying, I would have gotten something from McDonald's Dollar Menu and watched the game on TV. But the story always changes when it's somebody else's money.

This phenomenon isn't uncommon. I've been to a fair number of dinners with clients, and it's always seemed funny to me how freely people spend when they have the corporate credit card.

This tendency is the reason that universal health care simply cannot work. It's not that conservatives wouldn't like for everybody to have completely free health care -- If it were possible, we would be the first in line. But we have the disadvantage of being grounded in reality.

FREE LUNCH

Liberals used to speak of free health care. But that was too deceptive, even for them. It is not free. Just like my playoff game, somebody is paying for it. If there is one group of people in the world who will not work for free, it is doctors. They have been conditioned to feel that they deserve $75 for a 5-minute visit to prescribe some antibiotics after all the investment they put into school. Sadly, it seems like fewer and fewer people get into the medical profession because they want to help people, and more and more simply see the dollar signs.

The liberals now speak of it as "Universal" health care. The intention is noble. Again, most liberals have big hearts. There are many people who can't afford health care, and we ought to do our best to help these people. But we need to look at why health care became unaffordable in the first place.

CHA-CHING!

There is a major problem in the current health care system. The costs of health care are out of control. Have you ever looked at an itemized bill for a hospital visit? My wife recently had a C-section, and as I reviewed the bill, I realized that we had paid $2 per each 800 mg Tylenol. The actual half-hour surgery cost thousands of dollars.

How did the prices get this way? Insurance is supposed to provide for unforeseen circumstances. We buy car insurance in case we get in an accident. We buy life insurance to take care of our family in case we die unexpectedly. But we do not then intentionally get in a wreck or jump off of a cliff.

Insurance should not be for teeth cleanings and baby deliveries and prescriptions. These are things we expect to happen. But somewhere along the lines, people started buying insurance to cover these types of things.

MONOPOLY

When you buy a TV, you shop around and look for the store that will sell you the TV at the best price. When was the last time you shopped around for the best price on a cast for a broken bone?

Insurance has given everybody access to the corporate credit card. For the most part, we don't even look at the prices. We just pay our deductible and our co-pays and don't worry at all about the total cost because the insurance will cover it.

I love college football. Have you ever noticed the price for a bottle of water inside a college stadium? Why can they charge three times as much in the stadium as they could at the gas station across the street from the stadium? It's because there are limited options.

What if another vendor started selling water for $0.50 per bottle inside the stadium? What would happen? Everybody would obviously buy from the new vendor. What would Vendor #1 have to do to compete? They would have to lower their prices. Competition drives down price. So what does the lack thereof do?

The person who is insured doesn't hold the hospitals accountable. The insurance company cares to some extent, but they are detached from the situation and don't find out about the claim until after the service has already been performed. They are content as long as they are turning a profit, and they accomplish that by continually raising premiums.

So year after year, the doctors and hospitals have been working in a veritable monopoly, charging $2 for a single 800 mg Tylenol when you can buy a bottle of one hundred 200 mg Tylenol for $10 at the local drug store. But we don't worry, because we just have to pay our deductible and then it's the insurance company's problem.

At this point, it is financially impossible for any average American to pay for health care out of pocket. If the average American can't afford it, what does that say about the poor?

GESUNDHEIT!

While the idea of providing health care for those who cannot afford health care is noble, government will only exacerbate the problem. There is not a government agency on the face of the planet that runs efficiently. The government is like a big black hole that sucks in all money in its path.

My son got what appeared to be his first cold a few days ago. My wife and I debated on whether to take him to the doctor because of the simple $25 copay. After a little Internet research, I realized that there was nothing the doctor could do for him because he is so young. But my wife decided to take him, and the doctor told her there was nothing that they could do for him because he is so young. We paid our $25 copay. The insurance company will likely pick up at least another $50 for the 5-minute visit. If we were paying the $75 out of pocket, we wouldn't have gone (unless his symptoms got worse, obviously.)

What will happen if health care becomes free? There would be no reason not to go in for a doctor's visit. The number of patients increases, and the number of people paying decreases, and the doctors charge the same amount. What will happen? Somebody will have to foot the bill, which means taxes will have to increase.

DEEP POCKETS

Any liberals reading might be saying, "So what? We just tax the wealthy more. Done."

The problem is that this removes even one more layer of accountability. Who is going to complain if a Tylenol goes up to $3 per pill? It's the "government"'s money. Prices can (and will) increase, because of the lack of competition. The black hole will continue to expand, and we will have to keep funding it.

THE IDEAL

So what is the solution then? It does no good to complain about something if you can't offer a better solution.

Ideally, we would completely reform the health care industry. Not through regulation -- But through competition. We would all simultaneously raise our deductibles to somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000 to account for truly unexpected emergencies. Premiums would be completely affordable at a couple dollars a month. And then we would shop for the best value (quality & price) for any health care within reason.

Hospitals, dentists, and pharmacies would be forced to reduce their prices in order to compete with other hospitals, dentists, and pharmacies. Since everybody would be spending their own money, they would be a lot more careful about heading to the doctor for unnecessary care. The decrease in demand would force the health industry to lower prices even further and raise quality to draw customers in.

The medical field would feel a little pain as their salaries came back down to reasonable, but that would only help to filter out those who are in it only for the money, which would leave only those who truly wanted to help people.

Prices would drop to the point where the average American could afford to pay cash for health care. And for the truly poor, we would handle that the same way we handle taking care of the homeless -- Charitable donations (with incentive to contribute through tax breaks.)

THE SOLUTION

That would be ideal. But doing so would take a coordinated effort, so it's not likely to happen without government regulation, forcing people to do it. And it's not the proper role of government to tell people where to set their insurance deductibles.

So what is a realistic solution? A well-known conservative, much smarter than myself, with proven business and management savvy, and with a record of reform, has a tried solution that works and moves us closer to the ideal:

The answer is unleashing the markets -- not government

Given the fact that 8 states are now seeing record unemployment thanks to Obama (who is still blaming the previous administration every chance he gets two quarters into his administration and then tells us we haven't reached rock bottom yet)'s economic policies, we have reason to be skeptical that he has the answer to health care.

Case in Point: Michael Moore & GM

2009-06-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Dealers facing tight supply of SUVs, trucks

So how exactly is manufacturing more small cars going to help GM financially...?

Batman Is a Conservative

2009-06-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

I watched The Dark Knight last night. This is the second time I've seen it, but it struck me even more than the first time that this movie is a great (and likely purposeful) analogy for the world we live in. In fact, I think what makes it such a great movie is that it hits home for all of us.

But I'm curious to know how many liberals watched The Dark Knight and thought Batman was acting correctly. I've posted briefly on this subject before, but watching the movie has re inspired me.

SOME PEOPLE JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN

There is a great part in the movie where Alfred tells Bruce Wayne the following story:

ALFRED: "I was in Burma. A long time ago. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders, bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. We were asked to take care of the problem, so we started looking for the stones. But after six months, we couldn't find anyone who had traded with him.
"One day I found a child playing with a ruby as big as a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing the stones away."

BRUCE: "So why was he stealing them?"

ALFRED: "Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money... they can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with.
"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

You can't reason with Kim Jong Il. You can't reason with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. You can't reason with Osama Bin Laden. Just like you couldn't reason with Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

If Batman were a liberal, he would have apologized to The Joker for other superheroes treating the mob bosses so poorly in the past and set up a peace summit with The Joker to discuss how the mob bosses and Gotham could get along better.

IF I GET HIM TO YOU, CAN YOU GET HIM TO TALK?

Another great part in the movie is when Mr. Lau, who launders the money for the mob bosses in Gotham, has escaped back to his safe-haven in China. He tells the mob bosses:

"As the money is moved, I go to Hong Kong. Far from Dent's jurisdiction. And the Chinese will not extradite one of their own."

Gordon and Dent realize the same thing as they meet to talk about what to do about all of the money that has been hidden. Batman then says:

"If I get him to you, can you help him to talk?"

Then, in one of my favorite parts in the movie, Batman goes to Hong Kong and steals Lau from his safe-haven and brings him back to the U.S. There was no warrant, no negotiation with the Chinese government to try to bring him back, and Dent threatened Lau with his life (by telling him he would lock him up at county) in order to get him to talk. And he agreed.

If Batman were a liberal, he would have had the police try to work through the Chinese government to get Lau back while Lau provided the ability for the mob bosses to function at home. And Lau would have stayed at China, because they don't extradite their Chinese nationals.

If Al Queda, who is seeking to do harm to the U.S., is in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government won't cooperate, we do the same. We go there and take care of the problem. We fight terrorism wherever it is. If Iraq is a safe-haven for terrorists, we move in. Afghanistan? The same. If there are people who we have intelligence on (just like Bruce Wayne got to look at Lau's books) that are seeking to do us harm, we detain them.

The Geneva Convention protects our troops from torture by foreign countries. But the Geneva Convention is for soldiers who wear identifiable clothing and come out in open war. Al Queda is not a country and does not abide by the Geneva Convention. The debate over waterboarding is silly when Al Queda beheads innocent civilians for no reason. Waterboarding is mild compared to what they would do and have done to our troops. Saying "pretty please" does not get the information needed to save lives -- Waterboarding does. We act civilly with civilized people.

THIS IS HOW CRAZY BATMAN'S MADE GOTHAM

A little later in the film, you'll remember that The Joker releases a video of a Batman impersonator he's caught. After forcing the captured individual to read the message, The Joker says:

"This is how crazy Batman's made Gotham. You want order in Gotham? Batman has to go. So... Batman must take off his mask, and turn himself in. Every day he doesn't... people will die. Starting tonight. I'm a man of my word."

If Batman were a liberal, he would have taken off his mask. (In fact, he is tempted to do just that until Harvey Dent steps in.)

Batman didn't make Gotham crazy. The reason Batman ever came into existence was because Gotham was already crazy. We didn't create terrorism by anything we did. As I mentioned in the previous post, what did we do to Al Queda to provoke 9/11?

Al Queda would have us believe that the deaths in Iraq and elsewhere are coming as a result of our being there, and people have a natural tendency to want to stop the deaths. How many more Americans would have died had we not taken the fight there? We can't give into the demands of terrorists because of fear.

If Somali pirates capture a U.S. ship, we take them out. It's that simple. Obama actually got this one right. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We don't let fear control our actions, or the terrorists win.

BEAUTIFUL, ISN'T IT?

The most obvious (and likely blatant) analogy in the film comes toward the end as Lucius Fox discovers that Bruce Wayne has built a machine that gives him the ability to "see" the city by using sonar through cell phones.

BATMAN: Beautiful. Isn't it?
FOX: Beautiful. Unethical. Dangerous. You've turned every phone in the city
into a microphone...
BATMAN: And high frequency generator/receiver.
FOX: Like the phone I gave you in Hong Kong. You took my sonar concept and
applied it to everybody's phone in the City. With half the city feeding you sonar you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.
BATMAN: I've got to find this man, Lucius.
FOX: But at what cost?
BATMAN: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one
person.
FOX: No one should have that kind of power.
BATMAN: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
FOX: Spying on thirty million people wasn't in my job description

Batman then points to a TV screen to see The Joker saying "What does it take to make you people want to join in...?" as he tries to turn the citizens of the city against each other.

If Batman were a liberal, this machine never would have been built in the first place. The two ferries would have been blown up, and the Joker would still be roaming free in the movie. Ultimately, it was this device that allowed Batman to save the hostages and locate the Joker. And after that mission was accomplished, the machine was destroyed.

Conservatives value privacy as much as anybody. But we understand that desperate times call for desperate measures. And measures such as the Patriot Act allow us to protect ourselves against those who would seek to do us harm. There has been a lot said about this over the years, but this power has ultimately made us safer.

THAT'S THE SACRIFICE HE'S MAKING. NOT TO BE A HERO. TO BE SOMETHING MORE.

There are many more analogies, but I'll just touch on one more. At the point where Batman is about to reveal his identity to stop The Joker from killing innocent people, Harvey Dent steps forward and identifies himself as Batman. Rachel is astounded that Harvey would do that and that Bruce Wayne wouldn't stop him. Alfred again says something profound:

RACHEL: Why is [Bruce] letting Harvey do this, Alfred?
ALFRED: Perhaps both Bruce and Mr. Dent believe that Batman stands for something more important than a terrorist's whims, Miss Dawes, even if everyone hates him for it. That's the sacrifice he's making- to not be a hero. To be something more.

