The Medical Oppression To Which State Licensing Has Lead

     The state licensing of individuals in the medical and legal profession is against the very core principles of limited government. When any government entity can determine the composition and participation in a profession, it can also control how that profession is practiced. I have always wondered why the successful completion of medical and legal schools' requirements are not sufficient for those wanting to participate in those professions. Why the approval of bureaucrats is somehow more legitimate than the degree one receives from the centers of higher learning from which they attained the knowledge and skills to perform the functions of their chosen profession, is beyond me.
     This constitutionally ill-advised practice of state governments interfering with matriculation into certain professions is now being discussed as a means of forcing doctors to participate in ObamaCare exchanges, which they are fleeing like Leftists from the truth. This forced participation by the federal government will take the form of either federalizing the licensing of doctors or by the heavy boot of the federal government being placed on the throats of states through mandates aimed at compelling ObamaCare participation by doctors. Either way, the medical profession will essentially be transformed into an army of government workers who will be at the mercy of rules and rationing imposed by tax collectors and bureaucrats.
     It was not until the late 1800s that states began to license doctors and control the profession, originally to improve the quality of medical standards. But now, combined with ObamaCare, licensing could result in actually lowering both the standards and delivery of care. President Obama himself illustrated this in his response to a woman at a town hall meeting in 2009 when she asked if her ninety year old mother's will to live could be taken into account when determining if she could receive a pacemaker. He basically told the woman that her mother's age had to be the only determinant for receiving care, and the best that could be done for her is to administer a pain pill and send her home to die.
     Another more recent example is that of Sarah Murnaghan, a ten year old Pennsylvania girl who was facing sure death without a lung transplant. Her doctors determined that Sarah would be an excellent candidate for an adult lung, which often is not the case for young children. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, refused to allow the operation, saying that, "some people live and some people die." It took an order signed by a federal judge to overrule the Sebelius death panel of one, and thankfully Sarah is alive and doing well today, no thanks to the "compassion" of Leftist government policy.
     I understand that prior to doctor licensing in the 1870s, many people were practicing medicine who were doing more harm than good. But has not the maturation of the medical profession in the last hundred years mitigated and not intensified the need for government interference into this noble profession? Does any reasonable person believe that out from under the government's thumb, the medical profession would revert to 19th century standards and practices? To the woman at that town hall meeting, Sarah Murnaghan, and millions of other Americans, the government thumb on the jugular of the medical profession has now become the bane of quality health care that is medical oppression.
    

Should Kindness Play A Role In Politics ?

     In a recent champagne swilling event with his Hollywood devotees, President Obama quoted the late Roger Ebert to explain his own political philosophy. The late Mr. Ebert once said that all his political beliefs are based on kindness, and Mr. Obama stated that it is that philosophy that gets him out of bed each morning to face his critics. Beyond the fact that this president has displayed more nastiness towards those who disagree with him on policy than a bull caught in barbed wire while being taunted by a group of rodeo clowns, is the fact that his statement is illustrative of the core flaw of Leftism.
     Politics is, as its root word polis invented by the Greeks suggests, the creation of a city-state that is governed by its citizens. As such, public policy is implemented to the benefit of all the governed, not, as kindness would suggest, to the benefit of a select group of individuals within the whole. James Madison articulated this concept best and most succinctly when he said there is no charity in the United States Constitution. This is as it should be, charity and kindness is best left to individuals in the private sector practicing these lofty and worthy virtues on their families, friends, and neighbors.
    The inappropriateness of any President of the United States saying that his politics is driven by kindness is that the subjective nature of kindness can destroy what should be the objective nature of the law and public policy. This is the reason that the symbol of this great nation's justice system, Lady Justice, is blindfolded. The law, as well as public policy, should apply equally to all citizens regardless of sex, race, creed, wealth, or any other cosmetic or external characteristics. But this truly fair way of implementing policy would be the death knell of Leftism because it eliminates governmental authority being used to create victim groups for the expressed purpose of also creating permanent voting blocks, mainly for the Democrat party.     
     The wisdom of the Founders informed them that a nation based on the subjectivity of human emotions such as kindness and charity could lead to the justification for tyranny. This was best exemplified by Davy Crockett during his term as a representative of Tennessee in the House. Legislation was speeding through the congress to allocate taxpayer money in support of the widow of a well known Navy veteran. Mr. Crockett made an impassioned plea for his colleagues not to violate the public trust by using its money for the benefit of an individual, instead imploring his fellows to follow his lead in donating a portion of their own salaries to the cause. His speech on that day, entitled, Not Yours To Give, should be required reading by everyone in public service. It illustrates that charity meted out by government is not a virtue, but a vice visited upon those who have no stake in the largess of that charity.
     And so public servants like Barack Obama who speak of kindness as a driving force for politics, are silent on the inherent unkindness to those who pay the freight for their magnanimity. Of course the kindness of which President Obama and others on the Left speak has its roots more in political opportunity for them and their friends than any benefit for those who are in need of that kindness. In the final analysis, kindness as a driving force for public policy leads to the unraveling of the very fabric of liberty. A concept the founders understood when they created the documents which lead to the greatest nation in history populated with the most prosperous, and I might add, the kindest people on earth.

My Thanksgiving Message

    The national holiday of Thanksgiving was first suggested in 1789, by George Washington. It did not reach its lofty national status until the 1860s. But the origins of Thanksgiving predate George Washington's recommendation by more than 150 years. The first Thanksgiving, as legend has it, was celebrated by the pilgrims who settled the New World around the dawn of the seventeenth century. They were thankful to God almighty for the blessings bestowed upon them in their new home, thus making Thanksgiving one of the only remaining national holidays with its roots in the spiritual world. Even Atheists celebrate this national day of thanks, although I always wondered who it is they are thanking.
     Many myths about the first Thanksgiving persist, the most widely held one is that the pilgrims had such a bountiful harvest because of the farming skills taught to them by the local natives. Actually, even though the pilgrims received some valuable farming tips from the natives, they weren't totally helpless and it was not the kindness of the native population that saved them from certain extinction in the New World.
     Governor Bradford originally set up the colony to be a co-op, where the harvest was shared equally among all the colonists. Not only was the harvest communal, but so were the houses and other structures, no matter who was responsible for their construction. Mr. Bradford quickly found, as everyone does who implements this type of system, that the work was not being accomplished. With no personal incentive to work hard and own the fruits of their own labor, even these puritanical and spiritual people succumbed to the sloth that is inherent in a socialist system. I recall an episode of the sitcom Taxi where the Reverend Jim, a 1960s burnout, talked about a commune on which he lived. He said they farmed and raised animals and everyone did their own thing. When asked why it disintegrated, he said it turned out every one's thing was sitting around getting loaded. Reverend Jim's fictional commune and that of the real first pilgrims did not share a problem with drugs and alcohol, but did share human nature. And human nature teaches that if everyone is getting an equal share, even the more industrious will not put forth their best effort.
     Governor Bradford solved his problem by splitting up the land into plots over which each family had complete control, and benefited from the harvest of their land. This led to an over-abundance during the harvest, which they were able to share with the native people. They were also able to pay off, ahead of schedule, the overseas investors who sponsored their trip. They learned a valuable lesson about how working in one's own self-interest benefits the entire society. This is because there is more motivation to work hard when the individual is able to keep the fruits of his own labor.
     There are many things for which to be grateful on this day. Gratitude itself is the essence of a happy and well-lived life. If you find yourself in good health, be grateful that your health isn't poor. If you find yourself in poor health, be grateful for the opportunity to improve your condition. If you have enough money to pay your bills and be generous with others, be thankful for that blessing. If your paycheck runs out before your bills or you are unemployed, be thankful that you live a country where these conditions do not have to be permanent. No matter how dark the hour may seem, their is always some sliver of light for which to be thankful. And finally, be thankful for those pilgrims long ago who gave us the basis for the freest, most prosperous and exceptional nation in the history of the world.

