The Republicant Betrayal On ObamaCare

     Previously, I have not been in favor of the creation of a more conservative third party. I have always felt it is more realistic to change the party that exists than it is to create a whole new one and attain the power structure needed in Washington to accomplish any legislative goals. However, with Democrats hell-bent on dissolving the Constitution of the United States, and Republicants hell-bent on not getting in the way for fear of offending someone, I think it is time to consider a challenge to the two party system with a more Conservative third party. The fate of constitutional government and of the founding principles of freedom and liberty may depend upon it.
     When ObamaCare was rammed through Congress without debate using the subterfuge of reconciliation, Republicants were outraged and said they were going to do everything in their  power to repeal and replace it. They ran on that theme in the 2010 mid-term elections and, in the words of President Obama, gave the Democrats a shellacking. But after taking control of the House, they did nothing except engage in mostly symbolic votes against the law. And when the Chicago mob that we call a White House administration intimidated the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to change his vote and uphold the law, again Republicants were outraged and vowed to do everything they could to repeal and replace. Their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, even vowed that his first order of business, if elected, would be to repeal ObamaCare. We are all too painfully aware how that worked out for Conservatives.
     Now we have come to a place where even the man who lent his name and radical ideology to the new law, has admitted its failure before it has even begun. Barack Obama's admission is implicit in his delaying large parts of the law until 2015, thus allowing employers to escape the coverage mandate for another year. And that is not the only part of the law that our Outlaw In Chief has decided not to follow. According to the new law, the federal government is not legally allowed to subsidize anyone's health care insurance premiums in states that refuse to setup the health care exchanges (somewhere north of thirty at last count). But President Obama, in his usual modus operandi of not following laws that are inconvenient to him, is going to subsidize those very insurance premiums that the law forbids.
     With the new health care law becoming even more unpopular with the American people than it ever has been, and with the President admitting that it is a disaster by his actions and with the funding for it having to come from the continuing resolution that must be re-authorized at the end of September, one would think that Republicants would be in the catbird seat with regards to dissolving ObamaCare. But alas, the Republicant establishment and the moderate mollies they lead are afraid of forcing a government shutdown because they have bought into the Democrat myth that when it occurred in 1995, Republicants suffered politically for it. But the shutdown, orchestrated by the Newt Gingrich lead House, forced President Clinton into a balanced budget and lead to George W. Bush being elected twice to the presidency. A far cry from being a political albatross around the necks of Republicants.
     My question for the party elites and the second tier moderates that slavishly follow them is, "Is there ever an issue for which a government shutdown would be appropriate?" September is the nation's last chance to extricate itself from the tyranny of ObamaCare. But it appears as though many Republicants with the instrument of its destruction are going to sit on the sidelines, secure in the knowledge that they did not piss off anyone over a government shutdown.

The Myth Of The Slumlord

     Do not let the title of this blog post lead you to believe that every landlord has the best intentions when it comes to the safety and welfare of his tenets as it relates to his property. Nor should the reader determine that I am so naïve as to think that every landlord, especially those of low-income housing, does his best to keep his properties in good repair and make every attempt to provide clean, bug-free environments for his tents. But I do not think it constitutes a trip to fantasy land to say that most people who delve into property ownership for the purpose of providing rental opportunities to low-income folks, are hard working and do their best to provide adequate residence under the circumstances.
     And what are those circumstances that work against the interest of the landlord, and therefore the interest of the low-incomers who inhabit their properties? Well for one, in some impoverished areas of some cities the local governments have instituted rent controls, which force landlords to make repair and improvement decisions based on the rising costs of such projects, weighed against the stagnant rents they collect. At some point, the expense overshadows income and landlords are forced to support their properties out of their own pockets or cut expenses.
     Another circumstance with which low-income property owners must contend is the people themselves. I have a friend who has inner-city housing he rents and he once failed a Section-8 inspection because the tenets stove was covered in thick grease, food and roaches. My friend does not supply appliances, so the stove was purchased by the tenet. My friend also, to my knowledge, never cooked anything using the stove, so the filth was that of the tenet. But this is illustrative of how Leftist policies have made people so dependent that they are not even held responsible for cleaning the dwelling in which they live. Another tenet actually told my friend that he would have to replace the drywall in the house that she rented from him because it had worn out. The tenets children had punched so many holes in the walls that repair was not an option, and my friend had to completely re-drywall portions of the house.
     Added to the aforementioned problems are ever stricter Environmental Protection Agency regulations with regards to the bogus lead scare, property taxes and water bills that climb as much as 25% a year or more, city authorities that fine landlords at a greater rate, and for less severe infractions, as they do owner occupied housing in the inner city and deteriorating neighborhoods that make it harder and harder to find tenets that resemble anything approaching civilized human beings. I challenge anyone to find me one instance where a landlord has gone into a tenets domicile and strewn garbage around and imported roaches and bedbugs. My friend rents places that are free of bedbugs and roaches, but somehow after people move in, the pests appear in large numbers.
     The real slumlords are not the property owners but the Leftist politicians who have spent decades training inner city people to depend on someone else to do everything for them, including even the basic functions of civilized behavior, such as keeping their own domicile clean. Leftist politicians have created the myth of the slumlord in order to take away the power from individuals to do for themselves. The more that Leftist politicians can convince inner city dwellers that the filth and squalor in which they live is the fault of property owners, the better chance they have of being returned to office where they can institute restrictive policies against landlords which never improve the lives of the tenets, the landlords or the city at large, only the lives and fortunes of the Leftist politicians.

Compassion And The Illegal Immigration Debate

     Throughout the current debate on so-called immigration reform, the Democrats have tried to shame Republicants into agreeing to amnesty for illegal immigrants already in this country by saying it is the compassionate thing to do. As if protecting our borders is somehow mean-spirited. Democrats characterize Republicants as unfeeling and hard-hearted if they refuse to make amnesty the prime directive of immigration reform. The Leftist thuggery of Democrats seems to be reaping results in their favor with recent statements made by Republicants that they are amenable to giving legal status to illegal immigrants brought to this country as children by their parents who sneaked over the border.
     The Democrat tactic of using children, even though in this case most of the "children" are well into adulthood, is straight out of the same old playbook they have used for decades. They characterize a segment of the population as weak and vulnerable, and therefore in need of their big government programs to protect them from the rich, white, Conservative males that mean them harm. Republicants in Congress refused to vote for the Dream Act a couple of years ago, thereby handing the Democrats a legislative defeat that otherwise would have given special rights of citizenship to people brought to this country illegally as children.
     The question that no one, Republicant or Democrat who supports the concept of legislation for "dreamers" can answer is, "How do we know who even falls into this category?" There are no records kept of the names and ages of the children that come across the border illegally with their parents. There is no way to verify this status, other than the word of illegal individuals who want the benefits that some in Congress say have accrued to them simply by staying in this country illegally for so many years. And as with any government program, the less verification that exists, the more that abuse and corruption have free reign to run rampant.
     The founders of this great nation created a system of government that operated under the rules of reason, common sense and law. They were wise enough to know that once human emotion made its way into the chambers of government, liberty would succumb to the arbitrary will of the human heart. They believed, and rightly so, that charity and compassion were best left within the purview of individuals, and not in the hands of a central government. To make the law malleable, as any legalization legislation would do, is to weaken the very foundation upon which freedom and liberty are built. At one time I believed Republicants in Congress understood this principle. But of late they have become as Democrats, hungry for an ever more bloated bureaucracy that limits individual freedom and places rule of law under the crushing boot of tyranny.     
    

