The Age Of Conceit

     In the time before conceit, paint was put to canvas, stone was given life by sculptors and music was made beautiful, all for the glory of God and to edify the souls of those who drank in the essence of such art. Before the age of conceit, artists recognized that their abilities were a gift from God to be used to touch the souls of their fellow human beings. One could hardly imagine Michelangelo forgoing the four years and thousands of hours of labor it required to create one of the most enduring works of art that adorns the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and instead chose to spend an afternoon festooning the Chapel in formless streaks of color. Pope Julius II would not have been pleased, nor would generations of Chapel visitors.
     Over the last century, art has become more self-centered and a reflection of the unbridled negative human emotions of the artists. Even the classical arts, such as modern classical music, have become self-indulgent and masturbatory, the notes dripping with the ego of the composers. No longer are sculptures, paintings and music made to enhance the Godliness of the patron's soul, but to serve as a receptacle for the artist's own demented view of life and the world. This phenomenon is most obvious in modern music, but as I have stated, it is present in almost every form of modern art.
     One should not be surprised by the selfish nature of modern artistic expression, after all it is a reflection of the culture at large. Children, especially the last several generations, have been weened on the notion that the universe revolves around them and their feelings. These children grow up to be doctors, lawyers, electricians and of course artists. So the modern artist is culled from a pool that has ever increasingly become more and more selfish. One hardly has to look very hard to see people who have cut their teeth on self indulgence, and are passing it on to their children. Whether it is the selfish mother at the local coffee shop or restaurant that allows her "free range" children to annoy other patrons, or the driver who drives on the berm of the road to get ahead of everyone else stopped in a traffic jam on the highway. The attitude of living only for oneself has not only corrupted our art, but our culture as well.
     I feel that the self-indulgent nature which dominates art and culture has been engineered by Leftist ideology for the purpose of creating more dependence on government. It has also been a natural out growth of a less religious society. The less religious people become, the more selfish they become. This selfishness leads to less civil behavior towards each other which requires more government intervention in the lives of the governed. The age of conceit, more than anything else, will lead us to our ultimate demise if it is not defeated and replaced with liberty, which can not peacefully co-exist with conceit.

Gay Marriage And Natural Law

     With gay marriage before the Supreme Court of the United States, it has once again reared its divisive head and become a front and center issue. In recent years, the voters in thirty states have voted overwhelmingly to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and to make that definition a part of their respective constitutions. These initiatives have passed with well over sixty percent approval from the voters. The real question is not whether the majority of people support traditional marriage, it is obvious that they do, it is why does polling show results that would lead one to surmise that gay marriage is a 50-50 issue.
     It is easy to explain this disparity between the polls and election results, especially in light of proponents of traditional marriage having been successfully characterized by the Left as homophobes and bigots. Poll respondents claim to support gay marriage so that they are not thought of in a negative light by the pollster. No one wants to be thought of as a bigot, even by a stranger on the other end of the phone. But once in the voting booth they vote their conscience.
     The main argument advanced in favor of gay marriage is that people should be allowed to marry the person that they love, which actually is and has been the case for a long time. Gay marriage has existed for decades in this country in certain religious sects and in many secular settings, it just hasn't been recognized by government, nor should it be. If we allow marriage to have as its only basis the love of individuals, not five thousand years of human tradition and natural law, then polygamy should also be made legal as well as sibling marriage and parent-child marriage. Heck, for that matter, people should be allowed to marry their beloved pets. The love that the aforementioned individuals have should be recognized with an official government sanction, the same as homosexuals are demanding.
     It is a strange twist that gay rights advocates, after years of saying that they want the government and others out of their bedrooms, now want their bedrooms placed in the public domain. The whole idea that individuals would claim special status as a group based on a sexual act is anathema to common sense and a rational reading of thousands of years of natural law. The shifting values of the gay rights movement is illustrative of the rootless and temporal nature of Leftist ideology in general. Since their positions are based solely on emotion, and are not tethered to the foundation of natural law, they are forever readjusting their values based on the current political winds. This is one of the biggest differences between Conservatives and Leftists. In the Leftist world, values have an expiration date that corresponds to their ability to be politically expedient. Conservatives see values as immutable and created by the natural order of things and resulting in the best outcome for anyone who lives by them. This is not always the path of least resistance, but it is the path that leads its travelers to true happiness and real justice.

Cold Dead Career

     A clown purposely acts the fool to make people laugh and to generally entertain. A buffoon acts the fool unknowingly. While "actor" and "comedian" Jim Carrey may think he is the former, it is the latter description which best suits his buffoonish antics that he passes off as clever political commentary. The most recent offering of buffoonery, clumsily disguised as relevant commentary, from the attention-starved actor who has recently made more bombs than an artillery factory during wartime, is a "music video."
     Mr. Carrey's latest attempt to significantly lower the collective intelligence of our culture is a music video entitled, "Cold Dead Hand." In it, the man who once lived out of his car and is quickly on his way to replaying that role to critical acclaim, mocks gun owners in general and the deceased actor Charlton Heston specifically. The comically impotent Mr. Carrey perpetuates Leftist ignorance about gun-rights advocates as all being tobacco-chewing, pick-up driving, backwoods dwellers who marry their cousins and carry shotguns wherever they go. He also engages in one of the most cowardly acts imaginable, i.e., attacking the dead who can no longer defend themselves.
     I wonder if Mr. Carrey understands that many more people are killed every year by the government's fuel mileage standards than by gun violence. And that two-thirds of all gun deaths in the United States are suicides. I also wonder if the woefully uninformed Jim Carrey understands that the so-called assault weapons ban we had in this country for over 10 years was proven not to have lowered gun violence at all. I'm sure, with his limited ability to comprehend, that Mr. Carrey doesn't understand that gun violence has actually decreased in this country in the last twenty years at the same time the number of guns privately owned has dramatically increased. Mr. Carrey is obviously ignorant of the fact that many more crimes are prevented with the proper use of a firearm than are committed by the criminal use of such weapons.
     I'm sure that Mr. Carrey doesn't care about the facts and statistical evidence that disproves the driving force behind his childish outburst. And lest anyone out there forgot, it was Jim Carrey who was a visible opponent of childhood vaccinations a few years ago when the loony Left in Hollywood, as well as elsewhere, thought that the minuscule amounts of mercury in the drugs to help stabilize them was causing Autism. But there was no public ridicule of Mr. Carrey and others who leaped before they had all the facts. How many children died as a result of their idiot parents refusing to have them vaccinated on the advice of Hollywood hacks like Jim Carrey.
     Why doesn't Jim Carrey make a video about all the gang violence in Chicago or any other big city for that matter? Or How about a video from the brave and clever Mr. Carrey about Islamist extremists?  These two scourges on human existence kill more people in a year than all the gun violence in the last 20 years. No, I think Mr. Carrey's real impetus for the video was not to make a difference in reducing gun violence, but to revive his "Cold Dead Career."

