1. How can President Obama hold a jobs summit and not invite the Chamber Of Commerce ? That's like holding a football game and forgetting to invite the offense.

2. How can the unemployment rate drop from 10.2% to 10% when 11,000 more jobs were lost in november 2009 ?

3. From 1776 to 1913, the value of the dollar increased by 13%. In 1913, the Federal Reserve was implemented. Since 1913, the value of the dollar has dropped by 92%. Why do we have a Federal Reserve ?

4. Why would the President announce a withdrawal date of july 2011 from a war that is not yet won ?

5. Why would President Obama call the november 2009 jobs report "the best jobs report since december 2007" and talk about White House administration officials hugging each other in joy over the good news, when the november unemployment rate is 10% and the december 2007 unemployment rate was 4.9% ? FYI – the january 2008 unemployment rate was also 4.9%.

6. Why are the extramarital affairs of golfer Tiger Woods a big news story ?

7. If the Federal Reserve prints money out of thin air, backed by nothing, in order to, say, lend $85 billion to AIG, and then AIG pays back that money from profits, isn't the net effect nothing but a devaluation of the dollar ?

8. Isn't a devaluation of the dollar nothing but a hidden tax on the assets of all Americans ?

9. If a citizen continually spends more money than he/she makes, he/she will go bankrupt. How is it any different when the government does the same thing, except that the government will take all the citizens down along with it ?

10. Why would we hand health care over to government control when the part of health care the government does control (Medicare/Medicaid) is already so far in the red ?

11. How can the Obama stimulus possibly be working when it is based upon money borrowed or printed out of thin air, backed by nothing, and is therefore entirely artificial ? (See questions #3, #7, and #8).

12. If question #11 is too confusing, perhaps this will help simplify the matter. Does a man up to his neck in credit card debt improve his financial situation by getting more credit cards ?

13. What is wrong with asking the President of the United States to produce his original birth certificate ?

14. Is there any major Obama policy that is supported by the American people ?

15. Why don't we just put Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in front of a firing squad and save everyone a lot of time and money ?

16. How do tax increases ever help the private sector economy ?

17. Shouldn't there have to be at least one act of Tea Party-related violence (from the Tea Party side) before the media denounces the crazy, violent, extremist Tea Partiers ?

18. On the same subject, why is it considered crazy and extreme to be in favor of fiscal responsibility, liberty, and the U.S. Constitution, as the Tea Partiers are ? What does that say about the state of our country ?

19. On the jobs front, which Obama policies are pro-business ?

20. Why are Democrats now in favor of cutting Medicare, when they've been against Medicare cuts for four decades ?

One of the most disturbing things about Barack Obama is not Obama himself, but rather some of the people around him, including several people he has put into positions of authority. I've already detailed the radical nature of a couple Obama administration personnel, Science Czar John Holdren and FCC Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd. Holdren has a number of crazy beliefs, among them being the idea that the U.S. Constitution doesn't entitle people to have children. Holdren declared “neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce" in his 1977 book, Ecoscience. Evidently, Holdren missed the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence – "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In Holdren's defense, he only attended MIT and Stanford. Maybe they don't teach the basics at those elite schools. I don't know. I could only afford to go to Podunk University in Backwater, USA (so I am oppressed and demand reparations ! Just kidding. My inner whiny liberal took over for a second there). Yet, somehow I know the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution better than Holdren does. I must have read about it on a bathroom wall somewhere, or maybe at a gun show.

Mark Lloyd is another elite. He was a professor at Georgetown and a visiting lecturer at MIT prior to becoming a Hugo Chavez-loving Nazi hell-bent on destroying free speech on America's airwaves. Here's a quote from the well-educated Professor Lloyd:

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.”

Yes, Mr. Lloyd, it certainly IS clear that your focus is not free speech. That's why you should take the Che poster down from the wall of your office, clean out your desk, and go peddle your commie crap someplace like Cuba or Venezuela, but not here. Not in this country. We still call this the land of the free, not the land of government diktat.

Another Communist in the Obama administration is the eminent Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar. Mr. Jones went to Yale, so he's a real smart fellow, just like the other radical nutjobs I've mentioned. Jones claims to have been radicalized by the Rodney King verdict. By his own words, that drove him to embrace Marxism. I can't say I follow Mr. Jones' logic there, but like I said, I'm not one of the elite. To me, embracing communism because of a perceived American civil rights injustice is like jumping out of an airplane in flight because you don't like your seat. It's a hysterical and moronic overreaction. Maybe Jones doesn't realize that, under Communism, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CIVIL RIGHTS to begin with. What a boob, er, I mean, deep thinker. Liberal groups have been claiming that Jones radical Communist days are behind him, but here's Van Jones in April, 2009:

"This [green] movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don't stop there! Don't stop there! We're gonna change the whole system! We're gonna change the whole thing. We're not gonna put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system. We want a new system!…And our Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn't want, where it was all hot and windy. Well, guess what? Renewable energy? Guess what, solar industry? Guess what wind industry? They now own and control 80 percent of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth! Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt…What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about people who come here from all around the world who we're willing to have out in the field, with poison being sprayed on them, poison being sprayed on them because we have the wrong agricultural system. And we're willing to poison them and poison the earth to put food on our table, but we don't want to give them rights and we don't want to give them dignity and we don't want to give them respect?…We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."

Sounds to me like Jones is still a radical, and a race-baiter to boot. Whitey is poisoning people of color ????? We need to change the whole system ? Into what, Mr. Marxist ? Glenn Beck has been on a tirade against Van Jones for awhile now, and a group Van Jones founded, Color Of Change, has been trying to get Beck kicked off the air (which kinda proves Jones is a Communist. That's what Communists do, silence the opposition. They aren't about the free and open exchange of ideas, in case anyone hasn't figured that out yet).

The next commie-loving race-baiter on the radical hit parade isn't a member of Obama's administration, but her stupidity merits recognition. Her name is Diane Watson, Democratic Congresswoman from California. This woman LOVES her some Fidel Castro, and is so lost in identity politics that she can't even think straight. Dig it:

"You might have heard their philosophical leader. I think his name is Rush Limbaugh. And he said early on, “I hope that he fails.”…And remember: They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails [Watson is black]…. just want you to know: People look at the United States as a country that has changed its way and has elected someone from Kenya and Kansas, I’ll put it like that. And they’re saying, “We thought you would never do that.” So we don’t want to have this young man, and he just turned 48 — we want him to succeed, because when he succeeds, we regain our status. We regain our status….

It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?”

And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]

And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…"

First of all, Ms. Watson, we are allowed to oppose Obama's policies, even though he looks like you. His skin color is completely irrelevant, except to those like yourself who are too blind to see anything else. These race-based comments are really just attempts at thought suppression. There's no other way to view them.

About Cuba, yes, please, let's "go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place." I believe the generally accepted term for it is OPPRESSION, along with a health dose of POVERTY, as happens with all Communist states. Cuba is a police state. Fortunately, the Democratic primary challenger for Watson's congressional seat doesn't share Watson's myopic view of Cuban health care. Let's vote him into office.

The final person on today's list is Cass Sunstein, Obama's Regulatory Czar. This guy is an intellectual heavyweight. He's a former Harvard Law Professor, and an expert in constitutional law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. I'm not certain how radical he is, because he's a complex man, but he has at least some very confused ideas. Here are a few of his elite ramblings:

“Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust ‘government intervention’ and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions"

This is quite the straw man argument. I don't know of a single person who doesn't think the government has a legitimate role to play. Government is uniquely qualified for certain roles, and those were laid out in the very beginning by the Constitution. What I distrust is GOVERNMENT INTRUDING INTO EVERY ASPECT OF SOCIETY, as it has been doing by gradual degree for my entire lifetime. And Mr. Sunstein, individualism is not "pernicious." Railing against it is.

"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government"

This is Sunstein endorsing the Fairness Doctrine in order to control political speech. Looks like we have another nut who doesn't believe in free speech.

I just LOVE this next Sunstein quote. Love it.

“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day …”

Did we earn our own money ? Um, YES.
Did we earn it by our own efforts ? YES.
Could we have inherited it without probate courts ? YES.
Could we save it without bank regulators ? YES. (We could even save it without banks).
Could we spend it without public officials ? YES.

Sunstein sounds like the typical government drone, who thinks absolutely everything is derived from government. Wrong.

"Without taxes there would be no liberty," says Sunstein. To an extent, this is true, because taxation supports the government, which exists to secure our liberties. As George Washington said, "Freedom is not free." I think everyone agrees with that much. But should we "celebrate tax day" when our resources are stripped from us to pay for everything under the sun that the government can dream up, waaay beyond securing our liberty ? I think not. Should we celebrate pork barrel spending, special interest handouts, bailouts of the big corporations, the ripoff of our own Social Security system, private jets for congresspersons, trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities ? That would be NO. "Celebrate tax day," indeed. I'd almost as soon celebrate the day burglars broke into my home and stole my television, stereo, and my wife's jewelry. I never once thanked those burglars for helping to redistribute my wealth, nor will I thank the government for stealing my paycheck for unconstitutional purposes. Government exists to secure our liberties, not to rip them away.

Barney Frank (D-VT) wants the federal government to decide how much Wall Street executives (and all other executives of private companies) are paid. Barney also wants the government to decide how they are paid. Legislation to ban incentive-based pay for private corporations has been approved by the House Financial Services Committee.

I don't know where in the U.S. Constitution the federal government thinks it obtains the authority to do this, but, hey, we don't use that musty old Constitution thingy anymore anyway. The notion of limiting centralized governmental power (federalism) envisioned by the founding fathers is as outdated as bell bottomed jeans. These days, we seem to be climbing all over ourselves to give the federal government all the power it wants (totalitarianism). The statists are on the march, making all the same false promises the statists always make, the false promises that never quite seem to materialize (FYI – health care reform = forcing all Americans to buy health care insurance and then having the government determine what medical procedures you are allowed to have, in case you haven't figured that out yet).

Here is Barney's rationale for limiting executive pay:

"The problem with executive compensation is essentially, from the systemic standpoint, that it gives perverse incentives," said Frank, a Democrat. Without penalties for bad bets, the system means "heads you win, tails you break even," he said.

Perverse incentives. That means people shouldn't be rewarded for driving their companies into the ground. They should be held accountable instead. I think we can all agree with that, if not with the idea that the federal government should dictate people's salaries. That is so……Soviet.