The Transformative President

     Many Conservatives have accused Barack Obama of throwing the founding principles of this great country overboard and working against the intent of the founders. They almost say it as if it is going to cause the most Leftist president in our history to change his behavior for fear of being on the opposite side of freedom and liberty than the founders. But Conservatives criticism of the President's infidelity to the founding principles is only evidence to Mr. Obama that he is having success reaching his goal of "fundamentally transforming America" as he set out to do during the 2008 presidential campaign. In fact it was the only goal he set for himself that he has made any attempt to achieve.
     The modern Leftist ideology has its basis in the antithesis of the founding principles and values of this country, so no modern day Leftist will see criticism of his non-adherence to such values as anything but a flower in the lapel of his tyranny. Simply put, Leftism's success is based on increasing the number of dependent citizens and decreasing the number of wealthy ones. It is an ideology which seeks to manufacture evils like global warming and "social inequality," instead of dealing with real evils like radical Islamist terrorism. Leftism thrives on class-warfare, race-warfare and sex and age warfare to grow the size of government to a level that is never big enough to accommodate their political aspirations.
     The enemy of Barack Obama's Leftism is the foundation of liberty upon which our fore fathers built the structure of the people's government. That is why our current President must transform the founding from one of freedom and limited government to one of a smaller citizen and a larger central power that resides in his government. President Obama is not a man who believes in the rule of law taking precedent over his rule of radical change that he has decided is best for people who can not be trusted with the liberty and freedom granted to them as a birthright by their fore fathers who fought a revolution and created the greatest documents of free people ever written. The U.S Constitution and Declaration of Independence are seen as dangerous by the modern Left because they limit the power of government to what the governed decide, and bestows free people with virtually unlimited rights that come from God and can not be taken away by government.
     It is unfortunate that for the better part of two generations, the Left has controlled what is taught to children in our public schools. Many people, through no fault of their own, do not understand the founding principles of this country, which produced the greatest nation in human history and whose freedom and limited government has created the most advancement in the human condition ever. And this is what is at stake if Barack Obama's transformation is allowed to continue virtually unfettered as it has over the last four plus years. Our freedom and liberty is not for us alone, but has driven the same all over the world. And with the ability of free people to create and participate in economic freedom, comes wealth and prosperity for the greatest number of citizens. In such systems, the need for government is mitigated, and the limited government that is necessitated from that mitigation is an enemy to the political philosophy of people on the Left like Barack Obama.

Brother Barack's Traveling Salvation Show

     This week, President Obama inaugurated the latest leg of his never ending campaign to convince low-information voters that someone else besides him has been president for the better part of the last five years. In his opening salvo, which was characterized by the White House as an economic speech, Mr. Obama talked about his favorite manufactured boogey man, inequality. This speech was about income inequality, which the President and others who believe as he does, think can be solved by taking more money from people who have earned it and giving it to those who have not, with of course, a layover in Washington just long enough for some of those dollars to get stuck in the pockets of Democrat politicians.
     Barack Obama has been President for almost five years, and by this point in the Ronald Regan presidency (who students of history will remember took the reigns of power from Jimmy Carter under much worse economic conditions than Barack Obama found when he sat in the Oval Office for the first time) the Reagan economic policies had allowed the private sector to create ten million new jobs and Gross Domestic Product grew at an average rate of over five percent. By contrast, the Obama economy has produced an employment market where nine million fewer people are working than when Barack Obama took the oath of office, and Gross Domestic Product has not even averaged two percent. The number of people on food stamps has doubled, health care costs have risen forty percent or more just in the last three years since ObamaCare was rammed through Congress, fuel costs have doubled and unemployment is essentially the same as it was when Mr. Obama became President in January of 2009.
     President Obama made some glaringly false statements about income stagnation in the middle-class while one percenters have enjoyed forty percent growth in their incomes. Using the top ten percent as a comparison instead of the top one percent, would produce a result that shows income growth is fairly equal between the middle-class and the wealthy. Also, the factors that lead to income growth are all things that Conservatives have championed for years, i.e., stable, intact families created by strong traditional marriages, high graduation rates, low tax rates and wealth creation spurred by economic freedom produced by limited government. There can be no income upward mobility without wealth creation. A healthy and thriving free economy, by its very nature, is going to produce income inequality. An economy that features income equality also produces no wealth creation, innovation or overall economic growth. Income equality economies are best represented by those one would find in Cuba, North Korea and others presided over by tyrannical regimes.
     President Obama's latest effort to focus on jobs and economic growth, after having been President for almost five years, is not only disingenuous but absolutely buffoonish. Even his sycophants in the media are chiding this lame attempt to convince the American people that he is a Washington outsider instead of the guy who holds the most powerful office in the country. The current economic malaise in which we find ourselves is a direct result of the Obama policies, period. No amount of economic fire and brimstone speeches by Barack Obama are going to change that fact or convince a majority of Americans that somehow the wealthy in this country are responsible for the results of bad economic policies from the President. It is time for Brother Barack's traveling salvation show to fold up its tent, load the tired and worn piano on the flatbed, collect the hymnals of blame and go sell his snake oil somewhere else.

Huma Stands By Her Man, And Further Encourages Leftist Men To Disrespect Women

     Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner who tweeted pictures of his private parts to females on Twitter, gave a press conference yesterday. The presser was designed to quell new allegations that her husband, under the name of Carlos Danger, has been having elicit cyber affairs with multiple women. This does not seem to bother Huma, and she is going to stay with Anthony through thick and thin, or at least until he has no political viability remaining.
     Mrs. Anthony Weiner was supposedly advised before her press conference by Hillary Clinton, a woman who knows what it is like to have a husband for whom bimbo eruptions is a weekly occurrence, but who also knows what side of the political bread her butter resides. In fact it seems as though Leftist women, who rant hysterically how strong and independent they are, will allow their politically powerful men to step all over them time and time again with their embarrassing behavior. And Leftist men, who designed and have executed the mythical Republicant "war on women," are the ones for whom respect of women is a quaint and outmoded form of gentlemanly behavior.
     It has always perplexed me how many voters will hold womanizing men like Anthony Weiner or Bill Clinton in high esteem and allow themselves to believe the worst about a thoroughly decent man like Mitt Romney. It is not a shock that Leftist politicians would try to tarnish their political opponents by accusing them of behavior that seems to be a pre-requisite for men on the Left. What is the source of flummox for me and many other Conservatives is that the voters in this country are so easily convinced that Leftist men hold women in such high regard. Even the current President received a pass when it was discovered how women in his administration were treated with an air of patronizing derision.
     So Huma has made her decision to stay with a man that not only made an error of discretion once and is repentant, but by all evidence continues his deviant behavior. And the voters of New York must decide if they want a man as mayor that has so little self-control that even with his political future at risk, he can not stop himself from engaging in lewd and lascivious behavior. I have no delusions that the Leftist New York will not elect a man like Anthony Weiner, who has no moral rectitude, to manage their city. After all, those on the Left apparently think that Republicants not wanting to use taxpayer money to pay for female contraception is somehow more disrespectful of women than a man who breaks his covenant with his wife and apparently has no intentions of changing his deviant behavior. It is this naked hypocrisy which drives the Left to place decency and morality under the bus of their political aspirations.  

