Same-Sex Marriage: A Power Grab By The Left

     The arguments supporting the proponents of traditional marriage are thousands of years of tradition, the logic of natural law that has ruled the world since the dawn of man, the moral standing of the world's major religions and the attributes of every successful society throughout recorded history. The argument supporting the proponents of same-sex marriage is, "Marriage equality now!" Ask anyone who supports same-sex marriage, and that is the only basis for what they believe, that the current definition of marriage is to confining and excludes people who love each other just as much as any traditional married couple, but just happened to be homosexual.
     There is certainly nothing wrong with equality as it applies to the application of the law or the opportunities afforded every citizen of this country. But the Lefts idea of equality is aimed at blurring the lines between differences and even denying that any differences exist. The argument from the pro-same-sex marriage crowd ignores the fact that men and women are different, and therefore a relationship between one man and one woman is different than a relationship between two men or two women. And if they are different, they can not be identified using the same term. By using the same term to obliterate variances between these relationships, one is saying that there is no difference between men and women, and therefore it makes no difference who an individual marries. If this is the case, then polygamy should now be legal as well as marriage between any entities that love each other.
      Same-sex marriage is exemplary of the Lefts obsession with equality. Everything and everyone must be equal in the eyes of the Left, even if that equality is to the detriment of truth, fairness and natural law. There is no greater sin against nature than to say each man's labor must be valued at the same rate, and therefore the wealth of one man must be redistributed, through government, to another man whose labor, the free market, has not valued as highly as the first man. And yet the Left commits this sin through advocating policies which do exactly that. A similar sin is committed against nature when the Left advocates for the destruction of marriage through its ever expanding inclusion. Marriage by its very nature is exclusionary, just as the sexes of male and female are exclusionary.
     The Lefts aim in destroying marriage is to destroy the foundation of self-reliance, the family. Fewer strong families means more dependence on government, which is the ultimate goal of every Leftist policy. It is no coincidence that 30 years ago homosexuals did not give a hoot about marriage until Leftists in the ruling class told them they should. If there is one area in which the Left excels it is convincing groups of people that they are victims, thereby increasing the Lefts power over the other segment of the population who are the supposed victimizers. This kind of soft tyranny makes victims of us all and slowly corrodes the very foundations of liberty and freedom.

The Arrogant Ignorance Of The DOMA Decision

       I have listened intently to all the analysis of this week's Supreme Court decision to strike down part of the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA for all you abbrevitists), signed into law by Bill Clinton in the 1990s after it was passed by a Democrat Congress. And although Justice Kennedy, in his majority opinion, intimated that Bill Clinton and his fellow Democrats were bigots for ever passing the law in the first place, this is one of the few times I find myself on the side of a Bill Clinton decision. But the issue is not whether people who believe in traditional marriage are the narrow-minded reprobates that Justice Kennedy accuses them of being or whether or not a homosexual relationship is somehow equal to that between a man and a woman. The answer to both these questions can only be logically answered in the negative.
     The real issue of the court's decision is that five out of nine justices on the Supreme Court of the United States put themselves above not only their Constitutional role, but also the natural law upon which the U.S. Constitution is built. The founders created a Constitution that acknowledges natural law as the best and only basis upon which to organize a society. They further realized that no government can dole out rights like free hot dogs at a business opening, they acknowledged that the rights of free people come from God. One of the most fundamental natural laws of a thriving and moral society is the concept of marriage being between one man and one woman for the purpose of procreating, and raising the offspring of that procreation to be contributing members of the society in which they reside. What could be more basic to the continuing existence of a society than the raising of children? Over the thousands of years of known human existence, no other relationship has been proven to be better for accomplishing that goal than that of a married man and woman who have committed themselves, not only to each other, but to their children?
     Sometimes the level of foulness and disgust that pours forth from some men's mouths is far greater than the debris that pours forth from any other orifice of the human body. Illustrative of this proposition is President Obama's celebratory statement on the Court's decision. In one statement, President Obama, not only disparaged and denounced a majority of Americans (many who voted for him, as Hispanics and blacks overwhelmingly support traditional marriage) but thousands of years of human tradition and culture built upon the morality that exists as a result of natural laws. Not to acknowledge that the relationship between a homosexual couple is different than that between a heterosexual one, is not only the height of folly and ignorance, but it misses the uniqueness of the sexes.
     Redefining marriage to include same sex couples is like redefining a mortgage borrower to include people with no down payment or proof of income...Oh wait Democrats actually did that as part of their last big push to make everyone equal, and it brought us one of the biggest financial meltdowns in our nation's history. It seems natural laws and reason are in affect whether or not Democrats or the Supreme Court of the United States recognize them. We ignore natural laws like gravity and the definition of marriage to our own peril, for we shall surely suffer the consequences of our arrogant ignorance.

As Illegals Step Out Of The Shadows, The Federal Government Retreats Further Into Them

     Much consternation and analysis has been engaged in recently over the debate on so-called immigration reform. But the core issue of immigration reform as it is currently being discussed has been missed by most on the right and everyone on the Left. While moderates like Marco Rubio and John McCain argue with Democrats over border security, fines paid by illegals on "the pathway to citizenship," how long those now in the shadows will have to wait until they are technically allowed to pop out of the shadows and what restrictions, if any, will be placed on them while they wait,  a much larger and more important issue is being missed. Even larger and more important than what is going to be the source for the additional billions of dollars required to administer these new programs designed to gently coax illegals out of the shadows and bestow them with the privileges of citizenship.
     Beyond the fact that the Rubio gang's immigration bill will turn a bad situation into a worse one, is the fact that it is one more nail in the coffin of Constitutional government, which has made this nation the greatest in history. The Constitutionally antithetical concept of bestowing dictatorial power on the executive branch through the agencies it controls like the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security and others, has accelerated into hyper overdrive with the installation of Barack Obama as President.
     Congress passes laws like ObamaCare, Financial Reform and now, possibly, immigration reform, with hooks in them that basically state that some cabinet secretary has complete discretion how the law is implemented, or even if it is. Much of the specifics of ObamaCare and Financial Reform (Immigration Reform's elder siblings) are written after the law is passed by the United States Congress, in direct violation of our founding principles which require the people's representatives in Congress to be the only entity that creates laws. The founders created this type of system so that those who make the laws are answerable to those who must live by the laws. Cabinet secretaries are answerable to no one but the President. Over the years, a shadow government has been created in this country consisting of bureaucracies that have more power than Congress. The people's Constitutional authority over the lawmakers has been usurped by people like Barack Obama.
     One of the founding tenets of Conservatism is Constitutionalism, so I am perplexed by anyone who calls themselves a Conservative and supports the current immigration reform bill. The bill, along with its brother and sister bills, ObamaCare and Financial Reform, imparts untold and accountable power to unelected bureaucrats whose only function in life is do the President's bidding. Democrat senator, Chuck Schumer said that this bill will eliminate illegal immigration, and he is right. This bill will essentially require that as soon as someone has successfully sneaked over our border illegitimately, they will be handed U.S. citizenship and a Democrat voter registration card. And taking up a post at the welcome wagon will be Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, John McCain and Marco Rubio.