Let's continue with these ideas of accountability and perverse incentives. As of July 31st, 2009, the federal debt stood at $11,617,400,889,464.57. That's over $11.6 trillion. As soon as I write these words, they are outdated, because the national debt is now higher. The debt has increased by $3.89 billion PER DAY since September 2007. In addition, the federal government is projected to run nearly a $2 trillion deficit in 2009. We paid $451 billion in interest on the federal debt in 2008. This year it will be much higher. The interest on the debt is money flushed down the toilet (or sent to a foreign government, like China) that could easily pay for any imaginable health care reform we could dream up. Instead, our federal government has burdened every American citizen with roughly $38,000 in debt. The federal government is the poster child for incompetence.

This means the federal government, if viewed as a corporation (FedCorp), would be the worst run corporation in the entire history of the world (with the possible exception of those defunct Soviets we're trying to emulate). So, how are we holding FedCorp accountable ? Why, we're about to hand the entire health care system over to them !!! We're going to reward the worst company ever, FedCorp, by handing it control over 16% more of our economy. Talk about perverse incentives. This is equivalent to handing the entire energy sector over to Enron. FedCorp has shown NO ability to be responsible managers of taxpayer dollars, so, naturally, let's keep giving them ever more and more. That's the ticket. And never mind that the part of health care FedCorp already controls, Medicare/Medicaid, has such massive unfunded liabilities that it is threatening to destroy our economy down the road. If not addressed, the unfunded entitlement liabilities will hit our economy with such an economic tidal wave that the current recession will look like a ripple in a pond by comparison.

While we're on the subject of salaries, FedCorp is holding itself accountable for it's putrid mismanagement by…..giving all FedCorp's civilian employees a 2.9% pay raise in 2010. This is after Congress voted itself a 2.8% pay raise in January 2009, with the country in the depths of the recession. Apparently, accountability and perverse incentives don't apply to FedCorp, only to that horribly greedy entity known as the private sector (the sector that produces all our goods and services). FedCorp is spitting directly in your faces, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. YOU tighten your belts. THEY get raises.

There are so many examples of the federal government throwing away taxpayer dollars that I could never list them all. This post would be a thousand pages long if I tried. Go to the website YouDontKnowJack to see some examples of how just one Congressman, Jack Murtha (D-PA), aka, the King Of Pork, throws YOUR money around to his cronies and special interests. It's disgusting.

And it wasn't that much better when the Republicans were in charge. During the Bush years, with Republicans controlling Congress, government spending STILL skyrocketed. Federal spending went from $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year during Bush's tenure (and those guys were supposed to be conservatives ??? I don't think so). The only way the Bushies were conservative is if you compare them to Obama and the Democrats, who are trying to match Bush's 8-year federal spending increase total ($1 trillion) in their FIRST YEAR. If Bush was the frying pan, Obama is the fire. I find myself longing for the return of Bill Clinton and his Republican Congress. At least those guys realized the economy was EVERYTHING. Those guys look like geniuses compared to Bush and Barry, and even Clinton ran net deficits and added $1.5 trillion to the debt. Things have been so bad since then that Clinton and his GOP'ers seem like the good old days.

Our federal government is so far out of control that I barely know where to start. This post is only a drop in the bucket in trying to describe it. FedCorp is like a bunch of crack addicts with our money. They can never get enough. With an addict, there's only one cure. You have to MAKE them stop. WE have to make them stop. WE have to get rid of the whole bunch of them. WE have to vote them all out of office and start over. That's the only way WE can make a difference, the only way WE can make the federal crackheads stop. Barring that, WE are screwed. Barring that, America, the land of the free, will very soon be OVER. There is only so much money that FedCorp can spend. There are only so much taxes that FedCorp can take from us. We're on the express train to poverty as long as this continues. Wake up, America. Your country is disappearing before your very eyes.

The Senate formally apologized for slavery yesterday, one hundred and forty four years too late, one hundred and forty four years after slavery was abolished.

Do we all feel better now ? A bunch of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery have apologized for it. Now we know that America doesn't condone slavery (and here I thought the Civil War settled that issue). Thank goodness. All those American pro-slavery groups can go pound salt. If there are any, that is, which there aren't (I hope).

But even the Senate's unaminous and meaningless kumbayah vote to apologize for slavery isn't without controversy here in grievance-based America, where it seems everyone feels slighted over something. The Senate's slavery apology contained a disclaimer which stated the apology didn't authorize any reparations claim for the descendants of slaves.

Cue the outrage. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the reparations disclaimer.

Sigh.

To be clear, I believe reparations for slavery were in order, but they were in order 144 YEARS AGO, not now. They were in order for people who actually WERE slaves. There are no reparations in order for people who are six or seven generations removed from slavery, for people who have the same civil rights as everyone else, for people who even have MORE civil rights than everyone else (affirmative action). I agree with President Obama, who said the best reparations are "good schools in the inner city." Obama embodies the lunacy of the reparations argument. Should we pay reparations to Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, just because his skin contains the required amount of melanin ? I don't think so.

As I'm writing this, there are some teevee talking heads arguing about whether or not the coverage of Michael Jackson's death is motivated by race. One talking head is saying it is, that the media is talking about all Jackson's drug use because he is black.

Sigh.

That talking head must not remember the teevee coverage of the deaths of Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith, or Elvis Presley. The media wallowed in all the minutiae of each one's drug use, ad nauseum. It's about celebrity, not race.

Speaking of race-based issues, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court ruling in the Ricci case, and ruled that New Haven discriminated against 19 firefighters (18 white and 1 hispanic) when they threw out the results of a promotion test because no blacks scored high enough to be promoted. New Haven officials were afraid of protests by civil rights groups if no blacks were promoted, so they discriminated against the 19 firefighters and denied them the promotions they earned. As with so many of these types of cases, the Supreme Court vote was split. The 5-4 majority decision was resisted by the Court's four liberal members (who think discrimination is fine and dandy as long as it's done against white people). Of note is the fact that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was one of those overturned by the Supremes. As one of the appellate court judges, Sotomayor thought discrimination against white people was hunky-dory in the Ricci case too.

Your going to hears lots of grievance-mongering and spin about the Ricci case, but there is no reason for any of it. This country was founded on the notion that all men are created equal, and equal protection under the law is mandated in our Constitution. We have a Civil Rights Act that says you may not discriminate against people based upon race. That goes for ALL races. That's why slavery and Jim Crow laws were wrong. All we should do in this country is give everyone the same opportunity (as in, all the New Haven firefighters had the SAME opportunity for promotion, regardless of race. They all took the same test. That's equality). When we go beyond that to dictate outcomes based solely upon race, we violate our own principles and make a mockery of them.

It's time to get beyond race, as well as all the other false constructs that divide us. I've watched the civil rights movement go from one of righteousness in the 60's to the "gimme" entitlement mindset of today. No. You aren't entitled to anything in this country, except the equal opportunity to achieve or fail. After that, it's up to you, no matter who you are.

Baffle 'em with you-know-what.

If Washington D.C. has a credo, that must surely be it. The media isn't far behind.

But before I get into that, I'd like to take a moment to thank President Obama for saving us all from last week's swine flu pandemic (worldwide epidemic). Just think, if Bush was still the President, we'd probably all be dead now. Plus, Obama saved the country for the bargain basement price of $1.5 billion, which hasn't even been spent yet. Oh man, that Obama is GOOD.

The media was speculating today that the recession has bottomed out, because we only LOST 539,000 jobs in April. This rosy optimism came because the experts had predicted job losses of over 600,000. The media left out that the government hired 66,000 people to do the census, and the government hired many others as well (which accounts for almost the entire difference between the projections and the actual job numbers). Those government jobs are all on the taxpayer dime, of course, and add nothing to economic growth. The private sector is still hemorrhaging jobs as fast as ever, but I guess the media is looking for something positive to hand their hat on, because Obama is the president now, and that means CHANGE has come. Call me crazy, but I'll say the recession is over when we start CREATING jobs instead of losing them. The media's optimism comes in spite of the fact that GDP shrunk by 6.1% in the first quarter, and that we're $11 trillion in debt, and that we'll be running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, and that we have massive deficits projected as far as the eye can see, and that Obama is projected to double the national debt in four years and triple it in eight years, and that unemployment is 8.9%, the highest in 25 years, and that we had a Treasury bond auction with demand so weak that we had to pay higher interest rates just to continue selling our long-term debt (which will raise Obama's deficit and debt projections even higher), and that our industrial base is vanishing, and that what's left of it is collapsing, and that we have massive unfunded entitlement liabilities looming on the horizon (growing at the rate of $2 trillion yearly), and that most of our state governments are broke, and that many banks failed the stress tests (they need $75 billion more bailout dollars, with more surely to come), and that credit still isn't flowing after $700 billion spent on TARP, and that companies all across the country are cutting back the hours of the workers they are retaining, and that if you add the folks who have fallen off the unemployment rolls to the unemployed numbers, unemployment comes out close to 15%, and that the federal government is spending dollars it doesn't have at an all-time record pace, and that the government is printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, and that the government has committed a total of $12 trillion thus far in fighting the recession, and that on top of that, Obama wants to raise energy prices through the roof and create lots more entitlements…………

I guess other than that, happy days are here again.

Oh yeah, and we're still fighting two wars, Obama has no idea what to do with the Gitmo prisoners, we're funneling money to Hamas, we're pondering whether to charge Bushco with war crimes, Pelosi's STILL lying about her knowledge of waterboarding even after the leaked CIA information proves she lied her butt off, Obama is looking for a Supreme Court Justice who is "empathetic" to certain groups as opposed to one who follows the law, the price index is rising in while we're in the depths of recession, Iran is almost certain to have nuclear weapons soon, the Pakistan government is in jeopardy (and Pakistan has nukes, which just maybe could be a problem if the Taliban gets their hands on)…

But other than that, everything's coming up roses.

Plus, Obama cut $17 billion from the budget. Golf clap for Obama. What the media left out of that story was that Obama isn't reducing the deficit by that $17 billion, oh no, he's going to use that money for OTHER government programs, so the net savings to taxpayers is ZERO. This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in the new Obama CHANGE era.

But it's all good. Thar's a new sheriff in town, and he reads that thar teleprompter REAL good.

Never mind that in order to avert fiscal armaggedon, Obama is going to have to come up with a tax increase of proportions never before contemplated in this country's history. By my reckoning, it will have to be at least $2 trillion per year to cover the deficits, interest on the debt, and the unfunded entitlements. It's either that or make drastic government spending cuts, and you know our new sheriff ain't 'bout to do that. Only them thar rightwing extremist fellas talk that kind o' crazy talk.