The Supreme Court And Gay Marriage

     The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments yesterday on California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative that was passed by the voters of that state and subsequently declared unconstitutional by the 9th circuit court of appeals. Some of the justices, lead by Justice Kennedy, hinted that the court may not rule on the case at all, which would allow the 9th circuit's decision to stand. So by not ruling, the justices are taking a stand to support the denial by a judiciary, in this case the 9th circuit, to allow the will of the people in a state to have any meaning at all. The fact that this case is before the court is illustrative of the Lefts total disregard for the will of the people when that will conflicts with their rigid ideology.
     Proposition 8 confirms that marriage is between a man and a woman, it is not as some have characterized it, a ban on gay marriage. The initiative was passed with the support of the majority of voters in California, with 70 percent of blacks and over 60 percent of Hispanics supporting it. This is fascinating, especially in light of the fact that those two groups overwhelmingly voted to re-elect President Obama, now the poster child for gay marriage.
     My opposition to gay marriage is based on logic, reason and natural law. Ever since the dawn of man, marriage between one man and one woman has been practiced by every society as the best way to raise children and transform them into productive members of the society. An entire gaggle of modern studies show that children raised by a mother and a father living in the same household are many more times likely to finish school, avoid out of wedlock births, not have drug and alcohol problems, stay out of prison and make a good living. And since the number one objective of marriage is the teaching and raising of moral and responsible children, and since homosexual couples can not conceive children on their own accord, one must deduce that nature intended marriage to only be between a man and a woman.
     Those who would allow homosexual marriage, would be engaging in nothing less than the destruction of civil society. Homosexual marriage destroys the concept of the traditional family structure, which is the basis of a strong and orderly society. Without strong traditional families, crime rises, drug and alcohol abuse increases and out of wedlock births become the norm. At present, forty three percent of all births in the U.S. are to single mothers, a statistic that makes Leftists very happy because it assures more dependence on government, but does nothing to contribute to a free, prosperous and moral society.
     I am in favor of civil unions for homosexual couples, but marriage has been, for thousands of years, a tradition practiced by cultures around the globe to mean a union recognized by the society and God as a special relationship. I fail to see why this tradition, and necessary part of a morally cohesive society, should now be changed to satisfy less than one percent of the population who are homosexuals and want to marry. The objective, I believe, is not to gain rights for homosexual couples (they already have all those rights with civil unions), but to deny the rights of those who wish to keep traditional marriage as the vehicle by which our culture replenishes itself with productive and morally grounded citizens. And that is what Justice Kennedy and others on the bench are refusing to stand up and defend with their support of the 9th circuit's decision, should they decide not to make an official judgement on the case before them. It is this lack of courage by our leaders and people in positions of authority that is the crisis of our generation that could forever change the direction of this great nation.
    

Inanimate Objects Trump Human Agency

     The desire to exculpate people from the responsibility of their own behavior is evident everywhere in our society. The entire philosophy of the Democrat party, and the Left in general, is based on this desire. Unfortunately the Lefts desire is transformed into public policy and is implemented into law under which we all are forced to suffer. But this almost pathological need of Leftists to assign blame to anything or anyone else but the responsible party, has made its way into the very fabric of our culture.
     To wit: I heard a news report about a house fire in a neighboring community to where I live in which it was stated that a cigarette was to blame. It must have been a hell of a cigarette to light itself and then carelessly place its lighted end on something that was flammable and create the inferno which engulfed the house. Nowhere contained within the report on the fire was mentioned the name of the person ultimately responsible. For those reading who still don't understand what I am saying, an inanimate object like a cigarette, an SUV or a gun can not cause harm to human beings or property damage without human agency.
     And yet, if you listen to or read the news, you will find an overwhelming willingness to dismiss people from their behavior, especially when that behavior has caused damage to another human being or their property. This phenomenon occurs multiple times every day, and one only needs to listen to or read the words used to understand that the intent is to sanitize human agency out of negative behavior and put the blame on something that government can regulate and/or tax. It is almost a weekly occurrence that we hear a vehicle, usually the hated SUV, has caused a crash or driven itself into someone or something. In reality, no vehicle can drive itself, it requires a human driver who then should be held responsible for anything that may go wrong as a result of that vehicle moving.
     I believe that this compunction on the part of the news media to blame inanimate objects like guns, SUVs and cigarettes for the bad behavior of human beings, is deliberate. It is usually in reference to those things which the Left sees as evil and have a desire to eliminate or severely restrict by force of government. The same language is not used in the reporting of negative consequences that involve the sacred cows of the Left. For example, if the media reports at all about the thousands of birds that die every year as a result of collisions with windmills, it is reported that the birds flew into the windmills, never that the windmills reached into the sky and smacked down the poor birds. I suppose certain inanimate objects have human abilities and others don't, for a list of ones you should be aware of contact your nearest Leftist.
    

The "Cool Factor" And Barack Obama

      There have literally been hundreds of millions of words written and spoken in analysis of last November's election. Many theories have been advanced as to why Barack Obama won and Mitt Romney lost, some of which have made valid points and others of which border on conspiracy theory. But I believe the reason Barack Obama won re-election is the same reason teenagers buy music that they ultimately abandon in a few years, it is the "cool factor." People will give up their money, time and labor, and in the case of Barack Obama's re-election, their liberty, in order to be thought of by their fellow human beings as cool.
     Marketing gurus have known for a long time that if they can convince people that something is cool, and not having it is uncool, the public can be convinced to buy anything. No one wants to feel that they are the outsider, looking in. This human phenomenon is especially present in the young teenage physique, which with the juvenilization of America that has been implemented for the last few decades, explains the actions of people who are chronologically adult but emotionally teenagers.
     The music industry has used the "cool factor" to sell their product to successive generations of teenagers for the last 60 years. I use to think, when I was young and foolish, that hit music sold because it spoke to people's souls and was important. But top 40 music sells because it has successfully been marketed to the music-buying public using the "cool factor." Unfortunately, this method that has been used for decades by music industry marketers, has now made its way into the hands of political charlatans who sell candidates based on the "cool factor" and not the candidate's ideas or accomplishments.
     Which brings us full circle to Barack Obama. The blatancy of the "cool factor" being used to sell the public on Barack Obama was evident, not only in the war room of his campaign, but the media as well. I have been awestruck the last four plus years with the number of times I have heard Barack Obama referred to as "cool." As if he were the latest iPhone offering from Apple or the horribly disfigured musical styling of Beyonce. It is a sad commentary on where we are as a nation that Barack Obama, supposed leader of the free world, has been referred to as cool many more times than he has been referred to as presidential during his tenure. The marketing gurus must have focus grouped presidential, and found with today's juvenile voters, it didn't test as well as cool. But just remember, all you seekers of the cool thing, what is cool generally is not what is best, in music as well as politics.
    