I believe President George W. Bush will go down in history as one of the greatest presidents this nation has ever known. The illogical hate that people have for him makes absolutely no sense.

Politics are dirty, but I have never seen a President in my lifetime take the kind of abuse that George W. Bush has taken. And he takes it humbly, without defending himself. He could have saved his popularity rating by taking polls and doing what was popular. He could have gone on late night talk shows and done comedy skits and blamed everything on the previous administration long after he took office to gain popularity.

Instead, he did what he knew needed to be done in order to make this country safe. And he took a railing unparalleled in modern history for it. He didn't try to defend himself by showing that hundreds of chemical weapons have actually been discovered in Iraq. He didn't schedule prime time news conference after prime time news conference to explain why he was doing what he was doing.

He and his administration put their heads down and pushed forward with what they believed was the right thing to do and didn't let unfavorable poll numbers deter them from that path. And nobody can dispute that we have not had a terrorist attack on American soil in almost 8 years. NEWS FLASH: It's not because Al Queda wouldn't love to attack us. It's because they are using all their resources to try to defend themselves, as tens of thousands of the taliban have been sent to Allah.

THE END

The Dark Knight is only a movie, but we live in a world with people like The Joker who would love to see the world burn. It seems comical to me that anybody who loved the movie and thinks Batman was justified in everything he did could turn around and bash George W. Bush for his policies.

Personally, I think Batman and Bush would get along just fine.

Obama & Ahmadinejad: If you were President, what would you do...?

2009-06-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

IRAN

Earlier this morning, President Obama stated in a speech given in Egypt that "any nation, including Iran, should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

This seems fair, right? Why has the U.S. made such a fuss about Iran having nuclear weapons anyway? First, let's check out a map of the Middle East:

Then, let's review some of the things that Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said about Israel (which sits within missile range of Iran):

"Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khomeini) said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world."

"Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken. Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation."

"You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene."

"The Zionist regime has lost its raison d'être. Today, the Palestinians identify with your name [Khomeini], your memory, and in your path. They are walking in your illuminated path and the Zionist regime has reached a total dead end. Thanks to God, your wish will soon be realized, and this germ of corruption will be wiped off."

"The Iranian nation never recognized Israel and will never ever recognize it ... But we feel pity for those who have been deceived or smuggled into Israel to be oppressed citizens in Israel."

I don't see why we would be worried about Iran having the technology to destroy an entire nation...

Conservatives believe that the U.S. has a responsibility as the world power to use that power to maintain order in this world we share. The entire world has benefited by the generosity of the U.S. The U.S. has never used its power to conquer and expand.

After World War II, we helped to rebuild Germany and Japan and other nations that had just sought to destroy the U.S. A quick Google search just showed that the U.S. gives an average of $18 billion per year to other countries in foreign aid, asking nothing in return.

What other nation in the world would do that? What if Germany had won in World War II? How would they have used that power? What if Russia had won the Cold War? What would our world be like? What if Iran was the world super power? The U.S. does not act out of self-interest.

IRAQ

"Hey! -- What about the unjust war in Iraq? Bush lied, people died!"

How many more Iraqis would have been raped, killed, and tortured if Saddam Hussein were still in power? Even Barack Obama agreed in his speech: "Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible."

The U.S. did build diplomacy. They went to the United Nations. They did everything by the book. The U.N. inspectors were denied access in Iraq. If the inspectors had been able to do their job and nothing was found, the U.S. would not have attacked Iraq. Everybody at the time (including yourself, if you're being honest) thought Saddam Hussein had WMDs (and likely did)... especially when he wouldn't let the inspectors in.

Let's think about this logically. Why else would we attack Iraq other than to protect ourselves? For oil? Why haven't we taken a drop of oil then? It makes no sense. Just like in Japan and Germany, we quickly handed back control in Iraq to the native people. If the Iraqis told us to pull our troops out tomorrow, we would leave.

EVIL

The U.S. has used its power well to maintain order in the world. The world is better off because this great nation exists. We need to continue to protect countries like Israel who has done nothing to provoke these threats from Iran.

Allowing Iran to have nuclear capabilities would be like taking Dawenette Knight, who stalked Catherine Zeta-Jones (and even said in a letter, "We are going to slice her up like meat on a bone and feed her to the dogs"), and saying "Alright -- If we give you a backstage pass and a knife, you have to promise you won't kill anybody. Okay? Promise?"

One stark contrast I've observed between conservatives and liberals is that liberals believe that if we are just nice to everybody, everybody will be nice to us. They don't seem to believe that true evil exists in the world.

To those people, I ask: What did the U.S. do to provoke the 9/11 attacks? What could we have done different to appease Al Queda so that they wouldn't have attacked us?

If there were a button that Osama Bin Laden could push right now that would wipe the U.S. off of the face of the earth, he would push it in a heartbeat. Even if we said we were really, really sorry for being infidels.

What Obama and liberals need to understand is that evil does exist, and that no amount of pandering and apologizing will change that. The U.S. needs to continue to make this world safe for all inhabitants.

If you were President, what would you do?

Michael Moore & GM

2009-06-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

Something astounding happened today: For a brief second I thought Michael Moore and I agreed on something. Then I read another paragraph or two of his column.

I know I'm beating a dead horse on the auto bailouts and nationalization, and I hadn't planned on posting any more on the subject. But what I just read changed my mind. I believe that this column by Michael Moore exemplifies everything that I've spoken about in my other posts on the topic.

Michael Moore is a liberal and represents many of the liberal viewpoints. He says many of the things that liberals only think. His viewpoints come from the extreme left, where President Obama's viewpoints lie (according to his voting record.)

Here is a link to the column that Michael Moore wrote this morning in response to the government takeover of General Motors:

Goodbye, GM ...by Michael Moore

(For length's sake, I won't go through this paragraph by paragraph. I'll just hit the highlights.)

I'll start with the paragraph that made me think for a brief second that we actually shared a common point of view. Moore starts out talking about what has happened to his hometown in Michigan as GM has fallen apart. He talks about some of the things that led to the downfall of GM, and we almost agreed until he said that GM "was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to 'improve' the short-term bottom line of the corporation." (I've mentioned before that unions are one of the major problems because they force companies to pay employees more than the market. It is nearly impossible for a unionized company like GM to compete with a non-unionized company like Toyota when they have to pay their employees almost double what their biggest competitor does for doing the exact same job.)

So this then led to the sentence that made me think that Michael Moore and I actually agreed on something. Here it is:

"Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM."

Granted, I probably wouldn't have used the word "kill"; I probably would have used "let die." But the idea that the government should not interfere and should let the market run its course is one that I support wholeheartedly. I was shocked that Michael Moore would support this company dying.

Then I read on. Michael Moore introduces his plan for GM:

Step #1: "Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

"We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call 'cars' may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet."

(Side note: It just occurred to me as a non-scientific person that, if we are now supposed to refer to "global warming" as "climate change" because the cooling we see is actually caused by the warming, won't the net result be that the polar ice caps stay the same?)

It is always extremely offensive to me when Michael Moore uses these types of analogies. That's fine if he wants to say that automobiles are destroying the planet. But to draw an analogy between that and an unprovoked attack on innocent people at Pearl Harbor is offensive. To compare auto executives to Nazis is outrageous. To compare an automobile to mustard gas used for genocide by evil men or a nuclear missile in the hands of North Korea or Iran is absolutely ridiculous, and trivializes the threats that we face in the world.

(Ironically, if Michael Moore were a citizen of one of these countries he idolizes such as Cuba or Venezuela or China, he would be imprisoned, beaten, and beheaded (or worse) in a heartbeat for an unfavorable documentary about the government. Yet George W. Bush is somehow the evil, murdering tyrant...)

That being said, here is a summary of his plan:

#1: Declare state of war, and transform GM into building mass transit vehicles.
#2: Use the $30 billion bailout to keep autoworkers employed building mass transit.
#3: Announce we will have Japan-esque bullet trains within 5 years.
#4: Build mass transit for large to medium-sized cities using GM factories.
#5: Have the GM plants build energy efficient buses for rural cities.
#6: Have factories build hybrid or all-electric vehicles.
#7: Transform some GM car factories to build solar panels.
#8: Provide tax incentives to those who switch to alternative energy.

Sounds great, right? There is one major problem at this point. Even if Obama decides to follow Moore's plan and declares war on the automobiles, and converts GM to build bullet trains and mass transit, and magically made car factories produce solar panels, and uses taxpayer money to the employees to do all of it... who is going to ride the trains and the buses and buy the solar panels?

With the exception of New York and Chicago and a few other of the largest cities in the U.S., mass transit has failed. Americans like the convenience of being able to get where they need to efficiently and in the time frame they would like. This is the same reason Al Gore takes a private jet wherever he goes rather than flying Delta.

When was the last time Michael Moore or Al Gore took a bus? Or any who are reading who are concerned about global warming? What do you drive? If you really wanted to save the environment, you would trade in your Prius for a Hummer. Why don't you at least drive a Scion xB if you're not going to ride a bike? A bullet-train can do 165 mph? Seems pretty inconvenient compared to 500 mph in the sky for $49 each way.

I don't know about you, but I've received notices that bus routes are closing in my neighborhood. So how is building this multi-billion dollar mass transit system going to help if there is nobody to pay fares? I understand that the government doesn't have to worry about efficiency or making a profit like other businesses, but California is showing us that their are limits to government spending.

Again, conservatives have nothing against mass transit or the environment. We would love to take mass transit if it were as convenient, safe, and cost-efficient as a car. It would be completely ideal to have a battery-powered car that ran like a gas-powered car. We would love to have solar and wind power that is as cost-efficient as current methods. But we are at a disadvantage to the liberals: We have to be realistic. We have to ask, So how is all of this going to sustain itself?

Never you fear. Michael Moore has already considered this. Here is his solution:

#9: "To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them."

(I do have to pause and mention that I always find it humorous that a tax on gas will stifle the use of gas in the mind of a liberal, but that a tax on business will somehow make business grow.)

This is the only way the plan will work. Unfortunately, this is always the direction liberal actions end up when they don't work in the free market: If you don't do it, we will force you to do it. If a $2/gallon tax, isn't enough, then we'll raise it to $4/gallon. If that doesn't work, we'll raise it to $20/gallon. And if that's not enough, we will outlaw gas-powered vehicles. But believe you me, you will stop driving those cars, and you will take mass transportation.

Again, it all comes back to control, as exemplified by our good friend Michael Moore.

Actions & Consequences

2009-05-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

We learn from the time we are young that we can choose our actions, but we cannot choose the consequences to our actions. We find out that we can choose to touch a hot pan, but we cannot choose whether we will get burned our not. We can choose to jump off the roof, but we cannot choose whether or not we will break our legs. To every action, there is a consequence. When you pick up a stick, you pick up both ends. We all learned this before we were 2 years-old. All of us, that is, except our 47 year-old President.

The automobile industry is bleeding to death. We have been told again and again that the U.S. automakers are "too big to fail" as the rationale for pouring billions of taxpayer dollars in to bailout the automobile industry. Yet, Chrysler just filed for bankruptcy. The White House has been preparing GM for bankruptcy. Ford is hearing the knock of bankruptcy at the door as well.

What is President Obama's solution? To enact more stringent emission standards on the auto industry. This solution is like tying cinder-blocks to the legs of a person who is drowning.

WHY HAVEN'T WE THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE??

The proposed standards require that by 2012, all cars will average 42 miles per gallon, and trucks and SUVs will average 26 miles per gallon. The government says the word, and the auto industry must comply.

So this begs the question, why do cars currently not average 42 miles per gallon? (To give you some perspective, the only two car models on the road that currently meet these standards are the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid.) The liberal response to that question would likely involve something about George W. Bush's rich oil buddies. Mm, hmm.

Let's take a look at this logically: What would be the reason for a business (in this case a struggling business) to purposely withhold technology that would give a competitive advantage in an industry? If an automaker could build a full-size truck that could get 26 mpg with all the same performance as those getting 14 mpg, they would rule the industry. The technology doesn't exist.

IF IT AIN'T BROKEN...

So in order to meet the government mandate, the auto industry has to do one of two things. First, they could modify the functionality. They could make the vehicles smaller with less power. But as I mentioned in a previous post entitled "I Feel Like I'm Taking Crazy Pills" (which I still do), the top selling vehicle in the U.S. is the Ford F-Series, which averages around 16 mpg. I just read on wikicars.com that it is estimated that the F-Series alone makes up half of Ford Motor Company's profit.