Welcome to the age of universal government.

I've gone on several rants on this blog previously about what a Ponzi scheme Social Security is. I now realize I've been thinking too small. It isn't just SS that is a Ponzi scheme. It's our entire federal government, and that Ponzi scheme is unraveling. The new funds required from the taxpayers can no longer keep up with the demand for funds the federal government requires. Like all Ponzi schemes, even one on as grand a scale as our government, it is destined to collapse.

But remember, put your hand over your mouth when you cough, and wash your hands frequently. Then everything should be fine.

Last friday's Glenn Beck show was a townhall meeting with several Tea Party protesters. Needless to say, I found myself agreeing with much of the sentiment expressed. Two main themes were repeated by several of the Tea Partiers – 1) The mainstream media completely misrepresented the Tea Party protests (no doubt about that), and 2) The two party system is broken. The Tea Partiers looked at both Democrats and Republicans as betrayers of the public, and betrayers of the Constitution (the media ludicrously portrayed this sentiment as 'rightwing extremist racists against Obama for no good reason').

Those Tea Partiers are some smart folks. They give me hope.

I spend most of my time on this blog criticizing the political left, because they are the statists, the totalitarians who believe big government is the answer to everything. Such a threat to individual liberty, our Constitution, our founding principles, and our country cannot be overstated. I will resist that to my dying breath. After a 20th century in which Americans shed so much blood fighting fascism and communism, I'll never accept those very things in my own country.

Some people, mainly liberals, think my criticisms of the left mean I am the reincarnation of George W. Bush. It's as if they think there is only Michael Moore or Dick Cheney, and nothing in between. They'd be wrong. My contempt for Republicans is only slightly less than my contempt for Democrats. While the Republicans SAY they stand for limited government as prescribed by the founding fathers, which is a natural attraction for me, the Bush administration proved otherwise. We've seldom seen such an increase in government as we did with the Bush administration and his Republican Congress (at least until Obama came along and made the Bushies look like small government types by comparison, no small feat). I look at the Republicans as big government, and the Democrats as bigger government. That's a Hobson's choice I've never been comfortable with. I invariably enter the voting booth thinking, 'should I vote for the Republican just to vote against the liberal Democrat, or should I vote for a third party candidate I actually believe in, but who has no chance of winning ?'

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Many Tea Party protesters feel the same, and I talk to lots of people who think the Democrats and Republicans are just two sides of the same corrupt coin. The people feel helpless, because the two big parties form a virtual duopoly, with so much money and power that the game is heavily rigged in their favor. More people categorize themselves as Independents than as members of either of the two big parties, and I am one of those.

I ask the readers, where do you stand on the political spectrum ? Maybe you are a Libertarian. You could be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings, and not even know it, so I'm going to link you to the world's smallest political quiz, which is designed to tell you where you stand politically.

Take the test, and let me know how you scored. It's a very short test. I come out as a slightly right-leaning moderate Libertarian, which is pretty accurate.

You can find out more about the Libertarian party here.

Just in time for the Tax Day Tea Parties that are scheduled across the nation, President Obama's new head of the Department Of Homeland Security (DHS), Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), has released an unclassifed report outlining a terrorist threat against the United States Of America. The threat comes from (drumroll, please) – RIGHT WINGERS. Imagine that. The DHS report is titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The report's stated purpose is:

…to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States. The information is provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States.

And what are the characteristics of this "violent radicalization" taking place in Right America ? Where are these "terrorist attacks" going to come from ? I'm glad you asked. Here's some of what is driving those wingnuts so crazy:

The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.

Um, wait a minute. Is it only the Right who is concerned about the economic recession ? No, and the Obama admin is milking it for all it's worth ("never let a crisis go to waste.") Is it only the Right who complains about the outsourcing of jobs ? No. During the last election cycle, job losses was a huge election issue for the Left. How many times did you hear "Bush lost four million jobs" coming from Democrat politicians ? And as for threats to U.S. power and sovereignty from foreign powers, who were all those protesters at the recent G20 Summit ? Were they right-wingers ? Nope, not by a mile. Yet, this DHS report isn't about left-wingers at all, only about right-wingers.

Here's another thing to fear, according to the DHS report:

The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.

Okay, now I get it. What we should be fearing are those crazy people who believe in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and we should also fear OUR OWN RETURNING VETERANS. The American Legion has already responded to Janet Napolitano's politically-biased smears.

The DHS also points out the following for your edification:

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

Aha ! The right-wing "haters" reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority. There's the mark of an extremist, by golly. I can name several extremists who thought just like that. They were wingnuts with names like George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. The concept those wackos believed in is called federalism, and the notion is wholly supported by our Constitution, which limits federal authority, and a 10th Amendment that cedes remaining matters to the states. It seems the Constitution itself is now some kind of national security threat (and some of y'all thought I was kidding about the Constitution being shredded the other day. I wasn't. I'm introducing you to some of the shredders right now).

I also have a teeny-weenie problem with our federal government calling people who are anti-abortion or anti-illegal immigration "right-wing extremists." Another teeny-weeny problem I have is when racism is equated with the political right. Racism crosses all political boundaries. To say anything different is merely propaganda.

But wait, there's more from the DHS:

the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.

Scary, eh ? Now, if you substituted the word "leftwing" for "rightwing" in that last statement, it would be just as equally true or untrue, yet somehow we're only supposed to be afraid of the righties.

This same type of bullspit goes on for 9 pages in the DHS report, but when it comes to specific cases of crazy right-wing terrorist plots, the DHS is forced to admit….THERE AREN'T ANY. That's right, NONE:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence

So, no violence is being planned by the right, but, you know, you should still be VERY AFRAID of them. Imagine the outcry if the DHS came out with a report like this about ANY other group – "No Jews are planning any violence, but you better watch out for those Jews anyway. You never know when they're going to blow." I also noticed that Obama's DHS freely uses the word "terrorism" when referring to imaginary right-wing plots, but when referring to folks who really are plotting terrorist activities, like Al Qaeda, the word "terrorism" is now politically incorrect. Al Qaeda deals in "man-made disasters." I guess only imaginary violent right-wingers are terrorists now.

In summary, the DHS has issued a report "to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of [right-wing] violent radicalization in the United States" even though the report acknowledges there is no evidence of right-wing violent radicalization in the United States. Sooooo, why issue the report in the first place ?

It wouldn't have anything to do with politics, would it ? Some might even call it "the politics of fear."

Sure glad we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.

I'll say one thing about the Obama administration. They promised transparency, and they sure delivered. I can see right through them.

Theft – a: the act of stealing ; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it (from Mirriam-Webster dictionary)
—–
Question: Is it legal for the government to steal your property and give it to someone else at the government's whim ?

Answer: If you think the answer is 'no,' you better think again, because as things currently stand, the answer is an unqualified 'YES.'

Questions: How can such a thing possibly be legal when we have a Constitution that provides for equal protection under the law, the right to privacy, and the protection of private property ? How can such a thing possibly be legal when we adhere to the idea that all men are created equal ? How can such a thing be possible when our entire citizenry would say they are against theft ?

Answer: That's a long story, but in shorthand, it's known as the redistribution of wealth (taxation). Under the Constitutional vision of our founding fathers, taking away the income and property of one individual only to hand it to another individual would have been a crime. That crime is known as theft, and it's against the law all over the world….until the government gets involved, that is. Somehow theft is accepted by some when the government does it. It makes absolutely no sense, but that's the way some people see it.

Now for the long version of how we got to where we are today, where the government can legally steal almost anything it wants to steal. This is the story of how the Constitution was subverted over time, and the Constitutional limits on government were stripped away, leaving government as your virtual lord and master, where liberty is granted or stolen at the government's discretion.

Some of you may be saying to yourselves, 'wait a minute King, the government has ALWAYS had the power to tax. That's in the Constitution too.' And that's true. Congress does have the power to tax, but the government had to amend the original Constitution in order to tax people UNEQUALLY. That was accomplished with the Sixteenth Amendment, which made the income tax legal in 1913. Prior to the income tax, the Constitution stated that taxes had to be apportioned among the states (equally applied). The Sixteenth Amendment overruled existing law, and overruled existing court decisions, such as Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895), which greatly limited the Congress' authority to levy an income tax. With the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, the door was opened for Congress to start confiscating private property at it saw fit (your wages are your private property. They don't belong to anyone else).

If you want to see what the income tax has led to, just look at the explosion of government spending in the following chart:

After 150 years of relatively stable government spending, it didn't take long after the establishment of a limitless income tax for the government to realize it could confiscate money from the people any time it liked, to be used for any purpose the government wished. In other words, the power to tax without limits and without any sense of equality has allowed the government to become the all-powerful behemouth it is today.

The above chart also explains perfectly why we are in such dire financial straits today. We have allowed the federal government to have far too much dominion over our lives, and as it has proven time and again, the federal government is an inefficient and dumb beast that can't manage anything, least of all itself.

But government tyranny and legalized theft didn't stop with the income tax. That was only the beginning of the subversion of our Constitution. Once we started down the road of abandoning Constitutional protections for the people, we continued right on allwoing it to happen. George Will wrote a column called 'Racing Past The Constitution,' that discusses some of the ways the government is denying our Constitutional rights.

In 2005, we had a radical Supreme Court ruling in the Kelo v. New London case that trashed the Fifth Amendment, perverted the rule of eminent domain (which previously only allowed the government to take property 'for public use'), and allowed the government to take private property from one person and give it to another private entity just for the sake of increased tax revenue. And we the people accepted it, when we should have risen up against our government over such a blatant redefinition of Constitutional intent. We allowed the government to make our country less about the people, and more about – of the government, for the government, and by the government.

We've also allowed the Fourth Amendment to be trashed repeatedly, through RICO laws, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and a variety of other ways. Due process is denied to American citizens as their property is taken and the citizens have to prove their innocence, rather than the government having to prove them guilty. Privacy hangs by a thread. You may as well consider it a relic from the past.

While I'm on the subject of trashing the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment, which guarantees states rights, is virtually repealed. Fedzilla has mowed that one down too, as all power coalesces to the federal government. Second Amendment rights are narrowing and under attack.

How long will it be until the First Amendment, the right to free speech, is assaulted ? There is already a movement in Western culture to prohibit speech against religions, which is endorsed by the United Nations, as free speech begins to become secondary to political correctness and diversity. How long before America starts down that road, if we haven't already ?