It Is A Brave New World!

     Anyone who has not read Aldous Huxley's book, "Brave New World" should. It was written over 60 years ago, and is amazingly accurate in its characterization of the oppressive nature of Leftist policy. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he wanted to fundamentally transform America, and he has. The problem is that it didn't need to have its fundamentals transformed but reinforced. And what he has transformed America into is a society that is reminiscent of Huxley's "Brave New World."
     It is a brave new world that Leftists have created from the philosophical excrement that is Marxist theory. It is a brave new world where the country's young have chosen to imprison themselves in a doomed future all for the promise of a false security. A false security which is promised by a government that can no more fulfill the promises it makes than the great ochre can soar with the eagles. It is a brave new world where manufactured self-esteem is an acceptable alternative to accomplishment and success.
     It is a brave new world where sameness and oneness is driven by an overwhelming desire of those on the Left to achieve equality at any cost. And where that pursuit of equality takes precedence over reason and justice, real justice, not the manufactured justice of the Left that seeks to redistribute wealth and create a society where everyone is equally subservient to government. It is a brave new world where success is punished, failure rewarded, and the spoils divided among the ruling class.
     It is a brave new world where up is not down, but up is evil, down is pure and good and the government decides which is which. It is a brave new world where the back of the hand is firmly applied to the principles of independence and liberty. And a helping hand is offered to the oppression and tyranny of dependence.
     It is a brave new world where the Constitution and other founding documents of a once great nation are made living documents by the stale breath of tyranny and oppression from Leftist politicians who decide what those great and liberating words ultimately say. 
     It is a brave new world where an entire political party has encouraged out-of-wedlock births and has discouraged marriage all for the purpose of creating a permanent underclass that is enslaved to those politicians and consequently must continue to return them to their seats of power year after year. It is a brave new world where the profane has been made holy and the holy has been abandon at the ash heap of civil society.
     Yes, it is a brave new world that has been brought to us by Barack Obama and the Left. But there is hope, there are individuals which even today carry the torch of ideas that never die, no matter how weak their flickering flame becomes. Let us hope and pray that the flicker is fed and becomes a roaring inferno of true liberty and freedom.

The Legacy Of Leftism

     I know the captain of the Titanic was an honorable man because he didn't lower himself into a lifeboat and save his own life as he saw the approaching iceberg. This week, a sort of captain of an analgous ship did not show the same honor. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, announced to the president that he may not serve out his entire term. The Chairman told President Obama he feels no personal responsibility for staying in his position until the quantitative easing program, instituted by him several years ago, has run its course.
     The Fed Chairman, who has devalued the dollar by printing more money than Parker Brothers for their board game monopoly over the last 70 years, wants to get off the ship and onto another one before the holes he has created start to allow more water in than can possibly be bailed out by the economy. Chairman Bernanke, even with his limited intelligence, realizes that he can't print 85 billion dollars a month to buy bonds with so that money flows into the stock market, without at some point seriously damaging the economy when all that printed money has to be pulled back out. So he wants to be far away from the wreckage of the ship he helped sink.
     While Ben Bernanke will most likely be enjoying some cushy, high paying university gig, at taxpayer expense, he will be just the latest in a long line of Leftists who have fallen in doo doo and come up smelling like a rose. In fact, it seems as though those on the Left are immune to any consequences to their actions and policies. Remember Jon Corzine? He orchestrated the demise of Enron, then bankrupted the state of New Jersey when he was governor and finally he made over a billion dollars of investors' money disappear at MF Global, the investment company he founded and ran into the ground. He was never prosecuted for the illegal nature of the handling of investor funds, and mark my words, he will surface again in some high paying Wall St. job or perhaps even a post in a Democrat administration down the road.
     Mr. Bernanke leaving before the proverbial feces hits the fan, is somewhat analogous to a drive-by shooter who sprays a crowd with a hail of gunfire, and then is long gone when the consequences of his actions are fully felt by his victims. The people of the United States will be forced to deal with the consequences of Chairman Bernanke's monetary policy for many years after he has comfortably retired at the expense of others. But then this is the legacy of Leftism, to keep the commoners equally impoverished at the expense of enriching the elitist class.

The Teaching Of Racial Victimhood

     I do not think there is any intellectually honest person who would argue with the hypothesis that racists are made and not born. The environment that teaches someone to hate an entire group of people based solely on their race, is an essential part of forming a racist. If the proceeding premise is accepted as truth, then the antithetical to it is also true, i.e., victims of racism are also created by their environment and not born that way. The case could also be made that if someone who is a committed racist had been placed from birth into a family of the race that is the object of his hatred, he would grow up not hating people of that race.
     A black gentleman I know was once telling me how many times he was pulled over by the police when he was younger, and implied it was a result of his race. I too was pulled over multiple times by police when I was younger, but I did not attribute it to my Middle-Eastern heritage, but to the fact that I was young. That and I was usually driving a beat up car with three or four other young men in attendance. The gentleman I previously referred to thought his being stopped was a function of his race rather than his age because it has become more honorable in our society to be victim of racism than of ageism.    
     The development of feelings that one is a victim of racism that leads to every negative experience or vocalization being a function of that racism, is a learned behavior taught to young minorities by a civil rights industry and Leftist politicians. Many times the experiences of racism sighted by minorities did not even happen to them, but they are convinced that they had. These tales of racism are repeated so often by the media and politicians hoping to advance themselves politically, that many minorities feel that if they aren't a victim of bigotry against their race, they are not truly a member of their race.
     I do not intend to infer that there are absolutely no racist acts committed in this country. But saying that individual acts of racism exist in a random fashion in our society is a far cry from accepting that every police interaction, every foul word spoken and every dirty look that a minority receives is a result of their race. The Reverend Martin Luther King once said he longed for a day when every man could be judged by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. It is ironic that the very civil rights movement that Reverend King was instrumental in founding has been co-opted by charlatans who have driven this country further away from the good reverend's dream by the teaching of racial victimhood. 