The Continuing Adventures Of EPA Oppression

     There is hardly an American over the age of twenty one and in possession of cognitive abilities who does not realize that the bureaucracy known as the Environmental Protection Agency has outgrown the bounds of decent regulatory authority. The latest oppressive measure to be reined down upon business and residents alike is the draconian regulations on lighting. Of course we are all familiar with the EPA's tyrannical decision to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, in use for well over 100 years, and force Americans to use the mercury-laced compact fluorescent bulbs instead.
     The latest light bulb oppression from the EPA has reared its ugly head in the manufacture and sale of the tube fluorescent bulbs that are available in a variety of sizes. These bulbs are designated by the industry as T12, which the EPA has determined have too much rare earth minerals in their composition. Beginning in July of 2014, the T12 bulbs will no longer be legal to manufacture and sell. This means their replacement, the T8 bulb, must have new fixtures in which to be installed. This regulation, past not by Congress but by the Obamacrats in the EPA, will affect millions of businesses that have T12 fixtures in their offices and manufacturing facilities.
     This new edict from on high, along with previous regulations on light bulbs, will force 97% of all light bulb manufacturing to take place overseas, mainly in China. This will of course facilitate more jobs vacating the sinking ship of the Obama economy. This new wolf of oppression dressed up in the sheep's clothing of environmental concern will be another impediment to growth for American businesses. Having to expend the funds to replace T12 fixtures joins the nails of the worst economy since the 1930s Great Depression and ObamaCare, to affix the lid tightly on the coffin of prosperity in America.  
     The founders of this great nation did not trust government to make very many decisions, hence the severely limiting nature of the Constitution with regards to the federal authority. They would be shocked and dismayed that we have vested so much power in unelected bureaucrats. The power to oppress business and individuals alike, all in the name of the environment of which the Left, in their foolish arrogance, have appointed themselves protectors, is anathema to the founding principles of this country. It is this soft tyranny that grows into full blown oppression that the framers of the constitution were trying to avoid when they drafted the greatest document of freedom the world has ever seen. A document that the current occupant of the White House has betrayed in words and actions, thus violating his oath and disgracing the office entrusted to him by the citizens of this great nation.

Since When Does The Support Of The Governed Matter To Obama ?

     President Obama's approval rating in a recent CBS poll dipped to 37%, a level at which the main stream media tried to convince the American public that President Bush was no longer able to fulfill the duties of his office because he had lost the confidence of the American people. Of course, President Bush's low approval rating was only accomplished after four years of non-stop bludgeoning by the main stream media. President Obama has gotten his all on his own, the main stream media having carried his water for the better part of five years now.
     Conservatives have been jubilant at the prospect of Barack Obama's approval rating plummeting. I have heard some say it is the beginning of the end for the President. I do not know what that means to a President who has already won re-election, and can not run again. And if these conservatives are alluding to next year's mid-term elections, I do not see any indication or evidence that Democrats in congress will suffer from a low approval rating by the President. If that were true, then the opposite would also be true, and the Republicants would not have been able to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 mid-term election at a time when President Obama enjoyed an approval rating over 60%.
     The Democrats may lose control of the senate next November, but it will be vis-a-vis their support for the train wreck that is ObamaCare and not the President's low approval rating. The recent invoking of the nuclear option by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, essentially eliminating the 230  year tradition of the filibuster, is a result of the Democrat leadership seeing a possible loss of the senate next Fall. It is also due to fear of Republicants like Ted Cruz who are actually serious about their duty to the constitution. Make no mistake, the conservative Tea Party wing of the Republicant party is gaining strength, and scaring the hell out of the Washington establishment on both sides of the aisle.
     At this point in Barack Obama's term he has no concern for, or sense of duty to, the approval of the governed. The reason is twofold. One is that with essentially no filibuster in the senate to slow down his agenda, he is free to impose his will with a much lower level of congressional support than any president in the past. The second reason is the signaling of acquiescence by Republicant leadership, who have publicly stated that they refuse to allow another government shutdown for any reason, even to fight for the constitutional integrity of this republic. It is a republic that is currently at a crossroads, to the left is tyranny and to the right is liberty. The path taken depends on how We The People use our dwindling constitutional power to retake the authority granted to us by our founding documents before we become totally subservient to our Washington masters.

The Iranian Rope-A-Dope Snares Obama Administration

     Over this past weekend the United States, under the fecklessness of Secretary of State John Kerry and the "international community," reached a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. And while the ignorant diplomats living in their own little world patted each other on the back, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seemed to be the only world leader with his feet firmly planted in reality when he called the deal a "historic mistake." His comments were not just hyperbole in as much as Iran has expressed nothing but contempt for Israel, who would likely be the first target of Iranian nukes.
     The "deal" allows Iran to keep enriching uranium while enjoying relief from the sanctions that have been having a deleterious effect on their economy. Prime Minister Netanyahu characterized the deal reached in Geneva as, "cosmetic steps that Iran can easily reverse in a few weeks." But John Kerry, Barack Obama, and the rest of the intellectual elites of the "world community," have placed their own diplomatic hubris above the facts on the ground in Iran.
     The Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the supreme leader of Iran, may be evil but he is not stupid. The sanctions were severely limiting his ability to fund his nuclear program and so he installed  Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president. Rouhani is a cleric that the Ayatollah has convinced the "world community" is a moderate. The Iranian rope-a-dope worked flawlessly, but then when it comes to John Kerry and Barack Obama, it was not exactly a herculean task. While the self-congratulatory elites were swilling the wine of their own ignorance, the Ayatollah must have been guarded in his success being so easy.
     The most amazingly obtuse part of the Obama administration with regards to the Iranian deal is that they actually touted inspections as the mechanism for preventing Iran from violating the agreement. Have these glittering jewels of colossal ignorance learned nothing from the ineffectiveness of United Nations inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s, and their inability since then to find their own butts with both hands? Not to mention the foreign policy impotence they have displayed throughout the world from North Korea to Syria and beyond.
     A spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that if a nuclear briefcase bomb is detonated somewhere in the world five years from now, it will have its roots in this "deal." A sobering thought for everyone but the Obama administration, still intoxicated by the poisonous highball of their own incompetence and ignorance.