The Real Legacy Of Barack Obama

     Recently, President Obama's detractors have taken to calling him a liar in open forums, and the President's economy with the truth has become so widespread and commonplace, that even his supporters are excusing it by saying it is just politics as usual. It has become increasingly shocking to me over the last four years just how much dishonesty and outright corruption for which the American people have a stomach. Some say this moral apathy over presidential shenanigans began with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. But President Nixon was held accountable and his untruths that took the form of a cover-up of John Dean's break-in at the Watergate were not accepted by the American people, and he was forced to resign his office.
     The real corruption of the Presidency began with Bill Clinton, who was the first president in recent history and maybe longer, to make parsing of the truth a matter of course in his administration. But it has been Barack Obama that has not only destroyed the virtue of the presidency of the United States of America, but its people's virtue as well. Every politician seeks to paint his political opponents with the most negative brush he can muster. But the campaign that the President executed in last falls general election was not only unfitting the Commander In Chief of the United States, but the most petty of all criminals who spreads his sewage in the most disgusting places of the city. I say the people's virtue has been corrupted because even with the disgusting campaign that Barack Obama ran against Mitt Romney, they returned the purveyor of that filth to office for another four year term.
     The outright lies the President and his administration told about his signature legislation, ObamaCare, were so numerous that one could scarcely find enough truth in his sales pitch for the disastrous law to fill a thimble. And let us not forget the two week (or longer) lie about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including our ambassador, being the result of an anti-Muslim YouTube video. The maker of that film sits in jail to this day because of the President's lie, and the families of the dead still have no answers from their government about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their loved ones.
     Now it comes out in recent testimony, orders to IRS agents to kick applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party and other Conservative groups to higher ups in Washington, has caught President Obama in yet another lie. When this scandal broke, the President said that it was the result of a few rouge agents in Cincinnati, a statement we now know was a bald-faced lie. Had the President not been trying to cover-up a truth he knew would be embarrassing to his administration, he would have simply said in those early days of the scandal that "the investigation is still ongoing." By getting out front and proffering the lie that it was just a few rouge agents in the Cincinnati office, the President revealed a larger truth that he and his administration purposely used agencies of the federal government against his political opponents.
     After Bill Clinton lowered the Presidency of the United States in many peoples esteem throughout the world, George W. Bush was able to rehabilitate the image and virtue of the office through his decorum and honesty. My fear is that Barack Obama has so damaged, tarnished and sullied the office of the presidency that much of its honor, dignity and virtue has been lost to history, never to be the beacon of truth, honesty and probity it has been for over two hundred years. And that, my friends, will be the real legacy of Barack Obama.

The "Workers' Rights" Scam Of The Left

     There are many issues which separate Leftists from Conservatives, but so-called "workers' rights" is probably in the top five. Ask anyone on the Left who is a workers' rights advocate, and they will all tell you the same, that no employee should have any fear of losing their job, ever. They believe that job security is a right that government should force upon employers for the benefit of workers, irrespective of job performance or business needs. Now, I have read the Constitution and have found no right of job security within it. But the Constitution is not the governing document it was intended to be when the Left wants to create rights out of thin air for the purpose of growing the nanny state.
     Forced job security is not beneficial for either employer or employee, it is only a windfall for bureaucrats and Leftist politicians who make political hay from stealing liberty from others. It is the insecurity of losing one's job that produces a better work ethic and more production. It also motivates individuals to increase their skill set or start their own business. This is the reason that in socialist European countries, where jobs are guaranteed by government, there is very little innovation and small business development. The lack of government involvement in the labor market for the majority of U.S. history, is also why America has produced over 80% of the innovations in the world over the last 150 years and is why this great country is home to more small businesses than any other in the world.
     And what are the "rights" that advocates are fighting so hard to secure for the workers of America? In the extreme cases it involves union contracts which allow workers to attend work drunk or stoned on drugs half a dozen times before losing their jobs. These rights also include allowing child molester teachers to keep collecting their salaries, and instead of going to work every day, they are assigned to "rubber rooms" that house teachers that are so defective, even the union sees the benefit of keeping them away from the nation's children. But of course the union, with the help of Democrat politicians, have secured the jobs of these bottom of the barrelers. The defective teachers keep collecting their salaries and the union takes their cut in dues, which they then launder back to Democrat politicians through campaign donations.   
     The apparent concern over "workers' rights" by those on the Left has the same hollow ring as their concern over a myriad other issues. The leading Leftist advocates, and the politicians who support them with legislative efforts involving the use of taxpayer dollars, use issues like "workers' rights" to increase their own power base and control over the private sector. When this is allowed to continue, there is less profit for businesses to expand which means fewer jobs and more unemployed workers who must be supported, through higher taxes, by those workers fortunate enough to have employment. This leads to less wealth in the pockets of workers to buy products or start their own businesses, which leads to a stagnant economy that only benefits those in government or those connected to government by a counter-productive and counter-Constitutional ideology.

Detroit: Poster Child For Leftist Policy

     Last week the city of Detroit, which has been hanging by its fingernails for decades, could not hang on any longer and dropped into the abyss of official bankruptcy. This largest municipal bankruptcy filing in the history of the United States is illustrative, or at least it should be to anyone who has the courage to face the truth, of the eventual outcome of Leftist policies. Whether the entity is a city, state or country, prosperity, order and virtue will always allude that which is managed by Leftist ideology.
     A time traveler to 1960 would have found a very different Detroit than the empty, diseased and impoverished city that exists today. Then, Detroit boasted a population of a million and half residents with the highest per capita income in the country. It was the manufacturing capital of the world and was an industrial powerhouse, the likes of which had never been seen before. Driven by the automobile manufacturing industry, as well as many others, the city of Detroit was a well-oiled business machine. And with business came jobs and wealth for the residents.
     Beginning in the early 1960s, and continuing to this day, Democrats controlled the city of Detroit, lock, stock and barrel. Over the decades, greedy Democrat politicians, using the wrecking ball that is Leftist policy, drove business from Detroit and bankrupted the city with ever obese and slothful public sector union benefits. In its bankruptcy filing, the city managers have had to make the inescapable admission that the majority of their 18 billion dollars of debt is owed to public sector union benefits. Democrat politicians, who controlled union contracts, had no reason to be frugal with the taxpayers money because union dues, through forced campaign donations, filled Democrat coffers. The more salary and benefits union members received, the more money was laundered back to Democrat campaigns. This system is not unique to Detroit, but is ubiquitous throughout the country.
     So now Detroit finds itself in bankruptcy court, a crime-ridden Leftist utopia with police response times of 58 minutes when the national average is 11 minutes. With forty percent of its street lights not in working order. With thousands of condemned, dilapidated buildings awaiting demolition because the city does not have the funds to proceed. With a school system that graduates less than 25% of its students. With neighborhoods that look like war zones and where criminals have been given free reign to do as they please. I am reminded that just a few years ago, in defense of spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up the automobile industry, President Obama said he was not going to stand idle and let Detroit go bankrupt. But it has been the ideology of people like our President that has directly lead to policies that have turned the silk purse that was once Detroit into the sows ear that is Leftist utopianism.            