Leftism: A Higher Calling For Some In Religious Life

     Yesterday, Pope Francis I gave his inaugural mass in Vatican City, Rome. He spoke to thousands of attendees, including some world leaders who oddly enough don't support the church's mission, and who only saw the event as a photo-op. One of those leaders was our very own "Slow" Joe Biden.    
    Vice President Joe Biden attending the Pope's inaugural mass is an insult to Catholicism specifically and all of Christendom in General. The Vice President's support of a pro-abortion agenda is in conflict with the very core of the Catholic faith and Christian beliefs. Joe Biden says he is a Catholic, but how does one reconcile the core teachings of their faith with the radically anti-life position of their political affiliation if that person is a Democrat?
     During the vice presidential debate in the last election cycle, Joe Biden said that he believes abortion is wrong and he believes in the sanctity of life, but he doesn't wish to impose his beliefs on others. The hypocritical VP had moments before used his faith as a basis for defending an expanding government to fund social programs that he says, "support the least among us." The call of religious faith to help the poor through public policy was even alluded to by Pope Francis. It is disheartening that even a theologian like the Pope has accepted as truth the propaganda that the Left has encouraged over the last few decades. That propaganda uses the message of the Bible and other religious texts for individuals to help those less fortunate, as an endorsement of big government.
     Recently I have become evermore disgusted with clergy and others in religious life who have taken vows and then vote for politicians like Barack Obama. I fail to understand how they justify their politics in light of what they say are their deeply held religious beliefs. Either these people have taken a higher vow to Leftism or they are completely ignorant of the positions that are supported by those to whom they carelessly give their vote. If the former is true, they have broken their vow to God and will suffer His wrath for doing so. If, however, the latter condition applies, they have failed at the very basic responsibility of citizenship, i.e., to be part of an informed electorate. Unfortunately their ignorance not only affects their singular relationship with the big "G", God, but condemns us all to a life of servitude to the little "g", government.
    

The Official RNC Surrender

       The Republicant party has always had its "mavericks" like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who can not only reach across the aisle to Democrats on policy issues, but who actually take up residence there and abandon the Conservative principles that are not only the foundation of the party of Lincoln, but the country as founded. If the past two elections have illustrated anything at all, it is that the direction that these establishment Republicants seem hell-bent on leading the party is not only bad for republicanism, but for the fate of this great nation.
     Conservatives have long suspected that those in the party like Chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus, have wanted to transform it into an organization that the media and the Left in Washington would suckle as their own. Well yesterday, Chairman Priebus officially surrendered the party to the will of the Left. Speaking from his position as de jure head of the Republicant party, he accepted as truth the propaganda of the Left about Republicants. Mr. Priebus said the party had become an organization of stuffy old men and needed to change if election victory was in its future. In his rambling apology for the Republicant party, he gave backing and credence to all the stereotypes the Left spews about Republicants. I saw a glimpse of this capitulation during the last presidential campaign when Reince Priebus sat mute as a bloviating Chris Matthews spewed his hateful lies about Republicants.
     Chairman Priebus has a plan for surrender that includes, but I'm sure is not limited to, a 10 million dollar outreach program to minorities, a digital officer to help the party use technology to win elections and a revamping of the primary process so a Republicant nominee is chosen earlier. The plan that Mr. Priebus has for reaching out to minorities is to embrace amnesty for illegals and a full-throated support for gay marriage. Adopting a lighter version of Leftist ideals only makes the party weaker because Republicants will never out-left the Left. If the Republicant party wants more minority support, they need to articulate why conservative principles are better for the individual than the big government solutions from the Left that simply enslave them.
     As for some of the other suggestions from the RNC Chairman, I am all for using the tools of the digital age to win elections, but the main goal should be to spread conservatism. The Republicant party needs to be in constant campaign mode like the Democrats. Use the money of rich donors to run ads on issues in real time and pay for more expert speakers to tour college campuses to proffer arguments on issues that the students don't hear from their Leftist teachers or from the media. As far as changing the primary process, that's all fine and good. But Mitt Romney didn't lose to Barack Obama because he wasn't chosen early enough but because he was chosen at all. I like Mitt Romney, he is a good and decent man, but the Republicant party needs to figure out that it is conservative principles that win the hearts and minds of people and ultimately win elections. Chairman Priebus' surrender makes defeat a constant companion for the Republicant party and makes more likely the formation of a conservative alternative.

Barack Obama's Silent Support Of Iranian Religious Oppression

     There are many things about the way in which Barack Obama has conducted the office of President of the United States of America that can serve to embarrass, anger, irritate and demoralize   the average freedom-loving American. His handling of myriad issues ranging from the economy to Benghazi and Fast and Furious are exemplary of this President's combination of incompetence and willful destruction of the American value system and the rule of law. But his silent support of the Iranian government's imprisonment of an American Christian pastor goes beyond the pale, even for this President.
     Saeed Abedini is a Christian pastor, who is also an American citizen, and was imprisoned last September in his homeland of Iran, simply for preaching the gospel. His wife, Naghmeh Abedini, along with their two U.S.-based attorneys from the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay and Jordan Sekulov, have recently testified before Congressman Tom Lantos' Commission on Human Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mrs. Abedini, in part, expressed a deep sorrow for the lack of courage and defense of religious freedom by her government in general and by the President specifically. I am in solidarity with Naghmeh Abedini's disgust and disappointment with the Obama administration's lack of support for American values, however, I can not say that I am all that surprised.
     Anyone who has not been in a coma for the last four years is painfully aware of the reckless disregard that Mr. Obama and his gang have for all things decent and traditionally American. Mrs. Abedini expects defense of her husband's first amendment religious freedoms from a man who many times has expressed his contempt for the very document that insures those and other liberties. From his characterization of the Constitution as a "charter of negative rights" to his signature health care legislation, which is a Constitutional abomination, this President has illustrated that he has no more respect or reverence for the American founding principles than he does for truth and probity in general.
     So while President Obama and the rest of his political party try to figure out how they can continue to bankrupt the greatest nation on earth, one of its citizens sits imprisoned simply for practicing his Christian faith. Sadly, for Saeed Abedini and his family, he chose to express his faith during a time when the beacon of religious freedom, the United States of America, has a caretaker that has allowed its light to dim and fade into the black sky of religious oppression and tyranny.   