The Loss Of Parental Authority And The Growth Of Government

     In the early 1980s, just when the condom industry was descending from its record sales achieved in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the "Free Love" movement, along came AIDS, the best thing to happen to the prophylactic business since the invention of latex. The condom companies, aided by  debris from the sixties culture, were convincing a whole generation of children that it was okay to have sexual intercourse as long as one used a condom. They did such a great job spreading their propaganda, that many from that generation still believe that there is an AIDS epidemic, and the lowly condom is the only thing that can save humanity. It turns out neither is true.
     The average condom does not have much ability to stop the transmission of the AIDS virus, this is not politics talking but science. The latex from which condoms are constructed have microscopic pores in them, measured scientifically in microns. The average pore is about four microns wide, much too small for the average sperm to squeeze through, but wide enough to accommodate one thousand of the AIDS virus side-by-side. So why did the Left and the condom industry mislead people as to the effectiveness of condoms against the AIDS virus? Well, the industry's motives are purely profit driven, the Lefts motivation was to expand the role of government in your child's life through the union-run education system. Once the Left was able to convince parents that their children were going to have sex no matter what, and that they put themselves at risk of contracting the AIDS virus unless government programs were established and well-funded to hand out condoms in schools as a bizarre form of "sex education", they were able to increase their control and influence over an entire generation of children. Again, I turn your attention to a Plato-ism that I have presented in this blog before, "The two most important questions in a society is who is teaching the children, and what are they teaching them."
     The fact that parents in the modern age have subjugated their parental rights to that of government influence over their children, is shocking and destructive to our culture. One of the most fundamental jobs of parenting is to teach children self-restraint and self-discipline, neither of which is present in the argument, "Well they are going to have sex anyway, may as well make sure it is safe." Handing kids condoms and telling them that if they do decide to engage in sexual intercourse they should be safe about it, is like giving them an unlimited gift certificate to the candy store and telling them to moderate their sugar intake. But then many parents of the modern age have no self-restraint or self-discipline themselves, hence the multi-billion dollar diet industry that thrives on a lack of both.
     Life is not easy, but it is much harder when one gives into every whim, desire and impulse resident in the human heart. That is why God gave use a mind, to reason and evaluate the best course of action for our lives. The right course is not always the path of least resistance, many times that path leads to self-destructive behavior which also depletes our community. This is exactly why the Left condones and promotes such destructive practices, it allows a wide berth for government to grow into and exert its authority into areas of our lives it has no moral right or Constitutional charter to occupy. The lessons of self-restraint and self-discipline that should be inculcated in every child by their parents, are an enemy of Leftism and a threat to its very existence. That is why if we are to have any hope of beating back the barbarians at the gate who bombard us daily with an ever growing government, we must raise children that are self-reliant, self-disciplined and self-restrained.      

The Game Of Identity Politics, Not Just For Democrats Anymore

     The fifteen Republicant senators who voted with Democrats for passage of the thousand page debacle known as "Immigration Reform", are committing a fatal error in judgment that Republicants can not seem to avoid in recent years. And it is not only the Republicant senators, but others on the right, including some in talk radio, that have allowed Democrats to convince them that Hispanics will give their votes to Republicant candidates in greater numbers if they would only support amnesty. Besides the obvious flaw in logic of these people on the right who think Democrats actually want to help them garner more votes from a majority Democrat voting block, is the fact that most legal Hispanics do not support amnesty for those who are not.
     It is ironic that just a couple of years ago in his race against Charlie Crist for the seat he currently occupies in the U.S. Senate, the man with the rapidly disappearing career, Marco Rubio, said that any kind of "pathway to citizenship" is just amnesty and will not solve the illegal immigration problem. In being the poster child for how to destroy your career by associating yourself with the extreme moderates in the party like John McCain, Marco Rubio has pushed the current legislative attempt at increasing the Democrat voter base by using the exact term "pathway to citizenship."
     Republicants in and out of the senate were mollified into supporting the immigration bill by an amendment to double the number of border guards and complete the 700 mile security fence. The building of the fence was a previous promise in law which the Democrats have made sure has gone unfulfilled, and the increase in border guards will never happen on a permanent basis. It is embarrassing how many times dunder-headed Republicants like John McCain can be fooled into voting for bills that are good for Democrats and bad for the country. The current bill gives complete discretion to the Secretary of Homeland Security with regards to how the specifics of the bill are implemented, or even if they are implemented. Secretary Janet Napolitano has already publicly stated that she does not support the building of the fence. So once again Democrats promise the moon to get amnesty for a fresh supply of an under-class who will slavishly vote to keep them in power in order to keep taxpayer-funded benefits flowing. And none of the security aspects of this bill will have to be implemented if Janet Napolitano does not want them to be, which I would bet my last dollar, she will not.
     Senator Lindsey Graham recently admitted that Republicants like him are not supporting this immigration reform bill because it is the right thing to do for the country, but because he thinks Hispanics do not like Republicants, and by giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, he and his cohorts can ensure that Hispanics will magically turn out for Republicants at the polls. What Senator Graham and others on the right who support the current immigration reform bill are doing is giving away the farm for some magic beans that hold the false promise of growing them electoral success. Remember that even had Mitt Romney received seventy percent of the Hispanic vote in last fall's election, he still would have lost. Democrats have always participated in the reprehensible practice of identity politics, but now it seems they have company from the right in the form of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and others.  

A Cautionary Tale About Big Government

     Once upon a time, there was a sleepy little hamlet called Sun City. And by sleepy little hamlet I mean a town you would probably miss if you blinked while driving through it. Sun City had very little problem with crime. Oh, there was the occasional domestic argument or bar fight in the town's only tavern, but nothing that the town's part-time, volunteer police officer, Hank, could not manage. Hank had a full-time job and used his own truck for his volunteer police duties and life was generally good in Sun City.
      One day, the state in which Sun City was located, implemented a multi-year road construction project on the main road that ran past Sun City. The road closure caused traffic to be diverted through Sun City, adding many times the normal amount of vehicle traffic through this sleepy little hamlet's downtown district, such as it was. Of course with more traffic came more crime, in the form of speeders. This made life more dangerous and annoying for the residents of Sun City, so they complained to the city fathers.
     The city fathers decided that it would be a good idea if they bought Hank a police cruiser and allowed him the authority to write traffic citations. They instructed Hank to spend most of his free time patrolling the downtown area where the speeders were making life miserable for residents. Hank did as instructed and began to write tickets to out-of-town vehicles whose owners were breaking the law, the local residents were allowed much more leeway with regards to compliance with the traffic laws.
     As time proceeded, Hank wrote so many tickets, that the revenue generated from them, was enough for him to be hired on as a full-time police officer. Working full-time enabled Hank to write even more tickets which resulted in more officers being hired and a building was built to house their police paraphernalia. Hank and his deputies were firing on all cylinders, and wrote so many tickets to out-of-town speeders that the Sun City coffers overflowed with revenue.
     Then one day the state's project was finished and traffic resumed its normal pattern, which meant it no longer drove through Sun City. Of course this caused an almost hundred percent reduction in revenue from police activity into the city coffers. It was at this point that Hank and his deputies began to write tickets to the local citizenry. This did not sit well with the folks of Sun City and they eventually voted to disband the police department.  This is a true story and is illustrative of what happens when government grows only to feed itself. The people of Sun City had no need for a police force, its existence was purely to feed its own bureaucracy without much benefit to the citizens of Sun City. In other words, "Government that governs best, governs least."

The Instrument Of Printed Media's Demise

     Over the last ten years or more, we have witnessed a sea change in the way the average person consumes their news and information. This change has had one of the largest impacts on our culture since the advent of the movable printing type invented by the Chinese around 1040AD, which made possible the sharing of ideas with large numbers of people. This week, in my kind of home town of Cleveland, Ohio, the town's only newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, announced immediate layoffs of personnel and subsequent ones to come by year's end. The paper has also cut back their issues from seven a week to only three.
     The carnage at the Plain Dealer is not unique to Cleveland, but has transpired across the country with newspapers both small and large. Much of the precipitous decline in the printed word offered by such media is a result of more people getting their news and information from Internet sources. But the explosion in choice for news and information is at the very foundation of the change. The traditional Leftist news sources, like the Cleveland Plain Dealer, are reaping the negative effects of the free market that a business will always reap when they do not serve the needs of their customers in an honest way.
     The people's hunger for balanced information has fueled Conservative news, whether it is TV, radio or printed news on the Internet. For so many decades, the three major television networks and a handful of newspapers were the only source of news and information for the American public. And these sources became more and more arrogant, an arrogance expressed not only in how they slanted what they reported, but by what they chose to report and more importantly by what they chose to ignore. News and information that did not advance their Leftist agenda, was removed from the public discourse by news sources which kept it bottled up and unavailable for public consumption.
     In 1986, under the Reagan administration, the information monopoly of the Left was dealt a serious blow. President Reagan signed a law which revoked the Fairness Doctrine, which had made political speech and commentary on the radio non-existent. In 1988, Rush Limbaugh's political commentary on the radio went national, and quickly gained popularity, partially because of Mr. Limbaugh's talent, and partially because people were hungry for news and information unfiltered by the Leftist media complex. In the past 25 years since the seed of truth resident in The Rush Limbaugh Show was planted in the barren desert of what was media in this country, hundreds of political talk shows have taken hold and become a vibrant part of the public discourse. This new freedom in media lead to The Fox News Channel becoming the number one cable network news source in the country. And with the explosion of the Internet, people are no longer imprisoned by the archaic information slave masters of the Left.
     Yes, competition from Internet sources has contributed to the demise of the printed media in this country. But more importantly, it is the choice for alternative views and a fuller spectrum of the truth propagated by these sources and Conservative radio spawned by Rush Limbaugh, that is at the heart of the slow death of printed media. Their irresponsible treatment of their customers, has after all,  been the instrument of their demise.