The Deliberately Untold Black Story

     With all the media attention in the last couple of weeks on whether or not George Zimmerman would be found guilty of fatally shooting black teen, Treyvon Martin, the small minds at the highest levels of what passes for journalistic organizations in this country, have missed a positive story about a black teen. To Witt: In Lancastetr, Pennsylvania a black teen named Temar Boggs and his friends rescued five year old Jocelyn Rojas from a would be kidnapping and a certain molestation and possible death at the hands of a monster. Temar and his friends joined in a city-wide manhunt after the girl was taken. When they spotted the suspect's car, they began to follow it on their bicycles. The man, after seeing he was being followed, pushed Jocelyn out of the car. She was then scooped up by Temar and delivered safely back to her family.
      I only mention this story because the national main stream media will not make as big a fuss about a black teen saving a girl's life as they made about a young black teen losing his life after a confrontation with neighborhood watch that turned violent. Not to mention that the small-minded media will not mention the 61 black teens that died in the city of Chicago, just during the George Zimmerman trial. But the names of those black teens will not be known to anyone but their families and the coroner.
     The media will never make a fuss over a black teen saving a little girl because it does not serve their Leftist political agenda to characterize blacks as victims of white, male Conservatives. And the 61 black Chicago teens that were murdered senselessly by members of their own race, does not fit the political agenda of the Leftist media either. You see, in order for Democrats and the rest of the Left to keep blacks on their plantation, they must convince them that they are helpless victims of Conservative, white America and their only hope is to keep electing Democrats to public office. Stories of rugged individualism and self-reliance, like Temar Boggs, are a poison to the Leftist cause of creating dependence on government from manufactured victim groups.
     It is sad that the Leftist media only portrays blacks as victims and refuses to acknowledge the millions of stories like Temar Boggs that show blacks as independent and strong. But then, if the media and the rest of the Left strayed from this narrative, black America may bust the chains of dependence that the Democrat party has put them in and throw off the shackles of helplessness and victim hood and truly participate in the freedom and liberty the founders envisioned for all men. This, of course, would be the end of the Democrat party whose death knell comes with the appearance of such freedom and liberty.
    

A Diatribe Of Differences

     Someone asked me recently what the core differences are between the Left and the Right. Following is a basic list of differences, I am sure there are more, feel free to let me know if you think of any which I have not included.      
     Conservatives work to make individuals stronger and government weaker, Leftists work to make individuals weaker and government stronger.
     Leftists do a disservice to justice by weakening it with the modifiers "social" and "economic." Conservatives do not dilute justice with meaningless modifiers.
     Conservatives believe in the power of individuals to improve and change their lives for the better, Leftists believe only government can perform this task.
     Conservatives aim to preserve the principles and values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Leftists aim to transform the aforementioned documents into the Declaration of Dependence and The Restitution by making them "living, breathing documents" that transform individuals' rights into collective rights that are given and taken by government.
     Conservatives believe in the dignity of each human being to make choices about how to live their own lives, instruct their own children and participate in changing their own communities for the better. Leftists destroy individual human dignity by convincing people that they can not possibly understand the intricacies of life's decision, and that only they, through the big government they control, can make these decisions for everyone.
     The Left think the poor are deserving and the rich are not. Conservatives believe that those who work hard, play by the rules and succeed should be upheld as an example to others as an inspiration to apply a good work ethic to make a better life for themselves, their families and their communities.
     Leftists believe in using the natural changes in climate to create crisis that only their ever expanding central government can resolve. Conservatives believe in protecting the environment without growing government into a force that tells individuals what kind of light bulbs they must use, how many miles per gallon their car must achieve, how much of our own natural resources we can extract from the ground to reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign sources that hate us and what private land owners can do with their legally owned property.
     Leftists see race, income level, sex and every other difference as an opportunity to divide people and create certain classes that are victims that need big government to even the score by taking from other classes that are characterized as the victimizers. Conservatives aim to treat everyone as individuals and not part of a group that all live, vote and think the same way. Conservatives understand that the only victims are those created by big government programs that inculcate dependence. 
     Leftists believe that all money is the property of government and thereby can be taken from individuals through taxes if they are deemed by the ruling elite to have too much. Conservatives believe that each man is the exclusive owner of the fruits of his labor, and only a small amount should be required of every citizen to pay for the basic functions of government.   
     In essence, Conservatives believe in true liberty and Leftists believe in a soft tyranny where government is the central figure in the lives of each citizen.

The Laughing President

     When President Obama was elected to the presidency in 2008, some people said it was historic because he was the first black person to be elected to that office in our nation's history. As historic as that achievement was, he will be remembered by history as the first president to preside over a credit downgrade of U.S. debt, the first president to be re-elected with chronically high unemployment, the first president to win a second term with fewer votes than he received the first time and he will also be seen by history as the first president that blatantly laughed and sneered at the American public he is suppose to serve.
     He laughed uncontrollably when he was elected in 2008 after he said he wanted to transform the fundamentals of America and redistribute both the wealth of individuals within the country and redistribute this great nation's wealth to the rest of the world. He has succeeded on both counts. He laughed until tears streamed down his face when he convinced the American people that their government needed to spend almost a trillion dollars it did not have to "stimulate" the economy. He subsequently laughed even harder when that money was used to payoff his campaign donors in the form of low interest loans to "green energy" companies that went bankrupt and the creation of a gaggle of union jobs. He laughed again when the stimulus failed to stimulate the economy, but no one seemed to notice or hold him accountable for the huge waste of money.
     President Obama busted a gut laughing when he was able to pass one of the most far-reaching and expansive bills ever, with not one Republicant vote in either chamber of Congress. His laughter turned to a sneer when he used the budgetary instrument of reconciliation to ensure his health care bill would not receive a fair debate on the Senate floor. Then the President almost expressed milk through his nostrils from laughing so hard when he and his gang of thugs were able to publicly intimidate the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, into giving his stamp of approval to the President's unconstitutional health care law.
     The President was far from finished laughing at the American people, in fact he was just getting started. He laughed when his Attorney General, Eric Holder, perjured himself to a Congressional committee investigating the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexico. The President laughed even harder when he was able to extricate his Attorney General from any further embarrassment or legal ramifications by cloaking his friend in executive privilege. President Obama went horse from laughing when he and his State Department's negligence lead to the deaths of an U.S. ambassador and four other Americans in Benghazi, Libya. His laughter then had him rolling around on the floor as he and his administration engaged in a two week lie about the attack, and were discovered lying, but were never held to account by an apathetic public.
     President Obama laughed hysterically when he slandered with malice a good and decent man because he dared to run against our dear leader for the presidency. Barack Obama giggled like a school girl as he and his minions of malcontents accused Mitt Romney of everything from tax evasion to murder. The President's laughter over racial divide in this country is in full bloom after he has spent the last four and a half years using the chip on his shoulder with this country's name on it to divide it among racial lines. His love of chaos as a means to gain political power has him laughing currently as the not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial has sparked demonstrations across the country that the President, through his laughter, is hoping grow in scope and mayhem.
     Yes, President Obama's election was historic, but his being black is the least historic aspect of his presidency. The most historic aspect of the Obama presidency is his ability to laugh as the U.S. Constitution, the founding principles of this great nation and common decency all cry the tears of the banished.  