Conservatism Is The Clear Choice

      There really is no argument that when Conservative principles are in sync with public policy, there is no better way to assure both liberty and prosperity for the majority of a society. It has been proven by history for thousands of years and formed the thinking of the Constitution and the other founding documents of this country. Unlike Liberal policies, Conservative ones offer more choice and more freedom and require less government restrictions. The very goal of Conservatism is to protect and defend the founding principles of this country, which themselves are based on limited government that provide the people with virtually unlimited liberty.
     One of the core differences between Liberalism and Conservatism is that each has diametrically opposed beliefs of what constitutes the best agent of change in the lives of the governed. Liberals want to empower government to change people's lives and Conservatives aim to empower people to change their own lives. It is this very core difference which is the fundamental struggle between the two sides. The Modern day Liberal ethos sees a fundamental inability for the average person to make their own decisions on a myriad of issues, from what to eat and drink to providing their own health care. And the Liberal solution is more and bigger government, which by its very existence precludes the growth of individual freedom and in most cases leads to fewer choices and less liberty. Radio talk show host and author, Dennis Prager, puts it succinctly when he says, "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."
     Another core difference between Liberalism and Conservatism is the role of government in the lives of the governed. Conservatism holds fast to the value of limited government which forms the core of this country's founding documents. The Founding Fathers framed the Constitution specifically to limit the federal government's authority, that is why they enumerated the federal government's powers and by doing so gave the bulk of power to the people and the states. This idea forms the very basis of the tenth amendment, which the Supreme Court recently set ablaze with its ruling on ObamaCare. The founders had a mistrust of government and a faith in the ability of free people to create the most just and prosperous society. The modern day Liberal sees government as a moral authority that can dispense rights and justice in amounts and areas that only it can best determine.
     I recently heard a woman on the radio who is the poster-child for modern day Liberalism. She said, that since there are people who can not make healthy food choices, it is the role of government, through taxes and regulations, to make those choices for them. Her single statement of Constitutional ignorance is illustrative of Liberal thinking. They not only fail to understand that this kind of nannyism in government is antithetical to the founding principles that made this nation great, but once given, that same power can and will be used against them to restrict some freedom that they hold dear. The bottom line is that the difference between Conservatism and Liberalism is the difference between liberty and tyranny respectively.

Pope Francis I And The Politically Incorrect Church

     The election of Cardinal Bergoglio as the new leader of over a billion Catholics as Pope Francis I was historic. Not only because he was the first non-European elected to that position since Pope Gregory in 700, but because of the historic level of ignorance the news media exhibited for all things faith-based. The report I saw was on CNBC, but I'm sure a similar lack of religious decorum and knowledge was exhibited on other networks as well.
     The proudly uninformed and woefully inadequate anchor on CNBC actually made the comment that Jorge Bergoglio was a compromise choice for the conclave of cardinals. I could understand if he had made this comment about a Cardinal from the hated and evil United States. But isn't it in these people's contracts to promote countries like Argentina because, like the rest of the world, they have been robbed and abused by the U.S.? Does this "I have to remind myself to breath because I'm too stupid to stay alive otherwise" anchor know anything about the process used by the cardinals to elect a new Pope? It is not a political process but a spiritual one.
     But then I wouldn't expect anyone from the main stream media specifically, and from the Left in general, to understand spiritual matters. The cardinals believe, sincerely from their perspective, that they are inspired by the Holy Spirit to select a new leader of God's church on earth. Whether the media or anyone on the Left doesn't believe that, it is only important that that is the basis from which the cardinals elect one of their members to be the new Pope. But the Left doesn't understand anyone operating under anything but purely political motives, so being moved by the Holy Spirit is as foreign to them as truth is to our current President.
     The other troublesome comments made by anchors all over the media is the incessant focus on whether Pope Francis will reform the church on issues ranging from contraception to gay rights, as if the Pope is some sort of community agitator, like you know who. The Left is incapable of understanding any person or organization having values that form the very core of their existence. The principles under which the church was established two thousand years ago are the same scriptural-based principles then, now and forever. They are based on God's word and he doesn't change to suit the latest flavor-of-the-day, politically correct positions. God, and by extension His church here on earth, are proudly and un-apologetically politically incorrect. If Pope Francis I is to be a successful leader of the Catholic church, he will reaffirm the principles which established it and re-dedicate it to the timeless values of God's word.

The Record Dow And The Age Of Mediocrity

     There has been quite alot of excitement in the stock market since the Dow Industrial Average hit an all time high on March 6, 2013, the first one in five and a half years. Since that historic occasion, the Dow has moved higher by only 126 points in six sessions. This eight tenths of a percentage point gain is hardly reflective of what CNBC and others in the main stream media have been characterizing as a stock market that is on fire. The last two closes have been 5 point gains or less, and this after the Dow spent those days wandering between gains and losses.
     The reasons for the Dow reaching a new record high last Tuesday during an economy that is arguably the worse one since the Great Depression, has to do with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke printing 350 thousand dollars every second and pumping that money into bonds to lower bond yields and drive money into stocks. It is almost incomprehensible to those of us who haven't spent our entire lives in academia or government, like Mr. Bernanke, that more money is printed and used to buy government bonds every second of every day since Quantitative Easing III began than 98 percent of the people in this country make in a year working real jobs.
     The other reason, besides the sugar high created by Ben "the candy man" Bernanke, that the markets are on such a roll is because of lowered expectations. In the Obama Age, all expectations for excellence in the markets, as in the rest of American life, have been replaced with mediocrity. The financial markets are like a parent and the corporations are like the children. The parent agrees to reward the children with money for a certain level of academic success being achieved. The child will receive five dollars for an A, four dollars for a B and three dollars for a C. Expectations for corporate performance have been lowered so much in the Obama economy that it has become analogous to a child receiving F's quarter after quarter, and then one quarter he receives a D- and the parent rewards the child as if he received an A.
     The truth is that American corporations have met the drastically reduced expectations of the market when they have recently reported their earnings, but revenues have been anemically low. Revenues are sales, and while companies can make earnings look better by cutting expenses to the bone, they can not generate sales out of thin air. This lack of revenues is a sign that the economy is far from being on the road to recovery. I fear things will get worse before they get better, especially once The Candy Man pulls the supply of sugar from the markets, which the laws of math and economic reality will force him to do in the near future.