Beware, America. The freedoms you take for granted are dissolving right before your eyes. You can't take them for granted. You must fight for them. As legalized theft of your property and rights increases, your individual liberty diminishes. As George Washington once said, "freedom is not free."

A couple days ago, the Senate voted 61-37 in favor of granting voting rights to the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives.

The problem with the bill is, it's blatantly unconstitutional, and shouldn't survive a Supreme Court challenge. Article One, Section Two of the Constitution says the following:

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.

The Constitution grants House seats to STATES, and D.C. isn't a state. That's why D.C. doesn't have voting rights in Congress now.

As usual, the vote was mainly along party lines, with only two Democrats opposing the shredding of the Constitution, and six Republicans voting in favor of shredding the Constitution. The Republicans in favor were mostly the usual suspects – Orrin Hatch, Dick Lugar, George Voinovich…and the Stimulus Three – Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter. Figures.

Question – Don't Senators swear to uphold the Constitution ? I'm sure I heard that somewhere. Can we kick them out when they don't ?

Beyond the Constitutional issue, there is another issue here, and it's a big one – TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Residents of Washington D.C. pay taxes, yet they have no representation in Congress. I seem to recall taxation without representation being a pretty huge issue back around 1776. We broke away from England and founded our own country because of it, and rightly so. Everyone in our country should have voting rights.

A remedy for the people of D.C. is in order, just not THIS remedy. One course of action would be a Constitutional amendment to grant D.C. a vote in the House. Another less ideal remedy would be to exclude D.C. from paying federal taxes. A third remedy would be for D.C. to become part of the state of Maryland.

Back in 1978, the Democratic Congress approved a constitutional amendment that would have given D.C. a House representative and two Senators. That amendment failed to win support from the states.

In case any of you haven't figured it out yet, the reason this issue is arising now is – Washington D.C. voters are about 90% Democrats. The House seat, and two Senate seats if they can get them, are almost certain to go to Democrats, further consolidating the Dem majority. This bill is the first step, and Democrats aren't going to let anything as trivial as the Constitution of the United States stand in the way of more power for Democrats. Heck no. After all, the voters wanted CHANGE, didn't they ? Here it is. That's why the Democrats are rejecting all possible constitutional remedies for D.C. voting rights, and going with an unconstitutional one instead. It gives them the best chance of acquiring more power.

I can't imagine the Supreme Court upholding this bill, but maybe President Obama knows something I don't. Maybe he can get a new Supreme Court appointee or two who can "properly" interpret the Constitution. Maybe he can find a few Justices to interpret the word "state" to mean something other than "state." Maybe "state" will suddenly mean "state of being," or something. It depends what the definition of "is" is. I don't know, but I'm beginning to think the Hopenchangers are capable of anything.

I have to say up front that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is one of my least favorite politicians. I find him to be dishonest, ultra-partisan, and corrupt. Having said that, Reid did make a few points during his Meet The Press interview yesterday that I agreed with. Not many, but a few. Because I'm such a non-partisan person, I'm not afraid to agree with Reid when he gets something right.

On the Israel-Hamas conflict:

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the ground invasion into Gaza. Do you think on the part of this Israeli–of the Israelis this was offensive or defensive?

SEN. REID: I spoke to Prime Minister Olmert a couple of days ago. He indicated that they would do the ground activities. Let’s understand the background. For eight years they’ve been firing rockets into Israel. They’ve become more intense the last few months. Israelis have been killed, maimed and injured. Sometimes more than 200 a day coming into Israel. If this were going on in the United States from Vancouver, Canada, into Seattle, would we react? Course we do. We would have to. I think what the Israelis are doing is very important. I think this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away. They’ve got to come to their senses. The Fatah group, which is–makes up part of Palestinian group, has a peace arrangement with Israel. Hamas should do the same.

MR. GREGORY: And they’re in power in the West Bank.

SEN. REID: That’s right. And, and, and Israel, for–since 1967, controlled Gaza. They gave it to the Palestinians as a gesture of peace. And all they got are a bunch of rockets in return.

Bingo. Score one for Harry Reid. I expected him to say "the war is lost", and that Israel should surrender. I interpret Reid's comments as a signal that Obama supports Israel.

On seating Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's appointee Roland Burris in the Senate:

MR. GREGORY: Back when this story first broke, when the charges of corruption were brought against Governor Blagojevich, you put him on notice. And you had a letter that was signed by all Senate Democrats that said, in part, the following: “We write to insist that you step down as governor of Illinois and under no circumstance make an appointment to fill the vacant Illinois Senate seat. Please understand that should you decide to ignore the request … and make an appointment we would be forced to exercise our Constitutional authority under Article 1, Section 5, to determine whether such a person should be seated.” In other words, you can reject that appointment.

SEN. REID: Blagojevich obviously is a corrupt individual. I think that’s pretty clear. And the reason that he’s done what he’s done is to divert attention from the arrest that was just made of him and the indictment which will be coming in a few days, according to the U.S. attorney in Illinois. That’s why President-elect Obama agreed with us that Mr. Burris is tainted. Not as a result of anything that he’s done wrong. There’s–I don’t know a thing wrong with Mr. Burris. It’s not the person that has been appointed, it’s the appointee.

I agree with Reid up to this point. Blagojevich shouldn't have made a Senatorial appointment with such a cloud hanging over his head. Blago defied the wishes of the President-elect and the Congressional Democrats. Pretty arrogant of him. However, there's a problem. Blago is still entitled as governor to make the appointment, and an even bigger question is, do Reid and his fellow Senators have the Constitutional authority to deny Burris ?

MR. GREGORY: A critical editorial on the LA Times made this argument: “The Constitution says that each house of Congress `shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members’ and may punish members for `disorderly behavior’ or, on a two-thirds vote, expel a sitting member. Neither provision justifies excluding a senator because of the unrelated wrongdoing of the governor making the appointment. … It’s doubtful whether the Senate could refuse to seat … any duly elected (or by extension appointed) member who met age, residency and citizenship requirements…what in the Constitution allows you to judge Roland Burris in, in this manner, to not seat him?

SEN. REID: The LA Times quoted part of it itself from the Constitution: We determine who sits in the Senate, and the House determines who sits in the House. So there’s clearly legal authority for us to do whatever we want to. This goes back for generations.

This is where Harry Reid goes off the rails, in my opinion. The Constitution doesn't entitle Congress to "do whatever we want to do." If it did, they could arbitrarily eject any Senator for any manufactured reason, or for no reason at all. Imagine the political ramifications of that, not to mention how it could be used to subvert the will of the people and nullify elections. The 17th Amendment specifies that, whenever there is a vacancy in any state's Senate representation, the state's legislature "may empower [its] executive . . . to make temporary appointments until the people fill the [vacancy] by election as the legislature may direct." This means if Burris' appointment is to be nullified, it should be done by Illinois, not at the federal level, not by Harry Reid, not by Congress, and not by Barack Obama. As I see it, the only Constitutional claim from the federal level not to seat Burris would be if he didn't possess the necessary qualifications, or if he had committed some crime or indiscretion. Nobody is suggesting that of Burris, therefore, Reid has no Constitutional power to deny him. Even if we buy into the notion that Burris is the "fruit of the poisoned tree" (didn't Obama used to call this "guilt by association" when it was directed at him ?), remember that Blagojevich hasn't been convicted of anything yet. He is entitled to due process, and Burris isn't guilty of anything as far as we know. In every prior case where Congress refused to seat someone (Adam Clayton Powell, Frank Smith, Theodore Bilbo), there was corruption on the part of the Congressperson being seated. Powell was accused of financial wrongdoing. Smith was accused of corruption and campaign financing irregularities. Bilbo was a white supremacist who was accused of corrupt campaign practices and intimidating black voters. The Burris appointment may stink, but I can't find any Constitutional authority for the feds to deny him.

Harry Reid has another problem. Roland Burris is, gasp, black.

MR. GREGORY: People close to Roland Burris are raising another suggestion, and this is how Politico reports it this morning: “Top advisers to [Burris] are suggesting that Reid doesn’t want an African-American to succeed Obama.

This is, of course, nonsense, but I included it to show how much it sucks to be on the wrong side of the PC knee-jerk identity police, a practice that Harry Reid has used himself against Republicans. How does it feel to be on the receiving end, Harry ? Go ahead, prove to us you aren't a racist. Impossible, isn't it ?

If any of you read my last post, called A Deficit Disorder, you probably know my feelings regarding our federal government's economic policies range somewhere between cynical and disgusted. Lately, with mob boss Hugo Chavez Hank Paulson running the Treasury like Don Corleone, making the big banks an offer they can't refuse to force a partial nationalization of those institutions, "disgusted" might not be a strong enough term. Paulson even told Wells Fargo Bank, who didn't want to be nationalized, that if they didn't accept his offer, they should (cue Marlon Brando's Don Vito voice) "never seek my favors or protections again." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but Paulson really did say words to that effect. Heaven help us. That's what happens when you give the feds so much power.

So, I almost passed on watching the third presidential debate last night. However, I was interested to see if John McCain would go down fighting or go down easy, so I tuned in. I was glad I did. While the talking heads, with their sound-byte mentalities, were saying things like "McCain didn't score the knockout he needed", or that Barack Obama "didn't make a major gaffe" after the debate, I saw things much differently. I thought John McCain cleaned Obama's clock on almost every issue. As an economic Conservative and an economic Libertarian, I finally heard from McCain some of what I've been hoping to hear. I finally heard McCain outline some fiscal policies to balance the budget and reign in Fedzilla (as Ted Nugent calls it), and I finally heard McCain expose Obama for the wrong-headed, wealth redistributing, big government tax and spend liberal that he is. I only wish McCain had mentioned some of the fascist policies of the other two heads of the liberal triumvirate of terror who would control our government if Obama gets elected and the Democrats increase their control of Congress – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who would attempt to do things like eliminate the secret ballot in union voting (you VILL join ze union, comrade !) with the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act, and squelch free speech on talk radio (which mostly happens to be Conservative free speech) by imposing the equally Orwellian-named Fairness Doctrine. Ah, how I love the smell of our basic democratic principles burning in the morning.