The Long And Winding Road Of Deception

     The recent tumble in the stock market on fears that Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is going to stop, or at least mitigate, the Fed's bond buying program that has propped up the market for the last three to four years, is ample evidence that the market would not be at its current levels based on fundamentals in the economy or the market. Ben "Bozo" the Fed Chairman knows the gig is almost up and the bottom is going to fall out, and he only needs to prop up the market for a few more months until his term ends at the beginning of next year and he can secure himself a lucrative position at some university. His boss, President Obama, does not have to run again and any collateral damage from the debacle of an economy they have created can be blamed on intransigent Republicants, which will minimize the effects to Congressional Democrats in next year's mid-term elections.
     The soldiers should all be at attention for anyone with the courage to face the truth that this has all been planned from the beginning. The Obama administration, in the person of Rohm Emanuel, said they were going to use the crisis to push through policies that would not be possible without the fear and uncertainty that was stoked by the President's rhetoric when he was a candidate. Had the economy been festooned in a 4.9 percent unemployment rate (the average rate for the entire Bush administration) and Gross Domestic Product Growth of 3 to 4 percent (again, the average under George W. Bush), the Obama gang would not have been able to impose an almost trillion dollar stimulus that went to his union buddies as well as ObamaCare and financial reform. The most spectacular slight-of-hand was used on the American people to convince them that since the stock market was roaring back to life, so was the economy. People began to think that even though they were not doing well, others must be because the stock market more than doubled in four years. Just the opposite tact was used by Democrats during the Bush administration when both the economy and the market were booming, and yet people were convinced by Democrat rhetoric that even though they were doing well, their neighbors were not..
       But the slight of hand began long before Barack Obama slithered onto the national political stage. The Democrats, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, created the sub-prime mortgage market with adjustable rate mortgages, which were set to rise in 2008. As interest rates rose, and the people with loans who could not afford them began to default, the investment vehicles comprised of those loans began to become worth less and less. This caused ripples throughout the financial markets which had been told by the government that these loans were stable (Remember Barney Frank and other Democrats pushing Fannie Mae stock as a solid investment?). The private insurance on these investments, called credit default swaps, defaulted with the sheer volume of bad mortgages, and companies like American International Group did not have the funds to cover the defaults. This was all engineered to happen in 2008 by Democrat control of the mortgage industry through Fannie and Freddie, who underwrote 80 percent of the mortgages in this country. This bomb had a timer that was set to explode just before the 2008 election, giving whomever the Democrat candidate was, the Presidency.
     The one two punch to the mortgage industry comprised of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac making the rules for the mortgage industry, which was basically that there were no rules, and Democrats in Congress lowering standards for mortgage brokers, destroyed not only the industry but nearly the U.S. economy. The mortgage market was flooded with charlatan brokers, freshly created by Democrats in Congress, who were able to operate in an environment with few rules, also created by Democrats through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The recent rise in the stock market and its subsequent coming crash has all been scripted by Democrat policy and Leftist ideology. The President needed to reward Wall Street, two thirds of whom voted for and supported him in both his bids for the White House, hence the rising stock market artificially created by Ben Bernanke. But the long and winding road of deceit began long before this community agitator we call a president took control of the government and forever transformed it from a government by, for and of the people into a tool of Leftist elites who use it to impose their will upon a once free people.

Democrats, The Party Of The Rich

     For decades, Democrats have convinced a gullible public that the Republicant party is the party of the rich. This has been accomplished under the noses of an obtuse public who are blithely unaware of facts to the contrary, e.g., millionaire Democrats in the United States Congress far out number millionaire Republicants. A corollary myth is that Republicants are the party of big business, once again the facts on ground do not support this supposition.
     One only has to look honestly at the Democrat party and the Obama administration during the last four and a half years to understand the truth behind my premise that the Democrat party is home to the ultra-rich and big business. The disconnect between what the President and members of his party say about promoting a strong middle-class, and the reality of the deleterious effects on the middle-class of their policies, is glaring. The President has demonized Wall Street and big banks, and yet his Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, has used trillions in printed money to double the market's value over the last four years, while the general economy has only had negligible gains. The President has made disparaging remarks about the big banks, and then with a wink and a nod supported and signed The Financial Reform Act (Dodd/Frank). The new law guarantees that banks like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and others will have their smaller competitors crushed by the weight of the overwhelming bureaucracy created by Dodd/Frank. And it worked, hundreds of small community banks have had to close their doors simply because they could not afford the millions of dollars in compliance costs of the new law. Not to mention that the new law legislates guaranteed bailouts for the larger banks, should they need them at any time in the future.
     ObamaCare is another huge benefit to big businesses and a detriment to small ones, not to mention to the average American family. The Congressional Budget Office has recently said that under a fully implemented ObamaCare, the average middle-class family of four will pay twenty thousand dollars a year for health care insurance, three and half times the current cost. Small businesses that can not afford the additional costs heaped on them by the federal government, will close their doors and layoff their workers. The days of starting a small business on a shoestring and building it into a thriving company, will essentially end as ObamaCare will add enormous expense to start up costs. Large companies will be able to absorb the onerous cost of "health care reform", but their smaller competitors will fall off the financial cliff created by ObamaCare.
     Some on the right have suggested that President Obama has a similar anti-business stance as did President Franklin Roosevelt. But FDR crushed business with the force of government and tried to destroy the engine of wealth in this country. President Obama has crushed business with his rhetoric, while at the same time giving them a hand-out through favorable legislation. President Obama has not destroyed business wealth as much as he has consolidated it in the hands of fewer and larger entities that he can control more easily to walk hand-in-hand with big government. We have witnessed crony capitalism in the last four and half years like we have never seen before in this country.
     The growing of government also supports another kind of wealth, union wealth. The growing bureaucratic class, who on average receive twice the salary and benefits than their counterparts in the private sector, have added tremendously to union coffers, subsequently benefiting Democrat politicians through forced campaign contributions. The Democrat party, especially in recent years, have been anything but champions of the middle-class and small business. On issue after issue and policy after policy, Democrats have chose to serve the interest of big business and big government which leaves only crumbs and scraps for the middle-class.