Verdict No End For Zimmerman

     Usually when someone is accused of a crime and submits to the rigors of a trial, the matter is settled one way or another with the announcement of a verdict. The person pays the penalty for the crime if found guilty, or picks up their life where they left off if found not guilty. In the case of George Zimmerman, the most well-known neighborhood watch guard by now, the Left will make sure he never spends another day on this earth without threat to his life, liberty or pursuit of happiness. And even though he was found not guilty, Mr. Zimmerman will spend the rest of his life in the prison of the Lefts demonization.
     More to the point, the community agitator President, through his corrupt Attorney General, will seriously consider, and may file, civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for defending himself from someone who practically beat him unconscious before he shot and killed him. Well known terrorist expert and former federal prosecutor, most notably for a successful prosecution of the Blind Sheik for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Andrew McCarthy, has said that a civil rights violation against George Zimmerman for killing Treyon Martin is ludicrous and unlikely to be successful.
     The reason a civil rights violation will be hard for the government to prove is that to do so would entail two burdens of proof. First, the government must prove that George Zimmerman had some racial animus toward Treyvon Martin because of his race, and two, that that animus lead Mr. Zimmerman to deliberately deny Treyvon of a federally-protected civil right. All the evidence seems to suggest that neither one of these conditions could successfully be met. Mr. Zimmerman was certainly not a racist, after all he tutored black children and took a black girl to his high school prom. But of course, none of this will matter to the activists in and out of government. When one is a committed Leftist, truth is a casualty of an ideology which is fueled by the hatred of constant victimization for the purpose of curtailing liberty to empower government.
     I witnessed one of the "demonstrations" yesterday that were meant to show dissatisfaction with the not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial. With the President and others calling for calm and non-violence, it was illustrative of the difference between the Left and the Right. Had the verdict been decided the other way, there would have been no need for people like the President to call for non-violence. That is because those on the Right believe in the rule of law that sees that each man accused of a crime has his day in court and a jury of his peers decides from the evidence if he is guilty or not. The Left believes only in the rule of chaos, and the more they can create to obfuscate truth, reason and fact, the better their chances of imposing their will over the law. The Lefts temper tantrum over the George Zimmerman verdict is exemplary of their disdain for the American justice system and the rule of law that created it.

The Zimmerman Verdict

     When I first heard that the jury in the George Zimmerman trial had found him not guilty late Saturday night, I was surprised. But then, from the beginning, everything about this unfortunate incident has been a surprise. And the fact that my surprise over a not guilty verdict was only surpassed by my non-surprise over the predictable reaction of the race-baiting Left throughout this excruciating ordeal that they have impose upon the nation, is evidentiary of the Lefts desire to retard any growth toward racial maturity in this country.
     The prosecution's case against Mr. Zimmerman presented during his trial was exemplary of what happens when law and reason are replaced with race-baiting and manufactured emotion. After George Zimmerman shot Treyvon Martin while on neighborhood watch in February of 2012, local officials examined the evidence carefully and decided that Mr. Zimmerman acted in self-defense and that prosecution of any charges against him was not warranted by the evidence. Months later when the story was picked up by national media outlets, the flames of an emotional outburst were fanned by every racial opportunist from the lowest community agitator all the way up to the highest levels of the federal government.
     When the embers over George Zimmerman having shot Treyvon Martin were just beginning to glow, Eric Holder used taxpayer money to pay for demonstrations in Sanford, Florida, ostensibly for the cause of "justice." And once Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton mobilized their race-baiting machines, George Zimmerman did not stand a chance of ever being able to return to a normal life. The local community agitators and the national bullies like Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson were joined in their bullying by the Agitator in Chief, Barack Obama. President Obama's statement that if he had a son, he would look like Treyvon, was both racist and meant to be inflammatory. Treyvon did not look anything like President Obama and the only commonality between the two was their race and their sex.
     The manufactured "public outrage" over an unarmed black teenager being shot by a Hispanic man who the media tried hard to characterize as white, was enough to bully local prosecutors to bring charges against Mr. Zimmerman. But for George Zimmerman, the fact that a jury used testimony, evidence and critical thinking to acquit him of murder charges, does not mitigate the damage done to his reputation and hopes to live a normal life by the race profiteers and their useful idiots in the media. Mr. Zimmerman will not go to prison for defending himself, but he must now live his life as though he had. He will forever be the prisoner of the small-minded ideals of people like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

The "Living Wage" Scam

     One of the core fundamentals of our constitutional republic is the adherence to equal protection under the law. The very sound of these words strung together to express one of the primary ideals of our founding, is a high pitched screech to those on the Left. Unless, of course, equal protection is applied to one of the Lefts victim groups that they use to increase the size of government, thereby increasing their power. The virtue of equal protection under the law does not seem to be an issue for the Left when it comes to their discriminatory policies and laws.
     To Witt: Recently the D.C. city council passed a "living wage" law that requires employers to pay employees $12.50 an hour, a fifty percent increase over the nation's minimum wage of $8.25 an hour. But here is the rub, the law does not apply to all businesses in the D.C. area, but only big box stores (read: Wal-Mart). Wal-Mart was in the process of building 3 new stores in the D.C. area with possibly three more to come. As a result of the new law, Wal-Mart has cancelled the three possible stores and may stop construction on the three already in progress. Thousands of jobs will be lost, many of them manager, assistant manager and other executive positions. So not only is the ordinance blatantly discriminatory, something the Left claims to despise, but it will have the effect of keeping unemployment high in an area predominantly inhabited by minorities.
     If you ask proponents of a "living wage" law why the living wage should not be $20 an hour or even $100 an hour, they will say that no business that employs unskilled labor could afford to pay that much. But it seems clear that they have no problem imposing a wage on businesses that is just as arbitrary. What the so-called "living wage" is really about is raising the nation's minimum wage as high as possible so that union contracts will trigger an automatic raise, since most of them use the minimum wage as a baseline for their pay. Higher union salaries means more dues to the unions and more money going right back into the Democrat party coffers. Is it not interesting to anyone else that the people who will benefit the most from "a living wage" are the very Democrat politicians and activists that are pushing it. The "working poor," who they claim to want to help, will be hurt the most because it will mean a loss of low-skilled jobs.
     Democrats have done a good job of promoting institutional ignorance in the area of how money is earned in the free market. The minimum wage is one of the worst deals for those it is suppose to help. Study after study have shown that when the minimum wage is raised, low-skilled jobs are reduced, hurting those who may depend on them for subsistence. For years, employers like Wal-Mart have paid higher wages than the minimum wage, not because government told them to do so, but because the market did. The myth about minimum wage is that there are millions of people trying to support families on the meager earnings. The truth is that according to the Department of Labor statistics, a vast majority of minimum wage earners are people who are not heads of households, e.g. students, second earners and part timers.
     The "Living Wage' is just one more ploy by the Left to fool people into thinking that they care about them, when all they really care about is consolidating power in the halls of government. The D.C. city council decision is illustrative of how Leftist policies actually hurt those they claim to want to help. With help like this, it is no wonder the chronically impoverished stay that way.
    