Three of the Top 10 Best Selling Vehicles in America are full-sized truck. Why isn't the Toyota Prius #1? I believe the obvious answer is that people like to be able to fit the entire family along with cargo comfortably. They like to tow boats and haul trailers and drive in a blizzard without worrying about getting stuck. They want to be safe if they get in an accident. If you were the CEO of a company, would you change your best-selling model? Doing so would be suicide for any automaker.

R&D

The only other option would be to develop the technology. We are the greatest and most innovative nation on the face of planet. If anybody can develop the technology to power a full-size truck at 26 mpg, we can.

So what's the problem? R&D requires what the auto industry apparently doesn't have: Money. And lots of it. The technology does not magically appear because the government says so. It takes a lot of effort from a lot of expensive people. These new regulations will break the backs of the auto industry. If there was any chance of survival for Ford, Chrysler, and GM, this is the end.

And even if the automakers could somehow survive the enormous costs of R&D, who is going to pick up the tab in the end? Let's just say that the base price of a Ford F-150 will no longer be $22,000. The people on "Main Street" will pay significantly more as the automakers attempt to recover their costs. (But they will not see their taxes go up a single cent!)

CONSEQUENCES

Conservatives would love to see a clean, renewable energy source just as much as anybody else. (I know, I know... Rich oil buddies of George W. Bush. My guess is that they would just invest in the new energy source. They didn't get to be rich by being stupid.) But we understand there are consequences to actions.

We understand that you can raise taxes on business, but you can't choose the consequences of what that does to the unemployment rate or the stock market. The natural consequence of a tax is to discourage the behavior. We understand that you can spend a trillion dollars that you don't have, but you can't choose what that does to inflation and the value of the dollar. The natural consequence of printing more money is the devaluation of that money. We understand that you can give handouts, but you can't choose whether that handout decreases productivity.

We understand that you can require the car industry to produce 42-mpg cars and 26-mpg trucks, but you can't choose whether that action will lead to hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs.

There is a natural consequence to every action. When you pick up a stick, you pick up both ends.

NIGHTMARE ON PENNSYLVANIA AVE

Now for the scary part. Barack Obama is not stupid. The people surrounding and advising him are not stupid. They all learned, just like the rest of us at 2 years-old or younger, that actions have consequences.

Why would President Obama want the auto industries to fail? I'm sure it wouldn't have anything to do with this story...

GM bankruptcy plan eyes quick sale to the government

...or this one...

Government May "Nationalize" GM By Swapping Debt for Equity

...right?

If the government owned the auto industry, they could tell us what to drive by limiting our choices. This is the ideology of the extreme left: If people are left alone to make choices, they will make choices that hurt themselves, so the government will protect the people from themselves by eliminating choice. The government decides how money is allocated amongst the people so nobody has too much or too little. The government provides healthcare for all its people, by taking from those who have and giving to those who have not. They tell the people what they can read, what they can watch, and how they can worship so the people don't hurt themselves. And in return for all this care, the only thing that the people have to give up is their agency.

If I were a liberal, I would be in awe at the genius of President Barack H. Obama. (As is, I am in awe at his audacity.) He has the checklist of every liberal agenda item, and he is working to push them all through in his first year in office. He will not rest until he sees them all through, no matter what the consequence.

Swine Flu & Global Warming

2009-05-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

THE DREADED SWINE FLU

The world is in hysterics over the breakout of the now notorious "swine" flu. We first heard about the swine flu on April 23 when 7 people in the U.S. were infected with an unknown virus. Suddenly there were stories about 152 deaths in Mexico and confirmed cases in the U.S. The Vice President of the United States told people to avoid traveling. Egypt slaughtered 300,000 pigs. Schools shut down, people are wearing masks around in public, and everybody seems to be in a state of panic.

Then we find out that the 152 deaths in Mexico were actually only 7. (The number now is suspected to be 42, but nobody really knows.) Two people have died in the U.S. (one native Mexican.) We then find out that the "normal" flu is responsible for 36,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, and the media sheepishly reports that the swine flu is actually more mild then the "normal" flu. Yet, we don't see too many masks out during flu season. One of the many school districts that planned to shut the school down this entire week called my sister last night and told them that school will be back in on Thursday. The panic is subsiding.

The irrational fear and panic reminds me of global warming. I realize that we are now supposed to refer to it as "climate change" after people started asking why the earth was getting cooler if it was supposed to be getting warmer, (SCIENTIST: "Um... yeah... The earth getting cooler is actually a result of the earth getting warmer. ANY 8 YEAR-OLD: "Huh?"), but I prefer the classic name myself.

THREE KINDS OF LIES

I don't pretend to know much about science (it was always my one of my worst subjects), but I have taken a few classes in statistics. One of the basic fundamentals in statistics is that the sample needs to be representative of the population. The larger the sample, the more accurate the results. The smaller the sample, the more inaccurate the results. It's common sense that if you poll two people about the presidential elections, the results will not be representative of the population. But if you randomly sample 1000 people across the nation, you can say with 95% confidence that the results are accurate. (At least, those are the numbers we trust every 4 years leading up to November.) And we know from experience that even those numbers can be wrong.

Scientists estimate that the earth is 4.55 billion years old. Meteorologists began estimating the temperature of the earth in 1860. These estimates are incomplete and likely inaccurate, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. So let's say we've been keeping track of the temperature for 149 years. Scientists use the trends from those 149 sample years to describe the population of 4.55 billion years. (That is 0.00000003% of the population -- The equivalent of polling 9 people about the presidential election.)

What's more, scientists agree that the earth has gone through at least 4 ice ages. What did the cavemen do to cause those ice ages? How many species were destroyed then? And once they were in the ice age, how did the earth come out of it without the help of cars and airplanes? I can imagine if I was talking to a scientist, they would tell me that the earth goes through natural cycles... but that this current warming (er, I mean "change") isn't part of a cycle.

ROUTE 66

I understand that you can also look at ice core samples and measure the ozone and those types of things. I also understand that the carbon dioxide emitted from car engines can have an effect on the ozone. But I also know that the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas is not cars. The greatest contributor at 95% is water vapor. Not only that, but a recent UN report indicates that the methane from livestock flatulence is significantly more destructive to the environment than car emissions. That means that even the dinosaurs were "destroying" the environment. According to the first link, "total human greenhouse gas contributions add up to about 0.28% of the greenhouse effect."

I know scientists would likely say that the CO2 from automobiles is somehow pushing us over the edge. What about when there were no people on the earth to eat the livestock and the buffalo roamed free on the plains?

Last summer, I took a trip up to Yellowstone National Park. I have been there many times, but I was again impressed by the extent of damage caused by the wildfire in 1988. That fire was said to be started, at least in part, by lightning strikes (a natural cause.) That was a fire that (after letting the fire try to burn itself out naturally) firefighters worked feverishly around the clock to control and extinguish.

How many cars would it take to make up the carbon emissions from that fire? (The answer is 67,200,000 cars driving for one year in case you were curious.) What would have happened if that same fire had started even 100 years ago? How many more acres would have burned back then? How many wildfires occurred before the invention of the the automobile? How far would this current California wildfire be spreading without humans to stop it, and how many automobiles would that be worth?

CONTROL

My guess is that some reading might say, But aren't we better off being safe than sorry? I believe there is again a stereotype with Republicans that they hate the environment; all they care about is putting money into their pockets at any expense. That is false.

I love the environment, and I believe that it is our responsibility to care for the earth. I was taught from a young age not to litter, and I still make it a habit to pick up trash I find lying around. I recycle. I don't pour antifreeze or motor oil down drains. I try to take care of our planet. The problems that conservatives have with global warming, and the reason they fight it, has nothing to do with the environment. It has to do with control.

Democrat leaders use global warming as an excuse to exercise control the lives of others. Generally speaking, the democratic party leaders seek for power. They are envious of kings. They believe that most people aren't smart enough to take care of themselves. They believe that the benevolent government can do a much better job for people than they can do for themselves.

Conservatives love the environment just like liberals, but they don't believe that it falls within the proper role of government to tell people whether their emission output is too much to drive their car. Here is a list of 600 items said in news articles around the world to be caused by global warming:

Things Caused by Global Warming

(I especially enjoy the ones such as "avalanches reduced" & "avalanches increased" or "birds face longer migrations" & "birds returning early" or "Atlantic more salty" & "Atlantic less salty" to name a few that are both somehow caused by global warming, even though they are exact opposite effects.)

The more effects of global warming, the greater the ability to exercise control through regulation. The leaders aren't actually worried about the environment. We know that, because of people like Al Gore, who still flies around in private jets and drives SUVs and uses 20 times the energy of an average household. If he truly were concerned about the polar bears, he wouldn't be doing any of those things. Why would he say it if he didn't believe it? I believe the answer is that the idea that he can exercise influence over people and nations around the world appeals to him.

AND, IN THE END...

We ought to take care of our planet. Just like we learned in Boy Scouts, we ought to leave any "campground" we visit more clean than we found it. But the government has no right to tell us what color car we can drive (as is currently being considered in California.)

Who is the President of the United States' boss? How about Congress' boss? How about the Supreme Court's boss? They all work for "We the people of the United States", and not the other way around. That is the way the founding fathers structured it, because they had just fled a country that eventually told them how they had to worship their God.

The hysteria surrounding global warming is no different than the swine flu. The propagation of irrational fear based on incomplete information. Again, it's all about control.

I Want to be a Democrat

2009-04-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I am secretly considering becoming a Democrat. No, this isn't due to the fact that the Republican party nominated John McCain for President (although that is nearly reason enough.) I am a true conservative at heart, and that wouldn't change, but I just daydream sometimes about how much easier life would be if I were a Democrat. Let me give a few examples:

LOGIC

If I were a Democrat, I wouldn't have to spend all the time and effort researching facts and putting numbers together. For any argument that anybody presented contrary to my views, I would just say:

"It's because of the failed Bush policies!"

You may think I'm exaggerating, but watch any debate on CNN or Fox or MSNBC that involves a Republican strategist and a Democratic strategist. The Republican will always try to gear the argument toward logic. "How is Obama going to increase government spending by $1 trillion and keep his promise not to raise taxes on 95% of the people?" The Democrat will always respond by appealing to emotion and making a personal attack. "The people on main street are hurting! We have to make sacrifices to fix this economic crisis. George W. Bush got us into this mess while his rich oil buddies got richer."

If you doubt that, try me. Turn on the TV right now and watch any debate. Find one example where a Democratic strategist tries to debate an issue based on facts and logic. The Republican comment in this example is actually a logical question -- Where does the money come from? But if I were a Democrat, I wouldn't have to worry about answering. I would actually just claim that asking that question is a personal attack on Obama. Take that, Republicans!

CONSISTENCY

If I were a Democrat, I wouldn't have to worry about being consistent. For example, the same people who defended Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, claming that his personal life has nothing to do with his private life, are the same people who ridiculed and called for the resignation of Senator Larry Craig for something he may or may not have actually done.

I'm sure most of us saw this clip from Susan Roesgan this week following the tea parties, and her different responses to which President had a Hitler moustache painted on his face:

Susan Roesgan - CNN

Whether it's David Axelrod calling the Tea Party protests unhealthy (while the Cindy Sheehan War in Iraq protests were a perfectly healthy expression of free speech) or Obama scoffing at notions that he's pushing socialism at the same time the government acquires common stock (meaning they are part-owners in a the company) in the nation's banks, the need for consistency is not a problem. That would take a lot of pressure off.

THE SANDBOX

If I were a Democrat, I wouldn't have to worry about playing fair. Liberal talk-radio shows have little demand, so they simply can't compete with conservative talk-shows. What do the Dems do? They talk about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, so that people like Rush Limbaugh who has 13.5 million listeners per week would be forced to give opposing points of view on their show. That way, they get their point of view to 13.5 million people too.

Environmentally friendly energy solutions losing out in the free market? We all remember this statement from Obama on the campaign trail:

"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum [in proposed carbon taxes] for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

We've always learned that kids need to play nice in the sandbox. In this case, if somebody won't share with us, we just go get our Dad to come take it from them. Problem solved.

THE EXCEPTION

If I were a Democrat, I could think that I'm the exception to the rule. For example, socialism has never worked to build prosperity. Here is a list of current countries that practice socialism:

China
Cuba
Laos
North Korea
Vietnam

Which of those countries would you want to move to? Even without complete socialism, let's look at some of the countries with only socialized medicine (a.k.a Universal Healthcare):

Canada
Finland
Israel
United Kingdom

These are the countries that people from around the world go to when they are in need of expert medical care, right?