Kitty Astroturf

     For those unfamiliar with the term astroturfing, it refers to political demonstrations that are orchestrated by professional protesters and made to appear as grassroots community outrage over an issue. We recently have been subjected to such an event in my small town of North Ridgeville, Ohio. The artificial outrage has its source in the shooting of five mangy, disease-ridden, feral kittens by a humane officer.  Let me begin this post by saying I am pro-kitty, I live with four of them. I am also supportive of residents of a community seeing something in their community they want changed and petitioning their local officials to facilitate that change. That is not what happened in North Ridgeville, and what did happen in my small community is a form of national thug politics practiced by the left across this great nation.
     The original protest against the shooting of the kittens transpired last Thursday night and consisted of 20-30 people with hand-written signs marching near city hall for and hour or so. A few people driving by blew their car horns to show support for the protesters. Monday night, after the radical animal rights group Alley Cat Allies, co opted the local issue to use as a fundraiser for their organization, there were 70-80 people, some with professional signs, screaming in front of city hall for two and half hours. The symphony of  horn blowing from vehicles driving by was not limited to cars, but semi trucks also joined the Astroturf orchestra. A gentleman on a motorcycle, with window-shaking exhaust pipes, even treated me and my neighbors to his incessant driving back and forth in front of city hall. In fact, after watching the traffic for a while, I noticed that the people blowing their horns, some for 30 seconds or more at a blast, were the same half dozen or so people constantly driving back and forth in front of the protesters. Obviously these were members of the group whose job it was to disturb the peace in order to get their way, like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
     I took it upon myself to read Alley Cat Allies website, and on it was reports on the North Ridgeville event. The website also mentioned that members from Alley Cat Allies were meeting with the mayor and council members to demand action be taken. Again, I am in favor of members of a local community organically growing change in their city. But I am not in favor of outside agitators, in the form of national organizations, invading a town and using thuggery to intimidate local officials into bowing to their demands.
     Maybe the humane officer who shot the kittens could have handled the situation differently, but he is certainly not the evil monster characterized by some of the protesters. What is even more distasteful is some radical animal rights group using the kittens' death to fund raise for their organization and assert their influence where they have no business. As for those in my small community who allowed themselves to be used as tools of Alley Cat Allies, I wonder how many of them would have taken in those five kittens and paid for their medical expenses. I wonder further how they can be so exercised about five kittens being euthanized, and yet I would guess, most of them have no problem with the thousands of human babies aborted every week in this country. And shame on my local officials for allowing themselves to be intimidated into placing the rights of out-of-town carpetbaggers over the rights of taxpaying residents of the community. But this is 21st century America, where thuggery has replaced reasoned public discourse and the rights of the dissonant few are given precedence over the rest of us who pay the bills and serve our communities in silence.   
    

The Dangers Of 'Leading From Behind'

     If there is one truism that reveals itself with age, it is that one can choose not to participate in life's decisions, but make no mistake, those decisions will be made for the individual by some person or entity that may not have the best interest of the individual at heart. It is always better to participate fully in life and choose the path to be taken, rather than to let others choose your path. But this is exactly what has transpired with the Obama administration's strategy of "leading from behind."
     The President thinks that by leading from behind, he will avoid the perception around the world that, as he has framed it in the past, "America has been arrogant." But we have seen the results of this strategy in the Middle-East, others have made decisions for the United States which not only do a disservice to our national interests, but to the cause of liberty and decency in those affected countries.     
     In Libya, President Obama lead from behind and replaced Muammar Al-Gaddafi with a radical Islamic government controlled by Al Queda-style groups, which the Obama administration armed with weapons to help them overthrow their government. Gaddafi was a tyrant, but had been cowed into submission by the actions of the Bush administration, and was neutralized. The Egyptian debacle was even worse because the President supported the overthrow of an American ally, Hosni Mubarak, and replaced him with our enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood's own Mohamed Morsi, whose stated goal is to "Prepare for war with Israel." The three decades-long peace between these two countries was nurtured by Mr. Mubarak and is now in danger of disintegrating. And once again in Syria, President Obama wants to arm radical Islamists, ostensibly to overthrow the government there.
     Time after time, in the last four and a half years, President Obama has allowed decisions to be made by other entities, especially as they apply to the Middle-East. When Barack Obama commenced his term as United States President, there was still hope in Afghanistan that the Taliban would be permanently vanquished, Egypt was lead by a government that was an ally and committed to stopping terrorists and keeping the peace with Israel, Iran had a robust populace opposition to their tyrannical government, Libya was in the hands of a neutered tyrant and the forces of good lead by the U.S. were beginning to prevail over the forces of evil in the Middle-East. As a result of the Obama doctrine of leading from behind, the Taliban is in a robust resurgence and has chased the U.S. out of Afghanistan, Egypt is in the hands of our enemies and is committed to radical Islam which threatens Israel, the Iranian government has squashed any hopes of a rebellion there, Libya has turned into a country where a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans can be murdered and nothing is done and the entire Middle-East, as well as the world, is less safe from an ever growing radical Islamic threat.
     I am not blaming Barack Obama for the existence of radical Islam, it has existed for hundreds of years. But radical Islam never had state sponsorship in the modern era until Jimmy Carter handed over Iran to the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978. That too was a case of a U.S. President turning on an ally in favor of an enemy. It is fitting then for Barack Obama to complete the work begun by Jimmy Carter 35 years ago, and hand over the rest of the Middle-East to terrorist forces. I think it was John Lennon who once stated, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans." If that axiom was applied to the Obama administration, one would need to modify it to, "Tyranny is what happens in the Middle-East while Barack Obama leads from behind."
  

Free Market Advancement Trumps Government Stagnation

     In the areas of our daily lives that have become more functional and less expensive over the last thirty years, compared to the areas that have not, there is one common thread that weaves the tapestry of truth in this regard. Items such as mobile phones, that have become less expensive and more functional, have been exclusively developed in the free  market, while ones such as education have been entirely within the purview of government control. Cell phones (called mobile phones then) in the 1980s were big, expensive and had limited abilities. Today, everyone has cell phones that provide services of which those wealthy enough in the 1980s to own their predecessors would not have even dreamed.
     Gordon Geeco, the character Michael Douglas played in the 1984 movie Wall Street, said that greed, for lack of better term, is good. Well there is a better term that describes the function of wealth creation in America, and it is self-interest. Self-interest is different from greed in as much as it creates opportunity for all to participate in the wealth created by it, greed does not. And wealth creation, as Milton Friedman said, is the best remedy to poverty. The Leftist policy of wealth redistribution and making the poor more dependent on government, has only served the political ambitions of greedy politicians while they have perpetuated poverty among those who are the intended beneficiaries of such policies.
     In the free market, private enterprise is driven by the need to make a profit resulting from fulfilling the needs of customers and/or clients. This striving for profit fuels the engine of innovation and improves products and services in a relatively short span of time. Government is under no requirement to make a profit because they have the ability to fund their activities by confiscating money through taxes. In this type of situation, in all but the essential functions of government like national security, the government behemoth does not have to please customers or clients, and therefore does not advance innovation or development of its products and services.
     One of the most visible and blatant examples that illustrates my thesis is the Internet. The United States military developed the Internet in the 1960s as a way for information to be shared more easily among researchers. The government fought opening up the Internet for commercialization until the late 1980s. During that twenty plus year period, there was little to no advancement in Internet technology. In the ensuing twenty plus year period since the free market has controlled the Internet, the advancements have been staggering. The Internet has developed from a purely text-based U.S. facility used by very few people, into a world-wide service over which one can watch videos on hand-held devices that operate at speeds 2 to 3 thousand times faster than the old government-run Internet.
     It is the arrogant hubris of those in government that informs the misguided principle that academics, lawyers and bureaucrats can improve the lives of citizens and advance the cause of the human condition better than the free market. Even in the arena of charity, the private sector does a more efficient job of serving the poor than does government. Advancement, therefore, in most areas of society depends on a thriving free market and a stagnant federal government, only the opposite is ensured by the Leftist ideology which has gripped this nation in recent years. 
    