A Post-Nuclear Option America

     The effects of Harry Reid and Senate Democrats' power grab on Thursday of this week in eliminating filibusters of Presidential nominees, will not only allow the President to have a rubber stamp for any radical to which he wishes to hand the reigns of democracy, it will also have the effect of changing the function of that once esteemed body. Beyond the shameless hypocrisy of Democrats like Mr. Reid, Mrs. Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and others, who vociferously objected to the nuclear option in 2005 when Republicants controlled the Senate, is the distinction between the House of Representatives and the Senate being obliterated.
     For more than two hundred and thirty years, the senate filibuster has been the mechanism to prevent the tyranny of the majority, apparently something that is not so important to Democrats now that they are the majority. The founders created the two chambers of congress to be very different. The House of Representatives was the immediate body where a simple majority ruled. The Senate was the deliberate body where a single member could and should be able to prevent a vote based on principle and constitutional ethics. With the implementation of the nuclear option, Harry Reid has made the United States Senate irrelevant to its founding charter and unnecessary in the legislative process.
     The nuclear option implementation is a calculated risk by Democrats because they fear the loss of the senate in next November's mid-term election. With all the audio available of Democrats calling the nuclear option un-democratic and against the spirit of our founding documents, they run the risk of not only looking hypocritical, but they also risk exposing the under garments of their tyrannical nature. The fact that they have done this now and not in 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated, is a sign that they think the ObamaCare debacle has hurt them politically, and will hurt them in the near future. The damage that can be done in the next year with uncontested nominees from this President is immeasurable.
     I would suggest to Republicants running in next Fall's mid-term election to run against ObamaCare and for restoring the integrity of the senate by reversing the nuclear option once they have wrestled the majority away from Harry Reid and his band of authoritarians. The nuclear option not only changes a fundamental way in which the United States Senate has operated since its founding, but illustrates in stark terms Democrats' disdain and contempt for the founding principles of this great nation.

The Kennedy Assasination And The Lefts Denial

     Living in denial is the true mark of a committed Leftist. As this truism relates to the Kennedy assassination, it is a two for one. Those on the Left have lied to themselves over the decades that John F. Kennedy was some sort of a standard bearer for the modern day Left, and that his assassination, though committed by one of their own, was really the work of those on the Right. Neither of these assertions by the Left have the slightest bit of validity to bring to the reality party. But then, when it comes to valid reality, most Leftists run screaming in the opposite direction.
   Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, thirty fifth President of the United States of America. President Kennedy, a Democrat, would today be more comfortable and find a more suitable home in the Republicant party. John Kennedy believed in a strong national defense, fewer handouts to non-producers, and cutting taxes. All things that are kryptonite to the modern Democrat party. Not only would John Kennedy be a Republicant, but he would most likely take up residence in the Ted Cruz wing of the party. He certainly would not be in the John McCain/Lindsey Graham cabal.
     It has always fascinated me how all the conspiracy theories about President Kennedy's assassination have originated from the Left, many of the earlier ones being funded by the KGB of the old Soviet Union. We now know this for a fact because of the books written by former KGB agents after the fall of the Soviet Union. The reason for the attempted deception of conspiracy theories has always been quite obvious to me, Lee Harvey Oswald was a known communist and Leftist love communism with as much vigor as they hate conservatism. To accept that a Left-winger killed John Kennedy is an unacceptable reality to Leftists who rewrite history to suit their own agenda. So conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination are a two-fold attempt to exonerate the communist, Lee Harvey Oswald, while at the same time blaming the Right for his despicable act.
     And so on this fiftieth anniversary of Lee Harvey Oswald, a Left-winger, assassinating a president, who would be more conservative than half the Republicants currently serving in congress, the Left-wing media will attempt their best to rewrite the history of that awful day to somehow blame the Right for the actions of one of their own. Be prepared for the tortured twists in which the media will engage for the purpose of perpetuating the denial with which all Leftists cloak themselves in order to mindlessly practice their ideology.

Duplicitous Green

     Let me begin by saying that I am not in favor of deliberately or unnecessarily polluting the planet on which we live. I am also not in favor of manufactured solutions to artificial problems, like global warming, becoming public policy. I do not use "green" products because, very frankly, I have not found one that performs its function as well as its "non-green" equivalent. I believe that when it comes to protecting the environment, there are no better methods than those that come from conservative thought. I am the ultimate recycler, the majority of my furniture consisting of re-purposed items being a testament to that fact.
     The "green" lobby that petitions politicians on behalf of the green industrial complex is duplicitous in both its thinking and actions. Energy efficient refrigerators are exemplary of this condition. Sure your energy efficient ice box will save you $100 a year on energy costs, but having only a third of the life span of pre-energy efficient refrigerators, it will end up costing you much more than that old box. And it is not only the individuals additional costs in replacing the energy efficient refrigerator, but the extra energy it uses to manufacture, sell, and deliver the new box. And these efforts must be engaged three times as often as with refrigerators of the past.
     Recycling newspapers may seem at first glance to be saving trees, and in so doing, saving the planet. But when one adds in the costs, both in real dollars and energy expressed in BTUs, of collecting, transporting, and processing all those old newspapers, it really does not make sense from an environmental standpoint. And the fact that there are more trees in the continental United States now than at anytime in the last 200 years, means it is a resource that does not need saving. The timber industry over the last 70 years has done an excellent job of replanting more than what they harvest.
     Electric cars, which receive their recharging from electricity provided by coal-burning plants, are not winning any awards for energy efficiency. Beyond the range problems, expense, and inconvenience of electric cars, is their enormous contribution to environmental pollution through the mining of the minerals necessary for their batteries. Not only that, but the United States is trading being dependent on Middle East sources for oil, for being dependent on South American sources for lithium that make electric car batteries work.
     The supporters of compact fluorescent light bulbs defend their use of mercury by saying the reduced amount of energy they use reduces the mercury being spewed into the air by the coal-fired electric plants. But like much of what the Left uses to sell their oppression, the preceding argument is based on theory and speculation tied in a nice neat package of static analysis. There is no on-to-one relationship between a single bulb and the amount of mercury put in the atmosphere by the power plant that illuminates it. Therefore, using a compact fluorescent bulb that requires less electricity is not going to reduce the amount of time the plant must run to fulfill all energy needs demanded of it. Those plants will still be operating 24/7, 365 days a year. No amount of light bulb tyranny by Leftists is going to change that fact.
     The duplicitous nature of the modern "green" movement does not help advance the cause of conservation or individual liberty. Its goal, like that of every other Leftist movement, is to destroy or severely hamper capitalism and the free market. Leftists, like the "greenies," are unable to function in a competitive, free, and results-driven system and attempt to use environmentalism to impede and subjugate those who can.
    