McCain and Obama spent much time talking to Joe the plumber, who, after 15 years of working hard at his job, was finally in a position to own his plumbing business, and was concerned that Obama's tax plans would steal his hard-earned success and limit his ability to expand his business. (you really need to watch the entire video of Obama and Joe talking here). Obama's answer really does amount to stealing Joe's success, squelching Joe's American dream, and Obama taking the fruits of Joe's labor and "spreading the wealth around" to others. It's classic big government liberal-speak. In contrast, McCain showed how his tax cuts for business and low capital gains tax rates would enable Joe to grow his business, allowing Joe to hire people and create jobs. Obama's answer to Joe is the perfect example of how big government high-tax policies work against wealth creation and economic expansion. Instead of penalizing Joe for his success, the government should get the hell out of the way of people like Joe and let them do their thing. That is what would benefit society. McCain also rightly pointed out that Joe the plumber is not rich, though he would be under Obama's entitlement mindset. When Obama talks about tax "fairness", there really is nothing at all fair about it. Joe the plumber mentioned the flat tax during his conversation with Obama. The flat tax would be fair, but to Obama, those "rich" folks like Joe, who pay 35% income tax rates, aren't being taxed enough, whereas the non-rich, who often pay little to no income taxes, deserve even more money from the government. Once again, the word "fairness" takes on an Orwellian meaning in liberaldom (some animals are more equal than others).

McCain also pointed out that the last president wrong-headed enough to increase federal spending and raise taxes during a severe recession like this one was Herbert Hoover. Hoover's policies are widely seen as leading to the 1929 Great Depression. Are we about to allow history to repeat itself by electing Obama ? McCain noted that we shouldn't be raising ANYONE'S taxes during these harsh economic times. Amen, brother. We should be cutting back on government spending and stimulating the economy instead, as McCain said he plans to do, with both a hatchet AND a scalpel, and the veto pen too. Aww, Johnny, you had me at "freeze government spending."

McCain's plans are responsible, at least relative to Obama's. Obama's plans are nuts, unless our desire is to create a socialist country. I know I don't want that. I hope you don't either. Our founders sure didn't, which is why we have that wonderful document called the Constitution. It's too bad that very few are paying any attention to it these days, and that goes for both sides of the political aisle, including both Barack Obama and Hank Paulson. I couldn't find where Paulson is allowed to forcibly nationalize privately owned banks anywhere in the Constitution, but I guess I just don't get the notion of the "living" and "evolving" Constitution (Damn right I don't).

McCain mentioned several times that Obama's answer to absolutely everything is more government spending, more government control, and more government, period. Obama would take our already overblown federal government and put it on even stronger steroids. That is exactly the wrong answer – wrong for liberty, wrong for fairness, and wrong for America. Taxes, while necessary, should always be kept as low as possible. We have an annual time known as Tax Freedom Day, which is when the average American has paid off his government tax burden. It varies from state to state, but now falls around the end of April. After the financial crisis is cleaned up, and counting all our unfunded liabilities and national debt, who knows, it might fall at the end of June, July, or even August. When the average American is working 4-6 months of the year just for the government, what is that, but forced labor ? And what is forced labor, but slavery ? Do we want to keep EXPANDING that ? Hell no. America isn't a government chain gang. That cannot possibly be good for any of us in the long run. Each and every one of us has a civic duty to keep America free, to keep taxes low, and to limit our Fedzilla, to keep the American dream alive. And if the citizenry can't see that now, with all that is currently going on in our country, then we are certainly doomed.

You can find a transcript of the third presidential debate here. McCain took it to Obama, finally, though I wish McCain had been even more forceful in making his case. In boxing parlance, McCain too often jabs and jabs, and then inexplicably backs off from throwing the overhand right that he just set Obama up for. Too bad, because I don't think Obama could hear the rest of us Conservatives delivering those overhand rights by yelling at the tv sets in our living rooms.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) sometimes seems like an island of sanity crying out in the middle of an ocean of lunacy. That's what I thought when I heard Paul talking about the current financial crisis and the bailout plan. Paul says the bailout amounts to nothing but propping up the same failed policies and systems that brought us to where we are today. It's hard not to agree with him:

WOLF BLITZER ("Late Edition" host): What do you say to the president who wants you and your fellow Republicans and Democrats to quickly pass this $700 billion bailout package?

PAUL: Well, I think that's a mistake because we don't have the money. But that doesn't mean you have to do nothing. I mean, we could reform the system. We could return to sound money. We could balance our budget. We could change our foreign policy. We could take care of our people at home. We could lower taxes.

There's a lot of things that we can do. But the worst thing that we can do is perpetuate the bad policies that gave us this trouble in the first place, and that is that we no longer, over the last quite a few decades, believed in free-market capitalism. Capital is supposed to come from savings. We're supposed to work hard and save.

As a matter of fact, the Chinese work hard, right now, and they save, and they're buying up the world. But we borrow and spend and consume, and now it's caught up to us and it's undermining our whole system. … So this $700 billion is not going to do it.

And:

"This is Wall Street in big trouble and sucking in Main Street, now, and dumping all the bills on Main Street. … And you can't solve the problem of inflation, which is the creation of money and credit out of thin air, by more money and credit out of thin air, and not changing policy. We have to change basic policy.

"Yes, it would be painful, but it wouldn't last so long. What they're doing now, they're propping up a failed system so the agony lasts longer. They're doing exactly what we did in the Depression."

"So, yes, there are going to be losses, but everybody lived beyond their means when the prices of houses were going up. Nobody cared about it. They kept borrowing against it. Oh, yes, that was fine and dandy. Everybody was making money, and the owner of the home kept borrowing and living beyond their means. Now they have to live beneath their means.

"What the government is doing now — and this new program is trying to prop up prices. You want the price structure to adjust. You want the price of houses to go down. You don't want to fix the price of housing. You can't price-fix. We've had too much of that.

"We need a market economy. We need to believe in ourselves. We need to believe and understand how the economy got us — how the government got us into this mess. And believe me, it wouldn't be that tough. It would be a bad year. But, this way, it's going to be a bad decade."

Paul is exactly right. His recommendations, while painful, are sound. But our current government is all about pain avoidance, not sound policy. It's about getting elected, not sound policy. It's about special interests, not sound policy.

Paul also says neither John McCain nor Barack Obama have any answers for the financial crisis. I can't argue with that either.

It was a wacky weekend for the party of D, that allegedly stands for Democratic. Many votes were cast that won't count, and many other votes were counted that were not cast. We all should have seen this coming the moment they made Howard Dean the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). To everybody I've ever spoken with about Howie (who always seems angry for no apparent reason) – Told you so.

In sunday's primary in Puerto Rico, Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama, capturing 68% of the vote to Obama's 32%. The win earned Hillary 38 delegates to Obama's 17.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, those 38 earned delegates in Puerto Rico were trumped by the DNC's awarding of 59 unearned Michigan delegates to Barack Obama on saturday. The party of D operatives were congratulating themselves for their Solomonic wisdom all over the news shows yesterday, but it must be noted for the record, NOBODY IN MICHIGAN VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA. Sooo, how do you get 59 elected delegates without receiving any votes ? Why, you belong to the party of D, that allegedly stands for Democratic, that's how. John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and the other party of D nominees should be po'ed, because they deserved those 59 delegates every bit as much as Barack Obama did. Some deserved them more.

In the face of heated criticism, the DNC Outlaws Bylaws Committee made other compromises on saturday as well. They seated Florida's delegates in addition to the imaginary Michigan election they held in their minds, and then they decided the 2.3 million Florida and Michigan votes would count as half votes. This move at least brought those states in line with the DNC's own internal rules, though not in line with any Constitutional principle, except maybe that old revoked one about slaves counting as 3/5's of a person. Keep trying Florida and Michigan. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be real citizens. At least the 3/5ths compromise had the nobler goal of ending slavery behind it. The party of D was on the wrong side of the slavery debate when it counted too. Btw, did you know that Barack Obama is the first black man to EVER become a Senator in the party of D, the oldest political party in the country ? Yes, it is so. The Republican party, founded in 1854 by Abe Lincoln, elected it's first black man to the Senate, Hiram Rhodes Revels, in 1870. Just an interesting historical tidbit.

During the DNC's debate over whether to count millions of votes on saturday, one heckler repeatedly asked what I'll call THE QUESTION OF THE YEAR, before he was escorted out of the building by security. The question was :

HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELVES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IF YOU DON'T COUNT THE VOTES ?

Indeed. How, exactly ?

Speaking of counting the vote and real citizens, let's return to Puerto Rico for a minute. Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They fight in our military. Nearly 70 have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Puerto Ricans can vote in U.S. elections if they live on the mainland, but they can't vote in U.S. elections if they live on the island. They can vote in the primaries, but not the general election. Puerto Ricans live in this bizarre American colonial netherworld. Without getting into whether Puerto Rico should become a state, remain a colony, or become independent, I recommend this: As long as Puerto Ricans are U.S. citiizens, they should receive the full right to vote. I've already had my fill of votes not counting in this election cycle. I remain astonished that all it takes to suppress millions of American votes is some shenanigans from a handful of misguided politicians. We have to be better than that. The party of D can take all their wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Bush/Gore election of 2000 and stick it where the sun don't shine. They have forfeited the right to complain about anything.

Seeing as how the Democratic party is no longer democratic, I propose America has a contest to rename the Democrats into something more appropriate. I suggest the "Oxymoron party", or maybe the "Revisionist party".
===
In other news, Barack Obama quit his church after 20 years, in the wake of more wacked out remarks by that deranged Catholic priest, Pfleger, who said Hillary had a sense of entitlement to the Democratic nomination because she was white. The TUCC congregation ate Pfleger's remarks up. They loved it. Obama has no doubt grown tired of defending every loony racist statement that emanates from TUCC (Trinity Unbelievably Crazy Church), but the question about Obama will not go away. The question is, why did Obama sit there and listen to that nonsense for 20 years ? And Barack, please don't continue to insult our intelligence by saying you never heard that type of language when you were there. You KNOW you did. We KNOW you did. TUCC is based upon Black Liberation Theology, which assumes white oppression. At one time you embraced that church, when it was politically convenient, and now you have removed yourself from it, because it's politically invconvenient. That sounds less like a leader, and more like an opportunist to me, but let's move on. I also want a real discussion of the issues instead of all this stuff about preachers, because it's on the issues that Barack Obama really gets scary.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws – 14th amendment to the United States Constitution.

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age – 26th amendment to the United States Constiutition.

This is the United States Of America. Our citizens have the right to vote, to have their voices heard, to choose their representatives in government. That is the essence of our democratic Republic. Without that, our freedoms are not secured.