Going Postal On The Mentally Challenged

     My full time gig is in a building which has a mail room housing the different boxes for each suite. Generally the mail room is about as exciting as an Obama speech, but Monday of this week the sparks were flying. Our mail carrier, who on a good day might get 80 percent of the mail in the correct boxes and is routinely rude while doing it, escalated her inappropriate behavior to a level that I didn't expect, even from a government worker. She yelled and swore at a mentally challenged man in his fifties because he wouldn't leave the mail room and wait until she was done misplacing the mail in the wrong boxes. Her rant continued on for several minutes after the gentleman had vacated the room in tears.
     This mail carrier had the unmitigated nerve to say she was going to report the mentally challenged man to her supervisor for impeding the mail delivery, of course I doubt that she will mention he is mentally challenged or that she screamed uncontrollably at him. It was like pulling teeth out of the mouth of a fully awake lion, but I was finally able to convince my boss to lodge a complaint against her with the post office. I don't expect any disciplinary action to be taken against the carrier. Her union membership wraps around her and her fellow carriers like a cloaking device and protects their right to mistreat the handicapped and a myriad of other offenses that 40 years ago would have lead to immediate job termination.
    The salient issue of my post is not entirely this one carrier's actions on this particular day, but the general disgust and irritation that public employees exhibit towards the taxpayers who pay their salaries and benefits. We have all experienced a downward spiral in both the competence and attitude of public service workers, from the slow as molasses license bureau worker up to the arrogant and dismissive politicians who are suppose to protect our best interests. It is as if they are entitled to their salaries and benefits and the taxpayers who fund them are an inconvenience.
     I wish the behavior of my building's mail carrier was an anomaly, but sadly it has become all too illustrative of the almost adversarial relationship that has formed between public servants and the public they serve. The cause, I believe, is the exaggeration of salaries and benefits far beyond what public sector workers' counterparts in the private sector receive. That coupled with the iron clad job security that union membership provides, creates an environment for public sector workers where the only expectation of them is that they continue to cash their paychecks every week. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I expect my mail carrier, as well as other public employees, to be presentable in both their dress and attitude. Anything less use to be unacceptable by the public who paid the freight on the costs of government.

The Constitutional Disillusion Of Continuing Resolutions

     The normal and regular budget process used by the federal government is a hammering out of the details that both houses of Congress can pass, and the president can sign. For the last four years the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have intentionally short-circuited the federal budget by not passing one at all. This has given them the opportunity to create unnecessary crisis by having to pass what is called a "Continuing Resolution" every eight months or so. The continuing resolution is a fail safe instituted to fund essential functions of government when a situation arises whereby a budget is not passed before the fiscal deadline to do so. But President Obama and the Democrat Senate have been using the continuing resolution process to avoid their Constitutional duty to pass a budget at all and keep the country in a state of continual crisis.
     The continuing resolution process allows the President to get additional spending through a sort of back door budget. The added spending is folded into the continuing resolution and is never given the proper evaluation it would if it had to pass through a normal budgetary debate. So President Obama can bully Republicants into passing additional spending by using his bully pulpit to convince the American people that Republicants want to shut down the federal government and starve little children and senior citizens. The Republicants, not having an effective PR machine of their own, always cave and pass the continuing resolution, allowing President Obama to continue his governing by crisis.
     President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate ignore their Constitutional duty to pass a budget, which by the way the Republicant-controlled House has done every year since control of that body passed to the Republicants after the 2010 mid-term elections. The reason the President and the Democrat Senate are able to trample on the Constitution is because the Republicants are afraid to vote against the continuing resolutions. Their fear is rooted in the budget battle of 1995 when President Clinton and the the Republicant-controlled House came to a budgetary impasse and the government shut down for 28 days. The shutdown was used by Democrats to demonize Republicants, and today's Republicants think it is why they lost the 1996 Presidential election. But the government shutdown was a success for Republicants and the American people because it forced Bill Clinton into a balanced budget, and Republicants lost in 1996 because of their candidate, Bob Dole.  
     The Republicants should have never allowed President Obama the ability to run the government without a budget for the last four years. Granted, the first two years of his administration the President had super majorities in both houses. But since the Republicants have had control of the House Of Representatives they should have forced a shutdown in order to push the President into agreeing to a budget. But I fear that the scared little rabbits that run the Republicant party use their misinterpretation of the  1995 shutdown outcome to cloud their judgement about how to proceed towards fiscal sanity today. And every day that they do, is another day that President Obama and the Democrat Senate further dissolve the Constitution.

The Delusion Of Sex Change

     Sex change operations, or gender reassignment as it is now called, has been part of our culture since the 1930s, and can trace its origins to 1921 if you consider Rudolf Dora's attempt to remove his penis and become a woman. And one can argue about what to call it, I prefer the former term to the latter because technically words are classified by gender and people by sex, but there is no argument that changing ones sex has become all too commonplace.
     Approximately a quarter of a million people undergo sex change operations in the United States  yearly. It was recently reported by the American Psychological Association, and supported by a multitude of other studies, that a vast majority of these individuals are more emotionally conflicted and unhappy after the surgery than they were previously, and many eventually commit suicide. The problem is, treating someone who is conflicted about their sex by changing their physical sex organs does nothing to treat the psychosis that is responsible for their delusion of being trapped in the body of the wrong sex. And while it may seem the height of tolerance, especially to those on the Left, that indulging individuals' delusions about their sex, if those delusions differ from their physical attributes, it is analogous to indulging a child's delusion that they can fly by allowing them to jump off a roof.
     Sex change surgery has now become the most recent foray into "Barbary of the soul of decency" to be embraced and promoted by the university system in the United States. Over thirty American universities offer sex change surgery as part of their student medical plans, and another 25 offer hormone treatments as part of their plans. The question arises that if someone doesn't feel that their body is in sync with their mind, wouldn't the most enlightened course to pursue be to fix the mind? Or are we as a society suppose to indulge and financially support any citizen's delusional thinking instead of helping them to solve the psychological or emotional condition that is the source of their delusion.
     If a woman truly believes that she is a large-breasted woman stuck in a small-breasted woman's body, should others be expected to pay for breast enhancement surgery?  Or if a man with a small penis believes he is a large-penis man trapped in his current physique, do the taxpayers and his fellow citizens have the obligation to fork over hard earned dollars for his penis enlargement surgery? Has the thinking of modern times become so twisted that the culture encourages its members in the delusional thinking that their will is stronger than physical reality? These are the obvious questions that are not even considered by those who promote delusion and fantasy as a substitute for reason and probity.