The Lethal Leftist Cocktail

     By now, everyone knows that the Obama administration reported the statistics from the ObamaCare exchanges, and the numbers were, well to say the least, underwhelming. But the 106,000 persons who supposedly signed up for ObamaCare included those who put a plan in their online shopping cart, but never proceeded to the checkout to actually purchase the plan. The actual number of persons who went entirely through the process and purchased plans is closer to 25-30 thousand. Whether this methodology was an intentional way for the administration to juke the stats, or whether it was pure ignorance of how online businesses count their sales, it is, nevertheless, illustrative of the one-two punch of Leftism.
     The Left aims to impose their agenda through a cocktail with equal parts deception and ignorance. I can believe that this administration, 80% of whom never worked in the private economy, think that someone placing an item in an online shopping cart is a sale. I can also believe that this administration, 80% for whom honesty is the title of a Billy Joel song and nothing else, would deliberately try to mislead Americans that the President's health care plan is a smaller disaster than it actually is. And therein lies the rub, the pain and debacle of Leftist policies comes as a result of the deliberateness of deception and the ideological ignorance inherent in Leftist thought.
     Added to the deception and ignorance of the Leftist cocktail is a generous amount of arrogance, which prevents the Leftist from allowing the sanitizing light of reality, truth, and facts to constitute any semblance of a set of core principles. The Leftist is set adrift in a sea of political opportunity without the benefit of a rudder with which to steer his ship. For the Leftist, there is no past or future worth concern, there is only the present and its fleeting promises that can be used to gain political power over a free nation. This is the reason that Barack Obama is not concerned with lying to the American people, that and the fact he knows the journalistically impaired media will turn the water of his lies into the wine of truth to be served to an unsuspecting public.
     The lethal cocktail of the Left not only impairs the imbibers' duty to probity and good sense, but its effects are felt throughout our culture as more are influenced by its intoxicating poison. It is time for the sobering-up of our nation with the conservative values which allowed it to become the greatest in history. Values that were so important and as close to divinity as mere men could come, that they were written into our founding documents. We must choose to drink from the eternal spring of liberty instead of the stagnant, tainted water from the well of Leftism.

The Lefts Redefining Of Words

     I read a book in high school entitled, "Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley. The statists who controlled the society of a Brave New World had sanitized the language of all words they deemed "offensive". They even went so far as to outlaw certain thoughts that threatened the fragile fabric of their Utopian, statist society. I have been reminded again and again of this book in recent years with the enactment of hate crimes laws and the Lefts demonization of any idea that is anathema to the statist ideal they seek to impose on the rest of us.
    The latest reminder of "Brave New World" thinking has been the labeling of certain organizations as "Hate Groups" by those on the left, simply because these organizations have a different opinion on the definition of marriage. They lump groups such as Focus On the Family in with Neo-Nazis and the KKK. This is a favorite tactic of the left, especially when they know that their position is not the majority opinion in the country, and they have no substantive arguments to persuade people to their side. They seek to marginalize those with different opinions so that others are afraid to join them for fear of being labeled a "Hater".
     Sometimes the bastardization of words by the left takes the form of reducing the word's meaning in order to allow a favored group to avoid responsibility for their behavior. This redefining words is a close cousin to what the late Daniel Patrick Moynahan referred to as Defining Deviancy Down. However, where defining deviancy down is accepting more and more deviant behavior as normal, the Lefts word redefinition actually aims to remove deviancy from our language and culture altogether. Deviant behavior becomes, in the Leftist world, not defined down, as Mr. Moynahan suggested, but redefined out of existence. So children no longer engage in bad behavior, but are autistic, as a function of behavioral problems being reclassified as autism. And the deviancy of alcoholism and drug abuse have become the disease of addiction.
     The reason for the Lefts attempt to sanitize the culture of the concept of deviancy is that it implies an individual status, and as such, places responsibility to correct the deviancy squarely on the individual. As the Left has redefined words, they have at the same time reclassified unacceptable personal behavior as public health and welfare issues. Of course this results in a bigger role for a centralized government power to gobble up more individual rights as a function of providing a responsibility escape clause for those engaging in what use to be deviant behavior, but now has become excusable human affliction.

Obama Prosecution Of S&P Transparent As Saran Wrap

     With all the talk about ObamaCare lately and debate and discussion about the "presidential lie," a government prosecution by the Obama Justice Department has quietly proceeded, almost unnoticed. I am of course talking about the Obama administration's legal action against Standard and Poors, a division of McGraw-Hill, and one of the largest credit ratings agencies in the world. The Obama Justice Department is in the process of prosecuting S&P for their role in rating as solid investments the mortgage-backed securities which were at the epicenter of the financial crisis of 2008. As per usual with the actions of the Obama administration, the motives for this one are highly questionable, if not down right scandalous.
     If the government is going to prosecute S&P for misleading investors as to the credit worthiness of Residential Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligations, then they must also prosecute themselves. It was federal regulators, who are supported in their jobs by tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, who looked the other way as these "investments" were bought and sold multiple times. Lest anyone forgets, it was Democrats in Congress, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that pushed not only the mortgage lenders to make bad loans, but then encouraged the selling of these bad loans as investments.
     It is little more than ironic that no other credit ratings agencies are being prosecuted by the federal government in this manner. Added to the irony is that until August of 2011, Standard and Poor's was not on the Obama Justice Department's radar either. It was then that S&P downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States government, the first time in our history such a downgrade has occurred. The Obama administration was in the process of "negotiating" with House Republicants to raise the nation's debt limit. The downgrade was not only an embarrassment to the administration, but it lent fuel to the fire that the President and his Democrats had not been good stewards of the people's money. It was after the downgrade that the Obama administration began a campaign against Standard and Poor's to place the blame for the 2008 crisis squarely on their shoulders.
     It is ironic that the Obama administration is using its Justice department to prosecute S&P for the very crisis that was in part caused by Bill Clinton using his Justice department to force the bad loans in question to be made in the first place. Whether the government is ultimately successful or not is not important, the idea that the executive branch could use its Justice Department to punish administration detractors, is a concept that would cause a great amount of consternation among our founders. It is anathema to the great nation they carefully crafted, and an assault on the ideals of limited government and separation of powers.

Health Care's Original Sin

     At this particular time, anyone who has not been in a coma, knows about President Obama's deliberate sin of misleading the American people about being able to keep their current health insurance plans once his socialized health care scheme was implemented. But there was a health care sin that preceded Mr. Obama's recent sin, and was just as devious and dishonest. The sin I am talking about is the one which Democrats used to precipitate the crafting and ramming through Congress of their government confiscation of one sixth of the private sector. It says that the health care industry was so badly broken that most Americans were just one illness away from financial ruin.
     The Democrats' analysis of the health care system was founded on half truths, victimization, and outright lies. I could never understand how a system could be so broken which had an 85-90% satisfaction rating among its customers, which in every poll for the last 20 years, the health insurance industry has enjoyed. Even President Obama understood this fact, otherwise, he would have had no reason to lie to people about keeping plans that, in the Democrats' estimation, people did not like.
     An additional aspect of health care's original sin, of which Democrats convinced many Americans, is that they were only one illness away from bankruptcy. The truth is that as of 2010, depending on the source you believe, the average hospital stay in the United States costs between 9 and 15 thousand dollars. Not exactly pocket change, but also not an insurmountable mountain of debt for the average American family. After all, these same Americans are not driven into financial ruin when they pay twenty to thirty thousand dollars for a new car, or spend ten thousand dollars on their child's sweet sixteen party.
     Is it not painfully obvious to most individuals that the cost of health care has risen in direct proportion to the amount of coverage Americans possess? So much so, that items like prescription drugs and office visits, which use to be paid out of pocket by the patient, have increased to a level that Americans refuse to pay for these items on their own. ObamaCare only exacerbates this condition with its mandates on minimum coverage requirements of health insurance policies. The President and others on the Left have even taken to calling policies that have recently cancelled because of the law, sub-standard. These plans were offered by the insurance companies and accepted by private individuals at an agreed upon price, it is called the moral contract of capitalism.
     I would not expect those on the Left like Barack Obama to understand moral contracts entered into by free individuals. For the Left there is no morality, excepting that which is imposed upon free people by big government. It is a morality based not on principle and conviction, but on the shifting sands of political advantage. It is a twisted, corrupt morality that seeks to imprison the free behind an iron curtain of government arrogance that only leaves pain in its wake of incompetence.   
    