But now we have a candidate running for president, Barack Obama, who wants to disenfranchise 2.3 million Democratic primary voters in Florida and Michigan. It appears the Democratic National Committee (DNC) wants to help him do it. Ironically, Obama claims to be a former civil rights lawyer who represented many people in voting rights cases. Now, he's advocating against voting rights. Is this the 'Change We Can Believe In' that Obama promises us ??? I think not. This is the Change We Do Not Want. Even more ironcally, Obama is a black man. It took nearly 200 years from the founding of this country for African-Americans to throw off the chains of slavery, Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, prejudice, and voter intimidation to secure their full right to vote. Now Obama and the DNC come along and toss 2.3 million votes out the window at their whim. Welcome to the Obama Banana Republic, fellow citizens. What the hell was all that civil rights marching for anyway, if our votes can be brushed aside so easily ?

Obama wants to disenfranchise 2.3 million voters for one reason – it benefits HIM. Forget about the U.S. Constitution. Forget about the civil rights movement. Forget ALL that. Obama wants to be president, and the liberal Democratic establishment wants it too, so we can't be bothered with trifling issues like voting, civil rights, and Constitutions. In a third glaring irony, it was the Democrats who lamented over every vote being counted and recounted endlessly in Florida during the Bush/Gore presidential election of 2000, when it was to their advantage to figure out a way for Al Gore to win. Now, they don't care a lick about 1.7 million Florida primary voters, because they want Barack Obama to win. That is hypocrisy on a breathtaking scale.

And it's unconstitutional, criminal behavior. Peter J. Wirs cites the case law in his excellent article, called Specter Demands Sanity Check On Obama's Hypocrisy:

Constitutional law is unequivocal. Every vote cast must be counted. This constitutional principle, pronounced by the United States Supreme Court since Ex parte Yarborough (1884) and reiterated as recently as Gray v. Sanders (1963), is simply beyond reproach. This rock-bottom constitutional demand applies to primaries as well as general elections. United States v. Classic (1941). Deliberately refusing to count votes cast may, under certain fact scenarios, constitute a Federal crime, United States v. Classic, citing now Section 241 of the Federal Crimes Code. Reiterating black letter law stated in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), the high court reasserted in Bush v. Gore (2000) that "once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another."

In the United States v. Classic decision, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone expressed the majority opinion by stating that the Constitution's protection of the right to vote cannot be effectively exercised without reaching to primary elections and/or political party nominating procedures. Even the dissenting opinion in Classic recognized a Congressional right to regulate primaries.

Democrats should not be allowed to rip up millions of ballots. If the DNC doesn't find remedies for both Florida and Michigan's disenfranchised voters, Congress and the people should demand one. The principle of one person, one vote vastly overrides any other consideration here.

Now listen to the unamerican, vote stealing "compromises" Barack Obama has come up with for Florida (every "compromise" results in Obama being the nominee, btw. Some surprise). This comes from the Huffington Post:

Barack Obama is now floating a compromise on the Florida situation, telling the St. Petersburg Times that one idea would be to cut the delegations' sizes in half — a step back from his previous stance of splitting the delegates 50-50 between himself and Clinton, but a far cry from the Hillary camp's insistence upon seating them in full.

Obama only offered the "cut the delegate size in half" compromise after he knew it could not hurt his chances to become the nominee. Prior to that, he stuck to the absurd "50-50 delegate split" compromise, thereby nullifying the Florida primary and pretending 1.7 million Florida voters didn't go to the polls that day.

There is a DNC meeting this saturday, where the DNC will allegedly decide whether they care about democracy a little bit, or not at all. Stay tuned for the results.

The Global Poverty Act (S.2433). That sounds worthwhile. We all want to reduce global poverty. This pleasant sounding bill is sponsored by none other than Senator Barack Obama (D-God), the "new kind of politician", The Man From Hope (no wait, that was Bubba Clinton, the sexual predator president), The Audacity Of Hopester, who transcends all who came before him. He's The Great And Powerful Oz-bama. Swoon at mere mention of his name, ye lowly mortals. Pay no attention to the man in the booth.

The Global Poverty Act would commit the US to paying 0.7 percent of our Gross National Product to the United Nations to meet the UN's 2000 Millenium Development goals. This amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the US already spends in foreign aid. The US gives more in aid than any other country on this planet to begin with.

If this sounds like a global tax to you, well, it does to me too, payable to one of the most corrupt organizations on earth, the United Nations (who, btw, recently had it's Human Rights Council start on a mission to find countries who are "abusing freedom of speech". I hope you heard that. The UN is looking for countries who are too free, and calling that a problem. That's what happens when the Human Rights Council is dominated by the Arab League. They start prosecuting freedom rather than human rights violators. Also, guess who the biggest human rights violator on earth is, according to the mega-corrupt UN ??? If you said "Israel", you win first prize). The UN is a complete joke, is increasingly anti-american, is anti-Israel, is becoming anti-human rights, and is anti-sanity…and Barack Obama and others want to give it a big old chunk of our money, since we have so much extra that we don't need. All you foks out there have tons of extra money laying around, don't you ? Of course you do. That's why we don't have any problems here in America. We are rich. Yahoo ! It's a non-stop party here in the USA. The streets are paved with gold.

If you ask me, we should be considering withdrawing from the UN, not surrendering our sovereignty to it through a global tax. I think the chances of the UN eradicating global poverty with our global tax dollars are slightly less than my chances of finding an armed nuclear device in my backyard this morning.

It just occurred to me that I might be, to quote Obama, "distracting us from the issues that americans truly care about" by bringing this stuff about Barack's global tax up. If so, I truly and deeply apologize, and if Obama does become president, I will report to a re-education camp immediately. Until that time, I will operate on the assumption that this is still a somewhat free country guided by a Constitution, where the notion of paying a global tax to an unfriendly group of corrupt nations not only wouldn't be considered a good idea, but would be considered treasonous. I guess that makes me old-school, out of touch with Barry O's "new kind of politics". I hope they have real orange juice at the re-education camp. It's so much better than that sugary orange drink or that Tang stuff, and I've never even tried Sunny D. Like I said, I'm old school. But I digress…

Wait a second…Could it be that the Global Poverty Act is intended to BRING poverty to the entire globe ? Now, THAT makes sense. I should have thought of that earlier. We redistribute the wealth away from the rich people (like you and I. "Rich" will be defined as "anyone with a roof over their head"), and we give it to the UN, who will then do something with it, resulting in Global Poverty. Got it. I wonder why Obama didn't explain it like that to begin with ?

The text of the Global Poverty Act purposely avoids ANY mention of the cost of the bill, instead making it sound more like a generic and compassionate commitment to reduce poverty, as follows:

"…[The legislation] requires the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day."

It's only when you get to the UN's Millenium Development Goals that you discover the 0.7% tax on US GNP. Nice trick, Mr. Obama. That trick got the House to pass the bill without discussion via a voice vote back in february 2008. It is set to come up for a Senate vote soon, and it seems nobody is raising much of an objection. It seems nobody is even mentioning it. So far, this is pure stealth legislation. I have yet to hear the issue raised in any newscast or in any debate. Tim Russert just spent an entire hour with Barack Obama on Meet The Press and didn't raise the issue. Making the US subservient to the United Nations seems like a major issue to me. I hope it is to others as well.

And incidentally (or not), the Global Poverty Act would also commit the USA to the Kyoto Protocol, which is part of the Millenium Development Goals. Funny how that works.

You can send a blast fax to president Bush and Republican congressional leaders to ask that they stop the Global Poverty Act here.

Thursday was supposed to be a day when the House Of Representatives worked on the updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has already passed the Senate. The existing bill, the Protect America Act, passed last august, expires at midnight on saturday, february 16th. Rather than working on anything so mundane as protecting americans from terrorists, the House Democrats decided instead to vote on contempt charges for White House officials Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten for not appearing before Congress on the Democrats fishing expedition investigation into the White House firing of U.S. attorneys. Minority leader John Boehner led Republicans in a House walkout in protest. Boehner said:

"We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us…Let's just get up and leave."

Indeed.

A few words about the so-called investigation into those U.S. attorney firings, which has been going on for over a year now. Those attorneys SERVE AT THE PLEASURE OF THE PRESIDENT. He appoints them and he can fire them, as presidents regularly do. For example, Bill Clinton fired 92 of the 93 U.S. attorneys, including some who were investigating BILL CLINTON. I can't tell you what a big investigation there was into that. Oh wait, yes I can tell you. There WASN'T any big investigation into that. But somehow, when Bush fires 9 U.S. attorneys, THAT is a big deal, and was done for some dark machiavellian political reasons. There isn't any evidence, but shoot, who needs evidence to conduct a witchhunt ? Not the Democrats. Since they took control of Congress in 2006, investigating all things Bush has been Job One.

Back on topic, Congress has had SIX MONTHS to pass a permanent terrorist surveillance bill, and both sides of the aisle claim to want to get it done (one side even means it). But here we are on the eve of the bill's expiration, and nothing has happened yet. I guess the high drama of watching baseball star Roger Clemens deny HGH and steroid usage is more important to the House than our national security. Maybe next week Cirque Du Soleil can testify before the House regarding highwire safety regulations, or Paris Hilton can testify about what it's like to be born filthy rich (apparently, "it's hot"). Enquiring minds want to know.

So, after twiddling their thumbs for all this time, and after attempting to kick the can down the road by passing a 21-day extension of the terrorist surveillance bill, which the Republicans shot down, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said this:

"The first step must be reconciliation of the two bills…If the president wants to work together on that — we have been trying mightily to get the administration to engage."

Let me translate that for you. Bush backs the version of the bill that the Senate has already passed. His position is crystal clear on this subject. Always has been. The sticking point here is NOT Bush, it's NOT the Senate – it's Pelosi and company. So naturally, Nancy has to make it SEEM as if it IS Bush, because partisanship is what matters most. I can't wait for president Barack Obama to come along and change all this nonsense. Yes we can ! Oh, brother.

What Pelosi's Pals want to do is strip telecom immunity from lawsuits out of the bill. In other words, if a telephone company cooperates with the government and provides phone records for international Al Qaeda suspects, the ACLU should be able to sue the pants off that telephone company, enriching lawyers, protecting the 4th amendment, and protecting Al Qaeda, er, I mean, the people. The White House insists it may need private sector cooperation with the government for future terrorist investigations. Someone over at the White House must be living in that place known as the REAL WORLD.

Congenital liar Harry Reid (D-NV) also tried to blame it all on Bush, by saying:

"Your [Bush's] opposition to an extension is inexplicable..Nonetheless, you have chosen to let the Protect America Act expire. You bear responsibility for any intelligence collection gap that may result."