But that's the great thing! It doesn't matter that socialism has never worked in the history of man -- I would simply believe that we are the exception. We are different. It would work in our case!

RULES

Along those same lines, if I were a Democrat, I would be able to define my own rules. For example, it is illegal to kill a 1 year-old son or daughter. It is also illegal to kill a 1-minute old son or daughter. It is not your choice.

The debate regarding abortion has nothing to do with choice, because we all know that murder is illegal. The argument has to do with when life begins. So we just claim that life doesn't begin until the third trimester (even though if we didn't interfere, a baby would be born), and that it's the mother's choice because the baby is part of her body. Viola! Not murder anymore.

Using that same logic, I could rob the US Mint, and claim that those dollars weren't distributed into the system yet, and that I am a US Citizen, so it was my choice to take them.

As a Democrat, I would also have the ace in the hole, because I can also claim that anything is unconstitutional. I read an article today about how a law banning wearing saggy pants on a Florida beach was ruled unconstitutional. Here is a link to the Constitution:

The U.S. Constitution

Read through that, and try to find where our forefathers wrote that outlawing people who let their knickers hang out in public for all to see is unconstitutional. (You can actually save yourself the trouble -- It's not in there.) But that's the great thing: It doesn't matter! Here's what I would use:

"Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It doesn't matter that it doesn't say anything about saggy pants or abortion even. See, saggy pants are a form of speech! Abortion is a form of speech! All I would have to do is convince a judge that whatever inappropriate or illegal activity I want to do is a form of speech, and I'm golden!

BOTH WAYS

One of the major democratic platforms is that the government should not be allowed to limit the freedoms of the people. If they want to smoke marijuana, that's their own choice. But the good news is that I wouldn't have to extend the privilege to others.

For example, if students in my class want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, I would complain it was unconstitutional, and it's over. It wouldn't matter if I was only 1 in a class of 30! I know what you're thinking -- Isn't making saying the Pledge of Allegiance illegal a "rule" imposed by the government? Doesn't matter! Remember that First Amendment?

I could go on, but I'll stop there. Can you see why I daydream sometimes about being a Democrat? I honestly think it would be much easier.

TO ANY DEMOCRATS WHO MAY BE READING

Now I realize that I've spoken in general terms and a bit sarcastically, which I've tried to avoid in these posts, because my intention is not to be divisive. I'm taking the highly visible Democrats that I see on TV and those that I read in the news, and stereotyping based on that. I realize that.

The few Democrats that I know personally are great people. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I believe that they are good people with big hearts who just want to help others. But I believe the policies they support are like giving a child who is crying because he doesn't want to eat his vegetables some ice cream instead. It solves the immediate problem, but is it good for that child in the long run?

I realize this doesn't apply to all Democrats. But as with any stereotype, the stereotype comes from the majority. And I think if you'll pay attention to what you see on TV and read in the news, you'll see that the Democrats lead an envious life.

Inside the Mind of a Democratic Strategist

2009-04-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to monopolize this blog. In fact, I think it would be great if we had enough people posting that we had a new post every day. But tonight I read something that made my blood boil, and I just can't help myself. The April 15th Tea Party protests around the country were too big to be suppressed by the media. The fact that these impromptu protests are happening all over the country has the Democrats worried.

That concern was very apparent when I read Paul Begala's commentary tonight. Paul Begala was a political consultant for Bill Clinton in 1992 and was a counselor to Clinton in the White House. He is now a well-known political commentator for CNN and Democratic Strategist. What does a Democratic Strategist do? They develop political strategies for the Democrats to make the Democrats look good (and the Republicans look bad.) Begala was in top form today in response to the Tea Parties.

Let's take a look into Begala's mind and we analyze his column entitled "April 15 is Patriots' Day" one paragraph at a time:

"Happy Patriots' Day. April 15 is the one day a year when our country asks something of us -- or at least the vast majority of us."

What is the significance of April 15? Obviously, it's tax day. Begala is attempting to make a link between paying taxes and being a patriotic. The idea is: The more taxes, the more patriotic. (I guess that means that the 40% of Americans who don't pay any income tax aren't patriotic.)

This is the one day a year we pay taxes... other than those days where we fill up our car with gas, pay into Social Security and Medicare and Unemployement out of our paycheck, buy a pack of cigarettes, pay a property tax, or buy anything.

(Note that it is okay for Begala to claim that "Paying Taxes" = "Patriotic", but it is not okay for Republicans to claim that "Funding the Troops" = "Patriotic.")

"For those who wear a military uniform, those who serve the rest of us as policemen and firefighters and teachers and other public servants, every day is patriots' day. They work hard for our country; many risk their lives -- and some lose their lives."

If you watch closely, you will notice that democratic strategists will always appeal to emotion and avoid logic. Begala is using these examples of true patriots who serve our country to strike up the strong feelings of patriotism in our minds.

"But for the rest of us, the civilian majority, our government asks very little. Except for April 15. On this day, our government asks that we pay our fair share of taxes to keep our beloved country strong and safe.
"Freedom isn't free. That's what the courageous World War II veterans of the American Legion taught me back in Texas Boys State decades ago. That phrase had special meaning for them. Those guys had seen buddies blown apart at Anzio or Guadalcanal."

Here is where Begala lowers the boom as we are meant to feel guilty because there are troops and policemen and firefighters out there dying, and we are complaining about money! We're worried because we have to give a measly half of our income to the government. We are truly the scum of the earth.

What Begala doesn't seem to understand is that if it truly were a "fair share", none of these protests would be happening. Conservatives understand that the need for taxes in order to run a country, and we are more than happy to pay our fair share.

"I grew up in a different era. There was no draft, and while I have friends and family members who joined the military, most of my peers, like me, opted for the security and prosperity of the private sector.
"This country has showered me with the blessings of liberty. So what do I owe my country in return? Paying my fair share of taxes, it seems, is the least I can do. Thanks to President Obama and the Democratic Congress, 95 percent of Americans will get a tax cut this year. No one -- not even the wealthiest 1 percent -- will have to pay higher income taxes until 2011."

This is a strategy that Obama has been instructed to use as well. He will always say something like, "People like me (at a $2.7 million income) can afford to give a little more." This is a jab at the rich Republicans who are so greedy that they don't want to pay another 5% of their income to go to researching shooting pollution higher into the sky to reduce global warming. Obama and Begala are the true patriots because they are willing to give more.

Also, notice that he is very careful to say that no one will have to pay higher "income" taxes. Begala is a smart guy, and he knows as well as you and I do that this $1,000,000,000,000 in new spending has to be funded from somewhere. Income taxes may not increase (keep that promise in mind), but that leaves the capital gains tax, gas tax, sales tax, death tax, and whatever other taxes they choose to impose like they just did the cigarette tax wide open. The total taxes each individual pays each year will most definitely increase -- They have to. How else will be pay for the increase in spending?

"So why are a bunch of Fox News clowns and right-wing cranks hosting 'tea parties' all over the country? The Boston Tea Party, in case the clods at Fox didn't know it, protested 'taxation without representation.' Note the second word: without. The goofballs tossing tea bags today have representation. They voted in the election; they lost."

NOTE TO BEGALA: The Tea Party protests have little to do with the taxes we are currently paying; People are upset about the taxes that are inevitably coming. The spending is absolutely out of control, and that is the reason for the protest.

Begala uses the term "Fox News clowns" even though Fox News had nothing to do with the protests. He does so because he knows this term will conjure up feelings for Democrats and others who feel Fox News is right-wing. He emphasizes that by joining them with the inflammatory words "right-wing cranks", "clods", and "goofballs". I don't know about you, but I am not a right-wing crank, a clod, or a goofball. I didn't see a lot of right-wing cranks in the protests. What I saw was a lot of really normal people who are fed up. Begala can't have his readers think these were normal, level-headed people though.

He brings up the history of the Tea Party to try to make the conservatives look stupid, as if we don't know that the original Tea Party was because of taxation without representation. The term "Tea Party" is just a metaphor used because we're protesting about taxes. (I've got more news for you, Paul -- We aren't actually dumping tea bags over the side of ships either.)

And if Begala's logic that we voted and lost is correct, then what were all those protests about the War in Iraq? The Democrats voted in the 2000 and 2004 elections; they lost. They should have happily embraced the war.

"That a bunch of overpaid media millionaires would lead a faux-populist revolt is comical. They somehow held their populist instincts in check as George W. Bush and the Republicans cut taxes on the idle rich and put the screws to the working stiffs."

Again, Begala wants to mislead people to think that Fox News was somehow responsible for these protests. It would do great harm for people to know that this a grass-roots movement started by and organized by the people. Fox News had nothing to do with them. The only way I can see that he might justify his comment is because Hannity attended one of the Tea Party protests. (This actually was a populist revolt, Paul, and that's why you are so worried.)

Notice how he talks about George W. Bush cutting taxes on the "idle rich." He mentions Paris Hilton by name in the next paragraph. He tries to create an image of these rich folks sipping lemonade by the pool and watching their bank accounts grow. I don't know about you, but the rich people I know are the exact opposite of idle. They get more done in a day than I get done in a week. What percentage of the millionaires in the world do you suppose got that way by being idle? 1%? Less? Yet this is who he focuses his comments on.

Begala doesn't want you to think of individuals like Henry Ford, who started from scratch and worked tirelessly to create a company that now provides 213,000 jobs.

Bush's tax policies were a godsend to the Paris Hilton class, but they sent the country on the road to bankruptcy and helped ruin the economy. But now that we the people have decided to set things right, now that we've hired Obama to fix the mess conservatives created, now they're protesting?"

One common strategy used by liberal commentators is to state something as a fact, expecting that nobody will take the time to investigate whether the facts are true or not. Begala expects that his readers will just take his word for it. Unfortunately, this is a very effective strategy as people do just that.

How did Bush's tax policies send the country on the road to bankruptcy? There is no information, no graphs, no evidence to back up his claim. If we trace back to the beginning of the current economic crisis, it all started with the housing market collapsing. What does that have to do with Bush? Absolutely nothing. This is not a hard one. Who would change regulations to make it so underprivileged people could buy houses they couldn't afford? You liberals know it wasn't the mean, cold-hearted conservatives.

How did Bush's tax policies affect what happened to AIG? How about GM? Let me ask you this, Paul: How would higher taxes have helped either of those companies or any of the banks that have been bailed out?

"Give me a break. Instead of tossing tea bags for the cameras, the Fox phonies ought to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. There they would find better, braver men who have truly sacrificed for their country. They deserve nothing but the best -- not the shameful and shoddy conditions they endured during the Bush administration."

Again, Begala has no facts, so he has to appeal to emotion. What shameful and shoddy conditions? It's true that the troops obviously face unpleasant conditions in war, but they don't blame the Bush administration. How do I know? Here is a little video of the troops showing their "disdain" and "disgust" for Bush as they send him off after his last visit to Iraq in December 2008:

Bush Sendoff From the Troops

"You want something to protest? How 'bout protesting how little we give back to our veterans? Or how 'bout protesting that the entire budget of the National Cancer Institute (where government researchers battle a disease that will strike half of all men and a third of all women) is 0.03 percent of what we gave the bandits at American International Group alone? Oh, but veterans benefits and cancer research might cost money. It might require -- dare I say it? -- paying taxes."

Begala again paints the picture that these Tea Party protests are an attempt to get out of paying taxes altogether. He wants the reader to believe that if we don't raise these taxes, veterans with cancer won't be treated. Again, an appeal to emotion. In reality, only $1 billion of the new stimulus goes to maintain and repair VA medical facilities. That's 1/10 of 1%.

We have no problem paying taxes, Paul. Obama likes to say, "We just are going to go back to the tax levels we paid under Bill Clinton." We would say, "We just want to go back to the tax levels we paid under Ronald Reagan." We are proud to pay taxes. (If you'll notice, it isn't the Republican nominees whose names keep needing to be withdrawn because of tax problems.) We don't even mind the progressive tax system, because we are "patriots" who don't mind shouldering a little more of the burden to help out those who are less fortunate. But the taxes should be fair.

If I work at McDonald's, you order a meal that costs $5, you hand me a $20 bill, and I hand you back $5 in change, I'm guessing even you, Paul, would have a problem with me taking 50% of your money.