The Culture Of Irresponsibilty

     There is a school of thought that proclaims that as a nation, we must change our culture before we can ever hope to change our politics. The purveyors of this theory, of which I am one, have chosen the importance of culture over politics to the continued liberty and happiness we have enjoyed as a nation for over 200 years. There are those who are flummoxed by President Obama's almost instinctive ability to deflect an accounting of his actions and words, or any responsibility for their failed results. This is not surprising to me, considering he was formed with the ladle dipped into the well of our culture poisoned by Leftism.
     Barack Obama's absence of rectitude is endemic of a culture which has lost its moral bearing and drifts rudderless in a sea of moral relativism and situation ethics. Much of our culture has been tutored by the Left to shed the burdens of individual responsibility in favor of a more general and collective guilt for our sins. The current occupant of the White House is a reflection of ourselves as we look into the mirror of our cultural life as a nation.
     Every day I am shocked evermore by the increasingly gleeful acceptance that many Americans have for dishonesty as a constant companion in their lives. This dishonesty takes many forms, from denting some one's car in a parking lot and not leaving a note, to efforts to mitigate that which belongs in the realm of personal responsibility, such as health care. The object of the exercise of modern American life seems to be to weasel out of as much personal responsibility as possible and place it squarely on the shoulders of someone else.
     The fact that Barack Obama was able to transform the mortgage industry into a pseudo-charity, using taxpayer money to help those in trouble on their mortgages, is a testament to Americans' willingness to rescind their contractual obligations. What was so breathtaking about the Obama administration's actions to "help" those with mortgage problems, is that it was the first time in our history that the federal government inserted itself into private contracts on such a mass scale. But the deeper issue is that, as a nation, we have become less responsible in our commitments, and more  dishonest in our dealings with each other.
     So we can complain until our throats are too soar to complain anymore about politicians with no visible signs of probity, but it is we as the governed who must change the culture that produces such corrupt governance. As Cassius said to Brutus in William Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."  

Three Words On The Obama Legacy

     Great Presidents like Ronald Reagan leave to history a treasure trove of succinct and thoughtful quotes. Quotes that inspire, educate, and provoke thought and debate. Quotes that express some spark of jewel from the crown that is the founding values of this great nation. I challenge anyone to relay a great quote by our current president. For a man who uses more words to say anything than anyone else, Barack Obama has not produced one memorable quote for history. In fact, Barack Obama is as empty and vacuous now, after almost five years of being President, as he was in 2008 when he was originally campaigning for that position.
     My previous statements above not withstanding, Barack Obama will leave a legacy of words upon exiting the White House in January of 2017. The words of Barack Obama's presidential legacy will be discrimination, race, and intimidation.
     More than any other president in our history, Barack Obama has aimed to use the power of the federal government to discriminate against those that have, in favor of those who have not, in order to effect the fulfillment of some twisted Leftist distributive model for society. That word, discrimination, more than any other, defines the policies and actions of Barack Obama and the modern day Left. The discrimination based on a person's possessions is the cornerstone of wealth redistribution, and the modus operandi of the Obama regime.
     Mr. Obama's legacy will also include a healthy dose of the word race as a means of effecting societal change that places Leftists like himself in charge of everyone and everything. Barack Obama and his ilk see America's account with humankind to be in deficit from its past mistakes with race. And they see their mission as the self-appointed collectors who will make this country pay on an account that will never be satisfied in full. The Obama Left has used race to great effect in encouraging blacks to think of themselves as victims of this nation, and any opposition to keep silent out of fear of being labeled a racist.
     The third word of the Obama legacy is intimidation. Leftists like Barack Obama know that, stated honestly and forthrightly, their ideas and policies would not gain the support of the majority of Americans. So they must coerce and intimidate in order to get their agenda implemented. So President Obama, early in his presidency, sent community agitators to the homes of AIG executives as a warning to the financial services sector to cooperate with the meddling in their business of people in government who know nothing about their industry. This President also used the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate conservative groups away from practicing grassroots politics that may have removed Barack Obama from the White House in 2012. And, he publicly intimidated the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court into deciding in his favor on finding his signature health care law constitutional.
     Barack Obama will exit the White House in just over three years, never having blazed his oratory in the annals of great and inspiring words of history. But in addition to leaving this country with a severely obese federal government that must borrow almost forty percent of what it spends, Barack Obama will leave the American people with the bitter taste on their tongues of discrimination, race, and intimidation.  

The Latest In Barack Obama's Management Of Our Decline

     Since the late 1980s, a law has existed that resulted in the aftermath of the Libyan government-sponsored terrorist attack over Lockerbie, Scotland, which destroyed Pan Am flight 103 and killed almost 300 people in total. The law to which I allude prevents and restricts the immigration of Libyan nationals into the United States with the intent to study or work in the aeronautics industry. This law, which is a cog in the wheel of U.S. national security, is now being assaulted by the Obama administration.
     President Obama and his national security team wish to eliminated any and all restrictions on Libyan nationals immigrating to this country. The reason for the current administration's willingness to put the American people at risk in such a spectacular way is pure hubris. The Obama White House has deemed that it is more important for Americans to believe their actions in Libya have lead to a more tenable situation for the Libyan people and greater stability in the region as a whole, than it is for Americans to surmise that those actions have lead to a destabilization of the Middle East. One can not be sure if the President and his folks actually believe their own deception (sometimes people tell a lie so often they begin to believe it themselves) or if they simply desire that the American people believe it. Either way, out of ignorance or blatant deception, rescinding such an important national security measure could be risky to the continued safety and security of the homeland.
     This is not the first time that President Obama and the college fraternity he calls an administration has tried to pull a cuddly bunny out of the Libyan hat of turmoil and terrorism they helped in part to create. The Attack a little over a year ago that saw ambassador Stevens and three others senselessly murdered by terrorists, occurred as the Obama administration was trying to convince a wary public that the sows ear of the President's Libyan intervention was actually a beautiful silk purse of a democratic society. Hence the lack of security for American diplomats serving in Libya. But the truth is that not all is well in Libya. The people in control are Muslim Brotherhood devotees and children of Al Qaeda.
     The tip of this issue, like so many others, belies hundreds of feet of danger lurking just below the surface, waiting to cause havoc with the U.S. ship of state. Barack Obama's willingness to place this country's national security, fiscal security, and constitutional security at risk to fulfill his radically Leftist agenda never ceases to amaze me. Never has there been a President that has opened so many doors to our enemies, whether out of ignorance or blind devotion to a destructive ideology.
     This latest attempt to place the super power status of the United States on a level playing field with our enemies, comes on the heels of President Obama removing missile defense from Poland and Czechoslovakia, ignoring Iran's leaps towards becoming nuclear-tipped, allowing the Russians to bail out Bashar Al Assad in Syria, reducing our nuclear weapons arsenal by more than half, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and its splinter groups of terrorists controlling more of the strategically important Middle East, and on and on, almost ad infinitum. We ignore the deliberate attempt to manage America's decline by this President at our own risk, or worse yet, we accept as incompetence an ideologically driven strategy to place the United States on equal footing with those who are vehemently opposed to the values of liberty and freedom upon which this country was founded. 