The Redheaded Step-Child Of Issues

   With the focus of the American people, at least those interested enough in their freedom to pay attention, on the myriad scandals of the Obama Administration, immigration reform is the redheaded step-child of current issues. While focus has been placed on the National Security Administration spying on law-abiding citizens through their phone transactions, the Internal Revenue Service using its rather large and bloated authority to suppress Conservative free speech and votes in the last presidential election, the Eric Holder Justice Department spying on reporters and their families and the Benghazi debacle still lurking in the shadows, the American people have not been focused on so-called immigration reform. But they should be.
     The fact that Democrats and even some Republicants like Marco Rubio, John McCain and Lindsey Graham want to reward people for breaking our laws, is beyond the good sense of a country based on the rule of law. Of course a fifth grade, most of which are smarter than most members of the United States Congress, could ascertain that the Democrats want immigration reform as a foot-in-the-door to creating 11 million new Democrat voters, thereby keeping them in control of the federal government in perpetuity. This is reality, what is not reality is Republicants like the aforementioned, thinking that by allowing amnesty (that is what we are talking about with the current immigration reform bill being discussed, let us not fool ourselves) they will ingratiate themselves and their party to Hispanics and garner more of their votes. That kind of pandering is beneath the dignity of conservatism, besides it does not work. The Republicant nominee for president, George H.W. Bush received fewer Hispanic votes in 1988 than did Ronald Reagan in 1984, even after President Reagan signed the first amnesty bill in 1986, giving 3 million illegals legal status.
     Republicants like Marco Rubio have been caught with their pants down with regards to immigration reform. Saying for months that they would stand four square in favor of border security first, then having to back track in order to cover Senator Rubio's comments on Spanish-language TV, Univision, that under the gang of eight bill, legalization would come before anything else. This revelation that they have no intention of being tough on border security makes one wonder if the other "tough" provisions of the bill will also fall by the side of the road as the immigration reform truck runs over the rule of law in this country. I can foresee, for instance, the case being made that it is against illegal immigrants' civil rights to deny federal benefits to any of them who are in process of becoming legal.
     I know it is difficult in our culture of dichotomy that provides us with information at our fingertips, yet has produced one of the most ill-informed and sheep-like populations in our history, to grasp the importance and ramifications of every issue that affects them. But if the American people, and especially Conservatives, do not pay close attention to immigration reform as it is currently being discussed, this redheaded step child may become a problem child that will require a larger and larger chunk of our nation's resources.
    

The Triple Threat Of The Obama Data Mining Operation

     The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an Alinskyite bureaucracy created by the Obama administration to ostensibly keep the evil banks and other financial institutions from cheating the American people out of their hard-earned money. I just wonder when a bureau is going to be created to protect the American people against the Obama administration from doing the same thing.
     Richard Cordray was assigned the position of head snoop at the CFPB by a recess appointment made by President Obama when the U.S. Senate was not actually in recess. The President knew Mr. Cordray would not legitimately pass a confirmation vote. But that is how this administration operates, separate Congress from their Constitutional authority when they stand between Barack Obama and his agenda. The CFPB collects data on every financial transaction made in this country by its citizens and looks for crimes having been committed, sound familiar? Mr. Cordray's jack-booted accountants are given even more latitude to snoop into law-abiding Americans finances by the Financial Reform Act, also known as Dodd/Frank.
     The data collection under the guise of protecting our finances dovetails nicely for the Obama administration into the data collection being done by the National Security Administration with our phone records. The President mischaracterizes (deliberately or through ignorance) the data being amassed by the NSA from carriers like Verizon, as meta data. This terminology is misleading as to what is actually being collected. The phone records are pointer data, which are keys to a myriad other personal data about law-abiding Americans. Think of the "meta data" as your home's address, the address is not your actual home but would lead someone to your physical home were all your valuables are stored. The phone records being collected by the Obama administration provide them with links to a store house of personal information about every American citizen.
     With the financial data being collected by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the phone data being collected by the National Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service collecting medical information on every American as part of their job administering ObamaCare, this government is going to have every personal detail of every U.S. citizen. And with the Obama administration's propensity to use such data to destroy any opposition to their unpopular agenda having been well-documented by the IRS scandal, the privacy implicitly guaranteed by the Constitution is looking more and more like a casualty of the ignorance that elected Mr. Obama twice.     
     I am still flummoxed by those on the right that support this mass data mining and collection operation by an administration that has proven itself untrustworthy again and again. Some men would have been appalled by such government apparatus, men named Madison, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams among others who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors to the cause of fighting such tyranny. Today men named Boehner, Graham, McCain and others so easily give away the hard-fought freedoms for which honest patriots died.   

The Intimidation Factor In S&P's Sunnier Outlook

     In August of 2011, Standard and Poor's, the oldest credit ratings agency in the U.S., downgraded the financial worthiness of the United States government under the Obama administration, it was the first time in history the U.S. lost its triple A rating. Just last week, S&P upgraded its outlook for the U.S. government's credit worthiness, stopping short of returning it to its former triple A status. Its sunnier outlook has more to do with government intimidation than it does with sound fiscal principles. The credit worthiness of the U.S. government is in no better shape than it was two years ago, and a good case can be made that it has continued to deteriorate.
     The federal government has added two trillion more dollars in debt over the last two years, the federal reserve has been buying 85 billion dollars a month in government bonds to keep the rates historically low and the Obama administration has still not shown that it is anywhere close to being serious about submitting a responsible budget. Not to mention that the economy has over 8 million fewer workers participating in it over the last four and half years. Over that same period, the U.S. economic growth rate on average is less than two percent, which is not enough to keep the government from borrowing billions every day, let alone paying off the 17 trillion dollars it has racked up in total, almost half of which has come since Barack Obama took the oath of office in January of 2009.
     In addition to the aforementioned bad news, the ticking time bomb that Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, has set in motion is about to explode. When the trillions of dollars in printed money he has pumped into the markets will have to be pulled out in the next six to eighteen months, interest rates will skyrocket along with inflation. The faltering economy, driven by a weak employment market, will falter even more as ObamaCare is fully implemented and kills even the pathetic job growth we currently have, as companies will trim work forces to avoid the ObamaCare requirements.
     I fail to understand why Standard and Poor's sees any of this as reason to upgrade the outlook of  the U.S. credit health. Maybe their sunnier outlook is a result of the government investigations that they have had to endure since their downgrade of U.S. credit worthiness in 2011. It was an embarrassment for the Obama administration that they could not blame on their predecessors, they owned the first U.S. credit downgrade in history lock, stock and barrel. At the time of the historic downgrade, the Obama administration had been in charge for two and a half years and had added almost as much debt during that period as President Bush had added in eight years. To make matters worse, the Obama White House had not submitted a budget during their entire time in office (and after some 54 months, still have not fulfilled their Constitutional duty to do so).
     When S&P rightly saw the danger in the administration's handling of the nation's finances, the Obama gang said it was politically motivated and used the power of the government that they controlled to investigate the agency. And this use of government bureaucracies to intimidate private citizens and organizations, seems to be the modus operandi for this administration. And the banana republic Barack Obama is creating feeds on the hollowed out carcass of what use to be a free nation that was a safe haven for liberty.

The Sexism Of Feminism

     The modern feminist movement began in the 1960s, and the so-called sexual freedom that resulted from it, could not have benefited sexist men that feminists say they are against, more than had they created the movement themselves. The major goals of sexist men and that of feminism could not be more closely aligned if they had been one in the same group. And while the feminist movement said it was all about freeing women from a sexist patriarchal system, its effect has been to create in many women the very sexual attitudes of the men they claim have kept women slaves for millennium. Not to mention trading a partnership with a husband for dependence on government largess.
     The number one goal of the feminist movement was to knock down the walls of ignorance surrounding sex, and to teach women that it was okay to be as casual and cavalier about sex as their male counterparts. At least this is what the feminist seem to be promulgating in spades during the 1960s and 70s. This, of course, is something every teenage boy dreams about from puberty onward. Sexist men, or for that matter most men, have expended much energy over the ages trying to get women to treat sex as casually as they do. In one fell swoop the feminists have given men a permanent Christmas morning where every package under the tree unwraps itself.
     An additional goal of the feminist movement that mirrors sexist male behavior is having children out of wedlock. The feminists teach that it is okay for a woman to raise a baby on her own, in fact they even venerate such behavior as exemplary. The feminists have gone from saying it is okay to have children out of wedlock, to instructing women that it is preferable to do so. The feminist call to arms is, who needs a man? Sexist and irresponsible men condone women having children that the man does not have to care for or support. And once again, this feminist attitude that teaches men are an unnecessary part of child rearing, has created more dependence on government for the women who practice it. Not to mention the increased risk for crime, drug addiction and poverty for the children who grow up in such households.
     The feminist movement was all about sexual freedom for women, but the more "sexual freedom" women have gained, the more they find themselves shackled by poverty. The most recent United States census data shows that the poverty rate among women is at an all time high and has been steadily climbing since the 1960s. This is in no small part due to the feminist movement, which has inculcated in many women the sexual attitudes of men, resulting in having children out of wedlock, which the feminists also encourage.
     It is my contention that before feminism, men in general respected women more. Women were held up as the pillars of virtue upon which civilized society was built. Men defended women and offered them niceties like pulling out their chairs or opening doors for them, not because men felt women were weaker, but because they felt they were worthy of respect and honor. It is a shame that on the road to making women "sexually free", feminists have also made women equal to men in their weaknesses and failings.