"If the whiners at Fox News want to advertise their selfishness, they are free to do so. But please don't dress it up as patriotism. Patriotism is putting your country ahead of yourself -- which is the precise opposite of what the tea party plutocrats are doing."

Again, Fox News is referenced. Democratic strategists believe if you say something enough, people will believe it is true. "Fox News was responsible." "If you are protesting, you are selfish." "If you are protesting, you are putting your own interests ahead of your country."

Begala couldn't be more wrong. The point of these protests is that we are desperately trying to save our country before it's too late.

The most frustrating part is that Begala seems to be a smart guy. He has to realize all of this. He knows exactly what he is doing as he executes each strategy from his playbook. He knows that most of those who read his commentary will fall for it. And he is proud of his ability to talk so well that he can have this kind of influence on people. As he finishes the commentary, he chuckles and thinks to himself, "I could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman with white gloves."

Unfortunately for Begala, this is too big. There are too many people who are upset. The wheels are set in motion, and it's only going to gain more momentum. Just like in Boston in 1773, the people of this nation will not stand to be treated unfairly.

The Solution

2009-04-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

After I finished my last post, I realized that one thing I've heard a lot (especially from liberals) is, "Well, we don't like the bailouts either. But what else are we supposed to do? Let the economy collapse? We have no other choice."

One thing you'll notice if you pay attention to liberal commentators is that they will always condemn Republican ideas (no matter the issue or the position they take) without offering a better solution.

I am not a liberal, and I don't want to condemn Obama's plan without offering a better solution. There is another choice and a better solution.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

One economic school of thought is Keynesian Economics. The basic idea is that, when an economy freezes up, the government can free up the economy by "greasing the wheels" with money. The projects they propose give dollars to workers that wouldn't have been there otherwise, and those workers then spend that money on bread. The bread makers have more money to spend to go out to eat. The restaurant workers have more money to go to the movies, and so on. So every dollar that is injected moves around and becomes more dollars. Demand for goods and services increases, and eventually supply shifts to meet demand. The economic wheel starts turning again.

This idea is good in theory. Thus, the current economic stimulus package. So what's the problem? First, banks and other businesses are doing what any smart company would do in the current economic climate: They're hoarding the cash the government is handing them to save their own bacon. So at least a portion of the money being injected is doing no greasing.

Second, and more importantly, what happens when to the big health care system created by the stimulus package when the money runs out in three years? This is why the smart Republican governors are rejecting the stimulus money. It isn't out of spite. It's because they realize that instead of just the one-time costs of repairing roads and building schools, this stimulus money is directed to build programs in their states that are going to need to be funded after the stimulus money runs out.

Third, and most importantly, if I open my front door and there's $20 sitting on the porch, and the next day there's $20 sitting on my porch, and the next day there's $20 sitting on my porch, the next day when I need $20, what do I do? (Remember Clark W. Griswald on Christmas Vacation and his pool? He'd gotten a Christmas bonus every year before...)

Keynesian Economics may work in the short run, but in the long run, it creates a dependent nation. Why work when I have money sitting on my porch each morning? And as taxes are raised to pay for more and more dependents, the producers ask themselves, why am I doing all this work to have half of my money taken away?

THE LITTLE RED HEN

To put what is happening today into context, let's revert back to our childhood. If the story of the Little Red Hen were rewritten today, the Little Red Hen would be forced by law to give 50% of her bread to the other "Not I" animals. Let me ask: How does doing that help Duck, Cat, and Dog in the long-run?

If that weren't bad enough, the Little Red Hen would also be disdained by the world because of all the wheat that she has. (Never mind that she planted the grain herself without the help of Duck, Cat, or Dog.) These principles are so easy, we teach them to our 2 year-olds.

Once again, the story changes completely if the Little Red Hen sees that Duck is in need and asks if he would like some bread. There are obviously people who are in need, but taking from one person and handing to the other does not fit within the proper role of government.

ARTHUR LAFFER

So what is the answer? How does an economy grow? How did The United States rise from its humble beginnings to the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world? The answer seems obvious that it happens by inspiring individuals to be Little Red Hens instead of Ducks, Cats, and Dogs.

Arthur Laffer came up with the idea of the Laffer Curve. The basic idea is that, if the tax rate is 0%, the government will collect $0 in taxes. And if the tax rate is 100%, the government will also collect $0 in taxes. Would you work if the government taxed you at 100%? How about 99%? How about 98%? Obviously, at those tax rates, your incentive to get out and put in a 16-hour day is significantly diminished? How about if the government taxed you at 10%?

The results form a nice looking curve that looks like the St. Louis arch. Government revenue goes up for a time as taxes are raised, and then it comes back down as taxes become too high. The idea of presented by Laffer is that you can cut taxes significantly from the right side of the arch, and doing so can actually cause a move to that same level on the left side of the arch. Government revenue stays the same, but tax rates are cut significantly.

If I told you that, for every time you run around the track, I'll give you $10, how many laps would you run? How about if I told you that I'll give you $50 per lap. How many laps now? A person runs more laps when it's worth more, which means that person produces more.

The reduction in taxes creates more money for Investment, which creates more supply, and demand shifts to meet supply (instead of supply shifting to meet demand.)

REAGANOMICS

When Ronald Regan took office in 1981, the United States was in a recession worse than what we face today. Unemployment was at 10.3%. Inflation was at 13.5%. The Prime Interest Rate was 21.5%!

Over the next 7 years, Reagan slashed taxes from an astounding 70% to 28%. One year later, the recession had ended. Unemployment dropped. Inflation was down to 3.2%. Corporate earnings rose 29% (meaning that 29% more money was going to be taxed at the new lower rate... Hmmmm... Maybe Laffer was onto something.) The economy grew at an annual rate of 3.4%.

Yet, people (particularly liberal commentators) scoff at Supply-Side economics. They use the term "Reaganomics" and "Voodoo Economics" and "Trickle-Down Economics" because of the negative connotation those terms carry in the media. If you listen to the criticism, they will always say, "It has never worked! Reagan cut taxes, and government revenue decreased. He created a deficit! You can't cut taxes and increase government revenue."

They are correct. Unless you are on the right side of the curve and cut taxes so that you don't cross the apex, you will not increase government revenues. That isn't the purpose or the point.

What they always fail to mention is that the government revenue did not decrease by the amount of the tax cuts -- In other words, taxes were cut by 40%, but that didn't lead to a 40% reduction in government revenue. Not even close. It did work. While the government revenues may not have equaled what they had been before the massive tax cuts, they did not fall significantly either, just as the Laffer curve predicted. Most of the tax cuts had a neutral or small effect on tax revenues. By 1990, tax revenues had doubled since 1980.

So how do we close the gap for what increased productivity doesn't make up? We reduce all the frivolous government spending. Let's start with these types of things:

Top 10 Examples of Government Waste

Here are some facts about the effect Reagan's policies had on the economy from Wikipedia:

On 8 of the 10 key economic variables examined, the American economy performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and post-Reagan years.
Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years.
Interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency.
The only economic variable that was worse in the Reagan period than in both the pre- and post-Reagan years was the savings rate, which fell rapidly in the 1980s.
The productivity rate was higher in the pre-Reagan years but much lower in the post-Reagan years.

And my favorite...
The rich actually ended up paying a larger total percentage of the taxes, and the taxes on the poor got smaller and smaller with each year. (I thought the only way for that to happen was to force the rich to pay more, Obama.)

Critics claim that this all happened because of the deficit and the government spending. I claim that it is human nature to justify your position so that you appear to be right.

I am confident that there never would have been a deficit, had Reagan not needed to fight the Cold War and crush the Soviet Union (remember deficit spending for the purposes of war from the last post), which he did by ingeniously outspending them on weapons and his "Star Wars" project. In their attempt to keep up, they spent themselves into bankruptcy.

Supply-side economics may possibly lead to deficits in the short-run, but it leads to consistent and exceptional growth in the long-run as it gives incentive for more Little Red Hens to spring up.

GM

As Ronald Reagan stated so well:

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

As an example, take General Motors. This is a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy. Why is General Motors on the verge of bankruptcy when other automobile companies such as Toyota are managing to survive without any government loans?

The employees at GM are unionized. For years and years, the union has threatened the company with a strike in order to have higher wages. As a result, the Average Labor Cost per U.S. Hourly Worker at GM in 2005 was $73.73/hour.

The U.S. employees at Toyota are not unionized. Their average is $48.

If GM tried to cut wages, the union would strike. In 1935, F.D.R. signed into law the National Labor Relations act, which makes it illegal for a company to try to stop the formation of a union. It also specifies that GM cannot fire employees who strike over economic issues.

The solution for GM would be for the government to remove these bully regulations, let GM cut expenses to match the industry (Toyota), and fire anybody who strikes and replace them with some of the many Americans looking for jobs.

Soon after Ronald Reagan took over the presidency, the Federal Air Traffic Controllers went on strike seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek. Reagan held a press conference and stated that if the striking federal workers "do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated." (Unlike GM, he could legally do that because they were federal employees.) 48 hours later, Reagan fired all 11,345 striking workers.

GM needs the government to get out of the way and let them do business the way it should be done.

BABY OBAMA

We need to get the scientists to work on cloning Ronald Reagan. (I should have snuck a few billion for that in the stimulus bill... Nobody read it, so they never would have known.) I came across this quote from Reagan from 1965:

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."

That describes perfectly the current administration and their solution to the current economic problems. There is a better way.

I Feel Like I'm Taking Crazy Pills!

2009-04-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

I'm an optimist, even in tough times. In September of last year, it was my opinion that we ought to let the market run its course, even if that meant credit freezing up and a rough couple years. But I wasn't violently opposed to the bailout either, because it was my understanding that we would buy up this bad debt because we have deep pockets as a nation, and that someday, as the market rebounded, this debt would be paid back.

At that time, I believed that the United States could never slip into economic collapse because of all the fail-safes we have now that we didn't have in 1929. There wouldn't be any runs on banks, because banks are now Federally Insured (FDIC) up to $250,000. We now have Automatic-Stabilizers built into the economy such as Unemployment, which means that if people lose their jobs, they still receive a check, which means they will still spend money, and the economy will keep moving. We have the Federal Reserve, which influences interest rates, and makes sure that we won't be bringing in wheelbarrows of money to buy a loaf of bread like the Germans did in 1923. I genuinely believed that either way, we would be fine.

The past 70 days have changed my mind. I am still optimistic (*cough* 2012 *cough*), but I am genuinely fearful for the future of our country. The United States is the greatest nation ever, but that doesn't mean there are no limits. The same liberals who consistently complained about us being "stretched too thin" militarily in Iraq are now stretching us paper-thin economically.

What if we have another Hurricane Ike this season? What if North Korea launches a nuclear missile at Hawaii next week like some speculate they might? What if the fact that Russia is going to host bombers in Cuba and Venezuela means something? Could we fight a World War III today in our current financial situation? How deep are our pockets?

DEFICIT SPENDING

Obama's stimulus plan cost the nation $900 billion that was not originally in the budget. Where is the money coming from? When the government spends more than they "earn" through taxes, it is called deficit spending. To put it in personal terms, let's say I make $250,000/year. (Not true, but that is the line Obama has defined for excess.) If I bring in $250,000/year and I spend $350,000/year, I am deficit spending.

The question is, How can I spend $100,000 more than I make? That's impossible. Although anyone can see that this makes no logical sense, the government does it. But how do they fund it?

MONEY GROWS ON TREES

Option #1: Print more money. Easy enough, right? I described the problem with doing this a few posts ago when I talked about baseball cards and how something becomes more valuable with the less there are of that particular thing. Conversely, something becomes less valuable when there are more of that particular thing. So when we print more money, each dollar becomes worth less, which means we are able to buy less with each dollar, which is what we refer to as inflation. The question is: How much money can we print before we're bringing wheelbarrows of money to buy a loaf of bread like they were in Germany in 1923?

The Federal Reserve influences interest rates to control inflation. They raise interest rates to slow inflation, and lower interest rates to increase inflation. The problem, as you might be thinking, is that interest rates are currently at historic lows.

MADE IN CHINA

Option #2: We sell Treasury Bills, Bonds, etc. In essence, we raise money by telling people: You give us $900, we will give you this note, and then in one year, you give us the note back, and we will give you $1000.