How Did Health Care Insurance Become A Necessity ?

     Recent surveys have shown that health care insurance is the number one priority with a majority of Americans. This fact is a function of the Democrats imposing Leftist policies for the last half century which have exploded health care costs into the stratosphere of anxiety about experiencing even the most basic illnesses. It is also why President Obama's lie to the American people to sell his socialized medicine scheme, i.e., "If you like your current health insurance plan and doctor, you can keep them both. Period." is more important than any promise made by any modern day President. Health care is of such a personal nature to Americans that the President's lie was analogous to him  telling people, "If you like your current spouse, you can keep them." And then one morning a hundred million people awake to find their husband or wife gone.
     Of course, Barrack Obama and the Democrats in Congress promised a better spouse that would do more of the right things and fewer of the things that drove their other half crazy. And the new spouse would actually improve the individual's financial health. The best part is that everyone in the country would have a spouse that they could count on to make all their dreams come true. But the promise of keeping a spouse you like in my theoretical example, or your health care plan in the real world example with which we are currently suffering, vanishes like most promises of the big government, nanny-state that politicians like Barrack Obama keep trying to create out of free choice.
     The fact that Barrack Obama and his Lefty Lucys in Congress have been able to get as far as they have in destroying the best health care industry in the world that had an almost 90% satisfaction rate among its customers, is the result of decades of propaganda. Just in my lifetime, health care and health care insurance has gone from almost an afterthought in most families conscious daily lives, to an overwhelming concern. It has become so much of an obsession to many Americans that they feel they will die without health insurance because the care it covers is so onerous in cost that it would bankrupt the average family.
     Of course, most people reading this realize that the cost of health care has risen in direct relation to the amount of government intervention into that market over the last five decades. But that is exactly the modus operandi of the Left, i.e., convince people of a manufactured crisis in some area of life, propose government solutions to "fix" the crisis, and when the government "solutions" cause the cost of the thing to surpass most incomes' ability to comfortably afford it, step in with a full-blown government "system" to replace that which was not broke before the government intervened.
     The health care debacle, and the even bigger debacle of the eventual single-payer, government-run system towards which we seem to be careening, is illustrative of how Ronald Reagan once described Leftists. He said, "They see something moving and they tax it, if it keeps moving they regulate it, and if it stops moving they subsidize it." No greater insight into the ideology and mind of the Left has ever been so succinctly spoken as the preceding. I only wish for the sake of our health care and our liberty, this lesson would have become a quaint saying from the past instead of the governing principle which has replaced the Constitution in our modern American society. 
 

...And They Call This Enlightenment ?

     God sits upon his celestial throne today and everyday and laments the American Lefts definition of enlightenment.
     God says, "I whispered my divinity in the ears of James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other exceptional men, and gave them the words to build the greatest nation since the dawn of time. A nation that advanced the human condition more than any other, and now some men, in order to empower themselves by enslaving others, have sought to extinguish the flame of liberty passed to them through the ages. And they call this enlightenment?"
     God says, "I have given them a planet like no other, full of resources to be used to power their advancement. Oil and gas buried deep in the earth has been called a bane of human existence by some men who wish to transport their society back hundreds of years to the age of windmills. And they call this enlightenment ?"
     God says, "I wave my hand and exhale my breath and change the earth from warm to cold, and every condition in between. Some men have the foolish audacity to believe that they can control that which lies exclusively in My realm, and in so doing they aim to control other men's wealth and their use of the resources I have provided. And they call this enlightenment?"
     God says, "I give them the innocent and beautiful life that only I can create, and they dispose of this life in the abortionist's dark and unholy receptacle of sin. And they call this enlightenment?"
     God says, "I sent them my faithful and devoted servant, Martin Luther King Jr. to speak my truth about the equality of all men. But those charged with carrying his holy mantle forward have made it profane with government by using equality as a means to enrich and empower themselves. And they call this enlightenment?"
     God says, "I burned into stone for Mosses and his people commandments to be followed to live a virtuous and contented life. And after hundreds of generations keeping these words of mine alive, they outlaw it from public display in their edifices of justice that were built with the very words that came from my lips. And they call this enlightenment?"
     God says, "I have given them the wisdom of the aged and the innocence of the young with which to enrich their lives and their culture. But some men have used the young and old alike to confiscate the wealth and property of other men in order to materially enrich themselves at the expense of the young, the old, and everyone in between. And they call this enlightenment?"
     Enlightenment comes from a deeper spiritual understanding, not by eliminating it from the public life of a nation. Enlightenment has its roots in the holiness that is the age of God, not in the profanity of the pop culture of the new age. Enlightenment is not originated, enhanced, or maintained by politicians, but by those with the wisdom that comes from a God-centered life. And finally, enlightenment has as its sisters freedom and liberty, and the fulfillment of every man's soul to choose its path for himself.
    

Please Do Not Let It Be Christie !

     The voting booths in New Jersey hardly had a chance to cool down after Chris Christie's victory over his Democrat challenger, Barbara Buono, for that state's governor's mansion, when some were speculating that he would be the Republicant presidential nominee in 2016. I can understand those on the Left, in the main stream media and elsewhere, pushing Christie like they pushed John McCain in 2008, then once nominated, they slimmed him like any other Republicant candidate. Even Christie's boyfriend in the White House, who by the way called him with congratulations on the night of his victory, will join the Lefts onslaught when and if he becomes the nominee.
     Beyond the presidential hug and whirlwind date just days before last year's presidential election, there are real concerns for conservatives about Chris Christie. The man who once had the devotional teenage-like crush of Conservative stalwart Ann Coulter, has shown himself to be nothing more than a corked bat or a mirage for conservatives wandering aimlessly in the political desert. For all of Christie's bluster, New Jersey still has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and Christie is dead last among Republicant governors in leading their states to brighter economic skies. And then there is his pro-gun control stance and his support for carbon credits to solve the non-existent scam of global warming. Stop me when I get to something which makes Chris Christie a Conservative and worthy of the attention and support of the Conservative base in the 2016 presidential election.
     If there are still Conservatives who have a death wish to support Christie, consider that prior to becoming governor of New Jersey he was, at one time, a lobbyist whose clients included the biggest purveyor of the Ponzi scheme other than the federal government, Bernie Madoff.  And while he gained a special place in some Conservatives' hearts for standing toe-to-toe with the unions in his state, it is not unheard of for Democrats to do the same thing in desperate financial situations. And then there is his criticism of Conservatives like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz for their unwavering support of the conservative principles upon which this great nation was founded and built.
     For those still not convinced of Mr. Christie's inappropriateness for Conservative support for president, just remember that Mitt Romney vetted Chris Christie twice and decided that he would not garner enough support in a national election. No one wanted to win the presidency more than Mitt, not to mention that no one achieves the level in business that he did without being a good judge of character. I still believe in my heart that Mr. Christie's behavior after super storm Sandy was in some part motivated by his desire to payback Mitt Romney for not choosing him as a running mate. And in my opinion that is exactly the kind of petty thug politics Conservatives should be looking to eliminate from the White House beginning in January of 2017.