The Oppresive Nature Of The NSA Fishing Expedition

     Last week in a speech, President Obama said that if the people can not trust government, then we have a problem. As per usual, the President exhibited either his disdain for the founding of this great nation or his ignorance of it. It is trust placed in government by the governed that results in the very behavior exemplified by the many recent Obama administration scandals. And the Founding Fathers of this nation built its government in the way that they did precisely because of their inherent mistrust of government. They implored their progeny to always have a similar distrust in order to ensure the blessings of liberty. The framers of the Constitution knew that once the sewage of big government was allowed to pollute the pool of liberty, the pathogens of tyranny would grow and multiply, resulting in the cancer of oppression.
     One of the most venomous aspects of the growing Leftist ideology over the last 50 years has been the destruction of the moral certitude and basis upon which this nation was founded. This concept is no better illustrated than by the National Security Administration scandal, whereby the people's government continues to seize a billion phone records a day of average Americans from Verizon and other wireless carriers, all in the name of national security. It is shocking that those on the right, especially those who claim to be conservative, have stated that they see nothing wrong with the blatant invasion of privacy by the NSA. They squeamishly proffer the argument that this mitigation of our natural rights guaranteed by the Constitution, is necessary to protect us from the threat of terrorism. I have even heard some on the right say that since there are no victims as of yet, that have had their lives affected in any negative way, that this big government program is OK, no harm, no foul. Are we to accept that the government is only restricted by the enumerated powers in the Constitution when there occurs a victim from one of their policies? By then it is too late to reverse course, the founders knew this and that is why they severely limited the powers of the Federal government.
     We should never allow crisis to be the driver of government policies, which nibble at the fringes of the founding principles of this country, causing the winds of federal power to become so great that they overcome the very moorings of liberty. This is what has occurred in recent decades, and the most destructive outcome of this growing Leftism is not the lack of morality, but a total moral inversion. The moral inversion which teaches that freedom is a ticket to irresponsibility and that liberty can only be ensured by bigger and bigger government. The fact that so many on the right and in the middle have succumbed to the immorality that sees the mass confiscation of citizens' phone records as no big deal, is proof of our tittering on the cliff that jets out above the abyss of tyranny and oppression.
    
    

The Arms Of Her Courage

     The impassioned testimony last Tuesday presented by Wetumpka, Alabama Tea Party President, Becky Gerritson, should shame and humiliate more high profile and influential people who spoke against the Obama administration in its infancy, but were intimidated into silence by the Alinsky tactics of this President. Men (and I use that term loosely) like billionaire investor, Warren Buffet and CNBC host Jim Kramer.
     Jim Kramer saw the Obama policies for what they were, "The greatest destruction of wealth I have ever seen." Mr. Kramer said those exact words on the air in the early stages of the Obama train wreck. Just days later, Mr. Kramer reversed himself and was on board with the wealth destruction and everything else his masters in the White House spewed out on a daily basis. For his transformation from man into lapdog, Jim Kramer was given a promotion at CNBC and was made a host of one their morning shows. Billionaire investor, Warren Buffet, had a similar transformation from administration critic to sycophant. Mr. Buffet was rewarded with the insider information that General Electric was to receive billions in taxpayer money in bailouts. He used this information to buy GE preferred shares of stock when they were $6 and guaranteed himself a 15% return under the terms of the preferred agreement.
     Mr. Buffet, Mr. Kramer and others should be shamed by the Congressional testimony of a private citizen from Wetumpka, Alabama, whose only recourse to seeing her government careen out of control was to organize her neighbors, much in the same way the Sons of Liberty did some 240 years ago. And while Mrs. Gerritson and others were standing up to the behemoth tyranny that is the Obama administration and shaking their fists demanding limited and responsible government, those like Jim Kramer and Warren Buffet were cowering in the corner sucking their thumbs and clutching their binky blankys.
     Jim Kramer and Warren Buffet were not the only ones cowed into submission by the Obama thug tactics. Democrats like Dennis Kuchinich were likewise turned from critic of the Obama administration into slobbering devotee for far less than five pieces of silver. Former Congressman (you can not realize how good it makes me feel to say that) Kuchinich called the Obama administration the most corrupt he had ever seen, but became a supporter after only one ride in Air Force One with the President. There were others, both Democrat and Republicants, who were intimidated or bribed into silence and even vocal support of policies and tactics by a President and his gang of thugs they knew were wrong and opposed to everything upon which this great nation was founded. Congressional Republicants who supported the financial reform bill, known as Dodd/Frank, made it impossible for individual Americans to keep their financial life private and away from the prying eyes of over-reaching government.
     The men and women, whether in positions of power inside the government or influential ones in the private sector, who saw the crushing oppression of the Obama administration, and were intimidated or bribed into silence, should feel shame after seeing how brave Americans respond to this type of soft tyranny. Brave Americans like Becky Gerritson, a wife, mother and patriot, who, when her country was attacked from within, took up the arms of her courage, and with only her words as weapons, shined a bright light into the beds of her oppressors.     
    

The Immorality Of The Modern "Public Servant"

     People who have no moral foundation, or aptitude for it, can sometimes be shamed into doing the right thing. The problem we currently face with our government, and its leaders like Barack Obama and Eric Holder, is that they have neither a moral compass or the capacity for shame. Beyond their disdain for decency, Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder have no desire for moral clarity or certitude and act as if their feet would catch fire if they stepped onto the righteous path that use to serve as a highway for United States public servants.
     The attitude exhibited by our President and Attorney General is not limited to them, but is endemic in too many "public servants" of the modern era. Six of the richest districts in the United States are in the Washington D.C. area, it is by far one of the wealthiest areas of the country. This area is almost entirely populated by "public servants" who have become millionaires through matriculation into the university of government workers. Former President, Bill Clinton, lived in public housing his entire adult life and has only worked government jobs, but has somehow managed to become a multi-millionaire. His wife, the disgraced former Secretary of State, worked for the Rose law firm in Arkansas only because her husband Bill was the state Attorney General and then Governor, she never actually tried a single case during her tenure at the firm. She was what they call a "rainmaker." She, as the wife of the Attorney General, and then as wife of the Governor, met with prospective clients to impress them.
       The corruption of the term "public servant" has transpired right under the noses of the governed. We have allowed those who enter public life as middle-class to rise into the ether of wealth with incomes of which average Americans can only dream. We have allowed politicians to scare us into voting for higher taxes on ourselves to support public sector union contracts that benefit a select group of people, including the politicians who threaten to take away our essential services like police, fire and teachers unless we pay our pound of flesh in tribute to the mighty "public servants." We have struggled to live frugally and save for our retirements for 40 to 50 years while "public servants" have spent their bloated salaries like drunkin' sailors and then retire after twenty or twenty fives years of "service." We resolve ourselves to labor in the ditch of employment to support these "public servants" for forty years or more in retirement, all while our cities, states and country go broke from their greed and sense of entitlement.
     Someone once said that democracy can only succeed when practiced by a moral people, and if no one said it, I am saying it now. It is time we put "servant" back into "public servant" and not allow these essential parts of our republic to bankrupt the very nation they are supposed to be serving.