Accepting Political Realities

     With the administration-written immigration reform bill having passed the United States Senate with help from snookered Republicants like Marco Rubio, John McCain and others, the next stop is the House of Representatives. Word on the street in the capital is that the Senate version of immigration reform is going to die a slow death in the Republicant-controlled House. The bill has been analyzed by those who support it and those who do not, but a quick refresher promises to do no harm. The Senate immigration reform bill has amnesty first as its core principle. And just to make sure of that, the bill gives practically unlimited power to the Secretary of Homeland Security to implement the aspects of the bill that she wishes and in a manner that she wishes.
     The fact that fifteen Republicant Senators voted for this extra-constitutional bill, shows just how far some Republicants have strayed from the core principles of Conservatism, which are based on the U.S. Constitution and the original intent of the founders. The Senate immigration reform bill does not come close to qualifying under either Constitutional reality or original intent.
     There are some on the right that are ready to canonize House Speaker John Boehner for what they think will be the death of the Senate bill in the House. This is illustrative of just how far expectations of some Conservatives have fallen due to the feckless way in which Mr. Boehner has handled his responsibilities over the last two and a half years. Each time he was given a challenge from the President, he folded like a cheap lawn chair. And now that it appears as though he actually might do the right thing, some on the right want to knight him for his service.
     When those on the right say the phrase, "accept the political realities," it always leads to Conservative principles being compromised in some way. We have had to "accept the political realities" when it came to raising the debt limit of an already out of control federal government. We have had to "accept the political realities" when the President strong armed Speaker Boehner into accepting the sequester and then using it against Republicants as if it was their idea. We have had to "accept the political realities" of softening our core beliefs like traditional marriage, abortion and now illegal immigration. We have had to "accept the political realities" when the Republicants in Congress allowed the President and his majority in the Senate to pass continuing resolutions to fund the government for four years instead of fulfilling their Constitutional duty of passing a budget. We have had to "accept the political realities" that Barack Obama won two presidential elections and therefore is given the right to circumvent the United States Congress with czars and Executive Orders.
     We have had to accept many political realities in the last four and a half years as we have watched our country quickly becoming a European socialist state. And now because it appears, for the moment, that Speaker Boehner and the other House Republicants are going to show some backbone and honor the Constitution, we are suppose to cheer and submit their names for sainthood. With all due respect to those men and women in the Republicant House, I expect them to stand up and fight for Constitutional principles and what is best for this country. There will be no praise from me for performing the job that the Constitution requires of them and is the reason we graciously allow them to occupy their current positions.

Conservatives Should Not Be Fooled By ObamaCare Implementation Problems

     Recently, I have heard and read pundits from the Right like James Capretta, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, interpreting the apparent implementation problems with ObamaCare to be signs that it is going to fall of its own weight. Mr. Capretta, whom I respect a great deal, actually predicted that the new law would implode in the next nine months. It never ceases to amaze me how obtuse those on the Right can still be with regards to Barack Obama, as if after almost ten years on the national political stage, they still do not have a clue about the ideology that drives his agenda.
     The overly optimistic demise of ObamaCare from some Conservatives has been given new life by two recent developments with the implementation of the new law. Last week, the administration announced that the employer mandate, set to begin in 2014, will now be delayed until 2015. This delay will allow employers an extra year to off-load their health insurance burdens without threat of a federal penalty. The second major development from the administration which buoyed the spirits of misguided Conservatives, is the announcement that the federal government will accept the word of individuals that they have secured a government-mandated health insurance policy and there will be no verification of this data.
     The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) was not passed as a health care or even a health care insurance law. It was designed from the beginning to be a wrecking ball that would demolish the edifices of the commercial health care insurance industry. Atop the foundation of what was once the greatest health insurance industry in the world, would be built a taxpayer-subsidized health care system that would use rationing to control costs and deny care based on an individuals worth to the State. This is the kind of single-payer system that Barack Obama alluded to when he spoke in front of a group of union devotees and said a single-payer system was his goal, but it would take ten years before they could get there.
     Knowing that the goal from the beginning was not to fix the problems with our private health insurance industry (mostly created by too much government), but was a single-payer, government-run health care system, makes these "problems" with implementation actually mile markers on the road to socialized medicine in this country. And yet there are still people on the right that misread the deliberate chaos of ObamaCare implementation as trouble for the new law and the President who breathed it to life. They seem to ignore the fact that Barack Obama came into office promising chaos and crisis. This modus operandi of the administration was given voice by the President's first Chief of Staff, Rohm Emanuel, when he said, "You never want to waste a crisis because it gives you the opportunity to do things you wouldn't normally be able to do." ObamaCare implementation crisis is planned chaos for the purpose of increasing the scope and control of the federal government, Conservatives are mollified by it at their own risk.

A Case For American Influence

     The quickly deteriorating situation in Egypt and the ease with which the "Arab Spring" transformed into a Siberian Winter, along with the Syrian government murdering almost one hundred thousand of their own people and Iran inching ever so closer to being nuclear-armed, can hardly be noticed without acknowledging the fingerprints of President Obama. They are, for the most part, fingerprints of a passive leader of the free world. The deliberate non-interventionist policies of the Obama administration is no secret, the President himself has alluded many times to his wish of  reducing America's influence in the world, an influence, he believes in the deepest darkest places of his Leftist ideology, is responsible for enslaving people throughout the world and inflicting war upon them.
     Knowing the preceding truth  about our President makes his intervention in Egypt two years ago ever the more perplexing. But even that was not a full-fledged intervention, but more of an American drive-by where the President exerted the United States government's pressure just until Hosni Mubarak was ousted as the 30 plus year ruler of Egypt and ally of the U.S. Then President Obama backed out of the situation just at a crucial time when the future of Egypt was at stake and not only allowed, but seemed to encourage the Muslim Brotherhood, through Mohamed Morsi, gaining control of the Egyptian government. Now the President is even more withdrawn since his guy Morsi has been removed via a military coup.
     What the President and the implementers and supporters of his disastrous foreign policy do not understand, is that for there to be any hope of democracies in the Middle East that respect human and civil rights, the United States' influence is desperately needed. This is because there is no tradition in that part of the world for self-government or rights of the governed as we had in this country before the American revolution. Even as 18th century British subjects, the colonists that revolted had more rights and understood those rights better than most people in the Middle East today. British subjects and their rulers had lived under the influence of the Magna Carta for over five hundred years by the time of the American revolution. The idea of not only the ruled having rights, but the rulers having responsibilities to those they ruled, is a relatively new concept to the people of the Middle East.
     When the United States fails to participate and influence world events like in Egypt, Iran, Syria and elsewhere, the influences of tyranny and oppression shape those events. This is neither good for the people in those countries or for the United States. I fear that in the next few years, with the comatose foreign policy of the Obama administration, the United States and the world are in for some turbulent times and much more slaughter and mayhem. President Obama and his allies have a world view that is one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase. U.S. intervention does not cause friction and strife throughout the world, but reduces it and ensures the best chance for the people of other lands to live as self-directed lives as we enjoy in this great country. 