The U.S. sells these in large volume to raise money to pay for the spending. The first obvious problem with this approach is, Ummmmmm.... Where are we getting the $100 for each note to pay for the note at the end of the year? Answer: Obama's team has projected that we will see only a slight decline in the economy this year, but that his stimulus plan will lead to slight growth in 2010, and then increased growth thereafter, and we will pay for it out of the increased tax revenues. (If there is an 10 year-old in the room, they are now saying, "Then why is President Obama constantly saying it's going to get worse before it gets better and that this recovery may take years?")

Second, who is going to buy $800 billion worth of treasuries? Answer: Nobody is sure. The largest holder of U.S. treasuries is China, holding about $740 billion worth as of January. (This fact is scary, because they already hold the power to devalue the dollar if they sold those treasuries en masse.) The problem is that China doesn't want to buy anymore, because they're scared they won't be paid back. Secretary Clinton recently visited to ask (beg) them to continue to buy the debt.

BIG BAD BUSH

I'm sure any liberal reading is now saying, "You conservatives are hypocrites! Clinton left Bush with a budget surplus, and he turned it into a record deficit!" I say, That is true.

When Bush took office, the country was sliding into a slight recession (which is normal after periods of growth.) But September 11, 2001 changed everything. First of all, it pushed the country further into recession. But more importantly, we had a new, unanticipated war to fight.

Deficit spending is obviously not ideal. It historically has been reserved for times of war. We never want to create a deficit, but sometimes it is necessary (World War II, the Cold War, the War on Terror) to spend more than we have on troops, weaponry, etc. in order to maintain our freedom.

The same liberals who have trashed Bush for helping to create a record $482 billion deficit (largely due to the War on Terrorism) support a president who will add an additional $1 trillion in deficit spending. More than two times Bush's "record" deficit in additional spending! You tell me: Who are the hypocrites?

FEAR

All of that is scary enough. But even if the economy collapsed, Americans would do what they did in 1929 -- We would band together and get through it. What scares me infinitely more than that is the news that Barack Obama fired the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner.

Last month, another well-known world leader did something similar. This particular government had decided that rice prices were too high for their people, and they mandated that the rice companies lower their prices. The Cargill Rice Plant had not met those imposed prices, so the government expropriated (took over) the company. This government has now taken over airports, oil companies, sugar factories, and other businesses because they are not meeting the government's requirements. The government believes they can do it better. The country: Venezuela. The leader: Hugo Chavez.

Obama's team is now together a recovery plan for GM. Phew! Obama's team are most certainly auto experts, and the government is the model for efficiency, right? What do you suppose Obama's team is going to force GM to do. Let me take a stab in the dark: Produce more "green" vechicles?

GO GREEN?

The only problem is, Americans don't buy the green vehicles. Here are the Top 10 selling cars of 2008:

#1: Ford F-Series: 515,513
#2: Chevy Silverado: 465,065
#3: Toyota Camry: 436,617
#4: Honda Accord: 372,789
#5: Toyota Corolla: 351,007
#6: Honda Civic: 339,289
#7: Nissan Altima: 269,668
#8: Chevy Impala: 265,840
#9: Dodge Ram: 245,840
#10: Honda CR-V: 197,279

Where is the Toyota Prius? Where are all the hybrids? Are you telling me that the #1, #2, & #9 top selling cars in the U.S. are all full-size trucks?

So tell me: How is producing more green vechicles going to help GM? Their least fuel efficient vehicle (with the exception of the Hummer) is their best-seller!

Why? People aren't dumb. First, Americans like to be able to fit their whole family and their gear in the car. They like to be able to tow their boats and trailers. They like to be safe in the snow. They like to feel safe.

Second, they can do basic math. They can see that a base Toyota Corolla costs $15,350 and gets 32 miles per gallon, and that the base Toyota Prius Hybrid costs $22,000 and gets 47 miles per gallon. An average person drives 12,000 miles per year. In a Corolla, that would require 375 gallons of gas. In a Prius, that would require 255 gallons of gas. That is a difference of 120 gallons. At $2.00/gallon, that means the Prius saves you $240/year. At that rate, it would take you 27 years to break even. Even at $4.00/gallon, it would still take you 13.5 years.

Honda built a Hybrid Accord starting in 2005, but they stopped manufacturing the Hybrid model in 2008, because there was not enough demand.

AIR AMERICA

This frustrates the liberals. They want people to go green to "save" the environment. So they have to resort to manipulating the market.

It's the same thing that happens with Liberal Talk Radio. Every time there is an attempt to start a Liberal radio program, it sputters out and dies almost immediately. Why? Because there is no demand. The majority of the Democrat voting base don't listen to talk radio. So what do the liberals do? They talk about Fairness Doctrine and forcing conservative talk show hosts to give equal time to the other side.

Once again, it is simple supply and demand. If there is a demand for something, somebody will manufacture a product to meet that demand. If there is no demand, the supplier will go away. If oil supply descreases to the point where gas is $50/gallon, there will be a demand for alternative energy sources, and a supply will be provided. The supply and demand curves have a natural balance, and when you manipulate the curves, they will fight to get back to their natural balance.

The goverment pays $1.3 billion of our taxpayer money to farmers each year to NOT grow corn. There are so many large companies that can grow corn much more efficiently than small farmers and sell it at a lower price that small farmers can't make ends meet. So the government pays $1.3 billion each year for farmers to not grow corn, which reduces the supply, which raises the price of corn for you and I so that the small farmers don't go out of business.

I am obviously sympathetic to the small farmers, but there is something not right about the government using taxpayer money to manipulate the market. Wouldn't it be better to create a "Small Farmer" brand, and sell it at an increased cost like is done with organic food or non-dolphin tuna fish. Or maybe to have benefit concerts, like Willie Nelson does each year at Farm Aid, to raise money to help these small farmers.

ACE IN THE HOLE

Obama cannot save GM by pushing his agenda onto them like he has everything else. But everything he is doing is agenda driven. To illustrate, the great Stimulus to "rebuild this nation" includes only $72.5 billion out of $787 billion (9.2%) to fix bridges, mass transit, and highways. Where is the other 91% going...? Here is a great figure of the breakdown:

Obama Stimulus Breakdown

Obama is attempting to move forward on every liberal agenda item that hasn't been able to be pushed through in the past.

I wondered how he planned to change GM and the auto industry to "green" when there is no demand. I thought he might offer more stimulus money to subsidize the purchase of green cars. But yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said something that sent chills up my spine.

Rush predicted that Obama will increase domestic oil drilling regulations to limit the supply of oil, which would increase the price of gasoline, which would create the demand Obama needs in order to sell the green cars.

Seventy days ago, I would have never believed such a thing was possible in our nation. Now, I'm not so sure. I fear for the next 1390 days. But I am optimistic that the American people will see what is happening and will not stand for this government to destroy everything we stand for.

Case In Point

2009-03-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

This letter exemplifies one of the points I was trying to make in my last post, with regard to the AIG bonuses.

AIG Executive Resignation Letter

Let me pose this question: How is the result of the situation described in this letter good for AIG or the economy as a whole? There is something desperately wrong with this picture.

Goodbye, Dignity! It Was a Good Run.

2009-03-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

An historic event occurred last night. For those of you who missed it, the dignity of the Office of the President of the United States, which had remained intact for almost 233 years, was destroyed. For the first time in U.S. History, a sitting President of the United States appeared on a late night comedy show. It only took him 61 days in office.

This came just two days after former President George W. Bush refused to criticize President Obama on the economy in his first speech since leaving office. President Bush responded, "He deserves my silence." Regardless of what you think about Bush's policies, he respects the Office.

Obama rationalized the appearance, saying that it provided a unique opportunity to speak to a large audience about the economy. In this dignified appearance, Obama walked out at The Tonight Show and waved and smiled like he was Brad Pitt. He joked about how Kev looked like Secret Service, how the Air Force One jackets were cool, and talked about adding basketball standards to the White House tennis court. Oh, and in case you didn't hear, when joking with Jay about what a bad bowler he is, Obama said, "It's like the Special Olympics or something."

Obama quickly apologized after the show, but whether it's The Special Olympics or poking fun at Nancy Reagan, when Obama is speaking extemporaneously, we get a glimpse of his true character. But there were moments that were more disturbing to me than the poking fun at the handicapped:

"I do think, though, that the American people are all in a place where they understand it took us a while to get into this mess, it's going to take a while for us to get out of it. And if they have confidence that I'm making steps to deal with issues like health care and energy and education, that matter deeply to their daily lives, then I think they're going to give us some time."

So... The American people won't mind the fact that Obama is destroying the economy with his policies because he's pushing through "free" health care.

Speaking about AIG: "Now, the question is, who in their right mind, when your company is going bust, decides we're going to be paying a whole bunch of bonuses to people? And that, I think, speaks to a broader culture that existed on Wall Street, where I think people just had this general attitude of entitlement, where, we must be the best and the brightest, we deserve $10 million or $50 million or $100 million dollar payouts --

"And, you know, the immediate bonuses that went to AIG are a problem. But the larger problem is we've got to get back to an attitude where people know enough is enough, and people have a sense of responsibility and they understand that their actions are going to have an impact on everybody. And if we can get back to those values that built America, then I think we're going to be okay."

First, did he really disdain "a feeling of entitlement"? Ha!

Second, let's discuss bonuses. I've heard all of this talk about AIG and the $150 Million in bonuses. When you go apply for a job, what do you get paid? Why doesn't a new McDonald's hire start at $100/hr? Because there are high school students who are willing to work for $6.55/hr. If you were McDonald's, would you hire somebody for $100/hr when you have someone who will work for $6.55/hr? No -- That would be ridiculous.

On the flip side, if you are on the board for a major company that is in trouble (for example, AIG), who do you want to bring in to fix the company? You obviously want to hire the best people with the best minds and proven track records. What are you going to pay them? Warren Buffet is a financial genius. What if you called Warren Buffet, and offered him $6.55/hr to fix your company?

Here is the point: If you offer $6.55/hr, you're going to get somebody who is worth $6.55/hr. And that is the problem with Obama putting a salary cap of $500,000/year for executives receiving bailout money. The great financial minds who are worth $10 Million/year will leave. The reason those employees received those bonuses is because that is what the market bears.

When Obama says that "we've got to get back to an attitude where people know enough is enough", what he is saying is that people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are wrong. They should have reached $250,000/year and said enough is enough. That's the American Dream, right?

Then Leno actually asked a really good question: "Well, here's something that kind of scared me. Today they passed this thing that says we're going to tax 90 percent of these bonuses. And the part that scares me is, I mean, you're a good guy -- if the government decides they don't like a guy, all of a sudden, hey, we're going to tax you and then, boom, and it passes."

Obama responded: "Well, look, I understand Congress' frustrations, and they're responding to, I think, everybody's anger. But I think that the best way to handle this is to make sure that you've closed the door before the horse gets out of the barn. And what happened here was the money has already gone out and people are scrambling to try to find ways to get back at them."

First, notice how it was Congress' frustrations and "they" are responding. Obama is innocent. Unless you were listening to his comment just previous to this question where he said, "The main thing -- we're going to do everything we can to see if we can get these bonuses back." It's "we" when it's politically expedient, and "they" when it's not.

But to answer your question, Jay, if Congress decides that 84 cars is excessive and they need to move quickly before the horse gets out of the barn, they will take all of your cars.

"We were talking earlier about credit cards, and it's legal to charge somebody 30 percent on their credit card, and charge fees and so forth that people don't always know what they're getting into. So the answer is to deal with those laws in a way that gives the average consumer a break."

Why do credit card companies charge 30 percent on their credit card? Because people will pay 30 percent! It is what the market has dictated the percentage will be for people with that particular credit score. There is nothing evil about it. The credit card companies aren't out on the street forcing people to take their money.

"When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face there's a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit card, or you get a mortgage, there's no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you're going to be protected."

How about this instead? How about if a person doesn't take out a loan that they can't afford to pay back? I don't drive a Ferrari because I know I can't afford one. It doesn't matter if the bank qualifies me or not. I know I can't make the payment. If I bought a Ferrari anyway, I wouldn't expect that the government would bail me out. I would expect I would see a repo man knocking on my door. If you purposely stick a knife in the toaster, are you protected?

"And what we need is steady growth; we need young people, instead of -- a smart kid coming out of school, instead of wanting to be an investment banker, we need them to decide they want to be an engineer, they want to be a scientist, they want to be a doctor or a teacher."

This was maybe the most disturbing comment of the night. Obama would like to dictate what young people want to be when they grow up. Why does that sound familiar...? (Remember that the only difference between Socialism and Communism is that a people go into Socialism voluntarily.)