The Back Asswards World Of Ben Bernanke

     When the employment data for the month of May is announced this morning, the market will react in one of two ways. But its reaction may surprise you based on the results of the data. If the employment numbers are perceived as good, the market may tank and if they are bad it may rise. This is the result of Ben Bernanke, no doubt at the direction of the President, printing 85 billion dollars a month and buying government bonds to keep the rates historically low in order to drive money into stocks. This artificial buoying of the market is called Quantitative Easing. The Fed said this will continue until the economy shows signs of strength, hence if the employment data is good, it will make it more likely that the Fed will pull the needle out of the market's arm and the days of easy money will end.
     The stock market has more than doubled since its low in March of 2009, while the economy's improvement has been negligible. President Obama's impotent economy has produced economic conditions which rival the Great Depression and have certainly not been seen since. The President became CEO of the United States at a time, to be sure, was challenging, but no where near as economically difficult as when Ronald Reagan took the reigns of the same office some 32 years ago. At this juncture in the Reagan presidency, the economy was growing at 6 to 7 percent a quarter and it was adding half a million jobs per month. With an Obama Gross Domestic Product growth of barely 2 percent and less than a hundred thousand jobs being created a month on average, we would have been better off as a country having no president the last four and a half years and placing Congress on an extended holiday.
     But I digress, a return to the financially inverted world of Ben Bernanke. In the back asswards world of Ben Bernanke, good news is bad and bad news is good. It is a world in which easy money produced by the Federal Reserve is bad during Republicant administrations, but is an economic savior under a Democrat one. Chairman Bernanke knows that this endless printing of money and the buying of government bonds must have an end and has even made reference to the "unwinding" of his bond-buying binge. But unwinding trillions of dollars in monetary easing is like trying to transform popcorn back into a kernel.
     Mr. Bernanke thinks that the negative fiscal results that are bound to happen as a result of the Federal Reserve pulling the money out of the market place that it has been pumping into it the last three years, will be absorbed by a booming economy. The chicken and the egg scenario that the hapless chairman does not understand is that it is his monetary easing, along with the Leftist legislative agenda of the Obama administration, which has not only kept the economy from booming, but from growing at anything close to the ordinary rate of 3 percent a quarter. The academic theory behind Mr. Bernanke's actions is that if bond rates are kept low, investors will put their money to work in the stock market, sending it higher. As the market rises, it will give the illusion of an improving economy and create a self-fulfilling prophecy as businesses hire more employees and people feel good about spending money. This is the kind of blathering economic theory that is the result of having an academic run the Fed instead of someone who has actually worked in the real economy and understands it. This is the back asswards world of Ben Bernanke in which we now live, hold on tight, it is going to be a bumpy ride.    

The Precipitous Slide Into The Abyss Of Tyranny

     Pericles, the great Greek statesman and orator, said that courage is the secret to democracy. That sentiment was never better illustrated than it was by the victims of the Internal Revenue Service during their testimonies before a Congressional committee on Tuesday, June 4, 2013. These everyday Americans who wanted to get involved in making their country better because they saw it heading down the wrong path, had their patriotism met with tyranny from their government. These mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who were housewives, lawyers, dentists and nurses were treated like criminals by those charged with serving them, all because their ideas threatened the radical agenda of the current administration.
     The stories of the rampant corruption of government harassment based on an individuals or a group's political ideas, was aptly told by the victims. Their stories ranged from endless delays for tax-exempt status lasting years (while the President's half-brother had his application approved in 30 days and managed to get it back-dated two and a half years to make donations he collected during that time illegally, legal), to being asked questions of confidentiality the tax Nazis at the IRS had no business knowing. One Right To Life group was told all their board members would have to sign a statement saying the group would not demonstrate or protest in front of Leftist churches, also known as Planned Parenthood. When confronted by the group's lawyers about the illegalities of such a request, the IRS backed off. My question is that since the group's lawyers must have spoken with someone in the IRS legal department, did they not think that agents making illegal requests of applicants was worth investigating or at least reporting to a higher ranking official in the organization?
     The fact that this scandal involves over 500 Conservative organizations, almost a hundred agents of which we are currently aware and the fact brought to light by the Right To Life group's experience that superiors in the IRS knew of this practice, all points to this behavior being directed by the administration as a matter of policy. The Left likes to say there is no evidence that President Obama had any knowledge or involvement in the illegal behavior at the IRS, I say "Poppycock." I can produce dozens of audio clips where the President said Conservative groups like the Tea Party were spreading hate, funded by shadowy foreign sources and a threat to democracy. Are public statements like these not directives to his underlings of a policy direction. Would an underling in the marketing department of a corporation not act on his CEO making public statements about a competitor?
     Democrat Senator, Jim McDermitt, said the IRS scandal is a charade. This statement is illustrative of Leftists' total disdain for the liberty of the governed. The right of the people to express themselves freely when that expression is antithetical to the Leftist agenda, is a right Democrats and others on the Left cavalierly dismiss. Mr. McDermitt does not seem at all concerned that the IRS was being used by the Obama administration to destroy the liberty and right of free speech for a group of Americans based solely on their political ideas. It is easy to surmise for which side of the American Revolution Senator McDermitt would have fought, he would not have stood with the Sons of Liberty.
     The behavior of the IRS is the very essence of Thomas Jefferson's definition of tyranny, which is when the people fear the government. The opposite sentiment is liberty, i.e., when the government fears the people. The fact that there are not outraged Americans taking to the streets in protest over such a blatant violation of liberty, makes me highly concerned for the continued existence of this republic. Until the people of this nation take their rightful place out of the cowering corner they currently occupy and make their government fear them, we will continue this precipitous slide into the abyss of tyranny.

The Tyranny Of A Sovereign-Less Nation

      President Obama's speech a couple of weeks ago, in which he supposedly reset his administration's foreign policy, belies the fatal flaw in Leftist thinking. That is, if the United States leaves a theater of conflict with its tail between its legs, all conflict will cease and desist. The President illustrated one of the most infantile and most dangerous idioms of the Left when he stated that since we have pulled out of Iraq and are pulling out of Afghanistan, we are no longer at war with radical Islam and they are no longer at war with us. The President did not even come close to recognition of victory or even the desire for victory over a brutal and barbaric ideology, that not only is the enemy of the United States but civilized people throughout the world.
     Barack Obama, like every other Leftist who acquired their world view from the John Lennon song Imagine (which even the composer himself rejected towards the end of his life when he became an admirer of Ronald Reagan and started to become more conservative), thinks that the United States is the source of all conflict in the world and therefore if we withdraw from it, no one will want to attack us and instead will bring us daisies and fuzzy bunnies. This juvenile thinking presupposes that there is no evil or corruption in the world outside what the United States has brought to it.
     The Left thinks we have enemies because of something we have done and not because of who we are and the freedom and liberty our way of life represents. This severely flawed thought process is an outcome of the Leftist desire for a one world community, where the United Nations issues edicts and member nations blindly follow. We have already seen this dangerous thinking corrupt the inner sanctum of our republic in so much as Supreme Court justices have sighted international law as an ingredient in their decision-making on cases brought before them. There are also U.N. treaties, that if signed by the United States, will essentially subjugate our sovereignty to that of a world body that does not have our best interest at heart.
     For those Americans who define themselves, not as United States citizens, but as world citizens and think that a singular world government is most optimum, I have one question. What great achievements have resulted from the world body of the United Nations that has existed for over sixty years? They failed miserably to stop the slaughter in Rwanda or the genocide in Darfur. There have been no advancements in medicine, technology or industry as a result of its existence, and there is no intelligent case that can be made that the world is better off for the United Nations having existed in it. In fact, one could find merit resident in the opposite argument. The fact that advancement in the human condition comes from individual countries, most notably in the last hundred years from the United States, is reason enough to encourage and promote sovereign nations. Nothing worthwhile ever comes from bloated and overtly corrupt governing bodies that are endemic in the desire to micro-manage individual lives with regulation and laws from the mountaintop of arrogance occupied by those who think they have the intellectual superiority to do so.
     I fear that our current President's foreign policy will ultimately lead us closer to the tyranny of a sovereign-less nation and the corruption that is endemic in global organizations like the U. N.  
    