So You Want To Be A Community Organizer ?

     Being a modern-day community organizer requires of the individual to have a sense that their cause of the day is much greater than the depths of depravity that they must sink to in practicing the art of deception that is community organizing. It matters little what is the stated cause, for it is secondary to consolidating political power in the hands of the community organizer and advancing his own career. This goal of political power-grabbing is accomplished by using members of the community as pawns in some sort of demented chess game where the only piece left standing in the end is the community organizer.
      In the mind of the community organizer exists an eternal vision of injustice that only he can remedy. But the community organizer's definition of injustice is any situation or event that can be used to divide people, leaving ample space for the community organizer to fill with poisonous rhetoric that is aimed at agitating the masses, usually against a political opponent of the community organizer. Exemplary of this ethos is the modus operandi of the Obama administration. The President and his gang of thugs live in the ether of manufacturing injustice and assigning it to their political enemies in order to marginalize them in the public political discourse.
     Illustrative of manufactured injustice is the issue of "equal pay for equal work." The Left, and certainly President Obama, have achieved much political mileage out of this none issue. There have been laws in place since the 1970s which make it illegal to pay someone less for the same work because of their sex. And women today actually make more than men doing the same work when the number of hours worked is use in factoring pay equality. Women generally take more leaves from work for pregnancies and to care for ageing parents, which is deliberately ignored in the Lefts calculations to give the appearance that women make less for the same work, leading to unnecessary legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Act. This was a classic case of community organizers convincing the public that an injustice exists where there is not one, thus rallying support behind the community organizer to grow the size of government for his own political benefit.
     This community organizing ploy has been replicated all throughout the Obama presidency. From an energy policy that demonizes the abundance of fossil fuels in this country to health care where a perception was created that an industry which had an 85% customer satisfaction rating had need of a complete government take over. The community organizer thrives on chaos and conflict, the more the better because it provides opportunities to pit segments of the population against each other. This is the bread and butter of the community organizing trade, it is constituted from the pathogens of political pabulum and  the malicious manufacturing of malcontent.
    

The Lefts Selective Outrage Over Paula Dean

     Recently Paula Dean, celebrity chef and cooking products retailer, admitted in a deposition that she had used the dreaded 'N' word thirty years ago as she was being robbed at gun point. The fact that the Left has kept our culture mired in a past where that word maintains an overwhelming offensiveness, is the topic for another post. The recent admission by Paula Dean, and the Lefts complete hysteria over it, is illustrative of the Lefts inability and unwillingness to allow average Americans to decide for themselves what is offensive and what is not and whether the purveyor of the alleged offense should be punished in some way.
     In a free and fair society, the "offense" by Paula Dean would have been evaluated by the free market and any punishment would have been meted out by the consumers of Paula Dean's products. But the free market scares the Left because it puts the power to decide non-criminal offenses in the hands of average people, away from the strict and intolerant court of the Lefts radical ideology. The arrogance of the Left is that they think without imposing their radical agenda on a woefully unsophisticated public, that public would never know that they had been offended, and would not show the proper outrage over that offense.
     The Left has been very successful in training people to self-censor, mainly through their invention of political correctness, which limits free speech in areas for which the Left knows they have no truth-based, substantive arguments. This was the case with Paula Dean's employers and sponsors. They did not drop the celebrity chef because they felt her admission would hurt ratings of her show or sales of her products. They did not even drop her because they themselves were offended by her use of the 'N' word thirty years ago. They dropped her because they were afraid if they did not, there would be a gaggle of community agitators demonstrating at their door step and a complicit media intimating that they were as rabid racists as Paula herself.
     The real irony of the Paula Dean incident is that there is probably not a person alive in this country, over the age of 30, who has not used that word at sometime in their life. Rappers and others in the black community use the 'N' word almost without restraint. If the word is offensive, its offense should be drawn from its use, not the color of the user's skin. But that is the core dishonesty of the Left, their selective outrage over an alleged offense based on the offenders race or the area of the country from which she originates. And they use that selectivity to punish those they have determined to be members of the predator class and reward those they have deemed members of the victim class.

The Meaning Of Independence Day

     Independence Day, colloquially known as The Fourth Of July, means different things to different people. Some see it as a day off work, or an opportunity to stuff themselves with cheeseburgers and potato salad until all they can do is lay in a lawn chair and drink their favorite beverage. To me, Independence Day is a solemn reminder of the sacred ideals, values and principles that built the foundation of this greatest nation in history.
     The ideals of independence were present in George Washington's troops at Valley Forge, many of whom marched in the snow without shoes on their feet so that their descendants could have dozens of pairs of shoes in their closets, many of which they never wear.
     The ideals of independence were also resident on the many horse drawn wagons that made the year-long trek across this country, carrying men, women and children who sacrificed everything to make not only a better life for themselves but for their progeny. They faced thirst, hunger, disease and Indian attacks so that their descendants could hop on a plane and traverse the same distance in a matter of hours, surrounded by ergonomically-designed chairs and unlimited beverage service.
     The ideals of independence were even alive in the bloodiest battles of this great nation's civil war, when brother fought brother over what that independence meant and who should enjoy it. And after the last battle of the war was fought, and the dead were all buried, the ideal that each man is equal in the eyes of God and under the law, had prevailed.
     The ideals of independence lived on even after white poll workers and black voters were savagely lynched by the terrorist arm of the Democrat party, known as the Ku Klux Klan. Their descendants now baulk at showing an ID as a requirement to vote, and many equate it with the lynching their ancestors had to endure.
     The ideals of independence were alive and well on the many ships that made the months-long journey across the Atlantic Ocean, carrying immigrants fleeing from tyranny and oppression. They came with hope in their hearts that their new country, The United States of America, would allow them the opportunity to use their gifts, talents, blood, sweat and tears to work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labor to improve their families lives and the lives of their communities. The freedom and liberty for which they sacrificed so much is now frittered away by their descendants, who wish to trade it for the false promise of security.
     The ideals of independence were linked arm-in-arm with Reverend Martin Luther  King Jr. and others as they demanded their God-given civil rights and were met with verbal and physical resistance from Democrats like Bull Connor, George Wallace and others who refused to afford black men and women the same rights they enjoyed. Their descendants, having gained all the rights and privileges of free people, are voluntarily enslaved by a political ideology which aims to keep them in the chains of poverty and victim hood for the purpose of consolidating power in the hands of a few.
     The ideals of independence are resident in the many people of the modern era, who even after having the power of their government turned against them for their political beliefs, still stand toe-to-toe with that very government and say, "No! You are not going to take my liberty and make a mockery of this great nation's founding." Let us hope their descendants are able to enjoy the fruits of liberty secured by all the brave men and women throughout this nation's history. Long live that liberty, long live freedom and long live the United States of America as founded over two centuries ago.
      