There is more, but you get the point. Is this not scary to anybody else?! This is our President!

George Washington, the epitome of dignity in the Office, reluctantly accepted the nomination of his party both terms. He had no desire to be President, but he did it for the sake of solidarity for the new country. What a stark contrast with President "Pitt" on Leno last night. It was a sad day.

A Must-Listen for Conservatives

2009-03-02T10:14:00.000-08:00

Rush Limbaugh was the keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this weekend. It was a great speech that described Conservatism perfectly. It is lengthy, but well worth the listen:

Rush Limbaugh CPAC Speech

They also took a poll at the convention asking which person would be the best candidate for 2012. For the third year in a row, Mitt Romney won the poll. (Bobby Jindal came in 2nd, and Sarah Palin came in 3rd.) Here's a story to that link:

Romney Wins Straw Poll

Can you imagine the strength of a Romney/Palin ticket in 2012? As Rush mentioned in his speech, the formula for a landslide win is already there. One President in the last 200 years initially won the election with 90.89% of the electoral vote and was reelected with 97.58%... and that President was the most conservative in our nation's history, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Only one President since 1776 has had a higher two-term average at 100%, and that President was none other than the father of our nation, George Washington.

"I was expecting the Stimulus to be a little more Stimulus-y than this... That Barack Obama is..."

2009-02-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Help me out with something... Isn't the point of the economic stimulus to help the state of the economy? So why does the economy just keep getting worse and worse with every move President Obama and Congress make? If this was the answer to all our problems that the Democratic Congress passed, shouldn't we see cheering in the streets and a major rebound in the market?

I'm not an economics expert, but here is a link to a great article written by a couple of professors who are:

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/02/the_market_is_shorting_obamas.html

THE STOCK MARKET

The article is entitled "The Market is Shorting Obama's Stimulus". The Stock Market is a public forum for buying and selling shares in a corporation. When a private company makes the decision to "go public", what they are doing, in essence, is saying "We don't have enough money as is to pursue our plans to grow our business. We need to raise more money." Let's say that the company needs to raise $50 million. They decide to sell 10 million shares at $5 each to raise the money.

We, as investors, say "We will buy shares in your company and, in return, when you make more money, you will pay us a share of the profits ('dividends')." I buy 100 shares in the company for $500, and I become a part-owner in the company. When the company takes that $50 million and generates a profit and they decide to pay a $0.50 dividend on each share, I make a $50 that year on my investment.

SUPPLY & DEMAND

That is the primary stock market. Over the years, a secondary market has evolved. The most basic law of economics is "Supply & Demand". As some stocks became consistent money-makers for investors, more and more people wanted to buy those stocks. (In other words, there was an increased "demand" for shares in the company.) But the number of shares was limited to the original 1 million. (In other words, the "supply" of shares was fixed.)

What happens when demand is greater than supply? We see the result every Christmas with the hot items. Whether it's the Tickle-Me Elmo or the Nintendo Wii, the result is the same. People are willing to pay $350 for a $250 Nintendo Wii system.

(The opposite is also true: If supply is greater than demand, than sellers have to reduce the price in order to give incentive for people to buy, like exactly what is happening in the auto market right now.)

So investors were willing to pay me $6 for the $5 share, because they anticipate that they will end up making more money in the end.

MAKING A PROFIT

This secondary market created another phenomenon. Investors started seeing the values of stocks increase because of the increased demand, and they anticipated that the stocks would continue to increase. So they would buy the $5 for $6, not because they wanted to earn the dividends, but because they figured that stock would soon go to $7, and they could sell the stock at a $1 profit on their investment.

Many of the stocks in the stock market today don't even pay dividends; investors today mainly buy stocks because they anticipate that the value of the stock will increase.

THE SHORT SELL

All of this background is to define what is meant in the article by the market "shorting" Obama's Stimulus plan. The idea of a short sell is a method to make money when you anticipate that the value of a stock is going to drop.

As an example, six months ago, you could have made a deal to sell gas to a person at $3.95/gallon because that's what gas cost at the time. But if the person didn't come to collect their gas until today, you could buy the gas you're selling to them at $1.65/gallon, which means you would make $2.30/gallon profit.

Investors in the stock market who anticipate a stock is going to go down in value "sell" stocks they don't actually own at current prices. Then when it comes time for them to actually buy the stocks, if the price has gone down, they can make a profit. (If, by chance, the price has gone up, then they lose money on the transaction, just like as if gas had gone from $3.95 to $4.95 -- I would lose $1/gallon on the transaction.)

THE MARKET AS A FUTURE INDICATOR OF ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

Because investors spend a large percentage of their time studying the companies and their forecasts and earnings reports and the market, the Stock Market is generally a good indicator of what is going to happen to economic growth in the future. When the stock market is up, economic growth is positive; when the stock market is down, the future doesn't look good for the economy.

Investors are selling (and short selling) stocks right now. What does that mean they anticipate is going to happen in the market in the near future?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a group of stocks from a variety of industries that are averaged to give investors some sort of indication on how the stock market as a whole is performing. Here is how the Dow Jones has reacted to the attempts of the government to "fix" the economy:

10/04/2008 - Mortgage Bailout Passes: Dow Drops 508 points
11/05/2008 - Obama Elected: Dow Drops 444 points
01/20/2008 - Obama Sworn in as President: Dow Drops 332 points
02/13/2008 - House and Senate Pass Stimulus: Dow Drops 298 points
02/18/2008 - Obama Signs Stimulus: Dow Drops 90 points
02/19/2008 - Obama Unveils Mortgage Plan: Dow Drops 100 points

I'm sensing a pattern here...

PERSPECTIVE

To give some perspective, let's say that my personal finances were looking bad. What would be the solution? If I was starting to miss payments and it was looking like I might lose everything, which would be the proper approach:

A) Mortgage my house, cars, television and everything I could think of to get more money so I could have cash on hand to make all of my payments, and then start building an addition on to my house.

OR

B) Cut back spending, sell my home and cars if needed, and put more time and money into education so that I can get a raise at work.

Hmmmm... This is a tough one.

HARVARD

Does President Obama not recognize this? Of course he does! He's a smart man. He graduated with a Juris Doctorate from the best and most rigorous universities in the world: Harvard University. You have to be extremely smart to get a degree from Harvard! (Unless you earned an MBA from Harvard and your name is George W. Bush, that is... Then you're stupid and must have cheated.)

So why is President Obama and the Democratic congress pursuing plans that are making matters worse? There has to be an ulterior motive. The answer is that President Obama is a smart man. He sees this as a great opportunity to infuse his ideology into the government and further his agenda at a time where we "can't afford to spend time" debating whether it is good for our country or not. He is spreading fear far and wide so that we will make rash decisions.

HOPE AND CHANGE

Hope is not lost. Governor Bobby Jindal and other Republican governors who have said that they will not accept stimulus funds (although the Dems were clever enough to include a clause that forces them to) show us that there are some true conservatives out there.

I have had the thought cross my mind time and time again about how things would have been different if Mitt Romney had been able to get momentum a little bit earlier and had been the Republican nominee. Romney is a true conservative who understands how money works and has a proven track record in business. Here is a snippet from Wikipedia about Romney and the 2002 Olympics:

"Romney served as president and CEO of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games held in Salt Lake City. In 1999, before Romney was hired, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. Plans were being made to scale back the games in order to compensate for the fiscal crisis. The Games were also damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials, including then Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) President and CEO Frank Joklik. Joklik and SLOC vice president Dave Johnson were forced to resign.

"On February 11, 1999, Romney was hired as the new president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Romney revamped the organization's leadership and policies, reduced budgets, and boosted fund raising. He also worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by coordinating a $300 million security budget. Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up clearing a profit of $100 million, not counting the $224.5 million in security costs contributed by outside sources.

"Romney contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and donated the $825,000 salary he earned as President and CEO to charity."

I wonder what the Dow Jones would have done on November 6th if Mitt Romney had been elected President.

Whether it's Jindal or Romney or another true conservative, 2012 won't get here fast enough for me. Thank goodness we at least have congressional elections in 2010. The way things are heading, I imagine at those elections the dominating theme of "Change" will still hold true.

Lincoln and Obama: No Comparison

2009-02-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

I know I've posted twice recently, and I don't mean to monopolize the blog, but I saw something today that made my blood boil, and I need to vent. I went out this morning and turned on my TV. I changed the channel to CNN, and they were running a special called "From Lincoln to Obama".

Throughout the campaign and the first few months of his presidency, President Obama has spoken about and compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. The media has taken the cue and proliferated that idea. The part of the special I watched had the reporter asking college students how Obama compared to Lincoln. I will answer that question: There is no comparison.

The best book I've ever read is a biography of Lincoln's presidency called "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. She has said that she spent over 10 years writing this masterpiece. Goodwin has pieced together from 120 pages' worth of refrences a book that has a narrative flow unlike any other biography I've read. After reading this book, little doubt is left that Abraham Lincoln is the greatest President in the history of this country.

President Obama has also referred to "Team of Rivals" as a great influence in his life. The premise of the book is that Lincoln chose his party Rivals to fill his cabinet, and that doing so had a great influence on his presidency. Because Obama chose Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State, he and the press have concluded that he is the new Lincoln.

There is no doubt that Lincoln would be proud at how far the country has progressed in terms of race. For a man of black descent to be elected president would be confirmation of everything Lincoln had fought (and died) for.

Two of the students who were being interviewed on the "From Lincoln to Obama" special were black, and the first thing out of both of their mouths was about how Lincoln really didn't care about freeing the slaves, but rather he just wanted to unite the union, and that he was actually a racist. This view, pushed onto students by the liberal school system, is completely false.

Goodwin, who is one of the foremost scholars on Lincoln's life (and a liberal), said in "Team of Rivals":

"There is no way to perpetuate Lincoln's personal feelings about race. There is, however, the fact that armies of scholars, meticulously investigating every aspect of his life, have failed to find a single act of racial bigotry on his part. Even more telling is the observation of Frederick Douglass, who would become a frequent public critic of Lincoln's during his presidency, that of all men he had met, Lincoln was 'the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.' This remark takes on additional meaning when one realizes that Douglass had met dozens of celebrated abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Salmon Chase. Apparently, Douglass never felt with any of them, as he did with Lincoln, an 'entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race.'"

"Lincoln always believed, he later said, that 'if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong' and could not remember when he did not 'so think, and feel.'"

Lincoln fought every day of his political life for the abolition of slavery against the Democrats, who battled him every step of the way. He was a Republican -- The first Republican president, whose main platform was antislavery.

Of course Lincoln's greatest desire was to save the Union. From the first day of his presidency, the southern states has suceded from the north to form their own country. Lincoln held this country together during its darkest days. He emancipated the slaves and saved the nation. His life was taken because of his beliefs.

Barack Obama has done nothing. Absolutely nothing. This has nothing to do with politics -- Perhaps Obama will be the greatest president this nation has ever seen. Only time will tell. But to date, he has done nothing. How could he? He's been in office for less than a month. To draw a comparison between Obama and Lincoln is completely ridiculous.

Obama has risen from poverty like Lincoln -- So have others. Obama selected Clinton to be his Secretary of State. But William Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, became one of his greatest friends and trusted advisors. (I guess that could happen with Obama and Clinton, right...?)

Making a comparison between Obama and Lincoln is like saying that I have studied Tiger Woods' life, and I use Nike One golf balls, and thus I am like Tiger Woods. Obama has risen to the office of President of the United States as Lincoln, so the analogy might be better if I earned my PGA card (I'm working on it.) But a PGA card and a Nike One golf ball still do not make the comparison valid -- There is only one Tiger Woods.

On the birthday on the greatest President in the history of this country, let us not insult his memory by making such a ridiculous comparison. There is only one Abraham Lincoln.

Econ 101

2009-02-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1: WHAT IS A STIMULUS?

With all the talk of the economy and stimulus, I thought I'd add my two cents. (We need every cent we can get, right?) I'm far from an expert on economics, but I've also probably studied more economics than your average Joe.

The idea behind a stimulus is to jumpstart the economy. An economy is dependent on money changing hands. When I decide I can't afford to eat out, then the restaurants begin to lose money. They cut back by letting an employee go, and then that employee can't buy the new DVD player he wanted to, along with others that have been laid off from other businesses. So the electronics store loses business and has to close its doors, creating even more people who aren't spending moeny. And so it goes.