ObamaCare Lie Illustrative Of Lefts Expiration Date On Truth

     As a child my mother taught me that a lie will eventually catch up with the liar and cause havoc in his life. This theory does not seem to apply to Barrack Obama, a man who is religiously dedicated to dishonesty and throughout his life has been rewarded for it with positions he does not warrant through accomplishment or hard work, but has acquired with lies and moral corruption. The President's current foray into falsehood is the lie that he used in marketing his signature legislation, ObamaCare. Barrack Obama, being limited by the usual definition of lie, created a new category of lie called the meta-lie, which is a lie about a lie.
     Mr. Obama's original lie was that under his health care law, persons wishing to keep their current insurance plans and doctors, could do so. He made this statement dozens of times, occasionally adding the verbal "period" after it. When someone adds the word, "period" after a statement it means that the preceding statement stands without qualification. The President recently told the meta-lie that he qualified his previous statement by saying that Americans could only keep their current plan if the insurance provider did not change the plan after the law was implemented. Of course, regulations were written into the law that required insurers to change many current plans, essentially cancelling the policies of millions of Americans.
     As President Obama and his executioners of freedom sat at the table of big government and carved up liberty and stuffed their disgusting jowls of tyranny with its flesh, the American people refused to divest themselves of the lie. The Obama administration was able to perpetuate the biggest con in history because the American people wanted so badly to believe the con. They wanted to believe that their policies and doctors were not going to change, that they would save $2500 a year per family, and that millions who were currently uninsured would magically be covered and receive services from a system that was reducing its supply of doctors by 60,000 more a year than was graduating from medical schools.
     Barrack Obama and the modern Democrat party exhibit the behaviors of every other Leftist throughout history. They believe that truth only exists in the present, that it has no past and no future and it gains validation only from their words spoken today. Barrack Obama's hubris informs him that there is no virtue of probity except that which he gives it through his current statements. Another old adage I learned as a child is that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is. Tyrants, con men, and Democrats have prospered personally by convincing the masses of just the opposite. The American people who still harbor a belief in something for nothing, do so not only at the risk of destroying the greatest health care delivery system in the world, but to the detriment and destruction of liberty itself.

ObamaCare's Assault On Free Speech

     The Obama administration's health care strategy of burying commercial health insurers in so many regulations that they can no longer continue to provide their product, is like firemen setting your house on fire and then stepping in to save the day. For those having the courage to accept the truth, and the ears to hear President Obama's own words on the subject, a single-payer system was the desired goal from the beginning. Remember the public option? Well, regulating insurers out of business and chasing doctors and other medical professionals out of medicine has hastened the public option as the only option, therefore transforming it from an option into a mandate.
     The motivation of Barack Obama and the rest of his Obama-bots is political power and control over the lives of individuals. But a healthy chunk of their motivation for ruining the best health care industry in the world is that they hate the free enterprise system and the free market. Barack Obama and his Alinsky-ites realize that when put in a competition with the free market, their big government policies lose every time. So they work to eliminate the free market by using the unconstitutional power of the centralized government. They do not believe in big government over the private sector because they think it is better, but because through its mitigation of individual liberty, it is better for them. Additionally, it is Leftist arrogance that allows them to believe that they can run peoples lives better than individuals operating in the free market.
     An illustrative example of the Lefts hatred for the free market and the individuals who operate within it, is a not often talked about aspect of the ObamaCare law that limits the free speech of doctors. Health care professionals providing health information to patients in the form of seminars are no longer able to give those patients the benefit of their knowledge and experience, but must follow a very strict slide presentation created by the bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration. This intellectual oppression by the Obama administration is analogous to book burning engaged in by tyrants and authoritarians of the twentieth century. It is statists outlawing intellectual property that is not approved by their tangled web of bureaucracy.
     Why would the administration limit the speech of doctors giving information to patients? Partly, it is that in their hubris state they think they know more than doctors who have decades of experience and continuing education, and partly it is their irrational hatred of the free market. They have restricted doctors' speech to prevent them from mentioning the products of pharmaceutical companies. This is analogous to preventing painters from recommending a particular paint, a mechanic from recommending a brand of tires, or brokers from favoring one stock over another. This is the society of Auldous Huxley's Brave New World, where even thoughts must be approved by the central planners in control of the society and culture. It is a world we have entered, not kicking and screaming, but willingly, over the preceding five decades. It is the world that we traded in our liberty for, and only now have realized that we have been taken. It is a world that could only exist with the willing consent of We The People.
    

Central Bank Policy Greatest Threat To Financial Liberty

     I have learned a new way to finance my personal prosperity. My strategy is a twofold process in which I am going to endeavor from the comfort of my own home. In my kitchen, which I will call my central government, I will create debt investment instruments which I can sell to any interested investors. In my living room, which I will call my central bank, I will print my own currency, which I will then use to buy the debt investment instruments created in my kitchen. This scheme will give me a virtually unlimited supply of money which I can use for any number of spending projects as I print and borrow my way to prosperity.
     What is that you say? My scheme will not work. That due to an over-supply of my currency, it will completely collapse unless my central bank in the living room can sell the debt investment instruments they have been accumulating. And that for my central bank to pique the interest of new investors in the debt investment instruments they own they will have to offer a more attractive yield, causing my interest rates to skyrocket. This will cause money to be pulled from other areas and invested in the very attractive debt investment instruments owned by my central bank. But how could this not work? This is the exact same scheme that President Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke told the nation would bring it prosperity and jobs?
     There is an old market adage that says, "Don't fight the Fed." Consequently, when the Federal Reserve is favoring stocks by keeping investors out of bonds with low yields, wily investors put their money to work in the stock market. This, and nothing else, is the only reason that stocks have been hitting record highs recently. It certainly has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the companies being invested in or the economy in which they operate, both showing all the signs of life of the Clintons' marital relationship. When the Fed begins to sell the bonds they have been accumulating, as they must do in order to not totally collapse the dollar, they will do so at higher yields, which will signal the end to stock favorability and the beginning of bond favorability. Or at least investors will see them as a safe haven for their money, which they will move from stocks into bonds. This is called the "risk-off" trade because investors are getting a better return in safer bonds than riskier stocks.
     In response to a question about what the Fed should do about interest rates, I remember hearing Rick Santelli, CNBC analyst and grandfather of the Tea Party movement, say that they should let the free market determine rates. Mr. Santelli knows, as did Andrew Jackson, that an all powerful central bank is a bigger threat to the liberty of this great nation than any foreign enemy. Mr. Santelli and Mr. Jackson, as well as others, understand that the economy's ability to self-correct is dependent upon its freedom to set its own metrics based on market conditions. When a central bank or a central government tries to force certain conditions on the markets and the economy, the result is less wealth-creation, less job-creation, and less prosperity for the average American.
    