The Lonsome Ballad Of Edward Snowden

     Edward Snowden, the man without a country or a conscience, who gained world wide recognition for revealing to what extent the National Security Administration under Barack Obama was gathering data on every American citizen, finds himself stuck at a Moscow airport looking for a ride to anywhere but his homeland of the United States of America. Edward Snowden was clearly in the wrong, not for revealing the liberty gobbling NSA program that minds data for, who knows what purpose, but for the process he used to expose it.
      There were many options open to Edward Snowden, a list that should not have included abandoning his country. Mr. Snowden should have first taken his concerns to the Inspector General assigned to oversee the National Security Administration. If his concerns were not addressed by the Inspector General, Mr. Snowden could have written a letter to every member of both the House and Senate Intelligence committees. After allowing sufficient time for the members to act on the information, and without them having done so, Edward Snowden could have approached members of Congress that he may have considered friendly to his cause, like Rand Paul.
     After all possibilities were exhausted within the chain of government command, Mr. Snowden, feeling that his cause was still just and the consequences were worthy of that cause, could have gone to what he considered a balanced news outlet in the U.S. and exposed the program. This option would have required the courage on Mr. Snowden's part to stand and face any and all legal consequences for his loose lips. But Mr. Snowden did not choose to be courageous, instead opting for starting a firestorm and then hiding in Russia, which is not exactly a friend to the United States, and seeking asylum in, among other countries, Venezuela, which is as close to an enemy of the U.S. as a nation can come without publicly declaring so.
     Edward Snowden's sin, then, was not in the exposing of a government snooping program that the administration, with the help of some misguided individuals on the right, has vigorously defended. A program that stretched, if not exceeded, the limits of even the liberty-challenged Patriot Act. The Snowden sin was not even that he did not implement a remedy of proper protocol. No, Edward Snowden's sin was a simple case of cowardice. His convictions, what little may have existed, were made to stand naked against the cold winds of consequences without even the thinnest cloak of courage to sustain them.
    

Their Tyranny Of Ignorance

     The United States Congress has begun their Independence Day recess, and as Will Rogers once quipped, "Congress is in recess, the Union is safe." The United States Congress is in session between 125 and 175 days a year, just imagine how bad off we would be if they worked at this thing full time. With the recent track record of laws passed by Congress in the last four and half years, the nation would have been better off had Congress taken a four and half year recess.
     James Madison, father of the Constitution, stated that if government was populated with angels there would be no need for limits upon it. There is no greater proof of that pudding than the Obama administration in which one would be hard-pressed to find anything remotely resembling behavior of an angel. In fact, a sewage backup in a slaughterhouse would not contain as many life-threatening pathogens as the current regime, lead by President Obama. It is not so much that the people that populate the Obama fun house are bad as much as they are politically arrogant.
     I highly doubt that the Obama gang sees the things they do as anything less than epic, unequaled gifts to mankind, when in reality what they have a gift for is arrogant incompetence. We have all known someone in our lives that was not very good at something like sports or music, but they appeared to be totally oblivious to that fact, and continued to act as though God gifted them with exceptional ability. A character on the 1980s sitcom, "Cheers," named Cliff Claven comes to mind to describe the Obama administration. Cliff was the bar know-it-all and could recite "facts" and "statistics" on just about every subject. The only problem was, Cliff was winging it most of the time and really had no clue about anything. It was appropriate that Cliff Claven was a government employee. The entire Obama administration is the personification of Cliff Claven.
     The arrogant incompetence of the Obama administration has infected Congress as well, even the Republicants seem to have fallen ill with this horrible affliction. For the first two years of the Obama Presidency, the Republicants in Congress actually showed some backbone and distinguished themselves from the Democrats. The voters rewarded them with the largest mid-term victory in recent history in the 2010 elections, which gave them control of the House of Representatives. But then the wheels came off the "Stop Obama Bus" and instead of the Republicants moving the federal government back towards the right, they joined in its lurch to the Left. I have chronicled in this blog the battles between Speaker John Boehner and President Obama in which the Speaker forfeited almost every contest. This capitulation by Republicant leadership has culminated in the Rubio immigration reform bill that recently passed the Senate. The bill has Republicants, at least in the Senate, joining Democrats in their desire to expand the Democrat-voting under-class while not securing any of the items that would actually fix the illegal immigration problem in this country.
     Yes, Congress is in recess and we can breath easy, but do not become too complacent, because soon they will be back, and the nation will be at risk once again from their shenanigans. Their political hi-jinx would be laughable if they were not so dangerous. Their incompetence, their political larceny and their total disregard for our founding principles makes their tyranny of ignorance most dangerous indeed.

Government Greed

     It is no coincidence that as the pool of those dependent on taxpayer money has expanded, the pool of those paying the taxes has shrunk. This process of creating more beneficiaries being supported by fewer benefactors is one of the primary functions of Leftism. The result of this function is to increase the need for an ever-powerful federal authority to extract funds from those who have earned them and give them to those who have not. After, of course, government takes its cut. Once this realization is understood, the motivation for every Leftist policy is easy to uncover. And that motivation is not defined by a thirst for liberty but by a hunger for power and control.
     We have seen this overwhelming hunger on the left especially out-of-control in the last four and half years. It is in full evidence by legislation like Financial Reform and ObamaCare, where government merely regulating industries for the public good has been transformed into a de facto active management of businesses by politicians who have never run a business entity. In both of these economic and freedom crushing pieces of legislation, the only wealth being created is the wealth of individuals within the sphere of government. In the case of ObamaCare, the object is to destroy private health insurance in this country and replace it with a single-payer, government-run system. Financial Reform's goal is to support large financial institutions at the expense of smaller ones, in addition to federal authorities sticking their greedy little fingers into private individuals' financial and investing pies.
     The philosophy of people on the Left, like Barack Obama, is that freedom and liberty can not be trusted in the hands of common people, because they will build wealth instead of uniformity of outcomes. Leftists strive to make everyone equal by using the trowel of big government to smooth out the highs and lows of a diverse and thriving economy, making the entire country blend together in a bland surface of mediocrity. This philosophy places faith in government over faith in the individual, a concept that is anathema to this great nation's founding.
     Government is unrestrained by the guardrails of the profit motive that keeps private enterprise focused on satisfying the needs, wants and desires of customers at a competitive price. When business thrives, so does the community. The success of business depends on people having money to purchase their goods and services. Big government feeds itself with a bigger chunk of every individuals' labor. And the fewer people that are laboring and the more there are benefitting from that labor, the more of that labor big government must confiscate through taxes. The big government of the Left thrives on more dependents, not fewer, so therefore their policies and programs are designed to fail the individual while succeeding in growing a bigger need for even more government. This rapacious greed of Leftist government has made corruption the standard operating procedure for many who are suppose to be public servants and is in the process of destroying the moral compass of this great nation.