The Last Child

     Last night I watched an old ABC Movie Of The Week from 1971 entitled "The Last Child." "The Last Child" is a drama about the future, sans the normal trappings of 1970s futuristic movies. This movie contained no universal outfit of silver jump suit and boots that other film makers of the genre thought would be the essence of future fashion. The people in "The Last Child" did not tele-transport or ride from place to place in hovercrafts. Nor did they use bizarre-looking telephones and communications devices. This was a movie that spent its energy on how people lived in the future not how they dressed, traveled or communicated. Those things were assumed to be the same as they were in the time in which the movie was produced
     "The Last Child" centered around a young couple who had lost their 14 day old baby a year prior and the wife was pregnant again. In this futuristic America couples are allowed only one child, even if that child dies. The young couple find themselves running from a government bureaucrat who wants to force the wife to have an abortion and is played by Ed Asner. Little did folks in the 1970s realize that the oppressive government character Mr. Asner played in this movie would be his actual persona in the year 2013.
     The young couple on the run receive some unexpected help from a retired Senator, who is also on the run in a way by receiving insulin from his doctor to treat his diabetes. In the future of "The Last Child", apparently they have Obamacare and no one over the age of 65 is allowed drugs or medical treatment, even a 70 year old venerable former Senator. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Ed Asner prevents the Senator's doctor from delivering the illegal insulin and the Senator dies shortly after. But not until he has helped the young couple escape to Canada with a signed letter from the Senator to an influential Canadian official who is an ally of the soon-to-be dead Senator. In the future of "The Last Child", as the Senator explains, Canada is less barbaric than America. Do not fear all you defenders of freedom because Ed Asner's character ends up meeting his fate in a fiery car crash.
     It is eerily prescience how this 40 year old movie foretold the coming of Obamacare and other Leftist edicts. At one point in the movie the Senator picks up the young couple in what looks to be a big Lincoln. When the young man compliments him on the car the Senator says, "Maybe the government will allow them to be built again someday." At another point in the movie when the young couple is discussing their unborn child with a government doctor who says it must be aborted, the young man screams, "Every life is precious." That sentiment is considered somewhat old fashion by today's Leftists and would never be part of anything produced by Hollywood except in the context of making fun of those who still believe in the sanctity of life. There are other Leftist realities of 2013 America spattered throughout this 1971 movie. One in particular is when the young wife has been taken to the hospital for her forced abortion (before her brother who works for the government gets her released) and she gets frustrated with a nurse who informs her that she must have a permit from some deputy of permits to allow for visits from her husband while she is admitted. The nurse turns to the agitated woman and says, "Now honey we want to be nice don't we?"
     Considering that "The Last Child" was produced by Leftists of the day, it is fascinating to watch the 180 degree shift that they have made in the last 40 years. The very over-bearing and oppressive government that they demonized then is the very one that they advocate for now. "The Last Child" is well worth the time invested to watch it and I have included a link at the bottom of this post.

The Last Child

The Wealth Of Poverty

      The class warfare rhetoric that the Obama administration and the rest of the Democrat party have inundated this country with for the last four years, belies a progression towards and even more sinister Leftist agenda. They are creating a society where the poor are given the trappings of wealth while at the same time the wealthy are depleted of more and more of the fruits of their labor. This causes a general decrease in the incentive to work hard and be successful because it has become more likely that one will receive the same benefits if they don't.
     If some readers doubt what I say, one only needs to look at government programs for the poor which use taxpayer money to provide cell phones, air conditioning, car repairs, child care, food and housing in addition to a myriad of other benefits. In fact, the federal government now spends almost 80 billion dollars a year just to feed people through the Department of Agriculture's multiple food stamp programs. And this figure has almost doubled in the last four years under the Obama administration. The problem has grown to such epic proportions that entitlement spending now constitutes two thirds of the entire federal budget. James Madison is roiling in his grave over the complete bastardization of his beautiful document that served this country and the world well, up until the last few decades.
     James Madison, primary author of the U.S. Constitution, and the other Founding Fathers created a society where people could succeed or fail on their own, without the shackles of a bloated and out-of-control central government. Today the federal government has become so consuming and powerful that not only does it gobble up almost a quarter of the nation's total output, but it dictates to businesses like banks how they should operate. The two thousand page financial regulation law, known as Dodd/Frank, places thousands of onerous regulations on the financial industry for the purpose of making sure that no institution grows too large. And the codification of bailouts within the legislation protects too-big-to-fail institutions from the consequences of their bad decisions. The new law, which is still being written two years after it was passed, is responsible for hundreds of small community banks having to shut their doors as a result of not being able to afford the compliance costs.
     Government intrusion into the banking industry via regulations has become so cancerous that financial companies now spend 1.2 man hours ensuring compliance with federal regulations for every man hour they spend on their actual business functions. Many industries are similarly regulated by people who know little or nothing about the businesses of which they have become defacto chief operating officers. These frivolous government regulations cost businesses money and make it less likely for entrepreneurs to even start a business. And for each regulation there is at least one bureaucrat charged with enforcement who sucks up taxpayer money in the form of salary and benefits.
     So what, you may ask, does over-regulation have to do with the wealth of poverty? Plenty. The larger government is, the more impoverished the people are. There are no examples in history where a large and all-consuming government produces a thriving and prosperous society. This is the result of government's innate inability to create wealth and its ever present corollary of wealth destruction. Don't get me wrong, I think a certain amount of government is necessary, but the founders knew that the wealth confiscation by government had to be limited for the society at large to have the best chance of prospering. Sadly, today's Leftists who control the government and much of our culture have traded prosperity and the morality of capitalism for their own twisted definition of equality and fairness.