Is that rich, or what ? The House has had all this time to pass the bill, at the last minute they decide to vote on something else, and Reid doesn't think the Democrats bear any responsibility for it. Good thing we don't count on old Harry the Senate Majority Leader for leadership or anything. Unbelievable.

Here's one final strange, self-contradictory comment from Pelosi:

"We are trying to pass a bill that protects the American people and protects the Constitution…We know the president has the authority to do everything he needs to do to protect the American people in the interim."

Mrs. Pelosi, I have a question. If the president has "the authority to do everything he needs to do to protect the american people" already, why would there be a need for you to "pass a bill that protects the american people" at all ? Hmmm ?

Someone's pants are on fire.

You can read an Assocated Press story about this pathetic fiasco here.

I've been reading some dangerous and subversive writings lately. I have to share some of it with you, because I think these radical views could upset our liberal democracy if they become mainstream. Get a load of this claptrap:

“[A] wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” —Thomas Jefferson

Obviously, this Thomas Jefferson guy is some kind of greedy right wing extremist who is only looking out for the rich. He must be a conservative talk radio host or something. Whoever he is, we definitely shouldn't listen to his crazy rantings. Nothing good can come from it (other than the United States Of America – premier superpower, economic powerhouse, and beacon of freedom for the entire world, that is).

If you think that's bad, listen to this next wingnut's anti-government rambling:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master – George Washington

Holy Pelosi ! This guy is very unamerican, right Nancy ? The deranged loon sounds like the next Timothy McVeigh, or, even worse (shiver), Rush Limbaugh (oh, sorry, I meant 'that fat druggie Rush Limbaugh'. I didn't mean to be politically incorrect and omit the required pejorative adjectives) . This George Washington nut must not understand that it takes a village. Sounds like he wasn't educated in public schools either, the heretic. If Hillary wins, she should get his FBI file to the White House asap. We can't have that kind of Revolutionary language being bandied about. It might disturb the collective.

This next guy is one of those NRA gun nut types. I think he owns a brewery. He was probably drunk when he said this:

The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms – Samuel Adams

Now, I did a little digging, and I discovered all these fanatics are members of some cult known as The Founding Fathers (must be some right-wing militia group), very dangerous. Here's another one of them, who is obviously one of those supply sider sob's, a heartless person with no compassion for the poor:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer – Benjamin Franklin

This Founding Fathers group (they're probably associated with the KKK) also talks about freedom an awful lot, man. War too. They must be a bunch of fascist uber-nationalist gung-ho Christionista Marine types that go around talking about God and Country. What a bunch of squares. They should just smoke some weed and chill out, already. Check this out:

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry

The radical right-wing Founding Father nazis also have published some manifestos that you definitely want to avoid reading if you wish to remain a member of our liberal democracy. Among these subversives tomes are The Federalist Papers, The Declaration Of Independence, and The US Constitution. I don't think you really need to read them, because they are all really old, and don't apply to us today. Of course, there is that old saying – Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it….

Courtesy of the Patriot Post.

Can I get an amen here ? Don't we also call the following person a "thief" ?:

“A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” —Frank Dane

Democrats finally admit that tax cuts work (welcome to the light, Dems):

“We’re so used to Democrats pushing tax hikes as the answer to all of America’s problems that we were taken aback to find the following words buried in Pelosi’s release on the stimulus deal: ‘Economists estimate that each dollar of broad tax cuts leads to $1.26 in economic growth.’ Gee, that sort of sounds familiar. It’s almost, though not quite, like what the much-reviled supply-side economists have been saying for, oh, 30 years or so. Pelosi, and other Democrats now suddenly touting tax cuts, may be on to something. We might demur on the notion that all tax cuts must be ‘broad’ to be effective. Evidence really lies more strongly with giving tax cuts to those who would start new businesses or expand old ones. But it’s refreshing to hear a Democrat admit the obvious—that tax cuts work. It’s no secret that high tax rates act as a deadweight on the economy by creating absolute losses from which no one gains. Martin Feldstein, head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, estimates that a $1 tax hike costs the economy 76 cents in output. That explains why the economy jumps each time there’s a tax cut.” —Investor’s Business Daily

Lots of bipartisan guilt to go around here:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” —H.L. Mencken

I find the following comment very "stimulating":

“Washington, D.C. is a place where delusions go to thrive. That explains why Congress and the president are now agreed on remedies that will not work, expending money they do not have, to fix a problem that may not exist.” —Steve Chapman

Constitution ? You mean that g-d piece of paper ?

“Every candidate who repeats the misleading nonsense that ‘47 million in America have no health care,’ ought to be challenged with hard truth. The number is grossly inflated by including millions who are here illegally and millions of others who have the means to pay for health care insurance but refuse to adjust their budget and lifestyle. And don’t expect any media type to question where in the Constitution Congress derives any authority to dispense health care.” —Janet LaRue

Same as it ever was:

“Some Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls are preaching economic doom and gloom, disappearing middle class, and failing health care industry. What’s their solution? The short answer is give them more control over our lives.” —Walter Williams

Economic dunce cap wearer:

“How do we stimulate the economy to prevent or shorten a recession? One way would be to repeal the Bush tax cuts two years early, in 2009.” —Len Burman, director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, writing in The New York Times

They sure ain't conservatives, honey:

“Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama are not raging liberals.” —former CNN anchor Catherine Crier

This one's for you, Reverend, and your delusion that Chris Matthews is somehow a Republican shil:

“He’s come from a white family and a black family, and he’s married to a black woman, and they’re cool people. They are really cool. They are Jack and Jackie Kennedy when you see them together. They are cool. And they’re great-looking, and they’re cool and they’re young, and they’re—everything seems to be great… [I]f you’re in [a room] with Obama, you feel the spirit. Moving.” —MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

Der-da-der-der-durp:

“I don’t pay much attention to polls.” —Hillary Clinton, who in the next breath claimed that polls also show her ahead in “most of the Super Tuesday states.”

If only he would heed his own advice:

“I think it’s time for [Bill Clinton] to just be quiet. I think it’s time for him to stop. As one of the most outspoken people in America, there’s a time to shut up, and I think that time has come.” —professional race hustler Al Sharpton

Be careful what you ask for:

“Everyone seems to be campaigning as the candidate of change, but what does that mean exactly? Wouldn’t a depression be a change? How about basing our economy on Communism instead of Capitalism?” —John Hawkins

Lib vs Lib (and really funny):

“It’s down to Obama vs. Clinton, and it’s getting nasty. They hate each other, with the kind of passionate hatred that you see only between two people who hold essentially the same positions on everything. Edwards is still running, but at this point they don’t even bother to put a microphone on him for the debates. He just waves his arms to indicate how he’s going to take on the big corporations.” —Dave Barry

First, a little background.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978. It prescribed procedures for the collection of physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between or among "foreign powers" on territory under United States control. Basically, this meant that the government had to go through the FISA court for a court order to monitor such communications.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. We all know what happened on that day. Okay, MOST of us know what happened on that day. A few are still trying to figure it out, like the 9/11 Truthers, who can't even understand something they saw live with their own eyes. What can I say, there are slow learners in every class. Anyway, following 9/11 our president thought it would make sense to try to protect our country from further terrorist attacks, since it is precisely his job to keep our country safe. Good thinking, Mr. President. In the pursuit of this worthy goal, it appears on some occasions our president didn't require the National Security Agency (NSA) to go through the FISA courts to monitor international communications from suspected Al Qaeda members when one end of the communication was inside the USA and the other end was in a foreign country. Then, an unknown somebody inside our intelligence community leaked this tidbit to the New York Times, who plastered it all over the front page like the patriots they are, exposing what Bush calls the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) to all of america (and the terrorists too !). Though the exact details of the TSP are still classified, and though some members of Congress were briefed on the program, a firestorm ensued. Some people thought Bush was acting to protect the country against terrorists (good idea). Others thought he was (cue the left wing hyperbole machine) – a fascist, unitary executive, civil rights destroying, constitution shredding, super criminal running a totalitarian regime who was prying into the private lives of every american citizen at his whim and he should be impeached and thrown in prison ASAP. Not coincidentally, many of the people in this latter category are also 9/11 Truthers, if you get my drift. They think Bush brought down the World Trade Center towers too, apparently so he could justify his plan to spy on your aunt Martha, and also to invade every Middle Eastern country, so that oil would rise to it's highest price in history be stolen by america. They seem to think Bush is the Dr. Evil character in the Austin Powers movies, or that Bush is the puppet and Dick Cheney is the Dr. Evil character pulling his strings. I'm not kidding either. Just ask them. You'll be absolutely amazed at the abject stupidity of it all.

All this brings us to the year 2007, when the Protect America Act was first passed by the Democratic-led Congress, which granted the Administration a six-month extension of it's expanded FISA powers to fight terrorism. Apparently, most of the Democrats aren't really buying into the Dr. Evil theory, though they pretend they do when they talk to the mainstream media, just to keep up appearances. It's good to know the Democrats aren't really traitors, they just put on the airs for purposes of partisan gain.

It should be noted that the ACLU, who are evidently taking a little time off from their core mission of removing every reference to God from the universe (except the Muslim God, Allah, he is "protected free speech"), HATES the Protect America Act, which they have cleverly renamed the Police America Act. In case you are confused, policing america is a BAD thing to the ACLU. Go figure.

The reason I brought this issue up in the first place is because the Protect America Act is set to expire on February 1, 2008, and Congress is kicking around what to do about it. The Republicans just voted down a one month extension of the law offered by Harry Reid, because they want something more lasting. The Democrats want more information on the program so they can investigate more Republicans be more informed about the correct course of action, so Bush is releasing some classified NSA documents to Congress. Hopefully, the bipartisanship Congress displayed yesterday on the tax rebate diversion (here's a shiny new toy america ! Don't worry your pretty little head) will manifest itself once again on this surveillance issue. Communications have changed quite a bit from 1978. Back then, there weren't cell phones or the internet, for instance. Let's come up with a sensible plan that will enable us to monitor suspected terrorists without totally trashing the Constitution. It can be done. It isn't even that difficult. A key idea here is – foreign terrorist actors are NOT protected under the US Constitution. That's why spying on foreign agents and foreign lands has always been legal, without going through the courts. Terrorism is a new kind of enemy. We need new kinds of powers to effectively fight it.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’… I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character… And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.”