The idea of a stimulus is to get money changing hands again. I decide I can afford to go out to eat, the restaurant gets money, the employee buys a DVD player, and the electronics store stays open. On the surface, it sounds great.

Chapter 2: PRIMING THE LAWNMOWER

I have a lawnmower that was given to me a couple years ago by a friend. The lawnmower was in excellent condition with one minor exception -- It wouldn't run. You could start it, and as long as you kept pressing the primer button, it would run. But the second you stopped priming the engine, the engine would quit.

The stimulus is like the primer on the lawnmower. Under the right circumstances, the primer can facilitate the process of getting the engine running smoothly. But it would make no sense to try to mow the entire lawn while pressing the primer button repeatedly.

Given the present economic circumstances, if the government sends you another check for $1200, what are you going to do with it? If you're like me, you're going to sock it away in savings or pay down debt. How do either of those things help the restaurant or the electronics store? They don't. Saving the money is actually the worst possible situation, because it pulls even more money out of circulation.

Where does the money for the stimulus come from? It's money that should have been yours in the first place -- It comes from the taxpayers. Does the government really have $789 billion extra dollars lying around to stimulate the economy? Obviously not. So where is the money coming from? The contractors that are going to build the new $886,000 Frisbee Golf Course included in the stimulus bill are going to want to get paid. So the government prints more money to pay these contractors.

Chapter 3: BASEBALL CARDS

I used to collect baseball cards. Any idea what the most expensive baseball card is? It's a 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card that sold in February 2007 for $2.35 million. (Talk about stimulating the economy.) Why would anyone pay that much for a piece of cardboard? It doesn't take an economist to figure out it is worth so much because it is so rare. What if there were 100,000 of those cards still around? The relative value of each card would be much less.

So what happens to the value of each dollar we have when more dollars are printed and infused into the economy? The relative value of each dollar becomes that much less. We can buy less for our money, which is what we refer to in economics as (price) inflation.

It becomes obvious that printing money to send out checks to those of us who are going to sock it away in savings is not the answer to our economic problems. So why do they do it if they know it won't work? Because you and I like recieving a check for $1200 from the government (as long as we don't worry about where the money came from), and they expect we'll remember that when it comes time to vote.

Chapter 4: WHY RICH PEOPLE ARE RICH

What does the richest man in the world, Warren Buffet, do with his $1200 stimulus check? Ironically, he doesn't get one. But if he did, I guarantee he wouldn't sock it away in savings. People who are rich have learned to spend their money on things that will make them more money -- That's why they're rich. You and I take our $1200 and spend in on a new HDTV. Warren Buffet would take his $1200 stimulus check and turn it into $2400. How? He would invest in a small company or buy stocks or find a rare baseball card to buy. His uses his money to make money, and he uses the money he made to buy a new HDTV.

President Obama recently put a salary cap of $500,000 on executives recieving federal bailout money. Let's say the executive was making $20 million before the salary cap. What did that executive do with the other $19.5 million? He spent it. The corporate jets need pilots, the huge houses need contractors, the sports cars need vendors, and the extravagant parties need hundreds of workers. While you and I save, the rich can afford to spend.

Rush Limbaugh pointed out a couple weeks back the irony in the percieved evil of the automakers taking their private jets to Washington to ask for federal bailout money (which, keep in mind, is a loan that will be paid back, not a handout like the stimulus is), and yet there is no problem with senators flying in on their private jets for the inauguration.

Chapter 5: IT'S ABOUT CONTROL

Large portions of the stimulus are dedicated to projects in the economy. The $886,000 in the House stimulus bill for the Frisbee Golf Course in Austin, Texas, referred to earlier, is designed to create jobs for people. If we build this frisbee golf course, jobs will be created. Again, a good idea on the surface.

John Thain, former president of Merrill Lynch, was ousted after paying $1.2 million to renovate his office with bailout money. Who did the renovation? My guess is that Mr. Thain wasn't there in his coveralls. Architects and contractors and designers were hired, as Rush pointed out. Jobs were created from the office renovation just as well as they would be created from the frisbee golf course or anything else on the House and Senate stimulus bills.

So why is the frisbee golf course good and the office renovation bad? It's about control. Speaking generally, liberals seek for power. Liberalism taken to its extreme left is Communism. The government has total control over its people. The idea of liberalism and communism is that the individual people can't take care of themselves, and that the government, who has the power, can take care of them. The Democratic government seeks for us to depend on them.

Chapter 6: WHAT IF EVERYBODY WERE LIKE ME?

The principle of caring for one another is the crowning prinicple of God's plan. It is the most noble of characteristics. It would seem on the surface that Universal Health Care and other programs that care for all Americans are also noble ideas. So why does Communism fail, economically-speaking?

A wise and dear friend of mine once pointed out that a good way to evaluate ourselves is to ask the question, What if everybody were like me? The question can be asked about work: What if everybody at work were like me? How would the company function? I've asked it in terms of church service: What if everybody in my church were like me? Would everyone be cared for? And I've asked it in terms of my country: What if everybody in the country were like me? Would we be a strong country or would we fail? This soul-searching question continues to shape my life.

If I were to tell you that you could pay $100 per month for health care or you could recieve it "free", which would you choose? The inherent problem in Communism is that there is more taking than there is contributing. Productivity decreases as people realize that they aren't gaining much for the effort they are putting in, and they in turn put in less effort. What if everyone was like the person living on welfare?

Chapter 7: SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

With that in mind, the solution becomes easy: Reward people according to the amount of effort they put in, and there is incentive to become more productive.

A couple years back, I decided I was going to start investing in the stock market. Since I had no experience, I decided I would run a test first. I started with an imaginary $1000 and "bought" and "sold" stocks on a spreadsheet over the course of one year as I saved real money. In the end, I averaged a 35 percent increase on my money. I was pumped... until I realized that nearly half of that short term capital gain would go to tax. My imaginary 35% turned into 17% in my mind, and I didn't feel that it was worth the risk to invest my money that way.

America is the land of opportunity. But it is difficult when 50 percent of that "opportunity" is immediately taken away.

The stock market is considered a rough indicator of economic growth. Meaning that if the stock market is thriving, the economy will likely grow; if the stock market is dying, the economy will likely follow. What would happen to the stock market today if Congress announced they had passed a bill cutting the corporate tax rate in half? My guess is that we would see the largest one-day gain in history.

We need to cut taxes for everybody, but especially for those who turn money into more money, for those who create jobs, and for those who can spend freely. We decide where the extra money goes. By doing so, we will in turn be more productive as an economy, raising the income of everyone.

TIME TO ACT

If we don't act quickly, the stimulus will go through. The only thing that gets through to our elected officials is their constituency and their future. Make a call, write a letter, send an e-mail, and let your elected officials know that if they vote for the stimulus, this will be their last term in office. It's time for them to go back and take Economics 101.

A Meal at Cafe Rio

2009-02-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting experience the other day. I was standing in line at Cafe Rio, and the father of the family in line in front of me pulled out a wad of cash containing at least a couple $100 bills to pay for his meal. I had the thought pop into my head, What would happen if I turned to them as I picked up my meal and said, "You're in a much better situation than I am to pay for my meal, so you can pay for it" and walked away?

It struck me how obvious it was that doing so would not be proper behavior. We would never expect that a perfect stranger would pick up our meal.

What if this gentleman had instead turned around and offered to pay for my meal? The story changes completely. This is perfectly acceptable (and admirable) behavior. (I don't claim to be in need, and I wouldn't have accepted the offer.)

So what is the difference between the first situation and the second? The answer is agency.

It is interesting to me that the same individuals who would never think to ask for the person in front of them in line to pay for their meal expect that they should be able to have a surgery or retire or go to school and have a stranger pay for it.

The government would have us believe that health care is an entitlement. In other words, everybody is entitled to have "free" health care. How is it free? Are the doctors going to work for free? Obviously not. The money has to come from somewhere. Where is it coming from? The gentleman in line in front of me at Cafe Rio with the wad of cash.

There is no difference in asking the gentleman to pay for my dinner and asking him to pay for my surgery. Whether it's asking this gentleman to pay for a mortgage I got into that I couldn't afford or to bail out the business I mismanaged, it is all the same. It is not acceptable behavior.

But what about individuals who need surgery who can't afford it? Or elderly people that can't work anymore? Or young students who can't afford tuition?

I believe Republicans (who used to represent Conservatism) have gotten a bad reputation over the years for being greedy cold-hearted Scrooges who only care about themselves. My experience has been different -- Some of the wealthiest Conservatives I know are also the most generous.

In fact, I was just curious about whether Democrats or Republicans give more to charity. I did a quick search in Google, and found this page:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&page=1

Here are a couple of interesting quotes from the article:

"It turns out that this idea that liberals give more…is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above average percent of their income, 24 were red states in the last presidential election."

"When you look at the data, it turns out the conservatives give about thirty percent more per conservative-headed family than per liberal-headed family. And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money."

As Conservatives, we believe that if there is a person in line behind us in need, that we ought to turn around and offer to buy their meal. (That's not to say that Liberals don't, because I actually believe that many people are Liberals because they have big hearts and have simply been misled in what Republicans represent, but rather to dispell the stereotype given to Republicans.) But it ought to be our choice.

Cut taxes, reduce spending, and put more money in the hands of ALL Americans. Create private avenues for donations for those who can't afford surgeries or to retire or to go to school. And keep the government out of it (not because they have no authority, although that is also true) because the government is the antithesis of efficiency.

Let the generosity of the most generous people on the face of the earth, the United States of America, show through. It's what's proper.

Ezra Taft Benson Warns of Socialist Aganda...

2008-11-18T15:46:00.001-08:00

Gave this talk in 1977.He was the Secretary of Agriculture during the Eisenhower administration.

This is what is happening.Little by little whether people think so or not, it is happening.

Media Bias Followup

2008-11-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

To follow up on my post from a few days ago, I just got in to read the headlines on the major online news sites, curious to see what they had to say the day after an historic election. It probably shouldn't have suprised me, but it did to see they had a common theme. I had to laugh as I read through the main story on each of their websites. From CNN, under the headline:

IT WILL BE HARD TO CREATE JOBS
Unemployment is likely to rise during the first year of Obama's term, no matter what steps he takes.

"Here's the challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama as he weighs how to create more jobs: Another half-million jobs likely will be lost between now and Inauguration Day in January...

"...Economists generally believe there's little Obama can do to stop more job losses in the short-term, even if he's able to get a new economic stimulus package passed by the lame-duck Congress and signed into law by President Bush.

"'Superman couldn't change what's in store for the U.S. economy. It's going to be ugly,' said Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research."

I'm sure that would have been the exact same story run about McCain, had he been elected. The one that really made me laugh, though, was on MSNBC's website under the story entitled:

OBAMA FACES GREAT EXPECTATIONS

"Even after nearly two years in the spotlight, little is understood about the 47-year-old first-term senator's approach to leadership. His resume: community organizer, eight years as state legislator, and less than four as U.S. senator.

"As a lawmaker, he has displayed a knack for working with Republicans on a handful of favorite issues. But he has devoted most of his time in the Senate to running for president. Unlike the past seven presidents, he was never a governor or vice president. And unlike John F. Kennedy, the last senator to move directly to the presidency, Obama has not commanded troops in wartime."

I'm sure MSNBC was saying the same thing about Obama's inexperience prior to the election and we simply didn't notice.

President-elect Obama set the media's agenda for the next few weeks in his victory speech:

"The road ahead will be long. We may not get there in one year or even one term.

"There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem."

I'm sure he was saying that along the campaign trail and we just missed it.

After promising the world throughout the campaign, it appears it is now time to lower expectations.

Morning in America

2008-11-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

Obviously, the election didn't turn out the way I had hoped (though I suspected it wouldn't), but we're going to be fine. I found this great essay by John Mark Reynolds called Morning in America. Here is a snippet of the essay:

"Wednesday the sun came up and I was happy. It is still morning in America. The candidate I voted for did not win, but I got to vote in a free and fair election. Power will be passed peacefully and the Constitution is intact.

We should never take that for granted.
The United States of America is still a marvelous place to live."

It is worth your time to read.

(I also recommend checking out his essay on Discrimination and Prop 8.)

Today is the Day!

2008-11-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone out there has voted or will vote today!

Lack of Honesty in the News/Media

2008-10-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

This was an article written by a Democratic Journalist about the lack of truth in the news/media! It is worth the long read!

Meridian Magazine

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.