The Premise Thieves

     Have you ever found yourself in a discussion and half way into it you realize that you are arguing for or against a position based on a specious premise advanced by your opponent in the argument? This is a diversionary debating tactic which involves stealing the premise of the argument to shift the discussion in a direction that is more favorable to your position. This tactic is used by high school and college debate teams, teenagers wanting to borrow the car and community organizers. Anyone who has raised a teenager knows the frustration of premise theft, when the discussion turns from being about the reasons the teen can not borrow the car to you defending a speeding ticket you received two years prior.
     Maybe it is the close association between the Liberal mind and the teenage one that makes the Left so successful at the premise theft tactic. The most recent example is the Sequester debate in which the Left was successful at defining reductions in the rate of growth as cuts. The fact of the matter is that the federal government is going to spend more money this year than they did last year, even with the implementation of the Sequester. And the worse part is that Republicants accepted the premise advanced by Democrats that the Sequester growth reductions were cuts.
     The left has replicated the tactic of premise theft in the climate change debate. Republicants have allowed themselves to buy the premise that man-made climate change is a forgone conclusion and the only argument is just how much government is required to "solve" it. In this way the Left steals the premise that the activities of man are causing the earth to warm, setting up a disaster at some point in the future. The premise theft affords the Left the luxury of never having to support their position with real facts and reasoned arguments. This is an effective tactic because once the premise is accepted by the general public, as is the man-made climate change premise, even proof of subterfuge by the Left does not derail the false premise. This was best illustrated by the revelation of emails between "climatologists" at the Hadley Research Center which showed collusion to advance the man-made climate change theory even in the face of contradictory evidence. Hadley is the main fountain of the world-wide global warming movement.
     The theft of premise in this country is a tactic that has been successfully executed by the Left with everything from tax cuts (the premise that tax rate cuts reduce revenue to the government is believed by many, but just the opposite is true) to the problem with our education system is a lack of teachers (since the 1970s we have doubled the number of teachers while student enrollment has only increased by eight percent). Democrats and those on the Left are aided in their theft of premise by Republicants who do not argue effectively against the premise, but instead focus ineffectively on how best to solve the specious premise advanced by the Left. Until Republicant leaders are better able to focus the narrative onto the proper argument on a variety of issues and call the Left on their premise theft, this country will continue to inflict upon itself the instruments of its own destruction in the form of bad laws and regulations.

A Record With An Asterisk

     Well, it has taken almost five and a half years, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally risen above its October 2007 high. And while a rising stock market has historically been one of the signs of a healthy economy, it has been completely divorced from economic fundamentals for the last 4 four years. As the bulls on Wall Street and the political Left celebrated the Dow's climb over its previous record high, real unemployment has remained over 14%, Gross Domestic Product grew in the most recently completed quarter at an almost recessionary rate of one tenth of one percent, the federal debt is rapidly approaching seventeen trillion dollars and the housing market is still in shambles. Charge on Bulls!
     The way that the stock market has historically worked is that participating companies report earnings. If both revenue and earnings are growing and expanding, the company is rewarded with investor interest in theirs shares, which in turn drives them higher. Macro-economic conditions also have a hand in moving the stock market higher, but if companies are growing their revenues and earnings, presumably the economy is also growing. Generally the expectations for earnings are based on the companies predictions for the current reporting period which are made as part of the previous reporting period, this is called guidance. Earnings expectations are also based on analysts estimates for the company.
     The complete market fiction of the last four years has seen earnings expectations lowered to almost nothing, and approximately half the companies are still not meeting them. But like the lemmings they are, the market movers bust a gut over companies meeting pathetically low earnings thresholds. They have become like a parent whose child constantly brings home Fs and finally receives a D- and they buy the kid a new car. It truly is fascinating to watch supposedly smart people lower their standards of success to a level that a few years ago they would have considered abject failure.
     The other synthesis driving the stock market higher is the Federal Reserve's easy money policy. Ben Bernanke, the Pope of paper money, has been printing 85 billion dollars a month and buying government bonds in an effort to keep bond rates so low that money flows into the stock market to be invested in equities. In 2008 when the financial markets exploded, the Democrats said one of the main causes was an over active Federal Reserve artificially keeping interest rates low and causing to much monetary easing. It is interesting how the Left changes its economic positions as easily as their social and political ones to suit their agenda of the moment.
     At some point in the near future Mr. Bernanke is going to have to begin to pull out of the economy all the money he has been pumping into it. I have heard this described as trying to pull a pin out of a balloon without letting the air out.  God help anyone who is now entering the market based on the new record high. The market movers will have long since pulled out and only the suckers who invest based on headlines will remain to reap the economic carnage created by unsound fiscal policy imposed on a free market by a community organizer and an academic, neither of whom have had to make a living in that free market.

Post Sequesterlypse America

     As I drove home yesterday from my cabin retreat in the hills of Southern Ohio, I expected a myriad of horrible Sequester-inspired tragedies to greet me. After all the President said unless the Republicants in Congress caved on raising taxes as part of a deal to avoid the automatic spending cuts of the Sequester, the country would be plunged into a new dark age. So I thoroughly expected to see children and seniors starving in the street, airliners falling out of the sky and fires burning out of control for lack of an adequate number of firefighters. Of course none of this came to pass and life in America continued almost completely uninterrupted.
     President Obama's calculated political bluff of grossly exaggerating the effects of the Sequester was called by John Boehner and the rest of Congressional Republicants, to both the President's and my amazement. President Obama had to stumble and stammer through a back peddle that would have put a trained circus bear to shame. The dirty little secret of the Sequester cuts, besides the fact that they aren't cuts but a reduction in the rate of growth, is that the President has the authority and discretion to apply them to non-critical programs and expenditures. He didn't, for example, have to indulge his petty and childish revenge against Jan Brewer by releasing thousands of illegal alien criminals into her state and blame it on Sequester cuts. But then Barack Obama could never be accurately portrayed as an adult. Unfortunately the power of the Presidency is in the hands of someone who is emotionally eight years old.
     So where do we go from here? The next battle is raising the debt ceiling and the passage of a continuing resolution to fund the federal government. Congressional Republicants should force the President and Senate Democrats, with a government shut-down if necessary, to execute their Constitutional duty that they have avoided for the last four years and pass a budget. The Republicants should also impose stricter and realistic cuts to the bloated federal budget and tax and entitlement reform. What the Republicants should not do is fear being demonized for doing the right thing for the country, that will happen no matter what they do. When Newt Gingrich and the Republicant majority in the House shut down the government in the 1996 budget debate, they forced the popular and politically skillful President Clinton to cave and agree to a balanced budget. And even though the Womanizer In Chief took credit for it after fighting it tooth and nail, it was the right thing to do for the country and should be the focus of today's Republicants.
     We can no longer, as a country, afford to throw away money on programs like Head Start, that even the federal government has said is a failure of epic proportions. Head start costs the American taxpayers a whopping eight billion dollars a year and has no discernible benefit to those very taxpayers who fund it with their hard-earned dollars. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of federal programs with similar budgets and records of failure that can be eliminated. It's time for the Republicants to show the kind of backbone they did in the Sequester battle in every battle to come. If they do, they can turn back the barbarians at the gate. If they don't, then the barbarians will pick clean the bones of the greatest nation to ever exist in the history of man.