The "Gang Of Whatever" Strategy

     Unfortunately, every time Conservatives put their faith in a new Republicant standard bearer that is going to save the party, thereby saving the Republic, we are disappointed. The latest entrant is Marco Rubio. Just when we were all starting to heal from the Chris Christie betrayal, here comes Marco Rubio, looking like the successor to John McCain as the Republicant party moderate. The problem with those who occupy the middle of the road is that they insure that they will face an increased danger of being run over by both sides.
     It has always fascinated me how the call for moderation comes mainly from the Left, but is directed entirely to, Conservatives. There are never any calls from the media, or even the "reach across the aisle" club in the Republicant party, for even a modicum of moderation on the part of anyone on the Left. It has become so bad in recent years, that bi-partisanship has been redefined as Republicants moderating their position to be more aligned with Democrats. Never is the inverse even a vague suggestion. The record alacrity shown by Senator Rubio to moderate, and the redefinition of bi-partisanship to mean Republicants shifting their position to be parallel with that of Democrats, are amply illustrated by the current immigration debate.
     My opinion is that providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens is like providing free cash to bank robbers or free cars to car thieves. I had had some hope that Republicants were going to show some spine and insist on border security first and foremost before any other changes to the immigration system were implemented by Congress. But the gang of eight bill has no real enforcement teeth. And the fines that illegals would have to pay on their "pathway to citizenship" are now being walked back by Democrats and Republicants alike. So the gang of eight bill is looking more like it was written by a gang of eight Democrats.
     I fail to understand why some Republicant senators insist on falling for the rope-a-dope tactic of the Left inherent in the "gang of whatever" strategy. It always ends in disaster for Republicants and the nation at large. The last most memorable (or forgettable depending on how one looks at it) was the gang of 14 during the Bush administration. The Democrats were filibustering every judicial nominee who was not a devoted Leftist. The Republicants threatened to use the nuclear option, which eliminated filibusters for judicial nominations and required a simple up and down vote, which at the time Republicants could have won for most of President Bush's nominees. John McCain, six other Republicant and seven Democrat senators agreed that the Republicants would not allow the nuclear option to be employed and Democrats would not allow filibusters on judicial nominees, except in extreme cases. The loss for Republicants was that "in extreme cases" meant only Left-leaning judges avoided that classification, hence we ended the Bush years with many federal judgeships being filled by activist judges who do not subscribe to original intent with regards to the Constitution.
     I am not at all sure if Democrats are that smart, or Republicants are just that stupid, but one thing is clear, the "gang of whatever" strategy seems to work for Democrats. Unfortunately, most of what works for Democrats politically is bad for the country and requires a loss of liberty on the part of those of us who still believe it is the best principle around which to organize a society.

The Myth Of Food Deserts

     The newest Leftist scam to separate the United States taxpayer from their hard-earned dollars is the concept of "food deserts." The theory behind alleged "food deserts" is that the evil suburban dwellers have somehow prevented fresh fruits and vegetables from being available in the poverty-stricken inner-cities. This is the reason, so says the purveyors of this ridiculous theory, that so many inner-city dwellers are obese and subject to afflictions from malnutrition. They are forced, through no fault of their own or by personal choice, to eat high caloric, high fat and low nutrient foods.
     This theoretical concept that is being past off by Leftists as a "social justice" issue has no basis in reality, like most Leftist initiatives. In Cleveland, Ohio near where I live, the supposed "food desert" has within its boundaries multiple super markets where one may purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. There also exists the Port Authority-run West Side Market, that is open four days a week and is easily accessible by public transportation, to which free passes are available for most of the poor within the city of Cleveland and the outlying areas. The Market features all the fresh food anyone could ever want, sold by independent vendors. Over a hundred years ago folks use to spend a day or two traveling in horse-drawn wagons from far away locations to attend the Market. And today, some folks do not posses the motivation to hoist their obese butts onto a free bus to travel a few minutes to avail themselves of all the fresh foods sold at the Market. 
     The "food desert" scam is a Leftist device to use the poor as an impetus to receive funding for a non-existent problem. This is a favorite tactic of the Left used for the purpose of confiscating more taxpayer money and growing the size and scope of government. Even if fresh fruits and vegetables were not available throughout the inner-city, public transportation into the suburbs, where the fresh, nutritious food is being hoarded by greedy suburbanites, is so ubiquitous that an inner-city dweller can be within reach of the life-saving sustenance within minutes of leaving their home. But those on the Left that evangelize for the false faith of "food deserts" are actually doing their intended beneficiaries a disservice, which is the result of most Leftist policies. By subsidizing the distribution of certain foods into an area, the cost of all foods in that area increases. Not to mention the harm it does to individuals when they are deliberately taught that control over something as personal as their nutrition is not theirs, but lies within the purview of people who dwell elsewhere.
     The "food desert" strategy is illustrative of what President Obama's first Chief of Staff, Rohm Emanuel, said after Barack Obama won election to the Presidency in 2008. He said, "You never want to let a crisis go to waste, because it gives you the opportunity to do things you wouldn't normally be able to do." The only thing missing from this statement to make it a completely accurate depiction of Leftist tactics as they apply to "food deserts" is, "When there is no crisis of which to take advantage, create one."  One last thought. If Leftists who proffer the "food desert" propaganda actually think the only reason that inner-city dwellers don't eat nutritious foods is that it is being kept from them, why do they not use their own money to open and operate businesses in these areas that feature fresh fruits and vegetables?    
      

The Syrian Dilema

     Senator John McCain went over to Syria and bought the Brooklyn Bridge for a song from the Syrian "rebels." Well, he may as well have, he bought their sales pitch that they were dedicated to bringing a form of democracy to Syria once the United States armed them against Bashar al-Assad. The part-time Republicant Senator and full-time tool of the Lefts "non-partisanship", has joined opinions, if not forces, with Secretary of State John "I served in Vietnam" Kerry, in being desirous of arming the Syrian rebels against their brutal dictatorial government.
     The only problem with the analysis of the foolish like John Kerry, John McCain and others is that the rebels are not in any way, shape, manner or form freedom fighters or supporters of liberty for the Syrian people. According to Friends of mine, who left Syria several years ago, and are still well-connected to their former homeland by family and friends, the rebels are terrorists who have used the Syrian people's dissatisfaction with their government to impose Sharia law and replace the Assad regime with an extreme Islamist theocracy. Both the regime of Assad and the terrorist rebels engage in, among other acts of atrocity, persecution of Christians.
     Many middle-east experts, such as Colonel Ralph Peters and Andrew McCarthy, have wisely pointed out that the time for U.S. intervention in Syria has long since passed. The "lead-from-behind" President Obama squandered the opportunity to save lives and change the face of the middle-east as it relates to Bashar al-Assad's influence over it, when he refused to support intervention a year ago, before the rebellion was high-jacked by Al Qaeda-style terrorists. President Obama's Syrian blunder is reminiscent of his refusal to support reform in Iran during their election of 2009 when the aftermath produced the green party's demonstrations for change. This President has so little regard for the cause of liberty that he refused to even give moral support through his words.  
     I remember hearing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author and favorite target for persecution by the Soviet government, saying that it gave the victims of Soviet oppression in the gulags and elsewhere hope and strength when President Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire." For the first time, says Solzhenitsyn, a powerful world leader publically recognized what those in the Soviet gulags had known for their entire lives but never heard expressed on the world stage by any of its leaders, i.e., the brutal oppression practiced by their government against its people. Sadly, our current President has no such courage or ability to discern truth. The lack of leadership on the part of President Obama has not only been deadly for the eighty thousand plus Syrians who have been slaughtered in recent months, but for the entire stability of the region and the ripples that instability causes around the world.