I assume most people in america know the above words by Martin Luther King. I hope they do. They should, because they were some of the most important words spoken by an american in the last half century. We could never be a truly great nation with the stain of racism on our national soul, a stain that mocked our own notion that "all men are created equal." Since MLK can say it far better than I, here are links to two of his most famous writings:

I Have A Dream

Letters From A Birmingham Jail

By breaking the bonds of segregation, Jim Crow, and institutional racism, the King-led civil rights movement freed this entire country. Racism is a mental disorder, brought about by fear and ignorance, which leads to hatred. MLK helped cleanse us of that disorder at the ultimate cost of his own life. When you look back a short 40-50 years to King's time, it is obvious that great progress has been made. Racism has not been completely eliminated, and perhaps it never can be, but by any objective measure, the changes that MLK helped bring about have led us to a far better place.

Martin Luther King's goal was to unite us all in brotherhood, not to split us up into opposing camps in some imaginary racial or class war, as some would have us do today. In King's words, "Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood."

He was a Baptist minister at heart, a hero who maybe reluctantly stepped up to accept the great challenge that was thrown upon him, but step up he did, with tremendous courage. I wonder how many of us could have risen to such a challenge, could have shouldered such a burden. He did, and that is what made him a great man. MLK was a progressive leader with conservative christian moral values. His cause transcended politics. In the Letters From A Birmingham Jail, MLK closed with "Yours In Peace And Brotherhood". That is his legacy, peace and brotherhood.

Let's always look with a suspicious eye on anyone who proposes anything other than that.

(Note – I've had very limited computer time for the last week, so I apologize for not posting much. It won't last much longer. Thanks).

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed – Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not" – sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson

From Holder at AOL, July 31, 2007 (this was too good for me not to reprint): link

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE
1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
3. Colt: The original point and click interface.
4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
10. The United States Constitution (c)1791. All Rights Reserved.
11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?
12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.
15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
19. Criminals love gun ! control; it makes their jobs safer.
20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.
23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more.
24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

I have to admit to you all up front that I am not a big fan of guns. Never have been.

But I own one. It's a 9mm, just like in the photo. I'm even less a fan of being a victim. And I am a big fan of the Constitution, so I understand the importance of all that I just reprinted above. As a Libertarian, I am suspicious when agents of the government want to take things away from me, whether it be my money, my guns, or my other rights. Needless to say, that puts me at odds with Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, etc. They want to take those things away. They are the ones who want me to be a "subject" rather than a "citizen". Then they add insult to injury by pretending it's all for my own good, as if I'm an infant. Man, how I hate that.

It's true that guns kill, but that is not a valid argument to ban them. I just listed 25 reasons why that would be a bad idea. Here's another one. A 'gun free zone' is also a defenseless zone. When Matthew Murphy walked into Colorado's New Life Church a week ago armed with 1,000 rounds of ammunition and a couple AK-47's, the only thing that kept him from killing maybe hundreds of people was security guard Jeanne Assam, armed and able to shoot back. If that church was a 'gun free zone', it would quickly have turned into a 'dead zone'.

But I also read the part of the Second Amendment about 'a well regulated Militia'. Yesterday on Meet The Press, host Tim Russert spent an hour attempting to paint Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as a flip-flopping cult member, while skimming over all Romney's myriad accomplishments in about the first 30 seconds of that hour (not that there's a liberal media or anything. Gosh no). During the course of that program, Romney came down in favor of background checks prior to gun purchases, and also said he would have signed the assault weapons ban. I think background checks falls within the 'well-regulated' sphere of the Second Amendment. I don't want escaped mental patients walking into the nearest gun store and walking out with semi-automatic weapons. I like freedom, but I'm not crazy (no pun intended). I also don't have a big problem with an assault weapons ban. If it ever comes down to the citizenry needing Thompson sub-machine guns for protection, we are already in pretty much of an all-out war. Perspective matters. We don't want people driving around in Abrams tanks either.

Criminals will always get guns. We have no way to stop them. Making guns illegal definitely won't stop them. Drugs are illegal. Is it hard to get them ? Nope. Same with guns. Making guns illegal will only stop law-abiding citizens from having them, which will put them at the mercy of criminals. Not very smart. Nothing wrong with trying to make it harder for criminals to get guns, but law-abiding citizens have a right to own them, which must not be infringed.

On tuesday, December 11th, 2007, The House of Representatives voted on House Resolution 847 (H.R. 847), which dealt with "Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith". H.R. 847 was sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), and had 60 co-sponsors (58 Republicans and 2 Democrats).

My first reaction to this news was, why is Congress voting on a resolution about religion at all ? Congress doesn't need to recognize the importance of Christianity or Christmas. The 75% of americans who call themselves Christians can do that just fine all on their own. Congress just needs to stay out of religion's business altogether. That is what the Establishment Clause in the Constitution is all about. The Republicans should never have brought this issue to the floor of Congress. It isn't their business. Of course, the resolution passed overwhelmingly (372 – 9, with 10 voting merely 'Present'), because who is going to vote 'No' on a resolution saying that Christianity and Christmas are important ? Even if you aren't a Christian, I think it's pretty obvious that Christianity is iimportant in america. It's the leading american religion by far.

Except 17 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted either 'No' or merely 'Present' on H.R. 847. More on that later.

Now, let's go back in time a few months to September 2007, and House Resolution 635 (H.R. 635), which dealt with "Recognizing the commencement of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal, and expressing respect to Muslims in the United States and throughout the world on this occasion, and for other purposes". This one was sponsored by Rep. Eddie Johnson (D-TX), and co-sponsored by 29 Democrats and 1 Republican.

I have the exact same reaction to this resolution about Islam as I do to the resolution about Christianity. This isn't the business of Congress. This time, the Democrats are the ones who shouldn't have brought the resolution. This resolution also passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 376-0, with 42 voting merely 'Present' (1 Democrat and 41 Republicans).

Here's the part you members of the left side of the political spectrum will not like that I'm mentioning:

17 Democrats voted either 'No' or 'Present' on the Christianity resolution, but voted 'Yes' on the Islam resolution. Those who voted 'No' on H.R. 847 and 'Yes' on H.R. 635 were Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Diana DeGette (D-Co.), Alcee Hastings (D-Fl.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Fortney Stark (D-Calif.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.). Those who voted "present" on H.R. 847 and "yes" on H.R. 635 include: Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Rush Holt (D-N.J.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.), Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fl.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.).

What is the possible explanation for this ?

A defense of the Dems voting 'Yes' on the Islam resolution is that they wanted to show Muslims that we are not prejudiced against them. This does not explain the 'No' vote on Christianity, however. Does this show a bias within the Democratic party against Christianity ? I think it probably does, even if it's the minority opinion.

There were also 41 Republicans who voted merely 'Present' on the Islam resolution and voted 'Yes' on the Christianity resolution. The same thing could be said in reverse about them. Does this show a bias against Islam ? I think it probably does, even if it's the minority opinion, but it is radical Islam that is the enemy of america, so I think this is somewhat understandable, even though I disagree with it. We shouldn't condemn all of Islam due to the actions of the radicals (though they have an AWFUL LOT of radicals, I have to admit).

Any thoughts on this, folks ?

Paul Jacob is american political activist, radio commentator, and writer. He has a Libertarian political philosophy, and has been outspoken in favor of term limits and limited government, and against things like the abuse of eminent domain that was spawned by the disastrous Kelo v New London Supreme Court decision, which has led to government taking land from citizens and handing it over to monied private developers, as clear a case of unconstitutional judicial activism and abrogation of civil rights as can be found. Jacob is also head of the Citizens In Charge foundation.

Paul Jacob, along with Susan Elizabeth Johnson of Michigan (president of National Voter Outreach, and Richard Merrill Carpenter of Tulsa (head of Oklahomans In Action) comprise the Oklahoma Three. They have been indicted by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmonson (Demoncrat) for conspiracy to defraud the state. Their crime ? Get a load of this – They circulated voter petitions in Oklahoma in support of a Taxpayer Bill Of Rights (TABOR). I kid you not. Not only that, but the Oklahoma Three got enough signatures to get TABOR on the state ballot. The Oklahoma Three now face a maximum of 10 years in prison as a result of their subversive attempt at government of the people, by the people, and for the people. You may all have thought that a citizen has a right to to be involved in our democratic process, but apparently the AG Ayatollah in Oklahoma has a different idea. There is a law of more than dubious constitutionality in Oklahoma that says only Oklahoma residents are allowed to circulate petitions in the state. This was the excuse the state used to invalidate the TABOR peititon, prevent the issue from reaching the ballot, and prosecute Jacob and friends.

The Oklahoma residency requirement law is currently being reviewed in federal court. Jacob did check with the Oklahoma Secretary of State prior to circulating his petitions. He was told about the residency requirement, but was also told that people could move to Oklahoma, immediately declare residency, and thus qualify to begin circulating a petition. "Regardless of how the courts ultimately rule on the constitutionality of the residency requirement, everyone I worked with on the TABOR petition sought to follow the statute as written," Jacob wrote in a statement.

It seems pretty clear that this is all about the powers that be in Oklahoma wanting to remain the powers that be, and also using their power to intimidate and corrupt the democratic process in order to censure the wishes of the people. You see, TABOR would have put limits on the amount of money the state government could spend, among other things.

I have read reams of material from the far left on how president Bush is throwing the Constitution out the window by wiretapping international phone calls from Al Qaeda. That's a pantload, but here is a real live true example of american civil rights being denied. Guess how the far left reacted to the news of Jacob's indictment ? Here's a hint: the far left doesn't like Jacob's limited government, Libertarian politics, sooo…..you guessed it. They were just thrilled that the Oklahoma Three were indicted. Read the moonbats at DailyKos here. These are truly the most depraved people in the country.

Read Paul Jacob's statement here.

My friend Roysoldboy sent me an e-mail this morning that I have to share with you. Roy got it from the man behind the Redstate blog, who also goes by the name of Flagstaffan for any of you who have been on any of the Mclatchey forums. I hope he doesn't mind me telling you that. I don't think he will.

I can't vouch for the origin of this e-mail, but I think it reflects some commonly held sentiments of the american public.

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: NEW PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION

The following has been attributed to State Representative Mitchell Kaye from GA.

We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional, and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim they require a Bill of NON-Rights.

ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone — not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful. Do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful. (AMEN!) Then, get a JOB !!

ARTICLE IX: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don't care where you are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to wherever you came from!

(Lastly….)
ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country's history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!