The Big Lie

    The delay by the Obama administration of the employer mandate for providing health care insurance for their employees, may appear to be a gift to business managers. It not only gives them a year  to remove the burdensome cost of expensive health care plans, but to increase their bottom lines by reducing employee work hours below the thirty hour threshold required by the law. But what some business managers may not understand as a result of using static analysis, is that under the laws of dynamic analysis, if there are fewer persons working full time, they will necessarily have less money to avail themselves of those businesses products and services.
     This flawed thinking by businesses illustrates the continued ignorance by many in this country of who and what Barrack Obama and the modern Democrat party really are. It also shows an ignorance of the Affordable Care Act's very deliberate nature to serve as the administration's license to change the rules of the game as it suits their radical Leftist agenda. Do these businesses not realize that President Obama will eliminate the employee work hour threshold once the law is fully implemented, placing an even more onerous burden on business? I can not, at this point, understand how anyone, especially those in business, are not acquainted with the very wide berth the law gives the President in making up the rules as he goes, and the ability to reverse himself as the mood strikes him. Just like some banana republic tin god.
     It is not the large crony capitalist businesses that will be hurt, but the millions of small to medium sized ones that do not have an "in" with the administration to receive some sort of carve-out or other protection from future regulations. And while there may be some dope-smoking, maggot-infested, tree-hugging Leftist on a commune somewhere who still believes that Barack Obama and the Democrat party are for the "little guy," the rest of us understand the bald and naked truth that Leftist policies always hurt the little guy the most. A case in point is Dodd/Frank, aka The Financial Reform Act. It not only wrote into law protections for the big banks, but its crushing weight of regulations, and the cost associated with them, has caused the closure of over a hundred small community banks.
     The ignorance of business, like the ignorance still studied by many average Americans, is illustrative of the authoritarian credo, "If you are going to lie, lie big, because no one will believe it to be a lie." Too many Americans, in business and in other walks of life, still labor under the false belief that President Obama and the modern Democrat party want a thriving economy that produces opportunities for everyone. And that their failed policies were nonetheless constructed with good intentions. Many have a hard time believing the truth that the ideology that drives President Obama and the Democrat party is one of dependence-creation and wealth-redistribution. It would behoove even the crony capitalists to learn this lesson. Once the greedy and rapacious monster of big government has squeezed the last bits of life from the "little guy,"  it will turn its hungry, soulless eyes towards them.

The Cleveland Police Department Defines Deviancy Down

     A recently disturbing situation involving the Cleveland police department experienced by a friend of mine who owns rental property in the city, once again reminded me of the famous statement by Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan about defining deviancy down. The concept is, that as a society, we accept more and more deviant behavior as normal, and therefore the behavior becomes even more deviant. Over the last few decades, we have not only defined deviancy down in how we deal with inner city problems, but in our entertainment, sports, politics, education, and myriad other areas which define the very essence of who we are as a people. The recent incident I alluded to previously has illustrated how we now have defined deviancy down in law enforcement, the last vestige of civilization. Mr. Moynihan could not have envisioned that the ideology to which he dedicated most of his adult life would be so twisted, bent, corrupted, and hi-jacked as to play a major role in the defining down of deviancy in our culture.
     The incident involved a female tenant of my friend who had a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, who subsequently broke two windows in my friend's house and entered for the purpose of winning back his ex-girlfriend. The woman and the friend she lived with were able to chase off the intruder. When my friend called the Cleveland police to report the crime and the man's name and address who perpetrated it, the officer asked him several times if a crime had been committed. Exasperated, my friend asked the officer if violating a restraining order, breaking and entering, and vandalism were not crimes. The officer robotically informed my friend that they were not going to send a car unless a crime was committed.
     This defining criminal deviancy down engaged in by the Cleveland Police Department, God forbid, may lead to the ex-boyfriend being emboldened and escalating his behavior in the future, perhaps even leading to the death of this poor woman. Of course, we then would see all the community activists lighting candles and making impassioned speeches about how more needs to be done to protect women in the city of Cleveland. These same Left-wing activist never once support efforts to give the police the tools and authority they require to rid Cleveland streets of the filth that commit such crimes. In fact, just the opposite is true, the police are blamed for the crime when they follow the politically correct rules imposed upon them, and demonized when they rid the city of criminal filth by causing them to attain room temperature.
     A different item from the Cleveland Police Department, but related to the defining down of criminal deviancy, is the dis-incentive for people to report crimes. If a single house calls the police too much, they are put on a nuisance list and can be fined if they keep calling. So decent people in crime-ridden neighborhoods are kept from reporting crimes by the nuisance ordinance. Also, adding to the dis-incentive to report crime is the Cleveland Police Department's policy of broadcasting over the Internet the names and sometimes addresses of those that report crime, causing law-abiding citizens to fear retribution from the criminals who monitor such broadcasts. While this makes the mayor and other politicians look good because they can crow about "reported" crimes being down in the city, the decent citizens of Cleveland are the innocent victims of this defining deviancy down engaged in by the city leaders of Cleveland.
    

The Educative Effect On The Insurance Industry Of The IRS Scandal

     The whining, moaning, and gnashing of teeth being engaged in by the insurance industry over the crushing weight of ObamaCare regulations, is a case of too little too late. Now that these insurance executives realize that the customer bonanza that was promised by President Obama to get their support before the law was passed has turned into a huge loss of customers, they are quietly complaining about the law they helped write. These supposedly "smart" people in the highest positions of the health insurance business, foolishly believed that somehow socialized medicine was going to create more capitalism in their industry.
     Recently, reports that many health care insurance executives are afraid to speak out publicly for fear of reprisal from an ever more powerful and unconstitutional executive branch, has highlighted the administration's strategy of using the force of the federal government to intimidate opposition. This current intimidation of the insurance industry has its roots in the targeting of Conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service that was revealed in the spring of this year. I believe the twofold purpose of the IRS harassment strategy was, one, to suppress the votes of Republicans in the 2012 presidential election, and two, to send out a warning to anyone in the future who even thought about criticizing this administration.
     Intimidation only works if the one being intimidated has reason to believe that the intimidator has not only the ability to carry through on any threats, but also the history of doing so. The Obama administration took a calculated risk to leak the IRS scandal, knowing that it was a pretty safe bet that the main stream media would keep their fat out of the fire. And while there was no real consequence to the administration for this illegal and immoral activity, it served as an educative exercise to anyone who even thought about criticizing President Obama or his policies. Those foolish enough to do so would feel the full force of an overly bloated and constitutionally-mitigated executive branch. 
     So the insurance executives are now exhibiting behavior of the intimidated, beyond the normal intimidation that business fears from government regulators. They have not only dummied up in public, but are saying how great ObamaCare will be for the consumers of health care insurance. Now with insurance companies being driven from the commercial health care insurance market by the new law that they supported and helped write, I wonder if these "smart" people actually understand that they have been the instrument of their own demise.